The Sleepwalkers (22 page)

“Oh, don’t torment me; have I not been tormented enough already?” With her hands pressed to her temples she lay in the easy-chair, her head thrown back, her eyes shut; that was just how she used to sit in Lestow, and this relapse into old habit made him smile and feel almost tender. He was standing behind her. The arm in the sling pained him and made him awkward. But he succeeded in bending down and touching her lips with his. She started up: “This is madness!”

“No, it’s merely a farewell.”

With a voice as drained of life as her face she said: “You shouldn’t, you, of all people …”

“Who should kiss you, Elisabeth?”

“You don’t love me.…”

Bertrand was now walking up and down the room. His arm ached and he felt feverish. She was right, it was sheer madness. Suddenly he turned round and stopped close in front of her: without his intending it his voice sounded menacing: “I don’t love you?”

She stood motionless with her arms hanging, and let him bend back her head. In her very face he repeated his threatening words: “I don’t love you?” And she felt that he was going to bite her lips, but it turned into a kiss. And while most incomprehensibly the rigidity of her mouth relaxed into a smile, her hands, which had been hanging limp, now came to life and raised themselves, with the outflow of her feeling,
towards his shoulders to clutch them, never more to let them go. At that he said: “Take care, Elisabeth, that’s where I’m wounded.”

Horrified, she loosened her grasp. But then her strength forsook her: she collapsed into the easy-chair. He sat on the arm of it, drew out the pins of her hat, and caressed her blond hair. “How lovely you are, and how much I love you.” She was silent; she suffered him to take her hand; she felt the fevered heat of his, felt the heat of his face as he bent close to her again. When he hoarsely repeated “I love you” she shook her head, but yielded him her lips. Then at last the tears came.

Bertrand sat on the arm of the chair stroking her hair gently. He said: “I have such a longing for you.”

She answered weakly: “It isn’t true.”

“I have such a longing for you.”

She made no reply, staring into vacancy. He did not touch her again; he had risen to his feet and said once more: “I have an unspeakable longing for you.”

Now she smiled.

“And you are going away?”

“Yes.”

She looked up, questioning and incredulous; he repeated: “No, we shall never see each other again.”

She was still unconvinced. Bertrand smiled: “Can you imagine me suing for you to your father? Giving the lie to everything I have said? That would make it all the most sordid comedy; the most barefaced imposition.”

She grasped somehow what he meant, but yet could not understand:

“But why, then? Why …?”

“I can’t possibly ask you to be my mistress, to come with me … of course I could and you would end up by doing it too … perhaps out of romanticism … perhaps because you really care for me now … of course you do now … oh, my dear …” they lost themselves in a kiss … “but after all, I can’t put you in a false position, even though it might perhaps mean more to you than … to put it frankly, than your marriage to Joachim.”

She stared at him in amazement.

“You can still think of such a marriage?”

“Of course; it’s only”—and to escape from the unbearable tension into raillery he looked at his watch—“twenty minutes since we were
both thinking of it. Either the thought must have been unendurable twenty minutes ago, or it’s still endurable.”

“You shouldn’t make a joke of it now …” then in fear, “or are you in earnest?”

“I don’t know … that’s something no man knows about himself.”

“You’re putting me off, or else you take a delight in tormenting me. You’re a cynic.”

Bertrand said seriously: “Am I to deceive you?”

“Perhaps you’re deceiving yourself … perhaps because … I don’t know why … but something doesn’t ring true … no, you don’t love me.”

“I’m an egoist.”

“You don’t love me.”

“I do love you.”

She looked at him directly and seriously: “Am I to marry Joachim, then?”

“I can’t, in spite of everything, tell you not to.”

She freed her hands from his and sat for a long time in silence. Then she stood up, picked up her hat and put in the hatpins firmly.

“Good-bye, I’m going to get married … perhaps that’s cynical, but you can’t be surprised at that … perhaps we are both committing the worst crime against ourselves … good-bye.”

