It Cannot be Stormed

by Ernst von Salomon

  ‘I hope you’re enjoying yourself, Schaffer; no, I haven’t been drinking, not a drop. Make room, man. . .’

  She isn’t upstairs either. Perhaps in the blue room? Empty. . .

  ‘Out of the way. Don’t talk rubbish, idiot. I must find Helene, I must. . .’

  The stairs, over there perhaps? You can’t see across to the other side. The box is empty. What next, my cloak-room ticket? Waiter, has the bill been paid? Of course. . . With Jakobsohn. Impossible. Helene wouldn’t go with Jakobsohn. Why not? No, you don’t understand Helene. He was very polite to her, full of a vulgar, disgusting, slimy politeness. No, Helene with him, that’s impossible. . .

  ‘My coat, yes, that one with the torn lining. . .’

  What next? But if she isn’t with Jakobsohn, with the hippopotamus, with the son of a Mickey Mouse fantasy—him and her—ludicrous—if she had gone home, she would surely have said something? What did she say, what did she look like, when I last saw her? Last? What does that mean?. . .

  ‘Quick, quick,’ said Ive out loud, and found himself standing alone in the vestibule.

  Without thinking he looked in a long mirror and saw his reflection. He was shocked at his reflection, he looked simply ludicrous, shamefully and humiliatingly ludicrous. He knew he hadn’t the money for a taxi, and that made him feel absolutely helpless. He stood, with his coat half-buttoned up, his hat in his hand, in front of the door, and tried to gather his thoughts. But he was completely empty. Nothing would come into his mind but the old, forgotten, military formula: ‘Helmets off for prayers.’

  He put his hat on. Now Helene is done for, he thought mechanically, without really knowing what he meant by this. He pulled himself together, and walked on aimlessly for a few steps. He walked quicker and quicker, straight in front of him, towards the black trees, seeking out the dark spots, as though he would find Helene there. She is at the studio, he thought, and meditated. Or with Jakobsohn. But this seemed more than he could bear. Not with Jakobsohn, oh God, not with Jakobsohn, anywhere but there; Helene can’t do that to me, he thought, and was terrified. He felt a choking fear. Dimly he saw what was possible for Helene, he did not quite grasp it, it came upon him like a thunderbolt. Helene could do this thing to him, knowing that it was necessary for him and for her to be strict and bitter to the very last moment. He stood still, under the trees, and realised that his whole body was covered with a sticky sweat. . . Until the very last moment: then I must not live any longer, he thought. He thought: now it is decided; I can’t live any longer, everything is finished with, including responsibility to the world.

  He looked up at the trees. Above his head spread the broad, strong branches. . . There is no other way out. She washed her hands, her face, her whole body, she took clean linen from the cupboard, the folds must still be visible. The linen smells faintly of soap, her legs stick out of it like a rag-doll’s. What can she do after this terrible humiliation? And she has been carrying this about with her for years, and we knew nothing of it, we didn’t see it, didn’t realise. Of course, we knew. We were cowards, we did not want to see; it was so pleasant not to realise it. Good God, he thought, good God.

  ‘All lies,’ Helene had said, ‘all lies.’ Guilt or responsibility, how we enjoyed juggling with words.

  ‘You do not understand,’ Helene had said.

  But Helene understood, and she was an abandoned woman, had been for years, as long as she could remember. That is why she was justified, that was why she did not recognise guilt, but was responsible, was above all pettiness, was unassailable, unconquerable in her inmost soul. She was, was. . . the words kept palpitating in him, and, suddenly taking a short turn towards the town, he began to run. He ran past the entrance of the hall, which he had just left, and heard the sound of the orchestra. The saxophones are sighing in the end of the century, he thought, and began, in the midst of his aimless running, to compose verses, which for a moment seemed to him to be remarkable. At a street-crossing, just as he was about to cross the Damn, the red light went on. This just suited him, he rushed swaying across, between loudly hooting cars; but the next moment he was disgusted with himself, and gave up looking for imaginary dangers. He was surprised at his own theatricality, running like a drunken man, exaggerating his movements, as though he wanted to make it clear to the whole world that here was a man running with the burden of a great sorrow.

