Fear (7 page)

“Do you think it’s … it’s always just fear that … that keeps people from speaking out? Couldn’t it be … well, couldn’t it be shame? Suppose they’re ashamed to talk about it and expose themselves in front of so many people?”

He looked up in surprise. He was not used to getting answers from her. But the word she had used evidently fascinated him.

“Shame, you say … well, shame is only a kind of fear, but a better one, a fear not of the punishment but … yes. Yes, I see what you mean.”

He had risen to his feet, strangely agitated, and was walking up and down. The idea seemed to have struck a chord, bringing something in him to vigorous life. He suddenly stopped.

“I’ll admit, yes, shame in front of other people, strangers … the hoi polloi who devour other people’s troubles in newspaper stories like a sandwich … but for that very reason they could at least tell those who are close to them. Do you remember that arsonist, the one I was defending last year? The one who took such a curious liking to me? He told me everything, little stories about his childhood, incidents even more intimate than that. You see, he had certainly committed the crime, and he was found guilty, but he wouldn’t confess it even to me. That was because he was afraid I might give him away. It wasn’t shame, because he trusted me … I think I was the only person for whom he’d ever felt anything like friendship in his life. So it wasn’t a sense of shame in front of strangers … what would that mean when he knew he could trust me?”

“Perhaps—” She had to turn away because he was looking at her so intently, and she heard a tremor in his voice. “Perhaps you’d feel most ashamed with … with those you’re closest to.”

He stopped suddenly, as if a powerful idea had seized on him.

“Then you think … you think …” And suddenly his voice changed, became soft and low. “You think little Helene might have confessed more easily to someone else? The governess, perhaps. You think she …”

“I’m sure of it. She put up such resistance to you only because … well, what you think matters more than anything to her. Because … because she loves you best.”

He stopped again.

“You … you may be right. Yes, I’m sure you are. How strange that I never thought of that before … yet it’s so simple. Yes, I may have been too hard on her. You know me—I don’t mean it like that. But I’ll go in and see her now … and of course she can go to the party, I only wanted to punish her for her defiance, her resistance and … well, I suppose for not trusting me. But you’re quite right, I don’t want you to think I can’t forgive … Irene, I wouldn’t like you, of all people, to think such a thing.”

He was looking at her, and she felt herself blushing under his gaze. Was he saying these things on purpose, or was it coincidence, a dangerous, insidious coincidence? She still felt so dreadfully undecided.

“Well, the sentence is quashed.” A certain
cheerfulness
seemed to come back into his voice. “Helene is free to go to the party, and I’ll tell her so myself. Are you satisfied with me now? Or is there anything else you want? You … you see … you see I’m in a magnanimous mood today … maybe because I’m glad to have seen an injustice in time. That always brings relief, Irene, always …”

She thought she understood what the emphasis in his words meant. Instinctively she moved closer to him, she already felt the words rising in her, and he too stepped forwards as if he was in haste to take from her whatever so obviously troubled her. Then she met his eyes, and saw in them an eager desire for her confession, for some part of herself, a burning impatience, and all at once everything she had been feeling collapsed. Her hand fell wearily to her side, and she turned away. It was useless, she felt, she would never be able to say the one thing that would set her free, the one thing that was burning inside her and consuming her peace of mind. She sensed a warning in the air, like thunder coming closer, but she knew she could not escape. And in the secret depths of her heart she longed, now, for what she had feared so long, the lightning flash of discovery that would come as a release.

Her wish was to be granted sooner than she guessed. The struggle had been going on for fourteen days now, and Irene felt she had exhausted her strength. It was four days since she had heard from the woman, and fear had lodged so deep in her body, was so much at one with her blood, that she started up abruptly whenever the doorbell rang so that she would be in
time to intercept the next blackmail letter herself. There was impatience, almost even longing in her avid expectation, for with every payment she bought an evening of peace, a few hours with the children, a walk. For an evening, for a day she could breathe easily, go out into the street, visit friends. Although to be sure sleep, in its wisdom, would not let such a poor sort of comfort blind her deceitfully to certain knowledge of the danger always close at hand. Her sleep brought dreams of fear to consume her by night.

