The Sleepwalkers (11 page)

And now too emerged once more a fancy of which he had thought himself rid for good, and if he felt no compulsion now to seek in Ruzena’s face for that of her Italian brother, yet it was engraved there in a perhaps
more baffling form, engraved as the indelible countenance of that life from which he had not been able to deliver her. And again his suspicions awoke that it was Bertrand who had suggested this fancy to him, who had engineered it all, and who like Mephistopheles wished to destroy everything, not even sparing Ruzena. And on the top of this the manœuvres were approaching: how would he find Ruzena on his return? Would he ever, indeed, find her again? They promised each other that they would write often, daily; but Ruzena had all sorts of difficulties with her German, and as moreover she was proud of her visiting-cards, and he was unwilling to destroy her childish pleasure, the post often brought him nothing but one of those cards with the hateful inscription “Actress” and the words “Send lots of luv,” a word which seemed to desecrate the sweetness of her kisses. Nevertheless he was greatly disturbed when for a few days he received no word from her, although he had to tell himself that his rapid movements during the manœuvres made a delay of the post quite explicable; and he was delighted when presently one of the horrid little cards arrived. And suddenly and without warning, like a memory, there came the thought that Bertrand too was a sort of actor.

Ruzena really longed for Joachim. His letters contained descriptions of his camp life and the evenings in the little villages, where he would feel really happy only “if you, dear, sweet little Ruzena, were beside me.” And when he requested her to look at the moon at nine o’clock in the evening precisely, so that their glances might meet up there, she ran to the stage door during the interval, and though the interval did not come until half-past nine she gazed up dutifully at the sky. To her it seemed that that early spring afternoon in the rain still held her fast and paralysed something in her; the flood-tide which had submerged her then was only gradually receding, and although the girl’s will was not strong enough and she had besides no resources out of which to erect dams to hold the waters, yet the air which she breathed in and out was still permeated with a soft humidity. True, she envied those colleagues who received bouquets at their dressing-room doors, but she envied them simply for Joachim’s sake, since he ought to have had a celebrated diva as a lover. And although a woman in love often carries about with her that suggestion of the erotic which to many men is so delicately attractive, the men who laid their homage before the actresses were of a different type, and not likely to recognize such gentle indications.
So it happened that Ruzena was more inviolate than ever when she received Joachim on his return to Berlin after the manœuvres, and she looked on this as a victory, a victory on which, she nevertheless knew, defeat would follow; but she did not want to acknowledge this and stifled the knowledge under embraces.

