Part 2 (2/2)
Van Spreckdal got to his feet as if indignant, then, sitting down again, appeared to consult in a low voice with his fellow judge.
Those two dark profiles, silhouetted against the light-filled backdrop of the window, the three men standing behind me...the silence in the amphitheatre...all these things made me shudder.
”What have they got against me? What have I done?” I muttered to myself.
Suddenly Van Spreckdal said to my guards:
”Take the prisoner back to the carriage. We're leaving for the Metzgerstra.s.se.”
Then he addressed me directly:
”Christian Venius,” he cried, ”the situation that you find yourself in is most regrettable...Pull yourself together and consider that if human justice is unbending...you can still seek the pardon of a merciful G.o.d...You can even merit it by confessing your crime!”
These words stunned me like a blow from a hammer...I recoiled from them with arms outstretched crying:
”My G.o.d! What a nightmare!”
And I fainted.
When I came round the carriage was rolling slowly through the street and another carriage was in front of us. The two policemen were still there. One of them, while we were still moving, offered a pinch of snuff to his colleague. I too automatically stretched out my fingers to the snuffbox, but he pulled it away from me sharply.
I felt my face go red with shame and I turned my head to one side in order to hide my emotion.
”If you look outside,” said the owner of the snuffbox, ”we'll have to put handcuffs on you.”
”I hope the devil strangles you, you scurvy knave!” I thought to myself inwardly. And as the carriage had just stopped, one of them got down while the other held me back by the neck. Then, seeing his comrade ready to catch me, he pushed me out roughly.
These infinite precautions to ensure I did not run away augured nothing good, but I still had not the foggiest idea of just how serious the accusation was that was hanging over me when a frightful incident finally opened my eyes to it and plunged me into despair.
I had just been pushed into a low alleyway with broken and uneven flagstones. All along the wall there ran a yellowish ooze exhaling a fetid stench. I walked among shadows with the two men behind me.
Further on the chiaroscuro of an internal courtyard began to become visible.
As I approached it, I was possessed by an ever-increasing sense of terror. There was nothing natural about it, just a harrowing feeling of impending doom, nightmarish, unnatural. I instinctively drew back from it with each forward step that I took.
”Get along with you!” one of the policemen shouted, putting his hand on my shoulder. ”Walk, d.a.m.n you!”
Imagine my sense of dread when, at the end of this pa.s.sage, I saw the courtyard I had drawn the night before with its walls furnished with hooks, its heaps of sc.r.a.p metal, its hencoop and its rabbit hutch....
Not one skylight big or small, high or low, not one cracked pane of gla.s.s, not a single detail in my drawing had been left out!
I was transfixed by this bizarre turn of events.
Near the well were the two judges, Van Spreckdal and Richter. At their feet lay the old woman, supine...her long grey hair dishevelled...
her face blue...her eyes open inordinately wide...and her tongue caught in her teeth.
It was horrendous!
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