By Stanislaw Przybyszewski and translated by Joe E Bandel
III.
When Falk came home, Isa sat half-undressed on her bed and read. “Finally you have come!” She came toward him. “Oh, how I have longed for you.”
Falk kissed her and sat in the rocking chair. “Oh, how tired I am!”
“Where were you?”
“I was with Iltis.” “Did you hear anything new?” “No, nothing of importance.” “You are so pale, Erik?”
“I have a little headache.”
Isa sat beside him on a chair, took his head in both hands and kissed him on the forehead.
“You stay away so long now, Erik. It is so unpleasant to sit alone all evening.”
Falk looked at her and smiled.
“I must gradually emancipate myself from you.” “Why?”
“Well, if you should suddenly run away from me…” “Oh, you!” She kissed him even more violently.
Falk stood up, walked thoughtfully up and down the room, then stopped before her and looked at her smiling.
“What are you thinking about so much?” “You are very beautiful, Isa.”
“Didn’t you see it before?”
“Yes, of course. But it is strange that after a four-year marriage I still find you as beautiful as on the first day.”
Isa looked at him happily.
“You, Isa, we have lived very happily together.”
“Oh, I was so happy, and I am so happy, I have such a strong, such a joyful consciousness of happiness… Sometimes I get fear that this great happiness should not last long… But that is naturally ridiculous, such a female superstition… I know that you will always love me, and then I need nothing more, then I can never feel unhappy. Even if you are so nervous now, and stay away whole days, it doesn’t matter… It is actually so beautiful to sit like this and think of our love.”
She was silent for a moment. Falk walked around and looked at her from time to time restlessly.
“And your love is so beautiful, so beautiful… I think so often that I am the first you loved, I also know that no other woman exists for you, and that makes me so proud, you perhaps don’t understand this feeling…”
“Yes, yes, I can imagine it.” She looked at him smiling.
“Isn’t it true, Erik, you have never, since you met me, looked at a woman so…”
“How?”
They both laughed at each other.
“Well so, as I believe it says in the New Testament of the look that can desire more eloquently than words… Ha, ha, the gentlemen of the New Testament were experienced… But why do I ask you, I know it.”
“Are you so sure?”
Falk put on a mysterious expression. “Yes, nothing is so sure for me.”
“Hm, hm… You must have an incredible trust in me.” “Yes, I have, otherwise I couldn’t be so happy.”
Falk looked at her attentively.
“But what would you say if I had betrayed you after all?” She laughed.
“You can’t.”
“But if I had done it?” “No, you haven’t.”
“But let us assume I had done it under quite special circumstances, under circumstances for which no person is responsible.”
She became a little restless and looked at him.
“Strange how you can assume such a thing.” Falk laughed.
“Of course I didn’t do it. But we can take such a case purely psychologically. I thought a lot about it today. It interests me.”
“Well yes.”
“So you see, Isa, I can hate you at times. I have often told you that. I can hate you so intensely that I am completely out of my senses. I hate you because I must love you so, because all my thoughts refer to you, because I cannot go anywhere without having you constantly before my eyes.”
“But that is precisely so beautiful!” She kissed his eyes.
“No, just leave it, Isa. Listen further. I hate you at times and love you simultaneously with such unrest that I can become quite sick from it. I try to get rid of you. It is no happiness to love like that…”
Falk stood up and talked himself more and more violently into it.
“Now you see, one gets such a purely physical longing to forget this unrest, this torment. One longs for a resting pillow… He, he—resting pillow, that’s the right word…” He smiled with a peculiarly crooked grimace. “Now one knows a woman from earlier. A woman who has gone up so in her love that she lives only for this love. One goes to her without thinking anything about it, one goes quite mechanically because one suddenly remembers that the woman must still exist. Yes: she is there and is mad with happiness… Ha, ha, ha… You get such a strange line around your mouth when you listen so tensely, just like little girls in school when they are very attentive. But just listen. Yes, right… Iltis, you know, he understands it. He once said that there is a moment when every woman becomes beautiful. And he is right. Now imagine: the woman becomes quite transfigured, she becomes so new, so strangely beautiful, she has ceased to be herself, something of the eternity of nature’s purpose shines in her…”
Falk suddenly broke off and looked at her searchingly. “Well and?”
