They sat first in the basket-chairs in front of a café with little lamps
that had roses on the silk shades and pearl fringes. There were Gisela,
Kramer, Mara Luigi, Will Kraft, John. They ate fruit-ices and waffles
and drank a sweet liqueur, in order, as Giesbert said, “to prevent a
glaciation of their stomach walls.”
But Mara Luigi who had been dancing, and Kraft and John, who had been to
the concert, had not eaten that evening and expressed their cravings for
a real beefsteak. So they travelled two doors farther down to a wine
restaurant where the orchestra was playing the same pieces in a somewhat
different order.
After their meal they went to the nearest bar and drank a Sweden punch
and a bottle of champagne, and Mara Luigi danced with Giesbert and
Kraft, which caused all the other dancers to stop and stare with
interest. Myra felt her vanity somewhat flattered because she was with
such excellent dancers.
But the official closing time came. The waiters brought the bill, turned
down the lights and drew the heavy purple curtains across the windows.
But nobody thought of getting up and going.
At a neighboring table were sitting a beautiful blonde woman and two
gentlemen. Myra kept staring at her all evening. The blonde woman
regarded everything with a smiling or surprised curiosity, as if she
were at a zoological garden, while the two robust gentlemen sat beside
her as if it were their task to shield her from every impertinent glance
and every poisonous breath.
“Probably one of them is her husband the other her brother,” thought
Myra. “There is a place unoccupied at their table, why don’t I sit
there? Don’t I belong among that kind of people? By family, education,
training and manners? The smooth-shaven man is certainly her
brother—he’s the dead image of her. Wouldn’t it be much more suitable if
I were married to him, and were making a little evening out with my
brother and sister-in-law. That would be very nice. But why do I want
that? Merely because I have a nostalgia for perfectly plain simple
bourgeois surroundings, or because that lovely woman pleases me?”
When the three people had left the neighboring table, Myra began to find
it quite boresome and sterile. She was tired and had had her fill, but
it seemed to her as if something further must happen in order to give
this senseless expenditure of time and money some semblance of
justification. She was afraid that it would happen again, as always,
when she left a party early because she could not endure the boredom of
it any longer. Everybody would say to her next day, “Oh, what a pity
that you went so early, it was especially nice later on, we met so and
so, and we had such a good time!”
Gisela was all for going to the Club. The others, except Kraft, who
never touched a card, not from moral scruples, but because they bored
him to death, agreed.
Myra was a little frightened. She knew that it would turn out as usual.
Gisela would play and lose. Then Myra would try to save something and
place her own bet—with some caution and discretion, and would win twice
and lose three times. Or the other way round.
In any case, those hours at the Club always cost a few hundred or a few
thousand marks, and for a week Myra would calculate the lost sums in
terms of the books she saw in show-windows or handsome wood and leather
goods. Or she would look at the beggars on the street whom she could
have made happy, and the pale-faced children, with burning eyes,
standing in front of toy shops or confectioners’ windows.
To be sure—she herself was not much put out. She could telegraph the
bank and in a few hours would have as much money as she wanted. She was
not extremely clever at banking manipulations but she did know one
thing, she spent more than her interest. Sometimes it gave her an uneasy
feeling, almost a slight dizziness. But she scolded herself for a
narrow-minded Philistine. She would never have children—and she would
not live long. It might even be good not to possess another cent and
have, so to speak, to balance on a tight-rope. Such a situation would
prove whether the forces of life were strong enough in her. Perhaps she
would be happier in some very modest walk of life where she had to
work—as a waitress or a shop-girl. Perhaps physical need would be at
once an impetus and an absolution for putting her beloved revolver to
her forehead.
But it was not merely indifference to life or death that caused Myra to
go to the Club with the others. Gisela played with more bad luck than
passion, and if she was so insistent about going to the Club or some bar
or dance-hall, it was because she hoped to meet Fiametta there. Myra
knew this. They had met often during the winter, and Myra was fascinated
each time by her eloquent and haughty beauty, and was each time vexed
because Fiametta was always dressed in better taste, was more assured in
her manner, and above all, travelled in much better company than Myra.
