On Olga Radó’s writing-table was a beautiful box of heavy, angular crystal with a smooth silver cover. It was almost always empty, for the cigarettes were smoked so fast that it was almost no use to take them out of the original package.
One evening, Olga again took the last of the twenty-five from her pack.
“Oh, dear, what a shame! Myra do look on the desk. Of course, there isn’t one there either! What an imbecile I am!”
“I’ll run down quickly and get you some.”
“No, don’t, I won’t have you running downstairs for that. Wait, give me my case, there must be a few left in it.”
Olga was lying as usual on the divan, and she now sat up, tugging keys, handkerchiefs and letters from her pocket; finally she opened the case.
“Hurrah! By a wise economy we can hold out till tomorrow! Have one?” She proffered the open case.
“No,” said Myra, “I’ll be very nice and decline, otherwise they won’t last till morning.”
“Angel!” said Olga, snapping the clasp. “My one consolation is that you don’t care much anyhow.”
“May I look at the case?” asked Myra.
“There it is, my angel.” Olga handed it to her. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
Myra turned the smooth, reflecting gold with careful hands. “Incredibly beautiful. I’m simply wild about that broad low design. But why the crab? Is it a heraldic beast?”
“My coat of arms!” said Olga, laughing. “Our family device. It signifies that ‘like the crab we would go backward.’”
“It’s not a crab,” said Myra, hesitantly, blushing.
“No? Who told you so? But in any case, it is unfortunately, not a very useful or agreeable creature. It’s a scorpion.”
“Ooh!” said Myra. “Why such a monster? From some special preference?”
“Yes,” said Olga. “Someone had this case made for me because I once said that the scorpion is the most decent creature on earth. It is my favorite animal.”
“You’re not serious?” cried Myra, shocked.
“Oh, but I am. Yes, I am quite serious—about the scorpion. Do you know that it is the only animal in the world that commits suicide? It does not let itself be slowly tortured to death by human curiosity and cruelty. It struggles like a mad thing, and when it knows that it is no longer possible to save itself, it kills itself. Isn’t that wonderful?”
Olga had sat up. She was gazing at Myra out of great, dark eyes. Her beautiful pale features were set in a strangely anguished, yet heroic, expression.
Myra was shocked. “And you?” she said, clasping Olga’s hand with an involuntary movement. “Is that why you took it for your device?”
Olga smiled, a kindly, gentle smile.
“Little stupid,” she said, “that has another significance altogether. I must be a scorpion because I have a poison sting. Because my wits must be ‘like scorpion stings.’ Someone who loved me once declared it was so. And declared, too, that if I were driven to an extremity, I would turn my sting against myself and kill myself. I do not know if it is true or not. I get no particular pleasure out of thinking about myself. But that is how this person saw me. And so he had this case made for me. See!” She opened it. The little rubies of which the scorpion was formed were set à jour: the device was visible on the inside also. And right under it was engraved her name—Olga Radó.
Myra scolded herself furiously, but she could not help it—her heart was filled to bursting with furious jealousy of this stranger who loved Olga Radó and gave her gold cigarette cases.
“A beautiful hand-writing,” she said distractedly.
“It isn’t mine,” said Olga. Slowly she closed the case and with a gentle gesture laid its smooth surface against her cheek.
“It is so beautiful. I love it so. And I am so glad that I can love it. It was a parting gift. And it was a very beautiful parting.”
Myra was on fire with a torment of aversion.
“A beautiful parting!” she said bitterly. “Are there such things?”
Olga sat up abruptly. “Yes, Myra,” she said with real fervor. “And there should be more, many more. It is a misfortune that people do not understand how to part from one another. Learn it, Myra, learn it in time.”
“No,” said Myra obdurately, “I’ll probably never learn. Let people to whom love is only a game make a game of parting.”
“Myra,” said Olga earnestly, “you are a child! Do you think that it is any proof of a great love, for me to cling to someone till he is sick and tired of me? I would rather die a thousand deaths than become a burden to someone whom I love. It is an art to begin, though I believe that any individual can conquer any other individual, and the beginning will always be beautiful. But the end will always be a horrible, bitter, hateful torture. It is a great art, indeed, to know how to end. At the right time. And in the right way. Learn, Myra, learn it in time.”
