Gwen and Myra were sitting in a compartment of the moving train. Two
elderly ladies, black, stiff and erect, were sitting opposite, watching
them sharply.
From time to time, Fred would come through the aisle and make faces,
with the desired result that Gwen nearly died laughing.
But if she controlled herself with an effort, she did everything in her
power to make Myra laugh.
“Such shamelessness,” she said with pretended indignation. “Just see how
that fellow stares in here every time he passes. Next time I’m going to
report him to the conductor.”
With an offended mien, she pushed her travelling cap on tighter in order
to lean back and cross her legs.
But Myra was not to be made to laugh by any such antic.
“Oh, don’t imagine that he stares in here because he likes your
appearance!” she said quietly. “He is either a criminal or a detective
looking for a criminal. You can see that at a glance.”
“Good heavens, no!” Gwen continued the game in the highest spirits.
“Don’t frighten the wits out of me! I read such a horrible story the
other day—about a hardened criminal who was travelling in women’s
clothes. Of course he was smooth shaven. But he had such a heavy growth
of beard that he had to shave twice a day.” She spoke in a low voice,
though just loud enough so that attentive ears could catch every word.
With that her glance strayed with intentional carelessness over the
rather downy face of the lady sitting opposite. “Just imagine, he was
alone in the compartment with a young woman, on a long journey, and she
saw—of course, at first she thought she must be mistaken—but she saw
more and more distinctly that the face of the lady sitting opposite was
gradually becoming covered with a growth of stubble! It must have been
terrible! I think I’d have died of shock. As it was, I made a resolution
never to travel alone. That’s why I begged you so hard to come with me
today.”
“I was glad to do it,” Myra assumed a worried expression, “if only Emma
will take good care of the children. Bubbie was coughing so hard again
this morning.”
This was too much even for Gwen. For a moment she stared at Myra’s
immobile, serious face, then she burst out laughing, covering her mouth
with her handkerchief and coughing in spasms.
When at last they got off the train, they stood on the platform doubled
up with laughter.
Myra stared after the departing coaches. She had not been mistaken—a
black-gloved hand rubbed the window clean, and a pointed nose was poked
against it. An attentive glance followed her.
Gwen raised her hand to wave farewell, but Myra held her arm.
“Don’t,” Gwen tried to tear her arm away. “What do I care for the old
witches? Good-bye, dear train, run along or run off the track! No,
better not do that, there may be some nice people on you!”
“Come,” said Myra, “Fred is standing here closing and buckling his
travelling bag, just in order not to attract attention—like a real
detective. But we agreed that we should leave the station first. Come.
He’s looking quite desperately in our direction.”
They passed through the gates and the waiting-room out on to the street,
which lay in a glare of sunlight. Five minutes later, Fred approached
and tipped his hat.
“If I may make a suggestion to you ladies,” said Fred, “we will get my
travelling bag from the station now, and armed with that, you can seek
accommodations at a hotel. Ladies without luggage—that would never do!
And you can’t tell every chambermaid and waiter the story about the lost
last train.”
“And you?” asked Gwen.
“I’ll borrow some kind of a suitcase from an acquaintance. We can
provide ourselves with the most essential requisites for spending the
night here on our way to the station. Then you can pack them in my bag
and betake yourselves to the ‘Emperor’. In the meantime, I’ll look up my
friend, Schmid, and borrow a suitcase with which to inspire confidence.
In half an hour I’ll come to the hotel, go to the dining-room, and be
insanely astonished to find you there. Agreed?”
“Splendid!” Gwen was again dancing for joy.
“Stop! Stop! Stop! No pirouettes and toe-dancing, if you please! I
beseech you, Miss Myra, watch out for the child, she’s going to queer us
in the hotel and all over town. I don’t know whether I dare leave you
alone with her for half an hour.”
“It is only your presence that makes her so exuberant,” Myra assured
him. “When she is alone with me, she is perfectly rational.”
“Indeed!” There was an odd twitch at the corners of Fred’s lips, his
short sharp glance flew from Myra’s face to Gwen’s.
