In the days that followed Dorn sought to interest himself in the details
of the situation. The thing buzzed and gyrated about him, tiring his
thought with its innumerable surfaces. Revolution. A new state. New
flags and new slogans.
"I can't admire it," he explained to Mathilde at the end of the first
week, "because its grotesqueries makes me laugh. And I cannot laugh at
it because its intensity saddens me. To observe the business sanely is
to come to as many conclusions as there are words."
Mathilde had recovered some of her enthusiasm. But the mania that had
illuminated her thought was gone. She spoke and worked eagerly through
the days, moving from department to department, helping to establish
some of the innumerable stenographic archives the endless stream of
soviet pronouncements and orders were beginning to require. But at night
her listlessness returned.
"There is doubt in you too," Dorn smiled at her. "I am sorry for that.
It has been the same with so many others. They have, alas! become
reasonable. And to become reasonable ... Well, revolution does not
thrive on reason. It needs something more active. You, Mathilde, were a
revolutionist in Berlin. Now you are a stenographer. Alas! one collapses
under a load of dream and finds one's self in an uninteresting Utopia,
if that means anything. Epigrams lie around the street corners of Munich
waiting new text-books."
They were walking idly toward the café von Stinnes had appointed as a
rendezvous. It was late and the dark streets were deserted. The shops
had been closed all week. The Revolution was struggling in poorly
ventilated council-rooms with problems of economics. Beyond the
persistent rumors that the city, cut off from the fields, would starve
in another two days and that the legendary armies of Hoffmann were
within a stone's throw of the Hofbrau House, there was little
excitement. "My employers," von Stinnes had explained on the fourth day,
"are waiting to see if the Soviet can stand against the Noske armies
from Prussia. The armies will arrive in a few weeks. If the Soviet can
defeat them and thus establish its authentic independence, my employers
in Versailles will then finance the Bavarian bourgeoisie and assist in
the overthrow of the Communists. On the one condition, of course, that
the bourgeoisie maintain Bavaria as an independent nation. And this the
bourgeoisie are not at all averse to doing. It sounds preposterous,
doesn't it? You smile. But all intrigue is preposterous, even when most
successful."
"I quite believe," Dorn had answered. "I've long been convinced that
intrigue is nothing more than the fantastic imbecilities unimaginative
men palm off on one another for cleverness."
Now, walking with Mathilde, Dorn felt an inclination to rid himself of
the week's political preoccupation. Mathilde was beginning to have a
sentimental influence upon him.
"Perhaps if she loved me something would come back," he thought. "Anyway
it would be nice to feel a woman in love with me again."
An innocuous sadness sat comfortably in his heart. Later he would
embrace her. Kiss ... watch her undress. Things that would mean
nothing.... But they might help waste time, and perhaps give him another
glimpse of ... He paused in his thought and felt a dizziness enter his
silence. Words spun. "The face of stars," he murmured under his breath,
and laughed as Mathilde looked inquiringly up at him.
The café was deserted. Von Stinnes, alone in a booth, called "Hello" to
them as they entered.
"We have the place almost to ourselves," he said. "There are some people
in the other room."
He looked affectionately at the two as they sat down, and added, "How
goes the courtship?"
"Gravely and with cautious cynicism," Dorn answered. "We find it
difficult to overcome our sanities."
He smiled at the girl and covered her hand with his. Her eyes regarded
him luminously. They sat eating their late meal, von Stinnes chatting of
the latest developments.... A mob of communist workingmen had attacked
the poet Muhsam while he was unburdening himself of proletarian oratory
in the Schiller Square.
"They chased him for two blocks into the Palais," the Baron smiled, "and
he lost his hat. And perhaps his portfolio. They are beginning to
distrust the poets. They want something besides revolutionary iambics
now. Muhsam, however, is content. He received a postal card this
afternoon with a skull and cross-bones drawn on it informing him he
would be assassinated Friday at 3 P.M. It was signed by 'The Society for
the Abolition of Monstrosities.' He is having it done into an
expressionist placard and it will undoubtedly restore his standing with
the Council of Ten. Franz Lipp, the foreign minister, you know, has
ordered all the telephones taken out of the foreign office building.
It's an old failing of his--a phobia against telephones. They send him
into fits when they ring. He has incidentally offered to sign a separate
peace with the Entente. A crafty move, but premature. And the burghers
have been ordered under pain of death to surrender all firearms within
twenty-four hours."
The talk ran on. Mathilde, feigning sleep, placed her head on Dorn's
shoulder.
"You play with the little one," whispered von Stinnes. "She is in love."
Dorn placed his arm around her and smiled at her half-opened eyes.
A man, walking unsteadily across the empty café, stopped in front of the
booth.
"I've been looking for you," he said. "You don't remember me, eh?"
Dorn looked up. An American uniform. An excited face.
"My name's Hazlitt. Come out here."
Von Stinnes leveled his monocle witheringly upon the interloper and
murmured an aside, "He's drunk...."
Dorn stood up.
"Yes, I remember you now," he said. The man's tone had oppressed him.
"What do you want?"
He detached himself from Mathilde and stepped into the room. Hazlitt
stared at him.
"I owe you something," he spoke slowly. "Come out here."
Watching the man as he approached, Dorn became aware of a rage in
himself. His muscles had tightened and a nervousness was shaking in his
words. The man was a stranger, yet there was an uncomfortable intimacy
in his eyes.
Hazlitt stood breathing heavily. This was Erik Dorn--the man who had had
Rachel. Wine swept a flame through his thought. God! this was the man.
She was gone, but this was the man. Shoot him down like a dog! Shoot him
down! Kill the grin of him. He'd pay. He'd killed something. Shoot him
down! There was a gun under his coat--army revolver. Better than
shooting Germans. This was the man.
"You're going to pay for it," he spoke. "Go on, say something."
Dorn's rage hesitated. A mistake. What the devil was up?
"Oh, you've forgotten her," Hazlitt whispered. Shoot him! Voices inside
demanded wildly that he shoot. Not talk, but kill.
"Rachel," he cried suddenly. His eyes stopped seeing.
Dorn jumped for the gun that had appeared and caught his arm in time.
Rachel--then this was something about Rachel? Hazlitt ... Rachel. What?
A fight over Rachel? Rachel gone, dead for always. Get the gun away,
though....
They were stumbling across the room, twisting and locked together. He
saw von Stinnes rise, stand undecided. Mathilde's face, like something
shooting by outside a car window. And a strong man trying to kill him
... for Rachel. A Galahad for Rachel.
His thought faded into a rage. A curse as the man grabbed at his throat.
The gun was still in the air. His wrist was beginning to ache from
struggling with the thing. This was part of the idiocy of things. But he
must look out. Perhaps only a moment more to live. The man was weeping.
Mumbling ... "you made a fool out of her ... You dirty...."
As they continued their stumbling and clutching, a fury entered Dorn.
He became aware of eyes blazing against him--drunken, furious eyes that
were weeping. With a violent lunge he twisted the gun out of the man's
hand. There was an instant of silence and the man came hurling against
him.
Dorn fired. Down ... "my head ..." He lay still. The body of Hazlitt
sprawled over him. For a moment the two men remained embraced on the
floor. Then the body of Hazlitt rolled slowly from on top. It fell on
its back--a dead face covered with blood staring emptily at the ceiling.
Dorn, with the edge of an iron table foot embedded in his head, lay
breathing unevenly, his eyes closed.