“A lie, false, impossible!”
I was startled. His voice interrupted me harshly, hoarse and shaking, almost menacing. I had never seen my companion so agitated before. Instantly I realized what note I had incautiously struck in him. And when he stopped suddenly, I was painfully moved to see his white hair in the moonlight.
I wanted to change the subject quickly, broach another. But then he spoke again, this time warmly and softly in his calm, deep voice, pleasantly tinged with slight melancholy. “Or you may be right. Yes, it’s more interesting: L’amour coûte cher aux vieillards—I think that was the title of one of Balzac’s most moving stories, and many could be written on the subject. But the old people who know most about it are happy to talk only about their successes, not their failures. They are afraid of looking ridiculous in circumstances that only, so to speak, illustrate the pendulum of eternity swinging. Do you really think it was chance that the ‘lost’ chapters of Casanova’s memoirs are those describing him in later life, when the cockerel becomes a cuckold, the betrayer the betrayed? Maybe his hand was too reluctant and his heart too heavy to write about that.”
He offered me his own hand. Now his voice was cool, calm and placid again. “Goodnight! I see it’s dangerous to tell young people stories on summer nights. It easily leads to foolish thoughts and all kinds of unnecessary dreams. Goodnight to you!”
And he walked back into the dark, his step still with a spring in it, but slower now. It was late, but the weariness that usually came over me early in the warmth of these mild nights had been dispersed today by the agitation that rings in the blood when something strange happens, or for a moment you feel another man’s experience as if it were your own. So I went along the quiet, dark path to the Villa Carlotta with its marble stairway leading down to the lake, and sat on the cool steps. It was a wonderful night. The lights of Bellagio that had been sparkling among the trees like fireflies earlier now seemed endlessly far away across the water, and slowly, one by one, they fell back into the deep darkness. The lake lay there silent, shining like a black jewel, yet edged with sparkling fire. And the splashing waves, like white hands on the pale keys of an instrument, moved up and down the marble steps with a slight swell. The pale sky seemed endlessly high above, decked with thousands of sparkling stars. They stood there calmly, in bright silence; only occasionally did one suddenly break free of that diamantine dance and fall into the summer night, into the dark, into valleys, ravines, mountains or distant water, knowing nothing of it, slung like a human life into the steep depths of unknown destinies.
THE GOVERNESS
THE TWO CHILDREN are alone in their room. The light has been put out; they are surrounded by darkness except for the faint white shimmer showing where their beds are. They are both breathing so quietly that you might think they were asleep.
One of them speaks up. “I say…” she begins. It is the twelve-year-old, and her voice is quiet, almost anxious in the dark.
“What is it?” asks her sister from the other bed. She is only a year older.
“Good, you’re still awake. I… there’s something I want to tell you.”
No answer from across the room, only a rustle of bedclothes. The elder sister is sitting up, looking expectant. Her eyes are sparkling.
“Listen… I wanted to ask you… but no, you tell me first, haven’t you noticed anything about our Fräulein in the last few days?”
The other girl hesitates, thinking it over. Then she says, “Yes, but I’m not sure what it is. She isn’t as strict as usual. I didn’t do any school homework for two whole days recently, and she never told me off. And then she’s so… oh, I don’t know exactly how to put it. I don’t think she’s bothering about us any more. She sits somewhere all the time, she doesn’t play with us the way she used to.”
“I think she’s feeling sad, she just doesn’t want to show it. She doesn’t even play the piano any more.”
Silence descends again.
“You wanted to tell me something,” the elder girl reminds her sister.
“Yes, but you mustn’t tell anyone else, really not anyone, not Mama and not your best friend.”
“No, no, I won’t!” She is impatient now. “Come on, what is it?”
“Well, when we were going to bed just now, I suddenly remembered that I hadn’t said goodnight to Fräulein. I’d taken my shoes off, but I went to her room all the same, ever so quietly, to give her a surprise. And I opened the door of her room very carefully too. I thought at first she wasn’t there. There was a light on, but I couldn’t see her. Then all at once—it gave me a terrible fright—I heard somebody crying, and I suddenly saw her lying on the bed with all her clothes on and her head in the pillows. She was sobbing so hard that it made me jump. But she didn’t notice me. And then I closed the door very quietly again. I had to stand there outside it for a little while because I was trembling so much. And then that sobbing sound came through the door again, quite clearly, and I ran back down here.”
The girls keep quiet for a while. Then one of them says, very softly, “Oh, poor Fräulein!” The words linger in the air of the room like a lost, low musical phrase, and then die away again.
“I do wish I knew why she was crying,” says the younger sister. “She hasn’t quarrelled with anyone these last few days. Mama’s leaving her in peace at last instead of scolding her all the time, and I’m sure we haven’t done anything bad, not to her. So why was she crying like that?”
“I can think of a reason,” says the elder girl.
“What is it? Go on, tell me.”
Her sister hesitates, but at last she says, “I think she’s in love.”
“In love?” The younger girl is baffled. “In love? Who with?”
“Haven’t you noticed anything?”
“You don’t mean in love with Otto!”
