Steppenwolf (12 page)

As it turned out, my evening at the professor’s was a marvellous example of this whole problem. Before entering, I paused for a moment outside my acquaintance’s home, looking up at the windows. This is where the man lives, I thought, going on with his work year after year, reading and commenting on texts, trying to discover connections between Near Eastern and Indian
mythologies. And it gives him pleasure since he thinks what he is doing is of value, believes in academic research, is its servant. He believes in the value of knowledge for its own sake, and in the need to store it up, because he has faith in progress, in evolution. He did not experience the war or the shattering effect Einstein’s theories had on the foundations of all previous scientific thinking. (He thinks they are only a matter for mathematicians.) He is blind to the fact that, all around him, preparations are being made for the next war; he considers Jews and Communists to be detestable; he is a good, unthinking, contented child who sets great store by himself. He is much to be envied. Pulling myself together, I went in to be welcomed by a maid in a white apron. I must have sensed something or other because I took exact note of where she put my coat and hat before I was taken into a warm, brightly lit room and asked to wait. There, in obedience to a playful urge, instead of saying a prayer or taking a nap, I picked up the first object that lay to hand. This was a small, framed picture that was kept on the round table, a stiff cardboard flap obliging it to stand at an angle. It was an etching, a portrait of the writer Goethe as an old man with handsomely moulded features and hair swept back with a flourish, the mark of a genius. The artist hadn’t neglected to include the famous blazing eyes and had taken particular trouble to convey a hint of loneliness and tragedy behind the thin veneer of the courtier. Without detracting from the profundity of the daemonic old writer in any way, he had managed to give him an air of self-control and solid respectability that had something of the professor about it, or even the actor. All in all he had succeeded in transforming him into a truly handsome old gentleman, fit to adorn any bourgeois household. I suppose the picture was no sillier than all the rest of its kind: all those comely images of Christ the Saviour, Apostles, heroes, intellectual giants and statesmen diligently produced by skilled craftsmen. It may just have been a certain degree of
virtuosity in its execution that provoked me so much. Whatever the case, this conceited and self-satisfied portrayal of the ageing Goethe immediately shrieked out at me, striking a fatal false note. As if I wasn’t already irritated and furious enough, it demonstrated to me that I had come to the wrong place. Beautifully stylized old masters and the nation’s great and good were at home here; it was no place for a Steppenwolf.

If the man of the house had entered at this moment I might have managed, after making some acceptable excuses, to beat a retreat. However, it was his wife who came in and I surrendered to my fate even though I sensed that nothing good would come of it. As we exchanged greetings, the first dissonant note was followed by a whole series of others. The professor’s wife congratulated me on how well I was looking, whereas I was only too aware of the extent to which I had aged in the years since our last meeting. The pain in my gout-ridden fingers as we shook hands had been an embarrassing enough reminder of the fact. Yes, and when she then asked how my dear wife was I had no alternative but to tell her that my wife had left me and that we were now divorced. We were pleased to see the professor come in. He too greeted me warmly, only for the whole awkwardness and comedy of the situation to emerge at once and in the most striking form imaginable. He was carrying a copy of the newspaper he subscribed to, a publication of the militarist and warmongering party, and, after shaking my hand, he pointed to it, saying there was something in it about a namesake of mine, a journalist called Haller who must be a dastardly figure, one of those chaps without any allegiance to the Fatherland. Haller had, he said, made fun of the Kaiser and publicly declared that his Fatherland was no less responsible for starting the war than the enemy countries. What a nasty piece of work he must be! Well, he said, now the fellow was getting his comeuppance. The paper’s editor had well and truly pilloried the pest, made short work of
him. However, when he saw that I was not interested in the subject we went on to talk of other matters. It didn’t remotely occur to either of them that the monster in question might be sitting there in front of them, yet this was indeed the case: I myself was that monster. Ah well, why upset people by making a song and dance about it? I was laughing inwardly, but by now I had abandoned all hope of still having a pleasant evening. I can remember clearly the moment when I did so. You see, precisely when the professor was talking about that traitor to the Fatherland Haller the awful feeling of depression and despair that had been building up in me ever since the scene at the funeral, getting stronger and stronger, reached maximum intensity. Its pressure was terrible; I experienced it physically as an acute abdominal pain, a harrowing, fearful sense that my fate was sealed. I felt something was lying in wait for me, some threat stealing up on me from behind. Fortunately we were now informed that dinner was served. We went into the dining room where, constantly making an effort to say or ask something quite harmless, I ate more than I was accustomed to. Feeling more wretched by the moment, I kept wondering why on earth we make such efforts. It was clear to me that my hosts too were feeling anything but comfortable, that their cheerfulness was forced, whether because they were inhibited by me, or else were out of sorts for some domestic reason. They only asked me questions it was impossible to give an honest answer to and, as a result, I had soon lied myself into such a corner that every word I uttered almost made me sick. Eventually, in an effort to distract them, I started to tell them about the funeral I had witnessed that day, but I struck the wrong note. My attempts at humour did nothing to improve the general mood, and we were increasingly at odds with one another. Inside me, Steppenwolf was laughing and baring his teeth and, by the time dessert was served, we had all three fallen quite silent.

