The Sleepwalkers

by Hermann Broch

  So the word had appeared again, yet not flitting silently like a butterfly; but with the rattling clangour of a tramcar in the night streets the word murder had reappeared, and was shouting at him. The dead handed death on. There must be no surviving. As though death were a child, Mother Hentjen had conceived it by the dead tailor fellow, and Korn was imparting it to Ilona. Perhaps Korn too was dead; he was as fat as Mother Hentjen, and of redemption he knew nothing. Or if he were not dead already, he would die—faint comforting hope—would die like the snippet of a tailor, after he had consummated his murder. Murder and counter-murder, shock on shock, the past and the future broke upon each other, broke in the very moment of death which was the present. That must be thought out very vigilantly and very seriously, for only too easily might another book-keeping error slip in. And already how immeasurably difficult it was to distinguish sacrifice and murder from each other! Must all be destroyed ere the world could be redeemed to a state of innocence? Must the deluge break in, was it not enough for one man to sacrifice himself, for one to step aside? Esch still lived, although like all the sleepless he was dead to all appearance, Ilona still lived, although death had already touched her, and only one man was bearing the burden of sacrifice for the new life and the creation of a world in which daggers might no longer be flung. That sacrifice could never be undone now. And as all abstract and universally valid generalizations are to be found in the state of sleepless overwakefulness, Esch arrived at the conclusion: the dead are murderers of women. But he was not dead, and on him lay the obligation to rescue Ilona.

  Again arose in him the desire, the impatient desire, to receive death from Mother Hentjen’s hand, and the doubt whether it had not already happened. If he submitted himself to that death which came from the dead, he might propitiate the dead, and they might rest content with the one sacrifice. A comforting thought! And as the sleepless man can be more violently overcome with rage than the awake in their twilight state, so his happiness may be far more ecstatic, and he may experience it, one might almost say, with a sort of wild lightness of heart. Yes, that light and liberated feeling of happiness may become so bright that the very darkness behind the closed eyelids catches its radiance. For now it was absolutely certain that Esch, who was alive, a living man by whom women might conceive, if he resigned himself to Mother Hentjen and her body of death, must by this unprecedented measure not only consummate Ilona’s redemption, must not only put her for ever beyond the reach of the daggers, must not only retrieve her beauty for her and cancel from her flesh all trace of mortality, cancel it so completely that she would regain a new virginity, but that by doing this he must also of necessity rescue Mother Hentjen from death, vivify again her loins, so that she might bear the one whose task it would be to renew Time.

  Then it seemed to him as though his bed were returning with him from a great distance, until at last it rested again in a certain position in a certain alcove, and Esch, reborn in newly awakened longing, knew that he was at his goal, not, it was true, that final goal in which symbol and prototype return to their identity, yet none the less at that temporary goal with which earthly mortals must rest content, the goal that he termed love and that stood as the last attainable point on that coast beyond which lay the unattainable. And, as it were, in antithesis to the symbol and the prototype, women seemed curiously united and yet divided; Mother Hentjen might be sitting in Cologne waiting for him, Ilona might have receded into the unattainable and the invisible, and he knew that he would never see her again—but out there on that horizon where the visible and the invisible, the attainable and the unattainable became one, their ways crossed and their two silhouettes dissolved and merged into each other, and even if they were to separate, they would still remain united in a hope never to be fulfilled: the hope that, embracing Mother Hentjen in perfect love, bearing her life as his own, quickening and redeeming her from death in his arms, embracing in love this woman growing old, he might lift from Ilona the burden of approaching age and of memory, might create as a setting for Ilona’s new and virginal beauty the higher plane of his desire; yes, widely separated as the two women were, they yet became one, the reflected image of one, of that invisible entity to which he could never turn back, and which yet was home.

  The sleepless Esch was at his goal. In his overwakefulness indeed he had already foreknown the outcome, and he saw that he had merely been spinning a logical chain round it, and had remained wakeful merely because the chain had grown longer and longer; but now he permitted himself to forge the last link, and it was like a complicated book-keeping task which he had solved at last, indeed even more than a book-keeping task; it was the real task of love in all its absoluteness that he had taken upon him in submitting his earthly life to Mother Hentjen. He would gladly have made this conclusion known to Ilona, but in view of her imperfect mastery of the German language he would have to abstain.

