XI

It was at the beginning of October that Daniel for the first time

visited Eberhard in his doll house up by the castle.

They had met each other in the Peter Vischer on the evening agreed upon,

but there was a special party there that evening, a sort of a clam-bake;

the place was crowded; the noise was disagreeable, so that they left

much earlier than they had intended.

They walked along in silence until they reached the Town Hall, when

Eberhard said: "Won't you come up and sit awhile with me?" Daniel

nodded.

Eberhard lighted the six candles of a chandelier in his diminutive room.

Seeing that Daniel was surprised, he said: "There is nothing I hate

worse than gas or oil. That is light; gas and oil merely give off

illuminated stench."

For a while there was complete silence in the room; Daniel had stretched

out on the sofa.

"Illuminated stench," he repeated with a smile of satisfaction. "That is

not bad; it is the new age in which we are living. I believe they call

it _fin de siecle_. The day when things flourish is gone; everything has

to be manufactured now. Men have become Americans, gruesomely sobered by

the intoxication of doing a big business; women have lost their nicety

of instinct; the cities have become colossal steam engines; everybody,

young and old, is on his belly adoring the so-called wonders of science,

just as if it really meant anything to humanity that a loafer in Paris

can sip his morning coffee and crunch his rolls while reading that the

Pope spent a restful night, or that a gun has been invented which will

send a bullet through fourteen people one after another, whereas the

best record up to the present had been only seven to a shot. Who can

create anything, who can draw anything from his soul under such

conditions? It is madness, it is immoral discipline."

"Oh, I don't know; I think a man can draw something from within his

soul," said the Baron, in whose face a bored, peeved expression gave way

to one of suspense. "It is possible, for example, to conjure the

invisible spirit into visibility."

Daniel, who had not yet suspected that the Baron was, in a way, speaking

from another country and in a strange tongue, continued: "The whole

supply of interest and enthusiasm at the disposal of the nation has been

used up. The venerable creations of days gone by still have nominal

value; that is, they are still gaped at and praised, but creative,

reproductive, and moulding power they no longer have. Otherwise

hocus-pocus alone prospers, and he who does forgive it is not forgiven.

But life is short; I feel it every day; and if you do not attend to the

plant, it soon withers and dies."

"It is not only hocus-pocus," replied Eberhard, who was now completely

transformed, though he did not grasp the painful indignation of the

musician. "You see, I have associated but very little with men. My

refuge has been the realm of departed and invisible spirits who take on

visible form only when a believing soul makes an unaffected appeal to

them. It was my task to de-sensualise and de-materialise myself; then

the spirits took on shape and form."

Daniel straightened up, and saw how pale the Baron had become. It seemed

to him that they were both quite close together, and at the same time

poles removed from each other. He could not refrain however from taking

up the thread of his thought. "Yes, yes," he exclaimed with the same

short, jerky laugh that accompanied the beginning of the conversation,

"my little spirits also demand faith, credulity, and whine and cry for

form and shape. You have expressed yourself in an admirable way, Baron."

"And have you given up in final resignation with regard to your

spirits?" asked Eberhard, in a serious tone.

"Resignation? To what? Of what? Do you imagine that is necessary in my

case? I am the counterpart of Cronos. My children devour me; they devour

my living body. I conjure up spirits and endow them with flesh and

blood, and in return for what I do they convert me into a shadow. They

are rebellious fellows, I tell you, quite without mercy. I am supposed

to arouse a citizenry on their behalf that is petrified with

indifference. The very thing, or things, that offend and disgust me, I

am supposed to take up and carry about on an unencumbered shoulder. I am

supposed to be their prostitute and offer them my body at a price. I am

supposed to be their retail grocer and haggle in their behalf. There is

something inspiring about a struggle, and when the enemy is worthy of

one's steel there is a distinct pleasure in entering the fray. But my

little spirits want to be pampered and have a lot of attention paid

them. The hate, consequently, that is being dammed up within me is

possibly nothing but rage at my fruitless wooing. No, mine is not an

honest hate, because I long to get at every ragged beggar who will have

nothing to do with my spirits, because my entire life consists in

pleading for an audience with people who do not care to listen, and

scraping together pennies of love from people who cannot love, because

two or three are not enough for me, because I must have thousands and am

nothing if I don't have thousands, and pine away in anguish and distress

if I cannot imagine that the whole world is keeping step with my pace

and keeping in time with the swing of my baton. I can despise Mushroom

Mike who lies down by his wife at night drunk as a fool, and to whom the

name of Beethoven is an empty sound; Jason Philip Schimmelweis makes me

laugh when he looks me in the face and says, I don't give a damn for

all your art. And yet there is humanity in such people, and so long as

this is true I must have them; I must convince them, even if my heart is

torn from my breast in the attempt. Would you call this life? This

digging-up of corpses from the graves, and breathing the breath of life

into them so that they may dance? And doing it with the consciousness

that this moment is the only one? I am; I exist; here is the table,

there are the wax candles, and over there sits a man; and when I have

stopped talking everything is different, everything is as if a year had

passed by, and everything is irrevocable. Show me a way to humanity, to

men, and then I will believe in God."

The Baron's head swam; his brain felt close; it seemed to be sultry,

stuffy in his skull. He could not help but think of certain exciting

meetings where the people had sat in the dark in trembling expectancy

and then suddenly heard a voice from beyond the tomb at the sound of

which the marrow froze in their bones. He hardly dared look at the place

where Daniel was sitting. The words of the musician caused him infinite

pain: there lay in them a greediness, a shamelessness, and a

gruesomeness that filled him with terror.

He could almost have asked: And Eleanore? And Eleanore?

But however much he felt repelled, owing to his training, association,

and general views of life, there was nevertheless something about the

whole situation before which he bowed. He could not have said precisely

what it was, but it seemed to be a compromise between fear and

convulsion.

As he was pondering over it all, he heard a rattling at the window. He

looked up, and saw the face of Herr Carovius pressed so tightly against

the pane that his nose was as flat as a pancake, while his glasses

looked like two opalescent grease spots on the water.

Daniel also looked up; he too saw the face of Herr Carovius, then

distorted with wrath and filled with threats. He looked at the Baron in

amazement; the latter got up and said: "You will have to pardon the

annoyance; I forgot to draw the blinds."

With that he went to the window, and pulled down the dark shade over the

face of Herr Carovius.