The Sleepwalkers (42 page)

He spent the afternoon in lascivious thoughts of Mother Hentjen’s matter-of-fact love rites. And once more he was tortured by that matter-of-factness, which contradicted so blatantly her customary aversion. In whose nightly embraces could she have contracted those habits? A hope in which he himself did not believe faintly dawned, promising that all this would fall away once they were in America, and the comfort of this
hope mingled with the excitement which now came over him when he felt her house-door key in his pocket. Esch took out the key, held it in the palm of his hand, and felt the smooth metal of the handle. True, she had refused to learn English, but the wind of the future blew once more through the streets. The key to freedom, he thought. The cathedral rose grey in the late twilight, iron-grey soared the towers, and a breath of the new and the unfamiliar fanned them. Esch counted the hours until night. It was more important to hunt out girls for the South American journey than to go to the Alhambra. Five full hours, then he would be at the house door. Esch saw the alcove, saw her lying on the bed; and the thought of stealing in to her, the thought that at the touch of his aroused body her body would palpitate, made his breathing difficult and his mouth dry. For even last week, as during all the weeks before, she had received him in dull impassivity, and although that brief involuntary palpitation was insignificant in itself, yet it was a point at which the immense dead-weight of habit had been quickened, a tiny point, it was true, and yet a virginal one, and that was a herald of hope and of the future. And to Esch it seemed dishonourable to enter prostitutes’ resorts on the evening of Mother Hentjen’s birthday, so he betook himself to the Alhambra.

When afterwards he returned to the restaurant he could see from a long way off the yellow radiance on the uneven cobbles outside. The windows with their panes of bull’s-eye glass were open, and inside he could see Mother Hentjen sitting, stiff in her silk dress, surrounded by her noisy customers; a bowl of punch stood on the table. Esch remained in the shadow; the thought of entering filled him with loathing. He turned away again, but not to go duteously in search of girls at their resorts; he strode in fury through the streets. On the Rhine Bridge he leant against the iron parapet, gazed down into the black water and across at the sheds on the quay. His knees were trembling, so intense had been his desire to burst the rigid bony construction in which that woman was encased; the whalebones would have cracked in the wild struggle. With an expressionless face he trailed back into the town, mechanically running his hand along the bars of the bridge railing as he went.

