The Sleepwalkers

by Hermann Broch

  In time I picked up a few words of the Yiddish German they spoke. But I never, of course, really understood it. Still, they seemed to think that inconceivable, for whenever I drew near they broke off the guttural gibberish that came so queerly from the mouths of such dignified ancients, and regarded me with sidelong shyness. In the evenings they mostly sat together in their unlighted rooms, and when in the mornings I came into the hall that was always crammed with garments of all kinds, in the middle of which the maid brushed shoes, I often used to find one of the older men standing at the window. He had his phylacteries bound on brow and wrists, he swayed his torso in time to the shoe-brush, and from time to time kissing the fringes of his cloak, recited at passionate speed with his faded lips faded, passionate prayers out of the window. Perhaps because the window faced east.

  I was so fascinated by the Jews that I spent many hours daily quietly observing them. In the hall there hung two chromolithographs of rococo scenes, and I could not help wondering if the Jews could really see these pictures and many other things with the same eyes as ours, and read the same meaning into them. And obsessed by such preoccupations I completely forgot Marie of the Salvation Army, although in some way I felt that she was not unconnected with them.

  CHAPTER XIX

  Lieutenant Jaretzki’s arm had been amputated. Above the elbow. When Kühlenbeck did a thing he did it thoroughly. What was left of Jaretzki sat in the hospital garden beside the shrubbery, regarding the blossoming apple-tree.

  A round of inspection by the Town Commandant.

  Jaretzki rose to his feet, felt for his diseased hand, felt nothing but emptiness. Then he stood to attention.

  “Good-morning, Herr Lieutenant: well on the road to recovery, I see?”

  “Yes, sir, but there’s a good bit of me missing.”

  It almost seemed that Major von Pasenow felt himself responsible for Jaretzki’s arm as he said:

  “It’s a terrible war … won’t you sit down again, Herr Lieutenant?”

  “Thank you, Herr Major.”

  The Major said:

  “Where were you wounded?”

  “I wasn’t wounded, sir … gas.”

  The Major glanced at the stump of Jaretzki’s arm:

  “I don’t understand … I thought gas suffocated a man.…”

  “It can do this kind of thing too, sir.”

  The Major thought it over for a while. Then he said:

  “An unchivalrous weapon.”

  “Quite so, sir.”

  Both of them remembered that Germany too was employing that unchivalrous weapon. But they did not mention it.

  The Major said:

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-eight, sir.”

  “When the war began there wasn’t any gas.”

  “No, sir, I believe not.”

  The sun illumined the long yellow wall of the hospital. A few white clouds hung in the blue sky. The gravel of the garden-path was firmly embedded in the black earth, and at the edge of the lawn crawled an earthworm. The apple-tree was like an enormous nosegay.

  The Senior Medical Officer in his white overall came out of the house towards them.

  The Major said:

  “I hope you’ll be all right soon.”

  “Thank you very much, sir,” said Jaretzki.

  CHAPTER XX

  DISINTEGRATION OF VALUES (2)

  The horror of this age is perhaps most palpable in the effect that its architecture has on one; I always come home exhausted and depressed after a walk through the streets. I do not even need to look at the house-fronts; they distress me without my raising my eyes to them. Sometimes I fly for consolation to the so highly commended “modern” buildings, but—and here I’m certainly at fault—the warehouse designed by Messel, who is none the less a great architect, strikes me only as a comic kind of Gothic, and it is a comic effect that irritates and depresses me. It depresses me so much that looking at buildings in the classical style scarcely suffices to restore me. And yet I admire the noble clarity of Schinkel’s architecture.

  I am convinced that no former age ever received its architectural expressions with dislike and repugnance; that has been reserved for ours. Right up to the development of classicism building was a natural function. It is possible that people never even noticed new buildings, much as one scarcely notices a newly planted tree, but if a man’s eye did light upon them he saw that they were good and natural; that was how Goethe still saw the buildings of his time.

  I am not an æsthete, and unquestionably never was one, although I may unwittingly have given that impression, and I am just as little addicted to the sentimentality that yearns for the past, transfiguring dead-and-gone epochs. No, behind all my repugnance and weariness there is a very positive conviction, the conviction that nothing is of more importance to any epoch than its style. There is no epoch in the history of all the human race that divulges its character except in its style, and above all in the style of its buildings; indeed no epoch deserves the name except in so far as it possesses a style.

