Beware of Pity (40 page)

My hand stayed there for I don’t know how long, because time stood as still during those minutes as the air in the room. But then I felt a slight effort as she tensed her muscles. Turning her eyes away from me, she gently moved my hand off her arm with her own right hand, and further towards her. Slowly, she drew it closer to her heart, and then, tentatively and tenderly, her left hand joined it. Now they were both holding my own large, heavy, bare masculine hand firmly and gently, and very, very softly they began cautiously caressing it. At first her delicate fingers merely wandered around the motionless but acquiescent
palm of my hand as if with curiosity, gliding over the skin like the gentlest breath of air. Then I felt her light, childlike caresses venturing to move tentatively from my wrist to my fingertips, tracing the shape of my fingers on the inside and the outside, the outside and the inside again; I felt her stop briefly as if in shock when she reached my fingernails and felt those too, then tracing the veins back and down to my wrist again, and once more up and down—it was a tender exploration, never bold enough to take my hand really firmly, press and hold it. These playful caresses were like warm water washing around me, both respectful and childish, amazed and ashamed. And yet I felt that her loving nature was taking possession of me entirely in caressing that one small part of myself. Involuntarily her head had sunk back further in her chair, as if to enjoy touching me all the more; she lay there like a woman asleep and dreaming, eyes closed, lips softly open, and her face was both bright and calm, while her slender fingers kept stroking my hand from wrist to fingertips with ever renewed delight. There was nothing greedy in that ardent touch, only a sense of amazed bliss to be granted fleeting possession of some part of my body at last, showing me how immeasurably she loved me. I have never since, even in the arms of the most passionate of women, felt such deep emotion as in that tender, almost dreamlike game.

I don’t know how long this went on. Such experiences are outside ordinary time, and that shy stroking and caressing aroused some kind of intoxicating, beguiling and hypnotic feeling that moved and shook me more than her earlier fierce, burning kiss. I still could not find the strength to withdraw my hand—“I cannot go on living if you refuse me the right to love you,” I remembered her saying—and in a hazy, dreamy state of mind I was enjoying that constant caress moving over my skin
and into my tingling nerves. I let her go on, I was powerless, defenceless, yet at the same time ashamed to be loved so much when I felt nothing in return but a timid confusion, a frisson of embarrassment.

In the end, however, I could not bear to go on sitting there without moving—I was not tired of the caresses, of the warm wandering of her delicate fingers, the light, shy touch of them; I was ill at ease because my own hand lay there so unresponsive, as if it did not belong to me, and the woman caressing it were not part of my life. I knew, as you hear bells ringing in church towers when you are drowsy, that I must respond to the caress in some way—either by rejecting or returning it. But I did not feel strong enough to do either. I only knew that I must put an end to this dangerous game, and so I cautiously made myself move. Slowly, very, very slowly, I began withdrawing my hand from her light clasp—imperceptibly, I hoped. But sensitive as she was, she noticed the onset of this withdrawal at once, even before I did. Suddenly, as if in alarm, she let go of my hand. Her fingers dropped away, limp, and suddenly the tingling warmth was gone from my skin. Rather clumsily, I retrieved my hand once she had let go of it—for at the same time her face had darkened, and once again that childishly sulky look was hovering at the corners of her mouth.

“Don’t, don’t!” I whispered. I still couldn’t think of anything else to say. “Ilona will be back soon.” And when I saw that at these empty, meaningless words she just began to tremble more violently than ever, that sudden warm surge of pity came over me again. I bent down to her and dropped a fleeting kiss on her forehead.

Her eyes, however, stared back at me, stern, grey and cold, as if they were seeing through me, as if they could guess my
thoughts. I had not deceived her quick, sensitive perception. She had seen that I was rejecting her tender affection by withdrawing my hand, and she knew that my hasty kiss had not been an expression of real love, only of pity and awkwardness.

