The Sleepwalkers

by Hermann Broch

  He went out without another word, leaving his visitor simply standing. Huguenau stared after the unmannerly lout, but was quite pleased; he could now examine things at his leisure. There was a pleasant effect of quietness and solidity. He took out his cigar-case, selected a cigar that was somewhat frayed, and offered it to the workman at the machine.

  The printer looked at him incredulously, for tobacco was rare and a cigar at the best of times an acceptable gift. He wiped his hands on his blue garment, took the cigar, and because he was at a loss for adequate words of thanks he said:

  “One doesn’t often see these.” “Yes,” replied Huguenau, “it’s a bad look-out for tobacco nowadays.” “It’s a bad look-out for everything,” asserted the printer. Huguenau pricked up his ears: “That’s just what your chief says.” “It’s what everybody says.” The answer was not quite what Huguenau would have liked. “Well, light up,” he ordered. The man bit off the end of the cigar with strong brownish teeth, somewhat as if he were cracking a nut, and lit up. His working blouse and his shirt were wide open, showing the white hair on his chest. Huguenau felt that he should get some return for the cigar; the man owed him something; so he encouraged him, saying: “A fine little machine.” “It’ll do,” was the laconic answer. Huguenau’s sympathies were with the machine, and he felt hurt by this grudging approval. And since he could think of no other way of breaking the silence, he asked: “What’s your name?” “Lindner.” Then silence settled definitely upon them, and Huguenau wondered if he shouldn’t go away,—but suddenly his finger was clasped again by a childish hand; Marguerite had run in noiselessly on her bare feet.

  “Tiens,” he said, “tu lui as échappé.”

  The child looked up incomprehendingly.

  “Oh, of course, you don’t speak French … tut, tut, you’ll have to learn it.”

  The child made a contemptuous gesture, the same gesture that Huguenau had already remarked as characteristic of Esch:

  “The one upstairs can speak French too.…”

  She said: the one upstairs.

  Huguenau was pleased and said in a low tone:

  “Don’t you like him?”

  The child’s face grew sullen and her lower lip protruded, but then she noticed that Lindner was smoking.

  “Herr Lindner’s smoking!”

  Huguenau laughed and opened his cigar-case.

  “Would you like one too?”

  She pushed the case away and answered slowly:

  “Give me some money.”

  “What! It’s money you want, is it? What do you want money for?”

  Lindner said:

  “They begin young nowadays.”

  Huguenau had drawn out a chair for himself; he sat down and took Marguerite between his knees:

  “I need money myself, you know.”

  “Give me some money.”

  “I’ll give you some sweets.”

  She was silent.

  “What do you want money for?”

  And although Huguenau knew that “money” was a very important word, and although he could not get it out of his head, yet he was suddenly incapable of seeing any meaning in it, and had to ask himself with an effort:

  “What does anybody want money for?”

  Marguerite had braced her arms on his knees and stood very rigid. Lindner growled:

  “Oh, send her away,” and to Marguerite, “out you get, the printing-room is no place for children.”

  Marguerite gave him an angry side-glance. She clutched Huguenau’s finger again and began to pull him to the door.

  “More haste, less speed,” said Huguenau, rising up. “It’s quietly that does it, eh, Herr Lindner?”

  Lindner was polishing his machine again without a word to spare, and all at once Huguenau felt that there was some vague kinship between the child and the machine, almost as if they were sisters. And as if his assurance might comfort the machine he said quickly to the child before he reached the door:

  “I’ll give you twenty pfennigs.”

  When she thrust out her hand he was again aware of that curious doubt about the value of money, and cautiously, as if the affair were a mystery that concerned only the two of them and must not be overheard by anyone, not even the machine, he pulled the child close to him and whispered in her ear:

  “What do you want the money for?”

  The little one said:

  “Give it to me.”

  But as Huguenau still delayed, she drew down reflective brows. Then she said: “I’ll tell you,” escaped from his arm and pulled him out through the door.

