Night Games: And Other Stories and Novellas (38 page)

Suddenly a woman stood beside Fridolin and whispered-for no
one spoke aloud, as though even the voices had to remain a secret"Why are you all by yourself? Why aren't you dancing?"

Fridolin saw that two noblemen were watching him sharply from
another corner, and he suspected that the figure at his side-she was boyish and slim-had been sent to test him and tempt him. In spite of that he
was reaching his arms toward her to pull her close to him when at the
same moment one of the other women left her dance partner and quickly
walked up to him. He knew immediately that she was the one who had
warned him before. She pretended that she was seeing him for the first
time, and whispered, yet in a voice loud enough to be heard in the other corner of the room, "You've finally returned!" And, laughing gaily, she
added, "All your efforts are useless. I know you." And, turning to the
boyish woman, she said, "Let me have him for just two minutes. You can
then have him again, if you want, until morning." And then more softly
to her, as though she were overjoyed, "It's really him, him!" The other
replied in astonishment, "Really?" and floated away to the cavaliers in
the corner.

"Don't ask any questions," the woman now cautioned Fridolin,
"and don't be surprised at anything. I've tried to mislead them, but I tell
you now: it won't succeed for long. Flee now, before it's too late. And it
may be too late almost any minute. And be careful that they don't follow
you. No one must find out who you are. You'll have no peace or quiet for
the rest of your life if they find out. Go."

"Will I see you again?"

"Impossible!"

"Then I'm staying."

A tremor went through her body and shook him too, and almost
robbed him of reason.

"Nothing more can be at risk here than my life," he said, "and right
now you're worth it to me." He took her hands and tried to draw her to
him.

She whispered again, almost despairingly, "Go!"

He laughed and heard himself laughing, as one does in a dream. "I
can see where I am. You're not here, all of you, just to drive men crazy
with looking at you. You're just playing with me in order to drive me
completely mad with desire."

"It'll soon be too late, go!"

He wouldn't listen to her. "Do you mean to tell me there are no outof-the-way rooms here where couples who have found each other can
go? Will all these people here say goodbye with polite hand kisses?
Hardly!"

And he pointed to the couples that were dancing in time with the
wild tunes of the piano in the too bright, mirrored adjoining room, white
bodies pressed against blue, red, and yellow silk. It seemed to him as though no one was concerned with him and the woman next to him now;
they were standing alone in the semi-darkness of the middle room.

"Your hopes are in vain," she whispered. "There are no small rooms
such as you are dreaming of here. This is your last chance. Flee!"

"Come with me."

She shook her head violently, as though in despair.

He laughed again and didn't recognize his own laughter. "You're
making fun of me! Did these men and these women come here only to inflame each other and then go away? Who can forbid you to come away
with me if you want to?"

She took a deep breath and dropped her head.

"Ah, now I understand," he said. "That's the punishment you impose on the one who comes uninvited. I couldn't have thought of a more
cruel one! Please let me off. Have mercy on me. Impose some other
penalty on me. Only not this one, that I have to leave without you!"

"You're mad. I can't go away with you-not with you or anyone
else. Whoever tries to follow me would forfeit his-and my-life!"

Fridolin felt as though drunk, not only with her, with her fragrant
body and her glowing red mouth, not only with the atmosphere of this
room and the voluptuous secrets that surrounded him-he was intoxicated and at the same time parched from all the experiences of this night,
none of which had come to a satisfactory conclusion; with himself, with
his own boldness, and with the change that he felt in himself. He touched
the veil that was wound about her head with his hands, as though he
wanted to tear it off.

She seized his hands. "One night one of the men tried to tear the
veil from one of us during the dance. They ripped the mask from his face
and drove him out with whips."

"And-she'?"

"Maybe you read about a beautiful young girl ... it was only a few
weeks ago ... who took poison the day before her wedding?"

He remembered the incident and even the name. He said it out loud.
"Wasn't it an aristocratic girl who was engaged to marry an Italian
prince?"

She nodded.

