rodent-plagued old villa on a river. To toughen me, my father once made me spend three nights in a room with rats (which he hated). The house had now been free of rats for a long time. It had been broken up into apartments for laborers and office workers. Rats hardly cared to live there anymore. Instead there were a great many children, the place was teeming with them. Bratty, undernourished, but full of glee and noise. I envied them their youth.
The garden no longer existed. On the same plot of ground rose a tenement, its walls covered with damp spots. I was flooded with memories of my childhood as I passed by. Bitternesses, inconclusive broodings.Feelings of hatred toward my father, feelings of envy toward my brother and sister. Pity for my wife and for myself.
I returned late. I had had dinner in town and assumed that my wife, exhausted from her journey, would have long since gone to bed. In such cases I sometimes spent the night on a comfortable leather sofa-bed in my study, so as not to disturb her light sleep. I too was extraordinarily tired. The barometer was unusually low for this time of year, mid-August, the air suffocatingly close. Humid, but with no tendency toward rain. Before going to bed, I took the little glass vial containing the toxin out of my pocket and put it aside, on the mirrored top of a cabinet. But I could not sleep. Suddenly I heard my wife walking back and forth in her room directly above my study. She was awake now, or had not yet gone to bed. She was talking in a loud voice. To herself?
No sleep. I had gone quietly into the bathroom, where there were always pajamas in a closet. But the closet was locked, and I had given the key to my wife. So I did not undress. The footsteps in my wifeâs room had stopped now, as had the sound of her voice. I was just about to settle down when she appeared on the landing, wrapped in a sumptuous salmon-colored nightgown heavily embroidered with glass beads. In her eyes was an expression that in the most unfathomable fashion always both attracted and repelled me, a doglike tenderness, a lust to be beaten. I drew my shoulders together, I bowed my head. Rage against this woman, who could still smile , even now, welled up in me. I let her know that all I wanted was to be left alone. She turned on the lights in the study and saw the glint of the glass vial that held the toxin. She thought it was morphine. First she started reproaching me for a thousand petty things, then she cried, and without so much as a pause,smiling foolishly, she asked me to give her the same injection that I had given her before her trip.
I felt the deadly irony of fate so strongly that I could not help smiling too. Or was I just imitating her awkward, glassy grimace? No matter, it put her in a better mood immediately. She embraced me with her short, rosily powdered little arms. Conquered once more by her voluptuous urges, she dragged me upstairs to our bedroom, drew the curtains, and enfolded me. I pushed her away firmly, and that was the beginning. She wanted what she had always gotten. I could not fight her off. The more terrible the things I did, the more obstinately happy she looked! I was in a state of dreadful agitation. In her masochistic rapture, would she forget what she had asked me for? The injection? I wanted her to, and I didnât want her to. Never had one part of me been so much at war with another. For, as of a short time ago, a violent solution was no longer so urgently needed. I could accept the position in the distant city and begin a new, respectable life without her.
The telephone rang. I thoughtâwhy now?âof my father. It rang again. In a particularly shrill, maddening manner, it seemed to me. But neither I nor my wife went to the phone. The ringing must have soon stopped.
X
Immediately following my wifeâs death, which I ascertained conclusively, I opened the two windows and woke the housemaid. I told her to telephone a physician who lived nearby:
The garden no longer existed. On the same plot of ground rose a tenement, its walls covered with damp spots. I was flooded with memories of my childhood as I passed by. Bitternesses, inconclusive broodings.Feelings of hatred toward my father, feelings of envy toward my brother and sister. Pity for my wife and for myself.
I returned late. I had had dinner in town and assumed that my wife, exhausted from her journey, would have long since gone to bed. In such cases I sometimes spent the night on a comfortable leather sofa-bed in my study, so as not to disturb her light sleep. I too was extraordinarily tired. The barometer was unusually low for this time of year, mid-August, the air suffocatingly close. Humid, but with no tendency toward rain. Before going to bed, I took the little glass vial containing the toxin out of my pocket and put it aside, on the mirrored top of a cabinet. But I could not sleep. Suddenly I heard my wife walking back and forth in her room directly above my study. She was awake now, or had not yet gone to bed. She was talking in a loud voice. To herself?
No sleep. I had gone quietly into the bathroom, where there were always pajamas in a closet. But the closet was locked, and I had given the key to my wife. So I did not undress. The footsteps in my wifeâs room had stopped now, as had the sound of her voice. I was just about to settle down when she appeared on the landing, wrapped in a sumptuous salmon-colored nightgown heavily embroidered with glass beads. In her eyes was an expression that in the most unfathomable fashion always both attracted and repelled me, a doglike tenderness, a lust to be beaten. I drew my shoulders together, I bowed my head. Rage against this woman, who could still smile , even now, welled up in me. I let her know that all I wanted was to be left alone. She turned on the lights in the study and saw the glint of the glass vial that held the toxin. She thought it was morphine. First she started reproaching me for a thousand petty things, then she cried, and without so much as a pause,smiling foolishly, she asked me to give her the same injection that I had given her before her trip.
I felt the deadly irony of fate so strongly that I could not help smiling too. Or was I just imitating her awkward, glassy grimace? No matter, it put her in a better mood immediately. She embraced me with her short, rosily powdered little arms. Conquered once more by her voluptuous urges, she dragged me upstairs to our bedroom, drew the curtains, and enfolded me. I pushed her away firmly, and that was the beginning. She wanted what she had always gotten. I could not fight her off. The more terrible the things I did, the more obstinately happy she looked! I was in a state of dreadful agitation. In her masochistic rapture, would she forget what she had asked me for? The injection? I wanted her to, and I didnât want her to. Never had one part of me been so much at war with another. For, as of a short time ago, a violent solution was no longer so urgently needed. I could accept the position in the distant city and begin a new, respectable life without her.
The telephone rang. I thoughtâwhy now?âof my father. It rang again. In a particularly shrill, maddening manner, it seemed to me. But neither I nor my wife went to the phone. The ringing must have soon stopped.
X
Immediately following my wifeâs death, which I ascertained conclusively, I opened the two windows and woke the housemaid. I told her to telephone a physician who lived nearby:
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