Fear (3 page)

The horror had now moved into her home and would not stir from its rooms. In the many empty hours that kept bringing the images of that terrible meeting back to her mind, wave upon wave of them, her hopeless situation became perfectly clear to her. How it could have happened she had no idea, but the woman knew her name, knew where she lived, and now that her first attempts at blackmail had been so conspicuously successful she certainly would not shun any means of making use of her knowledge to continue her campaign of extortion. She would be a burden on her victim’s life year after year, like a nightmare that no effort, however desperate, could dislodge, for although Irene was well-to-do and the wife of a prosperous man, she could not possibly raise a large enough sum to free herself of the woman once and for all without confiding in her husband. In addition, as she knew from hearing occasional stories of his about
trials in which he had appeared, all agreements with base, unscrupulous persons, and any promises made to them were entirely null and void. She calculated that she could fend off the moment of doom for a month, maybe two, and then the entire artificial structure of her domestic bliss would collapse. There was little satisfaction in the certain knowledge that the blackmailer would also be brought down in her own fall. What were six months in prison for a woman who undoubtedly led a dissolute life and probably had a criminal record already, by comparison with the life she herself would lose? And she felt, in horror, that it was the only possible life for her. To begin a new one, dishonoured and with a stain on her reputation, seemed unimaginable to Irene, a woman who had received everything in her existence up to now as a gift, who had never been responsible for constructing any part of her own destiny. And then her children were here, her husband, her home, all the things that she realised only now, when she was about to lose them, were so much a part of her life, indeed were the essence of it. Everything that she had merely taken for granted in the past, touching it only with the hem of her garment, she now suddenly felt was dreadfully necessary to her, and the idea that a strange vagrant of a woman lurking somewhere in the streets might have the power to destroy its warm, coherent entity
with a single word seemed more than she could grasp, and indeed as improbable as a dream.

She could not avert the disaster—she felt that now with terrible certainty; she had no way of escape. But what … what exactly would happen? She fretted over that question from morning to night. One day a letter to her husband would arrive. She could see him now, coming into the room, pale, with a sombre expression on his face, taking hold of her arm, asking questions … but then … what would happen then? What would he do? Here the pictures in her mind’s eye were suddenly extinguished in the darkness of a confused and cruel fear. She had no idea what would happen then, and her speculations plunged to dizzy, endless depths. In this brooding frame of mind, however, she saw how little she really knew her husband, how unable she was to work out in advance what his decision would be. She had married him at the urging of her parents, although with no reluctance, indeed with a pleasant sense of liking for him which was not disappointed later. She had spent eight years of comfortable, quiet contentment at his side, she had borne his children, she shared his home and had spent countless hours physically close to him, but only now that she wondered about his possible behaviour did she realise what a stranger he still was to her. Looking back feverishly at her recollections of the last few years, and feeling
as if she were turning ghostly floodlights on them, she discovered that she had never wondered what his nature was really like, and now, after all these years, did not even know whether he should be described as harsh or forbearing, stern or affectionate. Stricken disastrously late by a guilty conscience which itself was engendered by her mortal fear, she had to admit to herself that she had known him only superficially, on the social level, never in that deeper part of his nature where his decision would surely be made at this tragic moment. Instinctively she began keeping an eye open for small traits of character in him, for indications, trying to remember what he had said in conversation about such cases, and she was unpleasantly surprised to realise that he had hardly ever expressed any views of his own to her. Then again, she herself had never turned to him with questions that went very deep. Now, at last, she put her mind to his life as a whole, looking for individual features that might tell her more about his character. Her fear began hammering reluctantly away at every little memory, trying to find a way into the secret chambers of his heart.

She turned her watchful attention to the slightest thing he said, and waited with feverish impatience for the times when he came home. She hardly noticed his greeting, but in his gestures—the way he kissed her hand or stroked her hair—there seemed to be an
affection that might indicate a deep love of her, although it avoided any stormy demonstrations. He always spoke to her in measured tones, never impatiently or in any agitation, and his general attitude to her was one of kindly composure, yet as she uneasily began to suspect it was not very different from his manner to the servants, and certainly was less warm than his feeling for the children, which always took lively form—sometimes he joked with them cheerfully, sometimes he was passionately affectionate. Today, as usual, he civilly asked about any domestic matters, as if to give her a chance of expressing her interests to him while he said nothing about his own, and for the first time she discovered herself noticing the care with which he treated her, his reserved approach to their daily conversations—which, as she was suddenly horrified to realise, were flat and banal. He gave nothing of himself away, and her curiosity, longing for something to calm her mind, remained unsatisfied.

As he said nothing to give her a clue, she searched his face. He was sitting in his armchair now, reading a book, his features clearly illuminated by the electric light. She scanned his face as if it were a stranger’s, trying to deduce from those well-known yet suddenly unfamiliar features the character that eight years of living together had kept hidden from her indifference. His brow was smooth and well shaped, as if formed
by strong intellectual effort; his mouth, however, looked stern and unyielding. Everything about his very masculine features was firm, full of energy and power. Surprised to find beauty in it, she considered that restrained gravity with a certain admiration, seeing the evident austerity of his nature which so far, in her simple-minded way, she had merely thought was not very entertaining, wishing it could have been exchanged for a sociable loquacity. His eyes, however, where the real secret must after all lie, were bent on his book, so that she was unable to consider what they told her. She could only look inquiringly at his profile, as if its curving line meant a single word portending mercy or damnation—a profile now unfamiliar, so harsh that it alarmed her, yet making her aware for the first time, in its determined expression, of its remarkable beauty. All at once she felt that she liked looking at him, and did so with pleasure and pride. Something stirred painfully in her breast as that sensation was aroused in her, a vague and sombre feeling, regret for something neglected, an almost sensuous tension that she could not remember ever having experienced so strongly in his physical presence. Then he looked up from his book. She quickly retreated further into the shadows, so that the burning question in her own eyes would not arouse his suspicion.

