IX

Karen Engelschall said: “You don’t have to worry; there’s no chance

of his getting back before night. If he does, I’ll tell him you’re an

acquaintance of mine.”

She gave Girke a slow and watchful look. She sat by the window, resting

her body with the broad satisfaction of those women of the people to

whom sitting still is an achievement and a luxury. She was sewing a

baby’s shift.

“Anyhow we don’t have much to talk about,” she continued with a

malicious enjoyment. “You’ve said your say. They offer me sixty

thousand if I go and disappear. That’s all right enough. But if I wait

they’ll go a good bit higher. I’m somebody now. I’ll think it over; you

can come back next week.”

“You should think very seriously,” Girke replied in his official

manner. “Think of your future. This may be the highest offer. Six

months ago you didn’t dream of such a thing. It’s very pleasant to live

on one’s own income; it’s every one’s ideal. It is very foolish of you

to lose such an opportunity.”

With her malicious smile she bent lower over her work. An undefined

well-being made her press her knees together and close her eyes. Then

she looked up, swept her tousled, yellow hair from her forehead, and

said: “I’d have to be a bigger fool than I am to be taken in. D’you

think I don’t know how rich he is? If he wanted to buy me off he’d make

your offer look like dirt. Why shouldn’t I make a good bargain? No, I’m

no fool. This here, as you say, is my great chance, but not the way

you think. I’m going to wait and see. If I’m wrong, well, I done it to

myself.”

Girke shifted his position uncomfortably. He looked at his watch, and

then with his prying eyes regarded the room with its common wall-paper,

furniture, and carpet.

“I can tell you one thing that’ll please you, and I don’t mind because

it don’t change nothing,” Karen Engelschall said. “His people are

all wrong if they think it’s on my account that he’s acting the way

he does, and that he’d have stayed with them except for me. ’Course,

I could make fools of you all and pretend he’d changed his life on

my account. What good would that do? A new-born child could see that

there’s something queer and crazy about it. So why should I go and

play-act in front of you, when I myself just sit here and wonder and

wonder!”

“That’s very true,” said Girke, amazed at her frankness. “I understand,

and what you say interests me immensely. I have always said that we

could count on the most valuable assistance from you. Now you would do

me a very real service if you would answer a few questions. I should

not, of course, forget your assistance but show my appreciation very

practically.”

Karen giggled quietly. “I believe you,” she answered. “You’d like to

spy around a bit and then go and report. No, I’m not fond of that sort

o’ thing. There’re other places where you can hear a lot. There’re

people what can tell you all you want to know. There’s that friend of

his, that Voss: Go to him!” The name brought rage to her eyes. “He acts

as if there wasn’t nothing he didn’t know in the world, and treats a

person so mean and low that you’d like to punch his dirty nose for him.

Ask him who gets the money. I don’t, but Voss ought to be able to tell

you.”

“I’m afraid you overestimate that,” said Girke, with his most expert

air. “There is no doubt that the man in question is at the bottom of

all the trouble. But things being as they are, even ten times the

amount that satisfies his greed would be inconsiderable. I can give

you that very definite assurance. There must be other and quite

unaccounted drains on his purse.”

“I don’t understand a word of what you’re saying there,” Karen

answered, and showed her small, yellow, evil teeth. “Maybe you’d like

to search my wardrobe or my mattress here, eh? Maybe you think this

place is too fine or that I got expensive clothes and jewels? And did

you ever see that hole over at Gisevius’s where the elegant gentleman

himself sleeps? We’re living in luxury, we are! Why, the very mice

starve here. I found one dead in a corner over there the other day.

Most people hate mice, but they don’t bother him. And it’s pitiful for

a man that’s lived like he has. According to what people say, he must

have been just like the emperor. He had castles and game-preserves and

motor cars and the handsomest women, and they just threw themselves at

his head. And never no trouble and no worry, more of everything than he

could use, and money and clothes and eating and drinking and friends

and servants and everything. And now he’s at Gisevius’s, where the mice

die of hunger.”