Once again, she had run to answer the door when the bell rang, even though she realised that her restless desire to get there ahead of the servants was bound to be noticed, and could easily arouse hostile suspicions. But while sober circumspection might put up little acts of resistance, it weakened when, at the sound of the telephone ringing, a step in the street behind her, or the summons of the doorbell her whole body was on the alert, as if it had felt the lash of a whip. And now the sound of the bell had brought her out of her room and running to the door again. She opened it only to find herself looking in surprise, for a moment, at a strange lady. Then, retreating in alarm, she recognised the hated face of the blackmailer, who was wearing a new outfit and an elegant hat.

“Why, if it ain’t you in person, Frau Wagner. I’m ever so glad. I got something important to say to
you.” And without waiting for any answer from the terrified Irene, who was supporting herself with one trembling hand on the door handle, she marched in, put down her sunshade—a sunshade of a glaring, bright-red hue, obviously bought with the fruits of her blackmailing raids. She was moving with great assurance, as if she were in her own home, looking around with pleasure, as if with a sense of reassurance, at the handsome furnishings. She walked on, uninvited, to the door of the drawing room, which was half-open. “This way, right?” she asked with some derision, and when the alarmed Irene, still incapable of saying anything, tried to deter her, she added reassuringly: “We can get this settled good and quick if you’d like to see me out of here.”

Irene followed her without protest. The mere idea that her blackmailer was here, in her own apartment, paralysed her. It was an audacity going beyond her worst expectations. She felt as if she must be dreaming the whole thing.

“Ooh, nice place you got here, very nice,” said the woman, admiring her surroundings with obvious satisfaction as she lowered herself into a chair. “Ever so cosy, this is. Look at all them pictures, too. Well, you can see what a poor way the likes of us live. Now you got a nice life here, Frau Wagner, a real nice life.”

And now at last, as she saw the criminal female so much at ease in her own drawing room, the tormented Irene’s fury burst out.

“What do you think you’re doing, you blackmailer? Following me into my own home! But I’m not letting you torture me to death. I’m going to …!”

“Now, now, I wouldn’t speak so loud, not if I was you,” the other woman answered, with insulting familiarity. “That door’s not closed, the servants can hear. Well, that’s no skin off of my nose. I’m not denying nothing, Lord save us, no, after all, I can’t be no worse off in jail than now, not with the sort of miserable life I lead. But you, Frau Wagner, you want to go a bit more
careful-like.
I’ll close that door right now if you really want to let off steam. Tell you what, though, might as well tell you straight out, shouting all them bad words won’t get you nowhere with me.”

Irene’s resolve, steeled for a moment by anger, collapsed helplessly again in the face of the woman’s implacability. Like a child waiting to hear what it must do, she stood there uneasily, almost humbly.

“Well then, Frau Wagner, I won’t beat about the bush. I’m in a bad way, like I told you before, you know that by now. So I need cash down. I been in debt a long time, and there’s other stuff as well. That’s why I come here to get you to help me out with—well, let’s say four hundred crowns.”

“But I can’t,” Irene stammered, horrified by the sum of money, which indeed she did not have in the apartment in ready cash. “I really don’t have that much any more. I’ve already given you three hundred crowns this month. Where do you think I’d get the money?”

“Oh, you’ll do it and no mistake, just you think how. A rich lady like you, why, you can get all the money you want. But you got to do it, see? So think it over, Frau Wagner, why don’t you? You’ll do it all right.”

“I really don’t have it. I’d be happy to give it to you, but I truly can’t get hold of such a large sum of money. I could give you something … maybe a hundred crowns …”

“Like I said, four hundred, that’s what I need.” She spoke brusquely, as if insulted by the suggestion.

“But I just don’t have it!” cried the desperate Irene. Suppose her husband were to come in now, she thought fleetingly, he could come home at any moment. “I swear I don’t have it.”

“Then you better make sure you do.”

“I can’t.”

The woman looked her up and down as if assessing her value.

“Well, let’s see … f ’rinstance, that ring there. Suppose you was to pawn that, it’d fetch a tidy sum. Not that I know that much about joolery, never had none meself … but I reckon you’d get four hundred crowns for it.”

