The Sleepwalkers

by Hermann Broch

  Esch followed her with his eyes: “She could do you in like a shot,” it sounded as if he were moved to tenderness, “the little black rascal.” Huguenau sat down opposite him: “Well, she seems to suit your taste pretty well … but I’ll have to get a desk of my own installed here fairly soon now.” “I can’t prevent you,” Esch growled, “and anyhow, it’s about time you began to do some editorial work.” Huguenau’s thoughts were still with the child: “That kid’s always about the place too.” Esch smiled slightly: “Children are a blessing and a trial, Herr Huguenau, but you don’t understand that yet.” “I understand well enough that you’re crazy about her … otherwise why should you want to adopt somebody else’s brat?” “Your own or somebody else’s, it doesn’t matter: I’ve already told you that.” “Oh, it matters all right, when another man’s had the pleasure.” “You don’t understand that,” shouted Esch, jumping up.

  He prowled up and down the room a few times, then went to the corner where the files of newspapers were piled up, pulled out a paper—it was the special issue—and began to study the Major’s article.

  Huguenau regarded him with interest. Esch held his head clasped in his hands, his short grey brush of hair escaped from between his fingers,—he had a passionate, almost an ascetic appearance, and Huguenau, desirous of banishing some vague, unpleasant memory, said cheerfully: “You just see, Esch, we’ll make a great thing of the paper yet.” Esch replied: “The Major is a good man.” “That may be,” said Huguenau, “but it would be better for you to be thinking of what we can make out of the paper,” he had stepped up to Esch, and, as though to waken him up, tapped him on the shoulder, “The Herald must be asked for in Berlin and Nürnberg, and it must be on show in the Hauptwache Coffee House in Frankfort too, you know Frankfort, don’t you? … it must become a paper for the whole world.”

  Esch paid no attention. He indicated with his finger a passage in the article: “But if works can make no man pious, and a man must be pious before he can do good works … do you know what that means? it means that the child doesn’t matter, but only your feeling about it; another’s or your own, it’s all one, do you hear, it’s all one!”

  Huguenau felt disappointed somehow: “All I know is that you’re a fool and that you’ve brought the paper to ruin with your feelings,” he said and left the room.

  The door had slammed long since, but Esch still sat there staring at it, sat and thought. It was not by any means clear, but Huguenau might be right all the same about one’s feelings. Nevertheless it looked as if there was some hope of order at last. The world was divided into good and evil, debit and credit, black and white, and even if a book-keeping error should happen to creep in, then it must be expunged, and it would be expunged. Esch had grown calmer. Peacefully his hands rested on his knees, he sat placidly staring through closed eyelids at the door, saw through closed lids the whole room, which now strangely transformed itself into a landscape—or was it a picture postcard?—and was like a kiosk among green trees, the trees of the Schlossberg at Badenweiler; he saw the Major’s face, and it was the face of a greater and higher being. And Esch sat for so long that at last, filled with wonder, he knew no longer where he had got to, and only with an effort did he manage to return to his reading. True, he could have recited the article by heart, word for word, yet he forced himself to read on, and now he knew once more what side he belonged to in this world. For the reflections which the Major had addressed to the German people had made an impression on one part of the German nation, even if it was not a very important part; they had made an impression on Herr Esch.

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  Four women were scrubbing the hospital ward.

  Surgeon-Major Kühlenbeck entered and looked at them for a moment.

  “Well, how are things with you?”

  “What can you expect, Herr Surgeon-Major …?”

  The women sighed, then they went on scrubbing again.

  One of them raised her head:

  “My man’s coming home on leave next week.”

  “Great, Tielden … the bed will fairly bounce then.”

  Frau Tielden blushed under her brown leathery skin. The others laughed heartily. And Frau Tielden laughed with them.

  All at once a noise, somewhat like a bark, was heard from one of the beds. It was not so much a bark, however, as a breathless, heavy and very painful expulsion of something that was scarcely a sound and came from far within.

