The Sleepwalkers

by Hermann Broch

  When Huguenau quitted that parsonage it became clear to him that he had to think out a definite plan of escape. Formerly he had often enough hung about in the neighbourhood of various corps headquarters where he passed without comment among the other soldiers, but that had now become impossible. He was really depressed by his civilian clothes; they were like an admonition to return to the work-a-day world of peace, and that he had donned them at the command of the priest seemed now a lapse into stupidity. The priest’s offer was an unauthorized interference with his private life, and he had paid dear enough to secure his private life. Besides, even if he did not regard himself as belonging to the Kaiser’s forces, yet as a deserter he had a peculiar, one might almost say a negative connection with them, and in any case he belonged to the war and he did not disapprove of the war. For instance, he had not been able to stomach the way in which men in the canteens abused the war and the newspapers, or asserted that Krupp had been buying up newspapers in order to prolong the war. For Wilhelm Huguenau was not only a deserter, he was a man of business, a salesman who admired all factory-owners for producing the wares that the rest of the world used. So if Krupp and the coal barons bought newspapers they knew what they were doing, and had a perfect right to do it, as much right as he had to wear his uniform as long as he pleased. There was no reason, therefore, why he should return to that background of civilian life which the priest with his suit of clothes had obviously destined for him, nothing to induce him to return to his native country in which there were no holidays, and which stood for all that was commonplace.

  So he remained in the base lines. He turned southwards, avoiding towns and calling at villages, came through the Hennegau and penetrated to the Ardennes. The war by that time had lost much of its formality, and deserters were no longer closely hunted—there were too many of them, and the authorities did not want to admit their existence. Still, that does not explain how Huguenau got out of Belgium undiscovered; one can attribute it rather to the somnambulistic sureness with which he picked his way through the dangerous zone; he walked along in the clear air of early spring, walked light-heartedly as if under a glass bell, cut off from the world and yet in it, and he was untroubled by reflections. From the Ardennes he crossed into German territory, coming out on the bleak plateau of the Eifel where winter still prevailed and it was difficult to make headway. The inhabitants did not bother about him, they were surly, silent people, and they hated every extra mouth that sought a share of their scanty provender. Huguenau had to take to the train and break into his savings, hitherto untouched. The serious issues of life threatened him again in a new and different guise. Something had to be done to secure and prolong his holiday.

  CHAPTER III

  The little town lay girdled by vineyards in a tributary valley of the Moselle. The heights above were crowned by woods. The vineyards were all in trim, with the vine-stocks set in straight lines interrupted at places by outcrops of reddish rock. Huguenau observed with disapproval that many of the owners had not weeded their plots, and that the neglected patches stood out like rectangular yellow islets among the reddish grey soil of the others.

  After the last days of winter in the Eifel highlands Huguenau had come down all at once into the real springtime. Like a promise of inalienable order and comfort the sun radiated gay well-being and light security into his heart. Any anxiety that might have lurked there could be thrown off. It was a satisfaction to him to see in the forefront of the town the stately District Hospital with its long façade lying in the morning shadow, he approved the fact that all its windows were open as if it were a southern sanatorium, and he found it pleasant to imagine the light spring airs blowing through the white wards. He approved, too, the large red cross marked on the roof of the hospital, and as he passed by he cast a benevolent glance at the soldiers in their grey hospital uniform, who were convalescing, some in shadow and some in the sun of the garden. Across the river lay the barracks, recognizable by its style of architecture, and a building resembling a monastery which he later discovered to be the prison. But the road sloped down towards the town in a friendly and comfortable manner, and as Huguenau passed through the mediæval town gate, a small fibre case in his hand just like the case of samples he used to carry, it did not even ruffle him that his entry reminded him strongly of similar entries into Württemberg towns which once upon a time—and how long ago it seemed—he had visited on his business rounds.

  The streets, too, were so old-fashioned that they reminded him of his compulsory day of rest in Nürnberg. Here in Kur-Trier the war of the Palatinate had not raged with such ruthlessness as in the other regions west of the Rhine. The old fifteenth- and sixteenth-century houses were still intact, and so was the Gothic Town Hall in the market-place, with its Renaissance outworks and the tower before which stood the old pillory. And Huguenau, who had visited many a lovely old town on his commercial rounds, but had remarked none of them, was seized by a novel emotion which he-could not have given a name to or traced to any known source, but which made him feel curiously at home in this town: if it had been described to him as an æsthetic emotion or as an emotion springing from a sense of freedom, he would have laughed incredulously, with the laughter of a man who has never had even an inkling of the beauty of the world, and he would have been right, in so far as nobody can determine whether it is freedom that opens the eyes of the soul to beauty, or beauty that gives the soul its vision of freedom, but yet he would have been wrong, for there was bound to be even in him a deeper human wisdom, a human longing for that freedom in which all the light of the world has its source and that finally creates the Sabbath that hallows life; and since this is so and cannot be otherwise, a gleam of the higher light may well have fallen on Huguenau in that very moment when he crawled out of the trench and shook himself free of human obligations, a gleam of that light which is freedom and which entered even into him and for the first time dedicated him to the Sabbath.

