The sun, like a golden rain, streams down through the dark curtain of
vine leaves on to the terrace of the hotel; it is as if golden threads
were strung in the air.
On the grey pavement and on the white table-cloths the shadows make
strange designs, and it seems as though, if one looked long at them,
one might learn to read them as one reads poetry, one might learn the
meaning of it all. Bunches of grapes gleam in the sun, like pearls or
the strange dull stone olivine, and the water in the decanter on the
table sparkles like blue diamonds.
In the passage between the tables lies a round lace handkerchief,
dropped, without a doubt, by a woman divinely fair--it cannot be
otherwise, one cannot think otherwise on this sultry day full of
glowing poetry, a day when everything banal and commonplace becomes
invisible and hides from the sun, as if ashamed of itself.
All is quiet, save for the twitter of the birds in the garden and
the humming of the bees as they hover over the flowers. From the
vineyards on the mountain-side the sounds of a song float on the hot
air and reach the ear: the singers are a man and a woman. Each verse
is separated from the others by a moment's pause, and this interval of
silence lends a special expression to the song, giving it something of
the character of a prayer.
A lady comes from the garden and ascends the broad marble steps; she is
old and very tall. Her dark face is serious; her brows are contracted
in a deep frown, and her thin lips are tightly compressed, as if she
had just said:
"No!"
Round her spare shoulders is a long, broad, gold-coloured scarf edged
with lace, which looks almost like a mantle. The grey hair of her
little head, which is too small for her size, is covered with black
lace. In one hand she carries a long-handled red sunshade, in the other
a black velvet bag embroidered in silver. She walks as firmly as a
soldier through the web of sunbeams, tapping the noisy pavement with
the end of her sunshade.
Her profile is the very picture of sternness: her nose is aquiline
and on the end of her sharp chin grows a large grey wart; her rounded
forehead projects over dark hollows where, in a network of wrinkles,
her eyes are hidden. They are hidden so deep that the woman appears
almost blind.
On the steps behind her, swaying from side to side like a duck, appears
noiselessly the square body of a hunchback with a large, heavy,
forward-hanging head, covered with a grey soft hat. His hands are in
the pockets of his waistcoat, which makes him look broader and more
angular still. He wears a white suit and white boots with soft soles.
His weak mouth is half open, disclosing prominent, yellow and uneven
teeth. The dark moustache which grows on his upper lip is unsightly,
for the bristles are sparse and wiry. He breathes quickly and heavily.
His nostrils quiver but the moustache does not move. He moves his short
legs jerkily as he walks. His large eyes gaze languidly, as if tired,
at the ground; and on his small body are displayed many large things:
a large gold ring with a cameo on the first finger of his left hand,
a large golden charm with two rubies at the end of a black ribbon fob,
and a large--a too large--opal, an unlucky stone, in his blue necktie.
A third figure follows them leisurely along the terrace. It is that
of another old woman, small and round, with a kind red face and quick
eyes: she is, one may guess, of an amiable and talkative disposition.
They walk across the terrace through the hotel doorway, looking like
people out of a picture of Hogarth's--sad, ugly, grotesque, unlike
anything else under the sun. Everything seems to grow dark and dim in
their presence.
They are Dutch people, brother and sister, the children of a diamond
merchant and banker. Their life has been full of strange events if one
may believe what is lightly said of them.
As a child, the hunchback was quiet, self-contained, always musing,
and not fond of toys. This attracted no special attention from anybody
except his sister. His father and mother thought that was how a
deformed boy should be; but in the girl, who was four years older than
her brother, his character aroused a feeling of anxiety.
Almost every day she was with him, trying in all possible ways to
awaken in him some animation. To make him laugh she would push toys
towards him. He piled them one on top of another, building a sort of
pyramid. Only very rarely did he reward her efforts with a forced
smile; as a rule he looked at his sister, as at everything else, with a
forlorn look in his large eyes which seemed to suffer from some strange
kind of blindness. This look chilled her ardour and irritated her.
"Don't dare to look at me like that! You will grow up an idiot!" she
shouted, stamping her foot. And she would pinch him and beat him. He
whimpered and put up his long arms to guard his head, but he never ran
away from her and never complained.
