VI

Johanna Schöntag wrote to Christian: “It is two months now since I

parted from you. In those two months misfortune has been very busy with

me and mine. My father committed suicide; that was why I was summoned

home so suddenly. Rash speculations complicated his affairs beyond

his power; he saw no way to prevent his being reduced to beggary,

and determined to leave the scene of his failure thus abruptly. All

obligations have been decently satisfied, and his good name has been

saved. We are also told, as if it were a consolation, that he lost his

head too soon, that things might have turned out better than he feared.

But we are in an unenviable situation, and life is not showing us an

admirable aspect. Such sudden transformations should be confined to

melodrama. I am still badly confused; I hardly know what is happening

to me. I envy those who have an aim of some kind and also the vitality

to pursue it. I wonder whether you will write to me. Or have you

already forgotten me? Have I even the right to ask that?”

She sent this letter to Crammon with the request to forward it. Crammon

replied: “My dear Rumpelstilzkin:--I hope that your voice will not die

in the desert. Unhappy things have taken place. The man to whom you are

writing has denied himself and his own past and all who love him. The

Lord has darkened his soul; we are striving for his salvation. May your

assistance bear rich fruit.”

The words frightened her, and she did not know how to interpret them.

She had time to reflect, for weeks passed before she received an answer

to her letter; and this answer was worse than none at all. It came not

from Christian himself but from Amadeus Voss, and was as follows:

“My dear Fräulein:--While arranging some documents which my friend

Christian Wahnschaffe left in the apartment which I have taken off his

hands, I found your letter among other things. Since he has failed

for some months, with very rare exceptions, to answer any letters, I

think I may take it for granted that you have not heard from him. I

can hardly dare hope to make up for his negligence. Who am I? What am

I to you? You may not even recall me. I, on the contrary, remember

you very exactly, and regret most constantly that I did not succeed

in making you more conscious of my devotion and sympathy. But I am

diffident by nature, and the fear of being repulsed or having my

feelings misunderstood has assumed morbid intensity in my mind. Do not

therefore, pray, regard it as a tactless importunity if I venture to

write you in Christian’s stead. The thought of your uncertainty and

fruitless waiting pained me, and I determined to put an end to it so

far as it lies in my power to do.

“I believe I can give you the assurance that Christian Wahnschaffe

is not as guilty, so far as you are concerned, as he may seem to be,

unless we agree that his guilt toward all who knew and loved him is the

same. To speak of his practising neglect or failing in a duty would

be unbecoming in me as well as incorrect in fact. He has sloughed off

his former skin, and the coin in which he pays to-day is of another

mintage. Whether its value is higher or lower than formerly it is not

my office to decide. He has, in the proverbial expression, burned his

bridges behind him. What he does may arouse the horror of the morally

immature; I, too, I confess, find the motivation obscure and difficult.

But one must have patience and faith in a benevolent providence; for we

all eat the bread of some abyss and it is bitter on each man’s lips.

“It is in view of the uncommon circumstances that I beg you to pardon

my taking upon myself the part of an _alter ego_ of our friend and

making his affairs, as it were, my own. I have done it only after

mature reflection; and what may at first seem to you sheer forwardness,

and an indelicate intrusion into secrets that are not my own, has been

prompted purely by a profound regard for your peace of mind. In closing

may I express to you my deep and sincere sympathy? You have suffered

from terrible visitations. God in His goodness will assuredly brighten

your path again.”

Johanna read this letter innumerable times, and each time with a pang

of intolerable shame, each time on the verge of tears. It made her feel

so exposed and affronted. And then she would burrow again and again

into the artifice of those stilted sentences. Frightened and desperate,

and yet with a stabbing curiosity, she asked: What could have happened

to make Christian, him whom she trusted immeasurably, whom she knew to

be the soul of delicacy and reserve--what could have happened to make

him callously expose the most intimate things in life to the treachery

and hypocrisy of this man?

In her excitement she went to Crammon’s house, but he had left Vienna

long ago. She asked where he was, but received no certain information.

Aglaia named a Berlin hotel, Constantine the château of Count Vitztum

in the mountains of Saxony. Johanna wrote letters, tore them up,

reflected and brooded, was pursued by shame and doubt, and finally

determined to write to Amadeus Voss. She wrote a brief note in her

rigid, angular writing, her left hand clenched in rage, her forehead

wrinkled, her little teeth gnawing at her lip. With a certain mockery

of implication she thanked him for his trouble, contemptuously ignored

his indiscretion, controlled her profoundly instinctive aversion,

and finally, with an impatient turn of speech, demanded some clear

information concerning Christian Wahnschaffe, since she had never

been taught the reading of riddles or the solving of mysteries. She

admitted that she had no right to make this demand, since her interest

in Christian was merely a friend’s. But as such it was strong and kind

enough to justify her inquiries.

