JUST DREAM

Chapter 5

He could feel her body beginning to tremble, and her sobs which were at first very quiet, gradually became louder and finally quite unrestrained. All at once she slipped down from her chair and lay at Fridolin's feet, clasping his knees with her arms and pressing her face against them. Then she looked up to him with large eyes, wild with grief, and whispered ardently: "I don't want to leave here. Even if you never return, if I am never to see you again, I want, at least, to live near you." He was touched rather than surprised, for he had always known that she either was, or imagined herself to be, in love with him. "Please—get up, Marianne," he said softly and bending down he gently raised her. Of course, she is hysterical, he remarked to himself and he glanced at her dead father. I wonder if he hears everything, he thought. Perhaps he isn't really dead. Perhaps everyone in the first hours after passing away, is only in a coma. He put his arms about her in a very hesitating embrace, and almost against his will he kissed her on the forehead, an act that somehow seemed rather ridiculous. He had a fleeting recollection of reading a novel years ago in which a young man, still almost a boy, had been seduced, in fact, practically r***d, by the friend of his mother at the latter's deathbed. At the same time he thought of his wife, without knowing why, and he was conscious of some bitterness and a vague animosity against the man with the yellow hand-bag on the hotel stairs in Denmark. He held Marianne closer, but without the slightest emotion. The sight of her lustreless, dry hair, the indefinite, sweetish scent of her unaired dress gave him a slight feeling of revulsion. The bell outside rang again, and feeling he was released, he hastily

kissed Marianne's hand, as if in gratitude, and went to open the door. Doctor Roediger stood there, in a dark gray top-coat, an umbrella in his hand and a serious face, appropriate to the occasion. The two men greeted each other much more cordially than was called for by their actual state of acquaintance. Then they stepped into the room. After an embarrassed look at the deceased, Roediger expressed his sympathy to Marianne, while Fridolin went into the adjoining room to write out the official deathcertificate. He turned up the gas-light over the desk and his eyes fell upon the picture of the whiteuniformed officer, galloping down hill, with drawn sabre, to meet an invisible enemy. It hung in a narrow frame of dull gold and rather resembled a modest chromo-lithograph. With his death-certificate filled out, Fridolin returned to the room where the engaged couple sat, hand in hand, by the bed of the dead Councilor. Again the door-bell rang and Doctor Roediger rose to answer it. While he was gone, Marianne, with her eyes on the floor, said, almost inaudibly: "I love you," and Fridolin answered by pronouncing her name tenderly. Then Roediger came back with an elderly couple, Marianne's uncle and aunt, and a few words, appropriate to the occasion, were exchanged, with the usual embarrassment in the presence of one who has just died. The little room suddenly seemed crowded with mourners. Fridolin felt superfluous, took his leave and was escorted to the door by Roediger who said a few words of gratitude and expressed the hope of seeing him soon again.