Steppenwolf Page 13

  'Hermione,' I said, 'something really odd happened to me the other day. A stranger gave me a little printed booklet, the kind of cheap pamphlet you get at fairgrounds, and in it I found the whole story of my life, everything of importance to me, described in exact detail. Don't you think that's remarkable?'

  'And what's the title of the booklet?' she asked casually.

  'It's called "On Steppenwolf: A Tract".'

  'Oh, "Steppenwolf" is marvellous! And that's what you're supposed to be? You are Steppenwolf?'

  'Yes, it's me. I'm somebody who is half human and half wolf, or imagines he is.'

  She didn't respond. As she gazed intensely, searchingly into my eyes and inspected my hands, the look on her face was for a moment deeply serious and sombrely passionate again, as it had been before. I felt I could guess what she was thinking. She was wondering whether I was wolf enough to carry out her 'final order'.

  'Of course it's something you've imagined,' she said, reverting suddenly to her cheerful self. 'Or, if you like, a poetic fancy. But there is something to it. You're not a wolf today, but when you walked into that ballroom the other day, looking like a zombie, there was indeed something of the beast about you. That's exactly what appealed to me.'

  An idea must suddenly have occurred to her because she interrupted herself, then added, as if shocked: 'Words like "beast" and "predator" sound so stupid. We shouldn't talk of animals like that. I grant you they are often frightening, but they are nonetheless truer than human beings.'

  'Truer? What do you mean by that?'

  'Well, just take a look at any animal, a cat, a dog, a bird or even one of those beautiful big creatures in the zoo, a puma, say, or a giraffe. Surely you can't help noticing that they are all true, that not a single animal is at a loss to know what it should be doing or how it should behave. They have no desire to make an impression. They are not play-acting. They are as they are, like stones and flowers, or like stars in the sky. Do you see?'

  I did.

  'Animals are usually sad,' she continued. 'And when human beings feel very sad, not because they've got toothache or have lost money, but because for once in a while they sense what everything, the whole of life, is like and are truly sad, then they always look a bit like an animal. At such times they look sad, but truer and more beautiful than they normally look, believe me. And that's how you looked, Steppenwolf, the first time I saw you.'

  'So, Hermione, and what do you think about that book with the description of me in it?'

  'Oh, you know, I'm not one to spend all my time thinking. We'll talk about it some other time. You can simply give it me to read one day. No, on second thoughts, if I should ever get round to reading again, give me one of the books you've written yourself.'

  Asking for some coffee, she seemed inattentive for a while and absent-minded, but then, having apparently thought her way through to some satisfactory conclusion, she suddenly beamed at me.

  'Hey, listen!' she exclaimed joyfully. 'It's come to me now!'

  'What has?'

  'What I was saying about the foxtrot. I couldn't get it out of my head the whole time. Tell me, have you got a room that the two of us can dance in for an hour or so every now and then? It needn't be very big, that doesn't matter, but there mustn't be anyone living below you who is just the sort to come up and make a scene if the ceiling starts to shake a bit above. Yes? That's fine then, very good. In that case you can learn to dance at home.'

  'Yes,' I said shyly, 'so much the better. But I thought you needed music to do it to.'

  'Of course you do. Listen, you'll buy your own music, at most it will only cost as much as paying some woman for a course of dancing lessons. You're saving on the teaching. I'll do that myself. That way we'll have music as often as we want, and we can keep the gramophone into the bargain.'

  'The gramophone?'

  'Yes, of course. You simply buy one of those small gramophones and a few dance records to go with it ...'

  'Splendid,' I cried, 'and if you really succeed in teaching me to dance, then you can have the gramophone as your fee. Agreed?'

