Gertrude

by Hermann Hesse

  As she went pale and looked at me in surprise, I helped her and spoke again: "Your answer is no, isn't it? I thought so. I only wanted to be certain."

  She nodded sadly.

  "Is it Heinrich?" I asked.

  She nodded again, and suddenly she seemed frightened and seized my hand. "Please forgive me and don't do anything to him."

  "I don't intend to, you can rest assured," I said and had to smile, for I thought of Marian and Lottie, who had also been so attached to him and whom he had beaten. Perhaps he would also beat Gertrude and destroy her lofty pride and trusting nature.

  "Gertrude," I began again, "think it over! Not for my sake. I know now how things stand with me. But Muoth will not make you happy. Goodbye, Gertrude."

  My feeling of numbness and unnatural calm persisted. Only now, when Gertrude talked to me this way, in the same tone that I recalled Lottie using, and looked at me so anxiously and said: "Don't go like that. I don't deserve this from you," did I feel as if my heart were breaking, and I had difficulty controlling myself.

  I held out my hand to her and said: "I don't want to hurt either you or Heinrich. But wait a little. Don't let him exercise his power over you. He destroys everyone he is fond of."

  She shook her head and released my hand. "Goodbye!" she said quietly. "It is not my fault. Think kindly of me and also of Heinrich."

  It was over. I went home and proceeded with my plan as if it were a piece of work to be done. It was true that while I did this my heart was heavy and filled to the brim with sorrow, but I was aware of it in a remote way and had no spare thoughts for it. It was all the same to me whether the days and hours that were left went well or not. I put in order the pile of sheets on which my half-finished opera was written, and wrote a letter to Teiser to go with it, so that my work should, if possible, be preserved. Then I seriously considered the manner in which I should die. I wished to spare my parents, but could think of no manner of dying that would make this possible. In the long run, it did not matter so much. I finally decided to use a revolver. All these questions occurred to me only in a shadowy and unreal fashion. I had only one fixed idea and that was that I could not go on living, for I sensed through the icy shell of my decision the horror of the life that would have been mine. It gazed at me hideously through vacant eyes and it seemed much more ugly and terrifying than the dark and quite unemotional conception I had of death.

  In the afternoon, two days later, I was ready with my preparations. I still wanted to have a walk through the town. I had to take a couple of books back to the library. It was a comfort to me to know that in the evening I would no longer be alive. I felt like a man who has had an accident and is still partly under anesthetic and does not feel the pain, but has a foretaste of excruciating torture. He only hopes that he will sink into complete oblivion before the suspected pain becomes real. That is how I felt. I suffered less from an actual pain than from an agonizing fear that I might return to consciousness and have to empty the whole glass that death, which called me, was to take away from me. That was why I hurried through my walk, attended to what was necessary and went straight back. I made just a short detour in order not to go past Gertrude's house, for I felt, without being able to analyze it, that if I saw the house, the intolerable pain from which I was seeking escape would overwhelm and prostrate me.

  So, breathing a sigh of relief, I went back to the house in which I lived, opened the gate and went immediately up the stairs, feeling lighter of heart. If the grief was still pursuing me and stretching out its claws toward me, if somewhere within me the frightful pain should begin to gnaw again, there were only a few stairs and seconds between me and liberation.

  A man in uniform came down the stairs toward me. I moved aside and hastened to pass him, fearing I might be stopped. He then touched his cap and pronounced my name. I looked at him in dismay. Being addressed and stopped, which I had feared, caused me to tremble. Suddenly a feeling of exhaustion overpowered me. I felt that I was going to fall and there would be no hope of making the few necessary paces to reach my room.

  Meanwhile, I stared in distress at the stranger. As the feeling of weakness grew, I sat down on one of the stairs. The man asked me if I was ill and I shook my head. He was holding something in his hand which he wanted to give me and which I would not take, until he almost forced it into my hand. I made a gesture of refusal and said: "I don't want it."

