The Sleepwalkers (39 page)

So they sat on in silence. The sun was declining in the west and shone on their faces, but Mother Hentjen did not feel its heat on her face, nor the smarting of her stiff, reddened, dust-covered skin. And it almost seemed as if this dreamlike, semi-conscious state were about to enclose Esch too and clasp him in its embrace, for although he saw the lengthening and broadening mountain shadows in the valley as an alluring promise of coolness he felt reluctant to move, and only with hesitation did he at last take up his waistcoat, one of whose pockets contained his great silver watch. It was time to go, and Frau Hentjen, now quite will-less, obeyed his command. While descending she rested heavily on his arm, and he
carried the flimsy pink parasol over his shoulder; his waistcoat and jacket dangled from it. To ease the exertion of walking for her he undid two hooks on her high-necked dress, and Mother Hentjen submitted to it, nor did she push him away when other pedestrians approached; she did not see them. The skirt of her brown-silk dress trailed in the dust of the main road, and when in the station Esch deposited her on a seat while he went to quench his thirst she sat there helpless and will-less, waiting for him to return. He brought a glass of beer for her too, and she drank it at his bidding. In the dark compartment of the train he made a pillow for her head on his shoulder. He did not know whether she was asleep or awake, and she herself scarcely knew it. Her head rolled to and fro awkwardly on his hard shoulder. To his attempts to draw her to him her thick-set body in its casing of whalebone put up a stiff resistance, and the hatpins on her nodding head threatened his face. Impatient now, he pushed her hat back, which, sliding downwards along with her coiffure, gave her a drunken look. Her silk dress smelt of dust and heat; only now and then was one aware of the delicate lavender scent that still remained in the folds. Then he kissed her on the cheek as it slid past his mouth, and finally he took her round, heavy head in his hands and drew it to him. She responded to his kiss with dry, thick lips, somewhat like an animal which presses its muzzle against a window-pane.

Not until she was standing in the entrance hall did she find herself back in her world again. She gave Esch a push on the chest and with uncertain steps made her way to her place behind the buffet. There she sat down and stared out into the restaurant, which seemed to lie before her in a mist. At last she recognized Wrobek sitting at the nearest table and said: “Good-evening, Herr Wrobek.” But she did not see that Esch had followed her into the restaurant, nor did she notice that he was among the last to leave. When he shouted good-night to her she replied non-committally: “Good-evening, gentlemen.” Nevertheless as he stepped out of the restaurant Esch felt a strange and almost proud sensation: that of being Mother Hentjen’s lover.

When a man has once kissed a woman the train of consequences follows inevitably and unalterably. One can hasten or delay it, but one cannot escape a law of nature. Esch knew that. Yet his imagination balked at picturing the course of his relationship to Mother Hentjen, and so he was relieved to have Teltscher beside him when he entered the restaurant next day at noon; that made it easier for him to meet Mother Hentjen, and simplified everything.

Teltscher had hit upon a new idea; they should get hold of a negress for the wrestling; that would make the final rounds peculiarly attractive; she could be called the “Black Star of Africa,” and after two indecisive rounds would finally be beaten by the German. Esch was rather apprehensive that Teltscher would hold forth about this African scheme to Mother Hentjen, and he was not mistaken, for hardly was he inside the door before Teltscher paraded his new idea. “Frau Hentjen, our Esch is going to find a negress for us.” She did not at first understand, not even when Esch truthfully declared that he didn’t know where he was to get hold of a negress. No, Mother Hentjen simply refused to listen, taking refuge in biting sarcasm: “One woman more or less, that makes no difference to him.” Teltscher jovially smacked him on the knee: “Of course, a man like him has so many women running after him, there’s nobody that can put his nose out of joint.” Esch glanced up at Herr Hentjen’s portrait; there was a man who had put his nose out of joint. “Yes, that’s the kind of fellow Esch is,” repeated Teltscher. To Frau Hentjen this was a confirmation of her own judgment, and she sought to strengthen her alliance with Teltscher; she regarded the short bristles of Esch’s hair, which were like a stiff dark brush above the yellowish skin of his head, and she felt that to-day she needed an ally. Turning her back on Esch she praised up Teltscher: it was only to be expected that a man who thought something of himself should avoid meddling with these women and should rather hand the job over to a man like Esch. Esch retorted huffily that most men would fall over each other to get jobs of that kind, but very few could handle them. And he despised Teltscher, who had not even managed to keep Ilona for himself. Still, she would soon be beyond anybody’s reach. “Well, Herr Esch,” said Frau Hentjen, “why don’t you get on with it? Your negress is waiting;
away you go.” Very well, he would go, he returned, and as soon as he had eaten his dinner he got up and left the somewhat disconcerted Frau Hentjen to Teltscher’s society.

