The Twilight of the Souls/Chapter XXI
"Are you going out, Gerrit?" asked Adeline.
She was surprised to see him come down the stairs, dressed, in uniform. He had spent the morning in bed, but he felt better now; and a feverish excitement acted like a spur. He said, in answer to his wife's question, that he was better, played for a moment with Gerdy, took his lunch standing and then hurried out of the house and rushed through a parade at barracks, where he was not expected. The fever, which he still felt sending shivers through his great body, drove him out of barracks again; and he walked to the Kerkhoflaan and asked Truitje if there was any news of her master or mistress, if Master Addie had had a telegram from Paris; but Truitje didn't know. Then he tore off like one possessed, first to Otto and Frances' house, where he found Frances and Louise, both sick with waiting: Otto had gone to Baarn, to break the news to Bertha.
He could not stay with the two women: Frances wandering from room to room, crying helplessly; Louise, calmer, looking after the children, the entire care of whom she had taken on herself since she had come to live with Otto and since Frances had become such an invalid. Gerrit could not possibly stay: with long strides, he flew to the Alexanderstraat, to Mamma, who was glad to see him well again after his two days' illness. He found Dorine with her; Adolphine called, followed by Cateau, all obeying an impulse not to leave the old woman alone in these days, when at any moment Van der Welcke, Constance and Emilie might arrive from Paris, bringing home the body of Henri, of whose death no one had telegraphed any details, much to the indignation of Adolphine and Cateau.
But, when Auntie Lot came in, her small eyes red and swollen with weeping, and cried, "Oh dear! . . . Kassian!"—an exclamation at once hushed by the children, an exclamation which Mamma, staring dimly into space, failed to understand—Gerrit could no longer endure it among all those overwrought women; and, convinced that Mamma did not even yet know that Constance and Van der Welcke had gone to Paris, convinced that the sisters had not even paved the way by telling her that Henri was seriously ill, he cleared out suddenly, without saying good-bye, and rushed into the open air, down the street, into the Woods, gasping for breath.
What was it, what could it be, hanging in the air? The clouds seemed to be bending over the town in pity, an immense, yearning pity which turned into a desperate melancholy while Gerrit hurried along with his great strides; the wintry trees lifted their crowns of branches in melancholy despair; the rooks cawed and circled in swarms; the bells of the tram-cars tinkled as though muffled in black crape; the few pedestrians walked stiffly and unnaturally; he met ague-stricken, black-clad figures with sinister, spectral faces: they passed him like so many ghosts; and all around him, in the vistas of the Woods, rose a clammy mist, in which every outline of houses, trees and people was blurred into a shadowy unreality. And it seemed to Gerrit as if he alone were real and possessed a body; and he ran and rushed through the spectral landscape, through the hollow avenues of death.
What was it in the air? Nothing, nothing extraordinary: it was winter in Holland; and the people . . . the people had nothing extraordinary about them: they walked in thick coats and cloaks, with their hands in their pockets, because it was cold; and, because the mist was cold and raw, their eyes looked fixed, their lips and noses drawn and pinched and they bore themselves rigidly and spectrally when they came towards him out of the fog and passed him with those shadowy and unreal figures. And, with all sorts of fever-born images whirling before his eyes, like shining will-o'-the-wisps in that morning mist, his thoughts touched hastily on every sort of subject: he saw the barracks before him; Pauline; the Paris train and Constance and Van der Welcke in a compartment with Henri's coffin between them; Auntie Lot and Mamma; Bertha at Baarn. He saw his boyhood at Buitenzorg; the foaming river; all his bright-haired children. He saw a worm, big as a dragon, with bristles like lances sticking straight out of its dragon's back. . . .
He was still feverish and had been unwise to get up and go out. But he could not have stayed in bed, he couldn't have done it: his feverish excitement had driven him to the barracks, to his mother and to . . . Where was he going? Was he going to Scheveningen? And why was he going through the Woods like that? What was it that constantly impelled him to keep to the right, to turn up the paths on the right, as though he were making for the Nieuwe Weg? What did he want on the right? . . .
