The Sleepwalkers (61 page)

But what does it avail to recognize this? Ornament can neither be fashioned by eclecticism nor artificially invented without falling into the
comic absurdities of a Van der Velde. We are left with a profound disquiet and the knowledge that this style of building, which is no longer a style, is merely a symptom, a writing on the wall proclaiming a state of the soul which must be the non-soul of our non-age. Simply to look at it makes me tired. If I could, I would never leave my house again.

Apart from the fact that the food at the hotel was expensive and that Huguenau was unwilling to allow himself such a luxury until he had established himself in a new position, he had the distinct feeling that it might endanger his impending transactions if the Major saw too much of him. Further discussions would only spoil the effect he had made and gain nothing, and it seemed more advantageous that the Major should forget about him until they met again on Friday. So Huguenau took his meals in a humbler establishment, and appeared in the dining-hall again only on the Friday evening.

He had not reckoned in vain. There sat the Major, and he looked completely surprised when Huguenau approached him briskly and cordially and thanked him anew for his very friendly and flattering invitation. “Oh yes,” said the Major, who now remembered at last. “Oh yes. I’ll introduce you to the gentlemen.”

Huguenau once more thanked him and sat down modestly at another table. But when the Major had finished his supper and looked up, Huguenau smiled over at him and rose slightly, to show that he was at the Major’s disposal. Thereupon they went together into the little adjoining room, where was held the Friday gathering of the gentlemen of the town.

The gentlemen were present in full force, even the burgomaster himself was there. Huguenau was quite unable to catch all their names. As soon as he entered he had a feeling of being greeted with warm sympathy, and a premonition of complete success. This feeling did not deceive him. The majority of the company already knew of his presence in the town and the hotel; obviously he had become a theme for speculation, and they now evinced the warmest interest in his proposals, as he later informed Esch. The evening ended with unexpectedly positive results.

That was indeed nothing to be surprised at. The company had the
impression that they were taking part in a secret conventicle, which was moreover at the same time a sort of summary court held on the rebel Esch. And if Huguenau got such an exceptionally gracious hearing from his listeners, that was not merely because of his intense desire to win it, nor because of his somnambulistic sureness, but also because he was not in the least a rebel, being rather a man fending for himself and his own interests, and speaking consequently a language which the others understood.

Huguenau could with ease have got the gentlemen to the point of subscribing the 20,000 marks demanded by Esch. But he did not do so. A secret fear admonished him that everything must remain tentative and no more than just plausible, because real security always hovers beyond or above the actual, and any too great solidity is dangerous and like an inexplicable oppression. This may appear meaningless, yet as every absurdity admits of some shred of reasonable explanation, so Huguenau’s explanation here was perfectly reasonable and led strangely enough to the same conclusion: it was that if he demanded or accepted too much money from these people, one of them might be struck with the idea of inquiring into his credentials; but if he was standoffish and declined large subscriptions, retaining for his own legendary group the greater share of the invested capital, then they could not doubt that they beheld in him the genuine representative of the most highly capitalized industrial group in the Empire (Krupp’s). And indeed no one doubted this, and in the end Huguenau himself finished by believing it. He declared that he was not in a position to offer his esteemed friends a greater share of the proposed 20,000 marks than a third—in other words 6600 marks in all; nevertheless he was prepared to enter into negotiations again with his group to find out whether instead of the two-thirds majority they would be content with a simple one of 51 per cent., and he would be glad also to accept suggestions in advance for later capital expansion; for the moment, however, the gentlemen must content themselves with the small sum mentioned.

The gentlemen were naturally disappointed, but there was no help for it. It was agreed that they should receive interim share certificates in return for their payments as soon as Huguenau had completed the purchase of the
Kur-Trier Herald
, and that after further sounding of the central group the consolidated undertaking would be established as a limited liability company or perhaps even as a syndicate. The
prospective shareholders dreamed of future meetings of directors, and the evening closed with cheers for the allied armies and His Majesty the Kaiser.

