IX

Crammon asserted that Amadeus Voss was paying his attentions to Johanna

Schöntag. Johanna was annoyed, and tapped him with her long gloves. “I

congratulate you on your conquest, Rumpelstilzkin,” Crammon teased her.

“To have a monster like that in leash is no small achievement. I should

advise muzzling the monster, however. What do you think, Christian,

wouldn’t you advise a muzzle, too?”

“A muzzle?” answered Christian. “Yes, if it would keep people from

talking. So many talk too much.”

Crammon bit his lips. The reproof struck him as harsh. Somewhere

beneath the downs of life on which he lay and enjoyed himself, there

was, evidently, a stone. The stone hurt. He sought for it, but the

softness of the down calmed him again, and he forgot his pain.

“I was sitting in the breakfast room, and waiting for Madame Sorel,”

Johanna began in a voice whose every shading and inflection sought to

woo Christian’s ear, “when Herr Voss came in and marched straight up

to me. ‘What does that bad man want of me?’ I asked myself. He asked

me, as though we’d been bosom friends for years, whether I didn’t want

to go with him to St. Paul’s to hear the famous itinerant preacher

Jacobsen. I couldn’t help laughing, and he stalked away insulted. But

this afternoon, as I was leaving the hotel, he seemed suddenly to

spring from the earth, and invited me to a trip around the harbour. He

had rented a motor launch, and was looking for a companion. He had the

same gruff familiarity, and when he left he was quite as insulted as

before. And you call that paying attentions? I felt much more as though

he were going to drag me off and murder me. But perhaps that’s only his

manner.” She laughed.

“You’re the only person, at all events, whom he distinguishes by

observing at all,” Crammon said, with the same mockery.

“Or the only one whom he considers his equal,” Johanna said, with a

childlike frown.

Christian was wondering: “Why does she laugh so often? Why are her

hands so pudgy and so very pink?” Johanna felt his disapproval, and was

as though paralysed. And yet Christian felt himself drawn toward her by

some hidden power.

Why should he resist? Why be so ceremonious? Such was his thought, as

Johanna arose, and he, with unobtrusive glances, observed her graceful

form that still possessed the flexibility of immaturity. He saw the

nape of her slender neck, in which were expressed both the weakness of

her will and the fineness of her temper. He knew these signs; he had

often been guided by them and used them.

Crammon, massive and magnificent in a great easy chair, spoke with

some emphasis of Eva’s appearance on the morrow. The whole city was in

a state of expectancy. But Christian and Johanna had suddenly become

truly aware of one another.

“Are you coming along?” Christian turned carelessly, and with a sense

of boredom, to Crammon.

“Yes, my boy, let us eat!” Crammon cried. He called Hamburg the

Paradise of Saint Bernard, concerning whom, as his patron saint and

namesake, he had instituted especial investigations, and who, according

to him, had been a mighty trencherman during his lifetime at Tours.

A frightened, subtle, and very feminine smile hovered about Johanna’s

lips. As she preceded the two men, the motions of her dainty body

expressed a vague oppression of the spirit, and at the same time a

humorous rebellion against her own unfreedom.

X

Amadeus Voss knew that he had no one’s sympathy, no one’s except

Christian’s. And him he suspected, watching him, weighing and analysing

his words and actions. In his terror of hypocrisy and treachery, he

practised both himself. Nothing healed or convinced or reconciled him.

Least of all did he pardon Christian the fact that the latter’s glance

and presence had the effect of subduing him. His bitterness moaned from

his very dreams.

He read in the Scriptures: “There was a certain house-holder, which

planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress

in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into

a far country: and when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his

servants to the husbandmen that they might receive the fruits of

it. And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed

another, and stoned another. Again he sent other servants, more than

the first, and they did unto them likewise. But last of all, he sent

unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son. But when the

husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir;

come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance. And they

caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him.”

Sometimes he would not leave Christian’s side for hours. He would study

his gestures and the expressions of his countenance, and all these

perceptions fed the corrosive fire in his brain. For this was the heir!

Then he would flee and bruise and stamp upon his very soul, until his

consciousness of guilt cast him down into the very dust. He would

return, and his demeanour would be a silent confession: “I can thrive

only in your presence.” It seemed to him that this silence of his was

like a cry; but it was not heard, and so his brother seemed again to

become his foe. Thus he kept passing from darkness, through fires and

fumes, back into the darkness.

