Part 9

She leaned against the wall, not daring to knock or to lift the latch. A voice, which she seemed to hear speaking distinctly outside her, said, “What are you seeking here? What right have you to force your way in here? Where did you acquire the boundless audacity to feel at home here?”

The door opened noiselessly and a feeble ray of light appeared. In its glow stood Olga Radó, tall and slender in a varicolored dark kimono, one hand on the latch, peering sharply from under her knitted brows. She saw and recognized Myra at once.

“Myra!” she exclaimed softly, and closed her eyes a moment as if frightened. “I knew it! What has happened, child? How did you get up here?”

Myra did not walk, she staggered. She went into the room, looking at the soft light of the shaded lamp on the papers, on the desk, on the backs of the books, on the silk cushions. Colors and shapes were a marvellous exhilaration. She let herself slide to the floor, laying her head against the easy-chair, and saying between tears and a laugh, between waking and sleeping, “Let me stay here, it is so good!”

Olga raised her, undressed her like a little child and laid her in the bed. As the cold sheets touched her body, horror set her trembling again. Once more she was wide awake, and sat bolt upright in the bed, striving to control the chattering of her teeth.

“Lie beside me,” she pleaded, “I must feel that I’m not alone. I’m so dreadfully frightened.”

Olga did not answer. She bolted the door, she set the lamp behind the bed, spread another silken veil over the light and let the kimono fall from her shoulders—all with a sad smile and slow, languid movements as if she were preparing for a sacrifice. Then she put her arm under Myra’s neck, tucked the coverlet more tightly around her and stroked the tangled hair from her forehead.

And as Myra felt the warmth of that beloved life, the strong pulse of that heart, she began to weep, quietly, released from pain. She cried herself to sleep.

After an interval, she did not know if it were hours or minutes, she awoke again. The light was still burning. Olga lay motionless beside her, her eyes wide open. Myra sat up and released her arm.

“Why didn’t you wake me?” she said reproachfully. “Poor thing, I must have broken your arm, that’s why you can’t sleep.”

Olga turned her head a little. “I should not have slept anyway. I’m so wide awake.”

“What were you thinking of?” asked Myra, trying to fathom her eyes.

Olga smiled a little wearily.

“I was thinking that your people are probably searching the whole house by now. I should like to know, or better, I’d rather not know, what is going on in Aunt Emily’s head at this moment. She certainly must think you’ve been bitten by a tarantula!”

Myra laughed softly and put her arm around Olga.

“By a scorpion!” she said tenderly. “There is no antidote but its own poison. You know that very well.”

Olga sat up and clasped her hands about her knees. Her glossy black curls fell luxuriantly about her shoulders. Her eyes gazed straight ahead and her wide pupils darkened the irises.

“What a strange fate!” she said in a vibrant tone as soft and deep as a cello’s. “That I must be stung by the scorpion and yet look for healing to the same creature.”

Her pale beautiful features assumed an expression of fierce, of sorrowful, of almost weird energy.

Myra was so terrified that her heart seemed to miss a beat. She did not have the courage to touch Olga, to embrace her.

“Olga!” she cried, in fear and pain, and stretched out her hands to her.

Again that troubled smile played about those pale lips. Olga threw both her arms around Myra and clasped her to her as if her embrace must smother, must annihilate, must destroy.

“Ah, little Myra!” she said with a little explosive laugh, “it’s all no good! You’ll have to let me take the easy road first, then perhaps, everything will be all right.”

IX

In her sleep Myra heard a violent ringing. Then she woke up: doors were slamming, steps approaching, there were many excited voices.

She opened her eyes and saw Olga standing beside the bed, already fully dressed. She was very pale, her eyes dark and blazing. “Get up, Myra,” she commanded in a voice that was breathless with excitement, “get up for God’s sake and dress!”

Myra threw on her things in mad haste. Meanwhile they were pounding on the door. Olga immediately went over to it, unbolted and opened it a crack.

“Who is there?”

Loud excited voices in the hall: excited faces trying to force themselves through the crack.

“I’m sorry, I can’t permit you in my room at this moment,” Olga said with icy courtesy.

Some voices began to shout louder than the others, Aunt Emily and Uncle George. Also the girl who had admitted Myra that night.

Myra’s hands were trembling as in a nightmare. She could not button her dress. She was aware only of a dreadful desire to be invisible or to jump out of the window or to sink into some vast unconsciousness.

Olga’s voice rose above the clamor, deep and calm, but as cold and sharp as polished steel.

“Does this conversation have to take place in the hall?”

Then suddenly, a soft, gentle voice: “May I offer the use of my room. I’ll be glad to step out.”