  Although I said this with considerable force, it didn't come from the heart. I couldn't imagine a contraption like that, for which I had absolutely no liking, in my study with its books, and there were lots of things about dancing that I also objected to. I had thought I might give it a try one day if the opportunity arose, although I told myself I was far too old and stiff now ever to learn properly. However, embarking on it straight away like this was a bit too swift and sudden for my liking. Everything in me combined to resist the idea, all the objections I, as an old, spoiled connoisseur of music, had to gramophones, jazz and all kinds of modern dance music. To expect me to tolerate the sound of American hit-tunes in my room, my refuge, my thinker's den with its volumes of Novalis and Jean Paul, and to dance to them, was simply too much to ask. But it wasn't just anyone doing the asking. It was Hermione, and it was her business to give orders. It fell to me to obey. And I obeyed, of course I did.

  We met in a cafe the next afternoon. When I arrived, Hermione, already sitting there drinking tea, smiled and showed me a newspaper in which she had discovered my name. It was one of those reactionary, mud-slinging rags from my home country that from time to time would publish defamatory articles against me. I had been an opponent of the war as it was taking place, and when it was over I had occasionally urged calm and patience, the need to behave humanely and self-critically, while combating the nationalistic hate campaign that was becoming more shrill, mindless and unrestrained by the day. Now here was yet another attack of that sort, badly written, partly the work of the editor himself, partly cobbled together by lifting passages from the many similar pieces that papers sympathetic to the same line had already published. It is well known that nobody writes as badly as those seeking to defend ideologies that have outlived their time. None ply their trade with less effort or attention to detail. Having read the piece, Hermione had learned that Harry Haller was a harmful pest, a wretch without any allegiance to the Fatherland. And it went without saying that the Fatherland was bound to be in a sorry state as long as people like him, with ideas like his, were tolerated, and the nation's youth was being taught to embrace sentimental humanistic ideas instead of being trained to take warlike revenge on the hereditary foe.9

  'Is this you?' Hermione asked, pointing to my name. 'If so, Harry, it seems you haven't half made some enemies. Does it bother you?'

  I read a few lines. It was the same old stuff. For years I had been familiar with every single one of the hackneyed phrases used to defame me, to the point where I was sick and tired of them.

  'No,' I said, 'it doesn't bother me, I got used to it long ago. On a few occasions I've expressed the view that all nations and indeed all individual human beings, instead of rocking themselves to sleep by mulling over false political questions as to who was the "guilty party", ought to be taking a searching look at themselves, asking to what extent they themselves, by their mistakes, their failure to act and their habitual bad practices have a share in the responsibility for the war and all the rest of the world's miseries. Only in this way, I argued, could the next war perhaps be avoided. Of course, the reason they can't forgive me for saying this is that they themselves are totally innocent. The Kaiser, the generals, the big industrialists, the politicians, the press - none of them are in the least to blame, none of them is guilty of anything! You might think all is wonderfully well with the world, if it weren't for the fact that over ten million slaughtered men are lying buried in the ground. And look, Hermione, even if articles full of smears like this no longer have the power to annoy me, they do sometimes make me sad. Two thirds of my fellow Germans read newspapers of this kind, every morning and night they read articles written in these strident tones. They are being manipulated every day, admonished, incited, made to feel anger and discontent. And the aim and purpose of it all is yet again war; the next, coming war, which will probably be even more horrific than this last on
e was. All this is clear and simple enough for anybody to grasp; anyone could reach the same conclusion after merely an hour's reflection. But nobody wants to, nobody wants to avoid the next war, none of them want to spare themselves and their children the next bloody slaughter of millions, if the price they have to pay is to reflect for an hour, to look into their own hearts and ask to what extent they themselves have a share in and are responsible for the chaos and evil in the world. None of them are prepared to do this! And that's the reason things will go on as before. Day after day, thousands of people are eagerly engaged in preparations for the next war. Ever since I realized this, it has had a paralysing effect on me, reducing me to despair. I have no Fatherland left and no ideals, all that kind of thing is just window-dressing for the gentlemen who are preparing the next round of slaughter. There is no point in thinking, saying or writing anything humane; there is no point in turning over good thoughts in one's head because for every two or three people who do so there are, day in, day out, a thousand newspapers, magazines, speeches, public and secret meetings that are all striving to achieve the opposite, and succeeding too.'

