When George stepped on to the summer heat of the pavement out of the
cool central restaurant where he had been accustomed to take his meals
for some weeks, and started on his way to Heinrich's apartment, his
mind was made up to start his trip into the mountains within the next
few days. Anna was quite prepared for it, and appreciating that the
monotonous life of the last few weeks was beginning to make him feel
bored and mentally restless had even herself advised him to go away for
a few days.
They had returned to Vienna six weeks ago on a rainy evening and George
had taken Anna straight from the station to the villa, where Anna's
mother and Frau Golowski had been waiting for the overdue travellers
for the last two hours in a large but fairly empty room, with a
dilapidated yellowish carpet under the dismal light of a hanging lamp.
The door on to the garden verandah stood open. Outside the pattering
rain fell on to the wooden floor and the warm odour of moist leaves
and grass swept in. George inspected the resources of the house by the
light of a candle which Frau Golowski carried in front of him, while
Anna reclined exhausted in the corner of the large sofa covered with
fancy calico and was only able to give tired answers to her mother's
questions. George had soon taken leave of Anna with mingled emotion and
relief, stepped with her mother into the carriage which was waiting
outside, and while they rode over the dripping streets into the town
he had given the embarrassed woman a faithful if forced account of
the unimportant events of the last days of their trip. He was at home
an hour after midnight, refrained from waking up Felician, who was
already asleep, and with an undreamt-of joy stretched himself out in
his long-lost bed for his first sleep at home after so many nights.
Since then he had gone out into the country to see Anna nearly every
day. If he did not feel tempted to make little trips round the summer
resorts in the neighbourhood he could easily get to her in an hour
on his cycle. But he more frequently took the horse tram and would
then walk through the little villages till he came to the low green
painted railings behind which stood the modest country house with its
three-cornered wooden gable in the small slightly sloping garden.
Frequently he would choose a way which ran above the village between
garden and fields and would enjoy climbing up the green slope till
he came to a seat on the border of the forest, from which he could
get a clear view of the straggling little place lying in the tiny
valley. He saw from here straight on to the roof beneath which Anna
lived, deliberately allowed his gentle longing for the love who was so
near him to grow gradually more and more vivid till he hurried down,
opened the tiny door and stepped over the gravel straight through the
garden towards the house. Frequently, in the more sultry hours of the
afternoon, when Anna was still asleep, he would sit in the covered
wooden verandah which ran along the back of the house in a comfortable
easy-chair covered with embroidered calico, take out of his pocket a
book he had brought with him and read. Then Frau Golowski in her neat
simple dark dress would step out of the dark inner room and in her
gentle somewhat melancholy voice, with a touch of motherly kindness
playing around her mouth, would report to him about Anna's health,
particularly whether she had had a good appetite and if she had
had a proper walk up and down the garden. When she had finished she
always had something to see to in the kitchen or about the house and
disappeared. Then while George was going on with his reading a fine
St. Bernard dog which belonged to people in the neighbourhood would
come out, greet George with serious tearful eyes, allow him to stroke
her short-haired skin and lie down gratefully at his feet. Later, when
a certain stern whistle which the animal knew well rang out, it would
get up with all the clumsiness of its condition, seem to apologise by
means of a melancholy look for not being able to stay longer and slink
away. Children laughed and shouted in the garden next door. Now and
again an indiarubber ball came over the wall. A pale nursemaid would
then appear at the bottom gate and shyly request to have the ball
thrown back again. Finally, when it had grown cooler, Anna's face would
show itself at the window that opened on to the verandah, her quiet
blue eyes would greet George, and soon she would come out herself in a
light house-dress. They would then walk up and down the garden along
the faded lilac-bushes and the blooming currant-bushes, usually on
the left side, which was bounded by the open meadow, and they would
take their rest on the white seat close to the top end of the garden,
underneath the pear-tree. It was only when supper was served that Frau
Golowski would appear again, shyly take her place at the table and tell
them if asked all the news about her family; about Therese, who had
now gone on to the staff of a Socialist journal; about Leo, who being
less occupied by his military duties than before was enthusiastically
pursuing his mathematical studies; and about her husband, who while he
looked on with resignation from the corner of a smoky café at the chess
battles of the indefatigable players, always saw new vistas of regular
employment display themselves only to close again immediately. Frau
Rosner only paid an occasional visit and usually went away soon after
George's appearance. On one occasion, on a Sunday afternoon, the father
had come as well and had a conversation with George about the weather
and scenery, just as though they had met by chance at the house of a
mutual acquaintance who happened to be ill. It was only to humour her
parents that Anna kept herself in complete retirement in the villa. For
she herself had grown to lose all consciousness of any false position,
feeling just as though she had been George's wedded wife, and when the
latter, tired of the monotonous evenings, asked her for permission
to bring Heinrich along sometimes she had agreeably surprised him by
immediately expressing her agreement.
