The Sleepwalkers (5 page)

And now the fold of the garden, whose railings were concealed by hedges, enclosed him. The security of nature here was still further enhanced by the fact that the Baroness had had one of the plush sofas from the drawing-room brought out into the garden: it stood there like something exotic reared in a hot-house, with its turned legs and swivelled feet resting on the gravel, lauding the friendliness of a climate and a civilized nature which permitted it such a station; its hue was a fading damask rose. Elisabeth and Joachim sat on iron garden-chairs, whose metal seats were pierced with stars like frozen Brussels lace.

After they had exhausted the excellences of the neighbourhood, which were bound to appeal particularly to one accustomed to and fond of country ways, Joachim was asked about his life in the town, and he could not help expressing his longing for the country and trying to justify it. He found that the ladies completely agreed with him; the Baroness in particular assured him again and again that—he mustn’t be
surprised—but often for days, yes, even for weeks, she never went into the centre of the town, so terrified, yes, terrified, was she of the hubbub, the noise and the tremendous traffic. Well, replied Pasenow, here she had a real haven, and the conversation flowed again for some time round the theme of the superior neighbourhood, until the Baroness, as if she had a delightful surprise in store, informed him almost with an air of secrecy that they had been offered the chance of buying the little house which they had come to love so much. And in the anticipatory joy of possession she invited him to look through the house, to make a
tour du propriétaire
, she added ironically and with a slight touch of embarrassment.

As usual the reception-rooms lay on the ground floor and the bedrooms upstairs. Yes, in the dining-room, which with its carved old German furniture breathed out an oppressive comfort, they were going to make a winter-garden with a fountain, and perhaps transform the drawing-room too. Then they climbed the stairs, at the top and the bottom of which were velvet hangings, and the Baroness went on opening door after door, passing over only the more intimate ones. Hesitatingly and with a slight blush Elisabeth’s room was revealed to the masculine eye, but even the cloud of white lace with which her bed, window, washing-table and mirror were hung did not fill Joachim with such a painful and ashamed feeling as the bedroom of her parents; indeed he could almost have reproached the Baroness for making him free of the household and compelling him to be a co-witness of her shame. For now, before his eyes, before everybody’s eyes, plainly displayed even before Elisabeth, whom he felt such knowledge confounded and violated, the two beds stood side by side, ready for the sexual uses of the Baroness, whom he now suddenly saw before him, not indeed naked, but unladylike and brazen: here was the double bedchamber, and now in a flash it seemed to him the central point of the house, its hidden and yet obviously visible altar, round which all the other rooms were built. And in the same flash he saw clearly that every house in the long row of villas which he had passed had as its central point a similar bedroom, and that the sonatinas and the
études
sent out through the open windows, behind which the spring breeze softly waved the lace curtains, were only intended to veil the actual facts. So everywhere towards evening the beds of the master and mistress were decked with the sheets that were folded with such hypocritical glossiness in the linen-room, and the servants and the children knew why this was done;
everywhere the maids and the children slept, chaste and unpaired, round the coupled central point of the house, they chaste and pure, yet at the service and command of the unchaste and the shameless. How had the Baroness dared, when she was lauding the advantages of the neighbourhood, to include among these the nearness of the church? Should not she enter it with humility, and as it were barefoot? Perhaps this was what Bertrand had meant when he spoke of the unchristian age, and it became intelligible to Joachim that the black warriors of God must fall on this abomination with fire and sword, so as again to restore true chastity and Christlikeness. He looked across at Elisabeth and thought he read from her glance that she shared his indignation. And that she should be fated to the same desecration, that indeed he himself should be the man chosen to perform that act of desecration, filled him with such compassion that he longed to steal her away, simply that he might watch before her door, so that undisturbed and unviolated she might dream for ever in a dream of white lace.

Affably conducted back to the ground floor by the ladies, he parted from them with the promise to return soon. In the street he became aware of the emptiness of his visit; he thought how dismayed the ladies would be if they heard Bertrand talking, and he actually wished that they could hear him for once.

