Steppenwolf
and to exalted dignity as you did. He did not think himself so
important! He sang his divine melodies and died. He died young--poor
and misunderstood--”
I lost my breath. A thousand things ought to have been said in ten
words. My forehead began to sweat.
Goethe, however, said very amiably: “It may be unforgivable that I
lived to be eighty-two. My satisfaction on that account was, however,
less than you may think. You are right that a great longing for
survival possessed me continually. I was in continual fear of death and
continually struggling with it. I believe that the struggle against
death, the unconditional and self-willed determination to live, is the
motive power behind the lives and activities of all outstanding men.
My eighty-two years showed just as conclusively that we must all die
in the end as if I had died as a schoolboy. If it helps to justify
me I should like to say this too: there was much of the child in my
nature--curiosity and love of wasting time in play. Well, and so it
went on and on, till I saw that sooner or later there must be enough of
play.”
As he said this, his smile was quite cunning--a downright roguish
leer. He had grown taller and his erect bearing and the constrained
dignity of his face had disappeared. The air, too, around us was now
ringing with melodies, all of them songs of Goethe’s. I heard Mozart’s
_Violets_ and Schubert’s _Again thou fillest brake and vale_
quite distinctly. And Goethe’s face was rosy and youthful, and he
laughed; and now he resembled Mozart like a brother, now Schubert, and
the star on his breast was composed entirely of wild flowers. A yellow
primrose blossomed luxuriantly in the middle of it.
It did not altogether suit me to have the old gentleman avoid my
questions and accusations in this sportive manner, and I looked at him
reproachfully. At that he bent forward and brought his mouth, which had
now become quite like a child’s, close to my ear and whispered softly
into it: “You take the old Goethe much too seriously, my young friend.
You should not take old people who are already dead seriously. It does
them injustice. We immortals do not like things to be taken seriously.
We like joking. Seriousness, young man, is an accident of time. It
consists, I don’t mind telling you in confidence, in putting too high
a value on time. I, too, once put too high a value on time. For that
reason I wished to be a hundred years old. In eternity, however, there
is no time, you see. Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a
joke.”
And indeed there was no saying another serious word to the man. He
capered joyfully and nimbly up and down and made the primrose shoot out
from his star like a rocket and then he made it shrink and disappear.
While he flickered to and fro with his dance-steps and figures, it was
borne in upon me that he at least had not neglected learning to dance.
He could do it wonderfully. Then I remembered the scorpion, or Molly,
rather, and I called out to Goethe: “Tell me, is Molly there?”
Goethe laughed aloud. He went to his table and opened a drawer; took
out a handsome leather or velvet box, and held it open under my eyes.
There, small, faultless, and gleaming, lay a diminutive effigy of a
woman’s leg on the dark velvet, an enchanting leg, with the knee a
little bent and the foot pointing downwards to end in the daintiest of
toes.
I stretched out my hand, for I had quite fallen in love with the little
leg and I wanted to have it, but just as I was going to take hold of
it with my finger and thumb, the little toy seemed to move with a tiny
start and it occurred to me suddenly that this might be the scorpion.
Goethe seemed to read my thought, and even to have wanted to cause
this deep timidity, this hectic struggle between desire and dread.
He held the provoking little scorpion close to my face and watched
me start forward with desire, then start back with dread; and this
seemed to divert him exceedingly. While he was teasing me with the
charming, dangerous thing, he became quite old once more, very, very
old, a thousand years old, with hair as white as snow, and his withered
greybeard’s face laughed a still and soundless laughter that shook him
to the depths with abysmal old man’s humour.
When I woke I had forgotten the dream; it did not come back to me till
later. I had slept for nearly an hour, as I never thought I could
possibly have done at a café-table with the music and the bustle all
round me. The dear girl stood in front of me with one hand on my
shoulder.
“Give me two or three marks,” she said. “I’ve spent something in there.”
I gave her my purse. She took it and was soon back again.
“Well, now I can sit with you for a little and then I have to go. I
have an engagement.”
I was alarmed.
“With whom?” I asked quickly.
“With a man, my dear Harry. He has invited me to the Odéon Bar.”
“Oh! I didn’t think you would leave me alone.”
“Then you should have invited me yourself. Some one has got in before
you. Well, there’s good money saved. Do you know the Odéon? Nothing
but champagne after midnight. Armchairs like at a club, nigger band,
jolly fine.”
I had never considered all this.
“But let me invite you,” I entreated her. “I thought it was an
understood thing, now that we’ve made friends. Invite yourself wherever
you like. Do, please, I beg you.”
“That is nice of you. But, you see, a promise is a promise, and I’ve
given my word and I shall keep it and go. Don’t worry any more over
that. Have another drink of wine. There’s still some in the bottle.
Drink it up and then go comfortably home and sleep. Promise me.”
“No, you know that’s just what I can’t do--go home.”
“Oh--you--with your tales! Will you never be done--with your Goethe?”
(The dream about Goethe came back to me at that moment.) “But if you
really can’t go home, stay here. There are bedrooms. Shall I see about
one for you?”
