Strange steps walked through the house, indifferent, careless steps.
They passed along the corridor and went up even to the attics. Down
in the courtyard bleak business voices bargained and depreciated
everything. They said that the ground alone had any value that could
be discussed. As for the building, it did not count--a useless old
chattel, no longer conforming to modern requirements.
Anne looked round as if fearing that the house might hear this. She
felt tempted to shout to the agents to clear out of the place and never
dare to come back again. Let old Florian lock the gate. Let the days be
again as secure as of old, when there was no fear that they must break
off their lives in the old house and have to continue elsewhere.
In the green room an agent knocked at the wall and laughed.
“Strong as a fortress. The pickaxe will have hard work with these old
bricks.”
Anne could listen no more. She moved herself to the furthest room
and hid so that Thomas might not look into her eyes. Why destroy her
husband’s bliss? He was so contented and grateful. He worked, planned,
discussed, bargained. At the auction Ille had fallen to him and his
eyes glistened marvellously when he spoke of it. “Soon our house at
home will be ready, and the farm too. Everything in its old place, the
furniture, the pictures, the servants, the bailiff, the agent, even the
old housekeeper. The crops are promising.... Are you pleased, Anne? You
rejoice with me, don’t you? The earth will produce for us.”
Feverishly, disorderly haste spoke in his voice, in his actions. Anne
was tired and slow; it took her a long time to go from one room to
another; there was so much to be looked at on her way....
Thomas prepared for re-union and counted the days impatiently; Anne
took leave and woke every morning with fear.
“Nothing has happened yet.” She looked round, and, being alone, she
repeated it aloud so that the walls might hear it.... Then again she
was frightened. “Perhaps to-day ... to-night....”
Then the day came.
A stranger walked with Thomas in the back garden. He trod on the flower
beds and turned his head several times towards the house. Anne saw
his owl-like face from the staircase window, watched his movements
anxiously. He too bargained and depreciated everything. She began to
hope: perhaps he would go away like the others, life would remain in
its old groove and the day which was to be the last day of all would
never come.
The owl-like face began to ascend under the vaults of the staircase and
smiled. It looked into the sunshine room. Vainly Anne fled from it; she
met it again in the green room.
The stranger, feeling quite at home, leaned now against the writing
table with the many drawers and said something to Thomas.
Anne did not understand clearly what was said, but she felt as if
a sharp, short blow had struck her brow. Her brain was stunned by
it. Thomas’s voice too reached her ear confusedly, but she saw with
despairing certitude that his countenance brightened.
When an hour later the banker from Paternoster Street left, the old
house was already his.
For days the dull pain behind Anne’s brow did not cease. Everything
that happened around her seemed unreal: the sudden departure of the
people from the ground floor, the packing up of everything all over the
house.
The time for delivery was short. The greatest haste was necessary.
The old pieces of furniture moved from their places, as clumsily,
painfully, as old people move from their accustomed corners. Below, in
front of the house, rattling furniture vans stopped now and then.
Anne looked out of the window. Barefooted, sweating men carried the
piano out of the door. The pampered household gods stood piled up in a
heap in the middle of the pavement, amidst the crowd of the street. A
man sat on the music chest. Christopher’s old desk lay upside down on
top of the chest of drawers, just like a dead animal, its four legs up
in the air.
In these days, Thomas travelled repeatedly from home, for he wanted
himself to supervise the placing of the furniture of the old house in
the manor house of Ille.
The boys were made noisy by their expectation of new and unknown
things. They spoke of Ille as if it were the realization of a fairy
tale--a fairy tale told by their father.
“They don’t cling to the old house,” thought Anne and felt lonely. She
liked best to be by herself. Then her imagination restored everything
to its old place in the dismantled rooms. The shapes of the furniture
were visible on the wall papers. The forsaken nails stretched out of
the walls like fingers asking for something. In the place of Mrs.
Christina’s portrait a weary shadow looked like a faded memory.
Another piece of furniture disappeared, then another.... The
writing-table with many drawers remained alone in the green room. Anne
drew the drawers out one by one. One contained some embroideries made
in cross-stitch. How ugly and sweet they were! She remembered them
well, she had made them for her grandfather. Then some clumsy old
drawings came into her hands, quaint castles, girls, big-eared cats;
two silvery, fair curls, in a paper, tied together; beneath them an old
distant date in her grandfather’s faded writing.
Whenever the clock struck she started and touched her forehead as if it
had struck her to hurry her on.
In another drawer she found a diploma of the Freedom of the Royal Free
City of Pest and a worn little book. On its cover a two-headed eagle
held the arms of Hungary between its claws.
