Rosshalde (7 page)

He was making a visible effort to keep calm. He had no desire to accuse, he wished only to tell his story, but behind his words an accusation was discernible, or at least a plaint at the wrecking of his life, the disappointment of his young hopes, and the joyless half existence, at odds with his innermost nature, to which he had been condemned.

“Even then, I thought of divorce now and then. But it's not so simple. I was used to working in peace and quiet, I couldn't face the thought of courts and lawyers, or of disrupting my daily routine. If a new love had turned up, a decision would have come easily. But my own nature was less resilient than I had thought. I fell in love with pretty, young girls, but what I felt was a kind of melancholy envy; it never went deep enough. I came to realize that there would never again be a love I could abandon myself to as I did to my painting. My need to expend my energies and forget myself, all my passion, went into my painting, and to tell you the truth, I haven't in all these years taken a single new human being into my life, neither a woman nor a friend. You see, any friendship would have had to begin with an admission of my disgrace.”

“Disgrace?!” said Burkhardt softly, in a tone of reproach.

“Yes, disgrace! That's how I felt and my feeling hasn't changed. It's a disgrace to be unhappy. It's a disgrace not to be able to show anyone one's life, to be obliged to conceal something. But enough of that! Let me go on.”

He stared darkly into his wine glass, tossed away his extinguished cigar, and continued.

“Meanwhile, Albert had grown out of babyhood. We both loved him very much and worrying over him kept us together. It wasn't until he was seven or eight that I began to be jealous and to fight for him—exactly as I fight over Pierre with her now. Suddenly I realized that the little boy had become indispensably dear to me, and then for several years I looked on in constant anguish as he grew cooler and cooler toward me and more and more attached to his mother.

“Then he fell seriously ill, and for a time our worry about the child submerged everything else; we lived in greater harmony than ever before. Pierre dates from that time.

“Since little Pierre has been in the world, he has had all the love it's in me to give. I let Adele slip away from me again; after Albert's recovery, I did nothing to prevent him from growing closer and closer to his mother. He became her confidant in her conflict with me and soon he was my enemy; in the end I had to send him out of the house. I gave up everything, I became an abject pauper, I stopped finding fault or giving orders in the house, I became a tolerated guest in my own home, but I didn't mind. All I wanted to save for myself was my little Pierre. When life with Albert and the whole state of affairs had become intolerable, I offered Adele a divorce.

“I wanted to keep Pierre with me. She could have everything else: she could live with Albert, she could have Rosshalde and half my income—more, for all I cared. But she refused. She was willing to divorce, she asked only the barest minimum of support, but she would not part with Pierre. That was our last fight. I tried to save my little vestige of happiness; I promised and begged, I humiliated myself, I threatened and wept and in the end I lost my temper; all in vain. She even consented to let Albert go away. It suddenly became clear that this quiet patient woman had no intention of giving an inch; she was well aware of her power and she was stronger than I. At that time I really hated her, and something of that hatred is still with me.

“So I sent for the mason and built this little apartment. I've been living here ever since, and you've seen all there is to see.”

Burkhardt had listened thoughtfully, never interrupting, not even at times when Veraguth seemed to expect and even to desire it.

“I'm glad,” he said cautiously, “that you yourself see everything so clearly. It's all pretty much as I thought. Let's talk about it just a little more. You've made a good start. I've been waiting for this moment ever since I came, and so have you. Suppose you had a nasty abscess that was painful and that you were a little ashamed of. I know about it now, and you feel better because there's no need for secrecy. But that isn't enough, now we've got to see if we can't cut the thing open and heal it.”

The painter looked at him, shook his head dully, and smiled. “Heal it? Such things never heal. But go ahead and cut.”

Burkhardt nodded. Yes, he wanted to cut, he would not let this hour pass in vain.

“One thing in your story is unclear to me,” he said thoughtfully. “You say it was on Pierre's account that you didn't divorce your wife. But couldn't you have forced her to let you have Pierre? If you had gone to court, they'd probably have had to give you one of the children. Have you never thought of that?”

