A clear winter has at last come after the foggy days of autumn. It has
been snowing for several days, and in the morning Jack Frost draws
crystal flowers on the window panes.
This morning I received a remarkable epistle from my mother. Its tone is
very different from what I am accustomed to in her. As a rule she avoids
all interference with my private affairs; and now, all at once, she
writes, she doesn't think it proper that I cut myself off, as I do, from
all intercourse, and open up no relations whatsoever with the prominent
members of the community. She goes on to say that she has learned from
trustworthy sources that very fine and cultivated families live in
Reissnitz, who would esteem it a pleasure to see me in their homes, and
who are probably hurt even now that I do not introduce myself to them.
She remarks that I am not intimate even with my colleagues, who would be
justified in making a claim upon me. In the house of Sanitaetsrat Ehrlich
I would surely find the stimulus and the diversion I undoubtedly need
after a severe day's work in the practice of my difficult profession. It
is always a dubious matter for a bachelor to isolate himself; he
develops peculiar ideas and habits, and acquires the manners of a social
hermit. Who, she'd like to know, is a certain Simon Eichelkatz, to whom
I devote all my spare time? Besides, it is necessary for a physician to
marry--in order to inspire confidence, for the sake of appearances. I
had hesitated too long; as Kreisphysikus I should have had a wife long
ago; why, the very fact of being Kreisphysikus presupposes an age not
exactly youthful.
I reflected a moment--she was right for three reasons. My thirty-eight
years actually do make me seem old to myself. In fact, I am old; and it
now occurs to me all of a sudden that I may have failed to make use of
the psychological moment to seek and find my affinity. And if I never
marry? Is marriage so unqualifiedly desirable? I thought of Simon
Eichelkatz. But how did my mother come to hear of him? I didn't recall
having mentioned him in my letters to her. As for the other points on
which she touched? Ah! A flash of inspiration! Herr Jonas Goldstuecker!
There it stood black on white! A very reliable gentleman had approached
her in a matter referring to me, calling for discretion, etc., etc. Now,
the merits of Fraeulein Edith Ehrlich were known in Rawitsch also. I had
to laugh; but I determined at all events to interrogate my old friend
about the persons in question.
I went to him in the evening. Though he sat near the stove, with a
blanket spread over his knees, he still seemed to suffer from the cold.
He also seemed tired and not so fresh as a few days before. He responded
to my questioning look with:
"It's cold, Herr Kreisphysikus; a bad time for old people. Inside
nothing to warm you; outside the cold! It chills you to the marrow!" He
rubbed his hands and drew the blanket up. Feiwel Silbermann had stepped
in, looked at him anxiously without his noticing it, and then put some
more coal in the stove.
"We keep up good fires here in Upper Silesia," said Simon, "but what's
the use when you begin to freeze inside?"
There was a touch of melancholy in his voice. I laughed and said:
"Feiwel will heat you inside, too."
Then I ordered hot tea and rum for him at once; and a glass of mulled
wine every morning during the cold weather.
I was well aware that this prescription would be of little avail; there
are no remedies to counteract such symptoms of old age. But he could be
given some relief; and after taking the warm drink he felt more
comfortable for the moment.
"It's a remarkable thing, Herr Doktor, that man grows into a block of
ice, when his time comes. He doesn't die, but he freezes. Just as
outside in nature everything stiffens with the frost when the time
comes; and all life dies, because the sun is gone, the great warmth.
What curdles in us, is the warm current of life, the blood. No herb
grows which can prevent it. Forgive me, Herr Kreisphysikus, for speaking
to you so openly. But at my age you don't make beans about things any
more, and you think all sorts of thoughts--about life and death. And
I've always found you a sensible man, to whom I can say anything at all;
and if I now say to you: when the long winter comes upon men, nothing
will help them, no doctor, no tea, and no mulled wine, you won't take
offense, will you?"
"But spring follows winter," I said more to quiet him than out of
conviction. He may have felt this, because he smiled mournfully, and his
faded features were suffused with a glorified light--the light that
fills us with the awe of the infinite when we stand in the presence of
the dead.
