Kurt was beside himself with fury. “He—pleaded for me! He, that Jew!” His outrage made him lift his fist as though to strike his brother.
But Karl, too, was beside himself. All his calm, all his judicious self-analysis, his control, his detachment, were gone. But he was beside himself with despair, with fear for Eric, with disordered grief at the thought of never seeing Eric again.
“Yes, he pleaded for you, when he saw how tired you made me. But you did not deserve his pleading. I have been such a hypocrite all my life! I knew what you were, but I ignored it. My God, how I despise myself!” His lips shook; he swallowed with obvious difficulty and pain. “I ought to have had nothing to do with you, all these years. I should have gone away.”
He looked at his brother, and a fierce sadistic delight filled him when he saw how his words were making Kurt suffer. And yet, a sort of amazement came over him that he could experience such obscene delight; his amazement increased, and with it a curious thrill as he said: “What a swine you are!” But Kurt said nothing; his head had dropped on his chest. His attitude was that of a man who had been mortally struck.
Karl went to the door. There he stopped, looked back.
“But you shall not hurt Eric! I shall stop you myself.”
He encountered Maria, who was about to ascend the stairs to her apartments. She stared at him, then, seeing his face, she smiled with a covert malevolence. “Are you ill, Karl? What has Kurt been saying to you?”
He lifted his head and gazed at her. She recoiled, shrank together. He went out of the house.
On the way home, stumbling through the new wet snow in the glare of lamplight, he said over and over to himself: What has happened to me? I have committed criminal folly. I ought to have restrained myself, for the sake of Eric and Gerda. I ought to have held my tongue, used guile to help them. But I could not restrain myself! Something over long years rushed to my brain and my tongue. He had tired me for so long. Now, I have ruined everything. I have ruined Eric.
He looked about him, dazedly. The city, the world, suddenly appeared to be grotesque one-sided drawings in children’s books. Nothing had substance; everything was two-dimensioned, highly colored, leering, leaning, full of thin shrill light. The painting of children, crude and fantastic, brutally drawn, filled with fantastic creatures without souls or being. Paintings, with Mother Goose rhymes printed beneath them. Or the dreadful drawings of madmen, full of frenzy. The sounds of such a city, such a world, were the close unbearable sounds of nightmare. He thought: I am sick. I shall vomit.
When he arrived home his wife, Therese, was waiting for him. She gazed at him with her clear gray eyes, and knew that he had realized everything in the hours he had been gone from her. She did not kiss him as usual, seeing his face and eyes. She merely said very quietly: “Gerda wishes to speak to you before you go to bed, Karl.”
He said suddenly, violently, putting his hands to his head: “Not tonight! I have had enough tonight! Let me alone, tonight!”
Even her lips turned white, but before she could speak again, he had left her and was running rapidly up the stairs to his room. There he found little Gerda waiting for him, sitting before the fire.
“No, Gerda!” he exclaimed, in the husky voice of agony. “Go away, child. I cannot talk to you, tonight. Leave me alone.” His voice broke.
She had never seen her gentle detached brother like this, so overwrought, so strange. She stood up. She was very small and delicate, with pale flaxen hair and great blue eyes and pretty pink lips. She appeared much younger than she really was, almost a child. Her expression, her whole appearance, was strikingly like Karl’s. She put out her hands to him, pathetically; they were trembling.
“Karl, you know then? Eric has told you?”
He was silent. He regarded her with a distraught manner.
“You know that we must go away from here, perhaps to America?”
He still did not speak. She began to cry, whimpering a little, like a very young child. The tears ran down her cheeks, gathered about her mouth in minute pools.
“But Karl, I need you. We need you, Eric and I. We must go away. Today—today, I had to leave the gymnasium. They said horrible things to me. Because of my Eric, my darling Eric! Karl, you must help us—” She whimpered again. Then, as he did not move, she crept up to him, and laid her head on his breast. She kept shuddering, as though she were very cold.
