"Yes...."
"I must make up my mind in the next few weeks. The people want of
course to know where they are. On the other hand, even if I did sign
for three years, and other chances came along, they wouldn't keep me
against my will. But up to the present it really seems to me that
staying in that small town has been an extremely sound thing for me. I
have never been able to work with such concentration as there. Haven't
I written to you how I have often sat at my secretary after the theatre
till three o'clock in the morning, and woken up fresh at eight o'clock
after a sound sleep?"
She gazed at him all the time with a look at once pained and
reflective, which affected him like a look of doubt. Had she not once
believed in him! Had she not spoken those words of trust and tenderness
to him in a twilight church: "I will pray to Heaven that you become
a great artist"? He felt again as though she did not think anything
like as much of him as in days gone by. He felt troubled and asked
her uncertainly: "You'll allow me, of course, to send you my violin
sonata as soon as it is finished? You know I don't value anybody else's
criticism as much as I do yours." And he thought: If I could only just
keep her as a friend ... or win her over again ... as a friend ... is
it possible?
She said: "You have also spoken to me about a few new fantasies you
have written just for the pianoforte."
"Quite right; but they are not yet quite ready. But there's another
one which I ... which I ..." he himself found his hesitations
foolish--"composed last summer by the lake where that poor girl was
drowned, Heinrich's mistress you know, which you don't know yet either.
Couldn't I ... I'll play it to you quite gently; would you like me to?"
She nodded and shut the door. There, just behind him, she stood
motionless as he began.
And he played. He played the little piece with all its passionate
melancholy which he had composed by that lake of his, when Anna and the
child had been completely forgotten. It was a great relief to him that
he could play it to her. She must be bound to understand the message
of these notes. It was impossible for her not to understand. He heard
himself as it were speaking in the notes; he felt as though it was only
now that he understood himself. Farewell, my love, farewell. It was
very beautiful. And now it is over ... farewell, my love.... We have
lived through what was fated for both of us. And whatever the future
may hold for me and for you we shall always mean something to each
other which we can neither of us ever forget. And now my life goes
another way.... And yours too. It must be over ... I have loved you. I
kiss your eyes.... I thank you, you kind, gentle, silent one. Farewell,
my love ... farewell.... The notes died away. He had not looked up from
the keys while he was playing: he now turned slowly round. She stood
behind him solemn and with lips which quivered slightly. He caught her
hands and kissed them. "Anna, Anna ..." he exclaimed. He felt as if his
heart would break.
"Don't quite forget me," she said softly.
"I'll write to you as soon as I'm there again."
She nodded.
"And you'll write to me, too, Anna ... everything ... everything ...
you understand?"
She nodded again.
"And ... and ... I'll see you again early to-morrow."
She shook her head. He wanted to make some reply as though he were
astonished--as if it were really a matter of course that he should
see her again before his departure. She lightly lifted her hand as
though requesting him to be silent. He stood up, pressed her to him,
kissed her mouth, which was cool and did not answer his kiss, and left
the room. She stayed behind standing with limp arms and shut eyes. He
hurried down the stairs. He felt down below in the street as though
he must go up again--and say to her: "But it's all untrue! That was
not our goodbye. I really do love you. I belong to you. It can't be
over...."
But he felt that he ought not to. Not yet. Perhaps to-morrow. She would
not escape him between this evening and to-morrow morning ... and he
rushed aimlessly about the empty streets as though in a slight delirium
of grief and freedom. He was glad he had made no appointments with any
one and could remain alone. He dined somewhere far off in an old low
smoky inn in a silent corner while people from another world sat at
the neighbouring tables, and it seemed to him that he was in a foreign
town: lonely, a little proud of his loneliness and a little frightened
of his pride.
The following day George was walking with Heinrich about noon through
the avenues of the Dornbacher Park. An air which was heavy with thin
clouds enveloped them, the sodden leaves crackled and slid underneath
their feet, and through the shrubbery there glistened that very road
on which they had gone the year before towards the reddish-yellow
hill. The branches spread themselves out without stirring, as though
oppressed by the distant sultriness of the greyish sun.
