32

One by one the first flakes fell, first dark specks against a pewter sky, and then white feathers drifting silently. But when they touched the ground they winked and disappeared, for it was too early for a lasting snow. However, the eaves were fringed with faint and fragile whiteness, and the bare trees in the garden were flowering with the melting blossoms of an artificial spring. There was no wind, only a ghostly silence and muteness.

Therese watched the snow fall. Her mind grew numb and still under it, as though her pain and sadness had begun to sleep. A largeness and peace took their place. Quiet shadows drifted through her thoughts, formless, cool and spectral. She felt that she sat in an aura of unreality, that the world that had existed for her had forever disappeared. Suffering was gone. She believed she had lost the capacity for emotion, for fever and terror. Surely the dying felt so. This was greater than indifference. It was no turning away. It was not even negation. It was the formlessness of eternity.

She had not seen Karl for a long time. He rarely emerged from his room and study. He was a ghost, haunting two rooms, to which she had become accustomed. She thought of herself unconsciously as a widow. The idea no longer disturbed her. At first, her loneliness and desolation had been anguish. But she had gone beyond death now. She was accustomed to its silence, and to its, inevitable peace. She rarely heard, consciously, the slow dragging footsteps of the distracted man upstairs. She slept at night, dreamlessly, as under a drug. When she thought of Doctor Traub it was like thinking of some one who had died many, many years ago.

She was resting in her small sitting-room, after breakfast. The unopened newspaper was on her knees. She doubted that she would read it. She rarely read any papers now. She never listened to her radio. Germany, like all the rest of the world had ceased to exist for her. Upon her features was a motionless tranquillity.

She heard a faint sound at the door. Karl stood there. She looked at him without a stir of the heart, as one might look at a ghost or a shadow.

“Therese,” he said.

She said nothing, merely gazing emptily at this unreal visitation.

He hesitated. But she could not move, nor gesture towards him. The snow-dimmed light was uncertain. She knew there was something there for her to see, but she could not arouse herself to see it. She struggled faintly against her inertia. And then, while she still struggled, still fought to see, he had gone away, without a sound.

I should have spoken to him, she thought. But her heavy thoughts would go no further. She closed her eyes, and for a time, she drowsed. The snow continued to fall. One thought floated dimly through the hollow of her mind: I must wake up.

It was the sudden wind which finally awoke her. The light was almost gone. She thought it was twilight. But it was just past noon. The snow was thicker, and swirled and danced in skeins and garlands in the wind. The wind was hollow and echoing, standing at the windows and the eaves, and calling in its dolorous voice. Now the trees outside were draped in white.

Lotte came in with Coffee and small cakes. She set the tray on the table at Therese’s elbow. She was much disturbed. “The Herr Doctor has left the house. We do not know where he is gone.”

“Gone?” echoed Therese, dully, rousing herself heavily. “How long ago?”

“I do not know, Frau Doctor. It may be an hour. It may be two hours. No one heard him go.”

Therese forced herself to her feet. She felt the renewed and painful throbbing of her pulses. She went upstairs. Karl’s study door was open. His desk was shiningly empty. Eric’s African box was nowhere in sight. The tiny mummified head still grinned from the cold mantelpiece. But that was all. Therese went into his bedroom. His dressing-gown and slippers lay neatly on his smooth white bed. She examined his closet. His coat and hat were gone.

Now she was trembling. Should she call the police, and tell them that her deranged husband was wandering the streets? He had not been outside his house for months. Where had he gone? What dark urging had made him go out? She wrung her hands in her distraction. She glanced through the windows, hoping to see his bent and emaciated figure. But the street was silent and white and deserted. Had the sight of the first snow aroused in him some dormant and healthy desire to be out in it? Had the first faint stirrings of sanity come back to him? He had stood near her that morning. He had wanted to say something. She had driven him away. As she had driven Wilhelm away.

She uttered a thin sharp cry. She ran to the telephone and called the police. The young man who took her message was sluggishly indifferent. She could not arouse him to any interest He finally took Karl’s description. She gathered that he was contemptuously amused. These hysterical women!

She went downstairs again, conscious of faintness and weakness. She forced herself to drink the coffee, but could eat nothing. I must be calm, she told herself. Perhaps Karl had merely gone for a walk. She must believe that. After all, he was not bedridden. Perhaps the fresh keen air would revive him a little. All at once a curious quiet came to her, as though a gentle voice had spoken to her, soothingly. Hardly knowing what she said or did, she turned her head and spoke aloud, wonderingly: “Felix?”

The sound of the name in her ears and heart increased the quiet, steadied her nerves. Tears filled her eyes, but they were not painful tears. She was sure that Doctor Traub was in the room. She could feel his warm and wholesome presence, his strength and comfort. It was very strange. She tried to see him. She was certain he was beside her, and the dim room seemed full of his smile. Her heart swelled, but it was not with pain. How ridiculous to believe there is any death, she thought. All at once, there was a still joy in her heart.

“Thank you, dear doctor,” she murmured, and smiled through her tears. Then the presence was gone. But she was no longer terrified or distracted. She sat down again, and waited for Karl’s return, positive he would come soon.

The unopened newspaper was still lying where she had dropped it. She picked it up, glanced idly through it, avoiding the larger and more vociferous columns. But there was no avoiding the largest. It leaped at her through the medium of a familiar name. The name of Captain Baldur von Keitsch.

