While Constance went in and out of the shops, on her numberless errands,
Paul never left her side:
"You see," he said, glad to have some one to listen to him for the first
time in his life, "what I call human wretchedness is not confined to the
social question, but exists everywhere, everywhere.... Look around you,
in the street. It's raining; and people are walking under dripping
umbrellas. Look at those women in front of us: wet skirts; muddy shoes,
worn at heel, splashing through the puddles: that is human
wretchedness.... Look at that man over there: fat stomach; squinting
eyes; gouty fingers clutching a shabby umbrella-handle: that is human
wretchedness.... Everything that is ugly, squalid, muddy, drab, abnormal
from any one point of view is human wretchedness.... Look at all those
shops, where you buy--or don't buy--trashy manufactured things that have
blood clinging to them, things which you are now pretending that you
need for your house: that is human wretchedness.... It's all ugly; and
the trail of a morbid civilization shows through it all.... Look around
you, at those big, lying letters, those gaudy posters: that is human
wretchedness. One cheats the other; and the whole thing has become such
a matter of system that nobody is really taken in. It's the same with
politics and religion as with a pound of sugar or a box of
throat-lozenges. It is all humbug and all human wretchedness. And it
drags on, piecemeal, through any average human life. It is all squalid,
vulgar, insincere, selfish, ugly and full of human wretchedness. You
think me a pessimist? Far from it. I am an idealist: in my own mind, I
see everything in a rosy light. My power of imagination is so strong
that I see everything white and gold and blue, like the marble statues
of ancient temples, with their blue sky and golden sun. But, when I take
leave of my imagination, then I see that everything is human
wretchedness: wars; politics; the fat stomach of our friend yonder; the
rain; and those pots and pans which you're wanting for your kitchen. All
life, high and low, general and individual, in the masses and in the
classes, is squalid, ugly, insincere and full of human wretchedness.
Look at that creature over there. What a miserable object: she is
knock-kneed; her nose is a yard long; and the reason why she's in this
filthy street is absurd! You think I don't know what I'm talking about,
but I do. You never see anything beautiful except at the theatre, or in
a book, or in a picture or an etching ... or in a great writer taking up
his pen in defence of some outcast, as Zola did. But even then there is
very little; and I at once see the human wretchedness through it all:
the pose, the affectation--even that of soberness--the ambition to
succeed, or to imitate some one or other. No one has a pure thought for
purity's sake ... except a fellow like Zola. There's no beauty anywhere.
Have you ever noticed, in a train, or in a tram-car, or at a theatre,
all those stupid, ugly faces, those crooked bodies, either too fat or
too thin, one with a blink--like this--another with a squint--like
that--this one with little hairs in his ears and that one with hands
that make you sick. I don't know if you understand me; but all of this,
with politics and the social question and those swarms of fat stomachs
like our friend's just now: all of this is what I call human
wretchedness.... I may write a book about it some day; but perhaps my
book itself would be merely human wretchedness...."
In the meantime, he had been following his sister into three shops, one
after the other, and she had managed to make her purchases in between
his philosophizings. Whenever he saw his chance, he went on speaking,
walking aslant beside her and talking into her ear, constantly having to
move off the narrow pavements of the Hoogstraat and Veenestraat, losing
her for a moment, because they were separated by a couple of carriages
going at a foot-pace, but soon catching her up again. And he never lost
the thread of his thoughts:
"I see that you have never reflected much, just like most women. What I
say is quite new to you. You have not even observed much. You should
observe, you should note all the queer things and people about you. Not
that you and I ourselves are not queer and behave queerly. We can't help
it. We too stumble along in our human wretchedness. But in your boy--it
was quite attractive--I saw something funny; and yet he was very
serious, much too serious for a child. Your boy, your boy is certainly a
man of the future. Sometimes you see a thing like that in a child: then
you say to yourself, 'He'll be this, he'll be that, he'll be the other,
later on, when he grows up.' Do you follow me? No, I see you don't
follow me. It's just your motherly vanity that feels flattered! Oh, how
small you are! That is your human wretchedness! Don't you see the
sunniness in your boy? No, you don't see it. I saw it at once. It was
most attractive. Not one of Bertha's or Gerrit's or Adolphine's children
has it. I can't explain it to you, you know, if you don't understand....
Yes, Sissy, life is not gay. You are forty-two and I am only
thirty-five, but I find it no gayer than you do. I see through
everything too clearly. I should never be able, consciously, to join in
anything that had to do with human wretchedness, to join in rushing
after an unnecessary object. That is why I do nothing, except observe.
I'm a dilettante, you see. My income is enough to live on; and I loathe
myself for playing the capitalist with a bit of money like that, like
the middle-classes; but I can't help it, you know. I ought to have been
rich, very rich. I should have planted a castle on a mountain-top, amid
the whiteness of the Alps, and I would have done a great deal to mend
human wretchedness; but I would not have had it around me. I hate it so:
I turn sick at the smell of a beggar; and meantime my heart breaks and I
feel a physical compassion for the poor devil. It's the fault of my
stomach or my nerves: they simply turn. It's very unfortunate when
you're built that way.... How do you like my new overcoat, with the
velvet turn-back cuffs? They're rather neat, aren't they? Pity they're
getting wet. But it's good velvet, it doesn't spoil.... And yet,
yesterday, I was really alarmed when I saw my back in two
looking-glasses. I had no idea that I had such a rotten back, a back
full of human wretchedness, in spite of my fine overcoat. The line went
like that, with a sort of hump. It was terrible; it upset me for all the
rest of the day. Then, in the evening, I sat down at my piano and played
_Isolde's Liebestod_; and then it all passed.... You can't make your
little brother out, eh? A mad chap, you think, what? Yes, I
am--almost--the maddest of the bunch. Bertha is very well-balanced;
only, her eyes are always blinking.... Karel: what he might have become,
I don't know; but now he is a round nought, kept in equilibrium by the
roundness of Cateau with her owl's eyes.... Then you have Gerrit: he
looks well-balanced, but isn't; puts on a jovial and genial air; and is
a melancholy dreamer all the time. You don't believe it? You'll see it
for yourself, when you know him better.... Next come you: well, you
yourself tell me you've had a strange life with your two husbands....
After that, they all go down-hill: Ernst behaves very oddly; Dorine too
is sometimes queer, with that everlasting trotting about; and I look at
all their queerness and have a tile loose myself.... So you think we are
a very sensible family? My dear Constance, we have a great crack running
right through us, slanting, like that! But we are nice people and we
don't let the world know. You wait: you'll see. And now, Sissy, here's
your tram and here I leave you..."
He helped her in; and she saw him walk away under his umbrella,
carefully drying with his handkerchief the velvet turn-back cuffs of his
new overcoat.