For the third time during one of her walks, Myra suddenly found herself,
on that corner in the suburbs, on which stood Sophie’s little house. But
this time she did not turn quickly in the opposite direction. Instead,
she walked down a street flooded with late autumn sunlight, quite bathed
in whiteness except for the thin tremulous shadows cast by the delicate
plumage of the young mountain-ashes.
Myra no longer remembered the number, but it would not be difficult to
discover the house. It must be the third to the right. Yes, the
garden-gate bore a rather striking name-plate, and above the arbor the
little pennant was hanging limply in the motionless air.
Myra’s heart beat somewhat faster as she opened the little grille-gate.
She was as embarrassed as she had been as a child when she had to go to
strange houses and knock on strange doors. If she walked right into the
garden they would stare at her in some surprise. No one would remember
her name, no one would recall her face, they would ask her what right
she had to force her way in here. Oh, she would create a very painful
situation for herself and others.
It would certainly be better to climb the short flight of steps to the
front entrance and give one’s card to the maid. Then they could bundle
her off with a polite remark if they no longer remembered her.
Hesitantly, she retraced a few steps.
But they must already have seen her, or heard the crunching of the
gravel—a blonde head appeared behind the house.
“Ah, Miss Rudloff!” Little John literally sprang forward to meet her.
And for the first few moments she forgot all that she had heard about
him, all that she had thought about him, and was captivated by his
boyish charm, by the lightness of his movements which were like a
dancer’s.
“How nice of you to come! No, no, right this way, there’s no need to go
through the house. We’ve spoken of you frequently, wondering where you
were. Nora will be frightfully glad to see you. Sophus still has
something to do, but she’ll be down any moment.”
He led her past a green wall where the first plump beans were hanging
between countless red and white flowers. In the narrow beds phlox and
asters were a riot of dazzling colors. They were surrounded by a
golden-green border of fragrant mignonette. In the big hexagonal arbor a
cozy tea-table was spread.
Myra also experienced a slight unconfessed fear of meeting Nora again.
Now she was almost gratefully surprised by her beauty and by the
commanding nobility of her movements. Nora was so accustomed to her
ailment that it never even occurred to her to make an attempt to rise
only to have to sink back helpless and pitiable in her chair. She sat a
little stiffly and very regally, extending her hand to Myra with a
winning smile.
Beside her sat Ulrich Zeeden, who in his haste to spring up and come out
from behind the table imperilled the tea service, which caused both John
and Myra to clutch frantically at it. The result was a merry confusion
which got them over the first few moments of what might have been
painful formality, and the conversation became general and lively.
In a few moments Sophie, too, emerged from the house with a long, quick
stride. She greeted Myra very cordially, demanding a cup of tea “right
away.” She insisted on drinking it standing, only to let them force her
into a chair where she chatted for a quarter of an hour, declaring
anxiously every two minutes, “Oh, children, the light is forsaking me, I
must get back to work!”
When she finally dashed off, she turned at the house and called back,
“If you’ll just wait there until I’m through, I’ll have another hour of
joy tonight. I’ve worked so hard today.”
“You forgot to add, ‘at my mournful occupation,’” John laughed after
her.
“Yes, at my mournful occupation,” she called from the door.
“Why mournful occupation?” asked Myra, puzzled.
“She always says that she’s next in line after the undertaker and the
funeral parlor,” John explained. “She makes gravestones.”
“Oh, that really is mournful,” said Myra, endeavoring to assume a slight
smile so that they would not think her exaggeratedly sentimental. The
words “grave” and “death” were always a stab of pain to her.
“One accustoms one’s self to death,” said Nora gravely, “as to
everything else. And that is well. One becomes a little brutal—which is
a very good thing for us hyper-sensitives. We come to feel as much at
home among urns and sorrowing angels, as a coffin manufacturer at the
sight of a coffin, or a physician at the sight of a wound. When one has
as much to do with death as Sophie, and through her I, death loses all
its horror, and one comes to see the humor in tragic situations. Ask
Sophie, she will tell you some stories of her profession.”
