He sighed, and a momentary light flashed in his eyes. Something in the blasphemous strength of the words attracted the Wanderer’s attention. Utterly indifferent himself, he saw that there was something more than madness in the man before him. He found himself wondering what encouragement Unorna had given the seed of passion that it should have grown to such strength, and he traced the madness back to the love, instead of referring the love to the madness. But he said nothing.
“So she was born,” continued Kafka, dreaming on. “She was born amid the perfume of the roses, under the starlight, when the nightingale was singing. And all things that lived, loved her, and submitted to her voice and hand, and to her eyes and to her unspoken will, as running water follows the course men give it, winding and gliding, falling and rushing, full often of a roar of resistance that covers the deep, quick-moving stream, flowing in spite of itself through the channel that is dug for it to the determined end. And nothing resisted her. Neither man nor woman nor child had any strength to oppose against her magic. The wolf hounds licked her feet, the wolves themselves crouched fawning in her path. For she is without fear—as she is without mercy. Is that strange? What fear can there be for her who has the magic charm, who holds sleep in the one hand and death in the other, and between whose brows is set the knowledge of what shall be hereafter? Can any one harm her? Has any one the strength to harm her? Is there anything on earth which she covets and which shall not be hers?”
Though his voice was almost as soft as before, the evil smile flickered again about his drawn lips as he looked into Unorna’s face. He wondered why she did not face him and crush him and force him to sleep with her eyes as he knew she could do. But he himself was past fear. He had suffered too much and cared not what chanced to him now. But she should know that he knew all, if he told her so with his latest breath. Despair had given him a strange control of his anger and of his words, and jealousy had taught him the art of wounding swiftly, surely and with a light touch. Sooner or later she would turn upon him and annihilate him in a dream of unconsciousness; he knew that, and he knew that such faint power of resisting her as he had ever possessed was gone. But so long as she was willing to listen to him, so long would he torture her with the sting of her own shame, and when her patience ended, or her caprice changed, he would find some bitter word to cast at her in the moment before losing his consciousness of thought and his power to speak. This one chance of wounding was given to him and he would use it to the utmost, with all subtlety, with all cruelty, with all determination to torture.
“Whatsoever she covets is hers to take. No one escapes the spell in the end, no one resists the charm. And yet it is written in the book of her fate that she shall one day taste the fruit of ashes, and drink of the bitter water. It is written that whosoever slays with the sword shall die by the sword also. She has killed with love, and by love she shall perish. I loved her once. I know what I am saying.”
Again he paused, lingering thoughtfully upon the words. The Wanderer glanced at Unorna as though asking her whether he should not put a sudden end to the strange monologue. She was pale and her eyes were bright; but she shook her head.
“Let him say what he will say,” she answered, taking the question as though it had been spoken. “Let him say all he will. Perhaps it is the last time.”
“And so you give me your gracious leave to speak,” said Israel Kafka. “And you will let me say all that is in my heart to say to you—before this other man. And then you will make an end of me. I see. I accept the offer. I can even thank you for your patience. You are kind to-day—I have known you harder. Well, then, I will speak out. I will tell my story, not that any one may judge between you and me. There is neither judge nor justice for those who love in vain. So I loved you. That is the whole story. Do you understand me, sir? I loved this woman, but she would not love me. That is all. And what of it, and what then? Look at her, and look at me—the beginning and the end.”
In a manner familiar to Orientals the unhappy man laid one finger upon his own breast, and with the other hand pointed at Unorna’s fair young face. The Wanderer’s eyes obeyed the guiding gesture, and he looked from one to the other, and again the belief crossed his thoughts that there was less of madness about Israel Kafka than Keyork would have had him think. Trying to read the truth from Unorna’s eyes, he saw that they avoided his, and he fancied he detected symptoms of distress in her pallor and contracted lips. And yet he argued that if it were all true she would silence the speaker, and that the only reason for her patience must be sought in her willingness to humour the diseased brain in its wanderings. In either case he pitied Israel Kafka profoundly, and his compassion increased from one moment to another.
“I loved her. There is a history in those three words which neither the eloquent tongue nor the skilled pen can tell. See how coldly I speak. I command my speech, I may pick and choose among ten thousand words and phrases, and describe love at my leisure. She grants me time; she is very merciful to-day. What would you have me say? You know what love is. Think of such love as yours can have been, and take twice that, and three times over, and a hundred thousand times, and cram it, burning, flaming, melting into your bursting heart—then you would know a tenth of what I have known. Love, indeed! Who can have known love but me? I stand alone. Since the dull, unlovely world first jarred and trembled and began to move, there has not been another of my kind, nor has man suffered as I have suffered, and been crushed and torn and thrown aside to die, without even the mercy of a death-wound. Describe it? Tell it? Look at me! I am both love’s description and the epitaph on his gravestone. In me he lived, me he tortured, with me he dies never to live again as he has lived this once. There is no justice and no mercy! Think not that it is enough to love and that you will be loved in return. Do not think that—do not dream that. Do you not know that the fiercest drought is as a spring rain to the rocks, which thirst not and need no refreshment?”
Again he fixed his eyes on Unorna’s face and faintly smiled. Apparently she was displeased.