Heinrich was the only one of George's more intimate friends who still
remained in town in these oppressive July days. Felician, who had been
as affectionate with his brother since his return home as though the
comradeship of their boyhood had been kindled afresh, had just taken
his diplomatic examination and was staying with Ralph Skelton on the
North Sea. Else Ehrenberg, who had spoken to George once soon after his
return by her brother's sick-bed in the sanatorium, had been for a long
time at Auhof am See with her mother. Oskar too, whom his unfortunate
attempt at suicide had cost his right eye, though it was said to have
saved him his lieutenant's commission, had left Vienna with a black
shade over his blinded eye. Demeter Stanzides, Willy Eissler, Guido
Schönstein, Breitner, all were away, and even Nürnberger, who had
declared so solemnly that he did not mean to leave the town this year,
had suddenly vanished.
George had visited him before any one else after he came back, to
bring him some flowers from his sister's grave in Cadenabbia. He had
read Nürnberger's novel on his journey. The scene was laid in a period
which was now almost past; the same period, so it seemed to George, as
that of which old Doctor Stauber had once spoken to him. Nürnberger
had thrown a grim light over that sickly world of lies in which adult
men passed for mature, old men for experienced, and people who did
not offend against any written law for righteous; in which love of
freedom, patriotism and humanitarianism passed _ipso facto_ for virtue,
even though they had grown out of the rotten soil of thoughtlessness
or cowardice. He had chosen for the hero of his book a sterling and
energetic man who, carried away by the hollow phrases of the period,
saw things as they were from the height which he had reached and seized
with horror at the realization of his own dizzy ascent, precipitated
himself into the void out of which he had come. George was considerably
astonished that a man who had created this strong and resounding piece
of work should subsequently confine himself to casual cynical comments
on the progress of the age, and it was only a phrase of Heinrich's
to the effect that wrath but not loathing was fated to be fertile
that made him understand why Nürnberger's work had been stopped for
ever. The lonely hour in the Cadenabbia cemetery on that dark blue
late afternoon had made as strange and deep an impression upon George
as though he had actually known and appreciated the being by whose
grave he stood. It had hurt him that the gold lettering on the grey
stone should have grown faint and that the beds of turf should have
been overgrown with weeds, and after he had plucked a few yellow-blue
pansies for his friend he had gone away with genuine emotion. He had
cast a glance from the other side of the cemetery door through the open
window of the death-chamber, and saw a female body on a bier between
high burning candles, covered with a black pall as far as her lips,
while the daylight and candlelight ran into one another over its small
waxen face.
Nürnberger had not been unmoved by this sympathetic attention on
the part of George and on that day they spoke to each other more
intimately than they had ever done before.
The house in which Nürnberger lived was in a narrow gloomy street
which led out of the centre of the town and mounted in terraces
towards the Danube. It was ancient, narrow and high. Nürnberger's
apartment was on the fifth and top storey, which was reached by a
staircase with numerous turns. In the low though spacious room into
which George stepped out of a dark hall stood old but well-preserved
furniture, while an odour of camphor and lavender came insistently out
of the alcove in the recess in front of which a pale green curtain
had been let down. Portraits of Nürnberger's parents in their youth
hung on the wall together with brown engravings of landscapes after
the Dutch masters. Numerous old photographs in wooden frames stood on
the sideboard. Nürnberger fetched a portrait of his dead sister out
of a secretary-drawer where it lay beneath some letters that had been
yellowed by time. It showed her as a girl of eighteen in a child's
costume which seemed to have a kind of historical atmosphere, holding
a ball in her hand, and standing in front of a hedge, behind which
there towered a background of cliffs. Nürnberger introduced all these
unknown faraway and dead persons to his friend to-day by means of their
portraits, and spoke of them in a tone which seemed to make the gulf of
time between the then and the now both wider and deeper.
