The Sleepwalkers

by Hermann Broch

  “Can’t say, five millions, ten millions … perhaps twenty before it comes to an end.”

  “I’m quite convinced that it can never come to an end … it will go on like this for all eternity.”

  Dr Flurschütz stopped:

  “Look here, Jaretzki, can you understand how we can be walking about so peacefully here, how life itself can run on so quietly here, while only a few miles away they’re blazing away merrily at each other?”

  “Well, there’s lots of things I don’t understand … besides we’ve both done our bit out there.…”

  Dr Flurschütz mechanically felt under the peak of his cap for his bullet scar:

  “That wasn’t what I meant … that was at the start, when one rushed into it because one felt ashamed to be left … but now one should by rights be going off one’s head.”

  “It hasn’t come to that yet … no, thanks, better to drink oneself blind.…”

  “Well, you follow the prescription rather thoroughly.”

  The wind carried a smell of tar to them from the closed-down factory.

  Thin and bent, with his fair pointed beard and his eyeglasses, Dr Flurschütz looked somewhat awkward in his uniform. They were silent for a while.

  The road descended. The scattered bungalows that had sprung up outside the town gates during recent years presently drew together in a continuous line; they looked very peaceful. In all the front gardens wretched-looking vegetables were growing.

  Jaretzki said:

  “Not very pleasant to live all the year round in this smell of tar.”

  Flurschütz replied:

  “I was in Roumania and Poland. And do you know … everywhere the houses had just the same peaceful look … with the same trade signs as here, master-builder, locksmith, and so forth … in a dug-out near Armentières I once saw a shop sign, it was one of the roof props, ‘Tailleur pour Dames’ … perhaps it’s silly, but the complete madness of the whole war really only dawned on me then for the first time.”

  Jaretzki said:

  “With my one arm I suppose I could get myself taken on for some job in the army as an engineer.”

  “You would like that better than the General Electric?”

  “No, I’m past liking anything better … perhaps I’ll just report for service again with my remaining arm … for throwing hand-grenades one arm would be enough … lend me a hand to get this cigarette lit.”

  “What have you been drinking to-day, Jaretzki?”

  “Me? nothing worth speaking of, I’ve kept sober for the sake of the wine I’m presently going to introduce you to.”

  “Well, how about the General Electric?”

  Jaretzki laughed:

  “To be quite honest, merely a sentimental attempt to get back into civilian life, with a career to look forward to, no more of this drifting about, perhaps get married … but you believe as little in that as I do.”

  “Why on earth shouldn’t I believe in it?”

  Jaretzki punctuated his reply with his cigarette:

  “ Because … the … war … can … never … come … to … an …

  end … how often must I tell you that?”

  “That too would be a solution,” said Flurschütz.

  “It is the only solution.”

  They had reached the town gate.… Jaretzki put up his foot on the curbstone, drew his handkerchief out of his pocket, and, his cigarette aslant in his mouth, flicked the dust of the road from his shoes. Then he stroked his dark moustache smooth, and passing through the cool arch of the gate they stepped into the still and narrow street.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  DISINTEGRATION OF VALUES (3)

  The primacy of architectural style among the things that characterize an epoch is a very curious phenomenon. But, in general, so is the uniquely privileged position that plastic art has maintained in history. It is after all only a very small excerpt from the totality of human activities with which an age is filled, and certainly not even a particularly spiritual excerpt, and yet in power of characterization it surpasses every other province of the spirit, surpasses poetry, surpasses even science, surpasses even religion. The thing that endures through thousands of years is the work of plastic art; it remains the exponent of the age and its style.

  This cannot be due merely to the durability of the material employed; the bulk of the printed paper from the last few centuries has survived, and yet any Gothic statue is more “medieval” than the whole of medieval literature. No, that would be a very inadequate explanation,—if there should be one, it must be found in the intrinsic nature of the concept of style itself.

  For certainly style is not a thing confined to architectural and plastic art merely; style is something which uniformly permeates all the living expressions of an epoch. It would be against all reason to regard the artist as an exception among mankind, as a man leading a sort of peculiar existence within the style which he himself produces, while the others remain excluded.

  No, if there is such a thing as style, then all human manifestations are penetrated by it, so that the style of a period is as indubitably present in its thought as in every other human activity of the period. And only by starting from this fact, which must be so, because it is impossible that it should be otherwise, can we find an explanation for the remarkable fact that precisely those activities which manifest themselves in spatial terms have become of such extraordinary and in the real sense of the word visible significance.

