Part 15 (1/2)
”Yes, doctor, absolutely.”
”Here he comes.”
Ernst came shuffling into the garden from the verandah; he knew Addie and smiled:
”Where's Mamma?” he asked.
”She'll be back this afternoon, Uncle. Are you coming for a walk with me?”
”No, I'm going to wait for Mamma,” said Ernst, in a suspicious voice, with a glance at the doctor.
Nevertheless, Addie succeeded in coaxing him outside, down the road. And then Ernst took Addie by the arm and said:
”Do you know what's so rotten? That fellow's hidden Mamma.”
”No, Uncle, really he hasn't.”
”Yes, he has, my boy. The fellow's buried her somewhere in the dunes.
Shall we go and look for her?”
”Uncle, I'm quite ready to go for a walk, but Mamma is not hidden or buried: she's gone to Baarn, to see Aunt Bertha, and she'll be here this afternoon.”
Ernst shook his head and grinned contemptuously:
”You people are always so obstinate. Do you mean to say you don't hear Mamma? Can't you hear her moaning? She's been moaning all night. That fellow's buried her, I tell you.”
”I don't believe it, Uncle, but at any rate we can go for a walk....”
”Yes, we'll look for her.”
They went through a pine-wood: it was cool and dark as a church. Ernst kept poking the ground with his stick, kept listening to the ground:
”She's farther on,” he said, ”in the dunes. Her voice comes from farther away. Don't you hear it?”
”No, Uncle.”
Ernst shrugged his shoulders:
”You people are so dull-witted. You have no senses ... and no souls,” he said, roughly. And he immediately added, as though afraid that he had given pain, as though anxious to make atonement without delay, ”Mamma is kind. You too, you're a good boy. I may make something of you yet.”
They walked along, up and down the dunes, Ernst continually stopping and Addie continually forcing him to go on. At last, Ernst went down on his knees and dug a big hole with his two hands:
”It's here,” he said. ”I can hear Mamma's voice sighing. O G.o.d, O G.o.d, how she's moaning! She'll be suffocated, she'll be suffocated. Her mouth, her throat, her eyes are full of sand. What cruel wretches people are! What harm has poor Mamma done them? The wretches, the savages!...
It's here, it's here: yes, wait a bit, Constance, wait a bit. I'm digging you out, I'm digging you out!”
He dug away, with his stick and his hands, dug away till the sand flew all round him, making his clothes white with dust. Addie had stretched himself on the ground and was letting him have his way, looking on quietly with his serene blue eyes, which seemed to study each of Ernst's movements. He said nothing more, finding no words with which to dispel the hallucination. At that moment, all words were vain. The hallucination was so vivid that Ernst actually saw Constance through the sand, saw her lying four or five yards beneath the surface, stuck fast in the sand, with its myriad grains pressing so tightly round her that she could not move and that, when, through her sighing and moaning, she was compelled to open her mouth, the sand at once trickled into it. He saw her body, as in a black garment, glued tightly to her limbs, stiff and motionless in that tomb of sand, in that winding-sheet which pressed closer and closer to her until the pressure threatened to choke her, especially now that her mouth was full of sand. Ernst could just see her black eyes faintly gleaming through a screen of sand; sand trickled into, her ears; and the sand, though there was no room for it below, kept trickling faster and faster, till it became an eddy of trickling sand. The trickling grains of sand were now gyrating madly around Constance like a great cyclone ... and Ernst dug and dug, with furious hands. He dared not use his stick ... for fear of hurting Constance. He dug, like an animal, with frantic hands. He dug away, dug out a regular pit; and the sand became wetter and wetter: he was now flinging out great lumps of sand.... Then, as he dug, he saw the dark body sinking, for ever sinking a yard lower: he could not reach his sister. The body sank and sank; and he reflected that, however deep he might dig his pit, he would never reach Constance:
”Addie!” he cried. ”Addie! Help me, can't you? Help me!”
Addie, lying at full length, with his chin on his hand, looked quietly at his uncle, with all the serenity of his searching blue eyes. Suddenly Ernst stopped his digging, quickly turned his head halfway towards Addie; and his restless eyes looked into Addie's eyes. Then Addie shook his head gently, as if in denial, as if to explain to Ernst, without words, that it was not as Ernst thought, that there was not a body under the sand....