She had not left the house for three days. And she realised, uneasily, that the rest of the household had noticed the fact that she was suddenly spending so much time at home, for in general it was very unusual for her to stay indoors in her own apartment for many hours on end, let alone whole days. Taking little interest in domestic matters, freed from petty economic anxieties by material independence, bored by her own company, she saw the apartment as little more than a place where she briefly rested. For preference she resorted to the streets, the theatre, the lively company at social gatherings, where something new was coming in from outside all the time. You could enjoy yourself without making any great effort there; you could find much to stimulate the slumbering senses. Irene’s cast of mind made her one of that elegant set of the Viennese bourgeoisie whose entire daily timetable seemed to consist, by some tacit agreement, in the constant meeting of all members of the same secret league at the same times of day to discuss their common interests, while it gradually elevated that meeting in order to observe others, that eternal drawing of comparisons, to the entire meaning of its existence. Once isolated and thrown on its own resources, a life so used to casual social intercourse loses any fixed point, the senses rebel without their usual diet of very mild but indispensable stimulation, and solitude degenerates
into a kind of nervous self-animosity. Irene felt time weighing endlessly down on her, and without her usual occupations the passing hours lost all their point. She paced up and down the rooms of her apartment as if she were in a dungeon, both idle and agitated. The street and the society world that were her real life were barred to her. The blackmailer stood there with her threat, like the angel with the fiery sword.

Her children were the first to notice this change in her, particularly the elder child, her little boy, who expressed his surprise that Mama was at home so often with embarrassing clarity, while the servants whispered to each other and exchanged surmises with the governess. Irene tried in vain to devise all kinds of necessary reasons, some of them very ingenious, for her conspicuous presence, but in itself the artificial nature of her explanations showed her how years of indifference had made her unnecessary in her own family circle. Whenever she tried to do something actively useful she came up against the interests of others, who resisted her sudden attempts as an intrusion on their own customary rights. There was no place left for her; for lack of contact with it she herself had become a foreign body in the organism of her own household. She did not know what to do with herself and her time, and even her approaches to the children failed, for they suspected that her sudden lively interest in them meant
the introduction of a new kind of discipline, and she felt herself blush in shame when, during one of her attempts to look after them, her seven-year-old son asked outright why she wasn’t going for so many walks these days. Wherever she tried to lend a helping hand she was disrupting an established order, and when she showed an interest she merely aroused suspicion. And she lacked the skill to make her constant presence less obtrusive by cleverly keeping in the background and staying quietly in a single room, with a single book or performing a single task. Her private fear, turning as all her strong feelings did to nervous strain, hunted her from one room to another. She jumped every time the telephone or the doorbell rang, and kept catching herself looking out into the street from behind net curtains, hungry for other people, or at least the sight of them, longing for freedom, and yet full of fear that suddenly, among all the passing faces, she might see the one face that followed her into her dreams staring up at her. She felt that her quiet existence was suddenly disintegrating, melting away, and this sense of helplessness was giving rise to a presentiment that her life was entirely ruined. These three days in the dungeon of her rooms at home seemed longer to her than all her eight years of marriage.

However, she and her husband had accepted an invitation for the evening of the third day weeks ago,
and it was impossible for her to back out suddenly now without giving very good reasons. What was more, the invisible bars of horror that had built up around her life must be broken down some time if she was not to be utterly destroyed. She needed people around her, a couple of hours’ rest from her own company, from the suicidal loneliness of fear. Then again, where would she be better protected than in a strange house and surrounded by friends, where would she be safer from the invisible persecution dogging her footsteps? She shuddered just for a second, the brief second when she actually stepped out of the house, venturing into the street for the first time since that second encounter. The woman might be lying in wait anywhere out there. Instinctively, she took her husband’s arm, closed her eyes, and quickly walked the few steps from the pavement to the waiting motor car, but then, as she sat beside her husband while the car raced through the empty nocturnal streets, the weight fell from her mind, and as she climbed the steps up to the house they were visiting she knew she was safe. For a few hours she could be the woman she had been for many long years—carefree and happy. Indeed, she felt the intensified, conscious joy of a prisoner leaving the walls of the dungeon and returning to the light of day. There was a rampart against all persecution here, hatred could not come in,
everyone here loved, respected and honoured her. She saw her friends, well-dressed people who spoke to her without any ulterior motive, who were bathed in the sparkling glow of the fires of cheerfulness, performing a round dance of enjoyment that, at long last, included her again. For now, as she came in, she felt from the glances turned on her by the other guests that she was beautiful, and she became yet more beautiful through being aware of their admiration after being deprived of it. How good it felt after all those days of silence, when she had felt the sharp ploughshare of that one idea cutting fruitlessly and repeatedly through her brain, while everything in her seemed to be sore and injured—oh, how good it was to hear flattering words again! They revived her like electric sparks crackling beneath her skin, rousing her blood. She stood and stared, something was vibrating restlessly inside her, trying to get out. And all of a sudden she knew it was her imprisoned laughter that wanted to be free. It popped out like a champagne cork, pealing in musical little coloraturas, she laughed and laughed, now and then feeling ashamed of her bacchanalian high spirits, but laughing again next moment. Electricity flashed from her relaxed nerves, all her senses were strong, healthy, stimulated. For the first time in days she ate with real appetite again, and she drank like a woman dying of thirst.