hunting suit.… You’ve no objection, have you, Eva?”
Frau Eva had no objection.
“You’ve got to manage for yourselves here now. I’m only going away at your wish, don’t forget that. So no complaining if anything goes wrong. I don’t care two hoots about going away. I can shoot bunny-rabbits here, too.”
“Aren’t you going to say good-by to von Studmann, Achim?”
“Yes, of course, if you think I ought to. But I’ll pack first. And the guns have to be greased. Anyway, give him my best regards if I don’t see him. He’ll probably always be asking your father for advice now; he can’t tell winter from summer barley! You’ll get into a mess, you see!” The Rittmeister smiled cheerfully. “Still, if it gets too bad you can send for me. I’d come at once, of course. I’m not the one to bear a grudge.”
XII
Listening at the door, Violet had only heard the beginning of the quarrel. Convinced that it would go on for some time and keep her mother busy, she slipped out of the house, at the back. For a moment she stood irresolute. Ought she really to chance it? If it was found out that she had left the house at night instead of going to bed, the stubbornest lying wouldn’t save her from being packed off to a strict boarding school, as her mother had threatened. Besides, if Hubert Rader found the Lieutenant and gave him her letter, Fritz would be under her window this very night. And there was the trellis on the wall! If she went away, she might miss him.…
Everything spoke in favor of staying and waiting. But there was the warm starry August night! The air seemed like a living thing, enveloping her body. It was like a link to him, who was also outside on this soft night, perhaps quite near her. She felt her blood singing in her ears that sweet alluring song which the body voices when it is ready. Perhaps she ought to go after all.… And she felt downcast at the thought that she might wait the whole night for him in vain.…
A little patch of light in the house, almost on the ground, attracted her attention. Uncertain what it was, she approached it, glad of any diversion which put off her decision. She knelt down and peered. It was Rader’s room in the basement, empty. He must have gone out to deliver her letter, then, and she could go up to her room with an easy mind: if the Lieutenant was in Neulohe tonight, he would come to her window. The otherwise orderly Rader had forgotten in his hurry to switch off the light.
Violet was just about to get up when the door opened. It was strange and a little uncanny: she, with the whole night around her, was looking unobserved at a little bright stage. Queer and at the same time a little uncanny was also the scene which now presented itself: the person closing the door was Hubert Rader, no longer the punctilious young man in gray livery, but a somewhat ridiculous thing in a disproportionately large nightshirt with gaily trimmed border. Above this angels’ raiment, however, was the sallow fishy head with its expressionless eyes —and Violet was no longer able to think this head stupid and silly. Something like horror filled her.…
Rader went to a cupboard in the corner. In his hand he carried a glass containing a tooth-brush. He unlocked the cupboard and placed the glass inside it.… That is how men are! After experiencing that evening a sensation which was perhaps unusual, something that might perhaps be termed the rehearsal of a murder, Hubert Rader put on a nightshirt and brushed his teeth as he did every other evening.… He was not always a murderer; normally he was a very ordinary citizen; and it was this which made him so dangerous. One recognizes a tiger by its stripes, but a murderer brushes his teeth like everyone else; he is unrecognizable.
And now Violet was to see something stranger still.…
But at the moment she was not thinking of Rader. I listened at the door for five minutes at the most, she calculated. Then I came out and stood say, for three minutes, wondering whether to chance it. Hubert still had to clear the table—he did that while I was saying good night—then put away the plates and things. But he couldn’t possibly have left the house! Undress, wash, brush his teeth! And my letter?
