The Sleepwalkers (34 page)

It was natural that Esch should be annoyed because Mother Hentjen had never answered his letter, since even business letters were always answered within a certain time, and a private letter deserved more consideration, not being a mere matter of business routine. Still, Mother Hentjen’s silence was in keeping with her character. It was common knowledge that a man needed only snatch at her hand, or try to pinch her on the more protuberant parts of her body, to make her stiffen into that rigidity of disgust with which she silently checked the importunate; perhaps Esch’s letter had provoked a similar reaction in her. After all, a letter is something the writer’s fingers have dirtied, not unlike dirty body-linen, and Mother Hentjen might be depended on to see it in that light. She was quite different from other women; she was not the woman to walk into a man’s room early in the morning before it had been tidied without showing embarrassment even if he was washing himself. She was no Erna: she would never have asked Esch to think of her sometimes and to write her nice, sentimental letters. Nor was she the woman to have an affair with a man like Korn, although she was a more earthly creature than Ilona. Of course, like Ilona, Mother Hentjen was something superior, only it seemed to Esch that on the earthly plane she had to maintain by artifice what Ilona had by nature. And if she was disgusted by his letter he could understand and approve her attitude; he had almost a yearning to be scolded by her: it seemed as if she were bound to know what he had been up to, and he could feel again the cold look with which she had always reproached him whenever he slept with Hede; not even that had she been willing to tolerate, and yet the girl was a member of her own establishment.

When he arrived in Cologne, however, and made it his first business to call on Mother Hentjen, Esch was received neither with the friendliness he had hoped for nor the reproach he had feared. She merely said: “Oh, there you are again, Herr Esch. I hope you’re staying for some time,” and he felt like an outsider, felt actually as if he were doomed for all eternity to vegetate forgotten in the Korn household. When Frau Hentjen did come to his table later she wounded him even more deeply by speaking only of Martin: “Yes, he’s got what he was asking for, Herr Geyring”—she had warned him often enough. Esch answered in
monosyllables; he had told her all he knew when he wrote. “Oh! I must thank you for your letter, too,” said Frau Hentjen, and that was all. In spite of his disappointment he pulled out a parcel: “I’ve brought you a souvenir from Mannheim.” It was a replica of the Schiller Memorial outside the Mannheim theatre, and Esch indicated the shelf from which the Eiffel Tower looked down with its black-white-and-red flag; it would perhaps go all right up there. And although he merely handed the thing over without further ado, Frau Hentjen accepted it with unexpected and genuine delight, for this was something she could show to her friends. “Oh no, I won’t let anybody so much as look at it down here; it’s too lovely for that; it’s going upstairs into my parlour … but it isn’t right of you, Herr Esch, to go to such expense for me.” Her warmth put him in a good mood again, and he began to tell her about his life in Mannheim, not omitting to express certain edifying sentiments which, though really emanating from that fool Lohberg, would, he assumed, be acceptable to Mother Hentjen. With many interruptions, for she was often called to the buffet, he extolled to her the beauties of nature, especially of the Rhine, and said he was surprised that she stuck so closely to Cologne and never made an excursion to places so easily within her reach. “All very well for sweethearting couples,” said Mother Hentjen contemptuously, and Esch answered respectfully that she could quite well go alone or with a woman friend. That sounded plausible and reassuring to Frau Hentjen, and she said that she might consider it some day. “Anyhow,” she remarked, dismissing it for the present, “I knew the Rhine well enough when I was a girl.” Hardly had she said this than she stiffened and stared over his head. Esch was not surprised, for he knew Mother Hentjen’s sudden withdrawals. But there was a particular reason for her reserve on this occasion, a reason that Esch could not have surmised: it was the first time that Frau Hentjen had ever mentioned her private life to a customer, and she was so upset by the realization that she fled to the buffet to look in the glass and finger her sugar-loaf coiffure. She was angry with Esch because he had drawn confidences from her, and she did not return to his table although the Schiller Memorial was still standing there. She felt like telling him to take it away, especially as one or two of his friends had sat down beside him and were running it over with masculine eyes and masculine fingers. She fled still farther, into the kitchen, and Esch knew that he had unwittingly committed some blunder or other. But when she finally reappeared he rose and took the
statuette to the buffet. She polished it clean with one of the glass-cloths. Esch, who remained standing because he did not know how to extricate himself, told her that in the theatre opposite the memorial the
première
—that was a word he had learned from Gernerth—the
première
of one of Schiller’s plays had taken place. He himself had now various connections with the theatre, and if everything went well he would soon be able to get tickets for her. Really? He had connections with the theatre? Oh, well, he had always been something of a wastrel. For Mother Hentjen connections with the theatre simply meant relations with the vulgar actresses, and she remarked, contemptuously and indifferently, that she could not bear the theatre, for there was nothing in it but love, love, and that bored her. Esch did not venture to contradict her, but while Frau Hentjen carried her present into safety upstairs he began talking to Hede, who had barely looked at him, being obviously offended because he had not thought it worth his while to send her a postcard too. Hede seemed thoroughly ill-humoured, and ill-humour seemed to pervade the whole restaurant, in which the automatic instrument, set a-going by a reckless client, was now grinding out its tunes. Hede rushed to the instrument to turn it off, since music at such a late hour was against the public regulations, and all the men laughed at the success of the prank. Through the half-open window a stray night breeze wandered in, and Esch, who had got a whiff of it, slipped outside into the mild freshness of the night, quickly, before Hede could return, quickly, before he could encounter Frau Hentjen again; for she might get out of him that he had thrown up his job with the Central Rhine Shipping: and she certainly wouldn’t be talked into believing that the promotion of wrestling matches was a respectable occupation; she wouldn’t believe in its prospects, but would be sure to make adverse malicious comments—perhaps with justice. Still, he had had enough for one night, and so he took himself off.

