“Yes.”
“Is that courteous to the lady who is waiting for you?”
Sight returned to Josaphat’s eyes. He turned a reddened gaze towards Slim.
“If you do not want me to commit the murder on the woman which did not succeed on you—then send her away before I come …”
Slim was silent. He turned to go. He took the cheque, folded it together and put it into Josaphat’s pocket.
Josaphat offered no resistance.
He walked before Slim towards the door. Then he stopped again and looked around.
He waved the cap which Freder had worn, in farewell to the room, and burst out into ceaseless laughter. He struck his shoulder against the door post …
Then he went out. Slim followed him.
VIII
Freder walked up the steps of the cathedral hesitatingly; he was walking up them for the first time. Hel, his mother, used often to go to the cathedral. But her son had never yet done so. Now he longed to see it with his mother’s eyes and to hear with the ears of Hel, his mother, the stony prayer of the pillars, each of which had its own particular voice.
He entered the cathedral as a child, not pious, yet not entirely free from shyness—prepared for reverence, but fearless. He heard, as Hel, his mother the “Kyrie Eleison” of the stones and the “Te Deum Laudamus”—the “De Profundis” and the “Jubilate.” And he heard, as his mother, how the powerfully ringing stone chair was crowned by the “Amen” of the cross vault …
He looked for Maria, who was to have waited for him on the belfry steps; but he could not find her. He wandered through the cathedral, which seemed to be quite empty of people. Once he stopped. He was standing opposite Death.
The ghostly minstrel stood in a side-niche, carved in wood, in hat and wide cloak, scythe on shoulder, the hourglass dangling from his girdle; and the minstrel was playing on a bone as though on a flute. The Seven Deadly Sins were his following.
Freder looked Death in the face. Then he said:
“If you had come earlier you would not have frightened me … Now I pray you: Keep away from me and my beloved!”
But the awful flute-player seemed to be listening to nothing but the song he was playing upon a bone.
Freder walked on. He came to the central nave. Before the high altar, over which hovered God Incarnate, a dark form lay stretched out upon the stones, hands clutching out to each side, face pressed into the coldness of the stone, as though the blocks must burst asunder under the pressure of the brow. The form wore the garment of a monk, the head was shaven. An incessant trembling shook the lean body from shoulder to heel, and it seemed to be stiffened as though in a cramp.
But suddenly the body reared up. A white flame sprang up: a face; black flames within it: two blazing eyes. A hand rose up, clutching high in the air towards the crucifix which hovered above the altar.
A voice spoke, like the voice of fire:
“I will not let thee go, God, God, except thou bless me!”
The echo of the pillars yelled the words after him.
The son of Joh Fredersen had never seen the man before. He knew, however, as soon as the flame-white face unveiled the black flames of its eyes to him: it was Desertus the monk, his father’s enemy …
Perhaps his breath had become too loud. Suddenly the black flame struck across at him. The monk arose slowly. He did not say a word. He stretched out his hand. The hand indicated the door.
“Why do you sent me away, Desertus?” asked Freder. “Is not the house of your God open to all?”
“Hast thou come here to seek God?” asked the rough, hoarse voice of the monk.
Freder hesitated. He dropped his head.
“No.” He answered. But his heart knew better.
“If thou hast not come to seek God, then thou hast nothing to seek here,” said the monk.
Then Joh Fredersen’s son went.
He went out of the cathedral as one walking in his sleep. The daylight smote his eyes cruelly. Racked with weariness, worn out with grief, he walked down the steps, and aimlessly onwards.
The roar of the streets wrapped itself, as a diver’s helmet, about his ears. He walked on in his stupefaction, as though between thick glass walls. He had no thought apart from the name of his beloved, no consciousness apart from his longing for her. Shivering with weariness, he thought of the girl’s eyes and lips, with a feeling very like homesickness.
Ah!—brow to brow with her—then mouth to mouth—eyes closed—breathing …
Peace … Peace …
“Come,” said his heart. “Why do you leave me alone?”
He walked along in a stream of people, fighting down the mad desire to stop amid this stream and to ask every single wave, which was a human being, if it knew of Maria’s whereabouts, and why she had let him wait in vain.
He came to the magician’s house. There he stopped.
He stared at a window.
Was he mad?
There was Maria, standing behind the dull panes. Those were her blessed hands, stretched out towards him … a dumb cry: “Help me—!”
Then the entire vision was drawn away, swallowed up by the blackness of the room behind it, vanishing, not leaving a trace, as though it had never been. Dumb, dead and evil stood the house of the magician there.
Freder stood motionless. He drew a deep, deep breath. Then he made a leap. He stood before the door of the house.
Copper-red, in the black wood of the door, glowed the seal of Solomon, the pentagram.
Freder knocked.
Nothing in the house stirred.
He knocked for the second time.
The house remained dull and obstinate.
He stepped back and looked up at the windows.
They looked out in their evil gloom, over and beyond him.
He went to the door again. He beat against it with his fists. He heard the echo of his drumming blows shake the house, as in dull laughter.
But the copper Solomon’s seal grinned at him from the