... Pozsony. A. D. 1797, Christopher Ulwing ... civil carpenter....
While she turned the pages a faint, mouldy odour fanned her face. Her
memory searched hesitatingly:
“Two prentice lads once wandered
To strange lands far away.”
Suddenly the torpor of her brain was dispelled. Reality assumed its
merciless shape in her conscience. She had to leave here, everything
would be different.... Unchecked tears flowed down her cheeks.
She had no courage to pack the contents of the drawers, nor the heart
to have the open boxes nailed down. Anything that seemed final filled
her with horror.
Somewhere a door creaked. Anne woke to her helplessness. She pretended
to hurry and strained her efforts to hide her feelings before those she
loved.
The boys were preparing for their examinations. Thomas noticed nothing.
In the egotism of his own happiness he passed blindly beside Anne’s
shy, wordless pain. He was pleased with everything, only his wife’s
apathy irked him.
A half-opened drawer, an empty cupboard, could stop Anne for hours. In
her poor tortured brain memories alone had room. Everything spoke of
the past. Even in the attics she only met with memories.
Uncle Sebastian’s shaky winged armchair; the grimy engravings of
Fischer von Erlach and Mansard; the out of date coloured map of
Pest-Buda.... She took the map to the light of the attic window. For a
long time she contemplated the lines of the short crooked streets, the
Danube painted blue, the small vessels of the boat-bridge, the small
churches, the many empty building plots.
She could not find her way on the map. Over her childhood’s memories a
new big city had risen, had swallowed in its growth the old streets,
removed the markets, spread beyond the limits of the tattered map,
spread even beyond the cold, confident dreams of Ulwing the builder.
Wearily Anne went down the stairs and evening found her again immobile
in front of an open cupboard. She sat on the ground and on her knee lay
an old shrunken cigar case, embroidered with beads....
Steps approached from the adjoining room. She became attentive and
really wanted to be quick, but forgot that she was engaged in filling
an empty box and with rapid movements she instinctively returned
everything to its usual place in the cupboard.
Thomas stopped near her.
“What do you think, how much more time do you require?”
“There is still much to be done,” answered Anne guardedly. What it was
she could not have told.
“In a week the house has to be handed over,” muttered her husband
nervously.
Anne looked up at him.
The lamplight lit up Thomas’s face. How old and worn out he looked! His
well-shaped mouth seemed pitifully dry and between his cheek bones the
sunken crevices were darkened with purplish-blue shadows.
Anne thought her eyes deluded her and got up.
Thomas snatched at his chest and again made the ominous movement with
his hand. Anne could no longer believe that it was accidental. As if
to escape her maddening anxiety she flung herself into his arms and
pressed her head to his chest.
Thomas stood motionless as if he had lost consciousness. He breathed
heavily and stared anxiously into space above his wife’s head. His
heart beat faintly a rapid course, stumbled suddenly, and for an
instant there was an awful, cold silence in his chest.
Anne listened with bated breath. Under her head, the rapid irregular
gallop started again.
As if he had only then noticed his wife’s proximity, Thomas stretched
himself out and pushed her away impatiently. Anne remembered that this
was not the first time this had happened. The awful truth dawned on her.
“It is nothing,” he said and made an effort to laugh, but his laughter
died away under Anne’s pitiful look.
“Thomas, since when?”
“A long time ago.”
“For God’s sake, why did you not tell me?”
“I thought it would pass away at Ille.... Open the window. It is rather
worse to-day....” His face became ashen-grey, his eyes appealed for
help. With a single gesture he tore his shirt-collar open.
Anne flew through the room.
“Call the doctor! The doctor....”
It sounded all through the house when Florian slammed the street door.
Hours came and passed and left their marks on the faces of the people
in the old house. Thomas was already in bed. On the vaulted staircase
Anne talked for a long time with Dr. Gárdos, the son of the old
proto-medicus.
The doctor’s voice was strangled; his words scarcely reached Anne
and yet they annihilated everything around her. Had she not yet lost
enough? Was there no mercy for her?
Dr. Gárdos looked at her full of pity.
“Miracles might happen....”
The corners of Anne’s eyes drew up slowly and horror was in her
expression. She shivered and then went back through the corridor with
strained, stiff lips. When Thomas as in a dream reached for her hand,
she bent over him with her wan, crushed smile.
Dawn was slow to come and it was a long time before evening fell again.
Nothing altered in the house, only the day opened and closed its eyes.
Thomas lay motionless in his bed. Anne watched his every breath
anxiously, thought of the passing hours and of the day that drew
threateningly nearer, on which the house was to be surrendered.
She asked for delay. It was refused. She had to accept the advice of
young Doctor Gárdos.