“No, Otto, I have never thought of that. It never occurred to me that a judge with his wisdom could repair my faults and omissions. If I myself hadn't the power to make my wife give up the boy, there was nothing for me to do but wait to see in whose favor Pierre would decide later on.”

“Then it's all a question of Pierre. If not for him, you would surely have divorced your wife long ago; you'd have found some happiness in the world or at least you'd have worked out a clear and reasonable way of life. Instead, you're caught in a web of compromises, sacrifices, and paltry expedients that can only stifle a man like you.”

Veraguth looked up uneasily and gulped down a glass of wine.

“You keep talking about stifling and being destroyed! But you can see that I'm alive and working; I won't let it get me down, I'm damned if I will.”

Otto ignored Veraguth's irritation. With gentle insistence he continued. “Excuse me, that's not quite true. You're an uncommonly strong man or you wouldn't have stood up this long under such conditions. You yourself know very well how much this life has hurt you and aged you, trying to hide it from me is useless vanity. When you tell me one thing and my eyes another, I believe my eyes, and I can see that you're in a very bad way. Your work keeps you going, but it's more of an anesthetic than a pleasure. You waste half your magnificent energies in self-denial and petty daily friction. You're not happy, at best you're resigned. And that, my boy, isn't worthy of you.”

“Resigned? That may be. A good many people are in that boat. Who's happy?”

“Anyone who has hope is happy!” cried Burkhardt. “And what have you to hope for? Not even outward success, honors, or money; of those you have more than enough. Why, you don't even remember what life and joy are. You're contented, because you've given up hoping. I understand that perfectly, but it's a horrible state to be in, it's a nasty abscess, and anyone who has such a thing and refuses to cut it open is a coward.”

He paced the room in violent agitation, and as he pursued his plan with tense energies, Veraguth's boyhood face rose up to him from the depths of memory, recalling a similar quarrel. Raising his eyes, he looked into his friend's face; he was sitting huddled up, peering into space. Every trace of the boyhood features had vanished. He had called him a coward by design. But now this man, formerly so quick to take offense, made no move to defend himself.

He only cried out in embittered weakness: “Go right ahead! No need to spare me. You've seen the cage I live in. Now you can point a finger at my disgrace and rub it in. Please continue. I won't defend myself, I won't even get angry.”

Otto stood before him. He felt very sorry for him but forced himself to say harshly: “But you should get angry. You should throw me out and break off our friendship, or else you should admit that I'm right.”

Now the painter stood up too, but limply, without vigor. “Very well, you're right, if that's what you want!” he said wearily. “You overestimated me, I'm not as young as I used to be, and not so easy to offend. And I haven't got so many friends that I can afford to throw any away. I have only you. Sit down and have another glass of wine. It's good. You won't get wine like this in India, and perhaps you won't find so many friends out there that will put up with your pigheadedness.”

Burkhardt tapped him lightly on the shoulder and said, almost angrily: “Let's not get sentimental, not now of all times. Tell me what fault you have to find with me, and then we'll go on.”

“Oh, I have no fault to find with you. You're perfect, Otto, perfect. For almost twenty years now you've watched me going down, you've looked on with friendship and perhaps with regret as I sank deeper and deeper into the swamp, and you've never said anything and never humiliated me by offering me help. For years you knew that I kept a phial of cyanide on me, you observed with noble satisfaction that I didn't take it and finally threw it away. And now that I'm so deep in the muck that I can't get out, you stand there finding fault and giving me advice…”

His reddened, feverish eyes stared forlornly. It was only then that Otto, wishing to pour himself another glass of wine and finding the bottle empty, noticed that Veraguth had drunk up all the wine in those few minutes.

The painter followed his eyes and laughed harshly.

