Christian and Ivan Becker entered. They forced their way through the
staring crowd. Christian had on his costly fur-coat. The agent stood
still and his jaw dropped. His men instinctively touched their caps.
Ivan Michailovitch wanted to close the door, but the woman in the big
hat stood on the threshold and would not stir. “The door should be
closed,” he said to the agent, who went forward and closed it, simply
thrusting the woman roughly back. Ivan asked whether the woman and her
children were to be evicted. The agent declared that she was unable
to pay her rent, that one extension of time after another had been
granted her, but that to continue would be to create disorder and
institute a bad example. Ivan Michailovitch answered that he understood
the situation. Then he turned to Christian, and repeated the words as
though he needed to translate them into another tongue: “She cannot
pay her rent.” A whistle sounded from without, and a woman screeched.
The agent opened the door, cried out a command, and slammed it again.
Silence ensued.
Frau Kroll was crouching among her children, her elbows dug into her
lap. She had a robust figure, and a bony face that was pale as dough
and deeply furrowed. It looked like the head of a corpse. The children
looked at her in terror: two were mother naked, and one of these had
the itch. The agent, assuming a benevolent tone, asked Ivan Becker
whether something was to be done for these people; he evidently did not
dare to address Christian. “I think we shall be able to do something
for them,” Ivan answered, and turned to Christian.
Christian heard and saw. He nodded rapidly, and gave an impression of
timidity and passionate zeal.
Christian’s attention somehow became fixed on a water jug with a
broken handle. The jug was stamped with a greenish pattern and the
banal arabesques bit into his mind. The snow-edged, slanting window
in the roof troubled him, and the sight of a single muddy boot. Next
a sad fascination came to him from a rope that dangled from the roof,
and from a little coal-oil lamp with a smoky chimney. His mere bodily
vision clung to these things. But they passed into his soul, and he
merged into oneness with them. He himself was that broken jug with its
green figures, the snow-edged window, the muddy boot, the dangling
rope, the smoky lamp. He was being transformed as in a melting furnace,
shape glided into shape; and although he was objectively aware of
what was taking place and also of the people--the beggar, the woman,
the children, Ivan Michailovitch, the agent, and those who waited
outside--yet it cost him a passionate effort to keep them outside of
himself for yet a little while, until they should plunge down upon his
soul with their torment, despair, cruelty, and madness, like wild dogs
throwing themselves upon a bone.
A sigh escaped him; a disturbed and fleeting smile hovered about his
lips. One of the children, a boy of four, clad in a shapeless rag, came
to him, and gazed up at him as though he were a tower. At once the eyes
of the others were fixed on him too. At least, he felt them. His breast
seemed a fiery crucible upborne and held high by the boy’s emaciated
arms. In a moment he had filled his hand with gold pieces, and by a
gesture encouraged the child to hold out its hands. He poured the gold
into them. But they could grasp only a few. The coins rolled on the
floor, and the people there watched them in dumb amazement.
He drew out his wallet, took from it with trembling fingers every bank
note it held, looked about, and approached the cowering woman. Then
suddenly there seized him a strange contempt for his own erectness
while she crouched on the floor. And so he kneeled, kneeled down beside
her, and let the notes slip into her lap. He did not know how much
money there was. But it was found later that the sum was four thousand
six hundred marks. He arose and took Ivan’s arm, and the latter
understood his glance.
There was a breathless silence when they left. The agent and his men,
the lodgers, the children--all seemed turned to stone. The woman
stared at the wealth in her lap. Then she uttered a loud cry and lost
consciousness. The little boy played with the pieces of gold, and they
clinked as only gold can, faintly sweet and without hardness.
Below, in the street, Ivan Michailovitch said to Christian: “That you
kneeled down before her--that was it, and that alone! The gift--there
was something fateful in it to me and something bitter! But that you
kneeled down beside her--ah, that was it!” And with a sudden gesture
he lifted himself on his toes, and took Christian’s head between his
hands, and kissed him with a kiss that was a breath upon the forehead.
Then he murmured a word of farewell, and hurried down the street
without looking at the waiting car.
Christian ordered the chauffeur to drive out to Christian’s Rest.
Two hours later he was there, in deep quietude, the quietude that he
needed. He telephoned his family that unforeseen events had prevented
him from staying to the end of the evening’s festivities, but that he
would be present at the ceremony of Judith’s marriage without fail.
Then he retired to the farthest room of his house, and held vigil all
night.