Knulp

  Knulp

  Three Tales from the Life of Knulp

  by Hermann Hesse

  Translated by Ralph Manheim

  a.b.e-book v3.0 / Notes at EOF

  Back Cover:

  First published in 1915, Knulp was Hesse's most popular book in the years before Demian. This is the first edition in English.

  Knulp is an amiable vagabond who wanders from town to town, staying with friends who feed and shelter him. Consistently refusing to tie himself down to any trade, place, or person, he even deserts the companion who might be considered Hermann Hesse himself the summer they go tramping together.

  Knulp's exile is blissful, gentle, self-absorbed. But hidden beneath the light surface of these "Tales from the Life of Knulp" is the conscience of an artist who suspects that his liberation is worthless, even immoral. As he lies dying in a snowstorm, Knulp has an interview with God in which he reproaches himself for his wasted life. But it is revealed to Knulp that the whole purpose of his life has been to bring "a little homesickness for freedom" into the lives of ordinary men.

  Translation © 1971 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc.

  FIRST NOONDAY PRINTING, 1971

  All rights reserved

  Library of Congress catalog card number: 72-148710

  Translated from the German, Knulp: Drei Geschichten

  aus dem Leben Knulps, Copyright S. Fischer Verlag,

  1915; Copyright 1949 by Suhrkamp Verlag,

  Frankfurt/Main

  Published simultaneously in Canada by

  Doubleday Canada Ltd., Toronto

  Printed in the United States of America

  DESIGNED BY HERB JOHNSON

  Contents

  EARLY SPRING

  MY RECOLLECTIONS OF KNULP

  THE END

  Early Spring

  Once, early in the nineties, our friend Knulp had to go to the hospital for several weeks. It was mid-February when he was discharged and the weather was abominable. After only a few days on the road, he felt feverish again and was obliged to think about getting a roof over his head. He had always had plenty of friends, he would have met with a friendly reception in almost every town in the region. But he was strangely proud about such things and any friend from whom he accepted help could take it as an honor.

  This time he remembered Emil Rothfuss, the tanner in Lächstetten, and at nightfall, amid rain and west wind, he knocked at the tanner's door. Rothfuss opened the shutters a crack and shouted down into the dark street: "Who's there? Can't it wait until daylight?"

  Tired as he was, Knulp perked up at the sound of his friend's voice. He remembered a little song he had made up years before when he and Rothfuss had been traveling companions for a month, and started to sing it:

  A man walked into the hotel

  After the day was done.

  I know those tired features well,

  It must be the Prodigal Son.

  The tanner opened the shutters wide and leaned far out of the window.

  "Knulp! Is it you, or is it your ghost?"

  "It's me!" cried Knulp. "But you can come down the stairs, you don't have to jump out the window."

  Happily the tanner ran down and opened the little front door. Knulp had to blink when his friend held the smoking oil lamp up to his face.

  "And now, get inside!" Rothfuss cried out excitedly, drawing his friend into the house. "You can tell me all about it later. There's some supper left. And there's a bed for you too. Good God, what weather to be out in! Have you got decent shoes at least?"

  Disregarding his questions and astonishment, Knulp stopped on the stairs to unfold his turned-up trouser cuffs, then climbed through the half light with assurance, though he had not set foot in the house for four years.

  In the hallway outside the door to the big room, he hesitated. The tanner bade him go in, but Knulp took him by the hand and held him back.

  "Hold on," he whispered. "It seems you're married now."

  "That's right."

  "Well, you see. Your wife doesn't know me. Maybe she won't be glad to see me. I wouldn't want to be in the way."

  "Ho-ho! In the way!" Rothfuss laughed, opened the door wide, and pushed Knulp into the brightly lit room. Over the dining table a large oil lamp hung on three chains. A light cloud of tobacco smoke hovered in mid-air; thin wisps of smoke floated over to the hot lamp-chimney, where they whirled up swiftly and vanished. On the table lay a newspaper and a pouch full of tobacco. The tanner's young wife jumped up from the little sofa on the far side of the room with embarrassed, not quite genuine alacrity, as if she had been awakened from a nap and didn't want to show it. For a moment Knulp blinked at her as though dazed by the glare, then looked into her light-gray eyes and held out his hand with a polite compliment.