For a long moment they stood like this. Karl looked down at her little shining head; he felt her clutch him. Something seemed to open in him, like an awful dividing pain. He put his arms about her gently, then with sudden fierceness, like a father protecting his child.
“Yes, yes, dear. Do be quiet, dear. Do not cry like this. I shall help you. Nothing shall hurt you. You shall go away, with Eric. Quiet, my darling. Eric sends you his love.”
2
There was a feverish gaiety about every one, in the frenzied last hours before departure. Every one laughed excessively, rushed about the house, little cries fluttering after; this was forgotten, then that, and must be thrust into a box or a bag. A place must be found for the warm afghan which Therese had knitted for her little sister-in-law; it was very cold in America, she had heard, especially in Boston, near the sea. Then, Gerda would need it on the ship, over her knees, watching the dark polished waves hurl her into a new world. Then there were the exquisitely bound private editions of Karl’s three last novels, all deep-blue morocco and gold, and all autographed with his affection. Eric must put these into his most convenient bag, for use on the ship. Gerda’s wedding silver was in its mahogany case, and new silken linens, the gifts of her brother Karl and his wife, Therese. It was still permitted to take jewelry, and Gerda’s own small fortune had been converted into diamonds and other precious gems. Then Therese’s uncle had brought Gerda a magnificent krimmer coat and muff; her trunks were full of valuable gifts from the few of her friends who had remained faithful to her. What small amount of his own fortune Eric was allowed to take with him was in the form of letters of credit and cheques. Roped and garnished with labels, his African box waited on a chair.
A month ago Eric Reinhardt had been dismissed from the University. He had expected it; it was not a great shock to him. Karl had always thought of him fondly as being “emotional.” He saw, with humility, that he had been mistaken. Eric was not emotional. He could become impatient and agitated over trifles; but over calamities he preserved a bitter calm, a philosophical humor. He visibly aged, but he indulged in no passionate recriminations, no outward griefs. He went about the business of emigration with cold precision and efficiency. Now he was joining the new University of Exile in America. His race was inured to misery and uprooting and hatred, to exile and exploitation and cruelty. After his initial incredulity and revolt, he accepted the ancient lot and wasted no time in idle wailing or despair. He never spoke of what had happened to him. It was not new.
His ancestors had dwelt in this part of Germany for seven hundred years, had literally helped to create its prosperity and culture and integrity. They had dwelt here many generations before those aliens who now called themselves “Germans” infiltrated into this region. But to Eric Reinhardt, Germany was already receding from his mind; even now, it had a strange and foreign look to him. The familiar faces on the streets had become alien; the very familiar spots in the city seemed stripped of all the trappings of his memory, like a foreign city which had briefly decked itself in the beloved flags of a visiting stranger, and had now removed those flags, revealing hostile walls behind them.
He had said good-bye to those infuriated friends who had stood with him. German friends. But the words they had said to him, of anger and affection and condemnation for the new madness, were words spoken in a tongue strange to his cars, and only lately learned. For everything that had meant Germany to him was dead. What remained was a convulsed land, where every landmark had been distorted or swallowed up in an earthquake.
Under Karl’s solicitous and anxious demands for rea
ssurance, he had said that leaving Germany was nothing now; all his thoughts were turned to America. But when he was alone, he would not let himself think.
He had planned to leave Germany alone, and establish himself in America, Then, he would send for Gerda. But the little frail thing, so fairylike and soft, had refused to be left behind. She had amused and astonished him with her stubbornness, with her mulish refusal to listen to reasonable argument. He was not to go without her; that, she would not allow. Then Karl had interceded in her behalf: Eric must take the girl with him. They could not be married in Germany, but once in Holland, before sailing for America, they could be married. Karl and Therese would go to Holland with the bridal couple, attend the wedding, and accompany them to the ship. And so, after endless argument, it was arranged.
