Anarchistbanjo's World

Homo Sapiens: In the Maelstrom by Stanislaw Przybyszewski and translated by Joe E Bandel

Suddenly he heard her cry and sob, tired, soft, heart-rending like a child. 

“How could you do that, how could you only,” she wailed. Falk sank before her. He grasped her hands, held them convulsively to his lips, she felt tears flow over her hands… “How could you do that…” 

He spoke no word, but pressed her hands even more convulsively to his lips. 

“Stand up! Stand up! Don’t torment me…” she begged pleadingly! 

He stood up. He seemed suddenly calm. Only his body twitched. “Don’t go from me,” he stammered suddenly, “I… I loved you too much.” 

Then he stopped. No! He must not say that to her, but it came involuntarily over his lips. 

“I lost my mind. The man always stood before my eyes. He always stood between us…” 

She stared at him frightened, seemed to understand nothing. “What?” “Who?” 

“Who?” asked Falk mechanically and recollected himself again. 

“No, nothing…” He stepped back a few steps… “Did I say something? No, no! You should not go… You can do with me what you want… Only don’t go!” 

His voice failed. 

“Nothing helps any more.” She spoke tired and as if absent. “You are a stranger to me. What I loved in you is destroyed. Now you are as ridiculous to me as the others. You are ridiculous to me with your animal desires. You are also only an animal, a beast, like the other men. And I believed… But don’t torment me, go now. I despise you. I have disgust, boundless disgust for you all… Let me go,” she begged, “let me…” she turned to the door. 

Falk blocked her way. He got another rage attack. 

“You must not go. You must stay with me! You must! I command it of you, I will smash you, crush you if you go.” 

He went toward her. She stepped back. 

He wanted to seize her. She tore herself loose, she ran around the table in terrible fear. 

“Are you mad?” she cried shrilly. 

Finally he seized her and pressed her in mad passion to him. She defended herself with all her strength, but he pressed her arms tight; his passion grew beyond his brain, a sick greed, a bestial lust to possess the woman came over him. 

“Let me go!” she cried almost unconscious. 

But he no longer had control of himself. He dragged her, pressed tight to him… 

Then she succeeded in freeing one hand, she arched far back and struck him with her fist in the face. 

He let her go. In a moment he felt his interior freeze to ice. 

He did not see her. He just stared at something that yawned like a black abyss before his eyes. 

When he came to himself, he saw her face and her eyes. He looked at her attentively. 

She stood as if petrified, only in her eyes a devouring disgust. She doesn’t love me any more. Now he understood it. 

“You don’t love me any more?” 

He said it with an icy smile. Actually it was not necessary to ask at all. 

“No!” she said cold and determined. 

He smiled without knowing it, went to the door, pushed the broken wood pieces aside with his feet and wanted to go out. 

Isa suddenly shot up in wild hate. 

“And that girl,” she cried after him… He stopped and started. 

“That girl,” she began to laugh convulsively… “That little girl who drowned herself… Ha, ha, ha… By chance while bathing… By chance, was that not the official bulletin? —Ah, how pale you are, how you tremble… You did that!” 

“You!” she cried suddenly… “One year after our wedding! Ha, ha, ha… what other heroic deeds did you perform, you proud, monogamous man? Do you have a few more girls there? Ha, ha, ha…” She walked around, held her head with both hands and spoke confused to herself. 

“Oh, these lies, these lies… Well yes—” she started up… “It is now over. Go, go. It will be good if you take care of the girl a little. She is very miserable, and very thin… Adieu, mon mari… Je n’ai plus rien à te dire… Adieu…” 

Falk heard nothing more. He felt nothing either. Only sit somewhere, quite still for himself incessantly still sit… 

It rang. 

Falk went mechanically to the corridor door and opened it. He looked at the messenger thoughtlessly and waited. 

“Are you Herr Falk?” “Yes.” 

“A letter for you.” 

He took the letter, went into his room, laid the letter on the desk, sat down and looked at it long and thoughtlessly. Finally he stood up and opened it mechanically. It took a long time until he forced himself to understand the content. 

It was from Geißler. He wrote him that he would pick him up in the morning at six o’clock. Otherwise everything was in best order. 

Falk sat down again and so he sat motionless the whole night. He had lost the consciousness of time. He was also not sleepy. Only now and then, when he felt desire to smoke, he got a cigarette and wondered that he could not think at all; he was chemically purified of thoughts, chemically purified he repeated senselessly. 

When Geißler came at the appointed time, he looked at him astonished. “Is it already time?” 

“Naturally. But didn’t you sleep?” “No,” said Falk apathetically. 

He took his old felt hat. 

“But you must take the top hat, it cannot go so formlessly…” 

“So, so… For my part I can take the top hat.” Geißler looked at him uneasily. 

Falk became furious. 

“Why do you look at me so mistrustfully? Do you believe that I am afraid?” 

But he fell immediately into his former apathy. 

When they arrived, Kunicki was already waiting with his second and a third gentleman. 

“The third is probably the doctor,” thought Falk profoundly. All formalities were quickly settled. 

Falk looked with a dull calm as Kunicki aimed at his head. Kunicki has the superiority of a person for whom the thing is a kind of sport, it shot through his head. Strange sport… But how does this fit together? Kunicki is after all a social democrat. That is against all principles. Ha, ha… un citoyen cosmopolitique, citoyen du monde entier. 

This citoyen du monde fixed itself in his brain, accompanied by a strange cheerfulness. 

In this moment he heard the cock click, saw smoke, but the bullet flew past him. 

He was now completely possessed by one single, fixed idea: the citoyen cosmopolitique with the limping principles should himself limp… Falk laughed to himself, he had trouble controlling his cheerfulness. At the same time he aimed very calmly and shot: a formal laughing cramp choked him in the throat. 

The shot hit Kunicki in the kneecap. He flew up and fell. 

“Thunder! give me a cigarette!” he cried furiously. 

“Will he limp?” Falk asked Geißler when they came into the city. The idea had taken total possession of his soul. 

“Don’t know.” 

“Citoyen cosmopolitique with the limping principles… Ha, ha, ha… God’s finger… Now he will limp himself…” 

Geißler became very unpleasantly touched. But Falk suddenly fell back into his apathy. 

“The satisfaction one gets thereby is after all damned minimal,” said Geißler to break the painful silence. 

Falk looked at him. 

“We were good friends… He is a sharp head,” he said musingly. “He refuted Rodbertus…” 

They were silent again. 

“Has Isa already left?” asked Geißler. “Was she supposed to leave?” 

“Well, I believed.” Geißler rose uneasily. “You want to go?” asked Falk anxiously. 

“I must now.” 

Falk suddenly looked up at him and smiled good-naturedly. 

“You are uneasy… He, he, he. Just go, go. I will now lie down to sleep.”