Demian

by Hermann Hesse

  That moment was the most important one of the whole experience thus far, with the most lasting effects. The sacred inviolability of my father was torn for the first time; it was the first crack in the pillars on which my young life rested and which everyone has to pull down before he can become himself. The essential inner line of our destiny consists of these invisible experiences. Such cracks and tears heal, they grow back together and are forgotten, but down in our most secret recesses, they continue to live and bleed.

  I was immediately terrified of this new feeling. I wanted to throw myself at my father's feet at once and kiss them, beg his pardon. But there is no way to apologize for anything truly fundamental, and a child feels this and knows it as deeply and inwardly as any wise man.

  I felt a need to think about my situation and come up with a course of action for the next day. But I couldn't do it. All I did that whole evening was slowly get used to the changed atmosphere of our living room. The clock on the wall, the table, the Bible and the mirror, the bookshelf and the pictures on the wall--they all bade me farewell; I had to look on, my heart growing cold within me, as my world--my beloved, happy life--detached itself from me and turned into the past. I could not help but feel myself putting down roots that from now on would hold me fast in the foreign land of darkness outside. For the first time I tasted death, and death tastes bitter because it is birth: anxiety and terror in the face of frightening renewal.

  How happy I was to finally lie down in my bed again! Beforehand, as one last purgatory, came evening prayers, and the hymn we sang that night was one of my favorites. But no, I did not sing along--every note was gall and wormwood for me. When my father spoke the blessing I did not pray with the others, and when he ended with " . . . be with us all!" a kind of convulsion ripped me out of the family circle. The grace of God was with them all, but no longer with me. I left the room feeling cold and deeply exhausted.

  In bed, after I had lain there a while tenderly wrapped in warmth and comfort, my heart once again strayed back to my fear, fluttering anxiously around what had happened. My mother had said goodnight to me as always; her footsteps still echoed in the room, and the glow from her candle still shone in the crack beneath the door. Now, I thought, she'll come back now--she has felt something, she will give me a kiss and ask me about it, full of love and forgiveness, and I'll be able to cry, the lump in my throat will melt away, and I'll hug her and tell her and everything will be good again, then I'll be saved! When the crack beneath the door grew dark again, I listened for a while longer and thought that it had to happen, it had to.

  Then I returned to the situation at hand and faced my enemy straight on. I could see him clearly: he had a squinty eye, his mouth was mocking me with a rough laugh, and while I looked at him and a sense of inescapable fate gnawed away at me, he grew bigger and uglier, and his evil eye flashed like the devil's. He was right next to me until I fell asleep, but then I did not dream about him or anything that had happened that day. Instead I dreamed we were sailing in a boat, my parents and sisters and me, surrounded by the peace and radiance of a holiday. I woke up in the middle of the night and could still feel the aftertaste of that blessedness--could still see my sisters' white summer dresses shimmering in the sun--and I fell from that paradise back into what was. Again I was standing face to face with the enemy and his evil eye.

  The next morning, when my mother hurried into the room, yelling that it was late and why was I still lying in bed, I looked sick, and when she asked me if something was wrong, I threw up.

  That seemed to be a victory of sorts. I always loved it when I was a little sick and could spend the whole morning lying in bed with a cup of chamomile tea, listening to Mother straightening up in the next room and Lina talking to the butcher out in the front hall. A morning home from school had something magical about it, like a fairy tale; the sun would come playfully into the room, and it was not the same sun as the one the green shades in the schoolroom were pulled down to block. But today even this felt off, struck a wrong note.

  Yes, if only I died! But I was just a little sick, as I had been many times before; none of my problems had been solved. Being sick kept me out of school but in no way kept me from Kromer, who would be waiting for me in the market square at eleven o'clock. Mother's kindness did not console me this time either: it was a painful burden. I quickly pretended to fall back asleep and thought about what to do. Nothing made any difference--I had to be at the market square at eleven. So I quietly got up at ten and said I was feeling better. As usual, Mother told me I had to either go back to bed or go to school for the afternoon. I said I wanted to go to school. I had come up with a plan.

