He shaved himself carefully. When he went into town he always shaved twice. Now it occurred to him that he could shave himself twice for Neulohe, for Eva.… But he rejected this thought immediately. He was neither a youngster nor a Don Juan. He wasn’t going to preen like a peacock.
A little later he was in the office. On the desk lay a note. “Please wake me before you go. I’ve something to tell you, Pagel.”
Studmann shrugged his shoulders. Could it be anything important? Cautiously he opened Pagel’s door—the lamplight, entering, showed him peacefully asleep on his side. Over his forehead a great lock of hair rested on the closed eyelid, every hair gleamed like the very thinnest of gold thread, and the face was serene. All of a sudden some words came into Studmann’s mind, probably from his schooldays. “Favored by fortune, nothing done, dead like all.”
The important communication, he decided, was not important. It was only four o’clock, and another hour and a half’s sleep wouldn’t do the young man any harm. Gently he shut the door. Besides, he mustn’t miss the early train to Frankfurt, because that was what Eva wanted. Even the most important communication could not change that, but could only upset it.
Black Minna now appeared in the office, still half awake and more slovenly than ever. And the coffee she served looked just as slovenly. Studmann, who from his work in the hotel was very sensitive to cleanliness, had it in mind to speak harshly, but refrained. Knowing the situation as he did, he was aware that his reproof would promptly be made known in Frau Eva’s kitchen, and thus reach her. He didn’t want her to have any more trouble at present.
Carriage wheels crunched on the gravel outside; Hartig, the coachman, was there. Abandoning the coffee and stale bread, Studmann lit a cigar, put on his overcoat and left the house.
The coachman on his high seat was talking with the gendarme. Studmann said hello and asked after any news. There was no news. The gendarme’s all-night vigil had been as fruitless as beating through the woods the previous afternoon. Not the slightest trace of the fellows! The whole thing was stupid. They should have gone about things in quite another way, of course; numb and exasperated, the gendarme explained his own plan …
“Excuse me, officer, I have to go to the station now,” interposed Studmann. “But my coffee’s still standing in the office. It’s not much good but it’s warm—if you’d care to drink it.… But don’t make a noise, please; the young man’s asleep in the next room.”
The officer thanked him and went to the office. The carriage with the smoking Studmann and the silent, ever-grumpy Hartig, rolled toward the station. It was quarter past four.
It’s only a quarter past four, thought Frau Eva, looking unbelievingly at the small alarm clock on her night table. Had someone called her? Vi? Achim? She had started up in bed and had automatically turned on the light. Now she sat erect among the pillows, listening. Outside there was nothing but the howling of the wind. Not a cry. All were asleep. Frau Eva had slept well, and felt incredibly fresh, full of a vague happiness. But what on earth was she going to do in the four hours until her morning coffee?
She looked at her room, surprised, almost a little disappointed, that it could offer her neither distraction nor diversion. For a moment she considered getting up to see if Vi, perhaps, had called out in her sleep. But it was so warm in bed and Vi, anyway, was a grownup girl now; the time had passed when her mother, as a matter of course, rose five or six times a night, to tiptoe to her little one. Happy vanished times, obvious duties gladly performed, simple cares which life, because it was life, brought along with it … and nothing of all this unnecessary artificial worry, the least essential thing in the world.
Suddenly her face became drawn and she remembered what had been forgotten—that she lay in a decaying house, a member of a family in dissolution. And that the very floor which held her bed was decaying. The door leading to her husband’s bedroom was locked, had been locked after the angry scene yesterday evening. She frowned; her pretty plump shoulders drooped. She had suddenly become an old woman. How could I have lived with him year in, year out, and put up with all this? Impossible to live with him one week longer—and she had put up with it for twenty years! Inconceivable! She felt that she had completely lost the charity to be patient or forbearing or, in feminine cunning, achieve something with him. It seemed that with her love had vanished all capacity for this.
