Christian, the brothers Maelbeek, who had followed Eva from Holland,
Botho von Thüngen, a Russian councillor of state named Koch, and
Crammon sat at luncheon in the dining hall of the hotel.
They were talking about a woman of the streets who had been murdered.
The police had already caught the murderer. He was a man who had once
belonged to good society, but had gradually gone to the dogs. He had
throttled the woman and robbed her in a sailor’s tavern.
Now all the prostitutes in the city had unanimously determined to show
their sister, who had sacrificed her life to her calling, a last and
very public mark of respect, and to follow her coffin to the grave. The
respectable citizens of Hamburg felt this to be a sort of challenge and
protested. But there was no legal provision by which the demonstration
could be stopped.
“We ought to see the spectacle,” said Crammon, “even if we have to
sacrifice our siesta.”
“Then there’s no time to be lost,” the elder Maelbeek declared, and
looked at his watch. “The friends will assemble at the house of
mourning at three sharp.” He smiled, and thought this way of putting
the matter rather witty.
Christian said that he would go too. The motor took them to a crossing
that had been closed by the police. Here they left the car, and Herr
von Thüngen persuaded the police captain to let them pass.
They were at once surrounded by a great throng of humble folk--sailors,
fishermen, workingmen, women, and children. The windows of the
houses were thronged with heads. The Maelbeeks and Koch stopped here,
and called Thüngen to join them. Christian walked farther. Somehow
the behaviour of his companions irritated him. He felt the kind of
curiosity which filled them as something disagreeable. He was curious
too, but in another way. Or, at least, it seemed different to him.
Crammon remained by his side. But the throng grew rowdy. “Where are you
going?” Crammon asked peevishly. “There is no use in going farther. Let
us wait here.”
Christian shook his head.
“Very well. I take my stand here,” Crammon decided, and separated from
Christian.
The latter made his way up to the dirty, old house at the door of which
the hearse was standing. It was a foggy day. The black wagon was like
a dark hole punched into the grey. Christian wanted to go a little
farther, but some young fellows purposely blocked his way. They turned
their heads, looked him over, and suspected him of being a “toff.”
Their own garb was cheap and flashy; their faces and gestures made it
clear what trade they drove. One of them was a young giant. He was half
a head taller than Christian, and his brows joined over the bridge of
his nose. On the index finger of his left hand he wore a huge carnelian
ring.
Christian looked about him quite unintimidated. He saw hundreds of
women, literally hundreds, ranging in age from sixteen to fifty, and in
condition from bloom to utter decay, and from luxury to rags and filth.
They had all gathered--those who had passed the zenith of their
troubled course, and those who had barely emerged from childhood,
frivolous, sanguine, vain, and already tainted with the mire of the
great city. They had come from all streets; they were recruited from
all nations and all classes; some had escaped from a sheltered youth,
others had risen from even direr depths; there were those who felt
themselves pariahs and had the outcast’s hatred in their eyes, and
there were others who showed a certain pride in their calling and
held themselves aloof. He saw cynical and careworn faces, lovely and
hardened ones, indifferent and troubled, greedy and gentle faces. Some
were painted and some pallid; and the latter seemed strangely naked.
He was familiar with them from the streets and houses of many cities,
as every man is. He knew the type, the unfailing stamp, the acquired
gesture and look--this hard, rigid, dull, clinging, lightless look.
But he had never before seen them except when they were exercising
their function behind the gates of their calling, dissembling their
real selves and under the curse of sex. To see many hundreds of them
separated from all that, to see them as human beings stripped of the
stimulus and breath of a turbid sexuality--that was what seemed to
sweep a cloud from his eyes.
Suddenly he thought: “I must order my hunting lodge to be sold, and the
hounds too.”
The coffin was being carried from the house. It was covered with
flowers and wreaths; and from the wreaths fluttered ribands with gilt
inscriptions. Christian tried to read the inscriptions, but it was
impossible. The coffin had small, silver-plated feet that looked like
the paws of a cat. By some accident one of these had been broken off,
and that touched Christian, he hardly knew why, as unbearably pitiful.
An old woman followed the coffin. She seemed more vexed and angry than
grief-stricken. She wore a black dress, but the seam under one arm was
ripped open. And that too seemed unbearably pitiful.
The hearse started off. Six men carrying lighted candles walked in
front of it. The murmur of voices became silent. The women, walking by
fours, followed the hearse. Christian stood still close pressed against
a wall, and let the procession pass him by. In a quarter of an hour the
street was quite desolate. The windows of the houses were closed. He
remained alone in the street, in the fog.
As he walked away he reflected: “I’ve asked my father to take care of
my collection of rings. There are over four thousand of them, and many
are beautiful and costly. They could be sold too. I don’t need them. I
shall have them sold.”
He wandered on and on, and lost all sense of the passing of time.
Evening came, and the city lights glowed through the fog. Everything
became moist, even to the gloves on his hands.
He thought of the missing foot on the coffin of the murdered harlot,
and of the torn seam of the old woman’s dress.
He passed over one of the great bridges of the Elbe, and then walked
along the river bank. It was a desolate region. He stopped near the
light of a street lamp, gazed into the water, drew forth his wallet,
took out a bank note of a hundred marks, turned it about in his hands,
shook his head, and then, with a gesture of disgust, threw it into the
water. He took a second and did the same. There were twenty bank notes
in his wallet. He took them out one by one, and with that expression
half of disgust, half of dreaminess, he let them glide into the river.
The street lamps illuminated the inky water for a short distance, and
he saw the bank notes drift away.
And he smiled and went on.