Elsie Lindtner / A sequel to "The Dangerous Age"

by Karin Michaëlis

LETTERS FROM LILI ROTHE TO THE MAN SHE LOVED

I have accumulated so many letters from you. To-day another has come—a letter from you to me!

Thus I know that you still think of me. And it does me good to know it. I go about thinking of you always and always, and it makes me happy. I want nothing different and nothing else but to be allowed to love you.

The letter ... in my hand, in my possession ... you, who understand what it is to love, will know how it is when one loves. Every trifling thing becomes a heaven and an earth.

The letter in my hand ... that means holding minutes of your time. Time is life. So I possess a bit of your life. For you the minutes have vanished, like raindrops sunk in the ground; for me they have imperishable qualities; they are like seeds that send up shoots and more shoots, to be nourished by the sun and moisture of my love.

And what was there in the letter? I am not ashamed to answer, only word after word, like footprint after footprint on a muddy path. The written sheets contain hardly more than the blank ones. But I did not expect that they would, how could I expect it?

For you I am simply one among many. No, perhaps a little more, a tiny bit more. You said the first time we were alone together ... not to me ... that my nature was congenial to you. That meant you liked to be in my neighbourhood—my poor little neighbourhood. I feel such pity for myself when we are together. It is like being two people, one of whom has to do and say the very opposite of what the other would like to say and do.... Only when I go away from you and your glance follows me like a living shadow, that doesn’t belong to me, I feel frightened and ashamed as a child. I am nervous about my walk, my figure, my movements, lest they should jar on you, and then I try to appear nonchalant. I talk and laugh, and am two people at once, one of whom watches the gaucheries of the other with sad eyes; the other who is quite at sea how she shall act to please you. And that is I myself, I, who in every one else’s society, feel as free as the pollen of the buttercups as it flies over the fields. I talk on and on as if I must fill space with my words, fearful that the embarrassment of silence will turn my features to stone, fearful, too, of discovering a glint of boredom in your glance. Your glance! It is like a dark, slowly flowing river that bears your soul towards me.

When you look at me, a new world is born within and around me. It is as on that day when the Lord said, “Let there be light, and there was light.” Your glance has divided me inwardly into light and darkness, which are a greater contrast than night and sun.

Your glance penetrates every drop of blood in my veins, as the sunshine soaks into the sleeping earth, and awakes to life its slumbering powers.

I know when your glance is resting on me like a tired hand on the arm of a chair. When you contemplate me without seeing me, because you are thinking of those cares which I divine, though I know nothing about them, something cries out within me, not from one place but from a thousand. Then warm founts of pity and grief overflow my inward being.

But don’t be afraid, my friend, that I shall speak of what I suspect. If you would rather no one should know, I will be silent—like a flower at evening I will close my eyes, compelled by the darkness in which you envelop yourself.

And I will go on seeming to understand nothing, nothing at all. But your mouth, beloved, your mouth, and your dear, beautiful hands betray you.

There is a quiver and trembling round the corners of your mouth as if the unspoken words lay there in ambush—and your hands look so helpless.

Your hands, whose grasp can be so majestically firm and strong, hang limply down, but you are not aware of it. At times your hands appear to me so full of “sin, sorrow, and peril,” that I feel as if my soul were responsible for yours.

I talk to you like this, beloved, because you will never know. There are other days when your glance, as you look at me, is like a blue flower that blossoms in the sacred garden of dreams, but only because you are happy in yourself, only because of that. You have had some pleasant experience, or built up some new hope.... I think, then, that you have derived strength from the glance that is life to you, as yours is my own life’s fountain.

At those times your glance flashes towards me, and a smile comes and goes on your lips. It comes from the foundation of your being, and is astonished at itself. At those times your figure is upright and elastic, and if you walk across a room you move with a rhythm that touches me like a song.

But, beloved ... you have yet another, a third look ... and this I recall when it grows dark. I fear it the most and love it the most. It’s when you realise I am a woman ... suddenly, as if a mask fell from my face, you realise that I am a woman, and not only a woman, but a woman meant for you. And the smile that then encloses me like a snare has not its origin in your consciousness and knowledge of my love, but its origin is in me because I am a woman. And then, of course, because in the kindness of your heart you are glad to give me the pleasure of remembering that I am a woman, your eyes fill with a misty twilight, and into this twilight I sink as into an everlasting night.

