The Sleepwalkers

by Hermann Broch

  Esch wished he were somewhere else. He said: “I’m thinking of going to America.”

  Martin’s aged boy’s face smiled: “Well, well, you’ve wanted to do that for a long time … or have you some particular reason for wanting to leave the country now?”

  No, Esch replied; he simply fancied that there were good prospects over there at present.

  “Well, Esch, I hope I’ll see you again before you leave. Better to be going because you have prospects than because you’re running away from something … but if it shouldn’t be so, you won’t see my face again, Esch!” That sounded almost like a threat, and silence once more sank on the three men sitting at the ink-spotted table in the hot, airless room. Esch got up and said that he must hurry if he was still to catch the train that day, and as Martin once more regarded him questioningly and suspiciously, he pushed the cigarettes into Martin’s hand, while the uniformed warder behaved as though he did not see anything, or maybe he had not really seen anything. Then Martin was led away.

  On the way back to the town Martin’s threat rang in Esch’s ears, and perhaps indeed it had already come true, for all at once he could no longer picture Martin to himself, neither his hobbling walk, nor his smile, nor even that the cripple would ever enter the restaurant again. Martin had become strange to him. Esch marched on with long, awkward strides as though he had to increase as quickly as possible the distance between him and the prison, the distance between him and all that lay behind him. No, that man would never run after him again, so as to strike him from behind with his crutch; no man could really run after another, nor could the other send him away, for each was condemned to go his own lonely path, a stranger to all companionship: what mattered was to free oneself from the coil of the past, so that one might not suffer. One had simply to walk fast enough. Martin’s threat had had singularly little effect, as if it were a clumsy work-a-day copy of a higher reality with which one had been already familiar for a long time. And if one left Martin behind, if one so to speak sacrificed him, that too was merely a work-a-day version of a higher sacrifice; but it was necessary if the past was to be finally destroyed. True, the streets of Mannheim were still familiar, yet he was making his way into a strange land, into freedom; he walked as on a higher plane, and when next day he arrived at Cologne he would no longer feel abashed before the city and the scenes it presented, he would find them submissive and humble, submissively ready for transformation. Esch made a disdainful gesture with his swinging hands, and even achieved an ironical grimace.

  He was so deeply sunk in thought that he passed Korn’s door without noticing it; only when he was on the top floor did he realize that he must descend one flight again. And when Fräulein Erna opened the door he started back. He had forgotten her, and there she was looking at him now through the slit of the partly opened door, showing her yellowish teeth and making her demands upon him. It was the demon of the past itself barring the gate of longing, the grimacing mask of the work-a-day world, more invulnerable and mocking than ever, demanding that one should for ever descend anew into the coils of dead-and-gone things. And here a good conscience could not avail him, here it could not avail him that at any moment he was at liberty to leave this place for Cologne or America,—for a breathspace it seemed to him that Martin had caught him up after all, and as though it were Martin’s vengeance that was pushing him down, down to Erna. But Fräulein Erna seemed to know that there was no escape for him, for like Martin she smiled all-knowingly and as in secret intelligence of a still obscure obligation binding him to her world, an obligation that was inescapable and threatening and yet of supreme importance. He gazed searchingly into Fräulein Erna’s face; it was the face of a withered Antichrist and gave no answer. “When is Lohberg coming?” Esch asked the question abruptly and as though in the vague hope that the answer would solve his problem; and when Fräulein Erna slyly hinted that she had intentionally refrained from inviting her fiancé, it was undoubtedly a flattering mark of preference, and yet it made him furious. Without regarding her offended looks he ran from the house to invite Lohberg for a visit that evening.

  And indeed Esch felt comforted when he found the fool, so deeply comforted that he at once begged for his company and purchased all sorts of eatables and even two bouquets, one of which he stuck in Lohberg’s hand. Small wonder that at the sight of them Fräulein Erna should clasp her hands and cry: “Why, here’s two real cavaliers!” Esch replied proudly: “A farewell celebration,” and while she was setting out the table he sat with his friend Lohberg on the sofa and sang: Must I then, must I then, leave my native Town, which won him disapproving and melancholy glances from Fräulein Erna. Yes, perhaps it was really a farewell celebration, a celebration of release from this work-a-day community, and he would have liked to forbid her to lay a place for Ilona. For Ilona too must be released by now and already at the goal. And this wish was so strong that in all seriousness Esch hoped that Ilona would stay away, stay away for ever. And incidentally he felt a little elated at the thought of Korn’s disappointment.