The voices withdrew next door and a few moments later—Myra had thrown on her dress—Peterkin stole into the room.

“Can I help you, Myra?” he whispered. His eyes were troubled.

At the same moment, there came a sound from next door as if a stick had been smashed across a table.

“I’ll have you thrown into jail!” thundered Uncle George.

Myra wanted to rush in, but Peterkin restrained her, imploring her not to go. “Don’t, don’t!” he begged. “Fix your hair quickly! Put on your shoes!” While she smoothed her hair, he knelt before her and buttoned her shoes. She let him. She could not dash next door in her stocking-feet, with her hair unkempt, to the immense pleasure of all the people peeping through the cracks in their doors.

When Myra did go down the hall to the next room, she was quite calm, quite erect, and sustained by a strong, brave, hot and almost joyous determination.

At the bottom of the hall stood a strange man with his hat and overcoat on. He looked her over with a piercing glance.

“Straight from her father’s dead body!” whimpered Aunt Emily with high pathos.

“The criminal police in a decent house!” screamed Frau Flesch. “Never in all my life have I had anything to do with the police!”

Myra pressed down hard on the latch. Her pulse was throbbing in her neck. For an instant the thought flashed through her mind: Perhaps it was best that this happened. Perhaps it was a good thing that she must now have the courage to take her place beside Olga and say, “I belong to her and will never leave her, even if you tear her and me into little pieces! If you have the courage and the right, use force on me, for I’ll never go one step with you of my own free will.”

Olga was standing, leaning against the table, her arms crossed on her breast, the fingers clasping her elbows.

As Myra opened the door, Aunt Emily rushed to her with a choking cry, “Here is the unfortunate child!”

Myra stood for an instant as though numbed. For a moment she felt as if she were among lunatics or had gone mad herself. With a hasty glance, she thought how very becoming to Uncle George were his stern manner, his steel-blue eyes and his iron-gray mustache against a face crimson with rage.

He came up to her and said in a deep, rough voice that trembled with something like emotion, “Myra, my child, what are you doing here? We’re burying your poor father tomorrow and you’re here!”

He laid his heavy hand on her shoulder.

Myra did not look at him. She was looking at Olga.

“This is my home,” she said. She meant her voice to sound vibrant and firm, but she could not manage it, and it sounded soft and tremulous.

“If you think you have the right, go ahead and use force on me, for I’ll never go one step with you of my own free will.”

It was hard, very hard, to say that. Very hard to say it under Uncle George’s honest gaze while his face was distorted with rage and sorrow, under Aunt Emily’s little blinking bird-eyes, or Frau Flesch’s spongy face that seemed fixed in a repulsively avid grin. Hard to say it in front of the strange man and the maid, who were listening in the hall.

But now it was said. And now everything would be all right. Now Olga would come and take her in her arms, would press Myra’s head against her breast so that she need not hear or see anything more, would, with one of her haughty and imperious gestures, show all these strange and horrible faces the door, would point her revolver at these intruders and drive them out with a single word....

Olga turned her head without changing her position, and looked at Myra. Everybody thought she was looking at Myra and gave an involuntary start.

But actually her eyes were merely resting on Myra’s forehead, eyebrows and hair.

Myra strove to intercept her gaze, but could not. It was fixed on her forehead, her eyebrows, her hair—on a line above her eyes.

“My dear child,” said Olga with a gentleness that was icy-cold, “your sense of dependence on me is touching, but I have done nothing to merit it. If you feel about me as you say, you ought to go with your relatives, behave like a rational creature and spare me your visits in the future. You must see that they occasion me nothing but unpleasantness!”

Myra hesitated for a moment. “Something must happen,” she thought, “she must look at me, she must give me some sign, a glance, a gesture, that this is all comedy, that I must trust her, believe in her, wait for an explanation....”

But nothing did happen.

Myra racked her brain for something terrible with which to shatter that stony mask. Could she not say, “You made me come, lured me, forced me and now you deny me”? No, she had no right to do that. But could she not think of some abusive word, something that would pierce, would wound, something cruel?

She turned over various silly childish epithets in her mind: they were as heavy as blocks of stone.

“Canaille!” she thought. “Harlot!” That was not what she was seeking. It seemed to her as if she must shove the blocks of stone this way and that in feverish search for the one sharp word she must fling.

Suddenly, she felt as if she had stood there an endless time, with arms hanging, and vacant eyes and open mouth.

She drew herself up and attempted a smile that would be at once proud and affable. But she felt as she was doing it, as if madness were twitching the distorted muscles of her face.

“Will you telephone for a taxi, Uncle George?” she said. “I am too tired to walk.”