  I couldn't meet Kromer without any money at all. I had to get the little stash that belonged to me. There was not enough money in the box, I knew that, but at least there was something, and I had a sense that anything would be better than nothing--Kromer had to be placated in some way.

  I felt bad when I crept into Mother's room in my socks and took the money box out of her desk, but not as bad as I had felt the day before. The pounding of my heart made me feel like I was about to throw up again, and it was no better when I realized, at the bottom of stairs, that the box was locked. It was easy to break it open--there was only a thin tin grate to tear off--but it hurt to break it: only then, by doing that, had I committed robbery. Before that I had snuck a treat here and there, candy or fruit, but this was theft, even if it was my own money. I felt I had now taken another step closer to Kromer and his world, and how quick and easy it was to go downward, step by step. I suddenly felt defiant: Let the devil take me! There's no turning back now. I nervously counted out the money--the box had sounded so full, but now, in my hand, there was so pathetically little. Sixty-five cents. I hid the box in the downstairs hallway, held the money in my fist, and left the house, differently from every other time I had gone out the front gate. Upstairs I thought I heard someone calling after me; I ran away.

  There was still a lot of time. I took a long way, full of detours, slipping through the streets of a changed city under clouds I had never seen before, past houses that were looking at me, people who were suspicious of me. I suddenly remembered that a school friend of mine had once found a thaler coin at the cattle market; I wanted to pray for a miracle from God, that He would let me make such a find, but I knew I no longer had any right to pray. And even if I had found the money, my money box would still be broken.

  Franz Kromer saw me from a distance but came up slowly, not seeming to pay any attention to me. When he was close he made a gesture ordering me to follow him and walked on calmly, without turning around even once, down Strohgasse and across the footbridge to a construction site at the edge of town. No one was working there; the walls were bare, without doors or windows in the frames yet. Kromer looked around and then stepped through an empty doorway. I followed him. He walked behind a wall, waved me over, and stretched out his hand.

  "D'you have it?" he asked coolly.

  I pulled my clenched hand out of my pocket and shook the money into his palm. He had counted it even before the last five-cent piece had stopped clinking.

  "That's sixty-five cents," he said, and he looked at me.

  "Yes," I said timidly. "That's all I have. I know it's too little, but it's everything. I don't have any more."

  "I thought you were smarter than that," he scolded me almost gently. "Men of honor do things the right way. I'm not going to let you give me anything that isn't the right amount, you know that. Here, keep your nickels! The other guy--you know who I mean--he won't try to knock down the price. He'll pay."

  "But I don't have any more! That was everything in my money box!"

  "That's your business. But I don't want to make you unhappy. You still owe me one mark and thirty-five cents. When am I gonna get it?"

  "Oh, you'll get it, Kromer, definitely! I don't know right now--maybe I'll get more soon, tomorrow or the day after. I can't tell my father, you understand."

  "I don't care about
that. I'm not the kind of person who wants to hurt you. I could have my money before lunchtime, you know, and I'm poor. You have nice clothes on, you get better food to eat for lunch than I do, but I won't say anything. I'll wait a little while. The day after tomorrow I'll whistle for you, in the afternoon, and you can take care of it then. You know my whistle?"

  He whistled for me. I had heard it many times before.

  "Yes," I said, "I know it."

  He walked off as though we didn't know each other. It was just business between us, nothing more.

