XXVIII
The child had disappeared.
Christian asked after its whereabouts. Karen shrugged her shoulders stubbornly. So Christian went to the dwelling of the widow Engelschall, who informed him with harsh brevity: “I put the child in good hands. You’ve got no right to worry. Why do you? It ain’t yours!”
Christian said: “You have no reason not to tell me where it is.”
The woman answered insolently: “Not on yer life! I ain’t got no call to do it. The kid’s well off where he is, and you ain’t going to refuse to pay a bit to his foster-mother, are you? It’s your dooty, and you can’t get out of it.”
Silently Christian regarded the fat moon-like face on its triple chin, from which the voice rumbled like that of an old salt. Then he became aware of the fact that that sweaty mass of flesh was contorting itself to an expression of friendliness. Pointing to the glass door, which separated the hexagonal room in which they were from the other rooms, she asked in sweetish High German whether he wouldn’t come in and partake of a little coffee. Coffee and fine pastry, she said, who would refuse that? She explained that she was expecting a baroness, who was coming from Küstrin especially to see her in order to get advice on important family matters. He could see that she wasn’t born yesterday either, had nice friends of her own, and knew how to treat people of rank. Again she asked him to stay.
In this dim room there were several tables covered with well-thumbed copies of periodicals and comic papers. It looked like a dentist’s reception room. The woman’s fat fingers were covered with rings that had brightly coloured stones. She wore a bodice of red silk and a black skirt, the girdle of which was held by a silver buckle as massive as a door knob.
When Christian came in to see Karen that evening, she sat by the oven resting her head on her hand. Christian had brought her some oranges, and he laid the fruit on her lap. She did not stir; she did not thank him. He thought that perhaps she was longing for her child, and did not break her long silence.
Suddenly she said: “It’s seven years ago to-day that Adam Larsen died.”
“I have never heard of Adam Larsen,” Christian said. Since she made no remark, he repeated: “I’ve never heard of Adam Larsen. Won’t you tell me about him?”
She shook her head. She seemed to crouch as for a leap at the wall under his look. Christian carried a chair close up to Karen. He sat down beside her, and urged her to speak: “What about Adam Larsen?”
She took in a deep breath. “It was the only good time in my life, the time I had with him, the only beautiful time—five months and a half.”
She delved deep, deep into her consciousness. Things there yearned for the light. “It was the time I was expecting my second child,” she said. “We were on the way from Memel to Königsberg, myself and Mathilde Sorge and her intended. Oh, well, intended is what they call it. On the way I noticed that I was going to get into a mess pretty soon. They advised me to leave the train. One station before we got to Königsberg I did get out. Mathilde stayed with me, though she scolded; her intended went on to the city. It was a March evening, cold and wet. There was an inn near the station where they knew Mathilde. She thought we could get lodging there, and there was no time to lose; but they were having a fair in that place, and every room was taken. We begged for a garret or anything; but the innkeeper looked at me, and saw what was the matter. I was leaning against the wall and shaking. He roared, and told us to go to the devil; he didn’t want to have anything to do with such things. I lay down on a low wagon in the yard. I couldn’t have gone on, not if they’d set the dogs on me. The farmer that owned the wagon came, and he wasn’t pleased; but Mathilde, she talked to him a while, and so he drove on slowly toward the city. Mathilde walked beside the wagon. I felt I don’t know how; I thought if I could just be dead—quite dead! The wheels bumped on the stones, and I screamed and shrieked. The farmer said he’d had enough of that. We were in the suburbs by this time, so they tugged me out of the wagon, and held me up. There was a young man who had seen us, and he helped too. The rain fell by the bucket, and I was clean done for. I asked them for God’s sake to get me in anywhere, if it was only a hole or a cellar. At the corner there was a cheap music-hall for working people. They dragged me through the door into a little room, and pushed two benches together, and laid me on them. The room was full of the gay dresses of the lady performers; on one side of the room was the bar, on the other side the auditorium. You could hear the music and the applause and the roars of laughter. Some women, got up in dirty silks and spangles, came in and stood around me, and quarrelled and screamed for one thing or another. Well, there’s no use going on with that part. The child was born there, and it was dead. They’d sent for a policeman and for a doctor too; but it was the young man we had met on the street who was really kind and wouldn’t leave me in my trouble. And that was Adam Larsen.”
“And he continued to help you? And you stayed with him?” Christian asked tensely.
Karen went on: “He was a painter, a real one, an artist. His home was in Jutland; he was lean and very fair. In those days my hair was just the colour of his. He had an aunt living in Königsberg, and he was glad to stay with her a while, because he was hard up. But when I was lying in the charity home to which they’d removed me, he got the news from Copenhagen that he’d been given a stipend by the state of two thousand talers for two years. He asked me if I wouldn’t like to go with him. He meant to go to Belgium to a famous painter who was living somewhere on the French frontier. He wanted to study with him, like others who were already there. Well, he said he was fond of me, and I said that was all very nice, and asked him if he knew the sort of woman I was. He said he didn’t want to know anything, and all I’d have to do was to have confidence in him. So I thought to myself, ‘Here’s one that’s got a heart,’ and I grew to be fond of him too. I’d never cared for any man yet; he was the first, and he was the last too. And so I went away with him. The great painter lived in a French village, and we moved to a little town called Wassigny not far from there. Larsen rented a little house. Every morning he’d ride over to the village on his bicycle; if the weather was bad he walked. It was half an hour’s walk. In the evening he’d come back, and we’d have a nice little dinner and tea and chat. And he’d get real enthusiastic, and tell me how he loved painting here—the trees and the fields and the peasants and the miners and the river and the sky, and I don’t know what all. I didn’t understand that, of course; but what I understood was that I felt as I’d never felt before in life. I couldn’t believe it when I woke up in the morning; I couldn’t believe it when the neighbours smiled at me. Near the village there was a pool with water lilies, and I used to go often and often and look at it. I’d never seen anything like that before, and I couldn’t rightly believe in it. I knew that couldn’t last; it wasn’t possible that it could last long. And sure enough, in August, Adam took to his bed one day. He had a fever, and it got worse and worse; and in six days he was dead. That was the end of everything. That was the end of everything.”
Her hands kept clutching her hair, and for the third time she said: “That was the end of everything.”
“And then?” Christian whispered.
She looked at him, and every muscle in her face quivered: “Then? Oh, the things that happened then ... then...!”
“Couldn’t you somehow find a way of life without ... without ...” Christian stammered, frightened by the blind, white rage in her face. She clenched her fists and cried so loud that her words re-echoed from the walls: “Oh, then! The things that happened then!”
Her whole body quivered. “Don’t touch me,” she said with a nervous start.
Christian had not touched her at all.
“Go on now,” she said. “I’m tired. I’ve got to sleep.” She got up.
He stood at one door, Karen at the opposite one. She lowered her head, and said in a toneless voice: “It’s crazy—me talking to you this way—so familiar and all.” And her face showed both hatred and fear.
When she was alone beside her bed, she lost herself in the contemplation of the picture of the woman with the pearls. Once she turned around, and looked wildly into the other room, to the spot where Christian had stood.
And Christian could not forget her words and the way she had said: “Oh, then....”