She had always loved Goethe. She had loved his compassion and beauty, his understanding and subtlety. But one day she read: “When the masses fight, they are respectable; but their opinions are not delectable.” She read his cynical boast that he had never quarrelled with the opposition. In that boasting she heard his cry of self-hatred, his timid fury against himself, his understanding of his degradation. He loudly admired Napoleon; he surrounded himself with all the fierce, angry and gigantic figures of his day. In all this, he was rubbing salt on his wounds with a masochist’s delight and will-to-die. In his expressions of disgust against the people was the groan of his own self-disgust. A deserter always denounces the deserted. It is his self-justification, his rationalization. Even Goethe had not been guiltless of this cowardice, this mournful depravity. How dreadful his last years must have been, in spite of world adulation.
But he had given a revealing truth in his words: “When the masses fight they are respectable.” Deeply hidden within those words was the urging voice of a poet to his people, that they must fight constantly, never to give up, never to surrender to oppression, tyranny and madness. But not often would they fight, just as he would not fight. Thus his hatred and despair. The people revealed to him, as in a gigantic mirror, his own pusillanimity, his own weakness, his own surrender to expediency.
Therese read the daily newspapers closely, after her recovery. She read the mounting lists of those who had been taken into “protective custody,” and those who had been beheaded or shot for “traitorous activities,” and “Marxist agitations.” The lists were like the lists of those who had perished in a dolorous pestilence. She saw many illustrious and well-known names there. The great and the noble in Germany were dying. Soon there would be left only the maggots. Sometimes she would be seized with a despairing frenzy. Did not the world see that its own epitaph was written here, that its own doom was sounding from Germany on shrilling trumpets? But if it saw or heard, it refused to acknowledge it.… But some day it must see and hear, and then it would be too late, too late for a thousand years. The damage done to the human soul might forever maim it.
There was only one hope: a spiritual revelation, an awakening of men’s souls. This was not a battle of politics, not even a battle of nations. It was the struggle of the powers of darkness against the human spirit.
One day she received an urgent message from Maria. “Please come as soon as possible. Kurt has been taken seriously ill.”
She dressed herself with fumbling and shaking hands, and asked Lotte to call her a cab. She tried to control herself, but a dark and superstitious dread pervaded her. When she walked out upon the street, she was appalled at the weakness in her legs, and her slow and feeble step. Once in the cab she had to wrestle with an overwhelming nausea, during which her mouth filled with sickening salt water and her senses swam. This terrified her. She thought she had recovered. She thought she could control herself. Now she was shivering in every nerve, and her vision was dimming. She dared not go to Kurt’s house in this demoralized condition. She tapped on the glass and told the driver faintly to drive her down the Tiergartenstrasse.
The last few days had been rainy and cool, smelling of decay and darkness. But today the autumn sun was the color of gold, and warm as May. Mists glimmered brightly down far streets; the sky was an opal. Never had Berlin seemed so beautiful, so white, so broad and shining, the new buildings chastely noble in the sunlight. Groups of noon diners sat out under awnings along the Tiergartenstrasse, arguing and laughing with a vehemence unfamiliar among this phlegmatic people. The winy air had made them gay, had quickened their voices and their gestures. They were not speaking of politics. Therese, as she slowly made her way to a small empty table, heard them talking of the most trivial things. And then she saw that this trivial talk was deliberate. They dared not, either from caution or from design, speak of anything else.
Many stopped their drinking and talking to stare at her, a lone pale woman in the midst of the hubbub. Strands of her fair bright hair curled into little tendrils under her black hat. Her thinness, her smart clothing, her fine features, impressed them as belonging to a distinguished lady. Her diamond ring sparkled in the sunshine as she removed her gloves and laid them on the table. Some thought she was a widow: her face was so sad and preoccupied. A widow. At this, uneasy glances turned away from her, and those nearest her table became thoughtfully silent. There were so many widows these days.
