Night Games: And Other Stories and Novellas (13 page)

"It's rather melancholy in here," said Leopoldine finally.

"Do you think so?"

And, since she nodded, he said, "But there's no need for it to be sad
at all."

Slowly she turned her head back toward him. He had expected to
see a smile on her lips, but he noticed instead a tender, almost melancholy look. Abruptly she stretched herself and said, "Now it's really high
time for me to go! My Marie will be waiting with supper for me."

"Has madam never let Marie wait before?"

And as she looked smilingly at him in answer, he became bolder
and asked her if she would not give him the pleasure of dining with him
this evening. He would send his orderly over to Riedhof's, and she could
still easily be home by ten. Her protestations sounded so little authentic
that Willi rushed into the anteroom without further ado, quickly gave his
orderly the necessary commands, and in a flash was back with Leopoldine, who, still standing at the window, was just flinging her Florentine
hat across the table where it dropped upon the bed. And from that moment on she seemed to become someone else. Laughingly she now
stroked Willi's smooth hair, and he responded by seizing her around the
waist and drawing her down next to him to the sofa. But when he drew
nearer to kiss her, she turned away so abruptly that he ceased any further
attempts and instead asked her how she usually spent her evenings. She
looked him earnestly in the eye.

"I have so much to do the whole day long," she said, "that I'm only
too glad to have my peace in the evenings and not see anyone."

He confessed that he didn't really understand what kind of business
she was involved in, and that it puzzled him how she had come to have
this kind of life at all. She evaded his questions. He wouldn't understand
such matters. He didn't desist from his questions immediately-she must
at least tell him something about the course of her life, not everything,
naturally, he wouldn't expect that, but he really would like to know in a
general way what had happened to her since the day when-when they
had last seen each other. More questions rose to his lips, and the name of
his uncle too, but something held him back from saying it out loud. And
so he only asked her abruptly, too hastily, if she were happy.

She looked down. "I think so," she answered softly. "Above all, I'm
a free person. That's what I always wanted to be most. I'm not dependent
on anyone, just like-a man."

"Fortunately, that's the only thing that's like a man about you," said
Willi. He moved closer to her and began to caress her. She allowed him
to continue, yet almost as though she didn't notice. And when the outside
door opened, she drew away from him quickly, and, standing up, took the
lamp out of the niche of the porcelain oven and lit it. Joseph entered with
the meal. Leopoldine glanced at what he had brought and nodded in approval. "The Lieutenant obviously has had some experience," she remarked, smiling. Then she and Joseph together set the table. She didn't
permit Willi to help, and so he remained sitting on the sofa, "like a
pasha," as he put it, smoking a cigarette. When everything was ready and
the first course was set out on the table, Joseph was dismissed for the
day. Before he went, Leopoldine pressed such a generous tip into his
hand that he was quite taken aback with surprise, and saluted her with as
much awe as if she were a general.

"Your health," said Willi, and clicked his glass with Leopoldine's.
Both emptied their glasses, and she put hers down with a clink and suddenly pressed her lips passionately against Willi's mouth. But as he became more passionate in return, she again pushed him away and said,
"First, let's eat." and changed the plates.

She ate as healthy creatures do who have ended their day's work
successfully and can afford to enjoy themselves. She ate with strong
white teeth but very delicately and correctly, in the manner of ladies who have now and then dined in elegant restaurants with fine gentlemen. The
bottle of wine was soon emptied, and it was good that the lieutenant remembered in time that he still had half a bottle of French cognac left over
from God knows what occasion standing in his cabinet. After the second
glass, Leopoldine seemed to become a little drowsy. She leaned back into
the corner of the sofa, and as Willi bent over her, kissing her eyes, her
lips, her neck, she, yielding, whispered his name, as though in a dream.

XIV

It was dawn when Willi awoke, and a cool morning breeze was blowing
in through the window. But Leopoldine was already standing in the middle of the room, completely dressed, the Florentine hat on her head, her
parasol in her hand. Good God, how soundly I must have slept! was
Willi's first thought, and his second, Where is the money? There she
stood with hat and parasol, evidently prepared to leave the room the next
moment. She nodded a morning greeting toward him. He stretched out
his arms toward her, as if in longing. She stepped closer and sat down on
the bed next to him with a friendly but serious expression. But as he
wanted to put his arms around her and pull her toward him, she pointed
to her hat and to her parasol, which she held in her hand almost like a
weapon, and shook her head, "No more nonsense," she said, and attempted to get up. But he restrained her. "You don't intend to go, do
you?" he asked in an almost tearful voice.