* * * * *
Nora took her needle-work from a little basket beside her, and asked
John to call the maid to clear the table. John begged like a child to be
allowed to do it himself, and skilfully and carefully removed all the
dishes. When he returned, he sat silent for a long while, his longing
eyes fastened on Nora’s flying fingers.
At last, he could restrain his childish desire no longer, and he
stretched out his hands. “Oh, please, please, let me stitch a little,
too!”
With a smile Nora handed him the sewing and searched her basket for some
crocheting with which to keep her own hands busy.
“Gracious,” cried Myra, “that wonderful hemstitching! Aren’t you
afraid?”
“Oh, no,” Nora assured her, “John can sew quite as well as I.”
“I can, can’t I,” said John, a blush of pride mantling his cheeks. “I
should have been an expert embroiderer or a miniature painter. I have an
inexhaustible patience for such things. Otherwise, I have no patience at
all.”
He bent his head over his work so that his wavy blonde hair fell over
his face. His slender, almost too well manicured hands moved with charm
and precision, setting stitch beside stitch.
It was an astonishing scene. Involuntarily the thought flashed through
Myra’s mind, “Thank God, he’s not my son. If he were, I think I’d tear
that embroidery from his hands and slap his ears with it. And yet—he
looks like a painted angel or a saint.”
* * * * *
John had to go before Sophie returned. He waited for her until the last
moment, then said a hasty, but cordial, good-bye, and leaving many
greetings for Sophie, dashed off.
Ulrich Zeeden gazed after him, shaking his head.
“A strange little fellow,” he said.
“A heart of gold,” added Nora with a slight note of defense in her tone.
“We’ve grown so used to him here, we can hardly get along without him.
He’s really like a loyal little page, always anxious to please and be
kind—ah, much more than that, he’s inexhaustibly good-hearted and
self-sacrificing.”
“Yes, there are some really fabulous rumors of his good-heartedness
going the rounds.” The corner of Ulrich Zeeden’s mouth twitched a little
contemptuously.
“There _are_ many rumors circulating about him—unfortunately,” Myra
burst forth. She felt her cheeks burning with embarrassment, but she was
determined, now she had spoken, to defend her cause courageously. “It
looks so ugly, so gossipy, to discuss someone the moment he has turned
his back. But because he’s your friend and because I think he’s very
nice, it makes me angry when people say horrible things about him, and I
have absolutely no right to tell them to hold their tongues or to punish
them for their lies.”
“Would you do that?” asked Ulrich Zeeden. “It would be very courageous
and really friendly of you, but in most cases I’m afraid it wouldn’t be
very successful. For whatever horrible things may be said, they are
certainly surpassed by the horrible things that are done in private, of
which no one has any idea.”
“Is that true?” Myra turned imploringly to Nora.
“Ah, my child,” she said comfortingly, “it is much too complicated and
bewildering for one to be able simply to say yes or no. But there’s no
reason to have such a desperate look in your eyes. Good and evil are so
intertwined that one can never hope to disentangle them and balance one
against the other.
“But I will tell you one thing, for I know very well what Myra means by
horrible things, and you, too, Ulrich. You mean the affair with
Drencker. People say and you know that it is true, Ulrich, and so do I,
if I must be candid—that Drencker has bought the little fellow body and
soul, so to speak; that he has furnished a charming apartment for him,
that he supports him, ‘provides’ for him, as they say. That Drencker
does not do all this simply to rid himself of his millions in a good
cause, all of us know. And that our good John has not attached himself
to this, to put it mildly, decidedly unpleasant gentleman, like
Alcibiades to Socrates, for the purpose of drinking wisdom from his
lips, but merely for a pecuniary advantage, is also obvious.
“Nevertheless, when one looks a little deeper, one discovers something
that atones for all these horrible facts. Ever since he was a child,
little John has felt a great and unswerving love, or rather a kind of
devout infatuation, for a school-fellow of his who possesses everything
which he himself lacks—manliness, self-assurance, a somewhat brutal
quality. This childhood devotion became an utterly unselfish, utterly
idolatrous friendship. Now it happens, that the other boy possesses
decided talent, which further compels John’s admiration. Neither of them
had any money. John had probably never thought of himself as worth very
much—he sold himself, sold himself with open eyes and very dearly, too,
in order to enable his friend to study, in order to be able to support
him in this way.”
