Letter From an Unknown Woman and Other Stories (8 page)

“What’s the matter, Bob? You look so pale,” says a voice suddenly. It is little Elisabeth, Margot’s sister. There is a soft, warm light in her eyes, but he does not notice it. He feels rather as if he were caught in some disreputable act, and says angrily, “Leave me alone, will you? You and your damned concern for me!” Then he regrets it, because the colour drains out of Elisabeth’s own face, she turns away and says, with a hint of tears in her voice, “How oddly you’re behaving today.” Everyone is looking at him with disapproval, almost menacingly, and he himself feels that he is in the wrong. But then, before he can apologize, a hard voice, bright and sharp as the blade of a knife, Margot’s voice, speaks across the table. “If you ask me, Bob is behaving very badly for his age. We’re wrong to treat him as a gentleman or even an adult.” This from Margot, Margot who gave him her lips only last night! He feels everything going round in circles, there is a mist before his eyes. Rage seizes him. “You of all people should know!” he says in an unpleasant tone of voice, and gets up from the table. His movement was so abrupt that his chair falls over behind him, but he does not turn back.

And yet, senseless as it seems even to him, that evening he is down in the garden again, praying to God that she may come. Perhaps all that had been nothing but pretence and waywardness—no, he wouldn’t ask her any more questions or be angry with her, if only she would come, if only he could feel once again the bitter desire of those soft, moist lips against his mouth, sealing all its questions. The hours seem to have gone to sleep; night, an apathetic,
limp animal, lies in front of the castle; time drags out to an insane length. The faintly buzzing grass around him seems to be animated by mocking voices; the twigs and branches gently moving, playing with their shadows and the faint glow of evening light, are like mocking hands. All sounds are confused and strange, they irritate him more painfully than silence. Once a dog begins barking out in the countryside, and once a shooting star crosses the sky and falls somewhere behind the castle. The night seems brighter and brighter, the shadows of the trees above the garden path darker and darker, and those soft sounds are more and more confused. Drifting clouds envelop the sky in sombre, melancholy darkness. This loneliness falls on his burning heart.

The boy walks up and down, more and more vigorously, faster and faster. Sometimes he angrily strikes a tree, or rubs a piece of its bark in his fingers, rubbing so furiously that they bleed. No, she is not going to come, he knew it all along, but he doesn’t want to believe it because then she will never come again, never. It is the bitterest moment of his life. And he is still so youthfully passionate that he flings himself down hard in the damp moss, digging his hands into the earth, tears on his cheeks, sobbing softly and bitterly as he never wept as a child, and as he will never be able to weep again.

Then a faint cracking sound in the undergrowth suddenly rouses him from his despair. And as he leaps up, blindly holding out his searching hands, he finds that he is holding—and how wonderful is its sudden, warm impact on
his breast—he is holding the body of which he dreamt so wildly in his arms again. A sob breaks from his throat, his whole being is dissolved in a vast convulsion, and he holds her tall, curving body so masterfully to his that a moan comes from those strange, silent lips. As he feels her groan, held in his power, he knows for the first time that he has mastered her and is not, as he was yesterday and the day before, the prey of her moods; a desire overcomes him to torment her for the torment he has felt for what seems like a hundred hours, to chastise her for her defiance, for those scornful words this evening in front of the others, for the mendacious game she is playing. Hatred is so inextricably intertwined with his burning desire that their embrace is more of a battle than a loving encounter. He catches hold of her slim wrists so that her whole breathless body writhes, trembling, and then holds her so stormily against him again that she cannot move, only groan quietly again and again, whether in pleasure or pain he does not know. But he cannot get a word out of her. Now, when he forces his lips on hers, sucking at them to stifle that faint moaning, he feels something warm and wet on them, blood, blood running where her teeth have bitten so hard into his lips. And so he torments her until he suddenly feels his strength flagging, and the hot wave of desire rises in him, and now they are both gasping, breast to breast. Flames have fallen overnight, stars seem to flicker in front of his eyes,
everything
is crazy, his thoughts circle more wildly, and all of it has only one name: Margot. Muted, but from the depths of his heart, he finally, in a burning torrent, gets out her
name in mingled rejoicing and despair, expressing longing, hatred, anger and love at the same time. It comes out in a single cry filled with his three days of torment: Margot, Margot. And to his ears, all the music in the world lies in those two syllables.