  *

  I think if I suddenly heard Kromer's whistle again, even now, so many years later, it would scare me. From that day on I heard it often--it felt like I heard it constantly. There was no place, no game, no task, no thought that his whistle didn't force its way into, robbing me of my independence. That whistle was now my destiny. Many a time, on mild and colorful autumn afternoons, I would be in our little flower garden, which I loved, and a strange urge would make me return to the boy's games of an earlier time in my life: I was acting the part, you might say, of a younger boy, still good and free, sheltered and innocent. But then Kromer's whistle, never entirely unexpected but still always a terrible shock, would come bursting in from somewhere or other, to cut the threads, destroy the games I was imagining. Then I had to go and follow my tormentor to nasty, ugly places, give him a full report, and listen to him warn me to hurry up with the money. The whole thing lasted maybe a few weeks, but to me it seemed like years, an eternity. I almost never had money to give him, at most a five-or ten-cent piece I had stolen from the kitchen table when Lina had left it there. Every time, Kromer berated and cursed me, showering me with contempt: I was the one betraying him, keeping from him what was rightfully his; I was the one robbing him, making him unhappy! Rarely in my life have I suffered so deeply, and never have I felt greater hopelessness, greater dependence.

  I had refilled the money box with toy coins and put it back; no one asked about it. But that could come crashing down on my head at any moment too. There were many times I was even more afraid of my mother's soft footsteps than of Kromer's brutal whistle--might she not be coming to ask about the money box?

  When I had showed up too many times without money for my devil, he started to torture and use me in other ways. I had to work for him. He had to deliver packages for his father, so I had to deliver packages for him. Or else he gave me a difficult task to do, like hop on one leg for ten minutes straight or stick a note on a passerby's jacket. I would continue and multiply these torments myself, in nightmares, lying in a pool of sweat.

  For a while it made me sick. I threw up often, had chills by day and sweats and fevers by night. My mother could tell something was wrong and took tender care of me, which only made it worse, since I couldn't trust and confide in her in return.

  One night, after I'd gone to bed, she brought me a little piece of chocolate. It was an echo of years past, when I would often get a comforting little treat at night when I had been good. This time, when she stood there and held out a piece of chocolate for me, I was so sore of heart that I could only shake my head. She asked what was wrong and stroked my hair. I could only blurt out: "No! No! I don't want anything." She put the chocolate down on the nightstand and left. The next day, when she tried to ask me about what had happened, I pretended not to know what she meant. Another time she took me to the doctor; he examined me and prescribed washing in cold water every morning.

  My condition during that period was like a kind of insanity. In the middle of the well-ordered, harmonious peace of our house, I lived shy and tormented like a ghost; I did not share in the others' lives and could rarely forget my situation for even an hour. My father was often annoyed, and whenever he confronted me I was cold and reserved back.

  CHAPTER TWO

  CAIN

  Salvation from my torments came from an entirely unexpected direction, and along with salvation something new came into my life whose effects have continued to this day.

  A new student had recently appeared in our Latin school. He was the son of a well-to-do widow who had moved to our city; he wore a black ribbon of mourning on his sleeve. He entered a higher grade than mine and was several years older than me, but before long I noticed him, just as everyone else did. This remarkable student seemed to be much older than he looked--he didn't come across as a schoolboy to anyone. He moved like a man among us children, a man from a different world--actually, like a lord. He was not liked; he never took part in our games, much less any rough-housing. The only thing anyone liked about him was the firm and confident tone he took with the teacher. His name was Max Demian.

  One day, as sometimes happened in our school for whatever reason, a different grade had classes in our own grade's large schoolroom. It was Demian's class. We younger students had Bible class that day; the older students had to write an essay. While the teacher drummed the story of Cain and Abel into our heads, I kept looking over at Demian, whose face strangely fascinated me: I saw his bright, unusually determined and intelligent face bent attentively over his work, looking nothing at all like a student doing an assignment, but rather like a scholar or scientist conducting his own research. I did not actually find it pleasant to look at him--on the contrary I felt resistant to him, he was too superior and cool for me, too provocatively sure of himself, and his eyes had the expression of a grown-up (something children never like), slightly sad, with flashes of mockery within them. Still I could not stop looking at him, whether I liked him or not; whenever he glanced back at me, though, I quickly looked away in alarm. Today when I think back to what he looked like as a student, I can say that he was different in every way from anyone else: he was utterly stamped with his own individual personality, and stood out for that very reason, even though he did everything he could not to stand out. He carried himself like a prince in disguise, living among peasant children and making every effort to seem like them.

