When she arrived in Stolpische Street it was seven o’clock in the
evening. Christian was not at home, and she waited.
She lit the lamp, sat down beside the table, and did not move. After
a while, since the chill of the unheated room penetrated through her
cloak and even her frock, she got up and walked up and down. Sometimes
she lightly touched the objects on the table--a notebook, or a dusty
ink-well. She let down the shades, and saw the silly pictures with
which they were adorned.
As on that other occasion she heard the house. It was full of rumours
and whispers, and oppressed her fatefully.
Swift, violent knocks at the door resounded. She started and then
hastened to open it. A boy stood before her. His condition made her
shudder. His clothes were spattered over and over with mud. Here and
there, about his knees and on his chest, the mud had caked and formed
a thick crust. His head was bare. His coal-black hair, which was also
muddy, hung down. His face had an utter bleached whiteness, such as
Johanna had never seen upon a human face. No drop of blood seemed left
beneath his skin.
Limping a little, he passed by Johanna and entered the room. His
movements were mechanical and trance-like. The volitional impulse
always far antedated the action it produced.
“I am Michael Hofmann,” he said, and his teeth chattered.
Johanna did not know him and had not heard of him. She thought she must
be dealing with a madman. In her fear she did not leave the door. She
expected him to attack her at any moment, and listened for some chance
step in the hall or yard. She wanted to flee, but she was afraid to
move. When the boy came into the circle of the lamplight, a sigh which
ended in a broken cry escaped her, so terrible was the expression in
his eyes.
He stopped, and looked about him. He was obviously seeking Christian
Wahnschaffe; but in the act of gazing he forgot to look, and his glance
became a stare. He grasped the back of a chair. Exhaustion seemed to
overtake him. When he was about to sit down, he reeled and half-whirled
about, and would have fallen but for the support of the back of the
chair. Now Johanna saw clearly that he was neither mad nor drunk. He
was a human being who had been robbed of strength and speech and almost
vision and consciousness by an experience of the supremest horror. Not
only his shaking limbs, not only the whiteness of his face betrayed the
fact, but the atmosphere that surrounded him.
Gently she closed the door. Hesitatingly she approached the chair upon
which he seemed now wedged fast. She dared to ask no question. Gnawing
her lip, she suppressed a feeling that welled up hotly within her. She
felt herself shrink and become thin and shadowy. She seemed suddenly to
have lost the very right to breathe.
Every passing second heightened her unspeakable consternation. Her
limbs trembled. She sat down on the other side of the room. The lad
had his back turned to her, and she observed that his body began to
twitch. She saw it by the creases in his coat and his arms, which were
hanging down. It was like an endless convulsion. The helplessness which
she felt in the face of this unknown tragedy caused her an almost
physical pain, and inspired her with self-disgust and self-contempt.
Her soul seemed steeped in blackness, shredded and crushed. While she
suffered so, a desire came over her, a defiant and struggling desire,
as for something ultimate to lay hold upon in life. It was the desire
to see how Christian would take the terrible thing in which he was,
to all appearances, implicated. Would he let it slide from him with
his old elegant smoothness? Would he let it be shattered against that
impenetrability against which all her life and fate had been shattered?
Or would he be that other who was frank and changed and had wrought
a miracle upon himself and upon all others except herself--who was
incapable of faith out of shame and despair and desolation and an inner
hurt? But if he was that other and changed man, if he approved himself
in this supreme instance, then she need torment herself so cruelly no
more. For in that case, what did her little sorrows matter? Then she
must be humble, and wait for her summons, though she did not know what
it would be.
And she waited, stretching out her slim throat like a thirsty deer.