A shock passes through his body. All at once the fervour of their embrace dies down, a brief, wild thrust, a sob, weeping comes from her throat, and again there is fire in her movements, but only to tear herself away as if from a touch she hates. Surprised, he tries to hold her, but she struggles with him; as she bends her face close he feels tears of anger running down her cheeks, and her slender body writhes like a snake. Suddenly, with an embittered movement of violence, she throws him off and runs. Her white dress shows among the trees, and is then drowned in darkness.

So there he stands, alone again, shocked and confused as he was the first time, when warmth and passion suddenly fell into his arms. The stars gleam with moisture before his eyes, and his blood thrusts sharp sparks into his brow from within. What has happened? He makes his way through the row of trees, growing less densely here, and farther into the garden, where he knows the little fountain will be playing. He lets its water soothe his hand, white, silvery water that murmurs softly to him and shines beautifully in the reflection of the moon as it slowly emerges from the clouds again. And then, now that he sees more clearly, wild grief comes over him as if the mild wind had blown it down out of the trees. His warm tears rise, and now he
feels, more strongly and clearly than in those moments of their convulsive embrace, how much he loves Margot. Everything that went before has fallen away from him, the shuddering frenzy of possession, his anger at her withholding of her secret; love in all its fullness, sweetly melancholy, surrounds him, a love almost without longing; but it is overpowering.

Why did he torment her like that? Hasn’t she shown him incredible generosity on these three nights, hasn’t his life suddenly emerged from a gloomy twilight into a sparkling, dangerously bright light since she taught him tenderness and the wild ardour of love? And then she left him, in tears of anger! A soft, irresistible wish for reconciliation wells up in him, for a mild, calm word, a wish to hold her quiet in his arms, asking nothing, and tell her how grateful he is to her. Yes, he will go to her in all humility and tell her how purely he loves her, saying he will never mention her name again or force an answer out of her that she does not want to give.

The silvery water flows softly, and he thinks of her tears. Perhaps she is all alone in her room now, he thinks, with only this whispering night to listen to her, a night that listens to all and consoles no one. This night when he is both far from her and near her, without seeing a glimmer of her hair, hearing a word in her voice half lost on the wind, and yet he is caught inextricably, his soul in hers—this night becomes unbearable agony to him. And his longing to be near her, even lying outside her door like a dog or standing as a beggar below her window, is irresistible.

As he hesitantly steals out of the darkness of the trees, he sees that there is still light in her window on the first floor. It is a faint light; its yellow shimmering scarcely even illuminates the leaves of the spreading sycamore tree that is trying to knock on the window with its branches as if they were hands, stretching them out, then withdrawing them again in the gentle breeze, a dark, gigantic eavesdropper outside the small, shining pane. The idea that Margot is awake behind the shining glass, perhaps still shedding tears or thinking about him, upsets the boy so much that he has to lean against the tree to keep himself from swaying.

He stares up as if spellbound. The white curtains waft restlessly out, playing in the light wind, seeming now deep gold in the radiance of the warm lamplight, now silvery when they blow forward into the shaft of moonlight that seeps, flickering, through the leaves. And the window, opening inward, mirrors the play of light and shade as a loosely strung tissue of light reflections. But to the fevered boy now staring up out of the shadows, hot-eyed, dark runes telling a tale seem to be written there on a blank surface. The flowing shadows, the silvery gleam that passes over that black surface like faint smoke—these fleeting perceptions fill his imagination with trembling images. He sees Margot, tall and beautiful, her hair—oh, that wild, blonde hair—flowing loose, his own restlessness in her blood, pacing up and down her room, sees her feverish in her sultry passion, sobbing with rage. As if through glass, he now sees, through the high walls, the smallest of her movements when she raises her hands or sinks into an
armchair, and her silent, desperate staring at the starlit sky. He even thinks, when the pane lights up for a moment, that he sees her face anxiously bend to look down into the slumbering garden, looking for him. And then his wild emotion gets the better of him; keeping his voice low, and yet urgent, he calls up her name: Margot! Margot!

