VII
Everything became blood-red before his eyes; he was seized with a feverish chill.
He had followed Philippina with a dejected, limp feeling of disgust, fear and coercion. Now he knew what it was all about. At the very beginning of the events he saw the middle and the end. He saw before the bolted door what was going on behind it. His soul was seized with horror, rage, woe, contempt, and terror. He felt dizzy; he feared lie might lose consciousness.
He sprang up the creaking stairs by leaps and bounds. He stood before the door behind which he had gone hungry, been cold, and glowed with enthusiasm as a young man. Silence should have reigned there now, so that the devotion of retrospective spirits might not be molested on the grave of so many, many hopes.
He jerked at the latch; a scream was heard from within. The door was bolted. He pressed his body against the fragile wood so violently that both hinges, and the latch, gave way, and the door fell on to the middle of the floor with a mighty crash.
The scream was repeated, this time in a more piercing tone. Dorothea was lying on a big bed with nothing on but a flimsy chemise. Frau Hadebusch, pimp always, had rented the bed from a second-hand dealer; it covered a half of the room. Before Dorothea was a plate of cherries; she had been amusing herself by shooting the pits at her lover. He likewise was lacking nearly all the garments ordinarily worn by men when in the presence of women. He was sitting astride on a chair, smoking a short-stemmed pipe.
When Daniel, with bloody hands—he had scratched himself while breaking in the door—with his hair flying wild about his face, panting, and pale as death, stepped over the door, Dorothea again began to scream; she screamed seven or eight times. She was filled with despair and terrible anxiety.
Daniel rushed at the young man, and seized him by the throat. While he held the American in a death-like grip, while he saw Dorothea, as if in a roseate haze, with uplifted arms, leave the bed screaming at the top of her voice, while an extraordinary power of observation, despite his insane rage, came over him, while he watched the cherries as they rolled across the bed and saw the green stems, some of which were withered, showing that the cherries were half rotten, while he felt a taste on his tongue as if he too had eaten cherries—while he saw all these things and had this sensation, he thought to himself without either doubt or relief: “This is the downfall; this is chaos.”
The American—it later became known that he was a wandering artist who had, with an equal amount of nerve and adroitness, worked his way into the private social life of the city—thrust his antagonist back with all his might, and struck up the position of a professional boxer. Daniel, however, gave him no time to strike; he fell on him, wrapped his arms tight about him, threw him to the floor, and was trying to choke him. He groaned, struggled, got his fist loose, struck Daniel in the face, and cried, “You damned fool!” But it was the cry of a whipped man.
Loud noise broke out downstairs. A crowd of people collected on the sidewalk. “Police, police!” shrieked the shrill voice of a woman. The people began to make their way up the stairs.