Steppenwolf (15 page)

‘That’s very sweet of you, but don’t you see, a promise is a promise. I’ve agreed to go and I’m going. Don’t you go to any more trouble. Come on, have a bit more to drink, there’s still some wine left in the bottle. Drink it up, then go home like a good boy and get some sleep. Promise me you will.’

‘No, dear. I can’t go home, I just can’t.’

‘Oh you and your stories! Have you still not got that man Goethe out of your system?’ (It was at this juncture that I remembered my Goethe dream.) ‘But if you really can’t go home, stay the night here, they have rooms to let. Shall I ask about one for you?’

Happy with this arrangement, I asked her where we could
meet each other again. Where did she live? She didn’t tell me. I only needed to search a little, she said, and I would find her all right.

‘Can’t I invite you out somewhere?’

‘Where?’

‘Anywhere you like, anytime you like.’

‘All right. Tuesday, for dinner in the Old Franciscan, first floor. Goodbye.’

She held out her hand. Only now did I notice it. It was a hand that matched her voice perfectly, beautiful and fully rounded, shrewd and kind. When I kissed it she gave a mocking laugh.

And at the last moment, turning round to me again, she said: ‘To go back to that Goethe story of yours, there’s one more thing you ought to know. You see, what you felt, not being able to stand that picture of him, is exactly what I sometimes feel about the saints.’

‘The saints? Are you so religious?’

‘No, I’m not religious, sadly, but I was once and will be again one day. Being religious takes time, and of course that’s something nobody has enough of nowadays.’

‘Enough time? Does it really require time?’

‘Yes, of course. To be religious you need time. You even need something more. You need to be independent of time. You can’t be seriously religious while living in the real world and, what’s more, taking the things of the real world seriously – time, money, the Odeon Bar and all that.’

‘I see. But what is it that you feel about the saints?’

‘Well, there are quite a few saints that I’m particularly fond of: St Stephen, St Francis and some others. Occasionally I see pictures of them or of Our Saviour and the Virgin Mary, such fake, dishonest travesties that I can’t stand them any more than you could stand that picture of Goethe. Whenever I notice some such stupid sentimental Saviour or St Francis and see that other
people find pictures of this sort beautiful and uplifting it strikes me as an insult to the real Saviour and I ask myself why, oh why did he live and suffer so terribly if all it takes to satisfy people is a stupid picture like that! Yet, in spite of this, I know that my own image of Our Saviour or of St Francis is merely a human image too, one that falls short of the original. If he could see the image I have of him in my mind, Our Saviour would find it just as stupid and inadequate as I do those sickly, sentimental
portrayals. That’s not to say that you are right to be so depressed and furious about the Goethe picture, not at all: you are wrong. All I’m saying is that I can understand you. You scholars and artists may well have your minds full of outlandish things, but you are just as human as the rest of us. We others have our dreams and fancies too. You see, learned Sir, I couldn’t help notice that you were slightly embarrassed when it came to telling me your Goethe story. To explain your grand ideas to a simple lass like me, you had to make a great effort, didn’t you? Well now, I’d just like you to know that you needn’t go to such lengths. I do understand, believe me. There, and now we must stop. Bed’s the place for you.’

She left, and an aged servant took me up two flights of stairs, or rather, having first asked about my luggage, on hearing that I hadn’t any, made me pay in advance what he called ‘bed money’. Then he led me up an old dark staircase into a bedroom and left me there alone. There was a plain wooden bed, very short and hard. On the wall hung a sabre, a coloured portrait of Garibaldi and also a withered wreath, left over from the festive gathering of some club or other. I would have given anything for a nightshirt. At least there was water and a small towel, so I was able to wash. Then, leaving the light on, I lay down fully clothed on the bed with ample time to think. Well, I had now set the record straight with Goethe. How marvellous it had been, his appearance in my dream! And this wonderful girl – if only I’d known
her name! All at once a human being, a live human being, shattering the
clouded glass cloche that covered my corpse-like existence and holding out her hand to me, her beautiful, kind, warm hand! All at once things that mattered to me again, things I could take joy in, worry about, eagerly anticipate! All at once an open door through which life could get in to me. Perhaps I could start to live again, perhaps I could again become a human being. My soul, having almost frozen to death in hibernation, was breathing again, drowsily flapping its small, frail wings. Goethe had been in my presence. A girl had ordered me to eat, drink and sleep, had been kind to me, had made fun of me, calling me a silly little boy. She had also, this wonderful girlfriend, told me about the saints, shown me that even with regard to my most eccentric and outlandish preoccupations I was by no means alone and misunderstood. I was not a pathologically exceptional case, but had brothers and sisters. People could understand me. Would I see her again, I wondered? Yes,
certainly, she could be relied on. ‘A promise is a promise.’

