Five Women (8 page)

One night the vomiting began, and the little animal continued to vomit until the next morning. When daylight returned, it lay languid and dizzy as though it had been beaten over the head. Perhaps it was merely that in their excess of love for it they had given the starving kitten too much to eat. However this might be, after that it could not be kept in the bedroom, but was given to the serving-man to look after. After two days the serving-men complained that it was no better; and indeed it was probable that they had put it outside in the night. And now it not only vomited but could not hold its stool, and nothing was safe from it. And this now was an ordeal, a grim trial of strength between that almost imperceptible halo and the dreadful filth, and it was decided—since it had meanwhile been discovered whence the little creature came—to have it taken back there: to a peasant's cottage down by the river, near the foot of the hill. This was a kind of deportation, done in the hope of evading both responsibility for the animal and ridicule for all the attention they paid to it. But it weighed on their conscience, and so they also sent milk and a little meat and even money in order to make sure that the peasants, to whom dirt did not matter so much, would look after the cat properly.

Nevertheless, the servants shook their heads over their master and mistress.

The serving-man who had carried the kitten down recounted that it had run after him when he left and that he had had to carry it back again. Two days later it was once more up in the castle. The hounds avoided it, the servants did not dare to drive it away for fear of the master and mistress, and when the latter set eyes on it, it was tacitly agreed that nobody would now refuse to let it die up here.

It was now very thin and lustreless, but the disgusting malady seemed to have passed off; now it was merely growing thinner all the time, losing flesh almost before their very eyes. For two days everything was, to a heightened degree, just as it had been before: there was the slow, affectionate prowling about in the refuge where it was cared for; an absent-minded smiling with the paws while striking at a scrap of paper dangled before it; sometimes a faint swaying out of weakness, in spite of having four legs to support it—and on the second day it sometimes collapsed on to its side. In a human being this process of disembodiment would not have seemed so strange, but in the animal it was like a metamorphosis into a human being. They watched it almost with awe. None of these three people, each in his or her peculiar situation, could escape the thought that it was his or her own destiny that was being vicariously accomplished in this little cat already half released from earthly bonds.

But on the third day the vomiting and filthiness began again. The serving-man stood by, and even though he did not dare to say it again aloud, his silence said it clearly enough: it will have to be put away. The Portuguese bowed his head as though struggling with some temptation, and then he said to his friend: "It is the only way." It seemed to him he had accepted his own death-sentence. And suddenly everyone looked at Herr von Ketten. He had grown white as the wall, and rose, and left the room. Then the lady from Portugal said to the serving-man: "Take it away." The man took the sick animal away to his own place, and the next day it was gone. Nobody asked any questions. They all knew that he had killed it. All of them felt the oppression of unspeakable guilt; something had gone from among them. Only the children felt nothing, finding it quite natural that the serving-man should kill a dirty cat that nobody could play with any more. But now and then the hounds would snuffle at a patch of grass on which the sunlight fell in the courtyard, and their legs stiffened, their hair bristled, and they glanced sidelong. At one such moment Herr von Ketten and the lady from Portugal encountered each other. They stopped side by side, looking across at the dogs and finding nothing to say. The sign had been given—but how was it to be interpreted and what was to be done? A great dome of silence surrounded them both.

If she has not sent him away before nightfall, I must kill him—Herr von Ketten thought to himself. But night fell and still nothing had happened. Supper was over. Ketten sat looking grave, heated by a slight fever. After a while he went out into the courtyard, for the cool evening air, and he remained absent for a long time. He could not make the final decision that he had all his life found it so easy to make. Saddling horses, buckling on armour, drawing a sword—all of that, which had once been the very music of his life, now had a harsh, discordant ring; and fighting seemed a senseless, alien mode of action. Even the short way, the way of the knife, was now like an infinitely long road on which a man might die of thirst. But neither was it his way to suffer; he could feel that he would never be wholly well again if he did not wrench himself free of all this. And gradually another thought associated itself with these... .

As a boy he had always wanted to climb the unscaleable cliff on top of which the castle stood. The thought was a mad one, a suicidal one, but now it was gradually gaining in obscure conviction, as though it were a matter of trial by ordeal, or something like an approaching miracle. It was not he but the little cat from the world beyond, it seemed to him, that would return this way. Laughing softly to himself, he shook his head in order to make sure it was still on his shoulders, and at the same time he realised that he had already gone a long distance down the stony path to the bottom of the hill.

At the bottom, down by the torrent, he left the path and clambered over great boulders with the water dashing between them, then through the bushes and up to the cliff. In the moonlight little points of shadow revealed crevices where fingers and toes could find a hold. Suddenly a piece of stone broke loose under one foot: the shock ran through his whole body, right into his heart. He strained his ears. It seemed an eternity before the stone splashed into the water far below. He must already have climbed a third of the height. Then it distinctly seemed to him that he awoke and realised what he was doing. Only a dead man could reach the bottom now, and only the Devil himself could reach the top. He groped above him. With each grip his life hung by the ten thin straps of sinew in his fingers. Sweat poured from his face, waves of heat flashed through his body, his nerves were like stony threads. But it was strange to feel how in this struggle with death strength and health came flowing back into his limbs, as though returning into his body from some place outside him. And then the impossible was indeed accomplished. There was one overhanging ledge that had to be circumvented, and then his arm was thrust in through an open window. Doubtless there was no other place where he could have arrived but at this very window, yet it was only now that he knew where he was. He swung himself in, sat on the sill and let his legs dangle inside the room. With his strength his ferocity had also returned. He waited until he had regained his breath. No, he had not lost the dagger from his side. It seemed to him that the bed was empty. But he went on waiting until his heart and lungs were quite calm again. And more and more distinctly it seemed to him that he was alone in the room. He crept towards the bed: nobody had slept in it this night.