Her burning eyes were fixed on Girke, but in reality she saw him

no longer. She was no longer speaking to this unknown man, whose

professional curiosity left her quite unmoved. She was relieving

herself by breaking the convulsive silence of her lonely days. Her

hands lay on her lap like empty shells, and the child’s garment had

slipped to the floor. Her tongue was unleashed. The words poured

forth--words born of her brooding, words familiar to her through many

days and nights of strangeness and amazement. In her voice there was

something metallic, and in her face the slack muscles grew taut.

Girke listened tensely and took mental notes. He noticed that he need

ask no questions now. The machine, fed by a secret fire, had started

itself.

Karen went on: “He comes here and sits down and looks around. He sits

down and opens a book and studies. Then he puts the book away and

looks around again. Then he notices me sudden like, as if I’d just

been blown in. If only he don’t begin asking questions again, I says

to myself. Then I say to him: ‘There was a big noise in the street

to-day.’ Or I say: ‘Isolde’s hands are swollen; we got to have some

ointment. My mother was here,’ I says maybe, ‘and told me of a place

on Alexander Square where you can buy linen cheap.’ He just nods. Then

I put on the water for the coffee, and he tells me how a mangy dog

followed him for a long time and how he fed it, and that he’d been to

a workingmen’s meeting in Moabit and had talked to some people. But he

don’t tell me much, and acts kind of ashamed. I’m satisfied so long as

he don’t ask questions. But his eyes get that expression in ’em, and

then he asks if my time wasn’t coming soon,”--brutally she pointed to

her distended body--“and if I wasn’t glad, and how it was the other

times, and if I was glad then, and if I’d like to have this or that.

And he brings me apples and cake and chocolate and a shawl and a

fur-piece for my neck. ‘Look, Karen,’ he says, ‘what I’ve brought you,’

and he kisses my hand. Kisses my hand, I tell you, ’sif I was God knows

what, and he didn’t know about me. Did you ever hear of anybody kissing

the hand of a woman like me?”

She was pale as she asked the question; her features were distorted,

and the helmet of her yellow hair seemed to rise. Girke’s eyes became

blank and stony. “Very remarkable,” he murmured; “most interesting.”

Karen paid no attention to him. “‘How are you, Karen?’” she mocked

Christian’s voice. “‘Do you want for anything?’ What should I be

wanting? So I get desperate and I says: ‘A runner for the floor or

cretonne curtains for the bedroom. Red cretonne,’ I says, ‘because it

pops into my mind. Sometimes we go out together to Humboldthain or the

Oranienburger Gate. He thinks to himself and smiles and says nothing.

The people stare and I get a goose-flesh. I’d like to scream out at

’em: ‘Yes, there he is, the great man, that’s him walking with me. And

this is me--a woman of the streets that’s going to have a baby. A fine

couple, eh? Mighty fine! We’re a grand couple, we are!’ Sometimes that

Voss comes and they talk in the other room; or anyhow Voss talks. He

knows how to, too; better’n any preacher. And once there was a baron

here, a young blond fellow. That was a funny business. He took to

crying, and cried and cried like a child. Christian said nothing, but

just sat down by him. You never know what he’s thinking. Sometimes he

walks up and down the room, and other times he’ll stand and look out

of the window. I don’t know where he goes, and I don’t know where he

comes from. Mother says I’m a fool. She says she’s going to find out

what’s what. If she smells money she sticks like a burr. Only I wish

she hadn’t sicked Niels Heinrich on to me. He gets more shameless all

the time. I get scared when I hear him on the stairs. He begins to cut

up rough in the hall. Last Monday he was here and wanted money. ‘I got

none,’ I says, ‘you go to work.’ He’s learned bricklaying and can earn

good money, but doing nothing suits him better. He told me to shut my

trap or he’d lay me out. Just then Christian came in. Niels Heinrich

glares at him. My legs was shaking, and I draws Christian aside and

says: ‘He wants brass.’ Christian didn’t know what I meant. So I says:

‘Money.’ And he gave him money, gave him a cool hundred, and turned and

went out. Niels Heinrich followed him; I thought there’d be a fight.

