their button-holes sat on the wood-box with cigarettes in holders and
talked about women, but they became silent as he went past. He opened
the door to the little green cabinet and went in. It was empty. He set
the mandarin’s yellow head in motion with a push of his knuckle and
passed on to the window.
The window-pane breathed frost and wintry chill. He blew on it till
there was a peep-hole between the ice-flowers, put his eye to the glass,
and looked out. The sky was dark and glittering with stars. Highest up
stood the Dipper with its handle aloft.
It was late, then.
He could not force himself to leave the room, because he felt a bitter
and devouring desire for his wife and the kiss of old times, the kiss
under the blue-green light from pearl fringe of the single electric
light, the kiss which the mandarin had beheld in his nodding
half-slumber. If she would only come now, precisely now! No one could
kiss as she did, no one. He had kissed other women since she no longer
loved him; but he had forgotten them all, he would not recognize them if
he met them on the street. If she would only come! Yes, even if she but
came to meet the other, even then he would take her forced and
treacherous kiss as a boon, even then--
He listened. Whispering voices were audible outside the door, but they
grew silent all at once and remained so.
He had a strange sensation at his heart, he felt that in a couple of
seconds he would lie stretched on the carpet, unconscious, but he held
himself upright, and suddenly he heard from the entry where the young
men were smoking their cigarettes a very clear voice which said: “Well,
after all it’s only natural. One can’t expect her to be in love with
someone who has a blue anchor tattooed on his hand.”
V
The coffin stood in the middle of the room. The black-clad woman walked
back and forth, back and forth.
“No, he’s not coming----”
When he finally did come, he said, “Pardon me, beloved. I was delayed by
someone who came to call----”
She nodded stiffly. She did not believe him, because he had not kissed
her.
When he felt that they had stood too long silent, he said, “I must be
off tomorrow. I’ve had a telegram from the minister.--But I swear to
you that I’ll come back,” he added in a somewhat lowered voice as if he
did not wish that the dead man should hear.
She comprehended that he was lying and that he never meant to see her
again. And she nodded.
“Good-bye,” she said.
When he had gone, she went forward to the head of the coffin and looked
at the dead man without thinking any further, for she was too weary. But
as she stood there she remembered suddenly that she had loved him. She
had loved other men too, but it came to her now that she had loved this
one most. At that thought she felt the tears rise from deep down in her
heart; she took his left hand, the one with the blue anchor, and wetted
it with her kisses and her tears.
THE KISS
There was once a young girl and a very young man. They sat on a stone on
a promontory that ran out into the lake, and the waves splashed at their
feet. They sat silent, each wrapped in thought, and watched the sun go
down.
_He_ thought that he should very much like to kiss her. When he looked
at her mouth, it occurred to him that this was just what it was meant
for. He had, to be sure, seen girls prettier than she was, and he was
really in love with someone else; but this other he could surely never
kiss, because she was an ideal, a star, and what availed “the desire of
the moth for the star”?
_She_ thought that she should very much like to have him kiss her, so
that she might have occasion to be downright angry with him and show how
deeply she despised him. She would get up, pull her skirts tightly round
her, give him a glance brimmed with icy contempt, and go off, erect and
calm, without any unnecessary haste. But in order that he might not
divine what she thought, she asked in a low, soft voice, “Do you think
there is another life after this?”
He thought it would be easier to kiss her if he said yes. But he could
not remember for certain what he might have said on other occasions
about the same subject, and he was afraid of contradicting himself. He
therefore looked her deep in the eyes and answered, “There are times
when I think so.”
This answer pleased her extraordinarily, and she thought: At least I
like his hair--and his forehead, too. It’s only a pity his nose is so
ugly, and then of course he has no standing--he’s just a student who is
reading for his examinations. That was not the sort of beau to vex her
friends with.
He thought: Now I can certainly kiss her. He was, nevertheless, terribly
afraid; he had never before kissed a girl of good family, and he
wondered if it might not be dangerous. Her father was lying asleep in a
hammock a little way off, and he was the mayor of the town.
She thought: Perhaps it will be still better if I give him a box on the
ear when he kisses me.