Now that the thing was inevitable, and Eric must go, Karl was consumed with a fever over the delays. He had the obscure but active fear that each day’s coming was a new threat to Eric. He could not get him away fast enough. He counted hours, days, weeks. When each passed safely, he was exhaustedly relieved. Eric and he had come closer together in these last weeks than they had ever come before. Yet the very depths of their intimacy and love for each other made them inarticulate, silent. It was impossible for them to speak of their ultimate parting, which must be forever. Once Eric had said: “Next year, you must come to visit us in America,” and Karl had turned away, cloven with his pain, and had said hurriedly: “Yes, yes.”
For never had he loved Germany so passionately as he loved her in the days of her delirium, and never had she needed all the help of her sons as she needed it now. Eric had been disarmed; he had been robbed of arms to fight. But Karl was still armed; he still had his armor and his sword. He would remain, to fight; he would remain, until he and his kind had conquered, or were destroyed. A sort of exaltation filled him; in the last days, he waited almost impatiently for the departure of Eric and his sister, in order that he might be free to begin the struggle.
During the last weeks Karl had sent numerous letters to friends in Holland and France and England. In each of those letters he enclosed a large banknote. Censorship had not yet been fully established; forty-nine out of fifty were received. These notes were from Eric’s fortune, before it had been confiscated. Upon receipt, the friends forwarded the money to a New York bank. So Eric and his wife would not be penniless upon arrival.
After the first convulsion of their lives, Eric and Gerda were jubilant and excited, and more in love than ever. Eric, of course, had left Kurt’s house, to spend the time before departure in Karl’s home. This period was idyllic for the young people. They stayed closely at home, and thought only of each other. A clear white light came to stay on Gerda’s small face; her every look was for Eric. In the presence of this love Karl felt renewed and tender and full of faith. With such as these in the world, surely evil was not the natural state of men, as seemed so evident in these times. He knew what was happening in Germany.
They never spoke of Kurt. It was only on the last night that Eric spoke of him, and then only to Karl. He said straightly and simply: “When we have gone, you must be reconciled to Kurt. Would you condemn a man completely because he had been infected with a virus that was floating about in the air? If you do, Karl, you are no better than those who used to beat the insane, or abandoned the plague-stricken. The fact that he has been poisoned spiritually, and that he is in the midst of a delirium, ought to inspire your pity, instead of your anger.” And then he had regarded Karl with the curious expression of the time when he had looked at him through the magic triangle.
Karl answered lightly, and evasively: “You have enough to worry about, Eric. Kurt, at this moment, is unimportant.” But he was amazed that when he tried to approach the thought of Kurt in his mind, it was as if he had touched an area of necrosis. There was no sensation there either of hatred or relenting, but only an area blackened, festering and sloughing.
None of them slept that night. And so it was, towards dawn, that every one of them heard the hard ringing footsteps approaching the street-door, and heard the crashing knocks.
Lights flew on in the house, as each member turned on his bedside lamp. They sat up in their beds, their hearts beating with a mysterious dread and terror. Night-calls of ominous import were still quite new in Germany, yet each in his bed knew that something horrible was about to happen to them all.
They heard the sleepy scolding of the servant, as she flopped to the door in her dressing-gown and slippers. They heard her draw the bolts and turn the keys. They heard her shrill voice suddenly stop, as though some one had clutched her throat. And then they heard a man’s brutal voice demanding that “the Jew, Reinhardt, appear immediately.”
Gerda and Eric met in the hall outside the door of their rooms. They looked at each other with death on their faces. Then Eric took Gerda in his arms, and kissed her, and left her. “I am here,” he called. He had pulled his scarlet-velvet dressing-gown over his pajamas. His hair stood on end, like the hair of a boy.
Karl was already in the cold and drafty hall, wrapped in his dressing-robe of dull blue flannel. He looked startingly old and wizened, shivering there. But his manner and voice were calm. Therese stood beside him, pale and shaken, her plaited hair on the shoulders of her wrapper.
Karl was speaking to an officer in a brown uniform, who was accompanied by two men of obviously lesser rank, also in brown uniforms.
“But Hans, this is preposterous! You were our gardener for many years, and your father served my father. You know us all. When we were children we played together. You carried Eric on your shoulders, for you were a big lad. You know what we have all been: devoted to our beloved Fatherland. And yet, you can come to this house, where you are known and regarded highly, and denounce a member of it as a traitor!”
