Demian
I should see her no more, no more hear her firm step in the house,
should find no more her flowers on my table! And what had I attained?
I had dreamed and had lulled myself in comfort, instead of winning
her, instead of fighting for her and drawing her to me for always! All
that she had said to me about genuine love crossed my mind, hundreds
of fine, suggestive words, a hundred tender invitations, promises
perhaps--and what had I made of them? Nothing! Nothing!
I took up a position in the middle of my room, collected my whole
conscious self together and thought of Eve. I wished to concentrate the
forces of my soul, in order to let her feel my love, in order to draw
her to me. She was to come, longing for my embrace. My kisses were to
suck insatiably the ripe fruit of her lips.
I stood tense, until fingers and feet became stiff with cold. I felt
force was going out of me. For a few seconds something seemed to take
shape with me, something bright and cool; I had for a moment the
sensation as if I carried a crystal in my heart, and I knew that was
myself. A cold chill pierced to my heart.
As I woke out of my fearful state of tension I felt something was
approaching. I was exhausted to the point of death, but I was prepared
to see Eve step into the room, burning with passion, ravished.
The sound of horse’s hoofs clattering down the long street rang nearer
and nearer, then suddenly ceased. I sprang to the window. Below Demian
was dismounting.
“What is the matter, Demian? Nothing can have happened to your mother?”
He did not listen to my words. He was very pale, and perspiration ran
down both sides of his forehead over his cheeks. His horse was flecked
with foam. He tied the reins to the garden fence, then he took my arm
and walked with me down the street.
“Have you already heard the news?” I had heard nothing.
Demian pressed my arm and turned his face to me, with a dark,
compassionate, singular look.
“Yes, old man, now we’re in for it. You know of the strained relations
with Russia----”
“What? Is it war? I had never believed it.”
He spoke in an undertone, although no one was near.
“It is not yet declared. But it’s war. Rely on it. I haven’t worried
you lately, but I have seen three new omens since. It will be no
foundering of the world, no earthquake, no revolution. It’s war. You
will see how that strikes everybody. It will be a joy to people;
everyone already rejoices that hostilities are about to commence. So
insipid has life become for them. But you will see now, Sinclair, that
is only the beginning. This will perhaps be a great war, a very great
war. The new dispensation commences and for those who adhere to the
old, the new will be terrible. What will you do?”
I was perplexed, everything sounded so strange and improbable.
“I don’t know--and you?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“As soon as mobilization orders are out, I join up. I am a lieutenant.”
“You? I had no idea of that.”
“Yes. It was one of my adaptations. You know, I have never wanted to
appear out of the ordinary, and have rather done too much, in order to
be correct, to do the right thing. In eight days, I think, I shall be
already in the field.”
“For God’s sake!”
“Look here, old fellow, you mustn’t take things so sentimentally. At
bottom it certainly won’t give me pleasure to order machine gunfire to
be turned on living creatures, but that is a secondary matter. Now each
one of us will be seized by the great wheel of fate. You as well. You
will certainly be called up.”
“And your mother, Demian?”
Then for the first time I recollected what I was doing a quarter of an
hour before. How the world had changed! I had summoned together all my
force in order to conjure up the sweetest picture, and now fate had
suddenly put on a new, horrible mask.
“My mother? We need have no cares for her safety. She is safe, safer
than anyone else in the world to-day. You love her so very much?”
“You knew it, Demian?” He laughed brightly and without any
embarrassment.
“You child! Naturally I knew it. No one has yet called my mother Mother
Eve without loving her. By the way, how was that? You have called to
either her or myself to-day, haven’t you?”
“Yes, I called--I called to Mother Eve.”
“She felt it. She suddenly sent me away, I was to come to you. I had
just told her the news about Russia.”
We turned back, scarcely speaking, he untied his horse and mounted.
I first realized in my room how exhausted I was by Demian’s message,
and even more so by my previous spiritual exertions. But Mother Eve had
heard me! My thoughts had reached her. She would have come herself,
if--how wonderful all this was, and how beautiful! Now it was to be
war. Now what we had so often spoken of was about to happen. And Demian
had known so much in advance. How strange that the world’s stream would
no longer flow somewhere or other by us--that now it was suddenly
flowing through us, that fate and adventure called us, and that now, or
soon, the moment would come when the world would need us, when it would
be transformed. Demian was right, one should not be sentimental over
it. Only it was strange that I was now to experience that lonely thing,
“fate,” with so many, with the whole world. Good then!
I was ready. In the evening, when I went through the town, every corner
was alive with bustle and excitement. Everywhere the word “war”!
I went to Mother Eve’s house. We had supper in the summer house. I was
the only guest. No one spoke a word about the war. But later, shortly
before I left, Mother Eve said: “Dear Sinclair, you called me to-day.
You know why I did not come myself. But don’t forget, you know the call
now and if ever you need someone who bears the sign, call me again.”
