Steppenwolf
go till late. This, too, Hermine had counselled me.
I had seldom of late been to the Steel Helmet, my former refuge, where
the disappointed men sat out their evenings, soaking in their wine and
playing at bachelor life. It did not suit the life I had come to lead
since. This evening, however, I was drawn to it before I was aware.
In the mood between joy and fear that fate and parting imposed on me
just now, all the stations and shrines of meditation in my life’s
pilgrimage caught once more that gleam of pain and beauty that comes
from things past; and so too had the little tavern, thick with smoke,
among whose patrons I had lately been numbered and whose primitive
opiate of a bottle of land-wine had lately heartened me enough to spend
one more night in my lonely bed and to endure life for one more day.
I had tasted other specifics and stronger stimulus since then, and
sipped a sweeter poison. With a smile I entered the ancient hostel.
The landlady greeted me and so, with a nod, did the silent company of
habitués. A roast chicken was commended and soon set before me. The
limpid Elsasser sparkled in the thick peasant glass. The clean white
wooden tables and the old yellow wainscoting had a friendly look. And
while I ate and drank there came over me that feeling of change and
decay and of farewell celebrations, that sweet and inwardly painful
feeling of being a living part of all the scenes and all the things of
an earlier life that has never yet been parted from, and from which the
time to part has come. The modern man calls this sentimentality. He
has lost the love of inanimate objects. He does not even love his most
sacred object, his motor-car, but is ever hoping to exchange it as soon
as he can for a later model. This modern man has energy and ability.
He is healthy, cool and strenuous--a splendid type, and in the next
war he will be a miracle of efficiency. But all that was no concern
of mine. I was not a modern man, nor an old-fashioned one either. I
had escaped time altogether, and went my way, with death at my elbow
and death as my resolve. I had no objection to sentimentalities. I was
glad and thankful to find a trace of anything like a feeling still
remaining in my burnt-out heart. So I let my memories of the old tavern
and my attachment to the solid wooden chairs and the smell of smoke and
wine and the air of use and wont and warmth and homeliness that the
place had carry me away. There is beauty in farewells and a gentleness
in their very tone. The hard seat was dear to me, and so was the
peasant glass and the cool racy taste of the Elsasser and my intimacy
with all and everything in this room, and the faces of the bent and
dreaming drinkers, those disillusioned ones, whose brother I had been
for so long. All this was bourgeois sentimentality, lightly seasoned
with a touch of the old-fashioned romance of inns, a romance coming
from my boyhood when inns and wine and cigars were still forbidden
things--strange and wonderful. But no Steppenwolf rose before me baring
his teeth to tear my sentiment to pieces. I sat there in peace in the
glow of the past whose setting still shed a faint after-glow.
A street seller came in and I bought a handful of roasted chestnuts.
An old dame came in with flowers and I bought a bunch of violets and
presented them to the landlady. It was not till I was about to pay my
bill and felt in vain for the pocket of the coat I usually wore that I
realised once more than I was in evening dress. The Masked Ball. And
Hermine!
It was still early enough, however. I could not convince myself to go
to the Globe Rooms straight away. I felt too--as I had in the case of
all the pleasures that had lately come my way--a whole array of checks
and resistances. I had no inclination to enter the large and crowded
and noisy rooms. I had a schoolboy’s shyness of the strange atmosphere
and the world of pleasure and dancing.
As I sauntered along I passed by a cinema with its dazzling lights and
huge coloured posters. I went on a few steps, then turned again and
went in. There till eleven I could sit quietly and comfortably in the
dark. Following the attendant with the pocket light I stumbled through
the curtains into the darkened hall, found a seat and was suddenly
in the middle of the Old Testament. The film was one of those that
are nominally not shown for money. Much expense and many refinements
are lavished upon them in a more sacred and nobler cause, and at
midday even school-children are brought to see them by their religious
teachers. This one was the story of Moses and the Israelites in Egypt,
with a huge crowd of men, horses, camels, palaces, splendours of the
Pharaohs and tribulations of the Jews in the desert. I saw Moses, whose
hair recalled portraits of Walt Whitman, a splendidly theatrical Moses,
wandering through the desert at the head of the Jews, with a dark and
fiery eye and a long staff and the stride of a Wotan. I saw him pray to
God at the edge of the Red Sea, and I saw the Red Sea parted to give
free passage, a deep road between piled-up mountains of water (the
confirmation classes conducted by the clergy to see this religious film
could argue without end as to how the film people managed this). I saw
the prophet and his awestruck people pass through to the other side,
and behind them I saw the war-chariots of Pharaoh come into sight and
the Egyptians stop and start on the brink of the sea, and then, when
they ventured courageously on, I saw the mountainous waters close over
the heads of Pharaoh in all the splendour of his gold trappings and
over all his chariots and all his men, recalling, as I saw it, Handel’s
wonderful duet for two basses in which this event is magnificently
sung. I saw Moses, further, climbing Sinai, a gloomy hero in a gloomy
wilderness of rocks, and I looked on as Jehovah in the midst of storm
and thunder and lightning imparted the Ten Commandments to him, while
his worthless people set up the golden calf at the foot of the mountain
and gave themselves over to somewhat roisterous celebrations. I found
it so strange and incredible to be looking on at all this, to be seeing
the sacred writ, with its heroes and its wonders, the source in our
childhood of the first dawning suspicion of another world than this,
presented for money before a grateful public that sat quietly eating
the provisions brought with it from home. A nice little picture,
indeed, picked up by chance in the huge wholesale clearance of culture
in these days! My God, rather than come to such a pass it would have
been better for the Jews and every one else, let alone the Egyptians,
to have perished in those days and forthwith of a violent and becoming
death instead of this dismal pretence of dying by inches that we go in
for to-day. Yes indeed!