  He called for the landlady but she was not there. He then took me by the arm in order to help me up. As soon as I saw that there was no escape and that he would not leave me alone, I suddenly pulled myself together. I stood up and walked toward my room, and he followed me. As I felt that he looked at me suspiciously, I pointed to my injured leg and pretended it was hurting me, and he believed me. I took out my purse and gave him a coin. He thanked me and finally pushed into my hand the thing that I knew I did not want to take. It was a telegram.

  Wearily, I stood by the table. Someone had now stopped me and broken the spell. What was it? A telegram. From whom? It was all the same to me. It was irritating to receive a telegram just now. I had made all my preparations and at the last moment someone sends me a telegram. I looked around. A letter lay on the table.

  I put the letter in my pocket; it did not tempt me. But I was intrigued by the telegram. I could not get it out of my thoughts and it disturbed me. I sat down and looked at it on the table and wondered whether to read it or not. It was, of course, an attack on my freedom; of that I had no doubt. Someone wanted to try to stop me, begrudged me my flight, wanted me to accept my sorrow and taste it to the full without being spared any twinge, stab or spasm of pain.

  Why the telegram caused me so much anxiety, I do not know. I sat at the table a long time and did not dare to open it, feeling that it concealed some power that would draw me back and compel me to bear the unbearable from which I wanted to escape. When I finally did open it, my hand shook. I could only decipher the telegram slowly, as if I were translating the contents from an unfamiliar foreign language. It read: "Father dying. Please come at once. Mother."

  I gradually realized what it meant. Only yesterday I had thought about my parents and regretted that I should have to give them pain, and yet it had only been a superficial consideration. Now they created obstacles, dragged me back and made claims upon me. I immediately thought of the conversations I had had with my father at Christmas. Young people, he had said, with their egotism and feeling of independence, can be brought to the point of ending their lives on account of an unfulfilled wish, but when one's life is bound up with those of others, one does not consider one's own desires to the same degree. And I was also tied by such a bond! My father was dying. My mother was alone with him and called me. The thought of his dying and her need for me did not at the moment affect me so deeply. I thought I knew of even greater griefs, but I fully realized that I could not now give them an extra burden to bear, ignore my mother's request and run away from them.

  In the evening I was at the railway station ready for my journey, and automatically yet consciously did what was necessary. I obtained my ticket, put the change in my pocket, went on to the platform and entered the train. I sat in a corner of a compartment, prepared for a long night journey. A young man entered the compartment, looked around, greeted me and sat down opposite me. He asked me something, but I just looked at him, only wishing that he would leave me alone. He coughed and stood up, picked up his yellow leather traveling bag and left to look for another seat.

  The train traveled through the night in blind, senseless haste, just as insensate and conscientious as I, as though there were something that would be missed or saved. Some hours later, when I put my hand in my pocket, I felt the letter. That is still there, I thought, and I opened it.

  My publisher had written to me about concerts and fees, and he informed me that my affairs were going well and improving. A well-known critic had written about me and he congratulated me on it. Enclosed with the letter was a newspaper article with my name as the he
ading, and a long discourse on the position of present-day music and of Wagner and Brahms; then there was a review of my string music and songs, with high praise and good wishes. As I read the small black letters, I gradually realized that it was about me, that fame and the world were holding out their hands to me. For a moment I had to laugh.

  The letter and the article had loosened the bandage from my eyes, and unexpectedly I looked back into the world and saw that I was not beaten and finished but that I was in the middle of it and belonged to it. I had to go on living as well as I could. Was it possible? Then everything about the past five days came back to me and all that I had felt as if in a stupor, and from which I had hoped to escape--it was all horrible, bitter and humiliating. It was all a death sentence that I had not executed, and I must leave my task undone.

  I heard the train rattling along. I opened the window, and as we flew past I saw the gloomy stretches of country, dismal-looking bare trees with black branches, large farmhouses and distant hills. They all seemed unwilling to exist, to express sorrow and resentment. Some people might think all this was beautiful, but to me it only seemed sad. I recalled the song "Is that God's will?"

