“No, no, not necessary. I’ll wake up of my own accord—in a quarter of an hour or so.…”
Then I was alone at last: I let my head fall back, and now the alcohol flooded right through me in an unrestrained free-running wave. With a velvet wing it covered all my sorrows and afflictions, it washed away even the little new worry over my unnecessary lie about business being fine. I slept.… Slept? No, I was extinguished, I no longer existed.
5
It is already beginning to get dark when I wake up. I throw a startled glance at the clock: it is between seven and eight in the evening. I listen for any noises in the house. Nothing stirs. I call, softly at first, then louder: “Magda!” But she doesn’t come. I get up stiffly. My whole body feels battered, my head is hollow, my mouth dry and thick. I glance into the dining-room next door: no supper table is laid, though this is our usual supper-time. What is the matter? What has happened while I slept? Where is Magda?
After some reflection, I grope my way to the kitchen. Walking is not easy, it is as if all my limbs are stiff and bent, they move with difficulty in their joints.
I half expected to find the kitchen empty too, and almost dark, but the light is on, and Else is standing by the table, busy with some ironing. As I come in she looks up with a start, and the expression on her face is no more reassured when she sees who it is. I can well imagine that I look a bit wild. Suddenly I feel as if I am dirty all over. I should have gone into the bathroom first.
“Where is my wife, Else?” I ask.
“Madam has gone to town,” replies Else, with a quick, almost fearful glance at me.
“But it’s supper-time, Else!” I say reproachfully, though I have not the slightest inclination to eat any supper.
Else shrugs her shoulders, and then says, with another quick glance, “There was a telephone call from your office. I think your wife has gone to the office.”
I swallow with difficulty; I am conscious how dry my mouth has become.
“To the office?” I murmur. “Good God! What’s my wife doing at the office, Else?”
She shrugs her shoulders again. “How should I know, Herr Sommer,” she says. “Madam didn’t tell me anything.” She reflects for a moment, then goes on. “They rang up shortly after three, and your wife has been gone ever since.” So for more than four hours already Magda has been at the office. I am lost. Why I am lost I cannot say, but I know that I am. My knees grow weak, I stumble forward a few steps and slump heavily into a chair. I let my head fall on the kitchen table.
“It’s all up, Else,” I groan. “I’m lost. Oh, Else.…” I hear her set down the iron with a startled crash, then she comes over to me and puts her hand on my shoulder. “What is it, Herr Sommer? Don’t you feel well?” I don’t see her. I don’t lift my face from the shelter of my arms. In the presence of this young girl I am ashamed of my gushing tears. It’s all over, all lost, my firm, my marriage, Magda—oh, if only I hadn’t drunk that wine this lunch-time, that’s what made everything go wrong; without that, Magda would never have gone to the office (a fleeting thought: I’ve still got to settle that affair of the empty wine bottle, too!). Else gently shakes my shoulder. “Herr Sommer,” she says “don’t give way like that. Lie down again for a bit, and I’ll quickly make you some supper in the meantime.” I shake my head. “I don’t want any supper, Else. My wife ought to be here by now, it’s high time …”
“Or,” says Else persuasively, “would you like to eat a little something here in the kitchen with me, Herr Sommer?” Adding rather doubtfully. “As your wife is out.…” By its very novelty, there is something seductive about this quite unheard-of proposal. To eat in the kitchen with Else? Whatever would Magda say? I raise my head and look at Else properly for the first time. I have never looked at her like that before: for me, she was always merely a dark shadow of my wife in the remoter regions of the house. Now I see that Else is quite a pleasant dark-haired girl of about seventeen, of a somewhat robust beauty. Under a light blouse she has full breasts, and at the thought of how young those breasts are I feel a hot wave run over me.
But then I come to my senses. It’s all so impossible. Already this business of letting myself go before Else just now is utterly impossible.
“No, Else,” I say, and get up. “It is very nice of you to try to cheer me up a bit, but I had better get over to the office as well. If I should miss my wife, please tell her that I have gone to the office.” I turn to go. Suddenly it is hard for me to leave the kitchen and this friendly girl. I notice how pale her face is, and how well her high-arching eyebrows suit it.
