That word of Karen’s, that desperate “then!” gave Christian no rest.
He had worked hard all day. He had not left the Physiological Institute
until seven o’clock. Then he had eaten a frugal evening meal, and had
gone home on foot. Thoroughly tired, he had thrown himself on the sofa,
and fallen asleep.
When he woke up it was dark night. The house was quite silent. He lit
a light, and looked at his watch; it pointed to half-past eleven. He
considered for a little, and then determined to go across the courtyard
to see Karen. He was sure to find her awake; sometimes she kept her
lamp burning until two o’clock. For some time she had been doing
embroidery work; she said she wanted to earn some money. So far she had
not succeeded, but she had taken no great pains to sell her work.
He crossed the dark court, and mounted the dark stairs. He stopped at
the open hall window of the third floor. The night was sultry. On one
side, through a canyon between the black and lifeless brick walls of
two houses, he saw smoke stacks project into the darkness. They came
from the earth itself and overtopped the roofs. They were tipped with
lightning-rods, and from some of them came thick fumes shot with the
quiver of flames. Below was blackness, empty land hedged in by wooden
fences, rough beams piled in heaps, low isolated huts, sand-pits and
mortar-pits, and darkness and silence over all.
To the left of the stairs was the door to the Hofmanns’ flat. When he
was letting himself into Karen’s rooms, he still gazed back at that
door. He thought he was being called thither, but it was a delusion.
Karen was in bed. “Why, what do you want so late?” she grumbled. “I’d
like a little quiet sometime.”
“I beg your pardon,” he said courteously. “I didn’t mean to disturb
you. I thought we might chat for a little while.”
“I’d like to know the good of all this talking, day and night.” She was
annoyed, and even her laugh showed it.
He sat down on the edge of the bed. “You must tell me what happened
to you after Adam Larsen’s death,” he said. “I can’t get rid of the
impression of your words: the things that happened then.... Of course,
I can imagine in a general way. I have insight enough into life now to
make a guess....”
She interrupted him with a note of contempt in her voice. “No, you
can’t guess nothing and you can’t imagine nothing. I’d bet my last rag
on that.”
“That’s all the more reason why I’d like you to tell me about it,” he
urged her. “You have never done so.”
There was an hostility in her silence, and it suddenly became clear
to him that some stubborn instinct in her refused to initiate him
wholly into her world. All that he had done for her had not sufficed to
conquer the distrust of him and his kind that was bred into her very
bone. The realization of this fact made him feel sad and helpless.
“I went to bed at seven to-day,” she said, blinking her eyes. “I wasn’t
feeling a bit well. I believe I’m going to be sick.”
Christian looked at her, and he could not keep the disquietude and
urgency out of his eyes.
Karen closed her lids. “Nothing but torment, torment, torment,” she
moaned.
Christian was frightened. “No, no. Forgive me. I’ll go.”
“You might as well stay.” She laid her cheek on her folded hands, and
drew up her limbs under the covers. A common but not disagreeable odour
came from her hair and skin.
Wearily and idly she talked into the pillow. “It’s the common, ordinary
thing, always the same. Women that tell you something else are liars.
Of course, a good many will invent long romances to seem interesting,
but I can’t do that. What do I care about it? No, it’s always the same
story, common and horrible and filthy from A to Z. Oh, yes, you might
as well stay now and sit down. I’ll tell you what I can. If you’ve just
got to know, I might as well tell you, but it’s hard. I don’t know
where to begin. There is no beginning. There’s nothing definite,--no
romance nor nothing.”
Christian sat down again. “When Adam Larsen died,” he said, “was there
no path for you? Was there no one among his friends or relatives who
paid any attention to you or helped you?”
She laughed a sarcastic laugh. “Hell! You’re all off there. His friends
didn’t hardly know about me. His brother came to the funeral, but I
didn’t dare so much as speak to him. He was one of the righteous kind,
with a golden watch-chain and a tip of five sous for the servants. And
I was in a strange country, and didn’t know the language, and had to
see about getting away. I had thirty francs in cash, and the question
was: where could I go? I tried to get work once or twice. But what
sort of work was I to do? I hadn’t learned nothing. Was I to go as a
servant, and black boots and scrub floors? No, thank you! I was used
to something different now, and I thought I could get along somehow.
Anyhow I didn’t give a damn what became of me; I didn’t matter so much.
In Aachen I took a job as a waitress. Nice occupation! I can’t give you
an idea of that--the tiredness in your legs, the abuse you got to take!
For food they give you the scraps; the bed ain’t fit for a dog. What
they expect of you makes you crazy mad.
