Selected Poems And Prose

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Selected Poems And Prose

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 Selected Poems And Prose

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.
other who was frank and changed and had wrought a miracle upon
himself and upon all others except herself—who was incapable of
faith out of shame and despair and desolation and an inner hurt?
But if he was that other and changed man, if he approved himself in
this supreme instance, then she need torment herself so cruelly no
more. For in that case, what did her little sorrows matter? Then she
must be humble, and wait for her summons, though she did not
know what it would be.
And she waited, stretching out her slim throat like a thirsty deer.
 XXVII
That “no, never, nevermore,” had driven Christian about without
another thought. On this day he forgot that Karen was sick unto
death.
As he was coming home that night it was raining. Nevertheless there
were groups of people in front of the houses. Some uncommon
event had brought them out of their rooms.
He had had no umbrella, and was wet to the skin. In the doorway,
too, stood people who lived in the house. They whispered excitedly.
When they saw him they became silent, stepped aside, and let him
pass.
Their faces frightened him. He looked at them. They were silent.
Terror fell on his chest like a lump of ice.
He went on. He was about to go up to Karen’s flat, but reconsidered
and went toward the court. He wanted to be alone in his room for a
while. Several people followed him. Among them was the wife of
Gisevius and her son, a young man whose behaviour was marked by
the well-defined class-consciousness of the organized worker.
Christian did not even observe that the window of his room was lit.
He walked close to the wall; he was so wet. Opening the door, he
saw Johanna and the boy. He did not at once recognize Michael,
who sat turned aside. He nodded to Johanna in surprise. The tense
and glittering look which she turned upon him made him start. He
reached the table and recognized Michael Hofmann. He grew pale,
and had to hold on to the table’s edge.
The door was still open, and in the dim light of the hall were
crowded the five or six people who had followed him. It was not
insolence that brought them to the threshold. They had been
disquieted by rumours, and thought that he could give them some
information.
Christian put his hand in the lad’s shoulder, and asked: “Where have
you been, Michael? Where have you come from?”
The boy continued rigid and silent.
“Where is Ruth?” Christian asked, as by a supreme effort.
Michael arose. His eyes were unnaturally wide open. With both arms
he made a large, obscure gesture. Horror shook him so that a
gurgling sound which arose in his throat was throttled before it
reached his lips. Suddenly he swayed and reeled and fell like a log.
He lay on the floor.
Christian kneeled down and put his arms about him. He lifted him a
little, and gathered the muddy, trembling boy close to him. He bent
down his face, and learned an unheard-of thing from the
beseeching, horror-stricken glance that sought him as from
fathomless depths. Passionately he pressed Michael’s body against
his own, which was so wet but no longer aware of its wetness. He
pressed the boy to his heart, as though he would open to him his
breast as a shelter, and the boy, too, clung to Christian with all his
might. The convulsive rigidity relaxed, and from that unbelievably
emaciated body there broke forth a sobbing like the moan of a wind
of doom.
The boy knew. No one could be so shattered but one who knew.
Then Christian kissed the stony, dirty, tear-stained face.
Johanna saw it, and the timid people at the door saw it also.
 INQUISITION

I
Edgar Lorm was accustomed to taking his meals without Judith, so
he was not surprised at her absence to-day and sat down alone.
The meal was served: a lobster, breast of veal with salad and three
kinds of vegetables, a pheasant with compote, a large boule de
Berlin, pineapple and cheese. He drank two glasses of red Bordeaux
and a pint of champagne.
He ate this excessively rich meal daily with the appetite of a giant
and the philosophical delight of a gourmet. As he was lighting his
heavy Havana cigar over his coffee, he heard Judith’s voice. She
burst in, perturbed to the utmost.
“What has happened, dear child?” he asked.
“Something frightful,” she gasped, and sank into a chair.
Lorm arose. “But what has happened, my dear?”
She panted. “I haven’t been feeling at all well for several days. I got
the doctor to look me over, and he says I’m pregnant.”
A sudden light came into Lorm’s eyes. “I don’t think that’s such a
terrible misfortune.” He had difficulty in concealing his surprised
delight. “On the contrary, I think it’s a blessed thing. I hardly dared
hope for it. Indeed, my dear wife, I don’t know what I wouldn’t give
to have it true.”
Judith’s eyes glittered as she replied: “It shall never be—never,
never! I shall not remind you of our agreement; I shall not lay the
blame on you if this terrible thing has really happened. I can’t
believe it yet. It would make me feel bewitched. But you are
mistaken if you count on any yielding on my part, any womanly
weakness, or any awakening of certain so-called instincts. Never,
never! My body shall remain as it is—mine, all mine. I won’t have it
lacerated and I won’t share it. It’s the only thing I still call my own. I
won’t have a strange creature take possession of it, and I refuse to
age by nine years in nine months. And I don’t want some mocking
image of you or me to appear. Never, never! The horror of it! Be
careful! If you take delight in something I detest so, the horror will
extend itself to you!”