  "Well," said the tanner. "Here she is. And this is Knulp, my friend Knulp that I've told you about. Naturally he'll stay with us, we'll give him the journeyman's bed. Luckily it's empty. But first we'll have a drink of cider together, and Knulp must have something to eat. Wasn't there some liver sausage left?"

  The tanner's wife rushed out of the room and Knulp looked after her.

  "She's kind of frightened," he said in an undertone. But Rothfuss wouldn't agree.

  "No children yet?" Knulp asked.

  At that point she came back, bringing the sausage on a pewter plate. She set it down beside the breadboard, on which she had placed half a loaf of bread with the cut side down. A carved inscription ran round the circular breadboard: Give us this day our daily bread.

  "Lis, do you know what Knulp just asked me?"

  "Forget it," said Knulp. And with a smile he turned to the lady of the house: "By your leave, ma'am."

  But Rothfuss wouldn't forget it.

  "If we had no children. That's what he asked me."

  "Goodness!" she laughed, and left the room again.

  "You haven't got any?" Knulp asked when she was gone.

  "No, not yet. She's taking her time. It's better that way for the first few years. But dig in, and I hope you like it."

  The tanner's wife brought in the gray and blue earthenware cider pitcher, set down three glasses, and filled them. Her movements were deft. Knulp watched her and smiled.

  "Your health, old friend!" cried the tanner, holding out his glass. But Knulp was a gentleman. "Ladies first," he said. "Your health, ma'am. Prosit, old man!"

  They clinked glasses and drank. Beaming with pleasure, Rothfuss winked at his wife and asked her if she had noticed what fine manners his friend had.

  She had noticed from the start.

  "Herr Knulp is more polite than you," she said. "He knows what's right and proper."

  "Nonsense," said the guest. "We all do what we've learned. When it comes to manners, you could easily put me to shame. And how beautifully you set the table, like at the finest hotel!"

  "Doesn't she!" said the tanner, and laughed. "But that too was learned."

  "Really? Where? Was your father a hotelkeeper?"

  "No, he's been dead for years. I hardly knew him. But I waited on table for several years at the Ox. Maybe you've heard of it?"

  "The Ox? Why, that used to be the best inn in Lächstetten."

  "It still is. Isn't it, Emil? Nearly all our guests were traveling salesmen and tourists."

  "I believe you, ma'am. I'm sure you had a pleasant life and made good money. But a home of your own is even better."

  After neatly removing the skin and setting it aside on his plate, he slowly and with visible relish spread the soft sausage on his bread. From time to time he took a swallow of the good yellow cider. The tanner looked on with respectful appreciation, as Knulp's slender, delicate hands went through the necessary motions so neatly and easily, and the lady of the house als
o took pleasure in watching him.

  "I must say you don't look so good," the tanner remarked critically, and Knulp had to admit that he had not been well of late and had been in the hospital. But he passed over the unpleasant parts of his story. His friend asked him what he meant to do next and warmly offered to keep him as long as he liked. That was exactly what Knulp had expected and counted on, but as though smitten with bashfulness, he merely thanked him offhandedly and postponed the discussion of such matters.

  "We can talk about that tomorrow or the day after," he said negligently. "Thank goodness the world isn't coming to an end. Anyway, I'll stay here a little while."

  He disliked making plans or promises too much ahead. He felt uncomfortable unless the morrow was his to dispose of as he pleased.

  "If I should really stay here a while," he said after a time, "you'll have to put me down as your journeyman."

  "That's rich!" said the tanner with a laugh. "You my journeyman! Anyway, you're not a tanner!"

  "That doesn't matter. Don't you see? Tanning means nothing to me. It's said to be a fine trade, but I have no talent for work. But it would look good in my roadbook. I'd be eligible for sick pay."

  "Can I see your book?"

