Homo Sapiens by Stanislaw Przybyszewski and translated by Joe E Bandel
VIII.
They stepped out the door.
“Shall I get a cab?” “No, no; let’s walk!”
That was very inconsiderate of Mikita. He had promised her for sure that he would come. Why didn’t he come? What was he jealous of this time? No, it was too tedious. She suffered under it. She felt bound. She hardly dared speak to anyone. She constantly felt his watchful eyes on her.
And that incident in Frankfurt! No, he went too far, he tormented her too much. Couldn’t he understand the joy of suddenly meeting a compatriot in a foreign city? But he went into the next room and wrote letters to hide his anger.
They walked through the Tiergarten.
The mild March air gradually calmed her.
Now he’ll surely resent her for not waiting hours for him at Iltis’s.
“Can you understand, Mr. Falk, why Mikita didn’t come?” “Oh, he’s probably having one of his moods again…”
The next moment, Falk felt ashamed…
“He’s probably struggling with his work, then he doesn’t want to see anyone, least of all go to a party.”
They fell silent.
It was eerily quiet. A faint feeling of fear crept into her soul.
How good that he was with her!
“May I offer you my arm?” She was almost grateful to him.
Now they walked more slowly.
She thought of the evening, of the dance, but she felt no shame anymore, no unease, no—on the contrary, a soft, pleasant sensation of warmth.
“Why are you so quiet?” Her voice sounded soft, almost tender.
“I didn’t want to be intrusive. I thought it might be unpleasant for you.”
“No, no, you’re mistaken. The company just made me so nervous, that’s why I got so restless; I’m so glad we left.”
She had spoken unusually warmly and heartily.
“Yes, you see, Fräulein Isa,” Falk smiled quietly, “I really have reason enough to reflect deeply on myself…”
He sensed her listening intently.
“You see—this strangeness—this peculiarity… You mustn’t misunderstand me—I’m speaking about it as if it were a riddle, yes, a mystery, as if a dead man had returned…”
Falk coughed briefly. His voice trembled slightly.
“When I was still in school, I was very fond of an idea from Plato. He holds that life here on earth is only a reflection of a life we once lived as ideas. All our seeing is just a memory, an anamnesis of what we saw before, before we were born.
You see—back then, I loved the idea for its poetic content, and now I think of it constantly because it has realized itself in me.
I’m telling you this fact—purely objectively, as I spoke yesterday about the invulnerability of fakirs. Don’t misunderstand me… I’m really a complete stranger to you…”
“No, you’re not a stranger to me…”
“I’m not? Really not? You don’t know how much that delights me. To you, to you alone, I don’t want to be a stranger. You see, no one knows who I am; they all hate me because they don’t know how to grasp me; they’re so uncertain around me… only to you would I open my entire soul…”
He faltered. Had he gone too far? She didn’t reply, she let him speak.
“Yes, but what I meant to say… yes, yesterday, yesterday… strange that it was only yesterday… When I saw you yesterday, I already knew you. I must have seen you somewhere. Of course, I’ve never actually seen you, but you were so familiar… Today, I’ve known you for a hundred years, that’s why I’m telling you everything; I have to tell you everything…
Yes, and then… I can usually control myself well, but yesterday in the cab—it overcame me; I had to kiss your hand, and I’m grateful that you didn’t pull your hand away…
I don’t understand it… I usually see all people outside, yes, somewhere far outside; my inner self is virginal, no one has come close to me, but you I feel within me, every one of your movements I feel flowing down my muscles—and then I see the others dancing around me like a ring of fire…”
Isa was spellbound. She shouldn’t hear this. She felt Mikita’s eyes on her. But this hot, passionate language… no one had ever spoken to her like this…
Falk was seized by a frenzy. He no longer cared what he said. He stopped trying to control himself. He had to speak to the end. It was as if something had burst open in his soul, and now the blaze poured out uncontrollably.
“I demand nothing from you, I know I mustn’t demand it. You love Mikita…”
“Yes,” she said harshly.
“Yes, yes, yes, I know; I also know that everything I’m saying to you is foolish, utterly foolish, ridiculous; but I have to say it. This is the greatest event in my life. I never loved; I didn’t know what love was, I found it ridiculous; a pathological feeling that humanity must overcome. And now, with a jolt, it was born… In a moment: when I saw you in that red light, when you said to me with that enigmatic, veiled voice: It’s you…
And your voice was so familiar to me. I knew you had to speak like that, exactly like that, I expected it. I also knew that the woman I could love had to look like you, only like you… Everything in my soul has been unleashed, everything that was unknown to me until now, the deepest, most intimate…”
“No, Mr. Falk, don’t speak further; I beg you, don’t do it. It pains me, it hurts me so much that you should suffer because of me. I can give you nothing, nothing…”
“I know, Fräulein Isa, I know only too well. I demand nothing. I just want to tell you this…”
“You know, Mr. Falk, that I love Mikita…”
“And if you loved a thousand Mikitas, I’d have to tell you this. It’s a compulsion, a must…”
Suddenly, he fell silent. What was he doing? He laughed.
“Why are you laughing?”
“No, no, Fräulein Isa, I’ve come to my senses.” He grew serious and sad.
He took her hand and kissed it fervently.
He felt only the hot fever of that long, slender hand.
“Don’t hold it against me. I forgot myself. But you must understand me. I’ve never loved in my entire life. And now this new, unknown thing surges over me with such force that it completely overwhelms me. Just forget what I said to you.”
He smiled sadly.
“I’ll never speak to you like this again. I’ll always love you, because I must, because you are my soul, because you are the deepest and holiest thing in me, because you are what makes me me and no one else.”
