IX

Broken by his wild dissipations, Felix Imhof had to halt at last. His

strength was at an end.

He summoned physicians, and with a smile begged for the truth. The last

whom he consulted, a famous specialist, bade him be prepared for the

worst, since his spinal marrow was affected. “Tubercular?” Imhof asked

objectively. “Yes, exactly,” was the answer.

“All right, old boy! Fifth act, last scene,” he said to himself. Since

fever ensued, and exhaustion alternated with violent pain, he took to

his bed, had the windows darkened and the mirrors covered, and stared

into space through the long hours with the expression of a frightened

child.

He had never been able to get along without people. As far back as

his memory went, his life had been as crowded as a fair. He had been

hail-fellow-well-met with every one; they had all clung to him, and he

had taken great pains to mean something to them all and to meet their

wishes. And who was left to him now? No one. Whom did he desire? No

one. Who would mourn for him? No man and no woman.

“I wonder what they’ll say about me when I’m gone?” he kept wondering.

“Oh, yes, Imhof, they’ll say, don’t you recall him? Good fellow,

pleasant companion, nothing slack about him, always in good spirits,

always on the lookout for something new--a little touched, maybe. You

must remember him. Why, he looked so and so and so. He talked like an

Italian priest, wasted his money like an idiot, and drank like a fish.”

And in spite of such reminders many would not remember, but shrug their

shoulders and begin to talk about something else.

He had neither father nor mother, sister nor brother, no relative and,

in reality, no friends. His very birth was obscure. Its mystery would

never be unveiled now. Perhaps he came of the dregs of mankind, perhaps

of noble blood. But this mystery had, so far as he was concerned,

neither romance nor charm. Only fate, for the sake of clearness,

had stamped his being thus as that of a solitary, alienated, and

self-dependent creature.

He had neither root nor connection nor bond. He was himself; nothing

else. A personality fashioned by its moment in time--unique and

complete in itself.

There was not even a servant who was faithful to him through personal

devotion or through attachment to his house. No soul belonged to

him--only things for which he had paid.

He had given much unselfish devotion to artists and works of art.

A beautiful poem, an excellent picture had given his mind the

elasticity and his mood the serenity which had compensated him for

all the weariness and flatness of his environment. But seeking now to

recall the impressions that had seemed unforgettable to him, he faced

emptiness. The bubbling spring was choked with stone and sand. Did art,

which he had loved so truly, sustain the spirit no better than some

fleeting roadside adventure? What did it lack?

From the wreck of his fortune a few treasures had remained--a painting

by Mantegna, the Three Kings from the East, an early Greek statue of

Dionysos, a statue by Rodin, and a still-life by Von Gogh. He had these

exquisite things and several others brought into his room, and sought

to lose himself in the contemplation of them. But the old happy ecstasy

would not return. The colours seemed dull and the marble without warmth

or life. What had passed from these things? What change had come over

them?

On the table beside his bed stood an hour-glass. He watched the reddish

sand, fluid and swift as water, flicker through an eye from the upper

bulb into the lower. It took twelve minutes. Leaning on his arms he

watched it and reversed the bulbs whenever the upper one was empty. And

again his eyes had the expression of a frightened child’s.

One day, as he was watching the running of the sand in the hour-glass,

he said aloud to himself: “Death? What’s the meaning of that? It’s

nonsense.”

It was an absurd word and idea, and he could not grasp it or penetrate

it. Scarcely had he begun to gain the slightest conception of dying

when he found that that very conception started from the idea of life.

One had always been in space and was to leave it now. Yet wherever

one passed to, there must be space also. And one could not think the

concept space without also thinking oneself. Well, then....

A shiver passed over him. Then he smiled avidly. He thought of the

delights that had been his--the fullness and wealth of pleasure and

expectation, of ecstasy and triumph; of the feasts and revels and

journeys and enterprises and games; of all the merry, multicoloured,

changeful conflict. How delightful it had been to rise in the morning

with one’s straight limbs; how delightful that wheels whirred and

newsboys shrilled and bells clanged and dogs barked; and how exquisite

it had been when a young woman, ready for love, loosened her hair and

dropped her garments and her white flesh gleamed like the flesh of

a fruit. Ah, and the pleasant comrades and the splendid horses, and

the homecomings at night, just a little drunk. In the hall one longed

for the first step of the stairs; it seemed so comfortable, logical,

inviting. Upstairs the windows were open, and in one of them was a

bunch of flowers. At all times and in all places one felt: “I am here,

in the midst of it, lord of the foam and music of life. I command and

life obeys, and there will be a to-morrow and a day after to-morrow,

and endless days, like slender trees along an avenue.” And at such

moments he had felt tender toward himself and flattered by his own

breath, and had fed on air and light and clouds and men and songs. And

everything had been goodly to his taste--even the ugly things and the

rain and the very puddles in the street. For he was alive ... alive....