Heinrich was just describing the end of his drama, which had occurred
to him yesterday. Ägidius had been landed on the island ready after
his death-journey to undergo within seven days his foretold doom. The
prince gives him his life. Ägidius does not take it and throws himself
from the cliffs into the sea.
George was not satisfied: "Why must Ägidius die?" He did not believe in
it.
Heinrich could not understand the necessity for any explanation at all.
"Why, how can he go on living?" he exclaimed. "He was doomed to death.
It was with his hand before his eyes that he lived the most splendid,
the most glorious days that have ever been vouchsafed to man as the
uncontrolled lord upon the ship, the lover of the Princess, the friend
of the sages, singers and star-gazers, but always with the end before
his eyes. All this richness would, so to speak, lose its point: why,
his sublime and majestic expectation of his last minute would be bound
to become transformed in Ägidius's memory into a ridiculous dupe's fear
of death, if all this death-journey were to turn out in the end to be
an empty joke. That's why he must die."
"Then you think it's true?" asked George, with even greater doubt than
before. "I can't help it--I don't."
"That doesn't matter," replied Heinrich. "If you thought it true now,
things would be too easy for me. But it would have become true as
soon as the last syllable of my piece is written. Or...." He did not
go on speaking. They walked up a meadow, and soon the expanse of the
familiar valley spread out at their feet. The Sommerhaidenweg gleamed
on the hill-slope on their right, on the other side hard by the forest
the yellow-painted inn was visible with its red wooden terraces, and
not far off was the little house with the dark grey gable. The town
could be descried in an uncertain haze, the plain floated still further
towards the heights and far in the distance loomed the pale low drawn
outlines of the mountains. They now had to cross a broad highway and at
last a footpath took them down over the fields and meadows. Remote on
either side slumbered the forest.
George felt a presentiment of the yearning with which in the years to
come, perhaps on the very next day, he would miss this landscape which
had now ceased being his home.
At last they stood in front of the little house with the gable which
George had wanted to see one last time. The door and windows were
boarded up; battered by the weather, as though grown old before its
time, it stood there and had no truck with the world.
"Well, so this is what is called saying goodbye," said George lightly.
His look fell upon the clay figure in the middle of the faded
flower-beds. "Funny," he said to Heinrich, "that I've always taken the
blue boy for an angel. I mean I called him that, for I knew, of course,
all the time what he looked like and that he was really a curly-headed
boy with bare feet, tunic and girdle."
"You will swear a year from to-day," said Heinrich, "that the blue boy
had wings."
George threw a glance up to the attic. He felt as though there existed
a possibility of some one suddenly coming out on the balcony: perhaps
Labinski who had paid him no visits since that dream; or he himself,
the George von Wergenthin of days gone by; the George of that summer
who had lived up there. Silly fancies. The balcony remained empty, the
house was silent and the garden was deep asleep. George turned away
disappointed. "Come," he said to Heinrich. They went and took the road
to the Sommerhaidenweg.
"How warm it's grown!" said Heinrich, took off his overcoat and threw
it over his shoulder, as was his habit.
George felt a desolate and somewhat arid sense of remembrance. He
turned to Heinrich: "I'd prefer to tell you straight away. The affair
is over."
Heinrich threw him a quick side-glance and then nodded, not
particularly surprised.
"But," added George, with a weak attempt at humour, "you are earnestly
requested not to think of the angel boy."
Heinrich shook his head seriously. "Thank you. You can dedicate the
fable of the blue boy to Nürnberger."
"He's turned out right, once again," said George.
"He always turns out right, my dear George. One can positively never
be deceived if one mistrusts everything in the world, even one's own
scepticism. Even if you had married Anna he would have turned out right
... or at any rate you would have thought so. But at any rate I think
... you don't mind my saying so, I suppose ... it's sound that it's
turned out like this."
"Sound? I've no doubt it is for me," replied George with intentional
sharpness, as though he were very far from having any idea of sparing
his conduct. "It was perhaps even a duty, in your sense of the term,
Heinrich, which I owed to myself to bring it to an end."
