Part 5 (1/2)

”Yes,” he said into the room, ”I believed it was only her soul that I loved. But what is a soul without a body, what is a human soul without a body? I couldn't desire her soul so pa.s.sionately, with all the insane pa.s.sion I was capable of, without longing for her just to smile at me at least once, once. G.o.d,” he slashed the air with his hand, ”always the hope, and nothing but the hope, that that soul might become flesh,” he cried, ”only the insane burden of hope! What's the time?” He turned on her and, although he spoke roughly and brusquely as if she were a servant girl, she was glad to see that at least he had not forgotten her presence. ”Forgive me,” he added swiftly, grasping her hand, but she had already forgiven him, she had forgiven him before it happened. She glanced at the clock and smiled. ”Eleven.” And she was filled with a great happiness, only eleven. Not yet midnight, not even midnight, how glorious, how lovely, how wonderful. She was as gay as a carefree child, jumped up and danced across the room: I'm dancing with you into heaven, the seventh heaven of love....

He watched her, thinking: it's strange, really, that I can't be angry with her. Here I am, half-dead with pain, deathly sick, and she's dancing, although she has shared my pain, and I can't be angry, I can't....

”You know what?” she asked, suddenly pausing. ”We must have something to eat, that's what we need.”

”No,” he said, appalled. ”No.”

”Why not?”

”Because then you'd have to leave me. No, no,” he cried out in anguish, ”you mustn't leave me for a single second. Without you...without you...without you I can't go on living!”

”What?” she asked, without knowing which word her lips were forming, for a delirious hope had sprung up within her.

”That's right,” he said softly, ”you mustn't go away.”

No, she thought, that's not it after all. I'm not the one he loves. And aloud she said: ”I don't have to go away! There's food too in the closet.”

How miraculous, that somewhere in a drawer of that closet there should be cookies, and cheese wrapped in silver foil. What a glorious meal, cookies and cheese and wine. He didn't like his cigarette. The tobacco was dry, and it had a kind of foul army taste.

”Give me a cigar,” he said, and needless to say there was a cigar there too. A whole box of cigars good enough for a major, all for the Lvov mortgage. It felt good to stand there on the soft carpet, watching Olina arrange the little snack on the coffee table with gentle, loving hands. When she had finished, she suddenly turned to him and looked at him with a smile: ”You couldn't go on living without me?”

”No,” he said, and his heart was so heavy he couldn't laugh, and he thought: I ought to add now: because I love you, and that would be true and it would not be true. If I said it I would have to kiss her, and that would be a lie, everything would be a lie, and yet I could say with a clear conscience: I love you, but I would have to give a long, long explanation, an explanation that I don't know myself yet. Always those eyes of hers, very gentle and loving and happy, the opposite of the eyes I desired...still desire...and he repeated, looking straight into her eyes: ”I couldn't go on living without you,” and now he was smiling....

At the very moment when they were raising their gla.s.ses to drink a toast to their birthdays or their wasted lives, at that very moment their hands began to tremble violently; they put down their gla.s.ses and looked at one another in dismay: there had been a knock at the door....

Andreas held back Olina's arm and slowly stood up. He strode to the door, taking only three seconds to reach it. So this is the end, he thought. They're taking her away from me, they don't want her to stay with me till morning. Time is still alive, and the world is turning. Willi and the blond fellow are each in bed with a girl somewhere in this house, that old woman is downstairs lying in wait for her money, the slot of her mouth always open, slightly open. What shall I do when I'm alone? I shan't even be able to pray, to go down on my knees. I can't live without her, because I do love her. They mustn't do that....

”Yes,” he asked softly.

”Olina,” came the madame's voice. ”I have to speak to Olina.”

Andreas looked around, pale, aghast. I'll give up the five hours if only I can spend just one more half-hour with her. They can have her then. But I want to spend one more half-hour with her, and look at her, just look at her, maybe she'll play the piano again. Even if it's only, I'm dancing with you into heaven....

