I have seen my brother; we met, what’s more, in the thick of the city crowd. Our meeting turned out to be a very friendly one. It was unforced and affectionate. Johann behaved very nicely, and probably I did, too. We went to a small, reticent restaurant and had a talk there. “Just you go on being yourself, brother,” Johann said to me, “begin from all the way down, that’s fine. If you need help. . .” I made a gesture of refusal. He went on: “For look, you see, it’s hardly worth it, up there at the top. If you see what I mean. Don’t misunderstand me, brother.” I gave a lively nod, for I knew in advance what he was saying, but I asked him to go on, and he said: “It’s the atmosphere up there. I mean, they’ve all got an air of having done enough, and that stops things, it’s cramping. I hope you don’t quite understand me, for, if you did understand me, brother, you’d be a dreadful person.” We laughed. Oh, to be able to laugh with my brother, I like that. He said: “You are now, so to speak, a zero, my good brother. But when one is young, one should be a zero, for nothing is more ruinous than being a bit important early on, too early on. Certainly: you’re a bit important to yourself. That’s fine. Excellent. But for the world you’re still nothing, and that’s almost just as excellent. I keep hoping you won’t quite understand me, for if you understood me completely. . .” “I’d be a dreadful person,” I broke in. We laughed again. It was very jolly. A strange fire began to animate me. My eyes were burning. I like it very much, by the way, when I feel so burned up. My face gets quite red. And then thoughts full of purity and loftiness usually assail me. Johann went on, he said: “Brother, please, don’t always interrupt me. That silly young laughter of yours has a stifling effect on ideas. Listen! Pay close attention now. What I’m telling you may be useful to you one day. Above all: never think of yourself as an outcast. There are no outcasts, brother, for perhaps there’s nothing in this world that’s worth aspiring to. And yet you must aspire, even passionately so. But so as to become not too full of longings: realize that there is nothing, nothing worth aspiring to. Everything is rotten. Do you understand that? Look, I keep hoping that you can’t quite understand all this. It worries me.” I said: “Unfortunately I’m too intelligent to misunderstand you, as you hope I might. But don’t worry. Your revelations don’t frighten me at all.” We smiled at one another. Then we ordered some more drinks, and Johann, who, by the way, did look uncommonly elegant, went on talking: “Of course there’s progress on earth, so called, but that’s only one of the many lies which the business people put out, so that they can squeeze money out of the crowd more blatantly and mercilessly. The masses are the slaves of today, and the individual is the slave of the vast mass-ideas. There’s nothing beautiful and excellent left. You must dream up beauty and goodness and justice. Tell me, do you know how to dream?” I contented myself with a nod, two nods, and let Johann carry on while I listened intently: “Try to earn lots and lots of money. Everything else has gone wrong, but not money. Everything, everything is spoiled, halved, robbed of grace and splendor. Our cities are vanishing relentlessly from the face of the earth. Big chunks of nothing are taking up the space once occupied by dwellings and princely palaces. The piano, dear brother, and the tinkling that goes with it. Concerts and theaters are going down and down, the standpoint sinks lower and lower. There is, to be sure, still something like a society that sets the tone, but it no longer has the capacity for striking the notes of dignity and subtlety of mind. There are books—in a word, don’t ever despair. Keep on being poor and despised, dear friend. Give up the money-idea, too. It’s the most lovely and triumphant thing, it makes one a very poor devil. Rich people, Jakob, are very unsatisfied and unhappy. The rich today: they’ve got nothing left. They are the really starving people.” I nodded again. It’s true, I say yes to everything very easily. But I liked what Johann said, and it suited me. There was pride in what he said, and sorrow. And, well, these two together, pride and sorrow, have a good sound. We ordered some more beer and my opposite number said: “You must hope and yet hope for nothing. Look up to something, yes, do that, because that is right for you, you’re young, terribly young, Jakob, but always admit to yourself that you despise it, the thing that you’re looking up to with respect. Nodding again, are you? Lord, what an intelligent listener you are. You’re like a tree hung with understanding. Be content, dear brother, strive, learn, do whatever good and kind things you can for people. Look, I’ve got to go. When shall we meet again? Frankly, you interest me—” We went out and on the street we said goodbye. For a long time I watched my dear brother as he walked away. Yes, he’s my brother. How glad I am that he is.