Suddenly, as a counteragent to his fever, he turned to the left; but, on coming to a cross-road, he wandered off to the right again, helplessly, as if he had forgotten the way. . . . There was the Ornamental Water, with the Nieuwe Weg behind it. There lay the ponds, like two dull, weather-worn mirrors, under the sullen pity of the skies; and the rather tame landscape of the Woods, with its wreath of dunes, became cruel, a tragic pool surrounded by all that avenue of chill death, which seemed to be creeping through the wintry air. . . .
But what was it in the air? Why, there was nothing, nothing but the Ornamental Water, in a misty haze; the few villas around it looming vaguely out of the fog; no pedestrians at all; nothing but the familiar, everyday, usual things. . . . Then what impelled him to wander so aimlessly past the Ornamental Water to the Nieuwe Weg? Why were those ponds like tragic pools? Was it not as though pale faces stared out of them, out of those tragic pools, pale, white faces of women, multiplied a hundredfold by strange reflections, eddies of white faces, with dank, plastered hair and dying eyes, which gleamed? . . .
Yes, yes, he was in a fever. He had been unwise to go out, in that chill morning mist. But it was rotten to be ill . . . and he was never ill. He had never said that he was ill. He was a fellow who could stand some knocking about. But for all that he was feverish. Otherwise he would not have seen the Ornamental Water as a tragic pool . . . with the white faces of mermaids . . . Lord, how cold and shivery the mermaids must feel down there in those chilly, silent pools . . . their dying eyes just gleaming up with a single spark! Were they dead or alive, the chilly mermaids? Were their eyes dying or were they ogling? How strangely they were all reflected, until they became as a thousand mermaids, until their faces blossomed like white flowers of death above the light film of ice coating the pool! Whew! How chill and cold they were, the poor, dead, ogling mermaids! . . .
Dead: were they dead? . . . Were they ogling and laughing . . . with eyes of gold? . . . He shivered as though ice-cold water were trickling down his spine; and he wrapped himself closely in his military great-coat. He felt something hard in his breast-pocket, a square piece of cardboard. Yes, he had been carrying that about for ever so long . . . and yet . . . and yet he couldn't do it. It was the photograph of his children, the latest group, taken for Mamma's last birthday. For weeks he had been carrying it about in his pocket, in an envelope with an address on it . . . and yet, yet he couldn't send it or hand it in at her door. The portrait of all his children:
"I expect they're charming kiddies, Gerrit?"
Gad, how could she have asked it, how could she have asked it, as though to drive him mad? . . . Whew, how cold it was! . . . He looked fearsomely at the mermaids: no, no, there was nothing, nothing but the chilly pool. He was in a high fever, that's what he was . . . Gad, how could she ask such a thing?
Still . . . still, it was over. She was no longer the girl she was. She was finished with, done for; she had lain in his arms like a corpse, tired of her own kisses, broken by his embrace, white as a sheet, done for. . . . Lord, how rotten, to be done for and still so young, a young woman! . . . Done for . . . like a defective machine: Lord, how rotten! . . . No, he couldn't give that photograph . . . of all his children . . . to a light-o'-love. . . . He couldn't do it . . .If she had only asked for a necklace or some such gaud . . . he would have managed somehow, out of his poverty, to buy her a nice keepsake. . . . Whew, how raw and cold it was! . . . The will-o'-the-wisps of all sorts of images shone in front of him; and, through them, through the flames, the flying Paris express . . . with the compartment, the coffin, Van der Welcke, Constance, two motionless figures. And yet it was bitterly, clammily cold; he was chilled to his marrow; and a great hairy dragon split its beastly maw to lick that chilled marrow with a fiery tongue. How big the filthy brute had grown! It was no longer inside him, it was all around him now: it filled the air with its wriggling body; it lifted its tail among the wintry boughs; and its tongue of fire licked at Gerrit's marrow; and under that marrow—how strange!—he was simply freezing. . . . Brrr, brrr! . . . Lord, how he was shivering, what a fever he was in! . . . Home . . . home . . . to bed! . . . Oh, how good to get into bed . . . nice and warm, nice and warm! . . . Still better to be nice and warm in women's arms . . . no kissing . . . just sleeping, nice and warm! . . . Brrr, brrr! . . . Lord, Lord, Lord, the water pouring down his back! Never in his life had he shivered like that! . . . How hard that photograph of his children was! He felt it on his heart like a plank. How long had he been carrying it about with him? Brrr, brrr! He might just as well have let her have it: it was the only thing that she had asked him for. . . . Money he had never given her: only fifteen guilders—brrr, brrr!—fif—brrr!—teen—brrr!—guilders. . . . Come, why not do it now? . . . Just hand it in, at her door—brrr!—and then—brrr!—and then—brrr!—home, to bed . . . nice and warm in bed! . . .