She went to the door. “I just want to gather up my things. I won’t be a moment.”

She went into the next room, put on her hat before the mirror very carefully, threw on her coat and looked for her bag. She did not hurry at all. She still had some mad feeling that Olga must steal in and whisper something to her—where they could meet, where she should write, when she could explain it all to her. But no Olga came.

As Myra opened her bag, she noticed a little wad of tightly pressed bills.—What was left from their trip. She took them out, laughing bitterly. Probably she would no longer be in any way tempted to steal.

Probably she would never again need money as long as she lived.

She raised her hand and opened it, letting the bills flutter down on the disordered bed.

Then she went out, past the strange man, past the maid, downstairs and out of the house, without once looking back.

* * * * *

In the street she got into the taxi with her relatives.

Uncle George remained for a while in the city. His behavior was really curious. He was quiet and kind, and always fixed upon Myra a pair of honest, anxious blue eyes, and always spoke to her in a slightly emotional tone. But there was never a word about the money or her flight.

When Myra pondered this behavior—she did not do so very often—she found only one explanation for it. She did not think it might be remorse because his vehement letter had occasioned her unhappy father’s death. Nor did it ever occur to her that he was striving to win her affection through love and kindness. No, probably she was a source of irritation to him. But he had seen Olga Radó. Had heard her voice. Had experienced something of her power. When Myra thought of that, she almost loved him.

He had heard how Olga denied, betrayed and humiliated her. And he sympathized with her. When Myra thought of that, she hated him.

Even Aunt Emily was singularly gentle. Myra thought later that it would have been better if they had tormented and wounded her at that time, and thereby made her strong through steely hate.

Aunt Emily and the entire family were all for expressing the depth of one’s grief by the length of one’s veil. Nobody was going to say that Myra, the depraved daughter, the unruly offspring, did not mourn her father’s death.

The first time Myra saw herself in a mirror, black crêpe from head to toe, slender and pale, with lifeless eyes and a mouth distorted with grief, she thought, “Like a widow!” Her heart contracted painfully.

When they drove to the interment, they sat side by side. Aunt Emily’s black-gloved right hand held a white handkerchief to her quivering lips; her left held Myra’s hand. And Uncle George stared out the window while from time to time a tear rolled from his blue eye and into his mustache.

Myra felt as if she had been a mountain: her stony invulnerability had turned aside every shot. But now an explosion had torn a crater in her. She was hollow inside, a deep, dark, precipitous chasm. The savage wound lay exposed to view, and everything fell into it without let or hindrance, lay in her like heavy stones, tortured her—everything, glances, words, tears, gestures.

“Woe to those who have torn me asunder!” she thought bitterly.

Then her fingers clasped Aunt Emily’s a little tighter for a moment. “We belong together,” she thought. “Forsaken, loveless, unhappy people who have grown hard and bitter—we belong together. There are two great families in this world—the rich and the poor, the sound and the sick, the laughers and the weepers.... Olga Radó belongs among the happy: she has triumphed, she has justified herself, she has rid herself of me—now she can go, laughing, to the next adventure.”

Myra did not always think such thoughts. She was a prey to the most conflicting feelings. There were sleepless nights when she thought that everything would be all right if only she could hold Olga’s hand and ask, “How did you come to do it, child? How could such a thing happen? What were you thinking of at the time?”

The next day she would pace up and down Motz Street and stare at the house across the way—but always in vain.

Then there were days when Aunt Emily displayed a loathsomely friendly sympathy and let fall insinuations concerning the ingratitude of the world in general and in particular, and how lonely Myra now was because she had given all her affection to such a person.

Then Myra hated them both—Aunt Emily and Olga—with a terrible hatred. But she hated Olga the more—Olga who had thrown her down where Aunt Emily could trample her, Olga who had torn that wound which Aunt Emily’s foul fingers could probe.

Sometimes she resolved to die, but more often to flee, to pack up a bundle and run down the highroad, to pass the night in meadows and hollows with nothing over her but the eternal starry skies.

At other times, it seemed to her as if that sort of life, particularly that sort of life, would be merely a constant torment without Olga—but a treasure without end, an inconceivable happiness if only Olga were there.

She strove to reconcile herself to the thought that Olga no longer loved her. But it was impossible that she actually hated her. She had simply sacrificed her, surrendered her without second thought in order to shield her reputation, in order to protect herself from unpleasantnesses. It is true, she did not love her. That was why her words had been lies. She had simply been glad when Myra came. Always. And she would be glad again if she returned.

