XXX
Niels Heinrich slid from the edge of the table, and began to pace up and down the entire length of the hall. Christian’s eyes followed him uninterruptedly.
He had once read in a book, Niels Heinrich said, the story of a French count, who had killed an innocent peasant girl, and had cut the heart out of her breast and cooked and eaten it. And that had given him the power of becoming invisible. Did Christian believe that there was any truth to that story?
Christian answered that he did not.
He, for his part, didn’t believe it either, Niels Heinrich said. But it was not to be denied that there was a certain magic in the innocence of virgins. Perhaps they had hidden powers which they communicated to one. It seemed to him this way, that in the guilty there was an instinct that drew them to the guiltless. The thought, then, that underlay the story would be, wouldn’t it, that virginity did communicate some hidden powers? Was the gentleman prepared to deny that?
Christian, whose whole attention was given to these questions, answered that he did not deny it.
But the gentleman had asserted that there were none who are guilty? How did these things go together? If there were none who are guilty, then none are guiltless either.
“It is not to be understood in that fashion,” Christian answered, conscious of the difficulty, and conscious in every nerve of the strangeness of the place, the hour, and the circumstances. “Guilt and guiltlessness do not sustain the relation of effect and cause. One is not derived from the other. Guilt cannot become innocence nor innocence guilt. Light is light and darkness is darkness, but neither can be transformed into the other, neither can be created by the other. Light issues from some body—fire or the sun or a constellation. Whence does darkness issue? It exists. It has no source; none other than the absence of light.”
Niels Heinrich seemed to reflect. Still walking up and down, he flung his words into the air. Every one was made a fool of—every one from his childhood on. There had always been palavering about sin and wrong, and everything had been aimed at giving one an evil conscience. If once you had an evil conscience, no confession or penitence, no parson and no absolution did you any good. And at bottom one was but a wretched creature—a doomed creature, and condemned to damnation from the start. That had convinced him, what the gentleman had said—without looking at Christian, he stretched out his arm and index-finger toward him—oh, that had convinced him, that no one had the right to judge another. That was true. He hadn’t ever seen anyone either to whom one could say: you shall pass judgment. Every one bore the mark of shame and of theft and of blood, and was condemned to the same damnation from the beginning. But if there was to be no more judging, that meant the end of bourgeois society and the capitalistic order. For that was founded on courts and on the necessity of finding men to assume its guilt, and judges who were ignorant of mercy.
Christian said: “Won’t you stop walking up and down? Won’t you come and sit by me? Come here; sit by me.”
No, he said, he didn’t want to sit by him. He wanted all these matters explained just once. He didn’t want to be submissive with his mind like a boy at school. The gentleman was incomprehensible, and was making a fool of him with phrases. Let him give to him, Niels Heinrich, something certain, something by which he could be guided.
“What do you mean by that—something certain?” Christian asked, deeply moved. “I am a man like yourself; I know no more than yourself; like yourself I have sinned and am helpless and puzzled. What is it I shall give you—I?”
“But I?” Niels Heinrich was beside himself. “What shall I give? And you wanted me to give you something! What is it? What can I give you?”
“Don’t you feel it?” Christian asked. “Don’t you know it yet—not yet?”
Silently they looked into each other’s eyes, for Niels Heinrich had stopped walking. A shiver, an almost visible shiver ran down his limbs. His face seemed as though singed by the desire of one who rattles at an iron gate and would be free.
“Listen,” he said, suddenly, with a desperate and convulsive calmness, “I stole those pearls in your house. I simply put them into my pocket. One of them I pawned, and made those swine drunk with the money. You can have them back if you want them. Those I can give you. If that’s what you want, I can give it to you.”
Christian seemed surprised; but the passionate tensity of his face did not relax at all.
Niels Heinrich put his hand into his trousers pocket. The string had been broken, so that his hand was full of the loose pearls. He held it out toward Christian; but Christian did not stir, and made no move to receive the pearls. This seemed to embitter Niels Heinrich strangely. He stretched out his hand until it was flat, and let the pearls roll on the floor. White and shimmering, they rolled on the parquetry. And as Christian still did not stir, Niels Heinrich’s rage seemed to increase. He turned his pocket inside out, so that all the rest of the pearls fell on the floor.
“Why do you do that?” Christian asked, more in astonishment than in blame.
“Well, maybe the gentleman wanted a little exercise,” was the impudent answer. And again that thin foam, like the white of an egg, clung to his lips.
Christian lowered his eyes. Then this thing happened: he arose and drew a deep breath, smiled, leaned over, dropped on his knees, and began to gather up the pearls. He picked up each one singly, so as not to soil his hands unnecessarily; on his knees he slid over the floor, picking up pearl after pearl. He reached under the table and under the stairs, where spilt wine lay in little puddles, and out of these nauseating little puddles he scratched the pearls. With his right hand he gathered them; and always, when his left hand was half full, he slipped its contents into his pocket.
Niels Heinrich looked down at him. Then his eyes fled from that sight, wandered through the room, found the mirror and fled from it, sought it anew and fled again. For the mirror had become a glow to him. He no longer saw his image in it; the mirror had ceased to reflect images. And again he looked toward the floor where Christian crept, and something monstrous happened in his soul. A stertorous moan issued from his breast. Christian stopped in his occupation, and looked up at him.
He saw and understood. At last! At last! A trembling hand moved forward to meet his own. He took it; it had no life. He had never yet so deeply grasped it all—the body, the spirit, time, eternity. The hand had no warmth: it was the hand of the deed, the hand of crime, the hand of guilt. But when he touched it, for the first time, it began to live and grow warm; a glow streamed into it—glow of the mirror, of service, of insight, of renewal.
It was that touch, that touch alone.
Niels Heinrich, drawn forward, sank upon his knees. In this matter of Joachim Heinzen, he stammered in a barely audible voice, why, one might discuss it, you know. His eyes seemed broken and his features extinguished. And they kneeled—each before the other.
Saved and freed from himself by that touch, the murderer cast his guilt upon the man who judged and did not condemn him.
He was free. And Christian was likewise free.
The hall had a side-exit by which one could leave the house. There they said farewell to each other. Christian knew well where Niels Heinrich was going. He himself returned to Stolpische Street, mounted the stairs to Karen’s rooms, locked himself in, lay down as he was, and slept for three and thirty hours.
A vigorous ringing of the bell aroused him.