* * * * *
The early twilight had already fallen. Gwen drew the yellow curtains
over the windows and turned on all the electric lights—the chandelier,
the lamp on the night-table, the bulb over the wash-basin and the
commode—so that the big hotel room was bathed in light.
“That’s how I like it.” She drew herself up like a purring kitten. “I
must have light and warmth.” She tried the register under the window, a
scorching heat poured out. “It’s beautiful! Like that! I detest a cold
bedroom. At home the heat is always partially turned off because mamma
thinks it’s unhealthy to sleep in a warm room. When I’m married, my
bedroom will have to be as hot as a hot-house, so that I can sleep
without a night-gown or covers!”
She opened Fred’s bag and took out their small purchases. When that was
done, she rummaged on.
“Just see all the things he has in here! Wonderful soap, smell it, Myra!
We’ll just keep it here. And a mouth-wash too. Shaving cream—we don’t
need that. My God, how many brushes! Splendid, buckskin slippers. Not
having any slippers with me is the most unpleasant part. I hate running
around bare hotel floors in my bare feet. I must see what kind of
pajamas he has. Violet and white. Very pretty. Do you want to wear
pajamas? I think they’re very uncomfortable. But they’re very nice to
take breakfast in in the morning. Do you know, I think they’re better
looking on homely people than on pretty ones. Because you don’t see
their necks and arms. But I’d like to wear them sometime just to see if
they suit me, _bleu électrique_ perhaps. And you must have strawberry
ones, not _fraise_, but strawberry-colored. Judging by the French-German
color designations, the French really are color-blind. We call _fraise,
fraise écrassée_, and are surprised that we’ve never seen
_fraise_-colored strawberries! Have you never had a shop-girl tell you,
‘We haven’t got that in blue, only in _bleu_’? Oh, the world is too
idiotic. I have such a craving for some good alcohol. What drink do you
like best? Do you want the right hand bed or the left? I suppose I’ll
have to do up my hair again. Shall I wear the cap? It’s probably the
most ladylike-looking. Are you ready? Shall we go down? How is it that
your hair is always faultless? It isn’t so much shorter than mine. Do I
look presentable? From the rear, from the front, from all sides? All
right, then give me a kiss and come.”
Gwen turned again on the stairs. She brandished the key of their room at
Myra before dropping it into her purse.
“The key! I took it out of the lock. They mustn’t find a gentleman’s bag
with shaving materials and pajamas in our room. Fred must take it away
as soon as he comes.”
Myra was a little frightened at the big bright dining-room. She had
completely forgotten how to look for a table, how to treat waiters, how
to run over a wine-card. It was like an examination. And the worst of it
was, that she could not defer the answer to these questions with a
“We’re expecting someone.”
As they entered, her first glance rested on a mirror, and in that mirror
she saw Fred’s face. He was glancing up over the paper, which he held in
both hands. His eyes, which were big and candid and of a deep luminous
blue, looked a greeting at her. From his glance, from his firm bright
face issued a current of repose and security.
How good that he was here! How good that he was here!
Presently she saw his broad shoulders and fair head in front of the
mirror.
Gwen began to giggle and nudge Myra. She made a motion as if she
intended to rush over and frighten him by a slap on the shoulder. But
Myra held her arm tightly.
“He has seen us,” she said softly, “just walk past as if you didn’t
notice him.”
Myra heard his chair scrape behind them and his quick, long stride.
They greeted one another with complete astonishment. Fred looked for a
larger table—he had purposely seated himself at a small one—and ordered
the waiter to bring over his things.
Carefully he selected a small supper and a good wine.
“Afterwards, we will have champagne,” he said when the waiter was out of
ear-shot. “Of course,” with a hunch of his shoulders, “I will happen on
the idea when he’s here. ‘Really, my dear ladies, we must celebrate this
meeting with champagne!’ Doesn’t that sound quite credible?”
“Very,” Myra agreed with a laugh.
“Good heavens, the bag!” Gwen put her hand to her open mouth in terror,
glancing from one to the other with her big frightened child’s eyes.
“Fred, you must take your bag out of our room! What will the maid think
of us? But don’t get caught, or they’ll have you arrested as a thief!