  Well, Korn really gave signs of being disappointed; though to be sure his disappointment expressed itself in coarse abuse of that Hungarian female, and in rabid impatience for immediate nourishment. Meanwhile he moved his broad bulk with astonishing agility through the room; addressed himself to the liqueur bottles, then to the table from which with his blunt fingers he lifted a few slices of sausage, and when Erna refused to allow this he turned upon Lohberg and with upraised hands shooed him from the sofa, which he claimed for himself by prescriptive right. The noise which the man Korn raised while doing this was extraordinary, his body and voice filled the room more and more, filled it from wall to wall; all that was earthly and fleshly in Korn’s ravenously hungry being swelled beyond the confines of the room, threatening mightily to fill the whole world, and with it the unalterable past swelled up, crushing everything else out and stifling all hope; the uplifted and luminous stage darkened, and perhaps indeed it no longer existed. “Well, Lohberg, where’s your kingdom of redemption now?” shouted Esch, as though he were seeking to deafen his own terrors, shouted it in fury, because neither Lohberg nor anybody else was capable of giving an answer to the question: why must Ilona descend into contact with the earthly and the dead? Korn sat there on his broad hindquarters and ordered brutally: “Bring in the food!” “No!” shouted Esch, “not till Ilona comes!” For though he was almost afraid of seeing Ilona again, everything was at hazard now, and suddenly Esch was full of impatience for Ilona to appear—as it were to be the touchstone of truth.

  Ilona entered. She scarcely noticed the company, simply obeyed the signal of the silently chewing Korn and sat down beside him on the sofa, and in obedience to his equally silent command slung her soft arm languidly round his neck. But for the rest all that she saw was the good things on the table. Erna, who observed all this, said: “If I were you, Ilona, I would keep my hands off Balthasar while I was eating, at least.” True, she was merely talking in the air, for Ilona obviously still did not understand a word of German, indeed must not understand it, just as she must not know of the sacrifices that had been made for her. Ignorant of their speech, she could hardly be regarded any longer as a guest at the table of the flesh-bound, but rather as a mere visitor to the prison of the work-a-day world, or as a voluntary captive. And Erna, who to-night seemed to know many things, made no further mention of earthly matters, and it was like an admission of a more subtle understanding when she lifted the bouquet from the table and held it under Ilona’s nose: “There, smell that, Ilona,” she said, and Ilona replied: “Yes, thank you,” and it rang as from a distance which the munching Korn would never reach, rang as from a higher plane ready to receive her if only one did not grow weary in sacrifice. Esch felt light-hearted. Everyone must fulfil his dream, whether it be evil or holy, and then he will partake of freedom. And great pity as it was that the ninny should get Erna, and little as Ilona would ever guess that now the final line had been drawn under an account, it
was a settlement and a turning-point, a testimony and the act of a new consciousness when Esch got up, drank to the company, and having briefly and heartily congratulated the betrothed couple, proposed a toast to their health, so that everybody, with the exception of Ilona for whose sake it was really done, looked quite dumbfounded. But as it expressed their secret wishes, their next emotion was gratitude, and Lohberg with moist eyes shook Esch’s hand again and again. Then at Esch’s request the happy couple gave each other the betrothal kiss.

  Nevertheless what had been done did not yet appear to him final, and when the party was breaking up, and Korn had already retired with Ilona, and Fräulein Erna was preparing to put on her hat so as to keep Esch company in escorting her newly betrothed to his home, then Esch objected; no, he did not regard it as seemly that he, a bachelor, should spend the night in the house of Lohberg’s fiancée, he would be very happy to seek a lodging for the night in Herr Lohberg’s house or to exchange rooms with him; they should think it over again, for after their betrothal they must have a great many things to talk about; and thereupon he pushed the two of them into Erna’s room and betook himself to his own.

  In this way ended the first day of his release, and the first night of unaccustomed and unpleasant renunciation broke in.

