The Sleepwalkers (33 page)

“You’re a brute, Herr Esch,” said Fräulein Erna. “Herr Lohberg would never say such things.”

“Redemption is in God’s hands,” said Herr Lohberg, “if He grants anyone the great gift of love it will last for all eternity.”

“You’re a clever man, Herr Lohberg, and lots of people would be the better of taking your words to heart,” said Fräulein Erna, “the very idea of letting oneself be burned for any man! The impudence …”

Esch said: “If the world was as it should be it could be redeemed without any of your silly organizations … yes, you can both look incredulous,” he almost shouted, “but there would be no need for a Salvation Army if the police locked up all the people who deserved to be locked up … instead of the ones that are innocent.”

“I wouldn’t marry any man unless he had a pension, or could leave something for his widow, some kind of security,” said Fräulein Erna, “that’s only what one is entitled to expect from a good man.”

Esch despised her. Mother Hentjen would never think of talking in such a way. But Lohberg said: “It’s a bad provider who doesn’t set his house in order.”

“You’ll make your wife a happy woman,” said Fräulein Erna.

Lohberg went on: “If God blesses me with a wife, I hope I can say with confidence that we shall live in true Christian unity. We shall renounce the world and live for each other.”

Esch jeered: “Just like Balthasar and Ilona … and every evening she gets knives chucked at her.”

Lohberg was indignant: “A man who drinks cheap spirits can’t appreciate crystal-clear water, Fräulein Korn. A passion of that kind isn’t love.”

Fräulein Erna took the crystalline purity as a reference to herself and was flattered: “That dress he gave her cost thirty-eight marks. I found that out in the shop. To fleece a man like that … I could never bring myself to do it.”

Esch said: “Things need to be set right. An innocent man sits in
jail, and another runs around as he pleases; one ought either to do
him
in or do oneself in.”

Lohberg soothed him down: “Human life isn’t to be lightly taken.”

“No,” said Fräulein Erna, “if anyone should be done in it’s a woman who has no feelings where men are concerned … as for me, when I have a man to look after I’m a woman of feeling.”

Lohberg said: “A genuine Christian love is founded on mutual respect.”

“And you would respect your wife even if she weren’t as educated as yourself … but more a creature of feeling, as a woman should be.”

“Only a person of feeling is capable of receiving the redeeming grace and ready for it.”

Fräulein Erna said: “I’m sure you’re a good son, Herr Lohberg, one that is capable of feeling gratitude for all his mother has done for him.”

That made Esch angry, angrier than he knew: “Good son or no … I don’t give
that
for gratitude; as long as people look on while injustice is being done there’s no grace in the world … why has Martin sacrificed himself and been put in jail?”

Lohberg answered: “Herr Geyring is a victim of the poison that’s destroying the world. Only when they get back to nature will people stop hurting each other.”

Fräulein Erna said that she too was a lover of nature and often went for long walks.

Lohberg went on: “Only in God’s good air, that lifts our hearts up, are men’s nobler feelings awakened.”

Esch said: “That kind of thing has never got a single man out of jail yet.”

Fräulein Erna remarked: “That’s what you say … but I say, a man with no feelings is no man at all. A man as faithless as you are, Herr Esch, has no right to put in his word.… And men are all the same.”

“How can you think so badly of the world, Fräulein Korn?”

She sighed: “The disappointments of life, Herr Lohberg.”

“But hope keeps our hearts up, Fräulein Korn.”

Fräulein Erna gazed thoughtfully into space: “Yes, if it weren’t for hope …” then she shook her head: “Men have no feelings, and too much brains is just as bad.”

Esch wondered if Frau Hentjen and her husband had spoken in that
strain when they got engaged. But Lohberg said: “In God and in God’s divine Nature is hope for all of us.”

Erna did not want to be outdone: “I go regularly to church and confession, thank God …” and with triumph she added: “Our holy Catholic faith has more feeling in a way than the Protestant religion—if I were a man I would never marry a Protestant.”

Lohberg was too polite to contradict her:

“All ways to God are equally worthy of respect. And those whom God has joined will learn from Him to live peaceably together … all that is needed is good will.”

Lohberg’s virtue once more disgusted Esch, although he had often compared him with Mother Hentjen because of that same virtue. He burst out: “Any idiot can talk.”

Fräulein Erna said with disdain: “Herr Esch, of course, would take anybody he came across, he doesn’t bother about such things as feelings or religion; all he asks is that she should have money.”

He simply couldn’t believe that, said Herr Lohberg.

“Oh, you can take my word for it, I know him, he has no feelings, and he never thinks about anything … the kind of thoughts you have, Herr Lohberg, aren’t to be found in everybody.”

