Five Women (7 page)

This fever was like a plain of burning grass, smouldering on day after day, week after week. Daily the sick man dwindled, being consumed in his own fire, but the evil humours also seemed to be gradually consumed by it. More than this even the famous physician could not say, and only the lady from Portugal knew secret signs that she chalked on his door and the bedposts. When, one day, there was almost nothing left of Herr von Ketten, only something like a shape filled with soft, hot ash, suddenly the fever diminished—remaining a mere faint glimmer under the ashes.

If it was strange to suffer pain against which one did not fight, what followed now was something that the sick man did not experience like someone who was himself in the midst of it. He slept a great deal, and was absent even when his eyes were open. But when his consciousness returned, this body without any will of its own, this body as warm and helpless as an infant's, was not his at all, and neither was this weak soul that the faintest breath of air could agitate. Surely he had already died and was all this time merely waiting somewhere, as though he might have to come back again. He had never known that dying was so peaceful. Part of his being had gone ahead into death, separating and scattering like a cavalcade of travellers. While the bones were still lying in bed, and the bed was there, his wife bending over him, and he, out of curiosity, for the sake of some diversion, was watching the changing expressions in her attentive face, everything he loved had already gone a long way ahead. Herr von Ketten and his moon-lady, his nocturnal enchantress, had issued forth from him and softly withdrawn to a distance : he could still see them, he knew that by taking a few great leaps he could still catch up with them, only he no longer knew whether he was already there with them or still here. Yet all this lay in some immense and kindly hand that was as benign as a cradle and which nevertheless weighed all things as in scales, imperturbable, unconcerned as to the outcome. Doubtless that was God. But even though he did not doubt it, it did not stir him either. He was waiting for whatever was to come, not even responding to the smile that hovered above him, and those caressing words.

Then the day came when all at once he knew this would be his last if he did not gather up all his will-power in order to remain alive. And it was on the evening of this day that the fever ceased.

When he felt this first stage of returning health like solid ground beneath him, he began to have himself carried out every day to the little green patch of ground on the rocky bluff that jutted, unwalled, above the precipice. Wrapped in blankets, he would lie there in the sun—now dozing, now waking, never sure whether he was asleep or awake.

Once, when he woke, the wolf was there. Gazing into thosebevelled eyes, he could not stir. He did not know how much time passed—and then his wife was there beside him, the wolf at her knee. He closed his eyes again, pretending he had not been awake at all. But when he was carried back to his bed, he asked for his crossbow. He was so weak that he could not draw it, and this amazed him. Beckoning to the servant, he bade him take the crossbow. "The wolf," he said. The man hesitated. But Herr von Ketten raged like a child, and that evening the wolf's pelt hung in the castle yard. When the Portuguese lady saw it and learnt only then, from the serving-men, what had happened, her blood froze. She went to his bedside. There he lay, pale as the wall behind him, and for the first time he looked her straight in the eyes again. She laughed and said: "I shall have a hood made of the pelt, and come by night and suck the blood from your veins."

Then he wanted to send away the chaplain, who once had said: "The Bishop can pray to God, and that is a threat to you"—and who had later, time after time, given him Extreme Unction. But this he could not do at once, for the Portuguese lady exerted herself on his behalf, begging him to have patience with the chaplain a short while longer, until he found another place. Herr von Ketten yielded. He was still weak and still spent much time drowsing in the sun, on the patch of grass.

Once—another time when he woke—there was the friend of her youth. He was standing beside the lady from Portugal, having come from her native country, and here in the North he seemed to resemble her. He saluted Herr von Ketten with a nobleman's courtesy, uttering words that, judging by his look and gestures, must have been all grace and cordiality. And the lord of Ketten lay in the grass like a dog, filled with shame.

Unless, indeed, that was not until the second time—for his mind sometimes wandered even now. It was a long time too before he noticed that his cap had become too big for him. The soft fur cap that had always sat so firmly on his head now, at a light touch, slipped down to where his ears stopped it from going further. The three of them were together, and his wife said: "Dear heaven! Your head has shrunk!"