George's glance often swept out over the narrow street towards the
grey masonry of ancient houses. He saw small cobwebbed panes with all
kinds of household utensils behind them. Flower-pots with miserable
plants stood on a window-ledge, while fragments of bottles, broken-up
barrels, scraps of paper, mouldy vegetables lay in a gutter between
two houses, a battered pipe ran down between all this rubbish and
disappeared behind a chimney. Other chimneys were visible to right and
left, the back of a yellowish stone gable could be seen, towers reared
up towards the pale blue heaven and a light grey spire with a broken
stone cupola which George knew very well, appeared unexpectedly near.
Automatically his eyes tried to find the quarter where he might be able
to fix the position of the house in whose entrance the two stone giants
bore on their powerful shoulders the armorial bearings of a vanished
stock, and in which his child, which was to come into the world in a
few weeks, had been begotten.
George gave an account of his trip. He felt the spirit of this hour
so deeply that he would have thought himself petty if he had let
the matter rest at half-truths. But Nürnberger had known the story,
and in its entirety too, long ago, and when George showed a little
astonishment at this he smiled mockingly.
"Don't you still remember," he asked, "that morning when we looked over
a summer residence in Grinzing?"
"Of course."
"And don't you remember too that a woman with a little child in her
arms took us round the house and garden?"
"Yes."
"Before we went away the child held out its arms towards you, and you
looked at it with a certain amount of emotion in your expression."
"And that's what made you conclude that I...."
"Oh well, you know, you're not the man to go in for thrills over the
sight of small children, a bit unwashed, too, into the bargain, if they
are not linked on to associations of a personal character."
"One must beware of you," said George jestingly, but not without some
sense of uneasiness.
The slight irritation, which he always felt again and again at
Nürnberger's superior manner, was far from preventing him from
cultivating his society more and more. He frequently fetched him
from home to go for walks in the streets and parks, and he felt a
sense of satisfaction, a sense in fact of personal triumph, when he
managed to draw him from the rarefied regions of bitter wisdom into
the gentler fields of affectionate intercourse. George's walks with
him had become such a pleasant habit that he felt as though his daily
life had been impoverished when he found one morning that Nürnberger's
apartment was closed. Some days afterwards came a card of apology from
Salzburg, which was also signed by a married couple, a manufacturer
and his wife, good-natured cheery people, whom George had once got to
know slightly through Nürnberger in Graben. According to Heinrich's
malicious description the common friend of this married couple had been
dragged down the stairs, of course after a desperate resistance, made
to sit down in a carriage and been transported to the station more
or less like a prisoner. According to Heinrich, too, Nürnberger had
several friends of this innocent kind who felt the need of getting the
celebrated cynic to let a few drops of his malice trickle into their
palatable cup of life, while Nürnberger on his side liked to recuperate
in their free-and-easy society from the strain of his acquaintances in
literary and psychological circles.
The meeting with Heinrich had meant a disillusionment to George.
After the first words of greeting the author had as usual only spoken
about himself, and that, too, in tones of the deepest contempt. He
had come at last to the conclusion that he did not really possess any
talent but only intelligence, though that of course to an enormous
degree. The thing about himself that he cursed the most violently was
the lack of harmony in the various phases of his character, which
as he well knew not only occasioned suffering to himself but to all
who came near him. He was heartless and sentimental, flippant and
melancholic, sensitive and callous, an impossible companion and yet
drawn towards his fellow-beings ... at any rate at times. A person with
such characteristics could only justify his existence by producing
something immense, and if the masterpiece which he felt obliged to
create did not appear on the scene very soon he would feel that as
a decent man he would be obliged to shoot himself. But he was not a
decent man.... There lay the rub. "Of course you won't shoot yourself,"
thought George, "principally because you haven't got the pluck to do
so." Of course he did not give expression to this thought but on the
contrary was very sympathetic. He talked of the moods to which after
all every artist is liable, and inquired kindly about the material
conditions of Heinrich's life. It soon transpired that he wasn't in
such a bad way by any means. He was even leading a life which as it
appeared to George was freer from anxiety than it had ever been before.
The maintenance of his mother and sisters for the ensuing years had
been assured by a small legacy. In spite of all the hostile influences
which were at work against him the fame of his name was increasing from
day to day. The miserable affair with the actress seemed to be finished
once and for all, and a quite new relationship with a young lady
which was as free and easy as could possibly be desired, was actually
bringing a certain amount of gaiety into his life. Even his work was
making good progress. The first act of the opera libretto was as good
as ready, and he had made numerous notes for his political comedy.
