The Sleepwalkers

by Hermann Broch

  When afterwards he returned to the restaurant he could see from a long way off the yellow radiance on the uneven cobbles outside. The windows with their panes of bull’s-eye glass were open, and inside he could see Mother Hentjen sitting, stiff in her silk dress, surrounded by her noisy customers; a bowl of punch stood on the table. Esch remained in the shadow; the thought of entering filled him with loathing. He turned away again, but not to go duteously in search of girls at their resorts; he strode in fury through the streets. On the Rhine Bridge he leant against the iron parapet, gazed down into the black water and across at the sheds on the quay. His knees were trembling, so intense had been his desire to burst the rigid bony construction in which that woman was encased; the whalebones would have cracked in the wild struggle. With an expressionless face he trailed back into the town, mechanically running his hand along the bars of the bridge railing as he went.

  The house was dark. Mother Hentjen, a candlestick in her hand, was waiting for him at the top of the stairs. He simply blew out the candle-butt and seized her. But she had already taken off her corsets, nor did she defend herself, but instead gave him a tender kiss. And although this greeting took him quite by surprise, and was perhaps no less novel than that palpitation for which he was waiting so impatiently, yet from this kiss it was terribly and incontrovertibly clear that one of her old habits had been to conclude her birthday celebrations with a tender love rite, and when the longed-for moment now actually arrived, when that blissful palpitation ran through her body, the thought that the touch of Herr Hentjen’s body, which in his present position Esch had no wish to picture, had also made her palpitate just like this, became a raging pain; the ghost which he had fancied was laid arose again, more mocking, more inconquerable than ever, and to conquer it and to show this woman that he, he alone was there, he flung himself upon her and sank his teeth into her plump shoulder. It must have hurt her, but she bore it in silence, although she made a wry face as though she had bitten on something sour, and when presently, exhausted, he made to leave her, she clasped him to her as in gratitude,—and yet her heavy awkward arm was like a vice—clasped him so fast that he could scarcely breathe and wrathfully struggled to free himself. She did not give way, but said—it was the first time that she had spoken to him in the alcove—in her usual business voice, in which nevertheless, had he been more sensitive, he might have heard a note almost of fear: “Why were you so late in coming?… because another year has been added to my age?” Esch was so stunned by her speaking at all that he did not grasp the meaning of her words; indeed, did not even attempt to grasp it, for the unexpected sound of her voice was to him like the termination of something, was like a sudden illumination after a long and painful process of thought, a sign that things could take on a different aspect. He said: “I’m sick of it, I’m going to finish it off.” The blood froze in Frau Hentjen’s veins; she had scarcely enough strength left to unclasp her arm from his shoulder; she felt leaden and icy, and her arm fell powerlessly of itself. All that she still knew was that she must not show her dismay before a man, that she must give him his marching orders before he went of his own accord, and summoning all her strength she brought out faintly: “Certainly, for all I care.” Esch took no notice of this and went on: “Next week I’ll go to Baden.” What need had he to tell her this as well? She felt somehow flattered that his resolve to end the affair should shake him so deeply, it seemed, that it was driving him away from Cologne, out into the world. Yet he was pressing his lips again to her shoulder, and that was surely a queer way of showing that he wanted to finish with her. Or did he simply want to indulge his lust up to the very last minute? men were capable of anything! Nevertheless she picked up hope again, and although her voice was still difficult to control she asked: “Why? Is there another girl there like the one in Ober-Wesel?” Esch laughed: “Yes, you might call it that, a girl just like her.” Frau Hentjen was indignant at his flippancy on the top of everything else: “It’s easy enough to make game of a weak woman.” Esch still thought she was referring to the person in Badenweiler: “Oh, the one in Baden isn’t so terribly weak as all that.” This fed her suspicions anew: “Who is it?” “A secret.” She maintained an offended silence, and submitted to his renewed caresses. Presently she asked: “Why should you want another woman?” In spite of himself he could not but secretly admit that this woman with her matter-of fact, almost businesslike and yet so curiously reluctant and chaste surrender, accorded him more intense pleasure and bliss than any other woman could, and that he really wanted nobody else. She said again: “Why should you want another woman? You’ve only to tell me if I’m not young enough for you.” He did not reply, for suddenly the fact that she had spoken at last filled him with excitement and elation; she who hitherto had lain silent in his arms, her head rolling in persistent negation, so unalterably silent that her silence had always seemed to him a legacy from the time of Herr Hentjen. She felt his happiness, and she went on proudly: “You don’t need any of those young things; I’m a match for any of them.” Nonsense, thought Esch, with a sudden stab of pain, she must be lying. And with a stab of pain he remembered Harry’s words and repeated them: “One can only love once,” and when Frau Hentjen simply said “Yes,” as if she meant to convey by this that he was the man whom she loved, then it was clear what a liar she was; pretended to be disgusted by men and yet sat drinking with them at her table, and let them drink her health; pretended to love him now, and yet was inconquerably matter-of-fact. But perhaps all this was wrong, for she had no children. Once more his desire for the unambiguous, the absolute, was brought up against an unscalable wall. If all this were only past and done with! His journey to Badenweiler appeared to him at that moment as a necessary prelude, an inevitable preliminary to the journey to America. Evidently she guessed at these thoughts of travel, for she asked: “What does she look like?” “Who?” “Why, the Baden girl.” Well, what did Bertrand look like? and more clearly than ever he recognized that he could picture Bertrand only by calling up Hentjen’s portrait. He replied harshly: “The portrait must be taken away.” She did not understand: “What portrait?” “That one below there,” he could not bring himself to utter the name, “above the Eiffel Tower.” She began to understand, but she rebelled against this attempt of his to mingle in her affairs: “Nobody has ever objected to it.” “And that’s just why,” he persisted, and now it became quite clear to him that it was his affair with Hentjen that he had to settle with Bertrand, and he went on: “and besides, an end must be put to all this.” “Well, perhaps …” she replied hesitatingly, and her rebellious feelings making her unwilling to understand, she added: “An end to what?” “We must go to America.” “Yes,” she said, “I know.”