That would be a wonderful joke. Watch, I’ll give you the key without
anyone’s noticing.”
She rummaged in her purse, which she held under the table on her lap,
drew out the key, squeezing it tight in her effort to hide it in her
little hand, and thrust her clenched fist under the table.
Fred took the key from her, and slipping it into his trousers pocket,
leaned back laughing in his chair.
“Wonderful!” he said, showing his firm white teeth, “now the whole room
has seen you pass me the key without anyone’s noticing you! Well, I
don’t mind. I don’t feel that I’m compromised any further. You look
pretty enough!”
He said it rather disdainfully, with a mocking twitch at the corner of
his mouth. But his lowered eyes ran over Gwen with a glance in which
there was something intimately appraising, and at the same time, burning
and absorbing.
“What am I doing here?” thought Myra with a sudden pang. “Why must I be
the witness of their affection? Simply because they want to guard their
reputation? Ridiculous. They have certainly been alone together a
hundred times before. They can’t be afraid that something will happen
that has never happened yet. These two people know one another
completely and without reserves. I’ve been aware of it for months. How
could I have forgotten it again? What am I doing here?”
Fred filled his glass.
“To good honest comradeship!” he said.
“I’ll drink to that!” Myra raised her glass.
Fred tried to meet her glance with serious, candid eyes. “You’re a born
comrade,” he said sincerely. “Loyal, clever, reticent and daring. You
know, we often visualize people in another age, with different lives, in
other rôles, so to speak. When I visualize you, it is always a thousand
years ago, in the days of the knights and minnesingers. Then I see you
in an esquire’s costume, following your chosen loved one. There are such
figures in the old songs and sagas, and even in my boyhood they always
stirred my emotion and admiration. A heroic maiden, without personal
ambition, but all for love, enduring all hardships, sharing all doughty
deeds, chided and praised, but never receiving the wages of passion
until some time in the tumult of battle she receives a blow or a thrust,
and the knight himself carries his faithful esquire into the tent in his
arms. Then as he peels off the boy’s doublet a woman’s body lies
exposed.”
“Don’t you think he has talent?” teased Gwen. “He should run more with
poets. And what am I? Utter yourself, Mr. Wietinghoff, in what rôle do
you prefer to visualize me?”
“You are an unmistakable child of the twentieth century,” said Fred
scornfully, “silly and precocious, spoiled and childish, fond of dress
and arrogant....”
Gwen stamped her feet on the floor and opened her mouth for an
unmannerly outcry, but Fred hastened to pacify her.
“But sweet,” he said hastily, “quite charming into the bargain,
irresistible, enthralling, entrancing, enchanting!”
“It seems so,” laughed Gwen. “How did I ever enchant you that you’re so
frightfully silly? Drink, children, I find the wine glorious and life a
wonderfully beautiful affair.”
Myra drank to her. The wine made her nerves tingle warmly.
“Comrade,” she thought, “a beautiful, a dear word. Comrade! I would like
to be that, and I can be. Comradeship. That is my strength. But nobody
has ever required it of me yet. I can be a comrade to this little girl
and a comrade to this man. Whether they have other relations with one
another or not, makes no difference to me, doesn’t affect me. Strange,
nobody has ever yet wanted me for a comrade, not even Olga. And yet I
feel as if a key to my inner nature has been given me in those words. I
feel as if I could see into and recognize what is within me. I will
always be grateful to Fred for giving me that clue.”
They all remained in a good mood. Sometimes Gwen laughed so wantonly
that Fred or Myra had to quiet her. Sometimes there was a humorous
allusion which Myra did not understand. But she was no longer hurt by
it. A good comrade must be trusting and patient in all matters. Must be
able to overhear what he does not understand. And must be forever alert,
must listen with ears peeled for a cry of need addressed to him.
At the entrance to their room Fred said good night. He lingered over
both their hands as he kissed them, though not a fraction of a second
longer over one than over the other. But he carried Gwen’s fingers to
his lips and gazed piercingly into her eyes. He bowed his head low over
Myra’s hand.