Suddenly one of the cavaliers, the most distinguished-looking of
them all, the only one in a white costume, stood in front of him, and with
a short, polite, but at the same time imperious bow, asked the woman
talking to Fridolin to dance with him. It seemed to Fridolin that she hesitated for a moment. But he had already put his arm around her and
danced away with her in the direction of the other couples in the brilliantly lit adjoining room.

Fridolin found himself alone, and this sudden abandonment fell
over him like a frost. He looked around. No one seemed to be paying any
attention to him at this moment. Perhaps this was his last chance to leave
safely. What held him spellbound in his corner despite his feeling that he
was at the moment unobserved and unattended-was it his wanting to
avoid an inglorious and perhaps ridiculous retreat? the excruciatingly unsatisfied desire for the beautiful female body whose fragrance still enveloped him? or his feeling that everything that had happened so far was
perhaps a test of his courage and that the magnificent woman would be
his prize after all? He didn't know himself. It was clear to him in any
case that he could not bear this tension much longer, and that he would
have to end it, no matter what the danger. Whatever he decided, it
couldn't cost him his life. Perhaps he was among fools, perhaps among
libertines, but certainly not among scoundrels or criminals. He toyed
with the idea of going to them, acknowledging himself as an intruder and
placing himself at their mercy in a chivalrous fashion. Only in this
way-in a noble manner-could this night end if it was to amount to
something more than an unreal and chaotic succession of dismal, miserable, scurrilous, and lascivious adventures, not one of which he had been
able to bring to a satisfactory conclusion. And so, taking a deep breath,
he prepared himself.

At this very moment, however, a voice near him whispered, "Password!" A cavalier in black had come up to him without his noticing it,
and since Fridolin didn't answer immediately, he asked a second time.
"Denmark," said Fridolin.

"That's right, sir, that's the password for admission. But the password for the house, if you please?"

Fridolin was silent.

"You won't do us the favor of telling us the password of the
house?" it sounded like a sharp knife.

Fridolin shrugged his shoulders. The other man stepped into the
middle of the room and raised his hand. The piano stopped playing and
the dance ceased abruptly. Two other cavaliers, one in yellow and one in
red, stepped up to him. "The password, sir," they both said simultaneously.

"I've forgotten it," answered Fridolin with an empty smile, and felt
very calm.

"That's a pity," said the man in yellow, "because it doesn't make
any difference here whether you forgot it or whether you never knew it."

The other masculine masked figures streamed into the room, and
the doors on both sides closed. Fridolin stood alone in his monk's robe in
the middle of the colorful cavaliers.

"Off with the mask!" a few demanded simultaneously. Fridolin
stretched his arms out in front of him as though for protection. It seemed
to him a thousand times worse to be the only unmasked one among so
many masks than to be the only one naked among people who were
dressed. And with a firm voice, he said, "If one of you is offended by my
presence here, I am ready to give him satisfaction in the usual way. But I
will take off my mask only if all of you will."

"It's not a question of satisfaction," said the cavalier in red, who
until now had not spoken, "but of expiation."

"Take off the mask!" another commanded in a high-pitched, insolent voice, which reminded Fridolin of the tone of an officer giving orders. "We'll tell you what's in store for you to your face, not your mask."

"I won't take it off," said Fridolin in an even sharper tone, "and woe
to him who dares touch me."

An arm suddenly reached for his face, as if to tear off his mask,
when suddenly a door opened and one of the women-Fridolin had no
doubt which one it was-stood there dressed as a nun, as he had first
seen her. Behind her in the overbright room the others could be seen,
naked with veiled faces, crowded together, silent, a frightened group. But
the door closed again immediately.

"Leave him alone," said the nun. "I'm prepared to redeem him."

There was a short, deep silence, as though something monstrous
had happened, and then the cavalier in black, the one who had first demanded the password from Fridolin, turned to the nun with the words,
"You know what you're taking upon yourself in doing this."

"I know."

There was a general sigh of relief in the room.

"You're free," the cavalier said to Fridolin. "Leave the house immediately, and be careful not to make any further inquiries into the secrets
whose vestibule you have slunk into. If you attempt to put anyone on our
trail, whether successfully or not-it will be your undoing."

