The Sleepwalkers (83 page)

He opened the Bible and read from the sixteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles:

“And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken: and immediately all the doors were opened, and every one’s bands were loosed.

“And the keeper of the prison awaking out of his sleep, and seeing the prison doors open, he drew out his sword, and would have killed himself, supposing that the prisoners had been fled.

“But Paul cried out with a loud voice, saying, Do thyself no harm: for we are all here.”

Clearing his throat cautiously, Esch waited, his finger between the pages of the closed book. He waited for the foundations of the house to tremble, he waited for a great revelation now to manifest itself, he waited for One to give the command that the black flag should be hoisted, and he thought: I must make way for him who shall create time anew. He thought all this and waited. But for the Major the words he had heard were like drops which turned to ice while they fell; he kept silence and all kept silence with him.

Esch said:

“All flight is meaningless, of our own free will we must accept our imprisonment … the invisible shape with the sword stands behind us.”

As the Major saw very clearly for a moment, Esch had interpreted the sense of the passage in part correctly, in part in the most obscure and fantastic way; but the old man did not linger over this reflection, and it was blotted out by an emerging picture which, though resembling a memory, was yet scarcely a memory, for it presented everything corporeally before him; the old reservists of the Landsturm and the young recruits were changed into apostles and disciples, members of a community met together in some greengrocer’s cellar or dark cave, speaking a strange dark language that was yet as comprehensible as a language one had known in childhood, and over them shone a celestial silvery cloud—and the disciples, like himself, were gazing up to heaven with trust and resolute ardour.

“Let us sing,” said Esch, and he began:

With the sole of his boot Esch beat time; many of the others did the same, rocking themselves in time and singing. The Major may have joined in the singing, but he did not know it, the singing seemed rather to be inside him, a singing behind his closed eyes, like a crystalline drop that falls singing from a cloud. And he heard the voice say: “Do thyself no harm: for we are all here.”

Esch let the singing die away, and then he said:

“It is of no avail to flee from the darkness of the prison, for we flee only into outer darkness … we must build the house anew when the time has come.”

A voice began again:

“Shut up,” said another voice.

A neighbouring voice responded:

“Shut up,” repeated the other voice, a slow voice, but resonant as a vaulted crypt, and it was the voice of a man in Landwehr uniform, a man with a long beard who stood up leaning on two sticks. And despite the effort it cost him, he went on to say: “Anyone who hasn’t been dead should shut up … whoever has been dead is baptized, but not the others.”

But the first singer had also sprung to his feet and his voice rang out again, singing:

“Let the fire descend,” added the Major at this moment in a low voice that was yet audible enough to make Esch bend down towards him. It was in a sense an incorporeal approach, at least the Major felt it to be so; there was an element of assurance in it, both reassuring and disconcerting, and the Major studied the ivory crook of his stick that was lying before him on the table, studied the white cuff that projected a little beyond the sleeve of his uniform coat,—it was in a sense an incorporeal serenity, a kind of etherealized, luminous, almost white serenity that expanded in the dark room and spread over the confusion of voices, like a network of tinkling glass in a strangely abstract simplification. The stream of sunlight shimmered outside like a sharp fiery sword; they were safe as in a haven of refuge, in a cave, a cellar, a catacomb.

Perhaps Esch was expecting the Major to say something more, for the Major twice lifted his hand in time with the measure of the song as if desiring to make some acknowledgment,—Esch held his breath, but the Major let his hand sink again. Then Esch said, as though to quicken into life something that was dead:

“The torch of liberty … the blaze of illumination … the torch of true freedom.”

But for the Major everything was so fused and blended into one experience that he could not have told whether he actually saw the fiery crests of torches or heard the voice of the man who was continually intoning “Let the fire descend,” or whether it was Esch’s voice or the wailing of Samwald the little watchmaker that rose in a thin piping from the background:

But the Landwehr man, gasping as he drew himself upright, waved one of his sticks and emitted hoarse sounds, bawling:

“Arisen from the dead … anyone who hasn’t been buried must shut up.”