“Well, when you live that way you’re open to all sorts of swindling
talk. I went into a house; stayed there four months, and then went into
another. I had debts, too. Suddenly you’re in debt, you can’t figure
out why. Board and lodging and clothes--they charge you three times
over for everything: you got to pay for the air you breathe. All you
think of is how to get out, or something awful will happen. Well, then
maybe some fellow comes along in high feather, throws money out of the
windows, pays for you, and gets you out. You go with him, and on the
third morning somebody knocks at the door. Who’s there? Police! Your
man’s a thief, and you have the devil’s own time clearing yourself of
complicity. What now? You have to have a roof and a bed, and some one
to talk to; you want a warm bite and a cool drink. You’ve got the mark
of the trade on you, and no one trusts you. You’re shoved and you’re
pulled, and you go down and down, day by day, step by step. You hardly
notice it, and suddenly you’re at the bottom.”
She curled herself up more compactly under the covers, and continued
in a blunter tone. “It’s easy to say that--at the bottom; but really
there’s no such thing. There’s a lower depth under every depth; and
there ain’t no words to tell you how it is down there. No one can
imagine it who hasn’t been there. No seeing from the outside and no
knowing will make people realize it. You live in a place for which they
charge you five times as much as is fair and decent. You’re common
property, and everybody gets out of you all he can. You don’t care if
the place is elegant or like a pigsty. It gives you the horrors to open
the door of it. It ain’t yours; it’s everybody’s. It’s the place where
everybody sort of sheds his filth, and you know them all and remember
them all. It does you no good to go to bed and try to sleep. Another
day is bound to come. There are the same greasy public houses and the
same faces, always the same crowd. And then there’s the street--what
you call your territory. That’s where you go by night. You know every
window and crossing and lantern: you stare and turn and ogle and grin,
and open your umbrella if it rains, and walk and stand around and keep
a sharp eye on the police, and make up to any man if he’s got torn
shoes or sports a fur ulster. And then you promise him God knows what;
and all the time you’d like to scratch his heart out if he walks off,
or spit in his face if he condescends to you. There it is! That’s the
main thing. Pain and worry--Lord, all people have them. But what you
get to find out about men there--oh, I tell you!”
Her last words were a cry again, a great cry, such as that other cry
which Christian had not been able to forget. He sat very straight, and
looked past the lamp to a certain spot on the wall.
Karen seemed, as she went on, to be addressing the floor. “Then there’s
the lodging-house keeper, who steals and cheats. There’s the owner
of the house, who acts by daylight as if he wanted to kick you, and
comes slinking to your door at twilight. There’s the shop-keeper, who
overcharges you, and acts as if he was doing you a favour by giving you
rotten stuff for your good money. There’s the policeman that grudges
you every step you take. If you don’t slip him a bribe, he pulls you in
and you go to jail. There’s the innkeeper; maybe you owe him a bit. He
torments you if you got no brass, and wheedles and flatters when you
have a little. I don’t mention your own man; but you got to have one
if you want to or not, otherwise you’ve got no protection. When he’s
sent to the penitentiary, you got to get another. They’re all handy
with their knives, but Mesecke was the worst of the lot. But I tell you
what’s hell--hell like nothing else in the whole, wide world--that’s
your business and your customers. It don’t matter if they’re elegant
or common, young or old, skinflints or spendthrifts--when they get to
you they’re no better than carrion on a dung-heap. There you see what
hypocrisy is and rascality; there you see the dirty souls as they are,
with their terror and their lies and their lusts. Everything comes out.
It comes out, I tell you, because they ain’t ashamed to let it. They
don’t have to be. You get to see human beings without shame, and what
you see is the miserable, hideous flesh. Would you like to know how it
is? Drink of a cess-pool and you’ll know! It don’t matter if it’s a man
that beats his wife when she’s with child, or lets his children starve,
or a student or an officer that’s gone to the dogs, or a frightened
parson, or a merchant with a huge belly--it’s the same, the same--man
without shame and the hideous flesh.”
She laughed with tormented scorn, and went on: “I met Mesecke when I
was discharged from the hospital. I had no one then. Before that I’d
been in jail three weeks on account of a scamp named Max. He was bad
enough, but he was a sweet innocent compared to Mesecke. A young man
happened to turn up in the café, a college student or something like
that. He treated us to one bottle of champagne after another, day in
and day out. You knew right away that there was something rotten about
it. And he always wanted me, just me, and he made the money fly. So
one day Mesecke took him aside, and said to him right out: ‘That money
comes out of your father’s safe. You stole it.’ The boy owned right up,
and his knees just shook. So Mesecke got his claws into him, and showed
him how to get more. And he and a skunk named Woldemar promised to take
him to an opium den that was, they told him, just like heaven on earth.