A waiter came up obsequiously and asked the gnädige frau’s order. Therese requested a cup of coffee, strong and black and hot. She sat alone, the reflections of sunlight on the awnings glimmering on her colorless cheeks and lips and haggard eyes. She drank her coffee, slowly, forcing herself to drink. The liquid warmed her, quieted her shiverings. Now she was not so nauseated. Her fortitude returned. She listened idly as she heard a near-by man ask his companion if he were going to the Parteitag at Nürnberg. Their voices rose in enthusiasm; they looked about them self-consciously, as though they hoped they were being overheard. Ah, at the Parteitag, the world would know once and for all that the Reich would endure no further nonsense from it! Their voices were loud and excited. But Therese saw that their faces were drawn and tired and very strained. They seemed to be directing their remarks for the benefit of two quiet insignificant men sipping beer at a near-by table. Then she understood.
Her throat closed with a sensation of imminent suffocation. She paid her bill and returned to her cab. Berlin was no longer bright for her, but a prison of dread and darkness. Hardly knowing what she did, she ordered the driver to take her to the Lehrter Bahnhof. Once in the great station, she wandered through the hurrying throngs. Thousands of voices echoed hollowly. The roar of incoming trains thundered under the gigantic roofs, filled the air with a gray fog. A primitive instinct for flight had brought her here. She crept about through the crowds like a disembodied ghost. She and Karl must go away. It was no use. She could not stay. She must fly as hundreds of others had flown. Nothing mattered but sheer physical safety. Hysteria gripped her and tossed her like mighty and resistless winds. She would buy tickets. She would take Karl away!
It was not until she was actually standing in line at a ticket booth that she came to her senses. Then, abruptly, she walked away, sought out another cab. Once in the seat, she collapsed. There was no escape. She was a fool. There was no island of safety anywhere in the world. A heavy, calm, fatalistic despair settled upon her, gave her the strength she needed to go on her way.
She walked up the steps of Kurt’s house steadfastly. Maria met her. Therese was appalled at the change in the stout and malicious woman. She had shrunk; she was the color of soft lard. Her hair, never tidy at the best, was disordered, as though she had not combed it for days. She came to Therese with a rush, and seized her hands. She said simply, loudly: “Therese, he is dying!” Her voice broke; she stared at Therese with a blank bewilderment and complete agony.
Therese tried to soothe her. “Oh, surely not, Maria. People do not die so easily.”
Maria shook her sister-in-law with abandoned frenzy. “But I know he is! The doctors—they shake their heads. They have taken X-rays. They have probed and examined. His head—they have to keep him under drugs! The pain! He screams. Now he is blind in one eye. They thought it was a tumor in the brain. But there is nothing there! They can find nothing. Nothing! Yet ‘nothing’ is killing him! I cannot endure it! I would rather he died.” She burst into hoarse rough sobs.
The house was dim, close and warm, but Therese felt death-like coldness in all her limbs. She murmured: “He has worked very hard. He has been under a strain. It is probably just a nervous breakdown. I—I saw him not so long ago, and I was sure it was a breakdown. It will take time, that is all.”
Maria exclaimed, in her rage of helplessness and fear: “Therese, you talk like the other fools! ‘Time, time!’ But there is no more time. If only that silly, whimpering husband of yours would come here, and console my Kurt! That is what ails him; he is dying for his brother!
” She smote her hands together in her frantic and rising terror and rage. “I tell you, he will not recover, he will make no effort, until Karl comes to him! Why will you not bring Karl? Why do you not tell him his brother is dying? Surely, even his ridiculous pique will be forgotten when he knows.”
Therese said quietly, fixing the woman with her eyes: “You do not understand. Karl is dying, too.”
Maria was silent, but her breathing was hard and violent. She stared wildly at Therese. Her eyeballs glared in the gloom of the drawing room. She was full of hatred and despair and incredulity. “It is not true,” she whispered at last, then louder, pleadingly: “It is not true, Therese?”
“Yes,” said Therese, still very quietly, “it is true.”
