Johanna did come.
She had waited until it was quite late, in order to avoid waiting for
Christian alone with Voss. When, after, all, she found only Voss, she
could not conceal her contempt. Her vexation made her face look old and
peaked.
The weather was cold and wet. She sat down near the oven and put her
hands against the tiles. She did not take off her coat. It was an
ample, fur-trimmed garment with large buttons. She looked in it like
a thin and hiding child. Nor did she raise her veil, which extended
rather tautly from her wide-brimmed hat to her chin and accentuated the
whiteness of her skin.
“You lied to me,” she said harshly. “It was mere bait. You knew he
wouldn’t be here.”
Voss answered: “What you have just said relegates me pretty clearly
to a mere means to an end. What do you expect of a meeting with
him anyhow? What is it to serve? Is it to revive memories or give
the opportunity for an explanation? No, I know you’re not fond of
explanations. You like tension, provided your way of escape is ready
for you. Very clever. I am to be at once the opportunity and the way of
escape. Very clever. But why don’t you simply go to him? Because, of
course, you don’t want to assume the psychical obligation implied in
such a step. It might look as though you meant something; you are not
sure how it would be interpreted. Your cowardice is almost funny. When
it’s convenient, you’re a sensitive plant; when it’s not, you’re quite
capable of putting your heel on some defenceless neck.”
“This is intolerable,” Johanna cried, and arose. “Don’t you know that
my being here compromises me more, especially in my own eyes, than
anything else I could do?”
Voss was frightened. “Calm yourself,” he said, and touched her arm.
Recoiling from his touch she sank back into her chair. “Calm yourself,”
Voss repeated. “He promised definitely to be here; but he has many
errands nowadays and has to meet many people and is constantly on the
way from one place to another.”
Johanna tormented herself. She was an experienced expert at it. She was
glad when things went ill with her, when her hopes failed, when she was
insulted or misunderstood. She was glad when the silk stocking into
which she slipped her foot tore, when ink dropped on her paper, when
she missed a train or found something for which she had paid generously
prove worthless. It was a bitter, mischievous gladness, such as one
feels at the absurd downfall of a hated rival.
It was this feeling that made her smile now. “I’m a charming creature,
am I not?” she said, with a bizarre look and gesture.
Voss was disconcerted.
“Tell me about him,” she said, half-defiantly, half-resignedly, and
again pressed her hands against the tiles.
Amadeus looked upon her hands, which were bluish with cold. “You are
cold,” he murmured. “You are always cold.”
“Yes, I’m always cold. There’s not enough sunshine for me.”
“People say that foundlings never get really warm; but you are no
foundling. I imagine, on the contrary, that your childhood was a hotbed
of carefulness. Undoubtedly the rooms were overheated, and hot-water
bottles were put into your bed at night, and tonics were prescribed.
Yet your soul froze all the more as the attempt was made to reach
it through material things. You are no foundling in the body; your
bourgeois descent is clear. But your soul is probably a foundling soul.
There are such souls. They flutter yearningly up and down in space
between heaven and hell, and their fate depends on whether an angel
or a demon assigns them their earthly tabernacle. Most of them get
into the wrong bodies. They are so anxious for a mortal form that they
usually fall into the hands of a demon to whom they are tributary all
their lives. Such are the foundling souls.”
“Fantastic nonsense!” Johanna said. “You had better tell me something
about him.”
“About him? As I told you before, he is concerned in many different
things. The woman Karen is ill, and will probably not get better. It
is her rightful reward; vice demands the payment of its debt. You can
find the sword foretold for such in Scripture. Well, he nurses her;
he watches with her at night. Then there is a Jewish girl who lives
in the house. He goes about with her to all sorts of people--a kind
of suburban saint. Only he doesn’t preach; preaching is not among his
gifts. He is dumb, and that is a blessing. I have never sat so near to
a woman,” he went on in precisely the same tone, so as to prevent her
interrupting him, “never at least to one who makes me feel that her
very existence is a good. And one is so damnably in need of something
pure, so filled with terrible longing for a human eye--to know none
other regards you as she does. Almighty God, to lose for once the curse
of my isolation! What is it that I ask? It is so little! Only not to
sicken of my rage and famish of my thirst; once to lay my head into
a woman’s lap and feel nothing but the beloved night; and when the
silence falls, to feel a hand in my hair and hear a word, a breath, and
so to be redeemed!” His voice had grown softer and softer, and at last
sank to a whisper.