The thought suddenly took definite shape and it drove him on along the Kanaal. Here also the mist hung like a haze over the water and the meadows on the other side; and, shivering and shuddering under the fiery lick of the dragon's tongue, Gerrit hurried to the Frederikstraat. That was where she lived, that was where he had been so often lately, until that last time when she had begged him not to come back again and to give her, as a keepsake, the portrait . . . the portrait of his children. He would leave it now at the door. He had taken it in his hand, because it lay like a plank on his heart; and her name was on the envelope. . . . Brrr! . . . Hand it in quickly and then—brrr!—nice and warm in bed.
The landlady opened the door.
"Would you please give this to the young lady?"
He meant to shove the envelope into the woman's hand and then—brrr, brrr!—home . . . to bed . . . warm . . . warm. . . .
"Don't you know, then, where the young lady is, sir?"
"Where she is?"
"Where she's gone to?"
"Has she gone?"
"She didn't come home yesterday afternoon. I don't say I'm anxious; but still she always used to come home of an evening. She owes me some money, but she hasn't run away . . . for everything has been left as it was, upstairs: her clothes, her bits of jewellery. . . ."
"Perhaps she's out of town. . . ."
"Perhaps . . . only she's taken nothing with her."
"Perhaps, all the same . . ."
"Yes . . . it's possible. . . . So I'm to give her the envelope . . . when she comes?"
"Yes. . . . Or no, no, give it to me . . . I'll see to it myself. . . . Or no, you'd better give it her when she comes back. . . . No, after all, I'll see to it. . . ."
He stuffed the envelope into his pocket, went off. Brrr! It lay on his chest like a plank. . . . Where could she be gone to? Where was Pauline gone to? Had she gone out of town? . . . Why hadn't he simply left the envelope? Well, you never knew: if she didn't come back, it would be there, with the photograph of his children. . . . She'd probably cleared out. . . . Yes, she had probably cleared out . . . with her rich young fellow. . . . Well, he, whoever he was, wouldn't remember her as he remembered her in the old days. . . . Brrrrrr! . . . Lord, Lord, how he was shivering! . . . Oh, to be in bed! . . . When could Constance and Van der Welcke be back? . . . Oh, the express! . . . Oh, the coffin! . . . Oh, the fiery lick of the dragon, whose great, hairy body filled the whole grey sky with its wriggling! . . .
He turned down the Javastraat: he wanted to hurry home; his teeth were chattering; he felt as if ice-cold water was dripping from him, while the confounded brute sucked his marrow with long, fiery licks of its tongue. Near the Schelpkade, he met a little group of four or five policemen: rough words sounded loud; their words sounded so loud through the unreality of the mist that they woke him out of a walking sleep, out of his dream of the dragon-beast with the stiff bristles:
"She was quite blue," he heard one of them say.
They were striding along, talking loudly, as if something startling had happened. Gerrit suddenly stood rooted to the ground:
"Who was blue?" he asked, in a hoarse bellow.
The policeman saluted:
"Sir?"
"Who was blue?" bellowed Gerrit.
"A woman, sir. . . . A woman who drowned herself, last night, in the Kanaal. . . ."
"A woman?"
