The Twilight of the Souls Part 38

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 s.h.i.+vering, 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 s.h.i.+vered 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, s.h.i.+vering 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 an 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 s.h.i.+vering!... 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 s.h.i.+vering: 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, st.u.r.dily and quickly, with the click-clack of his sword knocking against his thigh, while, above those st.u.r.dy legs, his body s.h.i.+vered 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:

"_Bonjour_!"

"_Bonjour_!"

And, in this singular dreaming and waking and suffering and walking, he knew things which n.o.body 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 rus.h.i.+ng express-train, but a train that came rus.h.i.+ng 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 corkscrews 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 ma.s.sing in curling clouds outside him. Nevertheless he was propelled by instincts and energies of a.s.sured 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...."