Life Goes On: A Novel

by Hans Keilson

  “Yes,” Albrecht responded slowly and awkwardly, “I remember.” He did not want to talk about that now. “I remember,” he went on softly, “a lot of it is true, a lot describes me perfectly. It’s uncanny how often I would sometimes feel as if I would never escape it—it was horrible. I felt trapped inside myself with no way out. You have no idea how it was for me. I went around conscientiously doing my work—a capable young man, people said when they talked about me, meaning my modesty and energy; a capable young man, and they invited me out to lunch. But no one realized that I was actually eating away at myself, living off my own substance, with nothing coming in from the outside to renew or refill my self, nothing to refresh or nourish me. I suffered endlessly from what I saw around me every day, the experience I was gaining and what I knew from the inheritance of my education. I was right in the thick of life and losing more and more of my connection to it, my foothold in it. If I were one of those people who tightrope-walk across every difficult situation, who masterfully dance their way through the minefields, then I could have gotten through everything without caring. But I’m too serious, too old—too humorless, if you ask me—to be able to do that. Don’t laugh when I confess that I really believe in words like ‘proper,’ ‘honest,’ ‘respect,’ and ‘dignity.’ They are more than words for me: they embody for me the only substance I can see in a fully realized life. And all of that was what I no longer had back then, I had nothing but a feeling of shame, and a boundless bad conscience for going around avoiding making a real decision. I could clearly see how I would only grow more and more disconnected and disengaged, and it was easy to tell when the day came that I had finally had enough.”

  Now there was a short break in their conversation. In the course of their discussion they had both stood up and were pacing around the room, each lost in his own thoughts. Eventually, Dr. Köster took heart—he was the older of the two—and had Albrecht sit down again.

  “Come, Albrecht, have a cigarette, and then we’ll talk through your whole situation together. It seems to me that you’re acting in a bit of a hurry, not entirely free of conclusions you’ve drawn under difficult pressure in a difficult situation.” He spoke paternalistically, like a teacher to his student, as though they both had to explore together and find the answer that he, the older man, knew already; he spoke gently and delicately, so that the student wouldn’t feel the least suspicion that he was being consciously steered toward the goal.

  “No cigarette, thank you,” Albrecht said. “Let’s not make the conversation look sweeter and prettier through a haze of smoke. It’s better to say everything straight-out, the way we feel it in the moment, and draw the contrast as sharply as we can.”

  “All right, Albrecht, as you wish.” He lit himself a cigarette. After a while: “So, let’s go back to where you said that you’ve decided to become political. You added that it sounded a little ridiculous and presumptuous to talk about it like a major decision with far-reaching consequences while other people didn’t need to take such a big running start, they just accepted it as self-evident. Now, let’s leave these other people out of consideration and not worry about what they might or might not be doing. If there was any sense at all in all our discussions over the years, it was to teach you to think for yourself, independently, and always make use of this independence. Even today, we should do that, no? So when you say that you want to become political, I try to fully comprehend what you’re saying and arrive at the causes that are bringing you to give up your solitude and throw yourself into the arms of one of the dozens of political parties on offer. Your solitude—I think that’s the most essential thing: you feel a need to come together with other people with similar external goals as you. It lightens your load to do that: you feel freer, life itself becomes a little easier for you. But that’s not all, by no means. Your current economic situation, which is perhaps not especially rosy and looks to remain rather unclear in the future, is strengthening you in your decision. I know, it’s hard, it’s damned hard, I realize that and I’m taking it into account—you are worn-out, your nerves are frayed, you feel rotten and everything seems more drastic and threatening than it really is. Take it slow, Albrecht, rest up a bit, then we’ll talk. I suspect that now—and I hope you don’t hold it against me that I’m speaking to you so directly—I suspect that you’re desperately longing to be happy. Admit it, Albrecht, am I right?”

  “I don’t admit it,” Albrecht calmly replied. “No, I have nothing to admit there, especially about any earthly happiness. I don’t long for it the way you’re accusing me of, or in any other way either. In fact, that was the first thing I learned many years ago, when you loaned me that wonderful book, and I won’t deny that it was painful too: that what people generally mean by happiness, ‘earthly bliss and pleasures in heavenly fullness,’ was not for me. You need to be built out of a different material than I am for that sort of thing to make you happy, and you need to be young, with laughter and a sense of humor, things I fundamentally lack. Believe me, happiness isn’t at all what I’m aiming at. Fundamentally, it’s the same for me as it is for you, Dr. Köster—I ask you to never forget that in the course of our conversation, even if we sometimes stray very far from it. You and I are interested in the same thing, namely, and listen closely: the life of the mind. Remember when we first met, when I was still going to school and inexperienced in the world, you told me: The mind, our love for the spirit, is the only thing that saves us and makes us able to act in the world. You see, I’ve kept your words in my mind all this time, I remember them perfectly: The mind is what saves us. I already understood that, way back then, and I still believe it today, despite everything, even if earlier I seemed to brag about not having read anything seriously for a long time. I have not forgotten what you said.… And it alone lets us act in the world. Then, when you added that part of the sentence, I thought I had definitely understood what you meant … lets us act.… But now I see that back then I didn’t have the slightest idea of what I know now. When things weren’t going well for people, when circumstances conspired against them, I saw how they got down to work and did things and brought about decisive changes. I’m sure it was always that way, but what you said made me see it, and your words about the mind and our love for intellectual and spiritual things made it seem incomprehensible to me why people would act that way. I saw a clear line in the sand between myself and anyone who took vigorous action. At the same time, I was one of the people circumstances were conspiring against, I was one of the victims—but still, I kept myself apart, in my little struggles and indecisions, off to the side and lost in observation and self-analysis. Gradually, but then decisively, I started to feel that I was cutting myself off more and more from whatever life is, and I realized—it was a painful shock too—that I no longer felt connected to what was going on around me, I was lost at sea in an endless, nebulous void.”

