The Fiery Angel (6 page)

The host, taking us for rich people, invited us to dine at his table, or, as the French say, at the
table d’ hôte
, and he served us very diligently, especially praising some chicken fried in almond milk, and the good Rhinewine from Bacharach. But Renata, though present in body at our table, was far away in thought, and she hardly touched the dishes and took no part in conversation, though I made various efforts to blow the breath of life into her. I related of those wonders of the New World that I happened to have witnessed, of the steps in the temples of the Maya flanked by giant, hewn masks, of immeasurable cacti, in the trunks of which can stand a horse and rider, of the perilous hunt of the grey bear and the spotted ounce, and of my lone adventures, not forgetting to embellish my tales with quotations now from the opinions of a contemporary writer, now from the verses of a poet of antiquity. The host and his wife listened mouths agape, but Renata, suddenly, breaking into the middle of my speech, rose from the table and said:

“Are you not weary yourself, Rupprecht, of chattering of such trifles! Farewell.”

And without adding another word she turned and left, though this was rather impolite, as I think now. But at the time I only felt confusion, and fear lest she might be angry with me and, jumping up, I hurried after her.

In her room Renata silently seated herself in the corner on a chair, and there she remained, motionless and speechless. I, not daring now to open a conversation, timidly lowered myself on to the floor next to her. Thus we stayed in the solitary room, holding no speech, and from a distance we might have seemed some lifeless creation, carved by a skilled hand and made of painted wood. All the gayness, all the lack of ceremony with which we had conversed in the beech forest, had now evaporated, leaving the bottoms of our souls dry. I felt myself gradually lapsing into a condition of dumb helplessness, and it seemed to me as if I could now neither utter a word nor attempt a movement. Thus, probably, feel animals when they grow paralysed beneath the staring eye of the rattlesnake.

On my left through two large open windows could be seen the tiled roofs of the twisting streets of Düssel-dorf, and the belfry of the. church of Saint Lambert, triumphant above the house-tops. The bluish eve spread softly across these triangles and rectangles, breaking up the clearness of their lines and merging them into shapeless masses. And that same bluish evening flowed into the room and swathed us with the white sheets of a shroud. I watched, in the darkness, as brighter and brighter glittered the semi-circular earrings of Renata, and more and more distinct grew the outlines of her thin white hands, and now I could no longer turn away my glance. As all around had become enveloped in the silence of the night, it must be assumed that much time had elapsed, but we did not note its passage, nor hear its steps, nor know of it.

And now at last, with an effort of will as though I were taking a decision of greatest importance, committing some perilous deed, I tore my eyes away from Renata, tore my soul away from the silence, and spoke:

“Perhaps you are tired, noble lady, and wish to rest. I shall leave. …”

My voice seemed to me very unnatural, but the sounds broke that magic circle into which we had been bound. Renata lifted her immobile face; her lips parted, and when she uttered the words it was as if a dead woman spoke, by a miracle:

“No, Rupprecht, you must not go away. I cannot remain alone; I am in fear.”

Then, after a few moments of silence, as her thoughts slowly unrolled, she spoke again:

“But she said that we should ride on whither we were bound, for there awaits us the fulfilment of our desires. So, in Köln we shall meet Heinrich. That I knew even before she spoke, and the hag only read it in my thoughts.”

Daring sparkled up in me like a tiny flame from under the ashes, and I answered:

“Why should your Count Heinrich be in Köln if his lands are on the Danube?”

But Renata did not notice the barb concealed in my retort, and, catching only one expression she clutched at it feverishly.

In her turn she demanded:

“
My
Count Heinrich? How
mine
? Is not all that is mine at the same time also yours, Rupprecht? Is there between us a line, a boundary that divides your being from mine? Are we not one, and the ache of my heart does it not pierce your heart?”

I was struck by this speech as by a club, for though I was by then already completely subject to Renata’s charms, yet I had not imagined any relation such as her words assumed. I did not even find anything to reply, while she, leaning her pale face towards me and placing her soft hands on my shoulders, asked gently:

“Do you not love
him
, Rupprecht? Can one not love
him
? But he is of the Heavens above, he is but one.”

