Place in the City (15 page)

“Anna,” he said. He awoke then. Everything that had held itself in suspension until now suddenly crumbled, and he had a sensation of houses and streets falling away from him upon every side. His legs were weak, so weak that they could barely support him, and he was trembling with cold.

“Anna,” he said.

He went down on his knees beside her, put his hands against her face.

“Anna—Anna.”

Then he realized that she had been shot, realized it as a concrete fact that was no longer part of an evil dream. You had to realize a thing like that; you had to adjust your mind to it; you had to grasp the facts. Her husband had shot her.

Frantically, he tore open her clothes. There were two jagged wounds in her breast, hardly an inch from each other. He wiped the blood off, saw that there was hardly any blood coming out now. Then he tried to feel her heart, but even as he touched her he could sense the chill of her skin.

“Anna,” he begged her, “Anna—”

Then he looked at her face, at the wide, staring eyes. He tried to remember what he knew of death. In his mind, fear, horror, and sorrow made a confusing jumble. When a person's eyes remained open—then it was death. Wasn't it? Who was he talking to?

Anna wasn't dead. “No,” he said, “you're not.”

The blood was on his fingers. He looked at his hands, and then he tried to think. What did he want to think of? Something? Certainly there was something to think of, but how could he think when he was able to put nothing straight in his own mind?

She was dead. When the overwhelming realization came to him, he started back from her, shook his head. How could he know so certainly? Yet he knew. There was no use trying to do anything now—no use at all. Because she was dead. He nodded his head, his mouth trembling.

“Anna?”

It was foolish, even, to speak to her, since you couldn't speak to a person who was already dead.

Then he attempted to recall what had happened? Why did he want to lie down and sleep? It was out of all reason to want to sleep now, but he was tired. Something had happened. There was a certain sequence of events that had broken all the silence and beauty of the night. His mind forced him to remember, how he had looked for his watch, how Claus had stopped them, how Anna was afraid, and how Claus had finally shot her. Then Claus ran away.

Why? He wondered why Claus had run away. Perhaps because he had been frightened.

His thoughts were racing back and forth now with wild, unrestrained madness. He thought of the watch. If only he hadn't stopped to look for the watch; if only they had left quickly. Then Anna would be alive.

He looked at her, saw how her head was wet with snow and sinking into it. Then he lifted her head. It was very stiff, but he managed to put it in his lap; and he sat there like that, holding her head.

“Close your eyes, darling,” he said.

He recalled other times when she had held his head in the same fashion, and that made him want to smile. He knew that he wanted to smile, and when he smiled, he realized that he was crying. That was strange, he hadn't cried in such a very long time.

They were still going away, he and Anna, because all this was crazy and impossible. Of course, it was impossible. They couldn't be hurt in that fashion. Nothing had happened, and they were going away. In just a moment things would reassert themselves in their right and normal order.

So he looked at Anna, crying; he wondered why they were alone, when it was hours already since it had happened.

Hours—at least …

He drew the coat over Anna to hide her bare breast. It would keep the cold from her, too.

He was cold himself, but that didn't matter; now he would sit for all time here with Anna, holding her head.

“You see, Anna,” he said, “I have to stop crying—I have to stop crying.”

Then, almost with a crash, it seemed, the street woke up; then there was sound all around him, voices and windows being thrown up. The night was full of the sound of running feet.

C
LAUS
ran wildly. The brightness of the night was deceiving; when he had gone a little way, the night swallowed him up: but to him it seemed that the night was light as day, that it was rising up on every side of him to grasp him. Once, he fell, and then he lost the gun; he didn't stop to recover it. Instead he ran on until all his breath was gone.

He had covered four blocks before he leaned against a house, gasping and panting. Sober reason told him not to run; it was wrong to run. At this hour of the night, any running figure attracts attention. He had to walk; he had to walk slowly and reasonably, as if he had no more on his mind than the lateness of the hour—no more.

