Night Games: And Other Stories and Novellas (42 page)

What now? Go home? Where else! Anyway, there was nothing
more he could do today. And tomorrow'? What should he do? And how?
He felt awkward and helpless; everything he touched failed. Everything
seemed unreal, even his home, his wife, his child, his profession, yes,
even he himself, walking mechanically through the evening streets with
his thoughts roaming far afield.

The clock on the courthouse tower struck half past seven. Not that it
mattered what time it was; time lay before him endlessly. Nothing mattered anymore, nobody concerned him. He pitied himself not a little.
Suddenly it occurred to him-it wasn't exactly a plan-to go to some
train station and take a train somewhere, it didn't matter where, and to
disappear, leaving everyone he knew behind, and then to surface somewhere else and begin a new life as another, different person. He recalled
certain strange pathological cases of double lives that he knew from psychiatry books. For example, a man living in normal, well-ordered circumstances suddenly disappeared, was missing for a while, returned
after several months or years, and didn't remember where he had been all
the while. Later someone who had run across him in a foreign country
recognized him, but the man himself remembered nothing. True, such
cases were rare, nevertheless they were authentic. And others probably
experienced similar things to a lesser degree. For instance, when one
comes back from dreams. True, one remembers.... But there are surely
other dreams that one completely forgets, of which nothing remains but a
mysterious mood, a curious numbness. Or one remembers the dream
only later, much later, and then no longer knows if one has really experienced it or only dreamt it. Only ... only-!

And as he wandered aimlessly on and yet instinctively in the direction of his home, he came near that dark, rather questionable street in
which, less than twenty-four hours ago, he had followed a forlorn creature to her shabby and yet cozy room. "Forlorn," was she? And just exactly this street, "questionable"? Strange how again and again we are
misled by words, how we categorize streets, events, and people and form
judgments about them out of lazy habit. Wasn't this young girl really the most charming, yes, the purest of all the people he had come in contact
with last night? He felt rather touched when he thought of her. And now
he remembered his resolve of yesterday and, deciding quickly, went into
the nearest store and bought all sorts of delicacies. Walking along the
walls of the houses with his little package, he felt happy knowing that he
was doing something that was at least sensible, perhaps even laudable.
Nevertheless he turned up the collar of his coat as he stepped into the entryway and went upstairs several steps at a time. The bell of the flat rang
with unwelcome shrillness, and when a disreputable-looking woman informed him that Fraulein Mizzi was not at home, he breathed a sigh of
relief. But before the woman had the opportunity to receive the package
for the absent Mizzi, another woman, still young and not unattractive,
wrapped in a kind of bathrobe, came into the hallway and said, "Is the
gentleman looking for Fraulein Mizzi? Well, she won't be coming home
very soon."

The older woman made a sign for her to keep quiet; but Fridolin, as
though he urgently needed to confirm what he himself really already
knew, remarked offhandedly, "She's in the hospital, right?"

"Well, since you know anyway. But there's nothing wrong with me,
thank God!" she exclaimed gaily, and moved quite close to Fridolin with
lips half open, throwing her voluptuous body back boldly in such a way
that her bathrobe opened. Fridolin, declining the invitation, said, "I just
stopped by in passing to bring Mizzi something," suddenly feeling like a
high school student again. And in a new, matter-of-fact tone he asked, "In
what ward is she?"

The younger woman mentioned the name of a professor in whose
clinic Fridolin had been an assistant doctor a few years ago. And then she
added good-naturedly, "Give me the packages, I'll take them to her tomorrow. I promise not to eat any of it. And I'll give her your regards and
tell her that you haven't been unfaithful to her."

At the same time, however, she stepped closer to him and laughed
invitingly. But when he drew back a little, she gave up immediately and
remarked consolingly, "In six, or at most eight weeks, she'll be back
home, the doctor said."

