They drove to the fair and made their way through the crowds to the
little puppet-show. The benches were filled with children; the grown
people stood in a semi-circle. From the harbour floated the odours
of machine oil, leather, and salt herring; in the air resounded the
discords of all kinds of music and of the criers’ voices.
Christian made a path for Eva; half-surprised and half-morosely the
people yielded. Eva followed the play with cheerful intensity. She had
loved such scenes from childhood, and now they brought back to her with
a poignant and melancholy glow the years of her obscure wanderings.
The Pulcinello, who played the rôle of an outwitted cheat, was forced
to confess that no cunning could withstand the magic of the good
fairies. His simplicity was too obvious, and his downfall too well
deserved to awaken compassion. The rain of blows which were his final
portion constituted a satisfying victory of good morals.
Eva applauded, and was as delighted as a child. “Doesn’t it make you
laugh, Christian?” she asked.
And Christian laughed, not at the follies of the rogue, but because
Eva’s laughter was so infectious.
When the curtain had fallen upon the tiny stage, they followed the
stream of people from one amusement to another. A little line of
followers was formed in their wake; a whispering passed from mouth to
mouth and each pointed out Eva to the other. Several young girls seemed
especially stubborn in their desire to follow the exquisitely dressed
lady. Eva wore a hat adorned with small roses and a cloak of silk as
blue as the sea in sunshine.
One of the maidens had gathered a bunch of lilacs, and in front of an
inn she gave the flowers to Eva with a dainty courtesy. Eva thanked
her, and held the flowers to her face. Five or six of the girls formed
a circle about her, and took each others’ hands and danced and trilled
a melody of wild delight.
“Now I am caught,” Eva cried merrily to Christian, who had remained
outside of the circle and had to endure the mocking glances of the
girls.
“Yes, now you are caught,” he answered, and sought to put himself in
tune with the mood of the merrymakers.
On the steps of the inn stood a drunken fellow, who watched the scene
before him with inexplicable fury. First he exhausted himself in wild
abuse, and when no one took notice of him, he seemed overcome by a
sort of madness. He picked up a stone from the ground, and hurled it
at the group. The girls cried out and dodged. The stone, as large as a
man’s fist, narrowly missed the arm of the girl who had presented the
flowers, and in its fall hit both of Eva’s feet.
She grew pale and compressed her lips. Several men rushed up to the
drunken brute, who staggered into the inn. Christian had also run in
that direction; but he turned back, thinking it more important to take
care of Eva. The girls surrounded her, sympathized and questioned.
“Can you walk?” he asked. She said yes with a determined little air,
but limped when she tried. He caught her up in his arms, and carried
her to the car, which was waiting nearby. The girls followed and waved
farewell with their kerchiefs. Hoarse cries sounded from the inn.
“Pulcinello grew quite mad,” Eva said. She smiled and suppressed all
signs of pain. “It is nothing, darling,” she whispered after a while,
“it will pass. Don’t be alarmed.” They drove with racing speed.
Half an hour later she was resting in an armchair in the villa.
Christian was kneeling before her, and held her naked feet in his hands.
Susan had been quite terror stricken, when she had whisked off her
mistress’s shoes and stockings, and saw to her horror the red bruises
made by the stone. She had stammered out contradictory counsels, had
summoned the servants, and excitedly cried out for a physician. At last
Eva had asked her to be quiet and to leave the room.
“The pain’s almost gone,” said Eva, and nestled her little feet
luxuriously into Christian’s cool hands. A maid brought in a ewer of
water and linen cloths for cold bandages.
Christian held and regarded those two naked feet, exquisite organs
that were comparable to the hands of a great painter or to the wings
of a bird that soars far and high. And while he was taking delight in
their form, the clearly defined net of muscles, the lyrical loveliness
of the curves, the rosy toes with their translucent nails, an inner
monitor arose in him and seemed to say: “You are kneeling, Christian,
you are kneeling.” Silently, and not without a certain consternation,
he had whispered back: “Yes, I am kneeling, and why should I not?” His
eyes met Eva’s, and the gleam of delight in hers heightened his inner
discomfort.
Eva said: “Your hands are dear physicians, and it is wonderful to have
you kneel before me, sweet friend.”
“What is there wonderful about it?” Christian asked hesitantly.
The twilight had fallen. Through the gently waving curtains the evening
star shone in.
