The Strong City

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  If Franz Stoessel had attained only success and power and wealth, he had attained those things which are still the most sought-after by humankind. If he had not attained happiness, but only a kind of psychic frustration and despair, he was still the object of justified envy by those who also suffered frustration and despair, and had not even the consolation of the security which power and wealth can bring. He was no happier nor less happy than all the rest of mankind, who build their own private strong cities and look through the gates with hopelessness. The powerless and the powerful have a common anguish in being born, and in striving after those things which lie outside themselves. Only in himself, thought Baldur, can man discover the true kingdom, the true freedom, the true release from fear.

  It was not Franz’s power which saddened Baldur. It was because Franz knew that outside his strong city lay his true inheritance, which he had abandoned.

  Franz spoke in German: “You look at me strangely,” and he smiled, as though amused. “Here I am, after all this time, and you only look at me.”

  Baldur continued to gaze at him with his quiet eyes. “It was only yesterday,” he said, absently. Only yesterday, that scene of violence and grief and hatred. Yet Franz could stand there and smile affably and wearily, as though it had happened in another life, another time. “Sit down, Franz,” said Baldur. “You are getting fat,” he added, with malice.

  Franz laughed, and sat down. “You look the same,” he said. But he knew it was a lie. However, his old amiability, and habit of pleasant hypocrisy was too strong for him. The room was too hot for him, also. Hearty living had narrowed his arteries. He gasped for air, but was too polite to allow Baldur to hear the gasp.

  “I was expecting you,” said Baldur, in his calm voice. “Today.”

  Franz raised skeptical eyebrows. He said: “Yes. We have a lot of things to talk about, haven’t we?”

  Baldur was silent. He felt Franz’s narrow and penetrating eyes fixed on him. He felt Franz’s sustained misery and desolation, and despairing hopelessness. Finally, the hopelessness was there, the loathing of self, the weary repudiation of living, the turning aside in nausea from the things which he had made for himself.

  Then he heard Franz say, in such a low voice that he could hardly hear it: “I’ve looked—for Irmgard. Everywhere. Only you know where she is.”

  “Yes,” said Baldur, clearly. “I know where she is.”

  “She—is well? She needs nothing? She and the boy?”

  “She is well. She needs nothing. Do you think I would let her want anything?”

  “No. I know that.” Franz’s voice was strangely gentle, strangely understanding, no longer jeering and contemptuous and full of hatred.

  Baldur said: “And your own family? How are they? Sigmund at school writes me hardly anything.”

  “Ungrateful,” murmured Franz, mechanically. Baldur said nothing. Then Franz, with an exhausted effort, said: “I’ve kept sending you reports about the mills. You are satisfied? Everything is as you wish?”

  Baldur could not help smiling. “You know I am satisfied, because I don’t care.”

  “But you ought to know everything.” Franz waited. Baldur did not speak. Then Franz began to tell of his new expansions and successes. His voice rose strongly, but Baldur, with curiosity, heard that the strength was forced, hypocritical, though proud. He is simulating, thought Baldur. But the pride is there. It is the pride of something he has done long ago, which doesn’t excite him now. Franz talked steadily for a long time, but Baldur heard only his voice, drained, forced, lifeless as steel is lifeless, though strong. Finally, it was still, and the silence in the room mounted like clouds, higher and higher.

  Baldur glanced at him quickly, furtively. Franz was staring at the fire, his clasped hands between his knees. He had forgotten Baldur. He looked at the flames emptily, and Baldur saw his face, stripped, desolate, full of gloom and wretchedness.

  He said: “But Franz, all that means nothing to you, does it?”

  Franz still looked at the fire, and in a peculiar voice, as though speaking in a dream, he said: “No. It means nothing. It wasn’t really what I always wanted. I see that now.” He suddenly started, and looked at Baldur with anger, as if the other man had caught him naked. “That is nonsense,” he said, with violence. “I’ve always gotten what I wanted—!”

  “But not Irmgard,” said Baldur, with relentlessness, and he smiled, as if gloating.

  It was that gloating look, that triumphant look which Baldur could not disguise, which sent the flames of fury leaping into Franz’s face. This miserable cripple had defeated him at the last, but never until now did he fully realize what this defeat had cost him. Never until now had he realized that it was Baldur who had stood between him and the only thing he had ever really wanted. It was Baldur who had known all the time, for years, since his marriage to Ernestine, what he really was, what a constant torment was in him. He felt stripped, exposed, humiliated and shamed forever. He had kept himself so hidden, even from himself, so chained and put away in the darkness of forgetfulness, and now this miserable creature was showing him that all the time he knew the secret place and had often looked in at it. He must have been laughing for years! Laughing because he knew that Franz had never really wanted the things he had gotten, but had taken them because he was afraid! It was the knowledge that Baldur had known always of this shameful fear that was so maddening. Baldur had known what a coward he was, that he had built his strong city to fortify himself against the world, against living, which he had not had the courage to face. You are a coward, said Baldur’s eyes, as they gazed at him. The builders of strong cities are always cowards. The builders of fortresses know that they have enemies, but the enemies are always themselves.