And she thought again: Why doesn’t he kiss me? Am I so ugly and
disagreeable?
She leaned forward over the water to see her reflection, but her image
was broken by the splashing of the water.
She thought again: I wonder how it will feel when he kisses me. As a
matter of fact she had only been kissed once, by a lieutenant after a
ball at the town hotel. He had smelt so abominably of punch and cigars
that she had felt but little flattered, although to be sure he was a
lieutenant, but otherwise she had not much cared for the kiss.
Furthermore she hated him because he had not been attentive to her
afterwards or indeed shown any interest in her at all.
While they sat so, each engrossed in private thoughts, the sun went down
and it grew dark.
And he thought: Seeing that she is still sitting with me, though the sun
is gone and it has become dark, it may be that she wouldn’t so much
object to my kissing her.
Then he laid his arm softly around her neck.
She had not expected this at all. She had imagined he would merely kiss
her and nothing more, and with that she would give him a box on the ear
and go off like a princess. Now she didn’t know what she should do; she
wanted of course to be angry with him, but at the same time she didn’t
want to lose the kiss. She therefore sat quite still.
Thereupon he kissed her.
It felt much more strange than she had supposed. She felt that she was
growing pale and faint, she entirely forgot that she was to give him a
box on the ear and that he was only a student reading for his
examination.
But he thought of a passage in a book by a religious physician on “The
Sex Life of Woman,” which read: “One must guard against letting the
marital embrace come under the dominion of sensuality.” And he thought
that this must be very difficult to guard against, if even a kiss could
do so much.
* * * * *
When the moon came up, they were still sitting there and kissing.
She whispered into his ear: “I loved you from the first hour I saw you.”
And he replied: “There has never been anyone in the world for me but
you.”
THE DREAM OF ETERNITY
While I was still very young I believed with entire certainty that I had
an immortal soul. I regarded this as a holy and precious gift and was
both happy and proud over it.
I often said to myself: “The life I am living is a dark and troubled
dream. Some time I shall awaken to another dream which stands closer to
reality and has a deeper meaning than this. Out of that dream I shall
awaken to a third and afterwards to a fourth, and every new dream will
stand nearer the truth than the one before. This approaching toward
truth constitutes the meaning of life, which is subtle and profound.”
With the joy of knowing that in my immortal soul I possessed a capital
which could not be lost in play or distrained upon for debt, I carried
on a dissipated life and squandered like a prince both what was mine and
what was not mine.
But one evening I found myself with some of my cronies in a large hall,
which glittered with gilt and electric light, while from its flooring
rose a smell of decay. Two young girls with painted faces and an old
woman whose wrinkles were filled with plaster were dancing there on a
platform, accompanied by the wail of the orchestra, cries of applause,
and the clink of broken glass. We watched the women, drank a great deal,
and conversed on the immortality of the soul.
“It’s foolish,” said one of my comrades who was older than I, “it’s
foolish to believe that it would be a blessing to have an immortal soul.
Look at that old harridan dancing there, whose head and hands tremble if
she stays still a moment. One sees directly that she is wicked and ugly
and entirely worthless, and that she’s getting more and more so every
day. How ridiculous it would be to imagine that she had an immortal
soul! But the case is just the same with you and me and all of us. What
a mean joke it would be to give us immortality!”
“The thing that I dislike most in what you say,” I answered, “isn’t that
you deny the immortality of the soul, but the fact that you find a
pleasure in denying it. Human beings are like children that play in a
garden surrounded by a high wall. Time and again a door is opened in the
wall, and one of the children disappears through the door. People then
tell them that it is taken to another garden bigger and more beautiful
than this, whereupon they listen a moment in silence and afterwards
continue to play among the flowers. Assume now that one of the boys is
more inquisitive than the others and climbs up on the wall so as to see
where his comrades go, and when he comes down again tells the rest what
he has seen; namely, that outside the gate sits a giant who devours the
children when they are taken out. And they all have to be taken out
through the gate in due turn! You are that boy, Martin, and I find it
unspeakably ridiculous that you tell what you think you’ve seen, not in
a spirit of despair, but as if you were proud and glad of knowing more
than the rest.”