He reversed the hour-glass and fell back among the pillows. His eyes

became aware of a small, grey spider that crept up the purple silk of

the wall-hangings. It frightened him. Suddenly the thought struck him:

“It is possible, even likely, that the spider will still exist when

I am gone.” This reflection frightened him beyond expression, and he

watched the spider’s slow progress with breathless suspense.

“Is it conceivable,” he thought, “that the horrible and trivial spider

will be in a world from which I am gone? It is maddening. I have

never believed in it and cannot believe in it--in unconsciousness and

darkness, and the damp and the earth and the worms. And the spider is

to live and I am not? Not I who filled all space with my being and my

vitality? Is there any philosophy or religion or conviction that is not

smashed to bits against this one fact? Supposing there were someone who

had the power to let me go on living as a street-sweeper, a beggar, a

jail-bird, despised, deformed, absurd, impotent. It almost seems to

me that I would accept life even at that price. Good God, where do

such thoughts lead one? What shameful ideas are these for a man who

has always insisted on cleanliness and honour! Have I ever slunk away

before an affront or failed to uphold my dignity? And yet I know that

I would choose life at any price. The pains of the soul? Much I care

about them! I would welcome grief, disappointment, bitterness, hatred,

and loss--so I could but live ... but live....”

An hour later Weikhardt was announced. Imhof considered whether he

should see him. He had denied himself to all callers during the past

few days, but he could not make up his mind to refuse to see the

painter, whom he had always liked uncommonly well.

“Is it Eliphaz, Bildad, or Zophar who comes to comfort Job?” he

addressed Weikhardt. “You remember the incident, don’t you? ‘They

lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not, they lifted up their

voice and wept; and they rent every one his mantle, and sprinkled dust

upon their heads toward heaven.’”

Weikhardt smiled. But when his eyes had become accustomed to the

semi-darkness of the room and he saw the emaciated face, his mocking

impulse fled.

For a while their talk was superficial. Weikhardt told about his

marriage, his work, his vain efforts after economic security, and

finally gossipped a little. Imhof listened with wavering attention.

Suddenly he asked with apparent equanimity: “How is that marvellous

female salamander?”

“What salamander? Whom do you mean?”

“Whom should I mean? Sybil, of course! Wasn’t it the maddest and

wildest thing that the trivial word of a soulless creature should

have brought swift decision into the slow process of my fate? Was it

Providence? Was it so written in the stars?”

“I don’t understand,” Weikhardt murmured.

“Don’t you? Didn’t you know that the horrible little wooden fay called

me a ‘nigger,’ and that I revenged myself in my characteristic way

by playing a trump that lost me the whole game? I went and sought

the company to which her icy scorn had sent me. I slept with a Negro

woman to shame the white girl and break her vanity, at least in my

imagination. Wasn’t it sublime? And you didn’t know it?”

“I knew of nothing,” Weikhardt murmured in astonishment. A long silence

followed.

Imhof continued in a changed voice. “The things that followed weren’t

so different from former experiences. But the central nerve was sick

and the source of life poisoned. Sometimes I’m tempted to hasten the

disgustingly slow execution by a clean bullet. It’s too undignified to

have death glide about you as an overfed cat circles around a trapped

mouse. Or else one could do the Sardanapalus act--light fireworks and

burn the house down, and make one’s exit with a grandiose gesture.”

“It would be cheap and meretricious,” Weikhardt said, “you’d never

forgive another for it.”

“I’m not capable of it in reality. I cling desperately to the

depressing rag of life that’s left. Ah, to live at all--what that

means!” He bit into his pillow, and moaned: “I don’t want to die! I

don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!”

Weikhardt arose to approach the bed. But Imhof beckoned him

passionately away. “Thus do I expiate,” he moaned. “Thus is the great

devourer being devoured. Thus Time hurls me from its bosom. Look upon

me writhing here and crying for pardon, and go out and tell the others

about it. Give them my love! And give my love to all dear boys and

girls! Good-bye, my friend, good-bye!”

