Therese was terrified. She sprang to her feet and rang the bell for Lotte. When the old woman appeared, Therese cried to her: “Wine! Bring wine at once!”
Lotte stared, paralyzed, at the rocking and groaning man. A strange expression of grim exultation sparkled in her ancient eyes. “Lotte!” cried Therese, harshly. Lotte started. She scurried from the room. She came back almost instantly with a tray of wine and glasses. Therese splashed the wine as she poured a glass. Her teeth chattered. She thrust the glass at Kurt and commanded him: “Kurt, you must drink this!” Lotte, from the doorway, watched, her hands folded under her apron, a grin on her lips.
But he did not reach for it. She pressed it against his lips. He swallowed. Beads of sweat ran down from his forehead, which was pulsing with unbearable pain. His temples were knotted with swollen veins. He was a man in extremis. Shudders passed over his body. He swallowed again and again, the wheezing like a death rattle in his throat. Finally, he thrust the glass aside. He fumbled for his handkerchief. He wiped his face, which was the color and wetness of clay.
He looked at her with simple and humble apology. Red veins, threaded the whites of his suffused eyes. There was moisture in his pinched nostrils; his forehead continued to drip. The water was like tears, bursting from all his pores.
“I am sorry, Therese,” he said, not able to raise his voice above a whisper. “But—there is such a pain—here.” He touched his temples with fingers still visibly trembling. “As if—if a spike were being driven into my head, into my brain.”
Therese exclaimed incoherently: “No, no! It is not possible!” The glass fell from her fingers and was shattered on the floor. She exclaimed again, full of passionate repudiation and horror: “It is not possible!”
Even in his torment, he was startled at her words and manner. He stared at her blindly. “But it is possible, Therese. They say it is—my eyes. There is a strain—” His attempt at reasonable talk collapsed. He whimpered in his throat. He continued to wipe his face. Now he did not look at her. He was filled with shame at his plight and his betrayal of his suffering. He even hated her because she had seen his weakness and pain.
“The fools have wanted to take an X-ray of my skull,” he mumbled.
“Then by all means have it taken, Kurt!”
Her vehemence finally penetrated to him. In spite of what he was enduring he regarded her with surprise, quite touched at her solicitude. He saw that she was genuinely overwrought.
“Thank you, Therese,” he said, with a gentleness quite alien to him. He was more and more convinced that she was his friend. Her face was so pale, her eyes so distended.
She thought to herself: Karl and Kurt. They are both symptoms of the soul of Germany, both dangerous and equally responsible for her plight. Both madmen. I must hold myself tightly, otherwise, I shall be mad, too. She sat down near him, trying to stop the tremors that thrilled along her nerves.
But in spite of herself she thought: Some way, I must find out if Karl has discovered my changing of the dolls!
He said apologetically: “The pain comes on me at unexpected times. Between the times, there is just a dull aching in my head, like an abscess. And then, without warning, I have a seizure. I—I sometimes collapse. But it is really nothing! he added, hastily. “One must not think of oneself these days. There is so much to be done.”
But what he had endured, and the friendship for him which Therese had displayed, had broken down his usual dour reserve and bellicose egotism. He had a desperate need for sympathy and understanding.
“I have only one consolation, my son, Alfred. He is a true son of Germany. You must know Captain Baldur von Keitsch? He is my son’s commander. He speaks highly of Alfred. He has recommended him for aviation instruction. Alfred is without fear, and is enthusiastic over the new regime.” He paused, and gazed at Therese with a kindling expression pathetic to see on his drawn face. “I have no fear for Alfred. Who knows? If he continues as he is now, he may even be brought to the attention of Herr Hitler, himself! We need such as Alfred in these heroic days. For soon the world shall hear from us, and tremble!”
His eyes darkened. “But my son Wilhelm. I have little hopes for him.”
Therese wanted to be silent. She was not interested in Wilhelm. But she said, responding to an unfamiliar impulse towards interfering in others’ affairs.