But if that were so he was sorry for Herr Esch, remarked Lohberg, for that meant he would never find happiness in this world.

Esch shrugged his shoulders. What did this fellow know about the new world? He said contemptuously: “First set the world right.”

But Fräulein Erna had found the solution: “If two people worked together, if your wife, for instance, were to help you in your business, then everything else would be all right, even if the man was a Protestant and the wife a Catholic.”

“Of course,” said Lohberg.

“Or if two people should have something in common, a common interest, as they say … then they must stand by each other, mustn’t they?”

“Of course,” said Lohberg.

Fräulein Erna’s lizard eye glanced at Esch as she said: “Would you have any objections, Herr Lohberg, if I joined you in the theatre business that Herr Esch was speaking of? Now that my brother has lost his senses I at least must try to bring in some money.”

How could Herr Lohberg have any objection! And when Fräulein
Erna said that she would invest the half of her savings, say about a thousand marks, he cried, and she was delighted to hear it: “Oh! Then we’ll be partners.”

In spite of this Esch was dissatisfied. The fact that he had got his own way had all at once ceased to matter, maybe because in any case he had renounced Ilona, maybe because there were more important aims at stake, but perhaps only because—and this was the sole reason of which he was conscious—he suddenly had serious misgivings.

“Talk it over first with Gernerth, the manager of the theatre. I’ve only told you about it, I don’t accept any responsibility.”

“Oh yes,” said Fräulein Erna, she knew well enough that he was an irresponsible man, and he didn’t need to be afraid that he would be called to account. He wasn’t much of a Christian, and she thought more of Herr Lohberg’s little finger than of Herr Esch’s whole body. And wouldn’t Herr Lohberg come in now and then for a cup of coffee? Yes? And since it was getting late, and they had already got to their feet, she took Lohberg by the arm. The lamp above them shed a mild light upon their heads, and they stood before Esch like a newly engaged couple.

Esch had taken off his coat and hung it on the stand. Then he began to brush and beat it and examined its worn collar. Again he was conscious of some discrepancy in his calculations. He had given up Ilona, yet he was supposed to look on while Erna turned away from him and set her cap at that idiot. It was against all the laws of book-keeping, which demanded that every debit entry should be balanced by a credit one. Of course—and he shook the coat speculatively—if he chose he could keep a Lohberg from getting the better of
him
; he was easily a match for the man; no, August Esch was far from being such an ugly monstrosity, and he actually took a step or two towards the door, but paused before he opened it; tut, he didn’t choose to, that was all. The creature across the passage might think he had come crawling to her out of gratitude for her measly thousand marks. He turned and sat down on his bed, where he unlaced his shoes. The balance was all right, so far. And the fact that he was at bottom resentful because he couldn’t sleep with Erna, that was all right, too. One cut one’s losses. Yet there was an obscure miscalculation somewhere that he couldn’t put his finger on: granted that he wasn’t going across the passage to that woman,
granted that he was giving up his bit of fun, what was his real reason for doing so? Was it perhaps to escape marriage? Was he making the smaller sacrifice to escape the greater, to avoid paying in person? Esch said: “I’m a swine.” Yes, he was a swine, not a whit better than Nentwig, who also shuffled off responsibility. His accounts were in a disorder which it would take the devil and all to clear up.

But disorderly accounts meant a disorderly world, and a disorderly world meant that Ilona would go on being a target for knives, that Nentwig would continue with brazen hypocrisy to evade punishment, and that Martin would sit in jail for ever. He thought it all over, and as he slipped off his drawers the answer came spontaneously: the others had given their money for the wrestling business, and so he, who had no money, must give himself, not in marriage, certainly, but in personal service, to the new undertaking. And since that, unfortunately, did not fit in with his job in Mannheim, he must simply give notice. That was the way he could pay his debt. And as if in corroboration of this conclusion, he suddenly realized that he ought not to remain any longer with a company that had been the means of putting Martin in jail. No one could accuse him of disloyalty; even the Herr Chairman would have to admit that Esch was a decent fellow. This new idea drove Erna out of his head, and he lay down in bed relieved and comforted. Going back to Cologne and to Mother Hentjen’s would, of course, be pleasant, and that diminished his sacrifice a little, but so little that it hardly counted; after all, Mother Hentjen hadn’t even answered his letter. And there were restaurants a-plenty in Mannheim. No, the return to Cologne, that unjust town, was a very negligible offset to his sacrifice; it was at most an entry in the petty-cash account, and a man could always credit himself with petty cash. His eagerness to report his success drove him to see Gernerth early next morning: it was no small feat to have raised two thousand marks so quickly! Gernerth clapped him on the shoulder and called him the devil of a fellow. That did Esch good. Yet his decision to give up his job and take service in the theatre astounded Gernerth; he could not, however, produce any valid objection. “We’ll manage it somehow, Herr Esch,” he said, and Esch went off to the head office of the Central Rhine Shipping Company.