“Oh, don’t I? And isn’t he in love with her? He’s been staying with us for three years while he studies at the university, so why do you think he’s suddenly taken to going out with us every day these last few months? Did he ever bother with you or me before Fräulein came to be our governess? He’s been hanging around us all the time lately. We keep meeting him by accident in the People’s Garden or the City Park or the Prater when we go out with Fräulein. Didn’t you notice?”
Startled, the younger girl stammers, “Yes… yes, of course I noticed. Only I always thought it was…”
Her voice fails her. She doesn’t go on.
“So did I at first,” says her elder sister. “You know how people always say girls are silly. Then I realised that he was only using us as an excuse.”
Now they are both silent. It sounds as if the conversation is over. Both girls seem to be deep in thought, or already far away in their dreams.
Then the younger sister breaks the silence in the darkness again. Her voice sounds helpless. “But then why was she crying? He likes her, doesn’t he? And I always thought being in love must be wonderful.”
“I don’t know,” says her elder sister, dreamily. “I thought it must be wonderful too.”
And once again sleepy lips say, softly and sorrowfully, “Oh, poor Fräulein!”
Then all is quiet in the room.
Next morning they do not discuss the subject again, and yet they are both aware that their thoughts are circling around it. They walk past one another, avoid each other, yet their eyes involuntarily meet when they are glancing surreptitiously at their governess. At mealtimes they watch their cousin Otto as if he were a stranger, although he has been living here with them for years. They do not talk to him, but they keep looking at him from under lowered eyelids to see if he is communicating with Fräulein in some way. Both sisters feel uneasy. They do not play today, and instead do useless, unnecessary things in their nervous anxiety to fathom the mystery. That evening, however, one of them asks the other in a cool tone, as if it were of no importance to her, “Did you notice anything else today?” To which her sister says, “No,” and turns away. They are bo
th somehow afraid of talking about it. And so it goes on for a few days, both children silently observing as their minds go round in circles, feeling restlessly and unconsciously close to some sparkling secret.
At last, after a few days, one of them, the younger girl, notices the governess discreetly giving Otto a look full of meaning. He nods in answer. The child quietly takes her sister’s hand under the table. When her sister turns to her, she flashes her a meaning glance of her own. The elder girl understands at once, and she too is on the alert.
As soon as they rise from table, the governess tells the girls, “Go to your room and occupy yourselves quietly with something. I have a headache, I’d like to rest for half-an-hour.” The children look down. Cautiously, they communicate by touching hands. And as soon as the governess has left, the younger girl hurries over to her sister. “You wait and see—Otto will go to her room now.”
“Of course! That’s why she sent us to ours.”
“We must listen outside her door.”
“But suppose someone comes along?”
“Who?”
“Well, Mama.”
The younger girl takes fright. “Yes, then…”
“I tell you what. I’ll listen at the door, you stay further along the corridor and warn me if there’s anyone coming. That way we’ll be safe.”
The smaller girl looks cross. “But then you won’t tell me anything!”
“Yes, I will. I’ll tell you all about it.”
“Really all about it?”
“Yes, I promise. You must cough as a signal if you hear someone coming.”
They wait in the corridor, trembling with excitement. Their hearts are beating fast. What will happen? They press close to each other.
Footsteps are approaching. The girls retreat into the shadows. Sure enough, it is Otto. He takes hold of the door handle, and the door closes after him. The elder girl shoots up to it like an arrow from the bow, pressing close to the door, holding her breath as she listens. The younger sister looks wistfully at her from a distance. She is burning with curiosity, and it tears her away from her post. She creeps up, but her sister angrily pushes her away. So she waits at a distance for two or three more minutes that seem to her like an eternity. She is quivering with impatience, stepping from foot to foot as if the floor were burning hot. In her excitement and anger she is near tears—to think that her sister can hear it all and she can’t hear anything! Then, in a third room, a door closes. She coughs. And both girls hurry away back to their room. They stand there for a moment breathless, their hearts thudding.
“Come on then, tell me all about it,” demands the younger girl avidly.
Her elder sister looks thoughtful. At last she says, dreamily, as if to herself, “I can’t make it out!”
“What?”
“It’s so strange.”
“What? What’s so strange?” The younger girl is impatient to know. Her sister tries to collect her thoughts. The smaller girl is pressing very close to her so as not to miss a word.
“It was really funny… not at all what I expected. I think when he came into the room he was going to hug her or kiss her, but then she said, ‘Don’t do that, I have something serious to discuss with you.’ I couldn’t see anything, because the key was in the lock on the inside of the door, but I could hear every word. ‘Well, what is it?’ asked Otto, but I’ve never heard him speak like that before. You know his usual cheerful, loud way of talking, but he sounded uncertain of himself when he said that, and I felt at once that he was somehow scared. And she must have noticed that he was pretending, too, because she just said very quietly, ‘You know what it is.’ ‘No, I don’t, I have no idea,’ he said. ‘Oh,’ she said, so sadly, so terribly sadly, ‘then why are you avoiding me all of a sudden? It’s a week since you spoke a word to me, you avoid me whenever you can, you don’t go out with the children or to the park with us any more. Am I such a stranger all at once? Oh, you know very well why you’re keeping away from me.’ He said nothing for a bit, then he said, ‘I’m about to sit my examinations, I have a great deal of work to do and no time for anything else. It can’t be helped.’ Then she began crying, and she said to him, through her tears but so kindly, she wasn’t angry, ‘Otto, why are you lying to me? Tell the truth. I really haven’t deserved this from you. I never asked for anything, but now the two of us have to discuss something after all. You know what I am going to say to you, I can see it from your eyes.’ And then he said, ‘Well, what is it?’ But very faintly. And she said…”
Suddenly the girl began trembling, and in her emotion she could get no further. Her younger sister pressed close, saying, “And then what?”
