Part 38 (1/2)
Gad, how could she have asked it, how could she have asked it, as though to drive him mad?... Whew, how cold it was!... He looked fearsomely at the mermaids: no, no, there was nothing, nothing but the chilly pool. He was in a high fever, that's what he was ... Gad, how could she ask such a thing?
Still ... still, it was over. She was no longer the girl she was. She was finished with, done for; she had lain in his arms like a corpse, tired of her own kisses, broken by his embrace, white as a sheet, done for.... Lord, how rotten, to be done for and still so young, a young woman!... Done for ... like a defective machine: Lord, how rotten!...
No, he couldn't give that photograph ... of all his children ... to a light-o'-love.... He couldn't do it.... If she had only asked for a necklace or some such gaud ... he would have managed somehow, out of his poverty, to buy her a nice keepsake.... Whew, how raw and cold it was!... The will-o'-the-wisps of all sorts of images shone in front of him; and, through them, through the flames, the flying Paris express ...
with the compartment, the coffin, Van der Welcke, Constance, two motionless figures. And yet it was bitterly, clammily cold; he was chilled to his marrow; and a great hairy dragon split its beastly maw to lick that chilled marrow with a fiery tongue. How big the filthy brute had grown! It was no longer inside him, it was all around him now: it filled the air with its wriggling body; it lifted its tail among the wintry boughs; and its tongue of fire licked at Gerrit's marrow; and under that marrow--how strange!--he was simply freezing.... Brrr, brrr!... Lord, how he was s.h.i.+vering, what a fever he was in!... Home ...
home ... to bed!... Oh, how good to get into bed ... nice and warm, nice and warm!... Still better to be nice and warm in women's arms ... no kissing ... just sleeping, nice and warm!... Brrr, brrr!... Lord, Lord, Lord, the water pouring down his back! Never in his life had he s.h.i.+vered like that!... How hard that photograph of his children was! He felt it on his heart like a plank. How long had he been carrying it about with him? Brrr, brrr! He might just as well have let her have it: it was the only thing that she had asked him for.... Money he had never given her: only fifteen guilders--brrr, brrr!--fif--brrr!--teen--brrr!--guilders.... Come, why not do it now?...
Just hand it in, at her door--brrr!--and then--brrr!--and then--brrr!--home, to bed ... nice and warm in bed!...
The thought suddenly took definite shape and it drove him on along the Kanaal. Here also the mist hung like a haze over the water and the meadows on the other side; and, s.h.i.+vering and shuddering under the fiery lick of the dragon's tongue, Gerrit hurried to the Frederikstraat. That was where she lived, that was where he had been so often lately, until that last time when she had begged him not to come back again and to give her, as a keepsake, the portrait ... the portrait of his children.
He would leave it now at the door. He had taken it in his hand, because it lay like a plank an his heart; and her name was on the envelope....
Brrr!... Hand it in quickly and then--brrr!--nice and warm in bed.
The landlady opened the door.
”Would you please give this to the young lady?”
He meant to shove the envelope into the woman's hand and then--brrr, brrr!--home ... to bed ... warm ... warm....
”Don't you know, then, where the young lady is, sir?”
”Where she is?”
”Where she's gone to?”
”Has she gone?”
”She didn't come home yesterday afternoon. I don't say I'm anxious; but still she always used to come home of an evening. She owes me some money, but she hasn't run away ... for everything has been left as it was, upstairs: her clothes, her bits of jewellery....”
”Perhaps she's out of town....”
”Perhaps ... only she's taken nothing with her.”
”Perhaps, all the same....”
”Yes ... it's possible.... So I'm to give her the envelope ... when she comes?”
”Yes.... Or no, no, give it to me ... I'll see to it myself.... Or no, you'd better give it her when she comes back.... No, after all, I'll see to it....”
He stuffed the envelope into his pocket, went off. Brrr! It lay on his chest like a plank.... Where could she be gone to? Where was Pauline gone to? Had she gone out of town?... Why hadn't he simply left the envelope? Well, you never knew: _if_ she didn't come back, it would be there, with the photograph of his children.... She'd probably cleared out.... Yes, she had probably cleared out ... with her rich young fellow.... Well, he, whoever he was, wouldn't remember her as _he_ remembered her in the old days.... Brrrrrr!... Lord, Lord, how he was s.h.i.+vering!... Oh, to be in bed!... When could Constance and Van der Welcke be back?... Oh, the express!... Oh, the coffin!... Oh, the fiery lick of the dragon, whose great, hairy body filled the whole grey sky with its wriggling!...
He turned down the Javastraat: he wanted to hurry home; his teeth were chattering; he felt as if ice-cold water was dripping from him, while the confounded brute sucked his marrow with long, fiery licks of its tongue. Near the Schelpkade, he met a little group of four or five policemen: rough words sounded loud; their words sounded so loud through the unreality of the mist that they woke him out of a walking sleep, out of his dream of the dragon-beast with the stiff bristles:
”She was quite blue,” he heard one of them say. They were striding along, talking loudly, as if something startling had happened. Gerrit suddenly stood rooted to the ground:
”Who was blue?” he asked, in a hoa.r.s.e bellow.
The policeman saluted:
”Sir?”