Debts of Honor | Page 5

know what that is; and no one would wish to learn from
me. Only an old serving-maid was in the chamber; no one else was
watching. My brother pressed my head to his bosom. And so we stood
there a long time.
Suddenly my brother told me to kiss my father's hand, and then we
must go. I obeyed him; he raised the edge of the winding-sheet; I saw
two wax-like hands put together; two hands in which I could not have
recognized those strong muscular hands, upon the shapely fingers of
which in my younger days I had so often played with the wonderful

signet-rings, drawing them off one after the other.
I kissed both hands. It was such a pleasure! Then I looked at my brother
with agonized pleading. I longed so to kiss the face. He understood my
look and drew me away.
"Come with me. Don't let us remain longer." And that was such terrible
agony to me! My brother told me to wait in my room, and not to move
from it until he had ordered the carriage which was to take us away.
"Whither?" I asked.
"Away to the country. Remain here and don't go anywhere else." And
to keep me secure he locked the door upon me.
Then I fell a-thinking. Why should we go to the country now that our
father was lying dead? Why must I remain meanwhile in that room?
Why do none of our acquaintances come to see us? Why do those who
go about the house whisper so quietly? Why do they not toll the bell
when so great a one lies dead in the house?
All this distracted my brain entirely. To nothing could I give myself an
answer, and no one came to me from whom I could have demanded the
truth.
Once, not long after (to me it seemed an age, though, if the truth be
known, it was probably only a half-hour or so), I heard the old
serving-maid, who had been watching in yonder chamber, tripping past
the corridor window. Evidently some one else had taken her place.
Her face was now as indifferent as it always was. Her eyes were cried
out; but I am sure I had seen her weep every day, whether in good or in
bad humor; it was all one with her. I addressed her through the
window:
"Aunt Susie, come here."
"What do you want, dear little Desi?"

"Susie, tell me truly, why am I not allowed to kiss my father's face?"
The old servant shrugged her shoulders, and with cynical indifference
replied:
"Poor little fool. Why, because--because he has no head, poor fellow."
I did not dare to tell my brother on his return what I had heard from old
Susie.
I told him it was the cold air, when he asked why I trembled so.
Thereupon he merely put my overcoat on, and said, "Let us go to the
carriage."
I asked him if our grandmother was not coming with us. He replied that
she would remain behind. We two took our seats in one carriage; a
second was waiting before the door.
To me the whole incident seemed as a dream. The rainy, gloomy
weather, the houses that flew past us, the people who looked
wonderingly out of the windows, the one or two familiar faces that
passed us by, and in their astonished gaze upon us forgot to greet us. It
was as if each one of them asked himself: "Why has the father of these
boys no head?" Then the long poplar-trees at the end of the town, so
bent by the wind as if they were bowing their heads under the weight of
some heavy thought; and the murmuring waves under the bridge,
across which we went, murmuring as if they too were taking counsel
over some deep secret, which had so oft been intrusted to them, and
which as yet no one had discovered--why was it that some dead people
had no heads? Something prompted me so, to turn with this awful
question to my brother. I overcame the demon, and did not ask him.
Often children, who hold pointed knives before their eyes, or look
down from a high bridge into the water, are told, "Beware, or the devil
will push you." Such was my feeling in relation to this question. In my
hand was the handle, the point was in my heart. I was sitting upon the
brim, and gazing down into the whirlpool. Something called upon me
to thrust myself into the living reality, to lose my head in it. And yet I

was able to restrain myself. During the whole journey neither my
brother nor I spoke a word.
When we arrived at our country-house our physician met us,