  And then, with his rage, a cold dry sickness came to Franz, like gritty sand thrown on a leaping fire. It choked the fire, but it smouldered underneath. He thought to himself: Why should I care? I am tired. Very tired.

  Yet, he must always dissemble. He thought his need to dissemble came from his pride, about which he had always been conceited. But it came from his terror of nakedness and revealing candor. His hypocrisy and deceit were the thin rags behind which he hid himself, in his fear.

  So now, he told himself that he must not let Baldur see how tired he was, how hopeless, how indifferent. All men became tired, their life like stale dry bread in their mouths, only their surface senses aware of living, their inner warmth withered and dead like old fruit. Emotion and ecstasy were the things of youth; they passed like storm and lightning, leaving the quiet and desolation of death behind them. Baldur must feel this, also. Franz glanced up furtively and saw Baldur watching him silently, with a peculiar expression. There was something in that look, something of compassion, and seeing it, Franz was enraged again, and ashamed.

  He said, in a dwindled and stifled voice: “You have always accused me of being a hypocrite. I never realized before what a contemptible hypocrite you are!”

  He had thought that Baldur would laugh lightly, and was vaguely startled that Baldur’s face suddenly became grave, stern and hard, and even evil. He saw that Baldur had gripped the arms of his chair so tightly that his knuckles sprang whitely to his skin. Seeing this, some primitive ferocity leapt up in Franz. He spoke in German, rapidly, with gathering madness:

  “I can see everything clearly! You always envied me. You envied me for what I was, knowing what I wanted, with the ability to get it! You envied me Irmgard, my children, Siegfried—everything! This is your revenge on me! Why aren’t you brave enough to admit it, admit that you could not struggle with me face to face, but must creep up on me and strike me in the back?”

  Baldur said nothing. His furrowed face shrivelled, dwindled, turned gray. But he looked at Franz directly, as though seeing something for the first time.

  And again Franz spoke: “Most of all, you envied me my desire. You never really desired anything, and you hated me because you wanted nothing, and I wanted everything. You were always helpl
ess, because you found nothing valuable—”

  “—and you,” said Baldur, in a strange, low tone, “you found something valuable in what you desired?”

  Franz’s mouth opened, and then closed, slowly, and he was silent.

  “You were the worst hypocrite,” said Baldur, “because you deceived yourself. Perhaps you are right: perhaps I envied your self-deception. But I can see now that you deserve the greater pity, and perhaps the greater blame.”

  He averted his head. “I have always been sorry for you. You see, I knew what you really wanted; I knew everything else you got, at such a cost of self-torment, self-hatred, effort and suffering, such exploitation and cruelty and remorselessness, was not what you wanted, and wasn’t what you really thought was valuable. Everything else was substitution, and a despicable one at that.”

  Franz laughed, shortly.

  “At least, I tried substitution. You didn’t even have the guts for that!”

  But Baldur felt no anger. He said, quietly: “You are right. But now we are here in this room, together, looking back at our lives, and ahead, to what remains of them. Who has gained the most, you or I? Who has lost the most?”

  And then there was a prolonged silence in the room, and neither spoke. They understood each other. With passionate relief, they had both discarded hypocrisy and pretense, knowing that they saw each other clearly without deception.

  Then Franz said, in a queer, strained voice: “I think you have gained and I have lost the most.”

  He was silent for a long time, then began to speak very quietly, as though thinking aloud, and feeling his way:

  “I knew there was something wrong, quite a long time ago.—It all began with my mother, and her dreams. I believed her. A child always believes his parents, in the beginning. It was not until later that I knew her dreams were silly, absurd and impossible. It was her belief that men could live together in herds, in peace and contentment. It was only the ‘evil ones’ who made this impossible. She forgot that man is by nature a solitary beast, a hunter, a carnivore, and such a beast’s nature makes him unfit for herd living. Only necessity, because of his physical weakness, has forced him into herds. His whole misery is because he has tried to reconcile nature with necessity.—There are some of us in which the solitary is more healthy, more pronounced, than in others, more primitive. We must work in the framework of the herd, but we carry out our hunting instincts, our predatory instincts, in that framework. The herd suffers—” His words became inaudible.

  “But you,” said Baldur, softly, “were not one of the predatory ones.”

  Franz looked at him, and for a moment the old hypocrisy tried to conceal his expression. Then it was gone.

  “No,” he said, simply, “I wasn’t one of them. I thought I was. But I see now it was because I recognized the predatory instinct in men, and it frightened me. Even when I was a child, it frightened me. I might have been a little more discerning than other children, perhaps. I began to see that the human herd was not really a herd, though it had the appearance of one. It was really a wolf-pack, hunting. It hunted together, but when the hunt was over, it turned on its own members and tried to destroy them. I can’t tell you how much I was frightened!”

  The old, half-forgotten terror of his childhood rose up in him.

  “And then, there was my poor mother, believing that the wolf-pack was really a gentle herd of sheep! I began to hate her for her foolishness; because I could feel the pack right at our heels. I knew that the weak were always destroyed by the pack; the pack waited, its tongues lolling, its eyes full of fire—I—I was afraid,” he added, with moving simplicity. “I began to tell myself that I wasn’t really a sheep—I was a hunter, one of the predatory ones.” His voice lost the inflections of the English language, and now it was the voice of a German who had never left his native hearth.

