"Good-night."
"Good-night," he replied, his eyeglass dropping once more. He put out both hands, adding: "I am tremendously glad to have the opportunity to get more acquainted with you. I always liked you, and I am sure we shall understand each other."
We understand each other! How intensely stupid the man is! But the more stupid he is, the more horrible to me is the thought that Aniela belongs to him, is simply a thing of his! I did not even try to undress that night. I never had seen so clearly that there may be situations where words come to an end, the power of reasoning ceases, even the power of feeling one's calamity,—to which there seems to be no limit. A truly magnificent life which is given unto us! It is enough to say that those former occasions when Aniela trampled upon my feelings, and when I thought I had reached the height of misery, appear now to me as times of great happiness. If then, if even now, the Evil One promised me in exchange for my soul that everything should remain as it was, Aniela forever to reject my love, but Kromitzki not to come near her,—I would sign the agreement without hesitation. Because in the man rejected by a woman there grows involuntarily a conviction that she is like a Gothic tower far out of his reach, to which he scarcely dares to lift his eyes. Thus I always thought of Aniela. And then comes a Pan Kromitzki, with two rugs from Batoum, and drags her from the height, that inexorable priestess, down to a level with those rugs. What a terrible thing it is, that imagination can bring it all so clear before us! And how repulsively mean he is, and how ridiculous withal!
Where are all my theories, my reasonings, that love is far above matrimonial bonds,—that I have a right to love Aniela? I still have my theories, while Kromitzki has Aniela. As the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb I thought the human being capable of carrying only a certain weight, and that if more were put upon his back he must needs break down. In my misery without bounds, and in my equally great foolishness and degradation, I felt that from the time of Kromitzki's arrival I was beginning to despise Aniela. Why? I could not justify it upon any common grounds. "One wife, one husband." This law I know by heart, like any other fool; but in relation to my own feelings it is a degradation for Aniela. What does it matter that it does not stand to reason? I know that I despise her, and it is more than I can bear. I felt that existence under these conditions would become simply impossible, and that necessarily there must be some change and the past be buried. What change? If my scorn could throttle my love, as a wolf throttles a lamb, it would be well. But I had a foreboding that something else would take place. If I did not love Aniela I could not despise her now; therefore my scorn is only another link in the chain, I understand perfectly that beyond Pani Kromitzka, beyond Pan Kromitzki and their relation to each other, nothing interests me,—nothing whatever; neither light nor darkness, war nor peace, nor any other thing. She, Aniela, or rather both she and her husband, and my part in their life, are my reason for existence. If for this same reason I cannot bear my existence any longer, what will happen then? Suddenly it came upon me, as a surprise, that I had not thought of the most simple solution of the problem,—death.
What a tremendous power there is in human hands,—the power of cutting the thread. Now I am ready. Evil genius of my life, do thy worst; pile weight upon weight,—but only up to a certain time, as long as I consent. If I find it too much I throw off the burden! "E poi eterna silenza," Nirvana, the "fourth dimension" of Zöllner—what do I know? The thought that it all depended upon me gave me an immense relief.
I remained thus an hour, stretched out on the couch, thinking how and when I would do it; and that very abstraction of my thoughts from Kromitzki seemed to calm me. Such a thing as the taking of one's life wants some preparation, and this also forced my thoughts into another groove. I remembered at once that my travelling revolver was of too small a calibre. I got up to look at it and resolved to buy a new one. I began to calculate ways and means to make it appear an accident. All this of course as a mere theory. Nothing was settled into a fixed purpose. I might call it rather a contemplating the possibility of suicide than a purpose. On the contrary, I was now certain it would not come to that soon. Now that I knew the door by which I could escape I thought I might wait a little to see how far my evils would extend, and what new tortures fate had in store for me. I was consumed by a burning and painful curiosity as to what would happen next, how those two would meet, and how Aniela would face me? I became very tired, and dressed as I was I fell into a troubled sleep, full of Kromitzkis, eyeglasses, revolvers, and all sorts of confused combinations of things and people.
I woke up late. The servant told me that Pan Kromitzki had gone to Ploszow. My first impulse was to follow and see them together. But when seated in the carriage I suddenly felt I could not bear it, that it would be too great a trial, and might hasten my escape through the open door into the unknown; and I gave orders to drive somewhere else.
The greatest pessimist instinctively avoids pain, and fights against it with all his might. He clutches at every hope and expects relief through every change. There awoke within me such a desire to make them go to Gastein as if my very life depended upon it. To make them leave Ploszow! The thought did not give me rest, and took such possession of me that I gave my whole mind to its realization. This did not present great difficulties. The ladies were almost ready to start. Kromitzki had come unexpectedly, evidently intending to give his wife a surprise. A few days later he would not have found us at Ploszow. I went to the railway office and secured places in a sleeping-car for Vienna; then sent a messenger with a letter to my aunt telling her I had bought tickets for the following day, as all the carriages were engaged for the following week, and we should have to go to-morrow.
26 June.
I still linger over the last moments spent at Warsaw. These memories impressed themselves so strongly on my mind that I cannot pass them over in silence. The day following Kromitzki's arrival I had a strange sensation. It seemed to me that I did not love Aniela any longer, and yet could not live without her. It was the first time I felt this—I might call it psychical dualism. Formerly my love went through its regular course. I said to myself, "I love her, therefore I desire her,"—with the same logic as Descartes employs in the statement, "I think, therefore I exist." Now the formula is changed into, "I do not love her, but desire her still;" and both elements exist in me as if they were engraved on two separate stones. For some time I did not realize that the "I do not love her" was merely a delusion. I love her as before, but in such a sorrowing manner, with so much bitterness and venom, that the love has nothing in common with happiness.