Fridolin stood motionless. "How-is this woman supposed to redeem me?"

No answer. A few arms pointed toward the door, a signal that he
should leave at once.

Fridolin shook his head. "Impose whatever punishment you want
on me, gentlemen, but I won't tolerate that another person should pay for
me."

"You wouldn't be able to change what happens to her in any case,"
the cavalier in black said very gently. "When a promise is made here,
there is no turning back."

The nun nodded slowly, as though in confirmation. "Go!" she said
to Fridolin.

"No," he said, raising his voice. "My life means nothing to me if I
have to leave here without you. I won't ask who you are or where you
come from. What difference can it make to you, gentlemen, whether or
not you keep up this masquerade drama, even if it's supposed to have a
serious ending? Whoever you may be, gentlemen, you surely have other
lives than this one. But I'm not an actor, not here or elsewhere, and if
I've been forced to play a part from necessity, I give it up now. I feel I've
happened into a fate that no longer has anything to do with this masquerade, and I will tell you my name, take off my mask, and be responsible
for all the consequences."

"Don't do it!" cried the nun, "You'll only ruin yourself without sav ing me! Go!" And turning to the others, she said, "Here I am, take meall of you!"

The dark nun's habit dropped from her as if by magic, and she stood
there in the radiance of her white body. She reached for her veil, which
was wrapped around her face, head, and neck, and unwound it. It sank to
the floor. A mass of dark hair fell in great profusion over her shoulders,
breasts, and hips, but before Fridolin could even glance at her face, he
was seized by irresistible arms, torn away, and pushed to the door. A moment later he found himself in the entryway. The door fell shut behind
him, a masked servant brought him his fur and helped him put it on, and
the outer door opened. As though driven by an invisible force, he hurried
out. He stood on the street as the light behind him was extinguished.
When he turned around, he saw the house standing there quietly with
closed windows from which not a glimmer of light escaped. I must remember everything clearly, was his main thought. I must find the house
again-everything else will follow.

Darkness surrounded him. Some distance away, where the carriage
was waiting for him, the dull reddish light of a lantern was visible. The
hearse drove up from the bottom of the street below as though he had
called for it. A servant opened the door.

"I have my own carriage," said Fridolin. The servant shook his
head. "If it's gone, I'll walk back to town."

The servant replied with a wave of his hand so little servantlike that
any objection was out of the question. The coachman's ridiculously high
top hat towered into the night sky. The wind blew gusts; violet clouds
flew across the sky. In view of his experience tonight, Fridolin could not
fool himself into thinking that he was free to do anything but step into
the carriage, which started off the moment he was inside.

Fridolin resolved to clear up the mystery of his adventure, no matter
how dangerous it might be. His whole existence, so it seemed to him, no
longer had the slightest meaning if he could not find this incomprehensible woman who at this very moment was paying the price for his salvation. It was only too easy to guess the price. But why should she sacrifice
herself for him'? Sacrifice-was she the kind of woman for whom the things that stood before her, to which she was now submitting, constituted a sacrifice? If she took part in these affairs-and it couldn't be her
first time today since she obviously understood the rules so well-what
difference could it make to her whether she belonged to one of the cavaliers or to all of them? Indeed, could she possibly be anything other than
a prostitute? Could any of these women be anything else? Prostitutesno doubt about it, even if all of them had a second life, a bourgeois life,
aside from this prostitute life. Perhaps everything he had just experienced had been only an outrageous prank played on him. A prank
planned, prepared, even rehearsed for the occasion when an outsider
should sneak in. And yet, when he thought again about the woman who
had warned him from the beginning and was now prepared to pay for
him-there had been something in her voice, her bearing, in the royal nobility of her nude body, which could not possibly have been a lie. Or was
it perhaps only his, Fridolin's, sudden appearance that miraculously
caused a change in her? After everything that had happened to him
tonight-and he was not conscious of any self-inflation in this thoughthe felt that such a miracle was not impossible. Are there not hours or
nights, he thought, in which a strange and irresistible charm emanates
even from men who under normal circumstances have no special power
over the other sex?