It was becoming clearer and clearer to Myra every day how rich she was. Franz Rudloff had been no miser, but there was nothing for which he really cared to spend money. And Aunt Emily was much too much of a model not to economize, even in the pettiest ways.

Myra had no very clear understanding of money or the value of money. But she knew that the sums mentioned to her, guaranteed her freedom, promised her that in a few months she could live her life where she wished and as she wished.

A life without Olga?

Myra finally resolved to write to Olga. Not how she felt, nothing about her longing, her love—God forbid! But a line or two, quite businesslike, if one might use the expression—lines whose purpose would simply be to bring about an explanation.

With much effort she composed a letter which she amended and improved and copied; she felt quite satisfied with her handiwork. No one could find in it a trace of affection or humility of any kind.

Rather it was sharp, ironic and somewhat challenging in tone. She mailed the letter and awaited the answer. None came.

* * * * *

Meanwhile Aunt Emily decided to inform Myra of the “facts of life.” To be sure, she chose a rather remarkable method.

Aunt Emily was too much of a model to discuss morally offensive matters with a young girl. Besides, she was probably afraid of Myra’s outbursts of temper, though otherwise she was not cowardly.

Myra had fallen into the habit of sitting in her father’s study. She would sit and read the whole day through, the most difficult and abstruse things, simply in order not to think. Here she had all the books within reach. It was more convenient to sit down at the writing-table with them, than to lug the sometimes heavy folios into another room.

On his desk she now found from time to time pamphlets, brochures, apparently of a quite varied character, novels, medical works, daily papers with passages underlined—but all treating of one theme.

There were strange and weird stories of countesses who dressed in men’s attire and frequented various dives until they were lured into a trap and brutally murdered.

Or accounts of sickening orgies in well-known clubs where hundreds of women dressed and disported themselves like men, and men were dolled up with false curls with open-work silk stockings, and with their bare arms and shoulders powdered.

There were statistics showing all the unfortunates who fell victim to softening of the brain, lunacy, tuberculosis of the spine and other diseases as a result of unnatural practices.

Or descriptions of the soul life of sexual inverts which led one to suppose that these thousands of human beings constituted a vast community, a community bound together by no ties of common interest, no similarity of education, origin, taste or attitude toward life, and never by love, but by a common lust for a common form of excess.

There was the biography of a famous man who was miserably murdered by a blackmailing waiter with whom he had had intimate relations—whom he had _loved_.

Myra shuddered when she thought of the word love in this connection. Sometimes it seemed to her as if she would be stifled by so much filth. She became physically ill simply from touching the books. Then she would not read them—for quite a while. She would read historical, philosophic and scientific works. But there were long periods when she was not conscious what she was reading. Her eyes ran along the lines and reflected the words. But her thoughts struggled with the dreadful things that had been flung at her, like blocks of stone, to kill her. Then she would pick up the other books again, the bad ones, and look for enlightenment and draw conclusions and make comparisons.

Whenever masculine women were discussed, mention was made of their superior intelligence, their thirst for knowledge and their desire for culture, coupled with an abnormal tendency to spendthriftness, a passionate desire for luxury, and an unnatural predilection for beautiful foot-gear. Mention was made, too, of weird Don Juan natures who passed with insatiable lust from one adventure to another.

As a result of such readings, Myra was left in the most dreadful bewilderment. These books should have taught her to understand the person who, of all others, had been closest to her. She had said to herself a hundred times in the past months, “This woman is a riddle that cannot be guessed, a mystery that cannot be solved, forever strange and remote, not to be grasped or comprehended. And each time she had felt with every fibre of her being, ‘such and such is the solution; now everything is clear, everything is all right, nothing can ever arise to divide us again.’”

But now, now?

Now Myra felt an anguished need to pack up these books and take them to Olga Radó! “Tell me, are there such people? Are you one of them? Am I? What do you know about it?”

Olga had had to express an opinion about everything that Myra had heard or read in the last year. And Olga’s opinion had nearly always been Myra’s, or had aroused, strengthened, clarified another opinion in her.

Now, for the first time, she had to settle such monstrous matters single-handed and she groped about blindly in the dark. Where she thought to find a light, a way out, she merely strayed deeper into the maze. She could neither make headway nor go back.

So Myra wrote a second letter. This time, too, there was not a word about love or longing—simply an urgent appeal for help, a good deal of complaining about what was happening inside her and a certain reproachfulness: you have brought me so far, you must take my hand and lead me out of this swamp.

No answer came.

Spring came, however. Warm, caressing winds came, and broad flashing rays of sunlight and a veil of buds shrouding every branch, and snow-bells and crocuses, forcing their way with difficulty through dark purple, rotting leaves.