Barlasch of the Guard

Il faut devoir lever les yeux pour regarder ce qu’on aime.

A few children had congregated on the steps of the Marienkirche at Danzig, because the door stood open. The verger, old Peter Koch⁠—on week days a locksmith⁠—had told them that nothing was going to happen; had been indiscreet enough to bid them go away. So they stayed, for they were little girls.

A wedding was in point of fact in progress within the towering walls of the Marienkirche⁠—a cathedral built of red brick in the great days of the Hanseatic League.

“Who is it?” asked a stout fishwife, stepping over the threshold to whisper to Peter Koch.

“It is the younger daughter of Antoine Sebastian,” replied the verger, indicating with a nod of his head the house on the left-hand side of the Frauengasse where Sebastian lived. There was a wealth of meaning in the nod. For Peter Koch lived round the corner in the Kleine Schmiedegasse, and of course⁠—well, it is only neighbourly to take an interest in those who drink milk from the same cow and buy wood from the same Jew.

The fishwife looked thoughtfully down the Frauengasse where every house has a different gable, and none of less than three floors within the pitch of the roof. She singled out No. 36, which has a carved stone balustrade to its broad verandah and a railing of wrought-iron on either side of the steps descending from the verandah to the street.

“They teach dancing?” she inquired.

And Koch nodded again, taking snuff.

“And he⁠—the father?”

“He scrapes a fiddle,” replied the verger, examining the lady’s basket of fish in a non-committing and final way. For a locksmith is almost as confidential an adviser as a notary.

Désirée hurried downstairs. In the entrance-hall, a broad-built little man stood awaiting her. He was stout and red, with hair all ragged at the temples, almost white. His eyes were lost behind shaggy eyebrows. His face was made broader by little whiskers stopping short at the level of his ear. He had a snuff-blown complexion, and in the wrinkles of his face the dust of a dozen campaigns seemed to have accumulated.

“Barlasch,” he said curtly, holding out a long strip of blue paper. “Of the Guard. Once a sergeant. Italy, Egypt, the Danube.”

He frowned at Désirée while she read the paper in the dim light that filtered through the twisted bars of the fanlight above the door.

Then he turned to the servant who stood, comely and breathless, looking him up and down.

“Papa Barlasch,” he added for her edification, and he drew down his left eyebrow with a jerk, so that it almost touched his cheek. His right eye, grey and piercing, returned her astonished gaze with a fierce steadfastness.

“Does this mean that you are quartered upon us?” asked Désirée without seeking to hide her disgust. She spoke in her own tongue.

“French?” said the soldier, looking at her. “Good. Yes. I am quartered here. Thirty-six, Frauengasse. Sebastian; musician. You are lucky to get me. I always give satisfaction⁠—ha!”

He gave a curt laugh in one syllable only. His left arm was curved round a bundle of wood bound together by a red pocket-handkerchief not innocent of snuff.

They dined in silence, while Lisa hurried about her duties, oppressed by a sense of unknown fear. After dinner they went to the drawing-room as usual. It had been a dull day, with great clouds creeping up from the West. The evening fell early, and the lamps were already alight. Désirée looked to the wicks with the eye of experience when she entered the room. Then she went to the window. Lisa did not always draw the curtains effectually. She glanced down into the street, and turned suddenly on her heel, facing her father.

“They are there,” she said. For she had seen shadowy forms lurking beneath the trees of the Frauengasse. The street was ill-lighted, but she knew the shadows of the trees.

“How many?” asked Sebastian, in a dull voice.

She glanced at him quickly⁠—at his still, frozen face and quiescent hands. He was not going to rise to the occasion, as he sometimes did even from his deepest apathy. She must do alone anything that was to be accomplished tonight.

The house, like many in the Frauengasse, had been built by a careful Hanseatic merchant, whose warehouse was his own cellar half sunk beneath the level of the street. The door of the warehouse was immediately under the front door, down a few steps below the street, while a few more steps, broad and footworn, led up to the stone veranda and the level of the lower dwelling-rooms.

It was Désirée who opened the door at length⁠—Désirée, grown older, with something new in her eyes. Barlasch, sure of his entrée, had already removed his boots, which he carried in his hand; this added to a certain surreptitiousness in his attitude. A handkerchief was bound over his left eye. He wore his shako still, but the rest of his uniform verged on the fantastic. Under a light-blue Bavarian cavalry cape he wore a peasant’s homespun shirt, and he carried no arms.

He pushed past Désirée rather unceremoniously, glad to get within doors. He was very lame, and of his blue knitted stockings only the legs remained; he was barefoot.

He limped towards the kitchen, glancing over his shoulder to make sure that Désirée shut the door. The chair he had made his own stood just within the open door of the kitchen. It was nine o’clock in the morning, and Lisa had gone to market. Barlasch sat down.

“Voilà,” he said, and that was all. But by a gesture he described the end of the world. Then he scowled at her with his available eye with suspicion, and she turned away suddenly, as one may who has not a clear conscience.

“What is the matter with your eye?” she asked, in order to break the silence. He laid aside his hat, and his ragged hair, quite white, fell to his shoulders. By way of answer, he unknotted the bloodstained dusky handkerchief, and looked up at her. The hidden eye was uninjured and as bright as the other.

“Nothing,” he answered, and he confirmed the statement by a lowborn wink. More than once he glanced, with a glaring light in his eye, towards the cupboard where Lisa kept the bread, and quite suddenly Désirée knew that he was starving.