“Wilhelm is a fine boy, Kurt. You must not press him too hard. He is very sensitive.” She added, the impulse stronger: “Sometimes I think he is very like Karl.”
She had thought to please him, and soften him towards Wilhelm. But to her amazement he was again angered. Moreover, he was outraged.
“Like Karl! There is no one like Karl! It is sacrilege to say so!”
She could not be affronted. She could only marvel at this fresh manifestation of reasonless love, and feel its pathos. All her disgust at Kurt, and her hatred for him, vanished. Her heart melted, and she felt the sad tug of compassion.
Her emotions, and what she had gone through, had exhausted her. She could not control her thoughts. Her head throbbed and beat. She was full of a universal pity. If there were angels, so must they feel for all men, even for such men as Kurt Erlich.
She was aghast at her own words: “Kurt do you believe in doomsday?”
He had been absorbed in his own dreary thoughts. He now stared at her, blinking rapidly.
“Oh never mind, Kurt. I am afraid I am just a little disturbed.”
He was never of a complex mind. He rose to his feet. He had to catch at the back of his chair to steady himself.
“Therese,” he said humbly. “Please tell Karl I was here. Tell him I ask him for only a moment. Just a moment, Therese!”
“Yes, yes, Kurt. Of course. When he is able to see you. You understand—his feelings, just now?”
But he merely bowed his head, and walked out of the room like an old man.
She sat in a long and shivering silence. The clock tolled out its hour. Everything was very still. The fire died in the grate. The room was suffocatingly hot, but Therese was numb with cold.
After a long while had passed, she tiptoed up the stairs. She was surprised to find that Karl’s study door was slightly open. She pressed her hand against it. It opened wider. A lamp burned on his shining desk, empty of everything but the open witch-box which Eric had brought from Africa. But Karl, himself, was not there.
There was a fetid and breathless atmosphere in that room, as though invisible obscenity lurked in it. Therese held her breath. Where was Karl? She crept towards the box, and looked within. The substituted doll lay on top of all the other debris, and the brass nail was sunken deeply in its head. She did not know why she was so intolerably relieved, why her body relaxed. Karl had not discovered the substitution then. She wanted to burst out into hysterical laughter.
She turned. On the mantlepiece stood the head of Gilu, the witch-doctor. The wicked eyes seemed to watch her intently. The lamplight made its grin wider. It was laughing silently. It was sentient and evil. It was alive and full of horribleness and understanding. It was the evil of the hating and gloating forces outside the walls of reality, waiting, sleepless, and forever triumphant.
She stared at it and it stared back at her, exultant, contorted with obscene mirth. She was seized with an impulse to lay her hands upon it, to throw it into the fire. She actually took a step towards it.
She heard a slight sound behind her. She started violently. Karl stood there. She saw his face, sly and gleeful, alight with madness. And then she knew that he had known of Kurt’s presence, that he had heard every word.
“Were you looking for me, Therese?” he asked gently.
She put her hands to her face with an appalled gesture. She shrank from him.
“No! No!” she almost screamed. And ran from the room.
14
To be natural, always to be natural with Karl, no matter what happened: Therese knew that was her only course, until she could actively help him. They were like two people f
allen into a pit, full of slime, the walls precipitous and with few footholds. Karl was sinking in the slime. She knew that she had a single foothold, and that with pain and anguish, she could rise to a higher one, and then another, until her footing was firm and she was out of the quicksand. Then and then only could she reach down a hand and pull him to safety. In the meantime, as she struggled from one precarious hold upwards to another, she could only call words of calm encouragement to him. She could only try to make him believe that this was a normal fall, and nothing to despair over. In a moment or two longer, they would both be free, climbing upwards strongly to the light and safety. Never, even for a moment, must she allow him to see her own hopelessness and terror. If she did, she would fall back forever into the slime with him, and they would go down together.
So, when on the morning of Friday she knocked lightly on the door of his study, and his slow dragging step approached the door, and he opened it, she smiled at him with her old sprightliness. He had not had anything to eat, but she ignored this.
“Good morning, Karl! Did you work late, last night? I did not hear you this morning. Karl, you have not forgotten we have dinner with Siegfried tonight?”
