Rosshalde (19 page)

Pierre had lost consciousness. His whole body trembled as with cold, occasionally he uttered a feeble delirious scream, and time and time again, after a pause of exhaustion, his leg began to kick and to stamp, rhythmically as though moved by clockwork.

So the afternoon passed and the evening and finally the night. It was not until morning, when the little fighter had exhausted his strength and surrendered to the enemy, that the parents exchanged a silent glance out of sleepless eyes. Johann Veraguth laid his hand on Pierre's heart and felt no beat, and he left his hand on the child's sunken chest until it grew cool and cold.

Then he gently stroked Frau Adele's folded hands and said in a whisper: “It's all over.” As he led his wife from the room, supporting her and listening to her hoarse sobbing; as he entrusted her to the nurse and listened at Albert's door to see whether he was awake; as he went back to Pierre and straightened him out in his bed, he felt that half his life had died away and been laid to rest.

With composure he did what was necessary. Then at length he left the dead child to the nurse, and lay down to a short, deep sleep. When the full daylight shone through the windows, he awoke, arose at once, and set about the last piece of work he meant to do at Rosshalde. He went to Pierre's room and opened all the curtains, letting the cool autumnal light shine on his darling's little white face and stiff hands. Then he sat down near the bed, spread out a sheet of paper, and for the last time drew the features which he had studied so often, which he had known and loved since their tender beginnings, and which were now matured and simplified by death, but still full of ununderstood suffering.

Chapter Eighteen

T
HE SUN WAS SHINING
fiery-red through the fringes of the limp, rained-out clouds as the little family rode home from Pierre's funeral. Frau Adele sat erect in the carriage; her face, drained with weeping, seemed strangely bright and rigid as it looked out from between her black hat and her black, high-cut dress. Albert's eyelids were swollen and throughout the ride he held his mother's hand.

“So you'll be leaving tomorrow,” said Veraguth in an effort to distract them. “Don't worry about a thing, I'll attend to everything that has to be done. Chin up, my boy.”

At Rosshalde, as they descended from the carriage, the dripping branches of the chestnut trees glittered in the light. Dazzled, they entered the silent house, where the maids, clothed in mourning, had been whispering as they waited. Veraguth had locked up Pierre's room.

Coffee was ready and the three sat down to table.

“I've taken rooms for you in Montreux,” said Veraguth. “See that you get a good rest. I shall be leaving too, as soon as I've finished here. Robert will stay and keep the house in order. He will have my address.”

No one was listening to him; a profound, shaming emptiness weighed on them all like a frost. Frau Adele looked fixedly into space and gathered crumbs from the tablecloth. She shut herself up in her grief, unwilling to be roused, and Albert imitated her. Now that little Pierre lay dead, all semblance of unity in the family had vanished, just as the politeness maintained by an effort of the will vanishes from a man's face as soon as a feared and powerful guest has gone away. Veraguth alone rose above the circumstances, playing his role and preserving his mask to the last moment. He feared that a womanish scene might mar his leave-taking from Rosshalde, and in his heart he waited fervently for the moment when the two of them would be gone.

Never had he been so alone as sitting in his little room that evening. Over in the manor house, his wife was packing. He had written letters, to Burkhardt, who had not yet been told of Pierre's death, announcing his arrival; to his lawyer and bank, giving them their final instructions. Then, when his desk had been cleared, he propped up his drawing of the dead Pierre before him. Now he was lying in the ground, and Veraguth wondered if he would ever again be able to give his heart to anyone as he had to Pierre, ever again share so deeply in anyone else's suffering. Now he was alone.

For a long while he looked at his drawing, the slack cheeks, the lids closed over sunken eyes, the thin, pressed lips, the cruelly emaciated hands. Then he locked up his drawing in the studio, took his coat, and went out. It was already night in the park and everything was still. Over in the house, a few windows were lighted; they did not concern him. But under the black chestnut trees, in the rain-drenched little arbor on the gravel walk, and in the flower garden, there was still a breath of life and memory. Here Pierre had once—had it not been years ago?—showed him a little captive mouse, and over there by the phlox he had spoken with the swarms of blue butterflies, and he had invented tender fanciful names for the flowers. Here, between henhouse and kennel, on the lawn and on the walk under the lime trees, he had led his little life and played his games; here his light, free, boyish laughter and all the charm of his self-willed, independent nature had been at home. Here, observed by no one, he had enjoyed his childlike pleasures and lived his fairy tales, and sometimes perhaps he had been angry or wept when he felt neglected or misunderstood.

Veraguth wandered about in the darkness, visiting every spot that preserved a memory of his little boy. Last he knelt down by Pierre's sand pile and cooled his hands in the damp sand. His hands encountered something wooden and, picking it up, he recognized Pierre's sand shovel. And then he broke down, his will abandoned him, and for the first time in those three terrible days, he was able to weep without restraint.

The next day he had a last talk with Frau Adele.

“Try to get over it,” he said, “and don't forget that Pierre belongs to me. You would have given him up to me, and I thank you again for that. Even then I knew he was going to die, but it was generous of you. And now live exactly as you please, and don't be in a hurry about anything. Keep Rosshalde for the present, you might regret it if you sold it too soon. The notary will keep you informed, he says the price of land around here is sure to go up. I wish you the best of luck. There's nothing left here that belongs to me except the things in the studio, I shall have them taken away later on.”

