Among the boon companions of Niels Heinrich Engelschall was Joachim
Heinzen, the son of the crippled machinist. The fellow was a simpleton.
His indiscriminate pursuit of every woman subjected him to malicious
practical jokes. Since, on account of his absurdity, no woman wanted
to be seen with him, he was gradually obsessed by a silent rage which
made him really dangerous, although his original nature had been kindly
enough.
Among other women, the one called Red Hetty had attracted him. He
followed her in the dark streets; in public houses he sat near her
and stared. She mocked at his attempts to become friendly with her.
Moreover, so long as she was the mistress of Niels Heinrich, he dared
to undertake nothing further, and his interest seemed gradually to
subside. When Niels Heinrich, however, had cast the woman off, Heinzen
began to pursue her again, but his efforts were fruitless.
But Niels Heinrich himself came to his aid, and promised to help him
for a certain sum. Joachim Heinzen hesitated to risk so much. At last
they agreed that half of the price was to be paid at once, the other
half later and in instalments. Red Hetty, badly frightened by Niels
Heinrich, became friendlier with Joachim; but after her breach with
her former lover she got drunk daily, and made fearful and disgusting
scenes. Joachim declared that Niels had cheated him, refused to pay the
instalments, and demanded the return of his original fifty marks. Thus
a quarrel arose.
Niels Heinrich did not fear the simpleton, and it would have been
easy for him to rid himself of the fellow. But since he had unbounded
influence over Joachim and had found him a useful tool on many
occasions, he did not want a definite breach, and sought ways and means
of soothing him. He flattered him by his attentions, permitted him to
be his neighbour in public places, and took his part in quarrels and
fights. Something loathsome and frightful was gathering gradually in
his brain. Dark plans employed his mind, though they had taken yet no
definite shape or form. He chose his creature, though he knew not yet
what for. But he did know that Joachim could be used for all things, no
matter how infamous, and had nevertheless a degree of inner innocence.
Perhaps a plan, with which his thoughts played only cynically and
indefinitely, gained form and certainty from the simpleton’s slavish
devotion. Perhaps it fired him, gave him courage, and stung his
imagination to enter the abyss of the unspeakable.
He assured Joachim that Red Hetty didn’t amount to much, that she was
a withered drab and a stinking carrion. He might have others, if he
would only open his eyes. There were some that made a fellow’s mouth
water; a count would be glad of ’em. In such and such places there
were some--ah, that was different. The poor fool asked where and who.
Then Niels Heinrich gave an evil chuckle, and said he was thinking of
a Jewess. You had to see her, that was all! Like a peeled egg. Firm on
her legs. Not too fat, not too lean. Eyes like the Irishwoman’s in the
pub. Hair like the tail of a race-horse. Ready to bite. Ah! “Hold on
now,” Joachim Heinzen answered, taken aback. “Hold on!”
It gave Niels Heinrich a bitter pleasure to tell the fellow of the
girl over and over again. He filled him with the image and goaded
his senses. He directed all the idiot’s desires upon a being he had
not even seen. But also he described her for his own benefit, and
heightened and stung his own appetites, and made himself impatient and
jeered at himself in order to test the possibility of their realization
by his rage over the apparently unattainable products of his fancy. He
took Joachim with him to Stolpische Street, and they lay in wait for
Ruth’s home-coming. Then he showed her to him, and they followed her up
the stairs. Ruth felt nervous and frightened.
It so happened that at this time a fellow student called her attention
to the curious healings accomplished by old Heinzen. When she went
there she did not know, of course, that it was Joachim Heinzen who had
followed her, nor did she recognize him when she saw him in the room.
But his stupid, steady glare disquieted her.
In great excitement Joachim announced to his patron that he had seen
the Jewess, whom he already regarded as his property, in his father’s
flat. “That’s rot,” said Niels Heinrich coldly. He had before this
jeered venomously at the cures old Heinzen performed. He repeated that
jeer now, and added that if the Jewess had gone to the old man’s,
there was no doubt but that she had done so because she had taken a
liking to Joachim. The fellow grinned. In the drinking den where they
spent many of their nights, Niels Heinrich had craftily arranged that
the prospective affair of Joachim and the Jewess should be frequently
discussed and commented. Joachim did not know that he and his affair
were a joke. He took Niels Heinrich aside, and asked how he could get
at the girl most quickly. Niels Heinrich looked at him mockingly, and
told him he had better put off all attempts for a while yet; this
was a matter in which one had to proceed cleverly; the Jewess was
distrustful, and was furthermore one of those new-fangled student
wenches. You couldn’t go at her with a club; you had to be elegant and
considerate. But the simpleton was not to be persuaded. He said he
wanted to go to her and invite her to a ball on the following Sunday.
