The Wardrobe

It was cloudy, dusky, and cool when the Berlin-Rome express entered a railway station of medium size. In a first-class compartment, with lace covers over the backs of the broad plush seats, a lone traveller straightened himself up: Albrecht van der Qualen. He awoke. He experienced a sickly taste in his mouth, and his body was full of that not very agreeable feeling which is evoked by a standstill after a long journey, the silencing of the rhythmic rolling thud, the stillness which affords such a marked contrast to the noises without, the calls and signals.⁠—This condition is like coming to out of a state of intoxication, of insensibility. Our nerves are suddenly deprived of the support, the rhythm, to which they had surrendered; now they feel themselves utterly disturbed and abandoned. And this is all the more pronounced when simultaneously we awake out of the dull sleep of a railway journey.

Albrecht van der Qualen stretched himself a bit, stepped to the window, and let down the sash. He glanced along the length of the train. At the forward end a number of men were busy loading and unloading parcels. The locomotive gave vent to more noises, sneezed and growled a little, and then became still and silent, but only as a horse stands still, lifting its hoof, twitching its ears, and waiting eagerly for the signal to start. A large, stout lady in a long raincoat perseveringly dragged a travelling-bag which must have weighed a hundredweight to and fro alongside the train, shoving it ahead of her by jerks of one knee. Her face was infinitely careworn; she was dumb, hounded, with anxious eyes. Especially her upper lip, which she protruded considerably and which was beaded with tiny drops of sweat, had something unutterably pathetic about it. “You poor, dear creature!” thought Van der Qualen. “If I could help you, give you shelter, comfort you, only for the sake of that upper lip of yours! But everyone for himself, that’s the way life is arranged, and I, who am at this moment quite free from anxiety, am standing here and looking at you as though you were a beetle that had fallen on its back.”

Twilight reigned in the modest railway station. Was it evening or morning? He did not know. He had slept, and it was absolutely impossible to say whether he had slept for two, five, or twelve hours. Had he not even upon occasion slept for twenty-four hours and longer, without the slightest interruption⁠—a deep, an extraordinarily deep sleep?⁠—He was a gentleman in a dark-brown winter overcoat of half length, with a velvet collar. It was very difficult to tell his age from his features; one might have hesitated between twenty-five and the close of the thirties. His complexion was yellow, but his eyes were of a glowing black, like coals, and surrounded by deep shadows. These eyes boded no good. Various physicians, in frank and serious conversations with him, had given him only a few months more to live.⁠—His hair, by the way, was dark and parted smoothly on the side.

In Berlin⁠—though Berlin was not the starting-point of his journey⁠—by chance he had boarded the departing express with his red handbag; he had slept, and now, having awakened, he felt himself so completely freed from all sense of time that a feeling of comfort permeated him. He owned no watch. He was happy in the thought that the thin chain of gold that he wore round his neck bore only a small medallion, which he carried in his waistcoat-pocket. He did not care to know what hour it was, nor even what day of the week, for he also refrained from using a calendar. For some time past he had rid himself of the habit of knowing the day of the month or even the month itself⁠—yes, even the particular year. All things must float in the air, he was used to think, and he considered this to mean a great deal, though it was a pretty murky turn of phrase. Seldom or never was he disturbed in this ignorance, since he did his utmost to keep all such disturbances at a distance. Surely it was enough to know approximately what season it happened to be? “It is approximately autumn,” he thought as he looked out into the dusky and damp station. “I know no more than that! Have I the least idea where I am?”

And suddenly this thought reduced the satisfaction that he felt to a kind of joyous horror. No, he did not know where he was! Was he still in Germany? No doubt. In North Germany? That remained to be seen! His eyes, still stupid from sleep, had seen a lighted sign glide past the window of his compartment, and this sign had possibly displayed the name of the station⁠—no image of a single letter had penetrated to his brain. Still in his state of stupor he had heard the conductor call out the name two or three times⁠—not a single syllable had he caught. But there, there, in a twilight of which he did not know whether it meant morning or evening, lay a strange place, an unknown city.⁠—Albrecht van der Qualen took his felt hat out of the net and seized his red leather travelling-bag, the strap of which clasped at the same time a red and white checked travelling-rug of silk and wool, in which, again, was stuck an umbrella with a silver handle. And although his ticket was booked to Florence, he left the compartment, strode through the modest station, put his baggage in the cloakroom, lighted a cigar, thrust his hands⁠—he carried neither stick nor umbrella⁠—into the pockets of his overcoat, and left the station.