In the upper floors of the head office buildings there were long, hushed corridors laid with brown linoleum. On the doors were stylish plates bearing the names of the occupants, and at one end of each corridor,
behind a table lit by a standard lamp, sat a man in uniform who asked what one wanted and wrote down one’s name and business on a duplicate block. Esch traversed one of the corridors, and since it was for the last time he took good note of everything. He read every name on the doors, and when to his surprise he came on a woman’s name, he paused and tried to imagine what she would be like: was she an ordinary clerk casting up accounts at a sloping desk with black cuffs over her sleeves, and would she be cool and offhand with visitors like all the others? He felt a sudden desire for the unknown woman behind the door, and there arose in him the conception of a new kind of love, a simple, one might almost say a business-like and official kind of love, a love that would run as smoothly, as calmly, and yet as spaciously and neverendingly, as these corridors with their polished linoleum. But then he saw the long series of doors with men’s names, and he could not help thinking that a lone woman in that masculine environment must be as disgusted with it as Mother Hentjen was with her business. A hatred of commercial methods stirred again within him, hatred of an organization that, behind its apparent orderliness, its smooth corridors, its smooth and flawless book-keeping, concealed all manner of infamies. And that was called respectability! Whether head clerk or chairman of a company, there was nothing to choose between one man of business and another. And if for a moment Esch had regretted that he was no longer a unit in the smoothly running organization, no longer privileged to go out and in without being stopped or questioned or announced, his regret now vanished, and he saw only a row of Nentwigs sitting behind these doors, all of them pledged and concerned to keep Martin languishing in confinement. He would have liked to go straight down to the counting-house and tell the blind fools there that they too should break out of their prison of hypocritical ciphers and columns and like him set themselves free; yes, that was what they should do, even at the risk of having to join him in emigrating to America.

“But it’s a pretty short star turn you’ve given us here,” the staff manager said when he gave in his notice and asked for a testimonial, and Esch felt tempted to divulge the real reasons for his departure from such a despicable firm. But he had to leave them unsaid, for the friendly staff manager immediately bent his attention to other matters, although he repeated once or twice: “A short star turn … a short star turn,” in an unctuous voice, as if he liked the phrase and as if he were hinting that
theatrical life wasn’t so very different from or even superior to the business that Esch was relinquishing. What could the staff manager know about it? Was he really reproaching Esch with disloyalty and planning to catch him unawares? To trip him up in his new job? Esch followed his movements with a suspicious eye and with a suspicious eye ran over the document that was handed to him, although he knew very well that in his new profession nobody would ask to see a testimonial. And since the thought of his work in the theatre obsessed him, even as he was striding over the brown linoleum of the corridor towards the staircase he no longer remarked the quiet orderliness of the building, nor speculated about the woman’s name on the door he passed by, nor saw even the notice-board marked “Counting House”; the very pomp of the board-room and the Chairman’s private office in the front part of the main building meant nothing to him. Only when he was out in the street did he cast a glance back, a farewell glance, as he said to himself, and was vaguely disappointed because there was no equipage waiting at the main entrance. He would really have liked to set eyes on Bertrand for once. Of course, like Nentwig, the man kept himself well out of the way. And of course it would be better not to see him, not to set eyes on him at all, or on Mannheim for that matter and all that it stood for. Good-bye for ever, said Esch; yet he was incapable of departing so quickly and found himself lingering and blinking in the midday sunlight that streamed evenly over the asphalt of the new street, lingering and waiting for the glass doors to turn noiselessly on their hinges, perhaps, and let the Chairman out. But even though in the shimmering light it looked as if the two wings of the door were trembling, so that one was reminded of the swing doors behind Mother Hentjen’s buffet, yet that was only a so-called optical illusion and the two halves of the door were immobile in their marble framework. They did not open and no one came out. Esch felt insulted: there he had to stand in the glaring sun simply because the Central Rhine Shipping Company had established itself in a flashy new asphalt road instead of a cool and cellar-like street; he turned round, crossed the street with long, rather awkward strides, rounded the next corner, and as he swung himself on to the footboard of a tram that rattled past, he had finally decided to leave Mannheim the very next day and go to Cologne to start negotiations with Oppenheimer, the theatrical agent.