12

FROM the moment when Elisabeth had read Margot’s short letter, her life had turned into one of those long grotesque riddles that one is set to work out in the dream classroom of dull delirium. And, at first, she felt as if her husband were dead and people were trying to deceive her into thinking that he had only deserted her.

She remembered how—on that evening which now seemed so remote—she had kissed him on the forehead before he went, and he had said as he stooped: “Anyhow, you had better see Lampert. She can’t go on scratching herself like that.”

These had been his last words in this life, simple homely words referring to a slight rash which had broken out on Irma’s neck—and then he had gone forever.

The zinc ointment had cured the rash in a few days—but there was no ointment in the world which could mollify and erase the memory of his big white forehead and the way he had patted his pockets as he left the room.

During the first days she wept so much that she herself was surprised at the capacity of her lachrymal glands. Do scientists know how much salted water can flow from a person’s eyes? And that reminded her of how, one summer on the Italian coast, they had used to bathe the baby in a tub of sea water—oh, one might fill a far bigger tub with her tears, and wash a struggling giant.

Somehow his abandonment of Irma seemed to her far more monstrous than his desertion of her. Or would he be trying to steal his daughter? Was it prudent to have sent her to the country alone with the nurse? It was, said Paul, and he urged her to go there too. But she would not hear of it. Although she felt she could never forgive (not that he had humiliated her—she was much too proud to feel wronged that way—but because he had abased himself), still Elisabeth waited on, hoping from day to day that the door would open like the night in a thunderclap and that her husband would come in, pale as Lazarus, his blue eyes swollen and wet, his clothes worn to shreds, his arms wide open.

The greater part of the day she sat in one of the rooms or sometimes even in the hall—in any place where the heavy mists of her thoughts happened to overtake her—and pondered over this or that detail of her married life. It seemed to her he had always been unfaithful. And now she remembered and understood (as one learning a new language might remember once seeing a book in that tongue when one did not yet know it) the red stains—sticky red kisses—which she had noticed once on her husband’s pocket handkerchief.

Paul did all he could to distract her thoughts. He never referred to Albinus. He changed some of his pet habits—that of spending Sunday morning at the turkish baths for instance. He brought her magazines and novels; and they talked about their childhood, their parents long dead and that fair-haired brother of theirs who had been killed on the Somme: a musician, a dreamer.

One hot summer day when they had gone to the Park they watched a small monkey which had escaped from its owner and was up in a tall elm tree. Its little black face in a crown of gray fluff peered out of the green leaves, then was gone and a branch rustled and shook several feet higher. In vain did its master try to tempt it down by means of a soft whistle, a large yellow banana, a pocket mirror which he flashed and flashed.

“It won’t come back, it’s hopeless; it will never come back,” she murmured, and burst into tears.