The Sleepwalkers (86 page)

After some time he heard the engine starting and saw the headlights of the car following the windings of the road.

Huguenau had trotted home from the prison as fast as he could, with Marguerite running behind him. In the printing-shed he bade the press be stopped: “Some important news, Lindner,” and then he betook himself to his room to do some writing. When he had finished it he said “Salut,” and spat in the direction of the Eschs’ living-rooms. “Salut,” he said again, as he passed the kitchen door, and then he handed his composition to Lindner, “Among the news of the town, in small type,” he ordered. And next day the following appeared in small type among the news of the town in the
Kur-Trier Herald:

It was another of these lucid inspirations of his, and Huguenau could hardly sleep for pure joy. He kept on reckoning it all up:

firstly, that bit about the deserters would annoy the Major, but the reference to the inferior food could not leave a Town Commandant complacent either, and if there was a man who deserved to be annoyed it was the Major;

secondly, the Major would hold Esch responsible, especially because of that hint about information on the best authority; for nobody would believe that Esch knew nothing of it,—and that would certainly put an end to the walking excursions of these two gentlemen;

thirdly, when one considered how furious the skinny Esch would be, the horse-faced Reverend, it was a sweet and gratifying thought;

fourthly, it was all so law-abiding—he was the editor and could put in what he liked, and the Major would have to be grateful to him, besides, for the compliments he had worked in;

fifthly and sixthly, there was no end to the gratifying consequences, it was, in a word, a highly successful stroke, it was, in a word, a
coup
,—and besides, it would make the Major respect him: the reports of a Huguenau had the knack of striking home, even if one did despise them;

yes, fifthly and sixthly and seventhly, one could go on and on, there was ever so much more of it, although to be sure there was a suggestion of unpleasantness somewhere that it was better not to think about.

In the morning Huguenau read the article in the printing-shed and was again delighted. He looked out of the window and cast a glance up at the office, twisting his face ironically. But he did not go up there. Not, of course, that he was afraid of the Reverend. When a man was only standing on his rights he had no need to be afraid. And a man must stand on his rights when he is persecuted. Even if it should bring everything about his ears a man must stand on his rights. All a fellow wants is to be left in peace and quiet; he only wants his due. And so Huguenau went to the barber’s, where he studied the
Herald
yet once more.

To be sure, his dinner remained a problem. It would be unpleasant to sit at the same table with Esch, who would in some way, although without any justification, feel himself the injured party. One knew these high and mighty looks that priests gave; enough to take away a man’s
appetite. And this Reverend was a Communist himself, and wanted to socialize everything, and yet always behaved as if it were the other fellow who was trying to smash up society, just because he wouldn’t let himself be put upon.

Huguenau went for a walk and thought it over. But he could not hit on a good idea. It was like going to school: let one be as inventive as anything, the only final course is to sham sick. So he turned back so as to get home before Esch, and climbed the stairs to see Mother Esch (for he had recently taken to calling her that). And with every step that he mounted his indisposition became more genuine. Perhaps he was really rather unwell, and it might be better to eat nothing at all. Yet, after all, his board and lodging were included in his salary, and he needn’t make Esch a present of any of it.

“Frau Esch, I’m not well.”

Frau Esch looked up and was touched by Huguenau’s pathetic appearance.

“I don’t think I can eat anything, Frau Esch.”

“But, Herr Huguenau … a little soup, I’ll make you some nice soup … that never did anyone any harm.”

Huguenau considered. Then he said gloomily:

“A bouillon?”

Frau Esch was startled.

“Yes, but … I haven’t any beef in the house.”

Huguenau grew gloomier.

“Oh, no beef? … I think I’m in a fever … just feel how hot I am, Mother Esch.…”

Frau Esch came nearer and hesitatingly laid a finger on Huguenau’s hand.

Huguenau said:

“Perhaps an omelette would be the thing.”

“Hadn’t I better make you some herb-tea?”