Their silence lasted so terribly long. Yes, she must rise now and go. But it seemed to her as if the chair were holding her tight, or the gray wall above it on which her eyes were fastened. She felt that the moment she rose, the tears would start from her eyes. That must never be. She strove to set her mind on something else, on something quite remote. She wanted to go to the theatre next week. She had been very happy at the prospect. But actually, the nicest part of going to the theatre or a concert was to sit here afterwards and discuss what she had seen and heard. That could no longer be. Not next week. Never again, perhaps.
The silence in the room took away her breath. If only Olga would say something. Anything. Scold her, humiliate her. It was so cruel of her simply to say nothing.
Myra made an attempt to get up. Her movement was imperceptible, but she felt it in every muscle. At the same instant, those painfully retaining lids could no longer hold back the constantly welling tears; they quivered, were closed, and the heavy drops oozed forth.
Myra was terribly ashamed of herself. Something inside her made itself small. She would have been so glad to make her exterior body small in the same way, to bend down, to hide her face. But she did not dare move. She did not want to attract attention by the slightest movement. Perhaps Olga’s thoughts were far away and she had not even noticed her.
The tears splashed on her hand. She did not dare dry them.
Suddenly she shrank together with a pang. She heard the divan creak and the soft rustling of a dress. Olga was on her feet. She heard an infinitely gentle, soft voice at her side. “Myra, child, what on earth are you crying about?”
Myra did not look up, but sank her head still lower. Then Olga was kneeling beside her with a sudden movement, as one kneels beside a crying child and tries to peer up into its face.
“What are you crying about?”
Myra saw the beautiful face before her through a blur of welling water. She smiled.
“I don’t know,” she said.
She looked at the slender white hand that lay on her knee, covering her own folded hands. She bent slowly over this hand, and pressed her lips, her hot, tear-wet cheeks against it.
“Child!” said Olga almost impatiently, trying with her other hand to raise Myra’s forehead. “If only I knew what it is you are crying about!”
Myra was frightened by her tone. She raised her head and again stared at the gray wall on the far side of the court-yard.
Olga had risen. Her hand still lay on Myra’s head. Its cool smooth palm pressed firmly, almost heavily, upon her hair and brow. Myra felt this pressure as something infinitely beneficent. Felt as if she would fly asunder, were that forceful hand to be removed.
“I don’t know myself,” she said softly. “But I wish I had been dead a hundred years. Perhaps you would love me, too, then.”
With a sudden gesture, Olga Radó clasped Myra’s head to her shoulder and pressed her lips hard, almost painfully, against her forehead.
“And what now?” she asked curtly. There was a strange vibrant ring in her deep voice as if she suppressed some resentment only by an effort.
In her temples, in her finger-tips, Myra felt the furious hammering of a pulse. But she did not know whose heart it was throbbing.
She had a feeling as if it were now her duty to do something infinitely great. It seemed to her as if Olga Radó must now rise before her in super-human greatness and demand some heroic deed of her.
Myra felt a holy determination to jump out a window at the slightest word, or to pierce her breast with a dagger and to proffer her palpitating heart in her own two hands.
But Olga Radó made no such demands. She suddenly released Myra and went to the window. She laid her fingers on the lock and her forehead against the pane. And thus, without looking at Myra, without even turning her head, she said after a pause, in a strangely quiet, even matter-of-fact tone, “Go home, child!”
“Why?” asked Myra frightened. She got up, her legs trembling under her. That oppressive feeling of something mysterious, something gruesome, lay like a heavy weight on her breast. Why was she being sent away? What had she done?
She wanted some kind of explanation. She wanted to place her hands on Olga’s shoulders, to turn her around by force and search her face for an answer. “I have a right to do so,” she thought with mounting anger. “I certainly have a right.”
But as she made her first step toward the window, Olga faced about violently. Crossing her arms on her breast, she clasped her elbows with her spread fingers. In her white face, her eyes flashed deep, dark and threatening.
“You are to go home,” she said with a composure so forced that she seemed to be controlling a simply boundless rage. “Can’t you hear? Am I no longer mistress in my own apartment? Take your hat and go. Go, go, go, go!”
The anger that had been blazing up in Myra was quenched. Nothing was left save fear, and a deep, deep sadness.
Something seemed to be driving her to Olga as if she were scourged. She wanted to fall on the floor before her, she wanted to clasp her knees, she wanted to beseech her.
“Weep, scream, beat me, but don’t use this kind of force against me. Tell me what is the matter. I will die for you, but don’t send me away, because you are suffering.” She stood without moving.
“Go, go, go!” said Olga.
