The Sleepwalkers (9 page)

Ruzena, on the other hand, seemed to have forgotten her gloomy prophecies. She had felt for Joachim’s hand under the table, and when in panic good breeding, and with a side-glance at Bertrand, he had found safety for it on the open publicity of the brightly lit tablecloth, Ruzena seized it again and fondled it; and Joachim, once more happy in that possessive caress, overcame his shame with a slight effort and held her hand in his, so that it could be seen quite publicly that they belonged by right to each other. And besides they were not doing anything
wrong; for in the Bible it said that when a brother died without leaving children his wife must not marry a stranger, but must take the brother of her dead husband. Yes, it had been something like that anyway, and it was absurd to think that he could betray Helmuth with a woman. But then Bertrand tapped on his glass and proposed a little toast, and once more one did not know whether he intended it seriously or whether he was joking or whether the few glasses of champagne had been already too much for him, so extraordinarily difficult to understand was his speech; in which he spoke of the German housewife, who was most charming when she was an imitation housewife, for play was the true reality of this life, for which reason art was always more beautiful than nature, peasant costume better at a ball than in a village, and the home of a German soldier complete only when, escaping from its accustomed austerity, although violated, no doubt, by the presence of a traditionless man of business, it was at the same time consecrated by the presence of the loveliest of Bohemian ladies; and so he asked the company to drink to the health of their beautiful hostess. Yes, that was all somewhat obscure and insidious, and one could not rightly tell whether all this play on the idea of
imitation
might not mean much the same as he himself had meant by deputizing; but as Bertrand continued to gaze at Ruzena very kindly in spite of the somewhat ironical expression round his lips, one knew that it was intended as a compliment to her and that one could dismiss all those puzzling thoughts; and the supper finished in a mood of general and pleasant gaiety.

Later they insisted on accompanying Bertrand to his lodgings, partly perhaps because they did not wish it to be too obvious that Ruzena was spending the night with Joachim. Ruzena in the middle, they walked through the quiet streets, all three separately, for Joachim did not dare to offer his arm to her. When Bertrand had disappeared behind the door of his lodgings they looked at each other, and Ruzena asked very seriously and humbly: “Will you see me to the casino?” He noticed the sadness and seriousness in her voice, but he felt in response only a weary indifference, and almost found himself replying as seriously in the affirmative, and could at that moment have said good-bye for ever to her; and if Bertrand had come back to lead her away Joachim could even have borne that. Nevertheless the thought of the casino was unendurable. And ashamed that he needed such a spur, yet almost glad of it too, he took her arm in silence. That night they loved each
other more passionately than ever. Nevertheless Joachim forgot this time also to give Ruzena her lace handkerchiefs.

