Everything became blood-red before his eyes; he was seized with a
feverish chill.
He had followed Philippina with a dejected, limp feeling of disgust,
fear and coercion. Now he knew what it was all about. At the very
beginning of the events he saw the middle and the end. He saw before the
bolted door what was going on behind it. His soul was seized with
horror, rage, woe, contempt, and terror. He felt dizzy; he feared lie
might lose consciousness.
He sprang up the creaking stairs by leaps and bounds. He stood before
the door behind which he had gone hungry, been cold, and glowed with
enthusiasm as a young man. Silence should have reigned there now, so
that the devotion of retrospective spirits might not be molested on the
grave of so many, many hopes.
He jerked at the latch; a scream was heard from within. The door was
bolted. He pressed his body against the fragile wood so violently that
both hinges, and the latch, gave way, and the door fell on to the middle
of the floor with a mighty crash.
The scream was repeated, this time in a more piercing tone. Dorothea was
lying on a big bed with nothing on but a flimsy chemise. Frau Hadebusch,
pimp always, had rented the bed from a second-hand dealer; it covered a
half of the room. Before Dorothea was a plate of cherries; she had been
amusing herself by shooting the pits at her lover. He likewise was
lacking nearly all the garments ordinarily worn by men when in the
presence of women. He was sitting astride on a chair, smoking a
short-stemmed pipe.
When Daniel, with bloody hands--he had scratched himself while breaking
in the door--with his hair flying wild about his face, panting, and pale
as death, stepped over the door, Dorothea again began to scream; she
screamed seven or eight times. She was filled with despair and terrible
anxiety.
Daniel rushed at the young man, and seized him by the throat. While he
held the American in a death-like grip, while he saw Dorothea, as if in
a roseate haze, with uplifted arms, leave the bed screaming at the top
of her voice, while an extraordinary power of observation, despite his
insane rage, came over him, while he watched the cherries as they rolled
across the bed and saw the green stems, some of which were withered,
showing that the cherries were half rotten, while he felt a taste on his
tongue as if he too had eaten cherries--while he saw all these things
and had this sensation, he thought to himself without either doubt or
relief: "This is the downfall; this is chaos."
The American--it later became known that he was a wandering artist who
had, with an equal amount of nerve and adroitness, worked his way into
the private social life of the city--thrust his antagonist back with all
his might, and struck up the position of a professional boxer. Daniel,
however, gave him no time to strike; he fell on him, wrapped his arms
tight about him, threw him to the floor, and was trying to choke him. He
groaned, struggled, got his fist loose, struck Daniel in the face, and
cried, "You damned fool!" But it was the cry of a whipped man.
Loud noise broke out downstairs. A crowd of people collected on the
sidewalk. "Police, police!" shrieked the shrill voice of a woman. The
people began to make their way up the stairs.
"Oh, oh, oh!" moaned Dorothea. In half a minute she had her dress on.
"Out of this place and away," she said, as she looked for her gloves and
umbrella.
Frau Hadebusch appeared in the hall, wringing her hands. Behind her
stood Philippina. Two men forced their way in, ran up to Daniel and the
American, and tried to separate them. But they had bitten into each
other like two mad dogs; and it was necessary to call for help. A
soldier and the milkman gave a hand; and finally two policemen appeared
on the scene.
"I must go home," cried Dorothea, while the other women shrieked and
carried on. "I must go home, and get my things and leave."
With the face of one possessed and at the same time dumb, Philippina
stole out from among the excited crowd and followed Dorothea. She did
not feel that she was walking; she could not feel the pavement under her
feet; she was unconscious of the air. That wild inspiration returned to
her which she had experienced once before in her life--the time she went
up in the attic and saw Gertrude's lifeless body hanging from a rafter.
Her veins pulsed with a hot lust for destruction. "Swing the torch!"
That was the cry she heard running through her brain. "Swing the torch!"
But she wanted to do something much more pretentious this time than
merely start a fire in some rubbish. The farther she went the more
rapidly she walked. Finally she began to run and sing with a loud,
coarse voice. Her cloak was not buttoned; it flew in the air. The people
who saw her stopped and looked at her, amazed.