The door behind us through which Ilona had left the room began to move gently on its hinges. Hastily, as though caught out in some piece of mischief, Edith closed the box with a sharp, resounding snap.
‘Not a word in front of the others of what I’ve told you. Not a word,’ she said, as though rapping out an order.
It was the white-haired man-servant with the beautifully trimmed mutton-chop whiskers who was discreetly opening the door; behind him Ilona was wheeling in a rubber-tyred tea-trolley piled with good things. She poured out, then came and sat down by us; I immediately felt my self-assurance return. A welcome subject of conversation was provided by the huge Angora cat, who had crept in noiselessly with the tea-trolley and was rubbing himself with unconstrained familiarity against my legs. After I had admired the cat, I was subjected to a cross-fire of questions: how long had I been here, how did I like the new garrison, did I know Lieutenant So-and-so, did I often go to Vienna? And involuntarily I found myself taking part in a natural, easy conversation, in the course of which the painful tension imperceptibly vanished. Gradually I even ventured to take occasional sidelong looks at the two girls. The one was completely different from the other: Ilona, already a woman, full-blooded, well-developed, voluptuous, healthy; beside her, Edith, half child, half young woman, about seventeen or eighteen, still appeared somehow immature. Curious contrast: one would have liked to dance with the one, to kiss her; the other one wanted to spoil as an invalid, to pet and make a fuss of, to protect and, above all, to soothe. For a strange restlessness emanated from her. Not for one moment were her features in repose; now she looked to the left, now to the right, now she leaned back as though exhausted; and she spoke as nervily as she moved in jerky, staccato tones, without pausing for breath. Perhaps, I thought to myself, this lack of restraint, this restlessness, is a compensation for the enforced immobility of her legs; perhaps, too, the result of a perpetual state of semi-fever, which quickens the tempo of her gestures and her speech. But I had little time for observation. For with her blunt questions and her light, volatile manner of talking she had a way of focusing attention completely on herself; and to my surprise I found myself taking part in a really enlivening and interesting conversation.
This went on for an hour, perhaps even an hour and a half. Then all of a sudden the shadow of a figure loomed up from the salon, and someone entered the room cautiously, as though fearing to disturb us. It was Herr von Kekesfalva.
‘Please, please, stay where you are,’ he urged me, realizing that I was about to rise out of politeness, and then bent down to implant a fleeting kiss on his daughter’s forehead. He was again wearing the black coat with the white-edged waistcoat and the old-fashioned stock (I never saw him in anything else). With those eyes that peered out circumspectly from behind gold-rimmed spectacles he looked like a doctor; and he might indeed have been a doctor at a patient’s bed-side as he cautiously took a seat beside the crippled girl. Strange, the moment he appeared, the room seemed to take on a more melancholy aspect; the anxious way in which every now and then he cast searching, tender, sidelong glances at his daughter checked and muted the flow of our hitherto unconstrained chatter. And he too soon became aware of our constraint and made an attempt to get the conversation going again. He too asked about my regiment, about the Captain, and inquired about the former Colonel, who was now a divisional chief at the War Ministry. He seemed for years to have had amazingly detailed knowledge of the affairs of the regiment, and I don’t know why, but I had a feeling that he had some definite purpose in stressing his particularly intimate acquaintance with each individual senior officer of the regiment.
Another ten minutes, I thought to myself, and I can take my leave unobtrusively. But at this moment there was another gentle tap on the door, and the butler entered noiselessly, as though he were bare-footed, and whispered something in Edith’s ear. She immediately flew into a temper.
‘Tell him to wait. Or no, tell him to leave me in peace altogether today. Tell him to go away. I don’t need him.’
We were all embarrassed by the violence of her outburst, and I rose with a disagreeable feeling that I had stayed too long. But she burst out at me as peremptorily as at the manservant:
‘No, stay. It’s nothing, nothing at all!’
Her imperious tone really bordered on rudeness. Her father too seemed to feel uncomfortable, for with a helpless, troubled expression he admonished her:
‘Edith!’
And now she herself realized, perhaps because of his distress, perhaps because I was standing there in embarrassment, that her nerves had got the better of her, for she suddenly turned to me.