Every day when the little one-horse mail-van returned from the train and drew up at the village post office, a messenger from the estate was already leaning against the counter; true, he was only a private messenger, yet he belonged to the post office and had himself become an official in a sense, perhaps indeed with a superior status to the two actual officials there, not however because of any personal qualifications, even though he might have grown grey in service, but simply because he came from the big house and his dignity was a prescriptive fact which had already existed for many decades, and certainly reached back to the time when there was not yet any State postal service, nothing but a post-chaise that drove infrequently through the village and left the letters at the inn. The great black post-bag whose straps had worn a diagonal stripe across the shoulders of the servant’s coat had survived many messengers, and certainly it too must have dated from that long-dead and perhaps happier time; for even the oldest man in the village could remember since his earliest childhood the post-bag hanging on its hook and the messenger leaning against the counter; and by interrogating their memory the old people could count up all the estate messengers who had gaily taken the road with the diagonal stripe on their jackets and were now all resting in the churchyard. So the post-bag was older and more venerable than the new-fashioned post office which had been opened after 1848, that stormy year, older than the hook which, as a mark of respect for the post-bag, or as a final act of official homage to the people at the big house, had been hammered in there when the post office was opened, fixed there also, perhaps, as a reminder that in spite of the violence of progress old customs were not to be forgotten. For in the new post office the old custom of giving preference to the letters for the big house was still maintained, and is probably maintained to this day. So when the coachman came in with the greyish brown mail-bag, and with that disdainful gesture which expresses an ordinary coachman’s attitude to mail-bags threw it on the worn counter, the postmaster, who knew better the respect due to human and official customs, unloosed with scarcely concealed solemnity the seal and the fastenings, and arranged the confusion of packets in little piles according to their size, so as to look through them and separate them more
expeditiously: then, all this having been accomplished in good order, the first thing that he did was always to put on one side the letters for the big house, and, before attending to anything else, to take a key from his desk and walk over to the post-bag hanging on its hook with its metal-plated mouth silently contemplating this procedure; then, inserting the key in the middle of the metal plate, he threw open the bag, which gaped at him, shamelessly showing its grey-canvas lining, and hurriedly, as if he could no longer endure the sight of that gaping canvas maw, he slipped in the letters and newspapers and also the smaller packets, gave the lower jaw of the bag a little push so that it snapped shut, turned the key again, and put it back in his desk. But now the messenger, who till then had remained a mere spectator, lifted up the heavy post-bag, slung it by its hard, worn strap over his shoulders, took the bigger parcels in his hand, and in this way brought the mail one or two hours sooner to the big house than the postman, who had to traverse the whole village first, could have done; a remarkably expeditious method which ensured that, by means of the messenger and the post-bag, an old tradition was continued, and also the practical needs of the gentry and the servants on the estate well looked after.

Joachim now received news from his home oftener than before; for the most part his father sent him curt accounts of what was happening in a sloping, running hand which reminded one so strongly of his walk that it, too, might actually be called three-legged. Joachim was informed of the visits that his parents had received, the shooting and harvest prospects, also a few particulars about the state of the crops; and generally the letters ended with the sentence: “It would be advisable for you to make preparations as soon as possible for returning here, for it is preferable that you should work yourself in sooner rather than later, and everything takes time.—Your loving Father.” Joachim still felt his old dislike for this handwriting, and he read these letters with a more exacerbated inattention than usual, for each admonition that he should quit the service and return to his home was like an attempt to drag him down into a civilian and insecure existence, pretty much, indeed, as if one were to rob him of his uniform and fling him naked into the Alexanderplatz, so that all those strange and busy people could rub shoulders with him. Well, let them call it inertia of feeling;
all the same he wasn’t a coward, and he would face calmly the revolver of an opponent, or march out gladly against the traditional enemy, France; but the dangers of a civilian life were of a more obscure and incomprehensible kind. Chaos and disorder everywhere, without a hierarchy, without discipline, and, yes, even without punctuality. When on his way from his flat to the barracks he passed Borsig’s machine factory at the start or the finish of the day’s work, and saw the workers standing before the factory gates like an exotic, dun-coloured race, much the same as the people of Bohemia, he was aware of their sinister looks, and when one or the other tugged at a black-leather cap in greeting, he never dared to respond, for he was afraid of branding the friendly workmen as turncoats, as men who had come over to his side. For he felt that those who hated him were justified, perhaps partly because he divined that they would hate Bertrand, in spite of his civilian clothes, no less than himself. There was something of that too lurking in Ruzena’s aversion to Bertrand. All this was disturbing and confusing, and to Joachim it was as though his ship had sprung a leak which people were urging him to widen. But what seemed completely absurd to him was his father’s demand that he should quit the service for Elisabeth’s sake; for if there was one thing that could make a man worthy of her it was the distinction of being superior, in outward attire at least, to all the impurity and disorder of life; to rob him of his uniform, therefore, was to degrade Elisabeth. So he pushed aside as an importunate and dangerous exaction all thought of a civilian life or a life at home, yet to avoid flat disobedience to his father he appeared at the station with a bouquet of flowers when Elisabeth and her mother left for their summer stay at Lestow.

