One evening—the girls were again sitting together in the
twilight—because they could chat better that way than in the glaring
lamp light, there came a shrill ring of the bell, and a few moments
later those deep, vibrant tones that sent a thrill of terror into Myra’s
very heart sounding from the next room.
She knew that voice perfectly, but she was afraid she might be mistaken.
She wanted to ask, “Isn’t that Olga?” but was afraid of receiving the
answer “No.” And more than all else, she was afraid that that
conversation in the next room might stop, that the door might open, and
she would hear too late, “Olga just dropped in for a moment.”
But the voices did not stop. They grew louder, drew nearer, the door was
thrown wide open of a sudden, and in the frame stood the tall apparition
of Olga Radó, in bold relief against the yellow light flooding the next
room, like a silhouette on a golden background.
“Do you want to have tea with me tomorrow, children?” she called into
the dark room. “Somebody has just sent me some Kugler’s confections.”
The Moebius girls shouted for joy.
Emmie pushed forward a chair and wanted Olga to sit down, but she
declined and did not take her hand from the door-knob.
“No, no, children, I haven’t a moment’s time. But be there promptly
tomorrow, at four, or half past at the latest, I have to go to the opera
in the evening.”
Myra did not move. When the door opened she had uttered a semi-audible
“Good evening.” Now it seemed obtrusive to call attention to herself.
Perhaps, Olga had not even seen her in her dark corner. Perhaps, too,
she did not want to see her. It would have been understandable. But
something hurt her at the thought.
“Won’t you come, too, Miss Rudloff? If you have nothing better in the
offing. You are heartily welcome.”
“I should love to,” said Myra, and went pale with pleasure.
* * * * *
Olga received her guests with what appeared to be cordial and genuine
pleasure. It seemed inconceivable to Myra that this woman should not
wrap herself in cold hauteur as in a coat of mail.
The girls could not restrain their amusement at the ingenious darkness.
“Yes,” said Olga, “I wanted to present my cubbyhole in the best light.
And the best light is the least light possible.”
Myra was urged to sit in a deep easy-chair.
“Yes, you must make yourself at home with us. After all you are our
guest of honor, you are the oldest! You are probably still proud of the
fact, but when you are as old as I am, it ceases to be a compliment.”
In all her life Myra had never felt as much at home as in the
easy-chair.
In front of her, Olga was crouched on a low taboret. The inevitable
cigarette was already between her fingers and she clamped it in her
teeth whenever she needed her hands free to pour tea or pass the cake.
When a lull occurred in the conversation, she brought out a box of
photographs she had taken on various trips, or a book with Dulac
illustrations, or a magazine with pictures of the latest screen stars.
Again Myra was conscious of a feeling of pain. It was all she could do
to answer yes or no to the conversation. “She is making such a dreadful
effort to entertain us,” she thought. “But in reality, we’re a bore and
a burden to her. As soon as the door has closed behind us, she’ll draw a
long breath and say, ‘Thank God!’ I can hardly blame her. But why did
she ever invite us?”
She had the greatest desire to go, simply to free Olga Radó from this
visitation. At the same time, she felt that if she tried to break away
with some excuse or other, and they questioned her and pleaded with her,
and all their attention was focussed on her, she would be unable to keep
back the tears which were even now threatening and smarting.
She was almost glad, and yet deeply unhappy, when Olga suddenly glanced
at her watch and said, “I’ll have to throw you out, children, sorry as
it makes me. I have to dress quickly as possible—the time passed so
dreadfully fast.”
* * * * *
Myra spent a whole week in aimless promenades, practised the piano at
home and studied French, and when she had practised and studied for half
an hour, would throw herself on the divan and stare at the scrap of blue
sky netted with silvery telephone wires which she could see from where
she lay. Then her thoughts would fly hither and yon—how glorious it
would be to understand all the languages in the world, or to master some
instrument perfectly, or to have a wonderful voice, or to be ravishingly
beautiful. But since one never could attain to any of those things,
perhaps it would be pleasantest to be dead.
