He fell asleep immediately, but when he awoke, it was only two o'clock.
The ship was still moving easily, and he could hear the screw working
regularly under the water. Life in times of great physical crises is a
fever, which travelling and sleeplessness enhance. Frederick well knew
his own nature, and was alarmed when he saw himself robbed of the peace
of sleep after so short a time.
But had his sleep actually meant peace? Lying on his back with wide,
staring eyes, he saw vast nocturnal spaces of his soul opened up, where
in bottomless depths another chaotic life had been born--a multitude of
tormenting visions, in which things and persons most familiar had arisen
in combination with things and persons entirely strange. He tried to
recall his dreams.
He had dreamed he was wandering hand in hand with Achleitner among the
dark smoke widows trailing backward over the ocean from the funnels of
the _Roland_, far, far away. He and the Russian Jewess together with
great difficulty dragged the dead stoker, Zickelmann, up into the blue
ladies' parlour; and by means of a serum, which he himself had
discovered, he brought him back to life. He smoothed over a quarrel
between the Russian Jewess and Ingigerd Hahlström, who fought and called
each other abusive names. He was sitting with Doctor Wilhelm in his
cabin, and, as Wagner once had done, was observing a homunculus still
undergoing embryonic development in a glass sphere on which light was
shining. At the same time Ingigerd's cockatoo was squawking in Arthur
Stoss's voice and continually asseverating:
"I am already a man of absolutely independent fortune. I am touring
simply to bring my fortune up to a certain amount."
Under the impression that he was recalling these things to his memory,
Frederick was really dreaming again. Suddenly he started up, cuffing Hans
Füllenberg furiously and saying: "I'll box your ears." Shortly afterward
he was in the smoking-room delivering a crushing sermon for the third or
fourth time, morally felling to the ground the man who had desecrated his
sacred relation to Ingigerd. But the captain came in, and said they had
to bury the stoker. There was a dead man on board. When Frederick stepped
from the smoking-room, he saw the corpse lying in the coffin. It was not
Zickelmann, the stoker, but Angèle, his suffering, neglected wife, in one
of her hysterical attacks in which she lay in a trance. And it was not at
the entrance to the smoking-room, but in Plassenberg in the Heuscheuer,
in front of his comfortable house. Captain von Kessel was standing in the
garden clipping a privet hedge. It was at night, but a full moon was
shining bright as day over the lonely valley meadows in front of his
house. Angèle arose and Frederick went to lead her into the house. She
resisted. Now the consciousness of his spiritual separation from her
filled him with infinite sadness, a sadness more bitter and profound
than any that had ever inspired him in his waking moments.
"I am a mother," said Angèle, "but not by you."
He embraced her, weeping, and wanted to draw her into his house. She
resisted gently, but firmly, and declared she was forbidden to enter. He
saw her wandering across the meadows in the moonshine, slowly and
wearily.
"Angèle!" he cried. He ran after her.
"It is so hard for me," she said, "because life and not death has robbed
me of you."
Frederick groaned aloud. A great stone seemed to be lying on his breast.
He heard the rushing of waters. He saw the flood come leaping through all
the valleys, over the tops of all the hills, wave upon wave, from all
sides. The moon was shining. He saw Angèle climb to a little skiff lying
moored somewhere; and the tide carried away the skiff with her in it. The
waters overwhelmed his house.
Again the wandering began, hand in hand with Achleitner and the smoke
widows across the ocean desert. Again began that difficult dragging
up-stairs and down-stairs of the naked, dead stoker, with the help of the
young admirer of Kropotkin. The dispute between Ingigerd and Deborah, his
sermonising of Füllenberg and the man in the smoking-room repeated
themselves, each repetition intensifying his torment. The homunculus
in the glass sphere in Doctor Wilhelm's cabin appeared again. It
developed with light thrown on it. In his anguish, in his impotence
against that martyrising chase of visions, Frederick's persecuted soul,
gasping for peace, suddenly rose in revolt, and he said aloud:
"Kindle the light of reason, kindle the light of reason, O God in
heaven!"
He rose in his berth, and saw that Rosa, the servant-girl, was in reality
holding a burning candle over him. She bent down slightly, and said:
"You are dreaming hard. Aren't you feeling well, Doctor von Kammacher?"
The door creaked. The servant-girl Rosa had left. The ship was moving
quietly. Or was he mistaken? Was the _Roland_ no longer proceeding so
calmly and steadily as before? He listened intently, and heard the screw
whirring regularly under the water. Monotonous calls penetrated from the
deck. Then came the loud rattling of the cinders pouring overboard.
Frederick looked at his watch. It was five o'clock. So three hours had
passed since he had first awakened! Again, with a clatter and a thunder,
a load of ashes slid into the Atlantic Ocean. Was it not the mates of the
dead stoker, Zickelmann, who were throwing it overboard? Frederick heard
the crying of children, thereupon the sobbing and whimpering of his
hysterical neighbour, and finally Rosa's voice, trying to quiet Siegfried
and Ella, who was a talkative little girl. Siegfried was fretfully
begging to be taken back to his grandmother in Luckenwalde. Mrs. Liebling
was scolding Rosa, telling her she was responsible for the children's
behaviour. Frederick heard her say:
"You all trample about on my nerves. I wish the three of you were at the
bottom of the sea. For heaven's sake, let me sleep!"