Chapter 14

When Daniel came home, it was late; but he sat down by the lamp in his room and began to read Jean Paul’s “Titan.” In the course of time his thoughts liberated themselves from the book and went their own way. He got up, walked over to the piano, raised the lid, and struck a chord; he listened with closed eyes: it seemed that some one was calling him. It was a sultry night; the stillness was painful.

Again he struck the chord: bells from the lower world. They rang up through the green, grey mists, each distinct and delicate. Each tone sent forth its accompanying group like sparks from a skyrocket. Those related by the ties of harmony joined; those that were alien fell back and down. And up in the distant, inaccessible heights there rang out with deceiving clarity, like the last vision of earthly perfection, the melody of love, the melody of Eleanore.

Yet, some one was calling him; but from where? His wife? The distant, gloomy, waiting one? He closed the piano; the echo of the noise made thereby rebounded from the church wall through his window.

He put out the lamp, went into his bedroom, and undressed by the light of the moon. The border of the curtain was embroidered with heavy Vitruvian scrolls, the shadows of which were reflected on the floor; they made jagged, goalless paths. All these lines consisted after all of only one line.

As he lay in bed his heart began to hammer. Suddenly he knew, without looking, that Gertrude was not asleep; that she was lying there staring at the ceiling just as he was. “Gertrude!” he called.

From the slight rustling of the pillow he concluded that she turned her face to him.

“Don’t you hear me?”

“Yes, Daniel.”

“You must give me some advice; you must help me: help me and your sister, otherwise I cannot say what may happen.”

He stopped and listened, but there was not a stir: the stillness was absolute.

“It is at times possible to remain silent out of consideration for others,” he continued, “but if the silence is maintained too long, deception follows, and falsehood does not fail. But of what use is candour if it thrusts a knife into the heart of another merely in order to prepare an unblocked path for him who is candid? What good does it do to confess if the other does not understand? Two are already bleeding to death; shall the third meet with the same fate merely in order to say that the matter was talked over? The truth is, too many words have already been spoken, gruesome, shameless words, at the sound of which the innocent night of the senses vanishes. And must one bleed to death when it becomes clearer and clearer that those are not eternal laws against which war is being waged? How can I, dwarf that I am, attack eternal laws? No, it is the frail, mutable customs of human society—? Are you listening, Gertrude?”

A “yes” that sounded like a note from a bird on a distant hill greeted his ears: it was the answer to his question.

“I have reached the point where silence is no longer thinkable: there is no going any farther without you. I will neither exaggerate nor have recourse to conventional phrases: I will not speak of passion nor say that it could not be helped. It is just barely possible that everything can be helped; that a man could always have done differently if he had begun soon enough. But who can ever tell what the future may bring? And passion? There are many varieties of passion. It is the term that every swain, washed and unwashed, uses in referring to his lusts. I had never felt a passion for which a woman was guilty. But now one has seized me with hide and hair. I had imagined that I could get out of it and not bring you into it; impossible! I am burning up with this passion, Gertrude, my whole being has been changed by it; and if help is not given me, I will be ruined.”

For a time there was a death-like stillness in the room; then he continued.

“But where is help to come from? It is strange; never until this thing happened did I know what holds us two together, you and me. Threads are being spun back and forth between us which no hand may touch without withering, as it is written in the Bible. There is a secret, a sacred secret, and if I offended it I would feel as though I had strangled the unborn child in your womb; and not only the child in your womb, but all the unborn children in my own breast. There is in the life of each man a woman in whom his own mother becomes young again, and to whom he is bound by an unseen, indestructible, umbilical cord. Face to face with this woman, his love, great or small, even his hate, his indifference, becomes a phantom, just as everything that we give out becomes a phantom compared with what is given to us. And there is another woman who is my own creation, the fruit of my dreams; she is my picture; I have created her from my own blood; she lay in me just as the seed lay in the bud. And she must be mine once she has been unveiled and made known to me, or I will perish of loneliness and maddened longing.”

The extravagant man pressed his face to the pillow and groaned: “She must be mine, or I will never get up from this bed. But if my way to her passes over you, Gertrude, I would have to cry out with Faust: ‘Oh, had I never been born!’”

Gertrude never uttered a sound. Minute after minute passed by. Daniel, growing calmer, listened to see if he could not hear some sound in the room. He heard nothing. The silence of his wife began to fill him with anxiety; he rose up in bed. The moon had gone down; it was pitch dark. He felt around for some matches, and lighted a candle. Holding it in his hand, he bent over Gertrude. She was as pale as death; she was looking at the ceiling with wide-opened eyes.

“Put the candle out, Daniel,” she whispered, “I have something to say to you.”

He put the candle out, and set it away.

“Give me your hand, Daniel.”

He felt for her hand; he took hold of it. It was ice cold; he laid it on his breast.

“May I stay with you, Daniel? Will you tolerate me in your home?”

“Tolerate? Gertrude, tolerate?” he asked, in a lifeless, toneless voice. “You are my wife, in the presence of God my wife,” he added, in deadened memory of the words of another.

“I will become your mother made young again, as you wish.”

“Yes, Gertrude, but how?”

“I will help you, you and Eleanore. The hearts of you two shall not bleed to death because of me. Let me stay; that is all I ask.”

“That is more easily said than done, Gertrude.” He pressed close up to her, took her in his arms, and sobbed with unexpected violence.

“It is hard; yes, it is hard. But your heart must not be allowed to bleed on my account.”

His head lay on her breast; he was seized with convulsions of grief that would not let him go until break of day.

Then all of a sudden the words came like a scream from Gertrude’s lips: “I too am a creature.”

He embraced her with warmth; and she murmured: “It is hard, Daniel, but be of good cheer, be of good cheer.”