Myra Rudloff picked up her hat and went. She strove to walk erect and in a straight line. She staggered a little as the lock snapped behind her, and she had to support herself against the wall. She leaned her whole weight against the balustrade because the stairs spun around beneath her like a raging whirlpool.
* * *
For a few days Myra lived in a state of dull torment. Through the haze of awakening she would remember that today she must not take the road to Motz Street. Not today, not tomorrow; perhaps nevermore. She was outlawed, outcast, banned from all the joys of life.
Long, drab and barren, the day stretched out before her. A heaviness like lead lay upon her limbs. When the telephone rang, she would start up with her heart furiously throbbing, as if out of a profound lethargy. But it never rang for her.
There was nasty weather during those days, cold and rainy. But one Sunday night the wind swept the sky clean of clouds and dried the streets. In the morning, a blue summer sky shone over the city. The sun’s rays, dancing on one corner of her mirror, awakened Myra.
She felt as liberated on awakening, as filled with the unconquerable force of life, as if at one stroke all her troubles had vanished, all her heavy burden lightened. She felt able to resume the struggle with all its impediments. Indeed, there no longer seemed to be any impediments.
Today she would return the books she had borrowed from Olga Radó.
And then she would call her to account, would ask her quite frankly and cheerfully what was really the matter, whether it was Olga’s intention to put her out again. If so, she might do it with an easy mind.
But she would not do so. It had been a mood, a caprice—but no deep-going rift, no conflict between them.
And if she really had committed some offense in Olga’s eyes, she would like some explanation, and then would like—ah, yes, for her own sake—would like to beg forgiveness.
Myra whistled and hummed to herself while she dressed and brushed her hair. When she rang, her stupid heart throbbed so that she could not breathe. That came from running upstairs too fast.
The maid was surprised. “Miss Radó is travelling,” she said hesitantly. “Didn’t you know?”
For the first few moments the shame of not knowing was greater in Myra than fear. She felt that she was exposed to the maid in the most absurd way.
“But, but ...” she said, “I just wanted to leave these books in her room. But I can just as well give them to you. Be so good, as to take them, Erna. Then I won’t even have to go up. I am in a hurry. I will see you again.”
She bounded down the first stairs so that the girl should hear her haste. Not until the door had closed behind her, did she walk more slowly.
Olga was gone. Without saying a word to her, without once calling her up, or dropping her a line, without as much as leaving a message for her with the maid.
She was gone. Without saying where. Without saying for how long.
Myra bowed her head very low on her breast and descended quite slowly, step by step.
* * *
A few days later, Myra heard the telephone ring, and the maid trotting at a run through the long hall. Myra opened her door.
“For me, Hedwig?”
“Yes. A gentleman wishes to speak to you. A Mr. Petersen or Peterkin, I didn’t quite catch it.”
On the girl’s round features were emblazoned unconcealed admiration. This was the first time that a man’s voice had asked to speak with her.
“Peterkin!” Myra shouted excitedly into the mouthpiece without paying the slightest heed to the fact that Aunt Emily was sitting in the next room. “Yes, this is Myra. What’s the matter? Nothing has happened, has it?”
“No, no, thank heaven! I am simply commanded to give you ‘her dearest regards’: I received a card today.”
“From where? From whom?” She did not need to ask.
“From Kissingen. I had to look up your address in the directory. I did not know your telephone number, nor even the name of the street. I wasn’t even sure of your name.”
“Good Lord, you poor fellow. Can’t I see you, or have you no time for me?”
“Of course, I have. I’d be glad to....”
“Shall we go walking for an hour? Will you? Please do, please! Today, if you can! Right away? Really? Wonderful! And you’ll bring the card with you!”
They met. After a two word greeting, Myra asked, “Did you bring the card? Please, show it to me. Please!”
Beside the address there was written in a firm, laboriously condensed hand:
“Please, Peterkin, do me a favor and return the books to the Royal Library. One is on my desk, two are on the shelf, to the left of the window in the case farthest to the right. And take my plant to your room, the maids will forget it and I don’t want it to die.”
On the other side was written across the sky that capped the landscape:
“Please ring the little girl and greet her for me. You’ll have to look up her number in the book. Tell her not to be angry with me. All the best to all of you. O. R.”
Hundreds and thousands of such picture post-cards had passed through Myra’s hands in the course of her life, but this was the first time the thought had occurred to her: “What a wonderful and beautiful invention whereby one can send a picture of the place where one is staying. So that is how it looks where Olga is now. She sees these houses every day, goes walking under these trees, these mountains greet her every morning and every evening—truly a wonderful and beautiful invention!”