I feel your arm supporting my neck, your cheek’s melancholy pressure. Shuddering we stand leaning against each other, like two pines of the forest, that for a short space a hurricane of storm wind has flung together only to separate them again.

All the time your smile is cold and meditative, and your glance is extinguished like a lamp that has consumed its last drop of oil. My poor heart tells me the reason—you are wondering at yourself for giving way to a mood which means so little to you.

But when, saddened, I try to move away, you again offer me your mouth as a friendly almsgiving.... The letter, the barren letter I hold it to my heart. I leave my house and go into the deepest part of the wood till I find a place solitary enough to lie down in. The letter has filled me with a joy that resembles the pungent fragrance of the pine needles carpeting the ground.

I open my letter, contemplate the two unwritten sides, and read once more the written sheets.... I begin a deliberate juggle with the words; I transpose them over and over again, read each letter separately, as if there were some sweet secret hidden in each, and a caress in every stroke of the pen. I can’t help thinking there must be somewhere between the lines one single little word all for myself, that concerns me only.

Yet my joy goes down with the sun; the leaves cease to glow, and the darkness gathers in, and I sit with nothing but despondency in my lap.

Beloved, beloved! how kind you are!

I have lain awake all night with these words ringing in my head like a song through the darkness. How kind you are!

You gave me a whole evening. Don’t deny it, for you know I collect all the minutes that you can spare from your superfluity. I glean them together, as Ruth gleaned wheat on Boaz’s fertile acres. I hadn’t dared to hope; not dared, you must believe me. I left the house alone with thoughts about you, but without the slightest shadow of a hope of seeing you. Then when I asked you imploringly, “Come to the meeting,” you shook your head and answered, “I can’t manage it.”

But while I made my way through the lighted, busy streets, my heart became suddenly so heavy that I felt I couldn’t go on. Yet I dragged myself there.

Many people greeted me, and said they were glad to see me.... I stood in the centre of a little group. Then all at once I felt your presence. I heard you coming ... your step ... it seemed as if you walked straight up to my very heart’s door.

Smiling, you held out your hand to me ... that alone was enough to gild my evening, but you stayed with me, stayed with me. We sat together, we two. The whole evening we sat together. While others discussed what they had come together to discuss, I sat apart and let myself be enthralled by a happiness which was almost more than I could bear.

Several times you leaned close to me to whisper something, and we both laughed and chatted about the others.

You are very fond of me as a friend with whom you can talk or be silent at your pleasure. If I were to cease to exist one day, you would—if only for a few minutes—feel the loss. Therefore I know that my life has not been lived in vain.

So, gradually, I have gained ground, step by step, and I don’t worry you. That is true, is it not? I don’t worry you? Rather than be a burden to you I would give up the joy that lies for me in seeing you now and then, and being sometimes where you are. It is that I long for nothing else, but to be allowed to love you.

Sometimes when my thoughts soar to the cloudy pinnacles of bliss I have asked myself, what if the impossible were to happen, if you were to love me!

The clouds float on high, but when they are heavy with the moisture of earth, they weep till they are light again, and their tears water into fruitfulness the woods and meadows, while they themselves sail on yonder through the chill ether.

The clouds aspire to reach the height of the stars as my thoughts aspire to your love. But they know perfectly well that they are striving after the unattainable.

And when my thoughts have tarried a while up there in the sky, they become weighed down with depression and float softly earthwards, where they properly belong, and my heart itself drops like an anchor into the deep, quiet waters of sorrow.

But why do I talk of sorrow, I who am the happiest of the happy?... I didn’t mean it, no, I didn’t mean it in the least.

But if the impossible were to happen, the impossible....

If it could happen that you would love me? If your glance told me so just once.

I know what I should do—yes, I know. I should shut my eyes on that glance, so as never to let it go from me. I should leave my home, and my children, and go away. I should take leave of life, and fall asleep quietly, oh, so quietly, never to awake.

