Very attentively the clergyman examined the room, the shabby, ugly
furniture, the window shades bordered by sentimental pictures, the
dirty, white-washed walls, the dim, little lamp, the split boards of
the flooring, the imitation leather of the sofa, the chest of drawers
which was broken and which bore a cheap plaster of Paris bust. A dumb
yet fiery amazement appeared on his face.
“I am asked to inform you,” Pastor Werner said, “that your father is of
course ready to comply with your request. What else, after all, can he
do? But I need not conceal from you the fact that his anxiety about you
is very grave, and that he finds your actions wholly incomprehensible.”
Christian answered a little impatiently. “I told him months ago that
there wasn’t the slightest ground for anxiety.”
“You must admit,” Werner objected gently, “that your latest plan does
involve the question of your very existence. Have you taken up any
occupation that secures you from need?”
Christian replied that, as his father was aware, he was definitely
preparing himself for a profession. The measure of his talent and
success was, of course, still in question.
“And until that profession begins to pay, what will you live on?” the
pastor asked. “Let me repeat to you the words which your father cried
out at our last interview: ‘Does he intend to beg? Or to accept gifts
from the charitable? Or starve? Or trust to chance and false friends?
Or take refuge in shady and dishonourable things, and yet be forced at
last, a remorseful fool, to ask for that which he now casts aside?’ I
have never in all these many years seen your father in such a state of
mind, or heard him express such grief and such passion.”
“My father may calm himself,” Christian replied. “Nothing of what he
fears is likely to happen; nor what, perhaps, he hopes, namely, that I
shall ask my patrimony back again. It is as inconceivable as that the
bird should return to the egg or the burning log to the tree whence it
came.”
“Then you did not intend to renounce all pecuniary assistance at once?”
the pastor asked, feeling his way carefully.
“No.” Christian hesitated. “I suppose not. I’m not equal to that;
not yet. One has to learn that. It is a difficult thing and must be
learned; and life in a great city would involve fatal and disturbing
elements. Then, too, I have assumed certain obligations; there are
several people who have definitely been counting on my help. I don’t
know whether they could follow my own course. I haven’t in fact, any
programme at all. What good would it do me? My great aim just now is to
get into a situation that is clear and reasonable, and get rid of all
sorts of stupid torments. I want to drop the burden of the superfluous;
and everything is superfluous except what I and those few people
absolutely need on the most stringent estimate. But every supposed
need, I think, can be reduced, until such gradual renunciation produces
a profit.”
“If I understand you correctly,” the pastor said, “it is your
intention to retain such a portion of your fortune as will secure you
against actual need.”
Christian sat down at the table and rested his head on his hand. “Yes,”
he said softly. “Yes. But there the great difficulty arises. I cannot
fix the boundary between necessity and superfluity in terms of money.
Unhappily I was brought up amid conditions that make it hard for me
to have a practical opinion on this net basis. I lack a norm of what
is necessary and what is dispensable, and I lack it especially where
others are concerned. You’ve understood me quite rightly. I want to
retain a part, but only a very small part; and I hate to bargain with
myself over the exact amount. The whole question of money is so absurd
and trivial; it is only dragged in the wake of the really important
things. One thing I couldn’t endure; and that would be to invest a
capital, however modest, and use the interest. Then I’d be a capitalist
again, and back in the world of the protected. But what other way is
there? You’re an experienced man. Advise me.”
The clergyman considered. From time to time he looked searchingly at
Christian; then he lowered his eyes and reflected again. “I am rather
confounded by your words,” he confessed at last. “Much that you say
surprises me--no, everything--yet it also seems to give me a certain
insight. Very well then; you ask my advice.” Again he thought, and
again observed Christian. “You renounce your personal fortune as well
as the income which the firm and family have paid you. So far, so good.
This renunciation will be officially acknowledged. I am also willing
to believe that you will never ask back what you now renounce. The
manner in which you bind yourself impresses me more than many solemn
oaths would do. You are through with your past. That, too, will be
respected on the other side. I understand the spiritual pain caused you
by the question as to what leeway you should permit yourself in the
matter of your personal and bodily needs during the period on which
you are entering, and which will be bitter and full of necessities for
self-conquest. I understand that. The problem is one of inner delicacy,
of spiritual modesty. To consider it runs counter to your feelings and
attitude. Yes, I understand that.”
