Johanna Schöntag’s first visit to Voss passed off in a very commonplace
manner. Trying to let him forget that she was a young lady made her
more and more conventional. To hide her embarrassment, she was half
capricious and half critical in mood. It amused her that there was a
rocking-chair in the room. “It reminds one of one’s grandmother,” she
said, “and gives one an anachronistic and homelike feeling.” Then she
sat down in it and rocked, took candied fruits from her little beaded
bag and crushed them on her tongue, which gave her a comical and
pouting expression.
On the table there was a tea-urn, two cups, and plates with pastry.
Voss’s demeanour seemed to say that narrow means did not prevent one
from entertaining properly. It amused Johanna. She thought to herself:
“If he brings out a photograph album with pictures of himself as a
child, I shall giggle right into his face.” And at the same time her
heart throbbed with quite other fears.
Voss spoke of his loneliness. He alluded to experiences of his own
that had made him shy. There were people, he said, who seemed fated
to suffer shipwreck in all matters where their hearts were involved.
They had to grow calluses of the soul. He was busy doing that. He had
never had a friend, though the illusion of friendship often enough.
To realize the futility of some great longing was bitterer than to
discover the insufficiency of a human being.
Johanna’s secret fears grew as she heard him wax sentimental. She said:
“This rocking-chair is the nicest thing I’ve come across for long. It
gives me a queer, pleasant little sea-sickness. Are you sure the people
under you won’t believe that you’ve become a father and are rocking
your offspring to sleep?” She laughed and left the chair. Then she
drank tea and nibbled at a piece of pastry, and quite suddenly said
good-bye and left him.
Voss gritted his teeth. His hand was as empty as before. He took a
piece of soft cake, formed it into the rude image of a girl, and
pierced it with the pin that Christian had given him. The room still
held the faint aroma of a woman’s body and garments and clothes and
hair. He rocked the empty chair, and talked to an invisible person who
was leaning back in it and coquettishly withdrew from his glance. For a
while he worked. Then his work wearied him, and his thoughts were busy
laying snares.
All he did and thought showed the sincerity of his feeling of
loneliness. His soul exuded poisonous fumes.
He opened a drawer of his desk, and took out the letters of the unknown
lady who had signed herself F. He read them through, and then took pen
and paper and began to copy them. He copied them word for word, but
whenever Christian’s name occurred he substituted dots for it. There
were twenty-three of these letters, and when he had finished dawn was
rising.
He slept a few hours, and then wrote to Johanna as follows: “I propose
this riddle to you: Who is F. and who is the thief and robber who
took French leave with such a treasure of enthusiasm and devotion?
Perhaps it is only a product of my fancy or a by-product of my morbid
imagination. I leave you to guess. Has there been an attempt here to
substitute a magnificent invention for the unromantic sobriety of
real life, or did this rare and miraculous thing really form a part
of human experience? It seems to me that something in the modulation
and tone-colour, something subtle but unmistakable, points to the
latter conclusion. Where is the man who could invent such pain and such
delight? Who would have the courage to represent the life of the senses
as so blended of shamelessness and of a primal innocence? Compared to
such an one our most vaunted poets would be the merest tyros. I have,
of course, never admired poets inordinately. They falsify appearances,
and, in the last analysis, they are but rationalists in whose hands
our dreams become transparent and two-dimensional. There is a verbal
veraciousness which is as penetrating as the glow of living flesh. Here
is an example of it. It is a miracle to be adored, a thing of envy
to all hungry souls. It is life itself, and since it is life, where
are the living two that begot it? She, the marvellous author of the
letters, is probably dead--consumed in the glow of her own soul. Her
very shadow bears the stigmata of doom. But her ecstatic pen paints the
picture of him whom she loved. I know him, we both know him. He stands
at the gate of the penitents, and offers for old debts a payment that
no one wants. To love as she loved is like worship; to be so loved and
not to value it, to let its evidence rot in the dust of a library--that
is a sin which nothing can wipe out. If one whom God himself pampered
spews the food of angels out of his mouth, nothing but carrion remains
for the step-children of fate. And yet we know: not wholly hopeless is
the cry of the blood’s need. Come to me soon; I have much to ask you
and to say to you. I was like stone yesterday; the happiness of your
presence drugged me. I shall be waiting for you. Each day I shall be
at home at five o’clock and wait for you for three hours. Is there not
some compulsion in that? When would you like to see Wahnschaffe? I
shall tell him and arrange the meeting.”
