The Strong City by Taylor Caldwell
Irmgard then looked again at Franz. She could see his face clearly, now, ghastly and drawn and bitterly remote. It was a face of stone. Irmgard remembered that Emmi had told her that the dead man had been the only friend of Franz.
He grieves, she thought, with a strange rush of warmth and tenderness at her heart. He grieves as I thought he could never grieve for any one. Her thoughts ran to him, calling him, offering him consolation and love. Her eyes, in the gloom, became lighted and intense, shone with vivid green fire.
As though he had felt her at last, he looked up, abruptly. Their eyes met. His expression did not change. He saw her, yet did not appear to see her. She had nothing to do with all this. She was apart from it, extraneous. She did not impinge on him at this moment. He dropped his eyes again.
A thin sharp pain struck through Irmgard’s breast, and she bit her lip. Franz! she mourned. Why will you not let me comfort you? But his stony cheek and lip, the gray flat planes of his whole face, his averted eyes, repudiated her and her comfort. However, she was not too distressed. In fact, a strange sad hope dawned in her mind. He was more than she had ever thought him.
Emmi briskly entered the room, carrying a bowl of hot sweetened milk in her hands. She brushed aside the whimpering women. Irmgard could see Mrs. Harrow more clearly now, a plump, pretty little woman in her black gown, her fair hair neat in spite of her prostrating grief. Her cheeks were blotched with tears. She looked at Emmi dazedly, then at the bowl. She made a feeble gesture of refusal.
“Nonsense,” said Emmi, quite loudly. “Please. It is what you need.”
The women regarded her with affront, outraged at this effort to revive the chief victim of this tragedy.
Dolly flung up her hands to her face, shaking her head. “He was all I had!” she cried wildly. “My Tom! He was all I had!”
“No,” said Emmi, inexorably. “You have the little maids. It is not good for you to forget them. You, their mother, are all they have.”
Dolly wept, distractedly, rocking backwards and forwards on her chair. She flung her hands about; the tears streamed down her fat pretty face. Her eyes were wide open, and staring, distraught. Emmi took her by the shoulder, and shook her vigorously.
“You will drink,” she said. “You will not be foolish. The children are drinking good milk, and eating, too. They wait for their mother.”
She put the bowl to Dolly’s lips. Over its rim the blue eyes, swimming in tears, and swollen, stared up blindly at the hard lean face above her. Then, obediently, but choking, the poor little creature drank the warm and heartening fluid, gulping, sobbing, but surely drinking. The women stepped back a trifle, glowering at this expedient harshness. The poor, thought Irmgard, hate to be deprived of their suffering victim, resent any alleviation of vicarious pain. In another’s torment they feel the sadistic satisfaction of the tormented.
Dolly’s sobs, after she had drunk the milk, were quieter now. Emmi stood for a moment, looking down at her with pitying but grim approval.
There was a deprecating knock on the door, and the minister, a little shrivelled man in his funeral black, entered. He had white sideburns and a small white beard, but no mustache. His air was at once meek and subservient and important. He let in a short burst of winter sunlight, and then closed the door behind him. The gloom was only the more intense for that one gush of brilliance.
He came to the coffin, the women making way for him. He stared down solemnly at the dead face. He held his book in his hands. His white hair was haloed by the candlelight. Then he lifted one hand and began to pray.
CHAPTER 32
The women enjoyed the short service, though the minister spoke as rapidly as possible. He knew his fee would be small. The dead man and his wife were strangers to him; he had never seen them in his small and poverty-stricken church, though he had seen the little girls, Mary, Pansy and Polly at Sunday school. Moreover, there was something disreputable to him in being killed by thieves at night, on the street. Christians did not die so. They died decorously in bed, surrounded by proper and weeping relatives. Moreover, though his congregation was composed of the working class, he had little sympathy with the poor. They were tiresome and dirty, complaining, and always hungry, and simmering with revolt. Revolt was un-Christian. One must be meek and submissive. These virtues were especially edifying when accompanied by a comfortable income. His parishioners had little, and only precarious incomes. It was the wisdom of God, which must not be questioned. But the less income, the more meekness was demanded.