Four days later Voss’s answer reached her. Her heart beat as she held

the letter. Unopened she hid it in a drawer. Not till evening, when she

had locked herself into her room, did she open and read it.

“My dear Fräulein Schöntag:--I am surprised that you are unaware of

a rumour which the very sparrows twitter from the house-tops here.

Everybody whispers and peers and is astonished, and dares not trust the

evidence of his senses. Hence to spare you unnecessary circumlocutions

I shall proceed at once to the point. You may remember that I left

Hamburg a week before Christian Wahnschaffe, and rented a comfortable

apartment for us both in Berlin. Since we had both determined to study

medicine there, I had every reason to suppose that as long as our

relations were harmonious we would have a common household. So I waited

for him, and he came at last; but he did not come alone. He brought a

woman with him. Here words fail me. I use the word woman because my

consideration for you forbids me the use of any other. And yet how

shall I convey the true state of affairs, if I shrink back from the

unchangeable facts? The truth cannot remain hidden. This person’s name

is Karen Engelschall. He rescued her in a state of hopeless degradation

from some harlots’ haunt near the harbour. She is a characteristic

outcast. Her appearance is coarse and her manners repulsive. She

expects to be confined shortly. She was in the power of a ruffian who

maltreated her and beat her; whenever she thinks of him she shakes with

terror and horror. She is between thirty and thirty-two years old, but

she looks older. One look at her face suffices to convince one that she

is familiar with every vice and with every crime.

“My dear young lady, pray do not stop here as you would stop listening

were I saying these things to you. The words I have written down are

brutally frank, and your imagination, unaccustomed to such images,

may identify me with the horrors I am forced to evoke. But I shall

be patient, if it be so, until your impressions become sufficiently

clarified to do me justice. What I have said is only an introduction,

and I must proceed.

“He came with his cases and boxes, but he had discharged his valet.

Toward me he was of an extreme cordiality, and indeed he seemed far

more cheerful than he had been when I left him. Two rooms were set

aside for this woman--a bedroom and a sitting-room. There remained

three rooms for him and two for me. But I had not been prepared for

this additional companion and hardly knew what to say. He gave me a

superficial explanation of her presence, but he withheld his real

confidence. How repulsive is this smoothness of the mere worldling,

how indistinguishable from downright falseness! To smile and be silent

convinces no one, though it may serve to deceive. We who are lowly

born do not know such gestures, and disdain to take refuge in polite

irresponsibility. The woman appeared at our meals. She sat there like

a clod, played with the cloth, asked foolish question, rattled the

silver, and used her knife as a shovel. Whenever Wahnschaffe glanced

at her, she looked like a thief who had been caught. I was confounded.

He seemed to me out of his senses. His entire behaviour toward her

was marked by a considerateness so exquisite that I was compelled

to believe that her influence over him had been gained in some

supernatural way. But what was its nature? I soon ascertained beyond a

doubt that she was not his mistress. Nor was such a thing conceivable;

it was a thought to be dismissed at once. What then was the source of

her power? It was in some devilish magic. Do not think that my mind is

wandering. In hours of spiritual insight I have looked deeply into the

secrets of creation. The human soul, poor and rich at once, has endless

capacities and powers of transformation. The stars gleam over us and we

know them not, neither their influence nor their power. The fissures of

the earth have been closed, and we know but as through the memory of a

dream that there are demons seeking to rule us. I trust that in this

matter we shall some day understand each other when we meet. Accept

this prophecy in proof of the truth of my assertions.

“I must continue. I no longer felt at home in those handsome rooms.

At night I often stood alone in the darkness, and listened for sounds

from the rooms of the other two. I conquered my aversion, and sought

out the woman when she was alone. She was talkative in a disagreeable

way. I did not conceal my contempt. In his presence she was dull.

Superficially she seems to rule him through her own servility. The

sight of her complete degradation impressed an eye satiated with

the glories of this world. I tried to discover in her some alluring

quality, some trace of lost or ruined beauty, some charm, however

humble or even perverse. I hoped to discover her secret by seeming to

agree with her and appreciate the situation. I watched for some sign of

a change in her soul, some symptom of expiation or conversion. I found

instead a crude, stained, stubborn, bestial, lumpish, unformed creature.