"What that spring is which follows the winter of our lives, no man
knows. I think it is an eternal winter; and if a new life does blossom
out of the grave, it is a fresh beginning, which grows from itself, and
does not join on to an end without an end." He gazed meditatively into
space. "My idea is," he continued, "that death is the only reality on
earth. Life is only a seeming. Life changes at every moment and passes,
death never changes and remains forever. Tell me, Herr Kreisphysikus,
if men grow old, they live seventy years or a little more, and don't
they stay dead a million years? Have you ever heard of anyone's living
twice, or being young twice?"
It is not the first time I am called upon to notice the profundity of
the old man's observations; but it never fails to surprise me.
"Have you never heard of the immortality of the soul, Herr Eichelkatz?"
I asked.
"Soul, Herr Doktor? What is soul? Where is it? In what is it? How does
it look? Does it fly out of the body when life is at an end? By the
window? By the chimney? Through the keyhole? Has anyone ever seen it?
Has someone ever felt it? Sometimes I read in the paper about spirits
with whom chosen mortals talk. Do you believe it, Herr Doktor? I don't.
Has such a thing ever been proved? They are meshugge or else cheats; it
always turns out that way."
I had to laugh at the curt way in which he disposed of spiritualism and
all its excrescences.
"Nevertheless, my dear friend," I answered, "there is probably a
spiritual after-life which manifests itself in our children and
grandchildren--a young spring time of life made fruitful by the impulses
of our souls."
He wrapped himself more tightly in his cover. A slight shiver went
through his body.
"Herr Kreisphysikus, and how about those who have no children, or those
whose children go away from them, or those who do not know their own
children?--through no fault of their own. Why should they be worse off
than the others? What have they done that they should be extinguished
forever, while the others live on forever? I don't believe it. For if I
did happen to see in the world a great deal about which I had to ask
myself why, still I didn't see anything that had no definite plan and
no compelling cause, the good and the bad. The thing might not have
pleased me, and it might have seemed bad or false, but it had a law
according to which it had to be carried out."
There he was dealing with Kantian abstractions again; the categorical
imperative came to him instinctively. I did not want to tire him with
thinking too much, and I said:
"By the way, Herr Eichelkatz, I wanted to ask you something that is of
personal interest to me. Who is Herr Jonas Goldstuecker?"
He looked at me slyly.
"Are you trying to provide for a spiritual after-life, which will
manifest itself in your children and grandchildren?" He repeated my
words with a touch of irony in the intonation. "And Herr Jonas
Goldstuecker is to help you on to immortality?"
"We haven't reached that point yet, Herr Eichelkatz," I answered
laughing, rejoiced that I had made him think of other things. Without
his noticing it, I turned the conversation upon my colleagues in the
place, especially Sanitaetsrat Ehrlich.
"I don't know the people of to-day very well, Herr Kreisphysikus. Since
I gave up my business I haven't bothered myself much about them. The
present Sanitaetsrat Ehrlich is the son of the Sanitaetsrat Ehrlich who
was one of the trustees along with Dr. Krakauer. He studied at the same
time as my son. And when Ehrlich had finished his course, he established
himself here and took up his father's practice. He married and reached a
position of prominence and wealth in the same place as his father, who
has been dead ten years. If that's what you mean by after-life, Herr
Doktor, then the old Sanitaetsrat Ehrlich actually does live on in his
son. They say the son uses the very same prescriptions as his father.
He's not a shining light; but he's a fine, respected man. I believe in
time he was made trustee, like his father; and he has children, sons and
daughters, who are a satisfaction to him. His oldest son is also
studying medicine, and will probably some time take up his father's
prescriptions and his practice. The old Sanitaetsrat Ehrlich was no
shining light, and neither is his son, and I don't know the young one at
all--but, at any rate, their light burns a long time, like a _Yom
Kippur_ light, and in the Khille it may be said of this family: _Ehrlich
waehrt am laengsten_."
He smiled, and was pleased at his own little joke, and I for my part was
glad to have left him in a better mood than I had found him.