The Sleepwalkers

by Hermann Broch

  Bertrand felt no call to give Joachim a truthful account of what had happened; the tale of an accident caused by Ruzena’s clumsiness sounded plausible enough. He ended up: “Since then she’s vanished completely. That might mean nothing at all, but a girl in such an excited state might easily do something foolish.” Joachim thought: what has he been doing to her? But he was suddenly horrified to remember that often enough, sometimes in jest, but sometimes in deadly earnest, Ruzena had threatened to throw herself into the water. He saw the grey willows on the banks of the Havel, the tree under which they had once sheltered; yes, she must be lying there in the river. For the space of a heart-beat he felt flattered by this romantic situation. But then the horror of it flooded over him again. Inevitable fate, inescapable discipline of God! And if he had prayed in the church, while still full of hope before his visit to Stolpin, that his father’s illness might not be a penance laid upon him, the son, but merely one of the chances of life, the finger of God now showed him that even that prayer had been sinful. One dared not question God’s discipline; there was no such thing as chance; for Bertrand, although he had parted in apparent enmity from Herr von Pasenow and was now depreciating the revolver incident as a stupid accident, was only trying to disguise the fact that he was an emissary of evil, deliberately chosen by God and by Herr von Pasenow to discipline the penitent, to lure him into temptation, to lead him into snares, so that in his extremity he might learn that the tempted is as much to blame as the tempter, and with the same fatality, now and always, brings ruin on those nearest him, and that no effort of his can avail to cheat the Tempter of his victims. When a man has come to such knowledge, is it not better for him to destroy himself? How much better it would have been if the bullet had killed him instead of Helmuth! But now it was too late, now Ruzena was lying at the bottom of the river, staring with glazed eyes at the fishes darting over her in the grey water. Quite unexpectedly her drowned image blended again with that of the Italian at the opera; but that too vanished when Joachim discovered that the man under the water was really himself. Yes, in his own blue eyes was the unlucky evil glance that the Italians believed in, and it would serve those eyes right if the fishes were darting over them. Bertrand said: “Have you any idea where she might be? Let’s hope that she has simply gone back to her home. I suppose she would have enough money for that?” Joachim felt annoyed by this question; it had a touch of the inquisitorial detachment of a doctor. What was Bertrand hinting at? Of course she had money on her. Bertrand did not remark his annoyance. “All the same, we’d better inform the police; it’s not impossible that she may be wandering about.” Of course they must inform the police; Bertrand was right, yet Joachim shrank from doing so; he would be questioned about his connection with Ruzena, and even though he told himself that it was unimportant, yet he feared that vague and mysterious consequences might follow. His connection with Ruzena had been all too long sinfully concealed; perhaps God had planned to have it brought to His notice by means of the police; perhaps this was another of the penances he must do, made still harder by the fact that the police office was situated in the Alexanderplatz, which he shrank more than ever from entering. Yet he rose to his feet. “I shall drive round to the police.” “No, Pasenow, I’ll arrange that for you; you’re still too upset, and anyhow they’ll suspect melodrama.” Joachim was sincerely grateful. “Yes, but your arm …” “Oh, that doesn’t matter; they’re just going to discharge me here.” “But I’ll come with you.” “All right, then, and I hope I’ll still find you in the cab when I get into it again.” Bertrand was once more gay, and Joachim felt secure. In the cab he begged Bertrand to tell the police to search the banks of the Havel. “Very well, Pasenow, but in my opinion Ruzena’s long since back in Bohemia; a pity you don’t know the name of her village, but we’ll soon unearth it.” Joachim himself was now surprised that he did not know the name of Ruzena’s native village, scarcely, indeed, her family name. She had often in fun tried to make him pronounce these names, but he could never get his tongue round the foreign words and could not remember them. It occurred to him now that he had never really wanted to know them or to keep them in his memory; yes, almost as if he had been a little afraid of those harmless names.