She would gladly have kept the card, but she did not have the courage to ask Peterkin for it.
“It happened so quickly,” she said, “—this trip.” She was reluctant to say that she had known and suspected nothing. But she was reluctant, too, to ply him with direct questions. Half unconsciously, she spoke in phrases that left everything indefinite, but which, to a certain degree, sounded him out.
“Yes,” said Peterkin, “rather peculiarly sudden. On Tuesday we were all there, why, we were all sitting together. But that night Olga came into my room and said, ‘Give me your railway guide.’ And she kept fingering it through and asking me, ‘Do you know the Black Forest, is it pretty there? What do you think, should I go to the North Sea?’ And so on, which is not her way. So undecided, I mean, so perplexed. And Wednesday night she was off. Didn’t tell a soul where. At first I had a suspicion—a notion, I should say, an idea....” Peterkin hesitated, and a faint red overspread his pale features—“that you had gone away together.”
Myra did not answer. It never occurred to her for a moment that her profound silence might possibly produce a queer impression.
His words had struck her like a bolt of lightning and she was in flames. Travel! Travel with Olga! There was something joyfully improbable about the idea. For a few seconds, she lived through in imagination all that it might have meant, had they decided to do this that Tuesday!
Abruptly, painfully, she returned to her senses: it was a silly, unfulfilled dream, one never, never to be fulfilled, perhaps. The reality was that she was here—alone—and that Olga was gone. Also alone? Or with whom? Nothing in the world gave Myra the right even to ask.
* * *
During those weeks Myra’s sole pleasure was to go walking with Peterkin. They made excursions together, lay half the day beside the water, or took a row-boat, or drank coffee in some out of the way inn with a garden, and talked about books, about strange cities, and distant mountains, about beasts and plants, and of people long dead—and about Olga.
Sometimes, when they were together they wrote to Olga, sent her picture post-cards, or long poems in doggerel, and from time to time they received some hasty reply, and once the news that she was planning to return in three weeks.
Myra was quiet and happy during this time. The companionship of Peterkin did her good. When she was home, she read and studied under his guidance and counted the days until Olga’s return. She drew up a long list of books which she intended to have read, of things which she intended to have accomplished by that time. She wanted to surprise Olga with all the knowledge she had acquired in the interval, and labored with a burning zeal.
Everything would have gone nicely, if it had not been for Aunt Emily. Aunt Emily watched and held her tongue and stored up gall and poison. And one day it broke out.
It was after dinner. Myra wanted to leave the table with a curt, “I hope you enjoy your meal,” and fetch her hat from her room. Aunt Emily who had sat on the defensive throughout dinner, brushed together a pile of minute crumbs, on the tablecloth, with her elegant fingers, and at Myra’s words, cleared her throat quickly and sharply and said with emphasis, “Perhaps you will be so good as to remain seated until I leave the table.”
Bored, but patient, Myra sat herself down again. She did not know that this was but the prelude to greater things. She thought it was merely one of those daily bits of chicanery that wasted at least one’s time and energy if they were not taken with the greatest unconcern.
Myra cast a covert glance at the clock. “Now, of course, she’ll sit for another five minutes before she gives the sign to rise,” she thought. “Very well, I’ll come five minutes late. Peterkin will wait.”
Aunt Emily continued to heap up crumbs and to clear her throat. “Will you be so good, Franz,” she began (it would be more precise to say she struck up), “will you be so good as to ask your daughter where she intends going this afternoon, and with whom? When I ask her, she answers, ‘Walking—with an acquaintance,’ or some such bit of wit. So please ask her yourself. Perhaps she still retains enough respect to tell you the truth, at least.”
Franz Rudloff rolled up his napkin and unrolled it again, thrust it into the napkin-ring and pulled it out again while he sat in mortal embarrassment.
“You know, my dear Emily,” he said without looking up, “that I have turned over my daughter’s education to you because I know that she could nowhere be so well brought up as in your excellent hands. Myra owes you exactly the same obedience she does me. You are in full possession of all the necessary authority....”
“Authority!” said Aunt Emily with a mocking laugh. “What am I supposed to do? You can’t spank a twenty-year-old girl or lock her in her room.”
“Not very well,” said Myra quietly, “thank God! But perhaps, I, too, may ask one question—would you mind telling me why you need to take such measures?”