Lorm stretched himself a little, and regarded her with amazement.
There was nothing for him to say.
She went into her bedroom and locked the door. Lorm gave orders
that no visitors were to be admitted. Then he went into the library,
and spent the time until eight reading a treatise on the motions of
the fixed stars. But often he raised his eyes from the book, for he
was preoccupied not so much with the secrets of the heavens as
with very mundane and very depressing things. He got up and went
to the door of Judith’s room. He listened and knocked, but Judith did
not answer. At the end of half an hour he returned and knocked
again. She knew his humble way of seeking admission, but she did
not answer. The door remained locked.
At the end of each half hour, which he spent in reading about the
stars, he returned to the door and knocked. He called her name. He
begged her to have some confidence in him and hear what he had
to say. He spoke in muffled tones, so as not to arouse the attention
of the servants. He asked her not to blame him for his premature
delight. He saw his error and deplored it. Only let her listen to him.
He promised her gifts—an antique candlestick, a set of Dresden
china, a frock made by Worth. In vain. She did not answer.
Three days passed. An oppressive atmosphere rested on the
household. Lorm slunk through the rooms like an intimidated guest.
He humiliated himself so far as to send Judith a letter by the
housekeeper, who took in her meals and who alone had access to
her. At night he returned to the door again and again, placed his lips
against it, and implored her. There was no stirring of anger in him,
no impulse to clench his fist and break down the door. Judith knew
that. She was beating her fish.
She knew that she could go any length.
This man had been the idol of a whole nation. He had been spoiled
by fame, by the friendship of distinguished people, by the kindness
of fate and all the amenities of life. His very whims had been feared;
a frown of his had swept all opposition aside. Now he not only
endured the maltreatment of this woman whom he had married
after long solitariness and hesitation; he accepted insult and
humiliation like the just rewards of some guilt. Weary of fame,
appreciation, friendship, success, and domination, he seemed to lust
after mortification, the reversal of all things, and the very
voluptuousness of pain.
Quite late on the third evening he was summoned to the telephone
by Wolfgang Wahnschaffe. The breach between Wolfgang and Judith
that had followed his first visit forbade his visiting the house.
He begged Lorm for an interview on neutral ground. The occasion,
he said, was most pressing. Lorm asked for details. The bitter and
excited answer was that the question concerned Christian. Some
common proceeding against him, some decision and plan, some
protective measures were absolutely necessary. The family must be
saved from both danger and inconceivable disgrace.
At this point Lorm interrupted him. “I feel rather sure that my wife
will prove quite unapproachable in the matter. And what could I do
more than the merest stranger?” Urged anew, he finally promised to
meet Wolfgang at luncheon in a restaurant on Potsdamer Street.
He had scarcely hung up the receiver when Judith entered. She had
on a négligée of dark-green velvet trimmed with fur. The garment
had a long train. Her hair was carefully dressed, a cheerful smile was
on her lips, and she stretched out both hands to Lorm.
He was happy, and took her hands and kissed them.
She put her arms about his neck and her lips close to his ear:
“Everything is all right. The doctor is a donkey. I did you wrong.
Everything is nice now, so be nice!”
“If only you are satisfied,” said Lorm, “nothing else matters.”
She nestled closer to him, and coaxed with eyes and mouth and
hands: “How about the antique candlestick, darling, and the frock by
Worth? Are you going to get them for me? And am I not to have my
set of Dresden china?”
Lorm laughed. “Since you admit that you wronged me, the price of
reconciliation is a trifle high,” he mocked. “But don’t worry. You shall
have everything.”
He breathed a kiss upon her forehead. That disembodied tenderness
was the symbol of the ultimate paralysis of his energy before her
and men and the world. And from day to day this paralysis grew
more noticeable, and bore all the physical symptoms of an affection
of the heart.
 II
An identical account in all newspapers gave the first public
notification that a murder had been committed:
“At six o’clock yesterday a foreman and a workman from
Brenner’s factory found the headless body of a girl in a
shed on Bornholmer Street. The body was held by ropes
in an unnatural position, and was so tightly wedged in
among beams, boards, ladders, barrows, and refuse, that
the police officers who were immediately summoned had
the greatest difficulty in disentangling their gruesome find.