Herr von Ketten tiptoed through rooms, corridors, and doorways that no one else would have found at once without guidance—until he came to his wife's bed-chamber. Listening, he waited. There was no sound of whispering. He glided in. The lady from Portugal was breathing quietly in her sleep. He searched dark corners and fumbled along walls and, when he stealthily left the room again, he could almost have sung for joy, joy that shook the very fabric of his unbelief.

He roved through the castle, but now floorboards and flagstones echoed with his tread, as though he were in search of some joyful surprise. In the yard a serving-man called out to him, demanding to know who he was. He asked for the visitor and learned that he had ridden away at the rising of the moon. Herr von Ketten sat down on a pile of rough-hewn timber, and the watchman marvelled at how long he sat there.

All at once he was seized by the certainty that if he were to return to the Portuguese lady's chamber, she would no longer be there. He thundered on the door and went in. His young wife started up as though in her dreams she had been waiting for this, and she saw him standing before her fully dressed, just as he had gone out that evening. Nothing had been proved, nothing had been disposed of, but she asked no question, and there was nothing that he could ask. He pulled aside the heavy curtain hanging before the window, and beyond it there rose the curtain of torrential thunder behind which all the seigniors delle Catene were born and died.

"If God could become man, then He can also become a kitten," the lady from Portugal said.

And perhaps he should have laid his hand upon her mouth to hush this blasphemy, but they both knew that no sound of it could penetrate beyond these walls.

Tonka

I

At a hedge. A bird was singing. And then the sun was somewhere down behind the bushes. The bird stopped singing. It was evening, and the peasant girls were coming across the fields, singing. What little things! Is it petty if such little things cling to a person? Like burrs? That was Tonka. Infinity sometimes flows in drips and drops.

And the horse was part of it too, the roan that he had tied to a willow. It was during his year of military service. It was no mere chance that it was in that year, for there is no other time of life when a man is so deprived of himself and his own works, and an alien force strips everything from his bones. One is more vulnerable at this time than at any other.

But had it really been like that at all? No, that was only what he had worked it up into later. That was the fairy-tale, and he could no longer tell the difference. In fact, of course, she had been living with her aunt at the time when he got to know her. And Cousin Julie sometimes came visiting. That was how it had been. He remembered being disconcerted by their sitting down at the same table with Cousin Julie over a cup of coffee, for she was, after all, a disgrace to the family. It was notorious that one could strike up a conversation with Cousin Julie and take her back to one's lodgings that same evening; she would also go to the bawdy-houses whenever she was wanted. She had no other source of income. Still, she was a relative, after all, even if one didn't approve of the life she led; and even if she was a light woman, one couldn't very well refuse to let her sit down at the table with one. Anyway, she didn't come very often. A man might have made a row about it, for a man reads the newspaper or belongs to some association with definite aims and is always throwing his weight about, but Auntie merely made a few cutting remarks after Julie had gone, and let it go at that. So long as she was there, they couldn't help laughing at her jokes, for she had a quick tongue and always knew more about what was going on in town than anyone else. So, even if they disapproved of her, there was no unbridgeable gap between them; they had something in common.

The women from the jail were another example of the same thing. Most of them were prostitutes too, and not long afterwards the jail itself had to be moved to another district because so many of them became pregnant while serving their sentence, carrying mortar on the building sites where male convicts worked as bricklayers. Now, these women were also hired out to do housework. For instance, they were very good at laundering, and they were very much sought after by people in modest circumstances, because they were cheap. Tonka's grandmother also had one in on washing-day; she would be given a cup of coffee and a bun, and since one was sharing the work with her it was all right to share breakfast with her too—there was no harm in that. At midday someone had to see her back to the jail, that was the regulation, and when Tonka was a little girl, she was generally the one who had to do it. She would walk along with the woman, chatting away happily, not in the least ashamed of being seen in that company, although these women wore grey prison uniform and white kerchiefs that made them easily recognisable. Innocence one might call it: a young life in all its innocence pathetically exposed to influences that were bound to coarsen it. But later on, when the sixteen-year-old Tonka was still unembarrassed, gossiping with Cousin Julie, could one say that this was still all innocence, or was it that her sensibilities were blunted? Even if no blame attached to her, how revealing it was!

The house must also be mentioned. With its five windows looking on to the street, it was a survival between towering new buildings that had shot up around it. It was in the back premises that Tonka lived with her aunt, who was actually her much older cousin, and her aunt's little son, the illegitimate offspring of a relationship that she had regarded as permanent, and a grandmother who was not really the grandmother but the grandmother's sister. In earlier days there had also been a brother of her dead mother's living there, but he too had died young. All of them lived together in one room and a kitchen, while the genteel curtains of the five front windows concealed an establishment of ill repute where lower-middle-class housewives of easy morals, as well as professionals, were brought together with men. This was something that the family tacitly ignored, and since they wanted no trouble with the procuress they even passed the time of day with her. She was a fat woman, very set on respectability. She had a daughter of the same age as Tonka, whom she sent to a good school; she had her taught the piano and French, bought her pretty clothes, and took care to keep her well away from the business. She was a softhearted creature, which made it easier for her to follow the trade she did, for she knew it was shameful. In earlier times Tonka had now and then been allowed to play with this daughter, and so had found her way into the front part of the house, at hours when it was empty, and to her the rooms seemed enormous, leaving her with an impression of grandeur and refinement that was only reduced to proper proportions after he came on the scene.