The darkness of the grave would have to be round me, so that not a sound disturbed my happiness.

To live and know that you loved me! I could not do it. My strength would be lacking. I can only love.

Henry said one day, “Don’t touch any of my little bottles.” I was staring at them so hard. Each of the little bottles contained the peace of the grave. But I must go on living for the sake of my little children, for Henry’s sake. And why should I not go on living? I have no reason to wish to do otherwise. Yet I am not with them, though in their midst. When I move about in my rooms, when I talk to the children and Henry, I am not there. My eyes are seeking him, my ears strain after him....

From the first moment we met, my beloved, you and I—I became a stranger amongst my own people. But no one knows it, except myself. And I feel that if I was bound by a thousand ties, I should break them all, where you, my love, were concerned.

I am so very much of a dreamer that it is difficult for me to write distinctly just what the relations are between us. Other thoughts perpetually throng upon me, and I have to strive hard not to pervert things or fabricate. And you will understand that I have not a jot or tittle of desire to fabricate....

You must know how poor I am, in spite of my having home and family, and how rich, on the contrary, you make me, so that eternally I must love you. You must be told everything. You must be told how very well I know you don’t care whether you are told or not, but I write not for your sake, but for the sake of my own love.... You are so unspeakably good and kind....

There was another evening, the evening of the fête. I asked you to give me a moment, one little moment for me alone, and in the middle of the revel and music we sat down in a corner together, at a little table. One gets distinct in calculating when the means are so sparingly few.

I seated myself at an angle, from which I could, to my heart’s content, and eye’s satisfaction, gaze right into your soul without any one seeing what I was doing.

You, you looked at me as if you were glad at my joy. You talked of all sorts of things. But every word that you let fall with a confidential emphasis as if it were between you and me alone, was like pure gold—a treasure to be added to my heart.

Not for long were we allowed to sit together undisturbed. Other people came up to us and jokingly teased us. They said that we too obviously sought each other’s company. How stupid of them to say that, when it is only I who seek yours. And yet—don’t be vexed with me—I liked them to say it. So I do.

And then it was that we came to discuss goodness, and I said so that every one could hear, that you were the best and finest of all the men I knew. My own husband stood near and smiled. He was so sure of me.... You, as well as the others, declared that there were men who might compare favourably with you. I could not bear to hear that. Softly in an undertone, I begged you to confess that you were the best, and you whispered, using “thou” for the first time, “For thee I am best.”

But it is not true that you are only best for me. You are wonderfully good—your whole manner of life bears witness to it. Every one knows it, and every one knows that you suffer. No one can protect you from its being common knowledge that you have suffered deeply. Your heart lies in ruins. I ought to learn from you to forget myself, and never to speak of love which to you can never mean anything again. But I don’t speak in words.

It was that evening you clasped me close to you, not because you loved me, but because you were so kind. While your lips sought mine I asked, “Then it is true that you love me a little?” and you answered in your infinite goodness, “Yes, it is true, you are very, very dear to me.”

But suppose I had then said, “Do you love me?” and you in your infinite goodness had replied, “Yes, I love you.” What then? What then?

I dread the moment when I shall put this question to you. It lies in the womb of the future, waiting to reveal itself. May I have the power granted me never to speak, but if I do speak, may I understand absolutely that your answer is prompted by infinite goodness alone. Yet between us there is something that is all yours and mine. Something greater than love, for love aims at a goal, and sooner or later comes to a standstill. But that which exists between you and me revolves on and on like a silent star in its own distant sphere. Nobody and nothing can check its progress.

... I am not exigent. Your love will, I know, never be my possession. I don’t expect it, and don’t wish it. It is my greatest happiness that I have met you too late to be one of the many who have passed out of your heart into the cold, and everlasting yearning.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

To-day is my birthday, and each one is emulating the other to give me pleasure. The rooms are crammed with flowers and presents. Yet I am not joyous, and the whole affair seems very childish. How should you be able to remember that to-day is my birthday? You who know such heaps of people!

You will come to-night! I did not tell you intentionally that it was my birthday.... Perhaps because I hoped that you yourself would recollect the date. Last year I met you in the street on my birthday, and you told me that it was the anniversary of your father’s death, and then I said that it was my birthday. You asked if you might send me some flowers, and I said no. How could I have explained it, receiving flowers from you who had never been in our house. And now, this evening you are coming!!

