The Sleepwalkers (55 page)

Thus Gödicke of the Landwehr lay in his bed on rubber air-cushions, and while it was impossible to nurse his battered body, while food was slowly injected in minute doses, his soul collected itself; to the
bewilderment of Doctor Kühlenbeck, the Senior Medical Officer, to the bewilderment of Doctor Flurschütz, to the bewilderment of Sister Carla, his soul collected itself with agony around the core of his ego.

Huguenau woke up early. He was an energetic man. A decent bedroom; no garret such as he had had with the priest; a good bed. Huguenau scratched his leg. Then he tried to find his bearings.

A hotel; the market-place; and the Town Hall was facing him.

There were really many inducements for him to go back and take up the threads of his life again in the place where they had been dropped; there were many reasons why he should do his duty as a business man and pick up easy money as an agent for butter and textiles. Yet the very idea of casks of butter and sacks of coffee and bales of textiles was so repugnant to him that he was himself surprised,—and the repugnance was really a matter for surprise to a man who since his boyhood had thought and spoken of nothing but money and trading. And the thought of being on holiday from school came up again most amazingly. Huguenau found it pleasanter to meditate on the town he happened to be in.

Behind the town were the vineyards. And in many of them were weeds. The owner had probably been killed in the war or was a prisoner. His wife could not manage the work alone, or was running round with another man. Besides, the price of wine was controlled by the State. Unless one could sell wine on the sly it wasn’t worth while to tend the vineyard. But the wines were of fine quality; they actually went a little to one’s head.

A war widow like that would really be glad to sell her vineyard cheap.

Huguenau began to think of possible buyers for stocks of Moselle. One should be able to find them. One could make a good bit of commission on the deal. Wine-shippers were the people. Friedrichs’ in Cologne, Matter & Co. in Frankfort. He had delivered pipes of wine to them before.

He jumped out of bed. His plan was made.

He tidied himself before the looking-glass. Combed his hair back. It had grown long since the company’s barber had shaved it. Now when had that been? It seemed to be in a former life; if it weren’t that hair
grew slowly in winter he would have had a fine mane. When a man is dead his hair and nails go on growing. Huguenau took a strand of his hair and pulled it down over his forehead. It reached almost to the point of his nose. No, a man couldn’t go about in that state. One always had one’s hair cut just before a holiday. True, this wasn’t a holiday. But it wasn’t so very unlike one.

The morning was bright. A little chilly.

There were two yellow armchairs with black-leather seats in the barber’s shop. The barber himself, a shaky old man, tied the not-very-clean overall round Huguenau’s neck, and tucked a roll of paper into his collar. Huguenau moved his chin a little to and fro; the paper rasped him.

There was a newspaper hanging on a hook and Huguenau asked for it. It was the local
Kur-Trier Herald
, with a supplement on “Farming and Viniculture in the Moselle District.” That was exactly what he needed.

He sat motionless, studying the paper, and then he looked at himself in the glass; he could easily have passed for one of the more solid citizens in the place. His hair was now cut as he liked it, short, respectable, and German. On top of his head a few strands of longer hair were left to make a parting. The next thing was to be shaved.

The barber whipped up a thin lather that spread cold and sparingly over Huguenau’s face. The soap was no good.

“The soap’s not up to much,” said Huguenau. The barber made no reply, but stropped his razor. Huguenau was offended, but after a while said excusingly: “War goods.”

The barber began to shave. With short, scraping strokes. He did it badly. Still, it was pleasant to be shaved. Shaving oneself was one of the conditions of war. Cheaper, too; but for once in a while it was pleasant to have it done for one. More like a holiday. There was a picture of a girl hanging on the wall with a lavish display of bosom, and beneath her were the words “Lotion Houbigant.” Huguenau had laid back his head and let the paper hang in his idle hands. The barber was now shaving his chin and throat; was he never going to finish? Well, Huguenau didn’t care; he had plenty of time. And to put off time a little longer he ordered a “Lotion Houbigant.” What he got was eau-de-Cologne.

Freshly shaved, a clean-shaven spruce man with the scent of eau-de-Cologne
in his nose, Huguenau walked back to the inn. When he took off his hat he sniffed at the lining. It smelt of pomade, and that too was satisfactory.

