She arrived at five o’clock. The darkness had fallen. They went into
Karen’s old rooms, since Michael was in Christian’s. To the latter’s
surprise the boy had suddenly expressed the desire for instruction
and for a teacher to-day. He had also asked how his life was to be
arranged in future, where he had better go and to whom, and from whom
he might hope for help, since he was unwilling to be a burden to
Christian any longer. His words and demeanour showed a determination
which he had never yet displayed. Christian had not been able to answer
his questions satisfactorily at once. The change caused him, first of
all, astonishment; and while he preceded Johanna to light the lamp, he
reflected on the difficult decision ahead.
The door to the room in which Karen had died was locked. A feeble fire
of wood that Isolde Schirmacher had lit at Christian’s bidding burned
in the oven. She came in now, put on another log, and tripped out again.
Johanna sat on the sofa and looked about her expectantly. She trembled
at the thought of the first word she would hear and the first she would
speak. She had not taken off her cloak. Her neck and chin were buried
in its collar of fur.
“It’s a little uncanny here,” she said softly at last, since
Christian’s silence was so prolonged.
Christian sat down beside and took her hand. “You look so full of
suffering, Johanna,” he said. “What is the cause of your suffering?
Would it ease you to speak out? Tell me about it. You will reply that I
cannot help you. And that is true; one can never really help another.
Yet once you communicate yourself to a friend, the troubles within no
longer rot in dull stagnation. Don’t you think so?”
“You come to me so late,” Johanna whispered, with a shudder, and drew
up her shoulders, “so very, very late.”
“Too late?”
“Too late.”
Christian reflected sadly for a little. He grasped her hand more
firmly, and asked timidly: “Does he torment you? What is there between
him and you?”
She started and stared at him, and then collapsed again. She smiled
morbidly and said: “I’d be grateful to anyone who took an axe and
killed me. It’s all I’m worth.”
“Why, Johanna?”
“Because I threw myself away to roll in filth where it’s thickest and
most horrible,” she cried out, in a cutting voice that was full of
lamentation too, while her lips quivered, and she looked up.
“You see both yourself and others falsely,” said Christian. “Everything
within you is distorted. All that you say torments you, and all that
you hide chokes you. Have a little pity on yourself.”
“On myself?” She laughed a mirthless laugh. “On a thing like myself?
It would be waste. Nothing is needed but the axe, the axe.” Her words
changed to a wild sob. Then came an icy silence.
“What did you do, Johanna, to make you so desperate? Or what was done
to you?”
“You come too late. Oh, if you had asked me before, just asked, just
once. It is too late. There was too much empty time. The time was the
ruin of me. I’ve wasted my heart.”
“Tell me how.”
“Once there was one who opened the dark and heavy portal just a tiny
bit. Then I thought: it will be beautiful now. But he slammed the
door shut in my face. And the crash--I still feel it in my bones. It
was rash and foolish in me. I should not have had that glimpse of the
lovely things beyond the gate.”
“You are right, Johanna; I deserve it. But tell me how it is with you
now? Why are you so torn and perturbed?”
She did not answer for a while. Then she said: “Do you know the old
fairy-tale of the goose-girl who creeps into the iron oven to complain
of her woe? ‘O Falada, as thou hangest, O Princess, as thou goest, if
thy mother knew of thy fate, the heart in her bosom would be broken.’
I haven’t taken a vow of silence, and I haven’t a burning oven for
refuge, but I can’t look at anyone or let him look at me. Go over by
the window and take your eyes from me, and I’ll tell you of my woes.”
With serious promptness Christian obeyed. He sat down by the window and
looked out.
With a high, almost singing voice Johanna began. “You know that I got
caught in the snares of that man who was once your friend. You see
there was too much time in the world and the time was too empty. He
acted as though he would die if he didn’t have me. He put me to sleep
with his words and broke my will, my little rudimentary will, and took
me as one takes a lost thing by the roadside that no one wants or
claims. And when he had me in his grip the misery began. Day and night
he tortured me with questions, day and night, as though I’d been his
thing from my mother’s womb. No peace was left in me, and I was like
one blinded by his own shame. And one day I ran away and came here, and
it was just the day on which Michael came in after the terrible thing
had happened to him, and of course you had no eyes for me and I--I saw
more clearly than before how low I had fallen and what I had made of my
life.”
She stared down emptily for a moment; then she shut her eyes and
continued. There had been an evening on which she had felt so desolate
and deserted that she had envied each paving stone because it lay
beside another. And so she had suddenly, with all the strength of all
the yearning in her, wished for a child. She couldn’t explain just
how it had come over her--that insane yearning after a child, after
something of flesh and blood that she might love. Just as that day
in Christian’s room she had turned his behaviour into an envious
experiment and test, and had wondered in suspense how he would take
and withstand the utter misery of Michael; so, on that other day, she
had put her own life to the test, and had made everything dependent
on whether she would have a child or not. And when Amadeus had come,
she had thrown herself at him--coldly and calculatingly. She wondered
whether such things often happened in the world or had, indeed, ever
happened before. But as time passed it became clear that her wish was
not to be fulfilled and she was not even capable of what any woman of
the people can accomplish. She wasn’t good enough for even that.
But in the meantime fate had played its direst trick on her. She had
begun to love the man. It could not have come about differently, for he
seemed so like herself--so full of envy, so avoided of men, so enmeshed
and helpless within. The likeness in his soul had conquered her. To
be sure, she could not tell whether it was really love, or something
strange and terrible that is written of in no book and has no name. But
if it was love to cling to some last contact while waiting for the end,
to be extinguished and set on fire again, so that between fire and fire
no breath was one’s own, and one wore an alien face and spoke alien
words; if it was love to be ashamed and remorseful and flee from one’s
own consciousness and drag oneself about in terror of the senses and
of the spirit and own no thing on earth, no friend or sister or flower
or dream--if such were love, well, it had been hers. But it hadn’t
lasted long. Amadeus had shown signs of coldness and satiety. He had
been paralysed. When he had devoured everything within her that could
be devoured, he had been tired and had given her to understand that she
was in the way. A cold horror had struck her, and she had gone. But the
horror was still in her heart and everything in her was old and cold.
She could never forget the man’s coarse face in that last hour--his
scorn and satisfaction. Now she could neither laugh nor cry any more;
she was ashamed. She would like to lie down very gently and wait for
death. She was so frightfully tired, and disgust of life filled her to
the brim.
She stopped, and Christian did not move. Long minutes passed. Then
Johanna arose and went over to him. Without stirring she gazed with him
out into the darkness, and then laid a ghostly hand upon his shoulder.
“If my mother knew of my fate, the heart in her bosom would be broken,”
she whispered.
He understood that touch, which sought a refuge, and her silent
beseeching. Resting his chin upon his hand, he said: “O men, men, what
are these things you do!”
“We despair,” she answered, drily, and with sardonic lips.
Christian arose, took her head between his two hands, and said: “You
must be on your guard, Johanna, against yourself.”
“The devil has fetched me,” she answered; but at the same moment she
became aware of the power of his touch. She became pale and reeled and
pulled herself together. She looked into his eyes, first waveringly,
then firmly. She tried to smile, and her smile was full of pain. Then
it became less full of herself, and lastly, after a deep breath, showed
a shimmer of joy.
He took his hands away. He wanted to say something more, but he felt
the insufficiency and poverty of all words.
She went from him with lowered head. But on her lips there was still
that smile of many meanings which she had won.