Chapter 2

Benda was convinced, not merely that one great misfortune had already taken place, but that a still greater was in the making.

Whenever he thought of Dorothea, the picture that came to his mind was one that filled him with fear. And yet, he thought, she must have some remarkable traits, otherwise Daniel would never have chosen her as his life companion. He wanted to meet her.

He had Daniel invite him in to tea. He called one evening early in the afternoon.

She received him with expressions of ostentatious joy. She said she could hardly wait until he came, for there was nothing in the world that made such an impression on her as a man who had really run great risks, who had placed his very life at stake. She could not become tired of asking him questions. At each of his laconic replies she would shake her head with astonishment. Then she rested her elbows on her knees, placed her head in her hands, bent over and stared at him as though he were some kind of prodigy—or monster.

She asked him whether he had been among cannibals, whether he had shot any savages, whether he had hunted lions, and whether it was really true that every Negro chieftain had hundreds of wives. When she asked this question she made an insidious face, and remarked that Europeans would do the same thing if the law allowed.

Thereupon she said that she could not recall having seen him, when still a child, in her father’s house, and she was surprised at this, for he had such a striking personality. She devoured him with her eyes; they began to burn as they always did when she wanted to make some kind of human capture, and blind greed came over her. She unbent; she spoke in her very sweetest voice; in her laugh and her smile there was, in fact, something irresistible, something like that trait we notice in good, confiding, but at times obstinate children.

But she noticed that this man studied her, not as if she were a young married woman who were trying to please him and gain his sympathy, rather as a curious variety of the human species. There was something in his face that made her tremble with irritation, and all of a sudden her eyes were filled with hate and distrust.

Benda felt sorry for her. This everlasting attempt to make a seductive gesture, this fishing for words that would convey a double meaning, this self-betrayal, this excitement about nothing, made him feel sad. Dorothea did not seem to him a bad woman. Whatever else she might be accused of, it did not seem to him that she was guilty of downright immoral practices. He felt that she was merely misguided, poisoned, a phantom and a fool.

His mind went back to certain Ethiopian women in the very heart of Africa; he thought of their noble walk, the proud restfulness of their features, their chaste nudeness, and their inseparability from the earth and the air.

He nevertheless understood his friend: the musician could not help but succumb to the charms of the phantom; the lonely man sought the least lonely of all human beings.

As he was coming to this conclusion, Daniel entered the room. He greeted Benda, and said to Dorothea: “There is a girl outside who says she has some ostrich feathers for you. Did you order any feathers?”

“Oh, yes,” replied Dorothea hastily, “it is a present from my friend, Emmy Büttinger.”

“Who’s she?”

“You don’t know her? Why, she is the sister of Frau Feistelmann. You must help me,” she said, turning to Benda, “for you must know all about this kind of things. There where you have been ostriches must be as thick as chickens here at home.” Laughing, she went out, and returned in due time with a big box, from which, cautiously and with evident delight, she took two big feathers, one white, one black. Holding them by the stem, she laid them across her hair, stepped up to the mirror, and looked at herself with an intoxicated mien.

In this mien there was something so extraordinary, indeed uncanny, that Benda could not help but cast a horrified glance at Daniel.

“This is the first time I ever knew what a mirror was,” he said to himself.