  Far removed from speculations of this nature, Huguenau engaged a room in the hotel in the market-place. As if to assure himself that he was still on holiday, he set out to have a jolly evening. The Moselle wine was not rationed and in spite of the war had retained its quality. Huguenau treated himself to three pannikins full and sat long over them. There were citizens all round at the various tables; Huguenau was an alien among them, and here and there hasty questioning glances were directed at him. They all had their business and their preoccupations, and he himself had nothing. None the less he was happy and contented. He was himself amazed: no employment and yet happy! so happy that he found pleasure in recapitulating to himself all the difficulties that would incontestably arise should a man like himself, a stranger without identification papers and without any connections in the town, attempt to set up business and obtain credit. It was extraordinarily funny to imagine the fix he would be in. Perhaps the wine was responsible. Huguenau, at any rate, as he climbed into bed with a somewhat addled head, did not feel like a worried commercial traveller, but like a merry and light-hearted tourist.

  CHAPTER IV

  When Gödicke, a bricklayer in the Landwehr, was unearthed from the ruins of his trench, his mouth, gaping as if for a scream, was filled with earth. His face was a blackish blue, and he had no discernible heart-beat. Had not the two ambulance men who found him made a bet about his survival he would simply have been re-buried immediately. That he was fated to see the sun again and the sunny world, he owed to the ten cigarettes which the winner of the bet was due to receive.

  He could not be said to have revived under artificial respiration, although both men toiled and sweated over him, but they carried him off and observed him closely, abusing him from time to time because he so obstinately refused to solve the riddle of his life, the riddle of his death; and they were tireless in shoving him under the doctors’ noses. So the object of their bet lay for four whole days in a field hospital without moving and with a blackened skin. Whether during this time a dim flicker of infinitesimal slumbering life be
gan to glimmer and was fanned with pain and anguish through the wreck of the body, or whether it was a faint and ecstatic pulsing on the verge of a great beyond, we do not know and Gödicke of the Landwehr could not have told.

  For it was only piecemeal, half a cigarette at a time, so to speak, that the life returned to his body, and this slow caution was both proper and natural, since what his crushed body demanded was the utmost immobility. For many long days Ludwig Gödicke must have fancied himself the child in swaddling-clothes that he had been forty years before, constricted by an incomprehensible restraint and feeling nothing save the restraint. And if he had been capable of it he might well have whimpered for his mother’s breast, and as a matter of fact he soon did begin to whimper. It was during the journey, and his whimpering was like the incessant mewling of a newly born child; nobody was willing to lie next to him, and one night another patient even threw something at him. That was during the time when everyone believed that he would have to die of hunger, since it was impossible for the doctors to find a way of introducing nourishment into him. That he went on living was inexplicable, and the Surgeon-Major’s opinion that his body had nourished itself on all the bruised blood under the skin was scarcely worth calling an opinion, let alone a theory. The lower part of his body in especial was terribly injured. He was laid in a cold pack, but whether that alleviated his sufferings at all could not be determined. But it was possible that he had ceased to suffer so much, for the whimpering gradually died away. Until a few days later it broke out again more strongly: it was now—or one may imagine that it was—as if Ludwig Gödicke were recovering his soul only in single fragments, and as if each fragment came to him on a wave of agony. It may be that that was so, even though it cannot be proved; it may be that the anguish of a soul that has been torn and pulverized into atoms and must join itself together again is greater than any other anguish, keener than the anguish of a brain that quivers under renewed spasms of cramp, keener than all the bodily suffering that accompanies the process.

  Thus Gödicke of the Landwehr lay in his bed on rubber air-cushions, and while it was impossible to nurse his battered body, while food was slowly injected in minute doses, his soul collected itself; to the bewilderment of Doctor Kühlenbeck, the Senior Medical Officer, to the bewilderment of Doctor Flurschütz, to the bewilderment of Sister Carla, his soul collected itself with agony around the core of his ego.

  CHAPTER V

  Huguenau woke up early. He was an energetic man. A decent bedroom; no garret such as he had had with the priest; a good bed. Huguenau scratched his leg. Then he tried to find his bearings.

  A hotel; the market-place; and the Town Hall was facing him.

  There were really many inducements for him to go back and take up the threads of his life again in the place where they had been dropped; there were many reasons why he should do his duty as a business man and pick up easy money as an agent for butter and textiles. Yet the very idea of casks of butter and sacks of coffee and bales of textiles was so repugnant to him that he was himself surprised,—and the repugnance was really a matter for surprise to a man who since his boyhood had thought and spoken of nothing but money and trading. And the thought of being on holiday from school came up again most amazingly. Huguenau found it pleasanter to meditate on the town he happened to be in.

  Behind the town were the vineyards. And in many of them were weeds. The owner had probably been killed in the war or was a prisoner. His wife could not manage the work alone, or was running round with another man. Besides, the price of wine was controlled by the State. Unless one could sell wine on the sly it wasn’t worth while to tend the vineyard. But the wines were of fine quality; they actually went a little to one’s head.