  Knulp reached into the inside pocket of his almost new suit and took out his roadbook, neatly enfolded in an oilcloth case.

  The tanner looked at it and laughed. "Spotless! It looks as if you'd left your mother only yesterday morning."

  He studied the entries and official stamps and shook his head with profound admiration. "What splendid order! With you, everything has to be just right."

  Keeping his roadbook in order was indeed one of Knulp's hobbies. In its dazzling perfection, his roadbook was a delightful fiction, a poem. Each of the officially accredited entries bore witness to a glorious station in an honest, laborious life. The only seemingly discordant feature was his restlessness, attested by frequent changes of residence. The life certified by this official passport was a product of Knulp's invention, and with infinite art he spun out the fragile thread of this pseudo-career. In reality, though he did little that was expressly prohibited, he carried on the illegal and disdained existence of a tramp. Of course, he would hardly have been so unmolested in his lovely fiction if the police had not been well disposed toward him. They respected the cheerful, entertaining young fellow for his superior intelligence and occasional earnestness, and as far as possible left him alone. He had seldom been arrested and never convicted of theft or mendicancy, and he had highly respected friends everywhere. Consequently, he was indulged by the authorities very much as a nice-looking cat is indulged in a household, and left free to carry on an untroubled, elegant, splendidly aristocratic and idle existence.

  "But that's enough now," he said, taking back his papers. "You'd have been in bed long ago if I hadn't turned up." And, with a compliment to the lady of the house, he arose.

  "Come along, Rothfuss, and show me my bed." The tanner lighted him up the narrow stairway to the journeyman's room on the top floor. Against the wall stood an empty iron bedstead and a wooden bed that was made up.

  "Would you like a hot-water bottle?" asked the tanner in a fatherly tone.

  "Don't rub it in," said Knulp with a laugh. "Naturally a master tanner like you wouldn't need one, now that he has such a pretty little wife."

  "Exactly," said Rothfuss with enthusiasm. "Here you are getting into a cold attic bed, and sometimes there's no bed at all and you have to sleep in the hay. When an honest craftsman like me has a house and business and a nice wife. If you'd only wanted to, you could have been a master craftsman long ago and be doing better than me."

  Meanwhile Knulp had hurriedly undressed and crawled shivering between the cold sheets.

  "Go on, go on," he said. "I'm comfortable and ready to listen."

  "I meant it seriously, Knulp."

  "So did I, Rothfuss. But you mustn't get the idea that marriage is your invention. Good night now."

  Next day Knulp stayed in bed. He still felt rather weak, and in any case he would hardly have gone out of doors in such weather. In the morning when his friend dropped in, Knulp told him not to worry about him, just to bring him a dish of soup at lunchtime.

  All day he lay quiet and content in the dim light of the attic room. The cold and weariness of the road seeped away from him and he basked in a feeling of sheltered warmth. He listened to the regular thudding of the rain against the roof and to the fitful gusts of the warm, soft wind. Now and then he dozed off for half an hour and occasionally, as long as it was light enough, he leafed through his traveling library -- a few sheets of paper on which he had copied poems and sayings, a bundle of newspaper clippings, and a few pictures that he had cut out of magazines. Among these he had two favorites, which were creased and worn from frequent handling. One was the actress Eleonora Duse, the other a sailboat at sea in a high wind.

  From boyhood Knulp had felt drawn to the sea and the north country; several times he had made a start in that direction, and once had gone as far as Brunswick. But time and time again a strange anxiety and homesickness had driven this migrant, who was always on the move and could never settle down anywhere, back to South Germany by forced marches. His carefreeness seemed to leave him when he found himself in a place with a strange dialect and customs, where no one knew him and where it was hard for him to keep his legendary roadbook in order.

  At noon the tanner brought him soup and bread. He entered the room quietly and spoke in a frightened whisper; he thought Knulp must be sick, for he himself had never lain abed in broad daylight since the days of his measles and chicken pox. Knulp, who was feeling fine, didn't bother to explain, but merely said he would be well and up the next day.