"Then it was certainly equally your duty to Anna," said Heinrich.
"That remains to be seen. Who knows if I have not spoilt her life?"
"Her life? Do you still remember Leo Golowski saying about her that
she was fated to finish up in respectable life? Do you think, George,
that a marriage with you would have been particularly respectable? Anna
was perhaps cut out to be your mistress--not your wife. Who knows if
the fellow she is going to marry one day or other wouldn't really have
every reason to be grateful to you if only men weren't so confoundedly
silly? People only have pure memories when they have lived through
something--this applies to women quite as much as men."
They walked further along the Sommerhaidenweg in the direction of the
town, which towered out of the grey haze, and approached the cemetery.
"Is there really any point," asked George hesitatingly, "in visiting
the grave of a creature that has never lived?"
"Does your child lie there?"
George nodded. His child! How strange it always sounded! They walked
along the brown wooden palings above which rose the gravestones and
crosses, and then followed a low brick wall to the entrance. An
attendant of whom they inquired showed them the way over the wide
centre path which was planted with willows. There were rows of little
oval plates, each one with two short prongs stuck into the ground, on
little mounds like sand-castles, close to the planks in a fairly large
plot of ground. The mound for which George was looking lay in the
middle of the field. Dark red roses lay on it. George recognised them.
His heart stood still. What a good thing, he thought, that we didn't
meet each other! Did she hope to, I wonder?
"There where the roses are?" asked Heinrich.
George nodded.
They remained silent for a while. "Isn't it a fact," asked Heinrich,
"that during the whole time you never once thought of the possibility
of its ending like this?"
"Never? I don't quite know. All kinds of possibilities run through
one's mind. But of course I never seriously thought of it. Besides, how
could one?" He told Heinrich, and not for the first time, of how the
Professor had explained the child's death. It had been an unfortunate
accident through which one to two per cent. of unborn children were
bound to perish. As to why this accident should have taken place in
this particular case, that, of course, the Professor had not been able
to explain. But was accident anything more than a word? Was not even
that accident bound to have its cause?
Heinrich shrugged his shoulders. "Of course.... One cause after the
other and its final cause in the beginning of all things. We could of
course prevent the happening of many so-called accidents if we had more
perception, more knowledge and more power. Who knows if your child's
death could not have been prevented at some moment or other?"
"And perhaps it may have been in my own power," said George slowly.
"I don't understand. Was there any premonitory symptom or...."
George stood there staring fixedly at the little mound. "I'll ask you
something, Heinrich, but don't laugh at me. Do you think it possible
that an unborn child can die from one not longing for it to come, in
the way one ought to--dying, as it were, of too little love?"
Heinrich put his hand on his shoulder. "George, how does a sensible man
like you manage to get hold of such metaphysical ideas?"
"You can call it whatever you like, metaphysical or silly; for some
time past I haven't been able to shake off the thought that to some
extent I bear the blame for it having ended like that."
"You?"
"If I said a minute ago that I did not long for it enough I didn't
express myself properly. The truth is this: that I had quite forgotten
that little creature that was to have come into the world. In the last
few weeks immediately before its birth, especially, I had absolutely
forgotten it. I can't put it any differently. Of course I knew all the
time what was going to happen, but it didn't concern me, as it were. I
went on with my life without thinking of it. Not the whole time, but
frequently, and particularly in the summer by the lake, my lake as you
call it ... then I was.... Yes, when I was there I simply knew nothing
about my going to have a child."
"I've heard all about it," said Heinrich, looking past him.
George looked at him. "You know what I mean then? I was not only far
away from the child, the unborn child, but from the mother too, and in
so strange a way that with the best will in the world I can't describe
it to you, can't even understand it myself to-day. And there are
moments when I can't resist the thought that there must have been some
connection between that forgetting and my child's death. Do you think
anything like that so absolutely out of the question?"
Heinrich's forehead was furrowed deeply. "Quite out of the question?
one can't go as far as that. The roots of things are often so deeply
intertwined that we find it impossible to look right down to the
bottom. Yes, perhaps there even are connections like that. But even if
there are ... they are not for you, George! Even if such connections
did exist they wouldn't count so far as you were concerned."