  If, he thought to himself, it is a question of responsibility, I must not look for Helene, I must let everything go on to the end; be cold, force things on and then bear the consequences. But equally strong was the thought that he would escape the consequences, that he would go on living, without reason, with a wound in his soul, but go on living, that he would be guilty of the most shameful betrayal, a betrayal that could only bear fruit in petty feelings, only be fruitful as the counterpole of his confidence, a useless betrayal, therefore, all things considered, the cause of a wound in his soul. Then he cursed himself for thinking of himself and not of Helene, but he could not help it. Finally, he gave up thinking about anything at all, and from that moment his mind became quite clear. She can’t do this, it came to him, she is a Catholic, and he turned into a street which led to the church. If there is no light in the church, if it is locked, he thought. . . it was locked. He rattled at the door. Through the high windows shone the faint light of the sanctuary lamp. The only thing left was to go to the studio. He ran, his hands on his breast, his elbows pressed to his sides, through the streets, through the eternal, long, dark alleys. He ran along the streets he had so often walked with Helene, past the dimly lighted street-corners, past the waiting taxis, past the shops, all closed now, and the inimical house-fronts. He began to look ahead of him. Breathing heavily, he peered forward to see if there was still a light in the hall. There was no light, but the gate was unlocked. He threw his whole weight against the heavy, creaking doors. As usual he was irritated by the plaster representations of the ‘Minstrels’ Festival in the Wartburg’ and ‘The Homecoming of Tannhauser’ in the entrance hall. What am I thinking of? He cursed himself, terrified lest all his excitement had been for nothing; and pushed against the door leading into the courtyard and lifted the latch. This door too was open, and with his relief at this was mixed the frightening memory that this door was frequently open. He saw something white in the courtyard. He ran up to it, but half-way there turned back again. It was a piece of paper in the dust-bin. He looked up at the rear of the house. All the windows were in darkness. Then he remembered shamefacedly that the Studio windows, of course, faced the other side. He went up the stairs, taking three steps at a time, opening his coat in order to go more quickly. Stairs, stairs, stairs; at every door, on every landing a fresh odour met him, the dark hole beside the banisters, the deep abyss of the entrance hall had a stupefying odour as he panted upwards. Was there a light in the studio? There was a light. He bumped against the door, he thrust his shoulder against it.

  ‘Open the door,’ he cried. ‘It is I, Ive, quick,’ and fell back, listening.

  He heard nothing; he listened, and in the distance he heard the scraping of a chair, slow footsteps. ‘Open the door,’ he cried, and put his head against the crack, to see if he could recognise the footsteps. They were not her footsteps. The painter pulled the door open, the light struck him in the face.

  ‘Where is Helene?’ he cried in a hoarse voice, and rushed into the room. But Helene was sitting silent and in deep absorption in front of her easel. She had on her white smock, on her head her old red cap, and her hand was gently moving as she placed her brush on the canvas.

  XVII

  Ive was himself astonished to find how one small event was capable of diverting him from one line of action to another. This one movement of the spiritual lever was sufficient to shift the points. It is true that his personal collision with the complications of reality had by no means led to personal consequences. If Ive had had any psychoanalytical training he might have found it possible to have been actually offended with Helene for not co
mmitting suicide. He might have been able to dissociate himself from her, not indeed because he was wounded, but for his own peace of mind, and to leave her, with regretful sympathy, to her own fate. Or again, if this kind of spiritual hygiene did not suit him, another course was open to him. He might have frankly admitted his mistake, and have immediately devoted himself to the benevolent service of humanity, beginning with his nearest friends, and thus have entered into the peace of a noble attitude. Unfortunately Ive was not disposed to acquire the necessary knowledge of the psychical mechanism. Not that he would have been daunted by any kind of mechanism, but he attributed very little importance to these things. He was, for instance, happy in the assurance that nobody could excel him in the use of so complicated an apparatus as that presented by a machine-gun. Moreover, he regarded the aforesaid machine-gun as undoubtedly the most suitable means of dealing in the most economical way with a number of problems of the times, including so-called intellectual problems. But he was not interested in the problems of the times but in the times themselves, if one may say so. He was interested in the substructure of power for which the times were struggling.

  And his ridiculous adventure in the ballroom and later in the studio had narrowed down for him the field of interest. Narrowed down, that was it.

  ‘What have I learned from the town?’ he said to Schaffer, when he went to say good-bye to him. ‘I have learned nothing from it except my duty. Rather I should say it has made my duty clearer to me. And after all that’s a great deal, it’s a very great deal.’