"I certainly do!" she said, and stroked his hair in a sisterly fashion.
"I want to get a few hours of real rest; I have an important conference at
nine."

It occurred to him that this might be a conference-how that word
sounded-to discuss his affair-the consultation with the lawyer for
which she evidently didn't have time yesterday. And in his impatience he
asked her outright, "A conference with your lawyer?"

"No," she replied with ease. "I'm expecting a business friend from
Prague."

She bent down to him, pushed his little mustache away from his
lips, and kissed him fleetingly. "Goodbye," she whispered, and rose to go. In the next second she might be out the door. Willi's heart stood still.
She wanted to go? Just like that?! But then a new hope awoke within
him. Maybe she-out of discretion perhaps-had put the money somewhere? Anxiously, restlessly, his eyes wandered over the room-across
the table, to the niche of the oven. Or maybe she had put it under the pillow while he was sleeping? Instinctively his hand reached for the place.
Nothing. Or maybe she had put it in his wallet, which was lying near his
watch? If only he could look there! And all the while he felt, he knew, he
could see that she was following his every move, his every glance, with
derision if not malice. Their eyes met for only the merest fraction of a
second. He turned his away as though he had been found out-and then
she was already at the door and had the door handle in her hand. He
wanted to call out her name, but his voice gave out as if in a nightmare.
He had an impulse to leap out of bed, to throw himself at her, to hold her
back; yes, he was ready to run down the stairs after her, in his nightshirt-exactly-he saw the image clearly in his mind-as he had once
seen a prostitute run after a man who had not paid her in a provincial
bordello many years ago.... But Leopoldine, as if she had already heard
her name, though he had not yet spoken it aloud, without letting go of
the door handle, reached with her other hand into the neckline of her
dress.

"I almost forgot," she said casually, and, stepping closer, she let a
bill flutter onto the table-"There!" she said-and was already back at
the door.

With a start, Willi sat upright at the edge of his bed and stared at the
bill. It was only a single bill, a thousand gulden note. There were no
higher denominations, so it could not be more than a thousand.

"Leopoldine," he cried, in a strange, unnatural voice. But when she
turned around, her hand still on the door handle, and looked at him with
an ice-cold and somewhat questioning look, shame overcame him, a
shame deeper and more humiliating than any he had ever felt before in
his life. But now it was already too late; he had to go on, no matter where
it led him, no matter how deep his humiliation. Uncontrollably the words
tumbled from his lips:

"But that's too little, Leopoldine! I didn't ask you for a thousand, I asked you for eleven thousand-you must have misunderstood me yesterday." And instinctively, under her ever more icy stare, he pulled the
covers over his naked legs.

She stared at him as though she didn't quite understand. Then she
nodded a couple of times, as though everything were now finally clear to
her. "Oh, yes," she said, "you thought ..." and with her head she gestured contemptuously toward the bill-"that has nothing to do with your
request. The thousand gulden are not a loan; they are yours-for last
night." And between her half-opened lips, her moist tongue played between her sparkling teeth.

The covers slipped off of Willi's feet. He stood erect and his blood
mounted, burning into his temples and his eyes. She looked at him unmoved, as though curious. And as he was unable to utter a single word,
she asked, "It isn't too little, is it? What exactly did you expect? A thousand gulden! I only received ten from you that time. Don't you remember?" He took a few steps toward her. Leopoldine remained calmly
standing at the door. With a sudden movement he now seized the bill and
crumpled it, his fingers trembling, as though he were about to throw it at
her feet. At that she let go of the door handle, walked over to him, and
looked straight into his eyes. "That wasn't a reproach," she said, "I had
no right to expect more at that time. Ten gulden-was enough then, too
much even." And, looking deeper into his eyes, she added, "To speak
more accurately, it was exactly ten gulden too much!"

He stared at her, then looked away, beginning to understand. "I
couldn't have known that," he said tonelessly. "Yes, you could have," she
answered. "It wasn't so difficult to see."