“I am the Resurrection and the Life,” he said, in a sonorous voice, “Whosoever believeth on Me shall never die.”
Irmgard experienced a sense of outrage that this little hasty man, with the small and pious face, sharpened with meanness, dared to utter these grave and holy words. But she heard them only dimly. She was watching Franz, and the shadow behind him. Franz still did not move, still did not appear to be aware of what was happening about him. Dolly sobbed quietly; the women whimpered. Emmi stood beside Dolly, her hand firmly on her shoulder. She had forbidden the children to enter the room again, and their scuffling and giggles were quite audible from the kitchen. The candlelight glimmered on the faces in the parlor, on Dolly’s bent head with the frivolous curls, on the shroud and the coffin, on Franz’s granite face, on the minister, given a spurious sanctity by it sacred flaring and dimming. The light threw vagrant shadows on the dark-brown walls of the tiny room, on the meagre and ugly furniture of the poor, on the black blinds shutting out the sun. It lingered, as if intentionally, on the dead and majestic face of Tom Harrow. Some of the women crossed themselves furtively, their lips moving in silent prayer.
The service was concluded. The door opened again, and the women blinked in the strong raw light. This time, the door was not closed. The undertaker, in his greenish-black long coat, top hat and white gloves, entered. He carried a hammer. Dolly saw him, and the hammer, and she suddenly screamed desperately, over and over. She staggered to her feet, flung herself on the open coffin, clutched the shroud. The women burst out into loud shrieks of sympathy.
Franz, then, stirred for the first time. His hands lifted, half extended themselves to Dolly, who lay across the body of her husband. His face was contorted, his mouth opening as though he were gasping. Irmgard took an involuntary step towards him. Her nerves were trembling, and her legs seemed to bend under her. The shadow behind Franz moved a trifle, convulsively.
Emmi, then, while the minister and the undertaker stood uneasily in the background, went to the prostrate and moaning little woman, who clutched her husband with such agony. She gently lifted her.
“No, no,” she murmured. “It is not good. Let the man rest. He must have peace.” She drew the fair curly head to her breast; her strong lean arms enclosed the plump and trembling body. Dolly collapsed against her, sobbing with terrible cries. Emmi nodded to the undertaker, who approached the coffin.
Through the open door Irmgard saw that two cheap hacks had joined the hearse. A woman brought Dolly’s bonnet and shawl, and Emmi put them on the poor woman with deft quickness. She glanced fiercely over her shoulder at the clamoring women, frenzied now in their enjoyment of agony, and drama.
“Quiet,” she said, very quietly, but with such a look that immediate silence followed. “Some one bring the children, in their coats and bonnets. Please.”
“What shall I do?” sobbed Dolly, leaning against Emmi. “My little lasses. They’ve got no father, they as had the best. It’s the workhouse for me, and the little gels. The workhouse!” she repeated, on a sudden loud scream, throwing back her head to look into Emmi’s face with wild distended eyes.
Then it was that Franz came to her. He took her wet and trembling hands, held them strongly. He looked down into her face, and smiled. Irmgard saw that his forehead was glistening, and wrinkled, as though with mortal pain.
“No, Dolly,” he said, gently, holding the attention of the distracted little woman, with her bonnet askew, and the tears running in rivers dow
She stared at him, with her wild running eyes, hardly hearing him, hardly understanding.
“Five thousand dollars, Dolly,” he said, again.
The women sucked in their breaths with a loud awed sound. The minister stared. The undertaker regarded the widow with sudden respect. Dolly moaned; her eyes half-closed; she swayed against Franz, and he held her. The minister came forward, all sympathy now, all holy compassion.
“My poor child,” he said, resonantly, “it is God’s will. We must not question it. We must be resigned. We must think of our children.” He laid his hand on Dolly’s quivering back, and lifted his eyes.
