Rosshalde by Hermann Hesse Page B

forced himself to speak calmly. “Forgive me,” he said with embarrassment. “Let’s have some of the wine. You’re not smoking?”
    Burkhardt took a cigar.
    â€œPoor fellow!”
    They drank and smoked in appeased silence, they saw the light glitter in the crystal glasses and glow more warmly in the golden wine, saw the blue smoke float indecisively through the large room and twist itself into capricious threads. From time to time they exchanged a frank, relaxed glance that had little need of words. It was as though everything had already been said.
    A moth whirred across the studio and struck the walls three or four times with a dull thud. Then it sat stupefied, a velvety gray triangle, on the ceiling.
    â€œWill you come to India with me in the fall?” Burkhardt asked at length, hesitantly.
    There was another long silence. The moth began to move about. Small and gray, it crept slowly forward, as though it had forgotten how to fly.
    â€œPerhaps,” said Veraguth. “Perhaps. We must talk about it.”
    â€œLook, Johann. I don’t want to torture you. But you must tell me a certain amount. I never expected that things would be all right again between you and your wife, but…”
    â€œThey were never all right.”
    â€œNo. But, all the same, I’m aghast at finding them as bad as this. It can’t go on. It’s destroying you.”
    Veraguth laughed harshly. “Nothing is destroying me, my friend. In September I shall be showing ten or twelve new paintings in Frankfort.”
    â€œThat’s fine. But how long can this go on? It’s absurd … Tell me, Johann, why haven’t you divorced?”
    â€œIt’s not so simple … I’ll tell you all about it. You’d better hear the whole story in the proper order.”
    He took a sip of wine and continued to lean forward as he spoke, while Otto moved back from the table.
    â€œYou know I had difficulties with my wife from the first. For a few years it was bearable, not good, not bad. At that time it might have been possible to save quite a good deal. But I was disappointed and I didn’t hide it very well, I kept demanding the very thing that Adele was unable to give. She was never very lively; she was solemn and heavy, I might have noticed it sooner. When there was trouble, she was never able to look the other way or make light of it. Her only response to my demands and my moods, my passionate yearning and in the end my disappointment, was a long-suffering silence, a touching, quiet, heroic patience which often moved me but was no help either to her or to me. When I was irritable and dissatisfied, she suffered in silence, and a little later when I tried to patch things up and come to an understanding, when I begged her to forgive me, or when, in an access of good spirits, I tried to sweep her off her feet, it was no good; she kept silent and shut herself up tighter than ever in her heavy fidelity. When I was with her, she was timid, yielding, and silent, she received my outbursts of rage or of gaiety with the same equanimity, and when I was away from her, she sat by herself, playing the piano, thinking of her life as a young girl. The outcome was that I put myself more and more in the wrong, and in the end I had nothing more to give or communicate. I became more and more industrious and gradually learned to take refuge in my work.”
    He was making a visible effort to keep calm. He had no desire to accuse, he wished only to tell his story, but behind his words an accusation was discernible, or at least a plaint at the wrecking of his life, the disappointment of his young hopes, and the joyless half existence, at odds with his innermost nature, to which he had been condemned.
    â€œEven then, I thought of divorce now and then. But it’s not so simple. I was used to working in peace and quiet, I couldn’t face the thought of courts and lawyers, or of disrupting my