Below in the entrance hall Atlas came to a stand in front of ? door, pulled a key out of his pocket and unlocked it. 'I'll go fust,' he whispered, and put a stumpy finger to his mouth. 'Professor, my friend!' George heard him saying inside the door. 'I've got a visitor for you! What do you give me for that?' George went in, closed the door, and was astounded at the bare little closet within. The window had been boarded up, a little light fell on a bed and a cupboard. Nothing could be seen clearly. A repellent smell of stale food crawled round him, involuntarily he put nis fingers to his nostrils. Where was Peters There was a scraping, such as one hears in the cages of animals. George felt along the wall. It was really there where he had thought; how appalling, this tiny room. 'Open the window,' he said aloud. 'Can't be done!' came the answer, in Atlas' voice. So Peter's eyes were the trouble, not only the wife; that was evident from the darkness in which he lived. Where was he? 'Here he is,' bellowed Atlas, a lion in a rabbit hutch, 'still at my patent!' George took two steps along the wall and collided with a neap. Peter? He bent down and felt the skeleton of a man. He lifted it up. The man trembled, or was it the draught? no, everything was closed, now someone was whispering, flat and toneless like one dying, like one dead, could he speak.
'Who is it?'
'It's George, your brother George, don't you hear me, Peter?'
'George?' Life came into the voice.
'Yes, George. I wanted to see you, I've come to visit you. I come from Paris.'
'Is it really you?'
'Why, do you doubt it?'
'I can't see here. It's so dark.'
'I knew you at once, by your thinness.'
Suddenly someone ordered, stern and harsh —George almost started — 'Leave the room, Pfaff!'
'What's that?'
'Please, would you mind leaving us alone?' George added.
'Immediately!' commanded Peter, the old Peter.
Pfaff went. The new gentleman was too grand for him. He looked like a president or something of the sort. He probably was. He would have plenty of time later to pay the Professor back for his sauce. In part payment he slammed the door, out of respect for the President he did not lock him in.
George laid Peter on the bed; he hardly noticed the difference when he no longer had him in his arms; he went to the window and pulled at the boards. 'I'll cover it up again soon,' he said, 'you need air. If your eyes hurt you, close them for the moment.'
'My eyes don't hurt.'
'Then why do you spare them? I thought you'd been reading too much and were taking a rest in the dark.'
'Those boards have only been there since last night.'
'Did you nail them up so tight? I can hardly get them away, I wouldn't have thought you had so much strength.'
'That was the caretaker, the landsknecht.'
'Landsknecht?'
'A venal brute.'
'I found him sympathetic. In comparison to other people in your entourage.'
'I did once too.'
'What has he done to you, then?'
'He behaves shamelessly. He's growing familiar.'
'Perhaps he does that to show you his friendship. You can't have been long in this little room?'
'Since the day before yesterday, about noon.'
'Do you feel better? Your eyes I mean. I hope you brought no books with you.'
'The books are upstairs. My little hand-library was stolen from me.'
'What a stroke of luck! Otherwise you'd have tried to read here. That would have been poison to your tired eyes. I believe even you are anxious about them now. Once you didn't care about them at all. You've treated them disgracefully always.'
'My eyes are perfectly well.'
'Truly? Haven't you any complaints?'
'No.'
The boards were down. A sharp light flowed into the room. Air streamed through the open window. George breathed in, deeply contented. So far the examination had progressed well. Peter s answers to the well calculated questions were correct, factual, a little curt, as always. The evil was all in this wife, only in the wife; he had purposely disregarded hints in her direction. He had no fear for his eyes; the way in which he reacted to repeated inquiries about their condition argued a genuine indignation. George turned round. Two empty birdcages hung on the wall. The bedclothes had red stains on them. In the corner at the back was a wash-basin. The dirty water in it shimmered red. Peter was even thinner than his hands had already told him. Two sharp creases cut his checks in two. His face looked longer, harsher and narrower than it had done. Four penetrating wrinkles were on the brow as though his eyes were always pulled wide open. Of his lips nothing was visible, a recalcitrant slit betrayed where they would be. His eyes, poor and watery blue, examined his brother, pretending indifference; in their corners twitched curiosity and distrust. His left arm, Peter was hiding behind his back.
"What's the matter with your hand?' George took it away from his back. It was wrapped in a cloth soaked through and through with blood.
'I hurt myself?
'How did this happen?'
'While I was eating, my knife slipped suddenly against my little finger. I've lost the two top joints.'
'You must have slipped with all your weight?'
'The joints were more than half cut off. I thought, diey're lost anyway and cut them right off. To be done with the pain once and for all.'
'What made you jump so?'
'You know very well.'
'How should I know, Peter?'
'The caretaker told you.'
'I find it extremely odd that he never even mentioned it to me.'