At first you did not wish to come, and it was sweet of you not to wish it. But as you don’t—don’t love me there is no reason why you should mind meeting my husband.

You are coming this evening. You are coming! Every time the bell rings my heart begins to beat faster, and every time I am disappointed. It is like standing in a brilliantly lighted room that becomes suddenly dark.

Once I received flowers from you which I never thanked you for. You know nothing about these flowers. Shall I tell you their story? But you mustn’t laugh.

I always feel happy when I think of them. It is almost as if the flowers were standing again in the window, and I lying in my hypnotic sleep, unable to open my eyes but knowing all the time that your yellow orchids, trembling like a swarm of golden butterflies on their delicate stalks were standing there in the window. I don’t suppose you gave a thought to whether they would reach me before or after the operation. Perhaps you merely rang up a florist on the telephone and ordered something specially beautiful to be sent to the Nursing Home on one or other of the days. And I am modest with good reason about questioning you.

I was in bed. No one was with me. The doctor had just been here and—as he considered his duty—explained for me, what my dear Henry had been so carefully keeping from me, that it was a matter of life and death. He had very little hope. But I was not afraid. I lay there and thought of you, of Henry and the children, and then again of you. I thought of how I had told you that I had to undergo that severe operation. I was bound to tell you—then, in case I died, I had to say good-bye to you.

You tried to turn it off with a joke, but in a few minutes you grew grave. You asked if I was nervous, and I begged you, if matters did not go well, to visit my grave, just once. Only once. It was very childish of me, but you did not laugh. You merely said, “To satisfy you I will promise, but I know you will live to visit my grave....”

I have the power when I like, of bringing you before me in the flesh, so very much in the flesh, that I at times can hardly bear other people to be in the room. I want to be alone with you. After I came out of the operating theatre, I was alone with you every evening and every night.

I talked to you, I talked ... and you were silent. I never was able to put many words into your mouth. But your attentive eyes rested on me ... and you were there.

When the doctor had gone, I lay by myself for a long time. The nurse supposed naturally that I needed rest after my conversation with the doctor. I thought of you. I was so curiously restless, a sort of joyous, expectant restlessness. I kept looking at the door, as if every minute I should see you coming in.

I didn’t really expect you. I knew, of course, that it was impossible, for many reasons. It would not occur to you to call on me. You might easily imagine that visits so shortly before the operation would not be permitted. There had been flowers in my room, sent by my friends, and many of Henry’s patients.

But they had been taken away, because I must not be excited by their scent. I lay there and gazed at the door; my heart began to beat violently—no, not exactly to beat, but it felt as if something was entering it. You must not think, beloved, that I imagined all this afterwards. I felt—I could feel distinctly that some great joy was on its way to me. I heard the footsteps approaching in my heart, and then I heard them outside on the stairs. Nurses and visitors were coming and going all day on the stairs, but, nevertheless, I sat up in bed pressing my hand on my heart, for I knew, I knew, that this concerned you.

My nurse came in with a parcel. It seemed as if she, too, understood that this was something which I ought to see at once. She came quite close up to me with the box and, smiling, opened it deliberately, so deliberately that it looked as if she were teasing me.... “Let me open it,” I begged, but no, she insisted on doing it herself.

I felt how the blood deserted my face.... “Give them to me!” I implored as if I were praying for my life. She handed me the long spray from which the flowers hung like gold sunbeams, and fluttered over the whiteness of the sheet. I held the spray in my hand.

When she was gone, I kissed every one of the sensitive flowers. And you were with me. All your steadfast calm was infused into my blood. Now I could die happy. The flowers were put in water and placed in the window. They were to stay there all night, I said, and no one objected. I had a light burning the whole night through, as if I were afraid of the dark. I dozed and woke, and dozed and woke. The flowers did not sleep, and they did not fly away.

You, you were with me!

Even if you never thought of me at all that night you were still with me. And, maybe, you dreamed of me. Men often dream of things that they haven’t been thinking about. And you forgot your dream before you awoke.

