Chapter 15

It was a cold, clear day in the middle of December. Eleanore wanted to go skating after dinner. She was known in the entire city for her skill on the ice. An irrepressible vivacity and sense of freedom pulsed through her body. It seemed to her lamentable that she should have to sit down in the overheated, sticky air of the office among all those clerks, and write.

She went, nevertheless, to the office, took her place among the clerks, and wrote as usual. Herr Zittel’s eyes shone through the lenses of his spectacles like two poison flasks. But she did not make much progress; time dragged; it dragged even more heavily and slowly than Herr Diruf’s feet, as he made his rounds through the room. Eleanore looked up. She felt as if his gloomy eyes were resting on her. Conscious of having failed to perform her duty as she might have done, she blushed.

Finally the clock struck six. The other clerks left, making much noise as they did so. Eleanore waited as usual until they had all gone, for she did not like to mix with them. Just then Benjamin Dorn came wabbling in: “The Chief would like to speak to Fräulein Jordan,” he said, and bent his long neck like a swan. Eleanore was surprised: what on earth could Herr Diruf want with her? Possibly it had to do with Benno.

Alfons Diruf was sitting at his desk as she entered. He wrote one more line, and then stared at her. There was something in his expression that drove the blood from her cheeks. Involuntarily she looked down at herself and felt her flesh creep.

“You wanted to see me,” she said.

“Yes, I wanted to see you,” he replied, and made a weary attempt to smile.

There was another pause. In her anxiety Eleanore looked first at one object in the room and then at another; first at the bathing nymph, then at the silk curtains, then at the Chinese lampshade.

“Well, sweetheart,” said Herr Diruf, his smile gradually changing into a sort of convulsion, “we are not bad, are we? By the beard of the prophet, we are all right, aren’t we? Hunh?”

Eleanore lowered her head. She thought she had misunderstood him: “You wanted to see me,” she said in a loud voice.

Diruf laid his hand, palm down, on the edge of his desk. His solitaire threw off actual sparks of brilliancy. “I can crush every one of you,” he said, as he shoved his hand along the edge of the desk toward Eleanore. “That boy out there, your brother, is an underhanded sharper. If I want to I can make him turn a somersault, believe me.” He shoved his fat hand a little farther along, as if it were some dangerous engine and his solitaire a signal lamp. “I can make the whole pack of you dance whenever I want to. Can’t I, sweetheart? Capito? Comprenez-vous?”

Eleanore looked into Alfons Diruf’s smeary eyes with unspeakable amazement.

Diruf got up, walked over to her, and put his arms around her shoulders. “Well, if the boy is a sweet-toothed tom-cat who can easily be led astray, you are a purring pussy-cat,” he said with a tone of terrible tenderness, and held the girl so tight in his arms that she could not possibly move. “Now be quiet, sweetheart; be calm, my little bosom; don’t worry, you little devil!”

Horror, hot and cold, came over her, and filled her with unnamable dismay. Contact with the man had a more gruesome effect on her than anything she had ever even dreamed of. One jerk as though it were a matter of life and death, and she was free. White as a sheet, she nevertheless stood there before him, and smiled. It was a rare smile, something quite beyond the bounds of what is ordinarily called a smile. Alfons Diruf was no longer fat and fierce; he was like a pricked bubble; he was done for. And finding himself alone, he stood there for a while and gaped at the floor. He looked and felt hopelessly stupid.

Eleanore hastened through the streets, and suddenly discovered that she was in the Long Row. She turned around. Benda, then on the way over to call on Daniel, caught sight of her, recognised her by the light of the gas lamp, stopped as she passed by him, and looked after her not a little concerned.

When she reached home, she sank down on the sofa exhausted. To rid her mind of the memory of the past hour, she took refuge in her longing, longing for a southern country. Her longing was so intense, her desire to go south so fervent, that her face shone as if in fever. But the glass case had at last been broken.

The bell rang shortly before eight; she said to Gertrude: “If it is Daniel, send him away. I cannot see any one this evening.”

“Are you ill?” asked Gertrude with characteristic sternness.

“I don’t know; I simply do not want to see anybody,” said Eleanore, and smiled again as she had smiled in Diruf’s office.

It was Daniel, to be sure. Benda had told him that he had seen Eleanore out in front of the house; and when he learned that she had not been to call on Daniel, his anxiety increased. “There is something wrong here,” he said, “you had better go see her.” After they had talked the situation over for a while Benda accompanied Daniel as far as Ægydius Place, in order to make sure that he inquired after Eleanore.

Gertrude opened the iron door. “Eleanore does not want you to come in,” she said, with a trace of joy in her eyes.

“Why not? What has happened?”

“She does not wish to see you,” said the monosyllabic Gertrude, and gazed into the light of the hall lamp.

“Is she ill?”

“No!”

“Then she has got to tell me herself that she does not wish to see me.”

“Go!” commanded Gertrude and tossed her head back.

Her gloomy eyes hung on his, and the two stood there for a moment opposite each other, like two racers who have come in at the same goal at the same time but from opposite directions. Daniel then turned around, and went down the steps in silence. Gertrude remained standing for a time, her head sinking deeper and deeper all the while on her breast. Suddenly she covered her face with her hands; a cold shudder ran through her body.