Crammon was startled. Despite Christian’s equivocal smile, he felt a sudden twinge of superstitious fear. “Idiotic!” he growled. He arose and took his hat, and still tried to wring from Christian a promise for the evening. At that moment a knock sounded at the door, and Amadeus Voss entered.
“I beg your pardon,” he stammered, and looked shyly at Crammon, who had at once assumed an attitude of hostility. “I merely wanted to ask you, Christian, whether we are going to leave. Shall the packing be done? We must know what to do.”
Crammon was furious. “Fancy the scoundrel taking such a tone,” he thought. He could hardly force himself to assume the grimace of courtesy that became inevitable when Christian, quite hesitatingly, introduced them to each other.
Amadeus bowed like an applicant for some humble office. His eyes behind their lenses clung to Crammon, like the valves of an exhaust pump. He found Crammon repulsive at once; but he thought it advisable not only to hide this feeling but to play the part of obsequiousness. His hatred was so immediate and so violent, that he was afraid of showing it too soon, and stripping himself of some chance of translating it into action.
Crammon sought points of attack. He treated Voss with contempt, looked at him as though he were a wad of clothes against the wall, neither answered him nor listened to what he said, deliberately prolonged his stay, and paid no attention to Christian’s nervousness. Voss continued to play the part he had selected. He agreed and bowed, rubbed the toe of one of his boots against the sole of the other, picked up Crammon’s stick when the latter dropped it; but as he seemed determined not to be the first to yield, Crammon at last took pity on the silent wonder and torment in Christian’s face. He waved his well-gloved left hand and withdrew. He seemed to swell up in his rage like a frog. “Softly, Bernard,” he said to himself; “guard your dignity, and do not step into the ordure at your feet. Trust in the Lord who said: Vengeance is mine.” He met a little dog on his path, and administered a kick to it, so that the beast howled and scurried into an open cellar.
Across the table Christian and Voss faced each other in silence. Voss pulled a flower from the vase, and shredded its calyx with his thin fingers. “So that was Herr von Crammon,” he murmured. “I don’t know why I feel like laughing. But I can’t help it. I do.” And he giggled softly to himself.
“We leave to-morrow,” said Christian, held a handkerchief to his mouth, and breathed the delicate perfume that aroused in him so many tender and slowly fading images.
Voss took a blossom, tore it in two, gazed tensely at the parts, and said: “Fibre by fibre, cell by cell. I am done with this life of sloth and parasitism. I want to cut up the bodies of men and anatomize corpses. Perhaps one can get at the seat of weakness and vulgarity. One must seek life at its source and death at its root. The talent of an anatomist stirs within me. Once I wanted to be a great preacher like Savonarola; but it’s a reckless thing to try in these days. One had better stick to men’s bodies; their souls would bring one to despair.”
“I believe one must work,” Christian answered softly. “It does not matter at what. But one must work.” He turned toward the window. The round, white cloud had vanished; the silver sea had sucked it up.