Later on, when she thought that he could understand what had become
quite clear to her she kept saying to him:
"Since you are a freak, you must be clever, or else everybody will be
ashamed of you, father, mother, and everybody! Even other people will
be ashamed that in such a rich house there should be a freak. In a rich
house everything must be beautiful and clever. Do you understand that?"
"Yes," said he, in his serious way, inclining his large head towards
one side and looking into her face with his dark, lifeless _eyes._
His father and mother were pleased with this attitude of their daughter
towards her brother. They praised her good heart in his presence and
by degrees she became the acknowledged guardian of the hunchback. She
taught him to play with toys, helped him to prepare his lessons, read
him stories about princes and fairies.
But, as formerly, he piled his toys in tall heaps, as if trying to
reach something. He did his lessons carelessly and badly; but at the
marvellous in tales he smiled in a curious, indecisive way, and once he
asked his sister:
"Are princes ever hunchbacks?"
"No."
"And knights?"
"Of course not."
The boy sighed, as though tired; but putting her hand on his bristly
hair his sister said:
"But wise wizards are always hunchbacks."
"That means that I shall be a wizard," submissively remarked the
hunchback, and then, after pondering a while, he said:
"Are fairies always beautiful?"
"Always."
"Like you?"
"Perhaps. I think they are even more beautiful," she said frankly.
When he was eight years old his sister noticed that when, during
their walks, they passed houses in course of construction a strange
expression of astonishment always appeared on the boy's face; he would
look intently at the people working and then turn his expressionless
eyes questioningly to her.
"Does that interest you?" she asked. And he, who spoke little as a
rule, replied:
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I don't know."
But once he explained:
"Such little people, and such small bricks, and the houses are so
big.... Is the whole town made like that?"
"Yes, of course."
"And our house?"
"Of course."
Looking at him she said in a decisive manner:
"You will be a famous architect, that's it."
They bought a lot of wooden cubes for him, and from that time on an
ardent passion for building took possession of him: for whole days he
would sit silently on the floor of his room, building tall towers,
which fell down with a crash, only to be built again. So constant did
his preoccupation become that even at table, during dinner, he used to
try to build things with the knives and forks and napkin rings. His
eyes became deeper and more concentrated, his arms more agile and very
restless, and he handled every object that came within his reach.
Now, during their walks in the town, he was ready to stand for hours in
front of a building in construction, observing how from a small thing
it grew huge, rising towards the sky. His nostrils quivered as they
took in the smell of the brick dust and lime. His eyes became clouded,
as if covered with a film, and he seemed deeply engrossed in thought.
When he was told that it was not the proper thing to stand in the
street he did not hear.
"Let us go!" His sister would rouse him, taking his arm.
He lowered his head and walked on, but kept looking back over his
shoulder.
"You will become an architect, won't you?" she asked him repeatedly,
trying to inculcate this idea in him.
"Yes."
Once after dinner, while waiting for the coffee in the sitting-room,
the father remarked that it was time for him to leave his toys and
begin to study in real earnest, but the sister, speaking in a tone
which indicated that her authority was recognised, and that her opinion
too had to be reckoned with, said:
"I hope, papa, that you will not send him to school."
The father, who was tall, clean-shaven and adorned with a large number
of sparkling precious stones, replied, lighting his cigar:
"Why not?"
"You know why."
As the conversation turned upon the hunchback he quietly walked out of
the room; but he walked slowly and heard his sister say:
"They will jeer at him."
"Yes, of course," said the mother, in a low tone, which sounded as
cheerless as the autumn wind.
"Boys such as he should be kept in the background," his sister said
fervently.
"Yes, he is nothing to be proud of," said the mother. "There is not
much sense in his little head."
"Perhaps you are right," the father agreed.
"No, there's a lot of sense."
The hunchback came back, stopped in the doorway and said:
"I am not a fool either."
"We shall see," said the father; and his mother remarked:
"No one thinks anything of the sort."
"You will study at home," declared his sister, making him sit down by
her side.
"You will study everything that it is necessary for an architect to
know. Would you like that?"
"Yes, you will see."
"What shall I see?"
"What I like."
She was slightly taller than he, about half a head, but she domineered
over everybody, even her father and mother. At that time she was
fifteen; he resembled a crab, but she was slim and straight and
strong and seemed to him a fairy, under whose power the whole house
lived--even he, the little hunchback.
