XIV
Christian shared his meals with Michael, and cared for him in brotherly fashion. At night he spread a couch for him with his own hands. He knew how to accustom the boy to his presence; his gift of unobtrusiveness stood him in good stead. In his presence Michael lost the convulsive rigour which not even Johanna’s affectionate considerateness had been able to break. At times he would follow Christian with his eyes. “Why do you look at me?” Christian asked. The boy was silent.
“I should like to know what you are thinking,” Christian said.
The boy was silent. Again and again he followed Christian with his eyes, and seemed torn between two feelings.
On a certain evening he spoke for the first time. “What will happen to me?” he whispered, in a scarcely audible voice.
“You should have a little confidence in me,” Christian said, winningly.
Michael stared in front of him. “I am afraid,” he said at last.
“What are you afraid of?”
“Of everything. Of everything in the world. Of people and animals and darkness and light and of myself.”
“Have you felt that way long?”
“You think it is only since.... No. It has always been so. The fear is in my body like my lungs or my brain. When I was a child I lay abed at night trembling with fear. I was afraid if I heard a noise. I was afraid of the house and the wall and the window. I was afraid of a dream which I had not yet dreamed. I thought: ‘Now I shall hear a scream,’ or: ‘Now there will be a fire.’ If father was out in the country I thought: ‘He will never come back; there are many who never come back; why should he?’ If he was at home I thought: ‘He has had a dreadful experience, but no one must know it.’ But it was worse when Ruth was away. I never hated any one as I hated Ruth in those days, and it was only because she was away so much. It was my fear.”
“And you went about with that fear in your heart and spoke of it to no one?”
“To whom could I have spoken? It all seemed so stupid. I would have been laughed at.”
“But as you grew older the fear must have left?”
“On the contrary.” Michael shook his head and looked undecided. He seemed to waver. Should he say more? “On the contrary,” he repeated. “Such fear grows up with one. Thoughts have no power over it. If once you have it, all that you dread comes true. One should know less; to know less is to suffer less fear.”
“I don’t understand that,” said Christian, although the boy’s words moved him. “The fear of childhood—that I understand. But it passes with childhood.”
Again Michael shook his head.
“Explain it to me,” Christian continued. “You probably see danger everywhere, and fear illnesses and misfortunes and meetings with people.”
“No,” Michael answered swiftly, and wrinkled his forehead. “It’s not so simple. That happens too, but it can’t harm one much. It isn’t reality. Reality is like a deep well; a deep, black, bottomless hole. Reality is.... Wait a moment: Suppose I take up the chessboard. Suddenly it’s not a chessboard at all. It’s something strange. I know what it is, but I can’t remember. Its name gives me no clue to what it is. But the name causes me to be satisfied for a while. Do you understand?”
“Not at all. It’s quite incomprehensible.”
“Well, yes,” Michael said, morosely. “I suppose it is foolishness.”
“Couldn’t you take some other example?”
“Another? Wait a moment. It’s so hard for me to find the right expressions. Wait.... A couple of weeks ago father had gone to Fürstenwalde. He went one evening, and he was to be back the next morning. I was alone at home. Ruth was with friends, in Schmargendorf, I think. She had told me she would be home late, and as it grew later I grew more and more restless. Not because I feared that something might have happened to Ruth; I didn’t even think of that. It was the empty room and the evening and the flight of time. Time runs on so, with such terrible swiftness and with such terrible relentlessness. It runs like water in which one must drown. If Ruth had come, there would have been a barrier to that awful flowing; time would have had to start anew. But Ruth did not come. There was a clock on the wall of that room. You must have seen it often—a round clock with a blue dial and a pendulum of brass. It ticked and ticked, and its ticking was like hammer blows. At last I went and held the pendulum, and the ticking stopped. Then the fear stopped too, and I could go to sleep. Time was no more, and my fear was no more.”
“It is very strange,” Christian murmured.
“Years ago, when we were taught to be religious, it was better. One could pray. Of course, the prayers too were pure fear, but they eased one.”
“I am surprised,” said Christian, “that you never confided in your sister.”
Michael gave a start. Then he answered very shyly, and so softly that Christian had to move his chair nearer to hear at all. “My sister ... no, that was impossible. Ruth had so much to bear as it was; but it would have been impossible anyhow. Among Jews, brothers and sisters are not as close as among Christians; I mean Jews who don’t live among Christians. We’re from the country, you know, and so we were farther removed from other people than here. A brother can’t confide in his sister. From the very beginning the sister is a woman; you feel that, even when she’s a little girl. And the whole misery comes from just that....”