“And Will Kraft allowed him to do that? You mean he acquiesced in such a
thing?” asked Ulrich Zeeden sharply, drawing out his words.
Nora shrugged her shoulders slightly. “I did not mention any names.”
There was a trace of bitterness in her gentle voice.
“What has Will Kraft allowed? What has he acquiesced in?” Sophie’s deep
resonant voice suddenly rang out close beside them.
“We’ve been slandering your friend, Sophus.” Nora smiled up at her.
“You’ve come just in the nick of time to defend him.”
“Defend him if you can,” said Zeeden in a harsh, censorious tone. “Will
Kraft has allowed a young, immature and rather unstable young man, whose
friend he is supposed to be, to sell himself to satisfy the unnatural
lusts of a beast in human form, and has accepted the purchase price. To
me that is about the lowest thing that anybody could do—just as I find a
whore-master a good deal more contemptible than a whore.”
“Indeed!” Sophie drew up a chair and sat down. “I’ve let you have your
say, now you let me have mine. In the first place, instead of ‘beast in
human form,’ you might say ‘human in beast’s form’—though that has only
incidentally to do with ‘my friend’, Will Kraft. But I can muster a few
points in his defense, too. Notably, that he has talent, not to say
genius, and that talent always and under all circumstances has the right
to achieve its object. Because work alone is of value, not life. Least
of all the moral life of the individual.”
“That is a matter of opinion,” interrupted Zeeden, “nevertheless,
continue!”
“But even if he were without talent, if he could create no work of any
value, whom is he injuring? The possibility is given him to work, as he
imagines, and as I imagine, for human culture. He is happy. Still
happier is old Drencker, who finds himself at the goal of all his
desires, having at last escaped the danger of blackmailers and
extortioners, and even robbers and murderers, whose life is no longer
embittered by the fear of prison, and who for the first time is
beginning to feel the blessedness of those millions that all his life
long have been only a curse to him.
“But the happiest of all is undoubtedly our little John. He is desired,
pampered, idolized. He sees his beauty, which incidentally he knows very
well how to prize, in the right setting. He spends half the day seated
before his three-leaf mirror, admiring himself, and coddling himself
with salves and powders and hair tonics. Do you mean to tell me he is
doing all that for Will Kraft’s sake? Don’t imagine it! He would do
exactly the same thing without Will Kraft! No, not exactly the same, for
he certainly has a better side, a tendency to idealism. He would do it
remorsefully without Will, and be disgusted at himself. But since he can
expend a portion of the sums which are earned by him (for a person of
his nature really without effort) on someone whom he adores, he can view
himself in quite a transfiguring light. He can do just what he pleases
and be a martyr and a saint into the bargain!”
Zeeden moved his hands as if he were clapping an inaudible applause. “A
beautiful speech, dear Sophus! Hearing your explanation, makes it
bearable. But there’s a flaw in it somewhere. I don’t know just where.
Perhaps it’s in defective Christianity again. But I think Nora is
shivering, it’s time that we went into the house. The evenings are
already quite cool.”
Myra rose. “Yes, and it’s high time that I went home, too. I intended to
stay for a few moments and I sit here hours and hours.”
“Bosh!” said Sophie, remaining quietly seated, and staring up at her
almost as if surprised. “That sounds like a _façon de parler_. Why do
you want to go? Have you something better in mind? Or did somebody once
tell you that a first visit should never last more than twenty minutes?”
“Yes, somebody did tell me that!” laughed Myra. “I think those are the
very words my Aunt Emily said to me.”
“And do you mean to say that you have the damnable intention of carrying
out all your Aunt Emily’s precepts? I thought not, well, don’t try them
on us! Whatever aunts tell you, you should _eo ipso_ do the reverse! So
you’ll stay and eat with us. The only excuse is the well-known
‘something better to do.’”