  And Schaffer was the first to agree with him there. Schaffer was not in the least astonished at Ive’s decision to leave the town. ‘That’s certainly the best thing you can do,’ he said thoughtfully, and from what he went on to say it was clear how well he realised what was impelling Ive, and others besides Ive.

  ‘Everything is a preparation,’ said Schaffer with precision, and sighed gently, for he could have wished that the preparation was somewhat pleasanter in his own case.

  How else can the Reich be founded, they both thought, except by sixty million spiritual fortresses? But for Ive the process of fortifying his soul had been completed at the moment that he felt the impulse to leave the town—just as this process had begun with the impulse to come to the town. Ive gave no further thought to the matter, he took it for granted. But it would be an exaggeration to say that he took it for granted because he was under the influence of some mysterious urge, because something stronger than himself was driving him. He might as easily have acted otherwise; he might easily have decided to stay with the farmers, and he saw no urgent reason for returning to them now, yet on this occasion, as on that, he made his decision. He realised that this was the zero hour, and he prepared himself to go through with it, although no one, not even he himself, could have reproached him if he had decided to shirk it. ‘The time has come,’ he said now, as then.

  It remains for us to carry out what has for centuries been the recognised task of the chroniclers, without falling into the errors which, for centuries, have been the recognised errors of the chroniclers, namely, in order to make our narrative plausible to resort to means which have nothing to do with the events we are narrating. We cannot, for instance, describe a trial for witchcraft and at the same time deny that witches existed; and we cannot drag in by the hair a mother—or a grandmother—complex or any other contribution of general culture to show why Ive left the town. For even if Ive was aware of these theories, he obviously made no use of them. And as for general culture, he neither tried to make a virtue of necessity, nor to fill in the gaps in his own education. In the first place the value of this culture would have had to be proved to him, and it seemed to him that the possessors of this precious gift were particularly unsuited for this task. He was not educated but trained, and, moreover, trained as a soldier, and, thank God, the traces of this training never left him.

  This probably explains why it was that he never joined in the noisy chorus of those who—with the exception of the National Socialists, who had never made any claim to it— regarded it as a reproach to be lacking in what the bankrupts of a whole century, from Jean Jacques Rousseau to Emil Ludwig, leaving out of account their different degrees of eminence, have understood by the term ‘intellect.’ Ive did not join in, because he could never get away from the question cui bono? If he did not join the National Socialists, it was not because he could not discern enough traces of the aforementioned intellect among them. On the contrary, it seemed to him that the wine of the Third Reich savoured too much of the cork of the Second.

  ‘You have not understood anything,’ Helene had said to him when he was on the point of taking refuge from a general conclusion in a personal decision, and the outcome of events showed him what she meant by this. Actually she herself was in the same position as Ive, that is she no longer had any tolerance for the prescriptions of Karl Marx, based on socialistic quackery. It never occurred to Helene to wish for any personal vocation; she had character enough to coordinate her own demands with those of her times, and since she herself had character enough for this, she could and was obliged to demand the same of her friends. She had justified herself and she observed with sorrow that Ive was about to renounce any claim to justification. Helene asked him to give an account of himself, and he did so. He discovered that he could say ‘Yes’ to the town, even a satisfied ‘Yes,’ almost amounting to a declaration of faith. Ive had come to the town to conquer it, and in his cell in the Moabit Prison he had dreamed of new battalions which would conquer the town—but the new battalions, which were formed without his co-operation, only conquered the streets of the town. Ive would not have objected, by a miracle of energy, preparation and chance, to reaching the responsible position of chief burgomaster—but he was kind enough to admit that even so he would not have been able to accomplish much more than Burgomaster Sahm. Ive was prepared to take from the town anything it had to offer him — but more active conquistadores than he had attempted this in their own sphere, and after a pleasant interlude, which had not lasted so very long, had found themselves landed in a cell of the self-same Moabit Prison. And Ive had gained in the town the only experience the town had to offer him, namely, nothing.

  ‘Just that, and that is an astounding achievement,’ he said to Dr. Schaffer, who, while delighted at Ive’s laughing confession, could not suppress a sigh. For he had his work cut out to keep on resolutely and rapidly marking time.