There was no one in the dining-room. Huguenau got his coffee and the maid brought out a bread-card from which she snipped a portion. There was no butter, only a blackish syrupy kind of jam. Nor was the coffee real coffee, and while he sipped the hot liquid Huguenau reckoned up how much profit the manufacturers were making on their coffee-substitute; he reckoned it up without envy and approved it. In any case buying wine cheap in the Moselle district was just as profitable a venture, an excellent investment. And when he had finished his breakfast he set about drawing up an advertisement offering to buy wines of good quality. Then he took it along to the office of the
Kur-Trier Herald.

The District Hospital had become entirely a military hospital. Dr Friedrich Flurschütz was making his round of the wards. He was wearing a military cap with his doctor’s white overall; a combination which Lieutenant Jaretzki characterized as absurd.

Jaretzki had been put into Officers’ Room III. That had been pure chance, for these double-bedded rooms were supposed to be reserved for Staff Officers, but once he was in he stayed there. He was sitting on the edge of his bed with a cigarette in his mouth when Flurschütz came in, and his arm in its unwrapped bandage was lying on the bedside table.

“Well, how are we, Jaretzki?”

Jaretzki indicated his arm:

“The Surgeon-Major’s just been in.”

Flurschütz looked at the arm and touched it cautiously here and there:

“A bad business … gone a bit further?”

“Yes, an inch or so … the old man wants to amputate.”

The arm lay there inflamed and reddish, the palm of the hand swollen, the fingers like red sausages, and round the wrist a ring of purulent blisters.

Jaretzki regarded his arm and said:

“Poor thing, look at it lying there.”

“Don’t worry about it, it’s only the left.”

“Yes, all you want to do is to cut things off.”

Flurschütz shrugged his shoulders:

“Can’t be helped; this century has been devoted to surgery and rewarded by a world-war with guns … now we’re beginning to find out about glands, and by the time the next war comes along we’ll be able to do wonders with these damned gas-poisonings … but for the present the only thing we can do is cut.”

Jaretzki said:

“The next war? Don’t tell me you believe that this one’s ever going to come to an end.”

“I don’t need to be a prophet to do that, Jaretzki, the Russians have given it up already.”

Jaretzki laughed bitterly:

“God preserve you in your childish faith and send us decent cigarettes.…”

With his sound right hand he had drawn a packet of cigarettes from the open shelf under the drawer of the table and now offered it to Flurschütz.

Flurschütz pointed to the ash-tray full of cigarette-butts:

“You shouldn’t smoke so much.…”

Sister Mathilde came in.

“Well, do we bind it up again … what’s your opinion, Doctor?”

Sister Mathilde was looking well. She had freckles on her forehead. Flurschütz said:

“It’s a bad business, this gas.”

He stayed to watch the Sister binding up the arm and then he went on his rounds again. At both ends of the broad corridor the windows were wide open, but no current of air could blow away the hospital smell.

The house lay in Fischerstrasse, one of the side-streets leading down to the river, a timbered edifice in which, it was obvious, all sorts of handicrafts had been carried on for centuries. Beside the door there was a black battered tin plate with the words in faded gold-lettering:
“Kur-Trier Herald
, Editorial and Business Office (in the courtyard).”

Penetrating through the narrow passage-like entry, where in the darkness he stumbled over the trap-door leading down to the cellar, and passing an opening that gave on the stairs leading to the dwelling-house, Huguenau found himself in an unexpectedly spacious courtyard shaped somewhat like a horseshoe. A garden adjoined the courtyard; there a few cherry-trees were in blossom, and beyond the garden one’s gaze was lost in the lovely mountain country.

The whole place witnessed to the semi-peasant character of its former possessor. The two wings had certainly served as granaries and stables; the left one had two storeys, and there was a steep and narrow wooden ladder on the outer wall; probably the top floor had once been the servants’ quarters. The upper storey of the stable buildings on the right was a hayloft, and one of the stable doors had been displaced by a large business-like barred window, behind which a printing-press could be seen at work.

From the man at the printing-press Huguenau learned that Herr Esch was to be found on the first floor opposite.

