Five Women by Robert Musil

in this struggle with death strength and health came flowing back into his limbs, as though returning into his body from some place outside him. And then the impossible was indeed accomplished. There was one overhanging ledge that had to be circumvented, and then his arm was thrust in through an open window. Doubtless there was no other place where he could have arrived but at this very window, yet it was only now that he knew where he was. He swung himself in, sat on the sill and let his legs dangle inside the room. With his strength his ferocity had also returned. He waited until he had regained his breath. No, he had not lost the dagger from his side. It seemed to him that the bed was empty. But he went on waiting until his heart and lungs were quite calm again. And more and more distinctly it seemed to him that he was alone in the room. He crept towards the bed: nobody had slept in it this night.
    Herr von Ketten tiptoed through rooms, corridors, and doorways that no one else would have found at once without guidance—until he came to his wife's bed-chamber. Listening, he waited. There was no sound of whispering. He glided in. The lady from Portugal was breathing quietly in her sleep. He searched dark corners and fumbled along walls and, when he stealthily left the room again, he could almost have sung for joy, joy that shook the very fabric of his unbelief.
    He roved through the castle, but now floorboards and flagstones echoed with his tread, as though he were in search of some joyful surprise. In the yard a serving-man called out to him, demanding to know who he was. He asked for the visitor and learned that he had ridden away at the rising of the moon. Herr von Ketten sat down on a pile of rough-hewn timber, and the watchman marvelled at how long he sat there.
    All at once he was seized by the certainty that if he were to return to the Portuguese lady's chamber, she would no longer be there. He thundered on the door and went in. His young wife started up as though in her dreams she had been waiting for this, and she saw him standing before her fully dressed, just as he had gone out that evening. Nothing had been proved, nothing had been disposed of, but she asked no question, and there was nothing that he could ask. He pulled aside the heavy curtain hanging before the window, and beyond it there rose the curtain of torrential thunder behind which all the seigniors delle Catene were born and died.
    "If God could become man, then He can also become a kitten," the lady from Portugal said.
    And perhaps he should have laid his hand upon her mouth to hush this blasphemy, but they both knew that no sound of it could penetrate beyond these walls.
     
     

Tonka
     
    I
     
    At a hedge. A bird was singing. And then the sun was somewhere down behind the bushes. The bird stopped singing. It was evening, and the peasant girls were coming across the fields, singing. What little things! Is it petty if such little things cling to a person? Like burrs? That was Tonka. Infinity sometimes flows in drips and drops.
    And the horse was part of it too, the roan that he had tied to a willow. It was during his year of military service. It was no mere chance that it was in that year, for there is no other time of life when a man is so deprived of himself and his own works, and an alien force strips everything from his bones. One is more vulnerable at this time than at any other.
    But had it really been like that at all? No, that was only what he had worked it up into later. That was the fairy-tale, and he could no longer tell the difference. In fact, of course, she had been living with her aunt at the time when he got to know her. And Cousin Julie sometimes came visiting. That was how it had been. He remembered being disconcerted by their sitting down at the same table with Cousin Julie over a cup of coffee, for she was, after all, a disgrace to the family. It was notorious that one could strike up a conversation with Cousin Julie and take her