His first thought was that he must have let his hair be cropped too short, though at the moment he could not remember when. Furtively he passed his hand over his head. But his hair was longer than it should have been, and matted since he had been ill. Then the cap must have stretched, he told himself. But it was still almost new—and how should it have stretched, lying unused in a chest? So he made a jest of the matter, remarking that in all the years when he had been living among men-at-arms, instead of with courtly cavaliers, his head might well have shrunk. He felt how awkwardly the jest came from his lips, and it did not even remove the question—can a skull become smaller? The strength in the veins may grow less, the fat beneath the scalp may melt away in fever : but what does that amount to? Now at times he would make a gesture as of smoothing his hair, or pretend to be wiping away sweat, or he would try to lean back into the shade unobtrusively and then, swiftly, using two fingertips as if they were a mason's compass, would measure his skull, placing his fingers now this way, now that. But no doubt remained: his head had become smaller, and if he fingered it from within, with his thoughts, it was even smaller, like two small thin shells fitted together.

There are, of course, many things that one cannot account for, but one does not carry them on one's own shoulders, feeling them every time one turns one's neck towards two people who are talking while one seems to be asleep. Although he had long forgotten all but a few words of that foreign language, once he caught the sentence: "You do not do what you would, and you do what you would not."

The tone seemed to be urgent rather than jesting—what could it mean?

Another time he leaned far out of the window, right into the rushing sound of the torrent; he now did this often, as a sort of game: the noise, as confused as wildly whirling hay, closed the ears, and when he returned out of that deafness, his wife's conversation with the other man suddenly stood out clearly, very small and far away. And it was an eager conversation. Their souls seemed to be in harmony with each other.

The third time it was simply that he followed the other two when they went out into the courtyard again in the evening. When they passed the torch at the top of the outside steps, their shadows must fall across the tops of the trees. He bent forward swiftly when this happened, but among the leaves the shadows all blurred into one.

At any other time he would have tried to drive the poison out of his body by calling for his horse and his men, or would have tried to burn it out in wine. But the chaplain and the scrivener gobbled and drank till the wine and food dribbled out of the corners of their mouths, and the young knight would clink the canikin with them, laughing like one setting two dogs at each other. Ketten felt a disgust for the wine that was swilled by these two clerks, mere oafs under their veneer of scholasticism. They would argue about the Millennium, and about learned doctoral questions, and would talk bawdy, now in German, now in Church Latin. A journeying humanist would translate whatever was needed to complement this gibberish and that of the Portuguese; he had sprained his ankle and had every intention of staying on until it was thoroughly strong again.

"He fell off his horse when a rabbit ran by," the scrivener said banteringly.

"He took it for a dragon," Herr von Ketten said with sullen mockery, standing nearby, unsure of himself.

"But then so did the horse!" the castle chaplain bellowed. "Else it would not have shied. And thus the magister understands better than the lord what comes from the horse's mouth!"

The drunken company guffawed at the lord's expense. Herr von Ketten looked at them hard, took a step towards them, and struck the chaplain in the face. He was a plump young peasant, and he turned very red, then deadly pale, but he remained seated. The young knight rose, smiling, and went in search of his friend, the lady of the castle.

"Why did you not stab him to the heart?" the rabbit-humanist hissed when they were alone.

"He is strong as two bulls," the chaplain answered, "and, moreover, Christian teachings are truly of such a nature as to afford consolation in such circumstances."

But the truth was that Herr von Ketten was still very weak, and his life was returning to him all too slowly. He could not reach the second stage of recovery.