“My letter!” she wanted to scream out; she wanted to bang on the window and ask for it back. What restrained her was not the fear of arousing the house, nor the dislike of a silly dispute with the crazy lying fellow. Oh, hang the letter! she thought suddenly, very calm. I don’t need it, I’ll find Fritz without it.… He’s probably kept it, not in order to take it to my parents, but to demand a reward again! And she felt his hand on her heart, his cold, inhuman hand. If I tell Fritz, he’ll kill him; Fritz wanted to kill little Meier for much less.… But she felt that she would not tell Fritz. This must always be kept a secret from him, whatever happened. Actually she should be horrified at having a secret in common with Rader, but she was not. There was a dismal seduction about this evil servant’s hand. She did not understand it, but she felt it.…
While all this was going through her head—and such thoughts and fears don’t take a second—Hubert Rader had knelt down at the foot of his bed. There he crouched in his long nightshirt, with clasped hands, saying his prayers like a child. But there was nothing childish about that evil head. When she saw him, scarcely three yards away, kneel down on the little stage visible only to herself, and pray, he who just before had put his hand round her throat—when she reflected that perhaps he was thanking God for being allowed to do that to her—then Violet could contain herself no longer but jumped up and ran into the night, not giving a thought to the people who ought not to see her, nor to Fritz, whom she had to see.…
She ran through the garden, on and on, and up a grass ridge between the fields. Her breast heaved. She felt as if she must run away from it all, from herself and everybody, and she threw herself down and gazed at the sky, whose impalpably deep background made the stars twinkle all the more brightly. At last she dozed off.…
But she could only have slept a very short time, the stars hadn’t shifted. It was as if she had dreamed of something very light and happy, but knew nothing more about it. A feeling of approaching danger had awakened her. Yet around her was nothing but silence and rural night. The village, too, had gone to bed, there was not a sound.…
“No, there is no danger,” she said, calming her throbbing heart. But suddenly she realized that she was alone in the fields and too far away for a cry to awake anyone in the village.… And she, who had been out in the fields and forest hundreds of times at night without even a thought of fear, was seized with a cowardly trembling that he might come in his white shirt, along the ridge, and want to lay his hand on her heart again. I would not be able to resist, she thought.
And she started to run again. Away from the Villa, whence he might follow her, she ran toward the dark mass of trees in the park. She clambered over the fence, her dress tearing on a nail, and tumbled into the grass on the other side, but jumped to her feet immediately and ran towards the swans’ pond, to the hollow tree.… She thrust her hand into the hollow, but there was no letter there; so he had already taken it and was on his way to her.…
Then she started running again, but already while she ran she realized that he’d never received the letter, that it was still with Rader, and she was gripped by a furious anger against that crook.… But the anger passed and, while she ran, she began to wonder why she was still running. There was surely no point anymore. Of course he’s no longer in the village. After such a burying of weapons you’re more likely to go home and report back than look for romantic adventures in the surrounding villages. However, although she knew she no longer needed to run, she continued to do so, as if something were chasing her, and she only stopped in her tracks when she saw a bright yellow rectangle shining through the trees. She changed her step to a cautious creeping and approached the lighted window as quietly as a cat. It stood wide open, but the curtains were drawn. She crossed the path, stepped onto the narrow grass border under the window and pushed the curtains apart. She’d been so confused that night that she didn’t for a moment think she was doing anything improper, just unusual. After casting an initial look into the room, she pushed her whole head through the curtains, and remained looking, standing, her body outside in the night, but her head in the brightly lit room.
At the table sat young Wolfgang Pagel, writing a letter. It had been a rather sad and gloomy day for him—in the morning the row with the Rittmeister, who’d thrown him out. Then the chaos with the prisoners, and the bricked-up door with the white cross, which had to be painted over. Then there was the crazy farm servant Rader with his cartload of dead geese, and Studmann with his mysterious consultations in the manor—it was all frantic and confused, as little like rural life as could be. As he eventually, angrily, swallowed down his lonely evening meal—the servant Elias had replaced Studmann—he confronted the evening, unable to sleep, unwilling to do any further work. He had thought of going to the inn or of wandering into the village and keeping an eye open for Sophie Kowalewski. All things considered, she was quite a nice girl and probably, since she had experience of Berlin, without too many airs and graces. Violet von Prackwitz, with her morning kisses, would have been more dangerous. But then he remembered that he couldn’t leave the house. He had accepted a commission, he was expecting a