“Don’t ... don’t ... don’t,” Johanna implored him, almost as softly.
“Tell me about him,” she went on hastily. “Does he really live in
complete poverty? One hears so many things. Last week I was invited
by some people, and the company talked of nothing else. Impudent and
stupid as these parvenus of yesterday always are, they fairly outdid
themselves. They joked about him and pitied his family, or even
suggested that the whole thing was an imposture. My gorge rose. But I
ask you this one thing: Why haven’t I heard from you a single cordial
word about him? Why nothing but venom and slander? You must know him.
It is unthinkable that you really entertain the opinion of him by which
you try to add to your self-importance in my eyes, and no doubt in
the eyes of others. I assure you that there isn’t the remotest chance
of our really becoming friends, unless you’re candid with me on this
point.”
For a long time Voss was silent. First he passed his handkerchief
across his damp forehead. Then, bending far forward, he leaned his
chin upon his folded hands, and looked upward through his glasses as
though he were listening. “Friendship,” he murmured in a sarcastic
tone. “Friendship. I call that pouring water into the wine before the
grapes have gone to the winepress.” After a pause he spoke again. “I
am not called to be his judge. At the beginning of our acquaintance
it was given me to behold him with astonishment upon his pedestal. I
kneeled in the mud and lifted my eyes as to a demigod. Then I kindled
a little fire, and there was considerable smoke. But I would be a liar
to assert that he did not stir me to the innermost soul. At times he
so mastered my evil and common instincts that when I was left alone I
cast myself down and wept. But love surrounded him and hate surrounded
me. Wherever he appeared love burst into bloom; whatever I touched
turned upon me in hatred. Light and beauty and open hearts were about
him; blackness and humiliation and blocked paths were my portion. All
good spirits guarded him; I was fighting Satan, and out of my darkness
crying to God, who cast me off. Ay, cast me off and rejected me, and
set a mark of shame upon me, and pursued me ever more cruelly, as my
self-humiliation deepened and my penitence grew tenser and my roots
emerged more energetically from the earth. Then it came to pass that
he recognized a brother in me. We passed an unforgettable night, and
unforgettable words were exchanged between us. But love remained about
him, and about me hate. He took my flame from me, and carried it to
men; and love was about him, and about me was hate. He made a beggar
of me, and gave me hundreds of thousands; and love was about him, and
about me was hate. Do you think me so dull that I cannot measure his
deeds or their heavy weight and cost? The consciousness of them steals
into my sleep, and makes it terrible as an open wound, so that I lie as
among stinging nettles without heaven or aspiration. Who would be so
accursed a traitor to himself that he would neither hear nor see the
truth when it roars like a flame of fire? But how about that brother
in the dust? The contrast was easier to bear while he dwelt amid the
splendours of the world. Now he goes and renounces, lives amid want
and stench, nurses a woman of the streets and mingles with outcasts;
and what is the result? Love grows about him like a mountain. It is
necessary to have experienced and to have seen it. He comes into rooms
out there, and all glances cling to him and touch him tenderly; and
each creature seems fairer and better to itself while he is there. Is
it magic? But that mountain of love crushes me where I lie.”
Again he dried his forehead. Johanna observed him attentively; at last
an insight into his nature dawned in her.
“It is they who take the last step who are the chosen,” Amadeus Voss
continued. “Those like myself stop at the step before the last, and
that is our purgatory. Perhaps Judas Iscariot could have done what the
Master did, but the Master preceded him, and that doomed him to crime.
He was alone. That is the solution of his mystery: he was alone. Just
now, before you came, I was reading in a book the story of the marriage
of Saint Francis to the Lady Poverty. Do you know it? ‘Woe to him who
is alone,’ it says there. ‘When he falls, he has no one to lift him
up.’”
The book lay on the table. He took it up, and said: “Saint Francis had
left the city, and met two old men. He asked them whether they could
tell him the abode of Lady Poverty. Let me read you what the two old
men answered.”
He read aloud: “We have been here for a long time, and we have often
seen her passing along this road. Sometimes she was accompanied by
many, and often she returned alone without any companions, naked,
devoid of dress and adornment, and surrounded only by a little cloud.