As no one was at hand to attract Myra’s attention, she looked at herself
in a mirror. She seemed quite a stranger to herself, and yet acceptable.
She winked at herself in the glass as if to say, “Never fear, tonight
we’ll manage to put on as haughty a face as that conceited person!”
* * * * *
By the time they left the Club they were all in a more or less bad
humor. They had all lost except John, who, with his hands full of bills,
was running after Kraft and with tears in his eyes and a pleading voice,
trying to force the money on him.
Will Kraft refused it with a scarcely veiled irritation, his hands
plunged in the pockets of his jacket.
Both of them made Myra feel sorry. And Kramer made her feel sorry too,
for he had lost heavily, and was now quite pale and monosyllabic.
And Giesbert and Mara Luigi made her feel sorry: they were bandying
reproaches for not having bet at least on different sides of the table.
Under their harsh muttered words was something like a hate that has been
smouldering for years.
And Gisela made her feel sorry, because she looked wretched and decayed,
like a chronic invalid—and because she had not met Fiametta.
And she felt sorry for herself—Oh, she felt so sorry for herself!
They were all in a bad humor, but nobody wanted to go home and get over
it by himself. All of them were expecting some compensation for
this squandered night, some mad intoxication, some vast
jollification—sensation, experience, joy, or an hour’s oblivion of all
vexations.
“Where do we go from here?” asked Giesbert, swinging his cane with
somewhat affected high spirits. “Heads up, ladies and gentlemen, heads
up! As everybody knows, the tom-cat doesn’t really go into action till
morning! Forward to our sweet Emil’s! I wager that the overwhelming
majority of our distinguished little company will feel quite at home
there.”
They turned down a quiet dark side-street where stood a quiet dark
little third rate middle class beer-shop. An elderly woman, bare headed,
with a shawl around her shoulders, seemed to be waiting for a dog that
was sniffing around, and which she called and motioned to from time to
time.
Giesbert appeared to know her. He greeted her with a friendly slap on
the back, and asked her to open the door.
The old lady undertook to guide them, and amidst constant cries of
“Watch out!” they went up and down stairs, across an unlighted yard,
through narrow doors, and tiny pitch-black passages between thick baize
curtains, until suddenly there was a confusion of lights, sounds, colors
and voices.
The large long room, bathed in lilac light, was decorated with
impeccable taste. Black and lavender were the dominating colors. The
thick carpet was black strewn with lavender flowers. The polished
panelling, the marble mantelpiece, the velvet hanging covered with
wildly fantastic lavender designs were also black. On the cornice of the
panelling were black bronze and black wood-carvings, standing out
against the lilac wallpaper.
“How pretty!” said Myra her eyes wide with surprise. “How does it come
to be here?”
“Oh, his friends have furnished it for him,” said Giesbert with a rather
ironic smile. “As a kind of private establishment! Why shouldn’t it be
pretty? There are very wealthy people among them—and some very
well-known artists—painters, sculptors, interior decorators—or what have
you! In return, little Emil provides them champagne and company!”
“Emil!” called John to a slender, sinuous, dark-haired man. “Show our
ladies your establishment!”
Emil was all graciousness. He opened a narrow door, and they entered a
dimly lighted, somber room, in which were standing a dozen brown tables.
The light willow chairs had been piled on them, and the whole room was
embellished with advertisements of beer and tobacco companies.
At one table in a corner a pair of young fellows were lounging with
cards in their hands.
Next door was the real beer-shop whose window gave on the street. More
chairs and tables, the tank with its brightly polished taps and a
player-piano against the wall. The place was in almost total darkness,
only a little night-lamp above the buffet was reflected in the metal
trimmings. In one corner they saw two shadowy figures that seemed to be
wrestling, and heard suppressed gigglings.
They returned to the first room, and Emil, as he was called on all
sides, assisted them to find a cozy table and the necessary number of
chairs.
Myra regarded the people around her with a mixture of curiosity,
sympathy and aversion.
