The Sleepwalkers (13 page)

While the reception-rooms were provided with parquet-flooring, the guest-rooms on the first floor had merely polished boards, huge planks of soft white wood separated from each other by somewhat darker connecting boards. The trunks from which those planks were once cut must have been gigantic ones, and although the wood was rather soft, yet their size and uniformity witnessed to the opulence of the man who
had had them laid here. The joinings between the planks and the boards were closely fitted, and where they had widened on account of the shrinking of the wood they were so neatly plugged with chips that one scarcely noticed it. The furniture had obviously been made by the village carpenter and probably dated from the time when Napoleon’s armies had passed through the vicinity; at least it forced one to think of that time, remotely reminding one of that style which is usually called Empire; however, it may have belonged to a slightly earlier or later period, for it diverged with all sorts of bulging lines from the severity of that norm. Here, for instance, was a wardrobe whose mirrored front was violently divided in two by a vertical strip of wood, and there were chests of drawers which, by possessing too many or too few shelves, offended against the laws of pure symmetry. Yet even although these furnishings were ranged against the walls almost without plan, even although the bed was stationed in the most inconvenient way between two doors, and the great white-tiled stove in the corner was squeezed between two cupboards, yet the spacious room had a comfortable and easy look, very pleasant when the sun shone through the white curtains, and the window, with its cross-bars, was mirrored on the glittering polish of the furniture. At such moments, indeed, it could actually happen that the great crucifix which hung on the wall over the bed no longer seemed a mere ornament or a customary article of furniture, but became once more what it had originally been when it was brought here: an admonition and reminder to the guest, warning him that he was in a Christian household, in a house which, it was true, provided in hosts of ways for his bodily comfort and from which he could ride out to the hunt in a merry company and return to devote himself to a hearty supper with abundance of strong wines, a house too where the roughest of practical jokes was permitted him, and where, at the time when the furniture in this room was joinered, an eye was closed if he should take a fancy to one of the maids; but a house nevertheless where it was considered inevitable that the guest, no matter how heavy he might feel after his wine, would have on retiring a desire to remember his soul and to repent of his sins. And it was in accordance with this essentially austere way of thought that over the sofa covered with green repp should be hung a sober and austere steel-engraving which in many of the guests’ minds awakened thoughts of Queen Luise, for it represented a stately lady in antique robes—
La Mère des Gracches
was the title of the picture
—and not only did this costume remind them of the Queen, but the altar towards which she was lifting her arms also suggested the altar of the Fatherland. Certainly the majority of the huntsmen who had slept in this room had led a worldly life, seizing advantage and enjoyment wherever they offered, not scrupling to screw from the dealers the most they could for their grain and their pigs, devoted to a savage pastime in which God’s creatures were shot down barbarously in heaps, many of them, too, filled with lust for women; but insolently as they claimed the arrogant and sinful life they led as an obvious right and privilege granted by Heaven, they were prepared to sacrifice it at any moment for the honour of the Fatherland or the glory of God, and even if the opportunity should never arise, yet this readiness to regard life as something secondary and scarcely worth considering was so potent that its sinfulness hardly counted for anything in the balance. And they did not feel that they were sinful when in the morning mist they strode through the faintly crackling undergrowth, or when at evening they climbed a steep, narrow ladder to a look-out perch, and gazed across bush and clearing, where the midges still wove their dances, to the edge of the wood. Then when the moist fragrance of grass and tree rose up to them and along the dry bulwark of the perch an ant came running and vanished in the bark, then sometimes in their souls, though they were pragmatic fellows with their feet firmly planted on the earth, something awoke that rang like music, and the lives they had lived and had still to live were concentrated so intensely into one moment that they could still feel the touch of their mother’s hand on their hair as if for eternity, while another shape already stood before them, separated from them no longer by any span of time, any span of space, the shape which they did not fear: Death. Then all the woods around might turn for them into the wood of the Cross, for nowhere do the magical and the earthly lie closer together than in the heart of the hunter, and when the buck appears on the border of the clearing, then the illumination is bodily present and life seems to be timeless, evanescent and eternal, held in one’s closed hand, so that the shot which kills a strange life is like a symbol of the need to save one’s own life in the arms of grace. Always the hunter goes out to find the Cross in the antlers of the deer, and for that illumination the price even of death seems to him not too high. And so, too, when after his abundant supper, he returns to his room, he can presume to lift his eyes again to the
crucifix, and, though from afar off, to think of the eternity in which his life is embedded. And perhaps in front of that eternity even the cleanliness of his body weighs no more in the balance than the sinfulness of his earthly life: on the wash-table stands a basin whose smallness is in ludicrous contrast to the size of the hunter and the customary dimensions of his life, and the jug, too, holds far less water than the wine he is accustomed to drink. Even the small commode beside the bed, which in the guise of a cupboard gives hospitality to a night-vessel, merely ratifies the inadequate proportions of the rest. The hunter employs it and flings himself on the groaning bed.

