The Fiery Angel (26 page)

“Dearest Rupprecht, I promised you to be your wife, if you killed Heinrich. This did not come to pass, perhaps by my fault, but thus I am not bound by that oath. Let us wait, therefore, to speak of the future. Can you not accept happiness without any foreign thought, take it as you would take a glass of wine, and drain it to the dregs? When it becomes necessary to worry about the cares of life, then we too can take heed, and believe me, in me you will find a courageous helpmate. But now I give you all my love, and of you I ask only one thing: let your arms be strong enough to receive it to the full!”

Having delivered this unexpected and unjust reply, Renata pressed herself tenderly against me, and tried to transport me into the garden of caresses, but, of course, she did not thereby dispel my doubts and, however strange it may be, this conversation proved to be the definite break in the flow of events, and that day must be regarded as the last day of our honeymoon. I could not but ascribe the failure of my offer to some secret cause, and my passionate feeling towards Renata somehow straightway became dimmed, and at the bottom of my soul began to gather an indefinite dissatisfaction, drop by drop, like a growing pillar in a cavern of stalactites. Simultaneously, like mice from the hat of a conjurer, there suddenly began to spread out fanwise through our life all kinds of misunderstandings, at times stupid and unworthy of us.

Came then the festival of the Holy Birth of Christ, and Renata, with the usual capriciousness of her fancies, desired by all means to spend it gaily, and amongst others. She suddenly required acquaintances, sights and a variety of songs, and I, remembering with what application Renata had previously immersed herself in Latin texts, was only puzzled to see with what childish simplicity she gave herself up to the various pleasures of the streets.

First of all, of course, we had to visit all the church services. On the night of the Eve of the Birth, we admired, in the Church of Saint Cecilia, the representation of the holy cradle with the kings kneeling before it, which reminded me vividly of the days of my childhood; we did not miss Mass on the day of John the Evangelist, or on that of the Forty Thousand Innocents, or on the day of the Lord’s Circumcision; and we walked the city with all the church processions. Then it pleased Renata to receive in our rooms children who came to praise Christ with a manger made of little planks, to listen to their singing, talk to them and give them sweetmeats. Further, Renata led me through all the booths built along the quay and on the market, in which were displayed various curios, and only laughed when I reminded her of her former saying regarding the un-bearableness of the street crowds. And we spent whole days amongst drunken and coarse yokels, watching players on bandores and on bagpipes, acrobats walking on their heads, conjurers who produced live snakes from their nostrils, sword-swallowers and men who released fountains from their mouths, women with beards, ichneumons, rhinoceroses, dromedaries, and other rarities by means of which the travelling men contrive to rid the burghers of their hard-earned coppers.

And lastly, to my surprise, there appeared in our house two women, apparently of burgherly station, whom Renata named as Katherina and Margarita, and whom she introduced to me as neighbours of ours and her acquaintances of long standing. The women looked to me dense and uninteresting, and I could never understand why they were supposed to be necessary in our midst, after we two had so rejoiced at having refound our solitude. Having spent a very dull hour in conversation with the two visitors on the relative merits of the paters of the various parishes, I began thereafter to speak out rather bitterly to Renata about this new acquaintanceship, and this served as cause for our first quarrel. Renata replied to me with unexpected hotness, I could not demand, could I, that she should see nobody in the world, and asked whether, in asking her to accompany me to the New World, I had the intention on arriving there of locking her up within four walls. I did not scruple to point out to Renata how unreasonable were her words, but she had no desire to listen to anything and, pouring out reproaches on me, threatened to walk out of the house, on the spot, as she would out of a prison.

True, having exchanged these very cruel words like sword thrusts, after a few minutes we both saw the stupidity of our quarrel, and hastened to blow out the flame of discord with the fierce wind of oaths and confessions, and pour over it the moisture of kisses and caresses—but under the ashes there still lay glowing coals. Some two days after this occurrence, Renata suddenly declared to me that she intended to visit one of the two neighbours during the afternoon hour, and that I too was expected at this gathering. I replied with indignation that I had no desire to pursue this stupid acquaintanceship, and when Renata, none the less, prepared herself for company and left the house, to spite her I went to Matthew, whom I had been wanting to visit for some time—and that was the first time after my illness that I parted from Renata.