He intended next year to visit the sittings of Parliament and attend
meetings, and coquetted with the admittedly childish fantastic plan
of posing as a member of the social democratic party, trying to tack
himself on to the leaders and getting himself taken on, if he could get
the chance, as an active member of some organisation or other, simply
so as to get a complete insight into the party machinery. Still, you
know, when he had been talking to any one for five minutes on end, why
he had got him absolutely. He would find in some casual word, whose
significance would completely escape any one else, a kind of whirlwind
which tore the veil from off the souls of men. His dream was to prove
himself a master of imagination in his opera poem and a master of
realism in his comedy, and thus show the world that he was equally at
home both in heaven and on earth. At a subsequent meeting George got
him to read as much of the first act of the opera as he had finished.
He found the verses very singable and asked Heinrich to allow him to
take the manuscript to Anna. Anna could not bring herself to fancy much
what George read out to her; but he asserted, though without any real
conviction, that what she felt was just the very longing for these
verses to be set to music, and that that must necessarily strike her as
a weakness.
When George came into Heinrich's room to-day the latter was sitting at
the big table in the middle of the room, which was covered over with
papers and letters. Written papers of all kinds lay about on the piano
and on the ottoman. Heinrich still had a sheet of faded yellow paper in
his hand when he got up and hailed George with the words, "Well, how
goes the country?"
This was the way in which he was accustomed to inquire after Anna's
health, a way which George felt afresh every single time to be unduly
familiar.
"Quite well, thanks," he replied. "I have just come to ask you if
perhaps you would care to come out there with me to-day."
"Oh yes, I should like to very much. The thing is, though, that I am
just in the middle of putting various papers in order. I can't come
before the evening about seven or so. Will that suit you?"
"Quite," said George. "But I see I am disturbing you," he added as he
pointed to the littered table.
"Not at all," replied Heinrich. "I am only tidying up, as I just told
you. They're my father's posthumous papers. Those there are letters to
him and here are rough notes more or less like a diary, written for
the most part during his parliamentary period. Tragic, I tell you!
How that man loved his country! And how did they thank him? You've no
idea of the refinement with which they drove him out of his party. A
complicated network of intrigue, bigotry, brutality.... Thoroughly
German, to put the matter in a nutshell."
George felt a sense of antagonism. "And he dares," he thought, "to hold
forth about Anti-Semitism. Is he any better? any juster? Does he forget
that I am a German myself...?"
Heinrich went on speaking. "But I will give this man a memorial.... He
and no other shall be the hero of my political drama. He is the truly
tragi-comic central figure which I have always been wanting."
George's antagonism became intensified. He felt a great desire to
protect old Bermann against his son. "A tragi-comic figure," he
repeated, almost aggressively.
"Yes," retorted Heinrich unhesitatingly, "a Jew who loves his
country.... I mean in the way my father did, with a real feeling of
solidarity, with real enthusiasm for the dynasty, is without the
slightest question a tragi-comic figure. I mean ... he belonged to that
Liberalising epoch of the seventies and eighties when even shrewd men
were overcome by the catch-words of the age. A man like that to-day
would certainly appear merely comic. Yes, even if he had finished up by
hanging himself on the first nail he came across I could not regard his
fate as anything else."
"It is a mania of yours," replied George. "You really very often give
one the impression that you have quite lost the capacity of seeing
anything else in the world except the Jewish question, you always see
it everywhere. If I were as discourteous as you happen to be at times,
I would ... you'll forgive me of course, say that you were suffering
from persecution-mania."
"Persecution-mania ..." replied Heinrich dully, as he looked at the
wall. "I see, so you call it persecution-mania, that.... Oh well." And
then he continued suddenly with clenched teeth: "I say, George, I want
to ask you something on your conscience."
"I'm listening."
He placed himself straight in front of George, and with his eyes
pierced his forehead. "Do you think there's a single Christian in
the world, even taking the noblest, straightest and truest one you
like, one single Christian who has not in some moment or other of
spite, temper or rage, made at any rate mentally some contemptuous
allusion to the Jewishness of even his best friend, his mistress or
his wife, if they were Jews or of Jewish descent?" And without waiting
for George's answer: "There isn't one, I assure you. You can try
another test also if you like. Read for instance the letters of any
celebrated and otherwise perfectly shrewd and excellent man and observe
the passages which contain hostile and ironic expressions about his
contemporaries. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred it simply deals with
an individual without taking any account of his descent or creed. In
the hundredth case, where the miserable victim has the misfortune to
be a Jew, the writer will certainly not forget to mention that fact.
