Night Games: And Other Stories and Novellas (31 page)

And then Hugo begins to speak again. With soft, tender words, in
which he avoids mentioning the name of the deceased, he asks about her
illness, about her death. And Richard replies. At first he is surprised that
he can do this, that he finds the repugnant and commonplace words for
all the sorrow of the last days. And now and then he steals a glance at his
friend's face, which looks pale, with trembling lips.

As Richard pauses, the other shakes his head as though he has heard
something incomprehensible, something altogether impossible. Then he
says: "It was terrible for me not to be able to be with you today. It was as
though fated."

Richard looks at him questioningly.

On that very same day ... in that very hour, we were out on the
ocean ...

"Yes, yes ..."

"There is no such thing as premonition! We were sailing, and the
wind was good and we were so happy ... horrible, horrible!"

Richard remains silent.

"You're not going to stay here alone now, are you?"

Richard looks up. "Why?"

"No, no, you can't."

"Where should I go then'? ... I hope you'll stay with me a while?". . . And the fear that Hugo will leave again without knowing
that he knows what has happened overwhelms him.

"No," answers his friend, "I'm taking you with me; you're coming
along with me."

"Me, with you?"

"Yes ..." And he says it with a tender smile.

"Where do you want to go?"

"Back!"

"To the North Sea?"

"Yes, and with you. It will do you good. I'm not going to let you
stay here alone, no!" . . . and he pulls Richard toward him as if to embrace him.... "You must come to us!"

"To us?"

"Yes."

"What does that mean, `to us'? Aren't you alone?"

Hugo smiles embarrassedly: "Certainly, I'm alone...."

"You said, `to us.'"

Hugo hesitates a while. Then he says, "I didn't want to tell you right
away."

"What?"

"Life is so strange-you see, I've gotten engaged...."

Richard looks at him rigidly....

"That's why I said `to us' . . . that's why I'm going back to the
North Sea, and you should come with me ... yes?" And he looks at him
with innocent eyes.

Richard smiles. "Dangerous climate on the North Sea."

"What do you mean?"

"So quickly, so quickly!" . . . and he shakes his head.

"No, my friend," the other answers. "It's not so quickly at all. Actually, it's an old affair."

Richard is still smiling. "What? ... an old affair?"

"Yes."

"You've known your fiancee for a while?" .. .

"Yes, since last winter."

"And you love her? ..."

"Ever since I met her," answers Hugo and stares out into space, as
though retrieving fond memories.

Then Richard stands up suddenly, with such a brusque movement
that Hugo starts and looks up at him. And then Hugo sees two large, alien
eyes peering at him, and sees a pale, trembling face that he can scarcely
recognize looming over him. And as he gets up fearfully, he hears, as if
from an alien, distant voice, curt words hissed between Richard's teeth:
"I know about it." And he feels himself seized by both hands and
dragged over to the piano so violently that the candelabrum shakes on its
pedestal. And then Richard lets go of his arms and digs underneath the
letters lying on the black piano top with both hands, rummages through
them, and lets them fly all over...

"You bastard!" he screams, and throws the pages in his face.

SOMEONE WAS KNOCKING at the door, very softly, but the doctor
awakened immediately, turned on the light, and got out of bed. He
glanced at his wife, who was still sleeping quietly, put on his robe, and
went out into the hall. He didn't immediately recognize the old woman
who was standing there with a grey scarf around her head.

"Our master is feeling very ill," she said. "Would the doctor be so
kind as to come right away?"

The doctor recognized the voice. It was his bachelor friend's housekeeper. The doctor's first thought was: my friend is fifty-five, he's already had heart trouble for two years; it could be something really
serious.

He said, "I'll come immediately. Do you want to wait?"

"Please excuse me, Doctor, but I have to go to two other gentlemen
right away." And she named the businessman and the writer.

"Why are you going to them?"

"My master wants to see them once more."

"Once-more-see them?"

"Yes, Doctor."

He's asking for his friends, thought the doctor; he must feel he's
near death.... And he said, "Is anyone with your master?"

The old woman replied, "Of course, Doctor. Johann won't leave his
side." And she left.

The doctor returned to the bedroom, and while he dressed himself
as quickly and as quietly as possible, a bitterness crept into his heart. It was not so much pain at the thought that he might soon lose one of his
good old friends, as the painful feeling that they were all now at this
stage, all of them, who were still young just a few years ago.

The doctor drove in an open carriage through the warm, heavy
spring night into the nearby suburb where the bachelor lived. He looked
up to the wide-open window from which a dim gleam of light flickered
out into the night.

The doctor went up the stairs; a servant opened the door and greeted
him with a serious expression, letting his left hand fall sadly.

"What is it?" the doctor asked, catching his breath. "Am I too late?"

"Yes, Doctor," answered the servant, "our master died a quarter of
an hour ago."