“I shuddered. All too near was the time when it had taken all my

passionate energy to save myself from the slime; too deeply had I

suffered among those from whom the Lord averts His countenance; too

many midnights lay behind me in which my soul hovered over the abyss;

too long had I been ground between the millstones of sin; too accursed

was this woman in my eyes, far too accursed for me to see her glide

calmly and sinuously to a point of sloth where she could rest from

past evil and prepare herself for more. I felt impelled to flee. It

was no spectacle for me. My spirit threatened to become poisoned again

and also my heart--that writhing thing that made me a burden to myself

and to mankind. I told Wahnschaffe that he could have my rooms; but

he urged me to stay, saying that he felt uncomfortable in the house

and would leave it. Aha, I thought, he is lusting after palaces; this

is too humble for him. But to every one’s astonishment he sought far

humbler quarters, stayed but a week, sought others that were still

meaner, and thus changed his abode twice more until he moved with the

woman to the reeking and buzzing tenement house in the north end of the

city where he is now.

“If I did not know the facts and were told them, I should laugh

incredulously. The widow Engelschall, Karen’s mother, was furious when

she heard of it. I have met her too, and I cannot describe her without

physical nausea. Karen’s brother, a rogue and an outcast, questioned

Wahnschaffe and threatened him. He is surrounded by the offscourings

of the earth. Yet there he studies, sleeps in a dark hole on a shabby

sofa of leather--he the spoiled darling, the expectancy and rose of his

own class, the epicure and the allurer, the Adonis and Crœsus! Does my

voice seem to pierce your ears even from the pallor of this written

sheet? Is your inmost mind petrified? Then pray come here and be a

witness to this experiment in monasticism, this modern hermitage, this

sombre farce. Come, for perhaps we need you as one of the hearts that

once glowed for him. Perhaps eyes from the world of his old delights

will be the mirrors in which he will see himself, and find and recover

himself once more.

“Do I seem to triumph in his downfall? I should not wish to do so; yet

there may be a touch of grimness in my soul. For it is I who prepared

the way, I whom dreams of sin like a leprosy of the soul condemn to

this very day to an accursed disquietude. He throws away what he has.

Millions that breed new millions lie in the bank, and he does not

regard them. He lives without luxury or diversion or agreeable company,

without plays or cars or games or love or flirtation, without being

honoured or admired or spoiled. I await the hour in which he will

laugh and declare the period of forgetfulness to be over. So long as

the millions breed millions, and his father and mother guard their

strong-boxes for him in the background, there is no room for serious

fear. His clothes and linen, his cravats and jewels and toilet articles

are largely still here where I live alone. He drops in at times to

bathe and change his garments. His appearance is what it always was; he

looks as though he were going to a luncheon with a minister of state or

to a rendezvous with a duchess. He is not melancholy or thoughtful or

hollow-eyed. He is as arrogant, as dry of soul, as insignificant, as

princely as ever. But there is a new lightness in his actions, a new

decisiveness in his speech. And he laughs oftener.

“Once he did not laugh, on that day in his castle when I told him of

darkness and of terror, before he went to meet the dancer. He listened,

listened day and night, and asked and listened again. But was it

compassion that stirred in his soul? By no means. He is not even a

Christian; no heavenly spark enlightens his soul; he knows nothing of

God, and is of those to whom the passage in Corinthians applies: The

natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they

are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are

spiritually discerned. I had desired to awaken him. I spoke as with

tongues of flame out of the nethermost depths. But he was the stronger:

he lured me to his Saturnalia and drove me into crime, and I forgot my

eternal weal for the sake of the lusts of this earth. He was like a

shadow to me; now I am myself like a shadow, and he insults the holy

thing he mocks. What knows he of the axe and the ring? I know of both.

What knows he of the signs and symbols that become torches in the

darkness of the soul? To him all things are concrete and finite;--the

nail and the board, the bell and the candle, the stone and the root,

the trowel and the hammer are but dead things to him, but not to me.

Rome and Galilee rise and battle. Torment proceeds from him; a torment

drives me to him. It is as though we were brothers and linked in the

flesh and had crept out of the same womb, and yet neither can find or

understand the other.

“Why does he live close to that woman? What does he expect of her? He

speaks of her in a tone of strange suspense. It is an uncanny, rash,

and insatiable curiosity that is in him. Once he lusted after palaces,

now he lusts after sties; once he desired counts and artists, cavaliers

and cocottes with ropes of pearls, now he seeks drunkards and paupers,

pimps and prostitutes. It is a lust that is in him, and neither

pilgrimage nor aspiration nor prayer--lust after the nail and stone,

the bell and candle, the stone and root, the trowel and hammer, and all

things wherein there is power and from which proceed both suffering

and knowledge. I have seen his eyes gleam when I spoke of the death

of an outcast, or of a deaf-mute’s drowning himself, who was my own

brother and died through his fault; and likewise when I spoke of the

self-inflicted death of another which I caused in my downtrodden youth.