That's just how the thing is, I can't help it. What you choose to call
persecution-mania, my dear George, is in reality simply an extremely
intense consciousness that has been kept continuously awake of a
condition in which we Jews happen to find ourselves. And as for talking
about persecution-mania, why it would be much more logical to talk
about a mania for being hidden, a mania for being left alone, a mania
for being safe; which though perhaps a less sensational form of disease
is certainly a much more dangerous one for its victims. My father
suffered from it, like many others of his generation. He at any rate
made such a radical cure that he went mad in the process."
Deep furrows appeared on Heinrich's forehead and he looked again
towards the wall, straight past George, who had sat down on the hard
black leather ottoman.
"If that's your way of looking at things," replied George, "why, you
have no other logical alternative but to join Leo Golowski...."
"And migrate to Palestine with him. Is that what you think? As a matter
of symbolical politics or actually--what?" He laughed. "Have I ever
said that I want to get away from here? That I would prefer to live
anywhere else except here? Above all, have I ever said that I liked
living among Jews? So far as I at any rate am concerned that would be a
purely objective solution of an essentially subjective problem."
"I really think so also. And that's why, to tell the truth, I
understand less than ever what you want, Heinrich. I had the impression
last autumn, when you had your tussle with Golowski on the Sophienalp,
that you looked at the matter far more hopefully."
"More hopefully?" repeated Heinrich in an injured tone.
"Yes. One felt bound to think then that you believed in the possibility
of a gradual assimilation."
Heinrich contemptuously contracted the corners of his mouth.
"Assimilation.... A phrase.... Yes, that'll come all right some time
or other ... in a very very long time. It won't come at all in the
way many want it to--it won't come either in the way many are afraid
it will.... Further, it won't be exactly assimilation ... but perhaps
something that beats in the heart of that particular word so to
speak. Do you know what it will probably look like in the end? That
we, we Jews I mean, have been a kind of ferment in the brewing of
humanity--yes, perhaps that'll come out in anything from one to two
thousand years from now. It is a consolation too. Don't you think so?"
He laughed again.
"Who knows," said George reflectively, "if you won't be regarded as
right--in a thousand years? But till then?"
"Why, my dear George, there won't be anything in the way of a solution
of the question before then. In our time there won't be any solution,
that's absolutely positive. No universal solution at any rate. It
will rather be a case of a million different solutions. For it's
just a question which for the time being every one has got to settle
for himself as best he can. Every one must manage to find an escape
for himself out of his vexation or out of his despair or out of
his loathing, to some place or other where he can breathe again in
freedom. Perhaps there are really people who would like to go as far
as Jerusalem to find it ... I only fear that many of them, once they
arrive at their official goal, would then begin to realise that they
had made an utter mistake. I don't think for a minute that migrations
like that into the open should be gone in for in parties.... For the
roads there do not run through the country outside but through our own
selves. Every one's life simply depends on whether or not he finds his
mental way out. To do that of course it is necessary to see as clearly
as possible into oneself, to throw the searchlight into one's most
hidden crannies, to have the courage to be what one naturally is--not
to be led into a mistake. Yes, that should be the daily prayer of every
decent man: to make no mistake."
Where is he getting to again now? thought George. He is quite as morbid
in his way as his father was. And at the same time one can't say that
he has been personally through bad times. And he has asserted on one
occasion that he felt there was no one with whom he had anything in
common. It is not a bit true. He feels he has something in common with
all Jews and he stands nearer to the meanest of them than he does to
me. While these thoughts were running through his mind his glance fell
on a big envelope lying on the table, and he read the following words
written on it in large Roman capitals: "Don't forget. Never forget."
Heinrich noticed George's look and took the envelope up in his hand.
Three strong grey seals could be seen on its back. He then threw it
down again on the table, drooped his underlip contemptuously and said:
"I've tidied up that business as well, you know, to-day. There are days
like this when one goes in for a great cleaning-up. Other people would
have burnt the stuff. What's the point? I shall perhaps read it again
with pleasure. The anonymous letters I once told you about are in this
envelope, you know."
George was silent. Up to the present Heinrich had vouchsafed no
information as to the circumstances under which his relations with the
actress had come to an end. Only one passage in his letter to Lugano
had hinted at the fact that it had not been without a certain deep-felt
horror that he had seen his former mistress again. Almost against his
own will the following words came out of George's mouth: "You know, of
course, the story of Nürnberger's sister who lies buried in Cadenabbia?"