Esch showed his strong teeth and laughed:

“Shut up yourself, Gödicke.”

These were rude words: Esch himself could not help laughing so loudly that the laughter somehow stuck in his throat and hurt him, as if he were laughing in his sleep. The Major, indeed, perceived neither the rudeness of the words nor Esch’s overloud laugh, for in his clearer knowledge he saw through the surface coarseness without even remarking it; indeed it seemed to him that Esch would be able with a light touch to set everything right, that Esch’s features, almost unrecognizable in the dusk, were blending with the whole room into a strangely dim, blurred landscape, and through the resonant laughter he saw the glimmer of a soul leaning out of a neighbouring window with a smile, the soul of a brother, yet not an individual soul, nor yet in actual proximity, but a soul that was like an infinitely remote homeland. And he gave Esch a smile. That knowledge, however, filled Esch too, and he too understood that the smile they exchanged raised them together to a high peak; it was as if he had come whirling from a remote distance on the wings of a roaring wind that swept away all the dead past, as if he had come in a fiery red chariot to an appointed goal, a high pinnacle on which it no longer mattered by what name a man was called or whether one figure blended with another, a goal where there was no longer any to-day or to-morrow,—he felt the breath of liberty stir on his forehead, a dream within a dream, and Esch, unbuttoning his waistcoat, stood there drawn up to his full height as if he were about to set his foot on the outer stairway of the castle.

Yet in spite of it all he had not been able to cow Ludwig Gödicke, who now hobbled forward almost up to the table and screamed pugnaciously:

“You can’t say anything till you’ve crawled under the ground … down there …” he bored the point of his stick into the earthen floor, “… down there … crawl down there yourself first.”

Esch had to laugh again. He felt strong, steadfast and robust, firm on his legs, a fine fellow whom it was worth anyone’s while to do in. He stretched his arms out like a man waking from sleep or nailed on a cross:

“Are you maybe thinking of knocking me down, eh? … with your crutches … you and your crutches, you misbegotten object.”

There was some shouting that he was to leave Gödicke alone, Gödicke was a holy man.

Esch made a gesture of sweeping denial:

“No one is holy … there’s no one holy but the son who will build the house.”

“I build all kinds of houses,” roared Gödicke the bricklayer, “all kinds of houses have I built … higher and higher …” and he spat contemptuously.

“Skyscrapers in America, I suppose,” sneered Esch.

“He can build skyscrapers too,” wept Samwald the watchmaker.

“Scraper yourself … scraping down walls is all he’s fit for.”

“From the earth beneath to the very skies.…”

Gödicke had raised his arms in the air with his two sticks; he looked menacing and powerful, “… arisen from the dead!”

“Dead!” screamed Esch, “the dead believe that they’re powerful … yes, powerful they are, but they can’t awaken life in the dark house … the dead are murderers! Murderers, that’s what they are!”

He stopped abruptly, scared by the echo of murder that was now fluttering in the air like a dark butterfly, but scared and silenced no less by the Major’s behaviour: for the Major had risen to his feet with a queer, stiff jerk, and had repeated the word, had woodenly repeated “murderers,” and now was gazing at the open door and the courtyard outside as if he were expecting something dreadful to appear.

All the men fell silent and stared at the Major. He did not move but went on gazing spellbound at the door, and Esch also turned his eyes towards it. There was nothing there out of the ordinary; the air quivered in the sunlight, the house wall on the other side of that sunny flood—the wall of a quay, the Major could not help thinking—was a blinding white rectangle standing out against the brown box of the doorway and the two wings of the door. But the illusion began to lose its intoxicating immediacy, and when Esch, seizing his opportunity in the silence, read again from the Bible: “and immediately all the doors were opened” the door became for the Major once more an ordinary barn door, and nothing remained except that the ordinary courtyard outside bore a far-off resemblance to his old home and the great farmyard among the byres and stables. And when Esch concluded: “Do thyself no harm, for we are all here” even the serenity vanished, leaving only fear, the fear that in a world of illusion and semblances nothing but evil could take on bodily form. “We are all here,” repeated Esch, and the Major could not believe it, for these were no longer apostles and disciples before his eyes, only men of the Landsturm and recruits, men of the rank and
file, and he knew that Esch, lonely as he himself, was like him staring in terror at the door. So they stood side by side.

