The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse (27 page)

I had already begun to shiver. It was impossible to stand still very long.

“You’re freezing,” said the guide. “It’s best that we move on.”

After saying this, he stood up, stretched himself to his full height for a moment, and regarded me with a smile. There was neither mockery nor sympathy in his smile, neither harshness nor consideration. There was nothing there but understanding, nothing
but knowledge. That smile said, “I know you. I know the fear that you’re feeling, and I’ve not at all forgotten your boasting of yesterday and the day before. I know and am familiar with each desperate hop and jump that your heart takes like a scared rabbit, and with each flirt with the lovely sunshine out there, even before you feel it.”

This was the smile with which my guide regarded me, as he took the first step into the dark rocky valley ahead of us, and I hated and loved him, just as a condemned man hates and loves the ax above his neck. Most of all, however, I hated and despised his knowledge, his leadership and coolness, his lack of likable weaknesses, and I hated everything in myself that acknowledged how right he was, that approved of him, that wanted to be like him and follow him.

He had already gone ahead, stepping on stones through the black brook, and was just on the point of disappearing from sight around the first rocky bend.

“Stop!” I called, so full of fear that I was forced to think at the same time that if this were a dream, my terror would explode it all this second, and I would wake up. “Stop,” I called. “I can’t go on. I’m not ready yet.”

The guide stood still and looked at me in silence without a single reproach but with his dreadful understanding, with his unbearable knowledge, his intuition, his smug assurance that he knew what would happen in advance.

“Do you think it would be better if we turned around?” he asked, and he had not even finished uttering his last word when I already knew, full of repugnance, that I would say no, would have to say no. And at the same time all the old, habitual, lovely, and familiar things cried out reproachfully within me: “Say yes, say yes,” as if the
entire world and home were wrapped around my feet like a ball and chain.

I wanted to cry out yes, even though I knew for sure that I would not be able to do it.

Then the guide pointed back into the valley with his outstretched hand, and I turned once again to look at the region that I loved so much. But now I was faced with the most painful thing that I could possibly see: My beloved valleys and fields were lying pale and dull under a white, impoverished sun. The colors clashed in a false and shrill way. The shadows were rusty black and without magic, and the heart had been cut out of everything, the charm and fragrance depleted, so that it all smelled and tasted like things that one had eaten to the point of nausea. Oh, I had known it all the time! How I feared and hated my guide’s terrible way of degrading things that were dear and pleasant to me! How I hated his way of letting the juice and spirit run out of it, falsifying the fragrances, and poisoning the colors with a light touch! Oh, I had known it! Yesterday’s wine had become today’s vinegar. And the vinegar would never again turn back to wine. Never again.

I kept quiet and sadly followed the guide. He was absolutely right, now as always. It was good that he at least remained with me and kept within sight, instead of—as he often had—suddenly disappearing at the moment a decision had to be made and leaving me alone, alone with that alien voice inside my breast into which he, at the time, would transform himself.

I kept quiet, but my heart cried fervently, “Just stay—I’ll certainly follow!”

The stones in the brook were terribly slippery. It was tiring and
made me dizzy to walk like this, step by step on narrow wet stones that shrank under my feet and eluded me. At the same time the path in the brook rose sharply, and the dark walls of the cliffs drew closer together. They swelled with gloom, and each corner revealed its nefarious intention of squeezing us and cutting off our retreat forever. A sheet of water ran over warty yellow rocks, all so slimy and sticky. No more sky, not even a cloud or some blue above us.

I walked and walked, following the guide, and often closed my eyes out of fear and repulsion. All at once there was a dark flower along the way, black velvet with a touch of sadness. It was beautiful and spoke familiarly to me, but the guide rushed on, and I felt that if I stayed a single moment longer, if I were to cast just one more glance at that sad velvet eye, then the distress and hopeless melancholy would become all too heavy and unbearable for me, and my spirit would remain banished forever in that sneering region of meaninglessness and madness.

Wet and dirty, I trudged onward, and as the damp walls pressed closer together above us, the guide began to sing his old song of comfort. With each step he took, he kept the beat with his clear, strong, young voice: “I will, I will, I will!” I knew quite well that he wanted to encourage me, to spur me on. He wanted to delude me and make me forget the horrible hardship and despair of this hellish journey. I knew he waited for me to chime in with his sing-song. But I refused to do it. I did not want to grant him this victory. Didn’t I feel like singing? Wasn’t I merely human, just a poor simple guy who had been drawn into doing things against my feelings that not even God would demand of me? Wasn’t each carnation and each forget-me-not allowed to stay alongside the brook where it was growing, to bloom and wither in its own way?

“I will, I will, I will!” the guide sang staunchly. Oh, if only I could have turned around! But I had long since been climbing over walls and precipices thanks to the marvelous help of the guide, and there was no return, none whatsoever. I suppressed my tears and felt them strangling me, but I didn’t dare weep, not in the least. And so I joined in the song of the guide, defiant and loud, in the same rhythm and tone. However, I did not sing his words. Instead, I kept repeating, “I must, I must, I must!” But it was not easy to sing while climbing. Soon I began gasping for breath and was forced to keep quiet. However, he kept singing tirelessly, “I will, I will, I will,” and in time he compelled me as well to sing his words. Now the climbing went better, and I no longer felt under duress. Indeed, I wanted to climb onward, and I no longer felt the slightest trace of fatigue from the singing.

