Andreas (4 page)

Downstairs, her father was standing telling the foreman how to bring in the part of the aftergrowth which had dried first. She ran confidingly to him and leaned against him. Standing beside the great child, the handsome man might have been her betrothed.

Andreas went towards the stable as if he had important business there. The servant came hastily out of the gloom, nearly ran into him, cried “Hallo there!” as though he had not recognized his master, and at once talk spurted from his moist mouth. The maid—that was a fine girl for you, she was busy helping him to cure the horse. She didn’t come from here either: she came from the valley, and could do what she liked with the farmer folk. But the master needed no telling; he knew pretty well what he was about: he had got a young and pretty one. Well, well, that was the way in Carinthia—that was life! For by the time they were fifteen every maid had had her man, and the farmer’s daughter was just as willing to leave her door unbolted as the dairymaid, one today, another tomorrow, so that everybody got his chance. There was a fire in Andreas’s breast which leapt to his throat, but not a word left his mouth. He longed to strike the fellow across the mouth—why did he not do so? The other felt it, and recoiled half a pace. But Andreas’s mind was elsewhere. His eyeballs quivered.
He saw Romana sitting in the dark on her virgin bed, in her nightgown, her feet drawn up under her, watching the door. She had shown him her door and the empty room beside it, and it all rolled past his eyes like mountain mist. He did not want to pursue the thought—strove to turn away from it. Without more ado he turned his back on the wretch, who had won the day again.

At the evening meal Andreas felt as he had never felt in his life: everything had fallen apart—the shadows and the light, the faces and the hands. The farmer stretched out his hand towards him for the cider jug. Andreas was startled to the depths of his being, as if the hand of doom were groping for the veins of his heart. At the other end of the table the maid was cackling her “Mr Sergeant!” “Who should that be?” demanded Andreas angrily. His voice sounded so strange, like a dreamer talking in his sleep. From far away the servant stared at him, white and unkempt—sullen.

Later, Andreas was alone in his room. He was standing by the table fidgeting with his portmanteau—there was a tinder-box, but he needed no candle: the moon shone bright through the window, casting black shadows. He was listening to the noises in the house, he had taken off his riding-boots—he did not know what he was waiting for. And yet he knew, and
suddenly found himself standing out in the passage in front of a bedroom door. He held his breath. Two people, lying together in bed, were talking in a low, confiding tone. His senses quickened, he could hear the farmer’s wife plaiting her hair as she spoke, and the house-dog moving about in the yard eating something. “Who can be feeding the dog at this time of night?” something in him wondered, and at the same time it seemed to him as if he must return to his boyhood, when he still slept in the little room next to his parents and overheard them talking in the evening through the wardrobe in the wall. Even now he did not want to eavesdrop, yet he heard all the same, but through what he heard he could hear his parents talking—they were certainly older than the farmer and his wife, yet not much—ten years maybe. “Is that so much?” he thought; “are they so much nearer death—worn out? For every word they say could be left unspoken; one speaks, the other replies, and real life passes by. But those two in there are as confiding and warm-hearted as a newly married couple.”

Suddenly he started as if an icy drop had fallen straight on to his heart. They were speaking of him and the girl, but even that was harmless. Whatever the child might do, said the wife, she let her have her way, because the girl would never carry on
behind her back. She was too straightforward; she got that from him, for he had always been a fiery friend and a happy-natured man, and now, by God’s goodness, the girl had grown like that too. No, said the husband, she got that from her, because she was her mother’s child, and so there could be nothing deceitful or underhand in her.—But now here she was, nothing but an old woman, with a daughter already running after a strange man, and the time would soon come when he would be ashamed to treat her like a lover.—No, God save him, she was always the same to him—nay more, always dearer, and these eighteen years he had not rued it for one hour. No, nor had she, not for an hour. He was the only thing she cared for; and, his pleasant voice replied, he cared only for her and the children; they were one with her, those that were left, and the others too. And that old couple the Schwarzbach had swept away in the April floods might be counted happy. They had floated away on a bed together, holding each other’s hands, and the river had carried them down into the mill-race, and her white hair had shone like silver under the willows. And that was what God gave to His chosen. That was beyond wishing and praying for.

