The Sleepwalkers (37 page)

Of course it was stupid to bother one’s head over such matters, for one had worse troubles; it was bad enough, in all conscience, to be loafing about these docks without pay. A man without a proper means
of livelihood deserved to be exterminated. Mother Hentjen herself would agree with that, and it was curiously pleasant to picture this eventuality to oneself. Yes, the best solution perhaps would be for a super-murderer like that to come along and just do one in. And as Esch strolled along the quay and encountered once more the sign of the Central Rhine Shipping Company Limited he said loudly and distinctly: “Either him or me.”

Esch was looking down into the barge that had brought up the theatrical properties, and supervising the unloading of its cargo. He saw Teltscher approaching with his rosy-cheeked friend, Oppenheimer: they advanced, so to speak, by stages, for every now and then they stopped, sometimes one seizing the other in his eagerness by the lapel of his coat, and Esch asked himself what they could have found to discuss so urgently. When they were near enough he heard Teltscher: “And I tell you, Oppenheimer, this is no job for me—you wait, I’ll send for Ilona yet, and if in half-a-year’s time I don’t put on my turn in New York you can cut off my head.” Hoho, so Teltscher hadn’t given up his claims on Ilona even yet? Well, he would sing a different tune when things had been put in order. And Esch no longer found any pleasure in the thought of death. He snarled at the two of them: what did they want here? did they fancy, perhaps, that he had never seen to a job like this in his life before? or maybe they thought that he wanted to pinch something? or perhaps the gentleman wished to supervise his work? Well, he regretted bitterly that he had ever got other people to put their money into this business, not to mention his own. Here he had been slaving for nothing almost a whole month for this risky affair, and had put his last cent into it, and why? because a certain Herr Teltscher, who was apparently now intending to bolt, had wheedled him into it. Full of rage he began unskilfully to mimic Herr Oppenheimer’s Jewish intonations. “Why, he’s an Anti-Semite!” said Herr Oppenheimer, and Teltscher prophesied that after the first report from the box-office the day after next the Transport Director’s spirits would rise considerably. And because he himself felt in a good humour and wanted to tease Esch he walked round the conveyance on which the properties were being loaded and checked them carefully, then went up to the horses and offered them a few lumps of sugar from his pocket. Esch, angry and offended, had turned away from the Jews and was checking the packing-cases, but he regarded the two men with the tail of his eye and was astonished at
Teltscher’s amiability; yet he did not want to admit that it was genuine, and half expected that the horses would decline the gift with a shake of the head. But the horses, just like horses, took into their soft and friendly lips the sugar-lumps lying on Teltscher’s flat palm, and Esch was annoyed; surely he himself might have thought of offering them a scrap of bread at least! But now that the work of loading was finished nothing remained for him but to give both the horses a sober clap on the crupper. Esch did so, and then, sitting on the packing-cases piled on the lorry, they all three drove into the town. Oppenheimer said good-bye at the Rhine Bridge; Teltscher and Esch drove on and got down at Mother Hentjen’s.

Teltscher had been a few times in the restaurant and already put on the airs of an old and regular customer. Esch felt guilty at bringing such riff-raff to Mother Hentjen’s place, instead of something better. He would have liked to fling the fellow off the lorry. A Judas like that to sit down in Martin’s place, a lout who had no idea that there were better, more refined, more highly respectable men in the world; who had no idea that Martin had been struck down by the hand of a man who would think it beneath him even to spit on a mere knife-thrower! And this juggler, this pimp, gave himself the airs of a conqueror, as if Martin’s seat belonged by rights to him. Conjurers’ tricks; mere juggling with dead things, sterile labour full of lies and trickery.