That was my mistake during these days, my unforgivable, irreparable mistake—hard as I tried I could not summon up all the patience I needed, the ultimate ability to dissemble. My resolve not to let her guess, from any word or gesture of mine, that her love was unwelcome to me was useless. Again and again I recalled Condor’s warning of the danger and the responsibility I would bear if I injured someone so vulnerable. Let her love you, he had said repeatedly, conceal your feelings, keep up the pretence just for that one week to spare her pride. Don’t let her guess that you are deceiving her—deceiving her twice over by assuring her cheerfully that she will soon be well again, while at the same time you are trembling with fear and shame. Pretend to be unselfconscious, entirely at your ease, I kept reminding myself, try to put warmth into your voice, tenderness and affection into your hands.

But there is always something fiery, dangerous and mysterious in the air between a woman who has once shown a man her feelings for him and the man himself. Those who love have an uncanny perception of what makes the beloved truly happy, and as it is the essence of love is to wish for boundless ardour, anything measured and temperate is alien and indeed intolerable to it. Love detects rejection in every inhibition of the beloved, every evidence of restraint, it suspects unwillingness in any reluctance to make an unconditional commitment, and it
is right. There must obviously have been something awkward, confused and clumsy in my attitude at the time, a touch of falsity in my voice, for none of my efforts could withstand her watchful waiting for some sign from me. I could not manage it, I could not convince her, and she suspected, with increasing uneasiness, that I was not giving her the real and only thing she wanted from me, my love in return for hers. Sometimes, in the middle of a conversation—and just when I was trying my hardest to make her believe in the warmth of my feelings—she would suddenly raise her grey eyes, and then I had to lower my own eyelids. I felt as if she were probing my heart, exploring its depths.

Three days passed like this, and they were a torment for both of us. I constantly sensed that silent, avid waiting in her glances, in her silence. Then—I think it was on the fourth day—she adopted a curious attitude of hostility. At first I did not understand it. I had arrived at my usual time in the afternoon, bringing flowers. She accepted them without really looking at them and casually put them aside, showing by this deliberate indifference that I could not expect to buy my freedom with gifts. After an almost scornful, “Oh, why do you bring me such lovely flowers?” she immediately retreated behind a barrier of ostentatious and inimical silence again. I tried casual small talk. But she answered only “Oh yes?” or “Fancy that” or “Very strange”, while making it abundantly clear that my conversation didn’t interest her in the least. She intentionally, in the interests of outward show, emphasised her indifference; she toyed with a book, opened it, put it down again, fidgeted with all kinds of objects, once or twice made a great show of yawning, and then, in the middle of a story I was telling her, called for the servant and asked whether
he had packed her chinchilla-fur coat. When he assured her that he had, she turned back to me with a chilly, “Oh, do please go on.” It was only too easy to guess the unspoken corollary to that remark—“but I’m not at all interested in anything you say.”

Finally I felt my powers falter. I glanced at the door more and more often, hoping for someone to come in, Ilona or Kekesfalva, and release me from my desperate chatter. But those glances did not escape her notice either. With a note of hidden contempt she asked, apparently full of concern for me, “Are you looking for something? Is there anything you want?” I am ashamed to say that all I could think of was to reply with a stupid, “No, nothing at all.” It would probably have been more sensible of me to take up her challenge openly and ask, “What exactly do you want me to do? Why are you plaguing me? I can leave if you’d rather.” But I had told Condor that I would avoid saying anything brusque or challenging, so instead of throwing off the burden of her hostile silence I foolishly let the conversation drag on for two hours, feeling as if I were walking on hot and silent sandy ground, until finally Kekesfalva appeared, looking diffident as he always did these days, and asked, perhaps with even more awkwardness than I was feeling, “Shall we go in to dinner?”

And then there we were sitting around the table, with Edith opposite me. She didn’t look up once, she said not a word to anyone. All three of us were aware of her dogged and aggressively offensive silence. I tried all the harder to lighten the atmosphere. I talked about our colonel, who like a habitual drunk regularly suffered from a disorder at a given time of year, in his case in June and July when he became more and more obsessed with the forthcoming manoeuvres, turning more pernickety and
agitated the closer the date for them came. Although I felt as though my collar was strangling me, I padded this stupid story out by embroidering it with many silly details. However, only the others laughed; they too were obviously forcing themselves to cover up for Edith’s embarrassing silence. She was now yawning ostentatiously for the third time during dinner. Keep talking, I told myself, and so I said that we were being worked to death these days, no one knew whether he was coming or going. Even though two lancers fell off their horses with sunstroke yesterday, I added, that crazy slave-driver our colonel made more demands on us every day. We could never predict when we’d be allowed to get out of the saddle; he had the most pointless exercise carried out twenty to thirty times running. I’d managed to get away just in time to come here today, I said, but whether I’d be able to arrive punctually tomorrow was known only to the Lord God and the Colonel, who considered himself God’s representative on earth anyway.

