It was a cold, clear day in the middle of December. Eleanore wanted to
go skating after dinner. She was known in the entire city for her skill
on the ice. An irrepressible vivacity and sense of freedom pulsed
through her body. It seemed to her lamentable that she should have to
sit down in the overheated, sticky air of the office among all those
clerks, and write.
She went, nevertheless, to the office, took her place among the clerks,
and wrote as usual. Herr Zittel's eyes shone through the lenses of his
spectacles like two poison flasks. But she did not make much progress;
time dragged; it dragged even more heavily and slowly than Herr Diruf's
feet, as he made his rounds through the room. Eleanore looked up. She
felt as if his gloomy eyes were resting on her. Conscious of having
failed to perform her duty as she might have done, she blushed.
Finally the clock struck six. The other clerks left, making much noise
as they did so. Eleanore waited as usual until they had all gone, for
she did not like to mix with them. Just then Benjamin Dorn came wabbling
in: "The Chief would like to speak to Fraeulein Jordan," he said, and
bent his long neck like a swan. Eleanore was surprised: what on earth
could Herr Diruf want with her? Possibly it had to do with Benno.
Alfons Diruf was sitting at his desk as she entered. He wrote one more
line, and then stared at her. There was something in his expression that
drove the blood from her cheeks. Involuntarily she looked down at
herself and felt her flesh creep.
"You wanted to see me," she said.
"Yes, I wanted to see you," he replied, and made a weary attempt to
smile.
There was another pause. In her anxiety Eleanore looked first at one
object in the room and then at another; first at the bathing nymph, then
at the silk curtains, then at the Chinese lampshade.
"Well, sweetheart," said Herr Diruf, his smile gradually changing into a
sort of convulsion, "we are not bad, are we? By the beard of the
prophet, we are all right, aren't we? Hunh?"
Eleanore lowered her head. She thought she had misunderstood him: "You
wanted to see me," she said in a loud voice.
Diruf laid his hand, palm down, on the edge of his desk. His solitaire
threw off actual sparks of brilliancy. "I can crush every one of you,"
he said, as he shoved his hand along the edge of the desk toward
Eleanore. "That boy out there, your brother, is an underhanded sharper.
If I want to I can make him turn a somersault, believe me." He shoved
his fat hand a little farther along, as if it were some dangerous engine
and his solitaire a signal lamp. "I can make the whole pack of you dance
whenever I want to. Can't I, sweetheart? _Capito?_ _Comprenez-vous?_"
Eleanore looked into Alfons Diruf's smeary eyes with unspeakable
amazement.
Diruf got up, walked over to her, and put his arms around her shoulders.
"Well, if the boy is a sweet-toothed tom-cat who can easily be led
astray, you are a purring pussy-cat," he said with a tone of terrible
tenderness, and held the girl so tight in his arms that she could not
possibly move. "Now be quiet, sweetheart; be calm, my little bosom;
don't worry, you little devil!"
Horror, hot and cold, came over her, and filled her with unnamable
dismay. Contact with the man had a more gruesome effect on her than
anything she had ever even dreamed of. One jerk as though it were a
matter of life and death, and she was free. White as a sheet, she
nevertheless stood there before him, and smiled. It was a rare smile,
something quite beyond the bounds of what is ordinarily called a smile.
Alfons Diruf was no longer fat and fierce; he was like a pricked bubble;
he was done for. And finding himself alone, he stood there for a while
and gaped at the floor. He looked and felt hopelessly stupid.
Eleanore hastened through the streets, and suddenly discovered that she
was in the Long Row. She turned around. Benda, then on the way over to
call on Daniel, caught sight of her, recognised her by the light of the
gas lamp, stopped as she passed by him, and looked after her not a
little concerned.
When she reached home, she sank down on the sofa exhausted. To rid her
mind of the memory of the past hour, she took refuge in her longing,
longing for a southern country. Her longing was so intense, her desire
to go south so fervent, that her face shone as if in fever. But the
glass case had at last been broken.
The bell rang shortly before eight; she said to Gertrude: "If it is
Daniel, send him away. I cannot see any one this evening."
"Are you ill?" asked Gertrude with characteristic sternness.
"I don't know; I simply do not want to see anybody," said Eleanore, and
smiled again as she had smiled in Diruf's office.
It was Daniel, to be sure. Benda had told him that he had seen Eleanore
out in front of the house; and when he learned that she had not been to
call on Daniel, his anxiety increased. "There is something wrong here,"
he said, "you had better go see her." After they had talked the
situation over for a while Benda accompanied Daniel as far as AEgydius
Place, in order to make sure that he inquired after Eleanore.
Gertrude opened the iron door. "Eleanore does not want you to come in,"
she said, with a trace of joy in her eyes.
"Why not? What has happened?"
"She does not wish to see you," said the monosyllabic Gertrude, and
gazed into the light of the hall lamp.
"Is she ill?"
"No!"
"Then she has got to tell me herself that she does not wish to see me."
"Go!" commanded Gertrude and tossed her head back.
Her gloomy eyes hung on his, and the two stood there for a moment
opposite each other, like two racers who have come in at the same goal
at the same time but from opposite directions. Daniel then turned
around, and went down the steps in silence. Gertrude remained standing
for a time, her head sinking deeper and deeper all the while on her
breast. Suddenly she covered her face with her hands; a cold shudder ran
through her body.