I watched him well amid his jewels and paintings and silver plate, and

the flowers and costly books of his houses, when these things began to

satiate him, and when he began to listen greedily for the wailing that

comes from prison houses, and when a sleep full of fear came over him.

And now he plays with the poor and the things of the poor, and wanders

by and collects these things and takes delight in them; he reaches out

after one and then after another, and desires to know what is in each

and what that signifies, and yet remains the man he was. There is no

salvation in this, for it is written: Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,

neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath

prepared for them that love him.

“But why does the woman follow him? Why does she refuse the monstrous

sums which his family has offered her to leave him? Why does she

calmly return with him to her own underworld, when she must be panting

after his gold, his jewels, his houses and gardens, his power and his

freedom? What holds her? Why does she tarry? What devil’s work is being

done? It happened recently that I walked home with him during a violent

snow-storm. He had given me a letter of his friend Crammon to read. It

was a long and foolish whine, such as one would rather expect from an

elderly blue-stocking than from a man of sense. We argued about the

letter, that is to say, he would not take it seriously, while I talked

myself into a rage over it.

“Then he told me that a certain Baron von Thüngen, one of his former

boon-companions, had visited him on the previous day. You may remember

him; he was one of those who danced attendance on Eva Sorel--a

reddish-blond, affected dandy. This man, Wahnschaffe told me, had

hunted for him long and had sat talking with him a whole day. He had

said that he was dissatisfied with his life and longed for another

way of living; that he did not know what to do, but had become a prey

to unbearable melancholy; that he had always felt a deep sympathy

for Wahnschaffe, but had not ventured to approach him; and that all

he asked now was the privilege of sometimes spending an hour in his

company. All this Wahnschaffe told me half diffidently, half in

surprise. But the matter was not clear to me, and I said that Thüngen

was probably merely one of those half-crazy idlers who had lost his

appetite, and whose palate lusts for more sharply seasoned food. He did

not take my rudeness amiss, and only said that such a judgment was rash.

“When we had reached our goal I went upstairs with him to Karen

Engelschall’s rooms. I did not wish to leave him. I was angry because

he had again gotten the better of me by his icy sobriety. When we had

passed through the narrow hall-way, we heard Karen’s screeching voice

from the kitchen as well as the sound of wood chopping. We opened

the kitchen door. The pregnant woman was kneeling by the hearth and

splitting kindling wood. On a chair near the wall Isolde Schirmacher,

the young girl that waits on her, leaned back with a yellowish pale

face and closed eyes. An indisposition had overtaken her; it seemed

epileptic in character, for her limbs were rigid and her head bent

over backwards. She had evidently been at this task before, and Karen

had taken her place. The girl’s condition seemed to have caused her

no concern. She split the wood with her hatchet, and, unconscious

of our presence on the threshold, talked bitterly and blasphemously

concerning her pregnancy: she didn’t want another brat; she had a

horror of it; it ought to be throttled at its first breath. Her talk

was pure filth--impossible to report. Then Wahnschaffe entered the

room, and lifted Isolde Schirmacher from her chair, and carried her,

as though she were no burden at all, into the next room, and laid her

on the bed. Then he came back, and said to the woman: ‘Let that be,

Karen,’ and took the hatchet from her hand and heaped up the wood that

had been cut. The woman was frightened. She obeyed him, and was silent,

as though speech had died within her. This thing I saw with my own

eyes, and from this picture you can see the nature of the woman and the

relations of Wahnschaffe and herself.

“No peace is left in me. From an invisible wound in the world’s body

the blood keeps flowing. I cry out for a vessel to receive it, but no

one brings me such a vessel. Or are the sickness and the wound within

myself? Is there such a thing as the yearning of the shadow for its

body? Is it conceivable that the unimaginable has come to pass, and

yet that he who yearned and sobbed and struggled and prayed for it to

come to pass cannot recognize it now? There is some strange fatality in

it all. I have learned now to tell fruit from rottenness, the bitter

from the sweet, the fragrant from the stinking, the hurtful from the

harmless. And I have also learned how limbs swing from their sockets,

how vertebra joins vertebra, how muscle is intertwined with muscle,

how ligament grows on ligament, how the veins pulse and how the brain

is stratified. I can open the magic clockwork and put my hand into the

mechanism that is forever rigid. There are compensations; but always at

the sombre gates of existence must I pay my entrance fee to brighter

regions. The other day I had a vision: You stood with me beside the

corpse of a young person, and asked me to cut out the heart which had

survived by a little the death of its body and twitched under my knife.

“That one more thing I wanted to tell you. With it I close.”

Johanna sat over that letter all night until morning. A storm of March

swept about the house. Her virginal room, with its hangings of white

silk and the white enamelled furniture, seemed already bare and rifled

to her. For on the morrow she was to leave it forever.