The Sleepwalkers (24 page)

Into this establishment Joachim and Elisabeth strayed, accompanied by Elisabeth’s companion, when they were making purchases in the city for their house and the trousseau. For although they knew that Bertrand was still in Hamburg, and although they never mentioned his name again, the word India had a magic sound for them.

The wedding at Lestow was a quiet one. The condition of Joachim’s father had become stationary; he lay in a coma, no longer recognizing the outer world, and one had to be reconciled to this lasting for years. True, the Baroness said that a quiet, intimate ceremony would be far more to the taste of herself and her husband than noisy display, but Joachim already knew the importance which his parents-in-law attached to their family festivals, and he felt to blame for his father, who robbed the occasion of its splendour. And he himself would perhaps have preferred a great and brilliant social setting to emphasise the social character of this marriage, into which mere love entered so little; yet
on the other hand it seemed to him more in accordance with the gravity and Christian nature of the union that Elisabeth and he should approach the altar without any thought of the world. And so it was decided not to celebrate the marriage in Berlin, even although Lestow presented various difficulties not easy to overcome, more especially as Bertrand’s advice was no longer to be had. Joachim rejected the idea of leading his bride home for the wedding night: the idea of passing that night in the house of sickness filled him with repugnance, but still more impossible to him was the thought that Elisabeth should retire to rest under the eyes of the domestic staff who knew him so well; so he suggested that Elisabeth should spend the night at Lestow, and he would fetch her next day. Strangely enough this proposal encountered the opposition of the Baroness, who found such a solution unseemly: “Even if we closed our eyes to it, what would the servants think?” Finally it was decided to hold the ceremony at such an early hour that the young couple could catch the midday train. “Then you’ll be able to go straight to your own comfortable house in Berlin,” said the Baroness, but Joachim would not hear of that either. No, it was too far out, for they would be leaving Berlin again early in the morning, and probably they might even be able to take the night train to Munich without stopping. Yes, night travel was almost the simplest solution of the marriage problem, a safeguard against the fear that someone might smile understandingly when he and Elisabeth had to retire for the night. Yet presently he doubted whether they really could set out for Munich straight off; after the excitement of the day could one really expect Elisabeth to undertake a night journey? And how could their day in Munich, in perpetual expectation of what was to come, be put in? It was clear that one could not have discussed such matters even with Bertrand, one had to come to a decision oneself; all the same, several things would have been appreciably simpler if Bertrand had been at hand. He considered what Bertrand would have done in such circumstances, and came to the conclusion that there was no harm in his booking rooms in the Hotel Royal in Berlin; if Elisabeth should wish it, they could still take the night train. And he was honestly proud of having found this adroit solution by himself.

It had now become quite wintry, and the closed carriages in which they drove to the church advanced only by slow stages through the snow. Joachim was in the same carriage as his mother; she sat there,
broad and complacent, and Joachim felt irritated when she reiterated: “Father would have been delighted; well, it’s a great pity.” Yes, that was all that was needed to fill his cup; Joachim was exasperated—nobody would leave him in peace to gain that calm which was imperative at this solemn hour, doubly imperative for him to whom this marriage signified more than a Christian marriage, to whom it meant redemption from the pit and the mire and a heavenly assurance that he was entering the way of grace. In her wedding-robe Elisabeth looked more like a Madonna than ever, looked like Snow-white, and he could not help thinking of the legend of the bride who had fallen down dead before the altar because she suddenly recognized in her bridegroom an incarnation of the Devil. The thought would not leave him and took such complete possession of him that he heard neither the chant of the choir nor the pastor’s sermon: indeed he actually closed his ears to them out of a fear that he might be compelled to interrupt them and tell those people that a man unworthy, an outcast, stood before the altar, a man who desecrated the holy state of matrimony; and he started in terror when he had to pronounce the “Yes,” in terror too at the thought that the ceremony, which should have been for him the revelation of a new life, had come to an end so quickly and almost without his being aware of it. He found it actually comforting that Elisabeth should now be called, without really being, his wife, but the thought that this state would not last was appalling. During the drive back from the church he took her hand and said: “My wife,” and Elisabeth responded to his pressure. But then everything was drowned in the tumult of good wishes, the hurry of changing and setting out, so that only when they reached the station did they realize what had happened.