Once more I could not find an answer, and Renata quickly fell to her knees and drew me to stand close to her. Then, turning to the open window, to the brilliant, moonless stars, she began to speak in a voice meek, low, but clear, a sort of litany, to each prayer of which I had to intone a response, like a church choir.

Renata spoke:

“Give me to see once more his eyes, blue as the skies themselves, and his eyelashes sharp as needles!”

I had to intone:

“Give me to see!”

Renata spoke:

“Give me to hear his voice, sweet, like the bells of a tiny temple submerged beneath the waters!”

I had to intone:

“Give me to hear!”

Renata spoke:

“Give me to kiss his white hands, hands of mountain snow, and his lips, not vivid, but like rubies beneath a transparent bridal veil!”

I had to intone:

“Give me to kiss!”

Renata spoke:

“Give me to press my bared breasts to his breast, to feel how his heart slows, and then beats quickly, quickly, quickly!”

And I had to intone:

“Give me to press!”

Renata was tireless in the invention of more and more new praises for her litany, composing them like a monk his prayers, and surprising me with the elaborateness of her comparisons, like those of a meister in a contest of meistersingers. I had no power to resist the witchery of her appeals, and, deprived of will, I muttered the responses, that pierced my pride like thorns.

And then Renata, pressing herself against me, looking into my very eyes, asked me, seeking to torture herself with her questions:

“And tell me now, Rupprecht, is he not handsomer than all else? Is he not an angel? But I shall see him again? I shall caress him? And he me? If only once? Only once!”

And I answered in my despair:

“He is an angel. You will see him. You will caress him.”

The moon of yesterday rose into the skies and pointed the column of its light at Renata, and under the moonbeam the darkness of our room moved. The bluish light at once revived the previous night in my memory, and all that I had learned about Renata, and the resolves to which I had later pledged myself. With even measured tread like the march of well-drilled troops, there passed through my head such thoughts as these:

‘And what if this woman is once more mocking you? Yesterday she mocked, pretending the evil-doing of the Devil, and to-day she mocks, pretending the madness of sorrow. And in a few days, when you have been dropped like a fool, she will be making jest of you with another, and letting him make free with her, in the spirit of this morning.’

With these thoughts I became like a drunken man and, suddenly seizing Renata by the shoulders, I said to her, smiling:

“It is not fitting to give yourself to sorrow, pretty lady, shall we not turn now to a pastime gay and pleasant?”

Renata shrank back from me in fear, but I, bracing myself up with the thought that otherwise I might become ridiculous, drew her to me and bent over her, intending to kiss her.

Renata freed herself from my hands with the strength and agility of a forest cat and cried out to me:

“Rupprecht, the Devil inhabits you!”

But I replied to her:

“No devil is in me, but you think to play with me in vain, for I am not such a simpleton as you suppose!”

Again I seized her, and we began to wrestle, very hideously, and I gripped her fingers so strongly that they creaked, and she beat and scratched me furiously. At one time I had already felled her to the floor, feeling for her at that moment nothing but hatred, but she suddenly plunged her teeth into my hand and slipped out with a lizard-like twist. Then, sensing that I was the stronger, she bent all double, her head fell on her knees, and there happened to her that same fit of tears as yesterday. Seated thus on the floor—for I in confusion had let her drop—Renata wept in despair. Her hair fell around her face and her shoulders trembled pitifully.

At that moment an image rose in my imagination: a picture by the Florentine painter Sandro Filippepi, which I saw by chance at the house of some grandee in Rome. On the canvas was depicted a stone wall of crude blocks tightly wedged into one another; an arched entrance set in it was firmly barred by iron gates; and near it, on a ledge projecting forward, was seated an abandoned woman, dropping her head on her hands in the inconsolability of her sorrow. Her face was not visible—only her dark hair. Garments were strewn around. And nowhere was there anyone else.

