双语·看不见的藏品

R. the famous novelist, had been away on a brief holiday in the mountains. Reaching Vienna early in the morning, he bought a newspaper at the station, and when he glanced at the date was reminded that it was his birthday. “Forty-one!”—the thought came like a flash. He was neither glad nor sorry at the realization. He hailed a taxi, and skimmed the newspaper as he drove home. His man reported that there had been a few callers during the master’s absence, besides some telephone messages. A bundle of letters was awaiting him. Looking indifferently at these, he opened one or two because he was interested in the senders, but laid aside for the time a bulky packet addressed in a strange handwriting. At ease in an armchair, he drank his morning tea, finished the newspaper, and read a few circulars. Then, having lighted a cigar, he turned to the remaining letter.

It was a manuscript rather than an ordinary letter, comprising several dozen hastily penned sheets in a feminine handwriting. Involuntarily he examined the envelope once more, in case he might have overlooked a covering letter. But there was nothing of the kind, no signature, and no sender’s address on either envelope or contents.“Strange,” he thought, as he began to read the manuscript. The first words were a superscription:

“To you, who have never known me.” He was perplexed. Was this addressed to him, or to some imaginary being? His curiosity suddenly awakened he, read as follows:

My boy died yesterday. For three days and three nights I have been wrestling with Death for this frail little life. During forty consecutive hours, while the fever of influenza was shaking his poor burning body I sat beside his bed. I put cold compresses on his fore head; day and night, night and day. I held his restless little hands. The third evening,my strength gave out. My eyes closed without my being aware of it, and for three or four hours I must have slept on the hard stool. Meanwhile, Death took him. There he lies, my darling boy, in his narrow cot, just as he died. Only his eyes have been closed, his wise, dark eyes; and his hands have been crossed over his breast. Four candles are burning, one at each corner of the bed. I cannot bear to look, I cannot bear to move; for when the candles flicker, shadows chase one another over his face and his closed lips. It looks as if his features stirred, and I could almost fancy that he is not dead after all, that he will wake and with his clear voice will say something childishly loving. But I know that he is dead; and I will not look again, to hope once more, and once more to be disappointed. I know, now, my boy died yesterday. Now I have only you left in the world; only you, who do not know me; you, who are enjoying yourself all unheeding, sporting with men and things. Only you, who have never known me, and whom I have never ceased to love.

I have lighted a fifth candle, and am sitting at the table writing to you. I cannot stay alone with my dead child without pouring my heart out to someone; and to whom should I do that in this dreadful hour if not to you, who have been and still are all in all to me? Perhaps I shall not be able to make myself plain to you. Perhaps you will not be able to understand me. My head feels so heavy my temples are throbbing;my limbs are aching. I think I must be feverish. Influenza is raging in this quarter and probably I have caught the infection. I should not be sorry if I could join my child in that way, instead of making short work of myself. Sometimes it seems dark before my eyes, and perhaps I shall not be able to finish this letter; but I shall try with all my strength, this one and only time, to speak to you, my beloved, to you who have never known me.

To you only do I want to speak, that I may tell you everything for the first time. I should like you to know the whole of my life, of that life which has always been yours, and of which you have known nothing. But you shall only know my secret after I am dead, when there will be no one whom you will have to answer; you shall only know it if that which is now shaking my limbs with cold and with heat should really prove, for me, the end. If I have to go on living, I shall tear up this letter and shall keep the silence I have always kept. If you ever hold it in your hands, you may know that a dead woman is telling you her lifestory; the story of a life which was yours from its first to its last fully conscious hour. You need have no fear of my words. A dead woman wants nothing; neither love, nor compassion, nor consolation. I have only one thing to ask of you, that you believe to the full what the pain in me forces me to disclose to you. Believe my words, for I ask nothing more of you; a mother will not speak false beside the deathbed of her only child.

I am going to tell you my whole life, the life which did not really begin until the day I first saw you. What I can recall before that day is gloomy and confused, a memory as of a cellar filled with dusty, dull and cob-webbed things and people—a place with which my heart has no concern. When you came into my life, I was thirteen, and I lived in the house where you live to-day, in the very house in which you are reading this letter; the last breath of my life. I lived on the same floor, for the door of our flat was just opposite the door of yours. You will certainly have forgotten us. You will long ago have forgotten the accountant’s widow in her threadbare mourning, and the thin, half-grown girl. We were always so quiet, characteristic examples of shabby gentility. It is unlikely that you ever heard our name, for we had no plate on our front door, and no one ever came to see us. Besides, it is so long ago, fifteen or sixteen years. Impossible that you should remember. But I, how passionately I remember every detail. As if it had just happened, I recall the day, the hour, when I first heard of you, first saw you. How could it be otherwise, seeing that it was then the world began for me? Have patience awhile, and let me tell you everything from first to last. Do not grow weary of listening to me for a brief space, since I have not been weary of loving you my whole life long.

Before you came, the people who lived in your flat were horrid folk, always quarrelling. Though they were wretchedly poor themselves, they hated us for our poverty because we held aloof from them. The man was given to drink, and used to beat his wife. We were often wakened in the night by the clatter of falling chairs and breaking plates. Once, when he had beaten her till the blood came, she ran out on the landing with her hair streaming, followed by her drunken husband abusing her, until all the people came out on to the staircase and threatened to send for the police. My mother would have nothing to do with them. She forbade me to play with the children, who took every opportunity of venting their spleen on me for this refusal. When they met me in the street, they would call me names; and once they threw a snowball at me which was so hard that it cut my forehead. Everyone in the house detested them, and we all breathed more freely when something happened and they had to leave—I think the man had been arrested for theft. For a few days there was a “To Let” notice at the the main door. Then it was taken down, and the caretaker told us that the flat had been rented by an author, who was a bachelor, and was sure to be quiet. That was the first time I heard your name.

A few days later, the flat was thoroughly cleaned, and the painters and decorators came. Of course they made lot of noise, but my mother was glad, for she said that would be the end of the disorder next door. I did not see you during the move. The decorations and furnishings were supervised by your servant, the little greyhaired man with such a serious demeanour, who had obviously been used to service in good families. He managed everything in a most businesslike way, and impressed us all very much. A high-class domestic of this kind was something quite new in our suburban flats. Besides, he was extremely civil, but was never hail-fellow-well-met with the ordinary servants. From the outset he treated my mother respectfully, as a lady; and he was always courteous even to little me. When he had occasion to mention your name, he did so in a way which showed that his feeling towards you was that of a family retainer. I used to love good old John for this, though I envied him at the same time because it was his privilege to see you constantly and to serve you.

Do you know why I am telling you these trifles? I Want you to understand how it was that from the very beginning your personality came to exercise so much power over me when I was still a shy and timid child. Before I had actually seen you, there was a halo round your head. You were enveloped in an atmosphere of wealth, marvel and mystery. People whose lives are narrow, are avid of novelty; and in this little suburban house we were all impatiently awaiting your arrival. In my own case, curiosity rose to fever point when I came home from school one afternoon and found the furniture van in front of the house. Most of the heavy things had gone up, and the furniture removers were dealing with the smaller articles. I stood at the door to watch and admire, for everything belonging to you was so different from what I had been used to. There were Indian idols, Italian sculptures, and great, brightly-coloured pictures. Last of all came books, such lovely books, many more than I should have thought possible. They were piled by the door. The manservant stood there carefully dusting them one by one. I greedily watched the pile as it grew. Your servant did not send me away, but he did not encourage me either, so I was afraid to touch any of them, though I should have so liked to stroke the smooth leather bindings. I did glance timidly at some of the titles; many of them were in French and in English, and in languages of which I did not know a single word. I should have liked to stand there watching for hours, but my mother called me and I had to go in.

I thought about you the whole evening, although I had not seen you yet. I had only about a dozen cheap books, bound in worn cardboard. I loved them more than anything else in the world, and was continually reading and re-reading them. Now I was wondering what the man could be like who had such a lot of books, who had read so much, who knew so many languages, who was rich and at the same time so learned. The idea of so many books aroused a kind of unearthly veneration. I tried to picture you in my mind. You must be an old man with spectacles and a long, white beard, like our geography master, but much kinder, nicer-looking, and gentler. I don’t know why I was sure that you must be handsome, for I fancied you to be an elderly man. That very night, I dreamed of you for the first time.

Next day you moved in; but though I was on the watch I could not get a glimpse of your face, and my failure inflamed my curiosity. At length I saw you, on the third day. How astounded I was to find that you were quite different from the ancient godfather conjured up by my childish imagination. A bespectacled, good-natured old fellow was what I had anticipated; and you came looking just as you still look, for you are one on whom the years leave little mark. You were wearing a beautiful suit of light-brown tweeds, and you ran upstairs two steps at a time with the boyish ease that always characterizes your movements. You were hat in hand, so that, with indescribable amazement, I should see your bright and lively face and your youthful hair. Your handsome, slim, and spruce figure was a positive shock to me. How strange it was that in this first moment I should have plainly realized that which I and all others are continually surprised at in you. I realized that you are two people rolled into one: that you are an ardent, lighthearted youth devoted to sport and adventure; and at the same time, in your art, a deeply read and highly cultured man, grave, and with a keen sense of responsibility. Unconsciously I perceived what everyone who knew you came to perceive, that you led two lives. One of these was known to all, it was the life open to the whole world; the other was turned away from the world, and was fully known only to yourself. I, a girl of thirteen, coming under the spell of your attraction, grasped this secret of your existence, this profound cleavage of your two lives, at the first glance.

Can you understand, now, what a miracle, what an alluring enigma, you must have seemed to me, the child? Here was a man whom everyone spoke of with respect because he wrote books, and because he was famous in the great world. Of a sudden he had revealed himself to me as a boyish, cheerful young man of five-and-twenty. I need hardly tell you that henceforward in my restricted world, you were the only thing that interested me; that my life revolved round yours with the fidelity proper to a girl of thirteen. I watched you, watched your habits, watched the people who came to see you—and all this increased instead of diminishing my interest in your personality, for the two-sidedness of your nature was reflected in the diversity of your visitors. Some of them were young men, comrades of yours, carelessly dressed students with whom you laughed and larked. Some of them were ladies who came in motors. Once the conductor of the opera—the great man whom before this I had seen only from a distance, baton in hand-called on you. Some of them were girls, young girls still attending the commercial school, who shyly glided in at the door. A great many of your visitors were women. I thought nothing of this, not even when, one morning,as I was on my way to school, I saw a closely veiled lady coming away from your flat. I was only just thirteen, and in my immaturity I did not in the least realize that the eager curiosity with which I scanned all your doings was already love.

But I know the very day and hour when I consciously gave my whole heart to you. I had been for a walk with a schoolfellow, and we were standing at the door chattering. A motor drove up. You jumped out, in the impatient, springy fashion which has never ceased to charm me, and were about to go in. An impulse made me open the door for you, and this brought me in your path, so that we almost collided. You looked at me with a cordial, gracious, all-embracing glance, which was almost a caress. You smiled at me tenderly—yes, tenderly is the word—and said gently, nay, confidentially: “Thanks so much.”

