Rosshalde (14 page)

Leaning back in the deep chair, he followed his thoughts. The sun shone yellow and warm on his knees, but very gradually his happiness left him. He felt that his thoughts were coming closer and closer to that horrid thing, and he felt that as soon as he found it, it would have power over him again; it was standing behind him, waiting. Whenever his memory approached that dividing line, a feeling of nausea and dizziness rose up in him, and his head began to ache.

The carnations bothered him with their overpowering smell. They were lying on the sunny wicker table and fading; if he wanted to give them to his father, now was the time. But he no longer felt like it, or, rather, he felt like it but he was so tired and the light hurt his eyes. And most of all, he had to think and remember what had happened yesterday. He felt that he was very close to it, that his thoughts had only to reach out for it, but each time it vanished and was gone.

His headache got worse. Oh, why did it have to be? He had been so happy today.

Frau Adele called his name from the doorway and a moment later she came out. She saw the flowers lying in the sun and was going to send Pierre for water, but then she looked at him and saw him slumped down in the chair with great tears on his cheeks.

“Pierre, child, what's the matter? Aren't you feeling well?”

He looked at her without moving and closed his eyes again.

“Answer me, angel, what's the matter? Do you want to go to bed? Shall we play a game? Are you in pain?”

He shook his head and made an unfriendly face, as though she were molesting him.

“Leave me alone,” he whispered.

And when she straightened him up and threw her arms around him, he flared up for a moment as if in anger and screamed in an unnaturally high voice: “Oh, leave me alone!”

An instant later his resistance ceased, he sank down in her arms, and when she picked him up, he moaned feebly, let his pale face droop forward, and writhed in a fit of vomiting.

Chapter Thirteen

S
INCE VERAGUTH HAD BEEN LIVING ALONE
in the new wing of his studio, his wife had never been to see him there. When she rushed into the studio without knocking, he was immediately prepared for bad news. So sure was the warning of his instinct that before she could say a word, he blurted out: “Is there something wrong with Pierre?”

She nodded hurriedly. “He must be seriously ill. He was acting very strangely, and now he has vomited again. You must go for the doctor.”

As she spoke, her eyes darted through the large room and came to rest on the new painting. She did not see the figures, she did not even recognize little Pierre, she only stared at the canvas and breathed in the air of this place where her husband had been living all these years. Dimly she sensed an atmosphere of loneliness and defiant self-sufficiency not unlike that in which she herself had been living so long. The impression of a moment, then she turned away from the painting and tried to answer her husband's headlong questions.

“Phone for the motorcar,” he said at length. “That will be quicker than the carriage. I'll go to town myself, just let me wash my hands. I'll be right over. You've put him to bed?”

Fifteen minutes later he was in town, looking for the only doctor he knew, who had made one or two calls at the house some years before. Veraguth went to the doctor's old address but found that he had moved. On his way to the new address, he passed the doctor's carriage, the doctor greeted him, he replied, and had already passed before it came to him that this was the man he was looking for. He turned around and found the doctor's carriage drawn up outside a patient's house. After an exasperatingly long wait, he caught the doctor in the doorway and made him get into the motorcar. The doctor objected and resisted, Veraguth almost had to use force.

In the motorcar, which started for Rosshalde at top speed, the doctor laid his hand on his knee and said: “Very well, I'm your prisoner. Others who need me will have to wait, you know that. Now tell me what the trouble is. Is your wife ill? —No? —The little boy then? What's his name again? Ah yes, Pierre. I haven't seen him in a long time. What's wrong? Has he had an accident?”

“He's sick, it started yesterday. This morning he seemed to be all right again, he was up and ate a little. But just now he started vomiting again and he seems to be in pain.”

The doctor passed his thin hand over his ugly-intelligent face. “Must be his stomach. We'll see. Is everything else all right? I saw your show in Munich last winter. We're proud of you, my friend.”