And then it happened that in the depths of the dark box, in the frame of the doorway, a figure came into sight, a round, thickset figure that advanced over the white gravel of the yard without causing the sun to darken. Huguenau. With his hands linked behind him, a passer-by taking an amiable stroll, he walked across the courtyard and paused in the doorway, blinking as he peered in. The Major and Esch were still standing immovably, for although it seemed an eternity to them it was only a matter of a few seconds, and as soon as Huguenau had ascertained what was going on he took off his hat, entered on tiptoe, bowed to the Major and sat down modestly at the end of a seat. “The devil incarnate,” murmured the Major, “the murderer …” but perhaps he did not say it, for his throat was drawn together and he looked at Esch almost as if imploring help. Esch, however, smiled with a hint of sarcasm, although he himself felt Huguenau’s intrusion as a treacherous attack or an assassination, as a blow bringing the inevitable death that one yet longs for, even when the arm holding the dagger is merely that of a despicable agent,—Esch smiled, and, since the man who faces death is released into freedom and all is permitted to him, he touched the Major’s arm: “There’s always a traitor among us.” And the Major answered in an equally low voice: “He should get out … get out …” and as Esch shook his head he added: “… naked and exposed … yes, naked and exposed are we on the other side,” and then he said finally: “… well it doesn’t matter …” for in the wave of disgust that he felt suddenly rising within him there was a broad and dominant current of indifference, of weariness. And wearily and heavily he lowered himself again into his seat by the table.

Esch, too, would have liked to hear and see no more. He would have liked to dismiss the meeting. But he could not let the Major depart in such an inharmonious frame of mind, and so, somewhat indecorously, he banged the Bible on the table and announced:

“We shall read again in the Scriptures. Isaiah, chapter forty-two, verse seven: To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house.”

“Amen,” responded Fendrich.

“It is a fine allegory,” said the Major.

“An allegory of redemption,” said Esch.

“Yes, an allegory of redemption through repentance,” said the Major, and drew himself up with a little jerk, as if on parade, “a fine allegory … shall we now bring the service to a close for to-day?”

“Amen,” said Esch, and buttoned up his waistcoat.

“Amen,” said the congregation.

As they left the barn and were still standing irresolutely in quiet conversation in the courtyard, Huguenau pushed his way through the groups till he reached the Major, but was taken aback by that officer’s discouraging aloofness. Still, he was unwilling to abandon the encounter, all the more as he had a joke ready to fire off: “So the Herr Major has come to assist at our fine new minister’s first celebration?” The curt, aloof nod with which he was answered informed him that their relationship was under a cloud, and this became still more obvious when the Major turned round and said with loud emphasis: “Come along, Esch, you and I will take a walk outside the town.” Huguenau was left standing in a state of mingled incomprehension, wrath and vaguely questioning guiltiness.

The other two took the path through the garden. The sun was already inclining towards the western heights. That year it seemed as if the summer were never coming to an end: days of shimmering golden stillness followed each other in equal radiance, as if by their sweetness and peace they wanted to make the war, now in its bloodiest period, appear doubly insensate. As the sun dipped behind the chain of mountain peaks, as the sky paled into tenderer blue, as the road stretched away more peacefully and all life folded in upon itself like the breathing of a sleeper, that stillness grew more and more accessible and acceptable to the human soul. Surely that Sabbath peace lay over the whole of the German fatherland, and in a sudden uprush of yearning the Major thought of his wife and children whom he saw walking over the sunset fields. “I wish this were all over and done with,” and Esch could not find any word of comfort for him. Hopeless and dreary this life seemed to both of them, its sole meagre return a walk in the evening landscape which they were both contemplating. It’s like a reprieve, thought Esch. And so they went on in silence.