Wasn’t that something scurrying over the blank surface like a veil, white and fast? He thinks he saw it clearly. He strains his ears, but nothing is moving. The soft breath of the drowsy trees and the silken whispering in the grass swell, carried on the gentle wind, now farther away, now louder again, a warm wave gently dying down. The night is peaceful, the window is silent, a silver frame round a darkened picture. Didn’t she hear him? Or doesn’t she want to hear him any more? That trembling glow around the window confuses him. His heart beats hard, expressing the longing in his breast, beats against the bark of the tree, and the bark itself seems to tremble at such passion. All he knows is that he must see her now, must speak to her now, even if he were to call her name so loud that people came to see what was going on, and others woke from sleep. He feels that something must happen at this point, the most senseless of ideas seems to him desirable, just as everything is easily achieved in a dream. Now that his glance moves up to the window again, he suddenly sees the tree leaning against it reach out a branch like a signpost, and his hand clings harder to its trunk. Suddenly it is all clear to him: he must climb up there—the trunk is broad, but feels soft and silken—and once up the tree he will call to her just
outside her window. Close to her up there, he will talk to her, and he won’t come down again until she has forgiven him. He does not stop to think for a second, he sees only the window, enticing him, gleaming faintly, and feels that the tree is on his side, sturdy and broad enough to take his weight. With a couple of quick movements he swings himself up, and already his hands are holding a branch. He energetically hauls his body after them, and now he is high in the tree, almost at the top of the leaf canopy swaying beneath him as it might do in alarm. The rustling sound of the leaves ripples on to the last of them, and the branch bends closer to the window as if to warn the unsuspecting girl. Now the boy, as he climbs, can see the white ceiling of her room, and in the middle of it, sparkling gold, the circle of light cast by the lamp. And he knows, trembling slightly with excitement, that in a moment he will see Margot herself, weeping or still sobbing or in the naked desire of her body. His arms slacken, but he catches himself again. Slowly, he makes his way along the branch turned to her window; his knees are bleeding a little, there is a cut on his hand, but he climbs on, and is now almost within the light from the window. A broad tangle of leaves still conceals the view, the final scene he longs so much to see, and the ray of light is already falling on him as he bends forward, trembling—and his body rocks, he loses his balance and falls tumbling to the ground.

He hits the grass with a soft, hollow impact, like a heavy fruit falling. Up in the castle, a figure leans out of the window, looking around uneasily, but nothing moves in the
darkness, which is still as a millpond that has swallowed up a drowning man. Soon the light at the window goes out and the garden is left to itself again, in the uncertain twilight gleam above the silent shadows.

After a few minutes the fallen figure wakes to consciousness. His eyes stare up for a second to where a pale sky with a few wandering stars in it looks coldly down on him. But then he feels a sudden piercing, agonizing pain in his right foot, a pain that almost makes him scream at the first movement he attempts. Suddenly he knows what has happened to him. He also knows that he can’t stay lying here under Margot’s window, he can’t call for help to anyone, must not raise his voice or make much noise as he moves. Blood is running from his forehead; he must have hit a stone or a piece of wood on the turf, but he wipes it away with his hand to keep it from running into his eyes. Then, curled on his left side, he tries slowly working his way forward by ramming his hands into the earth. Every time something touches or merely jars his broken leg, pain flares up, and he is afraid of losing consciousness again. But he drags himself slowly on. It takes him almost half an hour to reach the steps, and his arms already feel weak. Cold sweat mingles on his brow with the sticky blood still oozing out. The last and worst of it is still to come: he must get to the top of the steps, and he works his way very slowly up them, in agony. When he is right at the top, reaching for the balustrade, his breath rattles in his throat. He drags himself a little farther, to the door into the room where the gentlemen play cards, and where he can hear voices
and see a light. He hauls himself up by the handle, and suddenly, as if flung in, he falls into the brightly lit room as the door gives way.