Three Novellas, page 2
Days went by, and months. Two picture postcards flew in from Sicily, with fleeting messages. Summer, a hot summer, arrived. As the time of his leave approached, Fallmerayer decided not to go anywhere. He sent his wife and children to the mountains in Austria. He stayed behind and continued to attend to his duties. For the first time since his marriage he was separated from his wife. In the quiet of his heart he had promised himself much too much from this solitude. Only when he found himself alone did he begin to realize that he had no wish whatever to be alone. He rummaged in all the drawers; he was looking for the stranger’s letter. But he could no longer find it. Frau Fallmerayer had perhaps destroyed it long before.
His wife and children returned, July drew to a close.
Then came general mobilization.
V
Fallmerayer was an ensign in the reserve of the twenty-first battalion of Jäger. As he occupied a relatively responsible post it would have been possible for him, as for a number of his colleagues, to have remained for a time at home. Fallmerayer alone put on his uniform, packed his kit, embraced his children, kissed his wife and rejoined his regiment. He turned his duties over to his deputy. Frau Fallmerayer wept; the twins were jubilant to see their father in a different uniform. Frau Fallmerayer did not fail to be proud of her husband, but only at the moment of departure. She dammed her tears. Her blue eyes were full of the bitter consciousness of her duty.
As far as the stationmaster was concerned, it was only when he found himself in a compartment with a few comrades that he first appreciated the grimness of this hour of decision. In spite of which it seemed to him that a quite unreasonable gaiety set him apart from all the other officers in the compartment. They were officers on the reserve. Each of them had left a home he loved. And each of them at this moment was a keen soldier. Each of them at the same time was a desolate father, a desolate son. To Fallmerayer alone it seemed as if the war had freed him from a situation with no prospects. Assuredly, he was sorry for the twins. Also for his wife. Certainly, for his wife, too. But whilst his companions, if they began to speak of home, would by look and gesture reveal all the warmth and tenderness of which they were capable, it seemed to Fallmerayer that in order to emulate them, once he began speaking of his own family, he must put even more gloom into his voice and aspect. In fact he would much sooner have talked to his comrades about the Countess Walewska than about his own home.
He forced himself to silence. And it came to him that he was a double liar: first, because he withheld what was nearest his heart; second because now and again he spoke of his wife and children, from whom at that moment he was further removed than from the Countess Walewska, a woman from an enemy country. He began slightly to despise himself.
VI
He reported. He went to the front. He fought. He was a brave soldier. He sent the customary hearty letters home on service letterforms. He was decorated and promoted to lieutenant. He was wounded and sent to hospital. He was entitled to leave, which he declined, and returned to the front. He was fighting in the east.
In his time off between actions, inspections and assaults he began to learn Russian out of books which came his way by chance. Almost lustfully. In the midst of stinking gas and the smell of blood, in rain, in morasses of mud, amidst the sweat of the living and the miasma of the decomposing dead, Fallmerayer pursued the alien whiff of cuir de Russie and the nameless scent of the woman who had once lain in his bed, upon his pillow, under his bedclothes. He learned this woman’s mother tongue and imagined that he spoke with her in her own language. He learned terms of endearment, inflections of meaning, subtle Russian hints of affection. He would talk to her. Separated from her by the whole of a great world war, he would still talk to her. He conversed with Russian prisoners of war. He tuned his ear a hundredfold, marked the most delicate of intonations and copied them fluently. With every new inflection of this alien tongue he drew nearer to the stranger. He knew nothing more of her than what he had last seen: a fleeting word and a fleeting signature on a banal picture postcard. But he lived for her, waited for her and intended soon to speak with her. Because he spoke Russian, and because his battalion was drafted away to the southern front, he was transferred to one of the regiments which, a little later, were incorporated into the so-called Army of Occupation. Fallmerayer was first posted to Divisional Headquarters as interpreter, and subsequently to the “Information and Intelligence Bureau.” His final destination proved to be in the Kiev area.
VII
The name Solowienki he had indeed remembered, and more than remembered, for it had become familiar and native to him.
It was very simple to discover the name of the estate which belonged to the Walewski family. Solowki was its name and it lay three versts to the south of Kiev. Fallmerayer was stricken by a sweetly oppressive and painful excitement. He had a feeling of infinite gratitude towards Fate which had guided him through war to this destination, and at the same time a nameless fear of all that it was now preparing for him. War, going over the top, being wounded, the nearness of death; all these were quite shadowy events compared with what now faced him. All that had befallen him had merely been a preparation—perhaps an unavailing one, who knows—for his meeting with the woman. Was he truly armed against all eventualities? Was she in fact in her house? Had the advance of an enemy not driven her to a place of greater safety? And if she were living at home, would her husband be with her? At all costs he had to go there and see.
Fallmerayer had the horses harnessed and drove off.
