But what was it in the air? Why, there was nothing, nothing but the Ornamental Water, in a misty haze; the few villas around it looming vaguely out of the fog; no pedestrians at all; nothing but the familiar, everyday, usual things.... Then what impelled him to wander so aimlessly past the Ornamental Water to the Nieuwe Weg? Why were those ponds like tragic pools? Was it not as though pale faces stared out of them, out of those tragic pools, pale, white faces of women, multiplied a hundredfold by strange reflections, eddies of white, faces, with dank, plastered hair and dying eyes, which gleamed?...
Yes, yes, he was in a fever. He had been unwise to go out, in that chill morning mist. But it was rotten to be ill ... and he was never ill. He had never said that he was ill. He was a fellow who could stand some knocking about. But for all that he was feverish. Otherwise he would not have seen the Ornamental Water as a tragic pool ... with the white faces of mermaids.... Lord, how cold and shivery the mermaids must feel down there in those chilly, silent pools ... their dying eyes just gleaming up with a single spark! Were they dead or alive, the chilly mermaids? Were their eyes dying or were they ogling? How strangely they were all reflected, until they became as a thousand mermaids, until their faces blossomed like white flowers of death above the light film of ice coating the pool! Whew! How chill and cold they were, the poor, dead, ogling mermaids!...
Dead: were they dead?... Were they ogling and laughing ... with eyes of gold?... He shivered as though ice-cold water were trickling down his spine; and he wrapped himself closely in his military great-coat. He felt something hard in his breast-pocket, a square piece of cardboard. Yes, he had been carrying that about for ever so long ... and yet ... and yet he couldn't do it. It was the photograph of his children, the latest group, taken for Mamma's last birthday. For weeks he had been carrying it about in his pocket, in an envelope with an address on it ... and yet, yet he couldn't send it or hand it in at her door. The portrait of all his children:
"I expect they're charming kiddies, Gerrit?"
Gad, how could she have asked it, how could she have asked it, as though to drive him mad?... Whew, how cold it was!... He looked fearsomely at the mermaids: no, no, there was nothing, nothing but the chilly pool. He was in a high fever, that's what he was ... Gad, how could she ask such a thing?
Still ... still, it was over. She was no longer the girl she was. She was finished with, done for; she had lain in his arms like a corpse, tired of her own kisses, broken by his embrace, white as a sheet, done for.... Lord, how rotten, to be done for and still so young, a young woman!... Done for ... like a defective machine: Lord, how rotten!... No, he couldn't give that photograph ... of all his children ... to a light-o'-love.... He couldn't do it.... If she had only asked for a necklace or some such gaud ... he would have managed somehow, out of his poverty, to buy her a nice keepsake.... Whew, how raw and cold it was!... The will-o'-the-wisps of all sorts of images shone in front of him; and, through them, through the flames, the flying Paris express ... with the compartment, the coffin, Van der Welcke, Constance, two motionless figures. And yet it was bitterly, clammily cold; he was chilled to his marrow; and a great hairy dragon split its beastly maw to lick that chilled marrow with a fiery tongue. How big the filthy brute had grown! It was no longer inside him, it was all around him now: it filled the air with its wriggling body; it lifted its tail among the wintry boughs; and its tongue of fire licked at Gerrit's marrow; and under that marrow—how strange!—he was simply freezing.... Brrr, brrr!... Lord, how he was shivering, what a fever he was in!... Home ... home ... to bed!... Oh, how good to get into bed ... nice and warm, nice and warm!... Still better to be nice and warm in women's arms ... no kissing ... just sleeping, nice and warm!... Brrr, brrr!... Lord, Lord, Lord, the water pouring down his back! Never in his life had he shivered like that!... How hard that photograph of his children was! He felt it on his heart like a plank. How long had he been carrying it about with him? Brrr, brrr! He might just as well have let her have it: it was the only thing that she had asked him for.... Money he had never given her: only fifteen guilders—brrr, brrr!—fif—brrr!—teen—brrr!—guilders.... Come, why not do it now?... Just hand it in, at her door—brrr!—and then—brrr!—and then—brrr!—home, to bed ... nice and warm in bed!...
The thought suddenly took definite shape and it drove him on along the Kanaal. Here also the mist hung like a haze over the water and the meadows on the other side; and, shivering and shuddering under the fiery lick of the dragon's tongue, Gerrit hurried to the Frederikstraat. That was where she lived, that was where he had been so often lately, until that last time when she had begged him not to come back again and to give her, as a keepsake, the portrait ... the portrait of his children. He would leave it now at the door. He had taken it in his hand, because it lay like a plank an his heart; and her name was on the envelope.... Brrr!... Hand it in quickly and then—brrr!—nice and warm in bed.
The landlady opened the door.
"Would you please give this to the young lady?"
He meant to shove the envelope into the woman's hand and then—brrr, brrr!—home ... to bed ... warm ... warm....