XII
Johanna Schöntag’s first visit to Voss passed off in a very commonplace manner. Trying to let him forget that she was a young lady made her more and more conventional. To hide her embarrassment, she was half capricious and half critical in mood. It amused her that there was a rocking-chair in the room. “It reminds one of one’s grandmother,” she said, “and gives one an anachronistic and homelike feeling.” Then she sat down in it and rocked, took candied fruits from her little beaded bag and crushed them on her tongue, which gave her a comical and pouting expression.
On the table there was a tea-urn, two cups, and plates with pastry. Voss’s demeanour seemed to say that narrow means did not prevent one from entertaining properly. It amused Johanna. She thought to herself: “If he brings out a photograph album with pictures of himself as a child, I shall giggle right into his face.” And at the same time her heart throbbed with quite other fears.
Voss spoke of his loneliness. He alluded to experiences of his own that had made him shy. There were people, he said, who seemed fated to suffer shipwreck in all matters where their hearts were involved. They had to grow calluses of the soul. He was busy doing that. He had never had a friend, though the illusion of friendship often enough. To realize the futility of some great longing was bitterer than to discover the insufficiency of a human being.
Johanna’s secret fears grew as she heard him wax sentimental. She said: “This rocking-chair is the nicest thing I’ve come across for long. It gives me a queer, pleasant little sea-sickness. Are you sure the people under you won’t believe that you’ve become a father and are rocking your offspring to sleep?” She laughed and left the chair. Then she drank tea and nibbled at a piece of pastry, and quite suddenly said good-bye and left him.
Voss gritted his teeth. His hand was as empty as before. He took a piece of soft cake, formed it into the rude image of a girl, and pierced it with the pin that Christian had given him. The room still held the faint aroma of a woman’s body and garments and clothes and hair. He rocked the empty chair, and talked to an invisible person who was leaning back in it and coquettishly withdrew from his glance. For a while he worked. Then his work wearied him, and his thoughts were busy laying snares.
All he did and thought showed the sincerity of his feeling of loneliness. His soul exuded poisonous fumes.
He opened a drawer of his desk, and took out the letters of the unknown lady who had signed herself F. He read them through, and then took pen and paper and began to copy them. He copied them word for word, but whenever Christian’s name occurred he substituted dots for it. There were twenty-three of these letters, and when he had finished dawn was rising.
He slept a few hours, and then wrote to Johanna as follows: “I propose this riddle to you: Who is F. and who is the thief and robber who took French leave with such a treasure of enthusiasm and devotion? Perhaps it is only a product of my fancy or a by-product of my morbid imagination. I leave you to guess. Has there been an attempt here to substitute a magnificent invention for the unromantic sobriety of real life, or did this rare and miraculous thing really form a part of human experience? It seems to me that something in the modulation and tone-colour, something subtle but unmistakable, points to the latter conclusion. Where is the man who could invent such pain and such delight? Who would have the courage to represent the life of the senses as so blended of shamelessness and of a primal innocence? Compared to such an one our most vaunted poets would be the merest tyros. I have, of course, never admired poets inordinately. They falsify appearances, and, in the last analysis, they are but rationalists in whose hands our dreams become transparent and two-dimensional. There is a verbal veraciousness which is as penetrating as the glow of living flesh. Here is an example of it. It is a miracle to be adored, a thing of envy to all hungry souls. It is life itself, and since it is life, where are the living two that begot it? She, the marvellous author of the letters, is probably dead—consumed in the glow of her own soul. Her very shadow bears the stigmata of doom. But her ecstatic pen paints the picture of him whom she loved. I know him, we both know him. He stands at the gate of the penitents, and offers for old debts a payment that no one wants. To love as she loved is like worship; to be so loved and not to value it, to let its evidence rot in the dust of a library—that is a sin which nothing can wipe out. If one whom God himself pampered spews the food of angels out of his mouth, nothing but carrion remains for the step-children of fate. And yet we know: not wholly hopeless is the cry of the blood’s need. Come to me soon; I have much to ask you and to say to you. I was like stone yesterday; the happiness of your presence drugged me. I shall be waiting for you. Each day I shall be at home at five o’clock and wait for you for three hours. Is there not some compulsion in that? When would you like to see Wahnschaffe? I shall tell him and arrange the meeting.”
Johanna felt the same consternation this time that she had felt months before when Voss had written her in Christian’s stead. First she thought he had perpetrated a hoax. But when she read the letters she was convinced of their authenticity and deeply moved. Voss’s indications left no doubt as to their origin; again he had stolen another’s secret in order to make use of it. His motives seemed inexplicable to her. But she promised herself not to see him again, whatever happened. The very thought of him made her freeze. The morbid and heated hatred of Christian which he always manifested made her reconsider. At moments she nursed the flattering delusion that she might be the means of saving Christian from a great danger. And yet, somehow, the man himself exerted the stronger lure. There was a will in him! A strange temptation—to feel the compulsion of an alien will! Whither would it lead?