And she wept very bitterly, and said: ‘The sons of my mother have
fought against me.’ And we made answer: ‘Have patience, for those who
are good love thee.’ And now we say to thee: Climb that high mountain
among the holy hills which God has given her as a dwelling-place
because He loves it more than all the dwelling-places of Jacob. The
giants cannot approach its paths nor the eagles reach its peak. If
thou wouldst go to her, strip off thy costly garments, and lay down
every burden and every occasion of sin. For if thou art not stripped
of these things, thou wilt never rise to her who dwells upon so great
a height. But since she is kind of heart, they who love her see her
without trouble, and they who seek her find her with ease. Think of
her, brother, for they who yield themselves to her are safe. But take
with thee faithful companions, with whom thou mayest take counsel when
thou climbest the mountain, and who may be thy helpers. For woe to him
who is alone. When he falls he has no one to lift him up.”
His manner of reading tormented Johanna. There was a fanaticism in it
from which her soul, attuned to semitones, shrank.
“Woe to him who is alone,” said Voss. He kneeled down before Johanna.
All his limbs trembled. “Johanna,” he implored her, “give me your hand,
only your hand, and have pity on me.”
Her will failed her. More in consternation than obedience, she gave him
her hand, which he kissed with a devouring passion. What he did seemed
blasphemous and desperate after his words and his reading; but she
dared not withdraw her hand.
Her watchful ear caught a noise. “Some one is coming,” she whispered
faintly. Voss arose. There was a knock at the door, and Christian
entered.
He greeted them in a friendly way. His calm contrasted almost
resonantly with Amadeus’s wild distraction, for Voss could not
control himself wholly. While Christian sat down at the table with
the lamplight full upon his face, and looked now at Johanna, now at
Voss, the latter walked excitedly up and down, and said: “We have been
talking about Saint Francis, Fräulein Johanna and I.”
Christian looked his surprise.
“I know nothing of him,” he said. “All I remember is that once in
Paris, at Eva Sorel’s, some verses about him were read. Every one was
delighted, but I didn’t like the poem. I have forgotten why, but I
recall that Eva was very angry.” He smiled. “Why did you two talk about
Saint Francis?”
“We were talking of his poverty,” replied Voss, “and of his marriage to
the Lady Poverty, as the legend has it. And we agreed that such things
must not be translated into actual life, for the result would be
falsehood and misunderstanding....”
“We agreed about nothing,” Johanna interrupted him drily. “I am no
support for any one’s opinions.”
“Never mind,” said Voss, somewhat depressed. “It is a vision, a vision
born of the sufferings of religious souls. That poverty, that sacred
poverty is unthinkable except upon a Christian foundation. Whoever
would dare to attempt it, and to turn backward the overwhelming stream
of life in a distorted world, amid distorted conditions, where poverty
means dirt and crime and degradation--such an one would only create
evil and challenge humanity itself.”
“That may be correct,” said Christian. “But one must do what one
considers right.”
“It’s cheap enough to take refuge in the purely personal when general
questions are discussed,” Voss said rancorously.
Johanna rose to say good-bye, and Christian prepared himself to follow
her, since it was on her account that he had come. Voss said he would
walk with them as far as Nollendorf Square. There he left them.
“It is hard for us to talk,” said Christian. “There is much for which I
should ask you to forgive me, dear Johanna.”
“Oh,” said Johanna, “it doesn’t matter about me. I’ve conquered that.
Unless I probe too deeply, even the pain is gone.”
“And how do you live?”
“As best I can.”
“You don’t mind my calling you Johanna still, do you? Won’t you come to
see me some day? I’m usually at home in the evening. Then we could sit
together and talk.”
“Yes, I’ll come,” said Johanna, who felt her own embarrassment yielding
before Christian’s frank and simple tone.
While she was walking beside him and hearing and answering his direct
and simple questions, all that had happened in the past seemed a
matter of course, and the present seemed harmonious enough. But when
she was alone again she was as vexed with herself as ever; the nearest
goal seemed as irrational as the farthest, and the world and life shut
in by dreariness.
Two days later she went to Christian’s dwelling. The wife of the
night watchman Gisevius ushered her into Christian’s room. Shivering
and oppressed by the room, in which she could not imagine him, she
waited for over an hour. Frau Gisevius advised her to look in at Karen
Engelschall’s or the Hofmanns’ flat. To this she could not make up her
mind. “I’ll come again,” she said.
When she stepped out into the street she saw Amadeus Voss. He greeted
her without words, and his expression seemed to take it for granted
that they had agreed to meet here. He walked on at her side.
“I love you, Johanna,” he said.
She did not answer, nor turn her eyes toward him. She walked more
swiftly, then more slowly, then more swiftly again.
“I love you, Johanna,” said Amadeus Voss, and his teeth rattled.