This picture had made the strongest impression on me, I know not whether because the painter knew how to render in it emotion with an especial vividness, or because I saw it on a day when I myself had experienced a great sorrow—but never was I able to recall this work without my heart contracting painfully, and bitter grief rising in my throat. And when I saw Renata, seated in the same pose, dropping her head and weeping with the selfsame inconsolability—the two images, the one revealed to me in life and the other created by the painter, rose one upon the other before me, merged, and live till this day inseparable in my soul. Even then, the moment I pictured to myself Renata, once more lonely, abandoned, before the gates thus mercilessly closed upon her—inexhaustible sorrow flooded into my heart and, kneeling again, I tenderly moved Renata’s hands from her face and said to her, with a catch in my voice, but solemnly:

“Forgive me, noble lady. In truth the Demon possessed me and blinded my feelings. I swear to you by the salvation of my soul that nothing like this will ever happen again! Accept me once more as your true and humble servant, or as your elder and willing brother.”

Renata lifted her head and looked at me, at first like some small hunted beast when the hunter gives it its freedom, then trustingly and childlike, and she took my face affectionately between the palms of her hands and replied:

“Rupprecht, dearest Rupprecht! You must not be angry with me and ask of me what I cannot give. I gave all to my friend from Heaven, and for men I have left neither kisses nor words of passion. I am an emptied basket from which another has taken all the flowers and the fruit, but even empty you must carry it, for fate has bound us together and our fellowship was long ago inscribed in the Book of the All-knowing.”

Again I swore never to leave her, as one swears before an altar in the hour of betrothal, and my oath was honest, though later it once seemed to me as though I should break it.

Rising then from my knees, I said that I would take my leave, and would go into the other room we had engaged, so that Renata might rest alone freely. But she stopped me, saying:

“Rupprecht, without you I should be in fear;
they
would fall upon me again and torment me the whole night through. You must remain with me.”

Not ashamed, as children are not ashamed, Renata quickly took off her dress, then her footwear, and, nearly naked, she laid herself into bed, under the blue canopy, calling me to her, and I did not know how to refuse her. So, this second night of our acquaintance we passed under one coverlet, but remaining as strange to each other as though separated by iron bars. And when it happened that an understandable excitement again overcame my will, and, forgetting my oaths, I strove again for tenderness, Renata quietened me with sad and cold words, so passionless and thereby so cruel, that all the blood became numbed in me, and I fell on my face impotent, like a corpse.

A
LWAYS whenever possible I kept to the wise saying of the French:

Lever a six, diner a dix,

Souper a six, coucher a dix,

Fait vivre l’ homme dix fois dix.

So the next day I woke much earlier than Renata and, again slipping carefully from her sleeping embrace, I went into the adjoining room. There by the window, through which young and handsome Düsseldorf sparkled in the morning sun, I considered my position. I felt already that I lacked the strength to leave Renata, that I either had been charmed to her by some magic power, or borne naturally into gentle bondage by the Mother of Love—the Cyprian.

Boldly reviewing my position, like a warrior who finds himself fallen into danger, I now addressed myself thus: “Very well, abandon yourself to this madness if already you cannot overpower it, but be circumspect lest you lose in this abyss your whole life, and perhaps your honour. Mark to yourself beforehand terms and limits, and beware overstepping them when your soul is aflame and your mind powerless to give counsel.”

I took out of the belt the coins sewn within it, and divided my savings into three equal shares: one share I decided to spend with Renata, another I desired to give to my father, and the third I kept for myself, so that, returning to New Spain, I should be able to live there an independent life. At the same time, I resolved that I should not stay with Renata for more than three months, whatever wind might blow upon our life together, for after the happenings of the night I did not trust completely her words about the relatives who were supposed to be waiting for her in Köln: and the immediate future soon showed me how correct I was in that surmise.

Having thus thought out everything reasonably and soberly, I went to the host of the inn and for a fair price sold him my horse. Next I went to the river quay and bargained with one of the barges that were descending the Rhine with Netherland goods, for her to take us as far as Köln. Then I acquired various necessaries proper to a journey with a lady, such as—a pair of cushions, soft coverlets, victuals and wines; and at last I returned to the hostelry.