He dawdled about for a while. He had nothing to do. It annoyed him that he had left Frau Hentjen alone with Teltscher, and finally he was driven to return. It was hardly likely that Teltscher was still there, but he wanted to make sure. The restaurant was empty, nor could he find anybody in the kitchen. So Teltscher had gone, and there was nothing to hinder him from also taking himself off; but he knew that at this hour Frau Hentjen usually stayed in her own room, and suddenly he realized that that was why he had come back. He hesitated a moment and then quietly mounted the wooden stairs. Without knocking he entered the room. Mother Hentjen was sitting by the window darning stockings; when she caught sight of him she uttered a faint shriek and stood petrified. He went straight up to her, pressed her down into her chair again and kissed her on the mouth. She twisted and turned her heavy body in her efforts to evade him, and gasped hoarsely: “Go away … you’ve no business here.” More keenly than his violence she resented the fact that he had come into her room, he, fresh from the arms of a Czech or a negress, into her room that no man had yet entered. She was fighting for her room. But he held her firmly, and at length with thick, dry lips she began to return his kisses, perhaps only as a concession to persuade him to go, for between the kisses she kept repeating with set teeth: “You’ve no business here.” Finally she implored merely: “Not here.” Esch, weary of the grim struggle, remembered that this was a woman to be treated with consideration and respect. If she wanted to change the scene of action, why not? He let her go, and she urged him to the door. When they were in the lobby he said gruffly: “Where, then?” She did not understand, for she believed that he would go now. Esch, with his face close to hers, again asked: “Where, then?” And since she made no move and gave no answer he grasped her again to push her back into the room. She was aware only that she must defend that room. Helplessly she gazed round, saw the door leading into the parlour, had a sudden hope that the primness of the parlour would bring him back to his senses and to decent behaviour, and indicated the door with her eyes; he made way for her, but followed with his hand on her shoulder as if she were a captive.