That was an innocent enough remark; surely no one could be offended and take it amiss. I had turned to Kekesfalva as I uttered it, speaking in a cheerful, light-hearted tone, and without looking at Edith at all, for I had had quite enough of the way she sat staring into empty air. However, there was a sudden clinking sound. She had thrown down the knife she had been playing with right across her plate, and as we looked up, our attention caught, she let fly.

“Well, if it’s so difficult for you, you’d better stay in your barracks or go to that café of yours tomorrow. I dare say we shall be able to bear it.”

That took our breath away, and we all stared at her. It was as if someone had fired a bullet through the window.

“But Edith … ” protested Kekesfalva helplessly. 

However, she threw herself back in her chair and said in petulant tones, “I for one feel sorry for anyone worked so hard! Why shouldn’t Lieutenant Hofmiller have a day off duty for once? I’d be glad to think of him enjoying some leisure.”

Kekesfalva and Ilona looked at each other in dismay. They both realised at once that her pent-up feelings were attacking me for no good reason. From the anxious way they turned to me, I guessed that they feared I would reply in kind to this incivility, and for their sake I took pains to pull myself together.

“I think you may be right, Edith,” I said, as warmly as my thudding heart would allow. “I’m not very good company for anyone just now, not when I’m worn down like this. I’ve felt myself that you were bored all afternoon today! You shouldn’t have a tedious fellow like me descending on you. But how long before I can come and see you here again? Pretty soon the house will be empty and you’ll all be away. I can hardly imagine it—we can be together again for only four days in all, or strictly speaking three and a half days, before you …”

Opposite me at the table, Edith uttered a short, sharp laugh, with a sound like fabric tearing.

“Huh! Three and a half days! Very funny. He’s worked out to the nearest half a day when he’ll finally be rid of us again! I expect he’s marked off the day of our departure on his calendar as a red-letter day. Careful, though, it’s easy to get your sums wrong. Huh! Three and a half days, three and a half, a half, a half …”

She was laughing more and more hysterically, at the same time darting us hard, glittering glances, but she trembled as she laughed. You’d have thought some malignant fever had hold of her, although she shook as if with mirth. I could tell that she would have liked to jump up, which would indeed have been
the most natural and normal thing for a young woman in such a state of agitation to do, but with her helpless legs she couldn’t move from her chair. Held there in her anger as if spellbound, she had something about her of the vicious but tragic defencelessness of a caged animal.

“I’ll go and find Josef,” Ilona whispered to her. She herself, used as she was to guessing in advance every movement that Edith was about to make, had turned very pale. Edith’s father immediately went to her side. But his fears proved groundless; when Josef came in, Edith allowed him and Kekesfalva to help her away without a word of farewell or apology. Our dismay had obviously made her aware of the hysterical fit she had thrown.

I was left alone with Ilona, feeling like someone who has fallen out of an aircraft and, dazed with alarm, staggers to his feet not quite sure what has happened.

“You must try to understand,” Ilona whispered to me hastily. “She can’t sleep at night just now. The idea of the trip to Switzerland gets her so worked up, and … oh, you don’t know …”

“Yes, I do know, Ilona, I know all about it,” I said. “That’s why I’ll be coming back tomorrow.”

Keep going, I told myself firmly as I walked back to town, badly upset by the scene Edith had made. See it through at any price. You promised Condor, you gave your word of honour. Don’t let her nervous, edgy moods deter you. Remember, all that hostility is just the despair of a girl who loves you, and you owe her a debt because your heart does not respond. See it through to the end—there are only three and a half days to go, three more days and you’ll have done it! Then you can relax, be easy in your mind
for weeks, for months! So be patient now, patient—only this last short time to go, these last three and a half days, three days!