It Cannot be Stormed

by Ernst von Salomon

  Pareigat said that he could not understand how the Reich could be founded in any other way. Was this mandate a perpetual one or not? And did not its repudiation signify a self-repudiation on the part of the Reich?

  ‘The fact is,’ said Pareigat, ‘that the first impress of German consciousness and the one that has held good until today, the Reich, did not arise directly from the native German content. It called itself the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation; it was Christian and universal and only handed on to the German nation. It is therefore possible for the German to make use of the Reich if he recognises the direction and magnitude of the task and today is seeking new forms which will make it possible for the Church once more to hand the mandate to the German nation. But it is impossible for the German to make use of the Reich on the basis of the Reich’s autocracy, for this has never existed.’

  ‘Has it never existed?’ asked Ive. ‘Or is it not rather that it has clothed itself, as it were, in the Holy and Roman and Christian and Universal, and the garment has proved to be sometimes too big and sometimes too small for the body of the Reich? If one makes use of the autocracy of the Reich, that means to make use of one’s own religious sense; and then you have witnesses cropping up from Eckhardt and Jakob Böhme and Luther to Nietzsche—searchers in whom the divine spark was to be found.

  ‘And the paths they sought and their religious sense was determined in every thought of the omnipotence of Christian thought, that is in Catholicism,’ said Pareigat. ‘Is protest in itself a sign of autocracy? We must certainly guard ourselves against probing for results, but since Scheler it is impossible to rule out the result as being the ethical importance of the Reformation, and it is from him that we must estimate what was the result of the Reformation. And if God did manifest himself to Luther by a burst of thunder, it was the God of Christianity, and it was Luther who made it possible for Loyola to save the Church and lead her to a new greatness. If Germanness is a culture that fulfils itself in the Reich, it is a Christian culture, and it is Christian values which have determined it. It is impossible to deny this; but it is possible to deny Christian values as such; it is impossible to deny the Christian tradition, the Roman tradition of the Reich, but it is possible to date the beginning of the German Reich from today as the first beginning of German history, and if it cannot do without founding its significance on a divine mandate, then God will have to appear in a burst of thunder again on German soil, and this time a German God. And then the question arises whether he will not have to make use of the Reich again for a new protest.’

  ‘For a national protest, certainly,’ said Ive, ‘for a protest of German spirituality against Christian spirituality, which has its origins in the spirit of Israel.’

  But Pareigat did not take up this challenge, and Ive said that he admitted that it all depended on how far it was possible from the basis of Germanness to attack the antagonistic spirit at its very roots; that with the unitary philosophy of the Reich, with its syn-philosophy, to borrow a term from Schlegel, the Reich stood or fell; and that it was not permissible to derive and correlate the theses of this philosophy from German intellectual sources alone, since in the end it was only a matter of interpretation. He admitted all this, and it did not even occur to him to seek out paths which led to the religious forms of pagan German antiquity, for the echoes of this period which still rang in our ears had no bearing on the primitive feelings of either religion or history. But since the real history-making power for the German nation was Christianity, the purpose of its content was to be found in the German manifestations of Christianity. And this purpose was in fact united enough in its main features to glean from it an idea of its characteristic manifestation. If it had made a political stand against the supremacy of Rome, intellectually it had made a stand against the ideas of Christian morality.

  ‘Against man’s free will, in fact,’ said Pareigat. ‘No matter how wide an historical survey we make, in the end it is a question of individual choice. It is a tempting idea, to try to attack Christianity at its core, to deny sin, and guilt; to include in grace what the Church has excluded from it: nature; to permit man and nature to be merged in God, so that whatever happens takes place in God, and is therefore perfect; the idea is tempting and not new, I grant you. And if the Reich at one time found itself swamped by Christianity once from the West and once from the East, there is no reason why it should not be possible to exchange Jerusalem for Mecca, the authority of the Pope for the direct communion with God of Mohammedanism.

