双语·老屋子 第十章

Chapter 10

Fru Adelheid lay on the floor before her chair and pulled the fowers of her bouquet to pieces. Cordt sat with his head leaning on his hand and looked at the fowers.

“If only you would speak, Cordt…If only you would ask me something. Why don't you ask me something?”

“What can I ask you?”

“Ask me what I am thinking about. Why I have come home so early. Why I have not been here for so long.”

“I know all that, Adelheid.”

She crossed her hands on her knee and swayed to and fro and looked at him with dark and angry eyes:

“Is there anything you do not know, Cordt?”

“No.”

“I don't think so either. You know the right and the wrong of everything between heaven and earth. You are never in doubt and never at a loss. You know at once what is good and what is bad; and then you go away and do what is good.”

He shook his head and said nothing and she grew still more angry:

“You alone know. Whoever does not obey you is lost. There is no room in the house for any but you and those who serve you.”

Cordt bent over her and lifted her up in the chair.

“Be silent for a little, Adelheid,”he said.“And stay quiet for a little.”

But she slipped to the foor again and looked at him defantly:

“I will not sit in that chair,”she said.“Never again. I am not worthy of the honor. You do not know everything, Cordt. You do not know me.”

He stroked her hair with his two hands and forced her head back:

“Then show yourself to me,”he said.

She released her head and her eyes grew moist:

“You must not be good to me,”she said.“You don't know me. I am not the woman you think.”

Then she laid her head on the chair and said, softly:

“I am so sad, Cordt.”

“You will be glad again.”

“I daresay,”she said.“But I shall always be sad.”

She took the ruined bouquet and laid it on the chair and her cheek upon it. She closed her eyes. Cordt looked at her—she seemed so tired—and they were long silent. Then she said:

“It is so cold in here.”

And then silence fell upon the room again.

“Cordt!”

Fru Adelheid sat with her back against the chair and stared into the fre with strange eyes:

“Cordt…do you know…that sometimes, when I am merriest…outside…it is as though I heard little children crying.”

He sat silent.

“I hear little children crying, Cordt. When I am dancing…andsometimes when I am singing. And at the theatre…when there are many lights and people and I am happy…then it comes so often. Then I hear little children crying…far, far away, but still I can hear them distinctly…I can never help hearing them…Cordt…do you know what it is?”

“Yes, I know, Adelheid.”

Adelheid looked at him and turned her eyes to the fireplace again:

“Sometimes it happens differently,”she said.“When I hear a child crying…when it is really a child crying…a strange child, which has nothing to do with me, which I know nothing at all about…I needn't even see it, Cordt…but then I have to cry myself.”

She was silent for a little. Then she turned her face to him and asked:

“Do you know what that is, Cordt?”

And he looked at her calmly and said again:

“Yes, I know, Adelheid.”

“I do not know,”she said and shook her head softly.“I love our little boy and love to have him with me. Don't I, Cordt?”

“Yes.”

“But he is much happier with old Marie. He prefers to be with her. He puts out his little hands to me when I come in. But, when I have had him in my arms for a while, he wants to go back to Marie. He is so small still.”

“Yes.”

“Sometimes he will not kiss me on any account. He always kisses old Marie.”

“When she comes to die, we will put a tombstone on her grave,”he said.“And on the stone we will write,‘Here lies one whom the children in the house kissed.’”

Fru Adelheid folded her hands behind her neck and looked up at the ceiling:

“At one time, you used to tell me about your mother…that is long, long ago, Cordt. You talked of her so often, in those days…why do you never do so now?”

“I think only of you.”

She moved nearer to him and laid her head on his knee:

“May I lie like this, Cordt?”

He stroked her hair and left his hand lying on her shoulder.

“That's nice,”she said.

Cordt looked at her hair and stroked it again. She closed her eyes and nestled up against him:

“It is so quiet here,”she said.“Now I will go to sleep.”

But then she grew restless again. She half raised herself and lay on her knees, with her hands folded in her lap. Her hair had become undone and slipped down over her shoulders. Her eyes stared into the fre:

“You used to tell me that your mother undressed you every night when you were a little boy,”she said.“And every morning she dressed you…always.”

“So she did.”

“You said that it so often made her late when she was going to the theatre…or else she would get up from the table when there were guests. And your father used to be so angry with her.”

He nodded.

“I think your father was right,”she said.“I think it was odd of your mother…not quite…not quite natural.”