‘Do forgive me, but Josef could perfectly well have waited, instead of bursting in like that. It’s only the usual daily torture — the masseur who gives me remedial exercises. The most utter nonsense — one, two, one, two, up, down, down, up; and that, if you please, is going to put me right! The latest discovery of our dear doctor, and a quite superfluous form of torment. Useless, like everything else!’
She looked at her father challengingly, as though holding him responsible. In some embarrassment, for he was obviously ashamed in front of me, the old man bent over her.
‘But my child ... do you really think that Dr Condor ... ?’
He broke off, however, for her mouth had begun to work and her nostrils were quivering. It was in just this way that her lips had trembled on that fateful evening, and I began to dread a fresh outburst. But suddenly she blushed and murmured submissively:
‘All right then, I’ll go, although there’s no point in it, absolutely no point. Excuse me, Herr Leutnant, I hope you’ll come again soon.’
I bowed and was about to take my departure, but she had already changed her mind about my going.
‘No, stay with Papa while I march off.’ Those last words, ‘march off’, were as sharp and staccato as a threat. Then she picked up the little bronze bell that stood on the table and rang it; it was only later that I noticed that bells of this kind were placed within her reach on all the tables all over the house, so that she could always call someone to her at a moment’s notice. The bell rang out sharp and shrill and on the instant the butler, who had discreetly made himself scarce, reappeared.
‘Help me,’ she ordered him and threw off the fur rug. Ilona bent down to whisper something to her, but ‘No!’ she indignantly snapped at her friend, obviously in a state of agitation. ‘Josef shall help me up. Then I can walk by myself.’
What happened now was frightful. Bending over her, the butler seized her frail body under the armpits with an obviously practised grip and lifted her up. Holding with both hands on to the arms of the chair, she stood there erect, and measured each of us with a challenging look; then, feeling for the two sticks that were hidden beneath the rug, she pressed her lips firmly together, raised herself on to the crutches and — tap-tap, tap-tap — stamped, swayed, heaved herself forward, contorted and witch-like, while the butler held his hands out behind her to catch her should she slip or collapse. Tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap — first one foot and then the other, and between each step there was a faint clanking and squeaking as of tautly stretched leather and metal; evidently — I did not dare to look at her poor legs — she was wearing some kind of mechanical supports on her ankles. My heart was constricted as by an icy grip during this forced march, for I immediately realized why she had so demonstratively refused to be helped or to be wheeled out in her invalid chair: she wanted to show me, me in particular, to show all of us, that she was a cripple. She wanted, out of a kind of mysterious vindictiveness born of despair, to torture us with her torture, to arraign us, the hale and hearty, in the place of God. But it was this very challenge, this frightful challenge, that made me feel — and a thousand times more acutely than on the occasion of her outburst of despair when I had asked her to dance — how immeasurably she must suffer from her helplessness. At last — it seemed an eternity — she had swayed and stumbled the few paces to the door, heaving, hurling and throwin
g herself violently from one crutch to the other with the whole weight of her slender body. I could not bring myself to look closely at her, for the hard dry sound of the crutches, their tap-tap, tap-tap on the floor each time she took a step forward, the grating and slithering of the metal supports, and, too, the hollow sound of her laboured breathing, agitated me so excessively that I felt my heart beating against the very stuff of my uniform. She had left the room, and I listened breathlessly until behind the closed door the terrible noise grew fainter and fainter and finally died away.
Only now did I dare to look up. The old man — I had not noticed it — must have got up quietly in the meantime and was gazing intently out of the window, gazing out somewhat too intently. In the uncertain light I could see only the silhouette of the bowed figure, but the shoulders quivered in a series of vibrating lines. He too, the father who saw his child torture herself in this way day after day, he too had been shattered by this sight.
The air between the two of us was deathly still. After a few minutes the dark figure at last turned round and came softly up to me with uncertain tread as though walking over slippery ground.
‘Please don’t be offended with the child, Herr Leutnant, for being a little brusque, but ... you don’t know how much she’s had to go through in all these years ... always some new treatment, and the whole thing is so terribly slow. I can understand her being impatient. But what are we to do? After all, we must try everything, mustn’t we?’