Meanwhile the room had grown quite still. There was the sound of gentle movement in the beds, and
he thought he heard the two kissing. He wanted to go away and did not dare, the silence was so perfect. It came heavily home to him that things had not been so beautiful between his parents—no such fond closeness between them, although each was proud of the other and although, in the face of the world, they stood firmly side by side, and jealously guarded each other’s honour and public respect. He could not get clear in his mind as to what his parents lacked. Then the two in the room began to say the Lord’s Prayer together, and Andreas stole away.

Now more than ever he felt drawn to Romana’s room, irresistibly, yet differently from before, everything stood out clear in black and white. He said to himself: one day this will be my house, my wife, then I shall lie beside her talking about our children. He was sure now that she was waiting for him, just as he was going to her, for many innocent, glowing embraces, and a secret betrothal.

With quick, sure steps he approached the door: it was ajar, and yielded noiselessly to his pressure. He felt that she was sitting awake in the dark, aglow with expectation. He was already in the middle of the room when he noticed that she did not move. Her breath came and went so soundlessly that he had to hold his own as he strained to listen, and could not tell whether she was awake or asleep. His shadow
lay as if rooted to the floor; in his impatience he all but whispered her name, to wake her with kisses if no answer came—then he felt as if a cold knife had pierced him. In another bed, over which a cupboard cast black shadow, another sleeper stirred, sighed, turned over. The head came near the moonlight—white-streaked hair. It was the old maidservant, the nurse. Then he had to go; between each step and the next, time stretched endlessly. Frustrated, as in a dream, he stole along the long moonlit corridor to his room.

He felt more at ease, more at home, than ever before in his life. He looked out over the back courtyard; the full moon was hanging over the stable, it was a glassy clear night. The dog was standing in the full moonlight, holding its head strangely, away to one side, and in this posture was turning round and round on itself. The creature seemed to be suffering horribly—perhaps it was old and very near death. Andreas was seized with dull pain; a sadness beyond all measure possessed him to see the animal suffering when he was so happy, as though the sight were a premonition of the approaching death of his father.

He left the window. He could think of his Romana again, but now more truly and solemnly, since he had just thought of his parents in the same way. He was soon undressed and in bed, and in his imagination
was writing to his parents. Thoughts poured in upon him, every argument that occurred to him was unanswerable, they had never had such a letter from him. They must feel that he was no longer a boy now, but a man. If he had been a daughter instead of a son—he began somewhat in this way—they would long ago have known the joy, while still hale, of embracing their grandchildren and seeing their children’s children growing up. Because of him they had had to wait too long for that joy; it was one of the purest joys of life, and in a way itself a renewal of life. His parents had never had much joy from him—the thought was as vivid as if they were dead, and he must lay himself upon them to warm them with his body. Now they had sent him on a costly journey to a foreign land. Why? To see foreign peoples, to observe foreign customs, to polish his manners. But all these things were means, means to one end. How much better it would be if this supreme end, which was nothing more nor less than his life’s happiness, could be reached by one sudden step! Now, by God’s sudden guidance, he had found the girl, the life-mate to make that happiness secure. From then on he had but one aim—by her side to content his parents by his own content.

The letter he wrote in his imagination far
surpassed
this poor abstract; the most moving words
came unsought, a chain of beautiful phrases formed of itself. He spoke of the fine estate of the Finazzer family, and of their ancient and noble descent, without boasting, but in a way which really pleased him. If he had a pen and ink-well at hand he would have jumped out of bed and had the letter written at a sitting. But then fatigue began to dissolve the beautiful chain, other visions thrust themselves between, and all brought horror and dread.

