Steppenwolf Read online

  A street trader came in, selling roast chestnuts, and I bought a handful from him. Then an old woman came with flowers and I bought a few carnations for the landlady from her. Only when I was about to pay and reached in vain for my usual coat pocket did I again become aware that I was in evening dress. Masked ball! Hermione!

  However, I couldn't bring myself to go to the Globe Rooms just yet. There was still ample time. And besides, I felt reluctant to go, held back by misgivings of one sort or another, as had been the case recently every time I had been facing such an evening's entertainment. I had a horror of entering vast, overcrowded and noisy rooms, for instance, and still felt as intimidated as a schoolboy by the strange atmosphere in this world of the playboy, and by the prospect of having to dance.

  Sauntering along, I happened to pass by a cinema with its bright lights and gigantic coloured posters. I walked on a few steps but then turned back and went in, thinking that I could sit there nice and quietly in the dark until about eleven o'clock. Following the boy-usher with his torch, I stumbled through the curtains into the dark of the auditorium where, having found a seat, I was suddenly immersed in the Old Testament. It was one of those films produced at great expense and with considerable sophistication, allegedly not for profit, but with noble and sacred intentions, so that even schoolchildren were taken to see them in the afternoon by the teachers responsible for their religious instruction. This one, enacting the story of Moses and the Israelites in Egypt, involved an enormous contingent of people, horses and camels in addition to the splendour of the ruling Pharaoh's palaces and scenes of Jewish hardship in the hot desert sands. I saw old Moses, a splendidly theatrical Moses, his hairstyle loosely modelled on Walt Whitman's, striding through the desert with a long staff, looking grim and fiery like some Wotan at the head of the Jews. I saw him praying to God by the Red Sea, saw the Red Sea parting to form a passageway, a sunken track between mountainous masses of water dammed back. (Quite how the production team had contrived to stage this was an issue that might be debated for hours by the members of confirmation classes taken by their ministers to see the film.) Then I saw the Prophet and his fearful people striding across, while behind them the Pharaoh's war chariots came into view. I saw the Egyptians hesitating at the sea's edge and shrinking back before plucking up their courage and daring to wade in. Then I saw the mountainous masses of water closing over the Pharaoh, resplendent in his golden armour, and over all his chariots and warriors. I couldn't help thinking at this point of a wonderful duet for two basses by Handel, a glorious musical setting of this event. In addition I saw old Moses climbing Mount Sinai, a sombre-looking hero in a sombre wilderness of rocks, and there I watched Jehovah communicating the Ten Commandments to him by means of storm clouds, thunder and lightning, while at the foot of the mountain his good-for-nothing people were erecting the golden calf and indulging in pretty uproarious merrymaking. To sit there and witness all this was such a bizarre and incredible experience for me, seeing the sacred stories with their heroes and miracles which, long ago in our childhood days, had conjured up a first, dim awareness of another world beyond the merely human, now being enacted in exchange for a modest admission fee in front of a grateful cinema audience which was sitting there quietly munching the sandwiches they had brought with them to eat. The whole thing was a fine vignette of our times with their vast junk culture on sale at knock-down prices to the masses. My God, to avoid an obscenity like this, it would have been better if at that time, in addition to the Egyptians, the Jews and indeed all other human beings had immediately perished too, meeting a violent but respectable end instead of dying the kind of dreadful, unreal, lukewarm death we were nowadays. Ah well, what was the point?

  The film and the issues raised by it had done nothing to reduce the secret qualms I had about the masked ball or my undisclosed reluctance to attend it. On the contrary, it had had the unpleasant effect of increasing them, and, with Hermione in mind, I had to jolt myself into finally making my way to the Globe Rooms and venturing in. By now it was late, and the ball had been in full swing for some time. Sober as I was, and shy, I was caught up in a milling throng of costumed figures even before I had a chance to hand in my coat. I was nudged and jostled as if I were a close acquaintance; girls invited me to accompany them to the champagne parlours, and clowns clapped me heartily on the shoulder, addressing me with the familiar 'du', but I was having none of it. With some difficulty I squeezed my way through the overcrowded premises to the cloakroom and when I had been given my numbered token I made sure I put it carefully in my pocket, thinking I might need it again soon if the general hubbub became too much for me.