'It's his fault. I didn't know he kept canaries. He hid the cages under the bed, the devil knows why. One whole afternoon and the next day it was still as the grave in here. Last night at supper, just as I was cutting my meat, a hellish noise broke out. The first fright cost me my finger. You must consider what quiet I am used to at my work. But I avenged myself on the wretched fellow. He likes crude jokes ofthat kind. I believe he hid the cages under the bed on purpose. He could easily have left them on the wall where they now are.
'How did you avenge yourself?'
'I let the birds go. Considering what pain I was in, a mild revenge. Probably they've come to grief. He was in such a rage that he boarded up the window. But in any case I paid him for the birds. He asserted they were priceless, he had taken years to tame them. He's lying of course. Have you ever heard that canaries sing to order and stop singing to order?'
'No.'
'He wanted to put their price up that way. You would have thought
that it was women only who wanted their husband's money. That's a great mistake. You see how I paid for it.'
George ran to the nearest chemist, bought iodine, bandages and this and that to revive Peter. The wound was not in itself dangerous; but that a man already weak should have lost so much blood worried him more. He ought to have been bandaged up yesterday. The caretaker was a monster; he thought of nothing but his canaries. Peter's story sounded true. But he must make an investigation with the culprit as well to see if they tallied in every particular. It would be best to go straight back to the flat and hear his account of what had happened yesterday as well as on earlier occasions. George did not look forward to it. This was the second time in the day that he had mistaken his man. He regarded himself—and his success as a mental specialist bore witness to it — as a great connoisseur of men. The redheaded fellow was not merely a great strong Atlas of a man, he was insolent and dangerous. His joke of putting the canaries under the bed betrayed how little he really cared for Peter, although he pretended to be his best friend. He was perfectly capable of robbing a sick man of light and air by nailing up the window with boards. He had taken no care of his wound at all. One of the first sentences he had said when George made his acquaintance was to the effect that his brother had paid him, and paid him well, for the four canary birds that he owed him. Money was his chief interest. He was evidently in league with the woman. He stayed in the f
lat with her. The rough handling and the rougher words he had used she had accepted, not without a half pleasure in her anger. So she was his woman. Not one of these conclusions had George drawn at the time. So great had been his relief at Peter's acquittal of murder. Now he was ashamed again of himself. He had left his wits at home. How ridiculous, to have believed a woman like that! How absurd to have been so trusting of a landsknecht — Peter's name was very apt! The fellow would laugh in his face; he had outwitted him. No wonder the pair of them grinned, they were sure of their advantage and hold over Peter. They probably intended to keep the flat and the library for themselves, leaving Peter down there in that black hole. The woman had met him with a grin when she opened the door.
George decided to tie up Peter's hand before he sought out the caretaker. The wound was more important than any explanation. He would not learn much more than he knew already. He could easily find a pretext later on to leave the little room for half an hour.
CHAPTER V
WARYWISE ODYSSEUS
'We haven't yet greeted each other properly,' he said as he came back. 'But I know you dislike emotional family scenes. You haven't running water in here; I saw a tap in the passage outside.'
He fetched water and told Peter to keep still.
'I do that without being told,' was the answer.
'I look forward to seeing your library. As a child I never understood your passion for books. I was much less intelligent than you, I hadn't your incredible memory. What a silly, greedy little boy I was, always playing around! I'd have liked to act plays and kiss mother all day long. But you had your goal straight before you from the start. I've never come across another man whose development followed such a straight line. I know you don't care for compliments, you'd like mc to stop talking and leave you alone. Don't be angry, but I can't leave you alone! I haven't seen you for twelve years, I haven't heard anything of you except in the papers for eight, you seem to have thought personal letters too great an honour for me! It's more than likely you won't treat me any better in the next eight years than you have up to now. You won't come to Paris, I know what you feel about the French and about travelling. I haven't the time to come and see you again soon, I'm snowed under with work. You may have heard I'm working in an institute close to Paris. So you see, when should I thank you if not now; I have a lot to thank you for, your modesty is altogether exaggerated, you don't even guess how much I owe to you: my character as far as I have any, my love of learning, my way of life, my rescue from all those women, my serious approach to great things, my humility towards small ones. You are in the last resort even responsible for my taking to psychiatry. It was you who aroused my interest in the problems of speech, and I made my first leap with a thesis on the speech of a certain lunatic. Of course I shall never bring myself to that complete self-abnegation, to that attitude of work for work's sake, of duty for duty's sake, which Immanuel Kant — and long before all other thinkers — Confucius, have demanded, and which you have achieved. I'm afraid I'm too weak for that. Applause does me good, I seem to need it. You are a very enviable man. You must admit that men of your strength of will are rare, tragically rare. How could there possibly be two in one family; By the way, I read your thesis on Kant and Confucius with real excitement, far more than I feel when I read Kant