Polite, formal people came to him, explaining things and putting
questions to him. But he confessed frankly that he did not understand
what they were trying to teach him, and would look in an absent-minded
way past his instructors, preoccupied with his own thoughts. It was
clear to everybody that he took no interest in ordinary things. He
spoke little, but sometimes he asked strange questions.
"What happens to those who don't want to do anything at all?"
The well-trained tutor, in his tightly buttoned black frock-coat--he
resembled at once a priest and a soldier--replied: "Everything bad
happens to such people, anything that you can imagine. For instance,
many of them become socialists."
"Thank you," said the hunchback. His attitude towards his teachers was
always correct and reserved, like that of an adult. "And what is a
socialist?" "At best he is a dreamer and a lazy fellow--a moral freak
who is deprived of all idea of God, property and nationality."
The teachers always replied briefly and to the point. Their answers
fixed themselves in one's memory as tightly as if they were the stones
of a pavement.
"Can an old woman also be a moral freak?"
"Of course in their midst----"
"And girls too?"
"Yes, it is an inborn quality."
The teachers said of him:
"He has little capacity for mathematics, but he shows great interest in
moral questions."
"You speak too much," said his sister to him on hearing of his talks
with the tutors.
"They talk more than I do."
"You pray very little to God."
"He won't set my hump right."
"Oh, is that how you are beginning to think!" exclaimed his sister in
astonishment; and she warned him:
"I will excuse you this time, but don't entertain such thoughts again.
Do you hear?"
"Yes."
She already wore long dresses; he was then just thirteen.
And now a number of annoyances began to fall to her lot: almost every
time she entered her brother's work-room, boards and tools and blocks
of all sorts fell at her feet, grazing her shoulder, her head, or
hurting her hands. The hunchback always cautioned her by a cry of:
"Look out!"
But he was always too slow and the damage was done. Once, limping
slightly, pale and very angry, she sprang at him, and shouted in his
face:
"You do all this purposely, you freak," and she struck him in the face.
His legs were weak, he fell down, and, as he sat on the floor, quietly,
without tears and without complaining, he said to her:
"How can you think that? You love me, don't you? Do you love me?"
She ran away groaning. Presently she came back.
"You see this never happened formerly," she explained.
"Nor this," he quietly remarked, making a wide circle with his
long hand: in the corners of the room boards and boxes were heaped
up; everything was in confusion; there were piles of wood on the
carpenter's and turner's benches which stood against the wall.
"Why have you brought in all this rubbish?" she asked, looking
doubtfully and squeamishly around.
"You will see."
He had begun to build, he had made a little rabbit hutch and a dog
kennel. He was planning a rat-trap. His sister followed his work with
interest and at table spoke proudly to his mother and father about it.
His father, nodding his head approvingly, said:
"Everything springs from small beginnings and everything begins like
that."
And his mother, embracing her, said to her son:
"You don't realise how much you owe to her care of you."
"Yes, I do," replied the hunchback.
When he had finished the rat-trap he asked his sister into his room and
showed her the clumsy contrivance, saying:
"This is not a toy, mind you, and we can take out a patent for it. See
how simple and strong it is; touch it here."
The girl touched it; something snapped and she screamed wildly; but the
hunchback, dancing around her, muttered:
"Oh, not that, not that."
His mother ran up, and the servants came; they broke the rat-trap, and
freed the girl's finger, which had turned quite blue. They carried her
away fainting, and the boy's mother said to him:
"I will have everything thrown away. I forbid you."
At night he was asked to go to his sister, who said to him:
"You did it purposely. You hate me. What for?"
Moving his hunch he said quietly and calmly:
"You touched it with the wrong hand."
"That's a lie."
"But why should I hurt your hand? It is not even the hand you hit me
with."
"Look out, you freak, I'll pay you out."
"I know."
There were no signs that he pitied his sister or looked upon himself as
being to blame for her misfortune. His angular face was as calm as it
always was, the expression of his eyes was serious and steady--it was
impossible to believe that he could lie or be actuated by malice.