Outside, in the dusky, damp, and rather empty square five or six coachmen cracked their whips, and a man with a gold-braided cap and a long cape, which he shiveringly wrapped about himself, said with questioning accent: “The Honest Man Inn?” Van der Qualen thanked him courteously and walked straight ahead. The people whom he met had turned up the collars of their coats; for this reason he did so too, nestled his chin against the velvet, puffed at his cigar, and strode on, not fast and not slowly.

He passed a low wall and an old stone gate with two massive towers, and crossed a bridge, on the ramparts of which stood statues; the water rolled beneath, turbidly and lazily. A long, half-rotten barge came by; in the stern a man was steering with a long pole. Van der Qualen stood still for a while and leaned over the wall of the bridge. “Just see,” he thought, “a river; the river. It is well that I don’t know its ordinary name.”⁠—And then he went on.

He continued to walk a little longer upon the pavement of a street which was neither very broad nor very narrow, and then struck off somewhere to the left. It was evening. The electric arc-lamps flared up, sputtered a few times, glowed, hissed, and then lighted up the fog. The shops closed. “Very well,” thought Van der Qualen, “let us say that it is in every respect autumn,” and he strode along on the dark wet pavement. He wore no galoshes, but his boots were extraordinarily broad, solid, and durable, though by no means lacking in elegance.

He walked continuously towards the left. People strode and hurried past him, went about their business or came from their business. “And here I am walking right among them,” he thought, “and am more alone and strange than apparently any other human being has ever been. I have no business and no goal. I have not even a walking-stick for a support. No one could be less attached, freer, less interested. No one owes anything to me; I owe no one anything. God has never extended His hand over me; He does not know me at all. A good faithful misfortune without alms is a good thing; one may then say to oneself: ‘I owe nothing to God.’ ”

The city soon came to an end. Most likely he had proceeded from the centre towards the periphery. He found himself upon a broad suburban street with trees and villas, bent towards the right, passed three or four almost rustic streets, lighted only by gas-lamps, and finally stood still in one that was a little wider, in front of a wooden gate. This was to the right of an ordinary house, painted a turbid yellow, a house distinguished only by utterly untransparent and boldly-curved plate-glass windows. There was a plate attached to the gate, with the inscription: “Rooms to let⁠—third story.” “Really?” said he; he threw away the stump of his cigar, passed through the gate, along a plank which divided this piece of land from the neighbouring one, then to the left through the entrance door, and across the vestibule, which was covered by a cheap strip of carpet, a kind of old grey cover, and began to mount the humble wooden stairs. The doors to the flats were also very modest, with panes of frosted glass, protected by wire-cloth, and each bore some kind of nameplate. The landings of the staircase were lighted by oil-lamps. In the third story, however⁠—it was the topmost, and after that came the attic⁠—there were also entrances to right and left of the staircase⁠—simple brownish doors; no name was to be seen. Van der Qualen pulled the brass bell-knob in the middle.⁠—The bell rang, but no movement was heard from within. He knocked at the door to the left.⁠—No answer. He knocked at the door to the right.⁠—Light, slow footsteps were heard and the door opened.

It was a woman, a large, lean dame, old and tall. She wore a cap with a large bow of dull lilac, and an old-fashioned, faded black dress. She revealed an emaciated, birdlike face, and upon her forehead a patch of eruptions was visible, a mosslike growth. It was a rather revolting thing.