Not far off, there was sitting a fat black-bearded man on whose broad
and hairy hand a rosy solitaire flashed and sparkled. And that
fat-fingered hand adorned with rings was toying with the head and
shoulder of a pale young lad, clad in what was obviously an outworn
Sunday best. He seemed half brazen and half embarrassed.
At another table was seated a distinguished looking old gentleman, whose
finely chiselled features and gray Van Dyke, betrayed the thinker. One
of his slender white hands lay at the base of a champagne glass, the
other accompanied his long discourses as if he were on a platform or in
the pulpit. His handsome blue eyes glowed as though afire with youthful
enthusiasm. Opposite him, sat a broad-shouldered, bull-neck soldier,
with a good-looking honest peasant’s face, grinning, flattered but
uncomprehending.
More even than the men, the women attracted Myra’s attention. They ran
the whole gamut of types. Some had on dark jackets, with lapels,
breast-pockets and stiff collars. On their mannishly cut hair they wore
small men’s hats. Others betrayed themselves only by a slight
overpainting. The sharp features of a few expressed intelligence and
character. There were others who verged on the cocotte.
One in particular Myra thought very beautiful. She was tall and slender,
had short golden brown curls and the build and features of a Greek boy.
She was sitting with a big party having a very good time, and laughed a
lot and seemed slightly drunk.
A sweet provocative muffled music issued from behind the curtain. Two
young soldiers in uniform had clasped one another around the hips and
were swaying, body to body, in waltz rhythm. Despite their heavy boots,
they stepped as delicately and discreetly as women dancers—not a step
was audible.
“Ah, Emil,” said Giesbert, “how real life is here! When I think I’ll get
a bottle of champagne, I get it, but when I think, I’ll get nine
bottles, I don’t get them!”
“No, no, Mr. Giesbert,” said Emil, smiling, “you can have nine bottles
too!”
They drank champagne, and champagne with red wine, and champagne with
Port, and Benedictines, and Sweden punches and flips and champagne.
Myra drank somewhat prudently, and it amused her to watch how one after
the other, they began to talk nonsense.
But although she was still mistress of her tongue and her thoughts, she
felt her blood pulsing somewhat faster and the music lap her nerves in a
warm stream. For a moment, as she closed her eyes, she felt a desire,
and actually visualized herself sitting by the Rhine, on a terrace, or
in a garden, listening to old sentimental folk songs from the water, and
drinking a fragrant “Maybowl” with trusted friends.
When she opened her eyes and saw the room with its morbid color-scheme,
filled with smoke and fumes, she was overwhelmed with aversion and
misery.
They had become quite merry at her table. All had soft, parted, burning
lips and glowing eyes. All laughed and nestled into their chairs as into
a caress, or groped for one another with their hands.
“Intoxication, intoxication,” Myra thought, “I must force myself to feel
what the others feel! I had such a nice warm sense of well-being before,
a soft gliding dizziness. Why has it gone and left everything so stale
and horrid?”
She tossed off two glasses of champagne quickly, one after the other.
But she simply felt a dull heavy pressure over her eyes. She held her
hand over the glass that Kraft wanted to give her “to make her happy.”
“No, thanks, please, I have a head-ache, and I won’t become happy
anyway.”
“Take a little coke and get rid of your head-ache,” suggested Gisela.
“Perhaps.” Myra was ready for anything.
From all sides little gold and silver boxes were offered her.
She took a pinch of the white powder on the back of her hand, and
snuffed it up her nose. She had an impression of powdered snow when she
saw the white crystals. The room was close and stuffy and the idea made
her feel better. It was as if she were breathing pure clear winter air.
The top of her skull opened and the depressing fog that had weighed down
her brain all evening disappeared. The veils seemed to be torn from her
weary eyes. Everything seemed nearer and clearer, firmer in its
outlines, brighter in color.
“Thank God,” she said with relief, “I’m beginning to understand. It
really is a glorious feeling.”
But the effect wore off quickly. She tried it again.
Her head was clear, her thought firm. She felt well and secure.
Giesbert was paying her rather thick-tongued compliments. “Shplendid,
little Rudloff, shplendid! The little girl can carry off a thing or two!