  Gödicke of the Landwehr sat up in his bed; his features were painfully distorted, and it was he who had laughed in such a strange fashion.

  It was the first sound that had been got out of him ever since his arrival in the hospital (if one does not take into account his first whimperings).

  “A lewd rascal,” said Surgeon-Major Kühlenbeck, “why, he can laugh!”

  CHAPTER XXXVII

  STORY OF THE SALVATION ARMY GIRL IN BERLIN (5)

  The sickly spring-time of an adamant law,

  The sickly spring-time of a Jewish bride,

  The sickly din of the city, that yet tongue-tied

  Lies trapped and netted in invisible snares,

  A summer day of stone no warmth can thaw,

  A sickly sky looks down on asphalt squares,

  On streets like chasms, on a stony waste that wears

  Out like a scabby sore the earth’s grey hide.

  O city of lying light, O city of lying prayers,

  The penitent desires no verdant tree,

  He seeks but penitential caves, where he

  Implores the Law to yield him holiness

  Uprising like a fountain from deep thought,

  From holy words, from doubts, from fear distraught.

  It is the city of exiles, of penitents in distress,

  The city of the people chosen by God,

  A race that breeds for duty, passionless,

  And only counts its sons, whose old men nod

  Praying at windows, a monk-bearded race

  Bound ever to its God with fasts and thongs,

  The while its women knead the unleavened bread

  And votive oil flames raise their pallid tongues:

  A race that marries to beget in bed

  The pallid youth with the actor’s beard and face,

  The youthful Jacob to whom angels bend,

  Whom truth guides on a journey that will end

  At that far well by which the angels sank,

  At that far well where Rachel’s wethers drank.

  Grey city, the pallid nomads’ halting-place

  Upon their road to Zion, their way to God,

  A godless city in an invisible net,

  A vacant mass of stone with curses laden

  And sorrow; where the Salvation Army maiden

  Tinkles her tambourine, so that the sinner yet

  May find the true way and return to grace,

  The way to Zion, to love’s holy place.—

  In this town of Berlin, in these spring days

  Did Nuchem Sussin meet the girl Marie,

  And for a while they felt a sweet amaze

  And each fell down in spirit on one knee;

  The uplifted hand of Fate they did not see,

  Zion they saw; their hearts were filled with praise.

  CHAPTER XXXVIII

  For almost two years Heinrich Wendling had not been home on leave. Yet in spite of this Hanna was surprised, as surprised as though some irrational and incomprehensible event had burst in upon her, when the letter arrived in which he announced his homecoming. The journey from Salonika would take six days at least, probably even longer, but in any case it was only a matter of days. Hanna dreaded his arrival as though she had a secret lover to conceal from him. Every day’s delay was to her like an act of grace, yet every evening she went through her night toilet even more scrupulously than usual, and she lay in bed each morning too even longer than usual, waiting, dreading lest the returning wanderer might take possession of her immediately, filthy and unshaven
as he was. And even though she felt she should be ashamed of such fancies, and for that very reason hoped that some offensive or other accident might cancel his leave, yet she felt as well the presence of a still stronger, a very strange hope that lurked somewhere, a vague presentiment that she did not want to acknowledge and indeed did not acknowledge, and which was like one’s sensation before a grave operation: one had to submit to it in order to be protected from something fatal towards which one was involuntarily striving; it was like a last terrifying refuge, and dark as it was, yet it rescued one from a profounder darkness. To dismiss as masochism such an attitude of hopeful dread and terrified waiting would be to leave unexplored all but the mere surface of the spirit. And the only explanation that Hanna could find for her state, in so far as she was aware of it at all, was very like the fatuous conviction of old women that marriage is the sole means of putting an end once and for all to the various sufferings of anæmic girls. No, she could not dare to examine it more closely, it was a tangle into which she had no wish to penetrate, and though with one part of her she expected that as soon as Heinrich came in everything would be the same again, quite naturally, yet she divined with equal intensity that never would things be the same again.