  He walked behind me on the way home from school. After the other boys went their own ways, he caught up to me and said hello. His greeting, too, was adult and polite, even though he imitated our schoolboy tone when he said it.

  "Should we walk a bit together?" was his friendly question. I was flattered, and nodded. Then I told him where I lived.

  "Oh, you live there?" he said with a smile. "I know that house. There's something unusual over your front door, it interested me right away."

  At first I had no idea what he meant, and was amazed that he seemed to know our house better than I did. There was probably a kind of coat of arms on the keystone over the arch of the doorway, but it had been worn flat over the years and painted and repainted over many times; it had nothing to do with us or our family, as far as I knew.

  "I don't know anything about it," I said timidly. "It's a bird or something like that. It must be very old. They say the house used to be part of the monastery."

  "That may be," he nodded. "Take a closer look! Things like that can often be very interesting. I think it's a sparrow hawk."

  We kept walking, and I was very shy and awkward. Suddenly Demian laughed, as though he had just thought of something funny.

  "I was there in your class today," he said in a lively voice. "The story of Cain, with the mark on his forehead. Did you like it?"

  No, I rarely liked any of what we had to study, but I didn't dare say that to him--it was like a grown-up was quizzing me. I said I liked it very much.

  Demian clapped me on the shoulder.

  "You don't need to pretend with me, my friend! But the story is really quite strange, I think, much stranger than most of the things they tell us about in school. The teacher didn't say much about it, of course, just the usual stuff about God and sin and so on. But I think--" He interrupted himself, smiled, and said: "But are you interested?"

  He went on: "Yes, well, I think this story of Cain can be interpreted in a totally different way. Most of the things they teach us are no doubt perfectly true and right, but you can see them differently from
how the teachers do, and they usually make much more sense when you do that. This Cain with the mark on his forehead, for example, they haven't really explained him to us in a satisfactory way, don't you agree? Someone kills his brother in an argument, that could happen, and then he gets scared and acts innocent, that's plausible too. But for him to be rewarded for his cowardice with a special distinction that protects him and frightens everyone else, that really is very strange."

  "You're right!" I said. The topic was starting to get interesting now. "But how else would you interpret the story?"

  He slapped me on the shoulder.

  "It's simple! The mark came first: that's where the story started. There once was a man with something in his face that frightened people. They were afraid to lay a hand on him, or his children; they were awed. But maybe--in fact, I'm sure of it--there wasn't literally a sign on his forehead like a postmark. Things in life are rarely that obvious. No, it must have been something uncanny, almost imperceptible: a little more spirit, a little more daring in his look than people were used to. This man had power, and others were afraid of that power. He was 'marked.' They could explain it however they wanted, and 'they' always want what's easy and comforting and puts them in the right. They were scared of Cain's children, so the children had 'marks' too. In other words, they explained the mark not as what it really was--a special distinction--but as the opposite. They said that the people with this mark were sinister and unnerving--and so they were. Anyone with courage and character always seems unnerving to others. They felt very uncomfortable having this tribe of fearless, sinister people running around, and so they put a label on them, hung a story around their necks, to get back at them and get some compensation for all the times they had been scared. -- You understand?"

  "Yes--so you mean--Cain wasn't evil at all? And the whole story in the Bible is actually not true?"

  "Yes and no. Ancient stories like that are always true, but they're not always recorded and passed down in the right way. What I think is that Cain was a fine fellow, and they told this story about him because they were scared of him. It was just a rumor, idle gossip. But it was perfectly true, insofar as Cain and his children really did bear a kind of mark and were different from most people."