  Esch opened his eyes, recognized his room, and then went contentedly to sleep.

  He had decided for Mother Hentjen. Finally. Esch did not look out through the carriage window. And when he turned his thoughts to this perfect and absolute love of his it was like a daring experiment; acquaintances and customers would be drinking in the brightly lit restaurant; he would enter, and regardless of all those eyewitnesses, Mother Hentjen would run to him and fling herself on his breast. But when he arrived in Cologne the picture seemed to have altered strangely; for this city was no longer a city that he knew, and his way through the evening streets seemed to stretch for miles and was strange to him. Incredible that he had been away for only six days. Time had stopped, and the house that awaited his entry was quite indefinite, the restaurant quite indefinite in shape and size. Esch stood in the doorway and looked across at Mother Hentjen. She sat enthroned behind the buffet. Above the mirror a light burned under a red shade, silence hung in the air, not a customer was to be seen in the forlorn room. Nothing happened. Why had he come here? Nothing happened; Mother Hentjen remained behind the buffet and said at last in her usual phlegmatic way: “Good-evening.” And she glanced nervously round the room. Rage rose up in him, and all at once he could not understand why he had decided for this woman. So he too merely said, “Good-evening,” for although he somehow approved of her proud coldness, and knew also that he had no right to repay her in the same coin, yet he felt angry; a man who had decided in his heart for unconditional love was entitled at any rate to be met on an equal footing,—he rapped out: “Thanks for your letter.” She looked round the empty restaurant and said furiously: “What if anyone were to hear you?” and Esch, fully roused, replied with particular distinctness: “And what if they did … let this stupid mystery-mongering stop now, for heaven’s sake!” said it without point or object, for the restaurant was empty, and he himself did not know why he was there. Mother Hentjen became silent with terror, and mechanically put up her hand to her coiffure. Since she had accompanied him to the train she had keenly regretted being so forward, giving herself away so completely, and after sending that imprudent letter to Mannheim she had actually fallen into a genuine panic; she would have been grateful to Esch now for not mentioning it. But now that with a set, implacable face he openly exploited his advantage, she felt herself again defencelessly caught in a grip of iron. Esch said: “I can go, of course, if you like,” and now she would really have issued from behind her counter if the first customers had not at that moment entered. So the two of them remained standing where they were in silence; then Mother Hentjen whispered in a contemptuous tone which was intended to show that she merely wished to carry their quarrel to a finish: “Come back to-night.” Esch made no reply, but sat down at his table before a glass of wine. He felt an orphan. His calculations yesterday, which had seemed so clear, had now become incomprehensible to him; how could his deciding for this woman help Ilona? he gazed round the restaurant and still felt it strange; it meant nothing to him now, he had left all those things too far behind. What was he doing in Cologne at all? he should have been in America lo
ng ago. But then his glance caught Herr Hentjen’s portrait, hanging above the insignia of liberty, and it was as though it suddenly reminded him of something; he asked for paper and ink, and in his most beautiful clerkly script wrote: “I beg to bring to the notice of the Chief Commissioner of Police that Herr Eduard von Bertrand, resident in Badenweiler, Chairman of the Central Rhine Shipping Company Limited in Mannheim, is guilty of illicit practices with persons of the male sex, and I am prepared to appear as a witness and furnish proof of my accusation.”

  When he was about to append his signature he stopped suddenly, for he had been on the point of adding: “In the name of his bereaved relatives and friends,” and although he could not help smiling at this, he was startled. Finally, however, he added his name and address to the communication, and having carefully folded it, deposited it in his pocket-book. Until to-morrow, he told himself, a last respite. The picture postcard from Badenweiler was also sticking in his pocket-book. He considered whether he could present it to Mother Hentjen that night, and felt forlorn. But then he saw before him the alcove, saw her again in her painfully submissive readiness to receive him, and as he passed the buffet he said, and his voice was hoarse: “Well then, to-night.” She sat stiffly in her chair and seemed to have heard nothing, so that filled with new rage, a different rage however from the first, he turned back again, and raising his voice recklessly, said: “Be so good as to remove that portrait over there.” She still sat immobile, and he slammed the door behind him.