He turned away while Elisabeth climbed into the compartment, so as not again to fall a prey to impure thoughts. Now they were alone. Elisabeth leant back wearily in her corner and smiled faintly at him. “You’re tired, Elisabeth,” he said hopefully, glad that it was his privilege and his duty to protect her. “Yes, I’m tired, Joachim.” He did not dare, however, to suggest that they should stop at Berlin, fearing that she might interpret it as concupiscence. Her profile stood out sharply against the window, beyond which stretched the grey winter afternoon, and Joachim felt relieved that that oppressive and affrighting vision in which her face changed into a landscape remained absent. But while he was still regarding her he saw that the trunk, which had been placed
on the seat opposite, was outlined no less sharply against the grey sky, and he was overcome by the senselessly sharp fear that she might be a mere thing, a dead object, and not even a landscape. He got up hastily as though to do something to the trunk, but he merely opened it and took out the lunch-basket; it was a wedding present and a miniature miracle of elegance, suitable equally for train journeys and hunting expeditions: the ivory handles of the knives and forks were ornamented with decorative hunting scenes which were continued on the incised blades, and even the spirit-stove was not free from them; amid the ornamentation on each piece, however, one could recognize the intertwined arms of Elisabeth and Joachim. The centre space of the basket served as a receptacle for food and had been solicitously filled by the Baroness. Joachim pressed Elisabeth to eat, and as they had not been able to wait for the wedding lunch she gladly acceded. “Our first married meal,” said Joachim, and he poured the wine into the silver collapsible cups, and Elisabeth drank to him. In this way they passed the journey and Joachim was once more of the opinion that the train provided the best form of wedded life. He even began to understand Bertrand, who was at liberty to pass such a great part of his time in trains. “Shouldn’t we go straight through to Munich this evening?” he asked; but Elisabeth replied that she felt really fatigued and would rather break the journey. So he could not but divulge to her that he had already provided for her wish and booked rooms.

He was grateful to Elisabeth for the fact that she had not lost her composure, even if it was probably only an assumed composure; for she lingered out the hour for retiring and asked for supper, and they sat for a very long time in the dining-hall; the band which played for the diners’ entertainment had already put away their instruments, only a few guests were still left in the room, and grateful as any postponement of the hour was to Joachim, yet he felt again that cold, rarefied atmosphere diffusing itself through the room, that chill which on the evening of their betrothal had been like a dreadful foreboding of death. Perhaps even Elisabeth felt it, for she said that it was time now to retire.

So the moment had come. Elisabeth had parted from him with a friendly “Good-night, Joachim,” and now he walked up and down his room. Should he simply go to bed? He regarded the bed, on which the sheets were folded down. Yet he had taken an oath to watch before her door, to guard her heavenly dreams, that for ever on her silvery
cloud she might dream on; and now it had suddenly lost all sense and meaning, for everything seemed to point to the one conclusion, that he should make himself comfortable here. He glanced down at his clothes, and felt the long military coat as a protection; it was indecent for people to appear at weddings in frock-coats. All the same he must have a wash, and softly, as though he were committing an act of sacrilege, he pulled off his coat and poured water into the basin on the brown varnished washstand. How painful all this was, how senseless, unless it should be a link in the chain of trials laid on his shoulders; it would all have been easier if Elisabeth had locked the communicating door behind her, but out of consideration for him she had certainly not done that. Joachim vaguely remembered having been in the same position before, and now with crushing force came the memory of a locked door and a brown washstand under a gas-jet: dreadful because it was a memory of Ruzena, no less dreadful as raising the problem how, living with an angel, the thought of such a thing as a lavatory, no matter how discreetly it obtruded itself, was practically conceivable at all: in both cases a degradation of Elisabeth and a new trial. He had cleansed his face and hands gently and cautiously, so as to prevent the porcelain basin from making any sound against the marble top of the table, but now he was confronted with something quite inconceivable: for who could think of gargling in the immediate vicinity of Elisabeth? And yet he must immerse himself still more deeply in the purifying crystalline medium, must drown there, to walk forth from that utter purification as from baptism in Jordan. But how could even a bath help him here? Ruzena had recognized him for what he was and drawn the consequences. He slipped back hastily into his coat again, buttoned it up scrupulously, and walked up and down the room. There was no sound from the other room, and he felt that his presence must be an oppression to her. Why did she not scream at him to go away, as Ruzena had done behind the locked door? That time he had had the lavatory attendant at least to stand by him, but now he was alone and without support. All too prematurely he had rejected Bertrand and his easy assurance, and the fact that he had been capable of thinking it his duty to protect Elisabeth from Bertrand struck him now as hypocrisy. A terrible feeling of remorse came over him: it was not Elisabeth whom he had really wished to protect and save; he had merely hoped to save his own soul through her sacrifice. Was she kneeling on her knees in there praying that God might free her again from