After that she did not go so often to his room. She was visited by
her friends, chattering girls in bright coloured dresses, as noisy as
so many crickets. They brought a welcome note of colour and gaiety
to the large rooms, which were rather cold and gloomy--the pictures,
the statues, the flowers, the gilt, everything seemed warmer in their
presence. Sometimes his sister took them to his room. They affectedly
held out their little pink-nailed fingers, taking his hand gingerly
as if they were afraid of breaking it. They talked to him very nicely
and pleasantly, looking a little astonished, but showing no particular
interest in the little hunchback, busy in the midst of tools, drawings,
pieces of wood and shavings. He knew that the girls called him "the
inventor." His sister had impressed this idea upon them and told them
that in the future something might be expected of him which would make
the name of his father famous. His sister spoke of this with conviction.
"Of course he is ugly, but he is very clever," she reminded them very
often.
She was nineteen years old, and had a sweetheart, when her father and
mother both perished at sea. The yacht in which they were taking a
pleasure trip was run down and sunk by an American cargo boat in charge
of a drunken helmsman. She was to have accompanied them, but a sudden
toothache had prevented her going.
When the news came of her father's and mother's death she forgot her
tooth-ache, and rushed about the room throwing up her arms and crying:
"No, no; it cannot be."
The hunchback stood at the door and, wrapping the portiere round him,
looked at her closely and said, shaking his hunch:
"Father was so round and hollow; I don't see how he could be drowned."
"Be quiet; you do not love anybody!" shouted his sister.
"I simply cannot say nice words," he replied.
The father's corpse was never found, but the mother had been killed
in the moment of the collision. Her body was recovered and laid in
a coffin, looking as lean and brittle as the dead branch of an old
tree--just as she had looked when she was alive.
"Now you and I are left alone," the sister said to her brother sternly,
but in a mournful voice, after the mother's funeral; and the cold look
in her grey eyes daunted him. "It will be hard for us: we are ignorant
of the world and may lose much. What a pity it is that I cannot get
married at once."
"Oh!" exclaimed the hunchback.
"What do you mean by 'Oh'?"
He said, after thinking a while:
"We are alone."
"You seem to speak as if you rejoiced at it."
"I do not rejoice at anything."
"What a pity it is you are so little like a man."
In the evenings her lover came--an active little man, with white
eyebrows and eyelashes, and a round sunburnt face relieved by a woolly
moustache. He laughed continuously the whole evening, and probably
could have laughed the whole day long. They were already engaged, and
a new house was being built for them in one of the best streets of the
town, the cleanest and the quietest. The hunchback had never seen this
building and did not like to hear others talk of it. One day the fiancé
slapped him on the shoulder with his plump and much beringed little
hand, and said, showing a great number of tiny teeth:
"You ought to come and look over it, eh? What do you say?"
He refused for a long time under different pretexts, but at last he
gave way and went with him and his sister. The two men climbed to
the top storey of the scaffolding and then fell. The fiancé dropped
plump to the ground into the lime-pit, but the brother, whose clothes
got caught in the scaffolding, hung in mid-air and was rescued by the
workmen. He had no worse than a dislocated leg and wrist and a badly
bruised face. The fiancé, on the other hand, broke his back and was
severely gashed in the side.
The sister fell into convulsions, and tore at the ground with
her hands, raising little clouds of white dust. She wept almost
continuously for more than a month and then became like her mother. She
grew thin and haggard, and began to speak in a cold, expressionless
voice.
"You are my misfortune," she said.
He answered nothing, but kept his large eyes bent upon the ground. His
sister dressed herself in black, made her eyebrows meet in a line, and
whenever she met her brother clenched her teeth so that her jaw-bones
made sharp angles. He, on his part, tried to avoid meeting her eye and
was for ever busy planning and designing, alone in silence. So he
lived till he was of age, and then began between them an open struggle
to which their whole life was given, a struggle which bound them to
each other by the strong links of mutual insults and offences.
On the day of his coming of age he said to her in the tone of an elder
brother:
"There are no wise wizards, and no kind fairies. There are only men and
women, some of them wicked, others stupid, and everything that is said
about goodness is a myth. But I want the myth to become a reality. Do
you remember saying, 'In a rich house everything should be beautiful
and smart'? In a rich town also everything should be beautiful. I am
buying some land outside the town and am going to build a house there
for myself and for freaks like me. I shall take them out of the town,
where their life is almost unendurable and where it is unpleasant for
people like you to look upon them."
