The Sleepwalkers

by Hermann Broch

  “She isn’t really beautiful,” Bertrand told himself as he regarded Elisabeth sitting at the piano; “her mouth is too large and her lips are of a curiously soft and almost evil sensuality. But when she smiles she’s charming.”

  It was to a “musical tea” that Joachim and Bertrand had been invited. Elisabeth’s accompanists in Spohr’s trio were an old friend from a neighbouring estate and the indigent local teacher, and when the silvery crystalline drops of the piano fell into the brown stream of the two stringed instruments it seemed to Joachim that it was all due to Elisabeth. He loved music, although he did not understand much about it, but now he thought he had caught its meaning; it was pure and clear and hovered high above everything as on a silvery cloud, and from its celestial height let fall its cold and pure drops on the earth. And perhaps only to Elisabeth did it manifest itself, even though Bertrand, as he remembered from the days in Culm, could play a little on the violin. No, it did not look as if Bertrand would try to conquer Elisabeth from the musical side. When asked about his violin-playing he had replied evasively, with a deprecatory wave of the hand; and it may have been pure hypocrisy—for it had sounded cynical enough—when on the way back he had found nothing better to say than: “If she would only play something else than that horribly boring Spohr!”—

  They had arranged to go riding: Joachim and Bertrand called for Elisabeth. Joachim rode Helmuth’s horse, which had now once more become his property. They galloped over the stubble-fields where the shocks were still standing, and then at a sharp trot turned into a narrow forest-path. Joachim let his friend ride in front with Elisabeth, and while he followed it seemed to him that in her long black riding-habit she looked still taller and slenderer than usual. He would have liked to turn away his eyes, but she did not sit quite faultlessly on her horse and it disturbed him; she bent a little too far forward as she sat, and as she rose and sank, touching the saddle and then rebounding again, up and down, he could not but recall the day when he had said good-bye to her in the station, and the despicable wish that he could desire her as a woman rose up again, doubly despicable since his father, and before Bertrand too, had spoken of his courting. But almost more loathsome was the thought that Elisabeth’s parents too, yes, her very mother, might regard him as an object of desire for their daughter, hold him up to her as an attraction, both of them persuaded that they might reckon upon this desire, that it would appear and that it would not fail their expectations. Yet something more essential, more profound, remained still concealed behind all this, an indefinite idea of which Joachim desired to remain ignorant, although he felt his mouth becoming dry and his face hot; it was indefinite, and yet it made him angry that they should dare to consider Elisabeth capable of such things; he felt ashamed before her and ashamed for her. Let Bertrand have her if he wanted to, he thought, forgetting that in doing so he was committing the selfsame offence which he had just rejected with such indignation. But suddenly that did not matter, suddenly it seemed to him that Bertrand did not come into the question: with his wavy hair he was so feminine, in some way sisterly, with a sisterly solicitude to which perhaps Elisabeth could be safely confided. That was not quite true, of course, yet for a moment it was reassuring. Besides, what was it really that made her beautiful? And he contemplated her body bobbing up and down and her hips returning to the saddle again and again. And doing this he discovered that it was not beauty, but far more truly the opposite of beauty, that awakened desire; but he pushed the thought aside, and the picture of Elisabeth clambering into her carriage still in his mind, his thoughts flew to Ruzena, whose countless imperfections made her so charming. He let his horse fall into a walk to increase the distance between him and the couple in front, and drew Ruzena’s last letter from his breast-pocket. The notepaper smelt of the perfume which he had given her, and he breathed again the air of their illicit intimacy. Yes, that was where he belonged, that was where he wanted to be, and he felt he was a voluntary exile from society, and yet an outcast; he felt unworthy of Elisabeth. Bertrand was his accomplice, true, but Bertrand had the cleaner hands, and when Joachim recognized this he saw too why Bertrand had always treated him and Ruzena with a touch of superiority, of the avuncular, as a doctor might treat one, and had kept his own secrets hidden. A father’s secrets should never be uncovered; that was as it should be, and yet because of it that fellow in front of him was in a position, was at liberty, to ride by Elisabeth’s side, though he too was unworthy, yet better than Joachim himself. He thought of Helmuth. And as though he wanted Helmuth’s horse at least to be beside them, he set it to a trot. Its hoofs thudded softly on the leafy ground, and when they encountered a twig he could hear the sharp cracking of the wood. The leather of the saddle creaked pleasantly, and from the darkness of the leafage came a cool wind.

