Despair (13 page)

“Oh, Hermann,” she said, “how nice of you to think of coming. There’s something wrong with my tum. Sit down here. It’s better now, but I felt awful at the cinema.”

“In the middle of a jolly good film, too,” Ardalion complained, as he poked at his pipe and scattered its black contents about the floor. “She’s been sprawling like that for the last half hour. A woman’s imagination, that’s all. Fit as a fiddle.”

“Tell him to hold his tongue,” said Lydia.

“Look here,” I said, turning to Ardalion, “surely I am not mistaken; you have painted, haven’t you, such a picture—a briar pipe and two roses?”

He produced a sound, which indiscriminate novel-writers render thus: “H’m.”

“Not that I know of,” he replied, “you seem to have been working too much, old chap.”

“My first,” said Lydia lying on the bed, with her eyes shut, “my first is a romantic fiery feeling. My second is a beast. My whole is a beast too, if you like—or else a dauber.”

“Do not mind her,” said Ardalion. “As to that pipe and roses, no, I can’t think of it. But you might look for yourself.”

His daubs hung on the walls, lay in disorder on the table, were heaped in a corner. Everything in the room was fluffy with dust. I examined the smudgy purplish spots of his water colors; fingered gingerly several greasy pastels lying on a rickety chair …

“First,” said Ardor-lion to his fair cousin, a horrid tease, “you should learn to spell my name.”

I left the room and made my way to the landlady’s dining room. That ancient dame, very like an owl, was sitting in a Gothic armchair which stood on a slight elevation of the floor next to the window and was darning a stocking distended upon a wooden mushroom.

“…  To see the pictures,” I said.

“Pray do,” she answered graciously.

Immediately to the right of the sideboard I espied what I was seeking; it turned out, however, to be not quite two roses and not quite a pipe, but a couple of large peaches and a glass ashtray.

I came back in a state of acute irritation.

“Well,” Ardalion inquired, “found it?”

Shook my head. Lydia had already slipped on her dress
and shoes and was in the act of smoothing her hair before the mirror with Ardalion’s hairbrush.

“Funny—must have eaten something,” she said with that little trick she had of narrowing her nose.

“Just wind,” remarked Ardalion. “Wait a moment, you people. I’m coming with you. I’ll be dressed in a jiffy. Turn away, Lyddy.”

He was in a patched, color-smeared house-painter’s smock, coming down almost to his heels. This he took off. There was nothing beneath save his silver cross and symmetrical tufts of hair. I do hate slovenliness and dirt. Upon my word, Felix was somehow cleaner than he. Lydia looked out of the window and kept humming a little song which had long gone out of fashion (and how badly she pronounced the German words). Ardalion wandered about the room, dressing by stages according to what he discovered in the most unexpected spots.

“Ah, me!” he exclaimed all at once. “What can there be more commonplace than an impecunious artist? If some good soul helped me to arrange an exhibition, next day I’d be famous and rich.”

He had supper with us, then played cards with Lydia and left after midnight. I offer all this as a sample of an evening gaily and profitably spent. Yes, all was well, all was excellent, I felt another man, refreshed, renovated, released (a flat, a wife, the pleasant, all-pervading cold of an iron-hard Berlin winter) and so on. I cannot refrain from giving as well an instance of my literary exercises—a sort of subconscious training, I suppose, in view of my present tussle with this harassing tale. The coy trifles composed that winter have been destroyed, but one of them still lingers in my memory.… Which reminds me of Turgenev’s prose-poems.… “How fair,
how fresh were the roses” to the accompaniment of the piano. So may I trouble you for a little music.

Once upon a time there lived a weak, seedy, but fairly rich person, one Mr. X.Y. He was in love with a bewitching young lady, who, alas, paid no attention to him. One day, while traveling, this pale, dull man happened to notice, on the seashore, a young fisherman called Mario, a merry, sunburned, strong fellow, who, for all that, was marvelously, stupendously like him. A cute idea occurred to our hero: he invited the young lady to come with him to the seaside. They lodged at different hotels. On the very first morning she went for a walk and saw from the top of the cliff—whom? Was that really Mr. X.Y.? Well, I never! He was standing on the sand below, merry, sunburnt, in a striped jersey, with bare strong arms (but it was Mario!). The damsel returned to her hotel all aquiver and waited, waited! The golden minutes turning into lead …