My father has a coach and horses and a servant, old Fehlmann. Mamma has her own box at the theater. How she is envied by the women of the town, with its 28,000 inhabitants! Despite her age, my mother is still a pretty woman, even a beautiful one. I remember a light-blue, tightly fitting dress that she once wore. She was holding up a delicately white sunshade. The sun was shining. It was splendid Spring weather. In the streets there was a smell of violets. People were out for a stroll and beneath the green foliage of the trees in the park the band was playing. How sweet and bright everything was! A fountain was splashing, and children in light-colored clothes were laughing and playing. And a soft caressing breeze was blowing, with fragrances in it, awakening desire for inexpressible things. From the windows of houses on the Neuquartierplatz people were looking out. Mother was wearing long pale-yellow gloves over her slender hands and sweet arms. Johann had at that time already left home. But father was there. No, never shall I accept help (money) from the parents whom I so tenderly respect. My injured pride would fling me onto a sickbed and bang would go all my dreams of an independent life, destroyed forever these ardently cherished plans for self-education. That’s the point: to educate myself, or prepare myself for a future education, that is why I became a pupil at the Benjamenta Institute, for here one readies oneself for some darkly approaching arduous task. And that is also why I don’t write home, for even writing about it would make me have doubts about myself, would completely ruin my plan for starting from all the way down. Some-thing great and audacious must happen in secrecy and silence, or it perishes and falls away, and the fire that was awakened dies again. I know how I want it, that’s enough. —Ah, yes, that was it. I have a merry tale in store, about our old servant Fehlmann, who is still alive and in service. It was like this: Fehlmann did something very wrong one day and he was going to be dismissed. “Fehlmann,” said Mamma, “you can go. We do not need you any more.” Thereupon the poor old man, who shortly before this had buried a son of his who had died of cancer (that isn’t funny), threw himself at my mother’s feet and begged for mercy, yes, actually for mercy. The poor devil, he had tears in his old eyes. Mamma forgives him. I recount the scene next day to my friends, the Weibel brothers, and they laugh me to scorn. They stop being my friends, because they think that my family is too royalistic. They find this falling at someone’s feet suspicious, and they go along and slander me and Mamma in the most tasteless way. Like regular little boys, yes, but also like regular little republicans, for whom the dispensing of personal and autocratic mercy or displeasure is a monstrosity and an object of revulsion. How comical it seems to me now! And yet how significant this small incident is for the tendency of the times. The whole world today judges as the Weibel brothers did. Yes, that’s how it is: nothing lordly or ladylike is tolerated any more. There are no more masters who can do as they please, and there haven’t been any mistresses for ages. Should I be sad about this? It wouldn’t even cross my mind. Am I responsible for the spirit of the age? I take the times as they come and only reserve the right to make my own quiet observations. Good old Fehlmann: he was pardoned, in the patriarchal way. Tears of loyalty and dependence, how beautiful that is!
From three o’clock in the afternoon we pupils are left almost completely to our own devices. Nobody bothers with us any more. The Benjamentas are secluded in the inner chambers and in the classroom there’s an emptiness, an emptiness t
hat almost sickens one. All noise is forbidden. One is only allowed to scurry and creep about and to talk in whispers. Schilinski looks at himself in his mirror, Schacht looks out of the window or he gesticulates to the kitchen maids on the other side of the street, and Kraus is learning things by heart, murmuring the lessons to himself. It’s as quiet as the grave. The courtyard out there lies deserted, like a foursquare eternity, and I usually practice standing on one leg. Often, for a change, I see how long I can hold my breath. That is an exercise, too, and it is even supposed to be good for the health, as a doctor once told me. Or I write. Or I close my untired eyes, so as to see nothing any more. The eyes transmit thoughts, therefore I shut them from time to time, in order to stop having to think. When one is just there like this and doing nothing, one suddenly feels how painful existence can be. To do nothing and yet maintain one’s bearing, that requires energy, a person doing something has an easy time in comparison. We pupils are masters of this kind of propriety. Ordinarily, do-nothings start something out of boredom, lounge about, fidget, yawn broadly or sigh. We pupils do nothing like this. We close our lips firmly and are motionless. Over our heads the grumpy rules are always floating. Sometimes, when we are sitting or standing there, the door opens and the Fräulein walks slowly through the schoolroom, giving us a strange look. She always seems like a ghost to me. It’s as if it were someone coming from far far away. “What are you doing, boys?” she may ask then, but she doesn’t wait for an answer, she walks on. How beautiful she is! What a luxuriance of raven hair! Mostly one sees her with her eyes downcast. She has eyes that are wonderfully apt for being downcast. Her eyelids (oh, I observe all these things very sharply) are richly curved and are curiously capable of quick movement. These eyes! If one ever sees them, one looks down into something frighteningly abyssal and profound. These eyes, with their shining darkness, seem to say nothing and yet to say everything unspeakable, they are so familiar and yet so unknown. The eyebrows are thin to breaking and are drawn in rounded arches over the eyes. If you look at them, you have a prickly feeling. They are like crescent moons in a morbidly pallid evening sky, like fine wounds, but all the more sharp, inwardly cutting wounds. And her cheeks! Silent yearning and swooning seem to celebrate festivities on them. There is a weeping on them, up and down, of delicacy and tenderness that nobody has understood. Sometimes there appears on the shimmering snow of these cheeks a soft imploring red, a reddish timid life, a sun, no, not that, only the faint reflection of such a sun. Then it’s as if the cheeks were suddenly smiling, or a little feverish. When one looks at Fräulein Benjamenta’s cheeks, one has no more joy in living, for one has the feeling that life must be a turbulent hell full of vile crudities. Such delicacy as this almost forces one to look deep into such hardness and peril. And her teeth, which one sees shimmering when she parts her full and kindly lips in a smile. And when she weeps. One thinks that the earth must drop away from every footfall of hers, in shame and sorrow to be seeing her weep. And when one only hears her weeping? Oh, then one swoons away. Recently we heard her, right there in the schoolroom. We were all trembling like aspens. Yes, all of us, we love her. She is our instructress, our higher being. And something is making her suffer, that is obvious. Is she unwell?
