The Sleepwalkers (40 page)

He read a portion of it every day. At first he had contented himself with the illustrations, and now when he thought of America it seemed to him that the trees there were not green, the meadows not brightly coloured, the sky no longer blue, but that all American life was deployed against a polished and elegant chiaroscuro as in the brownish grey photographs, or against the sharp contours of the delicately limned pen-drawings. Later on, however, he became absorbed in the text. The recurring statistics certainly bored him, but he was too conscientious
to skip them and succeeded in learning a good deal by heart. He was deeply interested in the American police system and the law courts, which, the book averred, were organized in the service of democratic freedom, so that any man able to read a book intelligently could gather that in America no cripples were thrown into jail at the bidding of wicked shipping firms; it would be as well therefore for Martin to go with him. Esch turned over the pages at random, and strangely enough the photograph of the giant liner at the landing-stage in New York revealed Mother Hentjen in her brown-silk dress, the light-pink parasol in her hands, leaning over the railing watching the swarm of strangers, while Martin with his crutch sat on a chest, and the air was filled with syllables of the English language.

And thoroughgoing as he was, Esch decided after some hesitation to visit once more the book-shop in which he had felt so much at home. Making light of the fresh expense he purchased the English phrase-book with the inviting Union Jack and forthwith set himself to learn the English words, behind each of which he saw the word “Liberty” in the elegant half-tones of a silky and glossy photograph, as if in this one word all that had ever existed in the past and been expressed in the old language must now be resolved and redeemed. He even made up his mind that they must speak English to each other, and that Mother Hentjen must be instructed in English to that end. But with his healthy contempt for all reverie he did not stop short at merely wishing for freedom: his profits were accumulating, and although the receipts for the last few days of the wrestling had fallen off somewhat, he had in any case a clear surplus of about two hundred marks, which he now definitely set aside as the nucleus of his travelling expenses; hence he could take action, he could escape from his prison, he could begin his new life. He was often drawn nowadays to the Cathedral. When he was on the steps overlooking Cathedral Square, and English-speaking tourists chanced to appear, it was like a breath of freedom invigorating him and caressing his brow as he stood with bared head in the warm summer wind. The very streets of Cologne began to take on another aspect, one might even say a more innocent aspect, and Esch regarded them with kindliness and almost with a hint of malicious triumph. Once he was on the other side, across the sea, they too would have a different look. And if he ever came back he would let the English-speaking guide show him over the Cathedral.—

After the performance he waited for Teltscher; the air was soft and rainy as they walked through the night. Esch stopped suddenly: “Look here, Teltscher, you’ve always been boasting about an American engagement: it’s time you did something about it.” Teltscher loved to discuss his grand prospects: “If I’ve a mind to, I can get as many engagements over there as I want.” Esch dissented: “With your knife-throwing stunt … h’m, well … don’t you think wrestling or something of that kind would go better over there?” Teltscher laughed scornfully: “You’re surely not thinking of taking our girls over!” “Well, why not?” “You’re an idiot, Esch, if you would take over that kind of stuff. In any case … over there they expect real sporting turns, but the kind of thing our girls do …” He laughed again. Esch suggested: “But couldn’t we get a good team together?” “Nonsense, people over there aren’t going to wait till we arrive,” said Teltscher, “and where could you find trained girls here?” … he reflected …“if these cows of ours were anything to look at there might possibly be something in it. But only in Mexico or South America.” Esch did not grasp his meaning at first, and Teltscher was provoked by his stupidity: “They’re always hard up for women out there … and if the wrestling wasn’t a draw the girls would at least be provided for, and we could keep all the travelling expenses in our pockets.” That seemed obvious enough. After all, why not South America or Mexico? And the half-tone photographs in Esch’s mind took on a brilliantly coloured Southern luxuriance. Yes, it was a convincing scheme. Teltscher said: “You’ve hit on a good thing this time, Esch. Make it your job to fit out the circus with new girls worth looking at. I know one or two fellows who could easily arrange a tour for us over there. And then we’ll set sail with the whole cargo.” Esch knew that the proposal savoured abominably of white slave traffic. But he could ignore that knowledge, for the wrestling matches were not illicit, and even if they gave any cause for suspicion what did it matter? that would only pay off a few scores against a police force that locked up innocent men. A police force that worked in the cause of freedom and accepted no money from shipping firms wouldn’t need to be scored off. White slave traffic, of course, wasn’t very refined, but after all even Mother Hentjen’s business was against her principles. Nor did Lohberg approve of his shop. And in any case it was better to take Teltscher to America with the circus than to leave him here throwing knives. They passed a bored policeman who was patrolling his beat in
the rain, and Esch would have liked to assure him that the police would be none the worse off, for he would deliver Nentwig into their hands sooner or later! Esch was a man who upheld law and order and fulfilled his pledges, even though the other parties were swine. “Police swine,” he growled. The wet asphalt shone like a photographic film, dark brown in the light of the yellow lamps, and Esch saw before him the Statue of Liberty whose torch consumed and released all the husks of one’s past life, delivering into flame all that was dead and gone—and if that was murder, it was a kind of murder beyond the jurisdiction of the police: murder in the cause of redemption. His decision was taken, and when Teltscher advised him on parting: “And don’t forget, it’s always blonde girls they want out there, nothing but blonde,” he accepted the fact that he was to seek out and provide blonde girls. He had only to settle up his old scores, and then they would set sail with their cargo of blondes. From the lofty deck of the ocean liner they would look down on the swarm of smaller craft. They would cry a farewell to the Old World, a final good-bye. Perhaps the blondes on the ship would strike up a farewell song in chorus, and when the ship on its taut tow-rope glided past the river shores perhaps Ilona would be walking on the bank and would wave a hand, herself a blonde, but rescued from all danger, and the level water would broaden between them.