In the meantime the real Mr. X.Y. who, from behind a bay tree, had seen her looking down at Mario, his double (and was now giving her heart time to ripen definitely), loitered anxiously about the village dressed in a town suit, with a lilac tie. All of a sudden a brown fishergirl in a scarlet skirt called out to him from the threshold of a cottage and with a Latin gesture of surprise exclaimed: “How wonderfully you are dressed up, Mario! I always thought you were a simple rude fisherman, as all our young men are, and I did not love you; but now, now …” She drew him into the hut. Whispering lips, a blend of fish and hair lotion, burning caresses. So the hours fled.…

At last Mr. X.Y. opened his eyes and went to the hotel where his dear one, his only love, was feverishly awaiting him. “I have been blind,” she cried as he entered. “And now my
sight has been restored by your appearing in all your bronze nakedness on that sun-kissed beach. Yes, I love you. Do with me what you will.” Whispering lips? Burning caresses? Fleeting hours? No, alas, no—emphatically no. Only a lingering smell of fish. The poor fellow was thoroughly spent by his recent spree, and so there he sat, very glum and downcast, thinking what a fool he had been to betray and annul his own glorious plan.

Very mediocre stuff, I know that myself. During the process of writing I was under the impression that I was turning out something very smart and witty; on occasions a like thing happens in dreams: you dream you are making a speech of the utmost brilliancy, but when you recall it upon awakening, it goes nonsensically: “Besides being silent before tea, I’m silent before eyes in mire and mirorage,” etc.

On the other hand, that little story in the Oscar Wilde style would quite suit the literary columns of newspapers, the editors of which, German editors especially, like to offer their readers just such tiny tales of the pretty-pretty and slightly licentious sort, forty lines in all, with an elegant point and a sprinkling of what the ignoramus calls paradoxes (“his conversation sparkled with paradoxes”). Yes, a trifle, a flip of the pen, but how amazed you will be when I tell you that I wrote that soppy drivel in an agony of pain and horror, with a grinding of teeth, furiously unburdening myself and at the same time being fully aware that it was no relief at all, only a refined self-torture, and that I would never free my dusty, dusky soul by this method, but merely make things worse.

It was more or less in such a frame of mind that I met New Year’s Eve; I remember the black carcass of that night, that half-witted hag of a night, holding her breath and listening
for the stroke of the sacramental hour. Disclosed, sitting at the table: Lydia, Ardalion, Orlovius, and I, quite still and blazon-stiff like heraldic creatures. Lydia with her elbow on the table, her index finger raised watchfully, her shoulders naked, her dress as variegated as the back of a playing card; Ardalion swathed in a laprobe (because of the open balcony door), with a red sheen upon his fat leonine face; Orlovius in a black frock coat, his glasses gleaming, his turned-down collar swallowing the ends of his tiny black tie; and I, the Human Lightning, illuminating that scene.

Good, now you may move again, be quick with that bottle, the clock is going to strike. Ardalion poured out the champagne, and we were all dead-still once more. Askance and over his spectacles, Orlovius looked at his old silver turnip that lay on the tablecloth; still two minutes left. Somebody in the street was unable to hold out any longer and cracked with a loud report; and then again that strained silence. Staring at his watch, Orlovius slowly extended toward his glass a senile hand with the claws of a griffin.

Suddenly the night gave and began to rip; cheers came from the street; with our champagne glasses we came out, like kings, on the balcony. Rockets whizzed up above the street and with a bang burst into bright-colored tears; and at all windows, on all balconies, framed in wedges and squares of festive light, people stood and cried out over and over again the same idiotic greeting.

We four clinked our glasses; I took a sip out of mine.

“What is Hermann drinking to?” asked Lydia of Ardalion.

“Don’t know and don’t care,” the latter replied. “Whatever it is, he is going to be beheaded this year. For concealing his profits.”

“Fie, what ugly speech!” said Orlovius. “I drink to the universal health.”

“You would,” I remarked.