Johanna felt the same consternation this time that she had felt
months before when Voss had written her in Christian’s stead. First
she thought he had perpetrated a hoax. But when she read the letters
she was convinced of their authenticity and deeply moved. Voss’s
indications left no doubt as to their origin; again he had stolen
another’s secret in order to make use of it. His motives seemed
inexplicable to her. But she promised herself not to see him again,
whatever happened. The very thought of him made her freeze. The morbid
and heated hatred of Christian which he always manifested made her
reconsider. At moments she nursed the flattering delusion that she
might be the means of saving Christian from a great danger. And yet,
somehow, the man himself exerted the stronger lure. There was a will
in him! A strange temptation--to feel the compulsion of an alien will!
Whither would it lead?
Thus when, against her determination and her better instinct, she
entered the house on Ansbacher Street once more, she said to herself:
“O Rumpelstiltzkin, I’m afraid you’re rushing into destruction. But run
on and be destroyed. Then, at least, something will have happened.”
She carried the letters back to him. She asked coldly what had been his
intention in sending them. She feigned not to hear his answer that his
letter had explained his intention. She refused to sit down. Voss tried
to find a subject of conversation; he walked up and down before her
like a sentinel. In her mind she passed caustic comments on him; she
observed the negligence of his clothes, and thought his way of swinging
on his heel and suddenly rubbing his hands absurd. Everything about
him seemed silly and comical to her. She mocked at him to herself: “A
schoolmaster who has gone a little crazy.”
He told her he had made up his mind to move to Zehlendorf. Out there he
had found a peaceful attic room in a villa. He felt the need of trees
and fields, at least of their odour. In the morning he would ride in to
attend lectures and in the afternoon return. Even if this plan could
not be carried out daily, yet he would have the consolation of knowing
that he had a refuge beyond this stony pandemonium which tasted of
maltreated minds and of ink. He would move in two weeks.
“All the better.” The words slipped out before Johanna was aware.
“What do you mean by that?” he asked, with a cattish look. Then he
laughed, and his laughter sounded like the clashing of shards. “Ah,”
he said, and stopped, “do you really think the distance will make any
difference? You will come to me, I assure you; and you will come not
only when I summon you, but of your own impulse. So please don’t cling
to a delusive hope.”
Johanna had no answer ready. His insolence shook her self-control.
Voss laughed again, and took no notice of the impression made by his
words. He spoke of the progress of his studies: he had worked for two
semesters, and was as far advanced as others at the end of six. The
professors were saying excellent things of him. He considered all
that part of medical knowledge that could be directly acquired mere
child’s play. No man of normal mind and decent industry should need
more than eighteen months to master it. After that, to be sure, the
paths divided. On one were artisans, dilettanti, mere professionals,
and charlatans; on the other were great brains and spirits, pioneers
and illustrious discoverers. At first surgery had attracted him, but
that attraction had been brief. It was the merest butchery. He would
refuse to depend wholly on knife and saw, and at all crucial moments
of practice to submit to the dictates of a professional diagnostician,
with nothing left him but whether the butcher would turn out to be an
executioner or not. What attracted him inordinately was psychiatry. In
it mystery was heaped on mystery. Unexplored and undiscovered countries
stretched out there--great epidemics of the soul, illnesses of the
sexes, deep-rooted maladies of whole nations, a ghostly chase between
heaven and earth, new proofs of psychical bonds that stretched from
millennium to millennium as well as from man to man, the discovery of
whose nature would make the whole structure of science totter.
Johanna was repelled. One couldn’t go much further in the way of
boasting. His voice, which constantly passed from falsetto to bass,
like a young bird thudding awkwardly between two walls, gave her a
physical pain. She murmured a polite formula of agreement, and gave him
her hand in farewell. Even this she hated to do.
“Stay!” he said commandingly.
She threw back her head and looked at him in astonishment.
Now he begged. “Do stay! You always leave in such a mood that the
minute you are outside I’m tempted to hang myself.”
Johanna changed colour and wrinkled her childlike forehead. “Will you
kindly tell me what you want of me?”
“That is a question of remarkably--shall we call it innocent frankness?