That was all. But from this moment, from the time when you looked at me so tenderly, so tenderly, I was yours. Later, before long indeed, I was to learn that this was a way you had of looking at all women with whom you came in contact. It was a caressive and alluring glance, at once enfolding and disclothing, the glance of the born seducer. Involuntarily you looked in this way at every shopgirl who served you, at every maidservant who opened the door to you. It was not that you consciously longed to possess all these women, but your impulse towards the sex unconsciously made your eyes melting and warm whenever they rested on a woman. At thirteen, I had no thought of this; and I felt as if I had been bathed in fire. I believed that the tenderness was for me, for me only; and in this one instant the woman was awakened in the half-grown girl, the woman who was to be yours for all future time.

“Who was that?” asked my friend. At first, I could not answer. I found it impossible to utter your name. It had suddenly become sacred to me, had become my secret. “Oh, it’s just someone who lives in the house,” I said awkwardly. “Then why did you blush so fiery red when he looked at you?” inquired my school fellow with the malice of an inquisitive child. I felt that she was making fun of me, and was reaching out towards my secret, and this coloured my cheeks more than ever. I was deliberately rude to her: “You silly idiot,” I said angrily—I should have liked to throttle her. She laughed mockingly, until the tears came into my eyes from impotent rage. I left her at the door and ran upstairs.

I have loved you ever since. I know full well that you are used to hearing women say that they love you. But I am sure that no one else has ever loved you so slavishly, with such doglike fidelity, with such devotion, as I did and do. Nothing can equal the unnoticed love of a child. It is hopeless and subservient; it is patient and passionate;it is something which the covetous love of a grown woman, the love that is unconsciously exacting can never be. None but lonely children can cherish such a passion. The others will squander their feelings in companionship, will dissipate them in confidential talks. They have heard and read much of love, and they know that it comes to all. They play with it like a toy; they flaunt it as a boy flaunts his first cigarette. But I had no confidant; I had been neither taught nor warned, I was inexperienced and unsuspecting. I rushed to meet my fate. Everything that stirred in me, all that happened to me, seemed to be centred upon you, upon my imaginings of you. My father had died long before. My mother could think of nothing but her troubles, of the difficulties of making ends meet upon her narrow pension, so that she had little in common with a growing girl. My school fellows, half-enlightened and half-corrupted, were uncongenial to me because of their frivolous outlook upon that which to me was a supreme passion. The upshot was that everything which surged up in me, all which in other girls of my age is usually scattered, was focused upon you. You became for me—what simile can do justice to my feelings? You became for me the whole of my life. Nothing existed for me except in so far as it related to you. Nothing had meaning for me unless it bore upon you in some way. You had changed everything for me. Hitherto I had been indifferent at school, and undistinguished. Now, of a sudden, I was the first. I read book upon book, far into the night, for I knew that you were a booklover. To my mother’s astonishment, I began, almost stubbornly, to practise the piano, for I fancied that you were fond of music. I stitched and mended my clothes, to make them neat for your eyes. It was a torment to me that there was a square patch in my old school-apron (cut down from one of my mother’s overalls). I was afraid you might notice it and would despise me, so I used to cover the patch with my satchel when I was on the staircase. I was terrified lest you should catch sight of it. What a fool I was! You hardly ever looked at me again.

Yet my days were spent in waiting for you and watching you. There was a judas in our front door, and through this a glimpse of your door could be had. Don’t laugh at me, dear. Even now, I am not ashamed of the hours I spent at this spy-hole. The hall was icy cold, and I was afraid of exciting my mother’s suspicions. But there I would watch through the long afternoons, during those months and years, book in hand, tense as a violin string, and vibrating at the touch of your nearness. I was ever near you, and ever tense; but you were no more aware of it than you were aware of the tension of the main spring of the watch in your pocket, faithfully recording the hours for you, accompanying your footsteps with its unheard ticking and vouchsafed only a hasty glance for one second among millions. I knew all about you, your habits, the neckties you wore; I knew each one of your suits. Soon I was familiar with your regular visitors, and had my likes and dislikes among them. From my thirteenth to my sixteenth year, my every hour was yours. What follies did I not commit? I kissed the door-handle you had touched; I picked up a cigarette-end you had thrown away, and it was sacred to me because your lips had pressed it. A hundred times, in the evening, on one pretext or another, I ran out into the street in order to see in which room your light was burning, that I might be more fully conscious of your invisible presence. During the weeks when you were away (my heart always seemed to stop beating when I saw John carry your portmanteau downstairs), life was devoid of meaning. Out of sorts, bored to death, and in an ill-humour, I wandered about not knowing what to do, and had to take precautions lest my tear-dimmed eyes should betray my despair to my mother.

I know that what I am writing here is a record of grotesque absurdities, of a girl’s extravagant fantasies. I ought to be ashamed of them; but I am not ashamed, for never was my love purer and more passionate than at this time. I could spend hours, days, in telling you how I lived with you though you hardly knew me by sight. Of course you hardly knew me, for if I met you on the stairs and could not avoid the encounter, I would hasten by with lowered head, afraid of your burning glance, hasten like one who is jumping into the water to avoid being singed. For hours, days, I could tell you of those years you have long since forgotten; could unroll all the calendar of your life: but I will not weary you with details. Only one more thing I should like to tell you dating from this time, the most splendid experience of my childhood. You must not laugh at it, for, trifle though you may deem it, to me it was of infinite significance.

It must have been a Sunday. You were away, and your man was dragging back the heavy rugs, which he had been beating, through the open door of the flat. They were rather too much for his strength, and I summoned up courage to ask whether he would let me help him. He was surprised, but did not refuse. Can I ever make you understand the awe, the pious veneration, with which I set foot in your dwelling, with which I saw your world—the writing-table at which you were accustomed to sit (there were some flowers on it in a blue crystal vase), the pictures, the books? I had no more than a stolen glance, though the good John would no doubt have let me see more had I ventured to ask him. But it was enough for me to absorb the atmosphere, and to provide fresh nourishment for my endless dreams of you in waking and sleeping.

This swift minute was the happiest of my childhood. I wanted to tell you of it, so that you who do not know me might at length begin to understand how my life hung upon yours. I wanted to tell you of that minute, and also of the dreadful hour which so soon followed. As I have explained, my thoughts of you had made me oblivious to all else. I paid no attention to my mother’s doings, or to those of any of our visitors. I failed to notice that an elderly gentleman, an Innsbruck merchant, a distant family connection of my mother, came often and stayed for a long time. I was glad that he took mother to the theatre sometimes, for this left me alone, undisturbed in my thoughts of you, undisturbed in the watching which was my chief, my only pleasure. But one day my mother summoned me with a certain formality, saying that she had something serious to talk to me about. I turned pale, and felt my heart throb. Did she suspect anything? Had I betrayed myself in some way? My first thought was of you, of my secret, of that which linked me with life. But my mother was herself embarrassed. It had never been her way to kiss me. Now she kissed me affectionately more than once, drew me to her on the sofa, and began hesitatingly and rather shamefacedly to tell me that her relative, who was a widower, had made her a proposal of marriage, and that, mainly for my sake, she had decided to accept. I palpitated with anxiety, having only one thought, that of you. “We shall stay here, shan’t we?” I stammered out. “No, we are going to Innsbruck, where Ferdinand has a fine villa.” I heard no more. Everything seemed to turn black before my eyes. I learned afterwards that I had fainted. I clasped my hands convulsively, and fell like a lump of lead. I cannot tell you all that happened in the next few days; how I, a powerless child, vainly revolted against the mighty elders. Even now, as I think of it, my hand shakes so that I can scarcely write. I could not disclose the real secret, and therefore my opposition seemed ill-tempered obstinacy. No one told me anything more. All the arrangements were made behind my back. The hours when I was at school were turned to account. Each time came home some new article had been removed or sold. My life seemed falling to pieces; and at last one day, when I returned to dinner, the furniture removers had cleared the flat. In the empty rooms there were some packed trunks, and two camp-beds for Mother and myself. We were to sleep there one night more, and were then to go to Innsbruck.

On this last day I suddenly made up my mind that I could not live without being near you. You were all the world to me. It is difficult to say what I was thinking of and whether in this hour of despair I was able to think at all. My mother was out of the house. I stood up, just as I was, in my school dress, and went over to your door. Yet I can hardly say that I went. With stiff limbs and trembling joints, I seemed to be drawn towards your door as by a magnet. It was in my mind to throw myself at your feet, and to beg you to keep me as a maid, as a slave. I cannot help feeling afraid that you will laugh at this infatuation of a girl of fifteen. But you would not laugh if you could realize how I stood there on the chilly landing, rigid with apprehension, and yet drawn onward by an irresistible force; how my arm seemed to lift itself in spite of me. The struggle appeared to last for endless, terrible seconds;and then I rang the bell. The shrill noise still sounds in my ears. It was followed by a silence in which my heart well-nigh stopped beating, and my blood stagnated, while I listened for your coming.

But you did not come. No one came. You must have been out that afternoon, and John must have been away too. With the dead note of the bell still sounding in my ears, I stole back into our empty dwelling, and threw myself exhausted upon a rug, tired out by these few paces as if I had been wading through deep snow for hours. Yet beneath this exhaustion there still glowed the determination to see you, to speak to you, before they carried me away. I can assure you that there were no sensual longings in my mind; I was still ignorant, just because I never thought of anything but you. All I wanted was to see you once more, to cling to you. Throughout that dreadful night I waited for you. Directly my mother had gone to sleep, I crept into the hall to listen for your return. It was a bitterly cold night in January. I was tired, my limbs ached, and there was no longer a chair on which I could sit; so I lay upon the floor, scourged by the draught that came under the door. In my thin dress I lay there, without any covering. I did not want to be warm, lest I should fall asleep and miss your footstep. Cramps seized me, so cold was it in the horrible darkness; again and again I had to stand up. But I waited, waited, waited for you, as for my fate.

At length (it must have been two or three in the morning) I heard the house-door open, and footsteps on the stair. The sense of cold vanished, and a rush of heat passed over me. I softly opened the door, meaning to run out, to throw myself at your feet....I cannot tell what I should have done in my frenzy. The steps drew nearer. A candle flickered. Tremblingly I held the door-handle. Was it you coming up the stairs?

Yes, it was you, beloved; but you were not alone. I heard a gentle laugh, the rustle of silk, and your voice, speaking in low tones. There was a woman with you....

I cannot tell how I lived through the rest of the night. At eight next morning, they took me with them to Innsbruck. I had no strength left to resist.

