to the house of an old friend who lived near the cathedral: and while the
old ladies talked they sent her into the garden over which there
hung the shadow of the _Münster_. She used to sit in a corner and
never stir: she used to listen to the shivering of the leaves, and watch
the busy swarming insects: and she used to be both pleased and
afraid.--(She made no mention of her fear of devils: her imagination was
obsessed by it: she had been told that they prowled round churches but
never dared enter: and she used to believe that they appeared in the
shape of animals: spiders, lizards, ants, all the hideous creatures that
swarmed about her, under the leaves, over the earth, or in the crannies
of the walls).--Then she told him about the house she used to live in,
and her sunless room: she remembered it with pleasure: she used to spend
many sleepless nights there, telling herself things....
"What things?"
"Silly things."
"Tell me."
She shook her head in refusal.
"Why not?"
She blushed, then laughed, and added:
"In the daytime too, while I was at work."
She thought for a moment, laughed once more, and then said:
"They were silly things, bad things."
He said, jokingly:
"Weren't you afraid?"
"Of what?"
"Of being damned?"
The expression in her eyes froze.
"You mustn't talk of that," she said.
He turned the conversation. He marveled at the strength she had shown a
short while before in their scuffle. She resumed her confiding
expression and told him of her girlish achievements--(she said "boyish,"
for, when she was a child she had always longed to join in the games and
rights of the boys).--On one occasion when she was with a little boy who
was a head taller than herself she had suddenly struck him with her
fist, hoping that he would strike her back. But he ran away yelling that
she was beating him. Once, again, in the country she had climbed on to
the back of a black cow as she was grazing: the terrified beast flung
her against a tree, and she had narrowly escaped being killed. Once she
took it into her head to jump out of a first-floor window because she
had dared herself to do it: she was lucky enough to get off with a
sprain. She used to invent strange, dangerous gymnastics when she was
left alone in the house: she used to subject her body to all sorts of
queer experiments.
"Who would think it of you now, to see you looking so solemn?..."
"Oh!" she said, "if you were to see me sometimes when I am alone in my
room!"
"What! Even now?"
She laughed. She asked him--jumping from one subject to another--if he
were a shot.
He told her that he never shot. She said that she had once shot at a
blackbird with a gun and had wounded it. He waxed indignant.
"Oh!" she said. "What does it matter?"
"Have you no heart?"
"I don't know."
"Don't you ever think the beasts are living creatures like ourselves?"
"Yes," she said. "Certainly. I wanted to ask you: do you think the
beasts have souls?"
"Yes. I think so."
"The minister says not. But I think they have souls.... Sometimes," she
added, "I think I must have been an animal in a previous existence."
He began to laugh.
"There's nothing to laugh at," she said (she laughed too). "That is one
of the stories I used to tell myself when I was little. I used to
pretend to be a cat, a dog, a bird, a foal, a heifer. I was conscious of
all their desires. I wanted to be in their skins or their feathers for a
little while: and it used to be as though I really was. You can't
understand that?"
"You are a strange creature. But if you feel such kinship with the
beasts how can you bear to hurt them?"
"One is always hurting some one. Some people hurt me. I hurt other
people. That's the way of the world. I don't complain. We can't afford
to be squeamish in life! I often hurt myself for the pleasure of it."
"Hurt yourself?"
"Myself. One day I hammered a nail into my hand, here."
"Why?"
"There wasn't any reason."
(She did not tell him that she had been trying to crucify herself.)
"Give me your hand," she said.
"What do you want it for?"
"Give it me."
He gave her his hand. She took it and crushed it until he cried out.
They played, like peasants, at seeing how much they could hurt each
other. They were happy and had no ulterior thought. The rest of the
world, the fetters of their ordinary life, the sorrows of the past, fear
of the future, the gathering storm within themselves, all had
disappeared.
