Part 72

“No, he didn’t,” replied Eleanore, “but I have almost enough to pay the landlord.”

It was no longer possible to depend upon Jordan. He was supported by his children, and seemed to find the arrangement neither strange nor humiliating. At times he would allude in a mysterious way to a big enterprise that was going to claim the whole of his attention and bring him a great deal of money and honour. But if you asked him about it, he would wrinkle his brow and put his finger to his lips.

“I owe the man more than the rent,” said Daniel. He kissed Gertrude on the forehead, and went out.

“Put the child in the cradle, and come over here,” said Gertrude to Eleanore, as soon as Daniel had closed the door behind him. Eleanore did as she had been told. The baby was asleep. She took it up, looked at its wrinkled face, and carried it to the cradle. Then she went over to Gertrude’s bed.

Gertrude seized her by her hands, and drew her down to her with more strength than one would have imagined her to have just then. The eyes of the two women were drawn close together. “You must make him happy, Eleanore,” she said in a hoarse voice, and with a sickly glimmer in her eyes. “If you do not, it would be better if one of us were dead.”

Despite her terror, Eleanore loosened Gertrude’s hold on her with great gentleness. “It is hard to discuss that subject, Gertrude; it is hard to live and hard to think about it all.” Eleanore breathed these words into Gertrude’s ears.

“You must make him happy; you must make him happy! Repeat it to yourself and keep it in your mind every day, every hour, every minute. You must, you must, you must.” Gertrude was almost beside herself.

“I will learn how to do it,” replied Eleanore slowly and seriously. “I am ... I hardly know what I am or how I feel. But be patient with me, Gertrude, I will learn how to make him happy.” She looked into Gertrude’s face with anxious curiosity. Gertrude however pressed her hands against Eleanore’s cheeks, drew her down to her again, and kissed her with unusual fervour. “I too must learn how,” whispered Gertrude, “I must learn the whole of life from the very beginning.”

Some one knocked at the door. The midwife came in to look after her patient.

VII

At that time the superstition still prevailed that the window in the room of a woman in confinement must never be opened. The air in the room was consequently heavy and ill-smelling. Eleanore could hardly stand it during the day; during the night she could not sleep. Moreover natural daylight could not enter the room, and, as if it were not already gloomy enough, the window had been hung with green curtains which were kept half drawn.

The most unpleasant feature of all, however, was the interminable round of visits from the women: custom had decreed that they should not be turned away. The wife of the director of the theatre came in; Martha Rübsam came in, and so did the wife of Councillor Kirschner, and the wives of the butcher, baker, preacher, and physician. And of course the wife of the apothecary called. No one of them failed to pour out an abundance of gratuitous advice or go into ecstasies over the beauty of the baby. Once Daniel came in just as such an assemblage was in the sick room. He looked first at one, then at another, threw back his head, and left without saying a word.

Herr Seelenfromm and M. Rivière were likewise not frightened by the distance; they called. Eleanore met them in the hall, and got rid of them by the usual method. And one day even Herr Carovius came around to inquire how mother and child were doing. Philippina received him; and Philippina was having a hard time of it at present: she was not allowed to enter Gertrude’s room; Gertrude would have nothing to do with her; she refused to see her.

So that she might not get too far behind with her work—for it meant her daily bread—Eleanore pushed the table up to the window, and despite the poor light, kept on writing. In the evening she would sit by the lamp and write, although she was so tired that she could hardly keep her eyes open.

After three days, Gertrude had no milk for the baby; it had to be fed with a bottle. It would cry for hours without stopping. And as soon as it was quiet, its clothes had to be washed or its bath prepared, or Gertrude wanted something, or one of the pestiferous visitors came in. Eleanore had to lay her work aside; in the evening she would fall across the bed and sleep with painful soundness for an hour or two. If the baby did not wake her by its hungry howling, the bad air did. Her head ached. Yet she concealed her weakness, her longing, her oppression. Not even Daniel noticed that there was anything wrong with her.

She had very little opportunity to talk with him. And yet there was probably not another pair of eyes in the whole world that could be so eloquent and communicative with admonition, promise, request, and cordial resignation. One evening they met each other at the kitchen door: “Eleanore, I am stifling,” he whispered to her.

She laid her hands on his shoulder, and looked at him in silence.

“Come with me,” he urged with a stupid air. “Come with me! Let’s run off.”

Eleanore smiled and thought to herself: “The demands of his soul are always a few leagues in advance of the humanly possible.”

The next morning he stormed into the room. Eleanore was only half dressed. With an expression of wrath flitting across her face she reached for a towel and draped it about her shoulders. He sat down on Gertrude’s bed, and let loose a torrent of words: “I am going to set Goethe’s ‘Wanderers Sturmlied’ to music! I am planning to make it a companion piece to the ‘Harzreise’ and publish the two in a cycle. I have not slept the whole night. The main motif is glorious.” He began to hum it over in a falsetto voice: “‘Oh, mortal man, if genius does not forsake thee, neither rain nor storm can breathe upon thy heart!’ How do you like that?”

Gertrude looked at him inspired.

“I should have a good drink on that idea,” he continued; “I have rarely felt such a longing for a flask of old wine. It’s a bloody shame that I can’t afford it. But you wait till I get a little money, and you will see a bouteille of Tokay on my table every day.”

“My God, just listen how he raves! He’s going to have the best there is,” said Philippina angrily, as she entered the room in her stocking feet and heard Daniel’s remarks.

Daniel told her to keep her mouth shut and leave the room at once. He paid no attention to her reply, and cried out: “Something has got to happen. If I can’t drink, I at least want to dance. Dance with me, Eleanore; don’t be afraid, come, dance with me!” He threw his arms around her, pressed her to his bosom, sang a waltz melody, and drew the struggling and embarrassed girl across the floor.

Philippina broke out in her slimy, malicious laughter, and then shrieked at the top of her voice that Frau Kirschner was outside and wanted to see the Kapellmeister’s wife. Gertrude made an imploring gesture, the full meaning of which Daniel easily grasped. The baby began to cry, Eleanore tore herself away from Daniel’s embrace, arranged her hair, and hastened over to the cradle. Philippina opened the door to let the Councillor’s wife in. Just then a violent discussion was started in the hall. One could hear the voice of Jordan and that of some strange man.

It was the furniture dealer who had come to collect the money for the cradle. He was boiling with the rage that cares not how it may be expressed: he said he had already been there four times, and each time he was put off. The truth is, Daniel was very hard up.

The Councillor’s wife took Daniel to one side, and made him an offer of a loan of two hundred marks. Daniel was silent; he bit his lips, and looked down at the floor. She scolded him: “You are always your own worst enemy. Now be reasonable, Nothafft, I will send the money over at noon. If you have any left, you may pay it back.”

Daniel went out, and gave the blustering furniture dealer his last ten-mark piece.