The news spread rapidly through the neighbourhood, and
a rumour that increased in definiteness pointed to the
body of the murdered girl as that of the sixteen-year-old
Ruth Hofmann residing in Stolpische Street. A notification
of her disappearance had been lodged at police
headquarters several days ago. The theory that it was she
who was the victim of a murder of unparalleled bestiality
became a certainty some hours later. A mason’s wife
found in the mortar-pit of a building lot on Bellermann
Street the severed head, which proved to belong to the
body and was identified by several inhabitants of the
house on Stolpische Street as that of Ruth Hofmann.
Except for stockings and shoes, the body was entirely
naked, and its mutilations indicated felonious assault.
There is at present no trace of the murderer. But the
investigations are being present with all possible care and
energy, and it is warmly to be desired that the inhuman
brute may soon be turned over to the ministers of justice.”
 III
In the little rear room he had now been sleeping for fourteen hours.
The widow Engelschall determined to go to him.
She passed through the half-dark passage-way in which the supplies
were stored. Hams and smoked sausages dangled from the ceiling.
On the floor stood kegs with sardines, herrings, and pickled
gherkins. There were shelves filled with glasses of preserved fruit.
The place smelled like a shop.
She stopped, took a little gherkin out of an open keg, and swallowed
it without chewing.
The bell of the front-door rang. A sluttish creature, broom in hand,
became visible at the end of the passage, and called out to the
widow Engelschall that Isolde Schirmacher had come with an
important message. “Let her wait,” the widow Engelschall growled.
Softly she went into the small room in which Niels Heinrich was
sleeping.
He lay on a mattress. A bluish flannel coverlet was over him. His
hairy chest was bare; his naked feet protruded. The room was so
small that not even a chest of drawers could have been squeezed in.
Heaps of malodorous, soiled linen lay in the corners. Tools were
scattered about the floor—a plane, a hammer, a saw. Old
newspapers increased the litter, and on nails in the wall hung dirty
clothes, ties, and a couple of overcoats. On the walls red splotches
showed where bedbugs had been killed. On the table stood a
candlestick with a piece of candle, an empty beer bottle, and a half
empty whiskey bottle.
He lay on his back. The muscles of his face had snapped under an
inhuman tension. Between his reddish eyebrows vibrated three dark
furrows. His skin was the tint of cheese. On his neck and forehead
were beads of sweat. His lids looked like two black holes. The slim,
red little beard on his chin moved as he breathed—moved like a
separate and living thing, a watchful, hairy insect.
He snored loudly. A bubble of saliva rose now and then from the
horrible opening of his lips that showed his decayed teeth.
The widow Engelschall had had plans which had seemed easy to
execute outside. Now she dared do nothing. Last night she had
stood above him as she stood now. He had begun to murmur in his
sleep, and she had hurried out in terror.
It buzzed in her head: What had he done with the two thousand
marks which he had embezzled from the builder? She distrusted his
assertion that he had spent it all on the cashier of the Metropolitan
Moving Picture Theatre. To make up a part of the money and
prevent his arrest, she had had to pawn all her linen, two chests of
drawers, the furnishings of her waiting-room, and also to mortgage
a life insurance policy. Her letter to Privy Councillor Wahnschaffe had
not even been answered.
She didn’t believe that he had wasted so much good money on that
slut. He must have a few hundreds lying about somewhere. The
thought gave her no rest. It was dangerous to let him notice her
suspicion; but she could risk entering the room while he slept,
burrowing in his clothes, and slipping her hand under his pillow.
But she stood perfectly still. In his presence she was always
prepared for the unexpected. If he but opened his mouth, she
trembled within. If people came to speak of him, she grew cold all
over. If she stopped to think, she knew that it had always been so.
When the village schoolmaster had caught the ten-year-old boy in
disgusting practices with a girl of eight, he had said: “He’ll end on
the gallows.” When he was an apprentice, he had quarrelled over
wages with his employer and threatened to strike him. The man had
said: “He’ll end on the gallows.” When he had stolen a silver chain
from the desk of the minister’s wife at Friesoythe, and his mother
had gone to return it, the lady had said: “He’ll end on the gallows.”
The memories came thick and fast. He had beaten his first mistress,
fat Lola who lived in Köpnicker Street, with barbarous cruelty,
because at a dance in Halensee she had winked at a postal clerk.
When the girl had writhed whining on the floor, and shrieked out in
her pain: “There ain’t such another devil in the world!” the widow
Engelschall had appealed to the enraged fellow’s conscience, and
had said to him: “Go easy, my boy, go easy;” but her advice had
been futile. When his second mistress was pregnant, he forced her
to go for treatment to an evil woman with whom he was also
intimate, and the girl died of the operation. He jeered at the swinish
dullness of women who couldn’t do the least things right—couldn’t
bear and couldn’t kill a brat properly. No one, fortunately, had heard
this remark but the widow Engelschall. Again she had besought him:
“Boy, go it a bit easier, do!”