Esch should really have admitted that his mistress stood on the same plane as himself: for if he kept love in a subordinate place Mother Hentjen ignored it. In that she was his match, although moved by other considerations than his. She regarded love as something so profoundly secret that she scarcely ventured to pronounce the word. She forgot again and again the existence of this lover who was now established and whom she could not prevent from stealing in upon her of an afternoon when she was taking her nap or at night when her last customers had departed, and again and again at his approach she was overwhelmed with petrified astonishment, a state of petrifaction that only began gradually to wear away when the dim parlour and the alcove had received them both: then it dissolved into a feeling of detached isolation, and the dark alcove in which she lay looking up at the ceiling began to float away till soon it seemed no longer a part of her familiar house, but was like a soaring chariot hanging somewhere in infinite space and darkness.
Only then did she realize that somebody else was there beside her, occupied with her, and it was no longer Esch, it was no longer even a man she knew, it was a Someone who had strangely and violently thrust himself into her isolation, and yet could not be reproached for his violence since he was a part of that isolation and could be found only within it, a Someone, quiet and yet threatening, demanding assuagement for his violence, and therefore one had to play the game with him that he demanded, and though the game was compulsory it was yet strangely guiltless, since it was engulfed in isolation and even God shut His eyes to it. But he with whom she shared the bed was little likely to suspect the nature of that isolation, and she was sternly on her guard to keep him from impinging upon it. A profound muteness enveloped him, and she would not let that disconcerting silence be assailed, even should he mistake it for insensibility or stupidity. Silence abolished shame, for shame was born only in speech. What she felt was not bodily lust but release from shame: she was so isolated that, as if alone for all eternity, she could no longer be ashamed of a single fibre in her body. He could not understand her muteness, and yet was disheartened by the shameless silence that invited and submitted to him in brutish immobility. She gave him barely a sigh, and he was all agonized expectation and hope that she would finally let her voice go in a cry of satisfied animal lust. Too often he waited in vain, and then he hated the solicitous crook of the arm with which she invited him to lay down his head and sleep on her plump, unmoved shoulder. But when she sent her lover away it was with hard abruptness, as if she suddenly wanted to annihilate both him and the knowledge he shared with her: she pushed him out through the door, and as he stole down the stairs he could feel her hatred at his back. That gave him an inkling that it was a strange, strange land he had been in, and in spite of himself the knowledge always impelled him back to her again with torment and increasing desire. For even in the bliss of losing himself, of sinking tranced and nameless in the shamelessness of sex, the desire to overcome the woman kept stubborn vigil, the desire to force her to acknowledge him, to make the present moment flame up in her like a torch that burned up all else, so that in its glare she should be aware of her mate, and out of the silence of night that enveloped everything should let her voice ring out passionately, and say “du” to him and to him alone, as if he were her child. He no longer knew what she looked like, she was beyond beauty and ugliness, beyond
youth and age, she was only a silent problem that he was set to master and to resolve.