He walked on in that way. He walked and walked, growing wearier with each step. But he had to go on—he had to put more distance between himself and the woman he had killed.

Only slowly did he realize the fact that he had killed his wife. It was so hard to understand—because he loved her; even now he loved her. If his thoughts wandered back through his life, it was always to arrive at the same conclusion, that he had loved only Anna. Nobody else; in all the years he had lived there was nobody else. That was why he couldn't believe that he had killed Anna.

The gun was gone. He kept looking at his hands, yet he knew that the gun was gone. And he didn't remember dropping it. If there had been no gun—

No—it was still too clear, too vivid, the way the gun had exploded in his hand, the way the bullets had plucked at Anna and thrown her from her feet. Probably, all four shots had found their mark. He knew that he had shot four times, because in all his rage he had subconsciously counted the shots. Four of them.

He thought of Anna's body, which he had held in his arms so many times. It was very thin and frail; a soft-nosed bullet from the heavy automatic would go in and tear its way right through. That meant Anna was dead. She was lying back there in the snow, and the poet would be telling the police that he had done it. They would call him mad. Everyone would call him a madman. They would call him a bloodthirsty Hun; they would call him a murderer and a beast. But most of all, they would call him mad.

“But I'm not mad,” he whispered. “I'm not mad—I'm not. I'm sane. I killed her. But I loved her. Won't any of them understand why I killed her?”

Fear drove him on. He ran and he walked; sometimes he rested, leaning against houses. He knew that he had to get far away, that he would never be able to return; he knew that he had to find a place to hide.

He saw a policeman. Very suddenly, the blue figure emerged from the haze of the night, walking slowly and swinging a long stick. Claus knew it would be a test; if the officer stopped him, it would be all over; if the officer asked him a question, it would be over. Now anything would break him; he had to be calm; he had to live: it was terribly strong in him now, that desire to live.

Fumbling in his pocket for a cigarette, he found one, put it in his mouth, and stopped the policeman.

“Got a match?”

The officer looked at the long, gaunt figure; then he nodded. He felt in his coat, struck a match, and held it to Claus' cigarette. He couldn't fail to notice how the cigarette trembled.

“Yer cold, ain't yu?” the officer said.

“Yeah—cold.”

“Lookin' for a place tu sleep?”

“Yeah—I mean no. I'm going home now. I'm late.”

“Yeah, it's late.”

“Thanks.”

“O.K.”

Claus walked on, but he couldn't keep himself from looking after the officer,' Hadn't the man noticed anything—or were they all so stupid? If they were, they would never find him. Now he turned up the collar of his jacket and pulled it close. He was cold now.

He walked along slowly, because he was very tired. If he had to walk this way all night, his body would break down. He was all torn and trembling; indeed, it seemed to him that the ends of all the nerves in his body tingled separately. Then he thought of the subway.

It didn't matter which direction he went in now. As soon as he saw a subway entrance, he went down the steps, paid his fare and stood on the platform. At that hour of the night, or the morning, for it was the morning already, trains did not run frequently. He stood on the long platform alone; there was neither movement nor sound, only the steel supports, the platform and the shining tracks.

Like a caged beast, he paced up and down, twisting his bird-like head. Why didn't a train come? Wasn't it possible that they could trace him right here to the subway? Why was it so silent? Did trains run now? Why was no one else on the platform? The platform was like a tomb, the whole subway was. Then it might be a deserted road, he thought; yet he was unable to forget the man in the change-booth. Could he be a ghost? Was the whole world peopled with ghosts, set there only to plague him?

He knew that such thoughts were wild and unreasonable. It was deep in the night, and that was why the train did not come, and that was all. There was no other explanation.

So he sat down on a bench and waited. He started to smoke a cigarette, and then he saw the No Smoking sign. It didn't pay. The station agent might be suspicious. Then he realized how thin his nerves were, how he was trembling. If he didn't stop, he would betray his guilt to every person he met. And it wasn't so cold down here—not enough to make him tremble.

