Christian shared his meals with Michael, and cared for him in brotherly
fashion. At night he spread a couch for him with his own hands. He knew
how to accustom the boy to his presence; his gift of unobtrusiveness
stood him in good stead. In his presence Michael lost the convulsive
rigour which not even Johanna’s affectionate considerateness had been
able to break. At times he would follow Christian with his eyes. “Why
do you look at me?” Christian asked. The boy was silent.
“I should like to know what you are thinking,” Christian said.
The boy was silent. Again and again he followed Christian with his
eyes, and seemed torn between two feelings.
On a certain evening he spoke for the first time. “What will happen to
me?” he whispered, in a scarcely audible voice.
“You should have a little confidence in me,” Christian said, winningly.
Michael stared in front of him. “I am afraid,” he said at last.
“What are you afraid of?”
“Of everything. Of everything in the world. Of people and animals and
darkness and light and of myself.”
“Have you felt that way long?”
“You think it is only since.... No. It has always been so. The fear
is in my body like my lungs or my brain. When I was a child I lay
abed at night trembling with fear. I was afraid if I heard a noise.
I was afraid of the house and the wall and the window. I was afraid
of a dream which I had not yet dreamed. I thought: ‘Now I shall hear
a scream,’ or: ‘Now there will be a fire.’ If father was out in the
country I thought: ‘He will never come back; there are many who never
come back; why should he?’ If he was at home I thought: ‘He has had a
dreadful experience, but no one must know it.’ But it was worse when
Ruth was away. I never hated any one as I hated Ruth in those days, and
it was only because she was away so much. It was my fear.”
“And you went about with that fear in your heart and spoke of it to no
one?”
“To whom could I have spoken? It all seemed so stupid. I would have
been laughed at.”
“But as you grew older the fear must have left?”
“On the contrary.” Michael shook his head and looked undecided. He
seemed to waver. Should he say more? “On the contrary,” he repeated.
“Such fear grows up with one. Thoughts have no power over it. If once
you have it, all that you dread comes true. One should know less; to
know less is to suffer less fear.”
“I don’t understand that,” said Christian, although the boy’s words
moved him. “The fear of childhood--that I understand. But it passes
with childhood.”
Again Michael shook his head.
“Explain it to me,” Christian continued. “You probably see danger
everywhere, and fear illnesses and misfortunes and meetings with
people.”
“No,” Michael answered swiftly, and wrinkled his forehead. “It’s not
so simple. That happens too, but it can’t harm one much. It isn’t
reality. Reality is like a deep well; a deep, black, bottomless hole.
Reality is.... Wait a moment: Suppose I take up the chessboard.
Suddenly it’s not a chessboard at all. It’s something strange. I know
what it is, but I can’t remember. Its name gives me no clue to what
it is. But the name causes me to be satisfied for a while. Do you
understand?”
“Not at all. It’s quite incomprehensible.”
“Well, yes,” Michael said, morosely. “I suppose it is foolishness.”
“Couldn’t you take some other example?”
“Another? Wait a moment. It’s so hard for me to find the right
expressions. Wait.... A couple of weeks ago father had gone to
Fürstenwalde. He went one evening, and he was to be back the next
morning. I was alone at home. Ruth was with friends, in Schmargendorf,
I think. She had told me she would be home late, and as it grew later I
grew more and more restless. Not because I feared that something might
have happened to Ruth; I didn’t even think of that. It was the empty
room and the evening and the flight of time. Time runs on so, with such
terrible swiftness and with such terrible relentlessness. It runs like
water in which one must drown. If Ruth had come, there would have been
a barrier to that awful flowing; time would have had to start anew. But
Ruth did not come. There was a clock on the wall of that room. You must
have seen it often--a round clock with a blue dial and a pendulum of
brass. It ticked and ticked, and its ticking was like hammer blows. At
last I went and held the pendulum, and the ticking stopped. Then the
fear stopped too, and I could go to sleep. Time was no more, and my
fear was no more.”
“It is very strange,” Christian murmured.
“Years ago, when we were taught to be religious, it was better. One
could pray. Of course, the prayers too were pure fear, but they eased
one.”
“I am surprised,” said Christian, “that you never confided in your
sister.”
Michael gave a start. Then he answered very shyly, and so softly that
Christian had to move his chair nearer to hear at all. “My sister ...
no, that was impossible. Ruth had so much to bear as it was; but it
would have been impossible anyhow. Among Jews, brothers and sisters
are not as close as among Christians; I mean Jews who don’t live among
Christians. We’re from the country, you know, and so we were farther
removed from other people than here. A brother can’t confide in his
sister. From the very beginning the sister is a woman; you feel that,
even when she’s a little girl. And the whole misery comes from just
that....”