In this chamber, admirably suited to the needs of hunters for generations past, Bertrand was installed during his stay at Stolpin.

Among the remarkable memories which Bertrand brought back with him from his stay at Stolpin his picture of old Herr von Pasenow was not the least strange. On his very first day, immediately after breakfast, he was invited by the old gentleman to accompany him on his walk and be shown over the estate. It was a dull, thundery morning; the air was motionless, but the stillness was broken by the muffled thud of the flails coming from the direction of the two threshing-floors. Herr von Pasenow seemed to find pleasure in the rhythm; several times he remained standing and kept time with his stick. Then he asked: “Would you like to see the byres?” and set off towards the long, low sheds; but in the middle of the yard he stopped, shaking his head: “No use, the cows are out grazing.” Bertrand inquired politely what breeds they were; Herr von Pasenow first gazed at him as though he did not understand the question, then said with a shrug of the shoulders “It doesn’t matter,” and led his guest out through the gate: all round the little hollow in which lay the farm hills broadened in field after field, and everywhere the harvest work was in progress. “It all belongs to the estate,” said Herr von Pasenow, making a proud circular sweep with his stick; then his uplifted arm with the stick remained motionlessly fixed in one direction; Bertrand followed it with his eyes and saw the village church tower rising behind a hill. “That’s where the post office is,” Herr von Pasenow confided to him, making straight for the village. The heat was oppressive; the dull thudding of the flails fell gradually into silence behind them, and only the hissing of the scythes, the sound of blades being sharpened, and the rustling of the falling grain
still hung in the air. Herr von Pasenow came to a stop: “Are you sometimes afraid too?” Bertrand was startled, but felt sympathetically touched by this very human question: “Me? Oh, often!” Herr von Pasenow grew interested and came nearer: “When are you afraid? When everything is still?” Bertrand saw that there was something wrong here: “No, stillness is sometimes wonderful: I simply love this stillness over the fields.” Herr von Pasenow seemed put out and annoyed: “You don’t understand.…” After a pause he began again: “Have you any children?” “To the best of my knowledge, no, Herr von Pasenow.” “Well, then.” Herr von Pasenow looked at his watch and peered into the distance; he shook his head: “Incomprehensible,” he said to himself, then to Bertrand: “Well, then
when
are you afraid?”—yet he did not wait for an answer, but looked again at his watch: “But he should have been here by now.” Then he looked Bertrand full in the face: “Will you write to me sometimes when you’re on your travels?” Bertrand said yes; he would be glad to do so, and Herr von Pasenow seemed greatly pleased. “Yes, do write to me, I’m interested, I’m interested in lots of things … write and tell me too when you’re afraid … but he isn’t here yet; you see nobody writes to me, not even my sons.…” Then far away a man with a black bag became visible. “There he is!” Herr von Pasenow set off at a brisk pace, stick and legs going together, and as soon as the man was within hearing distance he screamed at him: “Where have you been idling all this time? This is the last time that you’ll go for the post … you’re dismissed, do you hear? you’re dismissed!” He had grown red and waved his stick in the man’s face; while the latter, obviously used to such encounters, calmly took the bag from his shoulder and handed it to his master, who almost docilely drew the key from his waistcoat-pocket and with trembling fingers turned it in the lock. With a trembling hand he dived into the post-bag, but when he drew out only a few journals it looked as if his fit of rage were about to repeat itself, for he held his mail speechlessly under the messenger’s nose. But thereupon he evidently recollected the presence of his guest, for he showed the journals to Bertrand: “Here, you can see for yourself,” he grumbled and put them back in the bag, locked it, and said as they walked on again: “I’ll have to go and live in the town this year, I’m afraid: it’s too quiet for me here.”