It might have been a little past midnight. He sank into one confused and ugly dream after another. All the humiliations he had ever suffered in his life, everything that had ever caused him pain and fear, came over him again. He had to relive all the troubled and false situations of his life as a child and boy. And Romana fled before him, strangely dressed, half peasant, half lady, barefoot under her black pleated brocade skirt, and it was in Vienna, in the crowded Spiegelgasse, quite close to his parents’ home. He had to follow her, in dread, and yet, in dread, conceal his hurried pursuit. She forced her way through the crowd, turned her face to him, and it was expressionless and distorted. As she sped on, her clothes were torn in disorder from her body. Suddenly she vanished in an entry, and he after her, as far as he could with his left foot, which dragged intolerably and kept catching between
the paving stones. Now at last he was in the entry, and here no horrible encounter was spared him. A look that he had feared more than any other as a boy, the look of his first catechist, shot through him, and the dreaded little podgy hand seized him. The loathsome face of a boy, who had told him on the backstairs in the twilight what he did not want to hear, was pressed close to his cheek, and as he struggled to push it away he saw lying in front of the door through which he had to follow Romana a creature which moved after him: it was the cat whose back he had once broken with a cart shaft, and which had taken so long to die. And so it was not dead, after all these years! Creeping like a snake with its broken back it came towards him, and panic seized him as it looked at him. There was no help for it. He had to step over it. With unspeakable torment he raised his left foot over the creature, whose back writhed up and down unceasingly—when the look of the cat’s upturned face struck him from below, the roundness of the cat’s face from a head at once cat and dog, filled with a horrible mixture of sensual gratification and death agony—he opened his mouth to scream—a scream issued from the house: he had to writhe his way through the wardrobe, which was full of his parents’ clothes. The screams from within grew more horrible, as though a living creature were
being butchered by a murderer. It was Romana, and he could not help her. There were too many
worn-out
clothes, the clothes of many years, which had not been given away. Dripping with sweat, he writhed his way through …

He was lying in bed, his heart pounding. It was already dawn, but not yet day. The house was astir, doors were banging, from the courtyard came a noise of hurrying steps and loud voices. Then the screaming began again which had torn his dreaming soul from the depths of his dream to the livid light. It was the piercing weeping and wailing of a woman’s voice—a shrill complaint ceaselessly rising and falling. Andreas leapt out of bed and dressed, but he felt like a condemned man awakened by the voice of the executioner: he was still too much in his dream—it was as if he had committed some dreadful deed, and now everything would come to light.

He ran downstairs in the direction of the voice ringing so dreadfully through the house. Thinking it might be Romana, his blood froze. Then he knew that no such sounds could issue from her though she was being roasted alive in martyrdom.

Downstairs, on the ground floor, a little passage leading sideways was full of farm-hands and maids staring in at the open door of a room. Andreas joined them and they made way for him. On the threshold of
the room he stopped. Smoke and a stench of burning rose towards him. A half-naked woman was tied to the bed-post, and from her mouth burst the ceaseless, piercing complaints or imprecations, such as the damned in hell might utter, which had penetrated to the depths of Andreas’s dream. The farmer was busying himself about the raving creature; his wife, half dressed, beside him; the steward was cutting with his pocket-knife the knotted rope which bound her ankles to the bed. The cords from her hands and a gag lay on the floor. The head maid was pouring water from a jug on to the smouldering mattress and the charred posts at the head of the bed, and stamping out the glowing sparks in the straw and twigs piled up beside the bed.

Then Andreas recognized in the screaming woman bound there the young maid who had been carrying on with his servant the day before, and a frightful foreboding made his blood run cold. The half-demented woman seemed to be calming down, reassured by the farmer and his wife. Twitching, she lay across the knees of the housekeeper, who wrapped her up in a horse-rug. She began to answer the farmer’s questions; her swollen face took on a human expression, but every answer turned to a soul-rending shriek, which forced its way from her distended mouth and rang though the house. Had
the man stunned her with a blow, or in some other way, and then gagged her? asked the farmer. What kind of poison had been mixed for the dog? Had a long or short time passed since she had contrived to tear the gag out of her mouth? But the woman could utter nothing except that she had screamed with horror for a just God to hear her: he had tied her up like that, had made up the fire under her very eyes, and bolted her in from the outside, had grinned in at her through the window and taunted her in her deadly fear. And all mixed with imploring prayers to forgive her her grievous sin. No name was spoken, but Andreas knew only too well whom they were speaking about. As though he had seen what he had come to see, he passed like a sleepwalker through the crowd of farm-hands and maids, who silently made way for him; behind them all, cowering in a doorway, stood Romana, half dressed, barefoot and trembling—almost as I saw her in my dream, something in him said. When she became aware of him her face took on an expression of boundless horror.