  “I believed it. I had to believe it, because I was so frightened. I saw that I had to hate, and I persuaded myself that hatred was strength. That has always been the curse of the German, his belief that hatred is strong. That is because he is afraid, and has no real defense against the packs that roam the rest of the world. He has no spiritual fortitude. He believes he must hate and destroy, all in a rapture of terrified hysteria, when all the time he is only a docile herd animal threatened by the packs. And in his hysteria there is a great danger to all the rest of the world, which won’t let him munch with his herd—His very ferocity is only terror and panic.”

  He continued, flatly, without emotion: “I began to hate my mother when I was very young, for she seemed silly to me, and blind. I began to see how the pack had hunted her, and my father, and my uncle, Irmgard’s father, and all the other poor creatures who believed that wolves were really men, and needed only a kind of St. Francis to lead them. Dozens of these poor gentle things came to our house in Germany, with shining eyes and with hot noble words in their mouths. I began to despise them. They frightened me, because I saw how defenseless they were against the packs, and I knew I had to leave them or the pack would be after me, too. I had the choice between the herd and the pack, and I chose the pack.”

  He sighed. He stood up and faced the fire, as if to hide his face.

  “But the hunting never gave me any peace, or any satisfaction. I was driven by my fear, only.—I’ve met many hunters, who really liked to hunt, and found fulfillment in it. Men like Ernest Barbour, Jules Bouchard, Jay Regan and Joseph Bryan. I’ve envied them, and hated them. Sometimes I used to wonder if they really didn’t feel like myself, when they were alone. But later, I knew they didn’t. They were the true wolves; they had fulfilled themselves, and they were happy. I wasn’t one of them.”

  He paused, and then said, suddenly, sharply: “But I would do it over again! I would have been just as miserable, with the herd! Because I would have been much more frightened—”

  “And you are never frightened, now?” asked Baldur, very softly.

  Franz was silent a moment. Then he said: “Yes, I am still frightened. I can’t stop. I keep thinking that perhaps I haven’t made myself strong enough to keep the pack off. What if there is a war, or a revolution, or a great social upheaval? What if I lose everything, then?—We’ve got to keep the status quo, men like me, or the pack will get us after all.”

  “And you don’t think there are greater strengths than money, Franz?” Baldur’s tone was very gentle. “Fortitudes? Faiths? Acceptances? Inner integrity?”

  Franz turned his head and looked at him, and for a moment his expression was derisive. Then it changed. He shook his head in weary negation. “If there are, I don’t know them. Once—I thought I did. Now it is too late.” He said, suddenly: “What about you? Have you any of them?”

  Baldur smiled sadly. “Every man must make his own compromise with reality. I made mine. I built a strong city, too. A graveyard, where nothing could disturb me.” He added: “It was even more vulnerable than yours.”

  They looked at each other, as though both had called out; and now there was nothing but understanding in their eyes. Involuntarily, they held out their hands to each other, and they met, slowly, firmly, tightly, like the grasp of kinsmen on a lonely road in the heart of a strange and frightful country.

  Then, as their hands still met, Baldur smiled a little, and said:

  “I think Irmgard would like to come home, now. Yes, I am sure she would like to come home to you, Franz.”

  A Biography of Taylor Caldwell

  Taylor Caldwell was one of the most prolific and widely read American authors of the twentieth century. In a career that spanned five decades, she wrote forty novels, many of which were New York Times bestsellers.

  Caldwell captivated readers with emotionally charged historical novels and family sagas such as Captains and the Kings, which sold 4.5 million copies and was made into a television miniseries in 1976. Her novels based on the lives of religious figures, Dear and Glorious Physician, a portrayal of the life of St. Luke, and Great Lion of God, a panoramic novel about the life a
nd times of St. Paul, are among the bestselling religious novels of all time.

  Born Janet Miriam Holland Taylor Caldwell in 1900 in Manchester, England, into a family of Scotch-Irish descent, she began attending an academically rigorous school at the age of four, studying Latin, French, history, and geography. At six, she won a national gold medal for her essay on novelist Charles Dickens. On weekends, she performed a long list of household chores and attended Sunday school and church twice a day. Caldwell often credited her Spartan childhood with making her a rugged individualist.

  In 1907, Caldwell, her parents, and her younger brother immigrated to the United States, settling in Buffalo, New York, where she would live for most of her life. She started writing stories when she was eight years old and completed her first novel, The Romance of Atlantis, when she was twelve, although it was not published until 1975. Marriage at the age of eighteen to William Combs and the birth of her first child, Mary Margaret—Peggy—did not deter her from pursuing an education. While working as a stenographer and a court reporter to help support her family, she took college courses at night.

  Upon receiving a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Buffalo in 1931, she divorced her husband and married Marcus Reback, her boss at the US Immigration Department office in Buffalo. Caldwell then dedicated herself to writing full time. Even as her family grew with the arrival of her second daughter, Judith, Caldwell’s unpublished manuscripts continued to pile up.