“Good-bye, Elisabeth; don’t forget this hour; it’s my sole revenge on Joachim.… I shall never be able to forget you.”

She passed her hand over his cheek. “You’re feverish,” she said, and went quickly out of the room.

That was what had happened, and Bertrand had paid for it with a severe bout of fever. But that seemed to him right and fitting, for it relegated yesterday to a greater distance. And made it possible for him to regard Joachim, who now sat before him in the same building—could it be the same?—with his usual kindness. No, it would have been too grotesque. So he said: “Don’t you worry, Pasenow; you’ll come to anchor all right in the harbour of matrimony. And the best of luck to it.” An unchivalrous and cynical fellow, Joachim could not help thinking again, and yet he felt grateful and reassured. It might have been the memory of his father, or only the sight of Bertrand, but the thought of matrimony was mingled queerly with the vision of a quiet sick-chamber through which white-clad nuns flitted. Tender and nunlike
was Elisabeth, white on her silver cloud, and he recalled a picture of the Madonna, an Assumption, which he believed he had seen in Dresden. He took his cap from the hook. He felt hustled by Bertrand into this marriage, and was struck now by the bizarre idea that Bertrand only wanted to drag him back into civilian life, to strip him of his uniform and his standing in the regiment, in order to be promoted as Major in his stead; and as Bertrand gave him his hand in farewell he did not observe how hot and feverish it was. Yet he thanked Bertrand for his friendly words and took his leave, stiff and angular in his long regimental coat. Bertrand could hear the faint jingle of his spurs as he went downstairs, and could not help thinking that Joachim was now passing the door of the reception-room.

His suit was accepted. To be sure, wrote the Baron, Elisabeth did not yet want an official betrothal. She had a kind of shrinking from the final step; but Joachim was expected to supper next evening.

Even if it was not counted a definite betrothal, even if neither Elisabeth nor his future parents-in-law addressed Joachim with the familiar “Du,” yes, even if the tone at the supper-table was almost formal, there was yet an unmistakable hint of festivity in the atmosphere, especially when the Baron tapped on his glass and with many fine phrases elaborated the idea that a family was an organic whole and could not easily admit a newcomer into its circle; but when by the dispensation of Providence a newcomer was admitted, then he should be admitted wholeheartedly, and the love that united the family should embrace him also. The Baroness had tears in her eyes, and took her husband’s hand in her own while he was speaking of love, and Joachim had the warm feeling that he would be happy here; in the bosom of the family, he said to himself, and the Holy Family occurred to him. Bertrand would probably have smiled and made fun of the Baron’s speech, but how cheap was that kind of mockery! The obscure witticisms that Bertrand used to fling about at table—how far away that was—were certainly more offensive than the deep feeling that informed the Baron’s words. Then they all clinked their glasses until they rang, and the Baron cried: “To the future!”