At bottom she admired his qualities. You couldn’t fool with him. He
knew how to take care of himself; he could get around anybody. If
only he hadn’t always vented his childish rage on harmless things.
The expense of it! If the fire didn’t burn properly, he’d tear the oven
door from its hinges; if his watch was fast or slow, he’d sling it on
the floor so that it was smashed; if meat was not done to his liking,
he broke plates with his knife; if a cravat balked in the tying, he’d
tear it to shreds, and often his shirt too. Then he laughed his goat-
like laugh, and one had to pretend to share his amusement. If he
noticed that one was annoyed, he became rabid, spared nothing,
and destroyed whatever he could reach.
She wondered what he lived on in ordinary times, when he had had
no special piece of good luck. For he seemed always in the midst of
plenty, with pockets full of money, and no hesitation to spend and
treat. Sometimes he worked—four days a week or five. And he could
always get work. He knew his trade, and accomplished in one day
more than other workmen did in three. But usually he extended blue
Monday until Saturday, and passed his time in unspeakable dives
with rogues and loose women.
The widow Engelschall knew a good deal about him. But there was a
great deal that she did not know. His ways were mysterious. To ask
him and to receive an answer was to be none the wiser. He was
always planning something, brewing something. All this commanded
the widow Engelschall’s profound respect. He was flesh of her flesh
and spirit of her spirit. Yet her anxiety was great; and recently the
cards had foretold evil with great pertinacity.
And so she hesitated, full of fear. The palish, yellow skull on the
coarse, fustian pillow paralysed her. The slack flesh of her fat neck
drooped and shook, as she finally bent and reached down after his
coat and waistcoat, which were lying under the chair. She turned
away a little so as to conceal her motions. Suddenly she felt a hand
on her shoulder and shrieked.
Niels Heinrich had risen noiselessly. He stood there in his shirt, and
pierced her with the yellowish flare of his glance. “What’re you doing
there, you old slut?” he asked with calm rage. She let the garments
fall and retreated toward the door trembling. He stretched forth his
arm: “Out!”
His appearance was fear-inspiring. Words died on her lips. With
reeling steps she went out.
Isolde Schirmacher was still waiting in the hall. She began to weep
when she gave her message: the widow Engelschall was to come to
Stolpische Street without delay. Karen was very sick, was dying.
The widow Engelschall seemed incredulous. “Dying? Ah, it ain’t so
easy to die. Give her my love, and say I’m coming. I’ll be there in an
hour.”
 IV
A further account appeared in the papers:
“The mystery which surrounds the murder of young Ruth
Hofmann is beginning to clear up. The public will be glad
to learn that the efforts of the police have brought about
the apprehension of her probable slayer. The latter is
Joachim Heinzen of Czernikauer Street, twenty years old,
of evil reputation and apparently of not altogether
responsible mind. Even before the discovery of the crime
his behaviour attracted attention. Within the last few days
the evidence against him has increased to the extent of
justifying his arrest. When the police frankly accused him
of the crime, he first broke down, but immediately
thereafter resisted arrest with the utmost violence. Lodged
in jail, he made a full and comprehensive confession.
When asked to sign the protocol, however, he retracted
his entire statement, and denied his guilt with extreme
stubbornness. In his demeanour brutish stupidity
alternated with remorse and terror. There can hardly be
any doubt but that he is the criminal. The first formal
examination by the investigating judge entrusted with the
case will take place to-day. All the inhabitants of the house
in Stolpische Street have been examined, among them a
personality whose presence in that locality throws a
curious side-light on a widely discussed affair, in which
one of the most respected families among our captains of
industry is involved.”
 V
The hint in the last sentence caused endless talk. The name, which
had considerately been left unmentioned, passed from mouth to
mouth, no one knew how. The rumour reached Wolfgang
Wahnschaffe. Colleagues asked him with cool amazement what his
brother had to do with the murder of a Jewish girl in the slums. Even
the chief of his Chancellery in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
summoned him, and questioned him with an expression that made
him blanch with shame.
He wrote to his father: “I am in the position of a peaceful pedestrian
who is in constant danger of a madman attacking him from behind.
You are aware, dear father, that in the career I have chosen an
unblemished repute is the first requisite. If my reputation and my
name are to be constantly at the public mercy of an insane
eccentric, who unhappily bears that name only to stain it, the time
has come to use every means, no matter how drastic, to protect
oneself. We have had patience. I was for far too long a flickering
little flame beside the dazzling but, as is clear now, quite deceptive
radiance of Christian. Now that my whole life’s happiness is at stake,
as well as the honour of myself and my house, it would be the
merest weakness on my part if I were to regard passively all that is
happening and still likely to happen. This is likewise the opinion of
my friends and of every right thinking person. Some energetic action
is necessary if I am to sustain myself in the station which I have
achieved, not to mention any other unpleasantness in which we may
become involved. Until I hear from you, I shall try to get in touch
with Judith, and take counsel with her. Although she ceased from all
association with myself, in the most insulting manner and for
reasons still dark to me, I believe that she will realize the
seriousness of the situation.”
