The Sleepwalkers (80 page)

“Oh, dear lady, I promise the first prize to you.”

“Thanks,” said Frau Paulsen, taking herself off.

Lisbeth Wöger and Berta stuck their heads together:

“Did you see how green she was with jealousy?”

Although Heinrich’s presence had to a certain degree broken through her hermit existence, Hanna Wendling had not come to the celebration willingly. But as one of the town’s prominent citizens and also as an officer, Advocate Wendling had felt it his duty to attend. So they had driven over with Röders.

They sat in the dancing-hall; Dr Kessel kept them company. At the upper end of the room stood the table of honour, gleaming with napery and decked with flowers and festoons of leaves; there presided the Burgomaster and the Major, and Herr Editor Huguenau had also his place there. When he caught sight of the newcomers he steered his way across to them. That he was on the committee could be seen from the badge in his buttonhole, but still more clearly was it written on his brow. No one could fail to remark Herr Huguenau’s dignity. Huguenau had known of course for a long time who this lady was: he had noticed her several times in the town, and a very little inquiry had discovered that she was Frau Advocate Wendling.

He made straight for Dr Kessel:

“May I beg you, Herr Doctor, to do me the great favour of introducing me to your friends?”

“Yes, with pleasure.”

“A great honour, a great honour,” said Herr Huguenau, “a great privilege; the gracious lady lives in such retirement, and if it were not for the great good fortune of her husband being here on furlough I feel sure that we wouldn’t have had the pleasure of welcoming her in our midst to-night.”

The war had made her rather shy of people, replied Hanna Wendling.

“That’s the wrong way to take it, dear lady. It’s just in such grave times that one needs cheering up.… I hope that you’re both staying for the dance.”

“No, my wife is a little tired, so unfortunately we must go soon.”

Huguenau was honestly hurt:

“But, Herr Advocate, you and your charming wife must really grant us the honour for once, our festivities really must be graced by such a
beautiful lady … and it’s for a philanthropic object, so won’t the Herr Lieutenant close one eye and put mercy before justice?”

And although Frau Hanna Wendling was perfectly aware of the shallowness of these flatteries, her face opened and she said:

“Well, as a favour to you, Herr Editor, we’ll stay for a little longer.”

In the middle of the garden a long table had been set up for the soldiers, and “The Moselle Memorial” had presented them with a small cask of beer, which stood on its two trestles beside the table. The beer had been finished long ago, but a few of the men still loitered round the empty table. Kneese had joined them, and now he was drawing designs with a finger-tip in the pools of beer on the wooden boards:

“The Surgeon-Major says that we’re to give them children.”

“Who?”

“The girls here.”

“Tell him he must lead the way.”

Guffaws.

“He’s doing that as it is.”

“It would be more sense if he let us go home to our wives.”

The lamps swayed in the night wind.

Jaretzki wandered alone through the garden. When he met Frau Paulsen he bowed:

“So lonely, dear lady?”

Frau Paulsen said:

“You seem to be lonely too, Herr Lieutenant.”

“Doesn’t mean anything in my case, I’m finished with everything.”

“Come, shall we try our luck at the tombola, Herr Lieutenant?” Frau Paulsen attached herself to Jaretzki’s sound right arm.

Huguenau met Surgeon-Major Kühlenbeck walking with Lisbeth and Berta under the trees.

Huguenau exclaimed in greeting:

“A happy evening, Herr Surgeon-Major, a happy evening, young ladies.”

And he was gone.

Dr Kühlenbeck was still holding stub-fingered bourgeoise hands in his great warm paws:

“Well, do you like that elegant young fellow?”

“No …” the two girls tittered.

“Indeed? Why not?”

“There’s others better than him.”

“I see. Who, for instance?”

Berta said:

“There’s Lieutenant Jaretzki walking with Frau Paulsen over there.”

“Leave them to themselves,” said the Surgeon-Major. “I’m going to stick to you.”

The band blew a flourish. Huguenau stood beside the conductor on the platform, which on one side projected into the hall, on the other, in the form of a pavilion, into the garden.

Making a speaking trumpet with his hands, Huguenau shouted over the tables standing in the garden:

“Silence.”

In the garden and the hall there was dead silence.

“Silence,” crowed Huguenau once more into the stillness.