I was satisfied with that and asked where I could find her again? Where
did she live? She would not tell me. I should find her in one place or
another if I looked.
“Mayn’t I invite you somewhere?”
“Where?”
“Where and when you like.”
“Good. Tuesday for dinner at the old Franciscan. First floor.
Good-bye.”
She gave me her hand. I noticed for the first time how well it matched
her voice--a beautiful hand, firm and intelligent and good-natured. She
laughed at me when I kissed it.
Then at the last moment she turned once more and said: “I’ll tell you
something else--about Goethe. What you felt about him and finding the
picture of him more than you could put up with, I often feel about the
saints.”
“The saints? Are you so religious?”
“No, I’m not religious, I’m sorry to say. But I was once and shall be
again. There is no time now to be religious.”
“No time. Does it need time to be religious?”
“Oh, yes. To be religious you must have time and, even more,
independence of time. You can’t be religious in earnest and at the same
time live in actual things and still take them seriously, time and
money and the Odéon Bar and all that.”
“Yes, I understand. But what was that you said about the saints?”
“Well, there are many saints I’m particularly fond of--Stephen, St.
Francis and others. I often see pictures of them and of the Saviour
and the Virgin--such utterly lying and false and silly pictures--and
I can put up with them just as little as you could with that picture
of Goethe. When I see one of those sweet and silly Saviours or St.
Francises and see how other people find them beautiful and edifying,
I feel it is an insult to the real Saviour and it makes me think: Why
did He live and suffer so terribly if people find a picture as silly
as that satisfactory to them! But in spite of this I know that my own
picture of the Saviour or St. Francis is only a human picture and falls
short of the original, and that the Saviour Himself would find the
picture I have of Him within me just as stupid as I do those sickly
reproductions. I don’t say this to justify you in your ill-temper and
rage with the picture of Goethe. There’s no justification. I say it
simply to show you that I can understand you. You learned people and
artists have, no doubt, all sorts of superior things in your heads;
but you’re human beings like the rest of us, and we, too, have our
dreams and fancies. I noticed, for example, learned sir, that you felt
a slight embarrassment when it came to telling me your Goethe story.
You had to make a great effort to make your ideas comprehensible to a
simple girl like me. Well, and so I wanted to show you that you needn’t
have made such an effort. I understand you all right. And now I’ve
finished and your place is in bed.”
She went away and an old house porter took me up two flights of stairs.
But first he asked me where my luggage was, and when he heard that I
hadn’t any, I had to pay down what he called “sleep-money.” Then he
took me up an old dark staircase to a room upstairs and left me alone.
There was a bleak wooden bedstead and on the wall hung a sabre and a
coloured print of Garibaldi and also a withered wreath that had once
figured in a club festival. I would have given much for pyjamas. At any
rate there was water and a small towel and I could wash. Then I lay
down on the bed in my clothes, and, leaving the light on, gave myself
up to my reflections. So I had settled accounts with Goethe. It was
splendid that he had come to me in a dream. And this wonderful girl--if
only I had known her name! All of a sudden there was a human being, a
living human being, to shatter the death that had come down over me
like a glass case, and to put out a hand to me, a good and beautiful
and warm hand. All of a sudden there were things that concerned me
again, which I could think of with joy and eagerness. All of a sudden
a door was thrown open through which life came in. Perhaps I could
live once more and once more be a human being. My soul that had fallen
asleep in the cold and nearly frozen breathed once more, and sleepily
spread its weak and tiny wings. Goethe had been with me. A girl had
bidden me eat and drink and sleep, and had shown me friendship and
had laughed at me and had called me a silly little boy. And this
wonderful friend had talked to me of the saints and shown me that even
when I had outdone myself in absurdity I was not alone. I was not an
incomprehensible and ailing exception. There were people akin to me. I
was understood. Should I see her again? Yes, for certain. She could be
relied upon. “A promise is a promise.”
And before I knew, I was asleep once more and slept four or five
hours. It had gone ten when I woke. My clothes were all creases. I
felt utterly exhausted. And in my head was the memory of yesterday’s
half-forgotten horror; but I had life, hope and happy thoughts. As I
returned to my room I experienced nothing of that terror that this
return had had for me the day before. On the stairs above the araucaria
I met the “aunt,” my landlady. I saw her seldom but her kindly nature
always delighted me. The meeting was not very propitious, for I was
still unkempt and uncombed after my night out, and I had not shaved. I
greeted her and would have passed on. As a rule, she always respected
my desire to live alone and unobserved. To-day, however, as it turned
out, a veil between me and the outer world seemed to be torn aside, a
barrier fallen. She laughed and stopped.
“You have been on a spree, Mr. Haller. You were not in bed last night.
You must be pretty tired!”
“Yes,” I said, and was forced to laugh too. “There was something lively
going on last night, and as I did not like to shock you, I slept at an
hotel. My respect for the repose and dignity of your house is great. I
sometimes feel like a ‘foreign body’ in it.”
“You are poking fun, Mr. Haller.”