  Esch had got up. He would have liked to walk up and down, as he was accustomed to do when anything occupied his mind, but there was no room in the alcove, and outside the nuts lay about the floor. So he sat down on the edge of the bed. And although he did his best to repeat Harry’s words they changed when he tried to utter them:

  “Love is only possible in a strange country. If you want to love really, you must begin a new life and destroy everything in your old one. Only in a new, quite strange life, where everything past is so dead that you don’t even need to forget it, can two human beings become so at one that the past and even time itself no longer exist for them.”

  “I haven’t a past,” said Mother Hentjen in an offended voice.

  “Only then,” Esch made an angry grimace which in the darkness Frau Hentjen luckily could not see, “only then will there be no need any longer to deny anything, for then truth will reign, and truth is beyond time.”

  “I’ve never denied anything,” said Mother Hentjen in defence.

  Esch did not let himself be put off: “Truth has nothing to do with the world, nothing to do with Mannheim …” he almost shouted, “it has nothing to do with this old world.”

  Mother Hentjen sighed. Esch gave her a sharp glance:

  “There’
s nothing to sigh over; you must free yourself from the old world, so as to become free yourself.…”

  Mother Hentjen sighed uneasily: “What’s to become of the restaurant? Shall we sell it?”

  Esch said with conviction: “Sacrifices must be made … that’s absolutely certain, for there’s no salvation without sacrifice.”

  “If we go away we’ll have to get married,” and once more a little apprehensively: “… I suppose I’m too old for you to marry?”

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, Esch regarded her in the light of the flickering candle. With his finger he wrote a “37” on the coverlet. He might have given her a cake with thirty-seven candles; no, better as it was, for she made a secret of her age, and would only have been annoyed. He contemplated her heavy, immobile features, and suddenly he would have liked her to be still older, a great deal older than she was. It seemed to him, although he did not know why, that that would have made things surer. If she were suddenly to become young and lie there in the fleeting semblance of youth, it would be all up with the sacrifice. And the sacrifice had to be, had to grow even greater along with his devotion to this ageing woman, so that the world might be put in order and Ilona might be shielded from the daggers, so that all living beings might be reinstated in their first innocence, and no one need any longer languish in prison. Well, one thing could be depended on, Mother Hentjen would soon grow old and ugly. The world seemed to him like a level, smooth, endless corridor, and he said absently:

  “We must lay the restaurant with brown linoleum; that would look nice.”

  Mother Hentjen picked up hope: “Yes, and get it painted too; the whole place is going to ruin … all these years nothing’s been done … but if you want to go to America …?”

  Esch repeated the words: “All these years.…”

  Mother Hentjen felt an apology was due: “One has to save, and one postpones a thing from year to year … and time passes …” and then she added: “… and one grows old.”

  Esch felt irritated: “When there are no children, saving is ridiculous … nobody ever saved up for me.”

  But Mother Hentjen was not listening. She merely wanted to find out whether it was worth while having the restaurant painted; she asked: “Are you going to take me to America with you? … or a young thing?”

  Esch replied roughly: “What’s all this eternal talk about young and old? … There will be no young and no old then, and there won’t be any time then either …”

  Esch was brought up short. An old woman could not have children. That perhaps was part of the sacrifice. But in a state of innocence nobody had children. Virgins had no children. And as he slipped back into bed he added conclusively: “Then everything will be firm and sure. And what you’ve left behind you can’t do you any more harm.”

  He tugged the coverlet into position and also drew it carefully over Mother Hentjen’s shoulder. Thereupon he put out his hand for the tin extinguisher that hung on the candlestick and that Herr Hentjen too had employed on such occasions, and clapped it on the flickering candle.

