Steppenwolf
such days as this or of sitting out any more such suppers? There was
not. This very night I would make an end of the comedy, go home and cut
my throat. No more tarrying.
I paced the streets in all directions, driven on by wretchedness.
Naturally it was stupid of me to bespatter the drawing-room ornaments
of the worthy folk, stupid and ill-mannered, but I could not help it;
and even now I could not help it. I could not bear this tame, lying,
well-mannered life any longer. And since it appeared that I could not
bear my loneliness any longer either, since my own company had become
so unspeakably hateful and nauseous, since I struggled for breath in
a vacuum and suffocated in hell, what way out was left me? There was
none. I thought of my father and mother, of the sacred flame of my
youth long extinct, of the thousand joys and labours and aims of my
life. Nothing of them all was left me, not even repentance, nothing
but agony and nausea. Never had the clinging to mere life seemed so
grievous as now.
I rested a moment in a tavern in an outlying part of the town and
drank some brandy and water; then to the streets once more, with the
devil at my heels, up and down the steep and winding streets of the
Old Town, along the avenues, across the station square. The thought of
going somewhere took me into the station. I scanned the time-tables
on the walls; drank some wine and tried to come to my senses. Then
the spectre that I went in dread of came nearer, till I saw it plain.
It was the dread of returning to my room and coming to a halt there,
faced by my despair. There was no escape from this moment though I
walked the streets for hours. Sooner or later I should be at my door,
at the table with my books, on the sofa with the photograph of Erica
above it. Sooner or later the moment would come to take out my razor
and cut my throat. More and more plainly the picture rose before me.
More and more plainly, with a wildly beating heart, I felt the dread
of all dreads, the fear of death. Yes, I was horribly afraid of death.
Although I saw no other way out, although nausea, agony and despair
threatened to engulf me; although life had no allurement and nothing
to give me either of joy or hope, I shuddered all the same with an
unspeakable horror of a gaping wound in a condemned man’s flesh.
I saw no other way of escape from this dreadful spectre. Suppose
that to-day cowardice won a victory over despair, to-morrow and each
succeeding day I would again face despair heightened by self-contempt.
It was merely taking up and throwing down the knife till at last it
was done. Better to-day then. I reasoned with myself as though with
a frightened child. But the child would not listen. It ran away. It
wanted to live. I renewed my fitful wanderings through the town,
making many detours not to return to the house which I had always
in my mind and always deferred. Here and there I came to a stop and
lingered, drinking a glass or two, and then, as if pursued, ran around
in a circle whose centre had the razor as a goal, and meant death.
Sometimes from utter weariness I sat on a bench, on a fountain’s rim,
or a curb-stone and wiped the sweat from my forehead and listened to
the beating of my heart. Then on again in mortal dread and an intense
yearning for life.
Thus it was I found myself late at night in a distant and unfamiliar
part of the town; and there I went into a public house from which there
came the lively sound of dance music. Over the entrance as I went in
I read “The Black Eagle” on the old signboard. Within I found it was
a free night--crowds, smoke, the smell of wine, and the clamour of
voices, with dancing in a room at the back, whence issued the frenzy
of music. I stayed in the nearer room where there were none but simple
folk, some of them poorly dressed, whereas behind in the dance-hall
smart people were also to be seen. Carried forward by the crowd, I
soon found myself near the bar, wedged against a table at which sat a
pale and pretty girl against the wall. She wore a thin dance-frock cut
very low and a withered flower in her hair. She gave me a friendly and
observant look as I came up and with a smile moved to one side to make
room for me.
“May I?” I asked and sat down beside her.
“Of course, you may,” she said. “But who are you?”
“Thanks,” I replied. “I cannot possibly go home, cannot, cannot. I’ll
stay here with you if you’ll let me. No, I can’t go back home.”
She nodded as though to humour me, and as she nodded I observed the
curl that fell from her temple to her ear, and I saw that the withered
flower was a camellia. From within crashed the music and at the buffet
the waitresses hurriedly shouted their orders.
“Well, stay here then,” she said with a voice that comforted me. “Why
can’t you go home?”
“I can’t. There’s something waiting for me there. No, I can’t--it’s too
frightful.”
“Let it wait then and stay here. First wipe your glasses. You can see
nothing like that. Give me your handkerchief. What shall we drink?
Burgundy?”
While she wiped my glasses, I had the first clear impression of her
pale, firm face, with its clear grey eyes and smooth forehead, and the
short, tight curl in front of her ear. Good-naturedly and with a touch
of mockery she began to take me in hand. She ordered the wine, and as
she clinked her glass with mine, her eyes fell on my shoes.
“Good Lord, wherever have you come from? You look as though you had
come from Paris on foot. That’s no state to come to a dance in.”
I answered “yes” and “no,” laughed now and then, and let her talk. I
found her charming, very much to my surprise, for I had always avoided
girls of her kind and regarded them with suspicion. And she treated
me exactly in the way that was best for me at that moment, and so she
has since without an exception. She took me under her wing just as I
needed, and mocked me, too, just as I needed. She ordered me a sandwich
and told me to eat it. She filled my glass and bade me sip it and not
drink too fast. Then she commended my docility.