  He accompanied Bertrand through the corridors of the police building; he had to wait outside the door of an office. Bertrand soon came back. “They know it all right,” and on a piece of paper he showed the name of a Czech village. “Did you direct them to the banks of the Havel?” Of course Bertrand had done so. “But, my dear Pasenow, there’s something unpleasant for you to do this evening, for I can’t do it because of my arm. You must get into mufti and hunt through all the cafés and cabarets. I didn’t want to suggest that to the police; we can always do that later. They might pounce on poor Ruzena and arrest her in the middle of some dancing-floor.” Joachim had not thought of such a vulgar and repulsive possibility. Bertrand was indeed a disgusting cynic. He looked at Bertrand. Did the man know more? Mephisto alone understood what Margaret had to do penance for. But Bertrand’s face betrayed nothing. There was nothing for it but to submit and accept the task Bertrand had laid upon him as a further discipline.

  He had entered upon his degrading pilgrimage, asking questions of waiters and barmaids, and was relieved to be told in the Jäger Casino that nothing had been seen of Ruzena. But on the staircase he met one of the plump dancing partners. “Looking for your sweetheart, I suppose, dearie; has she given you the slip? Well, come along, you can easily get another.” What did the woman know of his connection with Ruzena? It was possible, of course, that she had met Ruzena somewhere, but the thought of asking her sickened him, and he hurried past her and into the next café. Yes, Ruzena had been there, said the woman at the buffet, yesterday or the day before, that was all she could tell him; perhaps the attendant in the ladies’ toilet could give him more information. He had to continue his sorrowful quest, again and again overwhelmed with shame as he interrogated barmaids and lavatory attendants, and learned that she had been seen or had not been seen, that she had had a wash, that she had gone away once with a gentleman, that she had looked quite down-at-heels. “We all tried to persuade her to go home, for a girl in a state like that is no credit to any café, but she just sat and said nothing.” Many of these people simply addressed him at once as “Herr Lieutenant,” so that the suspicion awoke in him that Ruzena had taken them all into her confidence, and had betrayed his love to all these people. It was the lavatory attendants to whom he was always referred.

  And it was in a toilet-room that he found her. She sat sleeping in the corner under a burning gas-jet; her hand, with the ring that he had given her, lay limp on the wet marble of the washstand. She had undone her boots, and over one foot, which showed beneath her skirt, the shapeless, unbuttoned top of the boot hung down, showing its grey lining. Her hat had slipped to the back of her head, dragging her hair with it by the hatpins. Joachim would have preferred to turn and go; she looked like a drunk woman. He touched her hand; Ruzena wearily opened her eyes; when she recognized him she shut them again. “Ruzena, we must go.” She shook her head, keeping her eyes shut. He stood helplessly before her. “Give her a good kiss,” the attendant encouraged him. “No!” shrieked Ruzena in terror, springing up and making for the door. She stumbled over her unbuttoned boots and Joachim caught hold of her. “But you can’t go into the street with your boots and your hair like that,” said the attendant; “the Herr Lieutenant isn’t going to do you any harm.” “Let go; let me go out, I say,” panted Ruzena, and into Joachim’s face: “All over, you know it, all over.” Her breath smelt foul and stale. But Joachim still barred her way, so Ruzena turned round, tore open a lavatory door and locked herself in. “All over!” she screamed from behind the door. “Tell him must go away, all over.” Joachim had sunk on to a chair beside the wash-basin; his mind could grasp nothing, he knew only that this too was one of the trials sent by God, and he stared at the half-open brown drawer of the toilet-table, in which the attendan
t’s few possessions—handkerchiefs, a corkscrew, a clothes-brush—were bestowed higgledy-piggledy. “Is he gone?” he heard Ruzena’s voice. “Ruzena, come out,” he begged. “Fräulein, dearie, come out,” begged the attendant, “this is the ladies’ toilet and the Herr Lieutenant can’t stay here.” “He must go away,” was Ruzena’s answer. “Ruzena, please, do come out,” implored Joachim once more, but behind her bolted door Ruzena was mute. The attendant drew him by the sleeve into the passage and whispered: “She’ll come out when she thinks the Herr Lieutenant has gone. The Herr Lieutenant can wait for her downstairs.” Joachim accepted her suggestion, and in the shadow of a neighbouring house he waited for a full hour. Then Ruzena appeared; beside her waddled a fat, bearded, soft-fleshed man. She peered cautiously round with a curiously fixed, malicious smile, and then the man hailed a cab and they drove away. Joachim had to fight against an inclination to vomit; he dragged himself home, scarcely knowing how he got there, and perhaps his worst torture was his inability to rid himself of the thought that the fat man should really be pitied, because Ruzena was unwashed and had a stale smell. The revolver was still lying on the chest of drawers; he examined it, two shots were missing. With the weapon in his clasped hands he began to pray: “God, take me to Thee like my brother; to him Thou wert merciful, be merciful also to me.” But then he bethought himself that he still had to make his will; and he dared not leave Ruzena unprovided for, or else she would be justified in all she had done to him, incomprehensible as it was. He looked for pen and ink. Dawn found him fast asleep over an almost blank sheet of paper.

