Suddenly everything was clear to him, perfectly clear. So painfully clear that he could almost summon up a smile. It was all over. Baroness Ostrovska was going home, and François the waiter would stay at his post. Was that so strange? Didn’t all the foreign guests who came to the hotel leave again after two, three or four weeks? How foolish not to have thought of it before. It was so clear, it was enough to make you laugh or cry. And ideas kept whirring through his head. Tomorrow evening on the eight o’clock train to Warsaw. To Warsaw—hours and hours of travel through forests and valleys, passing hills and mountains, steppes and rivers and noisy towns. Warsaw! It was so far away! He couldn’t even imagine it, but he felt it in the depths of his heart, that proud and threatening, harsh and distant word Warsaw. While he …
For a second a small, dream-like hope fluttered up in his heart. He could follow. He could hire himself out there as a servant, a secretary, could stand in the street as a freezing beggar, anything not to be so dreadfully far away, just to breathe the air of the same city, perhaps see her sometimes driving past, catch a glimpse of her shadow, her dress, her dark hair. Daydreams flashed hastily through his mind. But this was a hard and pitiless hour. Clear and plain, he saw how unattainable his dreams were. He worked it out: at the most he had savings of a hundred or two hundred francs. That would scarcely take him half the way. And then what? As if through a torn veil he suddenly saw his own life, knew how wretched, pitiful, hateful it must be now. Empty, desolate years working as a waiter, tormented by foolish longing—was something so ridiculous to be his future? The idea made him shudder. And suddenly all these trains of thoughts came stormily and inevitably together. There was only one way out …
The treetops swayed quietly in an imperceptible breeze. A dark, black night menacingly faced him. He rose from his bench, confident and composed, and walked over the crunching gravel up to the great building of the hotel where it slumbered in white silence. He stopped outside her windows. They were dark, with no spark of light at which his dreamy longing could have been kindled. Now his blood was flowing calmly, and he walked like a man whom nothing will ever confuse or deceive again. In his room, he flung himself on the bed without any sign of agitation, and slept a dull, dreamless sleep until the alarm summoned him to get up in the morning.
Next day his demeanour was entirely within the bounds of carefully calculated reflection and self-imposed calm. He carried out his duties with cool indifference, and his gestures were so sure and easy that no one could have guessed at the bitter decision behind his deceptive mask. Just before dinner he hurried out with his small savings to the best florist in the resort and bought choice flowers whose colourful glory spoke to him like words: tulips glowing with fiery, passionate gold—shaggy white chrysanthemums resembling light, exotic dreams—slender orchids, the graceful images of longing—and a few proud, intoxicating roses. And then he bought a magnificent vase of sparkling, opalescent glass. He gave the few francs he still had left to a beggar child in passing, with a quick and carefree movement. Then he hurried back. With sad solemnity, he put the vase of flowers down in front of the Baroness’s place at table, which he now prepared for the last time with slow, voluptuously meticulous attention.
Then came the dinner. He served it as usual: cool, silent, skilful, without looking up. Only at the end did he embrace her supple, proud figure with an endlessly long look of which she never knew. And she had never seemed to him so beautiful as in that last, perfect look. Then he stepped calmly back from the table, without any gesture of farewell, and left the dining room. Bearing himself like a guest to whom the staff would bow and nod their heads, he walked down the corridors and the handsome flight of steps outside the reception area and out into the street: any observer must surely have been able to tell that, at that moment, he was leaving his past behind. He stood outside the hotel for a moment, undecided, and then turned to the bright villas and wide gardens, following the road past them, walking on, ever on with his thoughtful, dignified stride, with no idea where he was going.
He wandered restlessly like this until evening, in a lost, dreamy state of mind. He was not thinking of anything any more. Not about the past, or the inevitable moment to come. He was no longer playing with ideas of death, not in the way one might well pick up a shining revolver with its deep, menacing mouth in those last moments, weighing it in the hand, and then lower it again. He had passed sentence on himself long ago. Only images came to him now in rapid flight, like swallows soaring. First images of his youthful days, up to a fateful moment at school when a foolish adventure had suddenly closed an alluring future to him and thrust him out into the turmoil of the world. Then his restless wanderings, his efforts to earn a living, all the attempts that kept failing, until the great black wave that we call destiny broke his pride and he ended up in a position unworthy of him. Many colourful memories whirled past. And finally the gentle reflection of these last few days glowed in his waking dreams, suddenly pushing the dark door of reality open again. He had to go through it. He remembered that he intended to die today.