Nothing happened; but it was a nasty business. I can’t get the scare

out of my bones.”

She stopped and panted for breath.

Girke thought it his duty to interpolate: “We have accumulated

sufficient evidence to prove that Niels Heinrich pursues him with

demands for money.”

Karen scarcely listened. Her face grew darker and darker. She put her

hands against her breast, arose clumsily, and looked around in the

room. Her feet were turned inward and her abdomen protruded. “He

comes and he goes, he comes and he goes,” she complained, in a voice

that gradually became almost a scream. “That’s the way it is, day out

and day in. If only he wouldn’t ask questions. It makes me feel hot

and cold. It’s like being searched by a matron. D’you know how that

is? Everything’s turned inside out and everything’s handled. Awful!

And I ought to try to be comfortable here; there’s nothing better in

the world. When you’ve been kicked around like some stinking animal,

you ought to thank God to have a chance to breathe easy. But to sit

and wait and tell how things was at this place and at that, and how

this thing happened and the other--no, I can’t stand it no more! It’s

too much! It’s like splitting a person’s head open!” She struck her

fist against her temple. She seemed an animal, an animal with all the

ugliness of a human soul dead or distorted, a wicked savage awakened

now and untamable.

Girke was confounded. He got up, and pushed the chair, both as a

protection and a weapon, between the woman and himself. He said: “I

won’t take up more of your time. I beg you to consider my proposition

carefully. I shall drop in again some time.” He went with a sensation

as of danger at his back.

Karen hardly observed that she was alone in the room. She brooded. Her

thinking processes were primitive. Two uncertainties tormented her to

the point of morbidness and rage: What impelled Christian to search her

soul and past, again and again, with the same patience, kindliness,

and curiosity? And what inexplicable force made her answer, explain,

relate, and give an accounting of her life?

Every time he began she struggled, but she always yielded to that

force. She always began by turning her face in horror from her own

past. But soon she was forced by an implacable power to embrace that

vision, and everything that she had experienced, everything that had

vanished, all that was desolate, turbid, dark, and dangerous reappeared

with an incomparable vividness. It was her own life, and yet seemed

another’s, who was herself and yet some one else. It seemed to her that

all those desolate, turbid, dark, dangerous things began over again,

doubly terrible, with a foreknowledge of each day’s disconsolate end.

Forgotten things and places plagued her and emerged terribly from

her consciousness: rooms and beds and walls, cities and streets and

street-corners and public houses and dark halls that led to police

courts; human beings and words, and certain hours and days and tears

and cries; and all terrors and degradations and crimes, all mockery

and wild laughter--all this came back to her, and the past arose and

lacerated her mind.

It was like being in an inconceivably long shaft through which one had

already passed. And now one was commanded to retrace one’s steps and

fetch something that one had forgotten. One resisted desperately and

struggled against the command, but in vain. One had to turn back to

search for that forgotten thing without knowing what it was. And as

one wandered along, a figure met one from the opposite direction, and

that other figure was one’s very self. One was inclined to believe in a

mirror and its image. But that other self was lacerated; its breast was

torn open, and within it one saw the crimson gleaming of a naked heart.

What was it? What did it all mean?

She fell back on the chair with a deep moan, and covered her face with

her hands. Oh, he should be made to pay dearly for it--that tormentor

of hers.

The darkness crept in and blotted out her form.

X

Amadeus Voss said to Christian: “I’ll tell you exactly how you feel.