"No," she said; "you certainly will not do that. It is a crazy idea."
"It is your idea."
They disputed about it in the coldly hostile manner in which two
people dispute who hate each other bitterly, and have no need to
disguise their hatred.
"It is decided," he said.
"Not by me," his sister replied.
He raised his hunch and went off; and soon after his sister discovered
that the land had been bought and, what was more, that workmen were
already digging trenches for the foundation; that tens of thousands of
bricks were being carted, and stones and iron and wood.
"Do you think you are still a boy?" she asked. "Do you think it is a
game?"
He made no answer.
Once a week his sister, lean and straight and proud, drove into the
town in her little carriage drawn by a white horse. She drove slowly
past the spot where the work was proceeding and looked coldly at the
red bricks, like little chunks of meat, held in place by a framework of
iron girders; yellow wood was being fitted into the ponderous mass like
a network of nerves. She saw in the distance her brother's crab-like
figure. He crawled about the scaffolding, stick in hand, a crumpled hat
upon his head. He was covered with dust and looked like a grey spider.
At home she gazed intently at his excited face and into his dark eyes,
which had become softer and clearer.
"No," he said quietly to himself, "I have hit upon an idea: it should
be equally good for all concerned! It is wonderful work to build, and
it seems to me that I shall soon consider myself a happy man."
"Happy?" she asked wonderingly, measuring with her eyes the hunchback's
body.
"Yes, you know people who work are quite unlike us, they awaken new
thoughts in one.... How good it must be to be a bricklayer walking
through the streets of a town where he has built dozens of houses.
There are many socialists among the workers--steady, sober fellows,
first of all. Truly they have their own sense of dignity.... Sometimes
it seems to me that we don't understand our people."
"You are talking strangely," she said.
The hunchback was becoming animated, getting more and more talkative
every day.
"In reality everything is turning out as you wished it: I am becoming
a wise wizard who frees the town from freaks. You could be a good fairy
if you wished. Why don't you help me?"
"We will speak about it later," she said, playing with her gold
watch-chain.
Once he spoke out in a language quite unfamiliar to her:
"Maybe I have wronged you more than you have wronged me."
She was astonished.
"I wronged you?"
"Wait a minute. Upon my word of honour I am not as guilty as you
think. I walk badly. I may have pushed him, but there was no malicious
intention. No, believe me. I am more guilty of having wanted to injure
your hand, the hand you hit me with."
"Don't let us speak about that," she said.
"It seems to me one ought to be kinder," muttered the hunchback. "I
think that goodness is not a myth--it is possible."
The big building in the town grew rapidly; it had spread over the rich
soil and was rising towards the sky, which was always grey, always
threatening with rain.
Once a little group of officials came to the place where the work was
proceeding. They examined the building and, after talking quietly among
themselves, gave orders to stop the work.
"You have done this," exclaimed the hunchback, rushing at his sister
and clutching her throat with his long, nervous hands; but some men ran
up and pulled him away from her. The sister said to them:
"You see, gentlemen, he is really abnormal, and must be looked after.
This sort of thing began immediately after the death of his father,
whom he loved passionately. Ask the servants: they all know of his
illness. They kept silence until latterly, these good people; the
honour of the house where many of them have lived since their childhood
is dear to them. I also tried to hide our misfortune. An insane brother
is not a thing to be proud of."
His face turned purple and his eyes started out of their sockets as he
listened to this speech. He was dumbfounded, and silently scratched
with his nails the hands of those who held him while she continued:
"This house was a ruinous enterprise. I intend to give it to the town,
in the name of my father, as an asylum for insane people."
He shrieked, lost consciousness and was carried away.
His sister continued the building with the same speed with which he had
been conducting it, and when the house was finished, the first patient
who went into it was her brother. Seven years he spent there--ample
time for him to develop melancholia and become an imbecile. His sister
turned old in the meantime. She lost all hope of ever becoming a
mother, and when at last she saw that he was vanquished and would not
rise against her she took him under her care.
And now they are travelling all over the globe, hither and thither,
like blinded birds. They look on everything without sense or joy, and
see nothing anywhere except themselves.