After supper the young people were left alone to open their hearts to each other. They sat in the newly done-up music-room with its black-silk chairs on which were sewed covers of lace made by the
Baroness and Elisabeth, and while Joachim was still trying to find the right words he heard Elisabeth say almost gaily: “So you want to marry me, Joachim; have you thought it over carefully?” How unladylike, he thought; it might almost have been Bertrand speaking. What was he to do? Should he get down on one knee to follow up his suit? Fortune was kind to him, for the tabouret on which he had set himself was so low that when he bent towards Elisabeth his knees were in any case almost on the floor, and his attitude, if one liked, could have been construed as kneeling. So he remained in this somewhat constrained posture and said: “May I venture to hope?” Elisabeth made no answer; she had thrown her head back, and her eyes were half shut. As he now gazed at her face he was disquieted to find that a section of landscape could be transferred within four walls; it was the very memory he had feared, it was that noonday under the autumn trees, it was that blending of contours, and he almost wished that the Baron’s consent had been longer postponed. For more dreadful than a brother’s apparition in a woman’s face is the landscape that luxuriates over it, landscape that takes possession of it and absorbs the dehumanized features, so that not even Helmuth could avail to arrest their undulating flow. She said: “Have you taken your friend Bertrand’s advice on this marriage?” That he could deny without violating the truth. “But he knew about it?” Yes, returned Joachim, he had mentioned the proposal to Bertrand. “And what did he say?” He had only wished him luck. “Are you very attached to him, Joachim?” Joachim was comforted by her voice and her words; they brought him back to the consciousness that it was a human being and not a landscape that he was regarding. Yet they were disquieting. What was in her mind about Bertrand? Where was this leading to? It was somehow unseemly to spend this hour talking about Bertrand, although it was a relief to find any topic of conversation at all. And since he could not abandon the topic, and since also he felt it his duty to be absolutely honest with his future wife, he said hesitatingly: “I don’t know; I always have the feeling that he is the active element in our friendship, but very often it is I who seek him out. I don’t know whether that could be called attachment.” “Does he unsettle you?” “Yes, that’s the right word … I am always being unsettled by him.” “He is unsettled himself, and so unsettles others,” said Elisabeth. Yes, that he was, replied Joachim, and feeling Elisabeth’s look upon him could not help wondering anew that those transparent,
rounded stars, set one on each side of a nose, could emit such a thing as a look. What is a look? He touched his own eyes, and at once Ruzena was there and Ruzena’s eyes which he had felt with delight through her eyelids. It was unimaginable that he would ever be able to stroke Elisabeth’s eyelids; perhaps it was true, as they said in the schools, that there was a cold so intense that it seared; the cold of outer space occurred to him, the cold of the stars. That was where Elisabeth hovered on a silver cloud, intangible her effluent, dissolving face, and he felt it as an agonizing impropriety that her father and mother had kissed her when the meal was ended. But from what sphere did Bertrand spring, whose slave and victim she had almost become? If Bertrand was a tempter sent to both of them by God, it was part of the discipline laid upon him that he should save Elisabeth from such earthly aggression. God was enthroned in absolute coldness, and His commands were ruthless, fitting into each other like the teeth on Borsig’s cog-wheels; it was all so inevitable that Joachim felt it almost a comfort to know that there was even a single road to salvation, the straight path of duty, although he might be consumed in following it. “He’s going to India soon,” he said. “Oh yes, India,” she replied. “I hesitated for a long time,” he said, “for I can offer you only a simple country life.” “We are different from him,” she returned. Joachim was touched by that “we.” “Perhaps his roots have been torn up, and he is longing to be restored.” Elisabeth said: “Every man decides for himself.” “But haven’t we chosen the better part?” asked Joachim. “We can’t tell,” said Elisabeth. “Oh, surely,” Joachim was indignant, “for he lives for his business, and he has to be cold and unfeeling. Think of your parents, think of what your father has just said. But
he
calls that convention; he hasn’t got real inwardness, real Christian feeling.” He fell silent: he hadn’t expressed what he wanted to say, for what he expected from God and from Elisabeth was not a mere equivalent for Christian family life as he had been trained to understand it; yet just because he expected more from Elisabeth, he desired to confine his words to the neighbourhood of that celestial sphere in which she was to manifest herself as the tenderest of silvery, hovering Madonnas. Perhaps she would have to die before she could speak to him in the right way, for as she sat there leaning back, she looked like Snow-white in the glass casket and was so irradiated by that higher beauty and heavenly essence that her face had but little resemblance to the one he had known in life before it blended so