  It may be objected that my weariness and irritation are the results of my under-nourishment. It may be pointed out that this age has its own very suggestive machine-and-cannon-and-concrete style, and that some generations must pass before it will be recognized. Well, every age has some stylistic claim; even the experimental ages in spite of their eclecticism had a kind of style. And I am even willing to admit that in our day technique has simply outrun creative effort, that we have not yet wrested from our new material its adequate forms of expression, and that all the disquieting lack of proportion arises from imperfectly mastered purpose. On the other hand, no one can deny that the new kind of building, whether because its material is recalcitrant or its builders incapable, has lost something, has even quite deliberately abandoned something that it could not help abandoning, the lack of which distinguishes it fundamentally from all previous styles: the characteristic use of ornament. Of course that renunciation can be praised as a virtue, on the assumption that we are the first to discover principles of structural economy that enable us to dispense with ornamental excrescences. But is not that term “structural economy” merely a modern catchword? Can it be maintained that the Gothic or any other style was not built with structural economy? To regard ornament as merely an excrescence is to mistake the inner logic of structure. Style in architecture is logic, a logic that governs the whole building from the plan of its foundation to its skyline, and within that logical system the ornament is only the last, the most differentiated expression on a small scale of the unified and unifying conception of the whole. Whether it is an inability to use ornament or a renunciation of it makes no difference; the result is that the architectural structures of this age are sharply distinguished from all previous styles.

  But what does it avail to recognize this? Ornament can neither be fashioned by eclecticism nor artificially invented without falling into the comic absurdities of a Van der Velde. We are left with a profound disquiet and the knowledge that this style of building, which is no longer a style, is merely a symptom, a writing on the wall proclaiming a state of the soul which must be the non-soul of our non-age. Simply to look at it makes me tired. If I could, I would never leave my house again.

  CHAPTER XXI

  Apart from the fact that the food at the hotel was expensive and that Huguenau was unwilling to allow himself such a luxury until he had established himself in a new position, he had the distinct feeling that it might endanger his impending transactions if the Major saw too much of him. Further discussions would only spoil the effect he had made and gain nothing, and it seemed more advantageous that the Major should forget about him until they met again on Friday. So Huguenau took his meals in a humbler establishment, and appeared in the dining-hall again only on the Friday evening.

  He had not reckoned in vain. There sat the Major, and he looked completely surprised when Huguenau approached him briskly and cordially and thanked him anew for his very friendly
and flattering invitation. “Oh yes,” said the Major, who now remembered at last. “Oh yes. I’ll introduce you to the gentlemen.”

  Huguenau once more thanked him and sat down modestly at another table. But when the Major had finished his supper and looked up, Huguenau smiled over at him and rose slightly, to show that he was at the Major’s disposal. Thereupon they went together into the little adjoining room, where was held the Friday gathering of the gentlemen of the town.

  The gentlemen were present in full force, even the burgomaster himself was there. Huguenau was quite unable to catch all their names. As soon as he entered he had a feeling of being greeted with warm sympathy, and a premonition of complete success. This feeling did not deceive him. The majority of the company already knew of his presence in the town and the hotel; obviously he had become a theme for speculation, and they now evinced the warmest interest in his proposals, as he later informed Esch. The evening ended with unexpectedly positive results.

  That was indeed nothing to be surprised at. The company had the impression that they were taking part in a secret conventicle, which was moreover at the same time a sort of summary court held on the rebel Esch. And if Huguenau got such an exceptionally gracious hearing from his listeners, that was not merely because of his intense desire to win it, nor because of his somnambulistic sureness, but also because he was not in the least a rebel, being rather a man fending for himself and his own interests, and speaking consequently a language which the others understood.

  Huguenau could with ease have got the gentlemen to the point of subscribing the 20,000 marks demanded by Esch. But he did not do so. A secret fear admonished him that everything must remain tentative and no more than just plausible, because real security always hovers beyond or above the actual, and any too great solidity is dangerous and like an inexplicable oppression. This may appear meaningless, yet as every absurdity admits of some shred of reasonable explanation, so Huguenau’s explanation here was perfectly reasonable and led strangely enough to the same conclusion: it was that if he demanded or accepted too much money from these people, one of them might be struck with the idea of inquiring into his credentials; but if he was standoffish and declined large subscriptions, retaining for his own legendary group the greater share of the invested capital, then they could not doubt that they beheld in him the genuine representative of the most highly capitalized industrial group in the Empire (Krupp’s). And indeed no one doubted this, and in the end Huguenau himself finished by believing it. He declared that he was not in a position to offer his esteemed friends a greater share of the proposed 20,000 marks than a third—in other words 6600 marks in all; nevertheless he was prepared to enter into negotiations again with his group to find out whether instead of the two-thirds majority they would be content with a simple one of 51 per cent., and he would be glad also to accept suggestions in advance for later capital expansion; for the moment, however, the gentlemen must content themselves with the small sum mentioned.

  The gentlemen were naturally disappointed, but there was no help for it. It was agreed that they should receive interim share certificates in return for their payments as soon as Huguenau had completed the purchase of the Kur-Trier Herald, and that after further sounding of the central group the consolidated undertaking would be established as a limited liability company or perhaps even as a syndicate. The prospective shareholders dreamed of future meetings of directors, and the evening closed with cheers for the allied armies and His Majesty the Kaiser.