The officer, a burly, sulky-faced man, shifted his feet and set his shoulders at an angle both obstinate and apologetic.
“Herr Erlich, I know all this. But I have my orders. What am I to do? I know Herr Doktor Reinhardt well.” He paused, after saying the last words slowly, almost unbelievingly. “But I have my orders. It is all a mistake, as you have said. There is so much these days—Every one is being questioned.” He tried a surly but placating smile. “Probably you, too, tomorrow will be questioned, Herr Erlich. Today, it is Herr Doktor Reinhardt.”
Eric came up. Like a wisp of a shadow, Gerda came after him, her clasped hands clenched to her breast, pressing in, as though to subdue a mortal pain. “Hans!” he exclaimed. “What is this, at this hour?”
The officer cast down his eyes; he momentarily sucked in his under lip. He appeared more obstinate than ever, but now obscurely angered also, as though in some way this was all Eric’s fault—putting him into this obnoxious position. He said, not looking at Eric, waiting:
“It is not my fault, Herr Doktor! I have told Herr Erlich it is not my fault. What am I to do? I have my orders, to take you into custody, protective custody, for questioning about subversive activities.” He ended in a rush, defiantly but desperately.
Eric said nothing. His hands tightened at his sides; blue lines appeared at the corners of his mouth. But he said nothing.
Karl laid his hand on his adopted brother’s motionless arm, and said to the officer: “But this is impossible? Eric and my sister leave in less than five hours for Holland. I will tell you! Tomorrow morning I will go myself to your superior officer and explain that Eric and Gerda have gone away, but that I am willing to answer any questions—”
But Eric looked only at the officer and at the lowering vicious faces of his subordinates. Gerda stood beside him now; she had taken his other arm; she had pressed her cheek against it and was staring blankly before her.
The officer was querulously impatient; they saw his facial muscles quivering. “You make it hard for me, Herr Erlich! What am I to do? The Herr Doktor must come with me; I have an order for his arrest. But your brother, the Herr Professor, is a Party member. This is all a mistake, no doubt. They
do not know the Herr Doktor is a member of his family, perhaps. You must go to your brother. He will go to my officer immediately, and the Herr Doktor can be home in time to leave for Holland.”
Therese uttered a faint sound in her throat; she put her arm about Gerda, who seemed blind to everything but her agony and Eric. But Karl said with animation: “Of course! But cannot you wait here, Hans? I shall go to Kurt immediately. He will call your officer—”
The officer sighed, flushed with resentment at both his role and Karl’s inability to understand. “I am sorry, Herr Erlich. The Herr Doktor must go with me immediately. Those are my orders. No one shall harm him. It will be something to laugh at, before morning. But come with me now he must.”
There was a sudden silence. No one moved. But Karl’s lips parted as though his heart had been squeezed. After a few moments he said quietly: “Yes, you are right. He must go with you. In the meantime, I shall see my brother.” He turned to Eric, who still had said nothing, and had not moved. “Eric, you see how it is. It is a miserable annoyance. But you will be home in less than two hours. Please get dressed.”
“Why do you not call him on the telephone, Karl?” asked Therese.
Karl smiled strangely. “No. I prefer to knock on the door. Knock hard, several times. It is something that has not happened at his house as yet.”
Then Eric moved for the first time. He turned to Karl, who felt a sudden cold thrill run along his nerves. For Eric’s face was the face he had seen through the triangle.
“You are quite right, Karl. I will go and dress.” He put his arm about Gerda, and kissed the top of her head. “Go back to your bed, my love. And then, when it is time for you to get up and dress for our journey, I will be back with you.”
But she pressed her head deeper into his arm. They heard her exhale a breath like a dying moan. Therese, frightened, tried to disengage the girl. “Gerda dear, do let Eric go. The longer he delays, the less time he will have when he comes back in the morning. Come, do not be foolish. Karl is going to Kurt, and you are making it difficult for us.”