Cordt pushed the hair from his forehead, but said nothing.

“I could see quite well that you would have me do the same. But I couldn't do it. I can't do it as well as old Marie does and I can't see that that is necessary in order to be a good mother.…Then you also told me that, one evening, when your mother had to go out, you cried without stopping until she came home again.”

“Yes.”

“But, if your mother had been like me and if old Marie had undressed you every night, then it would have been she whom you would have cried for.”

“So it would,”he replied.“But it was good for me and good for herself that it was mother.”

“I don't understand that,”she said.

But then she raised her head and looked at him with great, proud eyes:

“Yes…I understand,”she said.“I understand that it is good for a man and gives him confdence to see his wife chained to her baby's cradle.”

“That is so, Adelheid.”

He looked at her quietly and sadly and her defance was broken then and there:

“How strangely you say that,”she said.“Cordt…”

Then she laid her head on his knee again and they were silent for a time. Then she said:

“I remember the evening when I was going to my frst grown-up ball. A lady came to dress my hair. I was so solemn and the ladyso talkative. She told me that I was pretty and that I was sure to be married soon; therefore I must lose no time and dance as much as I could; for, once a girl was married, she had to give up dancing. I asked her what she meant and said that I knew many married women who danced. Then she told me that that was true enough and that there were many fne ladies who did, but then they danced their children dead and therefore it was a great sin.”

He moved in his chair. She raised her head and laid it on his knee again:

“Do you believe that we can dance our children dead, Cordt?”

He did not reply, but stroked her cheek. But she pushed his hand away and turned her face and looked at him:

“Do you believe it, Cordt?”

He nodded.

Then Fru Adelheid rose awkwardly from the floor and stood before him. Slowly, she raised her hands and pressed them against her temples.

Cordt sprang up and took her hands frmly in his own and drew her to him. But she tore herself away and her eyes stared vacantly into his and did not see him.

“Adelheid!”

“Those are your children and mine, Cordt…the little children who cry when I am merry…the children who died because their mother danced . . .”

“Adelheid!”

His voice was very soft and his eyes very gentle. She stared into them and saw a gleam in their depths. She understood that he was rejoicing within himself, because he thought that he had her as hewanted her.

He put out his hands to her and his eyes and his silent, quivering mouth spoke a thousand loving words to her. She stood stiff and cold and looked at him stiffy and coldly.

And, when his hands touched her, she drew from him and pushed her chair far back, as if she could not fnd room enough:

“You do not understand me,”she said.

She crossed the room to the balcony-door and stood there. Then she came back to the freplace, where he had sat down, and looked at him as though he were a stranger:

“Those little children who cry,”she said,“what do they cry for?”

He raised his hands and let them fall on the arms of his chair.

“Why do they cry?”she repeated.“Because they have not been brought into a world which is closed to them at the very moment when they see its beauty?…Because they are not born to die?”

She went away again and came back and sat in her chair with a strained expression on her face, as though she had to explain something to one who was slow of comprehension:

“It's no use,”she said.

Her voice was harsh. She swung her body to and fro and her thoughts hunted for words in which she could say what she wanted in such a way that it would be settled once and for all and could not be misunderstood.

Then her looks fell on Cordt, as he sat there by her side, shattered and tired, with closed eyes and nerveless hands. She saw the pain she was giving him. She wished to undo and repair it and the tears broke out in her:

“Cordt!”

She took his hand and it lay lifeless in hers.

“Can't you help me?”

“No, Adelheid.”

Then her mood changed about. She pushed herself back in her chair and crossed her arms over her breast:

“Then I must help myself,”she said.“How could you, either, an old…yes, an old man like you?”

He did not answer, did not stir, did not look at her.

“An old man like you,”she repeated,“who long for peace and quiet and nothing else. Then you give out that that is the best happiness which is the easiest and the cheapest and the best adapted to domestic use.”

Cordt had raised himself upright in his chair. His hands lay clenched about his knee, his eyes blazed.

“Then you put the woman you love in your mother's chair…your grandmother's and your great-grandmother's chair…”

He few up and stood before her with his hands on his hips and his lips pressed close together:

“Hold your tongue!”

Fru Adelheid started and looked at him with frightened eyes:

“You have no right to speak to me like that,”she said.

He sat down again and threw his head back in his chair, with his face turned away from her. She was so tired, could not fnd the words she wanted, said everything differently and in another tone than that in which she thought it.