“There’s nothing that I’d like to do better in all the world.”
“Poor child—well, there will be.”
Sophie rose and drew herself up energetically. “I can feel my muscles
today! Come, Norina, let’s make things bright and comfortable inside.
It’s already decided that you’ll remain, Uli.”
Zeeden bowed in silence.
With one powerful push, Sophie moved the table aside to clear the way
for Nora. With a sudden resoluteness which she herself could not
explain, Myra pressed close to the invalid.
“May I help?” She thought they must hear the throbbing of her heart in
her voice.
“Oh, thank you so much—I will be too heavy for you.”
“Not at all, I am very strong. And if one does not need any particular
practice, believe me, it would gratify my ambitions! I could feel that
there’s something in this world for which I am useful.”
“That is an unanswerable argument,” said Sophie. “Will you call Martha,
then, Ulrich? Or will you be good enough to carry the chair yourself?”
Zeeden had already picked up the chair.
“Really, why don’t you have a wheel-chair?” he asked.
“Are you going to ask me that, too?” Sophie flung angrily over her
shoulder. “Because this lady must walk! And she can do it very well,
too. She has the soundest pair of legs in the world. But she’s too vain.
If she weren’t, she could walk for miles.”
The pressure of the invalid’s arm did not weigh unbearably on Myra’s
supporting hands. And the feeling that she was helping overcame her
horror to such an extent that even pity disappeared. This gentle woman’s
desperation over her ruined hampered body had long ago been dispelled,
so that her life now knew only its good and bad moments like every one’s
else. With more good and less bad, perhaps, for her illness shielded her
from the fiercest attacks of base natures; she almost never left the
house, in which she was treated as a queen, while no one who was not
filled with the friendliest of feelings, ever came to see her.
* * * * *
As they were sitting together after the meal, over a cup of tea and
cigarettes, Gisela suddenly appeared. Myra could not decide just what
she felt when she first saw her. She was glad that Gisela had come. At
the same time she was disturbed at the idea of being jolted out of her
comfortable repose even by a pleasure.
For the first time Myra endeavored to isolate the cause of that
disturbing quality which everyone felt in the presence of Gisela. She
was not noisy, not even particularly talkative. She would sit without
ever stirring from her place, staring in front of her. And yet it seemed
as if the atmosphere around her vibrated.
Myra felt this vibration in every nerve, felt her quiet repose being
more and more encroached upon by this burning, prickling, disquieting
sensation.
It began to seem to her as if the smiling resignation on Nora’s face
were merely a mask behind which the cruelest despair was at work.
It seemed to her as if Sophie bore up in vain, with the strength and
repose of a caryatid, against the intolerable burden.
It seemed to her as if Ulrich Zeeden’s deliberate manner cloaked a
ceaseless torturing struggle.
It seemed to her as if Gisela were as consumed by pain and sorrow as a
house in which the flames are raging, and whose blackened walls threaten
at every moment to crash into complete ruin.
And it seemed to her as if she, Myra, were the most unfortunate of all
these unfortunate creatures since Olga was dead and she was left alone
in the world. In a world, too, filled with strange, menacing,
pain-bringing, terrifying things.
Suddenly she wanted to go home because it seemed to her as if her
hostesses were struggling against their weariness out of a sense of
politeness.
Zeeden and Gisela left with her and they walked without speaking for
some time. Zeeden broke the long silence to address himself to Myra, and
to Myra only, “May I take you home, Miss Rudloff?”
“Thank you very much,” said Myra, “but only provided you live in that
neighborhood. I am not at all afraid of going by myself.”
Gisela leaned forward in order to speak past Myra. “Don’t put yourself
out in the slightest, Herr Zeeden. And it would put you out a great deal
if you had to go into the city again and then return to your lodgings. I
will take Miss Rudloff home. Besides we’re going the same way.”
Myra hesitated a moment, wondering whether she ought to protest this
arrangement. It displeased her to have Zeeden think she had declined his
escort in order to be alone with Gisela. But if she asked him to go with
her now, Gisela would be offended. She said nothing, telling herself
with a quiet defiance that people’s opinions were and must be
indifferent to her.