She rose and went out through the gloaming into the garden. Tall and
queenly, invested with mystery, she stepped between the trees, the
foliage ceased its whispering at her approach, and over her head
glimmered tenderly the many stars.
* * * * *
I am coming to the end. Events marched quickly. War was declared.
Demian, who looked strange in uniform, with a silver-grey cloak, went
away. I brought his mother home. Soon after I also said good-bye to
her. She kissed me on the lips and held me a moment on her breast, and
her large eyes burned steadily close to mine.
And all men were like brothers. They had in mind their country and
their honor. But it was fate, they peeped for a moment into the
unveiled face. Young men came out of barracks, stepped into trains, and
on many a face I saw a sign--not ours--a beautiful and dignified sign,
signifying love and death. I as well was embraced by people I had never
seen before. I understood and responded gladly. It was an atmosphere
of intoxication in which they moved, not that of a fated will. But the
intoxication was sacred, it was due to the fact that they had all
looked into the rousing eyes of destiny.
It was already nearly winter when I went to the front.
At first, in spite of the sensation of the bombardment, I was
disappointed with everything. Formerly I had often wondered why people
so seldom were able to live for an ideal. Now I saw that many, yes, all
men, are capable of dying for an ideal, provided that such an ideal is
not personal, not chosen of their own free will. For them it had to be
an ideal accepted by and common to a great number.
But with time I saw that I had underestimated men. Although service and
a common danger renders them uniform, I saw many, living and dying,
approach fate magnificently. Not only in an attack, but the whole time,
many, very many of them had a fixed, far-away look, rather like that
of a person possessed, a look which indicates entire ignorance of the
end pursued, and a complete surrender of self to the unknown. No matter
what they might believe and think they were ready, they were there in
case of need, out of them would the future be formed. And, however
strongly the world’s attention appeared to be focused on war and heroic
deeds, on honor and other old ideals, however distantly and unnaturally
sang the voices of humanity--all this was merely the surface, just
as the question with regard to the foreign and political aims of the
war was superficial. Deep down, below the surface of human affairs,
something was in process of forming. Something which might be a new
order of humanity. For I could see many--many such died at my side--to
whom the understanding was brought home that hate and rage, murder and
destruction had no connection with the real object of the war. No, the
object, just as the aims in view, was purely a matter of chance. Their
deepest and most primitive feelings, even their wildest instincts were
not actually directed against the enemy, their murderous and bloody
work was an expression of their own inner being, of their cleft soul,
which wished to rave and kill, to destroy and die, in order to be able
to be born anew. A giant bird was fighting its way out of the egg, and
the egg was the world, and the world had to go to ruin.
One night in early spring I was doing sentry duty in front of a farm
we had occupied. The wind was blowing in fitful gusts, shrieking and
moaning according to the vagaries of its mood; over the high Flanders
sky rode an army of clouds, somewhere or other behind was a suspicion
of moon. I had been restless throughout the whole of that day, troubled
by cares which I could not precisely define. Now, at my dark post,
I thought with fervor of the picture of my life up to that time, of
Mother Eve, of Demian. I stood leaning against a poplar, staring into
the agitated sky, the mysterious quivering brightness of which soon
resolved itself into a series of pictures. I felt by the odd slowness
of my pulse, by the insensibility of my skin to wind and rain, by the
lively wakefulness of my inner being, that a guide was near me.
In the clouds a large city could be seen, out of which millions of men
were streaming, spreading in swarms over the broad countryside. In
their very midst there appeared the mighty figure of a god, as big as
a mountain, with glittering stars in its hair, and with the features
of Mother Eve. Into it disappeared the processions of men, as into a
gigantic cave, and were lost to view. The goddess shrank down on the
ground, the sign on her forehead glittered brightly. She seemed to
be under the influence of a dream. She closed her eyes and her large
features were twisted in pain. Suddenly she cried out, and out of her
forehead sprang stars, which hurried in lovely arcs and half-circles
over the black sky.
One of the stars rushed noisily through the air to meet me, as if
seeking me out. With a crash it burst into a thousand sparks, lifting
me off my feet and hurling me on to the ground. The world broke up
thunderously about me.
They found me close to the poplar, covered with earth and wounded in
several places.
I lay in a cellar, guns growled and rumbled overhead, I lay in a cart,
and was jolted over empty fields. For the most part I was either asleep
or unconscious. But the more deeply I slept, the more strongly I felt
that I was being drawn, that I followed at the will of a force over
which I was not master.
I lay on straw in a stable, it was dark, someone trod on my hand. But
my inner self willed to go further, the mysterious force drew me on.
Again I lay in a cart, and later on a stretcher. Even more strongly
I felt in me the command to go forward, I was conscious only of the
pressure, the force which seemed to be controlling my journeying thus
from place to place.
At last I was there. It was night. I was fully conscious and I felt
strongly the secret attraction and power which had brought me to that
place. Now I was lying in a room, on a bed made up on the floor. I