My boy died last night. I shall be alone once more, if I really have to go on living. To-morrow, strange men will come, black-clad and uncouth, bringing with them a coffin for the body of my only child. Perhaps friends will come as well, with wreaths—but what is the flowers on a coffin? They will offer consolation in one phrase or another. Words, words, words! What can words help? All I know is that I shall be alone again. There is nothing more terrible than to be alone among. human beings. That is what I came to realize during those interminable two years in Innsbruck, from my sixteenth to my eighteenth year, when I lived with people as a prisoner and an outcast. My stepfather, a quiet, taciturn man, was kind to me. My mother as if eager to atone for an unwitting injustice, seemed ready to meet all my wishes. Those of my own age would have been glad to befriend me. But I repelled their advances with angry defiance. I did not wish to be happy, I did not wish to live content away from you; so I buried myself in a gloomy world of self-torment and solitude. I would not wear the new and gay dresses they bought for me. I refused to go to concerts or to the theatre, and I would not take part in cheerful excursions. I rarely left the house. Can you believe me when I tell you that I hardly got to know a dozen streets in this little town where I lived for two years? Mourning was my joy; I renounced society and every pleasure, and was intoxicated with delight at the mortification I thus super added to the lack of seeing you. Moreover, I would let nothing divert me from my passionate longing to live only for you. Sitting alone at home, hour after hour and day after day, I did nothing but think of you, turning over in my mind unceasingly my hundred petty memories of you, renewing every movement and every time of waiting, rehearsing these episodes in the theatre of my mind. The countless repetitions of the years of my childhood from the day in which you came into my life have so branded the details on my memory that I can recall every minute of those long-passed years as if they were yesterday.

Thus my life was still entirely centred in you. I bought all your books. If your name was mentioned in the newspaper the day was a red-letter day. Will you believe me when I tell you that I have read your books so often that I know them by heart? Were anyone to wake me in the night and quote a detached sentence, I could continue the passage unfalteringly even to-day, after thirteen years. Your every word was Holy Writ to me. The world existed for me only in relationship to you. In the Viennese newspapers I read the reports of concerts and first nights, wondering which would interest you most. When evening came, I accompanied you in imagination, saying to myself: “Now he is entering the hall; now he is taking his seat.” Such were my fancies a thousand times, simply because I had once seen you at a concert.

Why should I recount these things? Why recount the tragic hopelessness of a forsaken child? Why tell it to you, who have never dreamed of my admiration or of my sorrow? But was I still a child? I was seventeen; I was eighteen; young fellows would turn to look after me in the street, but they only made me angry. To love anyone but you, even to play with the thought of loving anyone but you, would have been so utterly impossible to me, that the mere tender of affection on the part of another man seemed to me a crime. My passion for you remained just as intense, but it changed in character as my body grew and my senses awakened, becoming more ardent, more physical, more unmistakably the love of a grown woman. What had been hidden from the thoughts of the uninstructed child, of the girl who had rung your doorbell, was now my only longing. I wanted to give myself to you.

My associates believed me to be shy and timid. But I had an absolute fixity of purpose. My whole being was directed towards one end—back to Vienna, back to you. I fought successfully to get my own way, unreasonable, incomprehensible though it seemed to others. My step father was well-to-do, and looked upon me as his daughter. I insisted, however, that I would earn my own living, and at length got him to agree to my returning to Vienna as employee in a dressmaking establishment belonging to a relative of his.

Need I tell you whither my steps first led me that fog autumn evening when, at last, at last, I found myself back in Vienna? I left my trunk in the cloak-room, and hurried to a tram. How slowly it moved! Every stop was a renewed vexation to me. In the end, I reached the house. My heart leapt when I saw a light in your window. The town, which had seemed so alien, so dreary, grew suddenly alive for me. I myself lived once more, now that I was near you, you who were my unending dream. When nothing but the thin, shining pane of glass was between you and my uplifted eyes, I could ignore the fact that in reality I was as far from your mind as if I had been separated by mountains and valleys and rivers. Enough that I could go on looking at your window. There was a light in it; that was your dwelling; you were there; that was my world. For two years I had dreamed of this hour, and now it had come. Throughout that warm and cloudy evening I stood in front of your windows, until the light was extinguished. Not until then did I seek my own quarters.

Evening after evening I returned to the same spot.

Up to six o’clock I was at work. The work was hard, and yet I liked it, for the turmoil of the show-room masked the turmoil in my heart. The instant the shutters were rolled down, I flew to the beloved spot. To see you once more, to meet you just once, was all I wanted; simply from a distance to devour your face with my eyes. At length, after a week, I did meet you, and then the meeting took me by surprise. I was watching your window, when you came across the street. In an instant, I was a child once more, the girl of thirteen. My cheeks flushed. Although I was longing to meet your eyes, I hung my head and hurried past you as if someone had been in pursuit. Afterwards I was ashamed of having fled like a schoolgirl, for now I knew what I really wanted. I wanted to meet you; I wanted you to recognize me after all these weary years, to notice me, to love me.

For a long time you failed to notice me, although I took up my post outside your house every night, even when it was snowing, or when the keen wind of the Viennese winter was blowing. Sometimes I waited for hours in vain. Often, in the end, you would leave the house in the company of friends. Twice I saw you with a woman, and the fact that I was now awakened, that there was something new and different in my feeling towards you, was disclosed by the sudden heart-pang when I saw a strange woman walking confidently with you arm-in-arm. It was no surprise to me, for I had known since childhood how many such visitors came to your house; but now the sight aroused in me a definite bodily pain. I had a mingled feeling of enmity and desire when I witnessed this open manifestation of fleshly intimacy with another woman. For a day, animated by the youthful pride from which, perhaps, I am not yet free, I abstained from my usual visit; but how horrible was this empty evening of defiance and renunciation! The next night I was standing, as usual, in all humility, in front of your window; waiting, as I have ever waited, in front of your closed life.

At length came the hour when you noticed me. I marked your coming from a distance, and collected all my forces to prevent myself shrinking out of your path. As chance would have it, a loaded dray filled the street, so that you had to pass quite close to me. Involuntarily your eyes encountered my figure, and immediately, though you had hardly noticed the attentiveness in gaze, there came into your face that expression with which you were wont to look at women. The memory of it darted through me like an electric shock—that caressive and alluring glance, at once enfolding and disclothing, with which, years before, you had awakened the girl to become the woman and the lover. For a moment or two your eyes thus rested on me, for a space during which I could not turn my own eyes away, and then you had passed. My heart was beating so furiously that I had to slacken my pace; and when, moved by irresistible curiosity, I turned to look back, I saw that you were standing and watching me. The inquisitive interest of your expression convinced me that you had not recognized me. You did not recognize me, either then or later. How can I describe my disappointment? This was the first of such disappointments: the first time I had to endure what has always been my fate; that you have never recognized me. I must die, unrecognized. Ah, how can I make you understand my disappointment? During the years at Innsbruck I had never ceased to think of you. Our next meeting in Vienna was always in my thoughts. My fancies varied with my mood, ranging from the wildest possibilities to the most delightful. Every conceivable variation had passed through my mind. In gloomy moments it had seemed to me that you would repulse me, would despise me, for being of no account, for being plain, or importunate. I had had a vision of every possible form of disfavour, coldness, or indifference. But never, in the extremity of depression, in the utmost realization of my own insignificance, had I conceived this most abhorrent of possibilities—that you had never become aware of my existence. I understand, now (you have taught me!) that a girl’s or a woman’s face must be for a man something extraordinarily mutable. It is usually nothing more than the reflection of moods which pass as swiftly as an image vanishes from a mirror. A man can readily forget a woman’s face, because age modifies its lights and shades, and because at different times the dress gives it so different a setting. Resignation comes to a woman as her knowledge grows. But I, who was still a girl, was unable to understand your forgetfulness. My whole mind had been full of you ever since I had first known you, and this had produced in me the illusion that you must have often thought of me and waited for me. How could I have borne to go on living had I realized that I was nothing to you, that I had no place in your memory? Your glance that evening, showing me as it did that on your side there was not even : gossamer thread connecting your life with mine, meant for me a first plunge into reality, conveyed to me the first intimation of my destiny.

You did not recognize me. Two days later, when our paths again crossed, and you looked at me with an approach to intimacy, it was not in recognition of the girl who had loved you so long and whom you had awakened to womanhood; it was simply that you knew the face of the pretty lass of eighteen whom you had encountered at the same spot two evenings before. Your expression was one of friendly surprise, and a smile fluttered about your lips. You passed me as before, and as before you promptly slackened your pace. I trembled, I exulted, I longed for you to speak to me. I felt that for the first time I had become alive for you; I, too, walked slowly, and did not attempt to evade you. Suddenly, I heard your step behind me. Without turning round, I knew that I was about to hear your beloved voice directly addressing me. I was almost paralysed by the expectation, and my heart beat so violently that I thought I should have to stand still. You were at my side. You greeted me cordially, as if we were old acquaintances—though you did not really know me, though you have never known anything about my life. So simply charming was your manner that 1 was able to answer you without hesitation. We walked along the street and you asked me whether we could not have supper together. I agreed. What was there I could have refused you?

We supped in a little restaurant. You will not remember where it was. To you it will be one of many such. For what was I? One among hundreds; one adventure, one link in an endless chain. What happened that evening to keep me in your memory? I said very little, for I was so intensely happy to have you near me and to hear you speak to me. I did not wish to waste a moment upon questions or foolish words. I shall never cease to be thankful to you for that hour, for the way in which you justified my ardent admiration. I shall never forget the gentle tact you displayed. There was no undue eagerness, no hasty offer of a caress. Yet from the first moment you displayed so much friendly confidence, that you would have won me even if my whole being had not long ere this been yours. Can I make you understand how much it meant to me that my five years of expectation were so perfectly fulfilled?

The hour grew late, and we came away from the restaurant. At the door you asked me whether I was in any hurry, or still had time to spare. How could I hide from you that I was yours? I said I had plenty of time. With a momentary hesitation, you asked me whether I would not come to your rooms for a talk. “I shall be delighted,” I answered with alacrity, thus giving frank expression to my feelings. I could not fail to notice that my ready assent surprised you. I am not sure whether your feeling was one of vexation or pleasure, but it was obvious to me that you were surprised. To-day, of course, I understand your astonishment. I know now that it is usual for a woman, even though she may ardently desire to herself to a man, to feign reluctance, to simulate alarm in indignation. She must be brought to consent by urgent pleadings, by lies, adjurations, and promises. I know that only professional prostitutes are accustomed to answer such an invitation with a perfectly frank assent-prostitutes, or simple-minded, immature girls. How could you know that, in my case, the frank assent was but the voicing of an eternity of desire, the uprush of yearnings that had endured for a thousand days and more?

In any case, my manner aroused your attention; I had become interesting to you. As we were walking along together, I felt that during our conversation you were trying to sample me in some way. Your perceptions, your assured touch in the whole gamut of human emotions,made you realize instantly that there was something unusual here;that this pretty, complaisant girl carried a secret about with her. Your curiosity had been awakened, and your discreet questions showed that you were trying to pluck the heart out of my mystery. But my replies were evasive. I would rather seem a fool than disclose my secret to you.

We went up to your flat. Forgive me, beloved, for saying that you cannot possibly understand all that it meant to me to go up those stairs with you—how I was mad, tortured, almost suffocated with happiness. Even now I can hardly think of it without tears, but I have no tears left. Everything in that house had been steeped in my passion; everything was a symbol of my childhood and its longing. There was the door behind which a thousand times I had awaited your coming; the stairs on which I had heard your footsteps, and where I had first seen you; the judas through which I had watched your comings and goings; the doormat on which I had once knelt; the sound of a key in the lock, which had always been a signal to me. My childhood and its passions were nested within these few yards of space. Here was my whole life, and it surged around me like a great storm, for all was being fulfilled, and I was going with you, I with you, into your, into our house. Think (the way I am phrasing it sounds trivial, but I know no better words) that up to your door was the world of reality, the dull everyday world which had been that of all my previous life. At this door began the magic world of my childish imaginings. Aladdin’s realm. Think how a thousand times, I had had my burning eyes fixed upon this door through which I was now passing, my head in a whirl, and you will have an inkling—no more—of all that this tremendous minute meant to me.

