Steppenwolf (20 page)

For a long time in the course of this nocturnal walk I had also been pondering my strange relationship to music. And, not for the first time, I had come to recognize that my own relationship to this art form, which was as unwholesome as it was touching, was a fate I shared with the German intelligentsia as a whole. To an extent never experienced by any other nation, the intellectual and spiritual life of Germany is dominated by the notion of matriarchy, of close ties to Mother Nature, and this finds expression in the hegemony of music. Instead of manfully resisting this by obeying the dictates of the mind, the Logos, the Word, and winning a hearing for them, we intellectuals all dream of a language without words, a language that will express things inexpressible, represent what cannot be given shape. German intellectuals, instead of sticking as faithfully and honestly as possible to the instrument they were born to play, have constantly engaged in hostilities against reason and the Word, and flirted with music. Neglecting most of their real responsibilities, they have overindulged in music, wallowing in wonderful, blissful tonal structures, in wonderful, lovely feelings and moods that they never felt the urge to translate into reality. We German intellectuals, all of us, were not at home in reality, were alien and hostile to it, and that is why we have played such a lamentable role in the real world of our country, in its history, its politics and its public opinion. Well, what of it? I’d often pursued this train
of thought, not without feeling the occasional strong desire to play a part in shaping reality, to be seriously and responsibly active for once instead of always confining myself to aesthetics and the arts and crafts of the mind. Always, however, I ended up resigning myself to my lot. The generals and the captains of heavy industry were perfectly right to say that we ‘intellectual types’ were not up to much. Divorced from reality, we were an irresponsible bunch of clever chatterboxes that the nation could well do without. Ugh! Pass me the razor!

Thus I had finally returned home, my head full of thoughts and echoes of the music, my heart heavy with sadness and desperate longing for life, for reality, for meaning and for things irretrievably lost. I had climbed my stairs, put the light on in the living room and made a vain attempt to read a little. I had thought of the date I had made for the following evening, obliging me to go dancing and drinking whisky in the Cécil Bar, and had felt bitterly resentful, not only against myself, but also against Hermione. For all that her intentions might be sincere and good, and however wonderful a creature she might be, she ought at that time to have let me perish rather than dragging me down into this chaotic, alien, shimmering world of entertainment where it was clear I was bound to remain a stranger for ever and where, severely impoverished, my best qualities were going to seed.

And in this sad frame of mind I had put out the light, made my way sadly to my bedroom and begun sadly to undress, when I smelled something unusual that made me stop short. There was a slight scent of perfume and, looking round, I saw the beautiful Maria with her big blue eyes lying in my bed, smiling and rather anxious.

‘Maria!’ I said. Then the first thing that occurred to me was that my landlady would give me notice to quit if she knew.

‘I’ve come to see you,’ she said softly. ‘Are you cross with me?’

‘No, no. Hermione gave you the key, I know. Well, so be it.’

‘Oh, you clearly are cross about it. I’ll go again.’

‘No, Maria, stay, beautiful one. Only, tonight of all nights, I am very sad. I can’t be cheerful tonight, though tomorrow I may be able to be again.’

I had bent down a little towards her and she now took my head in her two large, firm hands, drew it down and gave me a long kiss. Then I sat down by her on the bed and, holding her hand, asked her to speak softly since we must not be heard. I looked down at her beautiful full face, a strange and wonderful sight, lying there on my pillow like a large flower. Drawing my hand slowly to her mouth, she then pulled it under the blanket and placed it on her warm, silently breathing chest.

‘You don’t have to feel cheerful, dear,’ she said. ‘I already know from Hermione that you are troubled in mind. Anyone can understand that. But tell me, do you still find me attractive? The other day, when we were dancing, you really fell for me, didn’t you?’

I kissed her eyes, her mouth, her neck and her breasts. Only a moment ago, I had been bitterly blaming Hermione in my thoughts. Now, holding her gift to me in my hands, I felt grateful. Maria’s caresses didn’t in the least jar with the glorious music I had heard that evening. They were worthy of it, indeed complemented it. Slowly I removed the blanket from her beautiful body until I reached her feet with my kisses. And when I lay down beside her she gave me a kind smile, an all-knowing smile that lit up her floral face.