The Privy Councillor received this letter immediately on the heels of
a conference with a delegation of strikers. It was some time before
the pained amazement it automatically aroused in him really
penetrated his consciousness. In any other circumstances the letter’s
unfilial, almost impudent tone would have angered him. To-day he
gave it no further thought. Swiftly he wrote a telegram in cipher to
Girke and Graurock.
The reply which came by special delivery reached him the next
evening at his house in Würzburg. Willibald Girke wrote:
“My dear Privy Councillor:—Although it is some time since we have
had the pleasure of working under direct orders from you, yet in the
hope of renewed relations between us, we have been forward-
looking enough to continue our investigations, and to keep up to
date in all matters concerning Herr Christian Wahnschaffe at our
own risk and expense. Thanks to this efficient farsightedness which
we have made our rule, we are able to answer your question with
the celerity and precision which the situation calls for.
“We proceed at once to the root of the matter, the murder of the
young Jewess. We can give you the consoling assurance that there is
no other connection between your son and the foul crime in
question than through the warm and much discussed friendship
which your son entertained for the murdered girl. Hence he is
implicated as a witness, and as such will have to appear in court in
due time. This painful necessity is unhappily unavoidable. Who
touches pitch is defiled. His close association with proletarians
necessarily involved him in such matters and in a knowledge of their
affairs. It has been proved and admitted that he once visited the
dwelling of the murderer Heinzen. He did so in the company of Ruth
Hofmann, and on that occasion a scandalous scene is said to have
taken place which was provoked by Niels Heinrich, the brother of
Karen Engelschall. This Niels Heinrich is a close friend of Joachim
Heinzen, has been kept under close surveillance by the police and
examined, and his evidence is said to have been very serious for the
accused. It is this connection with Engelschall, casual and innocent
as it may be, that will be held against your son, and its disagreeable
results cannot yet be absolutely estimated.
“Ruth Hofmann was seen almost daily in your son’s society. Her
father’s flat was immediately opposite Karen Engelschall’s, a
circumstance which facilitated their friendship. A new party has
already moved in, a certain Stübbe with his wife and three children.
This Stübbe is a drunkard of the most degraded sort. He is noisy
every evening, and treats his family with such cruelty that your son
has already found it necessary to interfere on several occasions. We
touch upon this fact to illustrate the ease with which, in these
dwelling-places, comradeships are established and annoyances
incurred. The former tenant, David Hofmann, was indeed peaceful
and well-behaved. But he must have been in the utmost difficulties,
since he left for America only a few days before the murder.
Although telegrams were sent after him at once, he has not been
heard from. It is supposed that, for reasons of his own, he
emigrated under an assumed name, since the passenger lists of all
ships that have sailed within the past two weeks have been searched
for his own name in vain. It is possible, moreover, that he sailed
from a Dutch or British port. The authorities are investigating.
“Ruth’s young brother had also disappeared for six days, and did not
show up until the very evening on which the murder was discovered,
when he was found in your son’s room. He has remained there ever
since. His state of mind is inexplicable. No urging, neither requests
nor commands, could extract from him the slightest hint as to where
he had passed the crucial days between Sunday and Thursday. As
his silence is prolonged, it assumes a more and more mysterious
aspect, and every effort is made to break it in the belief that it may
be connected with the murder and may conceal important bits of
evidence.
“It has not failed to be observed that your son not only gives no
assistance to those who desire to question young Hofmann, but
frustrates their purpose whenever he can. Since he is absent from
his room during the greater part of the day, a certain Fräulein
Schöntag has undertaken to watch over the boy. Recently, however,
the necessity for such constant watchfulness seems to have
decreased. In the absence of Fräulein Schöntag the boy Hofmann is
now often left alone for hours, and only the wife of Gisevius
occasionally looks in to see that he is still safely there. Nevertheless
a plain clothes detective is keeping the house under close and
constant observation.
“From all this it is obvious that, in assuming the care of this
enfeebled boy, your son has taken upon himself a new burden,
which, in view of his other responsibilities and restricted pecuniary
means, will be not a little difficult to bear. We take the liberty of
making this observation, in spite of the fact that a real
understanding of your son’s intentions and purposes is still lacking to
us as to every one.