I stayed with you that night. You did not dream that before you no man had ever touched or seen my body. How could you fancy it, when I made no resistance, and when I suppressed every trace of shame, fearing lest I might betray the secret of my love? That would certainly have alarmed you; you care only for what comes and goes easily, for that which is light of touch, is imponderable. You dread being involved in anyone else’s destiny. You like to give yourself freely to all the world but not to make any sacrifices. When I tell you that I gave myself to you as a maiden, do not misunderstand me. I am not making any charge against you. You did not entice me, deceive me, seduce me. I threw myself into your arms; went out to meet my fate. I have nothing but thankfulness towards you for the blessedness of that night. When I opened my eyes in the darkness and you were beside me, I felt that I must be in heaven, and I was amazed that the stars were not shining on me. Never, beloved, have I repented giving myself to you that night. When you were sleeping beside me, when I listened to your breathing, touched your body, and felt myself so near you, I shed tears for very happiness.

I went away early in the morning. I had to go to my work and I wanted to leave before your servant came. When I was ready to go, you put your arm round me and looked at me for a very long time. Was some obscure memory stirring in your mind; or was it simply that my radiant happiness made me seem beautiful to you? You kissed me on the lips, and I moved to go. You asked me: “Would you not like to take a few flowers with you?” There were four white roses in the blue crystal vase on the writing-table (I knew it of old from that stolen glance of childhood), and you gave them to me. For days they were mine to kiss.

We had arranged to meet on a second evening. Again it was full of wonder and delight. You gave me a third night. Then you said that you were called away from Vienna for a time—oh, how I had always hated those journeys of yours!—and promised that I should hear from you as soon as you came back. I would only give you a poste-restante address, and did not tell you my real name. I guarded my secret. Once more you gave me roses at parting—at parting.

Day after day for two months I asked myself...no, I will not describe the anguish of my expectation and despair. I make no complaint. I love you just as you are, ardent and forgetful, generous and unfaithful. I love you just as you have always been. You were back long before the two months were up. The light in your windows showed me that, but you did not write to me. In my last hours I have not a line in your handwriting, not a line from you to whom my life was given. I waited, waited despairingly. You did not call me to you, did not write a word, not a word....

My boy who died yesterday was yours too. He was your son, the child of one of those three nights. I was yours, and yours only from that time until the hour of his birth. I felt myself sanctified by your touch, and it would not have been possible for me then to accept any other man’s caresses. He was our boy, dear; the child of my fully conscious love and of your careless, spendthrift, almost unwitting tenderness. Our child, our son, our only child. Perhaps you will be startled, perhaps merely surprised. You will wonder why I never told you of this boy; and why, having kept silence throughout the long years, I only tell you of him now, when he lies in his last sleep, about to leave me for all time—never, never to return. How could I have told you? I was a stranger, a girl who had shown herself only too eager to spend those three nights with you. Never would you have believed that I, the nameless partner in a chance encounter, had been faithful to you, the unfaithful. You would never without misgivings, have accepted the boy as your own. Even if, to all appearance, you had trusted my word, you would still have cherished the secret suspicion that I had seized an opportunity of fathering upon you, a man of means, the child of another lover. You would have been suspicious. There would always have been a shadow of mistrust between you and me. I could not have borne it. Besides, I know you. Perhaps I know you better than you know yourself. You love to be care-free, light of heart, perfectly at ease; and that is what you understand by love. It would have been repugnant to you to find yourself suddenly in the position of father; to be made responsible, all at once, for a child’s destiny. The breath of freedom is the breath of life to you, and you would have felt me to be a tie. Inwardly, even in defiance of your conscious will, you would have hated me as an embodied claim. Perhaps only now and again, for an hour or for a fleeting minute, should I have seemed a burden to you, should I have been hated by you. But it was my pride that I should never be a trouble or a care to you all my life long. I would rather take the whole burden on myself than be a burden to you; I wanted to be the one among all the women you had intimately known of whom you would never think except with love and thankfulness. In actual fact, you never thought of me at all. You forgot me.

I am not accusing you. Believe me, I am not coming. You must forgive me if for a moment, now and again, it seems as if my pen had been dipped in gall. You must forgive me; for my boy, our boy, lies dead there beneath the flickering candles. I have clenched my fists against God, and have called him a murderer, for I have been almost beside myself with grief. Forgive me for complaining. I know that you are kindhearted, and always ready to help. You will help the merest stranger at a word. But your kindliness is peculiar. It is unbounded. Anyone may have of yours as much as he can grasp with both hands. And yet, I must own, your kindliness works sluggishly. You need to be asked. You help those who call for help; you help from shame, from weakness, and not from sheer joy in helping. Let me tell you openly that those who are in affliction and torment are not dearer to you than your brothers in happiness. Now, it is hard, very hard, to ask anything of such as you, even of the kindest among you. Once, when I was still a child, I watched through the judas in our door how you gave something to a beggar who had rung your bell. You gave quickly and freely, almost before he spoke. But there was a certain nervousness and haste in your manner, as if your chief concern were to be speedily rid of him; you seemed to be afraid to meet his eye. I have never forgotten this uneasy and timid way of giving help, this shunning of a word of thanks. That is why I never turned to you in my difficulty. Oh, I know that you would have given me all the help I needed, in spite of a doubt that my child was yours. You would have offered me comfort, and have given me money, an ample supply of money; but always with a masked impatience, a secret desire to shake off trouble. I even believe that you would have advised me to rid myself of the coming child. This was what I dreaded above all, for I knew that I should do whatever you wanted. But the child was all in all to me. It was yours; it was you reborn—not the happy and carefree you, whom I could never hope to keep; but you, given to me for my very own, flesh of my flesh, intimately intertwined with my own life. At length I held you fast; I could feel your life-blood flowing through my veins; I could nourish you, caress you, kiss you, as often as my soul yearned. That was why I was so happy when I knew that I was with child by you and that is why I kept the secret from you. Hence forward you could not escape me; you were mine.

But you must not suppose that the months of waiting passed so happily as I had dreamed in my first transports. They were full of sorrow and care, full of loathing for the baseness of mankind. Things went hard with me. I could not stay at work during the later months, for my stepfather’s relatives would have noticed my condition, and would have sent the news home. Nor would I ask my mother for money; so until my time came I managed to live by the sale of some trinkets. A week before my confinement, the few crown-pieces that remained to me were stolen by my laundress, so I had to go to the maternity hospital. The child, your son, was born there, in that asylum of wretchedness, among the very poor, the outcast, and the abandoned. It was a deadly place. Everything was strange, was alien. We were all alien to one another, as we lay there in our loneliness, filled with mutual hatred, thrust together only by our kinship of poverty and distress into this crowded ward, reeking of chloroform and blood, filled with cries and moaning. A patient in these wards loses all individuality, except such as remains in the name at the head of the clinical record. What lies in the bed is merely a piece of quivering flesh, an object of study....

I ask your forgiveness for speaking of these things. I shall never speak of them again. For eleven years I have kept silence, and shall soon be dumb for evermore. Once, at least, I had to cry aloud, to let you know how dearly bought was this child, this boy who was my delight, and who now lies dead. I had forgotten those dreadful hours, forgotten them in his smiles and his voice, forgotten them in my happiness. Now, when he is dead, the torment has come to life again; and I had, this once, to give it utterance. But I do not accuse you; only God, only God who is the author of such purposeless affliction. Never have I cherished an angry thought of you. Not even in the utmost agony of giving birth did I feel any resentment against you; never did I repent the nights when I enjoyed your love; never did I cease to love you or to bless the hour when you came into my life. Were it necessary for me, fully aware of what was coming, to relive that time in hell, I would do it gladly, not once, but many times.

Our boy died yesterday, and you never knew him. His bright little personality has never come into the most fugitive contact with you, and your eyes have never rested on him. For a long time after our son was born, I kept myself hidden from you. My longing for you had become less overpowering. Indeed, I believe I loved you less passionately. Certainly, my love for you did not hurt so much, now that I had the boy. I did not wish to divide myself between you and him, and so I did not give myself to you, who were happy and independent of me, but to the boy who needed me, whom I had to nourish, whom I could kiss and fondle. I seemed to have been healed of my restless yearning for you. The doom seemed to have been lifted from me by the birth of this other you, who was truly my own. Rarely, now, did my feelings reach out towards you in your dwelling. One thing only—on your birthday I have always sent you a bunch of white roses, like the roses you gay after our first night of love. Has it ever occurred to you, during these ten or eleven years, to ask yourself who sent them? Have you ever recalled having given such roses to a girl? I do not know, and never shall know. For me it was enough to send them to you out of the darkness; enough, once a year, to revive my own memory of that hour.

You never knew our boy. I blame myself to-day for having hidden him from you, for you would have loved him. You have never seen him smile when he first opened his eyes after sleep, his dark eyes that were your eyes, the eyes with which he looked merrily forth at me and the world. He was so bright, so lovable. All your lightheartedness and your mobile imagination were his likewise—in the form in which these qualities can show themselves in a child. He would spend entranced hours playing with things as you play with life; and then, grown serious, would sit long over his books. He was you, reborn. The mingling of sport and earnest, which is so characteristic of you, was becoming plain in him; and the more he resembled you, the more I loved him. He was good at his lessons, so that he could chatter French like a magpie. His exercise books were the tidiest in the class. And what a fine, upstanding little man he was! When I took him to the seaside in the summer, at Grado, women used to stop and stroke his fair hair. At Semmering, when he was tobogganing, people would turn round to gaze after him. He was so handsome, so gentle, so appealing. Last year, when he went to college as a boarder, he began to wear the collegiates’ uniform of an eighteenth-century page, with a little dagger stuck in his belt—now he lies here in his shift, with pallid lips and crossed hands.

You will wonder how I could manage to give the boy so costly an upbringing, how it was possible for me to provide for him an entry into this bright and cheerful life of the well-to-do. Dear one, I am speaking to you from the darkness. Unashamed, I will tell you. Do not shrink from me. I sold myself. I did not become a streetwalker, a common prostitute, but I sold myself. My friends, my lovers, were wealthy men. At first I sought them out, but soon they sought me, for I was (did you ever notice it?) a beautiful woman. Everyone to whom I gave myself was devoted to me. They all became my grateful admirers. They all loved me—except you, except you whom I loved.

Will you despise me now that I have told you what I did? I am sure you will not. I know you will understand everything, will understand that what I did was done only for you, for your other self, for your boy. In the lying-in hospital I had tasted the full horror of poverty. I knew that, in the world of the poor, those who are downtrodden are always the victims. I could not bear to think that your son, your lovely boy, was to grow up in that abyss, amid the corruptions of the street, in the poisoned air of a slum. His delicate lips must not learn the speech of the gutter; his fine, white skin must not be chafed by the harsh and sordid underclothing of the poor. Your son must have the best of everything, all the wealth and all the lightheartedness of the world. He must follow your footsteps through life, must dwell in the sphere in which you had lived.