When they were inside she said uncertainly: “There, now perhaps
you’ll be sensible, Herr Esch,” and strained towards the window to fling back the shutters. But he had seized her from behind, and Frau Hentjen could not move from the spot. She tried to wrest herself free, but they swayed and stumbled among the nuts, so that they almost fell. The nuts cracked under their feet, and as Frau Hentjen, anxious to save her stores, struggled backwards towards the alcove in search of firm footing and something she could get a purchase on, she had a momentary flash of dreamlike awareness, as if she were walking in her sleep: was it not her own doing that the man was being enticed into that corner? But that thought only made her angrier, and she hissed: “Go to your negress … you can get round these sluts, but you won’t get round me.” She clawed at the corner of the alcove, but instead caught hold of the curtain; the wooden rings on the curtain-pole rattled slightly, and being afraid of damaging the good curtain she let go, so that Esch was able to force her into the dark corner where the twin beds stood. He was still behind her and had recaptured her hands and pulled them close to him so that she could not but feel his excitement. Whether for that reason or because the sight of the marriage beds reduced her to defenceless immobility, she went limp under his passionate aggression. And as he tore impatiently at her clothing, and she was afraid that now her underlinen would be damaged, she herself helped him as a criminal might help the hangman, and it filled him almost with horror to note how smoothly things now took their course and in what a matter-of-fact way Mother Hentjen, when they fell on to the bed, laid herself on her back to receive him. And it filled him with a horror still more profound to see her lying rigid and motionless, as if submitting to a familiar duty, as if she were merely recapitulating an old and familiar act of submission, without interest, without enjoyment. Only her round head rolled to and fro on the bedcover as if in persistent negation. He felt the warmth of her body and whipped up his own lust to provoke and overmaster hers. He clutched her head between his hands as if to squeeze out of it the thoughts that were congealed within it, refusing to flow out to him, and his mouth followed the unlovely lines of her heavy cheeks and her low forehead that remained motionless and unresponsive, as unresponsive as the masses for whom Martin had sacrificed himself and who were still unfree. Perhaps Ilona might have the same feeling about Korn’s massive insensitivity, and for a moment he was glad to think that his sacrifice was the same as hers, and that it was right, and
that it was done for her and for redemption into righteousness. Oh, to release oneself, to strip oneself more and more, to annihilate oneself with all the sin that one had accumulated and bore about, yet to release her too whose mouth one sought for, to annihilate Time that had her in its grip, Time that had embedded itself in these ageing cheeks; oh, the desire he had to annihilate the woman who had lived in Time, to bid her be born again timeless, motionless and perforce at one with him! His seeking mouth had found hers, that was now pressed against his like the muzzle of an animal against a pane of glass, and Esch was enraged because she kept her soul tightly enclosed behind her set teeth so that he should not possess it. And when with a hoarse sound she opened her lips at last, he felt an ecstasy such as he had never yet experienced in a woman’s arms, he flowed boundlessly into her, yearning to enter into possession of her who was no longer a woman to him but a re-won heritage wrested from the unknown, the matrix of life, annihilating his ego by transcending its confines till it was featureless and submerged in its own enlargement. For the man who wills Goodness and Righteousness wills thereby the Absolute, and it was revealed to Esch for the first time that the goal is not the appeasement of lust but an absolute oneness exalted far above its immediate, sordid and even trivial occasion, a conjoint trance, itself timeless and so annihilating time; and that the rebirth of man is as still and serene as the universal spirit that yet contracts and closes round man when once his ecstatic will has compelled it, until he attains his sole birthright: deliverance and redemption.

How little it mattered, after all, that one was Mother Hentjen’s lover! There are many men who think that life is centred in the existence of some particular woman. Esch had always known how to keep himself free from that prejudice. Especially now, even although Frau Hentjen often strangely usurped his thoughts. Especially now. His life was directed to greater and higher aims.

Near the New Market he came to a standstill in front of a book-shop. His eye fell on a picture of the Statue of Liberty stamped in gilt on green linen; beneath it was the title,
America To-day and To-morrow.
He had bought but few books in his life, and he was surprised at himself for going into the shop. Its smooth counters and the orderliness of its rectangular books reminded him vaguely of a tobacconist’s. He would
have liked to linger and talk, but since no one encouraged him he merely paid for the book and came out with a package in his hand that he did not know what to do with. A present for Frau Hentjen? She would certainly have not the slightest interest in it, and yet there was some inexplicable connection between her and his purchase. In his perplexity he came again to a standstill in front of the shop. Behind the glass pane on a line hung a bright array of foreign phrase-books, and on their covers waved the flags of their respective nations as if to cheer on aspiring students. Esch betook himself to his midday meal in the restaurant.

One is shy of producing an unsuitable gift, and so Esch carried his into the window-seat; that was where he always read the newspaper after dinner, so he might as well sit there with his book. It didn’t take long for Mother Hentjen to call across the empty room: “Well, Herr Esch, of course you can afford to sit down and read books in the middle of the day.” “Yes,” he answered, “I’ll show it you,” got up and brought it to her at the buffet. “What’s it for?” she said as he held the book out; he indicated by a jerk of the head that she was to look at it; she turned over a page here and there, regarded one or two pictures with closer attention, and simply handed the book back with a “very nice.” Esch was disappointed; he had indeed suspected that she wouldn’t be interested, for what did a woman like her know of the greater and higher aims of life! None the less he remained standing, expecting something else to happen … but all that happened was a remark from Mother Hentjen: “I suppose you’re thinking of spending the whole afternoon over that stuff?” Esch retorted: “I’m not thinking of anything,” and in a huff carried the book to his own room to read it in peace. And he came to the conclusion that he would emigrate by himself. By himself, all alone. Yet he could not help assuming again and again that his study of the American work was to benefit not only himself but Mother Hentjen.