“How is that? What particular misery?” Christian asked, in a whisper.
“It is frightfully hard to tell,” Michael continued, dreamily. “I don’t
believe I can express it; it might sound so ugly. But it goes on and
on, and one detail arises from another. Brother and sister--it sound so
innocent. But each of the two has a body and a soul. The soul is clean,
but the body is unclean. Sister--she is sacred. But it’s a woman, too,
that one sees. Day and night it steals into your brooding--woman ...
woman. And woman is terror, because woman is the body, and the body is
fear. Without the body one could understand the world; without woman
one could understand God. And until one understands God, the fear is
upon one. Always the nearness of that other body that you are forced to
think about. Where we lived last we all had to sleep in one room. Every
evening I hid my head under the covering and held my thoughts in check.
Don’t misunderstand me, please! It wasn’t anything ugly; my thoughts
weren’t ugly thoughts. But there was that terrible, nameless fear....
Oh, how can I explain it? The fear of.... No, I can’t put it into
words. There was Ruth, so tender and delicate. Everything about her
was in direct contradiction to the idea of woman; and yet I trembled
with aversion because she was one. Man as he is made and as he shows
himself--ah, those are two different things. I must tell you about a
dream I had--not once, but twenty times, always alike. I dreamed that a
fire had broken out, and that Ruth and I had to flee quite naked down
the stairs and out of the house. Ruth had to drag me along by force,
or I would have rushed back right into the fire, so terrible was my
shame. And I thought: ‘Ruth, that isn’t you, that mustn’t be you.’ I
didn’t, in that dream, ever see her, but I knew and felt that she was
naked. And she--she acted quite naturally and even smiled. ‘Dear God,’
I thought, ‘how can she smile?’ And then by day I didn’t dare look at
her, and every kind glance of hers reminded me of my sin. But why do
I tell you all that--why? It makes me feel so defiled, so unspeakably
defiled.”
“No, Michael, go on,” Christian said, gently and calmly. “Don’t be
afraid. Tell me everything. I shall understand, or, at all events, I
shall do my best to understand.”
Michael looked searchingly up at Christian. His precocious features
were furrowed with spiritual pain. “I sought a woman whom I might
approach,” he began, after a pause. “It seemed to me that I had soiled
Ruth in my mind, and that I must cleanse that soilure. I was guilty
before her, and must be liberated from that guilt.”
“It was a fatal delusion in which you were caught,” Christian said.
“You weren’t guilty. You had painfully constructed that guilt.” He
waited, but Michael said nothing. “Guilty,” Christian repeated, as
though he were weighing the word in his hand. “Guilty....” His face
expressed absolute doubt.
“Guilty or not,” the boy persisted, “it was as I have told you. If I
feel a sense of guilt, who can redeem me from it? One can only do that
oneself.”
“Believe me,” said Christian, “it is a delusion.”
“But they were all Ruth,” Michael continued, and his voice was full of
dread. “They were all Ruth--the most depraved and degraded. I had so
much reverence for them, and at the same time I felt a great disgust.
The unclean thing always grew more powerful in my thoughts. While I
sought and sought, my life became one pain. I cursed my blood. Whatever
I touched became slimy and unclean.”
“You should have confessed to Ruth, just to her, she was the best
refuge you had,” said Christian.
“I couldn’t,” Michael assured him. “I couldn’t. Rather I should have
done, I don’t know what.... I couldn’t.”
For a while he lost himself in brooding. Then he spoke quickly and
hastily. “On the Saturday before the Sunday on which Ruth was at home
for the last time, father sent me to the coal-dealer to pay the bill in
person. There was no one in the shop, so I went into the room behind
the shop, and there lay the coal-dealer with a woman in his arms. They
did not notice me, and I fled; I don’t remember how I got out, but
until evening I ran about senselessly in the streets. The terror had
never been so great. Next afternoon--it was that very Sunday--between
four and five I was walking on Lichener Street. Suddenly, a rainstorm
came up, and a girl took me under her umbrella. It was Molly Gutkind.
I saw at once the sort of girl she was. She asked me to come home with
her. I didn’t answer, but she kept on walking beside me. She said if I
didn’t want to come now, she’d wait for me that evening, that she lived
on Prenzlauer Alley, opposite the gas-tank near the freight station,
over a public house called ‘Adele’s Rest.’ She took my hand and coaxed
me: ‘You come, little boy, you look so sad. I like your dark eyes;
you’re an innocent little creature.’ When I reached home I saw what
Ruth had written on the slate. Prenzlauer Alley--how strange that was!