And, as he quieted down beside her, she began to think more clearly than usual and it seemed to her that there was nothing to bedone but to say her worst. Then she clenched her fsts, to give herself strength, and closed her eyes while she spoke:

“You must know things as they are, Cordt. It is all true, as you have seen it and as you have said it. I have lied to you, Cordt. I lied in my words…I lied every time I came up here and sat with you.”

Now she looked at him. He raised his head with an effort and met her eyes. Then he turned his face away again:

“You are lying now,”he said.

She opened her mouth and closed it again, so that her teeth struck together.

Then she crossed her hands in her lap and bent over them and wept:“I don't know that,”she said.

Cordt stood up and walked across the foor, slowly and wearily and without thinking. Fru Adelheid's tears fell into her lap.

They were in this room, each independent of the other, each without sympathy for the other. Their hearts were dead, their thoughts paralyzed. They were no longer two people who loved each other and who strove to be happy, not even two who were angry or sorry because they were to be parted. They were just two people under sentence of death, whom chance had imprisoned in the same cell, but who had nothing else in common.

Cordt was the frst to come to his senses.

He was standing behind her chair and the scent of her hair awakened him. He bowed deeper over her and remembered who she was. He looked at her hands, which were wet with tears, and his heart wept with her.

Then, at that moment, he saw that he must spare his sympathy if he wished to keep her. And, when he saw this, he at once realizedthat she was lost to him for ever.

He sat down in his chair and sought for the words which he should say. He felt like the actor who has to deliver the last sentence in the play, while the audience is already leaving, because the end of the performance is there and the tension over.

“Adelheid!”he said.

That was all he could say. She understood what was passing within him and was speechless too and wept softly.

And the night sped on.

She was lying on the floor again, where she had lain before, with her cheek upon his knee. She talked…hastily, by fts and starts, without troubling what she said, as long as she could get it all said.

Cordt leant his head on his hand and his thick hair fell over his forehead. He closed his eyes and opened them again, heard what she said and forgot it again, answered from time to time and knew only that it was over.

“There are other men for me besides yourself…it is true…it is all true…Ah, Cordt, may I say it, wicked as it is?…And you will be kind…you understand that it is not that…that it is not infdelity…”

She pressed her hands together and shook her head in despair:

“Yes…yes…it is infdelity, Cordt…it is.…It is, because it's you…and because I understand it now. May I tell you, Cordt…may I?…I love the desire in their eyes…I am curious about it…. There is nothing in it that insults me…. I am happy in it, I even try to kindle it…”

“Those things are not said to one's husband, Adelheid.”

She looked at him:

“To whom shall I say them, then?”

“Those things are not said.”

“Ah…well…I say them. I will say them. Because you are the man you are. And, also, you asked me about it, Cordt…you saw it and wanted to save me…that was why you spoke to me about it, wasn't it?…I did not know what it was…now I do know…I am not lying now…but I did not know, before you said it. And it is no uglier for me…it is better for me…Cordt, Cordt…it is less ugly so.”

She hid her face in her hands and wept so that she could not speak:

“And it is worse still, Cordt…it is worse than I have said…why do you not turn me out?…Ah, if you were only dead, Cordt!…Why should you be so unhappy and why should it be I that make you so? If you cast me away, it will be only what I deserve. For I know that it is you I love…I know it now as I never knew it before…you are the man that was destined for me…”

She seized his clothes with her hands and half raised herself, so that her white face was close to his:

“Cordt…can't you wait for me?…I am coming…”

Then she released her hold and sank in a heap on the foor:

“No…no…I cannot do what you wish.”

He rose to his feet and stood before her and looked into the fre:

“It's your will that is sick, Adelheid,”he said.

He walked across the room and stood at the balcony-door and looked out. Then he came back and sat in his chair again:

“You know where the great joy lies. And you know that it would be yours and mine, if you could reach it. But you cannot.There is no sense of perspective in your life…everything to you seems quite close or quite far, quite small or quite big. You are like Martens and the others. You belong to them, because your will is weak, like theirs. You are becoming like them.”

“No, Cordt.”

“Yes, you are like them. You are a woman and you are refned and therefore you dread the mire. But you belong to them. You and I are mortal enemies. If you were she whom my son had chosen for his wife, I should tremble for his happiness. And you had the happiness which you seek…nay, the happiness that exists. You set the cup to your lips when you were young enough to stand wine and old enough to know that it was good.”