Everything became brighter inside me, and as it did, the smooth cliff also receded, became drier and more pleasant. It also offered help to my slipping foot, and the bright blue sky revealed itself above more and more like a small blue brook between the banks of stone, and then like a small blue lake that grew and became more expansive.

I tried to exert my will more ardently and firmly, and the lake in the sky grew wider, and the path became more accessible. In fact, I sometimes ran an entire stretch with ease, without complaining, next to the guide. Then unexpectedly, I saw the peak close by, right above us, steep and glistening in the glowing air of the sun.

When we were somewhat beneath the peak, we crawled out of a narrow crevice. The sun pierced my eyes and blinded me momentarily, and when I opened them again, my knees shook with dread, for I saw that I was standing free and without support on a steep ridge.

All around me was the infinite space of the sky and scary blue depths. Only the narrow peak towered above us like a ladder. But the sky and sun were there once again, and so we climbed up the last frightening steep path, step by step, with lips pressed together and our brows furrowed. And finally we stood on top, slender figures on glowing rock in sharp, biting, thin air.

It was a strange mountain and a strange peak! We had reached this peak by climbing over endless bare stone walls. A tree grew out of the stone, a small sturdy tree with some short, strong branches. There it stood, incredibly lonely and odd, hard and stiff in the rock, the cool blue of the sky between its branches. And at the very top of the tree sat a black bird that sang a harsh song.

Silent dream of a brief rest high above the world: The sun was ablaze; the rock glowed; the air stiffened; the bird sang harshly. And its harsh song meant, Eternity, eternity! The black bird sang, and its blank hard eye gazed at us like a black crystal. It was hard to bear its gaze. It was hard to bear its song, and most dreadful of all was the loneliness and emptiness of this place—the staggering expanse of the arid sky. To die was inconceivable joy. To stay here was unspeakable pain. Something had to happen, immediately, right away. Otherwise we and the world would turn to stone out of dread. I felt the event rise and blow toward us like a gust of wind before a storm. I felt it flicker like a burning fever over my body and soul. It threatened. It came. It was there.

All of a sudden the bird whirled from the branch and plunged into space.

Then my guide took a running leap into the blue and fell into the palpitating sky and flew away.

Now the wave of destiny had peaked. Now it ripped out my heart which broke quietly apart.

And already I was falling. I jumped, plunged. I flew. Tied up in the cold vortex, I shot blissfully through the air and felt ecstatic pain as I soared downward, quivering through infinity to the mother’s breast.

E
ver since I was young, I used to disappear from time to time to reinvigorate myself, and I would lose myself in other worlds. People would search for me, and when they could not find me, they would report me as missing. Then after I returned, it was always a pleasure for me to hear the conclusions that so-called scientists would invent to explain who I was and the conditions of my absence or twilight existence. While I did nothing but what came naturally to me and what most people will be able to do sooner or later, I was regarded as a kind of phenomenon by these peculiar men—as a possessed person by one of them, and as a blessed person with miraculous powers by others.

To be brief, I had been away again for a while. After two years
of war, the present had lost much of its charm for me, and I disappeared for a while in order to breathe some other air. In my customary way I left the realm in which we live and was a guest in distant parts for a long time, speeding through people and eras, and I became unhappy because I saw nothing but the usual tribulations, trade, progress, and improvements on the earth. Then I withdrew into the cosmic spheres for some time.

When I returned, it was 1920, and I was disappointed to find that people were still at war with each other all over the globe, and that there was still the same senselessness and obstinance. Some of the borders of countries had shifted; some select regions with ancient high cultures had been carefully destroyed, but all in all nothing much had changed on the surface of things.

Of course, great progress had indeed been made in the cause of equality in the world. At least in Europe, so I heard, the prospects were the same for everyone in all countries. Even the differences between the belligerent nations and the neutral ones had almost completely vanished. Ever since they began shooting the civilian population mechanically from air balloons that were fifteen to twenty thousand meters high in the sky and let their shots fall as they moved, ever since this time the borders of countries, although sharply guarded as before, had become somewhat illusory. The scattering of these random shots from the air was so great that the dispatchers of these balloons were satisfied if they could just keep the bombs from hitting their own territory. They no longer cared how many of their bombs fell on neutral countries or ultimately even on the territory of their allies.

This was actually the only progress that the institution of war itself had made. To a certain degree, the meaning of the war had
finally been given its clearest expression by this random bombing. The world had been divided into two parts that sought to annihilate each other because they both desired the same thing, namely the liberation of the oppressed, the elimination of violence, and the establishment of permanent peace. Everyone was prejudiced against a peace that could not possibly last eternally—if eternal peace could not be obtained, then one certainly preferred eternal war, and the negligent manner in which the balloons with explosives let their blessings fall on just and unjust people from enormous heights fit the meaning of this war exactly. Aside from this, the war continued to be waged in the old way with significant but inadequate means. The limited imagination of the generals and the technicians had led to the invention of a few more weapons of annihilation. However, the visionary who had conceived the mechanical balloon that sprayed bombs had been the last of his kind. Since then, the intellectuals, the visionaries, the poets, and the dreamers had gradually lost interest in the war. The war was left up to the generals and the technicians and thus made little progress. The armies were to be found everywhere and confronted each other with tremendous perseverance, and although the lack of materials had long since led to awarding military medals that were made only out of paper, there was no sign anywhere that the bravery of the soldiers had abated.