He looked at his watch. They were both silent as the gears were shifted for the grade and the chugging of the engine grew louder. They soon arrived and left the motorcar at the gate, which was not open.

The doctor bade the chauffeur to wait for him. Then they quickly crossed the yard and entered the house. Frau Adele was sitting at Pierre's bedside.

Now, all at once, the doctor had plenty of time. He examined the child without haste, tried to make him talk, found words of kindly reassurance for the mother, and quietly created an atmosphere of businesslike confidence, which also had a soothing effect on Veraguth.

Pierre was uncooperative, silent, unfriendly, and distrustful. When the doctor palpated and pressed his abdomen, he made a scornful grimace, as though finding all this silly and useless.

“Poisoning seems excluded,” said the doctor with deliberation, “and there's nothing wrong with his appendix. It's probably a plain spoiled stomach, and the best thing for that is to wait and see. No food. Don't give him anything today but a little tea if he's thirsty; this evening he can have a sip of Bordeaux. If he's better, give him tea and zwieback for breakfast. If he has pain, you can phone me.”

Only when they left the room did Frau Veraguth begin to ask questions. But she obtained no further information.

“His stomach seems to be quite upset and the child is obviously sensitive and nervous. No trace of fever. You can take his temperature this evening. His pulse is a little weak. If he's not better, I'll come again tomorrow. I don't think it's anything serious.”

He quickly said goodbye and was very much in a hurry again. Veraguth accompanied him to the motorcar.

“Can it last long?” he asked at the last moment.

The doctor gave a harsh laugh.

“I shouldn't have expected you to be such a worrier. The child is rather delicate and we all of us had plenty of spoiled stomachs as children. Good morning!”

Veraguth knew that he was not needed in the house and sauntered thoughtfully off into the fields. The doctor's succinct, austere manner had set his mind at rest, and now he was surprised that he should have been so agitated and fearful.

With a sense of relief, he strode along, drawing in the warm air of the deep-blue morning. It seemed to him that this was his farewell walk through these meadows and rows of fruit trees, and he felt passably happy and free at the thought. He wondered what had given him this new feeling that a decision had been made and a solution arrived at, and soon realized that it stemmed from his talk with Frau Adele that morning. That he had told her of his travel plans, that she had listened so calmly and made no attempt at resistance, that he had blocked off all possible loopholes and evasions between his decision and its execution, and that the immediate future now lay plain and clear before him—all this was a comfort to him, a source of peace and new self-confidence.

Without knowing where he was going, he had turned into the path he had taken a few weeks before with his friend Burkhardt. Only when the path began to climb did he notice where he was and remember his walk with Otto. He had intended in the autumn to paint the copse on the far side of the hill, the bench and the mysterious light-dark passage leading through the trees into the clear bluish valley framed like a picture in the distance; he had meant to seat Pierre on the bench, his bright boyish face resting softly in the subdued brown light of the forest.

Eagerly looking about him, he climbed, no longer aware of the noonday heat, and as he awaited the moment when he would see the edge of the woods over the crest of the hill, the day spent with Burkhardt came back to him, he remembered their conversation down to his friend's exact words and recalled the early summer green of the landscape, which had since then become much deeper and milder. He was overcome by a feeling he had not known in a long while and its unexpected recurrence reminded him sharply of his youth. For it seemed to him that since that walk in the woods with Otto a long long time had elapsed and that he himself had grown, had changed and gone forward to such a degree that he could not help looking back on himself as he was then with a certain ironic commiseration.

Surprised by this very youthful feeling, which twenty years earlier had been a part of his everyday life and now struck him as a rare enchantment, he looked back over the short summer and discovered something that had been unknown to him only yesterday. Recalling the days of two or three months past, he found himself transformed; today he found clarity and a feeling of certainty as to the road ahead, where only a short time ago there had been only darkness and perplexity. It was as though his life had become once more a limpid stream or river, driving resolutely in the direction assigned to it, whereas hitherto it had stagnated in the swampy lake of indecision. Now it became clear to him that his journey could not possibly lead him back here, that there was nothing more for him to do here than take his leave, perhaps with a bleeding heart, but no matter. His life was flowing again, driving resolutely toward freedom and the future. Though still unaware of it, he had inwardly renounced and cut himself off from the town and countryside, from Rosshalde and his wife.