  Perhaps it would be idle to consider this too curiously if behind it there did not stand the problem which alone justifies all philosophizing: our dread of nothingness, our dread of Time, which conducts us to death. And perhaps all the disquietude which bad architecture evokes, causing me to hide in my house, is nothing else than that dread. For whatever a man may do, he does it in order to annihilate Time, in order to revoke it, and that revocation is called Space. Even music, which exists only in time and fills time, transmutes time into space, and it is in the utmost degree probable that all thought takes place in a spatial world, that the process of thought represents a combination of indescribably complicated many-dimensional logically extended spaces. But if that be so, then it also becomes clear why all those activities which are immediately related to space achieve a significance and an obviousness that can never be achieved by any other human activity. And in this also can be seen the peculiar symptomatic significance of ornament. For ornament, detached from all purposive activity, although produced by it, becomes the abstract expression, the “formula” of the whole complex of spatial thought, becomes the formula of style itself, and with that the formula of the entire epoch and its life.

  And in this, it seems to me, lies the significance, a significance that I might almost call magical, of the fact that an epoch which is completely under the dominion of death and hell must live in a style that can no longer give birth to ornament.

  CHAPTER XXV

  Had it not been for the prospect of building the new house they were to live in, Hanna Wendling might perhaps never have become engaged to the young provincial advocate. But in 1910 all young girls in the better-class bourgeois families read The Studio, Interior Decoration, German Art and Decoration, and owned a work called English Period Furniture, and their erotic preconceptions of marriage were in the most intimate manner bound up with problems of architectonics. The Wendlings’ house, or “Rose Cottage,” for such the quaint lettering on its gable designated it, conformed in a modest degree to these ideals; it had a deep roof with low eaves; majolica cherubs at either side of the front door displayed symbols of love and fertility; there was an English hall with a rough tiled stove, and a chimneypiece with brass knick-knacks standing on it. It had given her a great deal of labour and pleasure to find for every piece of furniture its appropriate position, so that a general architectonical equilibrium might be inaugurated; and when all was finished Hanna Wendling had the feeling that she and she alone was aware of the perfection of that equilibrium, even though Heinrich too h
ad a share in the knowledge, even though a great part of their married happiness consisted in this mutual awareness of the secret harmony and counterpoint exemplified in the arrangement of the furniture and pictures.

  Now the furniture had not been moved since that time, on the contrary, strict care had been taken not to alter the original arrangement by an inch; and yet it had become different: what had happened? can equilibrium suffer depreciation, can harmony become threadbare? In the beginning she was not conscious that apathy was at the back of this,—her positive emotion simply relapsed into neutrality, and only when it transformed itself into a negative condition did it become perceptible: it was not that the house or the arrangement of the furniture had now become repellent to her, for that might have been got over at a pinch by changing the disposition of the furniture; no, it was something that went deeper; the curse of the fortuitous and the accidental had spread itself over things and the relations between things, and one could not think out any arrangement that would not be just as fortuitous and arbitrary as the existing one. In all this there lay doubtless a certain confusion, a certain darkness, indeed almost a danger, particularly as there seemed no reason why this insecurity in architectonics should stop at other matters of sentiment, even for instance at questions of fashion: this thought was particularly alarming, and although Hanna Wendling knew very well that there were far more important and difficult problems, yet perhaps nothing was more alarming to her than the thought that even the fashion journals might lose their attraction for her, and that one day she might regard without delight, without interest, without comprehension, the English journal Vogue itself, which she had missed so sorely during these four years of the war.

  When she caught herself indulging in those thoughts she told herself that they were fantastic, although in fact they were far more essentially sober than fantastic, filled with a kind of disenchantment which was only fantastic in so far as no intoxication had preceded it, rather indeed a subsequent and additional disenchantment supervening on a state that was already sober and almost normal, so that in a sense it became still more normal and landed in negation. Such evaluations must always of course be relative in a certain degree; the border-line between sobriety and intoxication cannot always be established, and whether for instance the Russian love for humanity should be regarded as an intoxication, or whether it is to be taken as a standard for normal social relations, indeed whether the whole panorama of existence is to be regarded as drunk or sober; all these questions in the final resort are not to be resolved. Nevertheless it is not impossible that sobriety implies an ultimate state of entropy or an absolute zero, an absolute zero towards which all movement perpetually and of necessity strives. And there were many indications that Hanna Wendling was moving in this direction, and in essentials perhaps she was simply as usual anticipating a coming fashion; for the entropy of man implies his absolute isolation, and that which hitherto he has called harmony or equilibrium was perhaps only an image, an image of the social structure, which he made for himself, and could not help making, so long as he remained a part of it. But the more lonely he becomes, the more disintegrated and isolated will things seem to him, the more indifferent he must become to the connections between things, and finally he will scarcely be able any longer to see those connections. So Hanna Wendling walked through the house, walked through her garden, walked over paths which were laid with crazy-paving in the English style, and she no longer saw the pattern, no longer saw the windings of the white paths, and painful as this might well have been, it was scarcely even painful any more, for it was necessary.

  CHAPTER XXVI

  Huguenau now turned up daily in Fischerstrasse to see Herr Esch. Often, employing a well-tried business ruse, he did not even mention the transaction that had brought him, but waited for his opponent’s move, talking meanwhile about the weather, the crops, and the latest victories. When he saw that Esch did not want to hear anything about the victories, he dropped the victories and confined himself to the weather.

