XX
They drove to the fair and made their way through the crowds to the little puppet-show. The benches were filled with children; the grown people stood in a semi-circle. From the harbour floated the odours of machine oil, leather, and salt herring; in the air resounded the discords of all kinds of music and of the criers’ voices.
Christian made a path for Eva; half-surprised and half-morosely the people yielded. Eva followed the play with cheerful intensity. She had loved such scenes from childhood, and now they brought back to her with a poignant and melancholy glow the years of her obscure wanderings.
The Pulcinello, who played the rôle of an outwitted cheat, was forced to confess that no cunning could withstand the magic of the good fairies. His simplicity was too obvious, and his downfall too well deserved to awaken compassion. The rain of blows which were his final portion constituted a satisfying victory of good morals.
Eva applauded, and was as delighted as a child. “Doesn’t it make you laugh, Christian?” she asked.
And Christian laughed, not at the follies of the rogue, but because Eva’s laughter was so infectious.
When the curtain had fallen upon the tiny stage, they followed the stream of people from one amusement to another. A little line of followers was formed in their wake; a whispering passed from mouth to mouth and each pointed out Eva to the other. Several young girls seemed especially stubborn in their desire to follow the exquisitely dressed lady. Eva wore a hat adorned with small roses and a cloak of silk as blue as the sea in sunshine.
One of the maidens had gathered a bunch of lilacs, and in front of an inn she gave the flowers to Eva with a dainty courtesy. Eva thanked her, and held the flowers to her face. Five or six of the girls formed a circle about her, and took each others’ hands and danced and trilled a melody of wild delight.
“Now I am caught,” Eva cried merrily to Christian, who had remained outside of the circle and had to endure the mocking glances of the girls.
“Yes, now you are caught,” he answered, and sought to put himself in tune with the mood of the merrymakers.
On the steps of the inn stood a drunken fellow, who watched the scene before him with inexplicable fury. First he exhausted himself in wild abuse, and when no one took notice of him, he seemed overcome by a sort of madness. He picked up a stone from the ground, and hurled it at the group. The girls cried out and dodged. The stone, as large as a man’s fist, narrowly missed the arm of the girl who had presented the flowers, and in its fall hit both of Eva’s feet.
She grew pale and compressed her lips. Several men rushed up to the drunken brute, who staggered into the inn. Christian had also run in that direction; but he turned back, thinking it more important to take care of Eva. The girls surrounded her, sympathized and questioned.
“Can you walk?” he asked. She said yes with a determined little air, but limped when she tried. He caught her up in his arms, and carried her to the car, which was waiting nearby. The girls followed and waved farewell with their kerchiefs. Hoarse cries sounded from the inn.
“Pulcinello grew quite mad,” Eva said. She smiled and suppressed all signs of pain. “It is nothing, darling,” she whispered after a while, “it will pass. Don’t be alarmed.” They drove with racing speed.
Half an hour later she was resting in an armchair in the villa. Christian was kneeling before her, and held her naked feet in his hands.
Susan had been quite terror stricken, when she had whisked off her mistress’s shoes and stockings, and saw to her horror the red bruises made by the stone. She had stammered out contradictory counsels, had summoned the servants, and excitedly cried out for a physician. At last Eva had asked her to be quiet and to leave the room.
“The pain’s almost gone,” said Eva, and nestled her little feet luxuriously into Christian’s cool hands. A maid brought in a ewer of water and linen cloths for cold bandages.
Christian held and regarded those two naked feet, exquisite organs that were comparable to the hands of a great painter or to the wings of a bird that soars far and high. And while he was taking delight in their form, the clearly defined net of muscles, the lyrical loveliness of the curves, the rosy toes with their translucent nails, an inner monitor arose in him and seemed to say: “You are kneeling, Christian, you are kneeling.” Silently, and not without a certain consternation, he had whispered back: “Yes, I am kneeling, and why should I not?” His eyes met Eva’s, and the gleam of delight in hers heightened his inner discomfort.
Eva said: “Your hands are dear physicians, and it is wonderful to have you kneel before me, sweet friend.”
“What is there wonderful about it?” Christian asked hesitantly.
The twilight had fallen. Through the gently waving curtains the evening star shone in.
