"Quite well, but you mustn't go in yet, Herr Baron."
"No," replied George and shook his head. He stared at the immobile
little body with its bluish shimmer and knew that he was standing in
front of the corpse of his own child. Nevertheless he looked at the
doctor again and asked: "Can nothing more be done?"
He shrugged his shoulders.
George breathed deeply and pointed to the closed bedroom door. "Does
she know yet----" He asked the doctor.
"Not yet. Let's be thankful for the time being that it is over. She has
gone through a lot, poor girl. I only regret that it should turn out to
have been for nothing."
"You expected it, Herr Professor?"
"I feared it since this morning."
"And why ... why?"
The doctor answered softly and gently: "A very exceptional case, as I
told you before."
"You told me...?"
"Yes, I tried to explain to you that this possibility ... it was
strangled, you see, by the umbilical cord. Scarcely one or two per
cent. of births end like that." He was silent.
George gazed at the child. Quite right, the Professor had prepared him
in advance only he had not taken it seriously. Frau Rosner was standing
by him with helpless eyes. George held out his hand to her and they
looked at each other like persons whom the sore stress of circumstances
has made companions in misfortune. Then Frau Rosner sank down on a
chair by the wall.
The Professor said to George: "I will now go and just have a look at
the mother."
"Mother!" repeated George, and gazed at him.
The doctor looked away.
"You will tell her?" asked George.
"No, not at once. Anyway, she will be ready for it. She asked several
times in the course of the day if it was still alive. It will not have
so dreadful an effect upon her as you fear, Herr Baron ... at any rate
during the first hours, the first days. You mustn't forget what she has
gone through."
He pressed George's limply-hanging hand and went.
George stood there motionless. He was gazing continually at the little
creature, and it seemed to him a picture of undreamt-of beauty. He
touched its cheeks, shoulders, arms, hands, fingers. How mysteriously
complete it all was! And there it lay, having died without having
lived, destined to go from one darkness into another, through a
senseless nothingness. There it lay, the sweet tiny body which was
ready for life and yet was unable to move. There they shone, those big
blue eyes, as though with desire to drink in the light of heaven, and
completely blind before they had seen a ray. And there was the small
round mouth which was open as though with thirst, but yet could never
drink at a mother's breast. There it gazed, that white child-face with
its perfect human features, which was never to receive or feel the
kiss of a mother, the kiss of a father. How he loved this child! How
he loved it, now that it was too late! A choking despair rose within
his throat. He could not cry. He looked around him. No one was in the
room and it was quite still next door. He had no desire to go into that
other room, nor had he any fear. He only felt that it would have been
rather senseless. His eye returned to the dead child, and suddenly the
poignant question thrilled through him whether it was really bound to
be true. Could not every one make a mistake, a physician as much as a
layman? He held his open palm before the child's open lips and it was
as though something cool was breathed towards him. And then he held
both hands over the child's breast and again it seemed as though a
light puff were playing over the tiny body. But it felt just the same
as in the other place: no breath of life had blown towards him. He
now bent down again and his lips touched the child's cool forehead.
Something strange, something he scarcely felt tingled through his body
to the very tips of his toes. He knew it now; he had lost the game up
there in the clouds, his child was dead. Then he slowly lifted his
head and turned away. The sight of the garden tempted him into the
open. He stepped on to the verandah and saw Doctor Stauber and Frau
Rosner sitting on the seat that was propped against the wall--both
silent. They looked at him. He turned away as though he did not know
them and went into the garden. The shadow of the house fell obliquely
over the lawn, there was still sunlight higher up but it was dull
and as though without the strength to illumine the air. Why did he
want to think of that light which was sun and yet did not shine, that
blue in the heights which was heaven and yet did not bless him? What
was the point of the silence of this garden, which should console
and comfort him, and yet received him to-day as though it were some
strange inhospitable place? It gradually occurred to him that just
such a twilight had enveloped him in a dream a short time ago with a
dreariness of which he had previously had no idea, and had filled his
soul with incomprehensible melancholy. What now? he said to himself
aloud. He did not seek for any answer, and only knew that something
unforeseen and unalterable had happened that must change the face of
the world for him for all time. He thought of the day when his father
had died. A wild grief had overwhelmed him then; yet he had been
able to cry and the world had not suddenly become dark and void. His
father had really lived, had once been young, had worked, loved, had
children, experienced joys and sorrows. And the mother who had borne
him had not suffered in vain. And even if he himself should have to die
to-day, however early it might be, he had nevertheless a life behind
him, a life full of light and music, happiness and suffering, hope and
anxiety, steeped in all the fulness of the world. And even if Anna had
passed away to-day, in the hour when she gave life to a new being, she
would as it were have fulfilled her lot and her end would have had its
terrible but none the less deep significance. But what had happened to
his child was senseless, was revolting--a piece of irony from somewhere
or other, whither one could send no question and no answer. What was
the point of it all? What had been the significance of these past
months with all their dreams, their troubles and their hopes? For he
knew, all in a flash, that the expectation of the wonderful hour in
which his child was to be born had always lain in the depths of his
soul every single day, even those which were most matter-of-fact,
those which were most vacant, or those which were most wanton. And he
felt ashamed, impoverished, miserable.