It might so easily have been some other neighbourhood. It was very
strange. I felt desolate, and sat down on the stairs. Then I went up
to the room and read father’s letter, and it seemed to me as though
I had known everything beforehand. I felt so lonely that I went down
again, and walked and walked until I stood in front of that house in
Prenzlauer Alley.”
“And so, of course, you went up to the girl’s room?” Christian asked,
with a strangely cheerful expression that hid his suspense.
Michael nodded. He said he had hesitated a long time. In the
public-house he had heard the playing of a harmonica. It was an
exceedingly dirty house standing back from the street, an old house
with splotches of moisture on the wall and a wooden fence, and a pile
of bricks and refuse in front of it. At the door a dog had stood. “I
didn’t dare go past that dog,” said Michael, and mechanically folded
his hands. “He was so big and stared at me so treacherously. But Molly
Gutkind had seen me from the window (the house has only two storeys);
she beckoned to me, and the dog trotted out into the street. I went
into the house, and there was Molly on the stairs. She laughed and drew
me into her room. She served me with food, ham sandwiches and pastry.
To-day, she said, she’d be my hostess; next time I’d have to be her
host. She said she knew I was a Jew and she was glad; she always liked
Jews. If I’d be just a little bit nice to her, I’d never regret it. It
was all so peculiar. What was I to her? What could I be to her? I said
I’d go now, but she wouldn’t let me, and said I must stay with her. And
then...!”
“My dear boy,” Christian said, softly.
The tender words made the boy shudder all the more. He was silent for
many minutes. When he spoke again his voice sounded changed. He said
dully: “Three times I begged her to blow out the lamp, and at last she
did so. But something happened to the girl that I hadn’t expected. She
said she wouldn’t sin against me; she saw that she was a bad girl, and
I must forgive her. As she said this she wept, and she added that she
longed for her home with all her heart, and had a horror of her present
life. I seemed to be stricken dumb, but I was sorry for her with all
my heart. My body trembled and my teeth chattered, and I let her speak
and lament. When I saw that she had fallen asleep, I thought about
myself as deeply and severely as I could. It was dark and silent; I
heard nothing but the breathing of the girl. No guests were left in the
public-house below. It was uncannily silent; and with every moment’s
silence my old fear grew within me. Every moment it seemed to me that
that terrible silence must be broken. I watched the very seconds pass.
And suddenly I heard a cry. A sudden cry. How shall I describe it? It
came from deep, deep below, from under the earth, from behind walls. It
was not very loud or shrill, but it was a cry to make the heart stop
beating. It was like a ray, do you understand, a hot, thin, piercing
ray. I can compare it to nothing else. I thought--Ruth! My single
thought was--Ruth! Do you understand that? It was as though some one
had plunged an icy blade into my back. O God, it was terrible!”
“And what did you do?” asked Christian, white as the wall.
And Michael stammered that he had lain there and lain there, and
listened and listened.
“Is it possible that you didn’t jump up and rush out? That you
didn’t----? Is it possible?”
How could he have believed, Michael said, that it was really Ruth? The
thought had shot into his brain only like a little, flickering flame of
terror. He stared wide-eyed into nothingness, and suddenly sobbed. “And
now listen,” he said, and reached for Christian’s hand, “listen!”
And this is what he told. His face was veiled, tear-stained, pale as
death. He hadn’t been able to forget that cry. He didn’t know how much
time had passed, when finally he arose from the girl’s side. He had
left the room on tiptoe. The darkness had been solid; outside he had
seen and heard nothing. He had stood on the stairs for perhaps fifteen
minutes. Then he had heard steps, steps and gasps as of some one
carrying a heavy burden. He hadn’t moved. Then he had seen a light, the
beam of a bull’s-eye lantern; and he had seen a man, not his face, only
his back. This man had carried a large bale on his back and a bundle in
his hand. The man’s feet had been bare, and the feet had been red--with
blood. He had gone in front of the house and set down the bale; then he
had gone back into the cellar and come back with another man. He had
shoved this man in front of him as one shoves a keg. One could tell
that from the sound, but nothing could be seen, because the lantern had
now been darkened. The second man had uttered sounds as though he had
a gag in his mouth. Then they had gone away, after closing the door of
the house, and all had been silent again. “I had been at the head of
the stairs the whole time,” Michael said, and took a deep breath.