Ever since the train had left the station and she had waved good-bye with her lace handkerchief, Elisabeth had been trying to make clear to herself whether she loved Joachim. It was an almost joyful ground for reassurance that the feeling which she hopefully designated as love should have such a very unassuming and civilized appearance; one had actually to search one’s mind to discern it, for it was so faint and thin that only against a background of silvery ennui did it become visible. But now that she drew nearer and nearer to her home, and her ennui was changed into mounting impatience, the soft contours of the image faded; and when the Baron met them at the station with the new pair of horses, and also when they reached Lestow, and the green tree-tops of the peaceful park appeared, enclosed by the quiet massiveness of the gate—the first surprise, for to right and left two new lodges had been erected, so that the ladies uttered cries of lively astonishment, which were but the prelude, however, to the many they would utter in the next few days—it was only too comprehensible that Elisabeth should no longer think of love at all. For the Baron had once more employed the absence of his two ladies, or as he sometimes called them to Elisabeth’s gratified pride, his two wives, to carry out countless improvements and embellishments to the house, alterations which delighted them and gained for him many words of praise and tender gratitude. They had indeed every cause to be proud of their artistic papa; although he had no exaggerated respect for the existing order and had already adorned the old manor-house with all sorts of additions, he yet had an eye for more than mere architecture; for he never forgot that there was always a free space on a wall where a new picture would look well, a corner which could be set off by a massive vase, or a sideboard which could be furnished with a gold-embroidered velvet cloth: and he was the man to carry out his ideas. Since their marriage the Baron and the Baroness had become collectors, and the continual further perfecting of their home had grown for them into a sort of perpetuation of their first engagement, and had remained so even after the arrival of their daughter. As time went
on Elisabeth indeed became conscious that her parents’ passion for emphasizing the various family festivals of the year, for celebrating the birthdays and continually thinking out new surprises, had a deeper significance and was connected in a profound way, difficult to fathom, with their delight, indeed one might almost call it their greed, in surrounding themselves continuously with new things. Certainly Elisabeth did not know that every collector hopes with the never-attained, never-attainable and yet inexorably striven-for absolute completeness of his collection to pass beyond the assembled things themselves, to pass over into infinity, and, entirely subsumed in his collection, to attain his own consummation and the suspension of death. Elisabeth did not know this, but surrounded by all those beautiful dead things gathered together and piled up around her, surrounded by all those beautiful pictures, she divined nevertheless that the pictures were hung up as though to strengthen the walls, and that all those dead things were put there to cover, perhaps also to conceal and guard, something intensely living; something with which she herself was so intimately bound that she could not but feel at times when a new picture was brought in that it was a little brother or sister; something which begged to be cherished and was cherished by her parents as though their common life together depended upon it. She divined the fear behind all this, fear that sought to drown in festivals the monotony of every day which is the outward sign of growing old, fear that was always reassuring itself—by perpetual fresh surprises—that they were all alive and in the flesh and definitively together, and that their circle was closed for ever. And just as the Baron was always adding new stretches of his property to the park, whose dark and thickly grown copses were now surrounded on almost every side by wide borders of tender light-green young wood, so it seemed to Elisabeth that with almost feminine solicitude he wished to turn all their life into an ever more spacious enclosed park full of pleasant resting-places, and that he would reach his goal and be free of all apprehension only when the park had spread over the whole earth, attaining its object of becoming a park in which Elisabeth might walk about for ever. It is true that occasionally something in her rebelled against this gentle and inescapable compulsion, but as her resistance was hardly ever very definite, it dissolved into the sunny contours of the hills that lay in the distance beyond the seclusion of the park.