  It had grown really cold by the time they were out in the courtyard. Huguenau would gladly have carried in his arms the little girl whose warmth he had so lately felt; it was not right of Esch to let a child run round barefooted at this time of the year. He was a little embarrassed, and polished his eyeglasses. Only when the child again thrust out her hand and said “Give it to me,” did he remember about the twenty pfennigs. But he forgot to ask again what she wanted them for, opened his purse and extracted the two coins. Marguerite grabbed them and ran off, and Huguenau, left alone, could think of nothing else to do but to run his eye once more over the yard and the buildings. Then he too departed.

  CHAPTER XV

  As soon as Ludwig Gödicke of the Landwehr had gathered the most essential parts of his soul round his ego, he discontinued the painful struggle. It could be argued that all his life Gödicke had been a primitive kind of creature, and that a further struggle on his part would not have availed to increase the dimensions of his soul, since not even in the most dramatic moments of his life had there been many elements at the disposal of his ego. But that Gödicke was ever a primitive creature is a mere assertion that cannot be proved—and this alone invalidates the objection—nor could his new personality have been described as primitive; least of all, however, can one assume that the soul of a primitive and the world he sees are meagre and, so to speak, rough-hewn. One has only to remember how much more complicated is the structure of a primitive language than that of civilized peoples, in order to see that such an assumption is nonsensical. It is impossible to determine, therefore, whether Gödicke’s choice among the elements of his soul was comprehensive or not, how many he admitted into his new personality, and how many he excluded; all that can be said is that Gödicke went about with the feeling of having lost something that formerly belonged to him, something that was not absolutely essential to his new life, but something nevertheless that he missed and yet dared not find again lest it should kill him.

  And that there really was something missing was easily discernible from the economy of his utterances. He could walk, although with difficulty, could eat, although without appetite, and his very digestion, like everything connected with the crushed lower part of his body, gave him severe trouble. Perhaps his difficulty in speaking was in the same category, for it often seemed to him that the same oppression lay on his breast as on his bowels, that the iron rings constricting his belly were also bound round his chest and hindered him from speaking. Yet his incapacity to bring out even the shortest of words certainly sprang from that very economy with which he had composed his ego, and that provided for only the minimum of activity, so that any further demand upon it, let it be only the breath required for a single word, would have meant an irreplaceable loss.

  So he hobbled about the garden on two sticks, his brown beard down on his chest, and his brown eyes above the deeply pitted hairy furrows on his cheeks gazing into vacancy; he wore the hospital overall or his soldier’s cloak according as the Sister laid out one or the other for him, and he was certainly unaware that he was in a hospital or living in a town the name of which he did not know. Ludwig Gödicke the bricklayer had, so to speak, built a scaffolding for the house of his soul, and as he hobbled about on his sticks he felt himself to be merely a scaffolding with supports and stresses on all sides; meanwhile he could not decide, or rather, it was a sheer impossibility for him, to assemble the tiles a
nd bricks for the house itself, and all that he did, or more precisely all that he thought—for he did nothing—was concerned with the mere scaffolding, with the elaboration of that scaffolding and all its ladders and gangways, a scaffolding that grew more perplexing daily and needed careful underpinning: a scaffolding that existed in itself and by itself, though none the less its purpose was a real purpose, since invisibly in the centre of the scaffolding, and yet also in every single supporting beam, the ego of Ludwig Gödicke was precariously suspended and had to be preserved from dizziness.

  Dr Flurschütz often thought of handing the man over to a mental hospital. But the Senior Medical Officer, Surgeon-Major Dr Kühlenbeck, was of the opinion that the patient’s state of shock was merely the result of his experiences, and not organic, and so would pass off in the course of time. And since he was a quiet patient, easy to deal with, they agreed to keep him until he had completely recuperated from his bodily injuries.

