Christian wondered whether Amadeus would come. Two days passed in
slightly depressing suspense.
He had really intended to go to Waldleiningen to look after his horses.
Sometimes he could actually see their spirited yet gentle eyes, their
velvet coats, and that fine nervousness that vibrated between dignity
and restiveness. He recalled with pleasure the very odour of the
stables.
The pure bred Scotch horse which he had bought of Denis Lay was to run
in the spring races. His grooms told him that the beautiful animal had
been in poor form for some weeks, and he thought that perhaps it missed
his tender hand. Nevertheless he did not go to Waldleiningen.
On the third day Amadeus Voss sent a gardener to ask whether he might
call that evening. Instead Christian went down to the forester’s house
that afternoon at four, and knocked at the door.
Voss looked at him suspiciously. With the instinct of the oppressed
classes he divined the fact that Christian wanted to keep him from his
house. But Christian was far from being as clear about his own motives
as Amadeus suspected. He scented a danger. Some magic in it drew him on
half-consciously to go forth to meet it.
Looking about in the plain but clean and orderly room Christian saw on
the tinted wall above the bed white slips of paper on which verses of
Scripture had been copied in a large hand. One was this: “He was led
as a sheep to the slaughter; and like a lamb dumb before his shearer,
so opened he not his mouth.” And another was this: “For it is a day of
trouble, and of treading down, and of perplexity by the Lord God of
hosts in the valley of vision, breaking down the walls, and of crying
to the mountains.” And this other: “The Lord said unto me, Within a
year, within the years of an hireling, and all the glory of Kedar shall
fail.” And finally there was this: “I know thy works, that thou art
neither cold nor hot; I would thou were cold or hot. So then because
thou art lukewarm, and neither cold or hot, I will spue thee out of my
mouth.”
* * * * *
Christian looked at Amadeus Voss long and curiously. Then he asked,
in a very careful voice, and yet not without an inevitable tinge of
worldly mockery: “Are you very religious?”
Amadeus frowned and answered: “Whether I answer one way or the other
it will mean equally little to you. Did you come to cross-question
me? Have we anything in common that an answer to that question could
reveal? Amadeus Voss and Christian Wahnschaffe--are those not the
names of sundered poles? What image is there that could express the
differences that divide us? Your faith and mine! And such things are
possible on the same earth!”
“Was your youth especially hard?” Christian asked, innocently.
Voss gave a short laugh, and looked at Christian sidewise. “D’you know
what meal days are? Of course you don’t. Well, on such days you get
your meals at strangers’ houses who feed you out of charity. Each day
of the week you’re with another family. Each week repeats the last.
Not to be thought ungrateful you must be obedient and modest. Even if
your stomach revolts at some dish, you must pretend it’s a delicacy.
If the grandfather laughs, you must laugh too; if an uncle thinks
he’s a wit, you must grin. If the daughter of the house chooses to be
insolent, you must be silent. If they respond to your greeting, it’s a
great favour; the worn overcoat with ragged lining they gave you when
winter came binds you in eternal gratitude. You come to know all the
black moods of all these people with whom you sit at table, all their
shop-worn opinions, their phrases and hypocritical expressions; and for
the necessary hour of each day you must learn to practise its special
kind of dissembling. That is the meaning of meal days.”
He got up, walked to and fro, and resumed his seat. “The devil appeared
to me early,” he said in a hollow voice. “Perhaps I took a certain
experience of my childhood more grievously to heart than others,
perhaps the poison of it filtered deeper into me. But you cannot
forget. It is graven upon my soul that my drunken father beat my
mother. He did it every Saturday night with religious regularity. That
image is not to be obliterated.”
Christian did not take his eyes from the face of Amadeus.
Softly, and with a rigid glance, Voss continued: “One night before
Easter, when I was eight years old, he beat her again. I rushed into
the yard, and cried out to the neighbours for help. Then I looked up
at the window, and I saw my mother stand there wringing her hands in
despair. And she was naked.” And his voice almost died into silence as
he added: “Who is it that dare see his own mother naked?”
Again he arose and wandered about the room. He was so full of himself
that his speech seemed indeed addressed to himself alone. “Two things
there are that made me reflect and wonder even in my childhood.
First, the very many poor creatures, whom my father reported because
they stole a little wood, and who were put in prison. I often heard
some poor, little old woman or some ragged half-starved lad beg for
mercy. There was no mercy here. My father was the forester, and had
to do his duty. Secondly, there were the many rich people who live
in this part of the country in their castles, on their estates, in
their hunting-lodges, and to whom nothing is denied that their wildest
impulses demand. Between the two one stands as between two great
revolving cylinders of steel. One is sure to be crushed to bits in the
end.”
