“Well, yes,” Michael said, morosely. “I suppose it is foolishness.”
“Couldn’t you take some other example?”
“Another? Wait a moment. It’s so hard for me to find the right expressions. Wait.... A couple of weeks ago father had gone to Fürstenwalde. He went one evening, and he was to be back the next morning. I was alone at home. Ruth was with friends, in Schmargendorf, I think. She had told me she would be home late, and as it grew later I grew more and more restless. Not because I feared that something might have happened to Ruth; I didn’t even think of that. It was the empty room and the evening and the flight of time. Time runs on so, with such terrible swiftness and with such terrible relentlessness. It runs like water in which one must drown. If Ruth had come, there would have been a barrier to that awful flowing; time would have had to start anew. But Ruth did not come. There was a clock on the wall of that room. You must have seen it often—a round clock with a blue dial and a pendulum of brass. It ticked and ticked, and its ticking was like hammer blows. At last I went and held the pendulum, and the ticking stopped. Then the fear stopped too, and I could go to sleep. Time was no more, and my fear was no more.”
“It is very strange,” Christian murmured.
“Years ago, when we were taught to be religious, it was better. One could pray. Of course, the prayers too were pure fear, but they eased one.”
“I am surprised,” said Christian, “that you never confided in your sister.”
Michael gave a start. Then he answered very shyly, and so softly that Christian had to move his chair nearer to hear at all. “My sister ... no, that was impossible. Ruth had so much to bear as it was; but it would have been impossible anyhow. Among Jews, brothers and sisters are not as close as among Christians; I mean Jews who don’t live among Christians. We’re from the country, you know, and so we were farther removed from other people than here. A brother can’t confide in his sister. From the very beginning the sister is a woman; you feel that, even when she’s a little girl. And the whole misery comes from just that....”
“How is that? What particular misery?” Christian asked, in a whisper.
“It is frightfully hard to tell,” Michael continued, dreamily. “I don’t believe I can express it; it might sound so ugly. But it goes on and on, and one detail arises from another. Brother and sister—it sound so innocent. But each of the two has a body and a soul. The soul is clean, but the body is unclean. Sister—she is sacred. But it’s a woman, too, that one sees. Day and night it steals into your brooding—woman ... woman. And woman is terror, because woman is the body, and the body is fear. Without the body one could understand the world; without woman one could understand God. And until one understands God, the fear is upon one. Always the nearness of that other body that you are forced to think about. Where we lived last we all had to sleep in one room. Every evening I hid my head under the covering and held my thoughts in check. Don’t misunderstand me, please! It wasn’t anything ugly; my thoughts weren’t ugly thoughts. But there was that terrible, nameless fear.... Oh, how can I explain it? The fear of.... No, I can’t put it into words. There was Ruth, so tender and delicate. Everything about her was in direct contradiction to the idea of woman; and yet I trembled with aversion because she was one. Man as he is made and as he shows himself—ah, those are two different things. I must tell you about a dream I had—not once, but twenty times, always alike. I dreamed that a fire had broken out, and that Ruth and I had to flee quite naked down the stairs and out of the house. Ruth had to drag me along by force, or I would have rushed back right into the fire, so terrible was my shame. And I thought: ‘Ruth, that isn’t you, that mustn’t be you.’ I didn’t, in that dream, ever see her, but I knew and felt that she was naked. And she—she acted quite naturally and even smiled. ‘Dear God,’ I thought, ‘how can she smile?’ And then by day I didn’t dare look at her, and every kind glance of hers reminded me of my sin. But why do I tell you all that—why? It makes me feel so defiled, so unspeakably defiled.”