The scorpion

Myra was sitting on the terrace with the older women, with Mrs. Peters, with Mrs. Borgessen, with Mrs. Wietinghoff, and with the young Mrs. Vandahl who because of her condition felt a little awkward and preferred to sit still in her basket-chair rather than amuse herself with the “young people” in the garden.

Nearly all the women had some knitting in hand at which they worked more or less attentively. The conversation flowed along quietly, without haste, but also without stopping.

Myra looked down at the white net through which, also without haste but without stopping, she plied her needle in and out, silently rejoicing that she did not need to take part in the conversation. All she had to do was keep her eyes on her work. She need only look up and speak when she was spoken to. As a result, she seemed demure and young-girlish, and nobody ever suspected what a gloriously comfortable feeling that was.

She had sat on that terrace frequently in the last few months, but that day for the first time she felt the beauty of the garden, the quiet voices beside her, the clear calls from the tennis court, everything—colors, fragrances, sounds—with a sense of ease and comfort and grateful enjoyment.

For weeks and weeks she had lived in a state of secret apprehension like a criminal in flight. A hundred times, she thought she saw Gisela or heard her voice. A hundred times, when she tore open a letter from Luisa Peters, she expected to read that Gisela had come to some horrible end. A hundred times her heart had throbbed so violently that she had had to struggle for breath. And a hundred times her fear and anxiety had been unnecessary.

She often repeated to herself that there was really no need to fear a scandal, since the opinion and favor of these people was of no account to her anyway. And yet there were moments when she had to confess to herself that it would be less terrible to learn of Gisela’s death than to see her suddenly appear from somewhere—here on the terrace of the Peters’ house, for example. Some vexatious scene was sure to result, an unsavory scene of which she would willy-nilly be the central figure. She could picture it to herself down to the smallest detail, so that she would turn pale and blush, and the blood would hammer in her veins.

More than once she resolved to affect an astonished and injured expression, a bewildered smile. When she had found her poise sufficiently to deny the acquaintanceship, they would, they must take Gisela for a mad woman and have her put out by the servants.

Myra went over and over it during her sleepless nights. She saw Gisela’s face as distorted with hate and pain and vengeance as at that moment when she had flung her glass after Fiametta.

And she would hear herself saying in a very clear and calm voice, “I am so frightfully sorry, Mrs. Peters, to be the occasion of such a scene in your house. But I assure you I have never seen this—lady before in my life.”

It would make a very good impression if she paused for a moment before the word “lady,” much better than if she were to say “person.”

Perhaps it would be cleverer yet to go right up to Gisela and speak to her in a big sister tone. “Won’t you tell me where I have met you before? Where did you learn my name? I know you, of course, but for the moment I can’t recollect—won’t you help me? Did we perhaps go to school together?”

Or might she not produce the best impression by playing the terrified maiden, by fleeing behind a chair and trembling, or by seeking protection from the ladies. “Help me! What does she want with me? Do you understand what she wants with me? Do you know her? Do you know who she is?”

Yes, perhaps that would be the most natural course for a well-bred and somewhat timid young lady when attacked by a lunatic....

She would lie, lie to the limit—although she really did not care very much for the opinion of Mrs. Peters, or the opinion of Mrs. Borgessen. But she wanted peace, she wanted to be completely enveloped in an invulnerable cloak of propriety and convention. She wanted never again to be exposed, never again to let the shirt be torn from her shoulders. Never again should a contemptuous glance strike her. Her skin had become sensitive, so incredibly sensitive—a glance in which she did not read kindliness and friendliness hurt her.

Oh, how well she understood Olga Radó, who had denied her, pitilessly denied and handed her over. She had been hunted till she was worn out. Her skin had been seared with contemptuous glances. She could not endure another glance and did not mean to. She was afraid of glances, her fear of them amounted to the paltriest cowardice.

But she had not been afraid of a loaded revolver....

Now Myra had reached the same pass.