“This concludes our report. In the hope that our thoroughness and
exactness corresponds to your hopes and wishes, and in the
expectation of such further directions as you may be pleased to give
us, We beg to remain, Most respectfully yours, Girke and Graurock.
Per W. Girke.”
Albrecht Wahnschaffe wandered through the rooms of the old
house, followed by the dog Freya. To avoid the most crushing of his
thoughts, he summoned up the face of the workingman who had
been the spokesman of yesterday’s deputation. He recalled with
great exactness the brutal features—the protruding chin, the thin
lips, the black moustache brushed upward, the cold, sharp glance,
the determined expression. And in this face he saw no longer the
visage of this particular man who had come to him on this particular
and accidental errand, but of a whole world, mysterious, inevitable,
terrible, full of menace and coldness and determination.
The energy and circumspection which he had shown in his
conference with the delegates seemed to him monstrously futile.
The power of no individual would avail in the conflict with that
world.
He did not want to think—not of the letter of the private detective
agency, nor of its horrible revelations, which seemed dim and turbid
scenes of an immeasurably alien life, and yet the life of his son
whom he had loved and whom he still loved. Ah, no, he did not want
to think of the innumerable lowly and ugly and horrible events which
whirled past his mind in a ghostly panorama—the rooms, the courts,
the houses full of groaning, wretched bodies. To prevent himself
from thinking of these, he turned the pages of a book, hunted
through a drawer filled with old letters, and wandered tirelessly from
room to room, followed by the dog Freya.
Fleeing from these images, he encountered others that concerned
the realm of his work, in which the hopes of all his life were rooted
and had ripened, in which the very wheels of his existence had been
set in motion. He saw the great shops desolate, the furnaces
extinguished, the trip-hammers still, and from a thousand doors and
windows arms in gestures of command stretched out toward him
who had thought himself the master of them all. It was not the first
time that a strike had interfered with the intricate organization of the
works. But it was the first time that the feeling came to him that
struggle was useless and the end imminent.
And the question rose to his lips: “Why have you done this to me?”
And this question he addressed to Christian, as though Christian
were guilty of the demands of those who had once been willing
slaves, of the empty halls, the extinguished furnaces, the silent
hammers—guilty, somehow, because of his presence in those rooms
amid harlots and murderers, mad and sick men, and in all those
haunts of human vermin. Rage quivered up in him, one of those rare
attacks that all but robbed him of consciousness. His eyes seemed
filled with blood; he sought a sacrifice and a creature to make
atonement, and observed the dog gnawing at a rug. He took a
bamboo stick, and beat the animal so that it whined piteously—beat
it for minutes, until his arm fell exhausted.
Calm came, and he felt remorse and shame. But the core of his
anger remained in his heart, and he carried it about with him like a
hidden poison. The gnawing and burning did not cease, and he
knew that it would not cease until he had had a reckoning with
Christian, until Christian had given some accounting of himself as
man to man, son to father, criminal to judge.
The rage corroded his soul. Yet what was the way out? How could
he reach Christian? How summon him to an accounting? No active
step but would betray his dignity. Was he doomed merely to wait?
For weeks and months? The silent rage gnawed at his very life.
 VI
Johanna’s absence made Amadeus Voss more and more anxious.
Using the methods of a spy, he had discovered that she had left the
house of her relatives quite suddenly. On the day after her last visit
to Zehlendorf, she had come home silent and sorrowful. Her absence
had caused worry, since every one was now thinking of murders and
mysterious disappearances. She had refused to tell where she had
passed the night, and had simply declared that she was going away
altogether. She had resisted all questions and arguments in silence
and had quickly packed her possessions. Then a motor car, which
she had ordered, had appeared, and with formal words of thanks
she had said good-bye. She had told her cousin, with whom she was
more intimate than with the rest, that she needed a period of
concentration and loneliness, and was moving into a furnished room.
She begged that no one try to seek her out. It would be useless and
only drive her farther. Indeed, she had threatened more desperate
things if she were not left in peace. Nevertheless her frightened
kinsmen had followed her track, and had discovered that she had
rented a room in Kommandanten Street. But since she was lodging
with a respectable woman and seemed guilty of nothing exciting or
dangerous, her desire was finally respected, and all vain speculation
as to her incomprehensible action abandoned.
These details had been recounted to Voss by a maid whom he had
bribed with five marks. With tense face and inflamed heart he went
home to consider what he should do. He found a letter from
Johanna, who wrote: “I do not know how things will be between us
in the future. At this moment I am incapable of any decision. I am
not in the least interested either in myself or in my fate, and I have
weighty reason for that feeling. Don’t seek me out. I am in
Stolpische Street almost all day long, but don’t seek me out if you
have any interest in me or if you want me to have the least interest
in you in the future. I don’t want to see you; I can’t bear to listen to
you at present. The experience I have had has been too dreadful
and too unexpected. You would find me changed in a way that you
would not like at all. Johanna.”
