Time No Longer

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  Then, after a long time, Kurt struggled to speak again, in his low panting whisper.

  “Karl, I am sorry. Eric—Gerda …”

  “Hush. It does not matter now.”

  “But I killed them, Karl.”

  “No, no, you did not kill them. Hush, be still. Rest.”

  But Kurt fought with his death and his cold choking flesh. He tried to sit up. Karl put his arm about him, to support him. The bones of his brother’s body were hard against his arm, and again he felt the shock of sorrow and remorse. Kurt’s face was close to him, his cool breath on his cheek, his eyes fixed passionately on Karl’s.

  “When—when it was done, Karl, it was like a light to me. I saw things I never saw before.” A convulsion made his body arch, become rigid. “I could not bear it. The things I saw.… They killed me.”

  “Yes, I know, Kurt. But even all that does not matter now.”

  He held Kurt to him, tightly. His brother’s head rested on his shoulder. The tortured breathing became easier. He relaxed.

  “It was a long time—the seeing. I fought against it. But I could not escape seeing. Then I knew I could not live any longer. Karl, you understand?”

  “Yes, I understand. Everything.”

  Karl laid him gently back upon his pillows. A translucent light of peace and joy wavered over Kurt’s sinking face. He still held his brother’s hand. Karl heard the voices of the wind at the windows, the hissing of the snow. He held Kurt’s hand tightly, warmly, and smiled.

  “Rest,” he said. “Sleep.”

  “Yes,” whispered Kurt. “Yes. Sleep.”

  He closed his eyes. He slept. He smiled deeply to himself. His breathing became lower, more shallow.

  Karl released his hand. Kurt’s hand fell back inertly on the sheet. Karl stood up, and for a long time watched his brother as he slept. Then he forced his aching body to its feet, and left the room.

  He went downstairs, holding to the balustrade to keep himself from falling. No one was about. He opened the hall door, and a gust of wind and show-fresh air blew upon his face.

  He was about to go out when he heard the nurse’s shrill cry as she re-entered the room where Kurt lay, at peace at last.

  He closed the door silently after him. Then, standing on the steps, he wept again.

  37

  Old Lotte was just passing through the hallway when Karl returned. She had always maintained an attitude of normality towards him, shrewdly believing that those who suffered from mental agony and distraction should have a normal atmosphere about them at all times, and a normal approach. So, though she was frightened by his appearance, as always, her fat wrinkled face smiled.

  “Good evening, Herr Doctor. I have kept your dinner warm. It is waiting for you.”

  She helped him remove his snow-soaked coat, and competently shook it out. She expected that he would leave her silently, as usual, and in his dazed condition, mount the stairs to his rooms. But instead, he waited for her to hang up his garments. She started nervously when she saw him there. Then she was astonished, for he was smiling at her kindly, as he always used to smile before “the trouble.” Moreover, his eyes were no longer dim and wild and distraught.

  Her old heart beat with a strange mingling of hope and fear.

  “Good evening, Lotte,” he said. It was evident, from his pallor, that he was very weak and tired. “Where is the Frau Doctor?”

  She stammered, her face working. “She is not well, Herr Doctor. I called a physician. She fainted. She has never done that before, to my knowledge. Now she is resting in her room, and the physician said she must not be disturbed.”

  He was silent a moment. He rubbed his cold thin hands together, and she watched him fearfully, wondering if what she saw in his face was true, and not a delusion. It was true that his expression was dark and thoughtful, but there was no madness nor confusion about him. He felt her watching him. He looked at her and smiled again.

  “Good Lotte,” he said. “What would we do without you?”

  Her eyes filled with tears. All was well again, she thought. She could not speak for her overpowering emotion. So, trying to smile feebly, she turned and went away to her kitchen, where she could shed her joyful tears in privacy.

  Karl went up he stairs. He reached Therese’s door, and opened it.

  The room was lit by a small lamp near the bed. On her chaise longue Therese was half-lying, feet covered by a shawl. She wore a white lacy negligee, and her long fair hair streamed over her shoulders. Her eyes were closed. An expression of extreme exhaustion and collapse gave her features the aspect of prostrating illness. Karl watched her for a long time. His face was quiet and grave, but as he watched her, he understood her sufferings and the long months of her loneliness and pain. It was not the old Therese who lay there, calm, selfish, composed, always the gnädige frau, whom nothing could disturb overmuch, and who lived in a cool serene world of her own, selfishly insulated against the miseries of others. This was a new Therese, worn fine and thin by pain and torment, and if she was calm, it was with the sad and terrible calm of understanding.

  It is not only I who have come back, he thought, mournfully. It is not only I, who see at last.

  He thought that both he and Therese had been away on a long and dreadful voyage, alone. And now they had both returned, and were together in this room, full of experiences and suffering.

  He said, very softly: “Therese. Therese, my darling.”

  She opened her eyes, dull, heavy eyes, ringed with the shadows of despair. She looked at him. She did not speak. He went to her, knelt beside her, and took her in his arms. She did not move for a long time. Then, all at once, she burst into dry and violent sobs, and clung to him. They did not need to speak. They held each other, as though they were two who had thought never to see each other again, but had met once more in an alien and appalling land, where the most frightful voices resounded, and the heavens were lit by the red shadows of hell.

