Johanna’s absence made Amadeus Voss more and more anxious. Using
the methods of a spy, he had discovered that she had left the house
of her relatives quite suddenly. On the day after her last visit
to Zehlendorf, she had come home silent and sorrowful. Her absence
had caused worry, since every one was now thinking of murders and
mysterious disappearances. She had refused to tell where she had passed
the night, and had simply declared that she was going away altogether.
She had resisted all questions and arguments in silence and had quickly
packed her possessions. Then a motor car, which she had ordered, had
appeared, and with formal words of thanks she had said good-bye. She
had told her cousin, with whom she was more intimate than with the
rest, that she needed a period of concentration and loneliness, and
was moving into a furnished room. She begged that no one try to seek
her out. It would be useless and only drive her farther. Indeed, she
had threatened more desperate things if she were not left in peace.
Nevertheless her frightened kinsmen had followed her track, and had
discovered that she had rented a room in Kommandanten Street. But since
she was lodging with a respectable woman and seemed guilty of nothing
exciting or dangerous, her desire was finally respected, and all vain
speculation as to her incomprehensible action abandoned.
These details had been recounted to Voss by a maid whom he had bribed
with five marks. With tense face and inflamed heart he went home to
consider what he should do. He found a letter from Johanna, who wrote:
“I do not know how things will be between us in the future. At this
moment I am incapable of any decision. I am not in the least interested
either in myself or in my fate, and I have weighty reason for that
feeling. Don’t seek me out. I am in Stolpische Street almost all day
long, but don’t seek me out if you have any interest in me or if you
want me to have the least interest in you in the future. I don’t want
to see you; I can’t bear to listen to you at present. The experience I
have had has been too dreadful and too unexpected. You would find me
changed in a way that you would not like at all. Johanna.”
Pale with rage, he immediately rode into the city as far as the station
on Schönhauser Avenue. When he reached Stolpische Street it was nine
o’clock in the evening. Frau Gisevius told him that Fräulein Schöntag
had left half an hour ago. He looked into Christian’s room, and saw an
unknown boy sitting at the table. He drew the woman aside, and asked
her who it was. She was amazed that he didn’t know, and told him that
it was the brother of the murdered girl. She added that Wahnschaffe was
quite unlike himself since the tragedy. He walked about like a lost
soul. If you talked to him he either didn’t answer at all or answered
at random. He didn’t touch his breakfast which she brought him every
morning. Often he would stand for half an hour on the same spot with
lowered head. She was afraid he was losing his mind. A couple of days
ago she had met him in Rhinower Street, and there, in bright daylight,
he had been talking out loud to himself so that the passers-by had
laughed. Yesterday he had left without a hat, and her little girl had
run after him with it. He had stared at the child for a while as if he
didn’t understand. Shortly after that he had returned home with several
of his friends. Suddenly she had heard him cry out and had rushed into
his room. She had found him on his knees before the others, sobbing
like a little child. Then he had struck the floor in his despair and
had cried out that this thing could not be and dared not be true, that
it wasn’t possible and he couldn’t endure it. Fräulein Schöntag had
been there too. But she had been silent and so had the others. They had
just sat there and trembled. This attack had been caused by some young
men imprudently telling him that this was the day set for the official
examination and autopsy of Ruth’s body. He had wanted to hasten to the
court. They had restrained him with difficulty, and finally had to
assure him that he would be too late, that everything would be over.
All night long he had walked up and down in his room, while Michael had
been lying on the leather sofa. The two hadn’t exchanged one word all
night. She had slipped out of her room and listened repeatedly--not a
syllable. At five o’clock in the morning Fräulein Schöntag had come;
at seven Lamprecht and another student. They had persuaded him to go
out to Treptow with them to spend the day. He had neither consented
nor refused, and they had just dragged him along. Friends of Ruth
Hofmann had come too and staid till noon--a woman and a young man. They
sometimes came in the evening too, after Fräulein Schöntag had gone,
so that Michael need not be alone. No one knew what was going to be
done with the boy. His condition hadn’t changed in the least. He hadn’t
even undressed, and if Fräulein Schöntag hadn’t known just how to get
around him, he would not even have let anybody brush the mud from his
clothes or wash his hands and face. Sometimes a red-haired gentleman
would come to see the boy. She had heard that he was a baron and a
friend of Wahnschaffe. This gentleman had brought a chessboard day
before yesterday, because some one had said that Michael knew how to
play chess and had often played with his sister. But when the chessmen
had been set up, Michael had only shuddered and had not touched them.
The board was still there on the table. Herr Voss could go and see for
himself.