  ‘And really,’ he said, ‘it was probably a Western superstition to derive from the fact of Islamite immunity against the means of grace of the Western world the comforting statement that the idea of Kismet led to fatalism; even if it were no longer possible to overcome evil, why should not responsibility to the world be altogether an act of heroic character? But what was impossible with the denial of a moral principle was the participation of the individual in any kind of order; what would disappear in the Reich would be the kingdom of the objective intellect, society. For—’

  ‘Stop,’ said Ive, ‘that is not right. Responsibility to the world is not the question. That has been imposed upon us and we are answerable. Responsibility means,’ he said uneasily, for Helene had come in and slipped quietly past them without greeting them, ‘responsibility means to be answerable for one’s actions regardless of consequences, for all actions regardless of all consequences.’

  What is the matter with Helene? he thought to himself. She disappeared behind a curtain which cut the studio off from a little kitchen, and Ive could hear her washing her hands slowly and thoroughly.

  ‘Responsibility to the world means, therefore,’ said Ive, ‘that the individual is deprived of none of his influence on the content of his actions.’

  ‘What is the matter with Helene?’ he asked.

  She flung her hat and coat down in a corner and came towards Ive. But, a little way from him, she turned round with a quick, angry movement and walked right across the studio, her high heels tapping sharply on the floor. The painter barely looked up from his work. Ive followed Helene with his eyes.

  ‘The idea of free will,’ he said. ‘Helene!’

  Suddenly she was standing close in front of him with her hands pressed on the table.

  ‘You talk,’ she said, and drew her shoulders up.

  ‘You talk,’ she said, and the tone of icy scorn hit Ive in the face like the lash of a whip.

  They stared at each other. Helene’s forehead was a network of furrows.

  ‘You talk!’ she screamed, and her breath beat hot on Ive’s mouth.

  My God, why this sudden hatred, thought Ive, and he felt the blood draining from his face to meet the upward rush pumped up from his wildly beating heart until it nearly choked him.

  ‘Go on talking,’ said Helene, through her clenched teeth, and her words exploded through the studio.

  ‘But I am fed up! I am fed up!’ she shrieked at the wall. ‘Why do you work?’ she hissed at the artist. ‘Give me that sheet.’

  She snatched it from him, the Wet paint coming off on her dress. She seized it quickly by the edge, her hands tightened to tear it across, then she stopped suddenly, cast a glance at the colours, stretched out her arms and returned it to the painter.

  ‘Tear it up,’ she said, ‘tear it up.’

  The painter, white and puzzled, dropped his brush, took the sheet, and tore it slowly across. Pareigat and Ive jumped up. Helene stood in the studio like a slender flame.

  ‘I can’t go on,’ she said softly, and the piteous, thin voice that came from her contracted throat filled the whole room with its torture. Ive stood motionless. The question leapt into his mind, stabbing like a knife: What do I know of Helene? Her face had puckered up like a child’s on the point of crying. But she did not cry; she stood upright with an expression of misunderstood sorrow.

  ‘You talk and you paint,’ she said; ‘you come to this studio, as you would to a lonely island, to talk and to paint.
You talk and you paint on an island, and everything you do is a lie. A lie,’ she screamed threateningly at Ive. ‘What do you know about all the things you talk about? “This must be and that must be,” you say, and “This can’t be allowed and that can’t be allowed.” But what is you do not see. I will tell you what is: Filth!’ she screamed, stamping about the: studio. ‘You and your responsibility to the world! But you have made no attempt to clean up the excrements that fill the whole world with their stink. If it were even a hell in which we are forced to live! But there are no more devils in human form, nothing but petty criminals. What of it if a policeman knocks me down with his truncheon, at least that is brute force, and I am prepared to shoot. But can you shoot slime? Do you call it life to be slowly choked by slime? But you talk. You condone the lie by ignoring it.’

  ‘Helene!’ said Ive.

  ‘Be quiet,’ she said, turning to him.