My highest reshpects! She’ll drink ush under the table, Will, and
‘shnow’ us under the floor, into the cellar, under the cellar. We jusht
won’t be there at all, she makesh ush look shmall, sho shmall!”
Mara Luigi had changed places with Kramer in order to sit beside Myra.
She laid both her arms on the arm of Myra’s chair and spoke to her in a
low voice.
“Tell me honestly, why is it you don’t like me? I’ve always liked you so
immensely. From the very first moment—I’m right in saying that, am I
not, Gisela? But at the same time, I’ve always had the feeling that you
couldn’t abide me. I’m too feminine for you, eh? But, believe me, the
externals have very little to do with it! Or do you prefer bobbed hair?
Shall I have my hair bobbed?”
“Myra is the only woman in the world I’d ever marry,” declared little
John like a sleepy child. “I’d marry Myra right off, if I were a man!”
“God, what a fore-leg the lady has!” Kraft put his hand around her wrist
admiringly. “Show us your feet too!”
Laughing, Myra pressed her crossed feet against the edge of his chair.
He stroked her ankles in their sheer silk stockings.
“Yes, you may stroke them,” John conceded magnanimously, “you may stroke
them because it’s Myra, that’s why.”
A great and almost thrilling joy surged over Myra. She felt herself
beautiful, desirable and desired.
“She has the most beautiful legs in the world,” said Gisela, pulling
back Myra’s skirt to her knees. Myra let her do it without protest. For
the first time, in a burst of pride, she realized herself what perfect
slender legs she had.
The girl at the other table, who looked like a Greek boy, had been
constantly trying to attract Myra’s attention. Every time that Myra
glanced up, the Greek boy would carry her glass to her mouth. At first
she had done it as if by accident, now she smiled as she raised her
glass. Myra smiled back and drank to her.
Presently the girl wanted to get up. The people at her table laughed and
tried to restrain her. But she would not be deterred.
Glass in hand, she came over to Myra. The effort to walk without
staggering, lent her movements an especial grace.
“I want to drink to you,” she said with a challenging little laugh.
Myra raised her glass. They drank.
The stranger hesitated. “And—I’d like to give you a kiss, too—that is,
if Gisela will allow me.”
Everybody at the table laughed aloud and shouted remarks.
“Oh, I allow you,” said Gisela ironically.
“There is nothing for her to allow,” Myra contradicted haughtily.
The stranger bent quickly, and Myra felt against her lips a hot open
wine-wet mouth—for the space of a second. She closed her eyes, and since
her head was pressed back into her shoulders, and Kraft still held her
feet on his chair, she became so dizzy that she gripped her chair with
both hands. She felt as if the chair were tipping, the whole room
swaying, as if she were on a swing that was plunging through the air, or
on a ship whose planks were sprung and were being sucked into a raging
whirl-pool.
She sat up and pushed away the stranger almost violently in her need for
air.
At the same moment, she saw Gisela jump up, deathly pale, with her mouth
distorted, her head stretched forward like a panther ready to spring.
Her burning eyes were staring at the entrance door.
Involuntarily Myra followed her glance and saw the dark curtain fall
into place behind the latest arrivals.
Beside Ulrich Zeeden’s somewhat stooped figure stood Fiametta, on the
arm of a tall, slender elegant man.
Her eyes were large and clear and unsurprised, but full of a probing
curiosity and of a warm velvety sheen. To Myra it seemed as if those
eyes were not an arm’s length away from her, so distinctly could she
observe the play of the lids, the flecks of light on the brown iris, the
shadow of the lashes.
Those eyes were raised with a soft gleam to the man at her side as if
they had had more than enough of the scene before them. Her lips moved.
The man nodded in agreement. All three turned, and the curtain fell into
place behind them again.
Gisela seized a glass from the table and flung it with a bitter laugh at
the door. Giesbert and Kraft instantly caught her wrists. She resisted,
trying to free herself, but finally dropped her head on her breast, and
began to cry, loudly, unrestrainedly, hysterically.
The other people, occupied as they were with themselves, nevertheless
watched her attentively.
Myra began to tremble in every limb.