In the black, cellar-like streets there was a chill stench, as always in summer. Esch was vaguely content. The air and the dark walls were familiar and comforting; a man did not feel lonely. He almost wished that he might meet Nentwig. He would have enjoyed giving the man a good hiding. And it exhilarated Esch to feel that life often provided quite simple solutions. Yet it was a lottery in which winning numbers were rare, and so he would just have to stick to the scheme for promoting wrestling matches.

Oppenheimer, the theatrical agent, possessed neither an antechamber with cushioned chairs, nor a reception clerk with forms for visitors to fill up. That was only to be expected. But nobody likes an exchange for the worse, and Esch had nursed a vague hope of finding an establishment not unlike that of the Central Rhine Shipping translated into theatrical terms. Well, it wasn’t like that at all. After he had climbed a narrow dark staircase to the mezzanine floor, found a door marked “Oppenheimer’s Agency,” and knocked at it without getting any response, he was forced simply to walk in unannounced. He found himself in a room where an iron washstand was standing filled with dirty water and pigeonholes of all kinds were cluttered up with waste-paper. On one wall hung a large calendar issued by an insurance company, on the other wall, framed and glazed, was a picture of a ship of the Hamburg-Amerika line, the
Kaiserin Augusta Viktoria
, painted in gay colours with a swarm of smaller craft around her, as she left the harbour and clove the foaming blue waves of the North Sea. Esch did not give himself time to inspect the ship closely, for he had come on business, and since shyness was not one of his characteristics he pushed, although with some hesitation, into a second room. There he found a writing-desk that, in contrast to the disorder prevailing elsewhere, had nothing whatever upon it, not even any trace of writing materials, but was splotched with ink, its brown wood scored and nicked with old grey notches and new yellow ones, and its green-baize cloth torn in many places. There was no other door. In this room too, however, there were notable wall-decorations fastened to the wallpaper with drawing-pins, a collection of photographs that kindled Esch’s interest, for there were many ladies in tights or spangles, in seductive and alluring poses, and he gave a glance round to see if Ilona was amongst them. But he thought it more proper to withdraw and inquire of somebody where Herr Oppenheimer might be found. There was no house porter, and so he rang at several doors until he was told, with a contempt that included himself, that Oppenheimer’s office hours were highly irregular. “You can wait about for him if you’ve nothing better to do,” said a woman.

So that was that. It was unpleasant to be treated in that way, and if his new profession were to expose him to such contempt it was hardly encouraging. Still, it couldn’t be helped, he had taken it on for Ilona’s sake (and the thought gave him a thrill of warmth about the heart); it was in any case his new profession, and so Esch waited. Fine office
habits this Herr Oppenheimer had contracted! Esch had to laugh; no, this was not a job in which testimonials were likely to be asked for. He stood before the house door gazing down the street, until at length an insignificant, small, fair-haired, rosy man came towards the house and went up the stairs. Esch followed him. It was Herr Oppenheimer. When Esch explained his business Herr Oppenheimer said: “Women wrestlers? I’ll fix it up, I’ll fix it up all right. But what does Gernerth need you for?” Yes, what did Gernerth need him for? Why was he here? What had brought him here at all? Now that he had given up his post in the Central Rhine Shipping Company his visit to Cologne was by no means the official journey he had projected. Why had he come to Cologne, then? Surely not because Cologne was a stage nearer the sea?