Olina smiled at him, and he knew from that smile that she would stay with him whatever happened. And yet he was scared, and he knew now, as Olina quietly unlocked the door, that he did not want to part with this fear for her. That he loved this fear too. ”Leave your hand in mine, at least,” he whispered as she was going out, and she left her hand in his, and he heard her outside beginning to talk to the madame in hurried, heated Polish. The two women were locked in combat. The moneybox was doing battle with Olina. He anxiously scanned her eyes when she came back without closing the door. He did not let go of her hand. She had turned pale too, and he could see that her confidence was no longer very great....

”The general's turned up. He's offering two thousand. He's furious. He must be raising the roof down there. D'you have any money left? We have to make up the difference, otherwise....”

”Yes,” he said; he hastily turned out his pockets, which still contained money he had won from Willi at cards. Olina twittered something in Polish through the door. ”Hurry,” she whispered. She counted the bills. ”Three hundred, right? I haven't a thing! Not a thing!” she said frantically. ”Yes I have, here's a ring, that's five hundred. It's not worth more than that. Eight hundred.”

”My coat,” said Andreas, ”here it is.”

Olina went to the door with the three hundred, the ring, and the coat. She was even less confident on her return.

”She reckons the coat's worth four, only four-no more. And the ring six, thank G.o.d for that, six. Thirteen hundred. Don't you have anything else? Hurry!” she whispered. ”If he gets impatient and comes upstairs, we're sunk.”

”My paybook,” he said.

”Yes, let me have it. A genuine paybook is worth a lot.”

”And my watch.”

”Yes,” she laughed nervously, ”the watch. You still have a watch. Is it running?”

”No,” he said.

Olina went to the door with the paybook and the watch. More excited Polish whispering. Andreas ran after her. ”Here's a sweater,” he called through the door, ”a hand, a leg. Can't you use a human leg, a wonderful, superb human leg...a leg from an almost-innocent? Can't you use that? To make up the difference. Are you still short?” His voice was quite matter-of-fact, not excited, and he kept Olina's hand in his.

”No,” came the madame's voice from outside. ”But your boots. Your boots would make up the difference.”

It's hard work, taking off one's boots. But he managed, just as he had managed to pull them on quickly when the Russians came roaring up to the position. He took off his boots and pa.s.sed them out by way of Olina's small hand.

And the door was shut again. Olina stood before him, her face quivering. ”I have nothing,” she wept, ”my clothes belong to the old woman. So does my body, and my soul-she doesn't want my soul. Only the Devil wants souls, and humans are worse than the Devil. Forgive me,” she wept, ”I have nothing.”

Andreas drew her towards him and softly stroked her face. ”Come,” he whispered, ”come, I'll make love to you....” But she raised her face and smiled. ”No,” she whispered, ”no, never mind, it's not important.”

Again footsteps approached along the corridor, those confident, unswerving footsteps, but strangely enough they were no longer afraid. They exchanged smiles.

”Olina,” the voice called outside the door.

More Polish twittering. Olina smiled at him over her shoulder: ”When do you have to leave?”

”At four.”

She closed the door, without locking it, came back, and said: ”At four the general's car is coming to pick me up.”

Her trembling hands had spilled wine over the cheese, so she cleared it away, gathered up the soiled tablecloth, and rearranged the things. The cigar had not gone out, thought Andreas, who was watching her. The world had nearly come to an end, but the cigar had not gone out, and her hands were quieter than ever. ”Coming?”

Yes, he sat down opposite her, laid aside the cigar, and for a few minutes they looked past one another, in silence and almost blus.h.i.+ng, because they were both terribly ashamed at the knowledge that they were praying, that they were both praying, here in this brothel, on this couch....

”It's midnight now,” she said as they began eating. It's Sunday now, thought Andreas, Sunday, and he abruptly set down his gla.s.s and the cookie he had just begun; a frightful cramp paralyzed his jaws and hands and seemed even to blind his eyes; I don't want to die, he thought and, without realizing it, he stammered, like a weeping child: ”I...I don't want to die.”