  He overtook them at the border of a long clearing which rose gently. The coolness of the woods was as if cut off here, and one could smell the sun’s heat rising from the grass. With the lash of her riding-whip Elisabeth flicked at the horse-flies that had fixed themselves to her mount, and the horse, which knew the way, was impatient, awaiting its usual gallop over the clearing. Joachim felt superior to Bertrand; no matter how wide his business interests might be, at a desk one did not acquire the practice necessary to leap over obstacles. Elisabeth pointed out the hurdles, a hedge which she was accustomed to take, a fallen tree-trunk, and a ditch. They were not difficult. The groom was left behind at the edge of the clearing: Elisabeth took the lead, and Joachim again came last, not merely out of politeness, but because he wanted to see how Bertrand would take the jumps. The grass had not yet been mown, and it rustled lightly and sharply against the legs of the horses. Elisabeth rode first towards the ditch; it was a mere trifle, and it was only to be expected that Bertrand would take it. But when the hedge too was taken by Bertrand in good style Joachim felt really annoyed; the tree-trunk was far too easy, his last hope was gone. Joachim’s horse, which was trying to overhaul the others, was pulling hard at the curb, and Joachim had to hold it back to preserve his distance. Now came the tree-trunk; Elisabeth and Bertrand had negotiated it easily, almost elegantly; and Joachim gave his horse a free head for the leap. But when it was gathering itself for the jump he checked it suddenly, why he was never able to tell; the horse stumbled on the trunk, came down sideways and rolled over him on the grass. This of course happened very quickly, and when the other two turned round he and the horse were quietly standing together in front of the trunk, the bridle still in his hands. “What’s happened?” Happened? He didn’t know himself: he examined his horse’s legs, it was lame in one forefoot; it would have to be taken home. The finger of God, thought Joachim; it was not Bertrand but himself who had fallen, and now it was only right and just that he must go away and leave Elisabeth with that fellow. When Elisabeth suggested that he should take her groom’s mount and send him back with the lame horse, he declined morosely, for he still saw in the incident a judgment from God. And after all it was Helmuth’s horse and it could not be entrusted to anyone. He started for home at a walking pace and resolved to return to Berlin as soon as possible.

  They rode side by side along the forest-path. Although the groom followed at a short distance Elisabeth had the feeling that she was deserted by Joachim, a feeling which acutely depressed her. Perhaps she felt Bertrand’s glance hovering round her face. “Her mouth is strange,” Bertrand told himself, “and her eyes have that clearness which I love so much. She would be an easily wounded and provoking and really difficult mistress. Her hands are too big for a woman, thin and slender. She’s a sensual boy, that’s what she is. But she’s charming.” To escape from her depression Elisabeth tried to start a conversation, although a little time before she had already made the remark with which she began:

  “Herr von Pasenow has told us a lot about you and your great travels.”

  “Yes? He has told me a lot about your great beauty.”

  Elisabeth did not reply.

  “Doesn’t that please you?”r />
  “I have no wish to hear anything about my alleged beauty.”

  “You are very beautiful.”

  Elisabeth said a little uncertainly: “I didn’t think that you were one of the lady-killers.”

  She’s cleverer than I imagined, thought Bertrand, and he replied: “I couldn’t bring myself even to utter that awful term, not even if I wanted to be insulting. But I’m not being a lady-killer; you know well enough how beautiful you are.”

  “Then why do you tell me?”

  “Because I’ll never see you again.”

  Elisabeth looked at him in surprise.

  “Of course you don’t like anyone to talk to you of your beauty, for behind the compliment you suspect the wooer. But if I go away and never see you again, then logically I can’t be trying to court you and am justified in telling you the nicest things I can.”

  Elisabeth had to laugh.

  “Dreadful that one can listen to nice things only from a complete stranger.”

  “At least one can believe them only from a complete stranger. Intimacy contains necessarily the seeds of dishonesty and falsehood.”

  “If that were true it would be really frightful.”

  “Of course it is true, but that doesn’t make it at all frightful. Intimacy is the slyest and really meanest kind of courting. Instead of simply saying that one desires a woman because she’s beautiful, one insinuates oneself into her confidence, so as to catch her off her guard.”

  Elisabeth reflected for a little, then she said: “Isn’t there something outrageous behind your words?”

  “No, for I’m going away … a stranger can afford to speak the truth.”

  “I’m afraid of everything strange.”

  “Because you’re attracted by it. You’re beautiful, Elisabeth. May I call you that for this one day?”

  They rode in silence side by side. Then she said, finding the right words: “What do you really want?”

  “Nothing.”

  “But then there’s no meaning in all this.”

  “I want the same thing as everybody else who courts you and tells you for that reason that you’re beautiful; but I’m more honest.”