When Huguenau awoke he put his hand under the pillow; there he was accustomed to keep his pocket-book for safety of nights. He had a pleasant sense of owning 20,000 marks, and although he knew that his pocket-book did not contain even the 6600 marks which he would receive from the local gentlemen only when the purchase of the
Herald
was completed, but that all that was left in it was a balance of 185 marks, yet he stuck to it that he had 20,000. He possessed 20,000 marks, and that settled the matter.

Against his usual custom he remained lying in bed for a little. If he had 20,000 marks it would be a piece of madness to give them to Esch, simply because the man asked so much for his measly rag. Every price allowed for give-and-take, and he would be able to beat Esch down a bit, Esch could depend on that. At 14,000 marks the paper would still be too dear, and that left a private profit of 6000. The matter had merely to be cleverly managed, so that nobody might know that Esch was not getting his full 20,000. One could put it down as capital reserve, or give out that the industrial group were content with a bare majority instead of the decisive two-thirds preponderance, or something like that. Something was certain to occur to him! and Huguenau leapt cheerfully out of bed.

When he appeared at the office of the
Herald
it was still quite early. And he fell upon the dumbfounded Herr Esch with the most violent reproaches for having let his paper fall so low. It was shocking, the things that he, Wilhelm Huguenau, who after all was not in the least responsible for Herr Esch, had had to listen to about the paper during those last two days. As a middleman, of course, that might have left him quite indifferent, but it broke one’s heart, yes, it was heart-breaking to look on and see a good business wantonly being ruined; a newspaper lived by its reputation, and when its reputation was bankrupt, then it was itself bankrupt too. As things stood, it seemed that Herr Esch had managed things so that the
Kur-Trier Herald
was now a wretched unsaleable proposition. “You must see yourself, my dear Esch, that you should actually pay something to anyone who’ll take over the paper, instead of demanding money from him.”

Esch listened with a woebegone face; then he grimaced contemptuously. But Huguenau was not to be put out of countenance by that: “It’s not a smiling matter, my dear friend, it’s deadly serious, apparently far more serious than you think.” The idea of making a profit was out of the question, and if one nevertheless did not give up all hope of that, it would be made possible only with the help of tremendous sacrifices, yes sacrifices, my dear Esch. If among his friends, as he hoped and believed, there were some self-sacrificing men prepared to take up this quite senseless, because idealistic scheme, then Herr Esch could simply call it luck, a piece of luck such as one did not encounter more than once in a lifetime; for thanks to singularly favourable circumstances, and his own very efficient abilities as a negotiator, he might eventually get together in spite of everything a round sum of 10,000 marks for Esch, and if Esch didn’t snatch at that, then he was only sorry that he had thrown away his time on Esch’s affairs, which didn’t concern him in the least, no, not in the very least.

“Then leave them alone!” shouted Esch, striking the table with his fist.

“Pardon me, of course I can leave them alone … but I don’t quite see why you should jump into a rage when a man doesn’t accept straight off your fantastic ideas of what the paper’s worth.”

“I haven’t made any fantastic demands.… The paper’s a bargain at twenty thousand.”

“Well, but don’t you see that I actually accept your valuation? For you’ll admit that the buyer will have to spend a further ten thousand at least in getting the paper on its legs again … and thirty thousand would really be exorbitant, don’t you agree?”

Esch became thoughtful. Huguenau felt that he was on the right lines:

“Now, I see that you’re going to be reasonable … I don’t want to press you, of course.… You should just sleep on it.…”

Esch paced up and down the room. Then he said:

“I would like to talk it over with my wife.”

“Do that by all means … only don’t be too long in considering it … money talks, my dear Herr Esch, but it doesn’t wait.”

He got up:

“I’ll call on you again to-morrow … and meanwhile please give my respects to your good lady.”

Dr Flurschütz and Lieutenant Jaretzki were walking from the hospital towards the town. The road was pitted with holes made by the motor-lorries, which ran on iron tyres now, for there was no rubber left.

A closed-down roofing-asphalt factory stretched thin black-zinc pipes up into the still air. Birds twittered in the woods.

Jaretzki’s sleeve was fastened by a safety-pin to the pocket of his army tunic.

