Shivering, she got up and followed him. She reached into the window curtains with both hands to hold herself. The sun was shining on her face. He saw that her skin was withered in places. Her eyes were glassy and rigid, suddenly he imagined her front teeth were wrong. It was a hideous disillusionment if he had admired her, but he had never actually done that.
“There would be one piece of information, one salvation,” she whispered, close, very close to his ear.
He didn’t answer.
“Flee with me, Wilhelm.”
“As what – as your doctor?”
Then she slipped down on him and embraced his Kneel “Take my love, but give me morphine.”
She offered herself to him – she had come to sell herself.
He released himself. “That would be dishonorable of me. I’m not buying love, madam. ”
“You don’t need to buy my love either, since you showed me mercy, I love you.”
“I want to give you one more morphine, Frau Bremer, but then please, please, leave me, calm down, think about what you want to do. If you were found here, you and I would be compromised. ”
That was his answer to the confession of her love. Shame overwhelmed her; she felt that she was offering something that he did not wish to possess. She would have liked to flee and hide from his eyes, from everyone else’s, but she did not move. As if spellbound, she stopped and waited – waited for the alms he wanted to give her in order to free himself from her. – She felt the terrible humiliation of her situation – but for morphine she had humbled herself before Friedrich Rast, she couldn’t help it, she had to wait. –
Turnau went into his bedroom, which no lockable door separates from the drawing room. The door from the bedroom to the corridor was locked.
He looked around with a shy look. This woman, who wanted to force her love on him, at least did not follow him! He no longer longed for love. How was it possible that she didn’t understand? All physical activity of life had long since ceased to exist in him; he had believed that the woman must feel that there was no man opposite her in him – a ghost, a shadow hurrying towards the grave. – –
And she wanted to cling to this shadow, to hold on to it in her desperation. How indifferent to him she was! He would have laughed at her if he hadn’t felt so deathly ill.
Earlier, with her, it had been possible for him to rise to the point of moral indignation; he had told her that it would be mean for him to buy her love.
He did not get so far in front of himself – not to the point of moral reluctance, only to disgust, to general weariness with life, to an inexpressible dullness.
In the deadly exhaustion of his body and mind, he tried to avoid any excitement, to evade any disturbance. But the disturbances almost haunted him.
If only someone had freed him from this woman, whose claims he had charged himself by his courtesy! She was waiting for him there, but he was unable to come back to her. His nerves demanded rest, nothing but rest his sick body.
He went to a small wall cupboard and took out a box containing various small ones Bottles were located. These bottles contained everything that has recently been able to give him the ability to enjoy himself, an apparent external strength. More and more often, however, the effect, even of the strongest remedies, had failed to materialize. The broken nerves were dead – it was no longer possible to stimulate them. He couldn’t enjoy anymore.
He pushed the box away. In the next room, from which he was only separated by a portière, he heard a noise. – Right – you’re waiting for him there. A woman, trembling and longing, longed for his love. –
He couldn’t love anymore. He hadn’t been able to enjoy it for weeks – couldn’t sleep any more.
So tired, so dead tired and yet no rest. –
No longer enjoy and no longer live!
Hadn’t he always thought that, even pronounced in front of her – and now?
Yes, now the end was there – don’t enjoy it anymore! It was impossible; neither the injection of morphine, nor love, nor anything else in life offered him or any pleasure.
The little friend was there, so sharp, so sharp, so familiar. Perhaps she could give him one more – one last joy!
There was a small glass – he had reserved it for the end; the end – yes that was there now.
He uncorks the bottle. A sharp alcohol haze hit him. You can dissolve up to twelve percent morphine in water, stronger solutions require alcohol. It is a pain, like putting a limb in glowing coals, when you inject alcohol under your skin. But now – dear God, wasn’t it the end?
He gritted his teeth. The arm turned dark red, it was like a fire. But it worked. The feeling as if the bones of the head were about to fall apart subsided. He was almost able to think again.
So one more time! He withdrew the syringe and it rolled to the ground.
Yes, right, to get it back one has to bend down.
He stared at it with stupid looks – why, why – if it had to be the end?
If only the woman next door had just kept quiet! Lord God, it couldn’t last long now!
Without looking, he reached into a small compartment in his cupboard. He was now holding a revolver. Tired, he sat on the edge of his bed. He looked at the gun with a mad smile. “Death is the wages of sin” – but it went further, the saying did not end there. How? How?
Correctly in the notebook, there it had to be. – But the notebook? Get up and get it, or bend down and pick up the syringe? What for? What for?
A mad noise suddenly filled his brain, he felt his temples pressed as if with iron screws. The alcohol solution was a deadly one. But probably not for him. – – The end, the end! –
He felt nothing more, he thought nothing more, his eyes darkened. Slowly he raised the short, bare barrel of the revolver, placed it firmly on his temple, and pulled the trigger. The shot cracked dully in the small room covered with carpets and heavy fabrics. –
Lydia Bremer stood frozen for only a second, then rushed forward.
One look showed her what had happened. Perhaps the man who had cursed her to disdain her love was still alive – she cared nothing; she didn’t devote a minute of her time to him. She saw the box with its contents of small bottles. She slid noiselessly towards it and with a single greedy grip she let all the glasses disappear into her pocket.