  Then she said softly and with a great effort: ‘You think I am unjust, but I want to be unjust, for to be just is a lie. I want no more lies; I’m fed up with lying. You think I am in despair, but I want to be in despair, for all hope is a lie. Haven’t I done my utmost, haven’t I even done what I myself should never have thought possible? Who can say that I’m a coward? Do you think I would let myself be conquered by the inevitable? When have I ever given in? Am I daunted by the shoemaker, the baker or the tailor whom I can never pay, and do you care a damn? Do I flinch at my journeys to film studios, to editors, to Jakobsohn? Journeys that you know nothing about, that you probably regard as shameful, bitter, disgusting, but for me just street-walking? And you don’t know this? You don’t see it, don’t realise it? You tolerate a prostitution, because it’s legal, because it is so, as though it had to be? But it must not be, my God, it must not be. I am fed up. And you talk. And I put on a short-sleeved dress when I go to see Jakobsohn. And I cross my legs when I am waiting in the newspaper office. And I undress in front of every producer when I want to get a part for three days at twenty-five marks. I don’t mind standing naked before the whole world if it is necessary. But it is not necessary, it is vile obscenity. Do you think I’m prudish? Do I jib at realities? But this is not reality, this is low-down disgusting vulgarity. Am I afraid, I, of passion? When I love, I abandon myself. But I won’t be dragged into everyone’s bed in the interests of business. I won’t be pawed by every fat swine, I won’t be petted by every perfumed bundle of wadding. I am fed up, fed up, fed up. And you talk. You talk of free will and guilt and answerableness and supremacy and responsibility to the world. That has long since been divided up amongst the filthiest pack that ever existed, who have risen to supremacy from the sewers, and you can’t smell their origin? You can’t see the dirt in every film they reel off, in every popular tune they thump out, in every column they write, in every word they say? Either you are dense or corrupted. For you talk. You put up with it. You have theories about it. You’re so superior, aren’t you? Nobody will listen to you; and you are proud of it. But they listen to the others, to these creatures. They sit firmly implanted with their fat bottoms on every seat that’s worth sitting on. They sit at every telephone, at every microphone, at every desk. And you may dance to the tune they call. And you do dance. You dance around in a circle with all your talk, to their music, and you are grateful if they praise your clever steps, and are wounded when they laugh at your capers. Respectable people. Swine! And so are you. You talk. Of duty. And you don’t see your first and only duty. You talk. And are as independent as is possible for anyone to be today. You are not on a string as we are, who have to tremble if they take it into their heads to cut us down. You have the unique good fortune to be able to talk, but of the things that matter you don’t talk—talk, did I say, you don’t shriek them out, call them from the house-tops. You are cowards from ignorance. You lie from arrogance. But you are cowards and you lie. Cowardice and lies,’ she snapped at Ive, as though she were spitting at him. ‘Be silent if you cannot talk of what should be talked of. There is no excuse. For the rest of the world perhaps, but not for you. If you do not stand up to bear witness against pestilence and dung, who is to? But you are too grand to do such a thing as walk the streets. I am a street-walker. I let myself be spat on and besmirched. And I am in damned fine company. In company that has got used to being spat on and besmirched. They think it is the correct thing. And if they didn’t think it the correct thing, wouldn’t dare to make a stand against it; they have to take part in it, have to spit and besmirch in their turn, to behave as though they were in a brothel, and must not be surprised at being treated as though they were in a brothel. And you tolerate this. You see and talk of other things. And if the filth rises as high as your noses, you too take a mouthful and spit it out again, and behave as though that were the end of it. What heritage are you waiting for, waiting until it has been squandered away and not a rag is left? Waiting is treachery. You are traitors. Petty traitors. Traitors with no character. You’re just like the others. You are not even as efficient as they are. You talk of power and the others have it. You talk of decisions and the others make them. You dream of deeds and the others act. Just the same with art. You think they don’t understand it, but they understand it better than you do. They know what is dangerous. You don’t, and you aren’t dangerous yourselves. Leave me alone,’ said Helene, pacing up and down.