He stared at her blindly. His clothing was dishevelled. He had not gone to bed, or rested. But the smile was determined and fixed on her face.
“Siegfried?” he mumbled, passing his hands over his head with a dazed gesture.
She pretended to wifely exasperation. “O Karl, how forgetful you are! But you always affected to forget dinner with Siegfried. I wish you liked the dull old creature more.”
Her heart leaped with painful hope when she saw his smile, a little sheepish. For one instant his bloodshot eyes became normal, and there was even a faint twinkle in them. The prisoner had come to the door, and was looking at her shyly. She wanted to put out her hand with a cry to him, but she dared not.
“But he is dull, Therese,” he said. His voice was hoarse and weak, but it was more natural than it had been for some time. He shifted uneasily, and regarded her with pale suspicion. The prisoner was closing the door again. “But, my dear, you must excuse me, after all. I am sorry, I had forgotten. I—I do not feel like attending any dinners.”
She held back the trembling of her senses, and assumed an air of marital annoyance. “O Karl, I did so want to go! I feel like a party, even if it is a dull one. Why can you not oblige me in this?”
A sudden fever of despairing impatience possessed him. “I cannot go, Therese! Do you not understand? I can talk to no one! But go yourself. He is your father’s cousin, and it will not be odd if I do not accompany you.”
Her tense fingernails ran into her palms. She struggled for calm.
“Very well, Karl. But I shall not pretend I am not annoyed at you. However, go back to your work. I shall not disturb you.” She pretended to be hurt. “I shall send Lotte with your breakfast.”
She turned away. She expected that he would shut and lock the door immediately. She walked slowly down the stairs. But he had not yet closed the door. She knew that he was watching her. She did not let herself falter. She even hummed lightly, loud enough for him to hear her. When the door finally closed, just as she reached the bottom of the stairway, and she heard no ominous click of the lock, a light perspiration broke out over her. O, God be thanked! she had gained one small higher foothold.
Her relief was so intense that she felt hysterical. She went into the garden to regain composure. It was not a garden like Doctor Traub’s. Her aristocrat’s instinct was simple and formal. A line of tapering poplars caught the morning sun on their pointed crowns at the rear of the garden. She had no walls, but the trees were a colder and more forbidding barrier than any sun-warmed bricks or stones. On the other two sides were rows of evergreens, pointed and fronded, giving the garden a chill and rigid air. There were no flower beds, and only a long sweep of green grass, sparkling with dews of the past night. Therese was fond of the cool purple of iris. Though it was late in the season for them, they stood in formal sheltered rows near the poplars, their drooping amethystine petals frosted with moisture. There is no place to hide here, thought Therese. She was startled: Why had she thought such a thing? All at once she hated her cold bare garden, which offered no seat for the tired, no consolation of warm color, no smell of hope. It was like herself, egotistic and selfish. She could not endure it. She returned to the house. Lotte was just descending the stairs with an untouched breakfast tray in her hands.
“The Herr Doctor refused it all, except for a cup of black coffee,” she said, her disapproval of such scandalous conduct in these days making her small old eyes sparkle.
“I must have rosebushes, many of them! and phlox, and lilacs, many frowsy bushes of them, and yellow daisies with black hearts,” said Therese.
Lotte stared. “Are you well, Frau Doctor?” she exclaimed, full of concern.
Therese laughed drearily. “I have just been in the garden. For the first time, Lotte, I have realized how ugly it is.”
Lotte nodded. “I have always thought so, Frau Doctor. It is like a church, without painted windows, without music, without a pulpit and a priest.”
“He never said so, Lotte, but how the Herr Doctor must have hated it!”
Lotte eagerly welcomed this admission to confidence. “Yes, yes, Frau Doctor, it is so. He hated it. I knew it. He would go out for air, but he never remained but a moment.”
Therese was silent. The old simple peasant had known the places in Karl’s soul which she had never known, herself. She had been too self-absorbed.
She had never really known anything, and, at the last, she had not even known her own soul.
