Thrice on the street Niels Heinrich stopped and stared into Christian’s
face. Then he went on, stumping his feet against the asphalt and
hunching his back. At first he dragged himself painfully along;
gradually his tread grew steadier.
At Kahle’s shop he asked with toneless jeer whether the gentleman was
employed by the police. In that case the gentleman needn’t delay or
worry. He knew the way to headquarters himself.
“I did not go with you from such a motive.”
“Well, what for then?” The gentleman was talking crazy again. He had a
way of trying to make people drunk with talk.
“Do you live in this house?” Christian asked.
Yes, he lived there. Maybe the gentleman would like to look at the
stinking hole? Right ahead then. He himself wouldn’t stay upstairs
long. He just wanted to fix himself up a little more neatly and then
go to Gottlieb’s Inn. That was a better class café with girlies
and champagne. He was going to treat to fifteen or twenty bottles
to-day. Why not--since he had the brass? But first he’d have to go to
Grünbusch’s to pawn something. Maybe all that’d bore the gentleman; and
maybe not, eh?
These words he snarled out in his rage on the dark stairs; but beneath
his rage seethed a hell of terror.
The light of a street-lamp close by his window threw a pale, greenish
light into the room, and saved Niels Heinrich the trouble of lighting a
lamp. He pointed to it and remarked with a snicker that to have one’s
lighting at public expense was pure gain. He could read his paper in
bed and didn’t even have to blow out the lamp before going to bed. That
showed you how a man had to live who wasn’t without brains and might
have gotten ahead in the world. It was a lousy, stinking hole. But now
things would change; he was going to move to the Hotel Adlon and have a
room with a private bath, and buy his linen at the Nürnberger Bazaar.
He put his hand in his pocket, and a clinking could be heard. Christian
took his words for incoherent babble and did not answer.
Niels Heinrich tore off his crumpled collar, and threw his coat and
waistcoat on the bed. He opened a drawer and then a wardrobe, and with
astonishing dexterity put on a clean collar, so tall that it seemed
to enclose his neck in a white tube, tied a cravat of yellow silk,
and slipped into a striped waistcoat and a morning coat. These things
looked new, and contrasted absurdly with the stained, checked trousers
which, for some reason, he did not change for others. The cuffs of his
shirt were also soiled.
“Well, then why?” Suddenly he asked again, and his eyes flickered
rabidly in the greenish light. “Why in hell do you stick to me like a
leech?”
“I need you,” answered Christian, who had remained near the door.
“You need me? What for? Don’t understand. Talk plain, man, talk plain!”
“It serves no purpose to talk in that manner,” Christian said. “You
misunderstand my being here and my ... how shall I put it?--my interest
in you. No, not interest. That’s not the right word. But the word
doesn’t matter. You probably think it was my purpose to have you
surrender to the authorities and to repeat in court the confession you
have made to me. But I assure you that that does not seem important to
me or, rather, important only in so far as it is desirable for the sake
of Joachim Heinzen, who is innocent and whom his position and inner
confusion must make very wretched. He must be in a terrible state. I
have felt that constantly, and felt the pain of it especially since
your confession. I can almost see him. I have a vision of him trying
to climb up the stony prison wall and wounding his hands and knees.
He doesn’t understand; he doesn’t understand how a wall can be so
steep and stony; he doesn’t understand what has happened to him. The
world must seem sick to him at its core. You have evidently succeeded
in hypnotizing him so effectively and lastingly, that under this
terrible influence he has lost all control of his own actions. There is
something in you that makes the exertion of such power quite credible.
I am quite sure that your very name has faded from his memory. If some
one went to him and whispered that name, Niels Heinrich Engelschall,
into his ear, he would probably collapse as under a paralytic stroke.
Of course, as I have thought it out, it is an exaggeration. But try
to imagine him. One must try to grasp men and things imaginatively.
Very few people do it; they cheat themselves. I see him as robbed of
his very soul, as so poverty-stricken that the thought is scarcely
bearable. You will reply: he is an idiot, irresponsible, with an
undeveloped sensorium--more animal than human. Even science uses that
argument; but it is a false argument. The premises are false and
therefore the conclusion. My opinion is that all human beings have
equally deep perceptions. There is no difference in sensitiveness
to pain; there is only a difference in the consciousness of that
sensitiveness. There is, one may say, no difference in the method of
bookkeeping, only in the accounting.”