You are like a man who wants to harden himself to bear cold, and

suddenly strips off his garments; or like one who has never drunk

whiskey nor even smelt it, and suddenly pours down a bottle of the

vilest sort. But you are freezing in the cold, and reeling from the

liquor. And that is not the worst. The worst is that you feel a secret

horror. And how could it be otherwise? The elements of which you are

made are in bitter conflict with your will. You are full of horror and

will not confess it to yourself. Your hands are touching a hundred

things, dirty and common and ugly, that once did not so much as enter

the circle of your life. Now you sit and look at your nails that are

still well manicured. You look at them with disgust, and you cannot

bring yourself to touch the glass that greasy lips have touched and

calloused hands have held. Yes, you are sorriest of all for your hands.

And of what avail is the whole experiment so long as you feel sorry for

your hands? Do you think you really lie on that bed and rest on that

sofa?”

“I believe I do, Amadeus.”

“You are wrong. When the nights are cold, is it really you who stir the

fire in that stove?”

“Who else? I’ve even learned how to do it.”

“And is it you who light the kerosene lamp, you whose light pressure

made the lustres in palaces to radiate? No, it is not your real self.

Think of that smoky ceiling. How restless you must be, and how shaken

by aversion! Can you really sleep there? And is not your awakening

ghastly? You go about among the poor, but your clothes are handsome;

any one can see that a good tailor made them, and that they were

pressed recently. It makes those people grin and feel cheated, for

in their eyes the greatest cheat is a rich man who apes the poor.

They will not take you seriously, though you were to throw your whole

fortune into the river or were to wander among them in rags. You only

embitter them, and they take your mood for a deception and a morbid

whim. You don’t know them. You do not know the utter raggedness

of their souls; you do not know what they have lacked and have

been forced to lack for generations, nor how they hate you for the

bitterness of that necessity. You do not know their interests, nor

their thought, nor their speech. And they will never, never comprehend

that a man can renounce that which is the very blood of all their

hopes and wishes, the essence of their dreams, their envy and their

rancour. They toil for ten, twenty, thirty years, to have breath and

food in their belly. And you expect them to believe that all you ask

is a little breath and food--you, to whom they were hitherto but

nameless beasts of burden, you for whom they sent their sons into

mines and their daughters into the streets and hospitals, for whom

their lungs were corroded by the fumes of mercury and the shavings

of steel, for whom hundreds of thousands were sacrificed in the dumb

heat of those daily battles which the proletarian fights with capital,

sacrificed as stokers and masons, weavers and smiths, glass-blowers

and machine-hands, all wage-slaves of your own? What do you hope to

accomplish? With what powers of the spirit are you reckoning? What

space of time do you give yourself? You are but a gamester, nothing

but a gamester; and so far you are but playing with counters, without

knowing whether you will ever be able to redeem them.”

“All that you say is true,” Christian replied.

“Well, then?”

“I cannot do otherwise than I am doing.”

“Not a week ago such a horror of that place seized you that you fled to

the Hotel Westminster to spend the night there.”

“It is true, Amadeus. How do you know it?”

“Never mind that. Do you want to smother your very soul in horror? See

to it that you leave a way of escape for yourself. These Engelschalls,

mother and son, will make your life a veritable hell. If you fall into

their snares, you’ll be worse off than some poor devil in the hands of

usurers. Surely you’re not deceived in regard to the character of that

crowd? A child would know what they are after. I warn you. They and

others like them--the longer you live with them, the nearer will they

bring you to despair.”

“I am not afraid, Amadeus,” Christian said. “One thing I don’t

understand,” he added gently, “and it is that you of all people would

deter me from doing what I feel to be right and necessary.”

Voss answered with intense passion. “You threw me a plank so that I

might save myself and reach the shore. Will you thrust me back into the

abyss before I feel the firm earth beneath my feet? Be what you really

are! Don’t turn into a shadow before my very eyes! If you withdraw the

plank, I cannot tell what will become of either of us.”

His face was horribly distorted, and his clenched hands shook.