  When later he returned and made to open the house door he found it barred from inside. Without considering whether the maid might hear him, he rang the bell, and as nobody answered he went on ringing furiously. That did the trick; he heard footsteps; he almost hoped that it might be the little maid; he would tell her that he had forgotten something in the restaurant, but apart from that the maid would not disdain him, and that would be a lesson for Mother Hentjen. But it was not the maid, it was Frau Hentjen in person; she was still fully dressed and she was crying. Both circumstances increased his rage. They climbed the stairs in silence, and up in her room he fell upon her at once. When she submitted, and her kisses became tender, he asked threateningly: “Is that portrait going to be removed?” She did not know at first of what he was speaking, and when she did she did not quite understand for a moment: “The portrait?… oh, the portrait? why? don’t you like it?” In despair before her inability to understand he said: “No, I don’t like it … and there’s a lot of things besides that I don’t like.” She replied complaisantly and politely: “If you don’t like it I can easily hang it up somewhere else.” She was so unutterably stupid that it would probably take a thrashing to make her understand. However, Esch restrained himself: “The portrait must be burned.” “Burned?” “Yes, burned. And if you pretend to be so stupid much longer, I’ll set fire to the whole place.” She recoiled from him in terror, and, pleased with the effect of his threat, he said: “You should be glad; it isn’t as if you had any great love for the place.” She made no reply, and even if her mind was probably blank, and she only saw the flames rising from her roof-top, yet it was as though she were trying to conceal something. He said sternly: “Why don’t you speak?” His harsh tone completely paralysed her. Could this woman not be driven by any means to drop her mask? Esch had risen and now stood threateningly at the entrance to the alcove as though to prevent her from escaping. One would have to call things by their real names, otherwise one would never make anything out of this lump of flesh. But when he asked: “Why did you marry him?” his voice was hoarse and strangled, for with the question so many wild and hopeless emotions surged up in him that in thought he had to fly to Erna for comfort. He had left her, though she did not torment him and it had been completely immaterial to him what phallic images she carried in her memory. And it had been equally immaterial to him whether she had children, or prevented them by artificial devices. He dreaded Mother Hentjen’s answer, did not want to hear it, yet he shouted: “Well?” And Mother Hentjen, her fear that she had given herself away too much reawakened, perhaps also dreading that the nimbus surrounding her, on whose account she imagined Esch loved her, might be in danger of vanishing, gathered herself together: “It’s so long ago … you don’t need to let that worry you.” Esch pushed forward his under jaw and bared his strong teeth: “It shan’t worry me … it shan’t worry me …” he shouted, “it doesn’t worry me in the least.… I don’t give a hang for it.” So this was how she requited his absolute and untiring devotion and his torments. She was stupid and callous; he, who had taken her fate upon him, he, who wanted to take upon him her life although it had been aged and defiled by death, he, August Esch, who was prepared to make the decision and give himself absolutely to her, who longed that all his strangeness might be merged in her, so that all her strangeness and all her thoughts, no matter how painful to him, might become his as it were by way of exchange: it needn’t worry him! Oh, she was stupid and callous, and being so he had to beat her; he went up to the bed and hit out at her and struck her on the fat immobile cheek, as though by doing so he might reach the immobility of her spirit. She did not defend herself, but remained lying rigid, and even if he had flung knives at her, even then she would not have moved. Her cheek was red where he had struck her, and when a tear trickled down over it his anger was softened. He sat down on the bed, and she moved to the side to make room for him. Then he said imperiously: “We must get married.” She simply answered, “Yes,” and Esch was on the point of flying into a new rage, because she did not say that she was glad at last to be rid of the hated name. But the only reply she could think of was to put her arm round him and draw him to her. He was tired, and submitted; perhaps it was all right, perhaps it did not matter, for where the kingdom of salvation was concerned everything was uncertain, every hour uncertain, every figure and every reckoning. Yet he felt embittered again; what did she know about the kingdom of salvation? And did she even want to know about it? probably as little as Korn! it would certainly take some time to hammer it into her head. But meanwhile one must simply allow for that, must wait until she could understand it, must let her carry on her life as she was doing. In the land of justice, in America, it would be different; there the past would fall away like tinder. And when she asked him constrainedly whether he had stopped at Ober-Wesel, he was not annoyed, but shook his head seriously and growled: “Of course not.” And so they celebrated their marriage night, and agreed to sell the business, and Mother Hentjen was grateful to him for not setting fire to anything. In a month’s time they might be on the high seas. To-morrow he would see Teltscher and set the American project going again.