Christian nodded, and the pastor continued in a raised voice. “Then
listen to me. What I shall propose is subtle and difficult. It is
almost like a game or a trick. You may remember that I am chaplain
of the prison at Hanau. I try to help the souls of the lost and the
outcast. I study these people. I know their inmost motives, the
darkness of their hearts, their frozen yearnings. I dare to assert that
there is not one of them who cannot, in the higher sense, be saved,
nor one whose heart will not be reached by simple words earnestly
realized in action. That awakens the divine spark, and the vision of
such an awakening is beautiful. I serve my cause with all my strength,
and the improvement and transformation of some of my flock has been so
complete, that they have returned into society as new men, and bravely
resisted all temptations. I admit that success often depends on my
ability to save them from immediate need. Here is my problem. Kindly
people help; the state, too, though in its frugal manner, contributes.
But it is not enough. How would it be if from the fortune which you are
returning to your father a capital were to be deducted the interest
of which is to be used for my discharged convicts? Don’t draw back,
but hear me out. This capital would be in good securities and would
amount, let us say, to three hundred thousand marks. The interest
would be in the neighbourhood of fifteen thousand marks. That would
suffice. A great deal of good could be done with it. To touch or sell
the securities would be a privilege reserved to you alone. From the
capital itself you take in monthly or quarterly installments such sum
or sums as you need to live on. To draw and expend the interest should
be a privilege reserved to me and my successors. All these conditions
must be secured by legal means. The purpose, as you see, is a double
one. First, the plan will effect a great and needed good; secondly,
it furnishes an inherent norm and aim for you. Every superfluous or
thoughtless expenditure of yours jeopardizes a human soul; every
frugality you practise is at once translated into concrete human weal.
That gives you a point of orientation, a line of moral action. It is,
if I may call it so, an automatic moral mechanism. I judge that the
independence you desire will be achieved in two or three years. Within
that time you can hardly use up even one-tenth of the capital according
to your present standard of life. Of course, even this plan involves
a problem for you, but it is a problem that would, I think, attract
you. You don’t have to think of my humanitarian aims. I know that in
your letter to your father you expressed your dislike of such aims, a
dislike which I have no means of understanding. But I could tell you
things and relate circumstances that would show you how the subtlest
fibres of humanity are poisoned, and what a sacred duty it is to plough
up the spiritual soil in my particular little field. If you could once
see face to face some of these men restored to freedom and hope, your
heart would be won for my cause. It is such visible evidence that
instructs and converts.”
“You have too high an opinion of me,” Christian said, with his old,
equivocal smile. “It’s always the same. Everybody overestimates me in
this respect and judges me wrongly. But don’t bother about that, and
don’t ask about it. It doesn’t matter.”
“And what answer do you make to my proposal?”
Christian lowered his head, and said: “It’s a nice little trap that
you are setting for me. Let me consider it a moment. I am to feed, one
might say, on my own charity. What a horrible word that is--charity.
And by feeding on it myself I, of course, diminish it. And that, you
think, will constitute a sort of moral gymnastic for me, and make it
easier to realize my purpose----?”
“Yes, that was what, since you have chosen this path, I had in mind.”
“Well, if I disappoint you, you will have nothing to regret but
your own modesty,” Christian continued, with a peculiarly mocking
expression. “You could ask twice or even three times the sum you named,
and I would probably or, rather, assuredly not refuse. For into whose
pockets the millions go that I refuse, is a matter I care little about.
Why don’t you do that and thus decrease your own risk?”
“Is your question inspired by distrust of the cause I represent?”
“I don’t know. Answer it, if you don’t mind.”
“I’ve explained the situation to you. The circumstances themselves are
the guide to what I can and ought to ask for. On the one hand there is
an urgent need. On the other hand there are definite considerations
that not only set a natural limit, but forbid my using this opportunity
in such a way as to give a handle to the malicious and quarrelsome.”
Christian continued his purely argumentative resistance. “Do you think
it means anything to me or attracts me to know that you will give some
discharged criminal, whose moral nature you think you have saved, one
or two hundred marks to start life anew? That doesn’t mean a thing to
me. I don’t know those men. I don’t know how they look or act or talk
or smell, or what they’ll do with the money, or whether it will really
be of service to them. And since I don’t know that, the arrangement has
no meaning to me.”