And before I knew it I was asleep again, went on sleeping for four or five hours. It was gone ten o’clock when I woke, feeling battered and weary. My clothes were all crumpled; and the memory of something horrible from the previous day was going around in my head. Yet I was alive, full of hope, full of good thoughts. On returning to my flat I felt none of the terrible dread that such a homecoming had held for me the day before.

On the staircase, above the araucaria plant, I bumped into the ‘aunt’, my landlady. Although I seldom set eyes on her, I was very fond of the kind soul. I was not best pleased to encounter her now, though. After all, I was bleary-eyed and a bit dishevelled; my hair was unkempt and I hadn’t shaved. I wished her good morning and was on the point of going by. As a rule, she always respected my desire to remain alone and unnoticed, but today it really did seem that between me and the people around me a veil
had been torn apart, or a barrier had fallen, for she stopped and laughed.

‘You’ve been gadding about, Herr Haller. I don’t suppose you got to bed at all last night. You must be feeling pretty weary!’

‘Yes,’ I said, and couldn’t help laughing myself. ‘Things got a bit lively last night and since I didn’t want to lower the tone of your home I slept the night in a hotel. I hold the tranquillity and respectability of this place you inhabit in such high esteem that I sometimes feel very much like a foreign body in it.’

‘Don’t mock, Herr Haller.’

‘Oh, I was only mocking myself.’

‘That’s just the thing you oughtn’t to do. I won’t have you feeling like a “foreign body” in my home. I want you to live as you please, get up to anything you like. I’ve had any number of very, very respectable lodgers in my time, gems of respectability, but none was quieter or less of a disturbance to us than you are. Now then, how about a cup of tea?’

I didn’t say no. I was served tea in her lounge with its beautiful pictures and furniture, venerable objects of a past age. As we chatted a little, the kind woman, without actually asking, got to know this and that about my life and my ideas. She listened to me with that mixture of respect and motherly reluctance to take one wholly seriously that intelligent women reserve for the eccentricities of men. There was also talk of her nephew. In one of the adjoining rooms she showed me the latest thing he had been constructing in his spare time, a wireless set. The industrious young man, utterly fascinated by the idea of wireless communication, sat there of an evening, painstakingly assembling a machine of that sort; going down on his knees to worship the god of technology, the deity who after thousands of years has finally managed to discover and – in a highly imperfect manner – portray things that every serious thinker has
always known about and put to more intelligent use. We talked about this since
the aunt, who was a little bit religiously inclined, was not averse to discussing such matters. I told her that the ancient Indians had been fully cognisant of the omnipresence of all forces and actions. Technology had merely managed to make people in general aware of a fraction of this truth by constructing, as far as sound waves were concerned, an as yet terribly imperfect receiver and transmitter. However, the principal insight of that ancient body of knowledge, the fact that time was unreal, had so far escaped the notice of technicians. Of course, it too would eventually be ‘discovered’ and engineers would put their eager fingers to work on the problem. They would, perhaps very soon, discover that we are not only constantly surrounded by a flood of current, present-day images and happenings – in the way that now makes it possible to hear music from Paris or
Berlin in Frankfurt or Zurich – but that everything that has ever happened is recorded and available in precisely the same way. With or without wires, with or without interfering noises off, we would one day no doubt be able to hear King Solomon or Walther von der Vogelweide speaking.
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And, just like the beginnings of radio today, all this would, I said, only serve to make human beings surround themselves with an ever-more dense network of distraction and pointlessly fevered activity, thus deserting their true selves and destiny. However, rather than holding forth on these familiar topics in my usual embittered tone of voice, full of scorn for modern times and technology, I spoke in a playful, joking manner. The aunt smiled, and we sat for what must have been an hour together, contentedly drinking tea.

