The Sleepwalkers (89 page)

Frau Esch too seemed terrified by the unreasonable request that Huguenau had made to her. She felt her arm clasped by her husband’s bony hand, and with her mouth open she stared at Huguenau, who meanwhile had risen; only when he had reached the door did she stammer: “And why not, Herr Huguenau?…”

Huguenau heard her, but it did not lessen his bitter indignation against Esch. He found Marguerite below and presented her with a whole mark. “For your travels,” he said, “but you must dress yourself properly for going away … warm knickers … let me see … it seems to me you’re almost naked … in autumn it’s cold.”

It was already past nine when Dr Kessel’s door-bell rang. Kühlenbeck was sitting in the corner of the sofa smoking his cigar: “Well, Kessel, is this another patient?” “What else can it be?” replied Kessel, who had risen automatically, “what else … not a single night that one can sleep in peace.” And he walked wearily into the next room to fetch his bag.

Meanwhile the maid had come up: “Herr Doctor, Herr Doctor, the Herr Major is below.” “Who?” shouted Kessel from the next room. “The Herr Major.” “It must be something for me,” said Kühlenbeck. “I’m coming at once,” cried Kessel, and, his black bag still in his hand, he hurried out to receive the guest.

Presently the Major appeared in the doorway; he smiled a little awkwardly:

“I knew that you two gentlemen were here together … and as you so kindly invited me once, Herr Doctor Kessel … I thought that you two gentlemen were perhaps having a musical evening.”

“Well, thank God there’s nothing happened. I thought something had gone wrong again,” said Kühlenbeck, “… well, all the better.”

“No, nothing has gone wrong,” said the Major.

“No more revolts?” said Kühlenbeck, with his usual tactlessness, and went on: “Who really was it that put that idiotic article in the
Herald
? Esch, or that clown with the French name?”

The Major did not reply; he had been unpleasantly affected by Kühlenbeck’s question. He regretted having come. Kühlenbeck however went on:

“Well, prison can’t be exactly comfortable for these gentry … but they’re safely away from the Front and that should be enough to keep them contented. They must have forgotten what a sheer stroke of luck it is to be alive, simply to live, no matter how shabbily … human beings have short memories.”

“These newspaper people,” said the Major, although it was not a real answer at all.

“I was afraid that it was another summons to a patient,” said Kessel, “it’s to be hoped that there won’t be anybody to-night.”

Kühlenbeck went on talking:

“An unheard-of luxury for the State to keep prisons going these days … superfluous in any case … the whole world is a prison … but it can’t last for much longer … besides the prison here should have been evacuated long ago … what will we do with these people when we’ve all got to shift?”

“It hasn’t come to that yet,” said the Major, “and with God’s help it won’t come to that either.” He said this, but he did not believe it. Only that afternoon he had received another secret order with instructions in case of the possible evacuation of the town. Orders and counter-orders were coming in pell-mell and one did not know what the next hour would bring. It was a veritable pit.

Kühlenbeck regarded his great capable surgeon’s hands.

“If the French come across here … take my word for it, we’ll strangle them with our bare hands.”

Kessel said:

“Sometimes I think it a good thing that my wife is not alive
to see these times.” He gazed at the photograph which hung over the piano surrounded by a wreath of immortelles and a band of
crêpe.

The Major too gazed up at it: “Your wife was musical too?” he asked at last. Beside the piano stood the ’cello in a grey-linen case on whose cover a red lyre and two crossed flutes were embroidered. Why had he come here? Why had he come to see these doctors? did he feel ill? and he couldn’t stand doctors, they were all Freethinkers and unreliable. Had no sense of honour. There sat the Surgeon-Major with his head laid back on the corner of the sofa, blowing smoke rings up towards the ceiling, sticking his pointed beard into the air. It was all unseemly. Why had he come here? yet better to be here all the same than in the lonely hotel bedroom, or in the dining-hall where any moment that fellow Huguenau might appear. Kessel had rung for another bottle of Berncastler, and the Major hastily drank a glass. Then he said: “I thought that you would be having some music.”

Kessel smiled absently:

“Yes, my wife was very musical.”

Kühlenbeck said:

“What do you say, Kessel? why not fetch out your ’cello for once? … it will do us all good.”

The Major felt that Kühlenbeck was wanting to show him a kindness, even if it was perhaps a little too familiar of him. So he merely said: “Yes, that would be splendid.”

