Night Games: And Other Stories and Novellas (17 page)

Then the doorbell rings. She hears the chambermaid go to the front
door and open it. She hears her husband's voice; she hears how he puts
down his cane. She feels that she must be strong now or everything will
have been in vain. She hurries into the dining room so that she enters at
the same time as her husband does.

"Ah. you're home already'?" he says.

"Certainly," she answered, "I've been here for quite a while."

"Evidently no one saw you come in." She smiles without having to
force herself. It just makes her very tired, having to smile. He kisses her
on the forehead.

The little boy is already sitting at the table; he has had to wait a long
time and has fallen asleep. He had put a book on the plate, and his head
now rests on the open book. She sits next to him, her husband sits across
from her, picks up a newspaper, and fleetingly glances at it. Then he puts
it down and says, "The others are still at the meeting and continuing the
discussion."

"What about'?" she asks.

And he begins to talk about today's meeting, in great detail and for
a very long time. Emma pretends that she's listening and nods from time
to time.

But she hears nothing. She doesn't know what he's talking about,
and she feels like someone who has magically escaped horrible dangers ... she feels nothing except: I'm home! And while her husband
keeps on talking, she moves her chair closer to her son, takes his head, and presses him to her breast. An enormous weariness overcomes hershe can't control herself; she suddenly feels sleep overpower her, and she
closes her eyes.

Suddenly a possibility that she had not thought about since the moment she had climbed out of the ditch comes to her. What if he isn't really dead after all? If he ... no, it couldn't be ... those eyes ... that
mouth-and then ... no breath from his lips. But there's such a thing as
a death trance-instances when someone was only apparently dead, and
even practiced eyes had erred. And she herself certainly didn't have a
practiced eye. If he were still alive, if he had regained consciousness, if
he had suddenly found himself all alone in the middle of the night on the
highway ... if he were calling out to her ... her name ... if in the end
he were to worry that she herself was injured ... if he were to tell the
doctors that there was a woman, too, a woman who must have been
thrown farther still? And ... and ... yes, what then? They would search
for her. The coachman would come back from the Franz Josef Quarter
with others ... he would explain ... there was a woman here when I
left-and Franz would guess. Franz would know ... he knew her so
well ... he would know that she had run away, and a terrible fury would
seize him, and he would speak her name in order to revenge himself. Because he is lost ... and he would be so devastated that she had left him in
his final hour that he would say ruthlessly: it was Frau Emma, my
lover ... a coward, and also stupid, because isn't it true, my dear doctors,
you certainly would not have asked her name if you had been asked to be
discreet. You would have let her go, and I, too, oh, yes-only she should
have stayed here until you came. But since she acted so badly, I'm telling
you who she is ... it's ... Oh!

"What's the matter with you," the professor asked in a serious tone
of voice, standing up.

"What ... how ... what is it?"

"What's wrong with you?"

"Nothing." She presses the boy closer to her.

The professor looks at her for a long time. "Do you know that you
began to doze and ..."

"And?"

"You suddenly screamed."

"... Really?"

"As if you were having a nightmare. Were you dreaming?"

"I don't know. I don't know anything."

And in the wall mirror opposite her she sees a face, a face with a
dreadful smile and distorted features. She knows it's her own face, but
still she's afraid of it.... And she notices that it's becoming frozen. She
can't move her mouth now; she knows: this dreadful smile will play
around her lips for the rest of her life. She tries to scream. Then she feels
two hands on her shoulders and sees how the face of her husband is forcing itself between her own face and the face in the mirror. His eyes, questioning and threatening, are sinking into hers. She knows: if she doesn't
pass this last test, everything is lost. And she feels herself becoming
stronger again; once again she has control over her expressions and her
limbs. At this moment she can do with them what she wants, but she has
to use this moment, otherwise everything is over. With both her hands
she reaches for her husband's hand, still lying on her shoulders, and
draws him down to her and smiles at him cheerfully and tenderly.

And as she feels her husband's lips on her brow, she thinks: of
course ... a bad dream. He wouldn't tell anyone, would never take revenge, never ... he's dead ... he's most certainly dead ... and the dead
are silent.

"Why are you saying that?" she suddenly hears her husband's voice
say.

She's struck with terror. "What did I say?" And it seems to her that
she had suddenly said everything out loud ... that she had told the whole
story of the evening here at table ... and once more she asks, collapsing
under his horrified gaze, "What did I say?"

"The dead are silent," her husband repeats, very slowly.

"Yes ..." she says, "yes ...
'

And, looking him in the eyes, she realizes that she can no longer
hide anything from him, and they look at each other for a long time. "Put
the boy to bed," he then says to her. "I think you have something more to
tell me...."

"Yes," she says.

And she knows that in the next moment she'll tell this man, whom
she has deceived for many years, the whole truth.

And as she slowly goes through the door with her boy, her husband's eyes on her, a great calm comes over her, as though everything,
everything will be all right again....

BLIND GERONIMO got up off the bench and picked up the guitar lying
ready on the table next to the wine glass. He had just heard the distant,
faint rumble of the first carriages. Now he felt his way along the familiar
path to the open door and began to descend the narrow, freestanding
wooden steps that led into the covered courtyard below. His brother followed him, and the two positioned themselves next to the staircase with
their backs against the wall, in order to protect themselves against the
cold, damp wind that whipped over the muddy floor through the open
gates.