“Go!” she muttered. “I must go, must go, must go!”
She felt as if she would join in that strident weeping the next moment,
or throw herself on the floor, or overturn the table and trample the
glasses and bottles under her feet.
She was glad when she found herself in the street at last, in a cold
blue dawn, and still gladder to be in the taxi that they all took.
The air brought her to her senses. She felt beastly wretched.
She made the others swear not to cause any unnecessary commotion on the
stairs or in the halls. But the more she pleaded, the more exuberant
they became. Kramer had lost control completely. He was all for knocking
on Mrs. Meidinger’s door and ordering her to send him up a pretty girl.
“It’s no more than her duty,” he babbled. “She’s the mother of this
establishment. What’s to prevent her putting it on my bill, she puts
everything else on it.”
When Myra opened her door, Giesbert tried to crowd in after her. She
pushed him out, but he embraced her and a tussle ensued in the open door
in the course of which Giesbert hugged Myra and covered her face and
neck with passionate kisses.
Suddenly the door of the next room was opened with a bang, and Luisa
Peters emerged in an amazing big-checked dressing-gown, with her hair
done up for the night in two long smoothly plaited braids. She
forcefully commanded quiet.
Little Marga Luigi found her unexpected appearance so comical that she
bent double, shaking with laughter and pointing her finger at her.
Myra took advantage of Giesbert’s astonished about-face to slip into her
room where she shut and bolted the door.
She staggered against the bureau with which she supported herself,
trembling in every limb. Burning shame was devouring her, gnawing at her
inwardly, hollowing her out.
She bent double but she could not escape the incessant gnawing pain. She
wished she could get away, but she knew she did not have the courage or
the strength to pack a suitcase. But she must get away, at least out of
that house, before morning. It was unthinkable that she should ever
cross the dining-room again. Unthinkable, too, to wait for Mrs.
Meidinger to give her notice that she could not tolerate such a person
in her house.
She abhorred, she loathed herself. In addition she felt physically
wretched—dizziness, weariness, a galloping heart, the gall-like
bitterness with which the cocaine burned her jaws.
She felt that she must come to some decision, but she did not know what.
Her thoughts sought feverishly for something to which they could cling,
sought some person to whom they could confess, and who would have the
power to absolve them. She was seeking someone who would protect her
from herself, to whom she could kneel, in whose lap she could hide her
face, and who would lay kind, strong hands on her head.
“Mother!” a voice cried within her. “Mother!”
Her thoughts turned to Sophie—but Sophie repelled them. In that serene
little house, which had always been so comforting a refuge to her, she
would be a disturber of the peace. Not through any fault of hers, she
thought bitterly.
Olga—Olga alone was salvation. She would press the revolver to her
forehead, would think that it was Olga’s cool, firm hand.
And Olga’s hands would efface, erase, all the painful things, the shame,
the remorse, the disgust and grief and hopeless despair. In another
moment all that could be effaced.
And if she was dead the next morning, everything would be explained. Of
course, little Mara Luigi would not understand it: she would always
declare that Myra had been “so cheerful last night.”
But Fiametta would understand. She would recall the previous night. For
she had seen Myra, oh, Myra still felt the impact of her glance, and
Fiametta would hunch up her shoulders with a sudden shudder at the
thought that she had glanced at a dying woman.
Luisa Peters would say, “Poor child, she drank to find the courage.”
Sophie would be very shocked—perhaps she would be grieved too. But what
concern was that of Myra’s! Sophie had not given a thought as to what
became of Myra. And she had Nora....
It must happen quickly before anybody woke up in the house. In twenty
seconds it would be over—all over.
At that moment when she took the revolver out of the box, there was a
knock at the door.
Myra stood motionless, holding her breath. Perhaps she ought to do it
now, at once, quickly, spurred by that impatient knocking.
Then it would be over, then whoever was outside there could enter, for
all she cared.
Would it make a loud noise? Probably she wouldn’t hear it herself—she
hoped not, though of all the senses the ear must function the longest.
Ah, perhaps it wouldn’t happen so quickly, and she would hear them
breaking down the door and the shrieks and cries.