Then there would come pressing duties which compelled her to go down
Motz Street. And since one had to pass _the_ house, it was natural that
one should walk a little slower, gaze up at the windows and peer down
the street.
And since one was in town and wanted to go home, one might just as well
go down Motz as Kleist Street. And since one went out to get a little
fresh air, it was the most natural thing in the world that one should
sit down on a bench on Victoria Louisa Square and watch the children
playing.
Every day Myra stood in front of a shop-window containing gloves,
ribbons and laces, and stared in profound thought at the display—because
at the back was a mirror, and in this mirror she could watch the door of
the house opposite.
Every time the door opened, Myra started.
Once when Olga Radó emerged from that door, Myra scarcely recognized
her. Olga wore a loose cloak, both hands were thrust in her pockets and
she had no hat. She ran, rather than walked, two houses farther down to
the mail-box, and dropped a letter.
Myra hurried across the street to intercept her on her return. Her heart
was throbbing so that she had to gasp for breath. With the extreme speed
of thought she decided on a hundred different courses and instantly
rejected them again. She would say something to Olga. She would pass her
with a silent greeting. But suppose she were not recognized! She had
better say something to her. But what?
While she was still crossing the street, Olga had seen her and waved her
hand.
“Hello, Myra! Were you going to call on me?”
“Not exactly,” said Myra paling with excitement. Perhaps this was a
further stupidity, perhaps she should have said yes.
“Yes, exactly.” Olga hooked her hand in Myra’s arm. “Come up for an
hour. Or shall you be neglecting something? No? Well, then, fine! Wait,
I must see my friend at the corner and buy me some cigarettes. Will you
come, too?”
Never in all her life had Myra seen such a charming tobacco shop as this
at the corner. Never had any individual pleased her so much at first
sight as this white-haired, simpering little man, with the withered,
trembling hands, from whom Olga Radó bought her cigarettes.
Olga sat at the broad diplomat’s desk of black stained oak, her legs
crossed in a Luther chair, leaning somewhat forward, both elbows resting
on the high arms.
Myra sat facing her in the easy-chair. She felt a little strained as at
an examination. Something went tense deep within her, so that she
gritted her teeth and said to herself, “I will pass this test, I will
pass it.”
For a while all went well. They talked of the Moebius girls and of Erika
Hanneman and Olga’s aunt, the consul’s wife. And Myra told about her
life at home, about Aunt Emily and the beautiful days of her childhood.
Suddenly Olga said, “Tell me frankly, how do you come to be friends with
my so-called cousins?”
“I don’t know,” said Myra, “Aunt Emily....”
“I don’t mean to say anything against them,” said Olga quickly, “they
are as good as gold. But aren’t you bored to death in this perpetual
round?”
“Yes,” Myra replied, “but I’m always bored, anyway.”
“Why, how dreadful!” said Olga really shocked. “I’d rather be dead than
be bored. Don’t you really know anybody but Fannie and Emmie and Aunt
Emily?”
“No,” Myra hesitated. “It’s probably my own fault. I’ve never had a
friend. But then I’ve never wanted one.”
“It is not so easy,” Olga reflected. “Usually we miss our best friends
by a century or two. We know some by reading about them or seeing their
pictures. But that is all, of those who will be born after us, we know
nothing. That is why I so envy people who create. They can greet those
who come after us. They can keep themselves alive in pictures, words or
deeds. Yes, in deeds, too. It is like a cry. Thus I am, thus I was, love
me! And if in their own lifetimes they have never found anyone—perhaps
in a hundred years, or maybe two hundred, somebody will be born who will
love them as they desired to be loved. Who will understand them as they
desired to be understood. We poor creatures—once we’re dead, we most
certainly will never be loved again. Not for as long as ten years after,
ah, not even for ten months. Sometimes I would like....”
Her eyes were very dark and menacing under her furrowed brows.
