Herr Carovius and death were intimate friends. Whenever death had an
errand to run, it always knocked on Herr Carovius's door, as if to find
a person who approved of its deeds and who had a just appreciation of
them, for there were so many of the other kind.
But when Herr Carovius heard that Eleanore Nothafft had died, he felt
that his old friend had gone a bit too far. He was touched. He was
seized with griping pains in the abdominal region, and locked himself up
for the period of one whole day in his court room. There he was taken
down with catalepsy; his face went through a horrible transformation: it
came to look as if all the wickedness, hopelessness, and despair of the
man who had never become reconciled to life through love had been
concentrated in it and petrified.
His forebodings had come true.
Eleanore's funeral took place on a rainy June day. Herr Carovius,
dressed in his shabby old yellow raincoat with its big pockets, was
present. There were also many others present. Every face was touched
with grief; every eye was filled with tears, like the earth round about.
Those who had not known her had at least heard of her. They had known
that she had been there in some capacity, just as one hears of some
unusual phenomenon among the celestial bodies, and that she was gone;
that she was no more to be seen. For one moment at least all these
people were changed into deep, seeing, feeling beings; for one moment
they laid aside their fruitless activities, their petty misdeeds,
desires, anxieties, and vanities, and became conscious of the fact that
the truth, purity, love, and loveliness of this earth had been
decreased.
Herr Carovius went home and made a lime-blossom tea; such a tea had
often helped him when he had not felt well.
The rain dripped down on the kitchen window sill. Herr Carovius said to
himself: "That is my last funeral."
Along in the evening Dorothea came in and after her Philippina
Schimmelweis. Herr Carovius had paid her many a penny for her services
as a spy, and now she wanted to hear what he had to say to this last and
greatest of misfortunes. His infatuated interest in everything Eleanore
did had been a source of unmitigated pleasure to her, though she had
been exceedingly cautious never to let him see how she felt about it
all. On the contrary, she never failed to affect a hypocritical
seriousness in the face of all his questions, orders, instructions, and
caustic observations. She had egged him on; she had flattered him; she
had used every opportunity to fan the flames of his ridiculous hopes.
Owing to this the confidence between the two had grown to considerable
proportion; the man's senile madness, born of his love for Eleanore, had
even aroused Philippina's lewd lasciviousness.
She said she would have to be going home; the child was asleep; and
though she had locked the front door, you could never tell what was
going to happen over there. "My God," she said, "things take place in
that house that are never heard of in any other home."
The presence of Dorothea disturbed and annoyed her. She sat down on the
kitchen bench, and looked at the young girl with poison in her eyes.
Dorothea on the other hand found it painfully difficult to conceal her
disgust at the mere sight of Philippina: her ugliness defied descriptive
adjectives. Dorothea never took her eyes off the creature who sat there
talking in a screeching voice, and who, as if her normal
unattractiveness were not enough, had her head bandaged.
The fact is that Philippina had the toothache; for this reason her face
was wrapped in a loud, checkered cloth, while out from underneath her
hat stuck two little tassels.
She told the story of Eleanore's death with much satisfaction to
herself, and with that delight in the tragic in which she revelled by
instinct. "And now," she said, "old Jordan sits over there in his attic
rooms and sobs, and Daniel goes moping about, refusing to eat any food
and looking at you with eyes that would fill you with fear even if
everything else was as it should be."
This is the point to which Daniel has brought things, she showed in her
gratuitous report, in which there was an attempt to chide him for his
waywardness: He has put two women under the ground, has a helpless child
in the house, is out of a job, is not making a cent. Now what could this
kind of doings lead to? Judge Ruebsam's wife had paid the funeral
expenses. Why, you know, Daniel didn't even know what they were talking
about when the bill came in, and old Jordan, he didn't have twenty marks
to his name. She swore she wasn't going to stand for it much longer, and
if Daniel didn't quit his piano-strumming--he wasn't getting a cent for
it--she was going to know a thing or two.
Quite contrary to his established custom, Herr Carovius failed to show
the slightest interest in her gabble; at least he made no concessions to
her. Nor did he fuss and fume; he gazed into space, and seemed to be
thinking about many serious things all at the same time. His silence
made Philippina raging mad. She jumped up and left without saying
good-bye to him, slamming first the room door and then the hall door
behind her.
Dorothea was standing by the piano rummaging around in some note books.
Her thoughts were on what she had just been hearing.
She remembered Daniel Nothafft quite well. She knew that there was an
irreconcilable feud between him and her father. She had seen him; people
had pointed out the man with the angry looking eyes to her on the
street. She had felt at the time as if she had already talked with him,
though she could not say when or where. She had a vague idea as to what
people said about him, and she knew that he was looked upon in the city
as the adversary of evil himself.
Her breast was filled with an aimless longing. Her blood began to run
warm, the fusty _milieu_ in which she just then chanced to be cleared up
and began to bestir itself. She took her violin and began to play a
Hungarian dance, while an enlivening smile flitted across her face, and
her eyes shone with the audacity of an ambitious and temperamental girl.
Herr Carovius raised his head: "Tempo!" he exclaimed, "Tempo!" and began
to beat time with his hands and stamp the floor with his feet.
Dorothea smiled, shook her head, and played more and more rapidly.