  Summer had really come at last. “Rose Cottage” did honour to its name, although in deference to the times vegetables were cultivated rather than flowers, and although the semi-invalid jobbing gardener was incapable of attending properly to his business. But the crimson ramblers did not allow even the war to restrain them and had climbed up to the cherubs at each side of the door; the beds of peonies were pink and white, and the rows of heliotrope and stock on the border of the lawn were in full blossom. In front of the house the green landscape stretched peacefully, the spacious sweep of the valley held one’s gaze and carried it to the edge of the woods; the forester’s house, exposed to the eye in winter so that every one of its windows could be seen, was again smothered in green; the vineyards too had greened over, the woods lay dark, darker than ever now that black clouds were approaching from the mountains.

  In the afternoon Hanna had taken her chair outside. She lay back in it beneath the chestnut-trees and gazed at the advancing clouds, whose shadows marched across the fields, transforming the bright clear green into a dark and strangely restful greenish violet; as the shadow stretched across the garden and the air suddenly became cool and cellarlike, the flowers, until now sealed up by the heat, began all at once to exhale their perfumes as though their breath had been released. Or perhaps it was the sudden coolness that now gave Hanna leisure to feel their scent; yet it was so sudden, so unique, so vehement, this breaking wave of sweet perfume, cool and magical as an evening in a southern garden, as the falling dusk on the rocky beach of a Tyrrhenian sea. So the earth lay on the shore of a sea of cloud that broke in waves of rain, the soft, thick rain of thunder-showers, and Hanna, standing at the open veranda door, could smell the south; and even though she breathed in almost greedily the soft humidity that felt so cool and fresh in her nostrils, yet with the memory of that southern fragrance there had also been wafted to her the fear which she had felt for the first time during her honeymoon, standing on the seashore one rainy evening in Sicily; the hotel lay behind her, the flowers in the hotel garden perfumed the air, and she did not know who the strange man was that stood beside her—he was called Dr Wendling.

  She started; the gardener had hurried across the path to put the garden implements in a place of safety out of the rain; she started, because she could not help thinking that it was a burglar who had broken in, although she knew quite well what the man was about. If Walter had not come out to her she would have fled into the house and locked the door. Walter had seated himself on the door-step; he stretched out his naked legs into the rain and occupied himself in cautiously loosening the dried crust of a scar on his knee, afterwards contentedly stroking the new pink skin. Hanna too sat down on the door-step; she clasped her hands round her legs, her beautiful slender legs—she too wore no stockings when she was in the house or the garden—and her smooth shins felt cool to the touch.

  By now the rain had beaten down the scent of the flowers which it had awakened at first, and the air smelt only of moist earth. The brown-flecked tiled roof of the garden-house gleamed with wet, and when the gardener once more trudged down the path the gravel no longer crunched dryly under his feet, but rattled its wet and separate pebbles. Hanna put her arm round her son’s shoulders,—why couldn’t they remain always sitting like this, calmly at rest in a cool and cleanly world? only a very little of her fear was left. All the same she said: “If there’s more thunder like this during the night, Walter, you can come in beside me.”

  CHAPTER XXXIX

  When Surgeon-Major Kühlenbeck and Dr Kessel entered the dining-room of the hotel, the Major was already sitting at his accustomed place. He was reading the Cologne News, which had just arrived. The two gentlemen said good-evening, and the Major rose and invited them to sit at his table.

  The Surgeon-Major most tactlessly referred to the newspaper:

  “Are we to have the pleasure, Herr Major, of reading you in other papers too?”

  The Major simply shook his head, handed the paper across the table, and indicating the column containing the reports from the Front said:

  “Bad news.”

  Dr Kühlenbeck glanced over the reports:

  “Really no worse than usual, Herr Major.”

  The Major looked up questioningly.

  “Herr Major, all news is bad except one thing, and that is—peace.”

  “You’re right there,” said the Major, “but it must be an honourable peace.”