“The younger of those girls is very pretty,” replied Martin.
“It’s dreadful to be annihilated, and it’s also dreadful not to be able
to be annihilated,” remarked another of my friends.
Martin continued this line of argument.
“Yes,” he said, “one should be able to find a middle course. Gird up
your loins and go out to look for a midway degree between time and
eternity. He who finds it may found a new religion, for he’ll then have
the most enticing bait that a fisher of men ever possessed.”
The orchestra stopped with a clash. The gold of the hall glittered more
faintly through the tobacco smoke and through the floor boards pressed
continuously a smell of decay.
The party broke up and we separated, each in his own direction. I
wandered a long while back and forth on the streets; I came upon streets
which I did not recognize and which I have never seen since, remarkably
desolate and empty streets, where the houses seemed to open their lines
to give me space whithersoever I turned my steps, and then to close up
again behind my back. I did not know where I had got to, before all of a
sudden I stood in front of my own door. It stood wide open. I went in
through the door and up the stairs. At one of the stair windows I
stopped and looked at the moon: I had not previously noticed that there
was moonlight that evening.
But I have never either before or after seen the moon look so. One could
not say that it shone. It was ashen-gray and pallid and unnaturally big.
I stood a long while and stared at yonder moon, despite the fact that I
was dreadfully tired and longed to get to sleep.
I lived in the third story. When I had gone up two flights I thanked God
there was only one left. But as I came up this flight, it struck me that
the corridor was not dark, as it had always used to be, but faintly
lighted like the other corridors where the moon glimmered in through the
stair windows. But there were only three flights of stairs in the house
besides the attic stairs; for that reason the uppermost corridor was
always dark.
“The door of the attic is open,” I said to myself. “The light is coming
from the attic stairway. It’s unexcusable of the servants to leave the
door of the attic open, for thieves might get up into the attic.”
But there was no attic door. There was only an ordinary stairway like
the others.
I had counted wrong, then; I had still a flight to go up.
But when I had mounted this flight and stood in the corridor, I had to
control myself so as not to shriek aloud. For this corridor, too, was
light, neither was there any attic door open, but a new stairway led up
just as before. Through the stair window the moon glimmered in, and it
was ashen-gray and lustreless and unnaturally big.
I rushed up the stairway. I could no longer think. I tottered up
another, and yet another; I did not count them any longer.
I wanted to cry out, I wanted to wake that accursed house and see human
beings around me; but my throat was constricted.
Suddenly it occurred to me to try if I could read the names on the
door-plates. What kind of people could it be that lived in this tower of
Babel? The moonlight was too faint; I struck a match and held it close
to a brass plate.
I read there the name of one of my friends who was dead.
Then the bonds of my tongue were loosed and I shrieked: “Help! help!
help!”
* * * * *
That cry was my salvation, for it waked me up out of the terrible dream
of eternity.
THE DRIZZLE
Autumn is here again with its dismal days, and the sun is hiding himself
in the darkest corner of the heavens so that no one shall see how pale
and aged and worn he has grown in this latter time. But while the wind
whistles in the window-chinks and the rain purls in the rain-spouts and
a wet dog howls in front of a closed gate down below on the street and
before the fire has burned down in our tile stove, I will tell you a
story about the drizzle.
Listen now!
For some time back the good God had become so angered over the
wickedness of men that he resolved to punish them by making them still
wickeder. He should, in his great goodness, have liked above all things
to have drowned them all together in a new Deluge: he had not forgotten
how agreeable was the sight when all living creatures perished in the
flood. But unfortunately in a sentimental moment he had promised Noah
never to do so again.
“Harken, my friend!” he therefore said to the Devil one day. “You are
assuredly no saint, but occasionally you have good ideas, and one can
talk things over with you. The children of men are wicked and do not
want to improve. My patience, which is infinite, has now come to an end,
and I have resolved to punish them by making them wickeder still. The
fact is I hope they will then collectively destroy each other and
themselves. It occurs to me that our interests--otherwise so far
apart--should here for once find a point of contact. What advice can you
give me?”
The Devil bit the end of his tail reflectively.
“Lord,” he answered finally, “Thy wisdom is as great as Thy goodness.