It was Irmgard who first saw the stirring of the shadow which had stood behind Franz. It was Irmgard who saw him approach, on huge lumbering legs. She saw his face. An involuntary cry rose to her mouth, and she put her hand over it. For the face was full of murder and hatred.
“So,” said a rough, foreign voice, “so. They pay five thousand dollars for killin’ my friend, eh? You tol’ them so, eh?”
Franz, holding Dolly, started violently. He looked over his shoulder, and encountered the savage and inflamed eyes of Jan Kozak. Utter silence followed his words. Every one, the women, the minister, the undertaker, Emmi, Irmgard, and even the weeping Dolly, felt the presence of murder and violence in that death chamber, felt its raw flame and its horrible intensity.
Franz said nothing. His pale lip was caught between his glistening teeth. His eyes were suddenly distended with open and inhuman fear. He could not say a word, though Irmgard saw his desperate struggles to speak, the convulsive movement of his jaw.
Jan Kozak towered over him in his gigantic height.
His face was like a bull’s, and it was encrimsoned, savage with blood-lust. “I was there, that night,” he said, in his painfully slow and rumbling voice. “I heard you. That night, with the man. Sayin’ how to kill my friend. They was not to hurt him, you said. Just stop the strike. He got killed. Maybe wasn’t your fault. Maybe accident. But you did it.”
There was a single loud word, sharp and repudiating. “No!” said Emmi. “No!” She stood beside her son and Dolly, pressed against by the listening, open-mouthed women. She seemed to have increased in height, so straight and rigid was her fleshless body. Her face was white, tinged with blue. Her eyes were brilliant. The shawl had slipped from her head, and it rose above it, lean and clear as cut stone. But there was also a horror in her expression.
“No,” said Irmgard, softly, closing her eyes, her hands feeling out for a support which was not there. No one noticed her. Every one was thronging about that group near the coffin, Emmi, Franz, Dolly and Jan Kozak. And Franz still held Dolly in his arms.
Jan smiled, a most frightful smile. He put his hand on the shroud. Under it, he could feel the marble hand of Tom Harrow. He looked only at Franz, and his eyes were glittering.
“I hear you,” he repeated. “You are liar. You are bad man. You said, ‘I give a signal, when I get him alone, on the street.’ I hear you. I was behin’ you. All the time, you came to the meetin’s to hear what we say. So you can tell the bosses. So—you help kill my frien’. And then you go to the bosses and say, ‘That killin’ will cost you fi’ thousand dollars.’ It was a good night’s work, no?”
“No,” said Emmi again. But no one else spoke. Dolly had lifted herself from Franz’s arms. She stared blindly at Jan Kozak.
“Jan,” she whimpered. “It isn’t true.”
Jan lifted his great hand and pointed it inexorably at Franz.
“Ask him,” he said. “He stand there, and not speak. He know I tell truth. He don’t dare tell lie with Tom here.”
Franz stood in silence, his arms by his side, his forehead wrinkling into deep furrows. But he looked only at Dolly, whose wet and terrified eyes were fixed in sudden horror on his.
“Franz,” she moaned, almost inaudibly, “it’s a lie? Say it’s a lie, Franz? You didn’t kill my Tom?”
A heavy shudder ran over Franz’s body. He felt the murderous presence of Jan Kozak behind him. His face had turned a sickly yellow tinge, and his nostrils were wide, as though he found difficulty in breathing.
Then he spoke, in a thickened voice. “No, Dolly, I didn’t kill Tom. You can believe that, Dolly. This—this Kozak imagined he heard me speak to—to someone. You believe me, Dolly?”
Then, in that dank room, with the dead man in his coffin, Jan Kozak burst into loud and savage laughter. Every one started, and shrank except Emmi, who stood beside her son, her face slowly turning to the very hue of death. Jan pointed at Franz, and he laughed again, louder and more terribly.
“He is liar. He is afraid to tell the truth. He is afraid of police. I got no proof, he will say. No, I got no proof. But he know I tell the truth. He know him and me and God know the truth. And my frien’.”