That night, lying beside Maria, I slept, though not for long, deeply and satisfyingly like a child. And between my bouts of sleep I drank my fill of her lovely serene youthfulness and, as we chatted softly, discovered a lot of things worth knowing about her life and Hermione’s. I had scant knowledge of creatures and lives of this kind. Only occasionally, in the theatrical world, had I previously encountered similar existences, both women and
men, half artists, half good-time girls or playboys. Not until now did I gain a little insight into these curious, strangely innocent yet strangely degenerate lives. All these young women, usually from poor backgrounds but too clever and too good-looking to spend their whole lives earning their living in one single, badly paid and joyless job or another, were dependent partly on casual work, partly on their charming looks for survival. From time to time they would spend a few months sitting at a typewriter; periodically they were the lovers of affluent playboys who rewarded them with pocket money and presents. At times they lived a life in furs, limousines and grand hotels; at others they just had a room in some attic. If offered a high enough sum, they could possibly be persuaded to marry, but generally speaking they were far from keen on the idea. Many of them were devoid of sexual desire, only reluctantly granting their favours, and then only for the highest price, arrived at after considerable haggling. Others, and Maria was one of them, were unusually gifted lovers with strong sexual needs. Most of these were also experienced in the arts of making love with both sexes. Living solely for sex, they constantly had other, thriving relationships on the go in addition to those with their official and paying partners. Restlessly busy, full of care yet careless, clever yet thoughtless, these butterflies lived their lives, which were as childlike as they were sophisticated, independently. They could not be bought by just anybody; they expected no more than their fair share of good fortune and good weather. In love with life, yet far less attached to it than conventional members of society, they were forever willing to follow some fairy-tale prince to his castle, forever half aware that they would surely come to a sad and difficult end.

In that first strange night and the following days Maria taught me a great deal, not only bewitching new games and sensual delights, but also fresh understanding, fresh insights, a new kind of love. The world of dance halls and nightclubs, cinemas, bars
and hotel tea rooms, which I, as an aesthete and recluse, still considered somewhat common, taboo and beneath my dignity, was the only world that existed for Maria, Hermione and their female companions. It was neither good nor evil, neither desirable nor detestable. It was in this world that their brief lives full of yearning flourished. They were at home in it, experienced in its ways. They liked a glass of champagne or a chef’s speciality in the grill room in just the same way that you or I might like a composer or writer, and they would lavish the same amount of enthusiasm and emotional involvement on a new hit dance tune or the sickly sentimental song of a jazz singer that people like you and me would on Nietzsche or Hamsun.
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Chatting to me about Pablo, the good-looking saxophone player, Maria mentioned an American song he had occasionally sung to them. She talked of it as if spellbound, with a degree of admiration and love that gripped and moved me far more than the ecstasies any highly educated person might go into over pleasurable aesthetic experiences of an exquisitely cultivated kind. I was willing to share in her enthusiasm, no matter what the song was like, because Maria’s fond words and the look of longing that lit up her face were opening up wide gaps in my aesthetic defences. Of course there were some things of beauty, some few exquisitely beautiful creations that in my view were beyond all criticism or dispute, first and foremost Mozart. But where should one draw the line? Hadn’t all of us connoisseurs and critics in our youth fervently adored works of art and artists that seemed to us nowadays to be of doubtful quality or embarrassing? Wasn’t this something we had experienced in the case of Liszt, Wagner, perhaps even Beethoven? Wasn’t Maria’s glowing, childlike emotional response to the popular song from America an
aesthetic experience just as pure, just as fine as that of any senior schoolmaster spellbound by
Tristan and Isolde
or any orchestra conductor going into ecstasies over Beethoven’s Ninth? And didn’t this accord remarkably well with the opinions of our Herr Pablo, confirming that he was right?

That handsome Pablo! Maria, too, seemed to be extremely fond of him.

‘He is a good-looking chap,’ I said, ‘and I too like him a lot. But, tell me, Maria, how can you, besides him, also be fond of a boring old chap who isn’t good-looking, is even starting to go grey, and can neither play the saxophone nor sing love songs in English?’