  Late in the afternoon there was a knock at the door. Knulp was dozing and made no answer. The tanner's wife tiptoed in, removed the empty soup dish, and put a bowl of coffee in its place on the stool beside the bed.

  Knulp had heard her come in, but whether because he felt lazy or merely out of caprice, he kept his eyes closed and gave no sign of being awake. Standing there with the empty dish in her hand, the young woman cast a glance at the sleeper, whose head lay on his arm in its blue-checkered shirtsleeve. Struck by his fine dark hair and the almost childlike beauty of his carefree face, she stood a while, looking at the handsome young fellow about whom her husband had told her such strange stories. She saw the bushy eyebrows on his clear, delicately modeled forehead, his thin brown cheeks, his fine red mouth and slender neck, and she liked what she saw. She thought of the days when, as a waitress at the Ox, a springtime fancy would come over her and she would let a handsome young stranger like this one make love to her.

  Thoughtful and slightly aroused, she leaned forward a little to see his whole face. The tin spoon slid off the plate and fell to the floor, and what with the stillness and embarrassing intimacy of the place, she was scared to death.

  Knulp opened his eyes slowly and unsuspectingly, as though he had been sound asleep. He turned toward her, shaded his eyes with his hand for a moment, and said with a smile: "Why, it's Frau Rothfuss! And she's brought me coffee. A nice bowl of hot coffee, the very thing I was dreaming about. Thank you, Frau Rothfuss. By the way, what time is it?"

  "Four," she said quickly. "Now drink it while it's hot. I'll come back later for the bowl."

  And out she ran as though she hadn't a moment to spare. Knulp looked after her and listened as she hastily descended the stairs. His eyes were thoughtful and he shook his head several times, then he let out a soft birdlike whistle and turned to his coffee.

  But an hour before dark he began to feel bored. His health was restored, he was wonderfully rested, and he wanted company. Contentedly he got out of bed and dressed, crept down the dark stairs as quietly as a cat, and slipped out of the house unnoticed. A damp wind was still blowing from the southwest, but the rain had stopped and there were clear spaces between the clouds.

  Sniffing at the air, Knulp sauntere
d down the darkened street and across the deserted marketplace. Then he stood in the open doorway of a blacksmith's shop, watched the apprentices cleaning up, and, while warming his hands over the dying forge fire, struck up a conversation with the journeymen. He inquired about various acquaintances in the town, about deaths and marriages. The master took him for a fellow blacksmith, for Knulp knew the language of every trade and the signs by which its practitioners recognize one another.

  Meanwhile Frau Rothfuss was making her evening soup, fiddling with the iron rings of the little stove, and peeling potatoes. When she had finished and the soup was safely simmering on a low fire, she took the kitchen lamp, went into the big room, and stood before the mirror. In it she found what she had been looking for: a full face with fresh cheeks and bluish-gray eyes. Her hair didn't seem quite right, and with a touch or two of her nimble fingers she put it in order. Then she gave her hands, which she had washed only a moment before, another wipe on her apron, picked up the lamp, and went quickly up to the attic.

  She knocked at the door of the journeyman's room, first softly, then a little louder. When there was no answer, she set the lamp down on the floor and opened the door with both hands, very cautiously for fear it would creak. Then she entered on her tiptoes, took one step, and ran her hands over the stool by the bedside.

  "Are you asleep?" she asked in a soft voice. And then again: "Are you asleep? I've come to clear away the coffee things."

  When there was no sound, not so much as a breath, she stretched out her hand toward the bed, but quickly withdrew it with an eerie feeling, and went out for the lamp. Finding the room empty, the bed carefully made, and even the pillows and featherbed shaken out, she rushed back down to the kitchen in confusion, torn between fright and disappointment.

  Half an hour later, when the tanner had come in to supper and she had already set the table, she began to worry. But she was afraid to tell her husband about her visit to the attic room. Just then the outer gate opened, soft steps passed over the paved corridor and up the winding stairs, and there stood Knulp. He took off his trim brown felt hat and wished them good evening.