"Yes, sir. My mate here was the first to see the body, when it was floating with the face out of the water. Then he came and told me; and we went and fetched the drag. It was a young woman. . . ."
"And she was quite blue, you say? . . ."
"Yes, sir, and all bloated: she'd swallowed a lot of water. . . . We took the body to the cemetery near the Woods and we're on our way to the commissary."
"To the cemetery? . . ."
"Yes, sir. . . ."
The men saluted:
"Sir."
"She was quite blue," Gerrit repeated to himself.
And he hurried on at a jog-trot. Brrr, brrr! Oh, to be in bed . . . he wanted to get to bed! He was as cold as that woman must have been last night, floating in the water until her face blossomed up like a phantom flower of death. . . . Brrr! Icy cold water: wasn't he walking beside icy cold water twenty minutes ago? Hadn't it seemed to him that the whole tame landscape, in its wreath of dunes, had melted away into a hazy unreality, with those ghostly villas and trees . . . and the ponds like tragic pools, in which were mirrored the motionless, low, grey skies, full of the wriggling of his giant worm . . . until the faces of mermaids, with wet, plastered hair and gold-gleaming eyes had risen up like dead flowers, water-lilies of death, and ogled him with the last quiver of their dying eyes? . . . Oh, the Paris express! . . . Oh, what a fever he was in! . . . He must go quick to bed now . . . but, before he went, he would just call in at the Kerkhoflaan and ask if there was no telegram from Van der Welcke and Constance. . . . But how cold he felt and how he was shivering: brrr, brrr! . . .
It was as though his legs moved independently of his will, propelled by alien instincts, by energies outside himself; for his legs moved healthily, sturdily and quickly, with the click-clack of his sword knocking against his thigh, while, above those sturdy legs, his body shivered in the clutch of the monster, which licked and licked with fiery dabs of its tongue. And, above his body, towered his head, colossally large, with vertigos whirling like tangible circles around the huge head in which he seemed to be carrying a heavy lump of brains. From it there shot forth the strangest dreams; and these dreams, together with the contortions of the monster, filled the whole grey sky until everything became one great dream: all that town of unknown streets; houses; people who bowed and nodded to him; a couple of hussars, who saluted; a couple of officers whom he knew and to whom he waved:
"Bon jour!"
"Bon jour!"
And, in this singular dreaming and waking and suffering and walking, he knew things which nobody had told him, knew them for certain: knew that a woman had drowned herself last night in Paris, in the lake in the Bois; knew that Van der Welcke and Constance had gone to fetch her body and were now bringing it back to him in a rushing express-train, but a train that came rushing through the sky on whirling aerial rails, cutting through the contortions of a huge snake-thing which wriggled round the clouds and filled the whole sky. Oh, how full the sky was! For round the snake wriggled like cockscrews the whirling rails, all aslant and askew, tangled into iron spirals; and the express, in which Van der Welcke and Constance sat with a coffin between them containing a woman's blue corpse, had to follow all those turns and came rushing and puffing along them, constantly curving round its own track and covering them a thousand times, as though that aerial express were climbing and descending endless wriggling corkscrews. Then the rails and the dragon-coils were all tangled together; and the rails became dragon-coils; and the express flew and flew along the twisting dragon-thing, flew along every curve of its tail. The train became a toy-train; the dragon was enormous and filled the firmament; the town underneath was a toy-town; and Gerrit walked and walked with hurrying legs; and his head towered colossally large; and his brains became like heavy clouds: he saw his lump of brains massing in curling clouds outside him. Nevertheless he was propelled by instincts and energies of assured consciousness, for, when he turned down the Kerkhoflaan and left the Kerkhof, the cemetery, behind him, on one side, he knew quite well that there lay in it a blue woman who had been dragged out of the Kanaal by policemen; but he also knew, with equal certainty, that, up in the sky above, the express flew and flew over the body of his dragon and along its every curve; and he also knew that he was now standing outside Van der Welcke's villa: so small a house, such a toy-house that Gerrit's head stuck out above the roof of it and that his own voice sounded to him like distant thunder as he asked the person who opened the door:
"Telegram? From your master and mistress? Telegram?"