“Good evening,” said Van der Qualen. “The rooms⁠—”

The old lady nodded; she nodded and smiled slowly, dumb and full of understanding, and pointed with a beautiful, white, slender hand, with a slow, tired, and aristocratic gesture towards the opposite door, that to the left. She then withdrew and soon reappeared with a key. “Just see,” thought Van der Qualen, who stood behind her, while she unlocked the door. “You are like a nightmare, like a figure out of the tales of Hoffmann, my gracious lady.”⁠—She took the oil-lamp from the bracket and bade him enter.

It was a small low-ceiled room with a brown floor; the walls, however, were covered with straw-coloured mats up to the top. The window in the rear wall to the right was hidden by the long, slender folds of a white muslin curtain. The white door to the adjoining room was on the right hand.

The old lady opened this door and held up the lamp. This room was miserably bare, with naked, white walls, against which three wicker chairs, enamelled bright red, stood relieved like strawberries against whipped cream. A wardrobe, a washstand and mirror⁠—The bed, an extraordinarily huge piece of mahogany furniture, stood free in the middle of the room.

“Have you any objection to it?” asked the old lady, and she passed her beautiful, slender white hand lightly across the mosslike growth on her forehead.⁠—It seemed as though she said this merely casually, as though she could not think of anything more commonplace to say for the moment. She at once added: “So to speak⁠—?”

“No, I have no objection to it,” said Van der Qualen. “The rooms are fitted out rather⁠—well, cleverly. I’ll take them.⁠—I should like someone to fetch my things from the railway station⁠—here is the check. Please see to it that the bed and the night-table are put in order⁠—and let me have the front door key, as well as the key to the flat⁠—and also a couple of towels. I should like to wash and dress a bit, then go and dine in the city and return later on.”

He drew a nickel-plated case from his pocket, took out a piece of soap, and began to wash his face and hands at the washstand. Meantime he peered through windowpanes which curved markedly outward, far down over the muddy suburban streets in the gaslight, on arc-lamps and villas.⁠—Drying his hands, he crossed to the wardrobe. It was a foursquare, brown-stained thing, a little wobbly, with an absurdly ornate top, and stood in the middle of the right wall, exactly in the niche of a second white door, which must lead to the rooms to which the entrance was through the main and middle doors out on the landing. “A few things in this world are well arranged,” thought Van der Qualen. “This wardrobe fits into the niche of the door as though it had been made for it.”⁠—He opened it.⁠—The wardrobe was completely empty, with several rows of hooks in the upper part; but it was evident that this solid piece of furniture had no back whatever; it was shut off behind by a grey stuff, hard, common canvas, which was fastened to the four corners by nails or drawing-pins.

Van der Qualen closed the wardrobe, took up his hat, turned up the collar of his overcoat again, extinguished the candle, and went forth. As he passed through the front room, he thought he heard, between the sounds of his footsteps, in the adjoining rooms, a tinkling noise, a light, clear metallic tone⁠—but it was altogether unsafe to say whether this was not an illusion. “It is as though a golden ring fell into a silver basin,” thought he, as he locked the door to the flat, descended the stairs, left the house, and found his way back to the city.

He entered a well-lighted restaurant in a lively street and sat down at one of the front tables, turning his back to everybody. He ate a vegetable soup with toasted bread, a beefsteak with an egg, stewed fruit, and wine, a bit of green Gorgonzola, and half a pear. As he paid and put on his overcoat, he gave a few puffs at a Russian cigarette, then lighted a cigar, and went out. He strolled about a bit, found his way to his suburb, and retraced it without haste.

The house with the plate-glass windows stood there wholly dark and silent, as Van der Qualen opened the house door and mounted the dark stairs. He lighted his way up with a match, and, at the third story, opened the brown door to the left which led to his room. After he had laid his overcoat and hat on the sofa, he lighted the lamp on the big desk and found there his travelling-bag, as well as the plaid rug and the umbrella. He unrolled the rug and drew forth a flask of brandy, took a small glass out of his bag, and, while he sat in an armchair and smoked his cigar to a finish, took a sip from time to time. “It’s pleasant,” he thought, “that there is still brandy to be had in the world.”⁠—He then went into the bedroom, where he lighted the candle on the night-table, put out the lamp in the other room, and began to undress. He laid his grey, inconspicuous, and durable suit, piece by piece, on the red chair beside the bed; then, however, as he loosened his braces, he remembered his hat and overcoat, which still lay on the sofa; he fetched them, he opened the wardrobe⁠—He made a step backwards and felt behind him for one of the large, dark-red mahogany balls which decorated the four corners of the bed.