For a while he gazed into emptiness. “What is your opinion of an
informer?” he asked, suddenly.
Christian answered with a forced smile: “It’s not a good one.”
“Listen to me. In the seminary I had a fellow-student named Dippel.
His gifts were moderate, but he was a decent chap and a hard worker.
His father was a signalman on the railroad--one of the very poor, and
his son was his one hope and pride. Dippel happened to be acquainted
with a painter in whose studio he came across an album of photographs
displaying the female form in plastic poses. The adolescent boy gazed
at them again and again, and finally begged the painter to lend him the
album. Dippel slept in my dormitory. I was monitor, and I soon observed
the crowding and the sensuous atmosphere about Dippel, who had shown
the pictures to a few friends. It was like a spreading wound. I went
into the matter and ruthlessly confiscated the pictures. I informed the
faculty. Dippel was summoned, sternly examined, and expelled. Next day
we found him swinging dead from the apple tree.”
Christian’s face flushed hotly. The tone of equanimity with which it
was recited was more repulsive than the story itself.
Amadeus Voss continued: “You think that was a contemptible action. But
according to the principles that had been impressed on us I was merely
doing my duty. I was sixteen; and I seemed to be, and was, in a dark
hole. I needed to get out to the air and light. I was like one squeezed
in by a great throng, who cannot see what happens beyond. The fumes of
impatience throttled me, and everything in me cried out for space and
light. It was like living on the eternally dark side of the moon. I was
afraid of the might of evil; and all that I heard of men was more or
less evil. The scales rose and fell in my breast. There are hours in
which one can either become a murderer or die on the cross. I yearned
for the world. Yet I prayed much in those days, and read many books of
devotion, and practised cruel penances. Late at night, when all others
slept, a priest found me absorbed in prayer with the hair-shirt about
my body. During mass or choral singing an incomparable and passionate
devotion streamed through me. But then again I saw flags in the streets
of the city, or well-dressed women, or I stood in the railway station,
and a train of luxurious cars seemed to mock me. Or I saw a man who had
hurled himself out of a window and whose brains spattered the pavement,
and he seemed to cry out to me: Brother, brother! Then the evil one
arose in bodily form and I desired to clutch him. Yes, evil has bodily
form and only evil--injustice, stupidity, lying, all the things that
are repulsive to one to the very core, but which one must embrace and
be, if one has not been born with a silver spoon in one’s mouth. To
save a ray of light for myself, I learned to play the organ. It helped
little. What does music matter, or poems or beautiful pictures, or
noble buildings, or books of philosophy, or the whole magnificent world
without? I cannot reach myself. Between me and that real self there is
something--what is it? A wall of red-hot glass. Some are accursed from
the beginning. If I ask: how could the curse be broken? there is but
one answer: the monstrous would need to come to pass, the unimaginable!
Thus it is with me.”
Christian was shocked. “What do you mean by that?”
“One would have to gain a new experience,” answered Amadeus Voss, “to
know a being truly human--in the highest and deepest sense.” In the
gathering dusk his face had the hue of stone. It was a well-shaped
face--long, narrow, intelligent, full of impassioned suffering. The
lenses in front of his eyes sparkled in the last light of day, and on
his fair hair was a glimmer as upon jewels.
“Are you going to stay in the village?” Christian inquired, not from
a desire to know, but out of the distress which he felt in the heavy
silence. “You were employed by Councillor Ribbeck. Will you return to
him?”
Voss’s nerves twitched. “Return? There is no return,” he murmured.
“Do you know Ribbeck? Well, I hardly know him myself. I saw him just
twice. The first time was when he came to the seminary to engage a
tutor for his sons. When I think of him I have the image of something
fat and frozen. I was picked out at once. My superiors approved of me
highly and desired to smooth my path. Yes. And I saw him for the second
time one night in December, when he appeared at Halbertsroda with a
commissary of police to put me out. You needn’t look at me that way.
There were no further consequences. It wouldn’t have done to permit
any.”
He fell silent. Christian got up. Voss did not urge him to stay longer,
but accompanied him to the door. There he said in a changed voice:
“What kind of a man are you? One sits before you and pours out one’s
soul, and you sit there in silence. How does it happen?”
“If you regret it I shall forget all you have said,” Christian answered
in his flexible, courteous way, that always had a touch of the
equivocal.
Voss let his head droop. “Come in again when you are passing,” he
begged gently. “Perhaps then I’ll tell you about what happened there!”
He pointed with his thumb across his shoulder.
“I shall come,” said Christian.