Crammon and Christian had been spending a week with Clementine and
Franz Lothar von Westernach in Styria. Clementine had summoned Crammon
for the sake of her brother, who had recently returned from a stay in
Hungary with a deeply shaken mind.
Crammon and Franz Lothar were very old friends. The latter’s profession
of diplomacy had made the frank and flexible man reserved and
difficult. He took his profession seriously, although he did not love
it. A hypochondriacal state of the nerves had developed in him, even in
his youth.
Christian’s sympathy went out to him in his present state. He felt
tempted to question the man who sat so still and with a dim stare in
his eyes. Clementine, in her empty chattering manner, gave Crammon
directions for his behaviour, at which he shrugged his shoulders.
She said that she had written to her cousin, Baron Ebergeny, on whose
estate in Syrmia Franz had been a guest. But the baron, who was half a
peasant, had been able to give her no explanation of any real import.
He had merely pointed out that he and Franz Lothar, on one of the last
days of the latter’s presence, had witnessed the burning of a barn at
Orasje, a neighbouring village, during which many people had lost their
lives.
No information was to be obtained from Franz Lothar himself. He
was steadily silent. His sister redoubled her care, but his sombre
reticence only increased. Perhaps Crammon was capable of some tone,
some glance, that pierced and melted his petrified soul. One evening,
at all events, the unexpected happened. Crammon learnt that the burning
of the barn was the real cause of his morbid melancholy.
According to her custom, Clementine had gone to bed early. Christian,
Crammon, and Franz Lothar sat silently together. Suddenly--without any
external impetus--Franz covered his face with his hands, and deep sobs
came from his breast. Crammon sought to soothe him. He stroked his hair
and grasped his hands. In vain. The sobbing became a convulsion that
shook the man’s body violently.
Christian sat without moving. A bitterness rose in his throat, for
there came to him with unexpected power a sense of the essential
reality of the spiritual pain that was being uttered here.
The convulsion ceased as suddenly as it had begun. Franz Lothar arose,
walked up and down with dragging footsteps, and said: “You shall hear
how it was.” Thereupon he sat down and told them.
In the village of Orasje a dance had been planned. No hall was
available, and so the large, well-boarded barn of a peasant was
prepared. Numerous lamps were hung up, and the wooden walls adorned
with flowers and foliage. According to a local custom, the magnates on
all the neighbouring estates and their families received invitations to
attend the festivity. A mounted messenger delivered these solemnly by
word of mouth.
Franz Lothar begged his brother to take him to the peasants’ ball.
He had long heard stories in praise of the picturesqueness of these
feasts: the snow-white garments of the men, the strong and varied
colours of the women’s, the national dances, the primitive music. There
was a promise in all these, both of pleasure and of a knowledge of new
folk-ways.
They intended to drive over at a late hour when the dancing had already
begun. Two young countesses and the latters’ brother, all members of
their circle, planned to join them. But in the end the others went
first, for the young ladies did not want to miss any of the dancing.
Franz Lothar had long and cordially admired the Countess Irene, who was
the older of the two.
Several days before the ball, however, a quarrel had broken out
between the youths and maidens of Orasje. On the way to church, a
lad, whom a seventeen-year-old beauty had given too rude an evidence
of her dislike, had put a live mouse on her naked shoulder. The girl
ran crying to her companions, and they sent an envoy to the youths,
demanding that the guilty one apologize.
The demand was refused. There was laughter and teasing. But they
insisted on this punishment, although they were repeated their demand
in a more drastic form. When it was refused a second time they
determined to invite to their ball the young men of Gradiste, between
whom and those of Orasje there was a feud of many years’ standing.
They knew the insult they were inflicting on the youths of their own
village. But they insisted on this punishment, although they were
warned even by their fathers and mothers, and by loud and silent
threats which should have inspired them with fear.
The youths of Gradiste were, of course, loudly triumphant over their
cheap victory. On the evening of the dance they appeared without
exception, handsomely dressed, and accompanied by their own village
band. Of the youths of Orasje not one was to be seen. In the twilight
they passed in ghostly procession through the streets of the village,
and were then seen no more.
