This strange incident of meeting, seeing, loving, and parting forever had
passed swiftly as in a dream. Since Wilhelm had not yet returned,
Frederick, long after his visitor had fled, went out on deck, where the
exalted impression of the starry heavens shining over the infinite
expanse of the ocean, purified him, as it were. He was neither by nature
nor by habit a Don Juan, and it astonished him that the unusual,
surprising adventure seemed the most natural thing in the world.
The deck was empty. Another boy was on guard in Pander's place. The
temperature had sunk to below freezing-point, and a thick coating of
hoar-frost lay on the rigging.
As he stood leaning over the railing, he had a painful vision of the sum
total of life and death within the eons of life on earth. His innermost
being smarted with the pain of it. Death must have existed before the
beginning. Death and death! That was the limit, he thought, of vast sums
of trouble, hope, desire, enjoyment--enjoyment which forthwith consumed
itself to make way for renewed desire, for illusions of possession, for
realities of loss, for anguish, for conflicts, for meetings and partings;
all uncontrollable processes bound up with suffering and fresh suffering
and suffering again. It gave him some satisfaction to assume that now
that the passage was so smooth, his Deborah and all her companions in
suffering were probably lying wrapt in unconscious sleep, for a time
relieved of the great madness of life.
While waiting for Doctor Wilhelm, absorbed in these reflections,
Frederick involuntarily turned away from the edge of the deck, and became
aware of a dark mass not far from the smoke-stack, cowering in a corner
against the wall. The thing looked strange to him. On stepping closer he
saw it was a man on the floor asleep, wrapped in his overcoat with his
cap drawn over his eyes, his bearded head resting on a low camp-chair.
Frederick was convinced it was Achleitner. Why was he lying there in the
freezing cold instead of in bed? Frederick found the right answer. Not
more than three paces away was the door of Ingigerd's cabin; and he was
the faithful dog in three senses, the watchdog, the Cerberus, the dog
crazed with the rabies of jealousy.
"Poor fellow," Frederick said aloud. "Poor, stupid Achleitner!" He felt
genuine, almost tender sympathy; and over him came all the woe of the
deceived lover, as we can trace it from Nietzsche and Schopenhauer down
to Buddha Gotama, whose pupil, Ananda, asks: "Master, how shall we
comport ourselves toward a woman?" Quoth the master: "Avoid the sight of
her, Ananda, because a woman's being is hidden. It is unfathomable as the
way of the fish in the water. To her, lying is as truth, and truth as
lying."
"Sst! What are you doing here?" said Doctor Wilhelm, stepping up softly.
He was carrying something in his hands carefully wrapped up.
"Do you know who is lying here?" said Frederick. "It is Achleitner."
"He wanted to keep his eye on that cabin," Wilhelm remarked cynically,
"to limit the attendance."
"We must wake him up."
"Why?" said Wilhelm. "Later, when we go to bed."
"I am going to bed now."
"Come to my cabin first for a moment."
In his cabin the physician laid a human embryo on the table.
"She has attained her end," he said, meaning the girl travelling second
class, who in his opinion had taken the trip for no other purpose than to
rid herself of her burden and avoid disgrace. At the sight of the little
object, Frederick did not know whether to be born or never to awaken to
life was preferable.
He went out on deck again, aroused Achleitner, and led him to his cabin,
resisting and mumbling incomprehensible words, though half asleep. Then,
in dread of the agonies of insomnia, he went to his own cabin.