They had just reached the village when the first drops of the thunder shower fell, and Herr von Pasenow proposed that they should seek
refuge in the pastor’s house until it passed over. “You’ll have to meet him in any case,” he added. He was furious on learning that the pastor was not at home, and when the lady of the house said that her husband was at the school he broke out: “You seem to think too that you can tell an old man any story you like, but I’m not so old as not to know that this is the school holidays.” Yes, but she hadn’t meant that the pastor was teaching in the school, and besides he would be back in a minute. “Taradiddles,” grumbled Herr von Pasenow, but the lady refused to be daunted and asked the gentlemen to sit down and she would get them a glass of wine. When she had left the room Herr von Pasenow leant over to Bertrand: “He always tries to avoid me, for he knows that I see through him.” “See through what, Herr von Pasenow?” “Why, that he’s a thoroughly ignorant and incapable pastor, of course. But unfortunately I must keep on good terms with him all the same. Here in the country you’re thrown on the mercy of everyone and …” he hesitated, and added more softly: “and besides, he’s in charge of the graves.” The pastor came in and Bertrand was introduced to him as a friend of Joachim’s. “Yes, one comes and the other goes,” said Herr von Pasenow dreamily, and they did not know whether this indirect reference to poor Helmuth was intended as a compliment or an insult to Bertrand. “Yes, and this is our theologian,” he went on with his introduction, while the theologian smiled awkwardly. The Frau Pastor brought in the wine and a few slices of cold ham, and Herr von Pasenow emptied his glass hastily. While the others were still sitting round the table he went and stood at the window, tapped on the panes the rhythm of the threshing flails, and stared at the clouds as though he were impatient to get away. Into the halting phrases of the conversation he threw from the window: “Tell me, Herr von Bertrand, have you ever in your life met a learned theologian who knew nothing about the next world?” “Herr von Pasenow is pleased to have his joke with me,” said the abashed pastor. “Be so good then as to tell me yourself in what respect the priest of God is distinguished from us ordinary people if he has no connection with the next world?” Herr von Pasenow had turned round and now stared angrily and sharply through his monocle at the pastor. “And if he has learned anything about it, which I permit myself to doubt, what right has he to conceal it from us? … to conceal it from me?” He became somewhat more placable, “from me … on his own admission a sorely tried father.” The pastor replied softly:
“God alone can send you a message, Herr von Pasenow; please believe me when I say that.” Herr von Pasenow shrugged his shoulders: “Oh, I believe it … I believe it, take my word for that.” After a pause, turning to the window with another shrug he said: “It doesn’t matter,” and glanced, once more drumming on the panes, along the street. The rain was falling more slowly, and Herr von Pasenow gave the word: “Now we can go.” As he left he shook the pastor’s hand: “And don’t forget to call on us … for supper to-night, what? Our young friend will be there too.” Then they went. There were pools in the village street, but on the fields the soil was almost dry again, the rain had hardly served to efface the cracks in the ground. The sky was still covered by a faint white veil, but the scorching sun, which would soon break through, could already be felt. Herr von Pasenow was silent and did not make any response to Bertrand’s conversation. But once he stopped and said solemnly with his stick uplifted: “You must be very much on your guard with these learned divines. Keep that in mind.”

On the following days these morning walks were repeated, and occasionally Joachim joined in them. But when Joachim was there the old man was morose and silent and even gave up his attempts to discover what Bertrand’s fears were. Indirectly and tentatively as he usually framed his questions, he now remained completely silent about them. But Joachim too was silent. For he too did not dare to ask Bertrand the questions he wished to have answered, and Bertrand remained obstinately in possession of his revelations. In this way the three of them wandered over the fields, and both father and son took it ill of Bertrand that he should disappoint their eager expectations. But Bertrand had the greatest difficulty in keeping a conversation going.