  The sleepless man who with moistened finger-tip has quenched the quiet candle beside his bed, and in the now cooler room awaits the coolness of sleep, with every beat of his heart approaches death without knowing it; for strangely as the cool room has expanded round him, just as stiflingly hot and hurried has time grown within his head, so stifling that beginning and end, birth and death, past and future, crumble to dust in the unique and isolated present, filling it to the brim, indeed almost bursting it.

  Esch had considered for a moment whether Lohberg might not after all decide to go home and want his company. But with an ironical grimace he concluded that he might safely go to bed, and still grinning he began to take off his clothes. By the light of the candle he read again Mother Hentjen’s letter; the copious items of news about the restaurant were boring; on the other hand there was one passage which pleased him: “And do not forget, dear August, that you are my only love in all the world and will always be, and that I cannot live without you, and would not rest in the cold grave without you, dear August.” Yes, that pleased him, and now on Mother Hentjen’s account too he was glad that he had sent Lohberg in to Erna. Then he moistened his finger-tip, put out the candle, and stretched himself on the bed.

  A sleepless night begins with banal thoughts, somewhat as a juggler displays at first banal and easy feats of skill, before proceeding to the more difficult and thrilling ones. In the darkness Esch could not help grinning still at the thought of Lohberg slipping under the blankets to the coyly tittering Erna, and he was glad that he had no need to be jealous of the ninny. In truth his desire for Erna had now completely gone, but that was all to the good and as it should be. And in reality he only dwelt on the happenings in the other room to demonstrate how indifferent they left him, how indifferent it was to him that Erna was now caressing with her hands the meagre body of the idiot, and suffering such a misbegotten monstrosity beside her, and how totally indifferent what impressions, what phallic images—he employed a different term—she carried in her memory. So easy was it for him to picture all this that it seemed without importance, and besides with that pure Joseph one was not even certain that things would take such a course. Life would be an easy business if things of that kind left him just as indifferent in Mother Hentjen’s case,—but the mere impact of the thought was so painful that he started violently, not entirely unlike Mother Hentjen at certain moments. He would gladly have sought refuge with Erna for himself and his thoughts, had not something barred the way, something invisible, of which he only knew that it was the threatening and inescapable presence of that afternoon. So he turned his thoughts to Ilona; all that was needed to establish order there was that the hurtling knives should be erased from her memory. As a preliminary rehearsal, so to speak, for more difficult feats, he tried to think of her, but he was unsuccessful. Yet when at last he managed to picture to himself, with rage and loathing, that at that moment she was languidly and submissively enduring the presence of Korn, that dead lump of flesh, regardless of herself, just as she had stood smiling in the midst of the daggers, waiting for one of them to strike her to the heart—oh, then he suddenly saw the end of his task; for it was self-murder that she was committing in such a curiously complicated and feminine fashion, self-murder that dragged her down into contact with earthly things. That was what she must be rescued from! His task was defined, but it had become a new task! Indeed, if it were not for that threatening something barring the way, he would simply dismiss Ilona from his mind, walk over to Erna’s room, seize Lohberg by the collar, and curtly order him to take himself off. After that one would be able to sleep quietly and dreamlessly.

  Yet just when he was on the point of picturing to himself how peaceful the world would be then, and already felt within himself the unequivocal desire for a woman, the sleepless Esch was pulled up by an idea which was at once a little comical and a little shocking: he dared not return to Erna, for then it would no longer be possible to tell who was the father of her child. So that was the inexplicable obligation, that was the threat which had made him start back when he saw Erna that afternoon! Yes, it all seemed to fit in; for there was one who had stepped aside to make place for another from whose advent the new dispensation of time was to begin, and it seemed right, too, that a messiah’s father should be a pure Joseph. Esch tried again to summon his ironical grimace, but he was unsuccessful this time; his eyelids were too tightly shut, and no one can laugh in the dark. For night is the time of freedom, and laughter is the revenge of those who are not free. Oh, it was just and right that he should be lying here sleepless and wide awake, in a cold and strange excitement which was no longer the excitement of desire, lying in a semblance of death as in a vault, since the unborn was lying motionless and undreaming likewise. Yet how could one believe that Bertrand had been sacrificed, so that out of the paltry earthly vessel that was called Fräulein Erna new life should spring? Esch cursed to himself, as the sleepless sometimes are accustomed to do, but while he cursed he suddenly realized that after all it did not fit in, inasmuch as the magical hour of death should be the hour of procreation too. One could not be at the selfsame time in Badenweiler and Mannheim; so the conclusion he had drawn was a premature one, and everything was perhaps more complex and more noble.