“Thank you … And you? You'll never come here any more?”

“No. There would be no point. And I wanted to tell you this: I feel no more bitterness. I know that I myself was to blame for everything.”

“Don't say that. You mean well, but it only makes me miserable. And now you're staying behind all by yourself. It wouldn't be so bad if you had been able to keep Pierre. But as it is—no, this shouldn't have happened. I've been to blame too, I know…”

“We've made atonement these last few days. You mustn't fret, everything will be all right, there's really nothing to have regrets about. Look, now you have Albert all to yourself. And I, I have my work. That makes everything bearable. And you too will be happier than you've been for years.”

He was so calm that she too controlled herself. Oh, there were many things, very many, that she would have liked to say, things she would have liked to thank him for, or hold up to him. But she saw that he was right. It was plain that to him everything that she still felt to be life and bitterly present had already become shadowy past. There was nothing else to do but be calm and let the past be past. And so she listened patiently and attentively to his instructions, surprised at how thoroughly he had thought it all out.

Not a word was said of divorce. That could be taken care of some time in the future when he returned from India.

After lunch they drove to the station. There stood Robert with all the suitcases, and amid the noise and soot of the great glass dome Veraguth saw the two of them into the carriage, bought magazines for Albert, gave him the baggage check, and waited outside the window until the train moved off. Then he took off his hat and waved it and looked after the train until Albert disappeared from the window.

On the way home, Robert, in response to his inquiry, told him how he had broken off his overhasty engagement. At the house the carpenter was waiting to crate Veraguth's last paintings. Once they were packed and sent away, he too would leave. He longed to be gone.

And now the carpenter had finished his work. Robert was working at the manor house with one maid who had stayed on; they covered the furniture and locked the doors and windows.

Veraguth strode slowly through his studio, then through his living room and bedroom. Then he went out, around the lake and through the park. He had taken this walk a hundred times, but today everything, house and garden, lake and park, seemed to echo loneliness. The wind blew cold in the yellowing leaves and brought new fleecy rain clouds in low-hovering files. The painter shivered with the cold. Now they were all gone. There was no one here to care for, to be considerate of, no one in whose presence he had to maintain his composure, and only now, in this frozen loneliness, were the cares and sleepless nights, the quivering fever and all the crushing weariness borne in on him. He felt them not only in his mind and bones but deep in his heart. In those days the last shimmering lights of youth and expectancy had been extinguished; but the cold isolation and cruel disenchantment no longer frightened him.

Sauntering on along the wet paths, he tried to follow back the threads of his life, whose simple fabric he had never before seen so clearly. It came to him without bitterness that he had followed all those pathways blindly. He saw clearly that despite his many attempts, despite the yearning that had never left him, he had passed the garden of life by. Never had he lived out a love to its bottommost depths, never until these last days. At the bedside of his dying child he had known, all too late, his only true love; then he had forgotten, and risen above, himself. And now that would be his experience, his poor little treasure, as long as he lived.

What remained to him was his art, of which he had never felt as sure as he did now. There remained the consolation of the outsider, to whom it is not given to seize the cup of life and drain it; there remained the strange, cool, and yet irresistible passion to see, to observe, and to participate with secret pride in the work of creation. That was the residue and the value of his unsuccessful life, the imperturbable loneliness and cold delight of art, and to follow that star without detours would from now on be his destiny.

He breathed deeply the moist, bitter-scented air of the park and at every step it seemed to him that he was pushing away the past as one who has reached the shore pushes away a skiff, now useless. His probing and his insight were without resignation; full of defiance and venturesome passion, he looked forward to the new life, which, he was resolved, would no longer be a groping or dim-sighted wandering but rather a bold, steep climb. Later and more painfully perhaps than most men, he had taken leave of the sweet twilight of youth. Now he stood poor and belated in the broad daylight, and of that he meant never again to lose a precious hour.

 

Books by Hermann Hesse

PETER CAMENZIND

BENEATH THE WHEEL

GERTRUDE

ROSSHALDE

KNULP

DEMIAN

STRANGE NEWS FROM ANOTHER STAR

KLINGSOR'S LAST SUMMER

WANDERING

SIDDHARTHA

STEPPENWOLF

NARCISSUS AND GOLDMUND

THE JOURNEY TO THE EAST

THE GLASS BEAD GAME

IF THE WAR GOES ON …

POEMS

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WRITINGS

STORIES OF FIVE DECADES

MY BELIEF

REFLECTIONS

CRISIS

TALES OF STUDENT LIFE

HOURS IN THE GARDEN

PICTOR'S METAMORPHOSES

SOUL OF THE AGE: SELECTED LETTERS OF HERMANN HESSE

ROSSHALDE
. From
Gesammelte Schriften
copyright © 1956 by Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin and Frankfurt/M. Translation copyright © 1970, 1998 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hesse, Hermann, 1877–1962.

    [Rosshalde. English]

    Rosshalde / Hermann Hesse ; translated by Ralph Manheim.

            p. cm.

    ISBN 0-312-42229-6

    I. Manheim, Ralph, 1907– II. Title.

PT2617.E85R613 2003

833'.912—dc21

2003040565

First published in Germany by S. Fischer Verlag, Berlin and Frankfurt/M. under the same title

eISBN 9781466835153

First eBook edition: November 2012