He did not at once recognize who was at the door nor at once understand the reply:
"Telegram? Telegram?" he repeated.
And the thunder of his voice sounded distant and dull compared with the rattle of the express-train right through the sky.
"What do you say?" he now repeated. "What do you say?"
"Uncle, are you ill?" asked Addie.
"Ill? Ill? No, I'm not ill, my boy. But . . . telegram? Telegram?"
"Papa and Mamma will be back to-morrow morning; they're bringing Henri's body with them, Uncle; and they're bringing Emilie; and I've been to the undertaker's . . . to arrange to have the body fetched at the station at once. . . . I've seen to everything. . . . And I must go to all the uncles now: to Uncle Karel and Uncle Saetzema. . . . I've telegraphed to Otto; I don't know if Aunt Bertha will come or not. . . . It's very sad, Uncle, and it'll be very sad for Grandmamma when she knows everything: Henri . . . Henri was murdered; he was drunk, it seems; and . . ."
"He drowned himself and he was quite blue?
"No, Uncle, he was murdered: stabbed with a dagger. . . . Mamma is bearing up, Papa writes, but she is terribly overwrought . . . on Emilie's account also. Emilie is quite beside herself. Papa fortunately is keeping calm: he is doing all that has to be done; he has been to the legation. . . . But, Uncle, you're not at all well; you're shivering; you've caught a chill. Oughtn't you to go home and get into bed? . . ."
"Yes, yes, I'm going home."
"Then you'll be better in the morning. . . ."
"Yes, of course, of course . . . I shall be better. . . ."
"Then will you come to the station too, early to-morrow morning, and meet the train from Paris?"
"To-morrow morning early . . . yes, certainly, certainly. . . ."
"You oughtn't to have gone out."
"No, no . . . but I'm going home now . . . going to bed. . . . Good-bye. To-morrow morning early."
"Good-bye, Uncle."
Gerrit went away.
Above the Woods, on one side, the low sky sank lower and lower, heavy with grey clouds, such heavy grey clouds that they did not seem light enough to continue hovering there, seemed bound to fall . . . and to Gerrit they were, in the dim hues of his fevered vision, like purple pieces falling from the dragon's body, which was cut up by the express. The whole sky was full of purple dragon's blood; and it now streamed down like pouring rain. The blood streamed in a violent downpour and appeared intent upon drowning everything. . . .
Gerrit had now turned in the direction of the cemetery; and, impelled by instincts and forces outside himself, he walked in and, vaguely, asked the porter some question, he did not know what. The man seemed to understand him, however, and led the way: Gerrit followed . . . brrr, brrr! . . . Nevertheless, it was as though his fever abated: and, in that sudden cooling, he all at once felt and knew the truth. It must be so: it was she. The water, the policemen, she. Who else could it be? . . . He walked on, following the porter. . . .
On either side, the silent graves, with their tomb-stones, the lettering blurred and melancholy in the rain. . . . Yonder, on the left, the family-grave. Gerrit recognized it in the purple rain of dragon's blood: a sombre mausoleum of brick, like a small house; and it looked larger to him than the toy-villa of just now. What a huge building it was, that family-tomb of theirs! It was like a great palace: it would be able to contain all their dead within its walls. For the present, Papa was living alone there, quietly; but he was waiting, waiting for all of them, waiting for all of them . . . until the shadows had deepened into thick darkness around all of them and they came to him, in that huge sepulchral palace. . . . Lord, Lord, how small he was now: he was walking like a dwarf past the tomb, which stuck its steeple into the clouds, high as a cathedral. . . .