Eva shook her head. “I love it. That’s all.” Her hair fell open and
rippled down her shoulders. “I love it,” she repeated, and laid her
hands on his head, pressing it toward her knees. “I love it.”
“But you are kneeling!” Christian heard that voice again. And suddenly
he saw a water jug with a broken handle, and a crooked window rimmed
with snow, and a single boot crusted with mud, and a rope dangling
from a beam, and an oil lamp with a sooty chimney. He saw these lowly,
poverty-stricken things.
“Have you kneeled to many as though you adored them?” Eva asked.
He did not answer, but her naked feet grew heavy in his hands. The
sensuous perception which they communicated to him through their
warmth, their smoothness, their instinctive flexibility vanished
suddenly, and gave way to a feeling in which fear and shame and
mournfulness were blended. These human organs, these dancing feet,
these limbs of the woman he loved, these rarest and most precious
things on earth seemed suddenly ugly and repulsive to him, and those
lowly and poverty-stricken objects--the jug with the broken handle, the
crooked window with its rim of snow, the muddy boot, the dangling rope,
the sooty lamp, these suddenly seemed to him beautiful and worthy of
reverence.
“Tell me, have you kneeled to many?” he heard Eva’s voice, with its
almost frightened tenderness. And it seemed to him that Ivan Becker
gave answer in his stead and said: “That you kneeled down before
her--that was it, and that alone. All else was hateful and bitter; but
that you kneeled down beside her--ah, that was it!”
He breathed deeply, with closed eyes, and became pale. And he relived,
more closely and truly than ever, that hour of fate. He felt the breath
of Becker’s kiss upon his forehead, and understood its meaning. He
understood the feverish transformations of an evil conscience that had
caused him to identify himself with that jug, that window, that boot
and rope and lamp, only to flee, only to gain time. And he understood
now that despite his change from form to form, he had well seen and
heard the beggar, the woman, Ivan Michailovitch, the sick, half-naked
children, but that his whole soul had gathered itself together in the
effort to guard himself against them for but a little while, before
they would hurl themselves upon him with all their torment, despair,
madness, cruelty, like wild dogs upon a piece of meat.
His respite had come to an end. With an expression of haste and
firmness at once he arose. “Let me go, Eva,” he said, “send me away. It
is better that you send me away than that I wrench myself loose, nerve
by nerve, inch by inch. I cannot stay with you nor live for you.” Yet
in this very moment his love for her gathered within him like a storm
of flames, and he would have torn the heart from his breast to have
unsaid the irrevocable words.
She sprang up swiftly as an arrow. Then she stood very still, with both
hands in her hair.
He walked to the window. He saw the whole space of heaven before
him, the evening star and the unresting sea. And he knew that it was
all illusion, this great peace, this glittering star, this gently
phosphorescent deep, that it was but a garment and a painted curtain by
which the soul must not let itself be quieted. Behind it were terror
and horror and unfathomable pain. He understood, he understood at last.
He understood those thousands and thousands on the shore of the Thames
and their sombre silence. He understood the shipman’s daughter, whose
violated body had lain on coarse linen. He understood Adda Castillo
and her will to destruction. He understood Jean Cardillac’s melancholy
seeking for help, and his sorrow over his wife and child. He understood
that ancient rake who cried out behind the gates of his cloister:
“What shall I do? My Lord and Saviour, what shall I do?” He understood
Dietrich, the deaf and dumb lad who had drowned himself, and Becker’s
words concerning his dripping coat, and Franz Lothar’s horror at the
intertwined bodies of the Hungarian men and maids, and the panting
hunger of Amadeus Voss and his saying concerning the silver cord and
the pitcher broken at the fountain. He understood the stony grief of
the fishermen’s wives, and the opera singer who had twenty francs in
his pocket.
He understood. He understood.
“Christian!” Eva cried out in a tone as though she were peering into
the darkness.
“The night has come upon us,” Christian said, and trembled.
“Christian!” she cried.
Suddenly he became aware of Amadeus Voss, who emerged out there from
among the dark trees, and who seemed to have awaited him, for he made
signs to him at the window. With a hasty good-night Christian left the
room.
Eva looked after him and did not move.
A little later, forgetting the ache in her feet, she went into her
dressing-room, opened her jewel case, took Ignifer out, and regarded
the stone long and with brooding seriousness.
Then she put it into her hair, and went to the mirror--cool in body,
pale of face, quiet-eyed. She folded her arms, lost in this vision of
herself.