  CHAPTER XXII

  When Huguenau awoke he put his hand under the pillow; there he was accustomed to keep his pocket-book for safety of nights. He had a pleasant sense of owning 20,000 marks, and although he knew that his pocket-book did not contain even the 6600 marks which he would receive from the local gentlemen only when the purchase of the Herald was completed, but that all that was left in it was a balance of 185 marks, yet he stuck to it that he had 20,000. He possessed 20,000 marks, and that settled the matter.

  Against his usual custom he remained lying in bed for a little. If he had 20,000 marks it would be a piece of madness to give them to Esch, simply because the man asked so much for his measly rag. Every price allowed for give-and-take, and he would be able to beat Esch down a bit, Esch could depend on that. At 14,000 marks the paper would still be too dear, and that left a private profit of 6000. The matter had merely to be cleverly managed, so that nobody might know that Esch was not getting his full 20,000. One could put it down as capital reserve, or give out that the industrial group were content with a bare majority instead of the decisive two-thirds preponderance, or something like that. Something was certain to occur to him! and Huguenau leapt cheerfully out of bed.

  When he appeared at the office of the Herald it was still quite early. And he fell upon the dumbfounded Herr Esch with the most violent reproaches for having let his paper fall so low. It was shocking, the things that he, Wilhelm Huguenau, who after all was not in the least responsible for Herr Esch, had had to listen to about the paper during those last two days. As a middleman, of course, that might have left him quite indifferent, but it broke one’s heart, yes, it was heart-breaking to look on and see a good business wantonly being ruined; a newspaper lived by its reputation, and when its reputation was bankrupt, then it was itself bankrupt too. As things stood, it seemed that Herr Esch had managed things so that the Kur-Trier Herald was now a wretched unsaleable proposition. “You must see yourself, my dear Esch, that you should actually pay something to anyone who’ll take over the paper, instead of demanding money from him.”

  Esch listened with a woebegone face; then he grimaced contemptuously. But Huguenau was not to be put out of countenance by that: “It’s not a smiling matter, my dear friend, it’s deadly serious, apparently far more serious than you think.” The idea of making a profit was out of the question, and if one nevertheless did not give up all hope of that, it would be made possible only with the help of tremendous sacrifices, yes sacrifices, my dear Esch. If among his friends, as he hoped and believed, there were some self-sacrificing men prepared to take up this quite senseless, because idealistic scheme, then Herr Esch could simply call it luck, a piece of luck such as one did not encounter more than once in a lifetime; for thanks to singularly favourable circumstances, and his own very efficient abilities as a negotiator, he might eventually get together in spite of everything a round sum of 10,000 marks for Esch, and if Esch didn’t snatch at that, then he was only sorry that he had thrown away his time on Esch’s affairs, which didn’t concern him in the least, no, not in the very least.

  “Then leave them alone!” shouted Esch, striking the table with his fist.

  “Pardon me, of course I can leave them alone … but I don’t quite see why you should jump into a rage when a man doesn’t accept straight off your fantastic ideas of what the paper’s worth.”

  “I haven’t made any fantastic demands.… The paper’s a bargain at twenty thousand.”

  “Well, but don’t you see that I actually accept your valuation? For you’ll admit that the buyer will have to spend a further ten thousand at least in getting the paper on its legs again … and thirty thousand would really be exorbitant, don’t you agree?”

  Esch became thoughtful. Huguenau felt that he was on the right lines:

  “Now, I see that you’re going to be reasonable … I don’t want to press you, of course.… You should just sleep on it.…”

  Esch paced up and down the room. Then he said:

  “I would like to talk it over with my wife.”

  “Do that by all means … only don’t be too long in considering it … money talks, my dear Herr Esch, but it doesn’t wait.”

  He got up:

  “I’ll call on you again to-morrow … and meanwhile please give my respects to your good lady.”

  CHAPTER XXIII

  Dr Flurschütz and Lieutenant Jaretzki were walking from the hospital towards the town. The road was pitted with holes made by the motor-lorries, which ran on iron tyres no
w, for there was no rubber left.

  A closed-down roofing-asphalt factory stretched thin black-zinc pipes up into the still air. Birds twittered in the woods.

  Jaretzki’s sleeve was fastened by a safety-pin to the pocket of his army tunic.

  “Extraordinary,” said Jaretzki, “since I’ve got rid of my left arm, the right one hangs down from my shoulder like a weight. I almost feel as if I would like it amputated too.”

  “You’re a symmetrical fellow, it seems … engineers have a feeling for symmetry.”

  “Do you know, Flurschütz, sometimes I forget altogether that I ever was an engineer.… You won’t understand that, for you’ve stuck to your profession.”

  “No, one can hardly say that … I was really more of a biologist than a doctor.”

  “I’ve sent off an application to the General Electric, there’s a shortage of skilled workers everywhere now of course … but I simply can’t picture myself sitting at a drawing-board again … what do you really think, how many have been killed altogether?”