With lowered head he went a pace nearer to Niels Heinrich, who
remained quite still, and continued, while a veiled smile hovered
over his lips: “Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t desire to exert the
slightest influence on your decisions. What you do or fail to do
is your own affair. Whether one may desire to free that poor devil
from his terrible situation, or not, is a problem of decency and
humanity. So far as I am concerned, there is nothing I care about so
little as to persuade you to an action which does not arise from your
own conviction. I don’t regard myself as a representative of public
authority; it is not for me to see to it that the laws are obeyed and
people informed in regard to a crime that has troubled them. What
would be the use of that? Would it avail to make things better? I
neither want to ensnare you nor get the better of you. Your going to
court, confessing your crime, expiating in the world’s sight, being
punished--what have I to do with all that? Not to bring that about am I
here.”
Niels Heinrich felt as though his very brain were turning in his skull
with a creaking noise. He grasped the edge of the table for support.
In his face was a boundless astonishment. His jaw dropped; he listened
open-mouthed.
“Punishment? What does that mean? And is it my office or within my
power to drag you to punishment? Shall I use cunning or force to make
you suffer punishment? It does not even become me to say to you: You
are guilty. I do not know whether you are guilty. I know that guilt
exists; but whether you are guilty or in what relation to guilt you
stand--that I cannot tell. The knowledge of that is yours alone; you
and you alone possess the standard by which to judge what you have
done, and not those who will be your judges. Neither do I possess it,
and so I do not judge. I ask myself: Who dares to be a judge? I see
no one, no one. In order that men may live together, it is perhaps
necessary that judgments be passed; but the individual gains nothing by
such judgments, either for his soul or for his knowledge.”
It was a bottomless silence into which Niels Heinrich had sunk. He
suddenly remembered the moment in which the impulse to murder the
machine had come upon him. With utter clearness he saw again the steel
parts with their film of oil, the swiftly whirling wheels, the whole
accurately functioning structure that had, somehow, seemed hostile and
destructive to him. Why that image of all others came to him now, and
why he remembered his vengeful impulse with an access of shame now--he
did not understand.
Christian was speaking again: “So all that does not concern me at all.
You need have no fear. What I want has nothing to do with it. I want--”
he stopped, hesitated, and struggled for the word, “I want you. I need
you....”
“Need me? Need me?” Niels Heinrich murmured, without understanding.
“How? What for?”
“I can’t explain it, I can’t possibly explain it,” said Christian.
Whereupon Niels Heinrich laughed--a toneless, broken laugh. He walked
around the whole table; then he repeated that same repressed, half-mad
laugh.
“You have removed a being from this earth,” said Christian, softly;
“you have destroyed a being so precious, so irreplaceable, that
centuries, perhaps many centuries, will pass till one can arise
comparable to it or like it. Don’t you know that? Every living creature
is like a screw in a most marvellously built machine....”
Niels Heinrich began to tremble so violently that Christian noticed it.
“What ails you?” he asked. “Are you ill?”
Niels Heinrich took his felt hat, that hung on a nail, and began to
stroke it nervously. “Man alive,” he said, “you make a fellow crazy,
crazy.” His tone was hollow.
“Please listen,” Christian continued insistently, “--in a most
marvellously built machine. Now there are important screws and less
important ones; and this being was one of the most important of all. So
important indeed that I am convinced that the machine is hurt forever,
because it has ceased to function. No one can ever again provide a
part of such delicacy and exquisite exactness, and even though a
substitute be found, the machine will never be what it once was. But
aside from the machine and my comparison, you have inflicted a loss on
me for which there are no words. Pain, grief, sadness--these words do
not reach far or deep enough. You have robbed me of something utterly
precious, forever irreplaceable, and you must give me something in
return. You must give me something in return! Do you hear that? That is
why I am standing here; that is why I am following you. You must give
me something in return. I don’t know what. But unless you do, I shall
be desperate, and become a murderer myself.”
He buried his face in his hands, and burst into hoarse, wild,
passionate weeping.
With quivering lips, in a small voice like a naughty child’s, Niels
Heinrich stammered: “Saviour above, what can I give you in return?”
Christian wept and did not answer.