Pastor Werner was taken aback. “To be sure,” he replied. “But I do know
them, you see.”
Christian smiled again. “We’re very differently constituted; we neither
think nor act alike.” Suddenly he looked up. “But I’m not making these
objections to create difficulties. Quite the contrary. You personally
ask me for assistance and I personally render it. In return you do me
the service of acting as my paymaster and showing me how to solve my
problem. I hope you will have no reason to complain.”
“Then you do consent and I may proceed to make definite arrangements?”
the clergyman asked, half delighted and half doubtful still.
Christian nodded. “Go ahead,” he said. “Make what arrangements seem
best to you. It’s all too trivial to bother about.”
“What do you mean by that exactly?” Werner asked, just as Eva had once,
between laughter and amazement, asked his meaning. “A while ago you
also said that what was really important was dragged down by these
matters of money. What is the truly important thing to you?”
“I can’t explain that to you. But I feel the triviality of all this.
All I am doing is the merest beginning, and everyone overestimates it
absurdly and makes a mountain of this molehill. I haven’t reached the
real difficulty yet. And that will consist in earning back all one has
given away--earning it back in another manner, and so, above all, that
one does not feel one’s loss.”
“Strange,” murmured the pastor. “It is strange. To hear you talk, one
would think you were discussing a sporting event or a matter of barter.”
Christian laughed.
The pastor came up to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. His eyes
were serious as he asked: “Where is the woman whom you ... have taken
in?”
Christian’s reply was a gesture in the direction of Karen’s flat.
A thought that was strange and new seemed to flash into the clergyman’s
mind. “Then you don’t live with her?” His voice sank to a whisper. “You
are not living together?”
“No,” Christian answered with a frown. “Certainly not.”
The pastor’s arm dropped. There came a long silence. Then he spoke
again: “Your father is stricken to the heart by a feeling as though
several people whom he loves had succumbed to the same disease. He
tries to hide his emotion, but he doesn’t succeed. Before he had any
reason to be anxious about you, he once spoke to me of your sister
Judith. He used the expression, ‘self-degradation.’ He described her as
afflicted by a perverse impulse toward self-degradation.”
Christian swept the matter aside with a vivid gesture. “Oh, yes,
Judith! She flings a trivial challenge at the world. That’s no
self-degradation. She’s curious as to how far she dare go, how far
others will go for her, and what the upshot will be. She confessed as
much to me. She’ll plunge into water and be affronted because it’s
wet; she’ll go through fire in the hope that it won’t burn her. After
her experiment she’ll hate both fire and water. No, I have nothing in
common with that.”
“You speak very harshly for a brother,” the pastor said with gentle
reproachfulness. “However that may be, this new trouble has wounded
your father to the very core. He feels that all his life’s effort
is being negated from within, and that the fruit of all his toil is
rotting in his hands. He stood on the very peaks of success. What does
it mean to him now? His own flesh and blood rises up against him. His
hand seemed blessed; he feels it withering now. His wealth carried him
to a very great height. Now he is lonely there, and the son who, above
all others, should rejoice in that station, turns from him, and fills
him with a feeling for which he knows no name but shame and disgrace.”
Christian did not answer. He seemed quite indifferent. Werner
continued: “I ask you to consider the social structure of mankind.
Cruelty and force may seem to cling to it, yet there is something
infinitely delicate and venerable within. You might liken it to a tree,
deep-rooted in the earth, expanding in the air with many branches and
twigs, buds and blossoms. It has come to be through some action of God,
and no one should contemn it.”
“Why do you tell me that?” Christian asked, with a subtle withdrawal of
himself.
“Because your father suffers. Go to him, and explain yourself and your
ways. You are his son; it is your duty.”
Christian shook his head. “No,” he answered. “I cannot.”
“And your mother? Do I have to remind you of her too? I did not think
I should have to admonish you in her name. She waits. All her days are
one long waiting.”
Once more Christian shook his head. “No,” he said, “I cannot.”
The pastor buried his chin in his hollow hand and looked dully at the
floor. He left with divided feelings.