She broke off and began again in another one. “Do you know, there are a
great many very congenial people of the Renaissance. We should have
lived four or five centuries sooner. I should certainly have been
friends with Margherita Sforza. I have just read a wonderful story about
how she held her brother’s possessions when Julius Caesar was sent
against them.”
Myra felt a tempest in her brain which was not unlike vertigo.
Renaissance—that was a familiar idea. Her mind made some kind of hazy
connection with the name Sforza.
But—“Julius Caesar,” she muttered to herself, disconcerted.
Olga laughed. “No, no, not the great one! Julius Caesar of Capua. Some
stupid, little princeling or other. You don’t need to know him.”
“Ah,” Myra sighed with sincere feeling, “there’s so much that I don’t
know, that I have to learn.”
“Oh, well, it won’t be so dreadful,” said Olga. “You know Queen Jeanne,
don’t you?”
“Which one?” asked Myra quite at sea. “I know the Queen of Navarre’s
stories....”
“But not herself, I trust,” said Olga in fun. “Besides, she was a
Margueritte. But you don’t know the Sforza?” She asked it as tenderly,
as encouragingly, as if she were talking to a child whom she did not
wish to hurt.
“I don’t know ... no ... and yet....”
“Well, what _do_ you know about her?”
“Nothing,” said Myra disconcerted. “Only the picture by Rubens—the
little girl with the liverwurst....”
Olga listened for a moment with her eyebrows lifted as if she were
recollecting. Then she laughed loudly and merrily, more merrily than
Myra had ever heard her laugh. But, strangely enough, her amusement did
not wound Myra, although she was surprised at this failure on her part
to be hurt. It was so nice, to see Olga Radó laugh so heartily. Even if
one’s self was being laughed at.
“You poor child!” cried Olga still laughing. “What must your mind look
like! Ah, I should like to introduce some order there for a change!”
“Do,” said Myra fervently. “Please, please, do!”
For a moment Olga’s face grew serious and thoughtful.
“No, no,” said Myra, immediately terrified, “that’s just impertinence on
my part. After all, you’re not our governess!”
“Child!” said Olga, leaning forward suddenly and laying her hand on
Myra’s. “Are you really so sensitive? But you have no reason to be. Do
you want to learn to read with me? There is nothing more I can do for
you. But come up and study, won’t you? Come up here to me as often as
you wish until you are bored.”
“I never will be!” said Myra as if she were taking a sacred oath.
“But you know, before we can really dig into anything, you will have to
make a general survey. First you’ll have to work your way through a
history of the world. Shall I give you Schlosser? Here are eighteen
volumes. One volume after the other. Yes, my child, Heaven won’t help
you this time! If you can’t do more, at least you can read a round
hundred pages a day, that’s all. And when you’re finished, every three
or four days you’ll come up and exchange your book for another and we’ll
have tea and chat a little. Like the idea? Shall we make it a go?”
That is the way it began.
And that is the way it went along for quite a while.
With passionate zeal Myra read the books that Olga Radó lent her. And
when she had put down the book, her face ablaze, it would seem to her as
if Olga sat in front of her, holding a long conversation with her. On
every page there was something, something horrible or beautiful,
something strange or incomprehensible, something which she must tell
Olga or question her about.
And sometimes she really did have these conversations, sometimes she did
say what she had it in mind to say, what she had resolved to tell
Olga—but very seldom.
It was a peculiarly surprising and delightful fact, of which Myra was
probably always conscious, but which was not clear to her until much,
much later—one could not steer a conversation with Olga Radó.
So strong were her moods that they created an atmosphere in a room so
that it was impossible to partake of any other feeling than hers. And
whoever was not sensitive to this, whoever did invoke another mood than
that with which wood and glass and air and silk seemed softly to
vibrate, called forth a screaming dissonance.
Myra felt this sometimes, later on, when strangers entered the room. She
herself never called forth, not even at the very beginning, the
slightest discord, because she was quiet, because she effaced herself in
order, half unconsciously, and yet almost anxiously, to intercept every
vibration that quivered in the air.