The empty little lodgings in the house opposite ... there was no
choice, they must move there. They would have to rough it, there would
be room enough for a few days. For the doctor had told her, quite
calmly, that it was only a matter of a few days.
“So there are still miracles,” thought Anne. “Yes, it is only for a
short time and then ... everything will come right again.” She felt
relieved and thus the last day in the old house passed away.
It was evening. The two boys had already gone with Tini into the
lodgings opposite. Thomas slept. Anne and the old servant sat up with
him; they did not dare to look at each other.
The windows were open; in the corridor, near the wall, the marble clock
ticked, on the floor. The last thing left in the old house. Florian
insisted on carrying it over himself into the new lodgings.
Anne counted the strokes of the clock. “In three hours ... in two
hours....” She rose quietly, slid along the corridor, down the stairs.
In the back garden, between the high, ugly walls, the old chestnut
tree, the winged pump, the bushes were all still in their places ...
and one could rest on the circular seat of the apple tree. Everything
was as of old, even the ticking of the old clock came down into the
garden.
Anne leaned her head against the trunk of the tree; without taking her
eyes off Thomas’s window, she took leave of all things around her.
Suddenly, as if somebody’s speech had broken off in the act of saying
farewell, the silence became absolute. The clock had stopped.
Anne ran up the stairs. Now she remembered. Last night she had
forgotten the clock and now the butterfly pendulum, which she had seen
alive, lay dead between the marble pillars. She passed her hand wearily
over her brow. So the little dwarf had gone too! Had Time itself
forsaken the old house?
She opened the door of the green room. The candle light floated round
her up and down. Her steps echoed sharply from the empty walls.
She stopped in front of the tall white doors with the glass panes.
On the panel rising notches were visible. When they were children,
Christopher and she, their father had marked their growth every year.
She went further, trying the door-handles carefully. Some were meek
and obedient, others creaked and resisted. She knew them ... they had
had their say in her life. She knew the voice of everything in the
house. The windows spoke to her when they were opened; the board of the
threshold too had something to say beneath her tread, always the same
thing, ever since she could remember. But that was part of its destiny.
She slipped along the walls. She passed her hand over the faded
wallpaper, over the grey stove, even over the window sills. She put
the candle down and looked through the small panes of glass towards
the Danube, just like old times. But the fronts of the houses opposite
repelled her looks.
A carriage rattled through the street: it sounded like the crack
of a whip. Anne clung close to the walls and under the harmonizing
influence of the quiet night, the intimate physical contact brought
something suddenly home to her that had lived in her unconscious self
dimly unexpressed, for the whole of her existence. In that moment
she understood the bond that existed between her and the doomed old
house. The bricks under the whitewash, the beams, the arches, all were
creations of one single force and she felt herself one with them as if
she had grown from between the walls, as if she were just a chip of
them, a chip privileged to move and say aloud what they had to suffer
in silence.
She thought of the finished lives, continued in her who had survived
everybody. Mysterious memories of events she had never witnessed
invaded her mind. Grafts from memories treasured up by the house of the
Ulwings.
Since the clock had stopped, time ceased to exist for Anne. A painful
trembling of her own body brought her back to reality. The whole house
trembled. The bell rang in the hall.
Blood rushed to Anne’s benumbed heart. Her knees gave way as she
returned through the rooms. One after another she closed the doors
behind her, looking back all the time. Near the door of the nursery a
folded piece of paper lay on the floor. She picked it up and pressed
it carefully between the glazed wings, as she used to do, so that they
might not rattle when carriages passed below.
She only realized what she had done when the door-handle dropped back
to its place, when the door was closed, the door whose rattling would
wake no one any more. Anne sobbed aloud among the empty walls. The
rooms repeated her sob, one after the other, gently, more and more
gently....
The street door opened below. Dr. Gárdos’ commanding voice was audible
on the staircase. Two men followed him, carrying a stretcher on their
shoulders. Anne came face to face with them in the corridor. She
swayed, as if she had been hit on the chest, then she seemed quite
composed again. She opened the door and gently wakened her husband.
The stretcher, with Thomas on it, floated across the road in the early
dawn as over a narrow blue river. One shore, the habitual one, was the
old house, the other, the strange dark house, the strange new life in
which Anne felt she had no root.
She passed the gate quickly, with her head bent. Only in the middle of
the road did she stop and hesitate. She turned back suddenly.
The two pillar-men leaned out under the urns of the cornice. Their
stone eyes turned to her, as if they stared straight at her accusingly
and asked a question to which there was no answer.
Florian turned the big old key slowly in the door. For the last time,
the very last time....