  However much I tried to look at the trees and fields and roofs outside, however earnestly I tried to concentrate my thoughts on remote subjects and on anything I could think of without distress, I was unable to do so for long. I could not even think about my father; he had become remote with the trees and the countryside at night, and against my will and despite my efforts, my thoughts drifted back to forbidden things. I saw a garden with old trees in it, and among them a house with palm trees at the entrance, and inside on all the walls there were old, dark paintings. I went in and walked up the stairs past all the old pictures and no one saw me. I walked through like a ghost. There was a slim lady there with dark hair, who turned her back on me. I saw the man too and they embraced. I saw my friend Heinrich Muoth smile sadly and dejectedly, as he did sometimes, as if he already knew that he would abuse and ill-treat this fair lady too, and that there was nothing that could be done about it. It was stupid and senseless that this unhappy man, this reprobate, should attract the most charming women, and that all my love and good intentions should be in vain.

  Awakening from a sleep or doze, I saw the gray of morning and a pale light in the sky through the window. I stretched out my stiff limbs and felt sad and sober; the course that lay before me seemed gloomy and vexatious. First of all I now had to think of my father and mother.

  It was still gray and early morning when we approached the bridges and houses of my home town. In the smell and noise of the railway station I felt so weary and exasperated that I did not want to leave the train. However, I picked up my luggage and climbed into the nearest cab, which first traveled over smooth asphalt, then over slightly frosty ground, then crunched along a rough track and stopped at the large gate of our house, which I had never seen closed.

  But now it was closed and when, dismayed and frightened, I pulled the bell, no one came and there was no response. I looked up at the house and felt as if I were having an unpleasant wild dream. The driver looked on in surprise and waited. Feeling wretched, I went to the other door, which was seldom used and which I had not gone through for years. This was open. When I went in, I found my father's office staff sitting there wearing gray coats as usual, and they were quiet and subdued. They rose at my entrance, for I was my father's heir. Klemm, the bookkeeper, who did not look any different than he had twenty years before, gave a short bow and looked at me inquiringly with a sad expression on his face.

  "Why is the front door locked?" I asked.

  "There is no one there."

  "Where is my father?"

  "In the hospital. Your mother is also there."

  "Is he still alive?"

  "He was still alive this morning, but they think..."

  "Tell me what has happened."

  "Oh, of course, you don't know! It is still his foot. We all say he had wrong treatment for it. Suddenly he had severe pains and screamed terribly. Then he was taken to the hospital. Now he is suffering from blood poisoning. Yesterday at half past two we sent you a telegram."

  "I see. Thank you. Could you please have a sandwich and a glass of wine brought to me quickly and order a cab for me."

  My wishes were whispered to someone and then there was silence again. Someone gave me a plate and a glass. I ate a sandwich, drank a glass of wine, went out and climbed into a cab; a horse snorted, and soon we stood at the hospital gate. Nurses with white caps on their heads, and attendants wearing blue-striped linen suits passed along the corridors. Someone took me by the hand and led me into a room. Looking around, I saw my mother nod to me with tears in her eyes, and in a low, iron bed lay my father, changed and shrunken, his short gray beard standing out oddly.

  He was still alive. He opened his eyes and recognized me despite his fever.

  "Still composing music?" he asked quietly, and his voice and glance were kind as well as mocking. He gave me a wink which expressed a tired, ironic wisdom that had nothing more to impart, and I felt that he looked into my heart and saw and knew everything.

  "Father," I said, but he only smiled, glanced at me again half mockingly, though already with a somewhat distracted look, and closed his eyes.

  "You look terrible!" said my mother, putting her arm around me. "Was it such a shock?"

  I could not say anything. Just then a young doctor came in, followed by an older one. The dying man was given morphine, and the clever eyes that had looked so understanding and omniscient a moment ago did not open again. We sat beside him and watched him lying there; we saw his face change and become peaceful, and we waited for the end. He lived for several hours and died late in the afternoon. I could feel nothing but a dull sorrow and extreme weariness. I sat with tear-stained eyes and toward evening fell asleep sitting by the deathbed.

