Johanna told Eva, whom she adored, about her life. Eva thus received an
unexpected insight into the grey depths of middle-class existence. The
account sounded repulsive. But it was stimulating to offer a spiritual
refuge to so much thirst and flight.
She herself often seemed to her own soul like one in flight. But she
had her bulwarks. The wind of time seemed cold to her, and when she
felt a horror of the busy marionettes whose strings were in her hands,
she felt herself growing harder. The friendship which she gave to this
devoted girl seemed to her a rest in the mad race of her fate.
They were so intimate that Susan Rappard complained. The latter opened
her eyes wide and her jealousy led her to become a spy. She became
aware of the relations that had developed between Johanna and Christian.
At dinner there had been much merriment. Johanna had bought a number of
peaked, woollen caps. She had wrapped them carefully in white paper,
written some witty verses on each bundle, and distributed them as
favours to Eva’s guests. No one had been vexed. For despite her mockery
and gentle eccentricity, there was a charm about her that disarmed
every one.
“How gay you are to-day, Rumpelstilzkin,” Eva said. She, too, used that
nickname. The word, which she pronounced with some difficulty, had a
peculiar charm upon her lips.
“It is the gaiety that precedes tears,” Johanna answered, and yielded
as entirely to her superstitious terror as she had to her jesting mood.
A wealthy ship-owner had invited Eva to view his private picture
gallery. His house was in the suburbs. She drove there with Johanna.
Arm in arm they stood before the paintings. And in that absorbed
union there was something purifying. Johanna loved it as she loved
their common reading of poetry, when they would sit with their cheeks
almost touching. Extinguished in her selfless adoration, she forgot
what lay behind her--the anxious, sticky, unworthily ambitious life of
her family of brokers; she forgot what lay before her--oppression and
force, an inevitable and appointed way.
Her gestures revealed a gentle glow of tenderness.
On their way back she seemed pale. “You are cold,” Eva said, and
wrapped the robe more firmly about her friend.
Johanna squeezed Eva’s hand gratefully. “How dear of you! I shall
always need some one to tell me when I’m hot or cold.”
This melancholy jest moved Eva deeply. “Why do you act so humble?”
she cried. “Why do you shrink and hide and turn your vision away from
yourself? Why do you not dare to be happy?”
Johanna answered: “Do you not know that I am a Jewess?”
“Well?” Eva asked in her turn. “I know some very extraordinary people
who are Jews--some of the proudest, wisest, most impassioned in the
world.”
Johanna shook her head. “In the Middle Ages the Jews were forced to
wear yellow badges on their garments,” she said. “I wear the yellow
badge upon my soul.”
Eva was putting on a tea gown. Susan Rappard was helping her. “What’s
new with us, Susan?” Eva asked, and took the clasps out of her hair.
Susan answered: “What is good is not new, and what is new is not good.
Your ugly little court fool is having an affair with M. Wahnschaffe.
They are very secretive, but there are whispers. I don’t understand
him. He is easily and quickly consoled. I have always said that he has
neither a mind nor a heart. Now it is plain that he has no eyes either.”
Eva had flushed very dark. Now she became very pale. “It is a lie,” she
said.
Susan’s voice was quite dry. “It is the truth. Ask her. I don’t think
she’ll deny it.”
Shortly thereafter Johanna slipped into the room. She had on a dress
of simple, black velvet which set off her figure charmingly. Eva sat
before the mirror. Susan was arranging her hair. She had a book in her
hand and read without looking up.
On a chair near the dressing-table lay an open jewel case. Johanna
stood before it, smiled timidly, and took out of it a beautifully
cut cameo, which she playfully fastened to her bosom; she looked
admiringly at a diadem and put it in her hair; she slipped on a few
rings and a pearl bracelet over her sleeve. Thus adorned she went, half
hesitatingly, half with an air of self-mockery, up to Eva.
Slowly Eva lifted her eyes from the book, looked at Johanna, and asked:
“Is it true?” She let a few seconds pass, and then with wider open eyes
she asked once more: “Is it true?”
Johanna drew back, and the colour left her cheeks. She suspected and
knew and began to tremble.
Then Eva arose and went close up to her and stripped the cameo from the
girl’s bosom, the diadem from her hair, the rings from her fingers, the
bracelet from her arm, and threw the things back into the case. Then
she sat down again, took up her book, and said: “Hurry, Susan! I want
to rest a little.”
Johanna’s breath failed her. She looked like one who has been struck.
A tender blossom in her heart was crushed forever, and from its sudden
withering arose a subtle miasma. Almost on the point of fainting she
left the room.
As though to seal the end of a period in her life and warn her of evil
things to come, she received within two hours a telegram from her
mother which informed her of a catastrophe and urgently summoned her
home. Fräulein Grabmeier began packing at once. They were to catch the
train at five o’clock in the morning.
From midnight on Johanna sat waiting in Christian’s room. She lit no
light. In the darkness she sat beside a table, resting her head in her
hands. She did not move, and her eyes were fixed on vacancy.