  “One might say that you have thereby perceived the deepest truth,” Dr. Köster countered. “The situation you just described to me is the situation of anyone who withdraws and thinks in isolation and has gained a certain insight, don’t you agree?”

  “Yes,” Albrecht answered hesitantly, “maybe.… But you can’t just stay at that point, or at least I couldn’t. I still wanted to find some way to take part in life. Can you understand that?”

  “I understand,” Dr. Köster said thoughtfully, “that you have to work, to make money. Do you mean the energy needed to do that? The spiritual momentum in your soul?”

  Albrecht shook his head. “No,” he said slowly, “here too you’re only half understanding what I mean. It’s more than that—I have to dare to join in, take the step of becoming part of something where I think I belong, something that offers me a chance to live. I need to find a new, stable way to live, and something more than just an external structure. I understand it differently now—the mind, I mean. I’ve felt differently about it ever since I’ve had to spend all my time living and working, which for me have been basically the sam
e thing.”

  “Albrecht, what gave you these ideas? And what conclusions are you drawing for yourself in terms of what you told me before, about becoming political? You are taking it further, Albrecht, you’re not someone who is satisfied with simply recognizing something, no matter how much you want it or how happy it makes you.”

  “All right,” Albrecht answered seriously, “if you’re asking, I’ll tell you. But don’t try to gloss over it later, or analyze me, or add a commentary or anything. I want you to understand what I’m saying in just the way I say it.

  “You accused me before of losing what was most distinctive and special about me, as you put it, with this decision to become political. Either that or I didn’t know myself anymore, you said. You brought up solitude as opposed to joining a political party that creates a sense of belonging due to common outward goals. I don’t think you want to reject a feeling of connection with others working toward a common goal, or do you?”

  “Not in the least, Albrecht, you’ve misunderstood me. I meant everything that goes along with that decision, unintentionally included in it so to speak, but I don’t understand—”

  “Not so fast, Dr. Köster, let me say something else first. You may remember I had a friend here, Fritz Fiedler. One day he dropped out of school because he didn’t think he could continue to live his life under those conditions. He just skipped town, that was the only way to prove to his parents that he meant it. They were upstanding working-class people who had worked hard and gotten ahead, and at first they simply couldn’t get it through their heads that their son had no interest in being an educated, and in their view respected and prosperous, man. But they let him do what he wanted, in the end they had no choice and they made their peace with it. I don’t think they ever really understood it. It took me a while too, to realize what Fritz had done. He told me once that he couldn’t see any bridge between what they were teaching him in school and the life he saw all around him; there was clearly a deep chasm between the two, and he saw it, our teachers did too, and he didn’t know what to do about it. On top of that, he was young and healthy and very strong, and he craved some difficult task to use his strength on. It was as simple as that: he wanted to work. He wanted to live the life that he saw around him—his father worked, his brother worked, he didn’t want anything different for himself. You know how it all turned out. First he tried here in Germany, then, after a year, before his apprenticeship was over, his company went bankrupt and he was out on the street. The year he’d spent there counted for nothing. All right, so he could have started over with another apprenticeship. And do you know what would have happened to him, Dr. Köster, if he had successfully finished it? The same thing! He would have been out on the street, with no prospects for the future, a hopeless case like thousands of others. Then he went to America, and when he came back after two years he was done for. He never talked about everything he’d been through there but it isn’t hard to imagine. America has enough unemployment of its own. I talked to him then, but I couldn’t help him, I was in a difficult situation myself at the time. He puttered around here for another couple of months, trying to find his footing, but it was no use, he couldn’t. Then he shot himself in Berlin one day, in a little hotel, together with a girl. For love, of course, that’s what the papers all said—after all, what other reason could anyone have to take his life besides being lovesick and sexually frustrated? That or not having enough to eat, but Fritz did. Anyway, his parents are still carrying on, they look at me questioningly as though waiting to hear the useful, pious moral I’ll put at the end of this story. And it’s true, it’s not hard to reflect on something after it happens and make suggestions after the fact.”