The old man had come to a halt before the deserted tea-table. He did not look at me as he spoke, but kept his eyes, which were almost concealed by the greyish lids, trained rigidly on the table. As though in a dream he dipped into the open sugar-bowl, seized a lump, twirled it between his fingers, stared at it blankly and put it down again; one might almost have thought he had been drinking. He was still unable to withdraw his gaze from the tea-table; some particular object seemed to rivet his attention. Absently he picked up a spoon, put it down again and then said, as though to the spoon:
‘If you only knew what the child used to be like! She was on the move all day long, rushing up and down the stairs all over the place until our hearts were in our mouths. When she was only eleven she would gallop right across the meadows on her pony, no one could keep up with her. We were often afraid, my late wife and I, she was so reckless, so high-spirited, so agile, everything came so easily to her. One had a feeling that she had only to spread out her arms and she would fly. And to think that that should happen to her, her of all people ...’
The parting in the thin white hair sank lower and lower over the table. The restless hand still rummaged amongst the objects that lay about on the table, this time picking up, instead of the spoon, an idle pair of sugar-tongs and drawing curious round runic characters on the table with it (he was afraid to look at me, out of a feeling of shame, I knew, out of embarrassment).
‘And yet, how easy it is even today to make her happy! She can take a childish pleasure in the slightest little thing. She can laugh at the silliest joke and get excited over a book. I wish you could have seen how delighted she was when your flowers came and she threw off the fear that she had insulted you ... You have no idea how acutely sensitive she is about everything ... she feels everything more deeply than the rest of us. I’m quite sure no one is more wretched than she herself at having behaved with such lack of self-control ... But how is she ... how is she to control herself? How is the child to possess her soul in patience when the whole thing is so slow, how keep from complaining when God has so afflicted her, and she has done nothing ... no harm to anyone?’
He continued to stare at the imaginary figures which his trembling hand was now sketching in the empty air. And suddenly he let the sugar-tongs fall with a clatter. It was as though he had started up and had only just realized that he had been speaking not to himself, but in the presence of an utter stranger. In a quite different voice, a waking, distressed voice, he began to stammer out an awkward apology.
‘Forgive me, Herr Leutnant ... I can’t think why I’m bothering you with our troubles! It was only because ... it just came over me ... and I just wanted to explain to you ... I don’t want you to think badly of her ... to ...’
I don’t know how I summoned up the courage to interrupt the stammering, embarrassed old man and to go up to him. But suddenly I found myself taking his hand, the hand of this complete stranger, in both my own. I said nothing. I only seized the cold bony hand which, out of shyness, he involuntarily drew back, and squeezed it. He stared at me in astonishment, his spectacles flashed as he jerked his head obliquely upwards, and an uncertain gaze timidly sought out mine. I was afraid he was going to say something. He said nothing, but the black, round pupils dilated, as though on the point of overflowing. I too was conscious of a profound emotion such as I had never before experienced, and to escape from it I bowed hurriedly and left the room.
In the hall the butler helped me on with my coat. Suddenly I felt a draught at my back. I knew without turning round that the old man had followed me and was standing in the doorway; he evidently felt impelled to thank me. But I did not want to be made to feel embarrassed. I behaved as though I had not noticed that he was standing behind me. Quickly, my pulses racing, I left the tragic house.
The next morning — a pale mist still hung above the houses, and the windows were all shuttered to guard the good sleep of the townsfolk — our troop rode out, as on every morning, to the parade-ground. At first we ambled at a jog-trot over the uncomfortable cobble-stones; still somewhat drunk with sleep, stiff and sullen, my Uhlans swayed in their saddles. Soon we had ridden along the four or five streets of the little town; on reaching the broad high-road we broke into a gentle trot and turned off to the right across the open fields. ‘Gallop!’ I ordered my squadron, and at one breathless bound the snorting horses were off. They recognized at once the soft, springy turf, the clever beasts; there was no further need to urge them on, we could let the reins hang slackly, for scarcely had they felt the pressure of our legs than they were off like the wind. They too craved excitement and distraction.