Fräulein Benjamenta has spoken a few words with me, in the kitchen. I was just going up to my room, and she asked me, without honoring me with a look: “How are you getting on, Jakob? Is everything all right?” I at once stood at attention, as is required, and said in a submissive voice: “Oh, yes, certainly, Fräulein Benjamenta. Things just couldn’t go wrong for me.” She smiled faintly and asked: “What does that mean?” She said it over her shoulder. I replied: “I have everything I need.” She looked at me for a moment and was silent. After a while she said: “You can go, Jakob. You’re excused now. You needn’t stand there.” I did her the honor prescribed, bowing, and rushed to my room. Hardly five minutes had passed when there was a knock. I leaped to the door. I knew the knock. She stood there before me. “Jakob,” she said, “tell me, how do you get on with the other boys? They’re nice people, don’t you find?” My answer was that I felt I liked and respected them all, without exception. The instructress looked at me cunningly, with her beautiful eyes, and said: “Well, well. And yet you do quarrel with Kraus. Is quarreling for you a sign of love and respect?” I replied without hesitating: “Yes, to some extent, Fräulein. This quarreling isn’t meant so seriously, you see. If Kraus were clever, he would notice that I like him better than any of the others. I respect Kraus very very much. It would hurt me to think that you didn’t believe that.” She took my hand and pressed it lightly and said: “All right, now, don’t get excited. You must watch out, when you get heated. You hothead. If things are as you say, then I must be content with you. I shall be content, too, if you go on being well-behaved. Yes, remember this: Kraus is a splendid boy and it offends me when you don’t behave well with him. Be nice to him. That is my special wish. But don’t be sad, now. Look, I’m not reproaching you. What a coddled and pampered little aristocrat you are! Kraus is such a good person. Isn’t it so, isn’t Kraus a good person, Jakob?” I said: “Yes.” Nothing more than Yes and then suddenly I couldn’t help giving a rather stupid laugh, I don’t know why. She shook her head and went away. Why did I have to laugh? I still don’t know. But it’s not a matter of any importance. When shall I get some money? This question seems important. Money, as I see it, has a completely ideal value at the moment. When I imagine the clink of a gold coin, I go practically frantic. I have food to eat: so what. I would like to be rich and smash my head in. Soon I shan’t like eating any more.