“Why? In your own interest!” said Aunt Emily in a tone that was meant to express flaming indignation.
“Oh?” Myra was still rather amused than excited. “And what is going to bring about my total destruction? The fact that I go walking with a young man? Good Lord, poor little Peterkin! Did you ever happen to see him? I can introduce you to him some time, perhaps that will calm your fears!”
“Well, what sort of a man is he then?” asked Franz Rudloff, knitting his brows. This was intended to sound stern and forceful. It sounded rather timid.
Myra felt a tender pity for her father that was not altogether free of contempt.
“Good heavens, papa,” she said, “a fine, intelligent man. But a poor, ailing, deformed, little fellow. Hardly the person who could prove very dangerous to a young girl’s virtue or reputation.”
“Perhaps not to a normal young girl,” said Aunt Emily, quivering with malice. “Unfortunately, I do not know how far one can assume that you are normal. Unfortunately, there are plenty of young women who have some sick and perverse attraction to all repellent and unhealthy persons.”
Myra pushed back her chair so that it grated sharply on the floor.
“You are absolutely insane,” she said. That was all. Then she walked with her firm long stride into the next room, to the telephone, and called a number.
“May I speak to Mr. Peterkin? Forgive me, Peterkin, I’ll have to disappoint you today. My Aunt will not allow me to go walking with you. Yes, I am sorry, too. But there is nothing one can do about it. My Aunt thinks it improper. No, no, better not ring me, probably that is improper, too. God bless you, and don’t worry about it!”
Without turning, without casting as much as a glance in their direction, she went up to her room, and locked and bolted herself in.
Thus her friendly companionship with Peterkin was interrupted for the moment.
Franz Rudloff’s quiet sensitive nature suffered severely from the tense atmosphere in the house. The meals were eaten in a painful silence, every activity in common, a walk, a visit to the theatre seemed impossible.
He resolved to negotiate a peace and endeavored to bring his daughter to apologize. With this in mind he went, as he seldom did, to her room. Myra was poring, her head propped on her hands, over her books. When her father entered, she sprang up and received him as she would an honored guest. She moved up the most comfortable chair for him and offered him a cigarette.
He did not know how he should introduce the subject and felt dreadfully embarrassed. Myra endeavored to make the situation easier for him, for it pained her to see how he was suffering.
She promised the apology, promised to make conversation at table, promised to put on a pleasant face and manner from morn to night.
“I promise to control myself, Father,” she said.
Control! That was not what Franz Rudloff was asking.
“Couldn’t you try,” he said timidly, “to reach some different kind of feeling for Aunt Emily in your own heart? She really has such very estimable qualities. We could have a much happier family life if you—I know it is difficult to conquer one’s feelings—but if at least you made an attempt to love her.”
“Love!” echoed Myra. Her face was stony in its repose as she gazed past him, out of the window, but her breath came quicker. “I can promise you one thing, all my life long I have rejoiced at the thought of one thing, have waited for just one thing—the moment when she would die. I have prayed every night to God to make her die, soon, soon.”
Franz Rudloff turned quite pale.
“Myra!” he said, his eyes wide.
“I will promise you not to do that any more,” said Myra with a gentle, mournful smile. “Besides, it’s too late now anyway. Now I will pray God only to let me be twenty-one soon. To make this unhappy year pass quickly, quickly. When I am of age, we can always find some way. If she makes things too lively for me, I shall leave the house, even if it has to be as a nursemaid. If I don’t have to be together with her, she can live to a hundred for all I care. But before this, I don’t mind telling you, before this there were times when I would gladly have killed her with my own two hands.”
A yawning chasm opened before Franz Rudloff. He clutched the arms of his chair tightly, so violently and spasmodically was his poor weak heart pounding.
He rose and left the room, heavily and slowly, like an old man.
For a moment, Myra felt an impulse to jump up and stop him, to guide him back to the easy-chair again. Was there not some possibility of an explanation, some means of arriving at an understanding?
“He’s going because he is afraid,” she thought. “He’s going because he can no longer breathe the same air that I do, the air that is poisoned by the venom of my evil thoughts. He’s asking himself now why he has to be so bitterly punished, why he had to give life to a murderess. Who knows; he may go directly to Aunt Emily and ask her advice, what to do with his abandoned daughter. Perhaps they will consult an alienist again. I have expressed an intention to murder my whole family. No, no, there’s no point in trying explanations. Father simply does not understand me.”
He had gone. She let him go without moving.