The next morning when they came to fetch me, I besought so earnestly that my orchids might stand beside the bed. I submitted calmly to the anæsthetic. While the mask was being drawn over my face I thought of you, and it seemed as if the yellow, dewy petals began to dance over me.

Deeply I breathed in the fragrance, and I felt as if the flowers filled the room. They had increased from a swarm to countless swarms, and become a singing ocean of gold. And in the ocean I saw your eyes. You were with me, even if in thought you did not accompany me, yet you were there.

I woke up and my gaze met yours. My eyes were too tired to see much. Yet I saw the yellow flowers swaying on their stalks. They had come back. They had, with their loving souls, borne me company at the time, and now they had come back. Close to my eyes they seemed to be perpetually singing and making music. Yes, you were with me.

When the pain was most acute it was just as if they flew away, and dispersed at the sound of my groans. I quite understood it. They were like you. You, too, hate the thought of sickness. You, too, cannot bear people to be ill. So I tried to smile at them, and to act as if I did not feel the pain.

... Your flowers ... your exquisite, blessed flowers....

To-day is my birthday, and you are coming, yet I am not happy.

All my best friends are coming. I shall sit at the same table as you! You will sit on my right hand, for you are the only one who comes for the first time. It is not wrong, it cannot be wrong. But if it is wrong, then punish me, let me suffer for it; I am ready.

I said that I must rest before the guests arrive. I must be alone for a little to collect myself for the joy that is greater than joy.

For my joy is more than bliss. There is nothing so great, there cannot be anything greater than my joy.

The flowers are risen from the dead. The yellow butterfly blossoms.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

I almost wish it was over. I don’t know myself what it is, but I wish it was over.

That, I wish over, and I don’t know what it is. I see something beyond the barrier, and I don’t see it. It is not death, but there is something that hurts more than death.

And the evening was the happiest of my life.

Perhaps it is nothing at all. Perhaps it is only my heart breaking for happiness, but can it hurt so much when one’s heart breaks for happiness?

It was at the moment when you went out at the door. Magna Wellmann turned her head and said, “That was the evening of the year,” and you nodded. Then was it. It felt as if all my joy had suddenly been hemmed up in a coffin and couldn’t breathe. Henry asked, “Are you ill, you look so strange, and you have been beaming the whole evening as if you had light inside you....” That was true. I had light, yes, light burning within me, and now it is extinguished.

I must gather myself together. I must cherish and hoard my happy evening. It is wrong to think such things, but I am glad that Henry had to read the treatise this evening. I mean....

You led me to the table. You sat on my right, and you were so calm. You are always so calm. Why should you not be calm, you are not in love.

You invited me to drink, and I who never drink wine, drank with you, only a sip. It was ... no, I cannot speak of it. But now I understand that clergymen really believe it when they say, “This is the body and blood of Christ.”

No one could read my thoughts.

Now I know what it is that I have lacked hitherto, and I am glad that I have lacked it.

You made a speech in my honour. It was so natural that you should. You led me to the table, and it was my birthday. For me it was a sacred miracle. The words you spoke have gone to sleep in my heart. When I die one day in my coffin, and my children weep over me, they will arise and whisper and sing as your yellow flowers sang when I was ill.

I hold so fast to my happiness. But my hands are weak, and it slips through them like running sand.

The hours go as they came.

Why do you rend my dream in twain? Why do you thrust a knife in my heart? I have never thought of being your mistress. I only grant you every delight there is. But why in this night, in this night, when I woke and clung to my happiness! When Magna Wellmann telephoned me to-day, I knew everything. She said nothing and I asked no questions.

My yellow orchids hang on their stalks like dead butterflies. I have forgotten to give them water.

Forgive me! I am not. I won’t be like this, and now it is over. It hurts no longer. I am well, like the little boy who was run over the day before yesterday. He cried and moaned that he was going to die, and all the time was quite unhurt.

You walked over my heart, and I thought it must die, but there is nothing the matter with it.

