Steppenwolf
to feel at home in this world of idlers and pleasure seekers, a world
that is utterly strange and repugnant to me and that to this day I have
always carefully avoided and utterly despised, a smooth and stereotyped
world of marble-topped tables, jazz music, cocottes and commercial
travellers! Sadly, I swallowed my tea and stared at the crowd of
second-rate elegance. Two beautiful girls caught my eye. They were both
good dancers. I followed their movements with admiration and envy. How
elastic, how beautiful and gay and certain their steps!
Soon Hermine appeared once more. She was not pleased with me. She
scolded me and said that I was not there to wear such a face and sit
idling at tea-tables. I was to pull myself together, please, and dance.
What, I knew no one? That was not necessary. Were there, then, no girls
there who met with my approval?
I pointed out one of the two, and the more attractive, who happened at
the moment to be standing near us. She looked enchanting in her pretty
velvet dress with her short luxuriant blonde hair and her rounded
womanly arms. Hermine insisted that I should go up to her forthwith and
ask her to dance. I shrank back in despair.
“Indeed, I cannot do it,” I said in my misery. “Of course, if I were
young and good-looking--but for a stiff old hack like me who can’t
dance for the life of him--she would laugh at me!”
Hermine looked at me contemptuously.
“And that I should laugh at you, of course, doesn’t matter. What a
coward you are! Every one risks being laughed at when he addresses a
girl. That’s always at stake. So take the risk, Harry, and if the worst
come to the worst let yourself be laughed at. Otherwise it’s all up
with my belief in your obedience....”
She was obdurate. I got up automatically and approached the young
beauty just as the music began again.
“As a matter of fact, I’m engaged for this one,” she said and looked me
up and down with her large clear eyes, “but my partner seems to have
got stranded at the bar over there, so come along.”
I grasped her and performed the first steps, still in amazement that
she had not sent me about my business. She was not long in taking
my measure and in taking charge of me. She danced wonderfully and I
caught the infection. I forgot for the moment all the rules I had
conscientiously learnt and simply floated along. I felt my partner’s
taut hips, her quick and pliant knees, and looking in her young and
radiant face I owned to her that this was the first time in my life
that I had ever really danced. She smiled encouragement and replied to
my enchanted gaze and flattering words with a wonderful compliance,
not of words, but of movements whose soft enchantment brought us more
closely and delightfully in touch. My right hand held her waist firmly
and I followed every movement of her feet and arms and shoulders with
eager happiness. Not once, to my astonishment, did I step on her feet,
and when the music stopped, we both stood where we were and clapped
till the dance was played again; and then with all a lover’s zeal I
devoutly performed the rite once more.
When, too soon, the dance came to an end, my beautiful partner in
velvet disappeared and I suddenly saw Hermine standing near me. She had
been watching us.
“Now do you see?” she laughed approvingly. “Have you made the discovery
that women’s legs are not table legs? Well, bravo! You know the
fox-trot now, thank the Lord. To-morrow we’ll get on to the Boston, and
in three weeks there’s the Masked Ball at the Globe Rooms.”
We had taken seats for the interval when the charming young Herr
Pablo, with a friendly nod, sat down beside Hermine. He seemed to be
very intimate with her. As for myself, I must own that I was not by
any means delighted with the gentleman at this first encounter. He
was good-looking, I could not deny, both of face and figure, but I
could not discover what further advantages he had. Even his linguistic
accomplishments sat very lightly on him--to such an extent, indeed,
that he did not speak at all beyond uttering such words as please,
thanks, you bet, rather and hallo. These, certainly, he knew in several
languages. No, he said nothing, this Señor Pablo, nor did he even
appear to think much, this charming caballero. His business was with
the saxophone in the jazz-band and to this calling he appeared to
devote himself with love and passion. Often during the course of the
music he would suddenly clap with his hands, or permit himself other
expressions of enthusiasm, such as, singing out “O O O, Ha Ha, Hallo.”
Apart from this, however, he confined himself to being beautiful, to
pleasing women, to wearing collars and ties of the latest fashion and
a great number of rings on his fingers. His manner of entertaining
us consisted in sitting beside us, in smiling upon us, in looking
at his wrist watch and in rolling cigarettes--at which he was an
expert. His dark and beautiful Creole eyes and his black locks hid no
romance, no problems, no thoughts. Closely looked at, this beautiful
demigod of love was no more than a complacent and rather spoilt young
man with pleasant manners. I talked to him about his instrument and
about tone-colours in jazz music, and he must have seen that he was
confronted by one who had the enjoyment of a connoisseur for all that
touched on music. But he made no response, and while I, in compliment
to him, or rather, to Hermine, embarked upon a musicianly justification
of jazz, he smiled amiably upon me and my efforts. Presumably, he had
not the least idea that there was any music but jazz or that any music
had ever existed before it. He was pleasant, certainly, pleasant and
polite, and his large, vacant eyes smiled most charmingly. Between
him and me, however, there appeared to be nothing whatever in common.