Weikhardt took his leave without a word.

X

Karen’s body had been given back to the earth. Many of the people from

the house had accompanied it to the grave. Christian thought he had

also observed Johanna and Voss.

On the way home Dr. Voltolini walked beside him. For a while they did

not speak. Then Christian with the perception of something unpleasant

at his back, suddenly turned around. Ten paces behind he saw Niels

Heinrich Engelschall. As Christian stopped, the other stopped too, and

pretended to look at a shop window.

In the cemetery Christian had escaped from the friends who had

accompanied him. Now, too, he would have preferred loneliness; but he

did not want to wound the physician.

Continuing a conversation which they had started before the funeral,

Dr. Voltolini said: “Stübbe ought to be separated from his family and

placed in an institution. At any time delirium tremens might break out

and he might kill the whole crowd. And even as it is, the poor woman

can’t endure his cruelty much longer. She’s at the end of her strength.”

“I’ve interfered several times during the past few days,” Christian

answered softly. “Other neighbours helped too. A man like that is worse

than a wolf. The children stand around and tremble.”

“And it’s so difficult,” said Dr. Voltolini, “to get the authorities

to take any preventive measures. The law is unreasonably severe. Once

a misfortune has taken place, it enters more mercilessly than is

necessary; but it can never be moved to prevent anything.”

Again Christian turned around. Niels Heinrich was still following.

Again he stopped, looked about him indifferently, and spat on the

sidewalk.

“It is never a question of what one knows or desires, but always of

what one does,” Christian said, walking on again.

“And even what one has done, though it be inspired by the purest

motives and the strictest sense of duty, is spattered with mud, and one

must suffer for it as for a crime,” Dr. Voltolini said bitterly.

“Has that been your experience?” Christian asked, with apparently

conventional sympathy, but with his aware and listening glance.

“I don’t like to talk about it,” Dr. Voltolini said, with a saddened

mien. “I haven’t done so to any one here so far. You’re the first and

only one who have made me want to talk. I felt that way so soon as I

had met you. It isn’t as though you could advise or help me; it’s far

too late for either. My misfortune has done its worst and has receded

into the past. But constant silence gnaws at me, and I can escape a

period of paralysis if I can tell you the story of what happened to me.”

Christian shook his head very slightly in his astonishment. Many people

had already said similar words to him, and he did not understand their

motive.

Dr. Voltolini continued: “Until two years ago I practised at Riedberg,

near Freiwaldau, in Austrian Silesia. The town is several miles

from the frontier of Prussia. Quite near it medicinal springs were

discovered. It became a health resort of increasing popularity, and

I and my family gradually attained a modest prosperity. But in the

beginning of the summer of 1905 it happened that the wife of a cottager

was attacked by typhoid fever, and I, according to my sworn duty,

reported the case to the health authorities. Several citizens wanted to

prevent my action. Even the commission on sanitation, whose chairman

was mayor of the town, raised objections, and represented to me how the

guests would be scared away for a long time and the town get a bad

name. I told them I was acting in the interests of every one and could

not be deterred by merely material considerations. First they besought

and finally threatened me, but I remained firm.

“The first consequence was that a regiment, which had been ordered to

Riedberg, and whose being stationed there would have been profitable

to the town, was sent elsewhere. The panic that had been feared among

the guests in the hotels did break out, and most of them fled. And

now a wretched stream of abuse was poured out over me, and every one

raged against me in the filthiest terms. The men did not respond to my

greeting on the street. The butcher and baker and dairyman refused to

sell their goods to my wife. Daily I received anonymous letters; you

can imagine their character. My windows were smashed; no one came to my

consultation hours, no patient dared to summon me. The fees that people

owed me were not paid, and suspicions and slanders arose, ranging from

silly talk to the vilest insinuations.

“Finally I was discharged from my office of district physician. I

appealed to the National Medical Association, which in its turn

appealed to the highest authorities. The town council and the sanitary

commission were both dissolved by the governor of the province, the

mayor was removed from office, my own dismissal revoked, and an escort

of gendarmes despatched to the town to protect me and mine from

violence. The trouble was that my situation was as bad as ever. The

government could protect me from bodily hurt, but it could neither give

me back my practice nor force my old patients to pay what they owed

me. I was ruined. In the course of five months I brought twenty-one

suits of slander and won every case. But I was more discouraged each

time. It became clear that I could not stay at Riedberg. But where

was I to go--a country doctor without private means, with a wife and

children and, a feeble, aged mother to support? How was I to silence

the slanderers, wash off the stain, and heal the inner hurt? I had no

friend there who could lend me support; from the consolations of my

wife there came to me only the voice of her own despair.