They had arrived at Mother Hentjen’s. Teltscher clambered down first from the lorry. Esch shouted after him: “Here! Who’s to unload this stuff? Supervising and spying round, that suits you all right, but when it comes to real work you make yourself scarce.” “I’m hungry,” Teltscher retorted simply and pushed open the restaurant door. No use arguing with a Jew; Esch shrugged his shoulders and followed him. And to disclaim any responsibility for this sort of customer he said jestingly: “I’ve brought you a fine customer this time, Mother Hentjen, well, I couldn’t find anything better at the moment.” But suddenly everything seemed not to matter: Teltscher might sit in Martin’s place, and Martin in Nentwig’s; one could not make head or tail of it, and yet somewhere it was all as it should be. Somewhere it was not a matter merely involving human beings, for human beings were all the same and nothing was changed if one of them melted into another, or one of them sat in another’s place—no, the world was not ordered according to good and evil men, but according to good and evil forces of some kind.
He looked furiously at Teltscher, who was performing conjuring tricks with his knife and fork, and now announced that he would extract a knife from Mother Hentjen’s bodice. She started back with a shriek, but already Teltscher was holding up the knife between his thumb and first finger: “Mother Hentjen, Mother Hentjen, fancy you carrying things like that about in your bodice!” Then he proposed to hypnotize her and she became petrified at the mere suggestion. That was past the limit, and Esch let fly at Teltscher: “You should be locked up.” “That’s a new trick,” said Teltscher. Esch growled: “Hypnotism is against the law.” “An interesting chap,” said Teltscher, jerking his chin towards Esch, and by this gesture inviting Frau Hentjen also to find the interesting chap a source of amusement; but she was still petrified with fear and mechanically fingered her coiffure. Esch silently digested the success of his intervention to rescue Mother Hentjen, and was satisfied. Yes, he had let one of them go, that man Nentwig, but it wouldn’t happen a second time; even if it wasn’t a matter of the individual, and even if people melted into one another, so that one fellow couldn’t be told from the next; the wrong done existed apart from the doer, and it was the wrong alone that had to be expiated.

When later he accompanied Teltscher to the Alhambra he felt light-hearted. He had acquired a new kind of knowledge. And he almost felt sorry for Teltscher. And also for Bertrand. And even for Nentwig.

He had now managed at last to extort from Gernerth a guarantee of a hundred marks a month from the receipts in consideration of his collaboration—what would he have had to live on otherwise?—but the very first evening brought him in no less than seven marks. If that continued his revenue for the month would be doubled. Frau Hentjen had steadfastly refused to attend the opening performance, and next day at lunch-time Esch told her excitedly of its success. When he reached the most interesting, one might almost say the crucial, point of his narrative, and told how Teltscher had ripped up one of the girls’ tights and only loosely tacked it together again, so that during the wrestling it could not help bursting at a certain prominent protuberance, and went on to say that this incident would be repeated evening after evening; while at the very memory of it he still found himself so overcome by laughter that repeatedly he had to help out his words with dumb show, suddenly Frau Hentjen got up and said she had had enough. It was scandalous that a man whom
she had taken to be a decent fellow, a man who once had followed a respectable occupation, should sink so low. She withdrew into the kitchen.

Quite taken aback, Esch remained where he was and dried his eyes, still wet with laughter. In one corner of his heart he had a feeling of guilt, and in that corner he admitted that Mother Hentjen was right; the bursting tights on the stage were vaguely akin to the knives which no longer ought to be thrown there; yet Mother Hentjen certainly did not have the faintest suspicion of this, and her anger was really incomprehensible. He had a feeling of respect for her, he had no wish to swear at her as he did at that fool Lohberg, yet she would certainly have got on better with Lohberg, for as a matter of fact he wasn’t so refined as Lohberg. He contemplated the portrait of Herr Hentjen over the mantelpiece to see whether it had any resemblance to Lohberg, and when he had looked long enough at the features of the late restaurant-keeper they did actually melt into those of the Mannheim tobacconist. Yes, wherever one looked it seemed that one figure melted into another and that one could not even distinguish the living from the dead. Nobody was what he thought he was; a man imagined he was a chap with his feet planted firmly on the earth, pocketing his seven marks a night and going wherever he pleased; and in reality he was just sometimes in one place, and sometimes in another, and even when he made a sacrifice it was not himself who made it. An irresistible desire overcame him to produce some proof that this was not so and that it could not be so, and even if it was impossible to prove it to anybody else he was resolved to show that woman in there that he wasn’t to be confused either with Herr Lohberg or with Herr Hentjen. Without further ado he went through to the kitchen and said to Frau Hentjen that she mustn’t forget the wine auction at Saint-Goar next Friday. “You’ll get plenty to keep you company without me,” responded Frau Hentjen from the hearth. Her opposition exasperated him. What did this woman want from him? Must he only say things to her that she herself prescribed and wanted to hear? He could not help thinking of the orchestrion, which anybody could set going. And yet she couldn’t stand the orchestrion. If the kitchenmaid hadn’t been there, for two pins he would simply have fallen on her as she stood there by the hearth, to convince her of his existence. So he simply said: “I’ve arranged everything; we take the train to Bacharach, then the steamer to Saint-Goar. We’ll arrive there about eleven o’clock in time for the auction.
In the afternoon we can walk up to the Lorelei.” She stiffened a little under the firmness of his decision, yet she tried to give her reply a mocking inflection: “Great plans, Herr Esch.” Esch was now sure of himself. “Only a beginning, Mother Hentjen: by the end of next week I expect to have made a hundred marks.” Whistling to himself he left the kitchen.