Niels Heinrich laughed uproariously. “I guess you’re crazy,” he said.
“Your head must’ve gone addled.” He paled and laughed anew, and said:
“You got to wait and see. I’ll lay ten to one the girl will turn up at
your old man’s pretty soon. I’ll have some one watching, and you stay
home so you don’t miss her.”
He slapped Joachim’s shoulder. He stood there like a pole--lean, dry,
pointed. In the embankment on the road to Weissensee the wheels of an
express train thundered on the rails.
X
Ruth and Christian entered a dim, stuffy room. The door to the little
hall was open, as well as the door to the adjoining room. There were a
good many people in the flat. Careless of all these strangers, Mother
Heinzen sat at her table and pared potatoes. The table was covered with
innumerable things--files, boxes, ink-bottles, even a pair of shoes. In
the background, at a second table which was as narrow as a carpenter’s
bench, Joachim and an apprentice were making metal stoppers with a hand
machine. Old Heinzen leaned in a wicker chair. A shabby black cloth hid
the lower part of his body and concealed its mutilation. His lean and
almost rigid face, with its thick, inflamed lids, its yellowish beard,
and its sharp, straight nose, expressed no inner participation in what
went on around him.
A few whispering women stood nearest to him. A little beyond there
was a group consisting of a sergeant, a journeyman butcher with a
blood-stained apron and naked arms, a salvation army lass with blue
spectacles, and the porter of a business house in a fancy uniform.
Behind Christian and Ruth appeared a man whose head was swathed in
bandages, another who looked frightened as he leaned on his crutches,
and a woman whose face was a mass of repulsive sores. Other figures
emerged gradually into that narrow circle.
While no one dared yet to approach the miracle worker, a woman rushed
panting and moaning into the room. In her arms she carried a child
between three and four years old. The child’s face was like lead, its
eyes were convulsively turned outward, and its neck and limbs were
unnaturally contorted. The woman was trembling all over, and seemed not
to know where to turn, so Ruth took the child from her and carried it
to old Heinzen. The people willingly made way for her. On her face was
a radiance of sweet serviceableness.
Joachim Heinzen got up. The apprentice poured a mass of finished
stoppers into a basket filled with saw-dust, and shook the stoppers
down. Joachim, his arms akimbo, approached his father’s chair, and
devoured Ruth with his eyes. His mouth was open, his head craned
forward, his whole person quivered with excitement. Ruth held the child
out toward old Heinzen, and spoke words that could not be heard for the
rattle of the metal stoppers. Joachim made a threatening gesture toward
the apprentice, who stopped the noise.
Old Heinzen opened his eyes and raised his right arm. This was his
miraculous gesture, and a silence fell upon the room. Christian watched
the devotion, the utter loving-kindness with which Ruth held out the
epileptic child to the stricken man. Her grace pierced him, and he
asked himself with amazement: “Does she believe in it? Is it possible
to believe in such things?” But even as his amazement increased,
there seemed to arise in him the presentiment of something unknown
and incomprehensible; and as often before in moments of extraordinary
feeling, he had to fight down a secret desire to laugh.
Suddenly Heinzen dropped the raised arm. He seemed confused. He moved
his head and shoulders, and said wearily: “I can do nothing to-day.
There’s somebody here who takes my power from me. I can do nothing.”
His words made a deep impression, and all eyes sought the disturber.
They glided from one to another. Heads turned and pupils shifted.
Before a minute had passed the eyes of all the people in the room were
fixed on Christian. Even Mother Heinzen had stopped paring the potatoes
and had arisen and was staring at him.
Christian had heard Heinzen’s words. What did those glances demand of
him? What was their meaning? What did they desire? Were they angry? Was
there something in him or about him that affronted or disturbed them?