Captain von Schnaack of Room VI.—he had a shot wound in the lung which was now healed—stepped up beside Huguenau on the platform and now unfolded a sheet of paper:

“Victory at Amiens. 3700 English prisoners, 3 enemy aeroplanes shot down, two of them by Captain Blöcke, who thus achieves his twenty-third air victory.”

Captain von Schnaack raised his arm: “Hip, hip, hooray!” The band struck up the national anthem. All rose to their feet; the most of them joined in the singing. When it had died away again, someone shouted from a shadowy corner:

“Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah, long live the war!”

Everybody turned and looked.

There sat Lieutenant Jaretzki. A bottle of champagne was standing before him, and he was trying to embrace Frau Paulsen with his sound arm.

The walls of the dancing-hall were decorated with portraits of the allied generals and rulers decked with oak-leaves and paper garlands
and hung with banners. The patriotic and ceremonious part of the celebration was now over, and Huguenau could dedicate himself to pleasure. He had always been a good dancer, had always been able to flatter himself that in spite of his stoutness and short stature he cut a good figure; but to-night more was at stake, to-night more was in question than the elasticity and agility of a stout little man; here under the eyes of the military commanders the dance became a celebration of victory.

The dancer is removed beyond the reach of this world. Wrapped in the music, he has renounced his freedom of action, and yet acts in accordance with a higher and more lucid freedom. In the rigorous security of the rhythm that guides him he is safely sheltered, and a great relief comes to him from that security. Thus music brings unity and order into the confusion and chaos of life. Cancelling Time it cancels death, and yet resurrects it anew in every beat of the rhythm, even in the rhythm of that dreary and endless potpourri which, calling itself
A Selection of Music from All Countries
, is now being played, and consists of a particoloured assortment of German folk-songs and enemy dances such as the cake-walk, the matchiche and the tango. The dancer’s partner hums, then, growing more ardent, she sings. And her emotional and unschooled voice sings the barbarous words of these melodies, all of which she knows without exception, her soft zephyr-like breath brushing his cheek when he bends over her in the tango. But soon he straightens himself again, his warlike spirit reawakened he gazes fixedly and sternly through his eyeglasses, gazes into the distance, and dauntlessly he and his partner defy hostile powers when the music breaks triumphantly into an heroic march; but now with the changing rhythm they fall into the artful contortions of the one-step, and shuffle with curious swayings on one spot, almost without progressing, until the long waves of the tango once more roll up and their movements once more become catlike and soft, with a yielding suppleness of leg and body. Should they pass the table of honour, behind whose flower-filled vases the Major sits side by side with the Burgomaster, then with a sweep of the arm the dancer snatches up a glass from the board—for he himself belongs to this table—and without interrupting the dance, like a tight-rope dancer who carelessly and smilingly devours a succulent meal while still high up in the air, he drinks to the seated company.

He scarcely guides his partner now; one hand, gallantly enveloped in
his pocket-handkerchief, rests delicately beneath the low-cut back of her dress, but his left arm hangs carelessly by his side. Only when the music changes over to a waltz do they join their free hands; stiffly, in reciprocal tension, they brace their outstretched arms, and with their fingers locked the pair whirl round the hall. Glancing round the hall, he sees that the ranks of dancers have thinned. Only one other pair is still dancing, they come nearer, almost brush him, recede, glide away again along the walls. The others have withdrawn among the spectators; unequal to the alien dance rhythms, they stand and admire. Should the music cease, the spectators and dancers alike clap their hands, and it begins once more. It is almost like a trial of strength. Huguenau scarcely sees his partner, who with head flung back in surrender has resigned herself to his strong and yet hardly visible guidance; he does not know that the music has released in his partner a more delicate and disciplined artistry of sex, a bacchantic feminine power which will remain for ever unknown to her husband, to her lover, even to herself, nor does he see the ecstatic smile with which the other lady hangs in her partner’s arms; he sees only his rival, sees only the other hostile dancer, a lean wine-agent in evening clothes with a black tie and an Iron Cross on his chest, who in elegance and military distinction outshines himself in his plain blue suit. So might Esch himself, with his long lank limbs, dance here, and therefore, to filch the lady from him, Huguenau holds her with his eye as she glides past with her partner, and he keeps on doing this until she returns his gaze, gives herself to him with her glances, so that he, Wilhelm Huguenau, now possesses both the women, possesses them without desiring them, for it is not the favour of women that matters to him, though he may be competing for it now—the pleasures of love do not matter to him; on the contrary this celebration and this spacious hall concentrate ever more exclusively around the white-decked table over there, and his thoughts are directed more and more unconditionally on the Major who sits, white-bearded and beautiful, behind the flowers watching him, him, Wilhelm Huguenau in the middle of the floor; he is a warrior dancing before his chieftain.