She went alone to the house of her father’s old cousin, General Siegfried von Heyliger. She had often gone alone, for Karl had always been bored and impatient with the General, who talked of past wars and past glories and found nothing good in the present, and who incessantly complained of the softness of the new youth, and the decadence of the martial spirit in Germany.
The General lived in an enormous old brown house in a section of Berlin that smelled of musty and dignified age. Men like the General lived in this section, men who lived in the past, old soldiers with fierce white mustaches, saber scars, big bellies, pensions and hideous ancient furniture. They talked constantly of Heidelberg and duels, wars and beer taverns in ivy-covered little towns. They were meticulous and gallant with ladies, ceremonious and polite with the brutal politeness of the Teuton. They despised the French, admired the British, and never mentioned the rest of the world, which was obscene, irrelevant and filthy to them, and not to be spoken of by gentlemen and soldiers. Politics were the amusement of the vulgar and the degraded. In short, they knew nothing at all. Karl had said they were fat old ghosts in tombs, chattering about their youth and their campaigns, unaware that outside the tombs the world rushed by, full of noise and life.
The smell of the past was thick in the moldy ancient house. The carpets threw up a filmy cloud of this past. The great fires burned without present warmth. The portraits were of old soldiers, and Bismarck, and the Kaiser. A foggy patina of blue mist covered the immense sofas with their curved bulky arms, dimmed the long thin mirrors with their marble bases, shrouded windows already shrouded with yellowed silk. The ceilings were lost in plastered gloom; the walls, covered with the deep crimson of Victorian wallpaper, flickered with candlelight. Over black-marble mantelpieces were crossed sabers and likenesses of ancestors, scowling ferociously, and wearing medals. A marble stairway wound heavily upwards from the hall, and red velvet curtains swung gloomily at every doorway. Even the servants were old, and crept about with frightened and inward expressions. For the General was famous, or infamous, for a villainous temper, and every one was awed and overwhelmed by him. Even Therese called him “General,” not presuming upon their relationship. Even his wife called him respectfully by his title, and not in their most familiar moments would she have dared address him by his Christian name.
But he was fond of There
se, whom he had dandled on his knee when she had been a child. He had allowed her to play with his medals. He had told her great and heroic tales of campaigns in which he had figured prominently. “Ah, there are no days like those in these days,” he would sigh. Marshal Hindenburg had been his closest friend. But he never spoke of the old Marshal these days. His lips were closed against him. Nor did he ever speak of Adolf Hitler in connection with his friend. It would have been like speaking of a crawling, writhing panderer in connection with an emperor. Such things were so indecent as to approach sacrilege. One ignored them, as one ignored shameful necessities of the body. But one could tell that he was thinking of Hindenburg when his face darkened with grief and bitter sternness.
He was one of Berlin’s most famous and best-loved generals. Each year, he had been given a banquet by the younger officers, during which his stories had been listened to with respect, if with boredom. He was a great beer-drinker. He detested the new fashion of drinking harsh spirits. Only beer was served at the banquets. But this year the occasion of the annual banquet had been ignored. He had waited for the announcement. He had had his medals polished, and his uniform prepared. But there was no announcement. However, the next morning the most prominent Nazi newspaper in Berlin had derisively, and with enormous politeness, announced that General Siegfried von Heyliger had had a birthday, and Berlin felicitated him, but was too engaged these days in a new and more vital order to bother about old generals, who, the paper hinted, ought to be dead anyway, as they were a hindrance to the new and more vigorous Germany of today. There were many such old soldiers, the paper hinted, who refused to believe that the Germany they knew had happily gone, who refused to believe in life and modern power, who lived in the past and were only old moldy corpses dragging at the chariot wheels of the new Germany. Germany had an affection for them, certainly, and respected their pasts. But should they dare interfere, as they sometimes did, with the march of the iron feet of German youth, they would be taught a lesson they would never forget. Away with the past! It was dead (and apparently, the generals were dead with it). Heil to the future, to victory, to youth, to war and valor and the new Germany!