I rode on ahead. I am passionately fond of riding. I could feel the blood flowing from my hips, coursing through my relaxed limbs in a warm, pulsating, life-giving stream, while the cold air whistled round my brow and cheeks. Marvellous morning air: one could still taste the dew of the night in it, the breath of the loosened soil, the smell of the blossoming fields; one was enveloped in the warm, sensuous steam of snorting nostrils. I was always thrilled afresh by this first morning gallop, which so agreeably shook up one’s fusty, drowsy body and chased away one’s stupor as though it were a suffocating fog; the feeling of buoyancy which bore me along automatically expanded my lungs, and with mouth wide open I drank in the rushing air. ‘Gallop! Gallop!’ I felt my eyes brighten, my senses quicken, and behind me I could hear the rhythmic clank of the swords, the spasmodic snorts of the horses, the faint creaking of the saddles as they rose and fell, the even thud of the hoofs. It was one single Centaurian body, this charging group of men and horses, carried along by one single impetus. On, on, on, gallop, gallop, gallop! Ah, to ride thus, to ride thus to the ends of the earth! With a secret, proud feeling that I was the Lord and Creator of this exhilaration, I turned round in my saddle from time to time to glance at my men. And suddenly I saw all my good Uhlans had a new expression on their faces. The Ruthenian sullenness, the lethargy, the sleep had been wiped from their eyes as though it were a layer of soot. Feeling my gaze on them, they drew themselves up in the saddle and answered with smiling lips the joy in my eyes. I could tell that, like me, these dull peasant lads were stirred to rapture by the exhilaration of this whirlwind speed, this anticipatory dream of human flight. They all felt as blissfully as I the animal joy of being young, of at once expending and renewing their strength.
But suddenly I gave the order: ‘Tro-o-ot!’ With an astonished jerk they all tugged at the reins, and like a machine that has been sharply braked the whole column resumed a lumberin
g trot. Somewhat nonplussed, they kept casting furtive glances in my direction, for as a rule — they knew me and my passion for riding — we galloped at full tilt right across the meadows to the regimental parade-ground. But I felt as though an invisible hand had tugged at my reins; I had suddenly remembered something. I must unconsciously have caught sight of the Schloss on the horizon to my left: the white rectangle of its walls, the trees in the garden and the roof of the tower. And like a pistol-shot the thought flashed through my mind: perhaps someone can see you from over there; someone whose feelings you wounded with your passion for dancing, whose feelings you are wounding once again with your passion for riding; someone with crippled, fettered legs, someone whom it hurts to see you flash past like a bird. At any rate, I suddenly felt ashamed of careering along like this, so full of health, so unimpeded, so free. I was ashamed of my far too physical happiness as of some undeserved privilege. I made my disappointed lads ride behind me through the meadows at a slow, cumbrous jog-trot. They were hoping against hope, I could tell without looking at them, for the word of command that would send them charging off again.
The very moment, it is true, that I was seized by this strange inhibition, I realized that to mortify oneself in this way was stupid and useless. I realized that there was no point in denying oneself a pleasure because it was denied another, in refusing to allow oneself to be happy because someone else was unhappy. I realized that all the time one was laughing and cracking silly jokes, somewhere in the world someone was lying at the point of death; that misery was lurking, people starving, behind a thousand windows; that there were such things as hospitals, quarries and coal-mines; that in factories, in offices, in prisons countless thousands toiled and moiled at every hour of the day, and that it would not relieve the distress of a single human being if yet another were to torment himself needlessly. Were one to attempt, I was quite certain, to visualize the misery that existed at any one time all over the world, there would be an end of one’s sleep and the smiles would die on one’s lips. But it was never the suffering that one pictured to oneself, that one imagined, that stunned and devastated one; it was only what one had seen in the flesh with eyes of compassion, that stirred and shattered one. In the midst of my exaltation I had seemed to see, as near and real as in a vision, the pale distorted features of the crippled girl, had seen her drag herself across the room on her crutches, heard the tap-tap and the clanking and creaking of the concealed supports on the helpless limbs; and in a moment of dismay, as it were, without thinking, without reflecting, I had pulled in the reins. It was of no use my now saying to myself: what good does your riding along at a stupid trot instead of at a tempestuous, exhilarating gallop do anyone? For a blow had been struck at some place or other in my heart in the neighbourhood of my conscience; I no longer had the courage to experience, in all the freedom of vigour and health, the joys of the body. Slowly, sleepily we trotted along towards the coppice that led to the parade-ground, and it was not until we were completely out of sight of the Schloss that I roused myself and said: nonsense! Enough of this stupid sentimentality! I gave the order: ‘Gallop!’