  He concealed his misadventure with Ruzena, being ashamed before Bertrand and unwilling to grant him the satisfaction of having been right, and although the lie disgusted him he reported that he had found her in her own room. “That’s all right,” said Bertrand; “have you notified the police? If not, she might get into trouble with them.” Of course Joachim had not thought of that, and Bertrand sent a messenger with the requisite information to the police. “Where has she been, then, for these three days?” “She won’t say.” “That’s all right.” Bertrand’s dry indifference irritated him; he had nearly put a bullet through himself and the fellow merely said: “That’s all right.” But he had refrained from suicide because he had to provide for Ruzena, and for that he needed Bertrand’s advice: “Listen, Bertrand, I expect I’ll have to take over the estate now; but Ruzena needs some means of livelihood and an occupation, and I thought first of buying her a shop or something of that kind …” (“Aha,” said Bertrand) “but she won’t hear of it. So I’d like to settle some money on her. How does one do that?” “You must make it over to her. It would be better, though, to allow her an income for a certain time; otherwise she would go through all the money at once.” “Yes, but how does one do that?” “Well, of course I’d be glad to arrange it for you, but it would be better to put my lawyer on to it. I’ll fix up an appointment with him for to-morrow or next day. But, my dear chap, you’re looking wretched.” That didn’t matter, remarked Joachim. “Well, what is it that’s pulling you down? You really don’t need to take this affair so much to heart,” said Bertrand with light good-humour. His ironical indiscretion and that flicker of irony about his mouth are hateful, thought Joachim, and from afar the suspicion again began to steal upon him that behind Ruzena’s inexplicable behaviour and her instability were hidden Bertrand’s intrigues, and that Ruzena had been driven into this folly by her connection with Bertrand. It was a minor satisfaction that, in a sense, she had betrayed Bertrand too with the fat man. The sick disgust that had overwhelmed him on the previous evening began to rise again. Into what a morass had he fallen. Outside the autumn rain was pouring down the window-panes. Borsig’s factory buildings must now be black with running soot and water, the paving-stones must be black, and the courtyard, that one could see through the gateway, a sea of black, gleaming slime. He could smell the smoke driven down by the rain from the blackened top of the long red chimney-stack: it smelt foul, stale, sulphurous. That was the morass; that was the natural setting for Ruzena and the fat man and Bertrand; it was akin to the night haunts with their gas-jets and their lavatories. The day had turned into night, as the night into day. The word night-spirit occurred to him, a word, indeed, that conveyed no clear meaning. Were there also light-spirits? He could hear the phrase, “virginal shape of light.” Ah, that was the opposite of night-spirit. And he had a vision of Elisabeth, who was different from all the others, hovering on a silver cloud high above the morass. Perhaps he had already divined this when he first saw the white clouds of lace in Elisabeth’s room and had longed to watch over her slumbers. She would soon be coming now with her mother, moving into the new house. Extraordinary that there must be lavatories there too; he felt it was blasphemy to think of this. But not less blasphemous was the fact that Bertrand was lying here with his golden hair waved, lying in a white room like a young girl. Thus darkness obscures its real nature and keeps its mystery intact. Bertrand, however, went on to say with friendly concern: “You are looking so wretched, Pasenow, that you ought to be sent on holiday, and a little travel would do you good, too. It would put other thoughts into your mind.” He wants to get rid of me, thought Joachim; he has had his way with Ruzena and now he wants to ruin Elisabeth too. “No,” he said, “I can’t go just now.…” Bertrand was silent for a while, and then it was as though he had divined Joachim’s thoughts and was himself forced to betray his evil designs on Elisabeth, for he asked: “Are the Baddensens in Berlin yet?” Bertrand was still smiling sympathetically, almost frankly, but Joachim, with a gruffness unusual to him, answered curtly: “They’ll probably remain at Lestow for some time to come.” And now he knew that he must go on living, that chivalry demanded it of him, lest another destiny should be ruined by his fault and fall a prey to Bertrand; but Bertrand only gave him a gay good-bye, saying: “Well, I’ll arrange things with my lawyer … and when Ruzena’s affairs are settled you should take a holiday. You really need it.” Joachim said nothing more; his decision was made, and he went off full of heavy thoughts. It was always Bertrand who aroused such thoughts in him. And with the slight straightening of the shoulders, almost as if at the word of command, by which Joachim von Pasenow sought to shake off his thoughts, suddenly it was as if Helmuth had taken his hand, as if Helmuth wanted to show him the way again, to lead him back into convention and order, to open his eyes again. That Bertrand, whose expedition the previous day to the police headquarters had certainly done him no good, was again fevered, Joachim von Pasenow did not observe in the least.