“I have many worries, Else,” I say abruptly, “and I have nobody to stand by me.” Emphatically, I repeat, “Nobody, Else. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Herr Sommer,” she answers softly.
“Thank you, Else, for being so nice to me,” I add. And I go. Only as I am getting ready in the bathroom does it occur to me that I have just betrayed Magda. Betrayed and deceived. Deceived and defrauded. But at once I shrug my shoulders: that’s right! Lower and lower. Deeper and deeper into it. Now there’s no holding back!
6
I made my way cautiously to the office, cautiously, because at all costs I wanted to avoid meeting Magda in the street. I stood on the other side of the street in the shadow of a doorway, and looked across at my firm’s five ground-floor windows. Two of them belonging to my main office, were lit up, and occasionally through the ground glass I saw the silhouettes of two figures: that of Magda and of my book-keeper, Hinzpeter. “They’re going through the books!” I said to myself with a deep sense of shock, and yet this shock was mingled with a feeling of relief, for now I knew that the conduct of the business was in Magda’s capable hands. That was just like her, immediately on hearing the bad news, to give herself a clear picture of the situation by going through the books. With a deep sigh I turned away and walked right through the town and out of it, but not towards my home. What should I do in the office, what should I do at home? Invite the reproaches that were bound to be made? Try to justify what was utterly unjustifiable? Not at all. And while I walked out again into the countryside, which was slowly growing darker and darker, it became painfully clear to me that I was played out. I had nothing left to live for, I had lost my footing in society, and I felt I had not the strength to look for a new one, nor to fight to regain the old. What was I to do now? I went on, I walked away from office, wife, home town, I left everything behind—but I would have to go home again eventually, wouldn’t I? I would have to face Magda, listen to her reproaches, hear myself rightly called a liar and a cheat, have to admit that I was a failure, a failure of the most disgraceful and cowardly kind. The thought was unbearable, and I began to play with the idea of not returning home at all, but of going out into the world, of submerging myself in the darkness somewhere, in some darkness where a man might disappear without trace, without a final cry. And while I was outlining this to myself, with some feeling of self-pity, I knew that I was deceiving myself, that I would never have the courage to live without the security of hearth and home. I would never be able to give up the soft bed I was used to, the tidiness of home, the punctual, nourishing meals. I would go home to Magda, in spite of all my fears, I would go back to my own bed this very night—never mind about living in the darkness, never mind about a life and death in the gutter.
“But,” I asked myself again, and I quickened my hasty steps, “but what’s the matter with me? I used to be a fairly energetic and enterprising man. I always was a little weak but I knew so well how to conceal that, that up to now even Magda probably hadn’t noticed it. Where does all this weariness come from that has been growing on me for the last year, paralysing my limbs and brain, and making me, till now a fairly honest man, into a deceiver of my wife, and the kind of character who looks lustingly at a servant-girl’s breasts? It can’t be the alcohol. I never drank schnaps before today, and this lassitude has been hanging over me for such a long time now. Whatever can it be?” I tried this theory and that. I reflected that I was just over forty. I had heard talk of the change of life in men, but I knew no man of my acquaintance who, on passing forty, had changed as much as I. Then I recalled my loveless existence. I had always longed for love and appreciation, secretly of course, and I had had it in full measure, from Magda as well as from my fellow-citizens. Then gradually I had lost it. I didn’t know how it had all happened. Had I lost love and appreciation because I had grown so bad, or had I grown so bad because I had lost its encouragement? I found no answer to these questions: I was not accustomed to thinking about myself. I walked faster still. I wanted to get to the place where I would find rest from all these torturing problems. At last I stood before my goal, before that same country inn I had visited this fatal morning. I looked through the bar-room window for the girl with the pale eyes, who had passed such a contemptuous judgment on my manhood after one insolent glance. I saw her sitting under the dim light of a single little bulb, busy with some needlework. I looked at her for a long time, I hesitated, and with a painful and voluptuous sense of self-abasement, I asked myself just why I had come to her. And I found no answer to this question, either.