dreadfully and irrevocably with the landscape. The wish that Elisabeth were dead and her voice imparting angelic comfort to him from the other side grew and grew, and the extraordinary tension it engendered, or out of which itself had sprung, attained such force that Elisabeth too must have been affected by the onrush of terrifying coldness, for she said: “He doesn’t need the comforting warmth of companionship as we do.” Yet she disappointed Joachim by these earthly words, and even though the need for protection that echoed in them moved his heart and awakened in him the vision of Mary wandering on earth before her assumption into heaven, yet he realized that his strength was hardly equal to affording such protection, and in his twofold disappointment he wished with twofold earnestness a kind and pleasant death for both of them. And since the mask falls from the face that is confronted by death, defenceless against the breath of the Eternal, Joachim said: “He would always have been remote from you,” and this seemed to both of them a great and significant truth, although they had almost forgotten that it was Bertrand of whom they were speaking. Like yellow butterflies with black spots upon their serrated yellow wings, the ring of gas-jets blazed in the wreath of the chandelier over the black-silk catafalque on which Joachim still sat motionless with his body stiffly inclined and his knees bent, and the white-lace covers on the black silk were like copies of deaths’ heads. Into that frozen stillness dropped Elisabeth’s words: “He is more solitary than other people,” and Joachim replied: “His demon drives him out.” But Elisabeth almost imperceptibly shook her head: “He hopes to find fulfilment,” and then she added, as if from a fixed recollection, “fulfilment and knowledge in solitude and remoteness.” Joachim was silent; it was with reluctance that he took up this thought that hung cold and bewildering between them: “He is remote … he thrusts us all away, for God wills us to be solitary.” “He does, indeed,” said Elisabeth, and it was not to be determined whether she had referred to God or to Bertrand; but that ceased to matter, since the solitude prescribed for her and Joachim now began to encompass them, and froze the room, in spite of its intimate elegance, into a more complete and dreadful immobility; as they sat motionless, both of them, it seemed as if the room widened around them; as the walls receded the air seemed to grow colder and thinner, so thin that it could barely carry a voice. And although everything was tranced in immobility, yet the chairs, the piano, on whose black-lacquered surface
the wreath of gas-jets was still reflected, seemed no longer in their usual places, but infinitely remote, and even the golden dragons and butterflies on the black Chinese screen in the corner had flitted away as if drawn after the receding walls, which now looked as if hung with black curtains. The gas-lights hissed with a faint, malicious susurration, and except for their infinitesimal mechanical vivacity, that jetted fleeringly from obscenely open small slits, all life was extinguished. She will die soon now, thought Joachim, and it was almost a confirmation of it that he heard her voice saying in the emptiness: “His death will be a lonely one”; it sounded like a doom and a pledge, a pledge that he fortified: “He is sick, and may die soon; perhaps this very moment.” “Yes,” said Elisabeth from the other side of beyond, and the word was like a drop that turned to ice as it fell, “yes, this very moment,” and in the frozen featurelessness of that second in which Death stood beside them, Joachim did not know whether it was the two of them that Death touched, or whether it was his father, or Bertrand; he could not tell whether his mother was not sitting there to watch over his death, punctual and calm, as she watched in the milking-byre or by his father’s bed, and he had a sudden near intuition, strangely clear, that his father was freezing and longed for the dark warmth of the cowshed. Was it not better to die now beside Elisabeth, and to be led by her into the glassy brightness that hovered above the dark? He said: “There will be frightful darkness around him, and no one will come to help him.” But Elisabeth said in a hard voice: “No one should come,” and with the same grey, toneless hardness she went on speaking in the emptiness, adding in the same breath, that yet was not a breath at all: “I will be your wife, Joachim,” and was herself uncertain whether she had said it, for Joachim sat in unchanged stillness with his body inclined, and made no answer. No sign was given, and although it lasted no longer than the dulling and glazing of an eye, the tension was so charged with uncertainty and nullity that Elisabeth said again: “Yes, I’ll be your wife.” But Joachim did not want to hear her words, for they compelled him to turn back from that road on which there is no returning. With a great effort he tried to bend towards her; he barely succeeded, but his half-bent knee actually did touch the ground; his brow, beaded with cold sweat, inclined itself, and his lips, dry and cold as parchment, brushed her hand, which was so icy that he did not dare to touch her finger-tips, not even when the room slowly closed in again and the chairs resumed their former places.