When a man has adopted the habit of not noticing his fellow-creatures—in consequence perhaps of the caste-like seclusion of his life, and of a certain slowness in emotional reaction—he is bound to be surprised at himself if his eye should be attracted and held by two strange young men standing talking together near him. This is what happened to Joachim one evening in the foyer of the Opera House. The two gentlemen were obviously foreigners and not much over twenty; he was inclined to take them for Italians, not merely because of the cut of their clothes which was a little unusual, but because one of them, a black-eyed and black-haired fellow, wore an upward-curling Italian moustache. And although it went against Joachim’s grain to listen to the conversation of strangers, he perceived that they were employing a foreign language which was not Italian, and he felt constrained to listen more carefully, until with a slight sensation of alarm he thought he could tell that they were speaking Czech, or more correctly, Bohemian. His alarm was quite unfounded, and still more unfounded seemed to him the feeling of
infidelity to Elisabeth which supervened on it. Of course it was possible, if also unlikely, that Ruzena might be in the audience and that these two young men might presently visit her in her box, as he himself had often visited Elisabeth in hers; and perhaps there was really a resemblance between Ruzena and the young man with the little black moustache and the far too curly black head, and not merely in the colour of their hair; probably it was the slightly too small mouth and the lips which stood out too vividly from the olive face, the nose, too short and delicately chiselled, and the smile which was in some way challenging—yes, challenging was the right word—and nevertheless seemed to be asking for forgiveness.

Yet all this seemed preposterous, and it might well be that the resemblance was only a fancy of his; for when he thought of Ruzena now he had to admit to himself that her image had completely faded, indeed that he would not recognize her if he met her again in the street, and that he could see her only through the medium and in the mask of this young man. That reassured him and made the incident in some way safe, but without giving him any feeling of satisfaction, for at the same time and in some other layer of his mind he felt that it was somehow dreadful and unspeakable for the girl to be concealed behind the mask of a man, and even after the interval he could not rid himself of this feeling. They were presenting Gounod’s
Faust
, and even the sugary harmonies seemed to him not so fatuous as the operatic convention on the stage, where no one, not even Faust himself, noticed that in the beloved lineaments of Margaret those of Valentine lay concealed, and that it was for this, and this alone, that Margaret had to suffer. Perhaps Mephistopheles knew it, and Joachim was glad that Elisabeth had no brothers. When after the performance he again ran into Ruzena’s brother, he was thankful that now the sister too was set beyond his reach, and he felt so sure of himself that, in spite of his uniform, he turned in the direction of Jägerstrasse. And the feeling of infidelity, too, was gone.

It was only when he turned into Friedrichstrasse that he became conscious that he could not visit the casino in his uniform. He was disappointed and continued to walk along Jägerstrasse. What should he do? He turned round the next corner, came back to Jägerstrasse again, and caught himself peeping under the hats of passing girls, often half expecting to hear a few words of Italian. But when he was again approaching
the Jäger Casino the voice he heard was not Italian, but hard and staccato. “But you not know me any more?” “Ruzena,” Pasenow said reluctantly and thought at the same time: How painful! There he was standing in the open street in his uniform with this girl, he who only a few days ago had been ashamed of being seen with Bertrand in his civilian clothes, and instead of going away he was, forgetting all convention, almost happy, yes, completely happy, simply because the girl was going on talking: “Where is papa to-night? He comes not to-night?” She shouldn’t have reminded him of his father: “No, nothing doing to-night, little Ruzena: the”—what had she called him?—“the old gentleman isn’t coming to-night either.” … Yes, and now he must hurry away. Ruzena gazed at him in dismay: “So long keep me waiting and now not …” But, and her face cleared, he must pay her a visit. He gazed into her apprehensively questioning face as if he wished to print it finally on his mind, but seeking at the same time to discover if her southern brother with the curled moustache was hidden in it. There was some resemblance; but while he was wondering whether a girl who bore her brother in her face could be anything to him, he remembered his own brother, fair-haired and masculine with his short beard, and that brought him back to actuality. Of course that was different; Helmuth was a country gentleman, a huntsman, and had nothing in common with those soft southern people; and yet it was a reassurance. His eyes still searched her face, but his aversion faded and he felt a need to do her a kindness, to say something comforting to her, so that she might cherish a happy memory of him; he still hesitated; no, he would not visit her, but … “But?” the word sounded anxious and expectant. Joachim himself did not know at first what was to follow the “but,” and then he suddenly knew: “We could meet somewhere and have lunch together.” Yes, yes, yes, yes; she knew a little place: to-morrow! No, it couldn’t be to-morrow, but on Wednesday he had leave, and they arranged to meet on Wednesday. Then she stood on the tips of her toes and whispered into his ear: “You’re good, nice man,” and ran away, and vanished through the door over which the gas-jets were burning. Pasenow saw his father bustling up the stairs with his quick and purposive tread, and his heart contracted perceptibly and very painfully.