  ‘You can think I am hysterical if you like. I have a right to be hysterical. But you are worn down. All your corners have been gnawed as though by rats. And you don’t know it, you don’t see it, you don’t realise it. You talk of battle and do nothing but tilt against yourselves. You talk of attitude, and, of course, one shouldn’t mention these things, but there are a few people who, before they think of attitude, want to fill their bellies. I am one of them, and I don’t care about my attitude. Leave me alone. I’ll be quiet. Nothing has happened. Nothing that does not happen every day. I wash my hands every day, and my soul, from the shame that this should be necessary. Nothing has happened. They are making a new film, I am playing a harlot, fifteen yards of her. I have to give a side view of my left breast, naked. My breast was the most beautiful of all those that were in the running. Nothing has happened. The article has to be altered. They said I had a slight anal complex. They said it was only because I was such a charming little woman that they were keeping me on in spite of the general cuts. They said they wanted articles about the spring in Mentone, because of the holiday season. I shall write the articles. I have never been to Mentone and shall never go. And they know it. Nothing has happened. Everything is grand. Better than I thought. No, I am not embittered. Did my voice sound shrill? I have been having a singing audition. I have to go again tomorrow. “The Dream of a Night,” from the novel, War in the Dark. I do so enjoy dancing in the open air. Perhaps I shall get taken on. If not, thousands of others are in the same boat. I want some paint and canvas. I’m going to the Porza Ball tonight. Why? I promised Jakobsohn I would. Maybe he’ll buy the picture after all, if I go. He said he was enchanted. He says he knows a connoisseur of erotic pictures. He knows exactly what I think of him, and that obviously amuses him. You must come with me, Ive. What, am I to go alone? Come on. Put on an old jacket and go as an apache. I’m going as an amazon, with a whip, a short skirt, and high boots. Because I know that’s what Jakobsohn likes.’

  XVI

  Helene did not say a word in the taxi. She sat upright, one foot forward, and peered through the mirroring windowpane on to the road gleaming in the head-lights. Occasionally, as they passed a street lamp, by its light Ive could see her thin, pale face, bright red lips and motionless metallic green eyes. Over her dress she was wearing a silk cloak, which she had made herself out of some odd pieces, and she held it together at the throat with her slender bare hand. On the corners of her finger-nails Ive could still see a trace of paint, like a dried-up trickle of blood. Ive had a sudden desire to work, to work madly, anything rather than the torture of seeing Helene like this in her wretched, shabby, trumped-up silken finery, in this
musty, dirty taxi, smelling of sweat and stale smoke, sitting behind the driver in his brown suit.

  He turned to her and said abruptly: ‘Let’s turn back. Don’t let Jakobsohn have the picture, Helene. I’ll buy it. Wait a few days, two or three days, there’s still some money owing to me for the article on the butter-tax. I have a commission for a series on emigration. I’ll begin this very evening. I’ll get the money somehow. Do you hear, the picture is mine!’

  Helene did not even turn her head. ‘You don’t understand,’ she said, and Ive was silent.

  There was a crackle of bare wet branches scraping along the roof of the taxi, the sound of grinding wheels. In the crude yellow light stood the commissionaire. Helene jumped out and went towards the entrance. Ive put his hand in his pocket, stopped short, and at that moment he would gladly have snatched the pistol from the policeman standing stiffly at the corner and made an end of everything. ‘Helene!’ he called.

  ‘Oh, of course,’ she said, turned round and came back. She fumbled in her purse, without looking at Ive.

  ‘I’m thirty pfennigs short,’ whispered Ive. ‘Don’t make me mad,’ he said, ‘that’s mean.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ said Helene, and paid the taxi-man.

  Cars-rolled up. The policeman made a sign, the commissionaire opened the doors.

  He did not open the doors for Helene and Ive. Ive would have gone in, but Helene waited until the commissionaire returned.

  ‘Open the doors,’ she said. With a glum face the commissionaire pushed against the doors with his elbow so that they opened just widely enough for them to pass through one at a time. Ive would have gone in, but Helene waited.

  ‘Open them wide,’ she said, and looked at the commissionaire. Slowly he pushed the doors wide open.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Helene, and went through.