  He remained longer than usual. Nor did they descend the stairs on tiptoe this time. And when she let him out there were already people in the streets. That filled him with pride.

  Next morning he betook himself to the Alhambra. Of course nobody was there. He rummaged among the correspondence on Gernerth’s desk, found an unopened envelope which bore his own handwriting, and was so taken aback for a moment that he did not recognize it: it was Erna’s letter that he had himself written in Mannheim. Well, she would raise another fine outcry if she had received no reply all this time. And really not without justification. A careless lot, those theatre people.

  At last Teltscher came wandering in. Esch was almost glad to see him again. Teltscher was in a gracious mood: “Well, high time for you to be back,—everybody disappears on private business and Teltscher is left to do all the measly work.” Where was Gernerth? “Oh, in Munich with his precious family—grave illness in the family, they’ve got colds in the head or something.” He would soon be back, Esch supposed. “He’ll have to come back soon, the Herr Manager; last night there were scarcely fifty people in the theatre. We’ll have to talk it over with Oppenheimer.” “Right,” said Esch, “let’s go and see Oppenheimer.”

  They agreed with Oppenheimer that they would have to announce the end of the show. “Have I warned you, or haven’t I?” said Oppenheimer. �
��Wrestling is all right, but nothing but wrestling! who would come to see that?” The decision suited Esch very well; all that he need do was to have his share paid to him when Gernerth returned, and the sooner the end came, the sooner they would get to America.

  This time he asked Teltscher of his own accord to lunch with him, for now it was a matter of setting about the American project. Hardly were they on the pavement before Esch drew the list from his pocket and ticked off the girls whom he had earmarked for the journey. “Yes, I’ve got a few too,” said Teltscher, “but first Gernerth must pay me back my money.” Esch was surprised, for Teltscher should surely have been satisfied with Lohberg’s and Erna’s contributions. Teltscher said in exasperation: “And whose money have we been financing the wrestling matches with, do you think? Gernerth’s money is tied up, don’t you know that? He gave me the stage properties in pledge, but what can I do with them in America?” All this was somewhat surprising, but all the same when the business was liquidated Gernerth’s money would be released, and then Teltscher could go to America. “Ilona must come too,” decided Teltscher. That’s where you make your mistake, my dear fellow, thought Esch, Ilona won’t be mixed up with these things again; for though she might still be attached to Korn, that would not last much longer; soon she would be living in a distant, inaccessible castle, in whose grounds the deer grazed. He said that he must visit the police headquarters, and they made the necessary detour. In a stationer’s shop Esch bought several newspapers and an envelope; he stuck the papers in his pocket, and with many flourishes addressed the envelope on the spot. Then he took out of his pocket-book the carefully folded sheet of paper, stuck it into the envelope and went over to the police buildings. As soon as he emerged again he continued his conversation; there was no need for Ilona to go with them. “Don’t talk stuff,” replied Teltscher, “in the first place, think of the splendid engagements we could get over there, and secondly, if the American idea should come to nothing, we must set to work here. She’s idled long enough; besides, I’ve written to her already.” “Nonsense,” replied Esch rudely, “if you’re dealing in young girls you can’t take a woman with you.” Teltscher laughed: “Well, if you think I shouldn’t, you’ll have to indemnify me for the damage to my prospects. You’re a big capitalist now … and one generally brings back money from a business excursion, doesn’t one?” Esch was alarmed; it seemed to him that Teltscher had glanced knowingly across at the police buildings—what could that mean? What did the Jewish conjurer know? he himself knew nothing of this business excursion; he turned on Teltscher: “Go to the devil! I haven’t brought back any money.” “No harm intended, Herr Esch, don’t take it in that way, I didn’t mean anything.”