He suffered from his own embarrassment and importunateness. In the

midst of luxury and plenty, into which he had been transferred by a

fabulous turn of fortune, he suffered from the memories of his former

poverty, still felt how it had bound and throttled him, and still

rebelled against what was gone. He could not freely take what was given

him, but closed his eyes, and shuddered with both desire and a pang of

conscience. He would not look upon the pattern of his web of life. He

turned its texture around, and brooded over the significance of the

intricately knotted threads. And there was no human relationship which

did not rouse his suspicion, no harmless conversation in which he did

not seek a sting directed toward himself, no face that did not feed his

hatred, no beauty whose counter part of ugliness he did not see. To

him everything turned to poison and decay, all blossoms became noxious

weeds, all velvet a Nessus shirt, all light an evil smouldering, every

stimulus a wound: on every wall he saw the flaming letters, _mene tekel

upharsim_.

He could not yield himself or conquer the stubbornness of his heart.

With the object of his desire in his very hands, his envy burned on.

Whatever had once humiliated him spurred his vengefulness through

retrospection. Chastisements which his father had inflicted distorted

the old man’s image beyond the grave; his fellow pupils in the seminary

had once strewn pepper into his coffee, and he could not forget it; he

could not forget the expression on the face of Adeline Ribbeck with

which she had given him his first month’s salary in a closed envelope;

he remembered the contempt and contumely of hundreds, who had inflicted

upon him their revenge for the oppression or degradation which they

themselves had endured. He could not conquer these things nor forgive

fate. The marks that had been burned into his flesh throbbed like new

wounds.

But at other times he would cast himself into the dust in prayer and in

great need of forgiveness. Religious scruples plagued him into remorse;

he panted for an hour’s release from consciousness, judged himself with

cruel severity, and condemned himself to ascetic practices.

And these hurled him into the other extreme of a wild,

undiscriminating, and senseless dissipation and a mad waste of money.

He could no longer resist the excitement of gambling, and fell into the

hands of sharpers, drifted into loathsome dives, where he acted the

part of a wealthy man and an aristocrat in incognito, for he desired to

test this human mask and prove its worthlessness to himself. Since his

companions took him seriously in this rôle, which filled his own mind

with shame and despair, he took his high losses with apparent calm, and

overlooked the open cheating. One evening the den in which he happened

to be was raided by the police, and he escaped by a hair’s breadth.

One creature clung to him, frightened him with possible dangers ahead,

threatened exposure, and wrung from him a considerable sum of hush

money.

He became the prey of cocottes. He bought them jewels and frocks and

instituted nightly revels. In his eyes they were outcasts that he used

as a famishing man might slake his thirst at a mud puddle with no

clean water within reach. And he was brutally frank with them. He paid

them to endure his contempt. They were surprised, resisted only his

most infamous abuses, and laughed at his unconquerable traits of the

churchly hypocrite. Once he remained alone with a girl who was young

and pretty. He had blindfolded himself. But suddenly he fled as though

the furies were at his heels.

Thrice he had set the date for his departure and as many times had

put it off. The image of Johanna had joined that of Eva in his soul,

and both raged in his brain. Both belonged to an unattainable world.

Yet Johanna seemed less alien; she might conceivably hear his plea.

Eva and her beauty were like a strident jeer at all he was. He had

heard so much and read so much of her art that he determined to await

her appearance, in order (as he told Christian) to form a judgment of

his own, and be no longer at the mercy of those who fed her on mere

adulation and brazen flattery.

The audience was in full evening dress. Amadeus sat next to Christian

in the magnificent and radiant hall, in which had gathered royal and

princely persons, the senators of the free city, the heads of the

official and financial world, and representatives of every valley and

city of Germany. Christian had bought seats near the stage. Crammon,

who was an expert in matters of artistic perspective, had preferred the

first row in the balcony. With him were Johanna and Botho von Thüngen,

to whom he had emphatically explained that the play of the dancer’s

feet and legs was interfered with by the dark line of the stage below,

while from their present position its full harmony would be visible.

Amadeus Voss had almost determined to remain rigid in mind. He hardly

resisted actively, for he did not expect anything powerful enough to

make resistance worth while. He was cold, dull, unseeing. Suddenly

there floated upon the stage a bird-like vision, a being miraculously

eased of human heaviness, one who was all rhythm, and turned the rhythm

of motion into music. She broke the chains of the soul, and made every

emotion an image, every action a myth, every step a conquest over space

and matter. But the face of Amadeus seemed to say: How can that serve

me? How does that serve you? Filled by the fury of sex, he saw only a

scabrous exhibition, and when the thunder of applause burst out, he

showed his teeth.

Eva’s last number was a little dramatic episode, a charming _jeu

d’esprit_, which she had invented and worked out, to be accompanied by

a composition of Delibes. It was very simple. She was Pierrot playing

with a top. She regulated and guided the whimsical course of the toy.