“Oh!” cried the Baroness as they stood admiring the new pergola in
the rosarium. “Oh, how pretty! It might have been set up for a bride.” She smiled at Elisabeth, and the Baron smiled too, but in their eyes could be read their fear of the ineluctable menace, their helplessness, their fore-knowledge of a coming infidelity and treachery which nevertheless they forgave in advance, for they too had sinned. How terrible it was that the mere thought of her future marriage should seem already to oppress her parents. And Elisabeth put all thoughts of marriage completely out of her mind, so completely indeed that it almost seemed to her that she could listen without compunction to her parents when, as a sort of concession to her presumable destiny to fall in love and at the same time as a sort of act of recognition which raised her to their own level, giving her almost the status of a sister, they talked of a possible match. Perhaps that was why, when her mother pressed a tender kiss on her cheek, Elisabeth could not help thinking of her Aunt Brigitte’s wedding day, could not help feeling that this kiss too was a kiss of farewell: for just so had her mother kissed Aunt Brigitte, kissed her with tears, with tears although she had declared that she was very happy and was delighted with her new young brother-in-law. But of course that was all long past now; it was childish to muse on it, and going between her parents Elisabeth put her arms round their shoulders and walked with them to the pergola, where they sat down. The rose-beds, threaded with narrow, symmetrically winding paths, blazed with all their hues and were full of fragrance, yet all the shadows were not yet dispersed, and the Baron said, pointing sadly towards one bed: “I’ve tried to set some Manettis there, but I’m afraid our climate is too rough for them,” and as if he wished to bribe his daughter with the promise, he added: “but if it succeeds and they grow all right, then they’ll belong to Elisabeth.” Elisabeth felt the pressure of his hand, and it was almost like an intimation that there was something that could never be clutched firmly enough, something that might almost be time itself, something compressed and twisted like a watch-spring and that was threatening to uncoil, to wind out between their fingers, becoming longer and longer, an alarming, long, thin white band which presently would begin to creep, seeking to twine round her like an evil snake, until she became fat and old and hideous. Perhaps her mother too was feeling this, for she said: “When the child leaves us one day we’ll sit out here by ourselves.” And, conscious of her guilt, Elisabeth said: “But I’m going to stay with you always,” said it with a feeling of shame, for she did not
believe it herself, and yet it sounded like the renewal of an old vow. “In any case, I can’t see why she shouldn’t stay here with her husband when that happens,” the Baroness went on. But her father warded the subject off: “It’s a long time still before that can happen.” And Elisabeth could not help once more thinking of Aunt Brigitte, who passed her days in Würbendorf, and had grown fat, and squabbled with her children, and had now so little in common with the beloved figure of former days that one could not imagine she had ever existed and was almost ashamed of the happiness that she had once given one. And yet Würbendorf was a gayer and friendlier place than Stolpin, and everybody had been delighted to get a new young relation in Uncle Albert. It may have been that it was not really Aunt Brigitte whom she had loved so much, and that it was simply the admission of a new relation into the circle that had roused such exciting and dear emotions. For if one were related to everybody the world would be like a well-kept park, and to acquire a new relation would be like planting a new variety of rose in the garden. Infidelity and treachery would then turn to lighter offences; she had surely divined that already at the time when she had been so glad about Uncle Albert; and in the ocean of injustice surrounding them it was perhaps on this little islet of forgiveness that her parents now sought refuge when they spoke of her possible marriage as of an auspicious fate. But the Baroness had not yet given up her idea; and as life consists of compromises she said: “Besides, our little house in the west end will always be ready for them.” But Elisabeth’s hand still lay in her father’s and felt its pressure, and Elisabeth would not hear of compromise. “No; I’ll stay with you,” she repeated almost defiantly, and she remembered how bitterly she had resented as a child being banished from her parents’ bedroom and not being allowed to watch over their breathing; still, though the Baroness had always had a weakness for talking about death, which she said often came upon people in their sleep, and though she had alarmed Elisabeth and her husband with such sayings, yet there had been the morning’s joyful surprise that the night had not parted them for ever, a surprise which grew into a daily renewed wild longing that they should take one another by the hand and hold on so fast that they could never be torn asunder. So they sat now in the pergola, which was filled with the roses’ scent; Elisabeth’s little dog came scampering up and greeted her as though he had found her for eternity, and put his paws on her knees. The stems of the rose-trees stood up stiff and
hard against the green wall of the garden and the clear blue sky. Never would she be able to greet a stranger, no matter how nearly related he was to her, with the same intense joy in the morning; never would she think of his birthday with such passionate and almost pious devotion as of that of her father; never would she surround him with that incomprehensible and yet sublime anxiety which was love. And having recognized this she now smiled affectionately at her parents and stroked the head of her little dog Bello, which with apprehensively loving eyes gazed up devotedly at her.

Later she began to feel bored, and the faint feeling of resistance too returned once more. Then it was not unpleasant to think of Joachim, and she remembered his slim figure as he had stood bowing slightly, in his long angular officer’s coat, on the platform. But his image got strangely and inextricably entangled with that of her young Aunt Brigitte, and by this time she could not make out whether it was Joachim who was going to marry Brigitte, or she herself who was going to wed the young Uncle Albert of her childhood. And although she knew that love was not what it was represented to be in operas and romances, yet this much was certain, that she could think of Joachim without apprehension; indeed, even when she tried to picture to herself that the departing train might have caught his sword and flung him under the wheels, the picture filled her with horror certainly, but not with that sweet sorrow and dread, that trembling anxiety, which bound her to the lives of her parents. When she recognized this it was as though she had renounced something, and yet there was a sort of melancholy relief in it. Nevertheless she resolved to ask Joachim some time what was his birthday.