She and her two young children used to drop in every morning and talk
German to me–by request. One day, during a ramble about the city,
I visited one of the two establishments where the Government keeps and
watches corpses until the doctors decide that they are permanently dead,
and not in a trance state. It was a grisly place, that spacious room.
There were thirty-six corpses of adults in sight, stretched on their
backs on slightly slanted boards, in three long rows–all of them
with wax-white, rigid faces, and all of them wrapped in white shrouds.
Along the sides of the room were deep alcoves, like bay windows;
and in each of these lay several marble-visaged babes, utterly hidden and
buried under banks of fresh flowers, all but their faces and crossed hands.
Around a finger of each of these fifty still forms, both great
and small, was a ring; and from the ring a wire led to the ceiling,
and thence to a bell in a watch-room yonder, where, day and night,
a watchman sits always alert and ready to spring to the aid of any
of that pallid company who, waking out of death, shall make a movement–
for any, even the slightest, movement will twitch the wire and ring
that fearful bell. I imagined myself a death-sentinel drowsing
there alone, far in the dragging watches of some wailing, gusty night,
and having in a twinkling all my body stricken to quivering jelly by
the sudden clamor of that awful summons! So I inquired about this thing;
asked what resulted usually? if the watchman died, and the restored
corpse came and did what it could to make his last moments easy.
But I was rebuked for trying to feed an idle and frivolous curiosity
in so solemn and so mournful a place; and went my way with
a humbled crest.
Next morning I was telling the widow my adventure, when she exclaimed–
‘Come with me! I have a lodger who shall tell you all you want to know.
He has been a night-watchman there.’
He was a living man, but he did not look it. He was abed, and had
his head propped high on pillows; his face was wasted and colorless,
his deep-sunken eyes were shut; his hand, lying on his breast,
was talon-like, it was so bony and long-fingered. The widow
began her introduction of me. The man’s eyes opened slowly,
and glittered wickedly out from the twilight of their caverns;
he frowned a black frown; he lifted his lean hand and waved us
peremptorily away. But the widow kept straight on, till she
had got out the fact that I was a stranger and an American.
The man’s face changed at once; brightened, became even eager–
and the next moment he and I were alone together.
I opened up in cast-iron German; he responded in quite flexible English;
thereafter we gave the German language a permanent rest.
This consumptive and I became good friends. I visited him every day, and we
talked about everything. At least, about everything but wives and children.
Let anybody’s wife or anybody’s child be mentioned, and three things
always followed: the most gracious and loving and tender light glimmered
in the man’s eyes for a moment; faded out the next, and in its place came
that deadly look which had flamed there the first time I ever saw his
lids unclose; thirdly, he ceased from speech, there and then for that day;
lay silent, abstracted, and absorbed; apparently heard nothing that I said;
took no notice of my good-byes, and plainly did not know, by either sight
or hearing, when I left the room.
When I had been this Karl Ritter’s daily and sole intimate during two months,
he one day said, abruptly–
‘I will tell you my story.’
A DYING MAN S CONFESSION
Then he went on as follows:–
I have never given up, until now. But now I have given up.
I am going to die. I made up my mind last night that it
must be, and very soon, too. You say you are going to
revisit your river, by-and-bye, when you find opportunity.
Very well; that, together with a certain strange experience
Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205