The Sleepwalkers (52 page)

Next day he made inquiries of Oppenheimer, for with Teltscher the greatest caution was imperative. Oppenheimer confirmed Teltscher’s statements. “I see … then he’ll have to get an engagement again with
Ilona.…” “He can count on me, I’ll soon get an engagement for him,” said Oppenheimer, “what else is there left for him to do?” Esch nodded: “And if he were to rent a theatre himself, he would need money …?” “I don’t suppose you have the few thousands needed?” said Oppenheimer. No, he hadn’t. Oppenheimer wagged his head to and fro: it couldn’t be done without money; perhaps they could interest somebody else in the matter … how about Frau Hentjen, for example, who wanted to sell her business and would have a lot of ready money at her disposal? He had no influence there, said Esch, but he would put the proposal to Frau Hentjen.

He did not like doing it, it was a new task, but there was no getting round it. Esch felt the victim of a most insidious attack. Quite possible that in spite of everything Oppenheimer and Teltscher were in league; the two Jews! Why should nothing remain for a bounder like that but to throw knives? as though there weren’t honest and decent work to be had! And what was that he had drivelled about a death and a legacy? They had driven him into a cul-de-sac, it was as though they knew that nothing once done could be undone; that Ilona must be shielded from the knives and the world saved from injustice, that Bertrand’s sacrifice must not have been in vain, any more than the removal of Herr Hentjen’s portrait! No, nothing could be undone, nothing must be undone, for justice and freedom were involved, freedom, whose safety one dared no longer leave to the demagogues and the Socialists and the venal hirelings who wrote for the Press. That was his task. And that he had to retrieve Lohberg’s and Erna’s money seemed to him a part and a symbol of this higher task. And besides, if Teltscher could not rent a theatre, then the money would be lost for ever! There was no escape. Esch set the accounts against each other, made his calculations, and the sum gave the clear answer: he must induce Mother Hentjen to yoke herself like him to the task.

When he saw this clearly his uncertainty and anger faded. He mounted his bicycle, rode home, and sent Lohberg a detailed account of Herr Gernerth’s incredible and revolting crime, adding that he had at once taken reliable measures to protect the investors, and begging the esteemed Fräulein Erna not to be disturbed.

So it was all up with America. Now he would have to stay in Cologne. The door of the cage had slammed to. He was imprisoned. The torch
of liberty was quenched. Strangely enough he could not feel angry with Gernerth. For the real blame lay with a greater than Gernerth, with one who in spite of all temptation and inducement had politely declined to fly to America. Yes, that seemed to be the law, though it was not justice; whoever sacrificed himself must give up his liberty first of all. Nevertheless his position remained an incredible one. Esch repeated: “Imprisoned,” as though he had to convince himself of it. And almost with a quiet mind, disturbed only by the merest twinge of conscience, he told Mother Hentjen that they would have to postpone the American journey for the present, for Gernerth had sailed in advance to make arrangements for them over there.

Really one could tell Mother Hentjen whatever one liked; she had never shown the slightest interest either in the wrestling or in Herr Gernerth, and besides in what happened around her she saw only what it suited her to see. So now all that she saw was that the dreaded journey to a strange and adventurous land was abandoned, and the knowledge was like a warm and comforting bath into which her soul had been unexpectedly dipped, and which she had to enjoy in silence for a little before she said: “To-morrow I’ll have in the painters, or winter will be on us and then the walls won’t dry properly.” Esch was taken aback: “The painters? But you want to sell the place!” Mother Hentjen put her hands on her hips: “Oh well, it will be a good time yet before we go,—I’ll have the place painted, it must be kept in order.” Esch shrugged his shoulders and gave in: “Perhaps it will pay us, might get it back in the price.” “That’s so,” said Mother Hentjen. Nevertheless she could not shake off a faint residue of uncertainty—who knew? perhaps the American ghost had not been really laid—and she found it altogether right and proper that she should pay something for her stability and security. So Esch and Oppenheimer were very pleasantly surprised when they found little trouble in persuading Frau Hentjen that the theatrical business must be financed during Gernerth’s absence; and she agreed just as readily to a mortgage on the house, which Oppenheimer with great foresight had brought with him. The transaction was concluded, and Oppenheimer pocketed a commission of one per cent.