or even the sayings of Confucius themselves. It is so clear, so exhaustive, so ruthless to all other points of view, it is of such an overwhelming profundity and shows such comprehensive knowledge. Perhaps you saw that review in a Dutch paper which called you the Jacob Burckhardt of eastern cultures. Only they say you are not so discursive and far more exacting towards yourself. I consider your learning more universal than Burckhardt's. That may be explicable in part by the greater richness of knowledge in our time, but by far the greatest credit belongs to you personally; you save your strength to stand alone. Burckhardt was a professor and gave lectures, a compromise which was not without influence on the formulation of his thought. How tremendous your interpretation of the Chinese sophists! With few fragments, fewer even than we have from the Greek, you have reconstructed their entire world, their worlds I should say, for they are as different one from another as only the minds of philosophers can be. I was most pleased with your last important paper, the one in which you say that the school of Aristotle played the same part in the west as the school of Confucius in China. Aristotle, the spiritual grandchild of Socrates, gathers into his philosophy all the remaining tributaries of Greek thought. Among his medieval followers — and those by no means the least important — there are even Christians. In just the same way the later disciples of Confucius worked over all that was left of the teaching of Mo-Ti, of the Taoists and even of Buddhism in so far as it seemed serviceable to them and useful for the preservation of their influence. But we must not for that reason think of either the Confucians or the Aristotelians as eclectics. They are extraordinarily close to each o'ther —as you have convincingly shown —in their respective influences, the one on the Christian middle ages here, the other at about the same time, from the Sung dynasty onwards, over there. Of course I don't understand much about it, I don't know a word of Chinese — but your conclusions affect everyone who wants to understand his own roots, the ultimate origin of his opinions, the mental mechanism inside him. Am I allowed to ask what you're working on now?'
While he was washing and bandaging the hand, he observed closely, but as unobtrusively as possible, the effect of his sentences on the face of his brother. After the last question he paused.
'Why do you keep looking at meî' asked Peter. 'You're confusing me with one of your patients. You only half understand my scholastic theories, because you are too uneducated. Don't talk so much! You don't owe me anything. I detest flattery. Aristotle, Confucius and Kant are all the same to you. Any woman is preferable. If I'd had influence on you, you wouldn't now be the head of a lunatic asylum.'
'But Peter, you re not fair...'
'I am at work on ten different theses at once. Almost all of them are fiddling around with letters — as you call every work of textual criticism when you're alone. You laugh at concepts. Work and duty are concepts to you. You think only of people, and mostly of women. What do you want with me?'
'You're not fair, Peter. I told you I didn't know a word of Chinese. 'San' means three and 'wu' means five, that's all I know. I haue to look at you. How else am I to know if I'm hurting your finger; You'd never make a sound on your own. Your face is fortunately a little more expressive than your tongue.'
'Then make naste! You have an overbearing look. Leave my. studies alone! You need pretend no interest in them. Keep to your lunatics! I shall ask you nothing about them. You talk too much because you are always moving among people!'
'Very well. I've almost done.'
George felt from Peter's hand how willingly he would have stood up while he was saying these sharp words; so easily was his self-respect reawakened. Ten, twenty years ago it had always revealed itself in this kind of contradictions. Half an hour ago he had been crouching on the floor, feeble and dwindling, a little heap of bones, out of which had whimpered the voice of a beaten schoolboy. Now he was defending himself in curt, rude sentences, and showing signs of wanting to use his height as a weapon.
'I'd like to look at your books upstairs, if you don't mind,' said George when he had finished bandaging him. 'Will you come too, or will you wait for me? You must spare yourself to-day, you've lost a lot of blood. Lie down for an hour! I'll fetch you then.'
'What can you do in an hour?'
'Look at your library. The caretaker is up there?'
'You need a day for my library. You can see nothing in an hour.'
'I only want to get an idea of it. We'll look at it properly together later on.'
'Stay here! Don't go up! I warn you!'
'Why?'
'It smells in the flat.'
'Smells of what?'
'Of a woman, to use no more opprobrious terms.'
'You exaggerate.'
&nbs
p; 'You're a womanizer.'
'A womanizer? No.'
'You like a bit of skirt! Do you prefer me to speak plainly?' Peter's voice grew sharp.
'I understand your hatred, Peter. She deserves it. She deserves even more.'
'You don't know her!'
'I know what you've suffered.'
'You are like a blind man talking of colour ! You have hallucinations. You get them from your patients. The inside of your head is like the inside of a kaleidoscope. You shake forms and colours together to suit your whim. Colours, all colours, we can name each one by its name ! You should be silent about things which you have not yourself experienced!'
'I will be silent. I only wanted to tell you that I understood you, Peter, I've had the same experience myself, I am not what I used to be. That was why I changed my profession at the time. Women are a misfortune. Leaden weights on a man's spirit. If you take your duty seriously you must shake them off or you're lost. I do not need the hallucinations of my patients for my own healthy open eyes have seen more. I've learned many things in the course of twelve years. You were lucky enough to know from the beginning what I had to pay for with cruel experience.'
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