The visitor did not resume his travels, and the mistress of the castle failed to understand her lord's hints. For eleven years she had been waiting for her husband, for eleven years years he had been her far-off beloved in an aura of fame and glory, and now he went about castle and courtyard, wasted and worn by illness, looking commonplace enough beside the other's youth and courtly grace. She did not give it much thought, but she was a little weary of this country that had promised things beyond the power of words to tell, and she could not bring herself, just because of a cross face, to send away her childhood friend, who had brought back to her the very fragrance of her homeland and thoughts that one could think with laughter. She had nothing to reproach herself with. She had been a shade more superficial during these last weeks, but that was pleasant, and she could now sometimes feel her face lighting up as it had done years before.

A soothsaying woman, whom he consulted, prophesied to Herr von Ketten : "You will be cured only when you accomplish a task." But when he pressed her to tell him what task, she fell silent, tried to slip away, and finally declared that that was hidden from her.

He could easily have put a quick, painless end to this visit, for the sanctity of life and the sacred laws of hospitality are of little account to one who has spent years as an unbidden guest among his enemies. But in his enfeebled convalescent state he was almost proud of being clumsy, and any cunning solution seemed to him as unworthy as the young man's frivolous readiness of tongue. Strange things happened to him. Through the mists of weakness that enveloped him his wife's ways seemed to him tenderer than they need be; it reminded him of earlier days, when sometimes, returning home to her love, he had wondered at finding it more intense than at other times. For his absence alone could not, he thought, be the cause. He could not even have said whether he was glad or sorry. It was just as in the days when he had lain so close to death. He could not make any move. When he gazed into his wife's eyes, they were like new-cut glass, and although what the surface showed him was his own reflection, he could not penetrate further. It seemed to him that only a miracle could change this situation. And one cannot make destiny speak when it chooses to be silent. One must simply harken for whatever is on its way.

One day when a company of them came up the mountainside together, they found the little cat at the gate. It was standing outside the gate as though it did not want to jump, cat-fashion, over the wall, but to enter as human beings did. It arched its back in welcome and rubbed itself against the skirts and boots of the towering beings who were strangely surprised by its presence. They let it in, and it was like receiving a guest. The very next day it was apparent that what they had opened the gate to was no mere kitten that had come to stay; it was almost as though they had adopted a small child. The dainty little creature's tastes were not for the delights of cellar and attic. It would not leave the human beings' company for a single moment. And it had a way of making them give up their time to it, which was all the less comprehensible in that there were so many other and grander animals at the castle, and the human beings also had their own affairs to occupy them. The fascination seemed positively to originate in their having to keep their eyes lowered, watching the little creature, for it was very unobtrusive in its ways and just a shade quieter, one might almost have said sadder and more meditative, than seemed appropriate to a kitten. It romped in the way it knew human beings expect a kitten to romp; it climbed on to their laps and was, it seemed, studiously charming to them, and yet one could feel that it was also somehow absent. And precisely this—this absence of whatever would have made it into an ordinary kitten—was like a second presence, a hovering double, perhaps, or a faint halo surrounding it. Not that any of them had the hardihood to put this into words. The lady from Portugal bent tenderly over the little creature lying on its back in her lap, in its childlike way beating its tiny paws at her playful fingers. Her young friend, laughing, bent low over too—over the kitten, over her lap. And this casual frolicking reminded Herr von Ketten of his illness, now nearly gone, as though the illness and its deathly gentleness had been transformed into that little animal's body and so were no longer merely within him, but there in the midst of them all. A serving-man said: "That cat is getting the mange."

Herr von Ketten was astonished that he had not noticed this himself. The serving-man spoke again: "It will have to be done away with before long."

Meanwhile, the kitten had been given a name taken from one of the fairy-tale books. It had become gentler and more sweet-natured than ever. Soon everyone began to see that it was ill and growing almost luminously weak. It spent more and more time resting in someone's lap, resting from the affairs of the world, its little claws clutching tight in mingled affection and anxiety. And now too it began to look at them, one after the other: at pale Ketten and at the young Portuguese sitting bent forward, his eyes intent on it or perhaps on the breathing movement of the lap where it lay. It looked at them all as though asking forgiveness for the ugliness of what it was about to suffer—in some myterious way for all of them. And then its martyrdom began.