When Fridolin stepped out into the street from the entryway, he felt tears choking in his throat, but he knew this was less because he was
deeply touched than because his nerves were gradually giving way. Intentionally he struck a faster and more lively pace than he was in the
mood for. Was this experience another and final sign that everything he
undertook was bound to fail? But why should he think that? He might
just as well take it as a sign that he had escaped a great danger. And was
that the goal-to avoid danger? Many other dangers still stood before
him. He had no intention of giving up the search for last night's marvelous woman. Of course it was too late to do anything about it now. And
in any case he had to consider carefully just how to continue the search.
If only there were someone with whom he could consult about it! But he
didn't know anyone to whom he was willing to confide the adventures of
the previous night. For years he had not really been intimate with anyone
except his wife, and he could hardly discuss this with her. Neither this
nor anything else. For no matter how one looked at it, the night before
she had allowed him to be nailed to the cross.

And now he knew why, instead of going home, he was instinctively
walking ever farther in the opposite direction. He just wouldn't, he
couldn't, face Albertine right now. The most reasonable thing to do was
to eat out somewhere, then go to his ward and look after his two casesand under no circumstances go home-"home!"-until he could be certain of finding Albertine asleep.

He entered one of the more elegant and quieter cafes in the vicinity
of the courthouse, telephoned home that they shouldn't expect him for
supper, and then hung up quickly so that Albertine wouldn't have a
chance to get to the telephone. He sat by a window and drew the curtain.
In a distant corner another man had just taken a seat; he was wearing a
dark overcoat and was otherwise also rather inconspicuously dressed.
Fridolin thought he had seen his face before sometime during the day.
But of course it could be just a matter of chance. He picked up a newspaper and read a few lines here and there, just as he had done before in the
other cafe: reports of political events, theatre, art, literature, and minor
and major accidents of all sorts. In some American city that he had never
heard of, the theatre had burned down. The chimney sweep Peter Korand had thrown himself out of a window. It struck Fridolin somehow as peculiar that even chimney sweeps occasionally committed suicide, and he
found himself wondering if the man had first washed himself properly
before he had hurled himself down into nothingness, or whether he had
jumped black with dirt just as he was. In an elegant hotel in the heart of
the city, a woman had poisoned herself, a strikingly beautiful woman
who had registered there several days before under the name of Baroness
D. Fridolin immediately felt a strange presentiment. The woman had
come home at four in the morning in the company of two men who
had left her at the door. Four o'clock. That was exactly the same time
that he ... had arrived home. And around noon she had been found unconscious-so the report continued-in her bed with signs of fatal
poisoning.... A strikingly beautiful woman.... Well, of course there
were many strikingly beautiful young women.... There was no reason
to believe that Baroness D., or rather the woman who had registered at
the hotel as Baroness D., and a certain other woman were one and the
same. And yet-his heart pounded, and the newspaper trembled in his
hand. In a fashionable hotel.... Which one-? Why so secretive? So
discreet? ...

He lowered the newspaper and saw how the man in the distant corner raised his, a large illustrated magazine, in front of his face like a curtain. Fridolin immediately picked up his paper again and knew at this
moment that the Baroness D. had to be the woman he had met last
night.... In an elegant downtown hotel ... there were not many that
would be considered so-by a Baroness D.... And now what would
happen would happen-but this was a clue which he had to follow. He
called the waiter, paid, and left. At the door he once more turned around
to look at the suspicious man in the corner. But, strangely enough, he was
already gone....

A fatal poisoning.... But she had been found alive.... At the moment they had found her she was still alive. There was in the end no reason to assume that she had not been saved. In any case, he would find
her-dead or alive. He would see her, no one on earth could stop him
from seeing the woman who had died because of him; indeed, who had died for him. He was the cause of her death-he alone-if this was the
same woman. Yes, it was she. Returned to the hotel at four o'clock in the
morning in the company of two men! Probably the same ones who had
brought Nightingale to the train station a few hours later. They didn't
have a lot of scruples, those two!

He stood in the large broad square in front of the courthouse and
looked around. Only a few people were in sight, and the suspicious man
from the cafe was not among them. And even if-the men had obviously
been afraid; he clearly had the upper hand. Fridolin hurried on, took a
carriage when he reached the Ring, and asked to be taken first to the
Hotel Bristol, where he asked the concierge, as if he had been authorized
to do so, whether the Baroness D. who had poisoned herself this morning
had stayed at the hotel. The concierge didn't seem particularly surprised-perhaps he took Fridolin for a policeman or some other official.
In any case, he answered politely that the sad case had not occurred here,
but in the Hotel Archduke Karl....