Eva shook her head. “I love it. That’s all.” Her hair fell open and rippled down her shoulders. “I love it,” she repeated, and laid her hands on his head, pressing it toward her knees. “I love it.”
“But you are kneeling!” Christian heard that voice again. And suddenly he saw a water jug with a broken handle, and a crooked window rimmed with snow, and a single boot crusted with mud, and a rope dangling from a beam, and an oil lamp with a sooty chimney. He saw these lowly, poverty-stricken things.
“Have you kneeled to many as though you adored them?” Eva asked.
He did not answer, but her naked feet grew heavy in his hands. The sensuous perception which they communicated to him through their warmth, their smoothness, their instinctive flexibility vanished suddenly, and gave way to a feeling in which fear and shame and mournfulness were blended. These human organs, these dancing feet, these limbs of the woman he loved, these rarest and most precious things on earth seemed suddenly ugly and repulsive to him, and those lowly and poverty-stricken objects—the jug with the broken handle, the crooked window with its rim of snow, the muddy boot, the dangling rope, the sooty lamp, these suddenly seemed to him beautiful and worthy of reverence.
“Tell me, have you kneeled to many?” he heard Eva’s voice, with its almost frightened tenderness. And it seemed to him that Ivan Becker gave answer in his stead and said: “That you kneeled down before her—that was it, and that alone. All else was hateful and bitter; but that you kneeled down beside her—ah, that was it!”
He breathed deeply, with closed eyes, and became pale. And he relived, more closely and truly than ever, that hour of fate. He felt the breath of Becker’s kiss upon his forehead, and understood its meaning. He understood the feverish transformations of an evil conscience that had caused him to identify himself with that jug, that window, that boot and rope and lamp, only to flee, only to gain time. And he understood now that despite his change from form to form, he had well seen and heard the beggar, the woman, Ivan Michailovitch, the sick, half-naked children, but that his whole soul had gathered itself together in the effort to guard himself against them for but a little while, before they would hurl themselves upon him with all their torment, despair, madness, cruelty, like wild dogs upon a piece of meat.
His respite had come to an end. With an expression of haste and firmness at once he arose. “Let me go, Eva,” he said, “send me away. It is better that you send me away than that I wrench myself loose, nerve by nerve, inch by inch. I cannot stay with you nor live for you.” Yet in this very moment his love for her gathered within him like a storm of flames, and he would have torn the heart from his breast to have unsaid the irrevocable words.
She sprang up swiftly as an arrow. Then she stood very still, with both hands in her hair.
He walked to the window. He saw the whole space of heaven before him, the evening star and the unresting sea. And he knew that it was all illusion, this great peace, this glittering star, this gently phosphorescent deep, that it was but a garment and a painted curtain by which the soul must not let itself be quieted. Behind it were terror and horror and unfathomable pain. He understood, he understood at last.
He understood those thousands and thousands on the shore of the Thames and their sombre silence. He understood the shipman’s daughter, whose violated body had lain on coarse linen. He understood Adda Castillo and her will to destruction. He understood Jean Cardillac’s melancholy seeking for help, and his sorrow over his wife and child. He understood that ancient rake who cried out behind the gates of his cloister: “What shall I do? My Lord and Saviour, what shall I do?” He understood Dietrich, the deaf and dumb lad who had drowned himself, and Becker’s words concerning his dripping coat, and Franz Lothar’s horror at the intertwined bodies of the Hungarian men and maids, and the panting hunger of Amadeus Voss and his saying concerning the silver cord and the pitcher broken at the fountain. He understood the stony grief of the fishermen’s wives, and the opera singer who had twenty francs in his pocket.
He understood. He understood.
“Christian!” Eva cried out in a tone as though she were peering into the darkness.
“The night has come upon us,” Christian said, and trembled.
“Christian!” she cried.
Suddenly he became aware of Amadeus Voss, who emerged out there from among the dark trees, and who seemed to have awaited him, for he made signs to him at the window. With a hasty good-night Christian left the room.
Eva looked after him and did not move.
A little later, forgetting the ache in her feet, she went into her dressing-room, opened her jewel case, took Ignifer out, and regarded the stone long and with brooding seriousness.
Then she put it into her hair, and went to the mirror—cool in body, pale of face, quiet-eyed. She folded her arms, lost in this vision of herself.