  Finally, she was a little calmer. But she still clung to his hand, her piteous eyes fixed upon him.

  “I have been to Kurt,” he said. “He is dead. But I saw him before he died.”

  “Yes,” she whispered. And again: “Yes.”

  Now her tears came, soothing, filled with compassion. She kissed his hand, his cheeks, his mouth. Her lips quivered.

  She began to tell him everything. An hour went by. He listened silently and intently. Sometimes a spasm ran rigidly across his face. But he showed no other emotion. The wind trembled at the windows. The snow had turned to rain, and beat against the glass like volleys of bullets. But there were no other sounds but the slow shaking voice of Therese, and the wind and the rain.

  She told him the name Felix Traub had given her. He nodded, silently. Then he said:

  “There is so much to do. And so little time. But what I can do I shall do.”

  She kissed him again, clinging to him.

  Then suddenly, she was filled with terror. She had regained Karl only to lose him again. She forgot everything in the extremity of her terror. Now she wanted nothing but to hold him, to keep him safe, to fly.

  “Karl!” she cried, in anguish. “What, at the most, can you do? Karl, let us leave Germany. At once! Tomorrow! We can still get passports. England! France! America! Oh, I cannot have those things happen to you, Karl!”

  He held her in his arms. She shuddered. Her hands clutched him, despairingly. He listened to her pleading. He looked at her wet distracted face. He tried to soothe her. She felt strength and fortitude in his arms.

  “Therese,” he said. “Would you really want us to run away?”

  “Yes, yes! Immediately! I can stand no more, Karl. It has been too much. Now I have you again. We must go away. How can I stand by, and watch them kill you? For they surely will. They are devils. They find out everything. They know everything. It will only be a matter of time.…”

  He forced her to meet his eyes, holding her face in his hands.

  “Therese,” he repeate
d. “Shall we run away?”

  She tried to cry out. And then she could not. She saw the faces of Herman Muehler and Felix Traub. How could she betray them? She began to weep, hiding her face on Karl’s shoulder. She collapsed against him. He held her closely.

  But he looked beyond her, and his face was stern and dark.

  “I had a dream,” he said softly. “I dreamed that Eric came back. He talked to me. He told me what I must do. There is nothing else for me.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, there is nothing else.”

  And they clung to each other again, without words.

  38

  It was Christmas Eve, and very quiet. It was also almost Christmas. Therese had hung up the holly. Children were singing in the streets. It was very still. There had been a new snow, and the roofs of the houses were white with it.

  Therese was very tired. She had not seen Karl since the evening meal. He, too, must be tired, working so long in his study. She must call him to bed, remind him that he was still not completely well.

  She went upstairs. His study door was ajar. She pushed it wider.

  He was sitting at his desk, writing swiftly, his graying head bent, his face severe and absorbed, and attenuated. His fine thin hand moved rapidly. He was not aware of her.

  She tried to call him, but something kept her silent.

  So Voltaire and Rousseau had sat, at midnight, and later, writing. Their delicate pens had attacked a terrible era of oppresssion, misery and despair and death. These pens had overthrown a nation, a philosophy, a world. The sound of them had moved through generations. The sound had become flutes of liberty and justice, equality and fraternity. Now, savage and barbaric hands had seized on the flutes, had silenced their calling.

  Now the fateful drums were booming through the world again. Now the shattering trumpets blazed at every wall, everywhere. Now the thunder was shaking the frail minds of men, and multitudes stood aghast in the darkness, listening to the drums and the trumpets, not knowing where to flee, or where to hide.

  The mummy head of Gilu stood on the mantelpiece, near Karl, who was writing below. The evil face smiled ferociously. It was all madness and fury. And below it was Karl, with his smooth delicate pen, writing at midnight.

  So it must always be. So the saviors of men must always work, forgetting everything else. Forgetting self and safety, greed and expediency, treachery and frightfulness, and fear.

  Therese knew what the end must be. Soon she would be alone once more, and this time for always, in this world. Soon they would find Karl and kill him.

  She lifted her head, as though she heard the flutes of Voltaire and Rousseau, and all the voices of those who had died that other men might live in peace. Her pale face became heroic.

  Nothing mattered now. Not even Karl’s torture and death. Not even her coming loneliness and desolation.

  She heard the carols in the street below. She heard the whispering of the snow against the windows. She heard the faint scratching of Karl’s pen.

  “For greater love hath no man …”

  She closed the door softly behind her, and went away.

  A Biography of Taylor Caldwell

  Taylor Caldwell was one of the most prolific and widely read American authors of the twentieth century. In a career that spanned five decades, she wrote forty novels, many of which were New York Times bestsellers.

  Caldwell captivated readers with emotionally charged historical novels and family sagas such as Captains and the Kings, which sold 4.5 million copies and was made into a television miniseries in 1976. Her novels based on the lives of religious figures, Dear and Glorious Physician, a portrayal of the life of St. Luke, and Great Lion of God, a panoramic novel about the life and times of St. Paul, are among the bestselling religious novels of all time.