  The revels extended to every part of the large building. There was dancing in all the main rooms, even down in the basement, and every corridor and flight of stairs was inundated with dancers in fancy dress, the sound of music and the laughter of groups scurrying to and fro. I sneaked apprehensively through the throng, moving from the Negro band to the homespun rustic musicians, from the vast, brightly lit main hall to the corridors and stairways, the bars, buffet restaurants and champagne parlours. Bizarre, zany paintings could be seen hanging on most of the walls, the work of the latest artists. The ball had attracted everyone: artists, journalists, academics, businessmen and also, of course, all the local fun-loving men and women about town. In one of the bands I saw Mr Pablo blowing enthusiastically on his curved horn, and when he spotted me he called out a loud greeting. Carried along by the crowd, I ended up in one room or another, going up one staircase and down the next. In one passage down in the basement the artists had created a make-believe hell in which a gang of musical devils were drumming away like madmen. I gradually started to keep an eye out for Hermione or Maria. Setting off in search of them, I made several efforts to get through to the main hall, but each time I either lost my way or had to give up because of the surge of people moving in the opposite direction to mine. By midnight I still hadn't found anyone. Feeling hot and dizzy already, although I hadn't danced, I threw myself in the nearest chair I could find, and ordered some wine, surrounded by people who were all total strangers to me. Noisy festivities of this sort, I concluded, were not the thing for an old man like me. Drinking my glass of wine in a resigned frame of mind, I stared at the naked arms and backs of the womenfolk, eyed the many grotesque costumed figures wafting by me, and had to put up with their constant nudging and pushing. The few girls who asked to sit on my lap or wanted to dance with me were sent on their way without so much as a word. 'Sulky old so-and-so,' one of them cried, and she was right. I decided to raise my spirits and give myself some Dutch courage by carrying on drinking, but even the wine didn't taste good and I scarcely managed to down a second glass. And bit by bit I became aware of Steppenwolf standing behind me and sticking out his tongue. I was out of place here, a forlorn, lifeless figure. There was no doubt I had come with the best of intentions, but I just couldn't get into the right party mood. The deafening roars of enjoyment, the laughter, all the high jinks going on around me struck me as stupid and forced.

  The upshot was that at one o'clock, feeling disappointed and cross, I stole back to the cloakroom to put on my coat and leave. This was a defeat, a relapse into wolfishness on my part, something Hermione would scarcely forgive me for. But there was nothing else for it. While laboriously making my way through the crowds as far as the cloakroom, I had again taken a good look around to see whether I could spot either of my girlfriends. But to no avail. Now I was standing at the counter, and the polite man behind it was already holding out his hand to take my token, when I reached into my waistcoat pocket only to discover that it was gone! Oh hell, that was all I needed! Struggling to make up my mind whether I should leave, I had on several occasions felt in my pocket as I meandered sadly through the rooms or sat drinking my insipid wine, and I had always found the round, flat token in place there. And now it had gone. Everything was conspiring against me.

  'Lost your number?' asked a shrill voice, that of a small
devil standing next to me dressed in red and yellow. 'Here, you can have mine, chum,' he added, already offering it to me in his outstretched hand. I automatically took it with my fingers and by the time I had given it a twirl the nimble little chap had already vanished.

  However, when I raised the little round cardboard token to my eyes to identify the number on it, all I saw was the scrawl of some tiny handwriting, and no number at all. Asking the cloakroom attendant to wait a while, I moved under the nearest chandelier and tried to read. There was something scribbled on it in tiny wobbly block letters that were hard to decipher:

  TONIGHT FROM 4 AM ONWARDS MAGIC THEATRE

  - FOR MAD PEOPLE ONLY -

  PAY AT THE DOOR WITH YOUR MIND.

  NOT FOR EVERYBODY. HERMIONE IS IN HELL

  Just as a marionette, when the puppeteer has momentarily let slip its wire, comes back to life after a brief spell of stiff lifelessness and apathy, is again part of the play, dancing and acting, so I, at the sudden pull of the magic wire, rushed back lithely, youthfully and eagerly to join the hustle and bustle that I had just fled from, feeling tired, unenthusiastic and old. Never has a sinner been in more of a hurry to get to hell. Only a moment ago my patent-leather shoes had been pinching, I'd been nauseated by the perfume-laden air and wilting in the heat. Now I was hurtling spring-heeled towards hell, crossing all the rooms to the rhythm of a one-step. The air felt full of magic spells, I was cradled and carried along by the warmth, by all the blaring music, the riot of colour, the scent of women's shoulders, the intoxication of the partying hundreds, the laughing, the dance rhythms, the glint in all the inflamed eyes. A girl dressed as a Spanish dancer flew into my arms, cheekily ordering me to dance with her. 'Not possible,' I said, 'I have to go to hell. But I don't mind taking a kiss from you along with me.' Her red lips under the mask came closer, but it was only when they met mine in a kiss that I recognized Maria. I put my arms tight around her. Her full lips were like a summer rose in full bloom. And now we were indeed dancing already, our lips still touching, dancing past Pablo too, who was bending over his softly wailing reed instrument, in love with its sound. His beautiful, animal-like, gleaming eyes took us in, though his mind seemed to be half elsewhere. Before we had danced twenty steps, however, the music stopped, and reluctantly I released Maria from my arms.

  'I would have loved one more dance with you,' I said, thrilled by her warmth. 'Walk with me a little way, will you, Maria? I'm so enamoured of your beautiful arm I'd like to hold on to it for a moment longer. But Hermione has summoned me, you see. She's in hell.'

  'I thought as much. Farewell, Harry, you'll always have a place in my heart.' These were her parting words. Parting, autumn, destiny: all these had been evoked for me by the full, ripe fragrance of this late rose of summer.