It was a fairly early morning in May. The light, little two-wheeled waggonette drove past flowering meadows along a winding, sandy country road through an almost deserted neighborhood. Soldiers marched clattering and rattling along it on their way to their usual training exercises. Hidden in the bright, high, blue vault of the sky, larks were trilling. The thick, dark, belts of little pinewoods alternated with the bright and merry silver of the birches. The morning breeze brought from a great distance broken snatches of soldiers’ songs from outlying encampments. Fallmerayer thought of his childhood and of the countryside of his own home. He had been born and raised not far from the railway station for which at the outbreak of war he had been responsible. His father, too, had been an employee of the railway, a minor employee, a storekeeper. Fallmerayer’s whole childhood, just like his later life, had been filled with the sounds and smells of the railway, as of the sounds and scents of nature. The locomotives whistled and he held duets with the jubilation of the birds. The heavy smoke of the brown coal settled over the scent of the flowering meadows. The smoky gray of the tracks blended with the blue haze over the mountains to form a mist of nostalgia and longing.
Things were very different here, at once gay and melancholy. No friendly farms here, perched on gentle falls of land, few lilacs to be seen, no saxifrage nor pennywort nor coriander behind fresh painted fences. Only squat huts with wide, deep roofs of thatch resembling cowls, tiny villages lost in the immense landscape and almost invisible even on these plains. How different countries were! Was it also true of the human heart? Will she be able to understand me, Fallmerayer asked himself, will she be able to understand me? And the nearer he came to the Walewski estate, the more fiercely burned this question in his heart. The nearer he came, the more certain he grew that the woman was at home. Soon he had no doubt that he was only separated from her by a matter of minutes. Yes, she was at home.
At the very beginning of the sparse avenue of birches which marked the gently rising approach to the main house, Fallmerayer jumped down. He walked up the drive so as to spin out a little more time. An old gardener asked him what he required. Fallmerayer replied that he wished to see the Countess. He would announce him, said the man, went slowly away and soon returned. Yes, the Countess was there and awaited his call.
The Countess Walewska quite understandably did not recognize Fallmerayer. She took him for another of the many military visitors whom she had had to receive recently. She invited him to sit down. Her voice was deep, dark and foreign. It was familiar and frightening at the same time. But even his fear, even the shiver, were dear to him, welcome, warmly welcome to him after unthinkable years of longing.
“My name is Fallmerayer,” said the officer, “and you will naturally have forgotten the name.” He began again, “You may recall it. I am the stationmaster at L.”
She came over to him and grasped his hand. He smelt again the scent which for countless years had pursued him, which had surrounded, enclosed, tortured and consoled him. Her hands rested for a moment in his.
“Oh tell me, tell me!” cried the Walewska. He told her briefly how it had been with him.
“And your wife and children?” asked the Countess.
“I’ve not seen them again,” said Fallmerayer, “I’ve never taken leave.”
Whereupon a short silence ensued. They looked at one another. The young forenoon sun lay sleek and golden across the room which was broad and low-ceilinged, whitewashed and almost severe. Fallmerayer looked quietly at the Countess’s broad pale face. Perhaps she understood him. She rose and picked a gardenia from the middle window of three.
“Too light?” she asked.
“I prefer them dark,” said Fallmerayer.
She went back to the little table and rang a small bell. An old servant appeared. She ordered tea. The silence between them did not relent; it grew, rather, until the tea was brought in. Fallmerayer smoked. As she poured his tea he asked suddenly, “Where is your husband?”
“At the front, of course,” she replied. “I have heard nothing more from him for three months. We can’t even correspond now.”
“Are you very worried?” asked Fallmerayer.
“Certainly,” she replied, “and no less than your wife probably is about you.”
“Forgive me, you are right. That was really stupid of me,” said Fallmerayer. He stared into his teacup.
She had debated with herself, continued the Countess, whether to leave the house. Others had fled. She would not run, either from her peasants or from the enemy. She lived here with four servants, two saddle horses and a dog. She buried her money and her jewels. For a long time she searched for a word. She did not know the word for “buried” in German, and pointed towards the ground. Fallmerayer said the Russian word.
“You speak Russian?” she asked.
“Yes. I learned it. I learned it at the front.” He went on in Russian and added, “I learned it on your account, for you. I learned Russian so that someday I could speak to you.”
She assured him that he spoke admirably, as if he had only uttered that pregnant sentence in order to indicate his ability as a linguist. In this way she deflected his avowal into an insignificant exercise in style.
“Now I must go,” he thought. He stood up at once and without awaiting her permission, and knowing full well that she would interpret his discourtesy correctly, he said, “I will come back before long!” She made no reply. He kissed her hand and left.
VIII
He left, and never doubted that his destiny was beginning to fulfill itself. It is a law, he said to himself. It is impossible for one human being to be so irresistibly driven towards another, and then for the other to remain barred against him. She feels what I feel. If she does not love me now, love me she will.
Fallmerayer carried out his duties with his unfailingly sure reliability as an officer and an administrator. He decided provisionally to take a fortnight’s leave, for the first time since he had reported for duty. His promotion to Oberleutnant was due within a matter of days. He wanted to wait for that.