  CHAPTER XVI

  STORY OF THE SALVATION ARMY GIRL IN BERLIN (2)

  There’s much that can’t be said except in verse,

  despite the sneers of men who stick to prose;

  the bonds of verse are less tight-drawn than those

  of logic; song is fitter for a curse

  or a lament, when day like a dark hearse

  out-glooms the night, summoning ghostly woes,

  and in a hymn the sad heart overflows,

  even at a loud Salvation Army Meeting,

  nor smiles when drums and tambourines are beating.—

  Marie walked Berlin streets like a bold jade

  and haunted drinking-dens in her poke-bonnet;

  her girlhood was in flower, and yet upon it

  the ugly uniform like a blight was laid;

  her singing, when she sang before the Lord,

  was a thin, empty piping—yet it soared.

  Salvation Army Homes were Marie’s setting,

  where corridors were grey and reeked of stoves

  burning foul coal, and old men sat in droves

  with stinking breath and dirty feet a-sweating,

  where even in summer chills played on one’s back

  and yellow soap stank strong from every crack.

  Here was her dwelling-place, within that gate,

  here in a brown deal alcove stood her bed

  with a brown crucifix set at its head,

  and here she knelt and thanked God for her fate,

  waiting with rapt eyes for His heavenly grace,

  and here she slept, and glory filled the place.

  But she must rise at dawn and wash her face

  with ice-cold water—hot water is forbidden

  in such a house—while yet the sun is hidden,

  while the expectant air is still and grey,

  and sometimes heavy, as if the sky were chidden,

  or a tarpaulin blotted out the day,

  and that’s an hour when one may be hag-ridden,

  when hope may fail; for in the lonely dawn

  how can one think that day will bring a friend?

  or that the precious yesterday that’s gone

  will be affirmed again before day end?

  Marie has no misgivings; she must fend

  for all her charges; she puts coffee on,

  she sweeps and scours; then, at the window dreaming,

  she sees the grace of God on all things gleaming.

  CHAPTER XVII

  It was very seldom that Hanna Wendling went into the town. She hated the way there, not only the dusty main road, which would have been quite understandable, but the path along the river as well. Yet the path took barely twenty-five minutes, and the main road only a quarter of an hour. She had always had a deep dislike for the road into the town, even at the time when she was still daily calling for Heinrich at the office. Later there had been the car, but only for a few months, for then the war broke out. To-day it was Dr Kessel who had taken her to the town with him in his buggy.

  She made some purchases. Her new frock reached only as far as her ankles, and she felt as if people were staring at her feet. She had an intuitive feeling for fashions, and had always had it; she anticipated a coming fashion somewhat as certain people know that they will awaken at a certain time without having to look at the clock. Fashion journals for her had always been merely a belated corroboration. And the fact that people were staring at her feet now was also a sort of corroboration. There are of course lots of people who are able to waken to the minute, and many women with an intuitive feeling for the immanent logic of fashion, yet the man or woman who possesses a gift of this kind generally regards himself or herself as unique. So Hanna Wendling was feeling a little proud of herself now, and even if she had only a vague inkling that her pride was unjustified, yet a slight feeling of guilt assailed her when she saw the haggard women standing in queues before the bakers’ shops. But when she reflected that any woman with the smallest sense of fashion could quite well shorten her skirt, for it could be done practically without expense—the housemaid had fixed hers up in an hour in spite of the new edging—then her pride did not seem unjustified after all, and as pride puts one in a good humour Hanna Wendling was not irritated by the greengrocer’s dirty finger-nails, nor by the flies buzzing round his shop, and for the moment even the fact that her shoes were covered with dust scarcely troubled her. As she strolled through the streets, stopping now at one shop window, now at another, she had incontestably that virginal or nun-like appearance—it was often to be remarked during the war—that is to be seen in women who have been parted from their husbands for a long time and have remained faithful to them. Yet simply because Hanna Wendling felt a little proud at the moment, her face had opened out, and that indefinable soft veil which can fall over such women’s faces like a stealthy premonition of approaching age was drawn aside by some invisible hand. Her face was like the first spring day after a long and severe winter.