They had walked several miles, but they were not at all tired. Suddenly
she stopped, flung herself down on the ground, and lay full length on
the stubble, and said no more. She lay on her back with her hands behind
her head and looked up at the sky. Oh! the peace of it, and the
sweetness!... A few yards away a spring came bubbling up in an
intermittent stream, like an artery beating, now faintly, now more
strongly. The horizon took on a pearly hue. A mist hung over the purple
earth from which the black naked trees stood out. The late winter sun
was shining, the little pale gold sun sinking down to rest. Like
gleaming arrows the birds cleft the air. The gentle voices of the
country bells called and answered calling from village to village....
Christophe sat near Anna and looked down at her. She gave no thought to
him. She was full of a heartfelt joy. Her beautiful lips smiled
silently. He thought:
"Is that you? I do not know you."
"Nor I. Nor I. I think I must be some one else. I am no longer afraid: I
am no longer afraid of Him.... Ah! How He stifled me, how He made me
suffer! I seemed to have been nailed down in my coffin.... Now I can
breathe: this body and this heart are mine. My body. My dear body. My
heart is free and full of love. There is so much happiness in me! And I
knew it not. I never knew myself! What have you done to me?..."
So he thought he could hear her softly sighing to herself. But she was
thinking of nothing, only that she was happy, only that all was well.
The evening had begun to fall. Behind the gray and lilac veils of mist,
about four o'clock, the sun, weary of life, was setting. Christophe got
up and went to Anna. He bent down to her. She turned her face to him,
still dizzy with looking up into the vast sky over which she seemed to
have been hanging. A few seconds passed before she recognized him. Then
her eyes stared at him with an enigmatic smile that told him of the
unease that was in her. To escape the knowledge of it he closed his eyes
for a moment. When he opened them again she was still looking at him:
and it seemed to him that for many days they had so looked into each
other's eyes. It was as though they were reading each other's soul. But
they refused to admit what they had read there.
He held out his hand to her. She took it without a word. They went back
to the village, the towers of which they could see shaped like the
pope's nose in the heart of the valley: one of the towers had an empty
storks' nest on the top of its roof of mossy tiles, looking just like a
toque on a woman's head. At a cross-roads just outside the village they
passed a fountain above which stood a little Catholic saint, a wooden
Magdalene, graciously and a little mincingly holding out her arms. With
an instinctive movement Anna responded to the gesture and held out her
arms also, and she climbed on to the curb and filled the arms of the
pretty little goddess with branches of holly and mountain-ash with such
of their red berries as the birds and the frost had spared.
On the road they passed little groups of peasants and peasant women in
their Sunday clothes: women with brown skins, very red cheeks, thick
plaits coiled round their heads, light dresses, and hats with flowers.
They wore white gloves and red cuffs. They were singing simple songs
with shrill placid voices not very much in tune. In a stable a cow was
mooing. A child with whooping-cough was coughing in a house. A little
farther on there came up the nasal sound of a clarionet and a cornet.
There was dancing in the village square between the little inn and the
cemetery. Four musicians, perched on a table, were playing a tune. Anna
and Christophe sat in front of the inn and watched the dancers. The
couples were jostling and slanging each other vociferously. The girls
were screaming for the pleasure of making a noise. The men drinking were
beating time on the tables with their fists. At any other time such
ponderous coarse joy would have disgusted Anna: but now she loved it:
she had taken off her hat and was watching eagerly. Christophe poked fun
at the burlesque solemnity of the music and the musicians. He fumbled in
his pockets and produced a pencil and began to make lines and dots on
the back of a hotel bill: he was writing dance music. The paper was soon
covered: he asked for more, and these too he covered like the first with
his big scrawling writing. Anna looked over his shoulder with her face
near his and hummed over what he wrote: she tried to guess how the
phrases would end, and clapped her hands when she guessed right or when
her guesses were falsified by some unexpected sally. When he had done
Christophe took what he had written to the musicians. They were honest
Suabians who knew their business, and they made it out without much
difficulty. The melodies were sentimental, and of a burlesque humor,
with strongly accented rhythms, punctuated, as it were, with bursts of
laughter. It was impossible to resist their impetuous fun: nobody's feet
could help dancing. Anna rushed into the throng; she gripped the first
pair of hands held out to her and whirled about like a mad thing; a
tortoise-shell pin dropped out of her hair and a few locks of it fell
down and hung about her face. Christophe never took his eyes off her: he
marveled at the fine healthy animal who hitherto had been condemned to
silence and immobility by a pitiless system of discipline: he saw her as
no one had ever seen her, as she really was under her borrowed mask: a
Bacchante, drunk with life. She called to him. He ran to her and put his
arms round her waist. They danced and danced until they whirled crashing
into a wall. They stopped, dazed. Night was fully come. They rested for
a moment and then said good-by to the company. Anna, who was usually so
stiff with the common people, partly from embarrassment, partly from
contempt, held out her hand to the musicians, the host of the inn, the
village boys with whom she had been dancing.
