The Sleepwalkers (72 page)

One had to fight for every bale of paper that one asked to be delivered, and although Esch was furnished with a certificate from the authorities empowering him to receive the supply required by the
Kur-Trier Herald
, he had to go out to the paper factory every week. And almost every time there was a row with old Herr Keller or the factory manager.

The men were just leaving for the day when Esch left the factory. He overtook the foreman Liebel and the mechanic Fendrich on the road. He really couldn’t stand Liebel, with his fair-haired conical head and the thick vein across his brow. He said:

“ ’Evening.”

“ ’Evening, Esch, have you been praying all this time with the old man?”

Esch did not understand.

“Why, to get him to deliver your paper.”

“Bloody nonsense,” said Esch.

Fendrich stopped and showed the soles of his shoes; they were in holes:

“That’ll cost six marks … that’s how your rises in wages go.”

This provided Esch with a starting-point:

“You can’t do much by simply raising your wages, that’s the mistake all the unions make.”

“What’s this, Esch? Are you thinking of mending Fendrich’s boots with the Bible too?”

“Bloody nonsense,” repeated Esch.

Fendrich’s eyes glowed feverishly in their dark cavities; he was tuberculous and could not get enough milk to drink. He said:

“Religion too is probably a luxury that only the rich people can afford.”

Liebel said:

“Majors and newspaper editors.”

Esch said somewhat apologetically:

“I’m only an employee of the paper, like yourself,” then he flared up, “besides that’s all nonsense, as if the unions had ever taken the vow of poverty!”

Fendrich said:

“It would be all very fine if one could believe.”

Esch said:

“I’ve discovered something: religion has to renew itself too, and get a new life … it says in the Bible that only the son can build the house.”

Liebel said:

“Of course the next generation will have a better time, that isn’t news to me.… I simply can’t live now on my hundred and forty marks, even reckoning in the bonus … the old man won’t admit that … and I’m supposed to be foreman, too.”

“I haven’t any more than that myself,” said Esch, “counting in the house and all.… I’ve two tenants, but I can’t decently ask anything from them, poor devils … my rent account is passive.”

The evening wind freshened. Fendrich coughed.

Liebel said:

“Well? Any news?”

Esch admitted:

“I’ve been seeing the priest.…”

“What for?”

“About that passage in the Bible, the idiot didn’t even listen … mumbled something about prayer and the Church, and that was all. The bloody priest … one must help oneself.”

“That’s right,” said Fendrich, “nobody helps you.”

Liebel said:

“If you stick together, you help one another … that’s the advantage of the unions.”

“The doctor says I must go to the mountains, and he’s applied ten times already to the sick-fund … but if you don’t come from the Front you’ve got to want, these days, and my cough just goes on and on.”

Esch put on his ironical expression:

“With your unions and your sick-funds you won’t get much further on than me with my priests.…”

“You have to die by yourself,” said Fendrich, coughing.

Liebel asked:

“What really are you after?”

Esch considered:

“I used to think that one only had to clear out … to America … across the wide ocean on a ship … so as to begin a new life … but now …”

Liebel waited for the end of the sentence:

“And now?”

But Esch answered unexpectedly:

“Perhaps the Protestants are nearer it … the Major is a Protestant after all … but one must think the matter over first oneself … one must get together with other people and read the Bible to get some clear light … when one’s alone, one keeps on doubting, no matter how much one broods on the subject.”

“When one has friends, everything’s easier,” said Fendrich.

“You come and see me,” said Esch, “I’ll show you the passage in the Bible.”

“All right,” said Fendrich.

“And what about you, Liebel?” Esch felt obliged to ask.

“You must tell me first what you’ve concocted together.”

Fendrich sighed:

“Everybody can only see things through his own eyes.”

Liebel laughed and went away.

“He’ll come yet, all right,” said Esch.