Huguenau suspected economy:

“Oh, an omelette could surely be managed … you must have eggs in the house … say, three eggs.”

Thereupon with dragging feet he left the kitchen.

Partly because it was the right thing for an invalid to do, partly because he had to make up for the sleep he had lost in the night, he lay down on the sofa. But there was little chance of sleep, for his excitement over
the successful journalistic
coup
was still vibrating. In a kind of waking doze he looked up at the mirror above the washstand, looked at the window, listened to the noises in the house. There were the usual kitchen noises: he could hear a bit of meat being beaten—so she had swindled him after all, the fat madam, so that that blighter might have all the meat to himself. Of course she would argue she couldn’t make bouillon out of pork, but a nice bit of lightly fried pork never hurt anyone, not even an invalid. Then he heard a short, sharp chopping on a board, and diagnosed it as the cutting of vegetables,—he had always been scared as he watched his mother chopping up parsley or celery with quick-cutting strokes, scared for fear she would chop off her finger-tips. Kitchen knives were sharp. He was glad when the chopping noise ended and mother wiped her unharmed fingers on the kitchen towel. If one could only go to sleep: it might be better to get into bed, and then the Esch woman could sit beside him and knit or give him hot fomentations. He felt his hand; it was really hot. The thing to do was to think of something pleasant. Women, for instance. Naked women. That was the stair creaking, someone coming up. Strange, for father wasn’t usually so early. Oh, it was only the postman. Mother Esch was speaking to him. The baker used always to come up, but he never came now. That was just nonsense: it was impossible to sleep while one was hungry.

Huguenau blinked again at the window, and noted outside the chain of the Colmar mountains; the castellan of the royal castle was a Major, the Kaiser himself had appointed him. Haïssez les Prussiens et les ennemis de la sainte religion. Somebody laughed in Huguenau’s ear; he heard words in Alsatian dialect. A cooking-pot boiled over; it hissed on the stove. Now someone was whispering, “we’re hungry, we’re hungry, we’re hungry.” That was too stupid. Why couldn’t he have his dinner with the others? he was being treated worse and worse. Perhaps they would give his seat to the Major? The stair was creaking again—Huguenau flinched, it was his father’s step. Oh, stuff, it was only Esch, the would-be Reverend.

A swine that Esch; served him right if he was annoyed. Tit for tat. You can’t play with knives and not be cut. Esch had managed to turn Protestant; next thing he’d turn Jew and have himself cut, circumcised; must remember to tell the madam that. Finger-tips. Knife-tips. Best of all just to get up and go over to the office and ask him if he was thinking of turning Jew. All nonsense to be afraid of him; I’m only too
lazy. But she should bring me my dinner, and be quick about it … before that sanctimonious blighter gets his.

Huguenau listened intently to hear if they were sitting down to table. No wonder a man grew thinner and thinner with that Esch bagging everything. But that was what he was like. A Reverend had to have a belly. Pure fraud, his parson’s black coat. An executioner had a black coat too. An executioner had to eat a lot to keep up his strength. One never knew whether people were coming to lead one to the block or merely bringing one’s dinner. From now on he would go to the hotel and eat meat at the Major’s table. That very evening. If that omelette was much longer in coming there would be a good row. An omelette only took five minutes to make!

Frau Esch came quietly into the room and set the plate with the omelette on a chair and pushed the chair up to the sofa.

“Hadn’t I better make you some tea as well, Herr Huguenau, some herb-tea?”

Huguenau looked up. His irritation had almost vanished; her sympathy did him good.

“I’m rather fevered, Frau Esch.”

She ought at least to pass her hand over his forehead to feel if he had fever; he was vexed because she did not.

“I think I’ll go to bed, Mother Esch.”

Frau Esch, however, stood stolidly before him and insisted on giving him tea: it was a very special kind of tea, not only an ancient recipe but also a famous remedy; the herbalist, who had inherited the secret from his father and great-grandfather, had become very rich, he owned a house in Cologne, and people went to consult him from all over the country. She had seldom said so many words in one breath.