“Extraordinary,” said Jaretzki, “since I’ve got rid of my left arm, the right one hangs down from my shoulder like a weight. I almost feel as if I would like it amputated too.”

“You’re a symmetrical fellow, it seems … engineers have a feeling for symmetry.”

“Do you know, Flurschütz, sometimes I forget altogether that I ever was an engineer.… You won’t understand that, for you’ve stuck to your profession.”

“No, one can hardly say that … I was really more of a biologist than a doctor.”

“I’ve sent off an application to the General Electric, there’s a shortage of skilled workers everywhere now of course … but I simply can’t picture myself sitting at a drawing-board again … what do you really think, how many have been killed altogether?”

“Can’t say, five millions, ten millions … perhaps twenty before it comes to an end.”

“I’m quite convinced that it can never come to an end … it will go on like this for all eternity.”

Dr Flurschütz stopped:

“Look here, Jaretzki, can you understand how we can be walking about so peacefully here, how life itself can run on so quietly here, while only a few miles away they’re blazing away merrily at each other?”

“Well, there’s lots of things I don’t understand … besides we’ve both done our bit out there.…”

Dr Flurschütz mechanically felt under the peak of his cap for his bullet scar:

“That wasn’t what I meant … that was at the start, when one rushed into it because one felt ashamed to be left … but now one should by rights be going off one’s head.”

“It hasn’t come to that yet … no, thanks, better to drink oneself blind.…”

“Well, you follow the prescription rather thoroughly.”

The wind carried a smell of tar to them from the closed-down factory.

Thin and bent, with his fair pointed beard and his eyeglasses, Dr Flurschütz looked somewhat awkward in his uniform. They were silent for a while.

The road descended. The scattered bungalows that had sprung up outside the town gates during recent years presently drew together in a continuous line; they looked very peaceful. In all the front gardens wretched-looking vegetables were growing.

Jaretzki said:

“Not very pleasant to live all the year round in this smell of tar.”

Flurschütz replied:

“I was in Roumania and Poland. And do you know … everywhere the houses had just the same peaceful look … with the same trade signs as here, master-builder, locksmith, and so forth … in a dug-out near Armentières I once saw a shop sign, it was one of the roof props, ‘Tailleur pour Dames’ … perhaps it’s silly, but the complete madness of the whole war really only dawned on me then for the first time.”

Jaretzki said:

“With my one arm I suppose I could get myself taken on for some job in the army as an engineer.”

“You would like that better than the General Electric?”

“No, I’m past liking anything better … perhaps I’ll just report for service again with my remaining arm … for throwing hand-grenades one arm would be enough … lend me a hand to get this cigarette lit.”

“What have you been drinking to-day, Jaretzki?”

“Me? nothing worth speaking of, I’ve kept sober for the sake of the wine I’m presently going to introduce you to.”

“Well, how about the General Electric?”

Jaretzki laughed:

“To be quite honest, merely a sentimental attempt to get back into civilian life, with a career to look forward to, no more of this drifting about, perhaps get married … but you believe as little in that as I do.”

“Why on earth shouldn’t I believe in it?”

Jaretzki punctuated his reply with his cigarette:

“ Because … the … war … can … never … come … to … an …
end … how often must I tell you that?”

“That too would be a solution,” said Flurschütz.

“It is the only solution.”

They had reached the town gate.… Jaretzki put up his foot on the curbstone, drew his handkerchief out of his pocket, and, his cigarette aslant in his mouth, flicked the dust of the road from his shoes. Then he stroked his dark moustache smooth, and passing through the cool arch of the gate they stepped into the still and narrow street.

The primacy of architectural style among the things that characterize an epoch is a very curious phenomenon. But, in general, so is the uniquely privileged position that plastic art has maintained in history. It is after all only a very small excerpt from the totality of human activities with which an age is filled, and certainly not even a particularly spiritual excerpt, and yet in power of characterization it surpasses every other province of the spirit, surpasses poetry, surpasses even science, surpasses even religion. The thing that endures through thousands of years is the work of plastic art; it remains the exponent of the age and its style.