Ruzena was enchanted by the conventionally stiff courtesy with which Joachim had treated her in the restaurant, and in her delight she even
forgot her disappointment that he had appeared in mufti. It was a cool, rainy day; yet she did not want to give up her programme, and so after lunch they had driven out through Charlottenburg to the Havel. Already in the droshky Ruzena had pulled off one of Joachim’s gloves, and now, as they went along the river-path, she took his arm and pushed it under hers. They went slowly, walking through a landscape expectant in its stillness, and yet which had nothing to expect save the rain and the evening. The sky hung softly over it, sometimes united indissolubly to the earth by a veil of rain, and for them too, wandering through the stillness, there seemed to be nothing left but expectation, and it was as though all the life in them had flowed to their fingers, which, clasped and folded in upon each other, slept like the petals of an unopened bud. Shoulder leaning against shoulder, from the distance resembling the two sides of a triangle, they walked along the river-path in silence, for neither knew what it was that drew them together. But quite unexpectedly while they were walking along Ruzena bent over his hand, which lay in hers, and kissed it before he could draw it away. He looked into eyes that were swimming with tears, and at lips that twitched with sobs, yet managed to say: “When you meet me on stairs I say, Ruzena, I say, he not for you, never for you. And now you here.…” But she did not reach up her mouth for the expected kiss, but fell again, almost greedily, on his hand, and when he tried to free it, bit into it with her teeth, not sharply, but as gently and cautiously as a little dog playing: then looking at the mark contentedly she said: “Now let us walk on again. Rain matters not.” The rain sank quietly into the river, and rustled softly on the leaves of the willows. A boat lay half-sunk near the bank; under a little wooden bridge a runnel poured more rapidly into the placid flow of the river, and Joachim too felt himself being floated away, as though the longing which filled him were a soft, light out-flowing of his heart, a breathing flood longing to be merged in the breath of his beloved, and to be lost as in an ocean of immeasurable peace. It was as though the summer were dissolving, so that the very water seemed light, rustling from the leaves, and hanging on the grasses in clear drops. A soft misty veil rose in the distance, and when they turned round it had closed them in behind, so that in walking they seemed to be standing still. When the rain came on more violently they sought the protection of the trees, beneath which the ground was still dry, a patch of unreleased summer dust almost pitiable in the release of everything
around. Ruzena pulled out her hat-pins, not only because their constraint irked her, but also to protect Joachim from their sharp points, took off her hat, and leant her back against him as if he were a protective tree. She had bent back her head, and when he sank his, his lips touched her brow and the dark curls that framed it. He did not see the faint and slightly stupid furrows on her forehead, perhaps because he was too near to distinguish them, perhaps because seeing had melted completely into feeling. But she felt his arms round her, his hands in hers, felt as if she were among the branches of a tree, and his breath on her brow was like the rustling of the rain on the leaves; so motionless did they stand, and so at one was the grey sky with the level waters, that the willows on the little island seemed to float as in a grey insubstantial sea, hanging or resting there, one did not know which. But then she looked at the wet sleeve of her coat and whispered softly that they must turn back.