We went back into the first room for coffee and schnapps,
which, I thought, might buck us up a bit. But there, although he had been put to one side on a chest of drawers, the prince among writers caught my eye again. Unable to tear myself away from him, I again picked up his portrait and, despite hearing warning voices inside me, started to discuss its merits. The situation was, I had convinced myself, so intolerable that in order to rescue it I would either have to win over my hosts by rousing their enthusiasm to the same pitch as mine; or to cause a major explosion.

‘Let’s hope,’ I said, ‘that the real Goethe didn’t look like this! This conceited aristocratic pose; this dignified courting of the assembled ladies and gentlemen; and under the veneer of masculinity all this sugary sweet sentimentality! You can certainly find a great deal to criticize about the man – I myself often find fault with lots of things the pompous old ass got up to – but no, to picture him like this really is taking things too far.’

With an intensely pained expression on her face, the lady of the house finished pouring the coffee, then rushed out of the room. Half embarrassed, half reproachfully, her husband revealed to me that the Goethe portrait belonged to his wife and that she was especially fond of it. ‘And even if, objectively speaking, you were right, which incidentally I would dispute, you oughtn’t to have expressed your opinion in so crass a fashion.’

‘You are right,’ I conceded. ‘Unfortunately it’s a bad habit of mine, one of my vices. I’m always opting for the crassest form of words possible, something Goethe, by the way, also did in his better moments. Of course this sugar-sweet, petit bourgeois, front-parlour Goethe would never have used a crass, genuine, direct expression of any kind. I beg your and your wife’s forgiveness. Please tell her that I am a schizophrenic. And with that, if I may, I’ll take my leave.’

The embarrassed professor raised a few more objections, then again mentioned how agreeable and stimulating our former discussions had been. Indeed he had been profoundly impressed
at the time by my theories about Mithras and Krishna and had, he said, been hoping that today too … and so on. Thanking him, I said it was very kind of him to say all this, but that unfortunately my interest in Krishna as well as my desire to take part in academic discussions had completely worn off. I had, I said, lied to him on several occasions today. It was not true, for example, that I had been in town for just a few days. I had been here for many months but, now living my own life apart, I was not the ideal person to invite to a better class of home. For one thing, I was constantly in a bad mood and plagued with gout; and secondly I was drunk most of the time. What’s more, just to get things straight and in order not to go away a liar, I needed to make it clear to the honourable gentleman that he had today insulted me most grievously. How? By siding with the verdict of a reactionary rag on the views expressed by Haller – a stupid, bull-necked verdict worthy of an unemployed army officer, not an academic scholar. However, this Haller ‘fellow’, this chap lacking any allegiance to the Fatherland, was none other than me; and our country and the whole world would be a lot better off if at least the few people capable of thinking would stand up for reason and love of peace instead of blindly and fanatically heading towards a new war. Now he knew, and with that I wished him goodbye.