He kissed her hand again.
“We’ll stay friends, won’t we? And you’ll have the beautiful awareness that you are my greatest, my most powerful experience, my…”
His voice broke; he only kissed her hand. She was silent and squeezed his hand tightly.
Falk calmed himself.
“You don’t hold it against me?” “No.”
“You’ll stay my friend?” “Yes.”
They remained silent for the rest of the way.
Across from Isa’s apartment was a restaurant that was still open.
“We are comrades now, Fräulein Isa; may I ask you to drink a glass of wine with me? Let’s seal our camaraderie.”
Isa hesitated.
“You’d give me great happiness by doing so. I’d love so much to talk with you as a good comrade.”
They went inside.
Falk ordered Burgundy.
They were alone. The room was separated by a curtain.
“Thank you, Fräulein Isa, I’ve never had anyone…” Isa had Mikita on the tip of her tongue, but she remained silent. It was awkward to say his name.
The wine was brought. “Do you smoke?”
“Yes.”
Isa leaned back on the sofa, smoked her cigarette, and blew rings into the air.
“To the health of our camaraderie.” He looked at her with such heartfelt warmth.
“I’m so happy, Fräulein Isa, you’re so good to me, and then—aren’t we?—we have nothing to demand from each other; we’re so free…” He saw again that hot glow around her eyes… No! He didn’t want to see it. He hastily drank his glass, refilled it, and stared at the red surface of the wine. He thought about the meniscus; it must be convex…
“Yes, yes, the soul is a strange riddle…” Silence.
“Do you know Nietzsche?” He looked up. “Yes.”
“And that one passage from Zarathustra: The night is deeper than the day ever thought…”
She nodded.
“Hmm, isn’t it?” He smiled at her. “The soul is also deeper than it reflects in that foolish consciousness.”
They looked at each other. Their eyes sank into one another. Falk looked back into his glass.
“I’m a psychologist by trade, you know. By trade. That means I’ve measured sound velocities, determined the time it takes for a sensory perception to enter consciousness, but I’ve learned nothing about love… Then suddenly… Well…” He raised his glass. “To your health!”
He drank.
“No, no, nothing came of all those measurements. Last night, I learned far more about my soul than in the four or five years I wasted on so-called psychology… I had a dream…” He looked up. “But aren’t you bored?”
“No, no.”
They smiled at each other.
“Yes, I dreamed today that I was on a sea journey with you.
It was dark, a heavy, thick fog lay over the ship, a fog you could feel deep inside, heavy as lead, oppressive, suffocating with fear…
I sat with you in the salon and spoke—no, I didn’t speak. Something in my soul spoke—silently, and the voice was bodiless, but you understood me.
And then we stood up. We knew it, we knew exactly that it was coming—the terrible thing…
And it came.
A horrific crash, as if a sun had plummeted, a hellish scream of fear, as if glacier masses suddenly crashed onto the earth: a steamer had rammed into ours.
Only we two had no fear. We only felt each other, we understood each other, and held hands tightly.
Then suddenly, you were gone.
I found myself in a lifeboat, the sea tossing it to the heavens and then plunging it into an endless abyss.
I didn’t care what happened to me. Only a horrific, maddening fear of what had happened to you split my skull. Then all at once: I saw the mighty steamer sinking with incredible speed, I saw only a massive mast rising, and there, there at the top, I saw you clinging… And in that same moment, I plunged into the sea, I grabbed you, you let me carry you limply, and you became so infinitely heavy. I couldn’t hold on any longer, one more moment and I’d have sunk into the sea with you.
Then suddenly, the fog and clouds gathered into a giant figure. Across the entire sky, cruel, cold, indifferent…
Falk smiled with a strangely embarrassed smile.
It was the sea and the sky, it was you and me, it was everything: fate, Fräulein Isa.”
She grew frightened. He looked at her so eerily. Suddenly, he shifted.
“Strange dream, isn’t it?” he smiled.
She tried to seem indifferent and didn’t answer.
He looked at her for a while with large, feverish eyes. Then he looked back into his glass.
“That was the first revelation of fate in my life.” His voice sounded monotonous, even, with a nuance of casual indifference. It provoked her, it had something unspeakably hypnotic. She had to listen to him.
“I didn’t know what fate was either. But now I do. You see, Fräulein Isa, I go around, clueless; I held my mind so firmly in my hands; there was no feeling I couldn’t subdue; yes… and now suddenly you come in the way, you, the strange archetype of my soul, you, the idea I gazed upon in another existence, you, who are really the entire mystery of my art… Do you know my work?”
“I love it above all else.”
“Have you found yourself in it?” “Yes.”
“Now you see, I was so firm and hard, and now you cross my path, and my entire life is enclosed in this one experience. You gain this power over me that I can think of nothing else, you become the content of my mind…”
“No, Falk, don’t speak of it. I grow so weary at the thought that you should feel unhappy because of me…”
“No, Fräulein Isa, you’re mistaken. I’m happy, you’ve made me a new person, you’ve given me an unheard-of richness—I demand nothing from you, I know you love Mikita…”
Isa felt the unease surge within her again. She had completely forgotten Mikita. No! She couldn’t stay here any longer. She couldn’t hear any more. She stood up.
“Now I must go.”
“Stay, stay just a moment longer.”
There was something that held her down, but she had to think of Mikita. The fear and unease grew. She gathered herself.
“No, no, I must go now; I can’t stay any longer, I must, I must—I’m so tired…”
Falk suppressed a nervous laugh with difficulty.
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