But the Major’s eyes were filling with growing horror. This hall with these two men shamelessly shuffling, shamelessly hopping, more shameless even than the women with whom they were coupled; it was like a house of ill fame, it was the pit of corruption itself. And that a war could be accompanied by such celebrations of victory turned war itself into a
bloody caricature of corruption. It was as though the world were becoming featureless, featureless every face, a pit where nothing could be distinguished, a pit from which there was no longer any rescue. Seized with horror, Major von Pasenow caught himself wishing that he, a Prussian officer, could tear the banners from the walls, not because they were desecrated by the festive abominations, but because they were incomprehensibly bound up with these abominations and this diabolical display, in an incomprehensibility behind which all the unchivalry of unchivalrous weapons, treacherous friends and broken pledges was concealed. And as he sat in a strange icy immobility, the dreadful desire arose in him to destroy this demoniacal rabble, to exterminate them, to see them lying crushed at his feet. But motionless and gigantic as a towering mountain range, as the shadow of a mountain range on the wall, there rose grave and solemn above the rabble the image of a friend, perhaps it was that of Esch, and to Major von Pasenow it seemed that it must be for this friend’s sake that the Evil One had to be crushed and cast into nothingness. Major von Pasenow longed for his brother.

Sister Mathilde was searching for Dr Kühlenbeck. She found him among a crowd of prominent business men. Kringel the merchant, Quint the hotelkeeper and pork-butcher, Herr Salzer the architect, and Herr Westrich the postmaster, were all sitting there. And their wives and daughters were sitting beside them.

“A moment, Herr Surgeon-Major.”

“Another woman that’s cocked her eye at me.”

“Just one moment, sir.”

Kühlenbeck got up:

“What’s wrong, my child?”

“We must get Lieutenant Jaretzki out of here.…”

“Yes, I fancy he’s had about enough.”

Sister Mathilde smiled in agreement.

“I’ll come and see to him.”

Jaretzki’s sound arm was lying on the table, his head was resting on it, and he was asleep.

The Surgeon-Major looked at his watch:

“Flurschütz is relieving me. He should be arriving at any moment now with the car. He can take Jaretzki back with him.”

“Can we leave him here asleep like this, sir?”

“There’s nothing else for it. War is war.”

Dr Flurschütz blinked through somewhat inflamed eyes at the lighted garden. Then he went into the dancing-hall. The Major and the other guests of honour had already left. The long table had been removed and the whole room set free for the dancing, which proceeded on its crowded, steaming, sweating, shuffling course.

It was some time before he caught sight of his chief; with grave expression and upward-pointing beard Kühlenbeck was revolving with Frau Chemist Paulsen in a waltz. Flurschütz waited for the dance to end, and then he reported himself.

“Well, here at last, Flurschütz: you see what childish follies you have driven your worthy superior officer to with your lateness … but now there’s no excuse for you; when the chief dances, the next in command must dance too.”

“Insubordination, sir, I refuse to dance.”

“And this is the younger generation … it seems to me that I’m younger than the lot of you … but now I must go, I’ll send the car back for you. Bring Jaretzki with you; he’s blind to the world for the moment … one of the sisters will return with me, you bring the other.”

In the garden he unearthed Sister Carla:

“Sister Carla, I’ll take you back with me, I can manage four wounded men too. Round them up, will you, but be quick.”

Then he packed in his passengers. Three men were got into the back seat, Sister Carla and another man in the front seat, and he himself took his place beside the chauffeur. Seven crutches stared into the dark air (the eighth lay somewhere in the car), stars hung in the black tent of the sky. The air smelt of petrol and dust. But from time to time, particularly at the turns of the roads, one felt the nearness of the woods.