None the less Huguenau resisted:

“Some cherry-brandy, Frau Esch, would do me good.”

She primmed up her face with disgust: spirits? No! Even her husband, whose health was not of the most robust, had been won over to her tea.

“That so? Does Esch drink the tea?”

“Yes,” said Frau Esch.

“All right, then, for the love of God make me some too,” and with a sigh Huguenau sat up and ate his omelette.

Heinrich’s departure had passed off with remarkable ease. In so far as physical and spiritual effects can be separated, it might have been called a purely physical experience. As Hanna came home from the station she herself felt a little like an empty house where the blinds have been drawn down. But that was all. Besides, she knew for certain that Heinrich would return unharmed from the war. And this conviction of hers, which kept the departing soldier from turning into a martyr, not only obviated the sentimental outburst she had dreaded at the station, but had the more far-reaching effect of neutralizing and displacing her wish that he might never return. When she said to her son: “Daddy will soon come back,” they probably both knew what she meant.

The physical experience, for as such she was entitled to regard this six-weeks’ furlough, now presented itself to her mind as a contraction of her vital powers, a contraction of her ego; it had been like a damming-in of her ego within the limits of her body, like the foaming narrowing of a river within a ravine. In the past, now that she thought of it, she had always had the feeling that her ego was not bounded by her skin and could radiate through that tenuous covering into her silken underclothing, and it had been almost as if even her gowns were informed by an emanation from her ego (that was probably why she had such infallible taste in matters of fashion), yes, it had been almost as if her ego stretched far beyond her body and enveloped rather than inhabited it, and as if she did not think in her head but somewhere outside it, on a higher watch-tower, so to speak, from which her own bodily existence, however important it might be, could be observed and regarded as a trivial irrelevancy; but during these last six weeks of physical experience, during that headlong rush through the ravine, of all that diffused spaciousness nothing had survived but a shining vapour above the tossing waters, a rainbow glitter that was in a way the last refuge of her soul. Now, however, that the kindly plain once more spread before her and she felt as if released from fetters, her feeling of relief and smoothness turned at the same time into a wish to forget the troubled narrows. This forgetfulness, however, encroached upon her only a little at a time. All her personal memories vanished with relatively great rapidity; Heinrich’s bearing, his voice, his words, his walk, all that very soon disappeared; but the general memories
persisted. To use a highly improper analogy: the first to disappear was his face, then his movable extremities, his hands and feet, but the un-moving, rigid body, the torso reaching from the breast-bone to the thigh, that lascivious image of the male, persisted in the depths of her memory like the statue of a god embedded in the soil or washed by the surf of a Tyrrhenian sea. And the farther this encroaching forgetfulness advanced—and that was the frightful part of it—the more that statue of the god was shortened, the more emphatic and isolated became its indecency, an indecency on which forgetfulness encroached more and more slowly, filching smaller and smaller portions—paralysed by that indecency. That is only a metaphor, and like all metaphors coarsens the real truth which is always shadowy, a play of undefined ideas, a mingled current of half-remembered memories, half-thought thoughts and half-wished desires, a river without banks, over which rises a silvery vapour, a silvery emanation that spreads to the very clouds and the black sky of stars. So the torso in the mud of the river was no mere torso, it was a hewn boulder, it was an isolated piece of furniture, household rubbish jettisoned in the stream of events, a lump abandoned to the surf: wave succeeded wave, day was woven into night and night into day, and what the days transmitted to each other was inscrutable, sometimes more inscrutable than the dreams that followed each other, and at times it included something that recognizably suggested the secret knowledge of schoolgirls yet at the same time somehow aroused a secret wish to flee from such infantile knowledge, to flee into the world of the individual and to disinter Heinrich’s face once more from forgetfulness. But that was only a wish, and its fulfilment admitted of about as much possibility as the complete restoration of a Greek statue found in the soil: that is to say, it could not be fulfilled.