She was prepared to die rather than endure contempt. And prepared to lie, with a straight face, with a clear voice, to lie cold-bloodedly, not for any personal advantage, not ever for the sake of respect, but from shame, from the profoundest, most abysmal shame, in order that the protecting mantle might not be stripped from her naked soul.

Of course, she had never loved Gisela. But sometimes it seemed to her as if she were capable of denying even her greatest and most sacred love.

That was when she trembled with fear of the Moebius girls. Might it not be that she would suddenly see Fannie’s and Emmie’s reddish blonde heads bob up? Might she not suddenly confront one of them, totally unprepared?

Yes, and in this case it would do no good to declare them insane. No one would ever question the sound intelligence of the Moebius girls. Certainly no one here.

But what could they convict her of after all! Myra could meet every attack with a counter-attack. Myra had met Olga Radó at the Moebius house. “Our cousin,” they had proudly called her then. All she need do was inquire of them about their “relative,” and ask with surprise if it were true that Olga Radó was dead. Had she really shot herself?

Only, she must not weep as she asked it....

And whenever Myra thought that she must not weep, the tears would begin streaming down her face.

But presently she would grow calmer. She was no longer thinking of the possibility of such encounters. The last year seemed to her somewhat unreal, vague and meaningless. The memory of Olga Radó persisted. But she now remembered most vividly the first period of their friendship, and the pure adoration she had felt for Olga’s intellectual superiority, her accomplished manner, the distinguished and captivating quality of her entrances and exits. Myra was inclined to think less frequently of her burning tenderness, of the agony of a farewell which could not even be called a farewell—less frequently of her death.

Sometimes she would find a touching and painful pleasure in imaging that Olga was still living and would suddenly appear in these circles. Among these elegant, assured and clever women, she would be the most elegant, the most assured, the cleverest. If she but wished, she would succeed in ravishing this cool, reserved and self-conscious company in half an hour.

But the more clearly she had visualized the picture of the living Olga, the more her remembrance had paled in the last few months. Now and again it seemed to her like the giddy whirl of carnival night, and she was convinced that no one had a right to discuss a confidence of that time, any more than one had a right to remind a lady in the sober light of day that one had kissed her under her mask at the carnival carouse.

Myra had taken off her mask and costume. She was once more Myra Rudloff, and it would have been tactless to allude to any fugitive half forgotten connections.

So completely was she Myra Rudloff that she sometimes wondered if there were not someone of her own name to whom she could attach herself or whom she could attach to herself.

So weary was she of her young freedom.

Or perhaps of its restriction.

If she had an older relative with her, she could take lodgings and live more according to her taste. For, of course, it was forbidden her to live alone, just as she must not stay at a hotel, and just as there were a very few pensions, coffee-houses, restaurants and even streets that she might frequent.

Sometimes it struck her as absurd when people said in quite shocked voices, “Good Heavens, you mustn’t go there. One can see that you’re a stranger here!”

But she always acquiesced. She knew too well that she herself had lost her standards. For a while she had thought defiantly that she was old and stable enough to permit herself any associates, any book, any manner of life. Then she had found out that she could not swim in the troubled, swirling waters into which she had plunged. When she was close to drowning her pride had forsaken her and she was submissive and grateful that a firm hand had pulled her out.

She no longer felt secure. She had thought she could plunge into the sea without danger—now she was glad when expert hands prepared her bath for her.

Sometimes she was slightly embarrassed when an astonished glance rested upon her because she let slip that she had read a book, or seen a play which were strictly forbidden to young ladies of “her station.”

Sometimes she had to fight down a free and easy manner that had become so natural to her in the last few months that she noticed nothing improper in it.

Sometimes she thought almost with gratitude of Aunt Emily. At least she had taught Myra how to hold her knife and fork, and it would have been bad had she had to pay attention to such details and live in fear of violating etiquette. But in all matters of form, her “good training” had become blood of her blood.