"Wouldn't count for me?"
"The whole idea which you just tell me, well, it doesn't fit in with my
conception of you. It doesn't come out of your soul. Not a bit of it.
An idea of that kind would never have occurred to you your whole life
long if you hadn't been intimate with a person of my type, and if it
hadn't been your way sometimes not to think your own thoughts but those
of men who were stronger--or even weaker than you are. And I assure
you, whatever turn your life may have taken even down by that lake,
your lake ... our lake ... you haven't incurred any so-called guilt.
It might have been guilt in the case of some one else. But with a man
like you whose character--you don't mind my saying this--is somewhat
frivolous and a little unconscientious there would certainly be no
sense of guilt. Shall I tell you something? As a matter of fact you
don't feel guilty about the child at all, but the discomfort which you
feel only comes from your thinking yourself under an obligation to feel
guilty. Look here, if I had gone through anything like your adventure
I might perhaps have been guilty because I might possibly have felt
myself guilty."
"Would you have been guilty in a case like mine, Heinrich?"
"No, perhaps I wouldn't. How can I know? You're probably now thinking
of the fact that I recently drove a creature straight to her death and
in spite of that felt, so to speak, quite guiltless."
"Yes, that's what I'm thinking of. And that's why I don't
understand...."
Heinrich shrugged his shoulders. "Yes. I felt quite guiltless.
Somewhere or other in my soul and somewhere else, perhaps deeper down,
I felt guilty.... And deeper down still, guiltless again. The only
question is how deep we look down into ourselves. And when we have
lit the lights in all the storeys, why, we are everything at the same
time: guilty and guiltless, cowards and heroes, fools and wise men.
'We'--perhaps that's putting it rather too generally. In your case, for
example, George, there are far less of these complications, at any rate
when you're outside the influence of the atmosphere which I sometimes
spread around you. That's why, too, you are better off than I am--much
better off. My look-out is ghastly, you know. You surely must have
noticed it before. What's the good to me of the lights burning in all
my storeys? What's the good to me of my knowledge of human nature and
my splendid intelligence? Nothing.... Less than nothing. As a matter of
fact there's nothing I should like better, George, than that all the
ghastly events of the last months had not happened, just like a bad
dream. I swear to you, George, I would give my whole future and God
knows what if I could make it undone. But if it were undone ... then I
should probably be quite as miserable as I am now."
His face became distorted as though he wanted to scream. But
immediately afterwards he stood there again, stiff, motionless, pale,
as though all his fire had gone out. And he said: "Believe me, George,
there are moments when I envy the people with a so-called philosophy
of life. As for me, whenever I want to have a decently ordered world I
have always first got to create one for myself. That's rather a strain
for any one who doesn't happen to be the Deity."
He sighed heavily. George left off answering him. He walked with him
under the willows to the exit. He knew that there was no help for
this man. It was fated that some time or other he should precipitate
himself into the void from the top of a tower which he had circled up
in spirals; and that would be the end of him. But George felt in good
form and free. He made the resolve to use the three days which still
belonged to him as sensibly as possible. The best thing to do was to
be alone in some quiet beautiful country-side, to rest himself fully
and recuperate for new work. He had taken the manuscript of the violin
sonata with him to Vienna. He was thinking of finishing that before all
others.
They crossed the doorway and stood in the street. George turned round,
but the cemetery wall arrested his gaze. It was only after a few steps
that he had a clear view of the valley. All he could do now was to
guess where the little house with the grey gables was lying; it was no
longer visible from here. Beyond the reddish-yellow hills which shut
off the view of the landscape the sky sank down in the faint autumn
light. A gentle farewell was taking place within George's soul of much
happiness and much sorrow, the echoes of which he heard as it were in
the valley which he was now leaving for a long time; and at the same
time there was within his soul the greeting of days as yet unknown,
which rang to his youth from out the wideness of the world.
[1] A pun on the word _Ehre_ which means honour.
[2] Literally "sweet girl." The phrase was invented by Schnitzler
himself.
[3] A fashionable district in Vienna.