Zeeden took leave of them at the next corner, though somewhat more
stiffly and formally than usual.
“Do you like him?” asked Gisela when he was scarcely out of hearing.
“I hardly know him.” Myra shrugged her shoulders.
“He certainly likes you.”
“Why?” Myra laughed between her teeth.
“Why? He likes all the women I like. That’s why he can’t bear me,” she
added quickly, almost hurriedly. “That is to say, he’s unlucky with all
women, and has never been able to free himself from one dreadful
specimen.”
“How is it possible for him not to free himself from a dreadful woman if
he feels in himself the capacity for loving others?”
“You ask me?” Gisela shrugged her shoulders noncommittally. “They say
that she used to beat him till he bled and that he can’t live without
that! But he may have some other mania which she pampered, too. After
all, what does bind people together? The fact that one of them knows the
other’s concealed manias, and fattens them and coaxes them forth and
fondles them and trains them to turn against their former master like a
mad dog.”
“And you mean to say that that is the crux of all human relation?” asked
Myra sadly, much perturbed. “What kind of eyes do you see life with?”
“With unclouded eyes,” said Gisela and laughed bitterly.
“And Sophie?” asked Myra, “and Nora?”
“Sophie’s mania is called Nora. And she is the happiest person I know
because she can concentrate completely on her mania. As for Nora? What
goes on in her mind, nobody knows. I don’t even know if she is happy or
not.”
“I don’t know if she can be happy,” said Myra dejectedly. “It must be
dreadful always to have to take, never to give.”
“She knows that she gives a great deal,” Gisela contradicted.
“Everything for Sophie! Sophie became a human being for the first time
the day Nora went to live with her. She was lazy and idle and slovenly
and lived on cigarettes, alcohol and cocaine. We tried time and again to
shake her out of it—but it did no good.”
“And Nora,” asked Myra with bated breath, “was she sick then?”
“When she came here? Yes, of course—I think she had made an attempt on
her life. She married a syphilitic and had a feeble-minded child, or
something like that.”
“World, world,” thought Myra, “where can I fly from you? I’d rather be
dead and sleep in one of Sophie’s beautiful, rose-garlanded urns! How
can I, all by myself, ever stand all that makes up human destiny?”
They walked along in silence for a time, each plunged in his own
thoughts.
“Do you know, Myra Rudloff, that I have a mania of my own?” Gisela asked
suddenly; her voice was softer and more vibrant than usual.
Myra was frightened. She was afraid of confessions. “Good God,” she
thought, “here comes the morphine! What shall I say to her? I can’t help
her in any way.”
Gisela did not wait for an answer. “My mania,” she said, in a soft,
hovering tone, without glancing at Myra, without turning her head in her
direction, “is to love beautiful, pure, regal women—always those who are
above me, those who are too good for me, who in my own opinion are too
good for me. Women like you, Myra Rudloff!”
They had reached the house and stopped. Myra was racking her brain in
torment for a reply. She could think of none. She gave her hand to
Gisela, shyly, and said, “I thank you.”
The corner of Gisela’s mouth twitched in a hurt, ironic smile. “What
for?”
“For bringing me home—and for everything, for what you have just said,
too.”
Myra’s heart was throbbing as if it would burst, but only from a kind of
embarrassment. She would have been glad to retract her words. Perhaps it
would have been more tactful if she had pretended not to hear or not to
understand.
Gisela turned her head away with an impulsive, rather irritated
movement. The light from the street lamp fell on her face; it looked
wretched, sorrowful, almost decayed.
“Perhaps it would make her happy if I kissed her,” thought Myra. “It is
sad enough, but it can’t hurt anybody.”
She bent forward with a slight, embarrassed smile and laid her lips
against Gisela’s. She felt Gisela’s lips burn like a flame, open like a
flower; sharp teeth ground against hers and were pressed into her lips.
A small hand clasped her neck, twisted itself into her hair, would not
release her.
When Myra drew herself up again, she was somewhat dizzy.