  “I don’t want anyone to court me.”

  “Perhaps what you hate is simply the dishonest form it takes.”

  “Aren’t you really more dishonest than the others?”

  “I’m going away.”

  “What does that prove?”

  “Among other things, well, my modesty.”

  “How?”

  “To court a woman means to offer oneself to her as the living biped that one is, and that’s indecent. And it’s quite possible, indeed quite probable, that that’s why you hate any kind of courting.”

  “I cannot say.”

  “Love is an absolute thing, Elisabeth, and when the absolute tries to express itself in earthly terms, then it always turns into pathos, simply because it can’t be demonstrated. And as the whole thing then becomes so horribly earthly, the pathos is always very funny, represented by the gentleman who goes down on his knees to get you to accede to all his wishes; and if one loves you one must avoid that.”

  Was his intention in saying this to intimate that he loved her? As he became silent she looked at him questioningly. He appeared to understand:

  “There is a true pathos, and we call it eternity. And as there is no positive eternity for human beings it must be a negative one and can be put in the words ‘never-to-meet-again.’ If I go away now, eternity is here; then you will be eternally remote from me and I can say that I love you.”

  “Don’t say such dreadful things.”

  “Perhaps it’s the absolute clearness of my feelings that makes me talk like this to you. But perhaps there’s a little hate and resentment too in my forcing you to listen to my monologue, jealousy perhaps, because you’ll stay here and live on.”

  “Real jealousy?”

  “Yes, jealousy, and a little pride as well. For there’s the wish in it to let a stone fall into the well of your soul, so that it may rest there for ever.”

  “So you want to intrude yourself into my intimacy too?”

  “It may be. But still stronger is the wish that the stone may turn into a talisman for you.”

  “When?”

  “When the man will kneel before you whom I’m jealous of at this moment, the man who will offer you with that antiquated gesture his physical proximity: then the memory of, let us say, an aseptic form of love may help to remind you that behind every pseudo-æsthetic gesture in love there is hidden a still grosser reality.”

  “Do you say that to all the women you run away from?”

  “One should say it to them all, but I generally run away before it comes to that.”

  Elisabeth stared reflectively at her horse’s mane. Then she said: “I don’t know, but all this sounds strangely unnatural and beside the point to me.”

  “If you’re thinking of the propagation of the human race, then of course it’s unnatural. But do you find it more natural that some man or other, who lives somewhere at present, eating and drinking and looking after his affairs, will meet you some time by a stupid chance, and take a suitable opportunity of telling you how beautiful you are, getting down on one knee before you, so that afterwards, having gone through certain formalities, the two of you might produce children. Do you find that quite natural?”

  “Be silent! That’s dreadful! … That’s horrible!”

  “Yes, it is dreadful, but not because I speak of it as it is; for it’s a still more dreadful thing to think that you’re certainly destined, and very soon, to experience it and not merely to hear about it.”

  Elisabeth fought down her tears; she said with an effort: “But why, in Heaven’s name, should I hear about it? … please, please, be silent.”

  “What are you afraid of, Elisabeth?”

  She replied softly: “I’m afraid enough as it is.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of everything unknown, of others, of what’s to come … I can’t express it. I have a desperate hope that what is still to come will be as familiar to me as everything that’s familiar now. My father and mother belong to each other after all. But you want to take away my hope from me.”

  “And you refuse to see the danger because you’re afraid of it. Isn’t it one’s duty to shake you awake so that you mightn’t let your life run away, or dry to dust, or shrink to nothing, or something like that, out of mere indifference, or conventional notions, or ignorance? … Elisabeth, I mean very well by you.”

  Once more Elisabeth found the right words when she said softly, hesitatingly, against her will: “Then why don’t you stay?”

  “I’ve only been flung in your way by mere chance. And if I remained it would be as much an assault on your feelings as those I’ve been trying to warn you against; a somewhat aseptic assault, but still an assault.”

  “What should I do?”

  “That can be answered only negatively: nothing that isn’t approved by every fibre of you. No one can come to fulfilment except by submitting freely and absolutely to the law of his feelings and his nature—forgive the pathos.”

  “Nobody ever helps me.”

  “No, you are alone, as alone as you will be on your deathbed.”

  “It isn’t true. It isn’t true, what you say. I’ve never been alone, nor are my father and mother alone. You talk like that because you want to be alone … or perhaps because it gives you pleasure to torment me?”

  “Elisabeth, you are so beautiful that perhaps your fulfilment and completion lie simply in your beauty. Why should I torment you? But all I’ve said is true, and I’ve not said the worst either.”

  “Don’t torment me.”