Steppenwolf
“Splendid,” I cried, “and if you bring it off and teach me to dance,
the gramophone is yours as an honorarium. Agreed?”
I brought it out very pat, but scarcely from the heart. I could not
picture the detested instrument in my study among my books, and I was
by no means reconciled to the dancing either. It had been in my mind
that I might try how it went for a while, though I was convinced that
I was too old and stiff and would never learn now. And to go at it
hammer and tongs as she proposed seemed to me altogether too sudden
and uncompromising. As an old and fastidious connoisseur of music, I
could feel my gorge rising against the gramophone and jazz and modern
dance-music. It was more than any one could ask of me to have dance
tunes that were the latest rage of America let loose upon the sanctum
where I took refuge with Novalis and Jean Paul and to be made to dance
to them. But it was not any one who asked it of me. It was Hermine, and
it was for her to command, and for me to obey. Of course, I obeyed.
We met at a café on the following afternoon. Hermine was there before
me, drinking tea, and she pointed with a smile to my name which she had
found in a newspaper. It was one of the reactionary jingo papers of my
own district in which from time to time violently abusive references
to me were circulated. During the war I had been opposed to it and,
after, I had from time to time counselled quiet and patience and
humanity and a criticism that began at home; and I had resisted the
nationalist jingoism that became every day more pronounced, more insane
and unrestrained. Here, then, was another attack of this kind, badly
written, in part the work of the editor himself and in part stolen from
articles of a similar kind in papers of similar tendencies to his own.
It is common knowledge that no one writes worse than these defenders
of decrepit ideas. No one plies his trade with less of decency and
conscientious care. Hermine had read the article, and it had informed
her that Harry Haller was a noxious insect and a man who disowned his
native land, and that it stood to reason that no good could come to the
country so long as such persons and such ideas were tolerated and the
minds of the young turned to sentimental ideas of humanity instead of
to revenge by arms upon the hereditary foe.
“Is that you?” asked Hermine, pointing to my name. “Well, you’ve made
yourself some enemies and no mistake. Does it annoy you?”
I read a few lines. There was not a single line of stereotyped abuse
that had not been drummed into me for years till I was sick and tired
of it.
“No,” I said, “it doesn’t annoy me. I was used to it long ago. Now
and again I have expressed the opinion that every nation, and even
every person, would do better, instead of rocking himself to sleep
with political catchwords about war-guilt, to ask himself how far his
own faults and negligences and evil tendencies are guilty of the war
and all the other wrongs of the world, and that there lies the only
possible means of avoiding the next war. They don’t forgive me that,
for, of course, they are themselves all guiltless, the Kaiser, the
generals, the trade magnates, the politicians, the papers. Not one of
them has the least thing to blame himself for. Not one has any guilt.
One might believe that everything was for the best, even though a few
million men lie under the ground. And mind you, Hermine, even though
such abusive articles cannot annoy me any longer, they often sadden me
all the same. Two-thirds of my countrymen read this kind of newspaper,
read things written in this tone every morning and every night, are
every day worked up and admonished and incited, and robbed of their
peace of mind and better feelings by them, and the end and aim of it
all is to have the war over again, the next war that draws nearer and
nearer, and it will be a good deal more horrible than the last. All
that is perfectly clear and simple. Any one could comprehend it and
reach the same conclusion after a moment’s reflection. But nobody wants
to. Nobody wants to avoid the next war, nobody wants to spare himself
and his children the next holocaust if this be the cost. To reflect
for one moment, to examine himself for a while and ask what share he
has in the world’s confusion and wickedness--look you, nobody wants
to do that. And so there’s no stopping it, and the next war is being
pushed on with enthusiasm by thousands upon thousands day by day. It
has paralysed me since I knew it, and brought me to despair. I have no
country and no ideals left. All that comes to nothing but decorations
for the gentlemen by whom the next slaughter is ushered in. There is
no sense in thinking or saying or writing anything of human import, to
bother one’s head with thoughts of goodness--for two or three men who
do that, there are thousands of papers, periodicals, speeches, meetings
in public and in private, that make the opposite their daily endeavour
and succeed in it too.”
Hermine had listened attentively.
“Yes,” she said now, “there you’re right enough. Of course, there will
be another war. One doesn’t need to read the papers to know that. And
of course one can be sad about it, but it isn’t any use. It is just the
same as when a man is sad to think that one day, in spite of his utmost
efforts to prevent it, he will inevitably die. The war against death,
dear Harry, is always a beautiful, noble and wonderful and glorious
thing, and so, it follows, is the war against war. But it is always
hopeless and quixotic too.”
“That is perhaps true,” I cried heatedly, “but truths like that--that
we must all soon be dead and so it is all one and the same--make the
whole of life flat and stupid. Are we then to throw everything up
and renounce the spirit altogether and all effort and all that is
human and let ambition and money rule forever while we await the next
mobilisation over a glass of beer?”