“I don’t love her,” she thought sadly, “probably she loves me, and I
don’t love her.”
“Good night,” she said, laying her hand tenderly and discreetly against
Gisela’s cheek for a moment. It was as if she were speaking to a little
child. “Sleep tight.”
* * * * *
Myra intended to lie down on her divan.
Though it was still early in the afternoon, she had lighted the lamp and
drawn the curtains in order not to have to see how the endless autumnal
rain poured down the gray walls of the buildings opposite.
She had heaped up cushions and covers on the divan, moved a chair within
reach on which was a pile of books. The afternoon would be long and she
wished to have no cause to get up again. Neither did she want to drown
herself hour after hour in one book. So she had collected a half dozen
books with the pleasurable foretaste of a gourmand preparing himself for
an exceptional repast.
On the little glass-topped table at the head of the divan, she set
cigarettes, chocolate and a vase with a few pale pink, pungent
carnations that she had bought in town.
But no sooner had she lain down, drawn a light cover over her feet, and
reached for the topmost book when there came a knock on the door.
“Why didn’t I lock the door,” she thought for a moment in vexation. “If
I had, I would certainly never move. Whoever is there could rattle it as
much as he likes.”
But when in response to her “Come in!” Gisela opened the door, she was
really glad.
“Oh, how nice it is here!” cried Gisela before she had even said good
day. “No, for Heaven’s sake, don’t jump up from there, or I’ll run right
off again. You’ve made yourself so nice and cozy, don’t let me get you
up. I was going to see Mara Luigi, but she isn’t home, and I wanted to
have a look at your room. Heavens, how spick and span we are—my room
never looks like this even on high holidays.”
“If you don’t want me to get up,” said Myra with a smile—she was resting
on one elbow, the cover in her other hand, still in the act of springing
up—“you’ll have to come here. Otherwise I’ll have to put on the light
and settle you solemnly in an easy-chair.”
“No, no, I’m coming.” Gisela ran to the divan, pressed Myra back against
the cushions and drew the cover up about her chin.
“Do you want to go to sleep, my love? Shall I sing you to sleep and then
steal out on tiptoe? Sleep, little baby, sleep!” She knelt on one knee
on the divan, clasped Myra about her shoulders and rocked her to and
fro.
Myra experienced a slight and not at all unpleasant dizzying sensation.
“Don’t,” she said with her eyes closed, “I’m getting dizzy.”
She felt the rocking movement stop, and at the same time a gentle
breath, and soft lips brush very lightly, very tenderly, over her
forehead, her cheeks, her eyelids.
It was pleasant, but she resisted this pleasant sensation.
“I don’t love her,” she thought obstinately. “I did not desire her
lips—this is the way an animal must feel when it is stroked.”
The soft lips ceased to brush her face and Gisela crouched down on the
divan. Quite irrelevantly she pointed to the flowers. “Who sent you the
lovely carnations?” she asked.
Myra turned her head to follow Gisela’s gesture with her eyes.
“I did,” she smiled.
“What do you mean?”
“What do I mean? I bought them myself this morning.”
“That’s strange!” Gisela shook her head. “Are you expecting a visitor?”
“No, why?”
“Because that would be the only reason I’d ever buy flowers for my
room.”
“In fact, I bought them because I expected to be alone.”
“It’s very nice of you not to say ‘because I hoped....’”
Myra smiled. “Well then, because I feared I would be alone.”
“That’s just a polite lie,” said Gisela. “Anyhow, I’m thankful that I’m
at least worth a lie to you. For I think you don’t lie very often.”
“I don’t know.” Myra reflected seriously. “I think that I lied a good
deal as a child, at least as long as I was in the hands of my mentors.
But it was cheerless and unimaginative living. I never had much talent
at thinking up interesting tales. It was more a kind of denying, very
persistent and obstinate.”
“Lying and denying—there are worlds between. You are quite right. But
when a child denies, everybody says, it’s lying, or it’s deceiving. And
all the while it’s probably just ashamed, or stubborn, or bewildered. I
was treated so terribly when I was a child. Why don’t you have children?
