Journey Into the Past (6 page)

It was useless for him to pound the table with his clenched fist in his first fury, as if to strike out at an invisible foe; millions of helpless people were now raging in the same way as the dungeon walls of their destiny closed in on them. He immediately weighed up all the possibilities of smuggling himself across to Europe by some bold and cunning means, thus checkmating Fate, but the British consul, a friend of his who happened to be present, indicated with a cautious note of warning in his voice that he personally was obliged to keep an eye on all his movements from now on. So he could comfort himself only with the hope, soon to be disappointed, as it was for millions of others, that such madness could not last long, and within a few weeks or a few months this foolish prank played by diplomats and generals left to their own devices would be over. Before long, something else was added to that thin fibre of hope, a stronger power and better able to numb his feelings—work. In cables sent by way of Sweden, his company commissioned him to prevent possible sequestration by registering his Mexican branch of it independently and running it, with a few figureheads appointed to the board, as a Mexican firm. This task called for the utmost managerial energy. Since the war itself, that imperious entrepreneur, also wanted ore from the mines, production must be speeded up and the company’s work was redoubled. It required all his powers, and drowned out even the echo of any thoughts of his own. He worked with fanatical intensity for twelve or fourteen hours a day, sinking into bed in the evening worn down by the crushing weight of numbers, to sleep dreamlessly,

Yet all the same, while he thought his feelings were unchanged, his passionate inner tension gradually relaxed. It is not in human nature to live entirely on memories, and just as the plants and every living structure need nourishment from the soil and new light from the sky, if their colours are not to fade and their petals to drop, even such apparently unearthly things as dreams need a certain amount of nourishment from the senses, some tender pictorial aid, or their blood will run thin and their radiance be dimmed. And so it was with this passionate man before he even noticed it. When weeks, months, and finally a year and then a second year brought not a single message from her, not a written word, no sign, her picture gradually began to fade. Every day consumed in work made another grain or so of ash settle over her memory; it still showed through, like the red glow under the ashes in the grate, but finally the grey layer grew thicker and thicker. He still sometimes took out her letters, but the ink had faded, the words no longer went straight to his heart, and once he was shocked, looking at her photograph, to find that he could no longer remember the colour of her eyes. And it was less and less often that he picked up those once precious proofs of love, the letters that had magically given him new life, without realizing that he was tired of her eternal silence, tired of talking senselessly to a shadow that never answered. In addition the mining business, which was soon doing very well, threw him together with other people, other partners; he sought out company, friends, women. And when a trip in the third year of the war took him to the house of a prosperous German businessman in Vera Cruz, and he met the man’s daughter, a quiet, blonde, home-loving girl, fear of being always alone in the middle of a world rushing headlong into hatred, war and madness overcame him. He quickly made up his mind and proposed marriage. Then came a child, a second followed, living flowers flourishing on the forgotten grave of his love. Now the circle was closed; all was busy activity outside it, inside there was domestic calm, and after four or five years he would not have known the man he once was.

