The Sleepwalkers

by Hermann Broch

  In the Spatenbräu Esch drank his dark beer in silence. He was still in the grip of an emotion that could only be called yearning. Especially when it took shape as a need to send a picture postcard to Mother Hentjen. It was of course only natural that Erna should add a line: “Kind regards from Erna Korn,” but when Balthasar too insisted on contributing and beneath his, “Regards, Korn, Customs Inspector,” scored in his firm hand a black definitively conclusive flourish, it was like a sort of homage to Frau Hentjen, and it softened Esch so much that he became unsure of himself: had he really quite fulfilled his obligation to give an honest return for the Korns’ kindness? Actually, to round off the evening, he should steal across to Erna’s door, and if he had not thrust her away so ungently just now the door would certainly have been left unbarred. Yes, properly regarded, that was the right and fitting conclusion to the evening, yet he did nothing to bring it about. A sort of paralysis had fallen on him; he paid no further attention to Erna, did not seek her knee with his, and nothing happened either on the way home or afterwards. For some reason or other his conscience was troubling him, but finally he decided in his mind that he had done enough after all, and that it might even lead to trouble if he showed too much attention to Fräulein Korn; he felt a fate hovering over his head with threateningly upraised lance ready to strike if he should go on behaving like a swine, and he felt that he must remain true to someone, even though he did not know who it was.

  While Esch was still feeling the stab of conscience in his back so palpably that he declared he must have sat in a cold draught, and every night rubbed himself as far as he could reach with a pungent embrocation, Mother Hentjen was rejoicing over the two picture postcards which he had sent her, and stuck them, before they should go for final preservation into her picture-postcard album, in the mirror frame behind the buffet. Then in the evening she took them out and showed them to the regular customers. Perhaps she did this also lest anybody might say of her that she was carrying on a secret correspondence with a man; for if she let the postcards go the round of the restaurant then they were no longer directed merely to her, but to the establishment, which was only incidentally personified in her. For this reason too she was glad that Geyring undertook the task of replying; yet she would not hear of Herr Geyring going to any expense, so she herself procured next day a particularly beautiful panorama card, as it was called, three times the length of an ordinary postcard, showing the whole of Cologne stretching along the dark-blue banks of the Rhine, and leaving space for a great number of signatures. At the top she wrote: “Many thanks for the beautiful postcards from Mother Hentjen.” Then Geyring gave the command: “Ladies first,” and Hede and Thusnelda signed their names. And then followed the names of Wilhelm Lassmann, Bruno May, Hoelst, Wrobek, Hülsenschmitt, John, the English mechanic Andrew, the sailor Wingast, and finally, after several more, all of which were not decipherable, the name of Martin Geyring. Then Geyring wrote out the address: “Herr August Esch, Head Book-keeper, Shipping Depot, Central Rhine Shipping Company Limited, Mannheim,” and handed the finished product to Frau Hentjen, who, after reading it through carefully, opened the cash drawer to take from the large wire basket in which the bank-notes lay the necessary postage stamp. To her now the enormous card, with the long list of signatures, seemed almost too marked an honour for Esch, who had not been after all among the best patrons of the restaurant. But as everything she did she liked to do thoroughly, and as on the huge card there still remained, in spite of all the names, enough empty space not only to offend her sense of proportion, but also to provide the desired chance of putting Esch in his place by filling it in with a name of more humble rank, Mother Hentjen bore the card to the kitchen for the maid to sign her name, doubly pleased that in this way she could give pleasure to the poor girl without its costing anything.

  When she returned to the restaurant Martin was sitting at his usual place in the corner near the buffet, buried in one of the Socialist journals. Frau Hentjen sat down beside him and said jestingly, as she often did: “Herr Geyring, you’ll get my restaurant a bad name yet if you use it all the time for reading your seditious papers.” “I’m disgusted enough myself with these scribblers,” was the answer, “fellows like us do all the work, and these chaps only scribble a lot of nonsense.” Once more Frau Hentjen felt a little disappointed in Geyring, for she had never given up the hope that he would yet come out with something revolutionary and full of hatred on which she might feed her own resentment against the world. She had often glanced into the Socialist papers, but really what she found there had seemed to her pretty tame, and so she hoped that Geyring’s living speech would have more to give her than the printed word. So to a certain extent she was pleased that Geyring too did not think much of the newspaper writers, for she was always pleased when anyone did not think much of anyone else; yet, on the other hand, he still continued to disappoint her expectations. No, these anarchists didn’t get you very far, there wasn’t much help in a man like Geyring who sat in his trade-union bureau just like a police sergeant in his office, and Frau Hentjen was once more firmly convinced that the whole structure of society was simply a put-up job among the men, who laid their heads together to injure and disappoint women. She made one more attempt: “What is it that you don’t like in your papers, Herr Geyring?” “They write such stuff,” growled Martin, “turn the people’s heads with their revolutionary rant, and then we’ve got to pay for it.” Frau Hentjen did not quite understand this; besides, she was no longer interested. Mainly out of politeness she sighed: “Yes, life isn’t easy.” Geyring turned over a page and said absently: “No, life isn’t easy, Mother Hentjen.” “And a man like you, always on the go, always at it from early morning till late at night.…” Geyring said almost with satisfaction: “There won’t be any eight-hour day for men like me for a long time yet: everybody else will get it first.…” “And to think that they try to make it harder for you!” said Frau Hentjen in amazement, shaking her head and throwing a glance at her coiffure in the mirror behind the buffet. “Yes, they can make a fine noise in the Reichstag and the newspaper, our friends the Jews,” said Geyring, “but when it comes to the real work of organization they turn tail.” Frau Hentjen could understand this: she agreed indignantly: “They’re everywhere, these Jews; they have all the money and no woman is safe from them, they’re just like bulls.” The old expression of petrified loathing overspread her face. Martin looked up from his paper and could not help smiling: “It isn’t as bad as all that, surely, Mother Hentjen.” “So now you’re sticking up for the Jews next?” there was a hint of hysterical aggressiveness in her voice, “but you always stick up for one another, you men,” and then quite unexpectedly: “a girl in every port.” “That may be, Mother Hentjen,” laughed Martin, “but you won’t find such good cooking as Mother Hentjen’s anywhere in a hurry.” Frau Hentjen was appeased: “Not even in Mannheim, maybe,” she said, handing Geyring the picture postcard that he was to send off to Esch.