Nothing of all that was, perhaps, important and sacred to him could be
so for me as well. We came of contrasted races and spoke languages in
which no two words were akin. (Later, nevertheless, Hermine told me a
remarkable thing. She told me that Pablo, after a conversation about
me, had said that she must treat me very nicely, for I was so very
unhappy. And when she asked what brought him to that conclusion, he
said: “Poor, poor fellow. Look at his eyes. Doesn’t know how to laugh.”)
When the dark-eyed young man had taken his leave of us and the music
began again, Hermine stood up. “Now you might have another dance with
me. Or don’t you care to dance any more?”
With her, too, I danced more easily now, in a freer and more sprightly
fashion, even though not so buoyantly and more self-consciously than
with the other. Hermine had me lead, adapting herself as softly and
lightly as the leaf of a flower, and with her, too, I now experienced
all these delights that now advanced and now took wing. She, too, now
exhaled the perfume of woman and love, and her dancing, too, sang
with intimate tenderness the lovely and enchanting song of sex. And
yet I could not respond to all this with warmth and freedom. I could
not entirely forget myself in abandon. Hermine stood in too close a
relation to me. She was my comrade and sister--my double, almost, in
her resemblance not to me only, but to Herman, my boyhood friend, the
enthusiast, the poet, who had shared with ardour all my intellectual
pursuits and extravagances.
“I know,” she said when I spoke of it. “I know that well enough. All
the same, I shall make you fall in love with me, but there’s no use
hurrying. First of all we’re comrades, two people who hope to be
friends, because we have recognised each other. For the present we’ll
each learn from the other and amuse ourselves together. I show you my
little stage, and teach you to dance and to have a little pleasure and
be silly; and you show me your thoughts and something of all you know.”
“There’s little there to show you, Hermine, I’m afraid. You know far
more than I do. You’re a most remarkable person--and a woman. But do I
mean anything to you? Don’t I bore you?”
She looked down darkly to the floor.
“That’s how I don’t like to hear you talk. Think of that evening when
you came broken from your despair and loneliness, to cross my path and
be my comrade. Why was it, do you think, I was able to recognise you
and understand you?”
“Why, Hermine? Tell me!”
“Because it’s the same for me as for you, because I am alone exactly
as you are, because I’m as little fond of life and men and myself as
you are and can put up with them as little. There are always a few such
people who demand the utmost of life and yet cannot come to terms with
its stupidity and crudeness.”
“You, you!” I cried in deep amazement. “I understand you, my comrade.
No one understands you better than I. And yet you’re a riddle. You are
such a past-master at life. You have your wonderful reverence for its
little details and enjoyments. You are such an artist in life. How can
you suffer at life’s hands? How can you despair?”
“I don’t despair. As to suffering--oh, yes, I know all about that!
You are surprised that I should be unhappy when I can dance and am so
sure of myself in the superficial things of life. And I, my friend, am
surprised that you are so disillusioned with life when you are at home
with the very things in it that are the deepest and most beautiful,
spirit, art, and thought! That is why we were drawn to one another and
why we are brother and sister. I am going to teach you to dance and
play and smile, and still not be happy. And you are going to teach me
to think and to know and yet not be happy. Do you know that we are both
children of the devil?”
“Yes, that is what we are. The devil is the spirit, and we are his
unhappy children. We have fallen out of nature and hang suspended in
space. And that reminds me of something. In the Steppenwolf treatise
that I told you about, there is something to the effect that it is only
a fancy of his to believe that he has one soul, or two, that he is made
up of one or two personalities. Every human being, it says, consists of
ten, or a hundred, or a thousand souls.”
“I like that very much,” cried Hermine. “In your case, for example, the
spiritual part is very highly developed, and so you are very backward
in all the little arts of living. Harry, the thinker, is a hundred
years old, but Harry, the dancer, is scarcely half a day old. It’s he
we want to bring on, and all his little brothers who are just as little
and stupid and stunted as he is.”
She looked at me, smiling; and then asked softly in an altered voice:
“And how did you like Maria, then?”
“Maria? Who is she?”
“The girl you danced with. She is a lovely girl, a very lovely girl.
You were a little smitten with her, as far as I could see.”
“You know her then?”
“Oh, yes, we know each other well. Were you very much taken with her?”
“I liked her very much, and I was delighted that she was so indulgent
about my dancing.”
“As if that were the whole story! You ought to make love to her a
little, Harry. She is very pretty and such a good dancer, and you are
in love with her already, I know very well. You’ll succeed with her,
I’m sure.”
“Believe me, I have no such aspiration.”
“There you’re lying a little. Of course, I know that you have an
attachment. There is a girl somewhere or other whom you see once or
twice a year in order to have a quarrel with her. Of course, it’s very
charming of you to wish to be true to this estimable friend of yours,
but you must permit me not to take it so very seriously. I suspect you
of taking love frightfully seriously. That is your own affair. You can
love as much as you like in your ideal fashion for all I care. All I
have to worry about is that you should learn to know a little more of
the little arts and lighter sides of life. In this sphere, I am your