“How is that? What particular misery?” Christian asked, in a whisper.
“It is frightfully hard to tell,” Michael continued, dreamily. “I don’t believe I can express it; it might sound so ugly. But it goes on and on, and one detail arises from another. Brother and sister—it sound so innocent. But each of the two has a body and a soul. The soul is clean, but the body is unclean. Sister—she is sacred. But it’s a woman, too, that one sees. Day and night it steals into your brooding—woman ... woman. And woman is terror, because woman is the body, and the body is fear. Without the body one could understand the world; without woman one could understand God. And until one understands God, the fear is upon one. Always the nearness of that other body that you are forced to think about. Where we lived last we all had to sleep in one room. Every evening I hid my head under the covering and held my thoughts in check. Don’t misunderstand me, please! It wasn’t anything ugly; my thoughts weren’t ugly thoughts. But there was that terrible, nameless fear.... Oh, how can I explain it? The fear of.... No, I can’t put it into words. There was Ruth, so tender and delicate. Everything about her was in direct contradiction to the idea of woman; and yet I trembled with aversion because she was one. Man as he is made and as he shows himself—ah, those are two different things. I must tell you about a dream I had—not once, but twenty times, always alike. I dreamed that a fire had broken out, and that Ruth and I had to flee quite naked down the stairs and out of the house. Ruth had to drag me along by force, or I would have rushed back right into the fire, so terrible was my shame. And I thought: ‘Ruth, that isn’t you, that mustn’t be you.’ I didn’t, in that dream, ever see her, but I knew and felt that she was naked. And she—she acted quite naturally and even smiled. ‘Dear God,’ I thought, ‘how can she smile?’ And then by day I didn’t dare look at her, and every kind glance of hers reminded me of my sin. But why do I tell you all that—why? It makes me feel so defiled, so unspeakably defiled.”
“No, Michael, go on,” Christian said, gently and calmly. “Don’t be afraid. Tell me everything. I shall understand, or, at all events, I shall do my best to understand.”
Michael looked searchingly up at Christian. His precocious features were furrowed with spiritual pain. “I sought a woman whom I might approach,” he began, after a pause. “It seemed to me that I had soiled Ruth in my mind, and that I must cleanse that soilure. I was guilty before her, and must be liberated from that guilt.”
“It was a fatal delusion in which you were caught,” Christian said. “You weren’t guilty. You had painfully constructed that guilt.” He waited, but Michael said nothing. “Guilty,” Christian repeated, as though he were weighing the word in his hand. “Guilty....” His face expressed absolute doubt.
“Guilty or not,” the boy persisted, “it was as I have told you. If I feel a sense of guilt, who can redeem me from it? One can only do that oneself.”
“Believe me,” said Christian, “it is a delusion.”
“But they were all Ruth,” Michael continued, and his voice was full of dread. “They were all Ruth—the most depraved and degraded. I had so much reverence for them, and at the same time I felt a great disgust. The unclean thing always grew more powerful in my thoughts. While I sought and sought, my life became one pain. I cursed my blood. Whatever I touched became slimy and unclean.”
“You should have confessed to Ruth, just to her, she was the best refuge you had,” said Christian.
“I couldn’t,” Michael assured him. “I couldn’t. Rather I should have done, I don’t know what.... I couldn’t.”
For a while he lost himself in brooding. Then he spoke quickly and hastily. “On the Saturday before the Sunday on which Ruth was at home for the last time, father sent me to the coal-dealer to pay the bill in person. There was no one in the shop, so I went into the room behind the shop, and there lay the coal-dealer with a woman in his arms. They did not notice me, and I fled; I don’t remember how I got out, but until evening I ran about senselessly in the streets. The terror had never been so great. Next afternoon—it was that very Sunday—between four and five I was walking on Lichener Street. Suddenly, a rainstorm came up, and a girl took me under her umbrella. It was Molly Gutkind. I saw at once the sort of girl she was. She asked me to come home with her. I didn’t answer, but she kept on walking beside me. She said if I didn’t want to come now, she’d wait for me that evening, that she lived on Prenzlauer Alley, opposite the gas-tank near the freight station, over a public house called ‘Adele’s Rest.’ She took my hand and coaxed me: ‘You come, little boy, you look so sad. I like your dark eyes; you’re an innocent little creature.’ When I reached home I saw what Ruth had written on the slate. Prenzlauer Alley—how strange that was! It might so easily have been some other neighbourhood. It was very strange. I felt desolate, and sat down on the stairs. Then I went up to the room and read father’s letter, and it seemed to me as though I had known everything beforehand. I felt so lonely that I went down again, and walked and walked until I stood in front of that house in Prenzlauer Alley.”
