V
Autumn came, Victoria had gone home and the little out-of-the-way street and its houses was as quiet as before. At night there was a light in Johannes' room. It made its appearance with the stars at evening and was extinguished when day dawned. He was working with all his might, writing his great book.
Weeks and months passed; he was alone and visited nobody, he no longer went to the Seiers'. Often his imagination played him tricks and slipped irrelevant fancies into his book which he afterwards had to strike out and throw away. This put him back a great deal. A sudden noise in the stillness of the night, the rumbling of a cart in the street, might give his thoughts a jolt and throw them off the line:
Out of the way of this cart in the street, look out there!
Why? Why should one look out for this cart anyway? It was rolling past, perhaps it had now reached the corner. Perhaps there's a man standing there with no overcoat, no cap, he stoops down and meets the cart with his head, he will be run over, hopelessly mangled, killed. The man wants to die, that is his affair. He won't button his shirt any more and he has given up tying his shoes in the morning, he wears everything open, his chest is bare and skinny; he is to die.... A man was lying at the point of death, he wrote a letter to a friend, a note, a little request. The man died and left this letter. It had a date and signature, it was written with capitals and small letters although he who wrote it was to die in an hour. That was so strange. He had even put the usual flourish under his name. And an hour later he was dead.... There was another man. He was lying alone in a little room which was wood-panelled and painted blue. What then? Nothing. In the whole wide world he is the one who has got to die. That fills his mind; he thinks about it till he is worn out. He sees that it is evening, that it is eight by the clock on the wall, and he can't make out why it doesn't strike. Poor man, his brain is already falling asleep; the clock has struck and he didn't notice it. Then he makes a hole through his mother's portrait on the wall—what does he want with this picture now, and why should it be left whole when he is gone? His tired eyes fall upon the flower-pot on the table and he reaches out his hand and pulls the big flower-pot slowly and deliberately so that it falls on the floor and is smashed to pieces. Why should it be left unbroken? Then he throws his amber cigarette-holder out of the window. What does he want with it any more? It seems so obvious to him that he need not leave it behind. And in a week the man was dead....
Johannes got up and walked up and down his room. His neighbour in the next room woke up, his snoring ceased and a sigh was heard, a tortured groan. Johannes went on tiptoe to the table and sat down again. The wind howling in the poplars outside his window made him feel cold. The old poplars were stripped of leaves and looked like sad monstrosities; a few knotted branches scraped against the wall of the house with a creaking sound, like a piece of wooden machinery, a cracked stamp-mill which worked on and on.
He dropped his eyes on his papers and read them over. Well well, his fancy had run away with him again. He had nothing to do with death and a passing cart. He was writing about a garden, a green luxuriant garden by his home, the Castle garden. That was what he was writing about. It was lying dead and snowed under now, but he was writing about it all the same, and not of winter and snow at all, but spring and fragrance and mild breezes. And it was evening. The water below lay deep and still, like a leaden lake; the lilacs shed their perfume, hedge after hedge was in bud and green leaves, and the air was so still that the blackcock could be heard calling on the other side of the bay. On one of the paths of the garden stood Victoria, she was alone, dressed in white, twenty years old. There she stood. Taller than the tallest rose-bushes, she looked out over the water, out to the forests, to the sleeping mountains in the distance; she seemed like a white soul in the midst of the green garden. Footsteps sounded on the road below, she took a few steps forward to the lonely summer-house, leaned her elbows on the wall and looked down. The man in the road took his hat off almost to the ground and bowed. She nodded back. The man looked about him, there was nobody on the road watching him and he advanced towards the wall. Then she retreated, crying, "No, no!" and she waved him off with her hand. "Victoria," he said, "what you said once was the real truth, I can't have imagined it, that is impossible." "Yes," she answered, "but what do you want?" He was now quite close to her, only the wall separated them, and he answered: "What do I want? Oh, you know, I only want to stay here a minute. It's the last time. I want to come as near to you as I can; now I'm not far away!" She said nothing. So that minute passed. "Good-night," he said, taking off his hat again and sweeping the ground with it. "Good-night," she answered. And he went away without looking back....
What had he to do with death? He crumpled up the written sheets and threw them away to the stove. Other written sheets were lying there waiting to be burnt, all the fugitive waste of an imagination that overflowed its banks. And he began again to write of the man on the road, a wanderer who bowed and said good-bye when his minute was done. And he left the girl behind in the garden, and she was dressed in white and twenty years old. She would not have him; no, she wouldn't. But he had stood against the wall behind which she lived. As close as that to her he had been.
Again weeks and months went by and spring came. The snow was already gone, far out in space was a foaming of freed waters. The swallows had come and the woods outside the town quickened with the life of all kinds of hopping beasts and birds with foreign note. A fresh, sweet smell floated up from the ground.