  “Right,” said Kühlenbeck, lifting his glass, “then here’s to peace.”

  The other two gentlemen clinked glasses with him and the Major repeated again:

  “To an honourable peace … otherwise what should all those sacrifices have been made for?” As though he wanted to say something more, he still held his glass in his hand but remained silent; at last, however, he shook off his immobility and said: “Honour is by no means a mere convention … once upon a time poison-gas would have been rejected as a weapon of warfare.”

  The gentlemen made no reply, and went on drinking their wine.

  Then Dr Kessel said:

  “What’s the good of all those beautiful theories about war-time food? … When I come home at night I can scarcely stand on my legs; for a man well on in years the food simply isn’t enough.”

  Kühlenbeck said:

  “You’re a defeatist, Kessel: it’s been demonstrated that diabetes has been reduced to a minimum, and with carcinoma it seems to be the same … it’s only your personal misfortune that you’re not a diabetic … besides, my dear chap, if you do feel pains in your legs … we’re none of us getting younger.”

  Major von Pasenow said:

  “Honour isn’t mere inertia of feeling.”

  “I don’t quite understand, Herr Major,” said Dr Kühlenbeck.

  The Major gazed into vacancy:

  “Oh, it was nothing … as you know … my son fell at Verdun … he would be twenty-eight now.…”

  “But he wasn’t your only son, Herr Major?”

  The Major did not reply at once, it may be that he regarded the question as an indiscretion. Finally he said:

  “Yes, there’s my younger son … and the two girls … the boy will soon be called up too … one must render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s …” he stopped, then he went on: “You see, the cause of all the evil is that we don’t render to God the things that are God’s.”

  Dr Kühlenbeck said:

  “We don’t even render to human beings the things that are theirs … it seems to me we should begin with that first.”

  “God first,” said Major von Pasenow.

  Kühlenbeck threw out his chin; his dark grey beard jutted out into the air:

  “We doctors are blatant materialists, I’m afraid.”

  The Major said depreca
tingly:

  “You mustn’t say that.”

  Dr Kessel too dissented; a true doctor was always an idealist. Kühlenbeck laughed:

  “It’s true, I forgot your panel patients.”

  After a while Dr Kessel said:

  “As soon as I have half a chance I’ll take up my chamber music again.”

  And the Major remarked that his wife too loved her playing. He thought for a little and then he added: “Spohr, an excellent composer.”

  CHAPTER XL

  Since it had been rumoured that Gödicke had laughed, his roommates had tried everything possible to make him laugh again. The grossest stories were dished up to him, and as he lay in bed hardly anyone passed without hopefully shaking the bed until it bounced up and down. But it was of no avail. Gödicke did not laugh again. He remained dumb.

  Until one day Sister Carla brought him a postcard: “Gödicke, your wife has written to you …” Gödicke did not stir, “I’ll read it to you.” And Sister Carla read out to him that his faithful wife had heard nothing from him now for a long time, that she and the children were well, and that they all hoped he would soon be coming back. “I’ll answer it for you,” said Sister Carla. Gödicke gave not a sign of comprehension, and one might have thought that he had really understood nothing. And probably he would actually have succeeded in concealing from any eyewitness the tempest in his soul, that tempest which jumbled together the constituents of his ego and in rapid succession heaved them to the surface to submerge them just as rapidly again in the dark waves, he might have succeeded in calming the storm and gradually laying it altogether, had not the practical joker of the ward, Josef Settler the dragoon, passed by at that moment and as usual caught hold of the foot of the bed to make it oscillate a little. At that Gödicke of the Landwehr gave a cry which by no means resembled the laugh that was expected of him and that he was really under an obligation to provide; he gave an angry and heavy cry, sat up, by no means so slowly and laboriously as he was accustomed to do, and he snatched the postcard from Sister Carla, and he tore the postcard to pieces. Then he sank back, for the violent movement had started his pains again, and clasped his abdomen with his hands.