You’d certainly make a fine, understanding mother.”
“I’ve never thought about it.” Myra shrugged her shoulders. “I’ve always
imagined that every mother is good and understanding. But that may very
well be because I never knew my own mother.”
Gisela laughed bitterly. “I wish I’d never known mine either!”
Myra was shocked and seized Gisela’s hand. “It sounds dreadful when you
talk that way! Was she so bad?”
“Bad? Oh, no, not just bad.” There was a note of forced lightness in her
voice. “She was a worthy, efficient, excellent woman. Too worthy and
efficient for my father. He left her and two years later hanged himself.
And since I resembled him (naturally I couldn’t do anything about it;
after all, she chose him for a husband, I didn’t choose him for a
father)—but because I resembled my father’s family, my mother felt that
I was hereditarily tainted in advance. You know, there are people—and my
mother was one of them—who are so moral that they sniff immorality
everywhere. We had to sleep with our hands outside the quilt, and if we
forgot in our sleep, and my mother came in to check up, she’d tear the
covers off the bed. I swear, I never once knew why she did it.”
Myra did not know either, but she did not ask, because she was ashamed
to confess her ignorance, and furthermore she suspected that an
explanation might be painful.
“That was the beginning.” Gisela sprang up and began to pace restlessly
to and fro, with noiseless steps, on the thick carpet. “And it went on
that way. At fourteen I had my first rendezvous. It was with a boy from
dancing-school, a little fellow who was, if possible, more innocent and
idealistic than myself. When this transgression came to light, I was
subjected to a terrifying inquisition. Had we kissed, did we put our
arms around one another, and when and where and how. These possibilities
were first brought to my attention in this way....
“The same thing at school. Near the school there was a stationery store
where we used to buy our copy-books. The man had picture post-cards in
his window—among others a nude woman, the reproduction of some
masterpiece or other. A terrible case was made out of that post-card.
Investigation finally brought out which of the girls had stood in front
of the shop-window. Parents and pupils together descended on the
shop-keeper and forced him to remove all offensive pictures from his
window. It became a real sport with us to buy pictures of nudes—during
the Bible reading they circulated under the desks with inscriptions and
observations. The contagion spread to the whole class, but they had
first been inoculated with the virus, and at considerable pains, too.
“In a few among us, perhaps in many, there may have been a painfully
repressed, immature sensuality. But children are by no means as
shameless as adults—they are much more afraid of being shocked. But the
general discussion of the ‘immoral picture’ removed all obstacles. Now
everybody talked to everybody else about ‘it.’
“I resisted. I didn’t want to have anything to do with it. It may be
that I resisted out of timidity, because I felt that this thing, which
was just a joke to the rest of the children, might become fate to me. Do
you know how children act in such cases? Oh, so cruelly, so lustfully,
so sadistically! Because I resisted, I was pursued, the whole class was
in a conspiracy against me. I had to see what I didn’t want to see, hear
what I didn’t want to hear, do what I didn’t want to do. I was driven to
a pass from which I never again escaped.”
She folded her hands and wrung her fingers so that the bones cracked as
if the thin wrists were going to snap.
“No, how can anybody buy herself flowers like that?” she said suddenly,
standing before the carnations. “Why do you do it? Were you thinking of
somebody to whom you wanted to give them? But didn’t—perhaps, well,
because you happened to be put out with one another just then?”
“I have no one in the world to whom I might give flowers,” said Myra
bitterly, “unless it is a grave, and that’s too far away.”
She did not know herself how she came to say it. She blushed violently
at the thought that she was opening her heart, an error which she
forgave in others with a certain condescending indulgence, but which she
hated so intensely that she would be upset for weeks if she caught
herself at it.
But perhaps it was not even a need to open her heart. Perhaps it was
worse. Perhaps it was the desire—though still quite unconscious—to drape
herself with this holy, destructive sorrow, to endow herself with a new
mystical charm in the eyes of this ... this....
It seemed as if Gisela divined the feeling. She had started as if she
meant to throw herself upon Myra, to overwhelm her with sympathy and
comfort and affection—but checked herself and sat hunched over on the
end of the divan, her head bowed, her hands folded.