But then there came a day full of stormy emotions and the sound of bells, when the telegraph wires hummed, and loud voices were raised all the streets, proclaiming in large letters the news that peace had finally been made, when the British and Americans in town celebrated the destruction of his native land with loud and inconsiderate rejoicing. On that day, revived by memories of his country, which he loved again in its time of misfortune, her figure too came back into his mind, forcing its way into his emotions. How had she lived through those years of misery and deprivation on which the newspapers here dwelt at length, and with relish, with much busy activity on the part of journalists? Had her house, his house, been spared the upheavals and looting, were her husband and her son still alive? In the middle of the night he rose from the side of his peacefully sleeping wife, put on a light, and spent five hours until dawn writing a letter that seemed as if it would never end, a letter in which he told her, soliloquizing to himself, all about his life in the last five years. After two months, when he had almost forgotten writing his own letter, the answer came—undecidedly, he weighed the large envelope in his hands. Even the familiar handwriting suggested subversion. He dared not break the seal at once, as if, like Pandora’s box, this sealed letter contained something forbidden. He carried it around with him for two days in his breast pocket, and sometimes he felt his heart beating against it. But the letter, once it was opened at last, was neither obtrusively over-familiar nor cold and formal. Its calm handwriting conveyed the tender affection that he had always liked so much in her. Her husband had died at the very beginning of the war, she wrote; she hardly liked to mourn him too much, for it meant that he had been spared a great deal. He did not live to see the danger to his company, the occupation of their city, the misery of his own nation, which had become drunk on the idea of victory far too soon. She herself and her son were in good health, and she was so glad to hear good news of him, better than she could give of herself. She congratulated him on his marriage in honest and unequivocal terms; instinctively he assessed them warily, but no concealed undertone marred their clear meaning. It was all said frankly, without any ostentatious sentimental pathos, all the past seemed to be resolved in the purity of her continued sympathy, passion was transfigured as bright, crystalline friendship. He had never expected any less of her distinction of mind, yet sensing her clear, sure nature (he thought he was suddenly looking into her eyes again, grave and yet smiling in reflected kindness), sensing all that, a kind of grateful emotion overcame him. He sat down at once and wrote to her at length, and their exchange of confidences, something that he had long missed, was resumed on both sides. In this instance, the cataclysm affecting a whole world had been unable to wreak destruction.

He was now deeply grateful for the straightforward form his life had assumed. He was professionally successful, the business was prospering, at home his children were slowly growing from delicate, flower-like infancy to playful, talkative little creatures who regarded him with affection and kept him amused in the evening. And all that was left of the past, of the fiery blaze of his youth which had painfully consumed his days and nights, was a certain glow, the good, quiet light of friendship, making no demands and in no way dangerous. So two years later, when an American firm asked him to negotiate on its behalf for chemical patents in Berlin, it was a perfectly natural idea for him to think of greeting his lover of the past, now his friend, in person. As soon as he arrived in Berlin, his first request in his hotel was to be connected by telephone to her address in Frankfurt; it seemed to him symbolic that nine years later the number was still the same. A good omen, he thought, nothing has changed. Then the telephone on the table rang boldly, and suddenly he was trembling with anticipation at the idea of hearing her voice again after so many years, a voice conjured up by that ringing, reaching this place across fields and meadows, above buildings and factory chimneys, close in spite of the many miles of years and water and earth between them. And no sooner had he given his name than he suddenly heard her cry out, in amazed astonishment, “Ludwig, is that really you?” It made its way to his ears first and then, dropping lower, to his heart, which was suddenly throbbing and full of blood. All at once something had set him alight. He had difficulty in speaking, and the light weight of the receiver dangled from his hand. The clear, startled note of surprise in her voice, her cry of joy ringing out, must have touched some hidden nerve in him, for he felt the blood humming in his temples and found it hard to make out what she was saying. And without consciously intending to do so, or knowing that he would, for it was as if someone were prompting him, he promised what he had never meant to say at all—he would be coming to Frankfurt the day after tomorrow. With that, his calm was destroyed. He feverishly did what he had come to do in Berlin, travelling swiftly around by motor car to get all the negotiations successfully completed at high speed. And when, on waking next morning, he remembered his dreams of the night just past, he knew that for the first time in years—the first time for four years—he had dreamed of her again.

Two days later, as he approached her house in the morning after a freezing night, having sent a telegram to announce his arrival, he suddenly thought, looking down at his own feet: this is not the way I walk, not the way I walk back across the ocean, going straight ahead with a confident, determined stride. Why am I walking like the shy, diffident twenty-three-year-old of the old days, anxiously dusting down his shabby coat again and again with shaking fingers, putting on his new gloves before ringing the doorbell? Why is my heart suddenly beating so fast, why do I feel self-conscious? In the old days I had secret presentiments of whatever was waiting to pounce on me beyond that copper-embossed door, and whether it would be good or bad. But why do I bow my head now, why does my rising uneasiness do away with all my firmness and certainty? He tried to remember who he was now, but in vain; he thought of his wife, his children, his house, his company, the foreign land where he lived. But all of that had faded, as if carried away by a ghostly mist; he felt alone, a petitioner once more, like the clumsy boy of the past in her presence. And the shaking hand that he now placed on the metal door handle was hot.