My memory has not retained much of the evening that I spent with Nuchem Sussin at the Salvation Army meeting. I was occupied with more important things. No matter how one may estimate philosophical activity, it has at any rate the effect of making the external world insignificant and less worthy of notice. And apart from that even the most noteworthy things escape one’s notice while one is experiencing them. In short, all that I can remember is Nuchem Sussin walking along beside me with his grey frock-coat buttoned up, his trousers flapping about his legs, they were so short, and his absurdly small velour hat perched on his head. All these Jews, when they’re not rigged out in black caps, wear those velour hats that are too small for them, even the ostensibly fashionable Dr Litwak does this, and I could not forbear asking Nuchem the rude question where he had got that hat of his. “I just got it,” was the answer.

Besides, the whole affair was not worth mentioning. It took on some colour of importance only because of Dr Litwak, who came in to see
me yesterday. He has the unpleasant habit of simply walking in on me; he did the same thing on the occasion of my so-called illness. So he appeared before me again as I lay on the chaise-longue; he had the indispensable walking-stick in his hand and the absurd little velour hat on his head. That is to say, the hat itself was by no means small, it had a broad brim, but it sat on the very top of his skull without covering it. It occurred to me at that moment that Dr Litwak too must have had a milk-white complexion in his youth. Now it reminded one unquestionably of yellow cream.

“You will be able to tell me about Sussin.”

I said, because it conformed with the truth:

“He is my friend.”

“Friend, very good …” Dr Litwak pulled over a chair for himself, “his people are anxious, they asked me to come … you understand?”

In reality I was under no obligation to understand him, but I wanted to shorten the proceedings:

“He has a right to go where he likes.”

“Oh, who has the right, who hasn’t the right.… I’m not reproaching you of course … but why is he running about with this goy girl?”

It dawned on me only then that on that evening I had asked Marie and Nuchem into my room. People who haven’t money can’t sit about in restaurants.

I could not help laughing.

“You laugh, and his wife is sitting up there crying.”

Well, that was certainly news to me; all the same I might have remembered that these Jews get married at fifteen. If I had only known which was Nuchem’s wife: one of the stylish girls? or one of the matrons with their hair parted in the middle? the latter seemed the more probable.

I held Dr Litwak by the cord of his eyeglasses:

“Has he children as well?”

“Why, what do you expect him to have? Kittens?”

Dr Litwak put on such an indignant expression that I had to ask him what his first name was.

“Dr Samson Litwak,” he introduced himself anew.

“Well then look here, Dr Samson, what do you really want of me?”

He reflected for a while:

“I’m an enlightened man … but this is going too far … you must stop him.”

“Stop him from what? from wanting to go to Zion? Leave him that harmless pleasure.”

“He’ll get himself baptized yet … you must stop him.”

“But whether he reaches Jerusalem as a Jew or a Christian is surely a bagatelle.”

“Jerusalem,” he repeated, as if a bonbon had been put into his mouth.

“Well, then,” said I, hoping that he would retire now.

He was still obviously rolling the name on his tongue:

“I’m an enlightened man … but nobody ever got there by singing songs and beating drums … that’s for a different kind of people.… I must visit everybody, I’m a doctor, it needn’t matter to me whether one is a Jew or a Christian … there’s decent people everywhere, will you stop him?”

This persistence got on my nerves:

“I’m a great Anti-Semite,” he smiled incredulously, “I’m an agent of the Salvation Army, I’m quartermaster in Jerusalem.”

“A joke,” he said appreciatively, although he was visibly disconcerted, “a joke,
nebbich.
”

There he was certainly right; a joke,
nebbich
, that was for the time being the attitude to life into which I had fallen. What could be held responsible for it? The war? I did not know, and probably do not know even to-day, although many things have changed since.

I still held Dr Litwak by the cord of his eyeglasses. He said:

“But you’re an enlightened man too.…”

“Well?”

“Why don’t you leave people their …” he brought out the word only with difficulty, “… their prejudices?”

“So, you call such things prejudices!”

Now he was quite thrown into confusion.

“They’re not really prejudices of course … what do you mean by prejudices?…” and finally becoming calm again: “but in reality they’re not prejudices.”