That is why I sold myself. It was no sacrifice to me, for what are conventionally termed “Honour” and “Disgrace” were unmeaning words to me. You were the only one to whom my body could belong, and you did not love me, so what did it matter what I did with that body? My companions’ caresses, even their most ardent passion, never sounded my depths, although many of them were persons I could not but respect, and although the thought of my own fate made me sympathize with them in their unrequited love. All these men were kind to me; they all petted and spoiled me; they all paid me every deference.One of them, a widower, an elderly man of title, used his utmost influence until he secured your boy’s nomination to the college. This man loved me like a daughter. Three or four times he urged me to marry him. I could have been a countess to-day, mistress of a lovely castle m Tyrol. I could have been free from care, for the boy would have had a most affectionate father and I should have had a sedate, distinguished, and kind-hearted husband. But I persisted in my refusal though I knew it gave him pain. It may have been foolish of me. Had I yielded, I should have been living a safe and retired life somewhere, and my child would still have been with me. Why should I hide from you the reason for my refusal? I did not want to bind myself. I wanted to remain free—for you. In my innermost self in the unconscious, I continued to dream the dream of my childhood. Some day, perhaps you would call me to your side, were it only for an hour. For the possibility of this one hour I rejected everything else, simply that I might be free to answer your call. Since my first awakening to womanhood, what had my life been but waiting, a waiting upon your will?

In the end, the expected hour came. And still you never knew that it had come! When it came, you did not recognize me. You have never recognized me, never, never. I met you often enough, in theatres, at concerts, in the Prater, and elsewhere. Always my heart leapt but always you passed me by, unheeding. In outward appearance I had become a different person. The timid girl was a woman now; beautiful, it was said; decked out in fine clothes; surrounded by admirers. How could you recognize in me one whom you had known as a shy girl in the subdued light of your bedroom? Sometimes my companion would greet you, and you would acknowledge the greeting as you glanced at me. But your look was always that of a courteous stranger, a look of deference, but not of recognition—distant, hopelessly distant. Once, I remember, this non-recognition, familiar as it had become, was a torture to me. I was in a box at the opera with a friend, and you were in the next box. The lights were lowered when the Overture began. I could no longer see your face, but I could feel your breathing quite close to me, just as when I was with you in your room; and on the velvet-covered partition between the boxes your slender hand was resting. I was filled with an infinite longing to bend down and kiss this hand, whose loving touch I had once known. Amid the turmoil of sound from the orchestra, the craving grew even more intense. I had to hold myself in convulsively, to keep my lips away from your dear hand. At the end of the first act, I told my friend I wanted to leave. It was intolerable to me to have you sitting there beside me in the darkness, so near, and so estranged.

But the hour came once more, only once more. It was all but a year ago, on the day after your birthday. My thoughts had been dwelling on you more than ever, for I used to keep your birthday as a festival. Early in the morning I had gone to buy the white roses which I sent you every year in commemoration of an hour you had forgotten. In the afternoon I took my boy for a drive and we had tea together. In the evening we went to the theatre. I wanted him to look upon this day as a sort of mystical anniversary of his youth, though he could not know the reason. The next day I spent with my intimate of that epoch, a young and wealthy manufacturer of Brunn, with whom I had been living for two years. He was passionately fond of me, and he, too, wanted me to marry him. I refused, for no reason he could understand, although he loaded me and the child with presents, and was lovable enough in his rather stupid and slavish devotion. We went together to a concert, where we met a lively company. We all had supper at a restaurant in the Ringstrasse. Amid talk and laughter, I proposed that we should move on to a dancing-hall. In general, such places, where the cheerfulness is always an expression of partial intoxication, are repulsive to me, and I would seldom go to them. But on this occasion some elemental force seemed at work in me, leading to make the proposal, which was hailed with acclamation by the others. I was animated by an inexplicable longing, as if some extraordinary experience were awaiting me. As usual, everyone was eager to accede to my whims. We went to the dancing hall, drank some champagne, and I had a sudden access of almost frenzied cheerfulness such as I had never known. I drank one glass of wine after another, joined in the chorus of a suggestive song, and was in a mood to dance with glee. Then, all in a moment, I felt as if my heart had been seized by an icy or a burning hand. You were sitting with some friends at the next table, regarding me with an admiring and covetous glance, that glance which had always thrilled me beyond expression. For the first time in ten years you were looking at me again under the stress of all the unconscious passion in your nature. I trembled, and my hand shook so violently that I nearly let my wineglass fall. Fortunately my companions did not notice my condition, for their perceptions were confused by the noise of laughter and music.

Your look became continually more ardent, and touched my own senses to fire. I could not be sure whether you had at last recognized me, or whether your desires had been aroused by one whom you believed to be a stranger. My cheeks were flushed, and I talked at random. You could not help noticing the effect your glance had on me. You made an inconspicuous movement of the head, to suggest my coming into the ante-room for a moment. Then, having settled your bill, you took leave of your associates and left the table, after giving me a further sign that you intended to wait for me outside. I shook like one in the cold stage of a fever. I could no longer answer when spoken to, could no longer control the tumult of my blood. At this moment, as chance would have it, a couple of Negroes with clattering heels began a barbaric dance to the accompaniment of their own shrill cries. Everyone turned to look at them, and I seized my opportunity. Standing up, I told my friend that I would be back in a moment, and followed you.

You were waiting for me in the lobby, and your face lighted up when I came. With a smile on your lips, you hastened to meet me. It was plain that you did not recognize me, neither the child nor the girl of old days. Again, to you, I was a new acquaintance. “Have you really got an hour to spare for me?” you asked in a confident tone, which showed that you took me for one of the women whom anyone can buy for a night. “Yes,” I answered; the same tremulous but perfectly acquiescent“Yes” that you had heard from me in my girlhood, more than ten years earlier, in the darkling street. “Tell me when we can meet,” you said.“Whenever you like,” I replied, for I knew nothing of shame where you were concerned. You looked at me with a little surprise, with a surprise which had in it the same flavour of doubt mingled with curiosity which you had shown before when you were astonished at the readiness of my acceptance. “Now?” you inquired, after a moment’s hesitation. “Yes,” I replied, “let us go.”

I was about to fetch my wrap from the cloak-room, When I remembered that my Brunn friend had handed in our things together, and that he had the ticket. It was impossible to go back, and ask him for it, and it seemed to me even more impossible to renounce this hour with you to which I had been looking forward for years. My choice was instantly made. I gathered my shawl around and went forth into the misty night, regardless not only, of my cloak, but regardless, likewise, of the kind—hearted man with whom I had been living for years—regardless of the fact that in this public way, before his friends I was putting him into the ludicrous position of one whose mistress abandons him at the first nod of a stranger. Inwardly, I was well aware how basely and ungratefully I was behaving towards a good friend. I knew that my outrageous folly would alienate him from me for ever and that I was playing havoc with my life. But what was his friendship, what was my own life, to me when compared with the chance of again feeling your lips on mine of again listening to the tones of your voice. Now that all is over and done with I can tell you this, can let you know how I loved you. I believe that were you to summon me from my death-bed I should find strength to rise in answer to your call.

There was a taxi at the door, and we drove to your rooms. Once more I could listen to your voice, once more I felt the ecstasy of being near you, and was almost as intoxicated with joy and confusion as I had been so long before. I cannot describe it all to you, how what I had felt ten years earlier was now renewed as we went up the wellknown stairs together; how I lived simultaneously in the past and in the present, my whole being fused as it were with yours. In your rooms, little was changed. There were a few more pictures, a great many more books, one or two additions to your furniture—but the whole had the friendly look of an old acquaintance. On the writing-table was the vase with the roses—my roses, the ones I had sent you the day before as a memento of the woman whom you did not remember, whom you did not recognize, not even now when she was close to you, when you were holding her hand and your lips were pressed on hers. But it comforted me to see my flowers there, to know that you had cherished something that was an emanation from me, was the breath of my love for you.

You took me in your arms. Again I stayed with you for the whole of one glorious night. But even then you did not recognize me. While I thrilled to your caresses it was plain to me that your passion knew no difference between a loving mistress and a meretrix, that your spendthrift affections were wholly concentrated in their own expression. To me, the stranger picked up at a dancing-hall, you were at once affectionate and courteous. You would not treat me lightly, and yet you were full of an enthralling ardour. Dizzy with the old happiness, I was again aware of the two-sidedness of your nature, of that strange mingling of intellectual passion with sensual, which had already enslaved me to you in my childhood. In no other man have I ever known such complete surrender to the sweetness of the moment. No other has for the time being given himself so utterly as did you who, when the hour was past, were to relapse into an interminable and almost inhuman forgetfullness. But I, too, forgot myself. Who was I, lying in the darkness beside you? Was I the impassioned child of former days; was I the mother of your son; was I a stranger? Everything in this wonderful night was at one and the same time entrancingly familiar and entrancingly new. I prayed that the joy might last for ever.

But morning came. It was late when we rose, and you asked me to stay to breakfast. Over the tea, which an unseen hand had discreetly served in the dining-room, we talked quietly. As of old, you displayed a cordial frankness; and, as of old, there were no tactless questions, there was no curiosity about myself. You did not ask my name, nor where I lived. To you I was as before a casual adventure, a nameless woman, an ardent hour which leaves no trace when it is over. You told me that you were about to start on a long journey, that you were going to spend two or three months in northern Africa. The words broke in upon my happiness like a knell: “Past, past, past and forgotten!” I longed to throw myself at your feet, crying: “Take me with you, that you may at length come to know me, at length after all these years!” But I was timid, cowardly, slavish, weak. All I could say was: “What a pity!” You looked at me with a smile: “Are you really sorry?”

For a moment I was as if frenzied. I stood up and looked at you fixedly. Then I said: “The man I love has always gone on a journey.” I looked you straight in the eyes. “Now, now,” I thought, “Now he will recognize me!” You only smiled, and said consolingly: “One comes back after a time.” I answered: “Yes, one comes back, but one has forgotten by then.”

I must have spoken with strong feeling, for my tone moved you. You, too, rose, and looked at me wonderingly and tenderly. You put your hands on my shoulders:

“Good things are not forgotten, and I shall not forget you.” Your eyes studied me attentively, as if you wished to form an enduring image of me in your mind. When I felt this penetrating glance, this exploration of my whole being, I could not but fancy that the spell of your blindness would at last be broken. “He will recognize me! He will recognize me!”My soul trembled with expectation.

But you did not recognize me. No, you did not recognize me. Never had I been more of a stranger to you than I was at that moment, for had it been otherwise you could not possibly have done what you did a few minutes later. You had kissed me again, had kissed me passionately. My hair had been ruffled, and I had to tidy it once more. Standing at the glass, I saw in it—and as I saw, I was overcome with shame and horror—that you were surreptitiously slipping a couple of banknotes into my muff. I could hardly refrain from crying out; I could hardly refrain from slapping your face. You were paying me for the night I had spent with you, me who had loved you since childhood, me the mother of your son. To you I was only a prostitute picked up at a dancing hall. It was not enough that you should forget me; you had to pay me, and to debase me by doing so.