He stood by the garden fence at the top end and looked towards the
edge of the forest, towards his seat on which he had rested so often,
and he felt as though forest and field and seat had previously been
his possessions, and that he must now surrender them too, like so
much else. In a corner of the garden stood a dark grey neglected
summer-house with three little window-apertures and a narrow opening
for a door. He had always disliked it, and had only gone in once for a
few moments. To-day he felt drawn inside. He sat down on the cracked
seat and suddenly felt hidden and soothed, as though all that had
happened were less true or could in some inconceivable way be undone.
Yet this hallucination soon vanished, he left the inhospitable room and
stepped into the open.
I must now go back into the house again, he thought with a sense of
exhaustion, and could not quite realise that the dead body of his
child must be resting in the dark room, which he could see from here
stretching behind the verandah like an unfathomable darkness. He walked
slowly down the garden. Anna's mother was standing with a gentleman
on the verandah. George recognised old Rosner. He stood there in his
overcoat, he had laid his hat in front of him on the table. He passed a
pocket handkerchief over his forehead and his red-lidded eyes twitched.
He went towards George and pressed his hand. "What a pity that it
turned out differently," he said, "than we had all hoped and expected!"
George nodded. He then remembered that the old gentleman's heart had
not been quite right during the past week and inquired after his health.
"It is kind of you to ask, Herr Baron. I am a little better, only I
find going uphill rather troublesome."
George noticed that the glass door that led to the centre room was
closed. "Excuse me," he said to old Rosner, strode straight to the
door, opened it and quickly closed it behind him. Frau Golowski and
Doctor Stauber were standing near the table and speaking to each other.
He walked up to them and they suddenly stopped talking.
"Well?" he inquired.
Doctor Stauber said: "We have been speaking about the ... formalities.
Frau Golowski will be kind enough to see to all that."
"Thank you," replied George and held out his hand to Frau Golowski.
"All that," he thought. A coffin, a funeral, a notification to the
local registry; a son born of Anna Rosner, spinster, died on the same
day. Nothing about the father of course. Yes, his part was finished.
Only to-day? Had it not been finished the very second when quite by
chance he became a father?
He looked at the table. The cloth was spread over the tiny corpse. Oh,
how quick! he thought bitterly. Am I never to see it again? I suppose
I may be allowed to, once. He drew the cloth a little away from the
body and held it high up. He saw a pale child-face which was quite
familiar to him, only since then some one had closed the eyes. The old
grandfather's clock in the corner ticked. Six o'clock. Scarcely an hour
had passed since his child had been born and died: the fact was already
as indisputably certain as though it could never have been otherwise.
He felt a light touch on the shoulder.
"She took it quietly," said Doctor Stauber, standing behind him.
George dropped the cloth over the child's face and turned his head
towards the side. "She already knows, then...?"
Doctor Stauber nodded. Frau Golowski had turned away.
"Who told her?" asked George.
"It wasn't necessary to tell her," replied Doctor Stauber, "was it?" He
turned to Frau Golowski.
The latter explained: "When I went in to her she just looked at me, and
then I saw at once that she already knew."
"And what did she say?"
"Nothing--nothing at all. She turned her eyes towards the window and
was quite still. She asked where you had gone, Herr Baron, and what you
were doing."
George breathed deeply. The door of Anna's room opened. The Professor
came out in a black coat. "She is quite quiet," he said to George. "You
can go in to her."
"Did she speak to you about it?" asked George.
The Professor shook his head. Then he said: "I am afraid I must go into
town now; you'll excuse me, won't you? I hope things will go on all
right. I shall be here early to-morrow any way. Good-bye, dear Herr
Baron." He pressed his hand sympathetically. "You'll drive in with me,
Doctor Stauber, won't you?"
"Yes," said Doctor Stauber, "I only want to say good-bye to Anna." He
went.