Authors: Hermann Hesse
Gertrude (23 page)
When we stood beside his grave, I saw a tall, attractive woman with a tear-stained face, who held roses in her hand and stood alone, and when I looked across at her curiously, I saw that it was Lottie. She nodded to me and smiled. But Gertrude had not wept; she looked straight ahead of her, attentively and steadfast, in the light rain scattered about by the wind, and held herself like a young tree supported by firm roots. But it was only self-restraint; two days later, when she was unpacking Muoth's flowers, which had meantime arrived at her house, she broke down and we did not see her for a long time.
Chapter Nine
M
Y GRIEF, TOO
, only came to the fore later and, as is always the case, I thought of numerous instances when I had been unjust to my dead friend. Well, he had inflicted the worst things upon himself, and not only his death. I meditated for a long time about these things and could not find anything vague or incomprehensible about his fate, and yet it was all horrible and a mockery. It was no different with my own life, with Gertrude's, and that of many others. Fate was not kind, life was capricious and terrible, and there was no good or reason in nature. But there is good and reason in us, in human beings, with whom fortune plays, and we can be stronger than nature and fate, if only for a few hours. And we can draw close to one another in times of need, understand and love one another, and live to comfort each other.
And sometimes, when the black depths are silent, we can do even more. We can then be gods for moments, stretch out a commanding hand and create things which were not there before and which, when they are created, continue to live without us. Out of sounds, words and other frail and worthless things, we can construct playthingsâsongs and poems full of meaning, consolation and goodness, more beautiful and enduring than the grim sport of fortune and destiny. We can keep the spirit of God in our hearts and, at times, when we are full of him, he can appear in our eyes and our words, and also talk to others who do not know or do not wish to know him. We cannot evade life's course, but we can school ourselves to be superior to fortune and also to look unflinchingly upon the most painful things.
So during the years that have passed since Heinrich Muoth's death I have brought him to life again a thousand times, and have been able to talk to him more wisely and affectionately than I did when he was alive. And as time passed, my old mother died, and also pretty Brigitte Teiser, who, after years of waiting and giving the wound time to heal, married a musician and did not outlive her first confinement.
Gertrude has overcome the pain she suffered when she received our flowers as a greeting and plea from the dead. I do not often speak to her about it although I see her every day, but I believe that she looks back on the springtime of her life as on a distant valley seen during a journey a long time ago, and not a lost garden of Eden. She has regained her strength and serenity and also sings again, but since that cold kiss on the dead man's lips, she has never kissed another man. Once or twice, during the course of the years, when her spirit had recovered and her being radiated the old charm, my thoughts traveled along the old forbidden paths and I asked myself: why not? But I already knew the answer, that no change could be made in our relationship with each other. She is my friend, and after lonely, restless periods, when I emerge from my silence with a song or a sonata, it belongs first and foremost to us both.
Muoth was right. On growing old, one becomes more contented than in one's youth, which I will not therefore revile, for in all my dreams I hear my youth like a wonderful song which now sounds more harmonious than it did in reality, and even sweeter.
Books by Hermann Hesse
PETER CAMENZIND
BENEATH THE WHEEL
GERTRUDE
ROSSHALDE
KNULP
DEMIAN
STRANGE NEWS FROM ANOTHER STAR
KLINGSOR'S LAST SUMMER
WANDERING
SIDDHARTHA
STEPPENWOLF
NARCISSUS AND GOLDMUND
THE JOURNEY TO THE EAST
THE GLASS BEAD GAME
IF THE WAR GOES ON â¦
POEMS
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WRITINGS
STORIES OF FIVE DECADES
MY BELIEF
REFLECTIONS
CRISIS
TALES OF STUDENT LIFE
HOURS IN THE GARDEN
PICTOR'S METAMORPHOSES
SOUL OF THE AGE: SELECTED LETTERS OF HERMANN HESSE
GERTRUDE
. Copyright © 1955 by Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin. Revised translation copyright © 1969 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc., copyright renewed 1997. All rights reserved. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 69-13738
ISBN 0-312-42463-9
EAN 978-0-312-42463-3
First published in Germany by S. Fischer Verlag as
Gertrud
First published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
eISBN 9781466835078
First eBook edition: December 2012