So Huguenau climbed the wooden steps and found himself plump before a door with the inscription, “Editorial and Business Office,” behind which Herr Esch, owner and publisher of the
Kur-Trier Herald
, exercised his functions. He was a lean man with a clean-shaven face in which, between two long and deep furrows running down the cheeks, a mouth as mobile as an actor’s grimaced sarcastically, showing a set of strong yellowish teeth. He had something of the actor about him, something of the clergyman, and something of the horse.

The advertisement which Huguenau handed to him he scrutinized with the air of an examining magistrate considering a document. Huguenau took out his pocket-book, from which he extracted a five-mark note, as a hint, so to speak, that he was prepared to allot that sum for the insertion of the advertisement. But the other, paying not the least attention to this, asked abruptly: “So you’re out to exploit the people round about here, are you? I suppose the poverty of our winegrowers is common talk already—heh?”

It was an unprovoked attack, and Huguenau decided that its purpose was to force up the price for inserting the advertisement. He produced therefore another mark, but that merely had the opposite effect from what he had wished: “Thanks … you can keep your advertisement.… Evidently you don’t appreciate what it means to corrupt the Press
 … let me tell you, you won’t corrupt me with your six marks, nor with ten, nor with a hundred!”

Huguenau became more and more certain that he was dealing with a sharp business man. But simply for that reason it was imperative that he should not give way; perhaps the man was waiting for him to suggest going shares in the venture, and after all that arrangement would not be without its advantages.

“Hm, I’ve heard that these advertisement deals are sometimes made on a percentage basis—how about a half-per-cent commission on the results? Of course in that case you would have to insert the announcement three separate times at least … still, you’re quite at liberty to insert it oftener than that, when it’s a matter of generosity I impose no limits …” he risked a confidential laugh and sat down beside the rough kitchen table which served Herr Esch as a desk.

Esch paid no attention to him, but with a morose and suffering face walked from side to side of the room in a heavy awkward step which did not go with his lank appearance. The scrubbed floor creaked under his clumsy tread, and Huguenau contemplated the holes and loosened plaster between the two rooms, as well as Herr Esch’s heavy black shoes, which were fastened, instead of with laces, with queer thongs that reminded one of saddle-straps; over the tops of the shoes bulged an expanse of grey darned sock. Esch communed aloud with himself: “The vultures are hovering over those poor people already … but when you try to draw public attention to all the misery, you find yourself up against the censorship.”

Huguenau had crossed his legs. He regarded the things scattered on the table. An empty coffee-cup with brown stains, now dry, a bronze replica of the Statue of Liberty in New York (aha, a paper-weight), a paraffin lamp whose white wick behind the glass funnel reminded one distantly and dimly of a fœtus or a tapeworm preserved in spirits. Now Esch’s voice boomed from the opposite corner:

“The censorship people should be made to look at all the misery and the distress themselves … it’s to me that the people come … it would be simple treachery if …”

On a rickety shelf some manuscripts were lying, along with piles of newspapers tied together. Esch had resumed his prowling. In the middle of one of the walls, which were distempered in yellow, hung on a fortuitous nail a small faded picture in a black frame, “Badenweiler and
the Schlossberg”; probably it was an old picture postcard. Huguenau reflected that a picture or a bronze statuette like that would look very well in his office. But when he tried to recall to his memory that office, and what he had done in it, he was unsuccessful, it seemed so remote and strange that he gave up the attempt, and his eyes sought again the excitable Esch, whose brown-velvet jacket and light cloth trousers went just as badly with his clumsy shoes as the bronze statuette on the kitchen table. Esch must have felt his glance, for he shouted:

“Damn it all, why do you go on sitting here?”

Of course Huguenau could have gone away—but where? it was not so easy to hit on another project. Huguenau felt that unknown powers had launched him on these new rails, and that he could not afford to leave them without a struggle, nor indeed without suffering for it. So he remained quietly sitting and polished his eyeglasses, as he was in the habit of doing during difficult commercial negotiations to maintain an air of composure. Nor did it fail of its effect this time, for Esch, exasperated now, planted himself in front of Huguenau and burst out anew: