Kornel Esti (20 page)

“And so I went everywhere that German was spoken, publicly or privately. There were few visitors at the Germania and other cultural institutions as keen as I. At all costs I meant to hear spoken German, the more the merrier, and I didn’t care what.

“Allow me, after this long but necessary digression, to return to Baron Wüstenfeld, the president, who was asleep when we left him, and I assure you is still asleep. What did the people of Darmstadt have to say about this? Well, they were used to it. So was I eventually. At first, however, I recall, at one lecture I turned to a citizen of Darmstadt who was sitting beside me and asked him why the president was always sleeping. He was surprised at my question. He looked at me, then at the president, and replied—dispassionately—that he was in fact asleep, but he was, after all, the president, and he shrugged as if I’d asked why the sun was shining. The president was president in order to sleep. It was accepted at that time, and they went on with the agenda regardless.

“I apologized for my inquisitiveness. As time went by I realized that they were right. The president was an old man. A very old man. Very old and very tired. Clearly, that was why he was always known as the ‘tireless fighter for public education.’ He was also called ‘the watchman of public education,’ and not out of weary contempt or without good reason. He was a man of great culture and great breadth of vision, with a long career behind him, who functioned actively from morning to night in public life. He would open an extraordinary meeting early in the forenoon, convene a preparatory subcommittee at noon, chair a political council in the afternoon, and in the evening propose the toast to the guest of honor at a banquet. In general he presided everywhere, rang the bell everywhere, spoke the introductory or closing words everywhere. In the meanwhile he appeared everywhere that he had to, and his name was never missing from the list of those present. Was it any wonder that the burden of the years weighed on him and he was worn out with so much feverish and useful activity?

“No, indeed. Gradually I too came to regard as natural what all of Darmstadt, all Hesse, all Germany did. When as a scatterbrained student I rushed headlong into the distinguished, paneled hall of the Germania and wanted to be certain that I had arrived in time, I didn’t look at the table or at the audience, only at the presidential dais. If the president was asleep, I knew that the session had begun. If he was not, I knew that the session had not yet begun, and stepped outside for a cigarette or two. I became firmly assured that the sleeping of the president was at the same time the beginning of intellectual work and an infallible indicator and scientific measure of it.

“The lecturers themselves thought so too. Didn’t this habit of the president disturb or offend them? On the contrary. As the first word of their paper rocked the president to sleep with irresistible force, they too derived courage and inspiration from his slumbers. If they noticed that he was awake, they would pause briefly, sip their water, adjust the light, but they didn’t have to wait long before he was sleeping the age-old sleep of the just. Some scarcely dared speak for the first few minutes. They trembled quietly through the introductory remarks almost in a whisper, like mothers beside the cradles of their children, their thoughts and feelings coming almost on tiptoe, and only when they were convinced that the chairman’s sleep had reached the required depth and that nothing could now wake him did they raise and develop their voices, abandon themselves to flights of oratory. Need I remark that this touching, childlike attention on the part of the lecturers, this caution which sprang from profound respect, was in all cases superfluous?

“Yes, my friends, that man could certainly sleep. Never have I seen a president sleep like that, and I’ve seen many a president sleep in Germany and in other European countries, big and small. By that time I could get along quite well in German, and I only went to the Germania and elsewhere in order to admire him. And I wasn’t the only one that had a similar aim in view. Zwetschke was actually studying him—he was a slender, quick-witted young psychiatrist with whom I became friendly over this common interest. Foreigners came too—Norwegians, English, and Danes—presidents, for the most part, who despite their advanced ages made the pilgrimage to Darmstadt in order to spy out the modus operandi of their remarkable colleague, his secret, his stratagem, and to turn their experience to fruitful advantage in their demanding and responsible careers.

“But how did he sleep? In masterful fashion, remarkably, perfectly, with inimitable artistry. This was quite understandable. Even as a young man—at the age of twenty-eight—he had attained high office, and since then—for generations—had borne it constantly in the Germania and in other cultural organizations. He had vast experience. On each side of him on the dais sat a vice president, like the thieves on the right and the left. They were Professor Dr. Hubertus von Zeilenzig and Professor Dr. Eugen Ludwig von Wuttke. I’m not saying that they too nodded, dozed, snoozed, indeed actually slept, but they did it with only one eye, like hares, uneasily, like dogs do. A single glance at them was enough for the keen observer to appreciate at once the difference between master and apprentice, to realize that these were mere disciples, only vice presidents, and would never become presidents. He, however, who slept between them with profound conviction and expertise was a president, the real thing. God had created him such. I heard from Darmstadt people that this rare ability of his had shown itself even in boyhood, and while his frolicsome companions noisily played soccer in the field he would sit apart on a dais-like mound and preside.

“Significantly he slept, sternly and importantly, with indescribable dignity and pride. By that I don’t at all mean to imply that when he was awake he lacked any of these desirable qualities. Awake too he was a man of standing. He was likable, but ice cold; fair, but grave. If he appeared anywhere, with his frock coat buttoned to the chin, his freshly tied black cravat, and his trousers with their knifelike crease, smiles froze on faces. Our friends told us that one summer, when he was entertaining some German naturalists and escorting them officially in the Darmstadt woods, the thrushes, tits, and all the songbirds together suddenly stopped their singing, which was out of keeping with the gravity of the situation. His importance grew, however, when he was asleep. At such times he changed into an enigmatic statue of himself. Sleep drew a sort of superficial, improvised death mask over his face. He looked a little like Beethoven.

“Furthermore he slept refinedly, choicely, in gentlemanly fashion so to speak, aristocratically and chivalrously. For example, he never snored, never dribbled. He could exercise restraint. After all, he was a baron, a nobleman. He would hang his head slightly between his shoulders. He shut his eyes, and it seemed that by cutting off his sense of sight he merely intended to increase his attentiveness, as if in this way he meant only to render homage to science and literature. His face too was transfigured by inner absorption; a sort of church-like piety came over it. Certainly, next moment, the aged head, which the sinews of the neck now supported only laxly, sank lower and lower toward the green baize under the remorseless laws of gravity, and the head drew after itself the chest and then the torso. Many a time I was afraid that his face was going to fall onto the presidential bell, the bronze of which drew it like a magnet, and that his lips would kiss it. I can, however, assure you—that never happened.

“The amazing thing was this. He slept self-assuredly and masterfully. As soon as his nodding head reached the azimuth, it rose of its own accord, the torso became erect, and so the whole process began again. He was in command of himself. He recognized the territory marked out for him in infinite space in which he could range freely without contravening decorum and etiquette. Even in his sleep he knew that he was doing something illicit, and only conditionally allowed himself this trifling foible of old age, as pleasant and understandable as the taking of snuff. His discipline set a limit just when need arose.

“Nor did it ever happen that he overslept a lecturer. He would wake up of himself, just a couple of seconds before the end. How did he manage it? I could never make it out. According to my psychiatrist friend Zwetschke, the lecturers themselves must have warned him by speaking more loudly, with greater verve, as they were coming to a close. I didn’t accept that explanation. The delicate final lines of lyric verses, their sweetly allusive dying fall, had just as stimulating an effect on him as the stirring spirit of science and literature, and on all occasions he was alert, on watch in his lookout post, like one who had long been awake, and he would rise to his feet and with enviable knowledge of the subject express thanks in well-rounded sentences, as was his presidential right and duty, for the ‘elevated, thought-provoking, and still entertaining exposition’ or ‘brilliant, high-minded, and yet moving poetry.’

“Zwetschke observed that he slept according to types of subject. He said that he slept most soundly during philosophical discourses and most superficially during lyric poetry. It was his considered opinion that the president relied on his great experience and adjusted his sleep to match the characteristics of each category. That explanation I couldn’t accept either. I rather inclined to the thesis which several experts have recently upheld, that in the depths of our consciousness we are constantly aware of the passage of time while we sleep, and in particular follow the rotation of the earth by our ancient instincts, and this serves us as a time-measuring mechanism, so that when we really mean to wake up by a certain time we always do, and when we are to leave on a journey and set our alarm clocks for five we wake a few minutes before five. That instinct must have been at work in our president too.

“It happened—I won’t deny it—that now and then even he made mistakes in this and that, unimportant things. After all, extraordinary spirit and peerless intellect that he was, he was only human. He only made two mistakes. The privy councillor Dr. Max Reindfleisch was reading an excerpt from his historical novel in verse about Friedrich Barbarossa. He had not been reading for ten minutes when the president opened his eyes. This gave rise to a general sensation and consternation. The audience began to whisper. Some stood up to get a better look. He himself was horrified too. The suspicion flashed through his soul that perhaps his dozing had been noticed, and he was a little embarrassed. At that he deceived the audience and perpetrated a devilish trick. He decided to close his eyes again straightaway, and also to open them again several times one after another, indicating thereby that he had been keeping his eyes closed deliberately because that way he could pay better attention. And he shut his eyes. But he didn’t open them again. His eyelids were instantly gummed together by the sweet, warm honey of sleep and his head set off on its usual flight path toward the table and back, and thus he wavered to and fro until Privy Councillor Dr. Max Reindfleisch had finished the informative and learned excerpt from his novel.

“What was the second occasion? Oh, yes. The second was even more startling. You need to know that in that cultural organization a lecture would last at least an hour and a half. Professor Dr. Blutholz, privy councillor and well-known philosopher, was lecturing on his favorite topic, a very popular one in Germany,
On the First-Order Metaphysical Roots of the Intelligible World and Their Four Metaphysical Determinants
; he was warming a little to his excitingly attractive exposition and had been speaking for two whole hours without pause. At that point the president opened his misty eyes. Like a man rising from the deepest metaphysical depths, he didn’t know where he was, didn’t know whether the concluding speech came next, and just looked at the lecturer and the audience like visions in a nightmare. Fortunately, however, Professor Dr. Blutholz announced at that moment that after that brief introduction he would at last move on to his subject proper. That sentence had the effect on the president of the chloroform that merciful anesthetists promptly drip onto the mask of the restlessly moaning patient, strapped down on the operating table, who regains consciousness in the course of the operation. He too instantly subsided, he too ‘moved on to his subject proper’: he slept on, nice and evenly.

“What did he dream of at such times? On this point opinions differed. The German women, who—as I’ve hinted—are sensitive and romantic, said that in his dreams he obviously saw little roe deer, and ran about in the meadows of his long-past childhood, butterfly net in hand. Zwetschke, who was interested in psychoanalysis at the time, considered it likely that the president was weaving a dream which would advance his sleeping, and as his sole desire was to sleep, according to him the dream could only reflect the fulfilment of that desire in alluring little images: the lecturer would crash down from the rostrum, split his skull, and die horribly, the audience would rush upon one another in blind panic, a war of extermination would break out among them, they would shriek and die, covered in blood, the chandeliers would go out, darkness would enfold it all, the walls of the Germania would collapse, and the president would finally close the session and go home to sleep in his feather bed. In principle I agreed with this interpretation. The only thing that hurt me was that the distinguished psychiatrist had such a role in mind for the president, whom I knew to be one of the gentlest men in the world. I suggested that even in his dream he would refrain from thoughts of murder and violence. I put it to my friend that the president’s interest was not in the closing of the session but its continuation. I rather imagined, therefore, that in his dream the president constantly saw Count Leo Tolstoy visiting his humble Darmstadt society, there to read the three fat volumes of
War and Peace
from beginning to end, which in the first place would be a great honor to German culture, and second would guarantee the president of the Germania at least a week of uninterrupted slumber. To this day I feel proud that the excellent Zwetschke accepted my explanation.