Two days later he drove to Solowki. He was told that the Countess Walewska was not at home, that she was not expected before noon.
“Well, then,” said he, “I’ll just wait in the garden.”
And since no one dared to tell him to go, they left him in the garden at the back of the house. He looked up to the double row of windows. He sensed that the Countess was inside the house and had issued orders that she would not receive visitors. In fact he thought he saw the shimmer of a pale dress, first at one window, then at another. He waited patiently and was quite relaxed.
As it struck noon from the church tower he entered the house again. The Walewska was there. She was just coming downstairs in a narrow, black, high-necked dress, with a thin necklace of little pearls around her neck and a silver bracelet at her tight left sleeve. It seemed to Fallmerayer that she had put on armor because of him, and it seemed as though the fire which burned constantly for her in his heart had now borne another strange little blaze. Love was lighting fresh candles. Fallmerayer smiled.
“I’ve had a long wait,” he said, “but I was glad to wait, as you know. I looked up at your windows from the garden and pretended to myself that I was lucky enough to glimpse you. And so I passed the time.”
The Countess asked if he would care to lunch, since it was just the right hour. Gladly, said he, since he was hungry, but of the three courses which were then served he only ate ridiculously small helpings.
The Countess told him about the outbreak of war, and how they had returned home post haste from Cairo. She told him about her husband’s regiment of Guards; about his comrades; after that, about her youth. It was as if she were searching desperately for stories, as if she were even ready to invent them—anything so as to prevent the silent Fallmerayer from speaking. He stroked his little fair mustache and seemed to listen attentively to everything. He was, however, listening much more attentively to the scent which emanated from the woman than to the stories which she told. His pores were listening. And in any case even her words were scented, and her language. He sensed, anyway, everything she could tell him. Nothing about her could remain hidden from him. What could she hide from him? Her formal dress hid nothing of her body from the knowledge of his eyes. He felt the desire of his hands for her, the desire of his hands for the woman. As they rose he said that he thought he would stay a little. He had leave today and was taking a much longer leave in a few days’ time, when his promotion to Oberleutnant came through. Where did he think of going, asked the Countess.
“Nowhere!” said he. “I should like to stay with you.”
She invited him to stay as long as he liked, that day and later. But now she had to leave him and see to a few things about the house. Should he wish to come there were ample rooms in the house, quite enough for them to have no need of disturbing one another.
He took his leave. Since she could not stay with him, he said, he preferred to go back into the town.
As he climbed into the waggonette she waited on the threshold in her strict black dress, her face broad and white, and as he took up his whip she gently raised her hand halfway in a greeting that was at the same time determinedly restrained.
IX
Roughly a week after this visit the newly promoted Oberleutnant Adam Fallmerayer was granted his leave. He told all his comrades that he intended to go home. Instead he took himself to the family home of the Walewskis, moved into a room on the ground floor, which had been prepared for him, eating every day with the lady of the house, and discussing this and that, things far and near, with her, told her about the front and paid no attention to the content of his stories, let her tell him stories and never listened to her. At night he did not sleep, could no more sleep than he could at home in the station building, years before, during the six days which the Countess had spent over his head, in his room. Now, too, he was aware of her at night above him, over his head, over his heart.
One night—it was sultry and a good soft rain was falling—Fallmerayer got up, dressed and went out in front of the house. Above the wide well of the staircase burned a yellow petroleum lantern. The house was still, the night was still, the rain was still, as though falling on fine sand, and its monotonous murmur was the voice of night’s very silence. All at once a stair creaked. Fallmerayer heard it although he was standing outside the door. He looked round. He had left the heavy door open, and he saw Countess Walewska coming down the stairway. She was fully clad, as by day. He bowed and said nothing. She approached him. And there they stood, in silence, for a moment or two. Fallmerayer could hear his heart beating, and it seemed to him as though the woman’s heart were beating as loudly as his own, and in time with it. The air seemed suddenly oppressive, not a breath drew through the open door. Fallmerayer said, “Let’s walk in the rain, I’ll fetch you my coat.” And without waiting for her to agree he rushed into his room, came back with the coat, slipped it across the woman’s shoulders and then put his arm over the coat, just as he had done with her furs, that time, that never-to-be-forgotten evening of the disaster. And so they went out into the night and the rain.
They walked along the drive. In spite of the damp and the dark, the sparse, slender trunks of the trees shone silvery, as if lighted from within. And as if the silver gleam of these, the most delicate trees in the world had awoken Fallmerayer’s heart to tenderness, he drew his arm closer about the woman’s shoulder and sensed through the hard, damp material of the coat the yielding richness of her body. For a while it seemed to him that the woman leaned towards him, indeed that she pressed herself against him and yet, barely a moment later there was a clear distance between their bodies. His hand left her shoulders, felt its way upwards to her damp hair, crossed her damp ear and face. Next moment they both stopped, as one, turned towards each other and embraced. The coat slipped from her shoulders and fell to the ground with a heavy thud. Thus, in the rain and the dark, they came face to face, mouth to mouth, and kissed each other for a long time.