I must be mad to think I can smell paint so vividly...I was barely seven at the time they painted the garden fence: it was the first day of school holidays, and Uncle Hans was away, it had rained in the night, and now the sun was s.h.i.+ning in that moist garden...it was so wonderful...so beautiful, and as I lay in bed I could distinctly smell the garden and the paint, for the painters had already started painting the fence green...and I was allowed to stay in bed a while...because school was out, Uncle Hans was away, and I was to get hot chocolate for breakfast, Aunt Marianne had promised me the night before because she had just opened a new account...whenever we opened a new account, a brand-new one, we began by buying something special. And that paint, I can smell it as plainly as anything, but I must be mad...there can't possibly be a smell of green paint here. That pale face across from me, that's Olina, a Polish prost.i.tute and spy...nothing here in this room can smell so cruelly of paint and conjure up that day in my childhood so vividly. ”I don't want to die,” stammered his mouth. ”I don't want to leave all this behind...no one can force me to get onto that train going to...Stryy, no one on earth. My G.o.d, maybe it would be a mercy if I did lose my mind. But don't let me lose it! No, no! Even though it hurts like h.e.l.l to smell that green paint now, let me rather savor this pain than go mad...and Aunt Marianne's voice telling me I can stay in bed a while...since Uncle Hans is away....”

”What's that?” he asked, startled. Olina had risen, without his noticing it; she was sitting at the piano, and her lips were quivering in her pale face.

”Rain,” she said softly, and it seemed to cost her an unspeakable effort to open her mouth, she hardly had the strength to nod toward the window.

Yes, that soft rus.h.i.+ng sound that roused him with the power of a sudden burst of organ music...that was rain...it was raining in the brothel garden...and on the treetops where he had seen the sun for the last time. ”No!” he cried as Olina touched the keys, ”no,” but then he felt the tears, and he knew he had never cried before in his life...these tears were life, a raging torrent formed from countless streams...all flowing together and welling up into one agonizing outburst...the green paint that smelled of holidays...and the terrible corpse of Uncle Hans laid out in its coffin in the study, shrouded in the heavy air of candles...many, many evenings with Paul and the hours of exquisite torment spent trying to play the piano...school and war, war...war, and the unknown face he had desired, had...and in that blinding wet torrent there floated, like a quivering disk, pale and agonizing, the sole reality: Olina's face.

All this because of a few bars of Schubert, making it possible for me to cry as I have never cried in my life, to cry as maybe I only cried when I was born, when that dazzling light threatened to cut me in two.... Suddenly a chord struck his ear, a chord that shook him to the depths of his being, it was Bach, yet she had never been able to play Bach....

It was like a tower that was spiraling upward from within, piling level upon level. The tower grew and pulled him with it, as if it had been hurled up from the bowels of the earth by a gus.h.i.+ng spring that was fiercely shooting its way past the gloom of centuries into the light, into the light. An aching happiness filled him as, against his will yet knowingly and consciously, he was borne upward on level after level of that pure, upthrusting tower; as if borne on a cloud of fantasy, wreathed in what seemed a weightless, poignant felicity, he was yet made to experience all the effort and all the pain of the climber; this was spirit, this was clarity, little remained of human aberration; a fantastically clean, clear playing of compelling force. It was Bach, yet she had never been able to play Bach...perhaps she wasn't playing at all...perhaps it was the angels...the angels of clarity, singing in towers each more ethereal and radiant than the last...light, light, O G.o.d...that light....

”Stop!” he cried out, and Olina's hands recoiled from the keys as if his voice had torn them away....

He rubbed his aching forehead, and he saw that the girl sitting there in the soft lamplight was not only startled by his voice: she was exhausted, she was weary, infinitely weary, the towers she had had to climb with her frail hands had been unimaginably high. She was just tired, the corners of her mouth twitched like those of a child that is too tired even to cry; her hair had loosened...she was pale, and deep shadows encircled her eyes.

Andreas moved toward her, took her in his arms, and laid her on the sofa; she closed her eyes and sighed; gently, very gently she shook her head as if to say: just let me rest...all I want is to rest a little.... Peace, and it was good to see her fall asleep; her face sank to one side.