For a while he thought of the many ways leading to death, assessing their comparative bitterness and speed, until suddenly an idea shot through his mind. His clouded senses abruptly showed him a dark symbol: just as she had unknowingly, destructively driven over his fate, so she should also crush his body. She herself would do it. She would finish her own work. And now his ideas came thick and fast with strange certainty. In just under an hour, at eight, the express carrying her away from him left. He would throw himself under its wheels, let himself be trampled down by the same violent force that was tearing the woman of his dreams from him. He would bleed to death beneath her feet. The ideas stormed on after one another as if in jubilation. He knew the right place too: further off, near the wooded slope, where the swaying treetops hid the sight of the last bend in the railway line nearby. He looked at his watch; the seconds and his hammering blood were beating out the same rhythm. It was time to set off. Now a spring returned to his sluggish footsteps, along with the certainty of his destination. He walked at that brisk, hasty pace that does away with dreaming as one goes forward, restlessly striding on in the twilight glory of the Mediterranean evening towards the place where the sky was a streak of purple lying embedded between distant, wooded hills. And he hurried on until he came to the two silver lines of the railway track shining ahead of him, guiding him on his way. The track led him by winding paths on through the deep, fragrant valleys, their veils of mist now silvered by the soft moonlight, it took him into the hilly landscape where the sight of sparkling lights along the beach showed how far away the nocturnal, black expanse of the sea was now. And at last it presented him with the deep, restlessly whispering forest that hid the railway line in its lowering shadows.
It was late when, breathing heavily, he reached the dark wooded slope. The trees stood around him, black and ominous, but high above, in their shimmering crowns, faint, quivering moonlight was caught in the branches that moaned as they embraced the slight nocturnal breeze. Sometimes this hollow silence was broken by the strange cries of night birds. In this alarming isolation, his thoughts froze entirely. He was merely waiting, waiting and straining his eyes to see the red light of the train appearing down by the curve of the first bend. Sometimes he looked nervously at his watch again, counting seconds. Then he listened once more, thinking that he heard the distant whistle of the locomotive. But it was a false alarm. All was perfectly silent again. Time seemed to stand still.
At last, far away, he saw the light. At that moment he felt a pang in his heart, and could not have said if it was fear or jubilation. He flung himself down on the rails with a brusque movement. At first he felt the pleasantly cool sensation of the strips of iron against his temples for a moment. Then he listened. The train was still far off. It might be several minutes yet. There was nothing to be heard but the whispering of the trees in the wind. His thoughts went this way and that in confusion, until suddenly one stopped and pierced his heart painf
ully, like an arrow: he was dying for her sake, and she would never know. Not a single gentle ripple of his life as it came to its turbulent end had ever touched hers. She would never know that a stranger’s life had depended on her own, and had been crushed by it.
Very quietly, the rhythmic chugging of the approaching engine came through the breathless air from afar. But that idea burned on, tormenting the dying man in his last minutes. The train rattled closer and closer. Then he opened his eyes once more. Above him was a silent, blue-black sky, with the tops of a few trees swaying in front of it. And above the forest stood a shining, white star. A single star above the forest … the rails beneath his head were already beginning to vibrate and sing faintly. But the idea burned on like fire in his heart, and in his eyes as they saw all the fire and despair of his love. His whole longing and that last painful question flowed into the white and shining star that looked mildly down on him. Closer and closer thundered the train. And once more, with a last inexpressible look, the dying man took the sparkling star above the forest to his heart. Then he closed his eyes. The rails were trembling and swaying, closer and closer came the rattling of the express train, making the forest echo as if great bells were hammering out a rhythm. The earth seemed to sway. One more deafening, rushing, whirring sound, a whirlwind of noise, then a shrill scream, the terrifyingly animal scream of the steam whistle, and the screech and groan of brakes applied in vain …
The beautiful Baroness Ostrovska had a reserved compartment to herself in the express. She had been reading a French magazine since the train left, gently cradled by the rocking movement of the carriage. The air in the enclosed space was sultry, and drenched with the heavy fragrance of many fading flowers. Clusters of white lilac were already hanging heavily, like over-ripe fruit, from the magnificent farewell baskets that she had been given, flowers hung limp on their stems, and the broad, heavy cups of the roses seemed to be withering in the hot cloud of intoxicating perfumes. Even in the haste of the express as it rushed along, a suffocatingly close atmosphere heated the heavy drifts of perfume weighing oppressively down.
Suddenly she lowered her book with limp fingers. She herself did not know why. Some secret feeling was tearing at her. She felt a dull but painful pressure. A sudden sense of constriction that she couldn’t explain clutched her heart. She thought she would choke on the heavy, intoxicating aroma of the flowers. And that terrifying pain did not pass, she felt every revolution of the rushing wheels, their blind, pounding, forward movement was an unspeakable torment. Suddenly she longed to be able to halt the swift momentum of the train, to haul it back from the dark pain towards which it was racing. She had never in her life felt such fear of something terrible, invisible and cruel seizing on her heart as she did now, in those seconds of incomprehensible, incredible pain and fear. And that unspeakable feeling grew stronger and stronger, tightening its grasp around her throat. The idea of being able to stop the train was like a prayer moaned out loud in her mind …
Then she hears a sudden shrill whistle, the wild, warning scream of the locomotive, the wailing groan and crunch of the brakes. And the rhythm of the flying wheels slackens, goes slower and slower, until there is a stuttering rattle and a faltering jerk.