In this way did Mother Hentjen become a partner in Teltscher’s new theatrical venture; thanks to Oppenheimer’s agency a theatre was rented in the bustling town of Duisburg, and Mother Hentjen could justly hope that she would share in really ample profits. Esch had insisted
on three conditions: first that he should retain the right to inspect the books, secondly that before the liquidation of the affair the remainder of Lohberg’s and Erna’s capital investment should be repaid (that was only just and reasonable, even if Mother Hentjen had no need to know anything about it), and thirdly he forced Herr Teltscher and Herr Oppenheimer by a clause in the contract to strike out the favourite knife-throwing act from any conjuring performance that might take place. “Off his jump!” said the two gentlemen; but Esch held to his point.

Thus far things had gone smoothly and in irreproachable order. The sacrifice which Mother Hentjen had made had now bound him to her for ever and rendered his decision irrevocable. True, the hated business was not yet sold, but the mortgage was in a way a first step towards the annihilation of the past. And in Mother Hentjen’s bearing too there were things that might be read as signs of the beginning of a new life. She contested his marriage plans as little as she had contested the mortgage, and she was filled with a gentleness such as no one had seen in her hitherto. The autumn had come, premature and cold, and she wore again the grey dimity blouse, and was often without her corsets. Even her stiff coiffure seemed to have loosened; no doubt about it, she devoted no longer the old, cunning solicitude to her outward appearance, and in that too one could see the difference between the present and the past. Esch stamped through the house. If one were imprisoned and without anything to do, at least one should get something out of it. All the same, this couldn’t be called a new life. At breakfast he sat in the restaurant, and at supper-time he was still sitting there. Mother Hentjen made sundry remarks about wastrels and ne’er-do-wells who liked to give themselves airs, but she fed him willingly. Esch put up with everything. He studied his newspaper, and sometimes examined the picture postcards sticking in the mirror frame, glad that among them there was none with his own handwriting. And he supervised the house-painters and whitewashers in case they should damage anything. It was easy for Mother Hentjen to talk. A fine lot she cared for the new life! With women it was a simple business anyway—Esch had to laugh—they could carry the new life about with them anywhere, under their hearts, that was to say. That of course was why they had no desire to go out into the new world, they had everything already within their four walls and thought that they had only to remain sitting in their cage to be innocent!
There they scrubbed and polished and fancied that by satisfying their petty mechanical instinct for order they had done the trick! The new life in a cage? as if it was as simple as all that!

No, with petty devices, with petty modifications, the new life, the state of innocence, was not to be brought about in captivity. The unchangeable, the already done, the earthly work-a-day world, was not so easy to circumvent. The house stood there unchanged, and no mark of that measly mortgage was to be seen on it. The streets, the towers, round which the autumn wind whistled, were unchanged, and of the breath of the future there was no longer any trace. And really to rouse from sleep Mother Hentjen’s memories and Mother Hentjen’s past life, one would need to set fire to the four corners of Cologne and raze it to the ground, until not one stone remained on another. For what good did it do him that Mother Hentjen now wore her hair a little less stiffly brushed back? she still strutted unchanged through the streets, and people lifted their hats to her, and everybody knew what name she bore. God knows, he had not thought it would be like this when, for the sake of the sacrifice, he had taken upon him her advancing years and her fading charms. Even if her hair were to grow grey overnight, if all at once she were to become a quite old woman who no longer could remember anything about her life, irrecognizable to all who had known her, a stranger attached by no bond to her accustomed surroundings,—even that might be the new life! And Esch could not keep back the thought that every fresh child aged the mother, and that childless women did not grow old: they were changeless and dead, with no hold on time. But when women were awaiting a new life, then they were filled with the hope that time would begin again for them, and it was as though the thing that aged them re-won for them a new virginity; it was to them a hope that all living beings might attain the state of innocence, a prophetic dream of death and yet new life, the coming of the kingdom of salvation in this ageworn world. Sweet, never-to-be-fulfilled hope.