"Tempo," howled Herr Carovius. "Tempo!"
The barking of a sad dog was wafted into the room from the court below.
It was Caesar: he was on his last legs.
X
Daniel's mother had come; she had brought little Eva along.
Marian had learned of Eleanore's death through the newspaper. No one had
thought of her; no one had written to her. She had not read it in the
newspaper herself. The doctor in Eschenbach, who had subscribed to the
_Fraenkischer Herold_, had read it one morning, and had given her the
paper with considerable hesitation, calling her attention to the death
notice.
She was not present at the funeral. But she went out to the cemetery and
prayed by Eleanore's grave.
She appreciated Daniel's loss. When she met him he was precisely as she
thought he would be. She recognised her son in his great grief and mute
despair: he was nearer to her then than at any other time of his life.
She honoured his grief; she did not need to decrease it or divert it.
She was silent, just as Daniel himself was silent. All she did was to
lay her hand on his forehead occasionally. He murmured: "Mother, oh
Mother!" She replied: "Now don't! Don't think of me!"
She said to herself: "When an Eleanore dies in the full bloom of youth,
one must mourn until the soul of its own accord again grows hungry for
life."
At first Eva had tried to play with her little step-sister; but
Philippina had chased her from the room. Once she turned against the
enraged daughter of Jason Philip Schimmelweis, and said: "I'll tell my
father on you!"
"Yes? You'll tell your father? Well, tell him! Who cares?" replied
Philippina scornfully. "But who is your father? What is he? Where is he?
In Pomerania perhaps?" Whereupon she added in a sing-song voice:
"Pomerania is burnt to the ground. Fly, cockchafer, fly!"
"My father? He's in the room there," replied Eva surprised and
offended: "I am in his house, and little Agnes is my sister."
Philippina tore open her eyes and her mouth: "Your father--is in the
room--" she stammered, "and little Agnes--is your sister?" She got up,
seized Eva by the shoulders, and dragged her across the floor into the
room where Daniel and Marian were sitting. With an outburst of laughter
that sounded as though she were not quite in her right mind, and with an
expression of impudence and rage on her face, she panted forth her
indignation in the following terms: "This brat says Daniel is her father
and Agnes is her sister! A scurvy chit--I'll say!"
Marian, terrified, sprang to her feet, ran over to Eva, and began to
scream: "Let her go, take your hands off that child!" Eva was pale, the
tears were rolling down her cheeks, her little arms were stretched out
as if in urgent need of help from an older hand. Philippina let go of
her and stepped back. "Is it really true?" she whispered, "is it really
true?" Marian knelt down and picked up her foster child: "Now you mind
your own business, you rogue," she said to Philippina.
"Daniel?" Philippina turned to Daniel with uplifted arms, and repeated,
"Daniel?" She seemed to be challenging him to speak; and to be
reproaching him for having deceived her. There was something quite
uncanny about the way she said, "Daniel? Daniel?"
"You go back and mind Agnes!" said Daniel, worried as he had never been
before: he felt more than ever under obligations to Philippina. And what
could he do now without her? She was the sole guardian of his child. His
mother could not remain in the city; she had to make her living, and
that she could do only over in Eschenbach. Her business was located
there; and there Eva was growing up in peace and happiness. On the other
hand, he did not feel that it would be possible or advisable to take
Agnes away from Philippina, even if his mother saw fit to adopt her too.
Philippina was attached to the child with an ape-like affection. And
more than this: Who would take care of old Jordan if Philippina were
discharged? Daniel could not make his bed or get his meals.
Philippina went out. "The damned scoundrel!" she said as soon as she had
left the room. She clenched her horny fists, and continued Daniel's life
history: "The brute has a bastard, he has. You wait, you little chit,
and the first chance I get I'll scratch your eyes out!"
Taking the child on her lap, Marian sat down by Daniel's side. "Don't
cry, Eva, don't cry; we're going back home now in a minute."
Daniel looked at his mother most attentively, and told her how
Philippina had chanced to come into his family. He told her all about
Jason Philip's attempt to rob him of his inheritance, and how his own
daughter had betrayed him; how his father had taken three thousand
talers to Jason Philip; how Jason Philip had been forced to hand over a
part of the money when Jordan was in trouble because of his son; and how
he had waived his claims to the rest of the money.
Marian's head sank low on her breast. "Your father was a remarkable man,
Daniel," she said after a long silence, "but he never did understand
people; and the person whom he misunderstood most of all was his wife.
He was like a man who is blind, but who does not want to let it be known
that he is blind: he walks around, but where does he go? He stands still
and has not the faintest idea where he is. And by the way, Daniel, it
seems to me that you are a little bit like him. Open your eyes, Daniel,
I beg you, open your eyes!"
The child in her lap had fallen asleep. Daniel looked into Eva's
face--yes, he opened his eyes--and as he saw this delicate, sweet,
charming countenance so close before him, he could no longer control
himself. He turned to the wall, and cried as if his heart would break:
"I am a murderer!"
"No, Daniel," said Marian gently, "or if you are, then everybody who
lives is a murderer, the dead of the past being the victims."
Daniel writhed in agony and gnashed his teeth.
"Father is in the room there," whispered Eva in her dreams.