In his flat he found many begging letters, one from his former valet,
one from a Society for Succouring the Shelterless, one from a musician
whom he had met casually in Frankfort. There was also a letter from the
bank, requesting his signature on an enclosed document.
Next day Amadeus Voss asked for six thousand marks; the widow
Engelschall, loudly lamenting that her furniture would be sold unless
she met a promissory note, asked for three thousand.
He gave and gave, and the act of giving disgusted him. In the lecture
halls of the university they came to him--the merest strangers,
the most indifferent persons. Wherever he appeared, even in an
eating-house, people came to him and told him of their troubles, and
were diffident or brazen, and begged or demanded.
He gave and gave, and saw no end to it and no salvation in it, and felt
a leaden heaviness steal over him. And he gave and gave.
He saw greed and expectation in every eye. He dressed himself more
plainly, he cut down his expenditures to the barest necessities; the
gold towered up behind him like rolling lava, and burned everything he
touched. He gave and gave, and people asked and asked.
And so he wrote to his father: “Take my money from me!” He was aware
of the strangeness and the unheard-of nature of what he asked, so he
accompanied his request with elaborate reasons and persuasive phrases.
“Assume that I have emigrated and have been lost sight of, or that I
live far away under a false name, or that through your fault or mine
there had been a definite breach between us, that you had therefore
reduced my allowance to a minimum, but that my pride forbade my
accepting even that, since I desire to stand on my own feet and live
by the work of my hands. Or else imagine that I had wasted my means,
and hopelessly mortgaged the capital and interest still due me. Or,
finally, imagine that you yourself had become impoverished, and were
forced to withdraw all assistance from me. At all events, I want to
live without independent means. I have lost all pleasure in living with
them. It is hard, I know, to explain that to any one who has money and
has never been without it. Do me this favour! First of all, dispose
of the sums that are banked in my name; next stop the income that has
hitherto been paid out to me. The money is all yours, indisputably so.
During our conversation last year you gave me very clearly and justly
to understand that I have always lived on the fruit of your labour.”
Lastly he made the proposal to which he had referred in his imaginary
conversation with Ivan Becker. “If it wounds your sensibilities to
make a personal or practical use of the money which I am returning to
you who gave it--use it to build orphanages, homes for foundlings,
hospitals, institutions for the disabled, or libraries. There is so
much misery in the world, and so much suffering that needs to be
alleviated. I cannot do these things. They do not attract me; indeed,
the very thought of them is disagreeable. I do not deny that this
specific inability argues a weakness in my character; so if you
determine to expend the money upon charities, don’t do it in my name.”
He ended thus: “I do not know whether it even interests you to have me
say that I think of you affectionately. Perhaps in your heart you have
already cast me off and separated yourself from me wholly. If any bond
is to continue to exist between us, it can only be, however, if you do
not refuse me your help in this matter, which is, from one point of
view, so difficult, and from another, so perfectly simple.”
The letter remained unanswered. But several days after it had been
sent, a friend of the Wahnschaffe family, Pastor Werner, called on
Christian. He came both on a mission from the Privy Councillor and of
his own impulse. Christian had known him since childhood.