Fridolin at once drove to the designated hotel and found that
Baroness D. had been taken to the General Hospital as soon as she was
found. Fridolin asked how they had made the determination that it was a
suicide. Why had they at noon already been concerned about a lady who
had only come home at four o'clock in the morning? Well, that was quite
simple: two men (the two men again!) had asked for her around eleven
o'clock in the morning. Since the lady had not answered repeated telephone calls, the maid had knocked on the door. When there had been no
answer and the door had remained locked from the inside, there was
nothing to be done but to break it open, and when they did, they found
the baroness unconscious in bed. They had immediately called the ambulance and notified the police.

"And the two men?" asked Fridolin sharply, feeling like an undercover detective.

Well, the men, yes, that was suspicious, for they had completely
disappeared in the meantime. Anyhow, it was certain that the lady was
not really Baroness Dubieski, under which name she had registered at the
hotel. This was the first time she had stayed at this hotel, and there was
no such family with this name, at least no aristocratic one.

Fridolin thanked the concierge for the information and left rather
quickly, since one of the hotel managers who had just approached him
was eyeing him with unpleasant curiosity. He climbed back into the carriage and asked to be taken to the General Hospital. A few minutes later,
in the admissions office, he learned not only that the alleged Baroness
Dubieski had been taken to the Second Clinic for Internal Medicine, but
that at five o'clock in the afternoon, despite all the doctors' efforts, she
had died without regaining consciousness.

Fridolin took a deep breath-so he thought-but it was really an
agonized groan that escaped him. The official on duty looked up at him
in surprise. Fridolin pulled himself together immediately, politely took
his leave, and the next minute was standing outdoors. The hospital park
was almost empty. In one of the neighboring avenues under a lantern a
nurse in a blue-and-white-striped uniform and white cap was walking.
"Dead," said Fridolin to himself. "If it's her. And if it isn't? If she's still
alive, how can I find her?"

Fridolin could answer only too easily the question of where the
body of the unknown woman was at this moment. Since she had just died
a few hours ago, she was undoubtedly in the hospital morgue, only a few
hundred steps away. As a doctor he would of course have no difficulty in
gaining entrance there, even at such a late hour. But-what did he want
to do there? He only knew her body-he had never seen her face, had
only been able to catch a hasty glimpse of it at the moment he was leaving the ballroom last night, or rather had been chased out of the ballroom.
He realized that he had not thought of this fact before because, up to this
moment, in the last few hours since he had read the notice in the newspaper, he had envisaged the suicide, whose face he didn't know, with Albertine's face. In fact, as he now shuddered to realize, it had been his
wife that he had imagined as the woman he was seeking. And once more
he asked himself what exactly he wanted in the morgue. Yes, if he had
found her again alive, today, tomorrow-or years from now, when and
wherever-he would have known her unquestionably only by her gait,
her bearing, and above all by her voice-of that he was sure. But now he
would see only her body, a dead female body, and a face of which he remembered only the eyes-eyes that were now lifeless. Yes-he would know those eyes and the hair that had suddenly become untied and had
enveloped her naked body when they had driven him from the room. But
would that be enough to tell him unmistakably whether or not it was her?

With slow and uncertain steps he took the way through the familiar
courtyards to the Institute of Pathology and Anatomy. He found the door
open, so he didn't need to ring the doorbell. The stone floor resounded
under his footsteps as he walked through the dimly lit hallway. The familiar, even somewhat homey odor of all sorts of chemicals, which overwhelmed the smell of the building itself, enveloped Fridolin. He knocked
on the door of the histological room, where he expected to find an assistant still at work. To the sound of a rather gruff "Come in," Fridolin entered the high-ceilinged, almost festively illuminated room, in the middle
of which, just raising his eye from the microscope, stood-as Fridolin
had almost expected-his old fellow student, Dr. Adler, the assistant at
the institute, now rising from his chair.