Maria burst into tears. “Then all is lost. My Kurt will die, if Karl dies. What is wrong with these men? Have they no strength, no iron in their souls? They die of a malady no one can cure—”
“Yes, Maria, a malady no one can cure. Except God.”
The two women gazed at each other in a silence at once dark and ominous.
The room was dim and empty. There was no sound in the house. Then Therese caught a faint movement near a far doorway. She almost cried out. For it seemed to her that the nebulous figure pausing for a moment in that doorway was Karl’s. She saw his slender bent figure, his white agonized face, his blind eye-sockets. And then she saw that it was Wilhelm in his uniform, gazing across the width of the empty room at her.
“Wilhelm!” she cried, taking a step towards him, remembering that day, so long ago, when she had driven him cruelly from her. “Wilhelm, I must talk with you—”
But he had gone. He had drifted away like smoke.
25
They climbed up the immense balustraded stairs together, the two silent and hopeless women. Therese saw, as always, that the alert old beldame, Frau Reiner, had her room door open, in order that she might miss nothing from her cynical eyrie. Therese thought this was too much; she had never liked the old woman, and had shrunk even from thinking of her since the last time she had seen her. Now she said to herself: I really cannot compose myself to see her or speak to her. There was no sound within the avid room; perhaps she could slip by the door unseen. But she had hardly approached it, to pass it, when the old woman, who must really have been able to see around corners, called out, shrilly:
“Is that you, Therese?”
Therese sighed. Even in that miserable moment, she exchanged a wryly amused glance with Maria. She approached the door with as much dignity as she could summon.
The old woman sat near the dimming window, caparisoned and jewelled and perfumed as ever, a queen on her throne. She looked at Therese cunningly.
“Ah,” she said, in her high cracked voice. “The impeccable gnädige frau!”
Therese had always had a gift for making even the most blatant irony complimentary to herself. She had always smiled serenely at the old woman’s sallies, which were never too subtly barbed. But she had no serenity, no composure, today. She said with quiet stiffness: “Good afternoon, Frau Reiner.”
The old woman was silent. She stared at Therese with her sly wanton eyes. She pursed up her lips like an old monkey. She was indeed an old female monkey in her finery, and her elaborate coiffure. “Hum,” she muttered, surlily, after her long scrutiny. “So life has become too much for you, eh?”
“Very much too much,” answered Therese, in a low still voice.
The old woman was silent again, but her eyes brightened maliciously. She seemed to be experiencing some inner and malignant mirth, without mercy but with complete understanding. Then she said: “It is about time, you impeccable lady. But I am afraid it is too late.”
“Come, Therese,” said Maria, impatiently.
But Therese said: “It is late. But not too late.”
Again there was a pause. Then Frau Reiner motioned imperiously. “Come in, Therese. I want to talk to you. Maria, your precious Kurt will wait. He will not die today.” She chuckled darkly. “He will not die until he has seen his brother. Now, I shall not be crossed. Come in, Therese. Sit down near me. I like to look at the faces of the guilty. They are very amusing.” She added: “No, Maria, go away. I do not want you here just now. Your appearance and your conversation do not stimulate me these days. Go and smooth your husband’s pillow.”
The two women were alone. Therese sat near the beldame. The pale waning light lay on her colorless face. Frau Reiner studied her closely, saw the quiet folded hands, the suffering gray eyes. Even in her anguish there was a calm and dignity about Therese, or fortitude that could not be completely shaken. Frau Reiner shook her head, as though with angry denial.
“I have told you: I have always despised you aristocrats. But I admit you do not go to pieces; you refuse to be naked. That is the best, and the worst of you. You loathe emotion. When things are bad, that is a crime. But when they are hopeless, it is a virtue. But we plebeians, we vulgar, shriek and cry out all the time, and beat our breasts. You have always loathed us for this, have you not? It is very humiliating that at the last the world must depend upon you.”
Frau Reiner regarded her with cunning reflection.
Therese said nothing.
“But there always comes a time when you realize that it must be all out, total, for either good or evil. At those times you do not hesitate, while we shrink back and hesitate, and whine. Perhaps there is something to your old belief that in the final moments it is the aristocrat who will save the day. What are you doing, Therese, to save the day?”