He pushed the hair from his forehead and looked round the room:

“There is nothing more to be said. You are a child of the time and the time claims you as its own. There was no sense in bringing you to the old room.”

“No, Cordt.”

“But you are clever and you are refned and you have seen its great, silent beauty. And, one day, you will see that happiness lay in the land where you were and you sallied forth to fnd it in distant climes.”

“Yes, Cordt.”

“You will see that, one day. But then it will be too late. Then the years will be gone. Then the strings of the old spinet will be rusted and mute and the spinning-wheel will have fallen to dust and the fre died out in the chimney. Then your fancy will be frightened and bewildered, like the bird that keeps on fapping against the window-pane. Your faith will be lost and your modesty turned to unchastity.”

He rose and went across to the balcony-door. Fru Adelheid lay with her cheek on the fender and with closed eyes.

A silence hung over the room greater than it had ever known before. They both of them felt it and felt it as the silence when pain is dumbed at the approach of death. They no longer fought against the inevitable, against what was stronger than themselves; and they were so tired that they no longer thought of the defeat which they had suffered, but only smiled in the peace which they had won.

And the night sped on.

They were sitting again in the quaint old chairs and looked at the embers that were expiring in the hearth. The candles were nearly burnt out.

They were both of them very gentle and very still. It seemed years since they had last differed. Their faces were calm, their eyes clear and sad, when they looked at each other, but without longing, without anger or bitterness.

And they looked at each other and talked together…of that which was over.

Their words had lost all sting. He held her hand in his and pressed it as that of a good friend. Once, she pushed his hair from his forehead as she would have done to a child.

“If any one saw us sitting here, he would not understand what has happened to us,”said Cordt.

“No.”

“And, if anyone had heard every word that fell between us in this room, he would perhaps say that we were a pair of simpletons.”Fru Adelheid shook her head:

“It is well that nothing more has happened to us,”she said.

“I don't know,”replied Cordt.

Then he let go her hand and drew himself up in his seat:

“Sometimes I think it would be easier if there were an action that had to be forgiven,”he said.“Something to be forgotten. Then it would not be over.”

“It is not over,”she said.“We have missed happiness, because I did not keep the measure by which I should be gauged. But our boy down below lives and he can win a wife who shall sit in the old room with honor.”

“No,”said Cordt.“The secret of the old room is out. It does not suit these times and still less the times to come. Our son shall not see his happiness shattered here.”

And, a little later, he pressed his hand hard to his temples and said so softly that she just heard it:

“For it is hard to decrease one's own happiness.”

The candles went out…one after the other.

“It is late, Adelheid,”he said.“We had better go.”

“Yes,”she said.

But neither of them was able to.

They looked at each other and sat steeped in the same thoughts, afraid to end this still night, which was to be followed by bad days.

Then the last candle went out.

Cordt's lamp still burnt on the table, but it was as though everything in the room was displaced in its glow. There wasdarkness where light had been before and great shadows on the wall.

They both felt it as something uncanny and involuntarily moved closer together.

“Sing to me, Adelheid,”he said.

She went to the spinet and sat down and looked at the keys.

“Sing the last of the Lenore songs.”

She looked over her shoulder, but could not see the expression on his face.

Then she sang:

When death comes, come, Lenore, too:

Thou wert Life's beacon rosy-red;

And, by those glad, great eyes shot through,

In that same instant, Death were dead.

So am I never Death's, but thine;

No tears shed I, nor once complain:

Set only thy red lips to mine

And take thy soul again.

I shall have seen for the last time

The radiant, loving eyes I treasure;

And what of song and what of crime

I wrought let others weigh and measure.

But thou sometimes wilt not forget,

When evening creeps across the pane,

The scent of shy blue violet

That sweetened all the plain.

Cordt was standing behind her chair when the song was fnished. She did not perceive it, but sat with her hands on the keys and softly repeated the last lines.

He looked at her hair and her hands and at the white dress that hung over her shoulders and her lap. He knew as he had never known before what he had lost and knew that he would never win it back. His hands trembled, his eyes burned. He thought that he must kill her and himself.

Then he spoke her name.

She looked up and looked at him.

She forgot everything, saw nothing but him. He could see it in her great, strange eyes and in her red mouth.

And she sprang up with a cry of happiness and he took her in his arms and carried her away.