Downstream

her to him, it was in love with him. Hedvig had no way out but to assume a forced reserve, a sudden cold, and sheer rudeness. But that had no effect on him at all. He was insensitive to everything which was not logic. Then in her anxiety she crept behind her dead husband, draped herself in crepe, fled to the shadows and became just piety and memory. That was the only thing that hitherto could damp Levy’s eagerness. The world-embracing, hot and cold romance of money shrank up violently and he became gradually colder and colder, more formal and more ironical, till at last he said goodbye with a bow that was really a shrug of the shoulders.

So today Mrs. Hedvig had to assume her crepe.

During the soup Levy raised the question of the mortgage. That was a mere nothing, a bagatelle. They would buy the house by auction, no doubt about that. It would certainly be good business, because the house was, as it happened, valued much too high. Other people are frightened of houses that are assessed too high. But we are not, Mrs. Hill. For we know of a certain little insurance company that will take the house with open arms. They need it on their books. A house that is bought for 200,000 but can be taken up at 300,000 improves the position at once by 100,000⁠—not for the shareholders but for the Board of Directors.

Levy’s face suddenly became contemptuous and almost offended. This topic seemed to upset him. It was not worthy of the occasion or of his feelings:

“Well, that’s that,” he exclaimed. “I am tired of the house property swindle. That’s for inferior people, philistines and small fry. I really can’t understand your brother Peter’s taste. I admit that he has a brutal sort of natural business shrewdness, but he lives like an old-fashioned craftsman amidst modern improvements. Before 1905 we believed that business consisted in cheating each other and the State. Yes, I believed it too. But that is now old-fashioned, hopelessly old-fashioned. Nowadays we have at last grasped the fact that the really lucrative business is the positive one in which money really makes a contribution.⁠ ⁠… That is to say shares, industrial shares! We live in the age of a most tremendous industrial boom. The whole world is becoming industrialised. You must be blind not to see in which direction the royal road of capital leads. Money and wheels are related. Shares, industrial shares! Invest your money in forests, waterfalls and iron mines! Send it to the saw mills, the harbours and the ammunition works!”

Here Levy swallowed the third glass of mineral water and broke out into a vehement flood of share quotations and statistics of exports. And all the time he stared at Hedvig with an expression that was at once appealing, passionate, embittered and sceptical. He wanted to dazzle her, make her enthusiastic, but there was something spasmodic and almost despairing in his efforts. There was not a spark of real and innocent joy in the present moment.

Did he see through her, this woman before him, or did he suffer from the fact that the passionate pulses of his heart were only capable of stirring the ashes of some dry calculations?

Hedvig stared at the tablecloth. She felt his glance on every point of her face and neck. His harsh, quick voice at the same time opened up the whole world for her and spun her into a net of supple meshes. It was already as if she could not move hands or feet. He seemed to her to come closer, closer. She intermittently felt hot and cold in this strange heat with cold currents that streamed out from his being. Quickly, relentlessly the terror rose in her, the irresistible terror of seeing herself cut off from any possibility of escape, overpowered.

She suddenly got up from coffee:

“Shall we not do the round of the pictures today?” she said. “It is the first time it has been light enough after dinner.”

The round of the pictures was an invention of Hedvig’s fear. She felt safer amongst Percy’s pictures.

Levy rose slowly and offered Hedvig his arm. The tension in his face broke down. He was evidently not pleased to have to leave his own special field of attack and to have to resort to a slow roundabout strategy in order to fight with a dead man.

And yet Levy could certainly talk of art, in case of need. He was a connoisseur in his own way and had a great deal to say not only of market values but also of theories and technique. There were various things here that he could tell some malicious stories about, various things he was prepared at once to slaughter with his criticism, but also some things he had to admire. But it was a jealous, inarticulate admiration. Levy bit his lip and kept silent. To come up against the dead husband all the time made him, Jacob Levy, barrister, embarrassed and uncertain of himself. He knew much, but not how to battle with a shadow.

Hedvig found time to breathe. And she at once started the game of “Chinese shades.” It was really a game in her own style, silent, stealthy, and unconsciously false. She had had many and long rehearsals of it out there by the grave. Every accent of her voice was reminiscent of crepe. Solemnly she advanced through the rooms which the evening light was filling with its first pure tones of gold. She stopped with head inclined before one picture after the other. In every gesture, in every word, she simulated admiration for her dead husband’s fine understanding of art and for the modest, unselfish enthusiasm that never failed in spite of exhaustion and suffering.

A good dose of almost religious piety was administered to Levy. But he evidently did not like the medicine. His pallor was tinged with green. His lips curved into an imperceptible, nervous grimace. But he had to swallow it all