In ever new positions, turns, and rhythms, she finally drove the top

toward a hole into which it disappeared. But this trivial action was so

filled with life by the wealth and variety of her rhythmic gestures,

so radiant with spirit and swiftest grace, so fresh in inspiration,

so heightened in the perfection of its art, that the audience watched

breathlessly, and released its own tensity in a fury of applause.

In the foyer Crammon rushed up to Christian, and drew him through the

crowd along the dim passage way that led back of the stage. Amadeus

Voss, unnoticed by Crammon, followed them unthinkingly and morosely.

The sight of the wings, of cliffs and trees, of discarded drops,

electrical apparatus and pulleys and of the hurrying stage-hands,

stirred in him a dull and hostile curiosity.

An excited crowd thronged toward Eva’s dressing-room. She sat in the

silken Pierrot costume of black and white, the dainty silver whip still

in her hand, amid a forest of flowers. Before her kneeled Johanna

Schöntag with an adoring moisture in her eyes. Susan gave her mistress

a glass of cool champagne. Then in a mixture of five or six languages

she tried to make it clear to the unbidden guests that they were in

the way. But each wanted a look, a word, a smile of Eva for himself.

Next to the room in which Eva sat, and separated from it by a thin

partition with an open door, was a second dressing-room, which

contained only her costumes and a tall mirror. Accidentally pushed

in that direction, and not through any will of his own, Amadeus Voss

suddenly found himself alone in this little chamber. Having entered it,

his courage grew, and he ventured a little farther in.

He looked around and stared at the garments that lay and hung here--the

shimmering silks, the red, green, blue, white, and yellow shawls and

veils, the fragrant webs of gauze, batiste, and tulle. There were

wholly transparent textures and the heaviest brocades. One frock

glowed like pure gold, another gleamed like silver; one seemed made of

rose-leaves, another knitted of spun glass, one of white foam and one

of amethyst. And there stood dainty shoes--a long row of them, shoes

of Morocco leather and of kid and silk; and there were hose of all

colours, and laces and ribands and antique beads and brooches. The air

was drenched with a fragrance that stung his senses--a fragrance of

precious creams and unguents, of a woman’s skin and hair. His pulses

throbbed and his face turned grey. Involuntarily he stretched out his

hand, and grasped a painted Spanish shawl. Angrily, greedily, beside

himself, he crushed it in his hands, and buried his mouth and nose in

it and trembled in every limb.

At that moment Susan Rappard saw him, and pointed to him with a gesture

of astonishment. Eva saw him too, gently thrust Johanna aside, arose,

and approached the threshold. When she saw the man in his strange

and absorbed ecstasy, she felt as though she had been spattered with

filth, and uttered a soft, brief cry. Amadeus Voss twitched and dropped

the shawl. His eyes were wild and guilty. With a light laugh and an

expression of transcendent contempt, which summed up a long dislike,

Eva raised the little silver whip and struck him full in the face. His

features grew very white, in a contortion of voluptuousness and terror.

In the tense silence Christian went up to Eva, took the silver whip

from her hand, and said in a tone scarcely distinguishable from his

habitual one: “Oh, no, Eva, I shall not let you do that.” He held the

handle of the whip firmly at both ends, and bent it until the fragile

metal snapped. Then he threw the two pieces on the floor.

They gazed at each other. Disgust at Amadeus still flamed in Eva’s

face. It yielded to her astonishment at Christian’s temerity. But

Christian thought: “How beautiful she is!” And he loved her. He loved

her in her black and white Pierrot’s costume with the black velvet

buttons, he loved her with that little cap and its impudent little

tassel on her head; he loved her, and she seemed incomparable to him,

and his blood cried out after her as in those nights from which she had

driven him forth. But he also asked himself: “Why has she grown evil?”

And a strange compassion for her stole over him, and a stranger sense

of liberation. And he smiled. But to all who were watching, this smile

of his seemed a little empty.

Again Amadeus Voss read in the Scripture: “What mean ye that ye beat

my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor? Because the

daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and

wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling

with their feet: Therefore the Lord will strike with a scab the crown

of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will discover their

secret parts. In that day will the Lord take away the bravery of their

tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their round

tires like the moon, the chains, and the bracelets, and the mufflers,

the bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands, and the

tablets, and the earrings, the rings, and nose jewels, the changeable

suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping

pins, the glasses, and the fine linen, and the hoods and the veils.

And it shall come to pass, that instead of sweet smell there shall be

stink; and instead of a girdle a rent; and instead of well set hair

baldness; and instead of a stomacher a girding of sack-cloth; and

burning instead of beauty. Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy

mighty in the war. And her gates shall lament and mourn; and she being

desolate shall sit upon the ground.”

On the same evening he left for Berlin.