Christian said nothing. He seemed turned to stone.
“It was very quiet and I went down,” Michael continued his account.
“Something drew me on. I groped my way to the cellar stairs step by
step. There I stood a long time. Dawn was rising; I could see it from
the narrow window above the door. I stood at the head of the cellar
stairs. Steps of stone lead downwards. I saw first one, then two, then
three, then four. The lighter it grew, the more steps I saw, but the
light could not get beyond the sixth step.”
It was harder and harder for him to speak. Sweat stood on his forehead.
He leaned back and seemed about to fall over. Christian supported him.
He got up and bent over the boy. In his attitude and gesture there was
something wonderfully winning. Everything depended now on discovering
the last, most fearful truth. His whole being concentrated itself in
his will, and the boy yielded to this silent power. What he confessed
now sounded at first confused and dim as the story of ghostly visions
or the dreams of fever. One could hardly tell from the words what
was reality and what the compulsive imaginings of fear. One grisly
fact stood out--the finding of the blood-soaked handkerchief. Thrice
Christian asked whether he had found it on the stairs or in the cellar.
Each time the boy’s answer was different. He quivered like a rope in
the wind when Christian begged him to be exact and to think carefully.
He said he didn’t remember. Yes, he did, too; it had, been down below.
He described a partition, wooden railings, and a small, barred cellar
window, through which the yellowish pale light of morning had now
come in. But he hadn’t really been master of his senses, and couldn’t
remember whether he had really entered the room. And at that he gave a
loud sob.
Christian stood beside him, laying both hands on the boy’s shoulders.
The boy quivered as though an electric current were passing through
him. “I beseech you,” said Christian, “Michael, I beseech you!” and
he felt his own strength ebbing. Then Michael whispered that he had
recognized Ruth’s initials on the handkerchief at once. But from
that moment his brain seemed to have been hacked to pieces, and he
begged Christian to plague him no more. He wouldn’t go on; he’d rather
drop down dead. But Christian grasped the boy’s wrists. And Michael
whispered: the house had betrayed the fact to him that something
nameless had happened to Ruth, and the air had roared it to him. The
walls seemed to have piled themselves on him and he had had a vision
of everything, everything, and had whined and moaned and lacerated
his neck with his own nails. “Here and here and here,” he sobbed and
pointed to his neck, which was indeed covered with the scars of recent
scratches. Then he had run to the door of the house and rattled the
knob, and then back again and had counted the cellar steps, just out of
sheer despair. Then he had run up the stairs, and suddenly, at a door,
he had seen a man; in the twilight he had seen a fat man with a white
apron and a white cap, such as are worn by bakers, and a kerchief
around his neck with stiff, white, protruding ends. The man had stood
on the threshold, white and fat and sleepy. He might have been a shadow
or an apparition. But he had said in a low, sleepy, surly voice: “Now
they’ve gone and killed her, lad.” After that he had vanished, simply
vanished; and he, Michael, had rushed breathlessly into Molly Gutkind’s
room. She had waked up, and he had lain down on the bed and besought
her with all the passion of his stricken soul to be silent and to keep
him hidden, even if he were to fall ill, to tell no one but to keep
him there and be silent. Why he had asked that, why it had seemed so
necessary to him that the girl should say nothing--even now he didn’t
understand that. But he felt just the same this minute, and he would
be utterly devoted to Christian all his life if he, too, would never
betray what he had just confessed to him.
“Will you? Will you?” he asked, solemnly, and with a dark glow in his
tormented eyes.
“I shall keep silent,” Christian replied.
“Then perhaps I can go on living,” the boy said.
Christian looked at him, and their eyes met in a strange harmony and
understanding.
“And how long did you stay with the girl after that?” Christian asked.
“I don’t know. But one morning she said she couldn’t keep me any longer
and I’d have to go. All the previous time my consciousness hadn’t
been clear. I must have talked as in delirium. The girl did all she
could for me; my condition went to her heart. She sat at the bedside
for hours and held my hands. After I left her I wandered about in the
suburbs and in the woods, I don’t know where. At last I came here. I
don’t know why I came to you, except that it seemed as though Ruth were
sending me to you. You seemed to be the only human being that existed
for me in all the world. But what am I to do now? What is going to
happen?”
Christian reflected for several seconds before he answered with a
strange smile: “We must wait for him.”
“For him? For whom?”
“For him.”
And again their eyes met.
It was late at night, but they did not think of sleeping.