  Hermione had been listening sympathetically.

  'Yes,' she now said, 'you're right, I agree. Of course there will be another war; you don't need to read the newspapers to know that. And of course it's something you can feel sad about. But it's not worth it. It's just the same as someone feeling sad about the fact that, whatever they do to combat it, they are despite all their efforts inevitably going to die one day. When you are fighting death, Harry, dear, the cause you are fighting for is always fine, noble, splendid and honourable, and the same is true of the fight against war. However, it's always hopeless too, like tilting at windmills.'

  'That may be true,' I exclaimed heatedly, 'but by pointing to such truths as the fact that we are all bound to die before long and therefore nothing matters a jot you simply reduce the whole of life to something shallow and idiotic. So, what are we supposed to do? Just jettison everything, give up all our thought, all our striving, all our humanity, allow ambition and money to go on ruling us and wait over a glass of beer for the next mobilization to take place?'

  The look Hermione now gave me was remarkable, full of amusement, full of mockery, mischievousness and comradely solidarity, yet at the same time so weighty, knowledgeable and immeasurably serious!

  'That's not what I mean you should do,' she said, sounding just like a mother. 'And anyway, knowing that the fight is bound to fail doesn't make your life shallow and idiotic. Life is much shallower, Harry, if you are fighting for something good and ideal in the belief that you are bound to achieve it. Are ideals necessarily there to be achieved? Do we as human beings live only in order to abolish death? No, we live to fear death, then to love it again, and it's precisely because of death that the brief candle of our lives burns so beautifully for a while. You are a child, Harry. Now do what you're told to and come with me. We have a lot to do today. I'm not going to worry about the war and the press any more today. What about you?'

  I was certainly in no mood to either.

  We went together - it was our first walk with each other in town - to a music shop. There we looked at gramophones, opening and closing their lids, and getting the shopkeeper to play them for us. When we had found one that was perfectly suitable, nice, and cheap, I wanted to buy it, but Hermione was determined to take much longer over it. She held me back, insisting that I first visit a second shop with her, where I had to look at and listen to all systems and sizes from the dearest to the cheapest. Only then did she agree to go back to the first shop and buy the set we had found there.

  'You see,' I said. 'We could have saved ourselves the trouble.'

  'Do you think? And then tomorrow we might have seen the same gramophone on display in another shop window for twenty francs less. And anyway, it's fun to go shopping, and everything that is fun should be enjoyed to the full. You still have a lot to learn.'

  With the help of a porter, we took our purchase to my lodgings.

  Hermione inspected my living room closely, praising the stove and the couch, trying out the chairs, picking up some books and standing for quite some time in front of the photograph of my loved one. We had set down the gramophone between piles of books on a chest of drawers. And now my lessons began. Putting on a foxtrot, she demonstrated the first few steps for me, then, taking me by the hand, she started to lead me in the dance. I tried obediently to match her steps, but I kept bumping into chairs. I was listening to her commands but not understanding them, and since I was just as clumsy as I was keen to do what I was told, I kept treading on her toes. After the second dance she threw herself on to the couch, laughing like a child.

  'My God, how stiff you are! Just take a few steps forwards as you do when going for a walk. There's absolutely no need to strain. I can hardly believe it, you've even worked up a sweat already! Come on, we'll take a rest for five minutes. Look here, once you can do it, dancing is just as easy as thinking. And it's much easier to learn. Perhaps now you won't get quite so impatient when people are reluctant to learn how to think, but instead call Herr Haller a traitor to his country and are willing to allow the next war to happen without lifting a finger against it.'