“Then she said, ‘What am I going to do about our baby?’”
The smaller girl started with surprise, and cried, “Their baby? What baby? That’s not possible!”
“But she said it.”
“You can’t have heard properly.”
“I did, I did. And he repeated it, he sounded just as surprised as you, he cried, ‘A baby!’ She didn’t say anything for quite a time, and then she asked, ‘What’s to become of me now?’ And then…”
“And then?”
“Then you coughed, and I had to run away.”
The younger girl stares ahead of her, dismayed. “A baby! But that’s impossible. Where is the baby?”
“I don’t know. That’s what I don’t understand.”
“Maybe at home where… well, where she was living before she came to be our governess. Mama probably wouldn’t let her bring the baby with her because of us. And that’s why she’s so sad.”
They both fall silent again, baffled, brooding, unable to come to any conclusions. The thought of the baby is weighing on their minds. Once again it is the smaller girl who speaks first. “A baby, I mean it isn’t possible! How can she have a baby? She isn’t married, and only married people have babies, I know that!”
“Perhaps she was married.”
“Don’t be so silly. Not to Otto.”
“Then how?…”
They stare at each other, at a loss.
“Oh, poor Fräulein,” says one of the girls very sadly. They keep repeating the same phrase, and it dies away into a sigh of sympathy. But their curiosity also keeps flaring up.
“I wonder if it’s a girl or a boy?”
“How could we find out?”
“Suppose I asked her some time, very, very carefully… What do you think?”
“I think you’re crazy!”
“Why? She’s so nice to us.”
“Oh, do stop and think! No one tells us that sort of thing. They hush everything up. When we come into a room they break off their conversation and start talking to us in a silly way as if we were little children. And I’m thirteen already! What’s the point of asking? Grown-ups always tell lies.”
“But I really, really would like to know.”
“Do you think I wouldn’t?”
“I tell you what, the bit I understand least is why Otto didn’t sound as if he knew about it. You know if you have a baby, the way you know that you have a mother and a father.”
“He was only pretending not to know. He’s horrid. Otto is always pretending.”
“But you wouldn’t pretend about something like that. Perhaps he’s just trying to fool people…”
However, at this point the governess comes in. They stop talking at once and seem to be doing homework. However, they surreptitiously glance at her. Her eyes look reddened, her voice is rather huskier and more vibrant than usual. The children keep very quiet, suddenly regarding her with awed timidity. She has a baby, they keep thinking, that’s why she’s so sad. And soon they are feeling sad themselves.
*
At the dining-room table next day they hear unexpected news. Otto is leaving the family apartment. He has told his uncle that with his examinations so close he has to work very hard, and there are too many distractions here. He will rent a room somewhere for the next month or so, he says, until the
exams are over.
The children are very interested to hear this. They guess there is a secret connection with yesterday’s conversation, and alert as their instincts now are they pick up the scent of cowardice and flight. When Otto comes to say goodbye to them, they sulk and turn their backs. But they watch surreptitiously as he faces their governess. Her lips are trembling, but she offers him her hand calmly, without a word.
The children have changed a great deal over the last few days. They have lost their playfulness and laughter, the old happy, carefree light has left their eyes. They are full of uneasiness and uncertainty, deeply suspicious of everyone around them. They no longer believe what they are told, they think they detect deliberate lies behind every word. They keep their eyes and ears open all day long, watching every movement, picking up any sudden start of surprise or tone of voice. They haunt the place like shadows in search of clues, listening at doors to overhear anything of interest, possessed by a passionate desire to shake the dark net of secrets off their reluctant shoulders, or at least see through some gap in it and get a glimpse of the real world outside. They have lost their childish trustfulness, their blindly carefree merriment. Moreover, they guess that the tense, sultry atmosphere resulting from recent events will discharge itself in some unexpected way, and they don’t want to miss it. Ever since discovering that the people around them are liars they have become persistent and watchful; they are sly and deceitful themselves. With their parents, they take refuge in pretended childishness flaring up into hectic activity. They are a prey to nervous restlessness; their eyes, once shining with a soft, gentle glow, now look deeper and are more likely to flash. In all this constant watching and spying, they feel so helpless that their love for each other is stronger. Sometimes they hug stormily, abandoning themselves to a need for affection suddenly welling up in them, sometimes they burst into tears. All at once, and for no apparent reason, life seems to be in a state of crisis.