It is months since I wrote to you last; I simply felt I couldn’t. I have been like one scared. Why do people speak so often without thinking? One lets fall a word quite indifferently, that stabs the heart of another like a poisoned arrow. I have been half distracted by anxiety. I have listened to all the gossip. I am sick from disquietude. My youngest child has been ill, days and nights. I have watched beside him, expecting every hour that death would come, and yet in the middle of my fear of death my thoughts have been incessantly with you.

I wouldn’t believe it.... But if it is true.... Beloved, I am so saddened, I don’t know whether I ought to tell you why, or whether you would tolerate my intruding into the habits of your daily life. But I am not only depressed, for if that was all I could bear it in silence. No, I am frightened, frightened, frightened. I cannot sleep for anxiety.

You wrote last year to tell me yourself that your doctor had forbidden you to resort to the strong remedy which had become a necessity to you; that you were obeying, but suffering horrible pain in consequence. That first awakened my anxiety. Many, many times I felt as if I were running my head against the blank wall which separates life from death.... And yet, it seemed to me that there was strength in the touch of your hands, strength that could grapple with any illness, strength in your hands, your glance, your smile. Then one day something happened that it took weeks to get out of my head. I sat with you and between us was built the usual bridge of kindness and confidence. Your smile came over the bridge and met mine. We played with words as children in a meadow play with flowers. Your hand lay on mine so firmly and tenderly. I grasped at that moment why men honour so much the idea of a foundation stone. I felt my hand, too, was the corner-stone in an eternal building. So proud was I that your hand rested on mine, so sure, firmly and tenderly, and then suddenly, with such terrible suddenness, that my heart nearly stopped beating, your smile froze and died; your eyes became vacant, glazed; your face was not only strange—would it had only been that—it was so changed that you wouldn’t have recognised it yourself in the looking-glass.

In that moment—I can’t say whether they were moments or minutes—you were not master of your body, neither were you ruler of your soul. And then you came to yourself. But I left you and cried. My tears were cold and made me freeze. Soon after I had to go away on a journey. Beloved, beloved, how full of pain love is! Every day, every hour when I strolled in the garden among my flowers which I planted there myself, which stand there mysteriously waiting and watching for your coming, I saw before me a shadow that proceeded from my own distraught mind ... your dear face with the relaxed expression, and the glazed, fixed eye.

The pain which I experienced then has been carried about in my heart for years, and was day by day increased and nourished by my anxiety.

But then your letters came, like stars dropping from the sky in the still, dark night ... and once more I gained strength and courage to look life in the face. Life—that is what you are for me.

I could fancy every one dying round me, even my own darling children, all that was near and dear to me; all that peoples the earth, and I could fancy the houses falling, day and night ceasing—but I cannot picture life without you.

I cannot, and I will not....

The summer passed, and with the falling leaves I returned to your neighbourhood. You were, to all appearances the same, only rather paler, rather softer in your manner. Your hands were the same, your lips sought mine. I asked you no questions. Dare any one call to the man walking on a rope over the abyss, whether he feels giddy? I asked you nothing. But others talked about you to me. And all, all said the same. Don’t you see how changed he is? And they spoke of the strong remedy that had become indispensable to you, of the remedy by the help of which you maintain your mask of mental equilibrium, a mask through whose holes your own tormented soul stares out into vacancy.

Now I have come to it. I have come to it. Please do not be angry, or hurt, but let me say what I can no longer carry about with me unsaid. Try if you cannot, slowly and by degrees, break yourself of the habit of resorting to means which, instead of strengthening, undermine your health. In the name of my love I ask you to do this, and you must not think that I ask for my sake alone. Then if it happened that I was going to die, and knew that I was going to die to-day, so that I should never see you, or hear your voice again, I should still make the same request. Why will you be kind to every one but to yourself? A doctor said to me about you—No, those are words that may not be repeated....

Now say with a smile that I am conjuring up bogies, that my feelings have got the better of me, and perhaps you are right, but, beloved, death is not the worst. Do you understand me now?

I sit here and write in the bright sunshine. My children play round my skirts, and chatter and ask me why I am crying....

Well, now it is said, and now that I have said it, I dare not let you read what I have written.

But I will keep this letter with the rest of your letters, with the letters which you have never received. Should the day ever come when I have sufficient courage you shall read it.

Only this one, of all the letters.