  Dr Kessel, who had to make several visits to patients in the town and thereafter to drive out to the hospital, had promised to set her down again at her door; she had arranged to meet him at the chemist’s. When she reached it the buggy was already standing before the door, and Dr Kessel was chatting with Paulsen the chemist. Hanna Wendling had no need to be told what to think of Paulsen; indeed, she probably possessed the knowledge, extending far beyond his particular case, that all men who know that they are betrayed by their wives are wont to display a conspicuous and curiously empty gallantry towards other women; and yet she felt flattered when he rushed up to her with the words: “What a charming visit! Like a fresh spring day.” For ruthlessly as Hanna Wendling was accustomed to avoid and cut people in general, to-day, because she felt free and unconstrained she was susceptible even to the empty compliments of the chemist,—it was an oscillation from one extreme to the other, a vacillation between complete reserve and complete lack of it, an immoderation of bearing such as often appears in cramped natures and is not in the least the immoderation of the Renaissance popes, but simply the instability and insignificance of an ordinary bourgeois who lacks a sense of values. At least it may be asserted that it was the lack of a sense of values which now made Hanna Wendling, as she sat on the red plush-covered settle in the shop, shower dazzling and friendly glances on the chemist, and supply his lyrical phrases with a content in which she at once believed and did not believe. Indeed she felt quite cross with Dr Kessel, whose duty called him back to the hospital, when he was forced to suggest that they should leave, and when she sat beside him in the buggy the veil was once more drawn over her face.

  She was monosyllabic on the way, monosyllabic at home. Once more she could not comprehend why she had refused so absolutely to return to her father’s house in Frankfort for the duration of the war. The objection that food was easier to procure in the little town, that she could not leave the house standing empty, that the air here would be better for the boy; these were subterfuges which merely served to cloak the curious state of estrangement i
nto which she had fallen, and to which she could not shut her eyes. She was shy of people, she had said so to Dr Kessel; “Shy of people,” she repeated the words, and as she uttered them it was as though she were putting the responsibility for her shyness on Heinrich, just as she had blamed him when the brass pan in the kitchen had to be given up to be melted down for the war. Even with regard to the boy she was not immune from this mysterious feeling of estrangement. When she woke up in the night she found it difficult to realize that he was sleeping in the next room, and that he was her son. And when she struck a few chords on the piano, it was no longer her hands that did it, but unfeeling fingers which had become strange to her, and she knew that she was losing even her music. Hanna Wendling went to the bathroom to wash away her morning in the town. Then she contemplated herself carefully in the mirror, looking to see whether the face there was still hers. She found it, but she found it curiously veiled, and although she was in reality pleased by this, nevertheless she blamed Heinrich for it.

  Moreover she often discovered now that his name did not come to her at once, and then even to herself she called him by the same name that she employed before the servants: Dr Wendling.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  STORY OF THE SALVATION ARMY GIRL IN BERLIN (3)

  I had lost sight of Marie, the Salvation Army girl, for some weeks. Berlin at that time resembled—well, what did it resemble? the days were hot; the asphalt soft, even gaping in places, for nothing was repaired; women were everywhere in charge as conductresses and the like; the trees in the streets wilted in the very spring-time, looking like children with old men’s faces, and whenever the wind blew, dust and scraps of paper went whirling; Berlin had grown more countrified, more natural, as it were, and yet that made it all the more unnatural, as if it were an imitation of itself. In the house where I lodged there were two rooms occupied by Jewish refugees from the neighbourhood of Lodz, whose number and relationship to each other I was never able to make out; there were old men in Russian boots and ritual curls, and one that I happened to meet had buckled shoes and white stockings to the knee under his caftan, in the fashion of the eighteenth century; there were men who merely wore their coats rather long to suggest the caftan, and young men of remarkably mild appearance with woolly blond beards growing like false theatrical beards. Now and then a man in service grey uniform turned up, and even his uniform had a hint of the caftan about it. And sometimes there came a man of indefinite age, in ordinary town clothes, and his brown beard was shaven to a square fringe like Oom Paul Kruger’s, and left unshorn only at the temples. He always had a stick with an old-fashioned crook handle, and a pince-nez on a black cord. I took him at once for a doctor. Of course there were women too, and children, matrons with false fronts, and young girls dressed, curiously enough, in the height of fashion.