He stopped still, breathing deeply, suffused and buoyed up by a wave of clarity. He thought of Pierre, and a keen wild pain pierced his whole being as the certainty came to him that he would have to travel this road to the end and part also with Pierre.

For a long while he stood there, his face twitching, and if what he felt was burning pain, still it was life and light, clarity and a sense of the future. This was what Otto Burkhardt had wanted of him. This was the hour for which his friend had been waiting. At last he had cut open the old abscesses he had so long feared to touch. A painful operation, bitterly painful, but now that he had abjured his cherished wishes, his unrest and disunity, the conflict and paralysis of his soul had died away with them. Daylight had risen around him, cruelly bright, beautiful, luminous daylight.

Deeply moved, he took the last steps to the hilltop and sat down on the shaded stone bench. A profound feeling of life poured through him as though his youth had returned, and in gratitude at his deliverance he thought of his distant friend, without whom he could never have found his way, without whom he would have perished in dull, sick captivity.

But it was not in his nature to meditate for long, or to sustain an extreme mood for long. Side by side with his feeling that he had recovered his health and his will, a new consciousness of energy and imperious personal power invaded his whole being.

He stood up, opened his eyes, and looked out avidly as though to take possession of his new picture. For a long while he peered through the forest shadow into the bright distant valley below. This was he wanted to paint, and he would not wait until fall. Here there was a challenging task, an enormous difficulty, a precious riddle to be solved: this wonderful passage through the woods had to be painted with love, with as much love and care as one of the fine old masters, an Altdorfer or a Dürer, would have put into it. Command of the light and its mystic rhythm would not be enough, every minute form would have to be given its full rights, to be as subtly appraised and modulated as the grasses in his mother's wonderful bouquets of wildflowers. The cool bright valley in the distance would have to be doubly thrust back, by the warm flowing light of the foreground and by the forest shade; it must be made to shine like a jewel from the depths of the picture, cool and sweet, strange and alluring.

He looked at his watch. It was time to go home. Today he did not wish to keep his wife waiting. But first he took out his little sketchbook and, standing in the noonday sun at the edge of the hill, he blocked in the picture with bold strokes, setting down the over-all perspective lines and the promising oval of the sparkling little scene in the distance.

Then he was late after all and, disregarding the heat, he ran down the steep sunny path. He thought of the painting materials he would need and decided to get up very early the next day in order to see the landscape in the first morning light. His heart rejoiced at the thought that once again a fine, challenging task awaited him.

“How is Pierre?” was his first question as he hurried into the house.

The child was tired and resting, Frau Adele answered; he seemed to have no pain and was lying patiently on his bed. She thought it best not to disturb him, he seemed strangely on edge, starting up whenever a door opened or there was any unexpected sound.

“Oh well,” he nodded in reply, “I'll drop in on him later, toward evening perhaps. Forgive me for being a little late, I've been out. I shall be painting in the open for the next few days.”

The luncheon was peaceful and quiet. Through the lowered blinds a green light filtered into the cool room, the windows were all open, and in the noonday silence the splashing of the little fountain in the yard could be heard.

“You'll be having to outfit yourself for India,” said Albert. “Are you taking hunting equipment?”

“I don't think so, Burkhardt has everything. He'll tell me what to take. I believe my painting materials will have to be packed in sealed lead boxes.”

“Will you wear a tropical helmet?”

“Of course. But I can buy one on the way.”

When the meal was over and Albert had left the table, Frau Adele asked her husband to stay awhile. She sat down in her wicker chair by the window and he moved an armchair over beside her.