XIX
Johanna told Eva, whom she adored, about her life. Eva thus received an unexpected insight into the grey depths of middle-class existence. The account sounded repulsive. But it was stimulating to offer a spiritual refuge to so much thirst and flight.
She herself often seemed to her own soul like one in flight. But she had her bulwarks. The wind of time seemed cold to her, and when she felt a horror of the busy marionettes whose strings were in her hands, she felt herself growing harder. The friendship which she gave to this devoted girl seemed to her a rest in the mad race of her fate.
They were so intimate that Susan Rappard complained. The latter opened her eyes wide and her jealousy led her to become a spy. She became aware of the relations that had developed between Johanna and Christian.
At dinner there had been much merriment. Johanna had bought a number of peaked, woollen caps. She had wrapped them carefully in white paper, written some witty verses on each bundle, and distributed them as favours to Eva’s guests. No one had been vexed. For despite her mockery and gentle eccentricity, there was a charm about her that disarmed every one.
“How gay you are to-day, Rumpelstilzkin,” Eva said. She, too, used that nickname. The word, which she pronounced with some difficulty, had a peculiar charm upon her lips.
“It is the gaiety that precedes tears,” Johanna answered, and yielded as entirely to her superstitious terror as she had to her jesting mood.
A wealthy ship-owner had invited Eva to view his private picture gallery. His house was in the suburbs. She drove there with Johanna.
Arm in arm they stood before the paintings. And in that absorbed union there was something purifying. Johanna loved it as she loved their common reading of poetry, when they would sit with their cheeks almost touching. Extinguished in her selfless adoration, she forgot what lay behind her—the anxious, sticky, unworthily ambitious life of her family of brokers; she forgot what lay before her—oppression and force, an inevitable and appointed way.
Her gestures revealed a gentle glow of tenderness.
On their way back she seemed pale. “You are cold,” Eva said, and wrapped the robe more firmly about her friend.
Johanna squeezed Eva’s hand gratefully. “How dear of you! I shall always need some one to tell me when I’m hot or cold.”
This melancholy jest moved Eva deeply. “Why do you act so humble?” she cried. “Why do you shrink and hide and turn your vision away from yourself? Why do you not dare to be happy?”
Johanna answered: “Do you not know that I am a Jewess?”
“Well?” Eva asked in her turn. “I know some very extraordinary people who are Jews—some of the proudest, wisest, most impassioned in the world.”
Johanna shook her head. “In the Middle Ages the Jews were forced to wear yellow badges on their garments,” she said. “I wear the yellow badge upon my soul.”
Eva was putting on a tea gown. Susan Rappard was helping her. “What’s new with us, Susan?” Eva asked, and took the clasps out of her hair.
Susan answered: “What is good is not new, and what is new is not good. Your ugly little court fool is having an affair with M. Wahnschaffe. They are very secretive, but there are whispers. I don’t understand him. He is easily and quickly consoled. I have always said that he has neither a mind nor a heart. Now it is plain that he has no eyes either.”
Eva had flushed very dark. Now she became very pale. “It is a lie,” she said.
Susan’s voice was quite dry. “It is the truth. Ask her. I don’t think she’ll deny it.”
Shortly thereafter Johanna slipped into the room. She had on a dress of simple, black velvet which set off her figure charmingly. Eva sat before the mirror. Susan was arranging her hair. She had a book in her hand and read without looking up.
On a chair near the dressing-table lay an open jewel case. Johanna stood before it, smiled timidly, and took out of it a beautifully cut cameo, which she playfully fastened to her bosom; she looked admiringly at a diadem and put it in her hair; she slipped on a few rings and a pearl bracelet over her sleeve. Thus adorned she went, half hesitatingly, half with an air of self-mockery, up to Eva.
Slowly Eva lifted her eyes from the book, looked at Johanna, and asked: “Is it true?” She let a few seconds pass, and then with wider open eyes she asked once more: “Is it true?”
Johanna drew back, and the colour left her cheeks. She suspected and knew and began to tremble.
Then Eva arose and went close up to her and stripped the cameo from the girl’s bosom, the diadem from her hair, the rings from her fingers, the bracelet from her arm, and threw the things back into the case. Then she sat down again, took up her book, and said: “Hurry, Susan! I want to rest a little.”
Johanna’s breath failed her. She looked like one who has been struck. A tender blossom in her heart was crushed forever, and from its sudden withering arose a subtle miasma. Almost on the point of fainting she left the room.
As though to seal the end of a period in her life and warn her of evil things to come, she received within two hours a telegram from her mother which informed her of a catastrophe and urgently summoned her home. Fräulein Grabmeier began packing at once. They were to catch the train at five o’clock in the morning.
From midnight on Johanna sat waiting in Christian’s room. She lit no light. In the darkness she sat beside a table, resting her head in her hands. She did not move, and her eyes were fixed on vacancy.