  Pause.

  “I understand your friend’s situation perfectly, and especially why it ended the way it did,” Dr. Köster began. He possessed more than enough understanding and proved it with his words. “Your unhappy friend recognized the deep hopelessness that lies in wait for us all, at the end of anything we try to undertake today. His fate is a powerful tragedy and a tremendous reproach.”

  “Exactly,” Albrecht said excitedly, “that’s how I see it too. But there’s more. I would go so far as to say—and it may sound ridiculous to say it, now that he’s dead and can no longer rise up to begin a new life, but still: there is another path, starting off from the same experiences and painful recognitions but not necessarily leading to the same end. Of course I know there was no other choice for Fritz; otherwise he would have made it. He wasn’t in poverty: on the outside he was still doing fine, he could have kept living off his parents and brother, but that wasn’t the life he wanted. He was young and strong but he was simply shut out. If he had decided to become political, to think in political terms, or let us say think historically, have a clear effect on the world by toppling what is already teetering and building something new in his thoughts—if he had decided to do that instead of running around alone, lashing out everywhere and denying a part of himself—then I daresay that it would have turned out differently for him. He wouldn’t have reached this decision himself; he couldn’t have. And everyone failed him—his parents, even though his father used to be political himself and even spent time in jail for his activities; his teachers, especially, failed him. And I did too, since I didn’t know enough at the time to help him.”

  “But now my question for you,” Dr. Köster interrupted, “is this: Since you told me at the beginning that you only care about the life of the mind—you even told me to make sure not to forget it—what does all this have to do with intellect and knowledge? Or are you so far gone that you think everything can be explained from purely economic causes?”

  “That’s a nasty thing to say,” Albrecht replied slowly, and with infinite melancholy he stood up. His face turned rigid and suddenly looked ageless. “Don’t be angry at me for saying so, but I find that truly nasty. Do you need me to promise you that I won’t forget any of the things we used to talk about—the power of the mind, love for intellectual and spiritual things, the soul, everything hanging in eternal balance between heaven and earth, the doubtful nature of all existence, and all the rest that is so delicate and fragile that it would be dangerous to speak out loud about it, it could disintegrate in the cold inhospitableness of existence … do I really need to promise you, do you think I ever could forget it? No, I will never forget those things, no one who has ever partaken of them can. But now, Dr. Köster, listen to me, now it is necessary to understand something very different: the infinite tragedy that comes from being condemned to act in the world while the spirit is already redeemed. Can you understand that? I’ve learned that lesson, and I’ve felt it on my own body. There’s no mercy. If I don’t act, I’m done for.”

  Dr. Köster stood up and looked Albrecht straight in the face.

  “Dr. Köster,” Albrecht quietly went on, “it’s not a question of which of us is right. No doubt we both are. I’m sure you have the eternal, unchanging truth on your side. Fine, you can have it, along with your resignation and well-tended exhaustion, you can have those too, you can afford to indulge in them and be tired and resigned. The only thing is that this eternal, unchanging truth has let me go, it’s dropped me, and I would be a coward, or a suicide, if I kept on pursuing it in my situation now. All the evidence is against it, it seems to me. To be redeemed in the spirit, fine, and at the same time to be condemned to live in the world, that’s what you need to learn to understand. Then you’re prepared to take refuge even on crutches, as you put it before. But you’re wrong there too, you’re only judging from your own point of view. Where is there life without crutches? Let me limp around and remain incomplete, if that’s what you think I am, as long as I’m still alive. It is only in life that I think I can serve the spirit. When I talk to you about the form of life I was looking for, you should know that there is only this one form for me now: any I ever had before has been shattered, and I need to create a new one, one that guarantees respect, dignity, justice, and humanity. What do y
ou have to say against that?”

  Dr. Köster was silent for a long time. He walked over to the window and looked out onto the street, as though an answer might come to him from the nighttime darkness there. His breath came heavily. He could see before his eyes the image of the schoolboy from back then, the short pants, the open collar, the admiring, innocent eyes. Once he had spoken to that person. He stayed in his place by the window for a long while. Then he suddenly remembered the last words spoken, they were still ringing in his ears, and he slowly turned back around and said:

  “Not much, Albrecht. I agree that that’s what’s most important for you now. To put it in your own words: You are condemned to live in the world, of course … and only in this one particular way. I understand that too. No, don’t shake your head like that, I know what you’re thinking: you’re thinking that understanding is not enough—that no imagination, no matter how vivid and colorful, is enough to appreciate this truth; only actively living can do it justice.”

  “You’re right,” whispered Albrecht.

  “One more question, though,” Dr. Köster went on, undeterred. “I’ll be as frank with you as you’ve been with me. Do you really believe it? Answer me, do you believe that your goal can be accomplished—that any goal can be accomplished, if I can put it so bluntly? Answer me.”