Statistics show that the greatest number of crimes are committed in the
autumn, when the days are dismal, the sky is gray, and the earth is
enveloped in rain and mist.”
The good God pondered these words a long while.
“I understand,” he said finally. “Your advice is good, and I will follow
it. You have good gifts, my friend, but you should make better use of
them.”
The Devil smiled and wagged his tail, for he was flattered and touched.
He then limped home.
But the good God said to himself: “Hereafter it shall always drizzle.
The clouds shall never clear; the mist never lift, the sun never shine
more. It shall be dark and gray to the end of time.”
The umbrella makers and the overshoes manufacturers were happy at the
start, but it was not long before the smile froze upon even their lips.
People do not know what importance fair weather has for them until they
are for once compelled to do without it. The gay became melancholy. The
melancholy became mad and hanged themselves in long rows or assembled to
hold prayer-meetings. Soon no one worked any more, and the need became
great. Crime increased in a dizzying scale; the prisons were
overcrowded, the madhouses afforded room for only the clever. The number
of the living decreased, and their dwellings stood deserted. They
instituted capital punishment for suicide; nothing did any good.
Mankind, who for so many generations had dreamed and poetized about an
eternal spring, now went to meet their last days through an eternal
autumn.
Day by day the destruction went on. Countrysides were laid waste, cities
fell in ruins. Dogs gathered in the squares and howled; but in the
alleys an old lame man went about from house to house with a sack on his
back and collected souls. And every evening he limped home with his sack
full.
But one evening he did not limp home. He went instead to the gate of
heaven and straight on to the good God’s throne. There he stood still,
bowed, and said:
“Lord, Thou hast aged in these latter days. We have both of us aged, and
it is for that reason we are so dull. Ah! Lord, that was bad advice I
gave Thee. The sins that interest me need a bit of sunlight once in a
while in order to flourish. Look here! you’ve made me into a miserable
rubbish-gatherer.”
With these words he flung his dirty sack so violently against the steps
of the throne that the cord broke and the souls fluttered out. They were
not black, but gray.
“That’s the last of the human souls,” said the Devil. “I give them to
Thee, Lord. But beware of using them, if Thou intendest to create a new
world!”
* * * * *
The wind whistles in the window chinks, the rain purls in the
rain-spouts, and the story is done. He who has not understood it may
console himself with the thought that it will be fair weather tomorrow.
THE DRAWING IN INDIA INK
One day in April many years ago, in the time when I still wondered about
the meaning of life, I went into a little cigar booth on a back street
to buy a cigar. I selected a dark and angular El Zelo, stuffed it into
my case, paid for it, and made ready to go. But at that moment it
occurred to me to show the young girl who stood in the booth, and of
whom I used often to buy my cigars, a little sketch in India ink, which
I happened to have lying in a portfolio. I had got it from a young
artist, and to my thinking it was very fine.
“Look here,” said I, handing it to her. “What do you think of that?”
She took it in her hand with interested curiosity and looked at it very
long and closely. She turned it in various directions, and her face took
on an expression of strained mental activity.
“Well, what does it mean?” she asked finally with an inquisitive glance.
I was a little surprised.
“It doesn’t mean anything in particular,” I answered. “It’s just a
landscape. That’s the ground and that’s the sky and that there is a
road--an ordinary road----”
“Yes, I can see that,” she interrupted in a somewhat unfriendly tone;
“but I want to know what it _means_.”
I stood there embarrassed and irresolute; I had never happened to think
that it ought to mean anything. But her idea was not to be removed; she
had now got it into her head that the picture must be some sort of
“Where is the cat?” affair. Why otherwise should I have shown it to her?
At last she set it up against the window-pane so as to make it
transparent. Presumably someone had once shown her a peculiar kind of
playing card, which in an ordinary light represents a nine of diamonds
or a knave of spades, but which, when one holds it up against the light,
displays something indecent.
But her investigation brought no result. She gave back the sketch, and I
prepared to leave. Then all at once the poor girl grew very red in the
face and burst out, with a sob in her throat:
“Shame on you! it’s real mean of you to make a fool of me like that. I
know very well I’m a poor girl, and haven’t been able to get myself a
better education, but still you don’t need to make a fool of me. Can’t
you tell me what your picture means?”