Frankly, such thoughts would hardly have been to Mother Hentjen’s taste. Anarchistic ideas, she would have called them. Perhaps even with justice. For one had revolutionary thoughts and made revolutionary speeches when one found oneself in prison. And did not even know that one was doing it. Esch clattered up and down the stairs, cursed the house, cursed the steps, cursed the workers. A fine appearance this new life of his had! The clean patch on the wall where the portrait had hung
was now painted over, so that one might almost imagine that the portrait had been removed merely that the patch might be effaced. For no other reason. Esch stared up at the wall. No, this was no new life at all that he had begun; on the contrary, to all appearances Time had been put back to where it was before. This woman seemed literally resolved to cancel and undo everything. And one day after cleaning and dusting she came down into the restaurant, sweating and blown and yet pleased with herself: “Ouf, you wouldn’t believe how much the place was needing a doing up.” Esch asked absently: “When was it done up last?” but suddenly it dawned on him that it must have been on the occasion of her marriage; he brought down his fist on the table so that the plates rattled, and shouted: “Of course the cage only needs to be painted each time a new bird is put in it!” A little more, and he would have thrashed her out there in the restaurant. He was tired of being forced to turn his head the wrong way, always having to look back into the past. And on the top of that she expected him to pay court to her; for she seemed in no hurry with the marriage. On every side, unconquerable, the accustomed rose up again. And the substantial strand of settled habit was palpable enough in all her new warmth and softness, and everything went to show that not only did she contemplate taking up her old life again and continuing it for all eternity, but it looked also as though she wished to reduce love and lover alike to the rank of an ornamental accessory, to a sort of painted wall decoration in the house of her life. And even that semi-official intimacy which she had granted him as in a manner of speaking a security for their bond, she was trying now to curtail again. When he went off to Duisburg to supervise Teltscher’s accounts, not a word of appreciation did she vouchsafe him, and when he suggested that she might perhaps go there with him some time, she talked of impudence and retorted that he should stay there; that was the sort of company that suited him.

And Mother Hentjen was right! Yes, even in that! She was right to show him that in her house he was no more than a merely tolerated homeless orphan, one with whom nobody could have any real companionship. And yet she was not right! And that perhaps was the worst of all. For behind her apparently justified coldness, behind her apparently righteous condemnation, the old senseless fear peeped out again and again that he too—he, August Esch!—might simply have had his eyes on her money in wanting to marry her. That became quite clear
when the deeds of mortgage arrived; Mother Hentjen pried about in the papers for a while with an offended expression and at last said reproachfully: “Why, I never thought the stamp duty would be so high!… I could easily have paid it out of my savings-bank account if I had known,” by which it became clear as the day that she possessed secret reserves and preferred to conceal them, yes, preferred to accept a mortgage on her house rather than let him know anything about them. Not to speak of putting them under his skilled supervision. Yes, that was what this woman was like. She had learned nothing, knew nothing about the kingdom of salvation, and desired to know nothing about it. And the new life was a dead letter to her. She was striving again to return to that commercial and conventional kind of love to which he had submitted and yet could no longer endure: it was a vicious circle from which there was no escape. What had been was inescapable and unalterable. Unassailable. And even if one were to annihilate the whole city—the dead would still remain the mightier force.

And now Lohberg next made his appearance. He showed that his suspicions were aroused because only the capital was to be repaid without his and Erna’s promised share of the profits. That was surely the last straw. But when the fool hinted a little awkwardly and yet with a certain pride that every penny would be a godsend to him, for Erna was now well on the way, and they must seriously think of getting married, it sounded to Esch like a voice from the beyond, and he knew that his sacrifice was not yet complete. The faint and shabby hope that this child, for which he disclaimed all responsibility, might after all be Lohberg’s, was swallowed up in the unearthly knowledge that for the perfect love he had chosen an atonement must be made, atonement for a blasphemy in which the menacing reverberation of murder could be heard, so that his love was cursed with barrenness, while the child conceived in sin and without love would irrevocably come to birth. And although he was full of anger at Mother Hentjen, who knew nothing of this and thought only of getting her house painted instead of sharing his terrors, he longed for such an atonement, and the wish that Mother Hentjen might raise her arm to kill him again became strong. Yet in spite of this he had to congratulate Lohberg, and shaking him by the hand he said: “Your winnings will be paid if I can do it … as a christening gift.” What else remained to be done? He passed his hand over his stiff closely cropped hair, and a cool prickling sensation remained in
the palm of his hand. From Lohberg he learned also that Ilona was going to depart for Duisburg shortly. And he decided that beginning from the first of next month he must have Teltscher’s books posted monthly to him in Cologne for supervision.