From time to time she was in doubt as to whether a young lady of good family might go alone to the opera, or might be invited by an acquaintance whom she had met in the city to partake of a tart in a pastry-shop. Then she would think in a flash, “What would Aunt Emily say in so difficult a dilemma?” And as Aunt Emily averred nearly everything to be unseemly, reprehensible and immoral, Myra could feel in obeying her that she was leading a blameless-life, even in the eyes of the sternest critic.

She had already considered if the most sensible course were not simply to summon Aunt Emily. Then she would have the infallible oracle in all matters of propriety at her elbow. She could rent a house, take the furniture out of storage, have a home, receive visitors, give little parties. Besides, there was no occasion for contentions of any sort. Even Aunt Emily could have nothing to say against her present associates.

Myra was tamed. It made quite a difference whether one viewed the world, the blooming laughing world, always from the inside of a cage, against whose bars one continually batted one’s head and wings in an effort to escape, if just for once. Or whether one were flying back, tired out at evening, somewhat scratched and ruffled, to steal voluntarily into the comfortable cage and find refuge there.

Of course, the door would always remain open now, Myra was of age.

Instantly she recalled that she had come of age a few months too late. Otherwise Olga Radó would still be living, living with her, free at last of all cares and debts and worries, in a beautiful cozy home such as she had always wanted. She would be alive and happy, her laugh would still ring out for the world’s delight—and her bell-toned voice, and her beautiful proud face and her delicate, strong hands. Yes, none of these would have been destroyed, annihilated, extinguished—had there been no Aunt Emily.

And hate blazed up in Myra again like a red flame.

The voices from the tennis court drew nearer. White flannels flashed amongst the blackish-red foliage of a purple-beech and the golden-yellow leaves of a maple. The first pair turned the corner, passed the rose-trellis, and approached the terrace—Gwen and Fred Wietinghoff.

Mrs. Peters smiled in greeting to her beautiful daughter. The smile still further revealed her long prominent, rather uneven teeth, stopped with all kinds of fillings, embellished with specks of white porcelain, encircled with threads of gold as fine as a hair. Her teeth were the same color as the big dull gray pearl in her beautifully shaped ear and gave the same impression of some infinitely fragile, infinitely precious object which must be preserved at any price and with the most tender solicitude. Without the teeth her regular, somewhat withered but haughty features, crowned by a pile of carefully waved blonde hair carefully restrained by a net, regardless of fashion, might almost have been called handsome.

She smiled proudly and complacently. She had every right to.

Myra was delighted anew by the lovely firm way in which Gwen set down her tiny foot with its springy ankle, and by the slender firm body under its white dress, and the curly hair glistening and fluttering in the sunlight.

The sight of her filled Myra’s heart with a buoyant delight—but it did not throb faster by a single beat.

She was just as pleased to see Fred Wietinghoff, who was walking beside Gwen. He was much taller than she, broad-shouldered, and narrow in the hips, all the contours of his muscles showing under his silk shirt. He looked like a twenty-year-old. But when the light fell on his face, a network of sharp little wrinkles was visible in his clear, golden brown skin around his eyes and mouth, and a few white threads in his smooth metallic blond hair, at the temples.

But she was pleased, too, when she saw Vandahl whose eager eyes were seeking out his young wife from a distance, and blinking a greeting to her.

And she was pleased when she saw Henry Rantzau and young Lucius appear behind the others, plunged as deeply in conversation, which the younger man was accompanying with sweeping gestures, as if they were strolling somewhere across a lonely field, and not going to meet a group of people who were expecting and watching them.

“My dears, I’m dying of thirst!” It was Gwen’s first utterance as she took the last steps of the terrace at a bound.

She ran to the tea-wagon behind Myra, and poured raspberry juice and ice water into a cut-glass goblet.

With the utmost composure, Fred took the goblet from her as she was about to carry it to her lips and drained it at a draught.

“What is the meaning of that?” she asked amazed and angry.