The room with its bare, white walls, against which the red-lacquered chairs stood relieved like strawberries against whipped cream, stood revealed in the unsteady light of the candle. But there, the wardrobe, the door of which stood wide open, was not empty; someone stood within it, a figure, a creature, so lovely that Albrecht van der Qualen’s heart stood still for a moment and then resumed its beating with full, slow, gentle throbs.⁠—She was quite naked and held up one of her small, delicate arms, for she was clutching one of the hooks in the top of the wardrobe with her forefinger. Ripples of her long, brown hair rested upon her childlike shoulders, which breathed forth a beauty which could be answered only by sobs. Her long, black eyes mirrored the light of the candle.⁠—Her mouth was a trifle wide, but its expression was as sweet as the lips of sleep when they touch our forehead after days of suffering. She kept her heels close together, and her slender legs caressed each other.

Albrecht van der Qualen passed his hand across his eyes and saw⁠—he saw that the grey canvas had been unloosened from the right corner of the wardrobe.

“How⁠—” said he. “Won’t you come in?⁠—or what should I say⁠—come out? May I offer you a glass of brandy? Half a glass?⁠ ⁠…” But he expected no answer to these questions, and received none. Her small, shining eyes, so black that they appeared to be without expression, unfathomable and dumb⁠—they were directed upon him, but without fixity or aim, vague, and as though they did not see him.

“Shall I tell you a story?” she suddenly asked in a quiet, veiled voice.

“Tell it,” he replied. He had sunk in a sitting position on the edge of the bed, the overcoat rested upon his knees, and his folded hands lay upon it. His mouth stood a trifle open, and his eyes were half closed. But his blood pulsed warmly and mildly through his body, and there was a soft humming in his ears.

She had sunk down in the wardrobe and had clasped with her delicate arms one of her knees, which she had drawn up, while the other leg dangled outside. Her small breasts were pressed together by the upper part of her arms, and the taut skin of her knee shone. She told her story⁠—told it in a soft voice, while the candle flame executed silent dances.

“A couple were walking across the heath, and her head lay upon his shoulder. The herbs sent forth a strong scent, but the cloudy mists of evening were already rising from the ground.” Thus it began. And sometimes there were verses, which rhymed in so incomparably light and sweet a way that we are able to achieve it only now and then during nights of fever in a half-sleep. But the thing did not come to a good close. The end was as sad as when two hold each other in an inextricable embrace, and while their lips are pressed together, one of them thrusts a broad knife into the body of the other, just above the belt, and for good reasons. But that was the way it ended. And then, with a gesture of infinite quiet modesty, she lifted the right-hand corner of the grey stuff which constituted the back wall of the wardrobe, and was no longer there.

From now on he found her in his wardrobe every night and listened to her.⁠—How many evenings? How many days, weeks, or months did he remain in this dwelling and in this city?⁠—It would do no one any good if the number were put down here. Who would take any joy in a paltry figure?⁠—And we know that several doctors had granted Albrecht van der Qualen only a few months more.

She told him stories. And they were melancholy stories, void of comfort; but they sank like a sweet burden upon his heart and let it beat more slowly and happily. Often he forgot himself.⁠—His blood rebelled within him, he stretched out his hands to her, and she did not resist him. But then he would not find her in the wardrobe for several nights, and when she returned; she would tell no stories for several more nights, and then slowly began again, until he forgot himself once more.

How long did this last⁠—who knows? Who knows, moreover, whether Albrecht van der Qualen really awakened that afternoon and betook himself to the unknown city; whether he did not rather remain sleeping in his first-class compartment, to be borne by the Berlin-Rome express with tremendous speed across the mountains? Who among us would presume to give a definite answer to this question, upon his own responsibility? That is quite uncertain. “All things must float in the air⁠—”