IX

Holland may be described as a painting whereof the frame constitutes

the most impressive part. It is a fit dwelling place for the hermit who

from inward meditation amid hazy meadows, dreamy cows, and peaceful

little towns can easily turn to the contemplation of the greatest

revelations of the gods - the vast heavens, the clouds and the sea. But

toward the people he must learn to assume the attitude of the ancient

hermit toward the spiders and rats in his cell. Sometimes they are

annoying and disagreeable; sometimes too, in their revelations of life,

instructive and interesting. I live on good terms with the inhabitants

of this quiet little town because I never let them see how I think of

them, and never show myself as I really am. To this attitude, which,

with sharper insight, they would consider haughty conceit, I owe my

reputation as a modest and respectable man. Were I humble enough to

treat them as my equals by being natural with them, they would then

call me a conceited ass and a cad.

But on one point we understand each other, on the subject of the water,

the sea and the sport of sailing. If I kept a horse and rode to my

nursery in the morning they would consider me a fool and I should

surely never have become treasurer of the orphanage. But the fact that

I have a yacht and frequently show them what storms she can weather,

raises me in their esteem. Only the sea can arouse in these little

shrivelled souls a dim shadow of the old boldness and beauty of life.

True, most of them are too much attached to their miserable little

lives to risk them solely for the sake of stirring emotions without

compelling need, and they prefer to let me go on my reckless

expeditions alone or accompanied by the well-paid fisher lad. But they

do not laugh at my recklessness, and at the club I notice that they

regard the old gentleman with a certain amount of respect when he

returns again from one of these sailing expeditions, which many a young

seaman would refuse to undertake even for the sake of profit, and does

not even brag or boast of it, but only slightly smiles at the

exclamations of respectful amazement. Thus they honor physical courage,

which is nothing more than muscular strength and a craving for the

pleasing excitement of danger, while the moral courage to reveal to

them the true nature of my thoughts and feelings they would punish with

such sharp and malicious ill-will that in order to retain my peace of

mind and pursue my life's task undisturbed, I think I should not

challenge it and prefer to deceive them.

It was my father who made me a slave to the intoxication of the

thrilling suspense of sailing out amidst whistling winds, seething

foam, immense surging waves round about, fallow driving clouds above,

the tugging taut rope in one hand, the straining tiller in the other,

the eye travelling from sail to horizon, from pennant to ocean, the

boat trembling the while from the waves breaking against her bow, and

amid this tumult weighing the chances for a safe homecoming, total

submersion or the breaking of the rigging. It was then he felt

happiest; it deadened his melancholy, as biting on wood deadens a

gnawing toothache. And he found in me a willing pupil, eager as I was

for violent emotions and tortured by self-contempt, wild passions and

all the pangs of lost love-joys.

In Holland, too my father had immediately hired a boat to sail the

ocean, and the Scheveningen seamen had quite some trouble to make him

understand that the North Sea was not an Italian gulf or lake and in

rough weather would not permit of any rash enterprises in small

sailboats. Yet after a few weeks, be managed to attain his object and I

followed him gladly.

One afternoon we had sailed out, dressed in our oilskins, and the

skipper who, submerged to the waist, had pushed us off the shore

through the breakers, had warned us to be back within two hours, for at

that time the ebb-tide set in and, with the fresh north breeze, the

strong current would make it difficult for us to land. My father had

nodded as though he were thinking of something else and had long ago

penetrated and computed the caprices of the gray and formidable North

Sea.

For an hour we sailed on silently, as was frequently our wont, my

father holding the rudder. The coast had dwindled to a faint luminous

line above which like a thin white mist hung the foam of the breakers.

I lay on the deck, glanced toward land and horizon - then at my watch,

and said:

"Come about; father, it's time." He did not seem to hear, and I turned

toward him repeating: "It's time! come about!" Then I saw that be did

not want to hear. He had hauled the mainsail in closely, luffing

sharply, the sheet tightly drawn, and was staring fixedly and straight

ahead under the large yellow sou'-wester. His eyes had the hard grim

expression of old people who after a long life of struggle still fight

for the bit of breath left them, or of indulged and long-tortured

invalids, or of the starved or shipwrecked who no longer have feeling

for anyone or anything but their own distress. Between his

close-cropped gray whiskers and his tightly pressed lips I saw - what

before I had never noticed - two sallow lines deeply furrowing his

cheeks. All at once I felt a pity, such as I had never felt for him

before - as though the realization of all the grief which he had

suffered under my very eyes now suddenly penetrated my consciousness.

"What ails you, father?" I asked. He began talking away regardlessly as

though there were no wind and no waves about him.

"You said three years ago that by this time you would be lost. I think

you are right. You are."

"No, father, I think I was mistaken. I am beginning to see salvation."

"You do not see salvation, Vico, you see ruin. I understand it very

well. Your mother has you again in her clutches. She is a harpy; do you

know the monsters? Part woman, part vulture. They suck away half your

healthy life-blood and replace it with gall. Melancholy and gloom are

her idols. Suffering, pain, grief, trouble, bitterness - these are the

archangels in her heaven. She makes sorrow her object of worship, and

she pictures her God as a hideous corpse hanging on a cross with

pierced bands and feet, covered with blood, wounds, scars, sores,

matter, dirt and spittle, - the more horrible the better. And that

attracts the dull masses exactly as the colored prints of murders and

barbarians depicted in the papers. Was there ever more devilish error?"

"And if salvation can only be bought with pain, father? If all this

suffering was the price of redemption for our sins?"

"Jew!" my father snapped at me with glittering eyes, his mouth drawn

disdainfully in unutterable contempt! "Jew! where did you learn this

bartering morality? Buy! Buy! everything can be bought! If you are but

willing to pay, you can go anywhere, even to heaven. Salvation can be

bought for a slaughtered human being. A fixed price and dirt cheap! -

Salvation for all mankind for the corpse of a single Jew. What a

bargain! and God is Shylock, be holds to his bond! his bond! Blood is

the fixed price, nothing can change that. If not the blood of sinners

then let it be the blood of my son. Thus reads the contract:

'My bond! My bond!

My deeds upon my head! I crave the law!