“I’m sacrificing myself for you again,” he said with unshakable equanimity. “I’ve warned you against inflaming your lungs. I beg you, when you are thirsty, drink tea. May I pour you a cup?”

“I will drink water!” Gwen stamped her foot in annoyance. “Give me that carafe, I’m dying of thirst!”

“You won’t die of thirst for some time yet,” replied Fred. “You’re really hardly thirsty at all, but since you’ve never suffered from thirst in your life you have no standards by which to judge. Drink a cup of lukewarm tea, it will be very good for you.”

“But I don’t want lukewarm tea,” said Gwen between laughter and anger. “I drink hot tea in winter and ice water in summer. I’m going to drink water and if I get inflammation of the lungs, it’s no concern of yours.”

“Good heavens,” said Fred pityingly, “what a little sixteen-year-old! You’re not so young any more that you make yourself ‘cute’ that way. Probably you think it’s very romantic to toss off a glass of ice water in a fit of youthful impetuosity when you’re overheated with playing, and then be carried off by inflammation of the lungs in the flower of your youth.” He was sitting on the arm of a basket-chair, swinging his foot in its heelless shoe. “Inflammation of the lungs is a horrid malady with phlegm and spittle—not in the least poetic. In fact, there is no poetic sickness.” He straightened his shoulders slightly. “Only health is poetic, but everything from a saber cut to typhus is prosaic and disgusting and mostly connected with bad smells.”

“Oh, Fred, you’re disgusting.” She turned her back on him. “You’re positively not fit to enter a drawing-room. I’m going to tell your mother so.”

“She’ll think you’re slandering me!” He smiled complacently and somewhat mischievously. “She knows you can’t bear me.”

Vandahl had moved a stool beside his young wife’s chair. Myra observed how his big well-formed hands caressed the folds of her dress stealthily.

A radiant stream of tenderness was constantly playing on him from her soft brown eyes.

Myra was a little anxious on her account. She looked so happy, and apparently worshipped her husband so idolatrously. If only she had finished with her hours of pain! The wish burned in Myra’s heart like a mute prayer.

Rantzau and Lucius were leaning against the stone balustrade. Myra could catch disjointed fragments of their conversation when the others were silent.

“Why not? The electrons that are thrown off by the so-called cathode rays have a velocity of something like a quarter of a million kilometer seconds.”

It was Rantzau’s deep, vibrant voice.

Gwen seated herself on the arm of Myra’s chair and put her arm around her shoulders.

“Protect me, Myra,” she said, “everybody makes me angry and seems horrid to me. You are the only person here whom I really like!”

“Oh, Gwen,” Myra smiled up at her, “it’s a good thing that you don’t have to cross any bridges tonight!”

Gwen’s face grew serious. “I’ll kill somebody yet,” she said as if she were telling a fairy-tale, “and I’ll bury the corpse in a cellar and steal everything valuable and bury that in the forest. Then I’ll go somewhere, to the courts, to the police or the senate and tell everything. Then everybody will laugh and pity me and say, ‘Poor child, she has a fever, she’s delirious—that’s Mr. Peters’ little daughter! get a car, and take the youngster home, her mother ought to pack her off to bed, she’s got the measles.’ And then the bailiff or an officer will take me home so that nothing may happen to me on the way. Oh, Myra have you had any of the short-cake? Deuli makes them simply divine! They make life worth living. But I’ve never yet been able to eat enough of them. I’ve stipulated that when I get married I want you to give me a bath-tub full of short-cakes. And on my wedding-day I’ll eat short-cake from morning till night. Eat something, Myra—I really believe that you live on air and love.”

“On air perhaps,” said Fred dryly, “as far as I can judge your consumption of the other so-called popular commodity, I couldn’t last a week on your rations.”

Myra took good care not to understand his remark.

“I’d like to live on air,” she said, breathing in the breeze that came from the garden. Despite the fragrance of the roses, it was strong and sharp and smelled a little of the sea. “On pure fresh air!”