She learned that he had been murdered two nights ago, in his apartment. Evidently he had been expecting feminine company, for he had dismissed his servants. When he had been alone, the murderer, or murderers had come. From the wording of the paragraph, Therese deduced that this was merely a repeating of news previously printed, which she had missed because of her disinterest in the newspapers. The Gestapo now had a clue. The clue shrieked from the paper. It seemed that a certain wealthy half-Jew in Berlin, a former publisher, had been seen entering the apartment building where von Keitsch had lived, at seven o’clock in the evening. This Jew had been importuning von Keitsch, whom he knew slightly, to intercede for him in order that he might continue his business. Von Keitsch’s kindness, the paper averred, was famous. (Oh, that smiling ominous man, thought Therese, with sickness.) The Jew, in his defense, had alleged that he was a convert to Christianity, and several of his “white-Jew” or Gentile friends had been interceding for him, and badgering von Keitsch. Von Keitsch had apparently, in his good-heartedness, invited the Jew to call upon him that evening, for a few moments, to discuss the matter with him. The Jew’s reply had been found among his papers, joyfully accepting the invitation. He had come; he had been seen. But no one in the building had seen him leave. Apparently von Keitsch, as gently as possible, had told the Jew that nothing could be done. Thereafter, there was no doubt that the foul Israelite had murdered him, out of wanton fury.

“But let not Jewry think it can escape the consequences of this dastardly crime!” shrieked the newspaper. “The hunt is on. When Baptist Werner is found, and his guilt confessed, the whole German nation shall take vengeance upon his race. Too long has Germany suffered in silence the crimes and outrages of this degenerate race! Let Jewry beware! The day of judgment has come for it!”

Therese experienced a wave of enormous illness. She sat down abruptly, the paper slipping from her hands. The poor, unfortunate, foolish broken wretch! Why had he done this thing? Did he not know that his whole race would suffer massacre, torture and flagellation for this? What had he done! No doubt he had been driven to despairing madness by the fiend to whom he had come, pleading. But he should have remembered the German people. He should have known what madmen there were abroad in Germany today. But he had lost his head. He had been seized by the pure and primitive reaction of all tormented creatures against their tormentors. One could not blame him. But he should have remembered.

The paper hypocritically implored the German people not to be premature in their revenge-seeking. The world was too often alleging these days that Germany was full of violence and injustice. Let the German people show the world their true dispassionateness and love of fairness. The law must take its course. Baptist Werner must be found. Then, and only then, would the German people take their vengeance on him and his race. “However,” pleaded the lying paper, “let there be order. The German people are no irrational Latins or brutal Englishmen. We are civilized.”

Therese flung the paper from her, add ground her heel in it. She had reached that lofty plane, now, where her own private miseries could be forgotten in the contemplation of universal calamity. She forgot Karl. She forgot her sorrows. She was filled with an active despair and apprehension for half a million Jews. She was glad that von Keitsch was dead. A poisonous serpent would no longer spew his venom. Germany had one enemy the less. But there were still the helpless Jews. If she could have given von Keitsch back his life, no matter what her private detestation and comprehension of him, she would have done so, for the sake of the victims.

While she sat there shivering, staring blindly through the window at the drifting mistlike snow, old Lotte came in.

“Frau Reiner has telephoned, Frau Doctor. She wishes to speak to you.”

“Frau Reiner!” Therese aroused herself. The old woman had never called her before. Therese had heard her frequently express her dislike for the telephone. “Telephones,” she had said, have done more to spread German women’s buttocks than anything else.” She had declared herself unable to use “the things.” But she had called, that was evident. It must be something about Kurt. Kurt was dead.

She went to the telephone, and answered it in a shaking voice. “Therese?” the old woman’s voice, sharp and hard, came clearly to her ears. “You must come at once. We need you. Something has happened.”

“Kurt?” asked Therese, faintly.

“Kurt? Nonsense. Not Kurt. He is dying, and taking a long time about it. But it is not Kurt.”

Pure terror clutched Therese’s heart. “Karl? You have found Karl? He left the house this morning …”

Now the old woman’s voice was loud and furious. “Karl? You have not watched him? You have left him out of your sight? Where is he, you careless, silly woman? Where is my Karl?”

Relief flooded Therese. She sank down into a chair, her dry lips quivering. Then it was not Karl. She forced her voice to be calm. “Do not be so excited, dear Frau Reiner. Nothing is wrong. He went out for a walk; his strength seems to be returning. I—I thought for a moment he had had an accident, and they had somehow notified you.…”

There was a little humming silence. Then Frau Reiner said in a lower and fainter tone: “I am glad there is nothing wrong with Karl. Forgive me, Therese. Will you please come at once?” Now the tone was commanding again.

“Yes, certainly. I shall come immediately.”

But when she mounted the stairs to her room, her limbs failed her. She was forced to sit down on the steps. Sweat poured down her face. The sickness was thick in her vitals. Prostration paralyzed her whole body. She leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. One cannot go on this way, she thought, in the throes of reaction. Behind her closed lids the face of Gilu appeared, huge, fire-rimmed, grinning, filling all the darkness of the universe with a wide evil smile. His empty sockets were gutted with flame.

Finally she was able to gather some strength. She went to her room and put on her hat and coat, picked up her muff. Under her hat, and between the soft pale waves of her hair, her face was dwindled and small, as though she had been through a prolonged illness.