My secret repressions and unconfessed fright in face of the Masked
Ball were by no means lessened by the feelings provoked in me by the
cinema. On the contrary, they had grown to uncomfortable proportions
and I had to shake myself and think of Hermine before I could go to
the Globe Rooms and dared to enter. It was late, and the Ball had been
for a long time in full swing. At once before I had even taken off my
things I was caught up, shy and sober as I was, in the swirl of the
masked throng. I was accosted familiarly. Girls summoned me to the
champagne rooms. Clowns slapped me on the back, and I was addressed
on all sides as an old friend. I responded to none of it, but fought
my way through the crowded rooms to the cloak-room, and when I got my
cloak-room ticket I put it in my pocket with great care, reflecting
that I might need it before very long when I had had enough of the
uproar.
Every part of the great building was given over to the festivities.
There was dancing in every room and in the basement as well. Corridors
and stairs were filled to overflowing with masks and dancing and
music and laughter and tumult. Oppressed in heart I stole through the
throng, from the nigger orchestra to the peasant band, from the large
and brilliantly lighted principal room into the passages and on to
the stairs, to bars, buffets and champagne parlours. The walls were
mostly hung with wild and cheerful paintings by the latest artists.
All the world was there, artists, journalists, professors, business
men, and of course every adherent of pleasure in the town. In one
of the orchestras sat Pablo, blowing with enthusiasm in his curved
mouth-piece. As soon as he saw me he sang out a greeting. Pushed hither
and thither in the crowd I found myself in one room after another,
upstairs here and downstairs there. A corridor in the basement had
been staged as hell by the artists and there a band of devils played
furiously. After a while, I began to look for Hermine or Maria and
strove time after time to reach the principal room; but either I missed
my way or had to meet the current. By midnight I had found no one, and
though I had not danced I was hot and giddy. I threw myself into the
nearest chair among utter strangers and ordered some wine, and came to
the conclusion that joining in such rowdy festivals was no part for
an old man like me. I drank my glass of wine while I stared at the
naked arms and backs of the women, watched the crowd of grotesquely
masked figures drifting by and silently declined the advances of a few
girls who wished to sit on my knee or get me to dance. “Old Growler,”
one called after me; and she was right. I decided to raise my spirits
with the wine, but even the wine went against me and I could scarcely
swallow a second glass. And then the feeling crept over me that the
Steppenwolf was standing behind me with his tongue out. Nothing
pleased me. I was in the wrong place. To be sure, I had come with the
best intentions, but this was no place for me to be merry in; and all
this loud effervescence of pleasure, the laughter and the whole foolery
of it on every side, seemed to me forced and stupid.
Thus it was that, at about one o’clock, in anger and disillusionment I
steered a course for the cloak-room, to put on my coat again and go. It
was surrender and backsliding into my wolfishness, and Hermine would
scarcely forgive it me. But I could not do otherwise. All the way as I
squeezed through the throng to the cloak-room, I still kept a careful
look-out in case I might yet see one of my friends, but in vain. Now I
stood at the counter. Already the attendant was politely extending his
hand for my number. I felt in my waistcoat pocket--the number was no
longer there! The devil was in it if even this failed me. Often enough
during my forlorn wanderings through the rooms and while I sat over my
tasteless wine I had felt in my pocket, fighting back the resolve to go
away again, and I had always found the round flat check in its place.
And now it was gone. Everything was against me.
“Lost your number?” came in a shrill voice from a small red and yellow
devil at my elbow. “Here, comrade, you can take mine,” and he held it
out to me without more ado. While I mechanically took it and turned it
over in my fingers the brisk little fellow rapidly disappeared.
When, however, I examined the pasteboard counter for a number, no
number was to be seen. Instead there was a scribble in a tiny hand. I
asked the attendant to wait and went to the nearest light to read it.
There in little crazy letters that were scarcely legible was scrawled:
TO-NIGHT AT THE MAGIC THEATRE
FOR MADMEN ONLY
PRICE OF ADMITTANCE YOUR MIND.
NOT FOR EVERYBODY. HERMINE IS IN HELL.
As a marionette whose thread the operator has let go for a moment wakes
to new life after a brief paralysis of death and coma and once more
plays its lively part, so did I at this jerk of the magic thread throw