“I do what I can,” said Therese, smiling faintly. “I realize, as you say, that in these days it must be all out, for good or evil. There can be no half measures.”
“Hum,” said the old woman, thoughtfully. Then: “How is my Karl?”
“I think he is dying,” said Therese, quietly.
Frau Reiner stared at her incredulously. “And you can say that so calmly, with such composure?”
“It is because I see that now not even Karl must matter much. I am doing what I can for him. I am waiting for him to see me. But in the meantime, there is nothing I can do of any consequence for him. I do other things, while I am waiting.”
“And the ‘other things,’ I presume, concern yourself?”
“Quite often, yes.”
The beldame grunted. “That ought to keep you very busy.” She looked through the window. “I have lived a long time. I have seen madness before. But it has been a localized madness. Now the whole world is insane. Once I thought: ‘It is always the same story. There is never any difference.’ But now I know that there is a difference in these days. Men are universally corrupt. In an era where there has been so much said about mercy, civilization, goodness, decency and honor, there are none of these things. Never, in the history of the world, has there been such a universal absence of them. At one time, a localized pogrom against the Jews aroused worldwide indignation, oppression of the innocent in one country made other countries outraged. But today, persecution and torment of the helpless only make other countries envious. They only awaken their lust to do the same. I tell you, we shall see outrages beyond imaginations, and the world will be indifferent, or emulate them.”
Therese did not speak. The old woman played with her rings and chains with a sudden impotent frenzy.
“The souls of men are dead, or decaying. They are full of apathy. The world is a graveyard, a house of plague. Sometimes at night, I can see the streets of Berlin, the streets of all of Germany, even the large countryside. I see the specters of pestilence wandering through all of them. The pestilence will not remain here. It will spread throughout the world. For the world is ripe for it. It is full of corruption. What is to happen in the coming years will be too frightful to contemplate. But it will be because of the disease in the minds of men, the faithlessness, the cruelty, the greed and the hatred.”
“I know,” murmured Therese. The suffocating sensation seized upon her throat once more, and with it came the old impotence, the
old despair.
The old woman gazed at her crucifix, illuminated by the ever-burning candle. “‘A faithless and adulterous generation,’” she muttered. “Yes, yes, these must be the days spoken of by Saint Matthew. It is a terrible thing. I hope I shall not live to see the end. After all, there must be some mercy for the old. I did not make these days. I have done some wicked things, but I never thought it did not matter. Men, now, do evil and all manner of vilenesses, and are not only not ashamed, but are cynically satisfied and triumphant. They are not even hypocritical about it. There is no refuge. There is no corner of the world where just men can be found. You can find only disease of the mind, and leprosy of the soul.”
The autumn sun had moved behind a cloud. The air was full of the smell of ashes. Desolation enveloped the streets outside, the atmosphere in the house. The desolation pervaded Therese. Her flesh felt as though it were covered with dust. In the gloom the little candle appeared to burn brighter, with a reddish glow, and the crucifix was the only vivid thing in the darkroom.
The old woman’s face was a mask of somberness, its thousand wrinkles a parchment of melancholy. She looked at the crucifix for a long silent moment.
“Burn on, burn on, little candle,” she muttered, almost inaudibly. “But soon, you too, will go out, and the Thing you light will be lost in the darkness, too.”
“No!” Therese’s voice was loud and echoing, not frightened, but resolute. “It shall not go out! Nothing can make it go out! Only a few candles left, but they shall not go out!”
The old woman burst into a sharp and bitter chuckle. Her face shrank and withered until it suddenly resembled the head of Gilu.
“You are wrong, Therese. They will go out. Do you know what the world seems to me, in these days? A tiny prison, with shut doors, and barred windows, and inside, madmen. Soon, you will hear their howling on every wind. Listen: you can hear the howling in Germany. Soon every corner of the prison will be howling, too. Where will you hide, Therese?”