With difficulty, she makes her way to the window to fill her lungs with fresh air. The pane rattles down. Dark figures are hurrying around … words fly back and forth, different voices: a suicide … under the wheels … dead … yes, out here in the open …
She starts. Instinctively, her eyes go to the high and silent sky and the dark trees whispering above it. And beyond them, a single star is shining over the forest. She is aware of its gaze on her like a sparkling tear. Looking at it, she abruptly feels such grief as she has never known before. A fiery grief, full of a longing that has not been part of her own life …
Slowly, the train rattles on. She leans back in the corner and feels soft tears running down over her cheeks. That dull fear has gone away, she feels only a deep, strange pain, and seeks in vain to discover its source. A pain such as terrified children feel when they suddenly wake on a dark, impenetrable night, and feel that they are all alone …
LEPORELLA
HER REAL NAME WAS Crescentia Anna Aloisia Finken-huber, she was thirty-nine years old, she had been born out of wedlock and came from a small mountain village in the Ziller valley. Under the heading of ‘Distinguishing Marks’ in the booklet recording her employment as a servant, a single line scored across the space available signified that she had none, but if the authorities had been obliged to give a description of her character, the most fleeting glance would have required a remark there, reading: resembles a hard-driven, strong-boned, scrawny mountain horse. For there was something unmistakably horsy about the expression of her heavy, drooping lower lip, the oval of her sun-tanned face, which was both long and harshly outlined, her dull, lashless gaze, and in particular the thick, felted strands of hair that fell greasily over her brow. Even the way she moved suggested the obstinacy and stubborn, mule-like manner of a horse used to the Alpine passes, carrying the same wooden panniers dourly uphill and downhill along stony bridleways in summer and winter alike. Once released from the halter of her work, Crescenz would doze with her bony hands loosely clasped and her elbows splayed, much as animals stand in the stable, and her senses seemed to be withdrawn. Everything about her was hard, wooden, heavy. She thought laboriously and was slow to understand anything: new ideas penetrated her innermost mind only with difficulty, as if dripping through a close-meshed sieve. But once she had finally taken in some new notion, she clung to it tenaciously and jealously. She read neither newspapers nor the prayer-book, she found writing difficult, and the clumsy characters in her kitchen records were curiously like her own heavy but angular figure, which was visibly devoid of all tangible marks of femininity. Like her bones, her brow, her hips and hands, her voice was hard too, and in spite of its thick, throaty Tyrolean accent, always sounded rusty—which was hardly surprising, since Crescenz never said an unnecessary word to anyone. And no one had ever seen her laugh. Here too she was just like an animal, for the gift of laughter, that release of feeling so happily breaking out, has not been granted to God’s brute creation, which is perhaps a more cruel deprivation than the lack of language.
Brought up at the expense of the parish because of her illegitimate birth, put out to domestic service at the age of twelve, and then later a scullery maid in a carters’ tavern, she had finally left that establishment, where she was known for her tenacious, ox-like capacity for work, and had risen to be cook at an inn that was popular with tourists. Crescenz rose there at five in the morning every day, worked, swept, cleaned, lit fires, brushed, cleared up, cooked, kneaded dough, strained food, washed dishes and did the laundry until late at night. She never took any holiday, she never went out in the street except to go to church; the fire in the kitchen range was her sun, the thousands and thousands of wooden logs it burned over the years her forest.
Men left her alone, whether because a quarter-century of dour, dull toil had taken every sign of femininity from her, or because she had firmly and taciturnly rejected all advances. Her one pleasure was in money, which she doggedly collected with the hamster-like instincts of the rustic labouring class, so that in her old age she would not have to eat the bitter bread of charity in the parish poorhouse yet again.
It was only for the money, in fact, that this dull-witted creature first left her native Tyrol at the age of thirty-seven. A woman who was a professional agent for domestic staff had come there on holiday, saw her working like a madwoman from morning to night in the kitchen and public rooms of the inn, and lured her to Vienna with the promise of a position at double the wages. During the railway journey Crescenz hardly said a word to anyone, and in spite of the friendly offers of other passengers to put the heavy wicker basket containing all her worldly goods up in the net of the luggage rack, she held it on her knees, which were already aching, for deception and theft were the only notions that her clumsy peasan
t brain connected with the idea of the big city. In her new place in Vienna, she had to be accompanied to market for the first few days, because she feared all the vehicles as a cow fears a motor car. But as soon as she knew her way down the four streets leading to the market place she no longer needed anyone, but trotted off with her basket, never looking up, from the door of the building where her employers lived to the market stalls and home again to sweep the apartment, light fires and clear out her new kitchen range just as she had cleared the old one, noticing no change. She kept rustic hours, went to bed at nine and slept with her mouth open, like an animal, until the alarm clock went off in the morning. No one knew if she liked her job; perhaps she didn’t know herself, for she approached no one, answered questions merely with a dull “Very well”, or if she didn’t agree, with a discontented shrug of her shoulders. She ignored her neighbours and the other maids in the building; the mocking looks of her more light-hearted companions in domestic service slipped off the leathery surface of her indifference like water. Just once, when a girl imitated her Tyrolean dialect and wouldn’t stop teasing her for her taciturnity, she suddenly snatched a burning piece of wood out of the range and went for the horrified, screaming young woman with it. From that day on, everyone avoided her, and no one dared to mock someone capable of such fury again.