I hastily gathered up my belongings, that I might escape as quickly as possible; the pain was too great. I looked round for my hat. There it was, on the writing table, beside the vase with the white roses, my roses. I had an irresistible desire to make a last effort to awaken your memory. “Will you give me one of your white roses?”—“Of course,”you answered, lifting them all out of the vase. “But perhaps they were given you by a woman, a woman who loves you?”—“Maybe,” you replied, “I don’t know. They were a present, but I don’t know who sent them; that’s why I’m so fond of them.” I looked at you intently: “Perhaps they were sent you by a woman whom you have forgotten!”

You were surprised. I looked at you yet more intently. “Recognize me, only recognize me at last!” was the clamour of my eyes. But your smile, though cordial, had no recognition in it. You kissed me yet again, but you did not recognize me.

I hurried away, for my eyes were filling with tears, and I did not want you to see. In the entry, as I precipitated myself from the room, I almost cannoned into John, your servant. Embarrassed but zealous, he got out of my way, and opened the front door for me. Then, in this fugitive instant, as I looked at him through my tears, a light suddenly flooded the old man’s face. In this fugitive instant, I tell you, he recognized me, the man who had never seen me since my childhood. I was so grateful that I could have kneeled before him and kissed his hands. I tore from my muff the banknotes with which you had scourged me, and thrust them upon him. He glanced at me in alarm—for in this instant I think he understood more of me than you have understood in your whole life. Everyone, everyone, has been eager to spoil me;everyone has loaded me with kindness. But you, only you, forgot me. You, only you, never recognized me.

My boy, our boy, is dead. I have no one left to love; no one in the world, except you. But what can you be to me—you who have never, never recognized me, you who stepped across me as you might step across a stream, you who trod on me as you might tread on a stone, you who went on your way unheeding, while you left me to wait for all eternity? Once I fancied that I could hold you for my own; that I held you, the elusive, in the child. But he was your son! In the night, he cruelly slipped away from me on a journey; he has forgotten me, and will never return. I am alone once more, more utterly alone than ever. I have nothing, nothing from you. No child, no word, no line of writing, no place in your memory. If anyone were to mention my name in your presence, to you it would be the name of a stranger. Shall I not be glad to die, since I am dead to you? Glad to go away, since you have gone away from me?

Beloved, I am not blaming you. I do not wish to intrude my sorrows into your joyful life. Do not fear that I shall ever trouble you further. Bear with me for giving way to the longing to cry out my heart to you this once, in the bitter hour when the boy lies dead. Only this once I must talk to you. Then I shall slip back into obscurity, and be dumb towards you as I have ever been. You will not even hear my cry so long as I continue to live. Only when I am dead will this heritage come to you from one who has loved you more fondly than any other has loved you, from one whom you have never recognized, from one who has always been awaiting your summons and whom you have never summoned. Perhaps, perhaps when you receive this legacy you will call to me; and for the first time I shall be unfaithful to you, for I shall not hear you in the sleep of death. Neither picture nor token do I leave you, just as you left me nothing, for never will you recognize me now. That was my fate in life, and it shall be my fate in death likewise. I shall not summon you in my last hour; I shall go my way leaving you ignorant of my name and my appearance. Death will be easy to me, for you will not feel it from afar. I could not die if my death were going to give you pain.

I cannot write any more. My head is so heavy; my limbs ache; I am feverish. I must lie down. Perhaps all will soon be over. Perhaps, this once, fate will be kind to me, and I shall not have to see them take away my boy....I cannot write any more. Farewell, dear one, farewell. All my thanks go out to you. What happened was good in spite of everything. I shall be thankful to you till my last breath. I am so glad that I have told you all. Now, you will know, though you can never fully understand, how much I have loved you; and yet my love will never be a burden to you. It is my solace that I shall not fail you. Nothing will be changed in your bright and lovely life. Beloved, my death will not harm you. This comforts me.

But who, ah who, will now send you white roses on your birthday? The vase will be empty. No longer will come that breath, that aroma, from my life, which once a year was breathed into your room. I have one last request—the first, and the last. Do it for my sake. Always on your birthday—a day when one thinks of oneself—get some roses and put them in the vase. Do it just as others, once a year, have a Mass said for the beloved dead. I no longer believe in God, and therefore I do not want a Mass said for me. I believe in you alone. I love none but you. Only in you do I wish to go on living – just one day in the year, softly, quietly, as I have always lived near you. Please do this, my darling, please do it...My first request, and my last....Thanks, thanks...I love you, I love you....Farewell.....

The letter fell from his nerveless hands. He thought long and deeply. Yes, he had vague memories of a neighbour’s child, of a girl, of a woman in a dancing-hall—all was dim and confused, like a flickering and shapeless view of a stone in the bed of a swiftly running stream. Shadows chased one another across his mind, but would not fuse into a picture. There were stirrings of memory in the realm of feeling, and still he could not remember. It seemed to him that he must have dreamed of all these figures, must have dreamed often and vividly—and yet they had only been the phantoms of a dream. His eyes wandered to the blue vase on the writing-table. It was empty. For years it had not been empty on his birthday. He shuddered, feeling as if an invisible door had been suddenly opened, a door through which a chill breeze from another world was blowing into his sheltered room. An intimation of death came to him, and an intimation of deathless love. Something welled up within him; and the thought of the dead woman stirred in his mind, bodiless and passionate, like the sound of distant music.

——德国通货膨胀时期的故事

列车开出德累斯顿两站，一位上了年纪的先生上了我们的车厢，谦恭有礼地向大家打过招呼，然后抬起眼，像对一位老朋友似的特地再次朝我点头致意。最初的一瞬间，我想不起他是谁了；可是待他微微含笑，正要说出他的姓名时，我立刻就想起来了：他是柏林最有名望的艺术古董商之一，和平时期我常常到他店里去观赏和购买旧书和名人手迹。我们起先随便聊了些无关紧要的事。接着他忽然突如其来地说道：

“我得告诉您，我是刚从哪儿来的。因为这个故事可以说是我这个老古董商37年职业生涯中所遇到的最离奇的事。您本人大概也知道，自从货币的价值就像逸散的煤气荡然无存以来，艺术品市场上是什么情况：暴发户突然对哥特式的圣母像和15世纪印刷术发明初期的古版书，以及古老的蚀刻印制品和画像大为青睐；这帮人胃口之大你连变都变不过来，因此还不得不防范他们把屋里的东西一扫而光。他们恨不得连你袖口上的扣子和桌上的台灯都买了去。所以要搞到新的商品也就越来越难了——请原谅，我竟突然把这些我们一向对之心存敬畏的物品称之为商品——，但是这批兜里鼓鼓的土老鳖甚至已经让人习惯于把一部精美的威尼斯古版书仅仅视为一笔美金，把圭尔奇诺的一幅素描看作是几张100法郎钞票的等价物。这帮突然出现的购买狂个个涎皮赖脸，死缠硬磨，你怎么拒绝阻挡都无济于事。所以我一夜之间就被敲骨吸髓，弄得一贫如洗。我们这家老店号是我父亲从祖父手里接过来的，如今店里只好卖些寒碜的下脚货，这都是些从前连北方的街头废品商贩都不屑放到他们手推车上去的破烂；目睹此情此景我羞愧难当，真恨不得将卷帘百叶窗放下，关门拉倒。

“在这种狼狈处境中，我想到，何不把我们的业务旧册簿拿来翻一翻，找出几位昔日的主顾，兴许还可以从他们那儿弄回几件副本呢。这种老主顾名录总像一片墓地，特别是现在这个时候，其实并不会给我多少引导。因为我们以前的主顾大多不得不早就把他们的藏品拍卖掉了，或者早已去世，对于剩下的少数几位，也不能抱有什么指望。这时我突然翻到一捆大概是我们最早的一位主顾的信件，此人我早就把他忘了，因为从1914年世界大战爆发以来，他再也未曾向我们订购或者咨询过什么。我们的通信几乎可以追溯到60年以前，这可没有一点儿夸张！他在我父亲和我祖父手里就买过东西，可是在我自己经手的37年里，我记不得他曾经来过我们店里。种种迹象表明，他一定是个古怪的旧式滑稽人物，是门采尔或者施皮茨韦格笔下那种早已匿迹的德国人，他们有的还活到我们这个时代，在外省的小城镇有时还可见到，都成了稀有怪人。他手书的文本可说是书法珍品，写得干干净净，每笔款项下面都用尺子和红墨水画上横道，而且总要把数字写两遍，以免出现差错；再有，他还利用裁下的信笺空白页和翻过来的旧信封写信。凡此种种都表明，这个不可救药的外省人十分小家子气，是个狂热的节俭癖。这些奇特的文件除了他的签名之外，往往还署着他的各种繁冗的头衔：退休林务官兼经济顾问，退休少尉，一级铁十字勋章获得者。这位1870年的耆宿，要是还活着的话，至少也有80岁高龄了。可是这位滑稽可笑、节俭入迷的人物作为古代版画收藏家却表现出不同凡响的聪慧、精邃的知识和高雅的情趣。于是我慢慢整理出他将近60年的订单，其中第一份订单还是用银币结算的。我发现，在一塔勒还可以买一大批最精美德国木刻的那个时代，这位不显山露水的外省人定已悄没声儿地收藏了一批铜版画，和那些暴发户名噪一时的收藏相比，他的这些藏品却更令人刮目相看。因为在半个世纪里，他单在我们店里每次用不多的马克和芬尼购得的东西积攒在一起，在今天恐怕已经价值连城了。除此之外，还可以想见，他在拍卖行和其他商号一定也捞到了不少便宜货。当然，从1914年以来再没有收到过他的订单。我对艺术品市场的行情十分熟悉，要说这样一批藏品无论公开拍卖或者私下出售，是一定瞒不过我的。如此说来，这位奇人想必现在还活着，或者这批藏品现在就在他的继承人手里。

“这件事情引起了我的兴趣，第二天，也就是昨天晚上，我立刻乘火车直奔萨克逊一座凋敝的外省小城镇而去。当我出了小火车站，信步走上主要大街时，我觉得在这些平庸、俗气、带着小市民趣味的房子当中，在其中的某个屋子里竟住着一位拥有保存得完整无损的伦勃朗极其精美的画作、以及丢勒和曼特尼亚版画的人，这简直让人难以置信。我到邮局去打听，这里有没有一位叫这个名字的林务官或者经济顾问。当得知这位老先生确实还活着时，我真感到惊讶不已，于是，我在午饭前便动身前往他家，说实话，我心里真还有些忐忑不安呢。

“我毫不费劲就找到了他的住处。他的寓所在那种简陋的外省楼房的三层。这种楼房大概是在上世纪60年代由某位善于投机的泥瓦匠设计，匆忙地盖起来的。二层楼上住着一位老实的裁缝师傅；三楼的左侧挂着一块闪闪发亮的邮政局长的门牌，在右侧终于看到了写有这位林务官兼经济顾问姓名的瓷牌。我怯生生地按了一下门铃，立刻就出现一位头戴干净小黑帽的白发老妪。我把我的名片递给她，并问，能否跟林务官先生谈谈。她先是惊讶地、有些怀疑地看了看我，然后看了我的名片。在这座被世界遗忘的小镇上，在这么一幢老式的房子里，居然有人从外地来访，这可是一件大事。她和蔼地请我稍等，便拿着名片进屋去了。我听见她在屋里小声说着，接着突然听见一个响亮的男人声音大声地说：‘啊，R先生……从柏林来的，从那家大古董店来的……快请进，快请进……我很高兴！’这时，老夫人又急步来到门口，请我进屋。