  The news from his father’s sick-bed remained persistently bad. The old man no longer recognized anyone: he was sinking into a lethargy. Joachim caught himself entertaining the hateful-pleasant thought that now one could, in all security, send any letter to Stolpin, and pictured the messenger with the post-bag entering the bedroom and the old man incomprehendingly dropping letter after letter, incomprehendingly letting them fall, though there might be a betrothal announcement among them. And that was a kind of relief, and a vague hope for the future.

  The possibility of seeing Ruzena again filled him with dread, although many a time when he came off duty it seemed inconceivable that he should not find her in his rooms. In any case he was daily expecting to hear from her, for he had settled the matter of her income with Bertrand’s lawyer, and could not but presume that she had been informed. Instead of a message from her, he got a letter from the lawyer to say that the money had been refused. This would never do; he set out for Ruzena’s flat; the building, the staircase and the flat filled him with profound uneasiness, indeed with an almost anguished yearning. He feared that he would have to stand again before a locked door, perhaps even be turned away by some charwoman or other, and much as he shrank from forcing his way into a lady’s room, he merely asked if she were at home, knocked at her door and walked in. The room and Ruzena were alike in a state of dirt and disorder, neglected and barbaric. She was lying on the sofa and made a defensive, weary ges
ture, as if she had known that he would come. Haltingly she said: “Not take nothing from you. The ring I keep, souvenir.” Joachim could feel no sympathy rising within him; if on the very staircase he had still intended to point out that he literally did not understand what she had against him, he was now merely embittered; he could see nothing in her attitude but obstinacy. Yet he said: “Ruzena, I don’t know what has really happened …” She laughed contemptuously, and his resentment of her obstinacy and instability, which had injured him and done him injustice, reasserted itself. No, there was no sense in trying to persuade her, and so he merely said that he could not bear the thought that she was not even half provided for, and that he would have done it long ago whether they had stuck to each other or not, only he could do it more easily now because—and he added this deliberately—he had to take over the estate and so had more money at his disposal. “You are good man,” said Ruzena, “only you have bad friend.” That was ultimately what Joachim believed at the bottom of his heart, but since he did not want to admit it he only said: “Why do you think that Bertrand is a bad friend?” “Wicked words,” replied Ruzena. It was tempting to think of making common cause with Ruzena against Bertrand, but was it not just another temptation of the Devil’s, another intrigue of Bertrand’s? Obviously Ruzena felt so too, for she said: “Must beware him.” Joachim answered: “I know his faults.” She had raised herself up on the sofa, and they now sat side by side. “You are poor, good soul, can’t know how bad peoples are.” Joachim assured her that he knew it very well, and that he was not so easily deceived. And so they spoke for a while about Bertrand without mentioning his name, and since they did not want to stop speaking, they pursued the theme until the brackish melancholy that flowed behind their words rose higher and higher, and the words were drowned in it and blended with Ruzena’s tears into a stream that broadened and slackened more and more. Joachim, too, had tears in his eyes. Both were helplessly delivered to the senselessness of Fate, now they were aware that they could no longer find comfort in each other. They did not dare to look at each other, and finally Joachim’s woebegone voice said: “Please, Ruzena, please take the money at least.” She made no reply, but she had grasped his hand. When he bent over her to kiss her she bowed her head, so that the kiss landed among her hairpins. “Go now,” she said, “quick go,” and Joachim silently left the room, in which it was already dusk.