When he had gone I went over in my mind that evening of the Salvation Army meeting. As I have said, it had passed without making the slightest impression on me. Now and then I had regarded Nuchem Sussin as he sat there with a somewhat lifeless smile round the curved Jewish lips in his milk-white face, listening to the singing. And then I had asked them both up to my room, or more correctly Marie only,
for Nuchem of course lived in the house,—well, and then they had both sat in my room silently listening while I talked. Until Nuchem once more pointed to the lute and said: “Play something.” Then Marie had taken the lute and sung: “We’re marching on to Zion’s gate, A host so great and true, All cleansed in the Redeemer’s blood, And there is room for you.” And Nuchem listened with a somewhat lifeless smile.

Huguenau waited for eight days, expecting some sign of approval or at least a reply from the Major. He waited for ten days. Then he became uneasy. The report had obviously not come up to the Major’s expectations. But was it his fault that that cretin Esch provided him with no material? Huguenau considered whether he should follow up the first report with a second, but what was he to say in it? That Esch was colloguing as usual with the vine-growers and the factory workers was nothing new; that would only bore the Major!

The Major mustn’t be bored—Huguenau racked his brains to find some proposal to lay before the Major. Something simply must be done; Esch reigned supreme in the office and acted as though the real editor of the paper were non-existent, and in the printing-shed everything was dreary beyond endurance. Huguenau looked through the great newspapers for stimulation, and found it when he made the discovery that all these journals were labouring in the service of national charities, while the
Kur-Trier Herald
had undertaken nothing, absolutely nothing at all. So that was what Herr Esch’s warmth of heart amounted to, that warmth of heart which could not endure the spectacle of the misery among the vine-growers. But as for himself he knew now what to do.

On Friday evening, after a long absence, he appeared again at the hotel and proceeded at once to the room where the notabilities sat, for that was his place by right. The Major was sitting at his table in the outer dining-room, and Huguenau greeted him formally and curtly in passing.

By good luck the gentlemen were already there in force, and Huguenau announced that he was glad to find so many of them, for he had an important matter to discuss, and at once, before the Major came in. And in a fairly long speech he pointed out that the town lacked,
painfully lacked, any proper charitable organization such as had already existed for years almost everywhere else for the alleviation of hardships caused by the war, and he moved that such an organization should be established at once. As for its objects, he would content himself with mentioning, among other things, the preservation of soldiers’ graves, the provision for soldiers’ widows and orphans and so on; further, he would like to point out that the money for these lofty objects must be raised, and that in this connection an “Iron Bismarck,”
¹
for instance, could be erected in the market-place, nails at ten pfennigs per nail, besides it was a crying scandal that this town alone should lack such a monument—and finally that charitable appeals of various kinds, not to speak of public collections, would always help to increase their funds. And that this organization, for which he begged to suggest the title of “The Moselle Memorial Association” should appear under the patronage of the Town Commandant. He himself and his paper—of course within the limits of their modest powers—stood at all times and free of cost at the disposal of the association and its lofty aims.

It need scarcely be said, of course, that the proposal was greeted with universal applause and was accepted unanimously and without discussion. Huguenau and Herr Paulsen the chemist were nominated as delegates to convey the proposal to the Herr Major, and smoothing down their coats they strode with a certain solemnity into the dining-room.

The Major looked up with some surprise, then he drew himself up with a little jerk as though on parade and listened attentively but without understanding to the phrases of the two gentlemen. These phrases crossed one another and raced one another, and the Major heard something about an Iron Bismarck and war widows and a “Moselle Memorial” and did not understand. At last Huguenau was intelligent enough to resign all speech to the chemist; it seemed to him also that that was the more modest course, and so he sat still and regarded the clock on the wall, the picture of
The Crown-Prince Friedrich after the Battle of Gravelotte
, and the Spatenbräu sign (with the spade) which hung on a cord beside the picture of the Crown-Prince. Where could one get Spatenbräu now! Meanwhile the Major had grasped what Paulsen was saying: he thought, he said, that there were no military grounds against
his acceptance, he welcomed this patriotic proposal, he could only thank them most cordially, and he rose in order to convey his thanks to the gentlemen in the next room. Paulsen and Huguenau followed, proud of their accomplished achievement.