Having arranged to take the remarkable, beautiful girl from the Black Eagle out on Tuesday evening, I had considerable difficulty killing the time in between. And by the time Tuesday finally arrived it had become frighteningly clear to me just how important
my relationship with the unknown girl was. Without being the least bit in love with her, I nonetheless thought of nothing but her, expected everything of her, was willing to sacrifice everything for her and lay it at her feet. I only needed to imagine her breaking our date, or possibly forgetting it, in order to realize what a state that would leave me in. The world would be empty again, one day as grey and worthless as the next. Again I would be surrounded by that whole terribly still, death-like atmosphere from which there was no escape except by cutting my own throat. And the last few days had done nothing to make this way out more appealing. The razor had
lost none of its dread for me. This was precisely what I found so abhorrent: the fact that I was profoundly, agonizingly afraid of cutting my own throat, dreaded the thought of dying with a force just as wild, tenacious, self-protective and obstinate as if I had been the healthiest of human beings and my life a paradise. Fully aware of my state of mind, I recognized with merciless clarity that what made the pretty little dancer from the Black Eagle so important was this intolerable tension between my inability to go on living and my inability to die. She was the tiny little window, the minute chink of light in the dark cave of my fear. She was my salvation, my one way out into the open air. She had to teach me how to live or teach me how to die. With her firm and pretty hand she had to touch my frozen heart and by such vital contact either make it spring to life again or reduce it to ashes. How she had come by such powers, where she had acquired her ability to work magic,
what the mysterious reasons were for her having become so profoundly important to me – these were all imponderables. Not that it mattered, for I had no desire to know. I no longer had the slightest desire for any kind of knowledge or insight. After all, that was precisely what I’d had my fill of. The very fact that I could see my own state of mind clearly and was conscious of it to such a degree was what was causing me the most acute and ignominious torment and shame.
I could see this chap, this Steppenwolf creature, before my eyes like a fly caught in a spider’s web. I watched him moving closer to the point where his fate would be decided, watched him hanging there entangled and defenceless, the spider ready to close its jaws around him, but a rescuing hand seemingly just as near. I would have been capable of making the most intelligent and discerning observations about the circumstances and causes of my suffering, my mental ailment, my
bedevilment and neurosis. Their mechanisms were quite transparent to me. However, knowledge and understanding were not what I needed. Instead, what I was desperately longing for was experience, decisive action, the cut and thrust of life.

Although I never once during those few days of waiting doubted that my friend would keep her word, I was nevertheless very agitated and uncertain on the day itself. Never in my whole life have I waited more impatiently for evening to arrive than on that day. And, while my impatience and the tension within me became almost unbearable, at the same time they did me a power of good. For someone like me, accustomed to leading such a sober life, for a long time now never having anything to wait for or look forward to, it was an unimaginably new and beautiful experience. To spend this whole day in a state of utter restlessness, anxiety and eager anticipation; rushing to and fro, picturing to myself in advance our encounter, our conversations and whatever else the evening together might bring; shaving and dressing for it (taking particular care over this with new shirt, new tie, new shoelaces) – all this was wonderful. What did I care who
this shrewd and mysterious girl was or how she had managed to get involved with me? It didn’t matter. She existed. A miracle had happened. I had once again found a human being and a new interest in living. All that mattered was to keep the relationship going, to surrender to this magnetic attraction, to follow this star.

What an unforgettable moment when I saw her again! Sitting
at a small table in the old, comfortably appointed restaurant, having needlessly booked in advance by phone, I was studying the menu. In the water jug in front of me were two beautiful orchids that I had bought for her. Though I had to wait quite a while for her I felt sure she would come and was no longer agitated. And now she did come, pausing at the coat stand and merely casting an attentive, somewhat quizzical look of her light-grey eyes at me by way of a greeting. Suspicious, I checked carefully on the waiter’s behaviour towards her. Not a trace of familiarity, thank goodness. No, maintaining just the right degree of aloofness, he was politeness itself. And yet they knew each other; she addressed him as Emil.