Once more they were alone under the brilliant frozen sky retracing the
paths across the fields by which they had come in the morning. Anna was
still excited. She talked less and less, and then ceased altogether, as
though she had succumbed to fatigue or to the mysterious emotion of the
night. She leaned affectionately on Christophe. As they were going down
the slope up which they had so blithely scrambled a few hours before,
she sighed. They approached the station. As they came to the first house
he stopped and looked at her. She looked up at him and smiled sadly. The
train was just as crowded as it had been before, and they could not
talk. He sat opposite her and devoured her with his eyes. Her eyes were
lowered: she raised them and looked at him when she felt his eyes upon
her: then she glanced away and he could not make her look at him again.
She sat gazing out into the night. A vague smile hovered about her lips
which showed a little weariness at the corners. Then her smile
disappeared. Her expression became mournful. He thought her mind must be
engrossed by the rhythm of the train and he tried to speak to her. She
replied coldly, without turning her head, with a single word. He tried
to persuade himself that her fatigue was responsible for the change: but
he knew that it was for a very different reason. The nearer they came to
the town the more he saw Anna's face grow cold, and life die down in
her, and all her beautiful body with its savage grace drop back into its
casing of stone. She did not make use of the hand he held out to her as
she stepped out of the carriage. They returned home in silence.
A few days later, about four o'clock in the evening, they were alone
together. Braun had gone out. Since the day before the town had been
shrouded in a pale greenish fog. The murmuring of the invisible river
came up. The lights of the electric trams glared through the mist. The
light of day was dead, stifled: time seemed to be wiped out: it was one
of those hours when men lose all consciousness of reality, an hour which
is outside the march of the ages. After the cutting wind of the
preceding days, the moist air had suddenly grown warmer, too damp and
too soft. The sky was filled with snow, and bent under the load.
They were alone together in the drawing-room, the cold cramped taste of
which was the reflection of that of its mistress. They said nothing. He
was reading. She was sewing. He got up and went to the window: he
pressed his face against the panes, and stood so dreaming: he was
stupefied and heavy with the dull light which was cast back from the
darkling sky upon the livid earth: his thoughts were uneasy: he tried in
vain to fix them: they escaped him. He was filled with a bitter agony:
he felt that he was being engulfed: and in the depths of his being, from
the chasm of the heap of ruins came a scorching wind in slow gusts. He
turned his back on Anna: she could not see him, she was engrossed in her
work; but a faint thrill passed through her body: she pricked herself
several times with her needle, but she did not feel it. They were both
fascinated by the approaching danger.
He threw off his stupor and took a few strides across the room. The
piano attracted him and made him fearful. He looked away from it. As he
passed it his hand could not resist it, and touched a note. The sound
quivered like a human voice. Anna trembled, and let her sewing fall.
Christophe, was already seated and playing. Without seeing her, he knew
that Anna had got up, that she was coming towards him, that she was by
his side. Before he knew what he was doing, he had begun the religious
and passionate melody that she had sung the first time she had revealed
herself to him: he improvised a fugue with variations on the theme.
Without his saying a word to her, she began to sing. They lost all sense
of their surroundings. The sacred frenzy of music had them in its
clutches....
O music, that openest the abysses of the soul! Thou dost destroy the
normal balance of the mind. In ordinary life, ordinary souls are closed
rooms: within, there droop the unused forces of life, the virtues and
the vices to use which is hurtful to us: sage, practical wisdom,
cowardly common sense, are the keepers of the keys of the room. They let
us see only a few cupboards tidily and properly arranged. But music
holds the magic wand which drives back every lock. The doors are opened.