  Born Janet Miriam Holland Taylor Caldwell in 1900 in Manchester, England, into a family of Scotch-Irish descent, she began attending an academically rigorous school at the age of four, studying Latin, French, history, and geography. At six, she won a national gold medal for her essay on novelist Charles Dickens. On weekends, she performed a long list of household chores and attended Sunday school and church twice a day. Caldwell often credited her Spartan childhood with making her a rugged individualist.

  In 1907, Caldwell, her parents, and her younger brother immigrated to the United States, settling in Buffalo, New York, where she would live for most of her life. She started writing stories when she was eight years old and completed her first novel, The Romance of Atlantis, when she was twelve, although it was not published until 1975. Marriage at the age of eighteen to William Combs and the birth of her first child, Mary Margaret—Peggy—did not deter her from pursuing an education. While working as a stenographer and a court reporter to help support her family, she took college courses at night.

  Upon receiving a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Buffalo in 1931, she divorced her husband and married Marcus Reback, her boss at the US Immigration Department office in Buffalo. Caldwell then dedicated herself to writing full time. Even as her family grew with the arrival of her second daughter, Judith, Caldwell’s unpublished manuscripts continued to pile up.

  At the age of thirty-eight, she finally sold a novel, Dynasty of Death, to a major New York publisher. Convinced that a pre–World War I saga of two dynasties of munitions manufacturers would be better received if people thought it was written by a man, Maxwell Perkins, her editor at Scribner—who also discovered F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway—advised her to use only part of her name—Taylor Caldwell—as her pen name. Dynasty of Death became a bestseller in 1938 and the saga continued with The Eagles Gather in 1940 and The Final Hour in 1944. Inevitably, a public stir ensued when people discovered Taylor Caldwell was a woman.

  Over the next forty years, Caldwell often worked from midnight to early morning at her electric typewriter in her book-crammed study, producing a wide array of sagas (This Side of Innocence, Answer as a Man) and historical novels (Testimony of Two Men, Ceremony of the Innocent) that celebrated American values and passions.

  She also produced novels set in the ancient world (A Pillar of Iron, Glory and the Lightning), dystopian fiction (The Devil’s Advocate, Your Sins and Mine), and spiritually themed novels (The Listener, No One Hears But Him, Dialogues with the Devil).

  Apart from their across-the-board popularity with readers and their commercial success, which made Caldwell a wealthy woman, her long list of bestselling novels possessed common themes that were close to her heart: self-reliance and individualism, man’s struggle for justice, the government’s encroachment on personal freedoms, and the conflict between man’s desire for wealth and power and his need for love and family bonding.

  The long hours spent at her typewriter did not keep Caldwell from enjoying life. She gave elegant parties at her grand house in Buffalo. One of her grandchildren recalls watching her hold the crowd in awe with her observations about life and politics. She embarked on annual worldwide cruises and was fond of a glass of good bourbon. Drina Fried recalls her grandmother confiding in her: “I vehemently believe that we should have as much fun as is possible in our dolorous life, if it does not injure ourselves or anyone else. The only thing is—be discreet. The world will forgive you anything but getting caught.”

  Caldwell didn’t stop writing until she suffered a debilitating stroke at the age of eighty. Her last novel, Answer as a Man, was published in 1981 and hit the New York Times bestseller list before its official publication date. She died at her home in Greenwich, Connecticut, in 1985.

  William Combs, Taylor Caldwell’s first husband and father to Peggy, aboard a naval ship, circa 1926.

  A portrait of Caldwell at the start of her career in the late 1930s.

  A portrait of Caldwell taken before Scribner’s publication of Melissa on June 21, 1948.

  Caldwell at her desk in Palm Beach, Florida, in 1949. She spent many winter months at Whitehall, a resort hotel on the property of Henry Flagler’s for
mer estate, which is now the Flagler Museum.

  Caldwell’s second daughter, Judith Ann Reback, during time with her mother at Whitehall in the 1940s.

  Caldwell receiving an award in Los Angeles, California, for A Pillar of Iron after its publication in 1965.

  Caldwell with her daughters, Peggy Fried and Judith Ann Reback (Goodman), and Ted Goodman in 1969 on the MS Bergensfjord.

  Caldwell at a cocktail party with her daughter, Peggy, and the hostess of a research world cruise on the SS President Wilson in 1970.

  Caldwell with her granddaughter, Drina Fried, at her home in Buffalo, New York, winter 1975. Soula Angelou, her personal assistant, insisted on taking this rare family picture.

  An invitation from 1975 to one of Caldwell’s many cocktail parties. She hosted at least two parties a year in Buffalo, New York, before she moved to Connecticut.

  Caldwell with her fourth husband, Robert Prestie, who cared for her in the last six years of her life in Connecticut.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1941 by Charles Scribner’s Sons; assigned Reback and Reback 1946

  Cover design by Connie Gabbert

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-3906-2

  This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.