“And so, of course, you went up to the girl’s room?” Christian asked, with a strangely cheerful expression that hid his suspense.
Michael nodded. He said he had hesitated a long time. In the public-house he had heard the playing of a harmonica. It was an exceedingly dirty house standing back from the street, an old house with splotches of moisture on the wall and a wooden fence, and a pile of bricks and refuse in front of it. At the door a dog had stood. “I didn’t dare go past that dog,” said Michael, and mechanically folded his hands. “He was so big and stared at me so treacherously. But Molly Gutkind had seen me from the window (the house has only two storeys); she beckoned to me, and the dog trotted out into the street. I went into the house, and there was Molly on the stairs. She laughed and drew me into her room. She served me with food, ham sandwiches and pastry. To-day, she said, she’d be my hostess; next time I’d have to be her host. She said she knew I was a Jew and she was glad; she always liked Jews. If I’d be just a little bit nice to her, I’d never regret it. It was all so peculiar. What was I to her? What could I be to her? I said I’d go now, but she wouldn’t let me, and said I must stay with her. And then...!”
“My dear boy,” Christian said, softly.
The tender words made the boy shudder all the more. He was silent for many minutes. When he spoke again his voice sounded changed. He said dully: “Three times I begged her to blow out the lamp, and at last she did so. But something happened to the girl that I hadn’t expected. She said she wouldn’t sin against me; she saw that she was a bad girl, and I must forgive her. As she said this she wept, and she added that she longed for her home with all her heart, and had a horror of her present life. I seemed to be stricken dumb, but I was sorry for her with all my heart. My body trembled and my teeth chattered, and I let her speak and lament. When I saw that she had fallen asleep, I thought about myself as deeply and severely as I could. It was dark and silent; I heard nothing but the breathing of the girl. No guests were left in the public-house below. It was uncannily silent; and with every moment’s silence my old fear grew within me. Every moment it seemed to me that that terrible silence must be broken. I watched the very seconds pass. And suddenly I heard a cry. A sudden cry. How shall I describe it? It came from deep, deep below, from under the earth, from behind walls. It was not very loud or shrill, but it was a cry to make the heart stop beating. It was like a ray, do you understand, a hot, thin, piercing ray. I can compare it to nothing else. I thought—Ruth! My single thought was—Ruth! Do you understand that? It was as though some one had plunged an icy blade into my back. O God, it was terrible!”
“And what did you do?” asked Christian, white as the wall.
And Michael stammered that he had lain there and lain there, and listened and listened.
“Is it possible that you didn’t jump up and rush out? That you didn’t——? Is it possible?”
How could he have believed, Michael said, that it was really Ruth? The thought had shot into his brain only like a little, flickering flame of terror. He stared wide-eyed into nothingness, and suddenly sobbed. “And now listen,” he said, and reached for Christian’s hand, “listen!”
And this is what he told. His face was veiled, tear-stained, pale as death. He hadn’t been able to forget that cry. He didn’t know how much time had passed, when finally he arose from the girl’s side. He had left the room on tiptoe. The darkness had been solid; outside he had seen and heard nothing. He had stood on the stairs for perhaps fifteen minutes. Then he had heard steps, steps and gasps as of some one carrying a heavy burden. He hadn’t moved. Then he had seen a light, the beam of a bull’s-eye lantern; and he had seen a man, not his face, only his back. This man had carried a large bale on his back and a bundle in his hand. The man’s feet had been bare, and the feet had been red—with blood. He had gone in front of the house and set down the bale; then he had gone back into the cellar and come back with another man. He had shoved this man in front of him as one shoves a keg. One could tell that from the sound, but nothing could be seen, because the lantern had now been darkened. The second man had uttered sounds as though he had a gag in his mouth. Then they had gone away, after closing the door of the house, and all had been silent again. “I had been at the head of the stairs the whole time,” Michael said, and took a deep breath.