“Tomorrow we’ll go to the sea!” Gwen danced exuberantly across the room.
“Myra, sweet Myra, isn’t life beautiful? And isn’t it marvellous to go
on a spree with Fred? Aren’t you fascinated by him? Well, something like
that, you don’t have to be afraid of telling me, I’m not jealous! Only I
won’t let myself be put out of business.... But otherwise.... You are a
little in love with him, you don’t have to be afraid to tell me.”
“I think you’re rather tipsy, little mouse,” said Myra, smiling. “It’s
high time that you crept into your bed.”
“Yes, high time—high time,” Gwen hummed softly. She undressed while she
danced around the room, strewing her things on tables and chairs. “But
I’m not tired. Are you tired, Myra? I hope not.”
“Why not? What have you got up your sleeve?”
“Oh, I’m going to the ball with you tonight, to the ‘feather ball.’
Didn’t you use to say that when you were a child? It’s silly, isn’t it?
All children have the same stupid expressions and always think they’re
wonderfully witty, and can repeat them a thousand times over. But when
you grow older you don’t want to hear the best joke or eat the most
beautiful dish twice. Really sad, isn’t it? Or as Fred would say, ‘The
eternal hunger for what is new drives us on.’ Otherwise we’d swing
around in a circle like horses on a merry-go-round. Therefore, long live
the urge to change! What’s taking you so everlastingly long, Myra? I’m
getting into bed already.”
But she did not get into bed at once. She ran about the room in her
undershirt, putting this and that in order and looking for something
here, and wasted time chattering and loitering.
Myra was already in bed. “You’ll catch cold,” she said, shaking her
head. “How can you dawdle around that way? You were ready a half hour
ago. Turn out the unnecessary lights and creep into bed.”
Gwen stretched her bare arms over her head.
“I am so restless,” she complained, “can’t you understand. Ah, Myra, you
always act as if you were made of ice and snow. Really don’t you feel
the wine going through your veins and thudding up against your heart,
again and again.” She struck her breast regularly with her clenched
fist. “And can’t you feel that it’s spring outside? Have you no longer
any roots in the earth so that you can’t feel how the sap is fermenting
in you—in you, as in every tree and bush.”
She stopped beside the bureau and laid her arms and her forehead against
the smooth wood.
“Sometimes I think that a poor mistreated, sawed up, polished piece of a
tree like this still has a spark of life in it. And in spring, when the
great orgy is preparing, it begins to feel a pulse and twitching in its
poor polished wood. Feel it, there’s a throb like the soft beating of a
heart in it. Then I think that the furniture is pleased with me. It
feels my life frothing over, and that fulfills its desire and gives it
rest, Myra!” With a bound she was on the edge of the bed, and was
shaking Myra by the shoulders. “Are you more lifeless than that dead
wood? It isn’t true and I don’t believe you are like that!”
She threw her arms around Myra, burrowing with her head among the
pillows.
“Why don’t you like me, Myra?” she whispered in her ear. “Tell me, is it
because you are in love with Fred? It isn’t true that you’ve never been
in love with a woman. And it isn’t true that you could not love me....”
“Love?” said Myra in a toneless voice. “What do you call love?”
“I call love making someone happy—and making myself happy by doing so. I
call everything else friendship or idolizing or infatuation, infatuation
at most. I want to know what you have against me!”
She knelt on the edge of the bed, tearing the night-gown from her
shoulders like a mad woman.
“You must look at me! You must look at me! Where have I any defect that
could repel you?”
“You are very beautiful,” said Myra with a painful smile.
“Oh, but you are more!” Gwen threw herself upon Myra, and kissed her
mouth and eyelids, her neck and cheeks.
“I don’t want her,” thought Myra. “She has opened her heart to me and I
have not urged her on. I am his comrade, I am his comrade....”
Rosy red waves surged up. They swept from her heart, over her throat up
to her eyes. The room seemed to reel, as if the walls were struggling
for breath, as if their heart were palpitating by fits and starts.
Suddenly everything went still and bright. Like a dazzling light, like
the blare of a trumpet.
Perhaps a board had creaked in the floor very softly.