Kessel went over to the ’cello and with a glance at the photograph took out the instrument. But then he stopped: “Yes, but who will play the accompaniment for me?”

“You’ll manage all right by yourself, Kessel,” said Kühlenbeck, “pluck does it.” Kessel still hesitated a little: “Yes, but what shall I play?” “Something with feeling,” said Kühlenbeck, and Kessel drew in a chair and seated himself beside the piano, as though there were someone there accompanying him; he struck a note, ran his hand tenderly over the strings of the bow and tuned the instrument. Then he closed his eyes.

He played Brahms’ ’cello sonata in E flat, Op. 38. His mild face had a curious inward look, the grey moustache above his compressed lips was no longer a moustache, but a grey shadow, the furrows in his cheeks had altered their contours, it was no longer a face, it was almost invisible,
perhaps a grey autumnal landscape waiting for the snow to come. And even when a tear trickled down his nose, it was no longer a tear. Only the hand was still a hand, and it was as though the stroke of the bow had drawn all life into itself, rising and falling on the waves of the soft brown stream of sound which became broader and broader, flowing round and enclosing the player, so that he was cut off and very alone. He played. Probably he was only a dilettante, but that could well be a matter of indifference to him, as it was for the Major and even perhaps for Kühlenbeck: for the clamorous silence of that time, its tumult of dumb impenetrable noise raised up between one human being and another, a wall through which the human voice cannot penetrate, so that it has to falter and die—the terrifying silence of that time was cancelled, Time itself was cancelled and shaped itself into space which enclosed them all while Kessel’s ’cello rang out, uprearing sound, upbuilding space, fulfilling space, fulfilling them also.

When the music had died away and Dr Kessel once more became Dr Kessel, the Major gave himself a little jerk so as to conceal his emotion under a prescribed military bearing. And he waited for Kessel now to say something comforting—surely one might say it now! But Dr Kessel merely bent his head and one could see the meagre locks—not at all like Esch’s grey stiff brush of hair—that sparsely covered the top of his head. Almost with shame he put the instrument away, shoving it into its linen case, which gave one almost an unseemly impression, and Kühlenbeck from his sofa corner merely muttered “Ay.” Perhaps they were all three ashamed.

At last Kühlenbeck said:

“Ay, doctors are a musical lot.”

The Major searched his memory. In his youth he had had a friend, or was it a friend? who had played the violin, but he was not a doctor, although he … perhaps, indeed, he was a doctor or had wanted to be one. Memory stopped there, memory froze, movement froze, and the Major saw nothing but his own bare hand resting on the black cloth of his army trousers. And independently of his own will his lips said “Naked and exposed.…”

“I beg your pardon!” said Kühlenbeck.

The Major turned towards him: “Oh, nothing … these are bad times … I thank you, Herr Doctor Kessel.”

Now Kessel said at last:

“Yes, music is a comfort in these times … there’s not much else left in the way of comfort.”

Kühlenbeck brought his hand down on the table:

“Don’t whine, Kessel … for let the world be full of devils, we dare not despair … let peace only come and we’ll raise our heads again.”

The Major shook his head:

“Against foul treachery one is powerless.” The image of Esch rose before him, that tanned brown face with the challenging smile, yes, challenging was the right word, that face which nevertheless seemed somehow to be asking for forgiveness and now had the reproachful expression of a horse that has fallen and cannot get up again.

“We Germans have always been betrayed,” said Kühlenbeck, “and we’re still alive in spite of it.” He raised his glass: “Long live Germany!”

The Major too raised his glass, and he thought, “Germany,” thought of the order and security which Germany had hitherto meant to him. He could no longer see Germany. In some way or other he held Huguenau responsible for the misfortunes of the Fatherland, for the marching through of troops, for the contradictory orders of the Army Command, for the unchivalrous weapons of this war of gas, for the growing and general disorder. And he would actually have liked the image of Esch to melt and blend into one with that of Huguenau, proving that they were both emissaries of the Evil One, both adventurers who had emerged out of that inextricable turmoil filled with business affairs and faces which one did not understand, both unreliable and contemptible, loaded with guilt, demoniacally loaded with guilt for the disastrous conclusion of the war:

Kessel said:

“I’m finished with it.… I’ll do my duty, but I’m finished with it.”