She hastily rummaged through the extension of a table, but found nothing. She had barely a minute; the shot had been heard in the house; the room filled with people.
Professor Schrödter confirmed the death of his assistant. He assumed that Turnau had acted in a moment of mental derangement.
Shaking his head, he leafed through the notebook the dead man was carrying with him when he had thought it was in the next room. The professor hoped to find some explanation of the motives for the sad deed therein.
He finally found a note with the date of the previous night. “Death is the wages of sin, but the grace of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Next to it was that he wanted this saying to be placed on his tombstone.
The professor handed the little book to Lydia. She read the saying and clapped her hands in despair over her face.
“You were there, Madam Privy Councilor, should you not suspect the connection, you know nothing – nothing at all?”
He gave her a piercing look. She felt that everything was at stake for her – – her honor – – curious glances rested on her from all sides.
“Morphine,” she stammered, desperate, beside herself. –
“Ah – so we don’t need to look any further for your source of morphine, Turnau was the culprit, he gave you the poison, he himself died from it, oh I understand, I understand.”
A mocking smile slipped over the broad face of a guard. Lydia saw it, her blood rose in the face, she felt a passionate rage that had hitherto been alien to her nature.
“Professor, what must your people think of me when you ask me that!”
She tried to appear as cold and calm as usual – she couldn’t. The professor felt that he had behaved incorrectly in some way. His tone was less ruthlessly harsh when he asked her how she had come to see Turnau instead of asking the young doctor to come to her.
“You took away the last drop of morphine from me today,” she explained quickly, “only by meeting Turnau in secret could I hope to regain what I had lost.”
“But it would have been a mean thing on his part,” Schrödter rumbled again after all, “You are my patient, my assistant had to take it into account.”
Lydia’s eyes clouded over, she felt with bitter pain that she was helpless in the face of the treatment of the neurologist that had been forced upon her.
“Doctor Turnau was very inaccessible today, my visit was in vain,” she said briefly.
“A dying man – I want to believe that – today I noticed for the first time how sick he was – we don’t throw a stone on the dead.”
“What do you mean, Professor?”
Everyone’s eyes hung in breathless tension Present on the doctor’s lips. Schrödter saw that at that moment it was in his hand, a suspicion of keeping a stain out of the privy councilor’s name – he thought of the young woman’s husband. What a sanctuary this women’s honor was for this man!
To a certain extent, he turned to the staff at his institution, almost all of whom were now around him.
“Herr Doctor Turnau has been suffering for a long time, this morning I found him insane, in the excitement that preceded his deed he will hardly have recognized who was with him, perhaps he did not notice you at all, madam.”
Lydia understood. “Yes, he recognized me, but he kept me waiting in the drawing room while he prepared the terrible deed in the bedroom; only after the sound of the shot did I dare to follow him. ”
After this explanation she breathed a sigh of relief, no one paid much attention to her. The people occupied themselves with the corpse, the doctors withdrew.
With passionate delight she felt the small glasses in her pocket. For years to come these concentrated solutions would suffice to produce from them the comparatively weak remedy which it required. Oh, how did she want to guard this treasure, how carefully and carefully did she want to hide everything, she shouldn’t be outwitted a second time. But now home and above all bring everything to safety.
The joy that filled her made her forget the terrible humiliation she had suffered. Nor did she feel any pain at the sudden end of the man she had thought she loved an hour ago. She no longer loved anything in the world except enjoyment, and could now enjoy it – immeasurably, unrestrictedly, secretly.
Without a sound she left the deceased’s room and hurried down the stairs. Her heart beat up to the neck – away, only away.
“Excuse me, madam, I would like to allow myself to accompany you,” Professor Schrödter suddenly stood next to her, he looked at her coldly and suspiciously.
Oh, how she hated him – she could have slapped him in the face, pushed him away, she was stunned.
“Let me – the shock, the excitement – I want to be alone.”
“I consider it my medical duty to accompany you, even if you are directly uncomfortable with it.”
“I feel so uncomfortable that it would be intrusive if you insisted.”
That was an insult, now he had to leave it. But he didn’t leave her side. “I will be able to justify this intrusiveness in front of your husband.”
With these words he lifted her into the car, got in and drove to her side of her apartment. It almost looked like he was secretly smiling at her passed out anger. She always was paler, and subdued tears burned in her eyes.
The councilor was startled when he went to the door of the car and looked at her contorted, disfigured face. She looked old and almost ugly in this mad excitement with her sloppy suit.
“For God’s sake, what happened to my wife? Lydia, how do you look! Professor you explain – – – ”
“That’s why I came,” replied Schrödter with superior calm. “Our patient has managed to get morphine again; it will be your job, Herr Privy Councilor, to have all the patient’s clothes carefully searched and checked so that nothing can be smuggled in that we do not know.”
“Lydia!”
She no longer heard her husband’s horrified exclamation because she had passed out at the doctor’s inconsiderate words.
The privy councilor called the nurse to the carriage. The young girl quickly and resolutely took the delicate figure of her mistress in her arms and carried her into the house without taking up the support of the gentlemen.
The maid came to the aid of the bonne. The unconscious woman was carefully laid down, Fraulein Wagner unbuttoned her dressing gown in order to undress her, as the doctor had requested.
Lydia came to her senses.