“我脱下大衣，走进屋去。在这间陈设简单的屋子当中，站着一位身体还很硬朗的耄耋老人，他身板挺直，蓄着浓密的髭须，身着半军装式的镶边便服，热情地向我伸出双手。这个手势明白无误地表示出他喜悦的、自然流露的欢迎，可是这又与他站在那里呆滞的奇怪神情形成明显的反差。他一步也不向我迎来，我只好走到他跟前，心里略感诧异地去握他的手。可是当我要去握他的手时，我从这双手纹丝不动地所保持的水平姿势上发现，他的手不是在找我的手，而是在等待。一下子我全明白了：这是位盲人。

“我从小迎面看见瞎子心里就感到很不舒服。每当想到一个人活生生的，同时又知道，他对我没有我对他那样的感受时，心里总排遣不了羞惭和不是味儿的那种体悟。就是此刻，在我看到在他向上竖起的浓密的白眉毛下那双直愣愣凝视着虚空的瞎眼睛时，也得克服我心里最初的恐惧。可是这位盲人没让我长时间去发愣，因为我的手刚一碰到他的手，他就使劲将我的手握住，并且用热烈而愉快的响亮声音再次向我表示欢迎：‘真是稀客！’他笑容满面地对我说，‘确实是奇迹，柏林的大老板竟会光临寒舍……不过，俗话说得好，商人上门，可得多多留神！……我们家乡常说：来了吉卜赛，快快关上大门扎紧口袋！……是啊，我可以想象，您干吗来找我。在我们可怜的、衰落的德国，现在生意很不景气，没有买主了，于是大老板们又想起了他们的老主顾，又找他们的羔羊来了。不过，我怕您在我这儿交不到好运，我们这些可怜的吃养老金的老人，只要有口饭吃就心满意足了。你们现在把物价弄得疯涨，我们可是没法跟上……我们这样的人是永远被抛弃了。’

“我立即纠正他的话，说他误解了我的来意。我来这儿，并不是要向他兜售什么东西，我只不过是正好来到近处，不想错过这个来拜访他这位我们店号多年的老主顾和德国最大的收藏家之一的机会。我刚说出‘德国最大的收藏家之一’这句话，老人脸上就出现了奇怪的变化。他仍然直愣地、呆滞地站在屋子中间，但是现在他的脸上突然开朗了，而且现出内心深处有种自豪的神情。他转向他估计夫人所在的方位，仿佛想说：‘你听见了吗！’随后他转过脸对我说，声音里充满快乐，刚才说话时还显露出的那种军人的粗暴口气已经无影无踪，而是以和顺，甚至可说是轻柔的语调说：

“‘您这确实是太好了，确实太好了……不过也不会让你白来一趟的。我要给您看些东西，这可不是您每天都看得到的，即使是在您引以为豪的柏林……给您看几幅画，就是在阿尔贝特和讨厌的巴黎也找不更好的了……可不是，60年下来，收集了各种各样的东西，这些宝贝可不是平时能在大街上随便见到的。路易丝，把柜子的钥匙给我！’

“这时，发生了一件意想不到的事。这位站在他旁边客气地微笑着，和蔼可亲地静听我们谈话的老太太，这时突然举起双手向我恳求，同时剧烈地摇着脑袋以示反对。起先我还不明白，她的这个信号这是什么意思。随后她先走到她丈夫跟前，双手轻轻地搭在丈夫肩上：‘可是，赫尔曼，你也不问问这位先生，现在有没有时间看你的藏品，现在到中午了。吃过午饭你得休息一小时，这是大夫特别要求的。等吃完饭你再把你那些东西让这位先生看，然后我们一起喝咖啡，这不是更好吗？那时安纳玛丽也在家，对这些东西她比我懂得多，她可以帮你的忙！’

“她刚说了这些话，似乎越过她毫无所知的丈夫，再次向我重复了那个急切恳求的手势。这下我明白她的意思了。我知道，她是让我不要答应马上就观赏他的藏画，所以我立即借口说，有人请我吃饭。我表示，能允许我观赏他的藏品，我感到莫大的快乐和荣幸，可是在三点以前几乎不可能，三点以后我将乐于再来。

“他生气了，就像是被人把最心爱的玩具拿走了的孩子。他转过身来咕哝着说道：‘当然，这些柏林的大老板总是忙得不可开交。可是这次您可得拿出点时间来，因为这些藏品不是三五幅画，而是27个收藏夹，每位大师一个，而且没有一个收藏夹没有装满。那么，说好下午三点；可得要准时，要不我们就看不完了。’

“他又朝空中向我伸出手来，‘您看吧，您会高兴——或者生气的。您越生气，我就越高兴。我们收藏家就是这样：一切都为我们自己，不为别人！’他再次使劲握了我的手。

“老太太一直把我送到门口。在这段时间里，我注意到她一直忧心忡忡，显出又尴尬又恐惧的神色。可是现在快到门口了，她就压低嗓子，结结巴巴地说道：‘你来我们家之前……可以让我女儿安纳玛丽……去接您吗？……由于种种原因……这样较为妥当……您大概是在旅馆里用饭吧？’

“‘是的。我很高兴，我会感到非常愉快的。’我说。

“果然，一小时以后，我在市场附近那家旅馆的小餐厅刚刚吃完午饭，就进来一位衣着朴素、不很年轻的姑娘，睁大眼睛往四处找人。我朝她走去，做了自我介绍，并告诉她，我已准备停当，可以马上跟她一起去看藏画。可是她的脸一下子突然涨得通红，表现出慌乱和尴尬的神情，就像她母亲先前那样。她恳请我，动身前能不能先跟我说几句话。我马上就看出，她很为难。每当她鼓起勇气，想要说话的时候，脸上忐忑不安、颤动不定的红晕便一直升到她的额头，一只手折卷着裙子。末了，她终于结结巴巴地开口了，这当间又一再沉入内心的慌乱：

“‘我母亲让我来找您的……她什么都跟我说了……我们对您有个很大的恳求……在您到我父亲那儿去之前，我们想先把情况告诉您……父亲当然要让您看他的藏品，可是这些藏品……这些藏品……已经不很全了……其中缺了好些……可惜，甚至缺了相当多……’

“这时，她不得不再喘口气，随后突然凝视着我，匆匆地说道：

“‘我必须坦诚地跟您说……您了解这个时代，您什么都会理解……战争爆发以后，父亲的双目完全失明，在此之前，他的视力就常出问题，后来因为激动，他的视力就完全丧失了——起先，尽管那时他已是76岁高龄了，他还是决意要到法国去打仗，后来德国军队没像1870年那样往前挺进，把他气得七窍生烟，这时他的视力就急剧下降。不过除了视力不济之外，他的身体还是十分硬朗的，直到不久前他还能一连散步几小时，甚至能去进行他喜爱的打猎。可是现在他不能出去散步了，他剩下的唯一的乐趣就是他的藏品，他每天都要欣赏……这就是说，这些藏品他是看不见了，他什么也看不见，可是每天下午他都要把所有的收藏夹拿出来，至少可以把这些画摸一摸，总是按照同样的顺序一张一张地摸，几十年来，他已经将这个顺序背熟了……现在他对别的东西已经没有兴趣，我得老给他念报上各种拍卖的消息，价格越涨，他越高兴……因为……对物价和时代父亲一点也不了解，这才是最可怕的……他不知道，我们已经失去了一切，他每月的养老金还维持不了两天的生活……再加上我妹夫又阵亡了，留下她和四个孩子……可是父亲对于我们这些物质上的困难却全然不知。起初我们省吃俭用，比从前更节省，但无济于事。后来我们就开始变卖东西——我们当然不碰他心爱的藏品……我们卖掉了仅有的那点首饰，可是，上帝呀，这又能卖多少钱！60年来父亲把能省下的每一芬尼全都用来买画了。有一天，家里再没有什么可卖的了……我们真不知道这日子怎么过下去。这时候……这时候，母亲和我就卖了一幅画。父亲要是知道，那是绝对不会允许的。他不知道，日子过得多么艰难，他根本想不到，在黑市上弄点儿食物有多难，他也不知道，我们已经战败了，阿尔萨斯和洛林已经割让出去，我们再也不把报上的所有这些消息念给他听了，免得他激动。

“‘我们卖了一幅非常珍贵的画，一幅伦勃朗的蚀刻画。商人给我们出价好几千马克，我们本指望用这笔钱维持几年生活的，可是您知道，货币熔化起来有多快……我们把剩下的钱全部存进银行，可是两个月后就付之东流了。因此，我们只好再卖掉一幅，又卖掉一幅，商人总是很晚才把钱寄来，这时货币又已经贬值了。后来我们就拿到拍卖行去，可是尽管人家出价几百万，我们也还是受骗……等这几百万到我们手里，已经成了一堆分文不值的废纸。就这样，仅仅为了维持我们最可怜的生活，父亲收藏的珍品，连同几幅名画，全都渐渐流失了，而父亲对此却毫不知情。’

“‘所以您今天一来，我母亲就吓坏了……因为要是父亲给您打开那些收藏夹，那么事情就露馅儿了……每个旧画框，父亲一摸就知道。我们把复制品或者相似的画页放进画框，代替那些卖掉的画，这样他摸的时候，就不会有所觉察。只要他能触摸、能清点这些画页（这些画的顺序他已准确地熟记于心），那他就会感到跟从前睁着双眼欣赏这些作品的时候同样的高兴。而平时在这个小镇上，我父亲认为没有人配得上看他的宝贝……每一张画他都爱不释手，我相信，要是他知道，他这些画早就在他手底下流失了，他一定会心碎的。这些年来，自从德累斯顿铜版画陈列馆的前任馆长去世以后，您是第一位他愿意让看他的收藏夹的人。所以我请求您……’

“这位不再年轻的姑娘突然举起双手，眼里闪着晶莹的泪花。

“‘……我们请求您……别让他伤心……别让我们伤心……请您别把他这个最后的幻想毁掉，请您帮助我们，让他相信，所有他将向您描述的画还都存在……要是他猜到了真相，他就活不下去了。也许我们做的这件事对不起他，但是我们没有别的法子：人总得活啊……人的生命，我妹妹的四个孤儿，总比印在纸上的画重要吧……到今天，我们也一直没有夺走他的这个乐趣；每天下午能把他的收藏夹翻上三个钟头，跟每幅画都像跟人似的说说话，他就感到很快活。今天……今天说不定会是他最快活的日子。他盼了好些年，盼着有朝一日能给一位行家展示他心爱的宝贝；我请您……我举起双手恳请您，别毁掉他的快乐。’