The house was dark. Mother Hentjen, a candlestick in her hand, was waiting for him at the top of the stairs. He simply blew out the candle-butt and seized her. But she had already taken off her corsets, nor did she defend herself, but instead gave him a tender kiss. And although this
greeting took him quite by surprise, and was perhaps no less novel than that palpitation for which he was waiting so impatiently, yet from this kiss it was terribly and incontrovertibly clear that one of her old habits had been to conclude her birthday celebrations with a tender love rite, and when the longed-for moment now actually arrived, when that blissful palpitation ran through her body, the thought that the touch of Herr Hentjen’s body, which in his present position Esch had no wish to picture, had also made her palpitate just like this, became a raging pain; the ghost which he had fancied was laid arose again, more mocking, more inconquerable than ever, and to conquer it and to show this woman that he, he alone was there, he flung himself upon her and sank his teeth into her plump shoulder. It must have hurt her, but she bore it in silence, although she made a wry face as though she had bitten on something sour, and when presently, exhausted, he made to leave her, she clasped him to her as in gratitude,—and yet her heavy awkward arm was like a vice—clasped him so fast that he could scarcely breathe and wrathfully struggled to free himself. She did not give way, but said—it was the first time that she had spoken to him in the alcove—in her usual business voice, in which nevertheless, had he been more sensitive, he might have heard a note almost of fear: “Why were you so late in coming?… because another year has been added to my age?” Esch was so stunned by her speaking at all that he did not grasp the meaning of her words; indeed, did not even attempt to grasp it, for the unexpected sound of her voice was to him like the termination of something, was like a sudden illumination after a long and painful process of thought, a sign that things could take on a different aspect. He said: “I’m sick of it, I’m going to finish it off.” The blood froze in Frau Hentjen’s veins; she had scarcely enough strength left to unclasp her arm from his shoulder; she felt leaden and icy, and her arm fell powerlessly of itself. All that she still knew was that she must not show her dismay before a man, that she must give him his marching orders before he went of his own accord, and summoning all her strength she brought out faintly: “Certainly, for all I care.” Esch took no notice of this and went on: “Next week I’ll go to Baden.” What need had he to tell her this as well? She felt somehow flattered that his resolve to end the affair should shake him so deeply, it seemed, that it was driving him away from Cologne, out into the world. Yet he was pressing his lips again to her shoulder, and that was surely a queer way of showing that he wanted to finish with her. Or did he simply want to
indulge his lust up to the very last minute? men were capable of anything! Nevertheless she picked up hope again, and although her voice was still difficult to control she asked: “Why? Is there another girl there like the one in Ober-Wesel?” Esch laughed: “Yes, you might call it that, a girl just like her.” Frau Hentjen was indignant at his flippancy on the top of everything else: “It’s easy enough to make game of a weak woman.” Esch still thought she was referring to the person in Badenweiler: “Oh, the one in Baden isn’t so terribly weak as all that.” This fed her suspicions anew: “Who is it?” “A secret.” She maintained an offended silence, and submitted to his renewed caresses. Presently she asked: “Why should you want another woman?” In spite of himself he could not but secretly admit that this woman with her matter-of fact, almost businesslike and yet so curiously reluctant and chaste surrender, accorded him more intense pleasure and bliss than any other woman could, and that he really wanted nobody else. She said again: “Why should you want another woman? You’ve only to tell me if I’m not young enough for you.” He did not reply, for suddenly the fact that she had spoken at last filled him with excitement and elation; she who hitherto had lain silent in his arms, her head rolling in persistent negation, so unalterably silent that her silence had always seemed to him a legacy from the time of Herr Hentjen. She felt his happiness, and she went on proudly: “You don’t need any of those young things; I’m a match for any of them.” Nonsense, thought Esch, with a sudden stab of pain, she must be lying. And with a stab of pain he remembered Harry’s words and repeated them: “One can only love once,” and when Frau Hentjen simply said “Yes,” as if she meant to convey by this that he was the man whom she loved, then it was clear what a liar she was; pretended to be disgusted by men and yet sat drinking with them at her table, and let them drink her health; pretended to love him now, and yet was inconquerably matter-of-fact. But perhaps all this was wrong, for she had no children. Once more his desire for the unambiguous, the absolute, was brought up against an unscalable wall. If all this were only past and done with! His journey to Badenweiler appeared to him at that moment as a necessary prelude, an inevitable preliminary to the journey to America. Evidently she guessed at these thoughts of travel, for she asked: “What does she look like?” “Who?” “Why, the Baden girl.” Well, what did Bertrand look like? and more clearly than ever he recognized that he could picture Bertrand only by calling up Hentjen’s
portrait. He replied harshly: “The portrait must be taken away.” She did not understand: “What portrait?” “That one below there,” he could not bring himself to utter the name, “above the Eiffel Tower.” She began to understand, but she rebelled against this attempt of his to mingle in her affairs: “Nobody has ever objected to it.” “And that’s just why,” he persisted, and now it became quite clear to him that it was his affair with Hentjen that he had to settle with Bertrand, and he went on: “and besides, an end must be put to all this.” “Well, perhaps …” she replied hesitatingly, and her rebellious feelings making her unwilling to understand, she added: “An end to what?” “We must go to America.” “Yes,” she said, “I know.”

Esch had got up. He would have liked to walk up and down, as he was accustomed to do when anything occupied his mind, but there was no room in the alcove, and outside the nuts lay about the floor. So he sat down on the edge of the bed. And although he did his best to repeat Harry’s words they changed when he tried to utter them:

“Love is only possible in a strange country. If you want to love really, you must begin a new life and destroy everything in your old one. Only in a new, quite strange life, where everything past is so dead that you don’t even need to forget it, can two human beings become so at one that the past and even time itself no longer exist for them.”

“I haven’t a past,” said Mother Hentjen in an offended voice.

“Only then,” Esch made an angry grimace which in the darkness Frau Hentjen luckily could not see, “only then will there be no need any longer to deny anything, for then truth will reign, and truth is beyond time.”

“I’ve never denied anything,” said Mother Hentjen in defence.

Esch did not let himself be put off: “Truth has nothing to do with the world, nothing to do with Mannheim …” he almost shouted, “it has nothing to do with this old world.”