Although in many respects Esch could not have wished for a better, and even had to admit that it was a lofty kind of love, surpassing ordinary standards, that had laid its spell upon him, yet it always annoyed him, time and again, that whenever he came into the restaurant Mother Hentjen, anxious lest the other customers should suspect something, was so markedly cold to him that against her will she made him conspicuous. Had it not been that he wanted to avoid further notice and even scandal, and had not his cheap and bountiful dinner been in question, he would simply have stayed away. As it was, he made an effort to be compliant and to strike the happy mean in his visits; but he could not manage it, he could not please Mother Hentjen whatever he did: if he appeared in the restaurant she put on a sulky face and obviously wished him gone, and if he stayed away she asked him spitefully if he had perhaps been off with his negress.

Teltscher thought that they could not decently refuse to give Gernerth a chance to share in the South American project. With that the plan would have acquired a certain solidity in Esch’s eyes. But Gernerth declined, giving as an excuse his family, which he wanted to have with him when he took on his new contract in autumn. So the windbag Teltscher remained Esch’s sole associate. He was certainly not much to depend on, but the project should not be postponed for all that; Esch began his canvassing at once, and set out on the search for women wrestlers fit for export. Perhaps in its course he might actually run across the negress whom they still wanted; that of course would be an extra piece of luck.

He again made his round of the dens and brothels, and if he sometimes felt a slight twinge of conscience in doing so, it was only because Frau Hentjen, if she should find out, would never believe that he devoted himself to such a task out of mere business considerations. So, as a kind of proof of his erotic indifference, as a moral though quite preposterous alibi, he extended his business researches to include the homosexual resorts, resorts which hitherto he had avoided almost apprehensively. Yet he felt vaguely that there must be another reason for his desire to visit them. What took place in them should have left him quite unmoved, and it was really queer, the horror that overcame him when he saw these men dancing with each other, cheek pressed against cheek. Then he
could not help thinking of his first visit to one of those filthy dens when he was a mere lad at a loose end in the world, a lad who could scarcely remember his mother, and how he had felt that he wanted to run away to her the first time that he had caught sight of a male prostitute, tightly laced and in long skirts, singing obscene songs in a falsetto voice. If he forced himself to gaze at such abominations again, considering that the sight of them almost made him vomit, Mother Hentjen would be compelled to realize, in spite of her prudishness, how little pleasure he got out of his job. God knows, he would rather run to her than haunt such places, searching for he knew not what, as if he were looking for his lost innocence. Quite preposterous to think that one might run up against, say, the chairman of a company, for these street boys were certainly beneath the notice of a man like that. All the same, with such a queer lot one had to be prepared for anything. And as in venturous situations one exercises self-control, Esch did not bash in the painted mugs of these little manikins when they spoke to him; on the contrary he was on his best behaviour, treated them to sweet liqueurs, asked how they were getting on and—if they became confidential—inquired also into their source of income and the names of their kind uncles. True, he wondered sometimes why he listened to all their chatter, but he pricked up his ears when the name of Chairman Bertrand was mentioned; then the vague picture that he carried in his mind of that great man, a picture scarcely legible and yet larger than life-size, acquired gradually more colour, took on strangely tender hues, and became at the same time a little smaller as it grew more sharp and definite. Bertrand, it seemed, sailed up and down the Rhine in a motor-yacht, and his crew were very handsome; everything on this dream-boat was white and blue; once he had come to Cologne and little Harry had had the great honour of finding favour in his eyes; they had gone as far as Antwerp in the fairy yacht and in Ostend had lived like gods; but usually he was too grand to pay any attention to the kind of boys that came here. His castle stood in a great park in Badenweiler; deer grazed in the meadows and strange flowers scented the air; he stayed there when he was not in distant lands; nobody had entry to his castle, and his friends were Englishmen and Indians of fabulous wealth; he owned a motor-car, and it was so huge that one could sleep in it at nights. He was richer than the Kaiser.