the fetters which she had assumed out of pity? Was it not his duty to say to her that he gave her her freedom, this very night, that if she commanded him he would drive her at once to her house in the west end, to her beautiful new house which was waiting for her? In great agitation he knocked at the communicating door and wished immediately that he had not done so. She said softly: “Joachim,” and he turned the handle. She was lying in bed, a candle was burning on the commode. He remained at the door, almost as if he were standing at attention, and said hoarsely: “Elisabeth, I only wanted to tell you that I give you your freedom: I can’t think of your sacrificing yourself for me.” Elisabeth was astonished, but she felt relief that he did not accost her as a loving husband. “Do you think, Joachim, that I’ve sacrificed myself?” She smiled faintly. “Really you’ve thought of that a little too late.” “It isn’t too late yet; I thank God it isn’t too late.… I didn’t realize it until now.… Shall I drive you out to the west end?” Then Elisabeth could not help laughing: now, in the middle of the night! What would the people in the hotel think? “Why not just go to bed, Joachim. We can discuss all that in peace and quietness to-morrow. You must be tired too.” Joachim said like an obstinate child: “I’m not tired.” The flickering flame of the candle lighted up her pale face, which lay between her loosened hair on the snowy pillows. A peak of the bolster rose in the air like a nose, and its shadow on the wall was exactly the same shape as the shadow of Elisabeth’s nose. “Please, Elisabeth, smooth down the corner of that pillow, to the left of your head there,” he said from the door. “Why?” asked Elisabeth in surprise, putting up her hand towards it. “It casts such a horrible shadow,” said Joachim; meanwhile another peak of the bolster had risen, showing another nose on the wall. Joachim was irritated, he wanted to set this matter right himself and took a step into the room. “But, Joachim, what’s wrong with the shadows that they annoy you? Is it right now?” Joachim replied: “The shadow of your face on the wall is like a mountain range.” “But that’s nothing.” “I can’t stand it.” Elisabeth was a little afraid lest this should be the prelude to putting out the candle, but to her pleasant surprise Joachim said: “We must have two candles for you, then there won’t be any shadows and you’ll look like Snow-white.” And he actually went into his room and came back with the second lighted candle. “Oh, you’re joking, Joachim,” Elisabeth could not help saying, “where are you to put the second candle? There’s no place for
it on the wall. And besides, I would look like a corpse between two candles.” Joachim studied the position. Elisabeth was right, so he said: “May I set it on the commode?” “Of course you may …” she paused for a moment, and said hesitatingly and yet with a slight feeling of reassurance, “you’re my husband now.” He held his hand in front of the flame and carried the candle over to the commode, reflectively contemplated the two lights, and the quietness and semi-darkness of this wedding night striking him he said: “Three would be more cheerful,” as though with those words he were trying to excuse himself to Elisabeth and her parents for the quietness of the ceremony. She too gazed at the two candles; she had drawn the coverlet over her shoulders, and only her hand, caught at the wrist by a lace frill, hung languidly over the edge. Joachim was still thinking of the lack of display at their marriage; but he had held this hand in his in the carriage. He had become more composed, and had almost forgotten why he had come in here; now he remembered again and felt it his duty to repeat his offer: “So you don’t want to go to your house, Elisabeth?” “But you’re silly, Joachim; fancy my getting up now! I feel very comfortable here and you want to rout me out.” Joachim stood irresolutely beside the commode; suddenly he could not comprehend the way in which things changed their nature and vocation; a bed was a pleasant article of furniture for sleeping on, with Ruzena it was a coign of desire and inexpressible sweetness, and now it was a thing unapproachable, a something whose edge he scarcely dared to touch. Wood was wood and nothing more, but still one shrank from touching the wood of a coffin. “It’s so difficult, Elisabeth,” he said suddenly, “forgive me.” Yet he begged her forgiveness not merely, as she probably imagined, for expecting her to get up at that late hour, but because yet once more he had compared her with Ruzena, and—he admitted it to himself with horror—because he could almost have wished that Ruzena, and not she, were lying there. And he saw how deeply he was still stuck in the mire. “Forgive me,” he said again, and he knelt down so as to kiss a good-night on the white, blue-veined hand on the edge of the bed. She could not tell whether this might not mean the dreaded approach of intimacy, and remained silent. His mouth was pressed to her hand, and he became aware of his teeth, which were crushed against the inner side of his lips, as the frontier of the hard bony skull which was hidden beneath his own skull and was continued in the skeleton. He felt too the warm