“And? Hm, you know what can happen in a person without one being quite conscious of it…”
He stood up again and spoke very seriously:
“The human has gone so little beyond the animal. The little bit of consciousness is only there to constate something that has happened… It can be such a small sensation, such a tiny dot in the soul. One knew nothing of it before, nothing at all. But so this sensation, this tiny, detached sensation wakes. With a jerk it can grow into a huge, maniacal idea… It is perhaps the sensation of a drop of blood, isn’t it? Under some circumstance one can get the longing to see blood, no, not more blood, a sea of blood, a puddle of torn, ripped-apart limbs, God knows what all…”
He suddenly looked at Isa and laughed. “You are probably afraid, Isa?”
“No, no, but you have become so serious, and when you speak, your eyes widen as if you yourself had fear.”
“Fear?… Yes, I have fear of this foreign person in me… But just listen: one sees the woman suddenly in this transfigured beauty. In this moment something like curiosity arises, a burning curiosity, a greed to grasp the woman in her primal ground.”
“And?”
“Yes, one forgets everything, one no longer belongs to oneself. Something works quite spontaneously in the soul, it does everything on its own. One takes the woman. Isn’t it terrible?” he asked suddenly.
“Yes, terrible.”
“What would you now say if something like that had happened to me?”
“No, Erik, don’t speak like that. I don’t want to hear anything about it. I once thought about it…”
Falk looked at her in astonishment.
“When did you think about it?”
“No, no, I didn’t really think. It just suddenly flew through my head once.”
“When, when?”
“When you were with your mother and got sick. You know, just then the girl drowned. But you are so pale and your eyes are getting so big. Strange how big your eyes are.”
Falk looked at her fixedly. “What did you think then?”
“I suddenly got such a painful jerk of fear.” Falk pulled himself together and tried to smile.
“We are telling each other such beautiful horror stories… But what did you think then?”
“I sat beside your bed, I was so tired and fell asleep. When I woke, your eyes were wide open and stared at me quite uncannily.”
“I know nothing of that.”
“No, of course not. I am also not sure if it wasn’t all a dream. But then it shot through my head like a lightning: God, if the girl had gone into the water because of you!”
“What do you mean? She drowned in the bath. How did you get the idea…?”
“I don’t know how I got it, I was so nervous and so overtired, and then your mother told that you were very much together with her.”
Falk became restless.
“Strange what ideas you get.”
“I couldn’t get rid of these thoughts. I suffered so terribly because I knew that I would then have to leave you immediately, at once. Not a second would I then stay with you.”
Falk stared at her:
“It became infinitely clear to me in a moment that you would then go. Wouldn’t you? Immediately…”
“Yes.”
“Yes, yes, one understands such a thing in a second. There was something so uncanny in the way you spoke…”
“What do you mean?”
“Just don’t be so anxious.” Falk smiled. “But it seemed to me as if my fate had spoken.”
“Your fate?”
“Yes, you see, you don’t actually need to say what you mean… Yes, just look: At first you never told me that you loved me, we were still quite strangers, but I heard it in your voice. For you speak quite differently than all other people. Now I have heard it again, I mean, I now know so surely what would then
come. I don’t know where I get this certainty from… But what are we talking about… How is my big son?”
“He was very restless today. Ran and screamed, and when I asked him why he screamed so, he answered: I must, I must!”
“Strange!” Falk walked thoughtfully up and down. “The child is quite remarkably nervous. Yes, he will surely become a genius; all geniuses have hot heads and cold feet… Ha, ha, ha. Probably a small brain part should be cut out for him too… I believe every person has such a part that should be removed, yes, yes—then we would all become like God… But tell me, Isa: such a genius is a strange animal, like me for example. Just look at me: am I not a genius? He, he, he… Now the human race is so degenerated, out of five hundred million there are four hundred ninety-nine cretins and idiots. Shouldn’t a genius then have the obligation to improve the race?”
“By what?”
“Well naturally by begetting as many children as possible with as many women as possible.”
“But you said that the children of geniuses become idiots.” Falk laughed.
“Yes, you have a fabulous memory, but it would be interesting for our Janek to study later on living specimens the qualities that his magnificent Lord Papa had. In the possible hundred children that I could have in the possible hundred places, the hundred lovable qualities that I enjoy would have to be inherited.”
“Now you are babbling, dear Erik.”
Isa slowly undressed and did her hair. “Well good night, Isa. I want to work some more today.”
“Erik, I am afraid. Don’t go yet.”
“Don’t be a child… I only spoke about it because I will perhaps write it. Think of me, then you will forget the fear.”
“Come, kiss me.”
“No, I don’t want to kiss you. You are so confusingly beautiful, and I must work… Good night.”
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