  On I went, along the corridors milling with flirting couples, down the stairs to hell. There, on the pitch-black walls, infernally harsh lights were burning and the musical devils were feverishly playing away. A handsome youth without a mask was sitting on a tall bar stool in evening dress. With an air of disdain he briefly looked me up and down. Getting on for twenty couples were dancing in the very cramped space and I was forced up against the wall by the whirling crush. Avidly and nervously I observed all the women. Most of them were still wearing their masks; a few laughed at me; but none of them was Hermione. The handsome youth, perched on his bar stool, was looking scornfully across at me. The next time there was a break in the dancing Hermione would call out to me, I thought. But the dancing finished and nobody came.

  I went over to the bar, which was wedged into one corner of the low-ceilinged room. Joining the queue by the youth's stool, I ordered myself a whisky. As I was drinking it I could see the young man's profile. It looked as familiar and charming as a picture from the remote past, made precious by the still veil of dust cast upon it over the years. Then all of a sudden it clicked. Yes, of course, that's who it was. Hermann, my best friend when I was a boy!

  'Hermann!' I said tentatively.

  He smiled. 'Harry? Have you found me?'

  It was Hermione, only with a slightly different hairstyle and a touch of make-up. Pale and distinctive, her intelligent face gazed out at me from the fashionable stand-up collar of her dress shirt. Her hands, protruding from the shirt's white cuffs and the wide black sleeves of her dinner jacket, looked strangely small, her feet strangely dainty in the black-and-white men's silk socks emerging from her long black trousers.

  'Is it dressed up like this you intend to make me fall in love with you, Hermione?'

  Nodding, she said: 'So far I have only succeeded in making a few ladies fall in love. But now it's your turn. Let's drink a glass of champagne first.'

  This we did, squatting on our tall bar stools, while right next to us people went on dancing to the increasingly heated and violent sound of the strings in the band. And very soon I had fallen for Hermione, apparently without her going to the least trouble to make me do so. Since she was wearing men's clothes I couldn't dance with her, couldn't permit myself any show of affection or make any advances, yet while she seemed remote and neutral in her masculine disguise she was enveloping me in all her feminine charms by means of looks, words and gestures. Without so much as even touching her I succumbed to her spell, a spell which, consistent with the role she was playing, was hermaphrodisiac. For what she talked to me about was Hermann and childhood, my childhood and hers, those years before puberty when our youthful capacity for love extends not only to both sexes but to everything under the sun, things intellectual and spiritual as well as sensual, casting its spell over them all and endowing them with that fairy-tale aptitude for transformation that only poets and a chosen few occasionally regain even in the later stages of life. She was playing the role of a young man, no question, smoking cigarettes, indulging in witty, light-hearted chat, frequently seizing the opportunity to poke a little fun, but her every word and gesture had an erotic charge, transforming it, en route to my senses, into an agent of sweet seduction.

  There had I been thinking I knew everything there was to know about Hermione, yet that night she appeared to me in a totally new light! She tightened the desired net around me so gently that I hardly noticed it, toyed with me like a mermaid as she passed me the sweet poison to drink.

  We sat chatting and drinking champagne. We sauntered through the ballrooms, observing the goings-on like adventurous explorers, eavesdropping on the lovemaking of couples we had singled out. Pointing out women she wanted me to dance with, Hermione gave me tips as to how I might best win over this one or that. We acted as rivals, both on the trail of the same woman for a while, both dancing with her in turn, both attempting to win her. Yet all this was just a masquerade, a game between the two of us, binding us more closely together, kindling the fire of our passion for one another. It was all a fairy-tale experience, made richer by an additional dimension, deeper by an additional layer of meaning. Everything was make-believe, symbolic. We saw a very beautiful young woman who looked slightly ailing and out of sorts. 'Hermann' danced with her, restoring some colour to her cheeks, after which the two of them disappeared into an alcove where sparkling wine was on offer. She told me afterwards that she had conquered her as a woman by the magic charms of Lesbos, not as a man. For me, on the other hand, the whole building, ringing with music and full of rooms echoing to the sound of dancing by intoxicated crowds of masked revellers, was gradually turning into a wonderland, the paradise of my dreams. Blossom upon blossom lured me with its fragrance, my fingers reached out tentatively to fondle fruit upon fruit, serpents eyed me seductively from the shade of green foliage, lotus blossom drifted eerily across a black swamp, magic birds were singing their enticing songs in the branches of the trees. Yet all of this was leading the way to one destination, making my heart heavy with fresh yearning for the one and only woman I desired. At one point I was dancing passionately with a girl I didn't know, making a play for her, sweeping her along in a heady whirl when all at once, as we were flo
ating on a cloud of unreality, she burst out laughing and said: 'You've changed out of all recognition! Earlier tonight you were such a stupid bore.' Then I recognized her as the one who, hours ago, had called me a 'sulky old so-and-so'. Now she thought I was hers, but come the next dance it was another I was holding passionately close. I danced for two hours or more without letting up, each and every dance, even those I hadn't learned. Again and again Hermann, the smiling youth, would pop up near to me and give me a nod before disappearing from view in the milling crowd.