When an honest man emigrates to America his relations and friends stand on the quay and wave their handkerchiefs to him. The ship’s band plays,
Must I then, must I then, leave my native Town
, and although one might regard this, in view of the frequency with which ships make the voyage, as a show of hypocrisy on the part of the bandmaster, yet many of the listeners are moved. When the rope is once made fast to the tiny tug, when the ocean giant floats out on the dark, buoyant mirror of the sea, then fitful and forlorn over the water come faint gusts of more cheerful melodies with which the kindly bandmaster is trying to enliven the departing passengers. Then it becomes clear to many a man how dispersedly his fellows are scattered over the face of the sea and the earth, and how frail are the threads that bind them one to another. Thus, gliding out of the harbour into clearer waters, where the current of the river is no longer discernible and the fides of the sea actually seem to be setting backwards into the harbour, the great liner often swims in a cloud of invisible but tense anguish, so that many a spectator feels prompted to stop her. On she goes, past the ships that lie along the smoking, littered shores, rattling their cranes to and fro as they load and unload vague cargoes for vague destinations, past the littered shores that take on a dusty greenness towards the river-mouth and come to an end in scanty herbage, finally past the sand-dunes where the lighthouse comes into sight, on she goes, fettered like an outcast to her tiny escort, and on the ships and along the shores stand men who watch her go, raise their arms as if to stop her, yet summon up merely a half-hearted and awkward wave of the hand. Once she is out
in the open sea and her hull is almost sunk below the horizon, so that her three funnels are barely visible, many a man peering out to sea from the coast asks himself if this ship is making for the harbour or forging her way into a loneliness that the longshoreman can never comprehend. And if he finds that she is heading for the land he is comforted, as though she were bringing home his sweetheart, or at least a long-expected letter that he had not known he was waiting for. Often in the light haze of that distant frontier two ships meet, and one can see them gliding past each other. There is a moment in which both the delicate silhouettes merge together and become one, a moment of subtle exaltation, until they softly separate again with a motion as quiet and soft as the distant haze in which they pair, and each one goes alone her own way. Sweet, never-to-be-fulfilled hope!

But the passenger out yonder on board the ship does not know that we have been anxious for him. He scarcely notices the undulating ribbon of the coast, and only when he vaguely divines the yellow ray of the lighthouse is he aware that there are those on land who are anxious for him and think of his danger. He does not understand the danger that in fact encompasses him, he is not conscious that a great mountain of water separates him from the sea-bottom that is the earth. Only the man who has an aim fears danger, for he is afraid of failure. But the passenger who walks on the smooth planks that run round the deck like a racing-track, and that are smoother than any path he has yet trod, the passenger on board ship has no aim, and can never complete his destiny; he is closed within himself. All his potentialities lie asleep. One who loves him can love him only for what he promises to be, for all that lies within him, not for what he will achieve or has achieved; he will never achieve it. So men on shore know nothing about love and mistake their fears for love. The sea-passenger, however, soon comes to this knowledge, and the threads that were spun from him to those on shore are broken before the coastline sinks out of sight. It is almost superfluous for the bandmaster to try enlivening melodies upon him, for the passenger is content to let his hand slide over the smooth brown polish of the railing and its glittering brass rings. The shining sea lies stretched before him; he is at peace. Mighty engines drive him on, and their humming shapes a path that leads nowhere. The eye of the passenger at sea is a different eye: it is the eye of an orphaned man that recognizes us no longer. He has forgotten what was once his daily task; he believes no longer in the
correctness of addition sums, and if his way should take him past the telegraph operator’s cabin and he should hear the ticking of the apparatus, he marvels maybe at the mechanism, but cannot convince himself that the operator is receiving messages from the land and sending messages to the land; indeed, if he were not a sober-minded man he might think that the operator was speaking to the cosmos. He loves the whales and the dolphins that play round the ship, and he has no fear of the icebergs. But if a distant coastline should come into sight he refuses to look at it and perhaps takes refuge in the belly of the ship until it has vanished again, for he knows that it is not love that awaits him there, not loose-footed freedom, but taut anxiety and the straight walls of his aim. For he who seeks love seeks the sea; he may perhaps speak of the land that lies beyond the sea, but he does not mean what he says, for he thinks of the voyage as endless, the voyage that nourishes in his lonely soul the hope of expanding and opening itself to receive that other who emerges free as air from the light haze and enters into him, that other whom he rightly recognizes as a potential, unborn immortal.