  Chapter Six

  THAT LIFE IS DIFFICULT, I have often bitterly realized. I now had further cause for serious reflection. Right up to the present I have never lost the feeling of contradiction that lies behind all knowledge. My life has been miserable and difficult, and yet to others, and sometimes to myself, it has seemed rich and wonderful. Man's life seems to me like a long, weary night that would be intolerable if there were not occasionally flashes of light, the sudden brightness of which is so comforting and wonderful that the moments of their appearance cancel out and justify the years of darkness.

  The gloom, the comfortless darkness, lies in the inevitable course of our daily lives. Why does one repeatedly rise in the morning, eat, drink, and go to bed again? The child, the savage, the healthy young person does not suffer as a result of this cycle of senseless automatic activities. If a man does not think too much, he rejoices at rising in the morning, and at eating and drinking. He finds satisfaction in them and does not want them to be otherwise. But if he ceases to take things for granted, he seeks eagerly and hopefully during the course of the day for moments of real life, the radiance of which makes him rejoice and obliterates the awareness of time and all thoughts on the meaning and purpose of everything. One can call these moments creative, because they seem to give a feeling of union with the creator, and while they last, one is sensible of everything being necessary, even what is seemingly fortuitous. It is what the mystics call union with God. Perhaps it is the excessive radiance of these moments that makes everything else appear so dark, perhaps it is the feeling of liberation, the enchanting lightness and the suspended bliss that make the rest of life seem so difficult, cloying and oppressive. I do not know. I have not traveled very far in thought and philosophy.

  However, I do know that if there is a state of bliss and a paradise, it must be an uninterrupted sequence of such moments, and if this state of bliss can be attained through suffering and dwelling in pain, then no sorrow or pain can be so great that one should seek escape from it.

  A few days after my father's funeral--I was still in a state of bewilderment and mental exhaustion--I f
ound myself walking aimlessly in a suburban street. The small, attractive houses awakened vague memories in me, until I recognized the house and garden of my old teacher, who had tried to convert me to the faith of the theosophists some years ago. I knocked at the door and he appeared, recognized me and led me in a friendly manner into his study, where the pleasant smell of tobacco smoke hovered around his books and plants.

  "How are you?" asked Mr. Lohe. "Oh, of course, you have just lost your father. You look wretched. Has it affected you so deeply?"

  "No," I said. "My father's death would have affected me more deeply if I had still been on cool terms with him, but during my last visit I drew closer to him and rid myself of the painful feeling of guilt that one has toward good parents from whom one receives more love than one can give."

  "I am glad about that."

  "How are you going on with your theosophy? I should like you to talk to me, because I am unhappy."

  "What is wrong?"

  "Everything. I can't live and I can't die. Everything seems meaningless and stupid."

  Mr. Lohe puckered up his kind, peaceful-looking face. I must confess that even his kind, rather plump face had put me in a bad humor, and I did not expect to obtain any kind of comfort from him and his wisdom. I only wanted to hear him talk, to prove his wisdom of no avail and to annoy him because of his happy state and optimistic beliefs. I was not feeling amicably disposed toward him or anyone else.

  But the man was not as self-satisfied and absorbed in his doctrines as I had thought. He looked at me with real concern and sadly shook his fair head.

  "You are ill, my dear fellow," he said firmly. "Perhaps it is only physical, and if so, you can soon find a remedy. You must then go into the country, work hard and not eat any meat. But I don't think it is that. You are mentally sick."

  "Do you think so?"

  "Yes. You are suffering from a sickness, one that is fashionable, unfortunately, and that one comes across every day among sensitive people. It is related to moral insanity and can also be called individualism or imaginary loneliness. Modern books are full of it. It has insinuated itself into your imagination; you are isolated; no one troubles about you and no one understands you. Am I right?"