One passed through a little hall-way into a poorly furnished room.
There were several young men in this hall. One of these exchanged a few
words with Becker, and then went away.
“It’s my bodyguard,” Becker explained, with a faint smile. “But like
all the others they distrust me. They’ve been ordered not to lose sight
of me. Didn’t you notice that we were constantly shadowed out of doors?”
Christian shook his head.
“When that unhappy woman pointed her revolver at me in Lausanne,”
Becker went on, shivering, “her lips flung the word ‘traitor’ at me.
I looked into the black muzzle and awaited death. She missed me, but
since that moment I have been afraid of death. That evening many of
my friends came to me, and besought me to clear and justify myself.
I replied to them and said: ‘If I am to be a traitor in your eyes, I
shall not avoid any of the horror, any of the frightfulness of that
position.’ They did not understand me. But a summons has come to me to
destroy, to extinguish and destroy myself. I am to build the pyre on
which I am to be consumed. I am to spread my suffering until it infects
all who come near me. I am to forget what I have done and abandon hope,
and be lowly and loathed and an outcast, and deny principles and break
fetters and bow down before the spirit of evil, and bear pain and cause
pain, and tear up and plough the earth, even though beautiful harvests
be destroyed. Traitor--how little that means! I wander about and hunger
after myself. I flee from myself, and yet cry out after myself, and am
the sacrificer and the sacrifice. And that has caused an unparalleled
increase of pain in the world. The souls of men descend to the source
of things in order to become brothers to the damned.”
He pressed his hands together and looked like a madman. “My body
seeks the earth, the depths, pollution, and the night,” he said. “My
innermost being gapes like a wound; I feel the thongs and weight of
doom and the terror of time; I pray for prayers; I am a shadowy figure
in the ghostly procession of created things in travail; the grief that
fills the air of the world grinds me to dust; _mea culpa, mea maxima
culpa!_”
The feeling of pained embarrassment grew in Christian. He simply looked
at Becker.
Suddenly, a repeated knocking sounded at the outer door. Becker started
and listened. The knocking increased in loudness and speed.
“It has come after all,” Becker murmured in consternation. “I must
leave. Forgive me, I must leave. A car is waiting for me. Stay a few
minutes longer, I beg of you.” He took a valise that lay on the bed,
looked about vaguely, pressed his mutilated hand to his coat, and
murmured hastily, “Lend me five hundred francs. I spent my last money
at noon. Don’t be angry with me; I’m in a fearful hurry.”
Mechanically Christian took out his wallet and gave Becker five
bank-notes. The latter stammered a word of thanks and farewell, and was
gone.
Christian left the house fifteen minutes later in a bewildered
condition. For hours he wandered in the valleys and on the hills around
the city. He took the night train back to Berlin.
During the many hours of the journey he felt very wretched in body and
soul.