“Please, open the door!” called the voice outside; it was as pleading as
it was commanding. “Please, Miss Rudloff, open the door a moment!”
It was not Giesbert, or Mara Luigi, or one of the maids. It was Luisa
Peters.
Perhaps she was sick and needed someone. She would hardly be rattling
Myra’s door in the middle of the night to read her a moral lecture.
Myra tossed the revolver carelessly into the box and opened the door.
Luisa Peters forced her way into the room. She stood broad and robust,
and a little ridiculous in her big-checked dressing-gown, in spite of
her pale face.
Her quick alert eye instantly noticed the open box and the revolver with
the butt sticking out.
But she did not betray this by the slightest gesture.
“I must beg your pardon, Miss Rudloff,” she said with a good-natured
smile. “I complained because I thought that you came home in a rather
happy condition. But I saw at once that you weren’t well. You must lie
down immediately—you can hardly stand on your feet. Can I help you? You
had better believe, I know something about taking care of sick people!”
While she was speaking, she took Myra’s hat from her tangled hair. She
unbuttoned her dress. She held Myra like a doll, turning her this way
and that with her strong arms. She removed the hurting hair-pins from
the loosened knots.
Suddenly Myra felt the warm presence of a human being, felt those good,
strong, solicitous hands. It was as if all her festering wounds broke
open and warm blood washed away her pain. She began to weep,
unappeasable gentle tears, releasing her, rinsing her of pain.
“I am still too much a child,” she said, while the tears streamed down
her face. “You will think I am drunk—but I am perfectly serious. I am
still too much a child to run around the world so horribly alone!”
* * * * *
For three days Luisa Peters held Myra in gentle captivity. She did not
leave her alone for a moment, had her meals served in her room and
turned away everyone with the announcement that Myra was sick.
Myra was perfectly satisfied with this arrangement. She herself would
not have found the strength for this lie, and yet she felt the absolute
necessity of separating forever from all the people among whom she had
lived during the past year.
The very first day Luisa Peters endeavored to convince Myra—which did
not prove difficult—that her associations were altogether unsuitable and
that the best thing she could do would be to turn her back on that city
and all her so-called friends.
On the third, in the morning, she told Myra a great deal about her
native city, of its far-famed cleanliness for which she was constantly
longing, of its people who were reputed stiff and formal because they
did not wear their hearts on their sleeves—although they were honest and
courageous and pure. She told her, too, about her beautiful little
step-sister, Gwen, who was about Myra’s age, though still a child, the
carefully sheltered pet of the whole house. She would be a more suitable
companion for Myra than these horrible females here.
In the afternoon she helped Myra pack her suitcase. Myra wanted to go
away, to go to the clean city where the swift white little boats crossed
the blue waters.
Myra was quite touched by so much kindness and more so, if anything, by
Luisa’s confidence.
She smiled, a sad and knowing smile, when at parting Luisa Peters took
her in her arms and kissed her on both cheeks.
“At heart I’m at least ten years older than she,” she thought
sorrowfully, “for I know what, God be praised, she does not even
suspect—that she’s in love with me! Because she has little of the talent
of ‘the horrible females,’ she’ll never confess it to herself. Probably
she’d have to shoot herself, if she admitted it. God grant, that she
never becomes conscious.”
The only person whose hand Myra wished to shake once more was Eccarius.
There was much sympathy in his face. Perhaps Luisa Peters had informed
him of more than Myra gave her credit for knowing.
“There is something that you still have to tell me,” said Myra with an
attempt at smiling, “I’ve often thought of it on sleepless nights and
have wanted to ask you—and then I’ve always forgotten. Do you remember
when we were walking out to Mrs. Hersfeld’s one day”—a sudden shyness
prevented her from mentioning Sophie’s name—“I said that my motto would
be ‘Love life and be not afraid of death!’ But you wanted to turn the
motto around....”
“Yes,” Eccarius nodded gravely. “‘Love death and be not afraid of life!’
Or in other words, and this is my life’s motto, a good motto for a long
journey, ‘No one ought to die until he has learned to love death!’”