“Promise me one thing,” she said softly with a quality in her voice as
of joylessness which nothing could ever animate again. “When I am dead,
put flowers on my grave. Not at my funeral and not a large bought
wreath.
“I like to imagine how I’ll receive visits, how I’ll lie there and
sleep. I love graveyards so—generally those that are a little run down.
I don’t want any well-groomed gaudy grave—but a gray stone, half sunk
already and half overgrown with ivy. Then the beautiful woman in the
white dress who stops before it will think of me for a moment, not with
grief, but with a gentle melancholy, and will strew a handful of flowers
over me. I’ll feel them, oh, make no mistake, I’ll feel them!”
Myra sat up and taking her by both shoulders, shook her.
“Child!” she said. “Are you asking _me_ to do that? I’ll hand on the
commission to my grandchild! By the time that stone has sunken on your
grave, my ashes will have long been scattered by the wind.”
“How long does it take a stone to sink?” asked Gisela in such a
comically impatient and plaintive tone that Myra laughed aloud.
“But you’re not dead and buried yet,” she said consolingly.
“Unfortunately,” Gisela said in a lifeless voice but with suddenly
flashing eyes. There was bitterness in the words.
Again Myra felt a slight aversion. “She has no right to say that,” she
thought. “She certainly can’t have suffered so terribly.... But then,
who can estimate what gives another the right to desperation? Perhaps it
is much harder to struggle against one’s self than against fate.”
Her objection melted and she felt only a warm but helpless pity. With
timid hands she began to stroke the soft, tangled, dark hair from the
white forehead before her. Those burning eyes were shut, while on that
narrow face appeared the expression of quiet, yearning bliss.
As Gisela sat motionless, without breathing, as if her pulse had stopped
in her veins, Myra experienced a weird sensation.
“Open your eyes,” she commanded in a frightened voice. “I suppose it’s
this devilish violet light, but you look like a marble death mask.”
The long lids opened heavily. The wide-open eyes were a lightless deep
abyss to which life and vision returned gradually.
“Believe me, little Myra,” she said with her soft ailing child’s voice,
“I will soon be dead.”
“What do the words ‘be dead’ mean to you?” asked Myra timidly.
“A deep, cool, undisturbed repose.” She closed her eyes, and immediately
her face resembled a marble mask again.
“Eternal rest. Even in my childhood the words were like a melody, a
sweet mysterious seductive song. I heard it the first time when I was
quite small and had no ideas about it. It was a characteristic
expression of my mother. This or that person had gone to his eternal
rest. And it has never forsaken me, I have always longed to go to my
eternal rest.”
In her high voice was a sustained disembodied tone.
There was a sparkle and glitter under those dark eyelashes that were
like shadows on her face, and several pearly drops trickled down.
Myra kept both her hands clasped around Gisela’s blue-veined temples.
“No,” she said, without herself knowing what that “no” might mean. “No,
no, no!”
The lids were raised like a curtain, and the tear-filled eyes in which
the light was refracted, seemed larger and more burning than ever.
“No,” said Gisela. “No, no, no! Still no eternal rest, little Myra,
sweet, beautiful little Myra! Life streams from your finger-tips, life
flowers from your lips, life gleams from your eyes. I feel as if I were
already dead, and you were saying to me: ‘Arise and walk!’ Oh, how hard
it must be to rise up and leave a cool and narrow coffin because it
pleases some miracle-maker!
“I am dead, little Myra, I have died of a mortal sickness that is called
Fiametta. If you would bewitch the dead, little sorceress, you must
nourish them with your own blood, but that you know. If I am to live, I
must imbibe your blood.”
The slender hands fastened like talons in Myra’s shoulder, forcing her
back on the cushions. Supine above her, lay Gisela’s light muscular
body, close to her own hovered Gisela’s white face with the burning
eyes.
Fear, horror, aversion, pity, tenderness and the infatuating throb of
her own and another’s blood, whirled in a mad maelstrom that engulfed
all thought in its brightly foaming depths.