Christian said nothing. He seemed turned to stone.
“It was very quiet and I went down,” Michael continued his account. “Something drew me on. I groped my way to the cellar stairs step by step. There I stood a long time. Dawn was rising; I could see it from the narrow window above the door. I stood at the head of the cellar stairs. Steps of stone lead downwards. I saw first one, then two, then three, then four. The lighter it grew, the more steps I saw, but the light could not get beyond the sixth step.”
It was harder and harder for him to speak. Sweat stood on his forehead. He leaned back and seemed about to fall over. Christian supported him. He got up and bent over the boy. In his attitude and gesture there was something wonderfully winning. Everything depended now on discovering the last, most fearful truth. His whole being concentrated itself in his will, and the boy yielded to this silent power. What he confessed now sounded at first confused and dim as the story of ghostly visions or the dreams of fever. One could hardly tell from the words what was reality and what the compulsive imaginings of fear. One grisly fact stood out—the finding of the blood-soaked handkerchief. Thrice Christian asked whether he had found it on the stairs or in the cellar. Each time the boy’s answer was different. He quivered like a rope in the wind when Christian begged him to be exact and to think carefully. He said he didn’t remember. Yes, he did, too; it had, been down below. He described a partition, wooden railings, and a small, barred cellar window, through which the yellowish pale light of morning had now come in. But he hadn’t really been master of his senses, and couldn’t remember whether he had really entered the room. And at that he gave a loud sob.
Christian stood beside him, laying both hands on the boy’s shoulders. The boy quivered as though an electric current were passing through him. “I beseech you,” said Christian, “Michael, I beseech you!” and he felt his own strength ebbing. Then Michael whispered that he had recognized Ruth’s initials on the handkerchief at once. But from that moment his brain seemed to have been hacked to pieces, and he begged Christian to plague him no more. He wouldn’t go on; he’d rather drop down dead. But Christian grasped the boy’s wrists. And Michael whispered: the house had betrayed the fact to him that something nameless had happened to Ruth, and the air had roared it to him. The walls seemed to have piled themselves on him and he had had a vision of everything, everything, and had whined and moaned and lacerated his neck with his own nails. “Here and here and here,” he sobbed and pointed to his neck, which was indeed covered with the scars of recent scratches. Then he had run to the door of the house and rattled the knob, and then back again and had counted the cellar steps, just out of sheer despair. Then he had run up the stairs, and suddenly, at a door, he had seen a man; in the twilight he had seen a fat man with a white apron and a white cap, such as are worn by bakers, and a kerchief around his neck with stiff, white, protruding ends. The man had stood on the threshold, white and fat and sleepy. He might have been a shadow or an apparition. But he had said in a low, sleepy, surly voice: “Now they’ve gone and killed her, lad.” After that he had vanished, simply vanished; and he, Michael, had rushed breathlessly into Molly Gutkind’s room. She had waked up, and he had lain down on the bed and besought her with all the passion of his stricken soul to be silent and to keep him hidden, even if he were to fall ill, to tell no one but to keep him there and be silent. Why he had asked that, why it had seemed so necessary to him that the girl should say nothing—even now he didn’t understand that. But he felt just the same this minute, and he would be utterly devoted to Christian all his life if he, too, would never betray what he had just confessed to him.
“Will you? Will you?” he asked, solemnly, and with a dark glow in his tormented eyes.
“I shall keep silent,” Christian replied.
“Then perhaps I can go on living,” the boy said.
Christian looked at him, and their eyes met in a strange harmony and understanding.
“And how long did you stay with the girl after that?” Christian asked.
“I don’t know. But one morning she said she couldn’t keep me any longer and I’d have to go. All the previous time my consciousness hadn’t been clear. I must have talked as in delirium. The girl did all she could for me; my condition went to her heart. She sat at the bedside for hours and held my hands. After I left her I wandered about in the suburbs and in the woods, I don’t know where. At last I came here. I don’t know why I came to you, except that it seemed as though Ruth were sending me to you. You seemed to be the only human being that existed for me in all the world. But what am I to do now? What is going to happen?”
Christian reflected for several seconds before he answered with a strange smile: “We must wait for him.”
“For him? For whom?”
“For him.”
And again their eyes met.
It was late at night, but they did not think of sleeping.