The Sleepwalkers (56 page)

“Where have you come from, anyway? Who sent you here? … you don’t belong to this part of the country, and you needn’t tell me that you intend to set up here as a wine-grower yourself.… You’re just here to spy. Locked up, that’s what you should be!”

Huguenau gazed at Esch’s brown-velvet waistcoat, which was just at the level of his eye and showed a strip of leather belt beneath it, gazed at the light-coloured trousers spotted with grease. Past dry-cleaning, thought Huguenau, he’ll have to have them dyed black, I should tell him so; what is he really after? if he really wants to throw me out he has no need to provoke a quarrel first … so he wants me to stay, then. There was something queer about it. Somehow Huguenau felt a sort of fellow-feeling with this man, and at the same time divined that there was some profit to be made. So returning to the attack he resolved to make certain:

“Herr Esch, I’ve offered you an honourable deal, and if you decide to refuse it that’s your business. But if you merely want to swear at me, then there’s no point in continuing our conversation.”

He snapped his eyeglasses together and raised his bottom slightly from the chair, indicating by this movement that he was ready to go away—Esch had only to say the word.

But now Esch seemed really to have no wish to break off the conversation;
he raised his hand propitiatingly, and Huguenau, once more using his bottom as an indicator, signified that he would remain:

“To tell you the truth, it’s unlikely that I’ll set up as a wine-grower here myself; perhaps you were quite right there—although even that isn’t out of the question; a fellow longs for a quiet life. But I’m not here to exploit anyone,” he wrought himself up, “a middleman has as much title to respect as anybody else, all that he’s concerned with is to bring two parties together in a deal and satisfy them both, for then he has his reward too. Besides I must ask you to be a little more careful in the way you fling about expressions like ‘spy,’ that’s a dangerous game in war-time.”

Esch was put to shame:

“Come, come, I didn’t intend any offence … but sometimes your disgust at things rises into your throat, and then you can’t keep it from bursting out.… A Cologne builder, a thorough swindler, has been buying up land here for a mere song … driven the people out of their homes … and the chemist here has been following his example … what use can Paulsen the chemist have for vineyards? can you tell me that, perhaps?”

Huguenau said again in an offended voice:

“A spy.…”

Esch had once more resumed his prowling:

“One should emigrate. Somewhere or other. To America. If I were younger I would fling everything up and start all over again …” once more he halted before Huguenau, “but you’re a young man—why aren’t you at the Front, eh? how do you come to be wandering about here?” Suddenly he had become aggressive again. Well, Huguenau had no desire to enter into that question; he evaded it; it was quite incomprehensible to him, he said, that a man in a distinguished position, the proprietor and editor of a newspaper, living amid lovely surroundings and enjoying the esteem of his fellow-citizens, and no longer young besides, should cherish thoughts of emigrating.

Esch grimaced sarcastically:

“Esteem of my fellow-citizens, esteem of my fellow-citizens … they snarl at my heels like a pack of curs.…”

Huguenau glanced at the picture of the Schlossberg, then he said:

“I can hardly believe that.”

“Indeed! perhaps you’re on their side? that wouldn’t surprise me …”

Huguenau steered his craft into safer waters:

“Again these vague accusations, Herr Esch. Won’t you at least express yourself more precisely, if you have anything against me?”

But Herr Esch’s desultory and irascible mind was not so easy to curb:

“Express myself precisely, express myself precisely, it’s very easy to talk like that … as if a man can give a name to everything …” he shouted in Huguenau’s face. “Young man, until you know that all names are false you know nothing; not even the clothes on your body are what they seem to be.”

An uncanny feeling came over Huguenau. He didn’t understand that, he said.

“Of course you don’t understand it … but when a chemist snaps up land for a song, you can understand that all right … and it’s quite understandable to you that a man who calls things by their real names should be persecuted and slandered as a communist … and be set upon by the Censor, what? that seems quite right to you?… and I suppose you think too that we’re living in a just country?”

It was a disagreeable position to be in, said Huguenau.

“Disagreeable! One should emigrate … I’m sick of struggling against it.”

Huguenau asked what Herr Esch thought of doing with the paper.

Esch waved his hand contemptuously: he had often said to his wife that he would like to sell the whole show, but he would keep the house—he had thoughts of opening a bookshop.