The demons of the heart appear. And, for the first time, the soul sees
itself naked.--While the siren sings, while the bewitching voice
trembles on the air, the tamer holds all the wild beasts in check with
the power of the eye. The mighty mind and reason of a great musician
fascinates all the passions that he set loose. But when the music dies
away, when the tamer is no longer there, then the passions he has
summoned forth are left roaring in their tottering cage, and they seek
their prey....
The melody ended. Silence.... While she was singing she had laid her
hand on Christophe's shoulder. They dared not move: and each felt the
other trembling. Suddenly--in a flash--she bent down to him, he turned
to her: their lips met: he drank her breath....
She flung away from him and fled. He stayed, not stirring in the dark.
Braun returned. They sat down to dinner. Christophe was incapable of
thought. Anna seemed absent-minded: she was looking "elsewhere." Shortly
after dinner she went to her room. Christophe found it impossible to
stay alone with Braun, and went upstairs also.
About midnight the doctor was called from his bed to a patient.
Christophe heard him go downstairs and out. It had been snowing ever
since six o'clock. The houses and the streets were under a shroud. The
air was as though it were padded with cotton-wool. Not a step, not a
carriage could be heard outside. The town seemed dead. Christophe could
not sleep. He had a feeling of terror which grew from minute to minute.
He could not stir. He lay stiff in his bed, on his back, with his eyes
wide open. A metallic light cast up from the white earth and roofs fell
upon the walls of the room.... An imperceptible noise made him tremble.
Only a man at a feverish tension could have heard it. Came a soft
rustling on the floor of the passage. Christophe sat up in bed. The
faint noise came nearer, stopped; a board creaked. There was some one
behind the door: some one waiting.... Absolute stillness for a few
seconds, perhaps for several minutes.... Christophe could not breathe,
he broke out into a sweat. Outside flakes of snow brushed the window as
with a wing. A hand fumbled with the door and opened it. There appeared
a white form, and it came slowly forward: it halted a few yards away
from him. Christophe could see nothing clearly: but he could hear her
breathing: and he could hear his own heart thumping. She came nearer to
him; once more she halted. Their faces were so near that their breath
mingled. Their eyes sought each other vainly in the darkness.... She
fell into his arms. In silence, without a word, they hugged each other
close, frenziedly....
* * * * *
An hour, two hours, a century later, the door of the house was opened.
Anna broke from the embrace in which they were locked, slipped away, and
left Christophe without a word, just as she had come. He heard her bare
feet moving away, just skimming the floor in her swift flight. She
regained her room, and there Braun found her in her bed, apparently
asleep. So she lay through the night, with eyes wide open, breathless,
still, in her narrow bed near the sleeping Braun. How many nights had
she passed like that!
Christophe could not sleep either. He was utterly in despair. He had
always regarded the things of love, and especially marriage, with tragic
seriousness. He hated the frivolity of those writers whose art uses
adultery as a spicy flavoring. Adultery roused in him a feeling of
repulsion which was a combination of his vulgar brutality and high
morality. He had always felt a mixture of religious respect and physical
disgust for a woman who belonged to another man. The doglike promiscuity
in which some of the rich people in Europe lived appalled him. Adultery
with the consent of the husband is a filthy thing: without the husband's
knowledge it is a base deceit only worthy of a rascally servant hiding
away to betray and befoul his master's honor. How often had he not
piteously despised those whom he had known to be guilty of such
cowardice! He had broken with some of his friends who had thus
dishonored themselves in his eyes.... And now he too was sullied with
the same shameful thing! The circumstances of the crime only made it the
more odious. He had come to the house a sick, wretched man. His friend
had welcomed him, helped him, given him comfort. His kindness had never
flagged. Nothing had been too great a demand upon it. He owed him his
very life. And in return he had robbed the man of his honor and his
happiness, his poor little domestic happiness! He had basely betrayed
him, and with whom? With a woman whom he did not know, did not
understand, did not love.... Did he not love her? His every drop of
blood rose up against him. Love is too faint a word to express the river
of fire that rushed through him when he thought of her. It was not love,
it was a thousand times a greater thing than love.... He was in a whirl
all through the night. He got up, dipped his face in the icy water,
gasped, and shuddered. The crisis came to a head in an attack of fever.