The conductor in front of the waiting train stood at attention when he caught sight of Joachim, and there was a silent understanding between the two men, an understanding in the eye of the trusty subordinate that he was to look after the ladies of his superior. And although it was a slight violation of good manners to leave the Baroness alone in her carriage, where she was installed with her maid and her luggage, yet when Elisabeth expressed a wish to walk along the train until the bell rang Joachim felt that it was a friendly mark of distinction. They walked up and down on the firmly trampled soil between the lines, and when they passed the open door of the carriage Joachim did not omit to glance up with a slight bow, while the Baroness smiled down at him.
Elisabeth said how much she was looking forward to being home again, and that she absolutely counted on seeing him often at Lestow during his furlough, which of course he would spend as usual—and this sad year especially—with his parents. She was wearing a short English travelling suit of light grey cloth, and the blue travelling veil which covered her little hat went well with the colour of her costume. It was almost a matter of surprise to him that a creature who always seemed so thoughtful should be able to summon the trifling interest, the frivolous taste, necessary to choose advantageous clothes, particularly as he guessed that the grey of the costume and the blue of the veil had probably been selected to suit the colour of her eyes, which alternated between a serious grey and a merry blue. But it was difficult to put this thought into words, and so Joachim was glad when the bell signalled and the conductor asked the passengers to take their places. Elisabeth put her foot on the foot-board, and by adroitly half-turning her body to continue her conversation with Joachim avoided providing the horrid spectacle of a lady bent forward clambering into her compartment; yet when she reached the top step it could no longer be helped, and she stooped resolutely through the low door. Now Joachim was standing beside the train with his face raised towards her, and the thought of his father whom he had looked up to in the same place not so long ago got entangled so strangely with his glimpse of the tails of Elisabeth’s grey jacket and the marriage project which his father had hinted at in such unsavoury terms, that the very name of this girl with the grey-blue eyes and the grey jacket, though he saw her physically above him in the carriage-door, suddenly seemed irrelevant and, as it were, effaced from his memory, submerged horribly and surprisingly in his amazed indignation that there should be men like his father who in their depravity had the brazenness to apportion a pure creature like this for her lifetime to some man who would both humiliate and desecrate her. But clearly as he had recognized her as a woman at the moment of her resolute entry into the carriage, he painfully recognized at the same moment that he could not expect from her the sweetness of his nights with Ruzena, neither their glowing passion, nor their twilight dreaminess, but a serious, perhaps religious submission, unimaginable to him not only because it had to happen without either travelling costume or uniform, but also because the comparison with Ruzena, whom he had rescued from men’s degrading lusts, seemed almost a blasphemy. But already the bell had rung a third time, and
while he stood on the platform saluting them the ladies fluttered their lace handkerchiefs, until at last only two white dots could be seen, and a thread of tender longing detached itself from Joachim’s heart and stretched and span its way to the white dots at the very last moment, before they vanished in the distance.

Saluted stiffly by the porter and the staff, he left the station and stepped out into the Küstrinerplatz. The square looked empty and a little unkempt, gloomy too, although it was still penetrated by the sun, a kind of borrowed sun, while the real one was shining outside on the golden fields. And if this reminded him, in a way very difficult to understand, of Ruzena, yet it was true that Ruzena, full as she was of the sun, yet dark and a little unkempt, was as closely akin to Berlin as Elisabeth was to the fields through which she was travelling now, and to her father’s house standing in its park. There was an orderly satisfaction in coming to this conclusion. Nevertheless he was glad that he had rescued Ruzena from her obscure occupation with its false glitter, glad that he was about to free her from the tangle of threads which stretched over this whole city, from this net which he felt everywhere, in the Alexanderplatz and in the dingy machine factory and in the suburb with the little greengrocer’s shop, an impenetrable, incomprehensible net of civilian values which was invisible and yet darkened everything. He must deliver Ruzena from these entanglements, for here too he had to prove himself worthy of Elisabeth. But this was only a very vague thought, a thought which moreover he had no wish to make clear, probably because it would have seemed absurd even to himself.