Myra started up, alert, sober.
Something was in the room that had not been there before.
A violet blotch. And topping it, Fred’s face.
Fred’s eyes. Burning. Greedy. Completely unveiled like the eyes of
rutting animals. Perfectly naked eyes.
Myra did not cry out.
She threw off the soft body that lay choking her.
A catch-phrase flashed through her mind which she could not forget
again. It was the only thing she could think of, and her mind kept
repeating it over and over.
“A put up job. All a put up job!”
She sat up and reached for her clothes.
At that moment Fred sprang at her.
“Myra,” he stammered, “my sweetest one!”
She slapped his face with the palm of her hand.
He had been prepared for resistance, for kicking, scratching and
biting—he would have vanquished her laughingly. But the blow made him
stagger back.
Myra slipped into her clothes.
“A put up job,” she thought, “a put up job!”
Her hands did not shake in spite of her frantic haste. Not until she was
dressed did she cast a quick glance at Fred.
The mark of her hand on his pale face burned like a fiery brand. The
wide lids were quivering over his eyes.
A strange feeling took possession of Myra. A furious joy, “I caught him
a good one.” And then a dawning realization, “This is the first time
that I have ever touched that handsome face—that handsome face.”
She had never formulated it before in thought, it was as if her hands
had always longed to stroke that face.
An unutterable sorrow filled her heart. As if she had possessed
something beautiful and precious and was first aware of it when it lay
ruthlessly shattered and broken at her feet.
She walked quietly to and fro in the room, collecting her things. When
she had to pass Fred she walked around him. He did not look at her, but
he felt it and shuddered.
Gwen had crept out of her bed. She sat pink and naked on the big feather
comforter. She had hunched up her shoulders and was playing rather
embarrassedly with her toes.
The door to the adjoining room stood open. It was the door through which
Fred had entered.
“A put up job,” thought Myra, “a put up job!”
She went with her hat and coat on to that door. With her hand on the
latch, she stopped.
“I am going into the next room,” she said quietly. “I have no desire to
leave the hotel in the middle of the night. I will go at seven and leave
the door into the hall open.”
Fred turned.
“Miss Rudloff,” he said hoarsely, “Miss Rudloff!”
His two dark eyes in his pale face were like two open wounds.
Myra closed the door behind her and threw the bolt with a creak.
She did not turn on the light.
She knew, she sensed—there were things everywhere, strange things, his
things.
After quite a long while she heard voices from the adjoining room, high
and low, muffled and suppressed, but audible.
“Dear God, what won’t I have to hear,” she thought. “Dear God, give me
strength, give me strength. Let me die, if you can, but don’t let me go
insane, so that I will do something—something perfectly terrible....”
But the worst thing was the odor in the room. The smell of cigarettes,
the delicate scent of Russian leather, of soap, of vinegar.
Myra threw the window wide open and moved a chair up to it. The night
was cold. Myra trembled no matter how snugly she wrapped herself in her
coat.
She thought of the city which she would leave. Where would she go
now—whither?
Should she let herself be driven on, homeless, restless, the quarry of
passionate desire?
Or die?
Yes, if she could but have believed in sleep.
But stronger at this moment than ever before she felt undeniably,
inviolably, that there was in her something indestructible.
She was quite humble before that which she felt within her, with the
humility of a mother who feels a strange life stir in her womb.
“My poor soul,” she said softly, “what have I done to you? Why have I
never thought of taking care of and helping you? Why did I always want
to set you wandering in the cold space between the stars? Poor soul, why
do I have you, if you merely suffer on my account and I on yours?
Sometime I shall know, sometime I shall learn all. I would not like to
die, no, I would not like to die before I know why I have lived.”
The memory of Eccarius crossed her mind—“No one ought to die before he
has learned to love death.”
“No, I do not love death. I do not fear him, but I do not love him. I
will learn to love him. I will live in order to learn to love death.
Perhaps that is why we have to live. And perhaps that is why we have to
suffer.”
The voices in the next room hushed. The strange familiar odor had
disappeared from the room.
In the sky the stars were paling before the first feeble light of a
dawning March morning.