Voss let her cry for a little while. Then he asked very tensely: “He came in and——? And what?”
Johanna kept her eyes covered, and went on: “You had the feeling: This is the end for him, the end of all content, of smiles and laughter—the end. In fifteen minutes his face had aged by twenty years. I looked at it for just a moment; then my courage failed me. You may think it fantastic, but I tell you the whole room was one pain, the air was pain and so was the light. It’s the truth. Everything hurt; everything one thought or saw hurt. But he was absolutely silent, and his expression was like that of one who was straining his eyes to read some illegible script. And that was the most painful thing of all.”
She fell silent and Voss did not break this silence. Enviously and rancorously he reflected: “We shall have to convince ourselves that blood can issue from a stone; we must see and hear and test.” Deliberately he fortified his will to doubt. The explanations which he gave in his own mind were of an unworthy character. Not to provoke Johanna he feigned to share her faith; and yet there was something about her story that stirred his vitals and made him afraid.
Johanna needed some support. She froze in her new freedom; she distrusted her strength to bear it. With a touch of dread and longing she wondered that no one dragged her back by force into the comfort of a sheltered, care-free, secure life.
She was not sorry to have Amadeus walking at her side. Ah, it was inconsistent and weak and faithless to one’s own self, but there was such a horror in being alone. Yet her gesture of farewell seemed utterly final when they reached the house in Kommandanten Street where she lived. Amadeus Voss, suspecting her weakness and her melancholy, accompanied her to the dark stairs, and there grasped her with such violence as though he meant to devour her. She merely sighed.
At that moment an irresistible desire for motherhood welled up in her. She did not care through whose agency, nor whether his kiss inspired disgust or delight. She wanted to become a mother—to give birth to something, to create something, not to be so empty and cold and alone, but to cling to something and seem more worthy to herself and indispensable to another being. Had not this very man who held her like a beast of prey spoken of the yearning of the shadow for its body? Suddenly she understood that saying.
Sombre and searching and strong was the look she gave him when they stepped out upon the street again. Then she went with him.
VII
Karen was still alive in the morning. Death had a hard struggle with her. Late at night she had once more fought herself free of its embrace; now she lay there, exhausted by the effort. Her arms, her hands, her breasts were covered with sores filled with pus. Many had broken open.
Three women rustled through the room—Isolde Schirmacher, the widow Spindler, and the wife of a bookbinder who lived in the rear. They whispered, fetched things back and forth, waited for the physician and for the end.