A few days later, on a Sunday morning, as I was about to step into my bath, the maid rapped at the door; she kept saying something which I could not distinguish because of the running water: “What’s the matter?” I bellowed. “What d’you want?”—but my own voice and the noise made by the water drowned Elsie’s words and every time she started speaking, I again bellowed, just as it happens that two people, both side-stepping, cannot steer clear of each other on a wide and perfectly free pavement. But at length I thought of turning off the tap; then I leaped to the door and amid the sudden silence Elsie’s childish voice said:

“There’s a man, sir, to see you.”

“A man?” I asked, and opened the door.

“A man,” repeated Elsie, as if commenting on my nakedness.

“What does he want?” I asked, and not only felt myself perspiring but actually
saw
myself beaded from head to foot.

“He says it’s business, sir, and you know all about it.”

“What does he look like?” I asked with an effort.

“Waiting in the hall,” said Elsie, contemplating with the utmost indifference my pearly armor.

“What kind of man?”

“Kind of poor, sir, and with a shoulder bag.”

“Then tell him to go to hell!” I roared. “Let him be gone at once, I’m not at home, I’m not in town, I’m not in this world.”

I slammed the door, shot the bolt. My heart seemed to be pounding right up in my throat. Half a minute or so passed. I do not know what came over me, but, already shouting, I
suddenly unfastened the door and still naked, jumped out of the bathroom. In the passage I collided with Elsie who was returning to the kitchen.

“Stop him,” I shouted. “Where is he? Stop him.”

“He’s gone,” she said, politely disengaging herself from my unintentional embrace.

“Why the deuce did you—” I began, but did not finish my sentence, rushed away, put on shoes, trousers and overcoat, ran downstairs and out into the street. Nobody. I went on to the corner, stood there for a while looking about me and finally went back indoors. I was alone, as Lydia had gone out very early to see some female acquaintance of hers, she said. When she returned I told her I was feeling out of sorts and would not come with her to the café as had been settled.

“Poor thing,” she said. “You should lie down and take something; there’s aspirin somewhere. All right. I’ll go to the café alone.”

She went. The maid had gone out too. I listened in agony for the doorbell to ring.

“What a fool,” I kept repeating, “what an incredible fool!”

I was in an awful state of quite morbid exasperation. I did not know what to do, I was ready to pray to a nonexistent God for the sound of the bell. When it grew dark I did not switch on the light, but remained lying on the divan—listening, listening. He was sure to come before the front door was locked for the night, and if he did not, well, then tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow he was quite, quite certain to come. I should die if he did not—oh, he was bound to come.… At last, about eight o’clock the bell did ring. I ran to the door.

“Phew, I
am
tired!” said Lydia in homely fashion, pulling her hat off as she entered, and tossing her hair.

She was accompanied by Ardalion. He and I went to the parlor, while my wife got busy in the kitchen.

“Cold is the pilgrim and hungry!” said Ardalion, warming his palms at the central heating and misquoting the poet Nekrasov.

A silence.

“Say what you may,” he went on, peering at my portrait, “but there
is
a likeness, quite a remarkable likeness, in fact. I know I’m being conceited, but, really, I can’t help admiring it every blessed time I see it. And you’ve done well, my dear fellow, to shave that mustache off again.”

“Supper is served,” chanted Lydia gently, from the dining room.

I could not touch my food. I kept on sending one ear out to walk up and again up to the door of my flat, though it was much too late now.

“Two pet dreams of mine,” spoke Ardalion, folding up layers of ham as if it were pancakes, and richly munching. “Two heavenly dreams: exhibition and trip to Italy.”

“This person has not touched a drop of vodka for more than a month,” said Lydia in an explanatory way.

“Talking of vodka,” said Ardalion, “has Perebrodov been to see you?”

Lydia put her hand to her mouth. “ ’Scaped by bebory,” she said through her fingers. “Absolutely.”

“Never saw such a goose. The fact is I had asked her to tell you … It’s about a poor artist-fellow—Perebrodov by name—old pal of mine and all that. Came on foot from Danzig you know, or at least says he did. He sells hand-painted cigarette-cases, so I gave him your address—Lydia, thought you’d help him.”

“Oh, yes, he has called,” I answered, “yes, he has called
all right. And I jolly well told him to go to the devil. I’d be most obliged to you, if you’d stop sending me all kinds of sponging rogues. You may tell your friend not to bother about coming again. Really—it’s a bit thick. Anyone would think I was a professional benefactor. Go to blazes with your what’s-his-name—I simply won’t have …”