The elders and the married folk of Orasje sat at tables in their yards
and gardens, and chatted. But they were not as care-free as on other
festive evenings, for they felt the vengeful mood of their sons, and
feared it. They drank their wine and listened to the music. In the barn
over three hundred young people were assembled. The air was sultry, and
the dancers were bathed in sweat. Suddenly, while they were dancing a
Czarda, the two great doors of the barn were simultaneously slammed to
from without. Those who saw it and heard it ceased dancing. And now
a powerful and disturbing noise broke in upon the loud and jubilant
sound of the instruments. It was the sound of hammers, and a sharp and
terror-shaken voice called out: “They are nailing up the doors.”
The music stopped. In a moment the atmosphere had become suffocating.
As though turned to stone, they all stared at the doors. Their blood
seemed to congeal under the terrible blows of the hammers. Loud and
mingled voices came to them from without. The older people there raised
their protesting voices. The voices grew loud and wild, and then rose
to desperate shrieks and howls. Then it began to crackle and hiss. The
blows of the hammers had shaken down a lamp. The petroleum had caught
on fire, and the dry boarding of the floor flared like tinder that
could no longer be extinguished.
All reason and all human restraints fled. In the twinkling of an eye
the three hundred became like wild beasts. With the violence of mania
the youths hurled themselves against the locked doors; but these
had been built of heavy oak, and resisted all exertions. The girls
shrieked madly; and since the smoke and the fumes did not all float
out through the cracks in the walls and through the small, star-shaped
window-holes, the girls drew up their skirts about their heads. Others
threw themselves moaning to the floor; and when they were trodden on by
the others, who surged so madly to and fro, they writhed convulsively,
and stretched out their arms. Soon the dry woodwork had become a mass
of flame. The heat was intolerable. Many tore off their garments, both
youths and maidens, and in the terror and the torment of death, united
in the wild embraces of a sombre ecstasy, and wrung from their doomed
lives an ultimate sting of delight.
These embracing couples Franz Lothar saw later with his own eyes as
lumps of cinders amid the smoking ruins. He arrived with his cousin,
when the whole horror had already taken place. They had seen the
reflection of the flames in the sky from afar, and whipped up their
horses. From the neighbouring villages streamed masses of people. But
they came too late to help. The barn had been burned down within five
minutes, and all within, except five or six, had found their death.
Among the victims was also the Countess Irene, her sister and brother.
Terrible as this was, it added but little to the unspeakable horror
of the whole catastrophe. The image of that place of ruins; the sight
of the smouldering corpses; their odour and the odour of blood and
burned hair and garments; the pied, short-haired village dogs, who
crept with greedy growls about this vast hearth of cooked flesh; the
distorted faces of the suffocated, whose bodies lay untouched amid the
other burned and blackened ones; the loud or silent grief of mothers,
fathers, brothers; the Syrmian night, fume-filled to the starry
sky,--these things rained blow on blow upon the spirit of Franz Lothar,
and caused a black despair to creep into the inmost convolutions of his
brain.
It eased him that he had at last found the release of speech. He sat by
the window, and looked out into the dark.
Crammon, a sinister cloud upon his lined forehead, said: “Only with a
whip can the mob be held in leash. What I regret is the abolition of
torture. The devil take all humanitarian twaddle!” Then he went out and
put his arms about Lothar and kissed him.
But Christian felt a sense of icy chill and rigidness steal over him.
Their departure was set for the next morning. Crammon entered the room
of Christian, who was so lost in thoughts that he did not reply to the
greeting of his friend. “Look here, what’s wrong with you?” Crammon
exclaimed, as he examined him. “Have you looked in the glass?”
Christian had dispensed with his valet on this trip, or the slight
accident could not have happened. The colours of his suit and his
cravat presented an obvious discord.
“I’m rather absent-minded to-day,” Christian said, half-smiling. He
took off the cravat, and replaced it by another. It took him three
times as long as usual. Crammon walked impatiently up and down.