Mother Hentjen sighed. Esch gave her a sharp glance:

“There’s nothing to sigh over; you must free yourself from the old world, so as to become free yourself.…”

Mother Hentjen sighed uneasily: “What’s to become of the restaurant? Shall we sell it?”

Esch said with conviction: “Sacrifices must be made … that’s absolutely certain, for there’s no salvation without sacrifice.”

“If we go away we’ll have to get married,” and once more a little apprehensively: “… I suppose I’m too old for you to marry?”

Sitting on the edge of the bed, Esch regarded her in the light of the flickering candle. With his finger he wrote a “37” on the coverlet. He might have given her a cake with thirty-seven candles; no, better as it was, for she made a secret of her age, and would only have been annoyed. He contemplated her heavy, immobile features, and suddenly he would have liked her to be still older, a great deal older than she was. It seemed to him, although he did not know why, that that would have made things surer. If she were suddenly to become young and lie there in the fleeting semblance of youth, it would be all up with the sacrifice. And the sacrifice had to be, had to grow even greater along with his devotion to this ageing woman, so that the world might be put in order and Ilona might be shielded from the daggers, so that all living beings might be reinstated in their first innocence, and no one need any longer languish in prison. Well, one thing could be depended on, Mother Hentjen would soon grow old and ugly. The world seemed to him like a level, smooth, endless corridor, and he said absently:

“We must lay the restaurant with brown linoleum; that would look nice.”

Mother Hentjen picked up hope: “Yes, and get it painted too; the whole place is going to ruin … all these years nothing’s been done … but if you want to go to America …?”

Esch repeated the words: “All these years.…”

Mother Hentjen felt an apology was due: “One has to save, and one postpones a thing from year to year … and time passes …” and then she added: “… and one grows old.”

Esch felt irritated: “When there are no children, saving is ridiculous … nobody ever saved up for me.”

But Mother Hentjen was not listening. She merely wanted to find out whether it was worth while having the restaurant painted; she asked: “Are you going to take me to America with you? … or a young thing?”

Esch replied roughly: “What’s all this eternal talk about young and old? … There will be no young and no old then, and there won’t be any time then either …”

Esch was brought up short. An old woman could not have children. That perhaps was part of the sacrifice. But in a state of innocence nobody had children. Virgins had no children. And as he slipped back into bed
he added conclusively: “Then everything will be firm and sure. And what you’ve left behind you can’t do you any more harm.”

He tugged the coverlet into position and also drew it carefully over Mother Hentjen’s shoulder. Thereupon he put out his hand for the tin extinguisher that hung on the candlestick and that Herr Hentjen too had employed on such occasions, and clapped it on the flickering candle.

Mannheim lies on the way to Baden. And Esch remembered that a man must do his duty by his friends. Something had been bothering him for a long time and now he knew what it was: he could not leave his friends’ money in a losing business. They had earned more than fifty per cent. on their investment so far and that was all right, but now these profits must be secured. It was time to quit. His own three hundred marks were on a different footing. Should he lose them it would serve him right. For with a profit of fifty per cent. and two months’ expenses over and above that—and not a bad two months either—where did the sacrifice come in which was to redeem Ilona? And to finance his flight to America and liberty out of such ill-gotten gains would be another falsification: it was high time to call off the wrestling matches, profits and all. Mother Hentjen was right enough in her prophecy that he and all his pack of women would end up in disgrace and scandal.

But meanwhile he had to secure the money for Lohberg and Erna. It wasn’t easy to buttonhole Gernerth on the matter: in the evenings he kept grumbling about the empty theatre and in the daytime he was hard to catch: he was never in the Alhambra, he never seemed to enter his flat at all, and at Oppenheimer’s place there was nothing but two untidy rooms and no sign of anybody. Moreover, if one asked him where he usually took his meals, Gernerth replied: “Oh, I just make do with a sandwich, the father of a family can’t spread himself much,” which was, of course, hardly true, for one day when the English tourists were crossing the Cathedral square, who should come out of the Cathedral Hotel’s marble vestibule but Herr Gernerth himself, looking well-fed and with a fat cigar in his mouth? “Publicity, my dear friend, publicity,” he had said, and made himself scarce, as if anybody would have taken it amiss were he to live all the time in the Cathedral Hotel, and his whole family with him. To-day, anyhow, he wouldn’t get off: Esch would take care of that!