What I want would seem to be sufficiently clear. Or can you accuse
me of a lack of plain speaking? Am I a very deft and crafty wooer? I
should rather expect you to reprove me for my impetuousness; that would
be reasonable. But I cannot play at games; I have no skill in sinuous
approaches. I cannot symbolize my feelings through flowers, nor have I
learned to set springs of words or feign a bait upon the waters or make
sweetish speeches. If I could do these things I might be more certain
of reaching my goal. But I have no time; my time is limited, Fräulein
Johanna. My life is crystallizing to a catastrophic point. Its great
decision is at hand!”
“Your frankness leaves nothing to be desired,” Johanna replied, and
looked coolly and firmly into his eyes. She waited for a few seconds;
then she asked, with a forced smile, concealing both her dread and
her curiosity: “And why am I the arbiter in that great decision? What
qualities have attracted your attention toward me? To what virtue or
to what vice do I owe such an honour?” Awaiting his reply, she all but
closed her eyes; and that gave her face a melting charm. She knew the
danger of such coquettishness, but the abysses lured her.
But to Amadeus Voss she was exactly what she seemed to be. He gazed
ecstatically at her face, and asked: “May I be frank?”
“You frighten me. Can one be more so than you have already been?”
“You see--it is your race. It is, I do not deny it, the same race which
I have always.... Well, it’s speaking mildly to say that I’ve always
hated the Jews. Merely to scent a Jew was always to me like having
an explosive stuck into my nerves. An immemorial crime is symbolized
there, an ancient guilt; the Crucified One sighs across lands and ages
to my ear. My blood rebels against the noblest of your race. It may
be that I am the tool of an age-long lie; it may be that he who lacks
the love that makes a priest acquires the stupidity and intolerance
that mark the parson; it may be that our apparent enemies shall prove
at last to be our brothers, and that Cain and Abel will clasp hands on
Judgment Day. But it is part of my very being to nourish hatred when
the roots of my life under the earth beyond my reach are crippled by
the insolent growth of alien seedlings. And when one proposes to be my
comrade and my neighbour, and yet meets me with the reserve of an alien
soul--am I not to feel it and not to pay him back in the same coin?
That is the way I’ve always felt. I never before knew a Jewish woman;
and I cannot say that my feeling has undergone any essential change.
Had it done so, I should suffer less. Oh, you are quite right to
despise me on account of what I am saying; and, indeed, I am prepared
to hear your contempt often. That is a part of my suffering. The first
time I saw you I thought at once of Jephtha’s daughter. She was, you
remember, sacrificed by her father, because she happened to be the
first to welcome him on his return home; for he had made a vow, and
his daughter came to meet him with cymbals and with dancing. It is a
profound notion--that notion of sacrificing the first one who comes to
bid you welcome. And she must have been sweet and dainty--the daughter
of Jephtha. She is to-day--experienced in dreams; rash where it is a
matter of mere dreams; spoiled, incapable of any deed, submerging all
enthusiasm and initiative in an exquisite yearning. The long wealth
gathered by her ancestors has made her faint-hearted. She loves music
and all that flatters the senses--delicate textures and beautiful
words. She loves also the things that arouse and sting, but they must
neither burden nor bind her. She loves the shiver of fear and of
small intoxications; she loves to be tempted, to challenge fate, to
put her little hand into the tiger’s cage. But everything within her
is delicate and in transition toward something--blossoming or decay.
She is sensitive, without resistance, weary, and so full of subtle
knowledge and various gropings that each desire in her negates another.
Inbreeding has curdled her blood, and even when she laughs her face is
touched with pain. And one day her father Jephtha, Judge in Israel,
returns, home and sacrifices her. Oh, I am sure he went mad after that.”
Johanna’s face was as pale as death. “That, I suppose, was a lesson in
your admired science of psychiatry?” She forced herself to mockery.
Voss did not answer.
“Good-bye, you learned man.” She walked to the door.
Voss followed her. “When are you coming again?” he asked softly.
She shook her head.
“When are you coming again?”
“Don’t torment me.”
“Wahnschaffe will be here the day after to-morrow. Will you come?”
“I don’t know.”
“Johanna, will you come?” He stood before her with uplifted hands, and
the muscles of his cheeks and temples twitched.
“I don’t know.” She went out.
But he knew that she would come.