Matthew greeted me grumblingly but good-naturedly, and Agnes, who, to judge by everything, was now advised of the existence of Renata in my life—timidly and cautiously. I tried to break the ice that covered my relationship with Agnes, and entertained her for some time with stories of New Spain, with which I invariably produce an impression on all new acquaintances, again narrating of the temples of the Maya, and the huge cacti, and the perilous hunts of the bear and the ounce. We parted friends again, and when, on my return home, I heard from Renata sly words about some youth, the son of a merchant, who had shown her especial attention at the house of the neighbour, I hastened for my part to tell of Agnes, who had attracted my attention in the house of Matthew. This new duel of ours, in which the blades each endeavoured to prick the jealousy of the adversary, ended in my favour, for Renata, at first making believe to despise my confessions, soon changed over to plaintive reproaches, and then was even unable to restrain her tears, so that, comforting her, I had to swear that I felt no inclination towards Agnes, while she confessed to me that the son of the merchant had existed only in her imagination.

This did not, however, prevent Renata from declaring to me a few days later that she had accepted another invitation from the neighbour, to which I replied with a new visit to Matthew. And as these tourneys had more such repetitions, I soon became a really frequent visitor to the Wissmanns, and leaving Matthew to his learned books, began to spend long hours with Agnes. I liked very much this creature soft and mild, a maiden with whom it was good to talk of anything in the world, for everything was new to her, and she believed it all with the trustfulness of a child. And, in her own mind, grandmother’s tales were fancifully intermingled with university wisdom, with which her brother had been accustomed to tease her commonsense, and this brought her to the most absurd and entertaining ideas and conclusions, with which I delighted to amuse myself, as children play with toys. Agnes asked me quite seriously whether it were correct that on the faces of men is written in Latin characters HOMO DEI, and that the two eyes are the two letters O, the nose the letter M and so forth;—that Jesus Christ was crucified in the very centre of the earth, for Jerusalem is the centre of the cosmos as the heart is the centre of a body;—that there are as many kinds of plants on earth as there are stars in Heaven, for the various kinds of plants appeared in obedience to the stars at the union of cosmic matters;—that the emerald has been taken unto herself by the Most Holy Virgin, and that that stone shatters of itself into smithereens if near it is committed the sin of love—and much more of this kind.

I must, however, declare here and now, and with all definiteness, that in my relations with Agnes there was nothing resembling even the inception of love, though, of course, the proximity of a tender and youthful maiden was sweet to me, as if completing the passion and experience of Renata. But I must also confess that, in truth, in those days, I did not find in the depth of my soul either that unquestioning loyalty which had first given me, swordless and armourless, into the hands of Renata, nor that intoxicating passion which had held me in its chains of roses in the first days of intimacy after my illness. There came the natural collapse of that wave of emotions, that had swelled for many months, raised its crest to the highest in our honeyed days, and scattered at last in impotent foam. My passion, having overwhelmed me for two weeks with a flood of bliss, recoiled as if in an ebbing tide from the shores of the soul, stripping the bottom, and leaving on the sand, sea-stars, cockles and seaweed.

I knew, if not consciously, by instinct, that the hour of a new rising tide would come, and therefore I continued to repeat to Renata the old words of love and to swear that I was as true to her as I was before. Many times, too, I repeated my prayer—that she should agree to our marriage and that we should leave the City of Köln, where we had endured so much and where it would be difficult to set our lives on a new course. But the change that had occurred in me could not be concealed from Renata’s sharp sight. She asked me bitterly, whether it were not because she had admitted her passion for me and given me the proofs of her flame that I had cooled towards her. And to my pleading she answered that she yet loved me overmuch and not for anything in the world would she, as now, see the face on which she was accustomed to read torment for her, or happiness through her, unmoved and bored.

