The Sleepwalkers by Hermann Broch Read Free Book Online Page B

brother with the curled moustache was hidden in it. There was some resemblance; but while he was wondering whether a girl who bore her brother in her face could be anything to him, he remembered his own brother, fair-haired and masculine with his short beard, and that brought him back to actuality. Of course that was different; Helmuth was a country gentleman, a huntsman, and had nothing in common with those soft southern people; and yet it was a reassurance. His eyes still searched her face, but his aversion faded and he felt a need to do her a kindness, to say something comforting to her, so that she might cherish a happy memory of him; he still hesitated; no, he would not visit her, but … “But?” the word sounded anxious and expectant. Joachim himself did not know at first what was to follow the “but,” and then he suddenly knew: “We could meet somewhere and have lunch together.” Yes, yes, yes, yes; she knew a little place: to-morrow! No, it couldn’t be to-morrow, but on Wednesday he had leave, and they arranged to meet on Wednesday. Then she stood on the tips of her toes and whispered into his ear: “You’re good, nice man,” and ran away, and vanished through the door over which the gas-jets were burning. Pasenow saw his father bustling up the stairs with his quick and purposive tread, and his heart contracted perceptibly and very painfully.
    Ruzena was enchanted by the conventionally stiff courtesy with which Joachim had treated her in the restaurant, and in her delight she evenforgot her disappointment that he had appeared in mufti. It was a cool, rainy day; yet she did not want to give up her programme, and so after lunch they had driven out through Charlottenburg to the Havel. Already in the droshky Ruzena had pulled off one of Joachim’s gloves, and now, as they went along the river-path, she took his arm and pushed it under hers. They went slowly, walking through a landscape expectant in its stillness, and yet which had nothing to expect save the rain and the evening. The sky hung softly over it, sometimes united indissolubly to the earth by a veil of rain, and for them too, wandering through the stillness, there seemed to be nothing left but expectation, and it was as though all the life in them had flowed to their fingers, which, clasped and folded in upon each other, slept like the petals of an unopened bud. Shoulder leaning against shoulder, from the distance resembling the two sides of a triangle, they walked along the river-path in silence, for neither knew what it was that drew them together. But quite unexpectedly while they were walking along Ruzena bent over his hand, which lay in hers, and kissed it before he could draw it away. He looked into eyes that were swimming with tears, and at lips that twitched with sobs, yet managed to say: “When you meet me on stairs I say, Ruzena, I say, he not for you, never for you. And now you here.…” But she did not reach up her mouth for the expected kiss, but fell again, almost greedily, on his hand, and when he tried to free it, bit into it with her teeth, not sharply, but as gently and cautiously as a little dog playing: then looking at the mark contentedly she said: “Now let us walk on again. Rain matters not.” The rain sank quietly into the river, and rustled softly on the leaves of the willows. A boat lay half-sunk near the bank; under a little wooden bridge a runnel poured more rapidly into the placid flow of the river, and Joachim too felt himself being floated away, as though the longing which filled him were a soft, light out-flowing of his heart, a breathing flood longing to be merged in the breath of his beloved, and to be lost as in an ocean of immeasurable peace. It was as though the summer were dissolving, so that the very water seemed light, rustling from the leaves, and hanging on the grasses in clear drops. A soft misty veil rose in the distance, and when they turned round it had closed them in behind, so that in walking