‘Don’t say such ugly things!’ she said, telling me off. ‘Don’t you see it’s quite natural? I like you too. There’s something attractive, loveable and special about you too. You mustn’t try to be different from what you are. It’s not right to go talking about things like this and demanding explanations of people. Look, when you kiss me on the neck or the ear, I can sense that you are fond of me and find me attractive. You have a way of kissing, a bit on the shy side, that tells me: “He’s fond of you, he appreciates your good looks.” I like that very much, very much. Yet with a different man, on the other hand, I may like exactly the opposite: the fact that I seem to count for nothing in his eyes, so that when he kisses me it’s as if he is doing me a favour.’

Again we fell asleep. Again I woke to discover that I still had my arms around her, this beautiful, beautiful flower of mine.

And, strange to say, this beautiful flower nevertheless constantly remained the present bestowed on me by Hermione. The latter constantly interposed herself between me and Maria, masking her fully. And at one juncture I suddenly thought of Erika, my poor girlfriend, the woman I loved who was somewhere far away, and cross with me. She was scarcely less good-looking than Maria, though not in such full bloom, not as liberated, less gifted in those
ingenious little touches Maria brought to the art of lovemaking. For a while I could picture her clearly and painfully, the object of my love, her fate deeply bound up with mine. Then her image faded away again into my sleep and was forgotten, far off, an absence only half lamented.

After being devoid and deprived of them for so long, I saw many images from my past surfacing before me in this way during that lovely night of tenderness. Released now by the magic of Eros, they welled up from the depths in all their abundance, making my heart momentarily stand still, so enchanted and at the same time saddened was I to realize how rich the picture gallery of my life had been, how full poor Steppenwolf’s psychological firmament had been of eternal stars and constellations. I had a vision, gentle and blissful, of my childhood and mother, like some faraway mountain range, infinitely blue and remote. I heard the chorus of my friendships resound with brass-like clarity, beginning with the legendary Hermann, the psychological counterpart of Hermione. Fragrant and unearthly, like marine flora emerging moist from the water to display their blooms, the images of many women drifted into view; women I had loved, desired and celebrated in verse, and only a few of whom I had won or attempted to make my own. My wife appeared too, with whom I had lived for many a year, and who had taught me the values of companionship, conflict and resignation. In spite of all my dissatisfaction with our life together, the profound trust I placed in her had remained alive in me until the day when, deranged and sick, in an act of sudden desertion and wild rebellion, she abandoned me. And I realized how much I must have loved her, how deeply I must have trusted her for her breach of trust to have had such a grave and lifelong impact on me.

These images – there were hundreds of them, some I could put names to, some not – were all present again, having emerged young and fresh from the well of this night of love, and I realized
again something I had long forgotten in my misery: that they constituted everything of value that my life possessed. Remaining indestructibly in existence, they were fixed for ever like the stars, experiences I could forget but not destroy. Their sequence represented the saga of my life, their bright starlight the indestructible worth of my existence. My life may have been arduous, wayward and unhappy, my experience of humankind’s bitter fate causing me to renounce and reject a great deal, but it had been rich, proud and rich, a life – even its misery – fit for a king. No matter how pitifully I might waste what little time was left to me before finally going under, my life was essentially a noble one. It had a profile and pedigree. Not content with cheap rewards, I had aimed for the stars.

It is already some time ago, and a lot has happened and changed since that night so that I can only remember little of it in detail: odd words we exchanged, odd gestures and amorous acts of profound tenderness, bright, starlit moments when we awoke from the heavy sleep that followed our exhausting lovemaking. However, it was during that night, for the first time since my decline, that my own life looked back at me once again with relentlessly beaming eyes; that I was once again able to see fate at work in what I’d considered mere chance events and to recognize the ruined landscape of my existence as a small part of some divine plan. My soul could breathe again, my eyes see, and for a few moments I sensed intensely that all I needed to do in order to gain admittance to this world of images and become immortal was to gather up the scattered, fragmentary images of my life as Harry Haller alias Steppenwolf and raise them to the level of one rounded portrait. After all, was it not the point of every human life that it should be a determined attempt to reach such a goal?