Remarkable the look that Hermine now gave me, a look full of amusement,
full of irony and roguishness and fellow-feeling, and at the same time
so grave, so wise, so unfathomably serious.
“You shan’t do that,” she said in a voice that was quite maternal.
“Your life will not be flat and dull even though you know that your
war will never be victorious. It is far flatter, Harry, to fight for
something good and ideal and to know all the time that you are bound to
attain it. Are ideals attainable? Do we live to abolish death? No--we
live to fear it and then again to love it, and just for death’s sake it
is that our spark of life glows for an hour now and then so brightly.
You’re a child, Harry. Now, do as I tell you and come along. We’ve a
lot to get done to-day. I am not going to bother myself any more to-day
about the war or the papers either. What about you?”
Oh, no, I had no wish to.
We went together--it was our first walk in the town--to a music shop
and looked at gramophones. We turned them on and off and heard them
play, and when we had found one that was very suitable and nice and
cheap I wanted to buy it. Hermine, however, was not for such rapid
transactions. She pulled me back and I had to go off with her in search
of another shop and there, too, look at and listen to gramophones of
every shape and size, from the dearest to the cheapest, before she
finally agreed to return to the first shop and buy the machine we first
thought of.
“You see,” I said, “it would have been as simple to have taken it at
once.”
“Think so? And then perhaps to-morrow we should have seen the very
same one in a shop window at twenty francs less. And besides, it’s fun
buying things and you have to pay for your fun. You’ve a lot to learn
yet.”
We got a porter to carry the purchase home.
Hermine made a careful inspection of my room. She commended the stove
and the sofa, tried the chairs, picked up the books, stood a long
while in front of the photograph of Erica. We had put the gramophone
on a chest of drawers among piles of books. And now my instruction
began. Hermine turned on a fox-trot and, after showing me the first
steps, began to take me in hand. I trotted obediently round with her,
colliding with chairs, hearing her directions and failing to understand
them, treading on her toes, and being as clumsy as I was conscientious.
After the second dance she threw herself on the sofa and laughed like a
child.
“Oh! how stiff you are! Just go straight ahead as if you were walking.
There’s not the least need to exert yourself. Why, I should think you
have made yourself positively hot, haven’t you? No, let’s rest five
minutes! Dancing, don’t you see, is every bit as easy as thinking, when
you can do it, and much easier to learn. Now you can understand why
people won’t get the habit of thinking and prefer calling Herr Haller
a traitor to his country and waiting quietly for the next war to come
along.”
In an hour she was gone, assuring me that it would go better next time.
I had my own thoughts about that, and I was sorely disappointed over
my stupidity and clumsiness. It did not seem to me that I had learnt
anything whatever and I did not believe that it would go better next
time. No, one had to bring certain qualities to dancing that I was
entirely without, gaiety, innocence, frivolity, elasticity. Well, I had
always thought so.
But there, the next time it did in fact go better. I even got some fun
out of it, and at the end of the lesson Hermine announced that I was
now proficient in the fox-trot. But when she followed it up by saying
that I had to dance with her the next day at a restaurant, I was thrown
into a panic and resisted the idea with vehemence. She reminded me
coolly of my oath of obedience and arranged a meeting for tea on the
following day at the Balance Hotel.
That evening I sat in my room and tried to read; but I could not. I
was in dread of the morrow. It was a most horrible thought that I, an
elderly, shy, touchy crank, was to frequent one of those modern deserts
of jazz music, a _thé dansant_, and a far more horrible thought
that I was to figure there as a dancer, though I did not in the least
know how to dance. And I own I laughed at myself and felt shame in my
own eyes when alone in the quiet of my studious room I turned on the
machine and softly in stockinged feet went through the steps of my
dance.
A small orchestra played every other day at the Balance Hotel and
tea and whisky were served. I made an attempt at bribing Hermine, I
put cakes before her and proposed a bottle of good wine, but she was
inflexible.
“You’re not here for your amusement to-day. It is a dancing lesson.”
I had to dance with her two or three times, and during an interval
she introduced me to the saxophone player, a dark and good-looking
youth of Spanish or South American origin, who, she told me, could
play on all instruments and talk every language in the world. This
señor appeared to know Hermine well and to be on excellent terms with
her. He had two saxophones of different sizes in front of him which
he played on by turns, while his darkly gleaming eyes scrutinised the
dancers and beamed with pleasure. I was surprised to feel something
like jealousy of this agreeable and charming musician, not a lover’s
jealousy, for there was no question of love between Hermine and me,
but a subtler jealousy of their friendship; for he did not seem to me
so eminently worthy of the interest, and even reverence, with which
she so conspicuously distinguished him. I apparently was to meet some
queer people, I thought to myself in ill-humour. Then Hermine was
asked to dance again, and I was left alone to drink tea and listen to
the music, a kind of music that I had never till that day known how
to endure. Good God, I thought, so now I am to be initiated, and made