That night, when the boy was with me, he began to cry and whine like
everything. I felt sorry for him, ’cause I knew he’d come to a bad end;
and I told him so, and told him straight and rough. Then he emptied his
pockets, and I’d never seen that much money in my life; and it was all
stolen money. I got kind of dizzy, and told him to take it and put it
back; but he wanted me to have it and buy myself something for it. I
trembled all over, and told him for God’s sake to take it home; but he
cried and fell on his knees and hugged me, and suddenly Mesecke was in
the room. He’d been hidden and heard everything, and I hadn’t had an
idea. But the boy’s face turned as grey as a piece of pumice stone; he
looked at me and at Mesecke, and of course he thought it was a plot.
I was glad when Mesecke crashed his fist into my temple, so that the
air seemed to be full of fire and blood, and then kicked me into a
corner. That must have made the boy see I was innocent. Then Mesecke
took hold of Adalbert--that was his name--and went off with him.
Adalbert said nothing, and just followed. He didn’t turn up the next
day nor the next nor the day after that, so I asked Mesecke: ‘What did
you do to Adalbert?’ And he said: ‘I put him on board a ship that was
going overseas.’ Yes, I thought to myself, that’s a likely story. So I
asked him again; and this time he said if I didn’t hold my tongue he’d
scatter my bones for me. Well, I kept still. Maybe Adalbert did take
passage on a ship; it’s possible. We didn’t ever hear no more about
him. And I didn’t care so much, for there was something else every day.
I had to be careful of my own skin, and get through the night somehow,
and through the day. And it was always the same, always the same.”
She sat up, and took hold of Christian’s arm with an iron grip. Her
eyes sparkled, and she hissed out through clenched teeth: “But I didn’t
really know it. When you’re in the thick of it you don’t know. You
don’t feel that it’s no life for a human being; and you don’t want to
see, and you don’t dare to know that you’re damned and in a burning
hell! Why did you take me out of it? Why did things have to happen this
way?”
Christian did not answer. He heard the air roar past his ears.
After a while she let his arm go, or, rather, she thrust it from her,
and he arose. She flung herself back on her pillows. Christian thought:
“It has been in vain.” The dread that he had felt turned to despair. In
vain! He heard the words in the air about him: “In vain, in vain, in
vain!”
Then, in a clear voice that he had never heard her use before, Karen
said: “I’d like to have your mother’s rope of pearls.”
“What?” Christian said. It seemed to him that he must have
misunderstood her.
And in the same, almost childlike voice, Karen repeated: “Your mother’s
pearls--that’s what I’d like.” She was talking nonsense, and she knew
it. Not for a moment did she think it conceivable that her desire could
be fulfilled.
Christian approached the bed. “What made you think of that?” he
whispered. “What do you mean by that? What?”
“I’ve never wished for anything so much,” Karen said in the same clear
voice. She was lying very still now. “Never, never. At least, I’d love
to see them once--see how things like that look. I’d like to hold
them, touch them, just once. They don’t seem real. Go to her and ask
for them. Go and say: ‘Karen wants so much to see your pearls.’ Maybe
she’ll lend them to you.” She laughed half madly. “Maybe she’d let you
have them for a while. It seems to me that then”--she opened her eyes
wide, and there was a new flame in them--“that then things might be
different between us.”
“Who told you of them?” Christian asked as though in a dream. “Who
spoke to you of my mother’s pearls?”
She opened the drawer of the little table beside her bed, and took out
the photograph. Christian reached out for it eagerly, although she was
going to give it to him. “Voss gave it to me,” she said.
Christian looked at the picture and quietly put it away.
“Yes, that’s what I’d like,” Karen said again; and there was a wildness
in her face, and a childlikeness and a pathos and a greed, and a
certain defiance which was also like a child’s. And her smile was wild,
and her laughter. “Oh, there’s nothing else I’d want then. I would
taste the pearls with my tongue and bury them in my flesh; and I’d let
no one know and show them to no one. Yes, that’s what I want, only
that--your mother’s pearls, even if it’s for just a little while.”
Nothing could so have pierced the soul of Christian as this wild
stammering and this wild begging. He stood by the window, gazing into
the night, and said slowly and reflectively: “Very well, you shall have
them.”
Karen did not answer. She stretched herself out and closed her eyes.
She didn’t take his words seriously. When he left her, there was a
silent mockery in her mind--of him, of herself.
But the next morning Christian took the underground railway to the
Anhalter Station, and bought a third-class ticket to Frankfort. In his
hand he carried a small travelling bag.