He turned to Franz, and looked at him. “You and me—we got to have a talk. You stole my work. You stole my frien’s life. You and me—we got to talk.”
But Franz held Dolly by the arms, and she still stared at him, with terror, her eyes now dry and feverish.
“It is a lie, Dolly,” he said, and he shook her slightly. “You believe me, Dolly? Tom and I—we were friends. You believe me, Dolly?”
She still stared at him. Then, very slowly, her eyes filled with tears.
“I believe you, Franz,” she said.
Jan laughed again, hoarsely. The minister lifted a hand to him. “My man, this is very improper. If you have something to discuss with this gentleman, you must not do it—”
But Jan turned to the coffin. He stood and stared down at the dead face, and his own became cold and hard and suffering.
“Go to sleep, my frien’,” he said, in a muffled voice. “We get justice, some time. We still got God, waitin’.”
Then, without another glance at those in the room, he lumbered out of the door, and disappeared.
Dolly burst into renewed tears, loud in the utter stillness of the room. She clung to Franz, sobbing over and over her belief in him. And he held her to him. He murmured, bending over her.
But Emmi stood in silence, remote, her eyes staring into the distance as at some dreadfulness, some appalling vision. She did not feel Irmgard’s touch on her arm. She felt nothing. She saw nothing but that vision.
CHAPTER 33
Irmgard felt that she could not endure going to the cemetery with the little funeral party, of which Emmi was a member. The bright cold December wind had fallen, and it had suddenly begun to rain. The sky was a mass of grayish purple clouds by the time Dolly Harrow was composed enough to enter one of the hacks, which Franz, himself, had hired.
She would return to the flat on Mulberry Street, she told Emmi, and remain with her uncle. Emmi hardly seemed to listen. Irmgard was frightened by her expression, so pale and expressionless was it, since that hideous scene in the little parlor. Even when Irmgard had timidly suggested returning to her uncle, Emmi spoke abstractedly, and almost with indifference:
“He is ill, as I told you. I have promised him we shall return to Germany.”
“To Germany!”
“Go, child,” said Emmi, impatiently, waving her away with the gesture of one tormented beyond endurance. “Listen, and say nothing to him. I must talk to you later.” And without another word, she went back to Dolly.
She had given Irmgard the key to the flat, and Irmgard went away. She walked slowly, her eyes on the ground. She could think of nothing; feel nothing. When her thought touched Franz, it veered away with a shudder. But still, she would allow herself no real thought of him. Once or twice, she put her hand to her head, and said aloud: “No. No.” Her fine green skirts trailed in the dirt and the mud; rain splattered on the gay bonnet. She knew nothing of this, or did not care. She felt physically sick;
She found Egon, wrapped in a blanket, sitting before the kitchen stove. He regarded her with pleased astonishment when she entered. She saw how frail he had become, how old and ill. But his eyes were bright and contented.
“How pleasant it is to see you again, Liebchen,” he said, kissing her cheek as she bent over him. He held her hand. His own was tremulous and hot. He did not reproach her for her neglect. He regarded her with pleasure and affection. She told him, quietly, that Emmi had gone to the cemetery, and for a moment his sweet lined face became sorrowful.
“It is very bad,” he murmured. “I saw him once or twice, that Tom Harrow. He, too, had dreams.”
Something broke and shattered in Irmgard. She cried: “It is so foolish to have dreams, to believe in anything, or any one! The world is so horrible. It is good that such a man does not live in it any longer!”
Egon gazed at her in sudden quiet astonishment. “But what should men do, if there were no one who dreamed, my child? What little we have gained is because dreamers have lived.”
Irmgard turned away, abruptly. Her eyes were full of tears, tears that burned, that drowned and suffocated. But, still, she would not let herself think. She removed her bonnet and jacket, tied one of Emmi’s aprons about her slender waist. She examined the pots on the stove, and said: “There is some good soup, here. I shall heat it for you, Uncle Egon.”