  The darkness of the room was cool. Esch, a man of impetuous temperament, lay motionless in his bed, his heart hammered time down to a thin dust of nothingness, and no reason could any longer be found why one should postpone death into a future which was in any case already the present. To the man who is awake such ideas may seem illogical, but he forgets that he himself exists for the most part in a kind of twilight state, and that only the sleepless man in his overwakefulness thinks with really logical severity. The sleepless man keeps his eyes closed, as though not to see the cold tomblike darkness in which he lies, not to see it, yet fearing that his sleeplessness may topple over into mere ordinary awakeness at the sight of the curtains which hang like woman’s skirts before the window, and all the objects which may detach themselves from the darkness if he were to open his eyes. For he wants to be sleepless and not awake, otherwise he could not lie here with Mother Hentjen cut off from the world and safe in his tomb, full of a desire which is lust no longer; yes, he was robbed of desire now, and that too was good. United in death, thought Esch, lying in his semblance of death, yes, united in death, and in truth that would have been comforting, if he could but have refrained from thinking of Erna and Lohberg, who were also in a way united now in death. But in what a way! Well, the sleepless man has no inclination left for cynical witticisms, he wants, as it were, to let the metaphysical content of experience work upon him, and to estimate justly the extraordinary distance that separates his couch from the other rooms in
the house, wishes in all seriousness to meditate on the attainable final communion, on the fulfilment of his dream which will lead him to consummation; and as he cannot grasp all these things he becomes morose and aggrieved, becomes enraged and meditates now only on the question: how the dead can possibly give birth to the living. The sleepless man runs his hand over his closely cropped hair, a cool and prickling sensation remains in the palm of his hand; it is like a dangerous experiment which he will not repeat again.

  And when by such means he has advanced to more difficult and remarkable feats, his rage waxes, and perhaps it is only the rage of impotent joyless desire. Ilona was committing self-murder in a peculiarly complicated and feminine fashion, suffering night after night the presence of a dead lump of flesh, so that her face was already puffy as though it had been touched by corruption. And every night that that image of obscene lust was imprinted on her the corruption must increase. So that was the reason why he had feared to see Ilona that afternoon! The knowledge of the sleepless man grows into a clairvoyant foreshadowing dream of death, and he recognizes that Mother Hentjen is already dead, that she, the dead woman, can have no child by him, that for this reason alone she has written him a letter instead of coming to Mannheim, written it under the portrait of the man from whose hands she accepted death, just as now Ilona is accepting death from that animal Korn. Mother Hentjen’s cheeks too were puffy, time and death were embedded in her face, and the raptures of her nights were dead, dead as the automatic musical instrument which ground out its tune mechanically, one had only to press a lever. And Esch became furious.

  The sleepless man does not know that his bed is standing in a certain position in a house in a certain street, and he refuses to be reminded of it. It is notorious that the sleepless are easily moved to anger; the rolling of a solitary tramcar through the night streets is enough to arouse them to fury. And how much stronger then must be their rage over a contradiction so colossal and so terrible that it cannot even be put down to a book-keeping error? In panic haste the sleepless man sets his thoughts flying to discover the meaning of the question which, coming from somewhere or other, from afar off, perhaps from America, now presses on him. He feels that there is a region in his head that is America, a region that is none other than the site of the future in his head, and yet that cannot exist so long as the past keeps breaking in so boundlessly into the future, the wrecked and annihilated overwhelming the new. In this storm that breaks in he himself is carried away, yet not only he, but everyone around him is swept away by the icy hurricane, all of them following the pioneer who has first flung himself into the storm, to be whirled away so that time may once more become time. Now there was no more time left, only an extraordinary amount of space; the sleepless man in his overwakefulness listens and knows that all the others are dead, and even if he shuts his eyelids ever so tightly so as not to see it, he knows that death is always murder.