IX
When next Christian went through the village and saw Amadeus Voss at the window, he stopped.
Voss got up suddenly and opened the window, and thereupon Christian approached.
It was a time of thaw. The water dripped from the roofs and gutters. Christian felt the moist air swept by tepid winds as something that gives pain.
Behind the powerful lenses the eyes of Amadeus Voss had a yellowish glitter. “We must be old acquaintances,” he said, “although it is very long ago since we hunted blackberries among the hedges. Very long.” He laughed a little weakly.
Christian had determined to lead the conversation to the dead brother of Amadeus. There was that event in the mist of the past concerning which he could gain no clearness, much as he might reflect.
“I suppose everybody is wondering about me,” Voss said, in the tone of one who would like to know what people are saying. “I seem to be a stumbling-block to them. Don’t you think so?”
“I mustn’t presume to judge,” Christian said, guardedly.
“With what an expression you say that!” Voss murmured, and looked Christian all over. “How proud you are. Yet it must have been curiosity that made you stop.”
Christian shrugged his shoulders. “Do you remember an incident that took place when I stayed here with my father?” he asked gently and courteously.
“What kind of an incident? I don’t know. Or—but wait! Do you mean that affair of the pig? When they killed the pig over there in the inn, and I——”
“Quite right. That was it,” Christian said with a faint smile. He had scarcely spoken when the scene and the incident appeared with unwonted clarity before his mind.
He and Amadeus and the deaf and dumb Dietrich had been standing at the gate. And the pig had begun to scream. At that moment Amadeus had stretched out his arms, and held them convulsively trembling in the air. The long, loud, and piercing cry of the beast’s death agony had been something new and dreadful to Christian too, and had drawn him running to the spot whence it came. He saw the gleaming knife, the uplifted and then descending arm of the butcher, the struggle of the short, bristly legs, and the quivering and writhing of the victim’s body. The lips of Amadeus, who had reeled after him, had been flecked with foam, and he pointed and moaned: “Blood, blood!” And Christian had seen the blood on the earth, on the knife, on the white apron of the man. He did not know what happened next. But Amadeus knew.
He said: “When the pig screamed, a convulsive rigour fell upon me. For many hours I lay stiff as a log. My parents were badly frightened, for I had never had any such attacks before. What you remember is probably how they tried to cheer me or shame me out of my collapse. They walked into the puddle of blood and stamped about in it so that the blood spurted. My dumb brother noticed that this only increased my excitement. He made noises in his throat, and raised his hands beseechingly, while my mother was hastening from the house. At that moment you struck him in the face with your fist.”
“It is true. I struck him,” said Christian, and his face became very pale.
“And why? Why did you do that? We haven’t met since that day, and we’ve only seen each other from afar. That is, I’ve seen you. You were far too proud and too busy with your friends to see me. But why did you strike Dietrich that day? He had a sort of silent adoration of you. He followed you about everywhere. Don’t you remember? We often laughed about it. But from that day on he was changed—markedly so.”
“I believe I hated him at that moment,” Christian said, reflectively. “I hated him because he could neither hear nor speak. It struck me as a sort of malevolent stubbornness.”
“Strange! It’s strange that you should have felt so.”
They both became silent. Christian started to leave. Voss rested his arms on the window ledge and leaned far out. “There’s a paragraph in the paper saying that you’ve bought a diamond for half a million. Is that true?”
“It is true,” Christian replied.
“A single diamond for over half a million? I thought it was merely a newspaper yarn. Is the diamond to be seen? Would you show it to me?” In his face there was something of horrified revolt, of panting desire, but also of mockery. Christian was startled.
“With pleasure, if you’ll come to see me,” he answered, but determined to have himself denied to Voss if the latter really came.
For a secret stirred him again, a depth opened at his feet, an arm was stretched out after him.