And thus rising from my chair, I took my leave of Goethe and the professor, hastily grabbed my things from the coat hook outside, and beat a fast retreat. Full of malicious joy, the wolf within me was howling loudly; the two Harrys were acting up for all they were worth. For I realized immediately that this disagreeable evening meant far more to me than it did to the indignant professor. For him it was a disappointment, a minor irritation, but for me it was the hour of ultimate failure when I turned and ran. It was my farewell to the world of bourgeois respectability, morality and academic scholarship, a total triumph for Steppenwolf. And I was parting from all this as a refugee, admitting
defeat, declaring myself bankrupt in my own eyes. There was no consolation in my going, and no humour: I had taken leave of my former world – home, bourgeois respectability, morality, scholarship – just as a man with a stomach ulcer says goodbye to roast pork. I walked along under the street lamps in a rage, in a rage and terribly dejected. What a miserable, shameful, vile day it had been from morning to evening, from the cemetery to the scene at the professor’s! To what end? Why go on? Was there any point in saddling myself with even more days like this, swallowing even more of these bitter pills? No! And so I was going to put an end to the farce that night. Harry, take yourself home and cut your throat! You’ve been putting it off for long enough.

I walked back and forth through the streets, driven on by despair. It had of course been stupid of me to go spitting on one of the knick-knacks those good people chose to deck out their drawing room with, stupid and bad-mannered. But try as I might, there was nothing else for it: I simply could not stand that tame, insincere, well-behaved way of living any more. And since, as it seemed, I was now unable to stand loneliness either, since even my own company had become unspeakably abhorrent, indeed nauseating to me; since I was flailing around, close to choking in the airless sphere of my private hell, what possible way out was there for me? There was none. O Father and Mother, O far-off sacred fires that burned in my youth, O all you countless joys, labours and goals of my life! Nothing now remained of all this for me, not even regret; just nausea and pain. Never, it seemed to me, had the mere obligation to go on living been so painful as at this hour.

I took a moment’s rest in a dreary pub on the outskirts of town, drinking brandy and water, then walked on again, hounded by my demons, up and down the steep, crooked lanes of the Old Town, along the tree-lined avenues, across the station square. Get away from here, I thought, and went into the station where
I stared at the timetables on the walls, drank some wine and tried to gather my thoughts. I could see the spectre that was haunting me drawing closer and closer, becoming more and more distinct. It was the fear of going back home, returning to my garret and having to face my despair in silence. Even if I spent many more hours wandering around town, I could not avoid that moment when, returning to the door of my flat, to my desk with its books, to the sofa with the picture of the woman I loved above it, I had to sharpen my razor and cut my throat. This was the prospect that revealed itself to me more and more clearly and, my heart beating at a furious rate, I experienced more and more clearly that fear to end all fears, the fear of death. Yes, I was terribly afraid of dying. I could see no other way out; nausea, pain and despair were piled up around me; nothing was now capable of attracting me or giving me joy and hope. Nevertheless, the thought of executing myself, of that final instant as the cold blade cut deeply into my own flesh, filled me with inexpressible dread.

I could see no way of escaping the thing I feared. Even if today, in the battle between despair and cowardice, cowardice were perhaps to win again, despair would confront me afresh tomorrow and every day, and it would be further increased by self-contempt. I would go on taking the razor in my hand and throwing it aside again until one day the deed was finally done. In that case, better to get it over with today. I was talking sensibly to myself as to a frightened child, but the child didn’t listen. Wishing to go on living, it ran off. Seized with panic, I was driven on through the town. I walked round and round my home in wide circles, constantly meaning to go back there, constantly putting it off. Now and then I ended up in a pub, long enough for one glass, long enough for two, before I felt compelled to walk on, again in a broad arc around my destination, around the razor, around death. Tired out, I sat from time to time on a bench, on the rim of a fountain, on a kerbstone, listening to my heart
beating and wiping the sweat from my brow. Then I set off walking again, filled with mortal dread; filled too with a flickering desire for life.