“Take a grip on yourself, Claus,” he said to himself. “You murdered your wife—but you have to live.”

Thinking of Anna, he knew that now it would be the way it was before he met her; only worse. Now he would have an image of Anna in front of him always; he would think of how she was for all the time he had had her: he would think of her at the different times of the day, Anna in the morning, Anna coming to him while he sat at the piano, Anna at night, letting down her hair, Anna walking from one room into the next.

Sometimes, even, he would remember that he had murdered her.

Then he leaned over and put his face in his hands.

His bird-like face was as lean and hard and leathery as Anna's had been soft; Anna's skin was like silk. But if he continued to think of Anna, he would go mad. He wasn't mad now. Regardless of what others said and thought, he was not mad. Only, he had to stop thinking of Anna. Anna was gone. He couldn't bring her back by thinking of her.

While he sat there, it seemed to him that the lights were alternately fading and growing brighter; it gave an impression of night creeping into the subway station. Perhaps the night was flooding in there, drifting into himself. Night and death were the same thing, grim hooded masters whom you served, whether you willed it or not.

He tried to laugh at himself, and his laugh sounded weak and hollow. Probably, his glasses were clouded; so he removed them, peered at them, turned them over and over, and then began to wipe them studiously. He looked like a long secretary-bird, bent over the bench, nodding his head. When he replaced his glasses, the lights were no longer fading. Naturally, it had been no more than an illusion; he was nervous and unstrung, and it was no wonder that he was subject to strange ideas.

Then his hands were cold. He clapped them together, rubbed them and breathed on them, and then bent the fingers, one by one. He watched the play of his fingers, the subtle beauties in the tendons and muscles, the cleverness with which they moved; and watching them, he recalled how Anna used to hold up a hand against his, to show him how small hers was in comparison. They would always laugh over that.

What would he say to her? Wasn't there something he would always say to her at those time? Yes, he would say:

“My Anna—you are a child with a beautiful woman's face. That is all you are, my Anna.”

He always said the same thing to her. Why not? He was a man growing old, and set in his ways.

The train was coming. Now his ears were unnaturally keen, and he heard the train when it was no more than a distant mutter. Everything seemed to depend on the train. When he stepped into the train, all his worries would be over, all his doubts and fears. No more shadows would plague him. He would be able to step into the train and leave his crime behind him. He would be free of thoughts of Anna.

Smiling, he nodded; best that Anna should not enter his mind again. Had he told her once that he would go mad without her? But he was not going mad. He didn't need her; in himself, he was great and strong. He did not even have to think of her, if he did not wish to.

He would be safe when he was in the train. Then he would go away. If only he had the piano. He needed the piano—

The train was almost in sight now. Whenever he played and Anna was there, she simply stared. Sometimes the music would change the expression upon her face; but she never understood. It was the same way when he told her about the war—about the old country. She stared, but she never understood. Probably, when she went with the poet, she went in the same way, believing, but not understanding—

The noise died away. There was no train. Silence settled over the station, the same deep, terrible silence that made the tumult inside of himself so unbearable. But what of the noise he had heard? Where was the train? What had become of it? Was he really mad?

He sprang to his feet, stared about him wildly, and then he saw the train come around the bend, roaring, drowning out his thoughts with its noise. Of course, it was there, and he had heard it all the time.

He was weak and sweating when he stumbled into the train. He sat down in a corner seat, leaned back, and mopped his brow with a handkerchief. He was going to put the handkerchief away when he saw that it had blood on it. It fell from his hand, and he watched it dumbly as it fluttered to the floor of the car.

Glancing about him quickly, he saw that the car was empty; nobody had seen him. Quickly, he bent down, grasped the handkerchief, and crumpled it up in his hand. Then, stealing glances at it through his fingers, he tried to decide how blood had gotten onto it; then he remembered that he had had a nosebleed. He put it away and laughed. What a fool he was becoming, afraid of his own shadow! He was safe—he was even safe from his own thoughts here in the train.