  Gernerth, the theatre manager, now belonged to Esch’s intimate circle of friends. For Esch, an impetuous man, had bought another ticket the very day after the first performance, not merely because he wanted to see that brave girl again, but also that he might look up a somewhat astonished Gernerth after the performance and introduce himself as a paying client; while doing this he once more thanked the manager for a lovely evening’s enjoyment, and Gernerth, who saw a request for more free tickets in the offing, and was already preparing to refuse them, could not but feel touched. And heartened by his cordial reception Esch simply remained sitting; thus achieving his second object, for he was presented to the juggler Herr Teltscher and also to his brave companion Ilona, who, it turned out, were both of them of Hungarian birth, at least Ilona was, and she had very little command over German, while Herr Teltscher, whose professional name was Teltini, and who employed English on the stage, came from Pressburg.

  Herr Gernerth, on the other hand, was an Egerlander, and this was a matter for great joy to Korn
, the first time that the two men met; for the towns of Eger and Hof were close neighbours, and Korn could not but regard it as an extraordinary coincidence that two men who were almost landsmen should meet in Mannheim of all places. Still his expressions of joy and surprise were more or less rhetorical, for in less desirable circumstances the fact that he was meeting almost a landsman would have left him quite indifferent. He invited Gernerth to visit his sister and himself, partly perhaps because he could not bear the idea of his presumptive brother-in-law having private acquaintanceships of his own, and Herr Teltscher too was presently invited to a repast of coffee and cakes.

  So now on a dull Sunday afternoon they all sat at the round table, on which beside the bulging coffee-pot the cakes, contributed by Esch, were piled up artistically in a pyramid, while outside the rain poured down the window-panes. Herr Gernerth began, trying to set the conversation going: “You’ve a very nice place here, Herr Customs Inspector, roomy, lots of light.…” And he looked out through the window at the dreary suburban street, in which lay great puddles of rain. Fräulein Erna remarked that it was really too small for their circumstances, yet a fireside of one’s own was the only thing that could make life sweet. Herr Gernerth became elegiac: no place like home, yes, she might well say that, but for an artist it was an unfulfillable dream; no, for him there could be no home; he had a flat, it was true, a pleasant and comfortable flat in Munich, where his wife lived with the children, but he was almost a stranger to his family by this time. Why didn’t he take them with him? It was no life for children, on tour all the time. And besides—No, his children would never be artists, his children wouldn’t. He was obviously an affectionate father, and Esch as well as Fräulein Erna felt touched by his goodness of heart. And perhaps because he felt lonely Esch said: “I’m an orphan, I can scarcely remember my mother.” “Poor fellow!” said Fräulein Erna. But Herr Teltscher, who did not seem to relish this lugubrious talk, now made a coffee-cup revolve on the tip of his finger so that they could not help laughing, all but Ilona who sat impassively on her chair, recuperating, it seemed, from the perpetual smiles with which she had to embellish her evenings. At close quarters she was by no means so lovely and fragile as she had been on the stage, but might even have been called plump; her face was slightly puffy, there were heavy pouches covered with freckles under her eyes, and Esch, now become mistrustful, began to suspect that her beautiful blond hair, too, might not be genuine, but only a wig; yet his suspicions faded whenever he looked at her body, for he could not help seeing the knives whizzing past it. Then he noticed that Korn’s eyes too were caressing that body, and so he tried to attract Ilona’s attention, asked her whether she liked Mannheim, whether she had seen the Rhine before, with similar geographical inquiries. Unfortunately his attempts were unsuccessful, for Ilona only replied now and then and at the wrong point: “Yes, very nice,” and wished, it seemed, to have nothing to do either with him or with Korn; she drank her coffee heavily and seriously, and even when Teltscher spluttered something at her in their sibilant native idiom, obviously something disagreeable, she scarcely listened. Meanwhile Fräulein Erna was telling Gernerth that a happy family life was the most beautiful thing in the world, and she gave Esch a little nudge with her toe, either to encourage him to follow Gernerth’s example, or perhaps merely to withdraw his attention from the Hungarian girl, whose beauty, however, she praised none the less; for the greedy longing with which her brother was regarding the girl had not escaped her vigilant glance, and she considered it preferable that the lovely charmer should fall to her brother rather than to Esch. So she stroked Ilona’s hands and praised their whiteness, rolled up the girl’s sleeve and said that she had a lovely fine skin, Balthasar should only look at it. Balthasar put out his hairy paw to feel it. Teltscher laughed and said that every Hungarian woman had a skin like silk, whereupon Erna, who also had a skin of her own, replied that it was all a matter of tending one’s complexion, and that she washed her face every day in milk. Certainly, said Gernerth, she had a marvellous, indeed an international, complexion, and Fräulein Erna’s withered face parted in a smile, showing her yellow teeth and the gap where one tooth was missing in her left upper jaw, and blushed to the roots of the hair at her temples, which hung down thin and brown and a little faded, from her coiffure.