breath in the cavity of his mouth, and the tongue embedded in the trough between his lower teeth, and he knew that now he must quickly remove all these, so that Elisabeth might not become inwardly aware of them. Yet he would not concede Ruzena this quick triumph, and so in silence he remained stubbornly on his knees beside the bed, until Elisabeth, as though to indicate that he should go, very gently pressed his hand. Perhaps he intentionally misunderstood this hint, for it gave him a remote memory of Ruzena’s caressing hands; so he did not free Elisabeth’s hand, although he was actually very impatient to leave the room. He waited for the miracle, the token of grace which God must grant him, and it was as though fear stood between the gates of grace. “Elisabeth, say something,” he begged, and Elisabeth replied very slowly, as though the words were not her own: “We aren’t strange enough, and we aren’t intimate enough.” Joachim said: “Elisabeth, do you want to leave me?” Elisabeth answered gently: “No, Joachim, I think we’ll go the same road together now. Don’t be unhappy, Joachim, it will all turn out for the best yet.” Yes, Joachim would have liked to answer, and that’s what Bertrand said too; but he was silent, not merely because it would have been unseemly to suggest such a thing, but because in her mouth Bertrand’s words were like a Mephistophelian sign from the demon and the Evil One, instead of the sign from God that he had expected and hoped for and prayed for. For a moment Bertrand’s image was faintly visible as at the bottom of a brown box, visible and yet hidden, and it was the Devil incarnate whose face and form threw the shadow of a mountain range upon the wall. And immovable and frozen as it was when it appeared, and swiftly, as at the tinkling of a bell, as it vanished again, yet it was a warning that the Evil One was not yet overcome, and that Elisabeth herself was still in his power, seeing that with her own words she had called him up, and seeing that she had not succeeded in scaring away those phantoms and sick fancies with words from God. But even if this was disappointing, yet it was also good, filling him with a sense of the pathos of the earthly and the human and of human weakness. Elisabeth was his heavenly goal, but the way on earth to such a goal he had himself, in spite of his great weakness, to find out and prepare for both of them: and meanwhile where in this loneliness was a guide to be found to that knowledge? Where could he find help? Clausewitz’s aphorism came into his mind, that men act only from a divination and instinctive feeling of truth, and his heart was prescient with the knowledge that in a Christian household their
lives would be determined by the saving help of grace, guarding them so that they might not wander on the earth unenlightened, helpless and without meaning to their lives, and lose themselves in the void. No, that could not be called a mere convention of feeling. He straightened himself and ran his hand softly over the silk coverlet under which her body lay; he felt a little like a sick-room attendant, and distantly it was as though he were stroking his sick father, or his father’s deputy. “Poor little Elisabeth,” he said; it was the first endearment that he had ventured to utter. She had freed her hand, and now passed it over his hair: Ruzena had done that too, he thought. Nevertheless she said softly: “Joachim, we’re not intimate enough yet.” He had raised himself a little, and sat now on the edge of the bed and stroked her hair. Then with his head on his hand he contemplated her face, which still lay, pale and strange, not the face of a wife, not the face of his wife, on the pillow, and it so happened that gradually and without himself noticing it he found himself in a recumbent position beside her. She had moved a little to the side, and her hand, which with its befrilled wrist was all that emerged from the bedclothes, rested in his. Through his position his military coat had become disordered, the lapels falling apart left his black trousers visible, and when Joachim noticed this he hastily set things right again and covered the place. He had now drawn up his legs, and so as not to touch the sheets with his patent-leather shoes, he rested his feet in a rather constrained posture on the chair standing beside the bed. The candles flickered; first one went out, then the other. Now and then they heard muffled footsteps in the carpeted corridor, a door banged, and in the distance they could hear the sounds of the great city, whose gigantic traffic did not fully cease even at night. They lay motionless and gazed at the ceiling of the room, on which yellow strips of light from the slits of the window-blinds were pencilled, and they resembled a little the ribs of a skeleton. Then Joachim had fallen asleep, and when Elisabeth noticed it she could not help smiling. And then she too actually went to sleep.