“I'm sorry,” he cried angrily. “Yes, I'm a little tipsy, don't forget to take that into account. It happens every few months. I inadvertently get a little drunk … I need the stimulation, you see…”

Placing his hands heavily on his friend's shoulders, he said plaintively, in a voice grown suddenly high and feeble: “See here, Otto. I might have got along without the cyanide and the wine and all that if someone had offered me a bit of help. Why did you let me sink so far that I have to plead like a beggar for a little indulgence? Adele couldn't bear me, Albert turned away from me, Pierre will leave me too some day—and you stood there, looking on. Couldn't you have done something? Couldn't you have helped me?”

The painter's voice broke, he sank back in his chair. Burkhardt had grown deathly pale. It was much worse than he had thought. That a few glasses of wine could bring this proud, hard man to this unresisting confession of his secret shame and misery!

He stood beside Veraguth and spoke softly to him as to a child in need of comfort. “I'll help you, Johann. Believe me, I'll help you. I've been an ass, I've been blind and stupid. Everything will be all right, don't worry.”

He remembered rare occasions in their boyhood when his friend had lost control over his nerves. One such scene, which had lain dormant, deep in his memory, rose up before him in strange clarity. At that time Johann had been going with a pretty girl, a student of painting. Otto had spoken disparagingly of her, and Veraguth had broken off their friendship in the most violent terms. Then too a small amount of wine had affected the painter disproportionately, then too his eyes had turned red and he had lost control over his voice. His friend was strangely moved at this extraordinary recurrence of forgotten traits out of a seemingly cloudless past, and once again he was terrified at the suddenly revealed abyss of inner loneliness and self-torment in Veraguth's life. This no doubt was the secret at which Johann had occasionally hinted over the years, and which, Burkhardt had assumed, lay hidden in the soul of every great artist. This then was the source of the man's uncannily insatiable drive to create, to seize upon the world each hour anew with his senses and to overpower it. And this too was the source of the strange sadness with which great works of art often fill the silent beholder.

It was as though Otto had never fully understood his friend until that moment. Now he saw deep into the dark spring from which Johann's soul drew the strength and suffering in which it was steeped. And at the same time he felt a deep, joyous consolation at the fact that it was he, the old friend, to whom the sufferer had bared himself, whom he had accused, and whom he had begged for help.

Veraguth seemed to have forgotten what he had said. He rested appeased like a child after a tantrum, and finally he said in a clear voice: “You have no luck with me this time. It's all because I haven't been doing my daily work. My nerves are off kilter. Good times don't agree with me.”

And when Burkhardt tried to prevent him from opening the second bottle, he said: “I couldn't sleep now anyway. God knows what makes me so nervous. Well, let's just tipple a bit, you weren't so priggish in the old days. —Oh, you mean because of my nerves. I'll straighten them out all right, I've had plenty of experience at that. In the next few days I'll start work every morning at six and every evening I'll ride for an hour.”

And so the friends remained together until midnight. Johann talked, turning over memories from the old days, Otto listened, and with almost reluctant pleasure saw a smooth, calm, cheerfully mirroring surface close over the dark depths that had gaped before him only a little while before.

Chapter Six

I
T WAS NOT WITHOUT UNEASINESS
that Burkhardt went to see the painter in the morning. He expected to find his friend changed and feared that his agitation of the night before would have given way to cool irony and embarrassment. Instead, Johann came to meet him with quiet gravity.

“So you're leaving tomorrow,” he said. “I understand. And thank you for everything. You know, I haven't forgotten about last night; we shall have to talk some more.”

Otto consented, though he had his doubts. “If you like; but I don't want to upset you again for nothing. Maybe we opened up too many wounds last night. Why did we have to wait till the last moment!”

They ate breakfast in the studio.

“No, we did the right thing,” said Johann firmly. “Exactly the right thing. I've had a sleepless night and mulled the whole thing over. You opened up a good many wounds, it was almost more than I could bear. Remember, I've had no one to talk to for years. But now I've got to straighten everything out and do what has to be done, or I really am the coward you called me last night.”