“My ring!” cried Irene. It was her engagement ring, the only one that she never took off, a setting of a beautiful precious stone that made it very valuable.

“Go on, why not? I’ll send you the pawnshop ticket, you can get it back any time you like. I’m not planning to redeem it and keep it, not me. What’d a poor girl like me do with a posh ring like that?”

“Why are you persecuting me? Why do you torment me? I can’t … I can’t. Surely you must understand that. I’ve done all I could, you can see I have. Oh, surely you must understand! Take pity on me!”

“Nobody never took no pity on me. I could’ve starved to death for all anyone cared. Why’d I have pity on a rich lady like you?”

Irene was about to return a forceful answer, but then—and her blood ran cold—she heard the latch of the front door fall into place. It must be her husband coming home from his chambers. Without stopping to think, she snatched the ring from her finger and handed it to the woman waiting there, who swiftly pocketed it.

“Don’t you worry, I’ll be off now,” nodded the woman, perceiving the unspeakable fear in her face and the close attention she was paying to the front hall, where a man’s footsteps were clearly audible. She opened the
drawing-room
door, and in passing wished good day to Irene’s husband as he came in. He glanced at her for a moment, but did not seem to pay her much attention as she left.

“A lady coming to ask about something,” explained Irene, with the last of her strength, as soon as the door had closed behind the woman. The worst moment was over. Her husband did not reply, but calmly went into the dining room, where the table was already laid for lunch.

Irene could almost feel the air burning the place on her finger that was usually enclosed by the cool circle of her ring. It was as if the bare skin were the mark of a brand that would inevitably attract all eyes. She hid her hand again and again during the meal, and as she did so she was plagued by a curious feeling, the result of nervous strain, that her husband’s glance kept going to that hand, following it in all its wanderings. With all her might, she tried to distract his attention and keep a conversation going by asking constant questions. She talked and talked, to him, to the children, to the governess, again and again she rekindled the conversation with the little flames of her inquiries, but her breath kept running out, it was stifled, it failed her. She did her best to seem in high spirits and persuade the others to be cheerful, she teased the children, egging them on to argue with each other, but they neither argued nor laughed. Even she felt that her cheerfulness must be striking a false note, and it subconsciously alienated them. The harder she tried, the less successful her efforts were. Finally she fell silent, exhausted.

The others were silent too. All she heard was the faint clatter of plates, and inside her the rising voices of her fear. Then, all of a sudden, her husband said: “Where’s your ring today, Irene?”

She started nervously. Deep inside her something said a single phrase. All over! But still she instinctively put up a defence. Summon up all your strength, she told herself. Just for one more sentence, one more word. Find one more lie, a final lie.

“I … I took it to be cleaned.”

And as if the lie itself had strengthened her, she added firmly: “I’m getting it back the day after tomorrow.” The day after tomorrow. Now she was bound to her word. The lie would surely collapse, and she with it, if she did not succeed in redeeming the ring. She had set the time limit herself, and all of a sudden a new feeling was added to her confused fears, a kind of happiness to know that the moment of decision was so close. The day after tomorrow. Now she knew how much time she had left, and she felt a curious calm born of that certainty mingling with her fear. Something rose in her, a new strength. The power to live and the power to die.

The knowledge that, at last, her decision was certainly so close began to bring unexpected clarity to her
mind. As if miraculously, her nervous stress gave way to logical thought, her fear to a crystal-clear calm suddenly enabling her to see everything in her life as if it were transparent, and to value it at its true worth. She weighed up her life as a whole and felt that it was still a heavy weight, but that if she could only hold on to it in the new, intensified, more elevated frame of mind that these days of fear had shown her, if she could begin it again from the beginning, pure and sure and straightforward, she was ready to do so. But to live the life of a divorced woman, an adulteress, stained by scandal—no, she was too tired for that, and too tired to continue the dangerous game of buying respite for a limited period. Resistance, she felt, was unthinkable now. The end was near; she might be given away by her husband, her children, by everything around her, and indeed by herself. Flight from an apparently omnipresent adversary was impossible. And confession, the one thing that could surely help her, was out of the question; she knew that by now. There was only one path still open to her, but it was a path from which there was no return.