The doctor took a deep breath and went into the room. His dead
friend was lying there with narrow, bluish, half-opened lips, his arms
stretched over the white comforter; his thin beard was disheveled, and a
few strands of his grey hair had fallen onto his pale and moist forehead.
The silk shade of the lamp on his night table cast a reddish shadow over
the pillows. The doctor looked at the dead man. When was he last at our
house? he asked himself. I remember it snowed that evening. So it must
have been the past winter. We didn't see each other very much lately.

The noise of horse's hoofs came from outdoors. The doctor moved
away from the body and saw thin branches waving in the night air across
the street.

The servant entered, and the doctor asked him how it had all happened.

The servant told the doctor the familiar story of sudden nausea, difficulty in breathing, jumping out of bed, pacing back and forth in the
room, running to the desk and unsteadily returning to the bed, of thirst
and moaning, of a last sudden sitting up in bed and a collapse into the pillows. The doctor nodded and rested his right hand on the dead man's
forehead.

He heard a carriage pull up. The doctor stepped over to the window.
He saw the businessman get out and look up at him questioningly. The
doctor instinctively dropped his hand just as the servant who received
him had done. The businessman threw his head back as though he didn't want to believe it; the doctor shrugged his shoulders, left the window,
and, suddenly exhausted, sat down in a chair at the foot of the dead man.

The businessman entered in an open yellow overcoat, put his hat
down on a small table near the door, and shook hands with the doctor.
"This is horrible," he said. "How did it happen?" And he stared at the
dead man with suspicious eyes.

The doctor told what he knew and added, "Even if I had come in
time, I couldn't have helped him."

"Just think," the businessman said, "only a week ago today I spoke
to him at the theatre. I was going to have dinner with him afterward, but
he had one of his mysterious assignations again."

"Did he still have those?" asked the doctor with a melancholy
smile.

Another carriage pulled up. The businessman stepped over to the
window. When he saw the writer get out, he drew back because he didn't
want to be the one to reveal the unhappy news even through a gesture.
The doctor had taken a cigarette from his cigarette case and was idly
twirling it around. "It's a habit from my hospital residency," he remarked
apologetically. "The first thing I used to do after leaving a sick bed at
night was to light a cigarette, whether I had just given a morphine injection or had examined a dead body."

"Do you know how long it's been since I've seen a dead body?"
asked the businessman. "Fourteen years-since the time my father was
lying on the stretcher."

"And-your wife?"

"I did see my wife in her last moments, but-not later."

The writer appeared and shook hands with the others while casting
an uncertain glance in the direction of the bed. Finally he stepped closer
and looked earnestly at the body, though not without a contemptuous
twitch of his lips. So it was he, he thought, since he had often toyed with
the question of which of his closest friends would be fated to be the first
to go.

The housekeeper entered. With tears in her eyes she sank in front of
the bed, sobbed, and folded her hands. The writer put his hand on her
shoulder lightly and comfortingly.

The businessman and the doctor stood at the window feeling the
dark spring air on their foreheads.

"It's really strange," began the businessman, "that he sent for all of
us. Did he want to see us assembled around his deathbed? Did he want to
tell us something important?"

"As far as I'm concerned," said the doctor, with a pained smile, "it's
not so strange, since I'm a doctor, after all. And you," he turned to the
businessman, "were at times his business adviser. Perhaps he wanted to
inform you in person of some last-minute arrangements."

"That could be," said the businessman.

The housekeeper had left the room, and the friends could hear her
talking with the servant in the hallway. The writer was still standing at
the bed and conducting a dialogue with the dead man. "He," the businessman said to the doctor in a low voice, "he, I believe, was more often
with him lately. Maybe he can give us an explanation."

The writer was standing motionless; his eyes were boring into the
dead man's closed eyes. He had crossed his hands, in which he was holding his broad-brimmed grey hat, behind his back. The other two men became impatient. The businessman stepped closer and cleared his throat.
"Three days ago," the writer told him, "I went for a two-hour walk with
him in the vineyards. Do you know what he talked about? About a trip to
Sweden that he had planned for the summer, about a new folder of Rembrandt prints that were just published in London by Watson, and finally
about Santos Dumont. He explained all sorts of mathematical and physical details of hot-air balloons, which, to tell the truth, I didn't quite
understand. Certainly he wasn't thinking about death. Of course, it's possible that at a certain age one stops thinking about death."

The doctor had gone into the adjoining room. It would be all right
to light his cigarette here. It gave him a start, almost scared him, to see a
bit of white ash in the bronze ashtray on the desk. Why am I still here? he
wondered, as he sat down on the armchair in front of the desk. Of us
three I have the most right to leave since evidently I was called only in
my capacity as a doctor. We weren't such good friends after all. At my
age, he continued thinking, it's probably not really possible to be friends
with someone who has no career, who never had a career. If he had not been rich, what would he have done? He would probably have taken up
writing, since he was very witty. And he remembered many of the bachelor's hostile witticisms, in particular those about the work of their common friend, the writer.

The writer and the businessman entered. The writer made an injured
face when he saw the doctor sitting in the now orphaned desk chair with
an unlit cigarette in his hand, and closed the door behind him. Now they
found themselves more or less in another world.

"Do you have any inkling?" asked the businessman.