The Comedienne Part 61

The consecrated candle shed a yellowish light upon her face impearled with the sweat of her last struggle and death agony. Her gray hair, scattered in a disheveled ma.s.s upon the pillow, formed a sort of background upon which appeared in sharper relief her withered head, shaking with the unconscious and frightful convulsions of death. She breathed heavily and slowly and gasped with effort, catching the air with her pale lips. At moments her face would writhe and her mouth twitch with a dreadful spasm of pain and she would raise her hands as though she wanted to tear apart her throat to get more air. Her white and fever-coated tongue slipped spasmodically from her mouth and so tense did her body become in the struggle with death that the veins stood out like black whip cords on; her temples and throat.

The silence was full of weeping and sobbing of those kneeling about and the awful groans of the dying woman. Feverishly whispered prayers, tear-streaming eyes, the sobbing of the servant and the children filled the room with an atmosphere of dreadful and overwhelming tragedy. The dark shadows at the farther end of the room trembled as though engulfing it all. The candles diffused a yellowish, ghastly light that seemed to steep everything in boundless grief.

The room filled up completely with kneeling people and only she, who lay there rigid, unconscious, and dying, reigned from the throne of death over that bowed throng begging for mercy.

An old man with silvery gray hair made his way to the bed, knelt down, took a prayer book from his pocket and, by the light of the candle, began to read the Penitential Psalms. He had a clear and melodious voice and the words of the psalms, like a murmuring rainbow, or like flashes of lightning full of terror, tears, might, and heavenly grace, floated above the heads of all those present:

"Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am weak; O Lord, heal me, for my bones are vexed."

"Thou art my hiding place; Thou shalt preserve me from trouble . . ."

"Many sorrows shall be to the wicked, but he that trusteth in the Lord, mercy shall compa.s.s him about."

"My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my sore and my kinsmen stand afar off."

"They also that seek after my life lay snares for me; and they that seek for my hurt speak mischievous things and imagine deceits all day long."

The words rang out ever stronger and eddied through the air like the breath of a mighty power that bent low all foreheads and cast them down into the dust with tears of sorrow, penance, and supplication.

All those present repeated them after the old man and that confused, tearful and monotonous murmur of voices awoke Janina from her torpor. She felt that she was still alive, so she knelt down on the threshold of the room and with fever-parched lips whispered those sweet words long since forgotten, and drew from them a deep comfort full of sadness and tenderness.

"Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean; wash me and I shall be whiter than snow."

"Hide not thy face from me, lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit."

"And of thy mercy cut off mine enemies, and destroy all them that afflict my soul, for I am thy servant."

She repeated the words fervently and large tears rolled down her face, uniting with the tears of all the other mourners and purging her soul of all sorrows and memory of what had pa.s.sed. But after a while those tears began to stream so freely and stifle her so that Janina quietly arose and left the place.

On the street she met Wladek running toward the house in haste and fear. He stopped to ask her about his mother, but she went on without even glancing at him.

Almost all feelings were dead within Janina, save that of a deathly weariness. She entered the lighted Church of St. Ann on the Cracow Suburb and, seating herself in one of the pews, gazed at the illuminated altar and the throng of kneeling worshipers. She heard the solemn tones of the organ and a wave of song rising above it.

She saw looking at her from the walls and the altars the peaceful and happy faces of saints, but all this did not awaken a single emotion in her.

"Thou wilt cut off mine enemies and destroy all them that afflict my soul. Thou wilt destroy them . . ." Janina repeated mechanically and left the church. No, no, she could not pray she could not.

Janina slept after all this with a deep, stony sleep that was free from dreams.

On the following day Cabinski gave her a big role that used to be Mimi's. Janina accepted it with indifference. With the same indifference she went to Niedzielska's funeral. She walked at the end of the procession unnoticed by anyone and gazed indifferently at the thousands of graves in the cemetery and at the coffin and not a scintilla of feeling stirred in her even at the sound of the sobbing over the grave. Something had broken within her and she had lost all ability to feel what was going on about her.

In the evening Janina went to the theater for the performance. She dressed as usual and sat thoughtlessly gazing at the rows of candles pasted to the tables, at the scribbled walls and at the rows of actresses sitting before their mirrors.

Sowinska continually hung about the dressing-room and observed her curiously.

Her companions spoke to Janina, but she did not answer them. Every now and then, she fell into a state of torpor in which one beholds without seeing anything and lives without feeling, while deep within, at the very bottom of her consciousness, there was reflected the image of that dying woman and there swarmed and hissed those stinging and scornful whispers of her neighbors, mixed with the words of the Penitential Psalms.

Suddenly, a tremor ran through Janina, for a voice reached her from the stage which sounded like Grzesikiewicz's; so she arose and went out.

Wladek was standing on the stage, engaged in a lively conversation with Majkowska, whose naked shoulders he was kissing.

Janina paused behind one of the scenes, for some feeling without a name pa.s.sed through her heart, like the sharp, cold edge of a dagger, but was swiftly gone again, awakening in her a certain knowledge.

"Mr. Niedzielski!" she called.

The actor threw back his shoulders, while across his clean-shaven face there pa.s.sed a shadow of impatience and boredom. He whispered yet a few words into the ear of Mela, who smiled and departed, and then, without trying to disguise his ill humor, he approached Janina.

"Did you want anything?" he asked irascibly.

"Yes . . ."

In the despondency that filled her at that moment Janina wanted to tell him that she was unhappy and ill. She longed to hear a warm word of sympathy and felt an irresistible need of telling her troubles to someone and of weeping on some friendly breast, but on hearing the sharp tone of Wladek's voice, she suddenly remembered how much she had suffered through him and how base he was, so she suppressed those desires within herself.

"Are we going to play to-day?" she asked.

"We are. There are about a hundred rubles in the treasury."

"Ask them for some money for me."

"What do you think! Do you want me to make a fool of myself?

Moreover, I'm going right home."

Janina glanced at him and said in a quiet, expressionless voice: "Take me home, for I feel so very miserable."

"I have no time, I must immediately run to my own home, for already they are all waiting for me there."

"Oh, how base you are! How base you are!" she whispered.

Wladek recoiled a few steps, not knowing whether he should smile, or pretend to be offended.

"Are you saying that to me, to me?" he asked. He did not dare to swear, for that girl with her proud face and glance of a lady imposed respect upon him and thrust back into his throat, as it were, the brutalities that he wanted to hurl at her.

"To you!" Janina answered. "You are base! You are the basest person in the world . . . do you hear! . . . the basest!"

"Janina!" he cried endearingly, as though he wanted to shield himself thereby from her accusation.

"I forbid you to address me in that manner, it insults me!"

"Have you gone crazy, or what has happened to you? What sort of farce do you call that!" he choked out in anger.

"I have found out what you are and I scorn you with my whole soul."

"Whew! So that is the kind of pathetic role you have chosen to play?

Are you preparing it for your debut at the Warsaw Theater?"

Janina answered him only with a look of scorn and walked away.

Sowinska came up to her and with a mysterious and cruel pity in her voice whispered: "It isn't good for you to get so irritated and also, you ought not lace yourself so tightly."

"Why?"