What was I to answer? I should have given much to be able to tell her
what it meant; but I could not, for it meant precisely nothing.
* * * * *
Ah, well, that was many years ago. I now smoke other cigars, which I buy
in another shop, and I no longer wonder about the meaning of life--but
that is not because I think I have found it.
THE WAGES OF SIN
This is the story of a young girl and an apothecary with a white vest.
She was young and slim, she smelled of pine woods and heather, and her
complexion was sunburned and a trifle freckled. So she was when I knew
her. But the apothecary was a quite ordinary apothecary; he wore a white
vest on Sundays, and on a Sunday this attracted attention. It attracted
attention in a place in the country so far away from the world that no
one in that region was so sophisticated as to wear a white vest on
Sundays except the apothecary.
This, you see, was how it happened that one Sunday morning there was a
knock at my door, and when I opened it, the apothecary stood outside in
his white vest and bowed several times. He was very polite and very much
embarrassed.
“I beg your most humble pardon,” he said, “but Miss Erika was here
yesterday with her sisters while you were away, and when she went, she
left her poetry book for you and me to write something in it. Here it
is. But I don’t know at all what to write. Could you perhaps
kindly----?” And he bowed again several times.
“We will think the matter over,” I answered in a friendly tone.
I took the book therefore and for my own share inscribed a translation
of “Du bist wie eine Blume,” which I had made myself and which I always
use for that purpose. I then began to search among my papers to see if
by any chance I had some old verses from my school days which would suit
for the apothecary. Finally I came upon the following bad poem:
You set my thoughts in turmoil,
I wither in longing’s blight.
In solitude you haunt me,
I dreamed of you in the night.
I dreamed that we walked together
Side by side in the twilight dim,
And through your lowered lashes
I saw the bright tear swim.
I kissed your cheek and your eyelids,
I saw the tear-drop fall,
But oh, your red, red lips, love--
I kissed them most of all.
One cannot always dream sweetly.
Small rest since then have I known,
For, sorrowful oft and weary,
I watch through the night-hours alone.
Alas! your cheeks so soft, love,
I touch but with glances trist,
And those red lips, my darling,
I never, never have kissed.
I showed the apothecary this poem and offered to let him use it. He read
it through attentively twice and blushed all over with delight.
“Did you really write that yourself?” he inquired in his simplicity of
heart.
“Yes, I’m sorry to admit.”
He thanked me very warmly for the permission to use the poem, and when
he went out of the room I imagine we both had the feeling that we must
drop the formality of “mister” at the first opportunity.
* * * * *
That evening there was a little party at the girl’s house. Young folks
were there. We drank cherry syrup on a veranda festooned with hop-vines.
I sat and looked at the young girl.
No, she was not like herself. Her eyes were bigger and more restless
than usual and her mouth was redder. And she could not sit still on her
chair.
From time to time she cast a furtive glance at me, but more often she
looked at the apothecary. And the apothecary looked that evening like a
turkey-cock.
When the punch was passed around, we dropped the “mister.”
* * * * *
We young people went down on the meadow to play games. We tossed rings
and played other games, and meanwhile the sun went down behind the hills
and it grew dark.
We had laid the rings and the sword in a heap on the ground and were now
standing in groups, whispering and smiling, while the dusk came on. But
the young girl came up to me through the dusk and took me aside behind a
shed.
“You must answer me a question,” said she. “Did the druggist really
write his verses himself?” Her voice trembled, and she tried to look
away as she spoke.
“Yes,” I said. “He wrote them last night. I heard him going back and
forth in his room all night.”
But when I had said that, I felt a sting in my conscience, for I saw
that she was a pretty and lovable child and that it was a great sin to
deceive her so.
Who knows, I said to myself, who knows? Perhaps this is the sin of which
the Scripture says that it cannot be forgiven.
* * * * *
The twilight deepened, it became night, and a star burned between the
trees in the wood, where we were walking in pairs.
But I was alone.
I do not remember any more where I went that evening. I separated from
the others and went deeper into the wood.