  She left after an hour, telling me not to worry, I was sure to be better at it next time. This was not my view. I was very disappointed with my own stupidity and clumsiness. It seemed to me that I hadn't learned a thing during the last hour and I didn't believe a second attempt would be any better. No, dancing called for the sort of qualities I totally lacked: gaiety, innocence, nonchalance, verve. Ah well, wasn't that what I'd known all along?

  But lo and behold, it was actually better the next time. I even began to enjoy it and, at the end of the lesson, Hermione claimed I could now do the foxtrot. However, when on that basis she said I must go dancing with her in a restaurant the next day, I took fright and protested vehemently. She coolly reminded me that I had vowed to obey her and asked me to meet her for tea next day in the Hotel Libra.

  I spent that evening sitting at home, wanting to read but unable to do so. I was afraid of the next day. It horrified me to think that I, an old, shy and sensitive misfit, should not only visit one of those dreary modern teadance places where they played jazz, but also, without yet being able to do a thing, put in an appearance on the dance floor among strangers. And I confess to laughing at myself and feeling ashamed at my own behaviour when, alone in the silence of my study, after winding up the gramophone and setting it in motion, I quietly rehearsed the steps of my foxtrot in my stockinged feet.

  The next day in the Hotel Libra there was a small band playing, and tea and whisky were being served. I tried to bribe Hermione by offering her cakes; I tried inviting her to share a bottle of fine wine, but she would not relent.

  'You're not here to enjoy yourself today. It's a dancing lesson.'

  I had to dance with her two or three times. In between dances she introduced me to the saxophonist, a swarthy, handsome young man of Spanish or South American origin who, so she said, could play every instrument and speak every language in the world. This senor seemed to know Hermione very well and to be great friends with her. Standing in front of him were two saxophones of different sizes, which he played alternately while attentively and happily running his fiery black eyes over the people dancing. To my own amazement I felt something akin to jealousy of this harmless, good-looking musician, not the jealousy of a lover, since there was absolutely no question of love between me and Hermione, but rather the jealousy that troubles the mind of a friend. It seemed to me that he was not really worthy of the interest in, indeed reverence for him that she showed by singling him out so conspicuously for special favour. Pretty strange people I'm being expected to mix with, I reflected sullenly.

  Then Hermione was invited to dance time and again. I remained sitting on my own at the tea table, listening to the music, the sort of music I had until now been unable to stand. Good God, I thought, I'm now being initiated into
and expected to feel at home in a place like this, a world that is so strange and abhorrent to me, a world that until now I've taken such care to avoid and so profoundly despised as a world of layabouts and pleasure-seekers, this sleek, typecast world of marble-top tables, jazz music, cocottes and commercial travellers! Feeling depressed, I gulped down my tea and stared at the semi-chic crowd on the dance floor. My eyes were drawn to two beautiful girls, both good dancers. Full of admiration and envy, I watched as they swept lithely and appealingly, gaily and confidently across the floor.

  Then Hermione reappeared. She was dissatisfied with me. I wasn't here to pull faces like that, she said, telling me off, or to sit at the tea table without budging. Would I mind stirring myself, please, and going for a dance? What did I mean, I didn't know anyone? That was quite unnecessary. Weren't there any girls there at all that I liked?

  I pointed out the more beautiful one of the two to her, who happened to be standing close to us. With her short, strong blonde hair and her full, womanly arms she looked enchanting in her pretty little velvet skirt. Hermione insisted I should go immediately and ask her for a dance. I desperately tried to resist.

  'Don't you see, I can't!' I said sadly. 'Of course if I were a good-looking young chap, but a stiff old fogey like me who can't even dance, well she'd just laugh at me!'

  Hermione looked at me contemptuously.

  'And whether I laugh at you or not is, I suppose, all the same to you. What a coward you are! Anyone approaching a girl risks being laughed at, it's the stake you pay to enter the game. So take the risk, Harry, and if the worst comes to the worst simply get laughed at. Otherwise I'll lose all faith in your willingness to obey my commands.'