An inextricable maze was life, the net of evil lay over the world, and the dumb, stupendous din had begun again. Whoever strayed from the strict path of evangelical Christian duty was a sinner, and the hope that divine grace might fulfil itself here below had been a sinful hope, though proclaimed by the voice of the friend who had shattered the silence and rigidity that encased him and released him from his isolation in a blissful outpouring of the soul. And the Major said: “We have strayed from the path of duty and must bear the penalty.”

“Well, well, Herr Major,” laughed Kühlenbeck, “I don’t agree
with you there, but I do agree that it’s time we were striking the path for home, so that our exhausted friend Kessel may get to his little bed.” He had got up, his army coat hung somewhat loosely on his massive body. A disguised civilian, the Major could not help thinking—that wasn’t the King’s uniform. Major von Pasenow had also risen. Why had he come here, he, an officer in the King’s uniform? Earthly duty was a reflection of divine ordinance, and the service of something greater than oneself obliged a man to subordinate his life to higher ideas, demanded from him that he should give up even the last thin strip of personal freedom left him, if it was necessary. Voluntary obedience, yes, that was the attitude laid down by God; all the rest was to be regarded as non-existent. The Major pulled down his coat so that it hung straight, touched the ribbon of his Iron Cross, and in the punctilious military correctness with which he took his leave he found again that serenity and security which duty and a uniform bestow on men.

Dr Kessel had escorted them downstairs. At the door the Major said with a certain formality: “I thank you, Herr Doctor Kessel, for the artistic treat which you have given us.” Kessel hesitated a little in replying and then he said in a low voice: “I should thank you, Herr Major … this is the first time since the death of my dear wife that I have touched my ’cello.” The Major, however, did not hear and merely held out his hand with a certain stiffness. He went with Kühlenbeck through narrow streets, they crossed the market-place, a thin autumnal rain blew slantingly in their faces, they both wore the grey overcoat of an officer, both wore officers’ caps, and yet they were not comrades in the King’s uniform. The Major noted this inwardly.

Perceptions which are attained through fastings and self-mortifications certainly lack a final logical sharpness. I think I may say with certainty that about this time a change took place in my perceptive states. I regarded this transformation, however, with the utmost distrust, as it went hand in hand with long-continued under-nourishment; indeed I was almost prepared to agree with Dr Litwak’s diagnosis and admit that I was sick, especially as the change consisted in a feeling of great physical lucidity
rather than in a sharpening of my perception of the world round me. For instance if I put the old question to myself whether my life still possessed any intelligible reality, it was this physical feeling that provided me with the answer and gave me the certitude of living in a sort of second-grade reality, giving rise to a kind of unreal reality, of real unreality, which sent through me a thrill of strange gladness. It was a state, as it were, hovering between knowledge not yet grasped and knowledge grasped, a symbol that had found another symbol for itself, a sleepwalking that led towards the light, a fear that annulled itself and yet rose reborn again from itself; it was like a hovering above the sea of death, a winged rising and falling over the waves without touching them, so light had I become,—it was an almost physical intuition by which I seized the higher Platonic reality of the world, and all my being was filled with the certainty that I needed take only a small step to transform this physical intuition into a rational one.

In this wavering reality things streamed towards me and streamed into me and I had no need to raise a finger. What had formerly looked like passivity now found its meaning. If formerly I had stayed inside to give free rein to my thoughts, to hold philosophical monologues and now and then to jot down the heads of them, now I stayed in my room like an invalid who is obedient to his doctor and his malady. Everything turned out as Dr Litwak had prophesied. He visits me now regularly, and sometimes I myself actually call him in; and when, suddenly changing his opinion, he sets out to prove to me that I am not ill at all, “You’re just a little anæmic and more than half-crazy,” he seems to be right in that too, for I feel as though there were very little blood in my veins. I don’t want to think any longer, not, however, because I would be incapable of it; no, I don’t think any longer simply because I despise thinking. It is not that I have become so very wise as all that, I make no claim whatever to have reached the final plane of knowledge, or to have surmounted knowledge—alas, I know too well that I am far below the plane of knowledge; what keeps me from thinking is rather the fear of losing this hovering state, a fear that conceals itself behind contempt for the word. Or is it the suddenly awakened conviction that the unity of thought and being can be realized only within the most modest limits? Both thought and being reduced to their minimum!