“The opposition must have damaged the paper a good deal, I suppose, Herr Esch? I mean to say, the circulation can’t amount to very much now?”

Not at all, the
Herald
had its regular subscribers, the restaurants, the hairdressers, above all the people in the villages round about: the opposition was confined to certain circles in the town. But he was sick of squabbling with them.

Had Herr Esch any idea as to the price he wanted?

Oh yes … the paper and the printing-office were worth 20,000 marks, and a bargain at the price. In addition he would let the buyer have the use of the buildings rent-free for an extended period, say five years: and that would mean a big advantage for the buyer too. That was how he had figured it out, it was a decent offer, he didn’t want to overreach anybody, he was simply sick of the whole business. He had often said so to his wife.

“Well,” said Huguenau, “I didn’t ask out of idle curiosity … as I said before I’m a middleman, and perhaps I may be able to do something for you. Mark my words, my dear Esch,” and he patronizingly clapped the newspaper proprietor on the bony shoulder—“we’ll do a little business deal together yet; you should never be in too great a hurry to throw anyone out. All the same you must put the thought of twenty thousand out of your head. Nobody pays fancy prices nowadays.”

Self-assured and in excellent spirits Huguenau clattered down the wooden steps.

A child was squatting in front of the printing-shed.

Huguenau contemplated the child, contemplated the entrance to the printing-shed; he saw “No Admittance except on Business” on the door-plate.

Twenty thousand marks, he thought, and the little girl thrown in.

Well, he had no business in there yet, but from now on they could not refuse him admittance; if you were trying to sell a concern you had a right to see it. Esch would be obliged to show him round the printing-shed. Huguenau considered whether he should shout to him to come down, but then he decided, no: in a couple of days he would be returning here in any case, perhaps even with concrete proposals for buying the place,—Huguenau was quite certain of it, and besides it was dinner-time now. So he betook himself to his hotel.

Hanna Wendling was awake. She did not open her eyes, however, for there was still a chance that she might catch her vanishing dream. But it glided slowly away, and finally nothing remained but the emotion in which it had been immersed. As the emotion too drained away, Hanna voluntarily abandoned it just an instant before it completely vanished and glanced across at the window. Through the slats of the venetian blinds oozed a milky light; it must still be early, or else the sky was overcast. The striped light was like a continuation of her dream, perhaps because no sound entered with it, and Hanna decided that it must be very early after all. The venetian blinds stirred with a soft swaying motion between the open casements; that must be the dawn wind, and she inhaled its coolness by sniffing delicately, as if her nose could tell her what time it was. Then with closed eyes she reached out her
hand to the bed on her left; it was not occupied; the pillows, the blankets and the eiderdown quilt were methodically piled up and covered by the plush counterpane. Before she drew back her hand, so as to return it along with her naked shoulder beneath the warm sheets, she ran it again over the yielding and slightly cold plush, and the action was like a corroboration of the fact that she was alone. Her thin nightgown had slipped up over her thighs and formed an uncomfortable bunch. Ah, she had slept badly again; as a sort of indemnification, however, her right hand was lying on her warm smooth body, and her finger-tips stroked softly and almost imperceptibly the soft downy curve of her bosom. She could not help thinking of some French rococo picture of dalliance; then she remembered Goya’s portrait of the disrobed Maya. She remained lying in this position for a few minutes longer. Thereupon she smoothed down her nightgown—strange that a film-thin gown could warm one immediately like that—considered whether she should turn on her left or her right side, decided for the latter, as though she were afraid that the piled-up bed beside her would cut off the air, listened for a little longer to the silence of the street, and gave herself up to another dream, sought refuge in another dream, before any sound could reach her from outside.