Yet they seemed timid and wondering rather than hostile. That old seal
of his silence, his equivocal little smile, hovered about his lips. He
looked up as though asking for help, and his eyes met Ruth’s; and in
her eyes he saw that radiant understanding, that silvery, spiritual
love that animated her wholly and at all times.
The mother of the child uttered a cry. “How do you mean--takes your
power? Pull yourself together, old man, for God’s sake!”
“I can’t say nothing different,” murmured Heinzen. “There’s somebody
here that takes my power away.”
“And has he got the power?” the Salvationist cried shrilly.
“I don’t know,” Heinzen answered, in an oppressed manner. “Maybe, but I
don’t know.”
Slowly Christian went up to Ruth, who was still holding the child in
her arms, and bent over and gazed at the apparently lifeless form.
At once the epileptic rigour relaxed, flecks of foam appeared on the
child’s lips, and it began to weep softly.
The emotion that passed through the room was like a great sigh.
But noises from without broke in upon the silence here. Laughter and
curses had been heard a while before. Now the sounds came nearer, and
Niels Heinrich and Red Hetty appeared in the doorway.
He tugged the woman into the room. She reeled drunkenly, waved her
arms, and laughed shrilly. Pushed forward by Niels Heinrich, she
stretched out her fingers for some support; but the people whom she
touched drew back in vexation. Niels Heinrich caught her by the
shoulders, and shoved her at Joachim Heinzen. He chuckled as he did
so, and the noise he made was like the clucking of a hen. Joachim was
scared, and gazed stupidly and angrily at the wild looking creature.
She wound her arms about his neck and clung to him and babbled
drunkenly. Her black, wide-brimmed hat, with its huge green feather,
slipped grotesquely to the back of her head. Joachim tried to shake her
off, fixing his half-crazed eyes on Ruth. But as the woman clung the
more tenaciously, he struck her a blow full in the breast, so that she
fell to the floor with a moan and lay there in an absurd posture.
People hurried to and fro protesting. A few bent over the drunken
woman, who at once began to hiccough and babble again. Others
threatened Joachim with their fists. Mother Heinzen tried to calm the
tumult, Ruth sought refuge near Christian and took his hand. Then an
uncanny thing happened. Joachim Heinzen grasped her arm, and pulled her
roughly toward him. Perhaps it was a weak-minded jealousy that impelled
him, or else a brutal and stupid attempt to convince her that he cared
nothing for Red Hetty and was guiltless of the incident. With glassy
eyes he stared at Ruth; a vicious grin was on his face. Ruth gave a
soft cry, held up her hand to shield herself, and struggled gently. Her
lids were lowered. Her attitude went to Christian’s heart. He went up
to the fellow, and said very quietly: “Let her go.” Joachim hesitated.
“Let her go,” Christian repeated, without raising his voice. Joachim
obeyed and snorted.
Niels Heinrich seemed to be immensely entertained by it all. He urged
those about him to watch what was going on, laughed his clucking laugh,
and sought to encourage the simpleton. “Go ahead, Joachim,” he cried.
“You got to take what you want!” But while he laughed and goaded
Joachim on, his brows remained knit, and the upper part of his face
seemed rigid with some horror. He had recently grown a little, pointed,
goat-like beard which had a reddish colour. When he spoke or laughed
it moved stiffly up and down, and gave his head the appearance of a
marionette’s.
When he saw that Christian had restrained Joachim’s impudent roughness,
he came and stood before him, and said in an insolent, knife-like
voice: “Mornin’. I should think you’d know me.”
“I do,” Christian answered courteously.
“An’ I said good mornin’ to you!” Niels Heinrich said, with an
unconcealed jeer. His little beard twitched. The horror seemed to
spread over his whole face.
“Good evening,” said Christian courteously.
Niels Heinrich gritted his teeth. “Mornin’!” he yelled, livid with
rage. All those present gave a start and became silent.
Christian looked at him quietly. Then he turned quite deliberately to
Ruth, and said: “Let us go, little Ruth.” With the bow of a man of the
world he let her precede him. He also bowed courteously to those about
him. He might have been leaving a drawing-room.
Niels Heinrich, bent far forward, stared after him. He clenched his
fist, and went through the pantomime of pulling a cork-screw out of a
bottle.