Krakatit/Chapter 35
CHAPTER XXXV
The fat cousin was right. The old Hagen was becoming more and more paralyzed, though he had not yet succumbed to the disease. He now lay helpless, surrounded by doctors, trying to open his left eye. Uncle Rohn and his relations were suddenly sent for; and the old Prince tried once more to open his eye so as to look again at his daughter and make some signal.
She ran out of the room, bareheaded, and rushed outside to Prokop who had been waiting for her in the park for some time. Completely ignoring Holz she kissed and clung to him passionately. She made hardly any allusion to her father and Uncle Charles, absorbed in something, harassed and affectionate. She pressed herself against him and then suddenly became distant and preoccupied. He began to poke fun at the Tartar dynasty . . . a little too pointedly. She gave him an expressive look and changed the conversation, talking about the previous evening. “Until the last moment I thought that I wouldn’t go to you. Do you know that I am nearly thirty? When I was fifteen I fell terribly in love with our chaplain. I went to him to confess, simply in order to get a nearer sight of him, and because I was ashamed to say that I had stolen or lied I told him that I had been unchaste; I didn’t know what that meant, and the poor man had a lot of work to find out the truth. Now I couldn’t confess,” she concluded quietly, and made a bitter movement with her mouth.
Prokop was disturbed by her continued self-analysis, in which he saw a morbid desire for self-torture. He tried to find something else to talk about and discovered to his consternation that if they did not speak about love they had nothing to say to one another. They were standing on the bastion. It gave the Princess a certain relief to return to her past, to confess small but important things about herself. “Soon after I confessed we had a dancing master who fell in love with my governess, a stout woman. I heard about it and . . . saw them. It disgusted me. Oh! But all the same I spied on them and . . . I couldn’t understand. And then one day when we were dancing I suddenly understood, when he pressed himself against me. After that I wouldn’t let him touch me; in the end . . . I fired a shot-gun at him. We had to dismiss them both.
“At that time . . . I was terribly worried by mathematics; I simply hadn’t a head for it, you see? My teacher was a famous man, but unpleasant; you scientists are all extraordinary. He set me an exercise and looked at his watch; it had to be done in an hour. And when I had only five, four, three minutes left and I had still done nothing . . . my heart began to thump and I had such a horrible feeling” She dug her fingers into Prokop’s arm and drew in her breath. “Then I got to like those lessons.
“When I was nineteen they selected a husband for me; you wouldn’t believe it. And because by that time I understood everything I made my fiancé promise that he would never touch me. Two years later he died in Africa. I pined so much—through being romantic or something of the sort—that they never tried to make a match for me again. I thought that I’d got the question settled for ever.
“And I forced myself, you know, to believe that I had some obligation to him and that I ought to be true to him even after his death, until finally I grew to believe that I had been in love with him. Now I see that all the time I was only acting to myself and that I had never felt anything more than foolish disillusion.
“It’s curious, isn’t it, that I’m telling you all these things about myself? You know, it’s a great relief to speak about oneself like this without keeping anything back.
“When you arrived I thought to begin with that you were like that professor of mathematics. I was even frightened of you, darling. He’ll give me an exercise to do, I thought, and my heart began to beat again.
“A horse simply intoxicated me. When I was on a horse I felt that I didn’t need love. And I rode insanely.
“I always imagined that love was something vulgar and . . . terribly revolting. You see, I still can’t deal with it; at the same time it frightens me and masters me. And now I’m glad that I’m like any other woman. When I was little I was afraid of water. They showed me the strokes of swimming on dry land, but I would not go near the lake; I got the idea that it was full of spiders, and one day I was suddenly seized by some sort of courage or desperation, shut my eyes, cried out and sprang in. Don’t ask me how proud I was afterwards; it was as if I had passed an examination, as if I knew everything, as if I had changed into another person. As if I had grown up at last. . . .”
That evening she came into the laboratory, uneasy and worried. When he took her into his arms she said agitatedly: “He’s opened his eye, he’s opened his eye, oh!” She was thinking of the old Hagen; in the afternoon she had had a long conversation with Uncle Rohn but would not speak about it. It seemed that she was striving to get away from something; she threw herself into Prokop’s arms so passionately and devotedly that he had the impression that she wanted to blot everything out at all costs. Finally she lay still, her eyes closed, completely limp. He thought that she had fallen asleep but then she began to whisper: “Darling, I shall do something terrible, but you mustn’t leave me. Swear to me, swear to me,” she insisted wildly and sprang to her feet, immediately, however, getting control of herself again. “Ah! no. What could you swear to do? I’ve read in the cards that you will go away. If you want to, do it now before it’s too late.”
Prokop naturally jumped up, saying that she wanted to get rid of him, that her Tartar pride had rushed to her head, and similar things. She became very excited and charged him with being base and harsh, saying that he would answer for it, that . . . that . . . But scarcely had she said it than she flung her arms round his neck, repentant: “I’m a beast. I wasn’t thinking of that. You know, a princess ought never to shout, but I shout at you . . . as if I were your wife. Strike me, I beg you. Wait, I’ll show you that I’m capable. . . .” She released him and suddenly, as she was, began to tidy up the laboratory, wetting a cloth under the tap and cleaning the whole floor on her knees. She meant it for an act of repentance, but somehow she found the work pleasant, became radiant, worked with a will, humming to herself a song which she had picked up somewhere from the servants. He wanted to raise her to her feet. “No; wait,” she defended herself, “there’s a bit over there.” And she crawled with the cloth underneath a chair.
“Come here,” she said in a moment, surprised. Still mumbling reproaches he sat down next to her. She was squatting, her arms clasped round her knees. “Just see what a chair looks like from underneath. I’ve never seen such a thing before.” She placed on his face a hand which was still damp from the wet rag. “You’re as rough as the under side of this chair; that’s the most lovely thing about you. I’ve only seen other people on their smooth, polished side, but you, when one first looks at you, you’re like a beam with cracks in it—everything that holds the human frame together. If one runs one’s finger over you one gets a splinter in it, but all the same you're beautifully made. One begins to realize something else . . . something more important than what one gets from the smooth side. That’s you.”
She nestled against him. “I feel as if I were in a tent, or a log hut,” she whispered, entranced. “I never used to play with dolls, but sometimes . . . secretly . . . I used to go out with the gardener’s boys and climb trees with them. . . . Then they wondered at home why my clothes were torn. And when I used to climb with them my heart beat with fear so wonderfully. When I’m with you I have the same wonderful fear that I had then.
“Now I’m thoroughly hidden,” she said happily, leaning her head against his knees. “Nobody can find me, and I’m rough, like the bottom of that chair; an ordinary woman, not thinking about anything, only being soothed. . . . Why is a person so happy when he’s hidden? Now I know what happiness is: One must close one’s eyes and become tiny . . . quite tiny, waiting to be discovered. . . .”
She rocked herself to and fro contentedly while he smoothed her dishevelled hair; but her widely opened eyes looked past his head into the distance.
Sudenly she turned her face to him. “What were you thinking about?”
He moved his eyes away shyly. He could not tell her that he saw before him the Tartar princess in all her glory, a proud and commanding figure which now. . . in pain and yearning. . . .
“Nothing, nothing,” he muttered, looking down at the happy and contented face against his knees, and stroked her dark cheek, which flushed with tender passion.