Pale with rage, he immediately rode into the city as far as the station
on Schönhauser Avenue. When he reached Stolpische Street it was
nine o’clock in the evening. Frau Gisevius told him that Fräulein
Schöntag had left half an hour ago. He looked into Christian’s room,
and saw an unknown boy sitting at the table. He drew the woman
aside, and asked her who it was. She was amazed that he didn’t
know, and told him that it was the brother of the murdered girl. She
added that Wahnschaffe was quite unlike himself since the tragedy.
He walked about like a lost soul. If you talked to him he either didn’t
answer at all or answered at random. He didn’t touch his breakfast
which she brought him every morning. Often he would stand for half
an hour on the same spot with lowered head. She was afraid he was
losing his mind. A couple of days ago she had met him in Rhinower
Street, and there, in bright daylight, he had been talking out loud to
himself so that the passers-by had laughed. Yesterday he had left
without a hat, and her little girl had run after him with it. He had
stared at the child for a while as if he didn’t understand. Shortly
after that he had returned home with several of his friends.
Suddenly she had heard him cry out and had rushed into his room.
She had found him on his knees before the others, sobbing like a
little child. Then he had struck the floor in his despair and had cried
out that this thing could not be and dared not be true, that it wasn’t
possible and he couldn’t endure it. Fräulein Schöntag had been there
too. But she had been silent and so had the others. They had just
sat there and trembled. This attack had been caused by some young
men imprudently telling him that this was the day set for the official
examination and autopsy of Ruth’s body. He had wanted to hasten
to the court. They had restrained him with difficulty, and finally had
to assure him that he would be too late, that everything would be
over. All night long he had walked up and down in his room, while
Michael had been lying on the leather sofa. The two hadn’t
exchanged one word all night. She had slipped out of her room and
listened repeatedly—not a syllable. At five o’clock in the morning
Fräulein Schöntag had come; at seven Lamprecht and another
student. They had persuaded him to go out to Treptow with them to
spend the day. He had neither consented nor refused, and they had
just dragged him along. Friends of Ruth Hofmann had come too and
staid till noon—a woman and a young man. They sometimes came in
the evening too, after Fräulein Schöntag had gone, so that Michael
need not be alone. No one knew what was going to be done with
the boy. His condition hadn’t changed in the least. He hadn’t even
undressed, and if Fräulein Schöntag hadn’t known just how to get
around him, he would not even have let anybody brush the mud
from his clothes or wash his hands and face. Sometimes a red-haired
gentleman would come to see the boy. She had heard that he was a
baron and a friend of Wahnschaffe. This gentleman had brought a
chessboard day before yesterday, because some one had said that
Michael knew how to play chess and had often played with his sister.
But when the chessmen had been set up, Michael had only
shuddered and had not touched them. The board was still there on
the table. Herr Voss could go and see for himself.
The woman would have gossipped on and on. But Voss left her with
a silent nod. He had grown thoughtful. What he had heard of
Christian had made him thoughtful. Careless of his direction, he
turned toward Exerzier Square. He brooded and doubted. His
imagination refused to see Christian as the woman had pictured him.
It seemed an absolute contradiction of the possible, a mockery of all
experience. Grief, such grief—and Christian? Despair, such despair—
and Christian? The world was rocking on its foundations. Some
mystery must be behind it all. Under the pressure of huge forces the
very elements may change their character, but it was inconceivable
to him that blood should issue from a stone, or a heart be born
where none had been.
Forced back against his will, he returned to Stolpische Street.
Suddenly he saw Johanna immediately in front of him. He called out
to her; she stopped and nodded, and showed no surprise. But his
hasty, whispered questions left her silent. Her face was of a
transparent pallor. At the door of the house she stopped and
considered. Then she walked back into the court to the window of
Christian’s room. She wanted to look in, but a hanging had been
drawn. She hurried into the hall, rang the bell, and exchanged some
words with Frau Gisevius. Then she came back. “I must go upstairs,”
she said, “I must see how Karen is.” She did not indicate that Voss
was to wait. He waited with all the more determination. From the
dwellings about he heard music, laughter, the crying of children, the
dull whirr of a sewing-machine. At last Johanna came back and
returned to the street at his side. She said in a helpless tone: “The
poor woman will hardly outlive the night, and Christian isn’t at
home. What is to be done?”
He did not answer.
“You must understand what is happening to me,” Johanna said,
softly and insistently.
“I understand nothing,” Voss replied dully. “Nothing—except that I
suffer, suffer beyond endurance.”