“That’s fine,” she said to encourage me. “You’re not difficult. I
wouldn’t mind betting it’s a long while since you have had to obey any
one.”
“You’d win the bet. How did you know it?”
“Nothing in that. Obeying is like eating and drinking. There’s nothing
like it if you’ve been without it too long. Isn’t it so, you’re glad to
do as I tell you?”
“Very glad. You know everything.”
“You make it easy to. Perhaps, my friend, I could tell you, too, what
it is that’s waiting for you at home and what you dread so much.
But you know that for yourself. We needn’t talk about it, eh? Silly
business! Either a man goes and hangs himself, and then he hangs sure
enough, and he’ll have his reasons for it, or else he goes on living
and then he has only living to bother himself with. Simple enough.”
“Oh,” I cried, “if only it were so simple. I’ve bothered myself enough
with life, God knows, and little use it has been to me. To hang
oneself is hard, perhaps. I don’t know. But to live is far, far harder.
God, how hard it is!”
“You’ll see it’s child’s play. We’ve made a start already. You’ve
polished your glasses, eaten something and had a drink. Now we’ll go
and give your shoes and trousers a brush and then you’ll dance a shimmy
with me.”
“Now that shows,” I cried in a fluster, “that I was right! Nothing
could grieve me more than not to be able to carry out any command of
yours, but I can dance no shimmy, nor waltz, nor polka, nor any of the
rest of them. I’ve never danced in my life. Now you can see it isn’t
all as easy as you think.”
Her bright red lips smiled and she firmly shook her waved and shingled
head; and as I looked at her, I thought I could see a resemblance to
Rosa Kreisler, with whom I had been in love as a boy. But she had a
dark complexion and dark hair. I could not tell of whom it was she
reminded me. I knew only that it was of someone in my early youth and
boyhood.
“Wait a bit,” she cried. “So you can’t dance? Not at all? Not even a
one-step? And yet you talk of the trouble you’ve taken to live? You
told a fib there, my boy, and you shouldn’t do that at your age. How
can you say that you’ve taken any trouble to live when you won’t even
dance?”
“But if I can’t--I’ve never learnt!”
She laughed.
“But you learnt reading and writing and arithmetic, I suppose, and
French and Latin and a lot of other things? I don’t mind betting you
were ten or twelve years at school and studied whatever else you could
as well. Perhaps you’ve even got your doctor’s degree and know Chinese
or Spanish. Am I right? Very well then. But you couldn’t find the time
and money for a few dancing lessons! No, indeed!”
“It was my parents,” I said to justify myself. “They let me learn
Latin and Greek and all the rest of it. But they didn’t let me learn
to dance. It wasn’t the thing with us. My parents had never danced
themselves.”
She looked at me quite coldly, with real contempt, and again something
in her face reminded me of my youth.
“So your parents must take the blame then. Did you ask them whether you
might spend the evening at the Black Eagle? Did you? They’re dead a
long while ago, you say? So much for that. And now supposing you were
too obedient to learn to dance when you were young (though I don’t
believe you were such a model child), what have you been doing with
yourself all these years?”
“Well,” I confessed, “I scarcely know myself--studied, played music,
read books, written books, travelled--”
“Fine views of life, you have. You have always done the difficult and
complicated things and the simple ones you haven’t even learnt. No
time, of course. More amusing things to do. Well, thank God, I’m not
your mother. But to do as you do and then say you’ve tested life to the
bottom and found nothing in it is going a bit too far.”
“Don’t scold me,” I implored. “It isn’t as if I didn’t know I was mad.”
“Oh, don’t make a song of your sufferings. You are no madman,
Professor. You’re not half mad enough to please me. It seems to me
you’re much too clever in a silly way, just like a professor. Have
another roll. You can tell me some more later.”
She got another roll for me, put a little salt and mustard on it, cut a
piece for herself and told me to eat it. I did all she told me except
dance. It did me a prodigious lot of good to do as I was told and to
have some one sitting by me who asked me things and ordered me about
and scolded me. If the professor or his wife had done so an hour or two
earlier, it would have spared me a lot. But no, it was well as it was.
I should have missed much.
“What’s your name?” she asked suddenly.
“Harry.”
“Harry? A babyish sort of name. And a baby you are, Harry, in spite of
your few grey hairs. You’re a baby and you need some one to look after
you. I’ll say no more of dancing. But look at your hair! Have you no
wife, no sweetheart?”
“I haven’t a wife any longer. We are divorced. A sweetheart, yes, but
she doesn’t live here. I don’t see her very often. We don’t get on very
well.”
She whistled softly.
“You must be difficult if nobody sticks to you. But now tell me what
was up in particular this evening? What sent you chasing round out of
your wits? Down on your luck? Lost at cards?”
This was not easy to explain.
“Well,” I began, “you see, it was really a small matter. I had an
invitation to dinner with a professor--I’m not one myself, by the
way--and really I ought not to have gone. I’ve lost the habit of being
in company and making conversation. I’ve forgotten how it’s done. As
soon as I entered the house I had the feeling something would go wrong,
and when I hung my hat on the peg I thought to myself that perhaps I
should want it sooner than I expected. Well, at the professor’s there