“I broke down completely. For eleven months I lay in a hospital. With

unexampled energy my wife was busy during this period founding a new

home for us and finding a new field of activity for me. I received

permission to practise in Germany, and began life anew. Although I had

lost faith both in my own powers and in mankind, my soul gradually

grew calm again. Our circumstances are the most modest; but in this

great city it is possible to be alone and to prevent the interference

of strangers. For a long time I could practise my profession only if I

forgot that my patients were human. I had to regard them as mechanisms

that were to be repaired. Their pain and sorrow I passed over, and I

hated to notice either. Do you understand that? Do you understand my

coldness and contempt?”

“After all your experiences I can well understand it,” Christian

answered. “But I believe your standpoint is no longer the same. Am I

right? It seems to me that a change has taken place in you.”

“Yes, a change has taken place,” Dr. Voltolini admitted. “And it

began----” He stopped and cast an unobtrusive glance at his companion.

After a pause he said timidly: “Why did you smile that day when the

Schirmacher girl showed you her ring? Do you remember? You may, of

course, reply: it was natural to smile, for the stone which delighted

her so was quite worthless, and yet to disillusion her would have been

cruel. And yet your smile didn’t express that. It expressed something

else.”

Christian said: “I really don’t remember precisely. I do remember the

ring and the girl’s pleasure in it, but I can’t tell you to-day just

why I smiled. It would have been better, by the way, if the girl had

been less happy. A few days later she lost the ring, and the poor thing

cried for hours. It would have been better if I had said to her:

‘Neither the ring nor the stone is worth anything.’ I should have told

her to throw it away. On such occasions it is almost always better to

say to people, ‘Throw it away.’ Perhaps I smiled because that is what I

wanted to say and didn’t have the courage.”

“That’s how it looked,” Dr. Voltolini said quickly and with a touch of

excitement. “That’s the impression I had.”

“Why speak of it?” Christian said.

They had reached the house on Stolpische Street. Niels Heinrich, who

had followed them, disappeared among the vehicles on the street.

Dr. Voltolini looked at the pavement, and said with embarrassment

and hesitation: “You could do a great deal for me in the sense you

suggested, if I might call on you every now and then. It sounds strange

and like a confession of weakness, coming from a man of my years to one

of yours. I can’t justify my request, but I know I should be helped.

I would get on and be more reconciled to my fate and work harder at

the re-establishment of my life.” His eyes were turned tensely to

Christian’s face.

Christian lowered his head, and after some reflection answered: “Your

request is very flattering. I should be glad to serve you; I hope I

may. But in order not to put you off with empty phrases, I should tell

you that I shall be deeply preoccupied in the immediate future--not

only inwardly, I am always that, but outwardly too. I am confronted

with a difficult task--a terribly difficult task.”

Struck by Christian’s terrible seriousness Dr. Voltolini said: “I don’t

mean to be inquisitive. But may I ask what that task is?”

“To find the man who murdered Ruth Hofmann.”

“How?” The physician was utterly astonished. “But I thought that the

... murderer had been arrested.”

Christian shook his head. “It is not the right man,” he said, softly

but with assurance. “I saw him. I saw him when he appeared before the

investigating judge. I knew him before the crime too. He is not the

murderer.”

“That sounds strange,” said Dr. Voltolini. “Is that merely your

personal opinion, or do the authorities also----?”

“It’s not an opinion,” Christian said meditatively. “Perhaps it’s

more, perhaps it’s less--quite as one chooses. I don’t know what the

authorities suspect. Undoubtedly they consider Joachim Heinzen the

murderer. He has confessed, but I consider his confession false.”

“Did you express that opinion before the judge?”

“No. How could I have done that? I haven’t even a legitimate suspicion.

Only I know that the man who is now held is not the murderer.”

“But how do you expect to find the real criminal, if you haven’t even a

suspicion?”

“I don’t know, but I must do it.”

“You ... you must? What does that mean?”

Christian did not answer. He raised his eyes and held out a friendly

hand to Dr. Voltolini. “And so, if you should come and not find me,

don’t be angry at me. We shall meet again.”

The doctor clasped his hand firmly and silently.

Christian went into the house and up to Karen’s rooms. Fifteen minutes

later Niels Heinrich mounted the same stairs.