My God, he had come home many a time before this somewhat the worse for drink. But a wife learned to put up with that, although the mixture of bragging and sudden tenderness was always a little hard to support. But it was precisely yesterday afternoon he had picked on for this; he in his extreme folly could not wait to show off the car to—her brother! He had sneaked out. In an almost stupidly cunning way he had incited Violet against her and won her over to his side, a foolish child who was naturally enthusiastic about everything new, and especially something as new as a car. Finally, he had, to put the finish on everything, allowed this child of fifteen several liqueurs—he said one, she said two, but for certain there were four or five. No, all that was far more than even a woman married for many years could bear.
Supper had been laid, the servant waited, the maids in the kitchen waited. It grew late; too late. She had never thought that she would one day be sitting thus, angry and like a
And now she was sitting there like that, drawing up a list against him: This, that and the other thing. This done for him, that renounced for him, something else lost because of him. And yourself? This “yourself” grew and grew, until it became a monstrous cloud casting a shadow over her whole life, a threatening storm cloud, full of evil foreboding. And then the pair had come in, with the silly, unembarrassed jollity of the slightly tipsy.
“Oh, dear! … Oh, dear! Uncle Egon couldn’t find the corkscrew and knocked the neck off the bottle. Oh dear, oh dear!” Growling thunder from afar—who were you once upon a time? A slender, swift creature, no great thinker, for sure, but a knight without fear or reproach.… “And we passed a baby Opel in the wood, Mamma, and our worthy young Herr Pagel was in it; I’ll take my oath, with a young lady. She was holding her hand in front of her face, though!”
“Enough!” Yes, indeed enough, and more than enough. Words, quarreling, the young girl’s tears, the father’s amiable bad conscience changing into a raging one.…
“Only because you grudge me the car!” And Vi sobbing: “You don’t want us to have any pleasures! We can’t do anything. And now you want to tyrannize over Papa as well.”
Father and daughter in alliance against the mother, and the servants listening behind the door—that was the result of the home you had made, Eva! You had sworn to marry the first man who really had some style—you hated your father’s want of polish. Yes. Was everybody mad then? Was everybody diseased? Was this inflation some plague carried in the atmosphere, which everyone caught? Was this girl with blotched face, unrestrained gestures —now sobbing, now shouting her accusations—was that your daughter, your young and sheltered Violet? Was that your husband, the well-bred, upright man, so careful of his appearance, so fastidious and neat, now blustering and shouting and waving his hands about—“You won’t get the better of me”?
Yes, and was that you yourself, angrily replying, scornfully rebuking, and all the while thinking of another man? You, who had already arranged a substitute before this one had gone?
Shame, shame on all of us! One and all! She had rushed upstairs—she couldn’t get to her room quickly enough; she had wanted to be alone. The windows were open; it was pleasantly cool and fresh. She smelled a hint of central heating warmth in the air, and a hint of her soaps and perfumes as well. Just enough to remind her that she was at home now … Most of all she would have liked to have a bath, but she didn’t like the idea of seeing her body at the moment. It had seen too much of life, experienced too much, enjoyed too much for her to enjoy seeing it this evening. She slipped out of her clothes and in the darkness found the veronal which the doctor had once given her when an abscess in a tooth had been maddening.… She took a tablet—the smallest amount had its effect on her—and lay back to sleep.
She had almost dropped off, had almost banished the scenes of that evening from her mind—the deafening squabble no longer resounded in her ears—when the door opened. He was there. In a low, uncertain voice he asked: “Are you asleep, Eva? I thought I would just come in.”
This life can be one of constant disgust. She felt she would laugh, seeing him standing there. Although his hair was gray, he had learned nothing. Yes, he actually had on his best pajamas, had made himself smart for her, this eternal schoolboy, forever kept back in the class of those who would never understand anything.
“Eva! … Eva! … Eva! …” In every tone, considerate, pleading, and then slightly louder, so that she might wake up without his having exactly wakened her. She could see him quite well, outlined against the light, but he