  A war widow like that would really be glad to sell her vineyard cheap.

  Huguenau began to think of possible buyers for stocks of Moselle. One should be able to find them. One could make a good bit of commission on the deal. Wine-shippers were the people. Friedrichs’ in Cologne, Matter & Co. in Frankfort. He had delivered pipes of wine to them before.

  He jumped out of bed. His plan was made.

  He tidied himself before the looking-glass. Combed his hair back. It had grown long since the company’s barber had shaved it. Now when had that been? It seemed to be in a former life; if it weren’t that hair grew slowly in winter he would have had a fine mane. When a man is dead his hair and nails go on growing. Huguenau took a strand of his hair and pulled it down over his forehead. It reached almost to the point of his nose. No, a man couldn’t go about in that state. One always had one’s hair cut just before a holiday. True, this wasn’t a holiday. But it wasn’t so very unlike one.

  The morning was bright. A little chilly.

  There were two yellow armchairs with black-leather seats in the barber’s shop. The barber himself, a shaky old man, tied the not-very-clean overall round Huguenau’s neck, and tucked a roll of paper into his collar. Huguenau moved his chin a little to and fro; the paper rasped him.

  There was a newspaper hanging on a hook and Huguenau asked for it. It was the local Kur-Trier Herald, with a supplement on “Farming and Viniculture in the Moselle District.” That was exactly what he needed.

  He sat motionless, studying the paper, and then he looked at himself in the glass; he could easily have passed for one of the more solid citizens in the place. His hair was now cut as he liked it, short, respectable, and German. On top of his head a few strands of longer hair were left to make a parting. The next thing was to be shaved.

  The barber whipped up a thin lather that spread cold and sparingly over Huguenau’s face. The soap was no good.

  “The soap’s not up to much,” said Huguenau. The barber made no reply, but stropped his razor. Huguenau was offended, but after a while said excusingly: “War goods.”

  The barber began to shave. With short, scraping strokes. He did it badly. Still, it was pleasant to be shaved. Shaving oneself was one of the conditions of war. Cheaper, too; but for once in a while it was pleasant to have it done for one. More like a holiday. There was a picture of a girl hanging on the wall with a lavish display of bosom, and beneath her were the words “Lotion Houbigant.” Huguenau had laid back his head and let the paper hang in his idle hands. The barber was now shaving his chin and throat; was he never going to finish? Well, Huguenau didn’t care; he had plenty of time. And to put off time a little longer he ordered a “Lotion Houbigant.” What he got was eau-de-Cologne.

  Freshly shaved, a clean-shaven spruce man with the scent of eau-de-Cologne in his nose, Huguenau walked back to the inn. When he took off his hat he sniffed at the lining. It smelt of pomade, and that too was satisfactory.

  There was no one in the dining-room. Huguenau got his coffee and the maid brought out a bread-card from which she snipped a portion. There was no butter, only a blackish syrupy kind of jam. Nor was the coffee real coffee, and while he sipped the hot liquid Huguenau reckoned up how much profit the manufacturers were making on their coffee-substitute; he reckoned it up without envy and approved it. In any case buying wine cheap in the Moselle district was just as profitable a venture, an excellent investment. And when he had finished his breakfast he set about drawing up an advertisement offering to buy wines of good quality. Then he took it along to the office of the Kur-Trier Herald.

  CHAPTER VI

  The District Hospital had become entirely a military hospital. Dr Friedrich Flurschütz was making his round of the wards. He was wearing a military cap with his doctor’s white overall; a combination which Lieutenant Jaretzki characterized as absurd.

  Jaretzki had been put into Officers’ Room III. That had been pure chance, for these double-bedded rooms were supposed to be reserved for Staff Officers, but once he was in he stayed there. He was sitting on the edge of his bed with a cigarette in his mouth when Flurschütz came in, and his arm in its unwrapped bandage was lying on the bedside table.

  “Well, how are we, Jaretzki?”

  Jaretzki indicated his arm:

&
nbsp; “The Surgeon-Major’s just been in.”

  Flurschütz looked at the arm and touched it cautiously here and there:

  “A bad business … gone a bit further?”

  “Yes, an inch or so … the old man wants to amputate.”

  The arm lay there inflamed and reddish, the palm of the hand swollen, the fingers like red sausages, and round the wrist a ring of purulent blisters.

  Jaretzki regarded his arm and said:

  “Poor thing, look at it lying there.”

  “Don’t worry about it, it’s only the left.”

  “Yes, all you want to do is to cut things off.”

  Flurschütz shrugged his shoulders:

  “Can’t be helped; this century has been devoted to surgery and rewarded by a world-war with guns … now we’re beginning to find out about glands, and by the time the next war comes along we’ll be able to do wonders with these damned gas-poisonings … but for the present the only thing we can do is cut.”

  Jaretzki said:

  “The next war? Don’t tell me you believe that this one’s ever going to come to an end.”

  “I don’t need to be a prophet to do that, Jaretzki, the Russians have given it up already.”