But as soon as he was inside the house that sense of being a stranger was gone, for the old manservant, now thin and desiccated, almost had tears in his eyes. “Doctor, it’s you!” he kept faltering, with a sob in his voice. He was much moved. Odysseus, he thought, the household dogs recognize you, will the mistress of the house know you again too? But she was already opening the inner door, and came towards him with her hands held out. For a moment, as their hands joined, they looked at each other. It was a brief yet magically satisfying moment of comparison, examination, assessment, ardent memory and diffident delight, a moment when they happily exchanged covert glances again. Only then was the question resolved in a smile, and their glances became a familiar greeting. Yes, she was still the same, a little older, to be sure, on the left-hand side of her head silver threads ran through her hair, which she still wore parted in the middle, that glint of silver made her mild, friendly expression a little graver and more composed than before, and he felt the thirst of endless years quenched as he drank in the voice that now spoke to him, so intimate with its soft touch of regional accent. “Oh,” she said, “how nice of you to come.”

The sound was as pure and free as a tuning fork striking exactly the right note, and it set the tone for their entire conversation. Questions and anecdotes passed back and forth, like a pianist’s right and left hands moving over the keyboard, clear and musical as they responded to one another. All the pent-up, smouldering awkwardness was dispersed by her presence and her first words. As long as she spoke, every thought obeyed her. But as soon as she fell silent, her eyelids lowered in thought, veiling her eyes, a question shot through his mind as swiftly as a shadow: “Aren’t those the lips I kissed?” And when she was called away to the telephone, leaving him alone in the room for a moment, the past came pressing stormily in on him from all sides. As long as her lucid presence ruled, that uncertain voice inside him had been subdued, but now every chair, every picture spoke to him, almost inaudibly whispering quiet words heard by him alone. I lived in this house, he could not help thinking, something of me lingers here, something of those years, the whole of me is not yet at home across the ocean, and I still do not live entirely in my own world. Then she came back into the room, cheerful as ever, and once again such ideas retreated into the background. “You will stay to lunch, won’t you, Ludwig?” she said, taking it for granted. And he did stay, he stayed all day, and in conversation they looked back together at the past years. Only now that he was speaking of them did they truly seem real to him. And when he finally left, kissing her gentle maternal hand, and the door had closed behind him, he felt as if he had never been away.

That night, however, alone in the strange hotel room, with only the ticking of the clock beside him and his heart beating even harder in his breast, that sense of peace and calm was gone. He couldn’t sleep, he rose, put on the light, switched it off again and lay there awake. He kept thinking of her lips, and how he had known them in a way very different from today’s gently conversing familiarity. And suddenly he knew that all the casual talk between them had been pretence, that there was something still unrelieved and unresolved in their relationship, and the friendliness was merely an artificial mask over a nervous face, fitfully working in the throes of restless passion. He had imagined another kind of reunion with her for too long, on too many nights by the camp fire in his hut beyond the seas, for too many years and too many days—he had envisaged the two of them falling into each other’s arms in a burning embrace, the final surrender, a dress slipping to the ground—he had imagined it too long for this friendliness, this courteous talk as they sounded each other out to ring entirely true. Actor and actress, he said to himself, we are both putting on a performance but neither of us is deceived. She is surely sleeping as little as I am tonight, he thought.

And when he went to see her next morning, she must have seen his loss of self-control and noticed his agitation and the evasive expression on his face at once, for the first thing she herself said was confused, and even later she could not find her way back to yesterday’s easy, composed tone. Today their conversation was a matter of fits and starts, with pauses and awkward moments that had to be overcome with a forceful effort. Something or other stood between them, and questions and answers, invisibly coming up against it, ran into a dead end like bats flying into a wall. They both felt that they were skirting some other subject as they talked, and finally the conversation died down, reeling from this cautious circling of their words. He realized it in time and, when she invited him to stay for lunch again, invented an urgent appointment in the city.