Slowly he raised his eyes again, and now, in the depths of her eyes,
he became aware of a strange radiance: it was the same innocent and tender radiance that had shone in her eyes on that night so very long ago.
And suddenly vivid memories came back to him-and he recalled not
only the voluptuous pleasure she had given him, as had many others before and after her-and not only the affectionate, caressing words she
had spoken, the same ones he had heard from others, too-but also the
wonderful surrender with which she had clasped him around the neck with her slight, childlike arms, a surrender that he had never experienced
before or since, and long-forgotten words also resurfaced in his memory-words and the tone in which she had uttered them, such as he had
never heard from anyone else: "Don't leave me! I love you." All these
long forgotten things-suddenly he remembered them again. And just as
she was doing now-he now knew this, too-he, undisturbed, thoughtlessly, while she still seemed to slumber in sweet exhaustion, had risen
from her side, and, after a hasty consideration of whether a smaller bill
would do as well, had nobly put a ten gulden note on her night table.
Then feeling the still drowsy and yet already anxious look of the slowly
awakening girl on him when he was already at the door, he had run away
quickly in order to snatch a few hours of rest in his bed at the barracks. In
the morning, even before the start of his duties, he had already forgotten
the little flower girl from Hornig's.

Meanwhile, however, as that long forgotten night became so incomprehensibly vivid to him, the innocent and tender radiance in Leopoldine's eyes gradually faded. Now cold, grey, and distant, they stared into
his, and to the same degree that the image of that night was now fading
within him, anger, aversion, and bitterness arose instead. What did she
think she was doing? What did she allow herself in regard to him? How
dare she act as though she really believed that he had offered himself to
her for money! How dare she treat him like a gigolo who wanted to be
paid for his favors? And she had the effrontery to add to this outrageous
insult by bargaining for a lower price than had been set, like a lover disappointed by the erotic skills of a prostitute? As if she could have any
doubt that he would have thrown the whole eleven thousand back at her
feet if she had dared to offer them as payment for his services!

But even as the abusive word that she deserved was finding its way
to his lips, as he was raising his fist against her as though he wanted to
crush her into the ground, the word dissolved unspoken on his tongue,
and his hand sank slowly to his side. Because suddenly he realized-and
hadn't he suspected it before?-that he had been prepared to sell himself.
And not only to her but to any other, to anyone at all, anyone who would
have offered him the sum that could save him. And thus-despite the cruel and malicious injustice that a spiteful woman had done him-in the
depth of his soul, though he fought against it, he began to feel the hidden
and yet inescapable justice that had trapped him not only in this sorry adventure but in the essential core of his life.

He looked up and looked around the room; he felt as though he
were awakening from a confused dream. Leopoldine had gone. He
hadn't yet opened his mouth-and she was already gone. He couldn't understand how she had contrived to disappear from his room so suddenly-without his noticing it. He felt the crumpled bill in his still
cramped hand, dashed to the window, and threw it wide open as though
he wanted to fling the thousand gulden after her. There she was! He
wanted to call out to her, but she was already too far away. She was
walking along the wall with a lilting and joyous step, the parasol in her
hand and the Florentine hat whipping on her head. She walked as though
she had just come from some night of love, as no doubt she had come
from a hundred others. She was at the gate. The guard saluted her as
though she were a person of rank, and she disappeared.

Willi shut the window and stepped back into the room. His glance
fell on the rumpled bed and on the table with the remainders of the meal,
the emptied glasses, and the bottles. Involuntarily his hand opened, and
the bill fell onto the plate. In the mirror above the dresser he caught a
glimpse of himself-of his tousled hair, the dark rings under his eyesand he shuddered. It disgusted him deeply that he was still in his nightshirt. He reached for his coat, which was hanging on a hook, pulled it on,
buttoned it up, and turned up the collar. He paced aimlessly up and down
the small room several times. Finally he stopped in front of his dresser,
as if rooted to the spot. In the middle drawer, between the handkerchiefs,
he knew, lay his revolver. Yes, he was at that point. At the same point as
the other man, who had perhaps already gone beyond it. Or was he still
waiting for a miracle? Well, in any case, he, Willi, had done his duty, and
even more. And at this moment it really seemed to him as though he had
sat down at the card table only for Bogner's sake, had tempted fate so
long that he himself had become a victim, only for Bogner's sake.