It was half unconscious only at first, that is. She felt herself so
abysmally small and stupid that she hardly dared have an idea of her own
in Olga’s presence. Later, when her healthy nerves had been stretched
fine and thin to the breaking-point, she mastered the art consciously.
She used to say sometimes, in fun, “You must have gone down the street
in a very bad humor today. The houses are still making faces at you
behind your back!”
It was the third or fourth time that Myra had been up. Olga was lying on
the divan, smoking so incessantly that the blue clouds had difficulty in
escaping out the window.
Myra sat in her easy-chair, reading Jean Paul aloud to her. “Others,
too, at least the reader and myself, would have been affected by this
transparent night with which April was closing, the vast stillness on
which the drum-taps beat, that longing for one’s beloved with which the
morrow again restores a barren heart and a shattered life remove;—these
things would have filled us both with a gentle tremulousness and
dreams....”
“Please stop!” said Olga, pressing her hand to her temples. “Don’t be
angry, but I can’t stand that today. Be a good girl, up there you’ll
find Walt Whitman—on the top shelf—more to the right. But never mind,
don’t bother. Go to my dressing-table, you’ll find a silver brush there.
No, the one with the handle. Let me have it, will you?”
Obediently, Myra fetched the brush.
Olga took it from her without rising and beat a mighty tattoo against
the wall with the back; after a short pause, a second and a third.
Myra laughed. “Must you have the brush for that?”
“Yes,” said Olga. “It’s my telegraph instrument. After long years of
experience, proved the best. What else can I use? The ink-well is no
good. A book makes no noise, and besides, I don’t like to treat it
so....”
Meanwhile there came a knock on the door.
“Come in, come in, come in,” called Olga.
The door was partly opened and a man’s blond head peered in.
“Ah, a caller?” said a high, thin, husky, and yet not unpleasant, voice.
“Come in, Peterkin,” said Olga, “it’s only Myra.”
Her words sent a wonderful feeling of happiness through Myra. They gave
her a certain justification, a sense of being at home in this room,
where simply to be tolerated was a pride and joy.
The little man, who insinuated his delicate and deformed body through
the door, knew her, was aware that it was she who was “just Myra”—that
is to say, that she was not a mere caller, not a stranger, but somebody
who belonged there, who would not be in the way. One was as good as
alone.
All Myra’s sympathy darted out to the young man. Perhaps, if he had been
a more commanding, more handsome youth, she would have experienced some
feeling of jealousy toward him. But he was anything but handsome, in
spite of his gentle blue eyes and his exquisitely manicured hands.
Myra loved him from the very first, in the same way she had loved the
tobacconist at the corner, with an almost real affection.
This first meeting was the beginning of a faithful friendship that was
to last for years.
Otto Peterkin was, on the whole, not inclined to overestimate himself or
the fascinations which his person was likely to exert—and yet, may there
not have been moments during which he thought Myra’s feeling for him to
be of a different quality than her love for the little tobacconist?
“Peterkin,” said Olga, “fetch your fiddle and play us something.”
“All right, what?” said Peterkin.
“Something nice. Nothing is too good for this little girl.”
Peterkin played. Played what they both loved best, Olga and he, and
which he would not, could not have played, had there been someone
listening for whom it was “too good.”
Myra sat perfectly still. It seemed to her as if the notes bore her
onward like a gently flooding stream, on and on, everything was left
behind, the drab and dirty city, the crowds of carping, clawing
people—all were outdistanced, grew smaller, vanished in the haze. But
the air was ever clearer, ever purer, the water ever deeper, the shores
more lovely, more free. An island appeared, the low-hanging branches of
its flowering trees were lapped by the lifting waves.
That day, for the first time, Myra came home late for supper. The long,
agitated and irate lecture with which Aunt Emily received her, made her
feel as if someone had thrown dirty water on her. She shuddered with
loathing, but she felt no pain.