The woman would have gossipped on and on. But Voss left her with a
silent nod. He had grown thoughtful. What he had heard of Christian
had made him thoughtful. Careless of his direction, he turned toward
Exerzier Square. He brooded and doubted. His imagination refused to
see Christian as the woman had pictured him. It seemed an absolute
contradiction of the possible, a mockery of all experience. Grief, such
grief--and Christian? Despair, such despair--and Christian? The world
was rocking on its foundations. Some mystery must be behind it all.
Under the pressure of huge forces the very elements may change their
character, but it was inconceivable to him that blood should issue from
a stone, or a heart be born where none had been.
Forced back against his will, he returned to Stolpische Street.
Suddenly he saw Johanna immediately in front of him. He called out to
her; she stopped and nodded, and showed no surprise. But his hasty,
whispered questions left her silent. Her face was of a transparent
pallor. At the door of the house she stopped and considered. Then she
walked back into the court to the window of Christian’s room. She
wanted to look in, but a hanging had been drawn. She hurried into the
hall, rang the bell, and exchanged some words with Frau Gisevius. Then
she came back. “I must go upstairs,” she said, “I must see how Karen
is.” She did not indicate that Voss was to wait. He waited with all the
more determination. From the dwellings about he heard music, laughter,
the crying of children, the dull whirr of a sewing-machine. At last
Johanna came back and returned to the street at his side. She said in
a helpless tone: “The poor woman will hardly outlive the night, and
Christian isn’t at home. What is to be done?”
He did not answer.
“You must understand what is happening to me,” Johanna said, softly and
insistently.
“I understand nothing,” Voss replied dully. “Nothing--except that I
suffer, suffer beyond endurance.”
Johanna said harshly: “You don’t count.”
They were near the Humboldt Grove. It was cold, but Johanna sat down
on a bench. She seemed wearied; exertions hurt her delicate body like
wounds. Shyly Voss took her hand, and asked: “What is it, then?”
“Don’t,” she breathed, and withdrew her hand. After a long silence she
said: “People always thought him insensitive. Some even said that that
was the reason for his success with all who came near him. It was
a nice theory. I myself never believed it. Most theories are wrong;
why should this one have been right? There is so much vain talk about
people; it is all painful and futile, both when it asserts and when it
denies. His society wasn’t, I grant you, spiritually edifying. If one
was deeply moved by something, one somehow, instinctively, hid it from
him and felt a sense of embarrassment. And now--this! You can’t imagine
it. And how am I to describe it? All the time, that first evening while
he was taking care of Michael, he hadn’t yet been told anything. At
nine or half-past he went up to Karen’s, intending to come back in an
hour, but he came earlier. There were people loitering in the yard, and
they told him. Then he came into the room, quite softly. He came in
and....” She took out a handkerchief, pressed it to her eyes, and wept
very gently.
Voss let her cry for a little while. Then he asked very tensely: “He
came in and----? And what?”
Johanna kept her eyes covered, and went on: “You had the feeling: This
is the end for him, the end of all content, of smiles and laughter--the
end. In fifteen minutes his face had aged by twenty years. I looked
at it for just a moment; then my courage failed me. You may think it
fantastic, but I tell you the whole room was one pain, the air was pain
and so was the light. It’s the truth. Everything hurt; everything one
thought or saw hurt. But he was absolutely silent, and his expression
was like that of one who was straining his eyes to read some illegible
script. And that was the most painful thing of all.”
She fell silent and Voss did not break this silence. Enviously and
rancorously he reflected: “We shall have to convince ourselves
that blood can issue from a stone; we must see and hear and test.”
Deliberately he fortified his will to doubt. The explanations which
he gave in his own mind were of an unworthy character. Not to provoke
Johanna he feigned to share her faith; and yet there was something
about her story that stirred his vitals and made him afraid.
Johanna needed some support. She froze in her new freedom; she
distrusted her strength to bear it. With a touch of dread and longing
she wondered that no one dragged her back by force into the comfort of
a sheltered, care-free, secure life.
She was not sorry to have Amadeus walking at her side. Ah, it was
inconsistent and weak and faithless to one’s own self, but there was
such a horror in being alone. Yet her gesture of farewell seemed
utterly final when they reached the house in Kommandanten Street where
she lived. Amadeus Voss, suspecting her weakness and her melancholy,
accompanied her to the dark stairs, and there grasped her with such
violence as though he meant to devour her. She merely sighed.
At that moment an irresistible desire for motherhood welled up in her.
She did not care through whose agency, nor whether his kiss inspired
disgust or delight. She wanted to become a mother--to give birth
to something, to create something, not to be so empty and cold and
alone, but to cling to something and seem more worthy to herself and
indispensable to another being. Had not this very man who held her like
a beast of prey spoken of the yearning of the shadow for its body?
Suddenly she understood that saying.
Sombre and searching and strong was the look she gave him when they
stepped out upon the street again. Then she went with him.