When he got up, aching all over, he thought that she, even more than he,
must be overwhelmed with shame. He went to the window. The sun was
shining down upon the dazzling snow. In the garden Anna was hanging out
the clothes on a line. She was engrossed in her work, and seemed to be
in no wise put out. She had a dignity in her carriage and her gesture
which was quite new to him, and made him, unconsciously, liken her to a
moving statue.
* * * * *
They met again at lunch. Braun was away for the whole day. Christophe
could not have borne meeting him. He wanted to speak to Anna. But they
were not alone: the servant kept going and coming: they had to keep
guard on themselves. In vain did Christophe try to catch Anna's eye. She
did not look at him or at anything. There was no indication of inward
ferment: and always in her smallest movement there was the unaccustomed
assurance and nobility. After lunch he hoped they would have an
opportunity of speaking: but the servant dallied over clearing away; and
when they went into the next room she contrived to follow them: she
always had something to fetch or to bring: she stayed bustling in the
passage near the half-open door which Anna showed no hurry to shut: it
looked as though she were spying on them. Anna sat by the window with
her everlasting sewing. Christophe leaned back in an armchair with his
back to the light, and a book on his knee which he did not attempt to
read. Anna could only see his profile, and she noticed the torment in
his face as he looked at the wall: and she gave a cruel smile. From the
roof of the house and the tree in the garden the melting snow trickled
down into the gravel with a thin tinkling noise. Some distance away was
the laughter of children chasing each other in the street and
snowballing. Anna seemed to be half-asleep. The silence was torture to
Christophe: it hurt him so that he could have cried out.
At last the servant went downstairs and left the house. Christophe got
up, turned to Anna, and was about to say:
"Anna! Anna! what have we done?"
Anna looked at him: her eyes, which had been obstinately lowered, had
just opened: they rested on Christophe, and devoured him hotly,
hungrily. Christophe felt his own eyes burn under the impact, and he
reeled; everything that he wanted to say was brushed aside. They came
together, and once more they were locked in an embrace....
The shades of the evening were falling. Their blood was still in
turmoil. She was lying down, with her dress torn, her arms outstretched.
He had buried his face in the pillow, and was groaning aloud. She turned
towards him and raised his head, and caressed his eyes and his lips with
her fingers: she brought her face close to his, and she stared into his
eyes. Her eyes were deep, deep as a lake, and they smiled at each other
in utter indifference to pain. They lost consciousness. He was silent.
Mighty waves of feeling thrilled through them....
That night, when he was alone in his room, Christophe thought of killing
himself.
Next day, as soon as he was up, he went to Anna. Now it was he whose
eyes avoided hers. As soon as he met their gaze all that he had to say
was banished from his mind. However, he made an effort, and began to
speak of the cowardice of what they had done. Hardly had she understood
than she roughly stopped his lips with her hand. She flung away from him
with a scowl, and her lips pressed together, and an evil expression upon
her face. He went on. She flung the work she was holding down on the
ground, opened the door, and tried to go out. He caught her hands,
closed the door, and said bitterly that she was very lucky to be able to
banish from her mind all idea of the evil they had done. She struggled
like an animal caught in a trap, and cried angrily:
"Stop!... You coward, can't you see how I am suffering?... I won't let
you speak! Let me go!"
Her face was drawn, her expression was full of hate and fear, like a
beast that has been hurt: her eyes would have killed him, if they
could.--He let her go. She ran to the opposite corner of the room to
take shelter. He had no desire to pursue her. His heart was aching with
bitterness and terror. Braun came in. He looked at them, and they stood
stockishly there. Nothing existed for them outside their own suffering.
Christophe went out. Braun and Anna sat down to their meal. In the
middle of dinner Braun suddenly got up to open the window. Anna had
fainted.