  Sometimes he found Marguerite in the courtyard. The child was confiding, clung to his finger, and begged him to take her into the printing-room again. Huguenau said:

  “Aha! you’re after another twenty pfennigs, are you? But Uncle Huguenau isn’t rich enough yet, everything takes its time.”

  Nevertheless he gave her ten pfennigs for her money-box:

  “Well, what will we do when we’re both rich …?”

  The child stared at the ground and did not reply. At last she said hesitatingly:

  “Go away.”

  For some reason Huguenau felt pleased by this:

  “So that’s what you need the money for … well, when we’re rich we can both go away together.… I’ll take you with me.”

  “Yes, do,” said Marguerite.

  Whenever he went up to see Esch she generally stole up after him, sat down on the floor and listened. Or if she did not do this she would at least put her head in at the door and laugh. Huguenau would say then, because it was an unfailing topic for conversation:

  “I’m fond of children.”

  Esch seemed to like that; he smiled complacently:

  “A little ruffian … she would do one in if it came up her back.”

  Haïssez les Prussiens, Huguenau could not help thinking, although Esch was not a Prussian at all, but a Luxemburger. Esch went on:

  “I’ve often thought of adopting the little rascal … we haven’t any children of our own.”

  Huguenau was surprised:

  “Another man’s child.…”

  Esch said:

  “Another’s or your own … it’s much the same … a pretty thin life without one.”

  Huguenau laughed:

  “Well, yes, you can’t be too sure even of your own children.”

  Esch said:

  “Her father’s interned.… I’ve talked over the question of adopting her with my wife … after all she’s practically an orphan.”

  Huguenau said reflectively:

  “Hm, but then you would have to provide for her.”

  “Of course,” said Esch.

  “If you had any spare cash, or could get hold of some, by selling out, for instance, you could take out a life insurance policy for your family.… I have connections with several insurance companies.”

  “Indeed,” said Esch.

  “I’m still a single man, thank God, in difficult times like these that’s an immense advantage … but if I should ever set up house, I’ll safeguard my family by a settlement of capital or something of the kind … well, you’re in the enviable position of being able to do that.…”

  Huguenau went away.

  Marguerite was waiting for him in the courtyard.

  “Would you like to stay here always?”

  “Where?” asked the child.

  “Why, here, with Uncle Esch.”

  The child gazed at him with hostility.

  Huguenau winked at her and wagged his head:

  “Rather not, what?”

  Marguerite laughed too.

  “Well, you would rather not …?”

  “No, I don’t want to.”

  “And you don’t care much for him either … he’s very strict with you, eh?” and Huguenau brought his arm down as if smacking someone.

  Marguerite made a contemptuous grimace:

  “No.…”

  “And the other one … Aunt Esch …?”

  The child shrugged her shoulders.

  Huguenau was satisfied:

  “Well, you won’t need to stay here … we’ll run away, the two of us, to Belgium … come, let’s go and see Herr Lindner in the printing-room.”

  Together they went up to the printing-press and watched Herr Lindner as he fed it with sheets of paper.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  STORY OF THE SALVATION ARMY GIRL IN BERLIN (4)

  The feeling that the Jews had been taking stock of me proved to be justified. For two days I had felt rather out of sorts, had scarcely touch
ed my breakfast and gone out for only half-an-hour. On the evening of the second day there came a knock at the door of my room, and to my surprise the little man entered whom I had always taken to be a doctor. And indeed he actually revealed himself as one.

  “You must be ill,” he said.

  “No,” I said, “and if I am it’s nobody’s business.”

  “It won’t cost you anything, I haven’t come for the sake of the money,” he said timidly, “one must help.”

  “Thanks,” I said, “I’m quite well.”

  He stood before me, holding his walking-stick tightly pressed to his bosom.

  “Fever?” he asked imploringly.

  “No, I’m quite well, I’m just going out.”

  I got up and we left the room together.

  In the hall one of the young Jews was standing, one of those with the downy stage beards.

  The doctor now introduced itself:

  “My name is Dr Litwak.”

  “Bertrand Müller, doctor of philosophy,” I gave him my hand; the young Jew also offered me his hand. It was dry and cool, and as smooth as his face.

  They attached themselves to me as though it were the most natural thing in the world. I wasn’t going anywhere in particular, but I walked very fast. The two of them, one on my right and the other on my left, kept step with me and conversed with each other in Yiddish. I became seriously annoyed:

  “I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”

  They laughed:

  “He says he doesn’t understand a word.”

  After a while:

  “Really, you don’t know any Yiddish?”

  “No.”

  We reached the end of Reichenbergerstrasse, and I set my course for Rixdorf.

  Well, and then we encountered Marie.

  She was leaning against a lamp-post. It was already quite dark, but the gas was being used sparingly. All the same I recognized her at once.

  Moreover the windows of the restaurant opposite gave a little light.