If I were rich, I wouldn’t travel around the world. To be sure, that would not be so bad. But I can see nothing wildly exciting about getting a fugitive acquaintance with foreign places. In general I would decline to educate myself, as they say, any further. I would be attracted by deep things and by the soul, rather than by distances and things far off. It would fascinate me to investigate what is near at hand. And I wouldn’t buy anything, either. I would make no acquisitions. Elegant clothes, fine underwear, a top hat, modest gold cufflinks, long patent leather shoes, that would be about all, and with these things I would start out. No house, no garden, no servant, yes, a servant, I would engage a good, dignified Kraus. And then I could begin. Then I would walk out into the swirling mist on the street. Winter with its melancholy cold would match my gold coins excellently. I would carry the banknotes in a simple briefcase. I would walk about on foot, just as usual, with the consciously secret intention of not letting people notice very much how regally rich I am. Perhaps, too, it would be snowing. All the same to me, on the contrary, that would suit me fine. Soft snowfall among the evening glow of streetlamps. It would be glittering, fascinating. It would never occur to me to take a cab. Only people who are in a hurry or want to put on noble airs do that. But I wouldn’t want to put on noble airs, and I would be in no hurry whatever. Thoughts would occur to me as I strolled along. Suddenly I would greet someone, very politely, and look, it’s a man. Very politely, then, I would look at the man, then I would see that he’s having hard times. I would notice this, not see it, one notices such things, even if one hardly sees them, but there’s something about it that one sees. Well, now, anyway, this man would ask me what I want, and his question would be a cultivated one. This question would be asked very gently and simply, and I would be very deeply moved by it. For I would have been quite expecting something harsh. “This man must have been deeply wounded,” I would at once say to myself, “otherwise he would have got annoyed.” And then I would say nothing, absolutely nothing, but it would be enough to keep looking at him, more and more. Not a sharp look, no, a very simple look, perhaps even rather a blithe one. And then I would know who he was. I would open my briefcase, would extract from it ten thousand marks in ten separate notes, and would give this sum to the man. Then I would doff my hat, as politely as ever, say goodnight, and walk away. And it would go on snowing. As I walked along I would not be
thinking any more thoughts, I wouldn’t be able to, I would be feeling far too good for anything like that. The man was a horribly destitute artist, I knew it for certain, it was to him that I had given the money. Yes, I knew it, for I wouldn’t have let myself be deceived. Oh, there would be one great passionate worry less in the world. Well, now, the next night I would perhaps have some quite different ideas. In any case I wouldn’t travel around the world, but would prefer to get up to some crazy and foolish tricks. For example, I could give a madly rich and joyous banquet and arrange orgies such as the world has never seen. I would like it to cost one hundred thousand marks. Quite definitely the money would have to be spent in an utterly wild way, for only genuinely wasted money would be—would have been—beautiful money. And one day I would be a beggar and the sun would be shining and I would be so happy, and I wouldn’t ever want to know why. And then Mamma would come and hug me—what nice imaginings these are!
Kraus’s face and nature have something old about them, and this oldness he radiates takes anyone who looks at him away to Palestine. The times of Abraham come to life again in the face of my fellow-pupil. The old patriarchal epoch, with its mysterious customs and landscapes, rises to the surface and gazes at one paternally. I feel as if all people in that time were fathers with ancient faces and long brown complicated beards, which is nonsense, of course, and yet perhaps there is something in this very simple-minded notion that corresponds to facts. Yes, in that time! Even this phrase, “in that time’’: how parental and domestic it sounds! In the old Israelite time there could very well be, now and again, a Papa Isaac or Abraham, he enjoyed respect and lived out the days of his old age in natural wealth, which consisted in landed property. In those days something like majesty surrounded gray old age. Old men were in those days like kings, and the years they had lived meant the same as the same number of acquired titles of nobility. And how young these old men kept! They were still begetting sons and daughters at the age of a hundred. In those days there were still no dentists, so one must assume that there were absolutely no decayed teeth either. And how beautiful, for example, Joseph in Egypt is. Kraus has about him something of Joseph in Potiphar’s house. He has been sold into the house as a young slave, and look, they are bringing him into the presence of an immensely rich, honest, and fine man. There he is now, a household slave, but he has a pleasant time of it. The laws in those days were perhaps inhuman, certainly, but the customs and usages and ideas were correspondingly more delicate and refined. Today a slave would have a much harder time, God help him. Of course, too, there are very very many slaves in the midst of us arrogantly ready-made modern people. Perhaps all we present-day people are something like slaves, ruled by an angry, whip-wielding, unrefined idea of the world. —Well and good, now one lady the lady of the house demands of Joseph that he do what she desires. How peculiar that such backstairs stories are still very well known today, they live on, from mouth to mouth, through all ages. In all primary schools the story is taught, and do people still object to Joseph’s pedantry? I despise people who underestimate the beauty of pedantry, they are thoroughly mindless people, weak in judgment. Good, and then Kraus, I mean Joseph, refuses. But it could very well be Kraus, because there is something very like Joseph in Egypt about him. “No, my lady, I wouldn’t do a thing like that, I owe loyalty to my liege lord.” Then the lady, who is, incidentally, charming, goes and accuses the young servant of committing a base deed and of trying to seduce his lady into an error. But I don’t know any more. Peculiar that I don’t know what Potiphar said and did next. I can still see the Nile quite clearly. Yes, Kraus could be Joseph, or anything, for that matter. His bearing, figure, face, haircut, and gestures are incomparably suitable. Even his unfortunately still-uncured skin feature. Spots are Biblical, oriental. And his morality, character, the firm possession of a chaste young man’s virtues? They are wonderfully suitable. Joseph in Egypt, too, must be a good all-around little pedant, or else he would have obeyed the wanton woman and have been disloyal to his lord. Kraus would act precisely as his ancient Egyptian likeness did. He would raise his hands in protest, and say with a half--imploring, half-chastising look on his face: “No, no, I wouldn’t do a thing like that,” et cetera.
Jakob von Gunten Page 7