When an hour later she once more found herself awake, she could no longer conceal from herself that the forenoon was already far advanced. For anyone who is bound only by very frail threads, threads that are scarcely palpable to him, to what other people or he himself calls life, getting up in the morning is always a hard task. Perhaps even a slight violation. And Hanna Wendling, who felt the unavoidable day once more approaching, got a headache. It began at the back of her head; she crossed her hands behind her neck, and when she tugged at her hair, which softly coiled round her fingers, for a moment she forgot her headache. Then she pressed against the place where the pain was; it was a throbbing which began behind her ears and ran down to the top of her spine. She was used to it. When she was in company, sometimes it seized her so violently that she became quite dizzy. With sudden resolution she flung back the bedclothes, slipped her feet into her high-heeled bedroom slippers, opened the venetian blinds without pulling them up, and holding her hand-glass behind her head contemplated the painful area at the back of her neck in the large mirror on her toilet-table. What was hurting her there? nothing could be seen. She turned
her head from side to side; she could see the play of her spine under the skin; really she had a pretty neck. And her shoulders were pretty too. She would have liked to have had her breakfast in bed, but it was war-time; bad enough to have stayed in bed so late. Really she should have got up and taken her little son to school. Every day she made up her mind to do it. Twice she had actually done it, and then had left it again to the maid. Of course the boy should have had a French or an English governess long ago. Englishwomen made the best governesses. Once the war was over they would have to send the boy to England. When she was his age, yes when she was seven, she spoke French better than German. She searched for the flask with the toilet-vinegar, rubbed her neck and temples, and examined her eyes attentively in the mirror: they were golden-brown, in the left one a tiny red vein could be seen. That came from her restless night. She threw her kimono round her shoulders. And then she rang for the maid.

Hanna Wendling was the wife of Dr Heinrich Wendling, advocate. She was a native of Frankfort. For two years Heinrich Wendling had been in Roumania or Bessarabia or somewhere at the back of beyond.

Huguenau sat down at his table in the dining-room. At a table not far from him a white-haired gentleman was sitting, a major. The waitress had just set down a plate of soup before him, and the old gentleman now went through a curious pantomime; with his hands folded and his reddish face piously composed he bowed his head a little over the table, and only after having ended this unmistakable grace did he break his fast.

Huguenau gaped at this unusual spectacle; he beckoned the waitress and asked without much ceremony who the strange officer was.

The waitress put her mouth to his ear; that was the Town Commandant, a high-born landowner from West Prussia who had been recalled to service for the duration of the war. His family were still living on the estate at home, but he got letters from them every day. Oh, and the Commandant’s office was in the Town Hall, but the Herr Major had lived in the hotel ever since the beginning of the war.

Huguenau nodded, his curiosity satisfied. But then he suddenly felt a cold contraction in his stomach, and it struck him that the man sitting
over there embodied the power of the army, that the man needed only to stretch out the hand now gripping a soup-spoon and he would be done for, and that therefore he was, so to speak, living next door to his own executioner. His appetite was gone! hadn’t he better countermand his order and take to flight?

But meanwhile the waitress had brought his soup, and as he mechanically spooned it up the paralysing coldness relaxed, passing over into an almost comforting cool lassitude and defencelessness. Besides, he daren’t run away, he had to finish the deal with the
Kur-Trier Herald.

He felt almost relieved. For although every man believes that his decisions and resolutions involve the most multifarious factors, in reality they are a mere oscillation between flight and longing, and the ultimate goal of all flight and all longing is death. And in this wavering of the soul and the spirit between the positive and the negative poles, Huguenau, the same Wilhelm Huguenau who a moment before had dreamt of flight, now felt himself strangely drawn to the old man sitting at the other table.

He ate mechanically, not even noticing that to-day was meat day; he drank mechanically, and in the extreme and as it were more clairvoyant state of awareness to which he had had access for the past weeks, all things fell asunder, flew apart and receded to the poles, receded to the frontiers of the world where things once more regain their oneness and distance is annihilated,—fear was changed to longing, and longing to fear, and the
Kur-Trier Herald
coalesced into an extraordinarily indissoluble unity with the white-haired Major. The matter cannot be put much more precisely or rationally than this, for Huguenau’s actions now developed in a world where all measurable distance was annihilated, they were in a way short-circuited into irrationality without any time for reflection; so while he waited for the Major to finish his meal, it was not really waiting, it was a sort of simultaneity of cause and effect that made him rise at the very moment when the Major, after another silent grace, pushed back his chair and lit his cigar; forthwith and without the slightest embarrassment Huguenau approached the Major, walked up straight to the Major, quite unembarrassed although he had no pretext whatever for such an intrusion.