“她这番话说得那样感人肺腑，我现在的复述，根本无法表达她的这种感情。上帝呀，作为商人，我见过许多人被通货膨胀卑鄙地洗劫一空，弄得倾家荡产，他们上百年祖传的珍宝被人用一个黄油面包就给骗走了——但是在这儿命运创造了一个特例，使我特别震撼。不言而喻，我答应她绝不吐露真情，并尽力帮忙。

“于是我们一起去她家——路上我十分愤怒地听说，人们用一丁点儿钱就骗了这两位可怜的无知女人，我心头就无名火起，但是这更坚定了我帮助她们到底的决心。我们走上楼梯，刚按响门铃，就听见屋里老人愉快而响亮的声音：‘进来！进来！’凭着盲人敏锐的听觉，他一定听见我们上楼的脚步声了。

“‘由于急着要让您看他的宝贝，赫尔曼今天中午一点儿都没睡。’老夫人笑着说。她女儿一个眼神就让她知道我答应了她们的请求，老太太也就把心放下了。桌上铺了一大堆收藏夹，正在等待。盲人一触到我的手，就抓住我的手臂，把我按在沙发椅上，连寒暄话都没说。

“‘好吧，现在我们马上就开始！——要看的东西很多，而柏林来的大老板又没有时间！这里第一个收藏夹里全是大师丢勒的作品，您自己将会确信，收集得相当齐全——而且一幅比一幅精美。喏，看看吧，您自己来判断！’——说着他打开了画夹中的第一幅，‘这是《大马》。’

“于是他便精心细致地，就像人家平时触碰到一件易碎的东西似的，用指尖小心翼翼地从收藏夹里取出一个嵌了一张泛黄的空白纸的画框。他激情满怀地把这张分文不值的废纸举在面前，凝视着，足有几分钟之久，可是并没有真正看见。他张开双手狂喜地把这张白纸举到眼前，整个脸上呈现出一位观赏者迷人地凝神专注的表情。可是他两颗瞎了的僵滞的眼珠，突然闪闪发亮，出现一缕智慧之光——是纸的反光，还是内心的喜悦所造成？

“‘怎么样，’他自豪地说，‘您什么时候见过比这印得更好的画吗？每个细部的线条多么锐利，轮廓多么清晰——我把这张画同德累斯顿的那幅做过比较，德累斯顿那张就显得呆板、木讷多了。再来看看它的来头！这儿——’他把画翻了过来，用指甲丝毫不差地指着这张空白纸上的一些地方，以至我下意识地朝那儿看去，看那儿是否真有标识——‘您看，这儿是那格勒的收藏章，这里是雷米和埃斯戴尔的收藏章。这些著名收藏家大概怎么也料想不到，他们的画居然来到了这间小屋里。’

“听到这位毫不知情的老人如此热情地赞赏一张完全空白的纸，我真感到不寒而栗。看见他用指甲精确到毫米不差地指着只在他的幻想中还存在的看不见的收藏家的标识，真让人感到十分怪异，心里直发毛。恐怖使得我的喉咙感到憋气，像是被绳子勒住了似的，我不知道该怎么回答才好。我迷惘地抬眼看着那两个女人，看见浑身颤抖、异常激动的老夫人又举起了恳求的双手。于是我让自己镇静下来，开始进入我的角色。

“‘简直是超群绝伦！’我终于结结巴巴地说道，‘这幅画的印制真可谓精美无比！’自豪感使得老人的整个脸上立刻显得神采奕奕。‘不过，这还不怎么样，’他得意扬扬地说，‘您得先看看《忧愁》，或者这幅《基督受难》，这幅画色彩之绚丽，印制之精致，世上无出其右者。您看这儿，’说着他的手指又轻盈地抚摸着一幅他想象中的画，‘色彩鲜艳，质感强烈，色调温暖。柏林的大老板们和博物馆的专家们见了不被震得瞠目结舌，惊得呆若木鸡才怪呢。’

“老人得意扬扬，滔滔不绝地说啊，讲啊，足有两个小时。我真无法向您描述，跟他一起观赏这100张或200张空白废纸或是拙劣的复制品有多么怪异，多么吓人！这些子虚乌有的画在这位可悲的毫不知情的老人记忆里可是货真价实，真真切切的，他可以毫无差错地按照精确的顺序赞美和描述每一幅画，精确地指出画上的每一个细部。这些看不见的藏品早已风流云散，荡然无存了，可是对于这位盲人，对于这位令人感动的受骗者来说，还实实在在收藏在那里。还完整无缺地存在着。他由幻觉产生的激情是如此感人肺腑，几乎连我也开始相信了。只有一次，他似乎有所察觉，这下，他那梦游者的沉稳和观赏的热情就被可怕地打破了：拿起伦勃朗的《安提俄珀》（这是一幅试印张，想必确实具有无可估量的价值），他又赞赏了印刷的清晰，同时他那感觉敏锐的、神经质的手指深情地将这幅画复绘一遍，随后又照着印象中的线条重新描画时，他那久经磨炼的触角神经在这张陌生的画页上却没有发现那些凹纹。这时他额头上突然掠过一片阴影，声音也变得慌乱了。‘这确实是……确实是《安提俄珀》吗？’他喃喃自语，神情显得有些尴尬。我立刻心生一计，急忙从他手里将这幅装了框的画页拿了过来，热情洋溢地把这幅我也能记得起来的蚀刻画的各种细节描绘一番。盲人的那张已经变得尴尬的脸重新松弛下来。我越赞扬，这位性格怪僻、已到风烛残年的老者就越显得亲切与随和，快乐与真挚。‘这才是行家啊！’他朝他的家人转过脸去，兴高采烈地、得意扬扬地说。‘终于，终于找到一位知音了。你们听听他说的，我这些画有多值钱。你们总是对我心存疑虑，责怪我把所有的钱都花在了收藏上。这倒是真的，60年来，我不喝啤酒，不抽烟，不旅行，不看戏，不买书，总是一个劲儿省，省下钱来买了这些画。等到有朝一日我不在人世了，你们将会看到——你们发了，成了全城的首富，富得跟德累斯顿最有钱的富人一样，那时候，你们还会为我干的蠢事高兴的。可是只要我活着，一幅画也不许拿出这屋子——你们得先把我抬出去，这才能动我的藏品。’

“他边说边用手指轻柔地抚摸那些早已没有藏品的空收藏夹，就像是抚摸有生命的东西似的。——对我来说，这是一个可怕但又感人的情景，因为在这战争年代里，我还从未在一个德国人的脸上见过如此完美、如此纯真的幸福表情。他身旁站着他的妻子和女儿，神秘地跟那位德国大师蚀刻画上的女人形象极为相似。画上的女人前来瞻仰救世主的坟墓，站在挖开的空墓穴前，脸上的表情既惊恐又虔诚，还有见到奇迹时的狂喜。犹如那幅画上的女门徒被救世主神的预示映得神采奕奕一样，这两个日渐衰老、含辛茹苦、家徒四壁的小市民妇女脸上则感染着老人那天真烂漫、心花怒放的欢乐，她们一面欢笑，一面流泪，这样感人至深的情景我还从未见过。可是，老人对我的夸奖真是百听不厌，他不断把画页堆起，又翻开，如饥似渴地把我说的每一句话都吞进肚里。等到最后，这些骗人的收藏夹被推到一边，老人很不乐意地得把桌子腾出来喝咖啡的时候，对我来说倒是一次休息。可是我这心含内疚的放松又怎能与这位似乎年轻了三十岁的老人，与他激越高昂、升腾跌宕的欢乐情绪，与他的豪迈气魄相提并论！他讲了千百个买画淘宝的趣闻逸事，一再站起身来，不要别人帮忙，自己摸索着去抽出一幅又一幅画来：他像喝了酒似的兴奋和陶醉。可是等我末了说，我得告辞了，他简直大为惊吓，像个任性的孩子似的一脸恼怒，固执地跺着脚说：这可不行，还没看完一半呢。两个女人费了好大周折才让这位倔强的老人明白，他不能让我多耽搁了，要不然就会误了火车。

“经过激烈反对，最后他终于顺从了。告别的时候到了，他的声音变得非常柔和。他握住我的两只手，他的手指以一个盲人的全部表达力，亲热地顺着我的手一直抚摸到手腕，像是想更多地了解我，并向我表达言语所不能表达的更多的爱。‘您的光临给了我极大、极大的快乐。’他开口说，语气中透着从内心激起的感触，这是我永远不会忘怀的，‘终于又能和一位行家一起来欣赏我心爱的藏画，对我来说这真是件欣慰的事。我会让您看到，您没有白到我这个瞎老头这儿来。我让我太太作为证人，我在这儿当着她的的面答应您，我要在我的遗嘱上再加上一条：委托您久负盛名的字号来拍卖我的收藏。您该获此殊荣，来管理这批人所不知的宝藏，’——说到这里，他深情地把手放在这些早已洗劫一空的收藏夹上——‘直到它流散到世界各地之日。不过您要答应我编制一份精美的藏品目录：让它成为我的墓碑，更好的墓碑我也不需要。’

“我望了望他夫人和女儿，她们俩紧紧地挨在一起，有时会有一阵战栗从一人传给另一个人，仿佛两人是一个身体，因为受到同样的心灵震撼而在那里颤抖。我自己的心情十分庄严，因为这位令人感动的毫不知情的老人，委托我像保管一批珍宝似的保管他那看不见的、早已散失的藏品。我深受感动，答应了这件我永远也无法完成的事；老人瞎了的眼珠又为之一亮，我感到，他从内心渴望感觉到我的真实存在：我从他的和蔼可亲，从他心怀感激和诺言，用手指紧握我的手指的举止上，感觉到了他的这种渴望。

“两位女人送我到门口。她们不敢说话，因为老人听觉敏锐，会听见每一句话，但是她们热泪盈眶，她们的目光注视着我，充满感激之情。我神情恍惚，摸索着走下楼梯。我心里感到十分羞愧：我像童话里的天使踏进一个穷人家里，帮人做了一次虔诚的欺骗，肆无忌惮地撒谎，使一个瞎子在一小时内重见光明，而实际上我确实是个卑鄙的商贩，到这里来是想从别人手里狡猾地捞取几件珍贵的东西。可是我带走的却很多很多：在这麻木迟钝、毫无欢乐的时代，我又一次生动地感觉到了纯真的激情，一种心灵里充满阳光、完全献身于艺术的心醉神迷——对于这种精神状态我们这些人似乎早已忘怀了。我心里充满敬畏之情，——我无法用别的方式来表达——虽然我还因为不知原因而一直感到羞惭。

“我已经到了大街上，这时上面的窗户咔喇一响，我听见有人在喊我的名字：真的，老人非要朝他估摸我所去的那个方向用他失明的眼睛为我送行。他的身子探出窗外老远，他的妻女只好扶着他，以防意外。他挥动手绢，用男孩子快乐而爽朗的声音叫道：‘一路平安！’这是一个令我难以忘怀的情景：楼上窗口上露出一张白发老人快乐的笑脸，由一片善意的幻觉之白云从我们这个可憎的现实世界轻轻托起，高临于大街上那些郁郁寡欢、行色匆匆、忙忙碌碌的人群之上。我不觉又想起了那句真实的老话——我想，那是歌德说的——‘收藏家是幸福的人！’”