Short Fiction

It was the fault of the wet-nurse. What was the good of Frau Consul Friedemann’s giving her an earnest talking-to, when her suspicions were first aroused, and bidding her suppress that vice of hers? What was the good of giving her a daily glass of claret in addition to the nourishing beer? It was suddenly evident that this young woman also went so far as to drink the spirits intended for the cooking-stove, and before a substitute for her had arrived, before one could discharge her, the disaster had happened. One day when the mother and her three half-grown daughters returned from a walk, little Johannes, about a month old, lay on the floor, whimpering lightly yet frightfully, just as he had fallen from the swaddling-table, while the wet-nurse stood staring stupidly.

The doctor, who tested the limbs of the contorted and jerking little body with firm, solicitous fingers, made a very, very serious face; the three girls stood sobbing in a corner and Frau Friedemann prayed aloud in the terror of her heart.

And it was at the close of this pause in the conversation, which lasted about a minute and which was interrupted only by short exclamations attendant upon deliberation, that the remarkable thing occurred. Amra sat leaning back among the cushions of the sofa, and was gnawing nimbly and eagerly as a mouse at the pointed nail of her little finger, while her face betrayed a most extraordinary expression. A smile played about her lips, an absent and almost delirious smile, which revealed a painful as well as cruel lust, and her eyes, which were wide open and shining, wandered slowly towards the mantelpiece, where they remained for a moment fixed upon those of the young musician. Then with a sudden flounce she flung the upper part of her body to one side, towards her husband, the counsellor-at-law, and, both hands in her lap, stared him in the face with a look that seemed to clutch and draw him, while her face grew visibly paler. She spoke in a full, slow voice: “Christian, I propose that at the close you appear as a chanteuse in a baby-dress of red silk and dance something for us.”

The effect of these few words was enormous. Only the young painter strove to laugh good-humouredly. Herr Hildebrandt, with a face as cold as stone, picked invisible fluff from his sleeve; the students coughed and used their handkerchiefs with unseemly loudness.

One of the streets which run rather steeply from Quay Alley up to the centre of the city is called the Grey Way. About the middle of this street, on the right hand as you come from the river, stands a house labelled No. 47, a narrow drab-coloured structure, in no way distinguished from its neighbours. There is a small shop on the ground-floor, in which one can buy rubber overshoes and cod-liver oil. On entering the hallway, which gives upon a courtyard in which cats are prowling about, one sees a narrow and worn wooden staircase, saturated with the inexpressible musty smells of poverty, leading to the upper stories. A carpenter lives on the left side of the first story, a midwife on the right. The second story harbours a cobbler on the left, and on the right a lady who begins to sing loudly as soon as steps are heard on the staircase. The flat on the third story to the left is empty; the one to the right is occupied by a man by the name of Mindernickel, who also bears the name of Tobias. There is a story about this man which must be told, because it is full of riddles, and shameful beyond belief.

The room with its bare, white walls, against which the red-lacquered chairs stood relieved like strawberries against whipped cream, stood revealed in the unsteady light of the candle. But there, the wardrobe, the door of which stood wide open, was not empty; someone stood within it, a figure, a creature, so lovely that Albrecht van der Qualen’s heart stood still for a moment and then resumed its beating with full, slow, gentle throbs.⁠—She was quite naked and held up one of her small, delicate arms, for she was clutching one of the hooks in the top of the wardrobe with her forefinger. Ripples of her long, brown hair rested upon her childlike shoulders, which breathed forth a beauty which could be answered only by sobs. Her long, black eyes mirrored the light of the candle.⁠—Her mouth was a trifle wide, but its expression was as sweet as the lips of sleep when they touch our forehead after days of suffering. She kept her heels close together, and her slender legs caressed each other.

Albrecht van der Qualen passed his hand across his eyes and saw⁠—he saw that the grey canvas had been unloosened from the right corner of the wardrobe.

“How⁠—” said he. “Won’t you come in?⁠—or what should I say⁠—come out? May I offer you a glass of brandy? Half a glass?⁠ ⁠…” But he expected no answer to these questions, and received none. Her small, shining eyes, so black that they appeared to be without expression, unfathomable and dumb⁠—they were directed upon him, but without fixity or aim, vague, and as though they did not see him.

“I am near the end, Lisaweta. Listen to me. I love life⁠—this is a secret. Take it and keep it⁠—I have told it to no one else. People have said, people have even written and had printed, that I hate life, or fear or despise or shun it. I have enjoyed hearing this, it flattered me; but it is no less false for that reason. I love life.⁠ ⁠… You are smiling, Lisaweta, and I know why. But I beg you, don’t think what I am saying now is literature! Don’t think of Cesare Borgia or any drunken philosophy which has that for a slogan! He is nothing to me, this Cesare Borgia; I don’t put the least faith in him, and I will never, never understand how people can honour the extraordinary and the demonic as the ideal. No, ‘life’⁠—as it stands in eternal contrast to the mind and art⁠—not as a vision of bloody greatness and savage beauty, not as the irregular does it present itself to us irregular people; but the normal, the respectable, and the likable are the realm of our yearnings, they are life in all its seductive banality! That man is not an artist for long, my dear, whose last and deepest enthusiasm is for the refined, the eccentric, and the Satanic, who does not know the hankering after the harmless, simple, and living, after a little friendship, devotion, confidence, and human happiness⁠—the stealthy and devouring hankering, Lisaweta, after the bliss of mediocrity!⁠ ⁠…