  Mannheim lies on the way to Baden. And Esch remembered that a man must do his duty by his friends. Something had been bothering him for a long time and now he knew what it was: he could not leave his friends’ money in a losing business. They had earned more than fifty per cent. on their investment so far and that was all right, but now these profits must be secured. It was time to quit. His own three hundred marks were on a different footing. Should he lose them it would serve him right. For with a profit of fifty per cent. and two months’ expenses over and above that—and not a bad two months either—where did the sacrifice come in which was to redeem Ilona? And to finance his flight to America and liberty out of such ill-gotten gains would be another falsification: it was high time to call off the wrestling matches, profits and all. Mother Hentjen was right enough in her prophecy that he and all his pack of women would end up in disgrace and scandal.

  But meanwhile he had to secure the money for Lohberg and Erna. It wasn’t easy to buttonhole Gernerth on the matter: in the evenings he kept grumbling about the empty theatre and in the daytime he was hard to catch: he was never in the Alhambra, he never seemed to enter his flat at all, and at Oppenheimer’s place there was nothing but two untidy rooms and no sign of anybody. Moreover, if one asked him where he usually took his meals, Gernerth replied: “Oh, I just make do with a sandwich, the father of a family can’t spread himself much,” which was, of course, hardly true, for one day when the English tourists were crossing the Cathedral square, who should come out of the Cathedral Hotel’s marble vestibule but Herr Gernerth himself, looking well-fed and with a fat cigar in his mouth? “Publicity, my dear friend, publicity,” he had said, and made himself scarce, as if anybody would have taken it amiss were he to live all the time in the Cathedral Hotel, and his whole family with him. To-day, anyhow, he wouldn’t get off: Esch would take care of that!

  So in the evening Esch opened the door of the manager’s office, locked it behind him, grinning widely, pocketed the key, and with another wide grin presented to the trapped Gernerth a neatly ruled account of the profits to date due to Herr Fritz Lohberg and Fräulein Erna Korn on their invested capital of 2000 marks, amounting to 1123 marks, which with the capital made a sum-total of 3123 marks to be repaid, and under it was written “settled in full in the name of the said parties, August Esch.” Besides that he demanded his own money. Gernerth shrieked murder and robbery. In the first place Esch had no legal power to sign a settlement, and in the second place the wrestling matches were still going on, and money couldn’t be withdrawn from a going concern. They wrangled for some time, until at length with many lamentations Gernerth agreed to pay out the half of the sum due to Lohberg and Erna, while the other half was to remain invested and share in any further profits that arose. But for himself Esch could extract nothing save an advance of fifty marks for travelling expenses. Perhaps he had been too complaisant. In any case that was enough for the journey to Baden.

  Frau Hentjen in her brown silk came to the station and peered round cautiously for any sign of an acquaintance who might see her and gossip about her. For although it was early there were swarms of people. At the other platform there stood a train going in the opposite direction, and several carriages for emigrants, Czechs or Hungarians, were being shunted on to it, and Salvation Army officials were running up and down. Now, Mother Hentjen’s presence at the station was but right and proper: it was high time she gave up her stupid affectation of secrecy. All the same, Esch had a bad conscience when he saw the emigrants and the Salvation Army people. “Silly sheep!” he grumbled. He could not tell why he was so provoked. Apparently he had caught the absurd disease of secrecy from Mother Hentjen, for when one of the Salvation girls passed by he looked the other way. Frau Hentjen remarked it: “I suppose you’re ashamed of my being here? Perhaps you’ve got another woman travelling with you?” Esch with some rudeness told her not to be a fool. But that was the last straw: “That’s all one gets for compromising oneself … one can’t touch pitch without being defiled.” Once more Esch could not understand what bound him to this woman. As she stood there facing him in the daylight the remembrance of her sexual submission and of the dim alcove, the images that haunted him as soon as he was away from her, sank into oblivion as if they had never existed. With this same train he and she had travelled together to Bacharach; that was the beginning of the affair—perhaps to-day would see its end. Evidently she felt his detachment, for she said suddenly: “If you’re unfaithful to me, I’ll soon let you see.…” He was flattered and wanted her to go on; at the same time he wanted to hurt her: “All right, I’m going to do it this very day … what’ll I see?” She stiffened and made no answer. That softened him, and he took her hand, which lay heavy and awkward in his. “Well, well, what’ll happen then?” She said with a vacant eye: “I’ll do you in.” It was like a promise and a hope of redemption; yet he forced himself to laugh. She was not to be diverted, however, from her thoughts.
“What else could I do?” After a pause: “You’re probably going as far as Ober-Wesel? … to that woman?” Esch grew impatient: “Nonsense, I’ve told you a hundred times that I must settle up my affairs with Lohberg in Mannheim … aren’t we going to America?” Frau Hentjen was not convinced: “Be honest about it.” Esch impatiently waited for the signal to be given for the train’s departure; he must on no account betray his intention to visit Bertrand: “Haven’t I invited you to come with me?” “You didn’t really mean it.” But now that the signal was just going to be given it seemed to Esch that he really had meant the invitation to be taken seriously, and as he stood holding her plump arm he wanted to give her a kiss; she fended him off: “What, here before all these people!” And at that moment he had to climb into the train.