In the restaurant he looked again through the newspapers he had brought with him and marked in red pencil the notices of the opening performance. When he found no word of it in
The People’s Guardian
he felt irritated. Yes, they could let a comrade and friend of theirs who had sacrificed himself lie in prison. But they couldn’t put in a measly little report of the wrestling performance. Here, too, things must be set in order. He felt within him the strength required for it and the faith that he would succeed in mastering and resolving the chaos in which everything was so painfully entangled, in which friend and foe, sullen and yet resigned, were so inextricably involved.

As he was walking through the theatre during the interval he suddenly caught sight of Nentwig, and he started so violently that it brought to his mind a phrase, “struck to the heart.” Nentwig was sitting with four other men at a table, and one of the wrestlers, a bath-robe flung over her tights, was sitting with them. The bath-robe gaped and Nentwig was occupied in widening the opening by adroit movements of his pudgy hands. Esch walked past with his head averted, but the girl called out to him, so that he had to turn round. “Hallo, Herr Esch, what are you doing here?” he heard Nentwig’s voice. Esch hesitated: then he said briefly: “ ’Evening.” Nentwig did not feel the rebuff, but lifted his glass to him, while the girl said: “You can have my chair, Herr Esch. I must go back to the stage now.” Nentwig, who had been drinking, held Esch’s hand firmly clasped, and while he poured out a glass of wine for him looked up at him with a sentimental, vinous gaze. “No, fancy meeting like this, it’s quite an unexpected pleasure.” Esch said that he too was needed on the stage, and Nentwig, still holding his hand, gurgled with laughter: “Aha! going to see the ladies behind the scenes. I’ll come too, I’ll come too.” Esch tried to make Nentwig understand that he was here on business. At last Nentwig grasped it: “Oh? So you’re employed here? A good post?” Esch’s vanity would not allow him to admit this. No, he wasn’t employed here; he was a partner in the concern. “Think
of that, think of that,” said Nentwig in astonishment; “a good business, a nice little business, obviously a nice little business”—he looked round at the well-packed hall—“and he forgets his good old friend Nentwig, who would always be glad to share in a thing like that.” He became quite alert: “Who caters for the wine, Esch?” Esch explained that he had nothing to do with the catering; the proprietor looked after that. “Hm, but all the rest”—Nentwig made a grand comprehensive gesture embracing the hall and the stage—“you’re concerned in all that? Come, drink a glass of wine anyway,” and Esch could not avoid clinking glasses with Nentwig, and must shake hands with Nentwig’s companions too, and drink to them. In spite of the cunning with which Nentwig had cornered him he could not summon up the hate he ought to have felt against Nentwig. He tried to bring to his mind again the sins of the head clerk; he did not succeed; there had been something fishy in the balance sheet, something very fishy, and Esch sat up a little straighter so as to keep his eye on the one policeman in the hall. But Nentwig’s guilt had grown so strangely shadowy and contourless that Esch became aware at once of the senselessness of his intentions, and somewhat awkwardly and a little ashamed of himself he put out his hand for his wine-glass. Meanwhile Nentwig gazed with swimming eyes at his good old book-keeper, and it seemed to Esch as if along with those swimming eyes the whole plump form of Nentwig was dissolving into indeterminacy. This vinegar faker had treacherously accused him of erroneous book-keeping, had tried to deprive him of his livelihood and his existence, and would always go on conspiring against him. Yet one could hardly feel angry with him now. From the inextricable coil of happenings an arm projected, an arm with a threatening dagger in its hand, but if one were to discover that it was Nentwig’s arm the whole thing would turn into a stupid and almost sordid episode. Death dealt by the hand of a Nentwig could scarcely even be called murder, and a sentence pronounced over Nentwig would be nothing but the shabbiest form of revenge for a mistake in book-keeping that was not a mistake at all. No, there was little point in handing over a head clerk to justice, for it was not a matter of striking down a hand, even if that hand held the threatening dagger, it was a matter of striking a blow at the whole thing, or at least at the head of the offence. Something inside Esch told him: “A man who sacrifices himself must be decent,” and he decided to take no further notice of Nentwig. The fat little man had again sunk back into his drunken doze, and when
the strains of
The Gladiators’ March
began, to which the wrestlers, under Teltscher’s direction, now came marching on to the stage, Nentwig did not notice that Esch had disappeared.