What was that strangeness in the air? . . . How long had he been walking? . . . Was life no longer ordinary? . . . Were there not, as usual, houses, people, things: the barracks . . . his children . . . Adeline? . . . Who was that man who went before and led the way? . . . Was it a real man, that porter? . . . Or was it a dead man, walking? . . . Wasn't everything dead here? . . . Was it morning or was it evening? . . . Was it life or death? . . . Was he alive or was he dead? . . . Brrr, how cold he felt again! . . . Was that the cold of death? . . . What was this building which they now entered? . . . What a huge place! . . . Was it a church or was it only a tomb? . . . Where was he and why was he alone, alone with that dead man, that ghost showing him the way? . . . Where on earth was Constance and where was Van der Welcke? . . . Hadn't they brought it back from Paris, Pauline's blue body? . . . Was that Pauline? . . .
The coffin was open, covered only with a sheet; he lifted it, the sheet. . . . Brrr, brrr, how cold he was! . . . He remembered: Paris; yes, yes, he remembered: Paris; poor fellow; poor Henri! . . . But this, this wasn't Henri. . . . Who was it, who could it be? . . . Wasn't it Henri the policemen found? . . . What had become of those policemen? . . . When was it he met some policemen? . . . It was years since he met those policemen . . . and her body had turned quite blue. . . . What was the matter now? . . . What was that porter saying, hovering round him like a ghost? . . . .
Yes, everything was dead, for the shivering cold which he felt could only be the cold shiver of death. . . .
Blue, was she blue? . . . The man lifted a corner of the sheet: Gerrit saw a face, pale as that of a mermaid whose features had blossomed up out of the icy stillness of a tragic pool. . . . The eyes were open. . . . What sad golden eyes those were! . . . Had they not always laughed . . . with golden gleams of mockery? . . . Then why did he now for the first time see them weeping . . . in death . . . see them mournfully staring . . . in death? . . . Had they never laughed? . . . Had they always gazed mournfully . . . even though they gleamed golden and mocked . . . or seemed to . . . seemed to? . . . Then what was real? . . . Was everything . . . was everything dead then? . . . Did he . . . dead . . . want to bring her his gift . . . what she had asked for so strangely . . . the portrait . . . the portrait of his children? . . . He had it here: he felt it lying on his chest . . . hard and heavy . . . like a plank, like a plank . . . He had it here. . . .
"Gerrit, dear, are you coming?"
Who was calling him from so very far away? . . . Wasn't it his sister? . . . His favourite sister? . . .
"Come along, Gerrit!"
Who were those calling him away from that woman? . . . What were those voices, which he vaguely recognized? . . . Was it not the voice of his favourite sister, was it not the voice of her husband, of the two of them, who had brought Pauline's body back from Paris? . . . Yes, he recognized them, it was . . .
"Come on, Gerrit, old man, you're not well. . . . What are you doing here, beside this woman, beside this corpse? She's all blue, drowned in the lake in the Bois de Boulogne. . . . Did you know the woman? . . .
Yes, yes, he had known the woman. . . .
"Come along, old chap!"
"Gerrit, dear, won't you come?"
"Constance," whispered Gerrit, "you brought her from Paris . . ."
"Beg pardon, sir?" asked the porter.
"Yes, there she lies, there she lies, dead. . . ."
"Gerrit, come away!" cried the voices.
"Lay your flowers over her now! . . . Constance, lay your flowers over her. . . . She is lying so cold and all alone . . . and it is all so big here . . . big as a church . . . she is lying . . . as if in a cold, damp church. . . . Lay flowers beside her . . ."
"What do you say, sir? "
"Yes . . . lay flowers beside her . . . lay flowers beside her . . . Constance . . ."
"Won't you come away now?"
"Yes, yes, I'm coming. . . ."
There, there she lay . . . covered all over, with the sheet. She was nothing but a blue, motionless woman's shape . . . under a sheet. Now . . . flowers lay over the sheet: all the white flowers of his imagination. Now his fingers tore into little pieces the plank which he carried on his heart and strewed them in between the flowers: into such little, little pieces that they were as the petals of flowers . . . and nothing more . . . over the woman. . . .
The voices called him.
"Yes, yes, I'm coming . . . I'm coming . . ."
The voices lured him home, to bed; and he jogged on through the streets raining with dragon's blood. . . .
When he reached home, Adeline at once sent for the doctor. . . . It was typhoid fever.