All the carriages taking the road over the Stilfser Pass had to pass
beneath the gloomy arch of the old inn. For travelers going from Italy to
the Austrian Tirol, it was the last stop before the climb to the summit
began. The inn did not encourage a long stay, however, for its position
between two bare cliffs blocked the mountain view. But the blind Italian
and his brother Carlo had more or less made it their home during the
summer months.

The mail coach arrived, and other carriages came shortly after.
Most of the travelers stayed seated in their places, well wrapped in their
blankets and coats. The few who climbed out paced impatiently up and
down between the arches. The weather continued to grow worse, and a
cold rain splattered on the ground. After a series of beautiful days, fall
seemed to have arrived suddenly and much too early.

The blind man sang and accompanied himself on the guitar. He
sang with an uneven and sometimes suddenly shrill voice, as always
when he had been drinking. Now and then he turned his head upward
with what seemed to be an expression of futile pleading. Yet the features
of the face with the black stubble and the bluish lips remained totally immobile. The older man, his brother, stood almost motionless next to him.
Whenever someone dropped a coin into his hat, he nodded his thanks and
glanced at the donor's face with a quick unfocused look. But immediately, almost fearfully, he turned away again and, like his brother, stared
into space. It was as though his eyes were ashamed of the gift of light
that had been granted them and which he could not share with his blind
brother.

"Bring me some wine," said Geronimo, and Carlo went, obedient as
always. As he walked up the stairs, Geronimo began to sing again. He
hadn't listened to his own voice for a long time, and therefore could pay
attention to what was happening around him. He heard two whispering
voices very close to him, those of a young man and a young woman. He
wondered how often these two might already have traveled this same
road back and forth, for in his blindness and his intoxication it seemed to
him sometimes as though the same people wandered over the pass daily,
sometimes from north to south, sometimes from south to north. And so
he felt that this young couple, too, were old acquaintances of his.

Carlo came down and handed Geronimo a glass of wine. The blind
man raised it toward the young couple and said, "To your health, ladies
and gentlemen!"

"Thanks," said the young man, but the young woman pulled him
away, for she felt uneasy near the blind man.

At that moment a carriage containing a rather boisterous crowd
pulled in: it was a father, a mother, three children, and a nursemaid.

"A German family," Geronimo whispered to Carlo.

The father gave each of the children a coin to toss into the beggar's
hat. Every time one fell in, Geronimo nodded a thank you. The oldest
boy looked the blind man in the face with an anxious curiosity. Carlo observed him. The sight of the boy forced him to remember, as he always
did when he saw children of that age, that Geronimo had been that very age when the misfortune through which he had lost his eyesight had occurred. Even today, almost twenty years later, he still remembered that
day with total clarity. The shrill, piercing outcry with which little Geronimo had collapsed on the lawn still rang in his ears today; he still saw the
sunlight playing and dancing on the white garden wall, and he still heard
the Sunday church bells which had begun to peal at that very moment.
He had been shooting at the ash tree in front of the garden wall with his
peashooter, as he had often done before, and he knew as soon as he heard
the scream that he must have injured his little brother, who had run by
just then. He let the peashooter fall from his hands, jumped through the
window into the garden, and dashed over to his little brother who was
lying on the grass screaming with his hands clutched tightly over his
face. Blood was dripping down his right cheek and his neck. At that very
moment their father had returned home from the fields through the small
garden gate, and both of them had knelt down helplessly next to the wailing child.

Neighbors had rushed over; the old Vanetti woman was the first
who was able finally to remove the child's hands from his face. Then the
blacksmith to whom Carlo had been apprenticed at the time and who
knew a little bit about first aid arrived and saw immediately that the right
eye was lost. The doctor who had come that evening from Poschiavo
couldn't help either. On the contrary, he had warned that the other eye
was in danger, too. And he had been right. A year later Geronimo's world
had sunk into darkness.

At first everyone had tried to persuade him that he would recover
later on, and he seemed to believe it. But Carlo, who knew the truth, had
roamed the country road between the vineyards and the forest for many
days and nights, and had come close to committing suicide. But the priest
in whom he had confided had explained to him that it was his duty to live
and to dedicate his life to his brother. Carlo was convinced. A terrible
pity seized him. Only when he was with the blind boy, when he could
stroke his hair and was allowed to kiss his forehead, tell him stories, and
take him for walks in the fields behind the house and between the
grapevines, did his agony cease. Ever since the accident he had neglected
his apprenticeship in the blacksmith's shop because he could not bear to be separated from his brother, and later he was unable to commit himself
again to his trade, despite his father's warnings and admonitions. One
day it suddenly struck Carlo that Geronimo had entirely stopped talking
about his misfortune. Soon he knew why: the blind boy had come to realize that he would never again see the sky, the hills, the roads, other people, or any light at all. Now Carlo suffered more than ever, even though
he tried to calm himself with the thought that he had caused the accident
quite unintentionally. And sometimes, when he watched his brother
sleeping next to him early in the morning, he was seized by such a fear of
seeing him awaken that he ran out into the garden so as not to have to be
there when those lifeless eyes once again tried to find the light that had
forever vanished for them. It was at that time that Carlo thought of having Geronimo, who had a pleasant voice, take music lessons. The school
teacher from Tola, who sometimes came over to their village on Sundays, taught him to play the guitar. Of course at that time the blind boy
had no idea that his newly learned art would one day become his livelihood.