Johanna said harshly: “You don’t count.”
They were near the Humboldt Grove. It was cold, but Johanna sat
down on a bench. She seemed wearied; exertions hurt her delicate
body like wounds. Shyly Voss took her hand, and asked: “What is it,
then?”
“Don’t,” she breathed, and withdrew her hand. After a long silence
she said: “People always thought him insensitive. Some even said
that that was the reason for his success with all who came near him.
It was a nice theory. I myself never believed it. Most theories are
wrong; why should this one have been right? There is so much vain
talk about people; it is all painful and futile, both when it asserts and
when it denies. His society wasn’t, I grant you, spiritually edifying. If
one was deeply moved by something, one somehow, instinctively,
hid it from him and felt a sense of embarrassment. And now—this!
You can’t imagine it. And how am I to describe it? All the time, that
first evening while he was taking care of Michael, he hadn’t yet been
told anything. At nine or half-past he went up to Karen’s, intending
to come back in an hour, but he came earlier. There were people
loitering in the yard, and they told him. Then he came into the room,
quite softly. He came in and....” She took out a handkerchief, pressed
it to her eyes, and wept very gently.
Voss let her cry for a little while. Then he asked very tensely: “He
came in and——? And what?”
Johanna kept her eyes covered, and went on: “You had the feeling:
This is the end for him, the end of all content, of smiles and laughter
—the end. In fifteen minutes his face had aged by twenty years. I
looked at it for just a moment; then my courage failed me. You may
think it fantastic, but I tell you the whole room was one pain, the air
was pain and so was the light. It’s the truth. Everything hurt;
everything one thought or saw hurt. But he was absolutely silent,
and his expression was like that of one who was straining his eyes to
read some illegible script. And that was the most painful thing of all.”
She fell silent and Voss did not break this silence. Enviously and
rancorously he reflected: “We shall have to convince ourselves that
blood can issue from a stone; we must see and hear and test.”
Deliberately he fortified his will to doubt. The explanations which he
gave in his own mind were of an unworthy character. Not to provoke
Johanna he feigned to share her faith; and yet there was something
about her story that stirred his vitals and made him afraid.
Johanna needed some support. She froze in her new freedom; she
distrusted her strength to bear it. With a touch of dread and longing
she wondered that no one dragged her back by force into the
comfort of a sheltered, care-free, secure life.
She was not sorry to have Amadeus walking at her side. Ah, it was
inconsistent and weak and faithless to one’s own self, but there was
such a horror in being alone. Yet her gesture of farewell seemed
utterly final when they reached the house in Kommandanten Street
where she lived. Amadeus Voss, suspecting her weakness and her
melancholy, accompanied her to the dark stairs, and there grasped
her with such violence as though he meant to devour her. She
merely sighed.
At that moment an irresistible desire for motherhood welled up in
her. She did not care through whose agency, nor whether his kiss
inspired disgust or delight. She wanted to become a mother—to give
birth to something, to create something, not to be so empty and
cold and alone, but to cling to something and seem more worthy to
herself and indispensable to another being. Had not this very man
who held her like a beast of prey spoken of the yearning of the
shadow for its body? Suddenly she understood that saying.
Sombre and searching and strong was the look she gave him when
they stepped out upon the street again. Then she went with him.
 VII
Karen was still alive in the morning. Death had a hard struggle with
her. Late at night she had once more fought herself free of its
embrace; now she lay there, exhausted by the effort. Her arms, her
hands, her breasts were covered with sores filled with pus. Many
had broken open.
Three women rustled through the room—Isolde Schirmacher, the
widow Spindler, and the wife of a bookbinder who lived in the rear.
They whispered, fetched things back and forth, waited for the
physician and for the end.
Karen heard their whispers and their tread with hatred. She could
not speak; she could scarcely make herself understood; but she
could still hate. She heard the screeching and rumbling in the flat
that had been the Hofmanns’ and was now the Stübbes’. The
drunkard’s rising in the morning was as baleful to his wife and
children as his going to bed at night. All the misery that he caused
penetrated the wall, and aroused in Karen memories of equal horrors
in dim and distant years.
Yet for her there was really but one pain and one misery—Christian’s
absence. For days he had paid her only short visits; during the last
twenty-four hours, none at all. Dimly she knew of the murder of the
Jewish girl, and dimly felt that Christian was changed since then; but
she felt so terribly desolate without him that she tried not to think of
that. His absence was like a fire in which her still living body was
turned to cinders. It cried out at her. In the midst of the moaning of
her agony she admonished herself to be patient, raised her head
and peered, let it drop back upon the pillows, and choked in the
extremity of her woe.
The door opened and she gave a start. It was Dr. Voltolini, and her
face contorted itself.