In this time of our shallowed love, Renata and I would not see each other for whole days, then again would fall upon each other in a gust of flaming-up desire, then would drop once more into abysms of enmity and anger. In the hours of quarrel, Renata would sometimes attain to extremest rage, and at times reproach me with things it is perhaps better even not to remember, then threaten that she would cut my throat in dead of night, or lie in wait for Agnes in the street, to slay her, then once more she would expend herself in tears, fall upon the floor and give herself up on my account to just such a paroxysm of despair as before for Count Heinrich. In contrast, on the days of reconciliation all the ecstasies of two happy lovers would be revived: once more we would be like Antonius and Cleopatra in their Egypt, or like Tristan and the beautiful Iseult in their cave, and our recent discords would seem to us but an absurd misunderstanding, caused by the pranks of the wicked house demons, those whom Renata herself called the “tiny ones.”

There can be no argument that all these continuous alternations of joy and torture wearied me more than the former pains of love refused, and my longing for a life peaceful and occupied in work ever increased, like a slowly-brooding storm. But we had still some time to wait before the first lightning flashes, for Renata still preserved her sway over my soul, which, after a short excommunication, once more cleaved towards her, to her glance and to her kiss, as the root under the earth cleaves towards moisture. However, in the being of Renata herself there was a something that did not permit of a slow march of events and, carried away by a new inner upheaval towards a new road of thoughts and emotions, she suddenly turned herself, and the whole of our life, on to another tack.

O
NE evening, which I had spent, as usual, with dear Agnes, I returned home rather late, so that I had to obtain the right of way from the night-watchman with small presents. Approaching our house, I distinguished in the darkness someone sitting in the porch like a cat, and soon saw that it was Martha. She rushed to meet me, and related, not without simple horror, that something unexpected and terrifying had happened to-day to Mistress Renata, and that she, Martha, was afraid lest it might not be the interference of some unclean power. From the detailed description I soon gathered that Renata had been victim of another of those fits of possession, that I had already had opportunity to witness, when the spirit that was entered within her body cruelly tortured and insulted her. And now I remembered that Renata had been especially sad and restless during the last few days, to which I, however, had reacted with a disregard at once light-hearted and ignoble.

At this moment my feeling was as if someone had pricked me in the heart, and the stream of my love for Renata had suddenly burst in my soul into a flood strong and full. I hurried upstairs, already imagining to myself in every detail how I should plead for pardon and forgiveness from Renata, and kiss her hands and listen to her tender answering words. I found Renata in bed, where, as always after a seizure, she lay exhausted almost to death, and her face, feebly lit by a candle, was like a white wax mask. Seeing me, she did not smile, rejoice or make a single movement that would manifest emotion.

I kneeled at her bedside and began to speak thus:

“Renata, forgive me! All this time I have been behaving unpardonably. I am cruelly guilty in that I left you. I do not know how or why I did so. But it shall never be again, I swear to you.”

Renata stopped my speech and said in a voice soft, but clear and decisive:

“Rupprecht, it is I who must speak now, and you who must listen. To-day there has happened to me something so important that I cannot encompass it within my reason. To-day my life was severed in two, and that which awaits me in the future will not resemble that which has been in the past.”

After this solemn exordium, Renata, turning to me her pale and serious face, related to me the following:

During the last week, when I had paid little attention to Renata, she had suffered much from solitude and wept for whole days, carefully concealing the fact from me. But, when a person is in weariness, he becomes defenceless against the assault of inimical demons, and so the long-standing enemy of Renata, who had persecuted her ever since the castle of Count Heinrich, had once more vanquished her, entered into her, and, torturing her, felled her to the floor. However, as she lay, prostrate and scarcely aware of anything, suddenly there rose before her a brilliant radiance, and in it appeared the image of the fiery angel, whom she had not seen since the very days of her childhood. Renata at once recognised her Madiël, for he was now as he had ever been: his face shone, his eyes were blue as the skies, his hair as if of threads of gold, his robe as if spun from flaming yarn. An inexpressible ecstasy seized Renata, like that which possessed the apostles on Mount Tabor in the hour of the Transfiguration of our Lord, but Madiël’s face was stern, and speaking, he said thus: