He nodded contentedly.
“Bravo! You’re a smart chap, we shall be good friends yet. But now I
must tell you something else: this Kromer, or whatever his name is, is
a nasty fellow. His face tells me he’s a rascal! What do you think?”
“Oh yes,” I sobbed out, “he is nasty, he’s a devil! But he mustn’t know
anything! For God’s sake, he mustn’t know anything. D’you know him?
Does he know you?”
“Don’t worry! He’s gone, and he doesn’t know me--not yet. But I should
like to make his acquaintance. He goes to the public school?”
“Yes.”
“In which standard?”
“In the fifth. But don’t say anything to him! Please, don’t say
anything to him!”
“Don’t worry, nothing will happen to you. I suppose you wouldn’t like
to tell me a little more about this fellow Kromer?”
“I can’t! No, let me go!”
He was silent for a while.
“It’s a pity,” he said, “we might have been able to carry the
experiment still further. But I don’t want to bother you. You know,
don’t you, that it is not right of you to be afraid of him? Such fear
quite undermines us, you must get rid of it. You must get rid of it, if
you want to become a real man. D’you understand?”
“Certainly, you are quite right ... but it won’t do. You don’t know....”
“You have seen that I know a lot, more than you thought. Do you owe him
any money?”
“Yes, I do, but that isn’t the essential point. I can’t tell, I can’t!”
“It won’t help matters, then, if I give you the amount you owe him? I
could very well let you have it.”
“No, no, that is not the point. And please: don’t say anything to
anybody! Not a word! You are making me miserable!”
“Rely on me, Sinclair. Later you can share your secrets with me.”
“Never, never!” I exclaimed vehemently.
“Just as you please. I only mean, perhaps you will tell me something
more later on. Only of your own free will, you understand. Surely you
don’t think I shall act like Kromer?”
“Oh no--but you don’t even know anything about it!”
“Absolutely nothing. But I think about it. And I shall never act like
Kromer, believe me. Besides, you don’t owe me anything.”
We remained a long time silent, and I became more tranquil. But
Demian’s knowledge became more and more of a puzzle to me.
“I’m going home now,” he said, and in the rain he drew his coat more
closely about him. “I should only like to repeat one thing to you,
since we have gone so far in the matter--you ought to get rid of this
fellow! If there is nothing else to be done, then kill him! It would
impress me and please me, if you were to do that. Besides, I would help
you.”
I was again terrified. I suddenly remembered the story of Cain. I had
an uncanny feeling and I began to cry softly. So much that was weird
seemed to surround me.
“All right,” Max Demian said, smilingly. “Go home now! We will put
things square, although murder would have been the simplest. In such
matters the simplest way is always the best. You aren’t in good hands,
with your friend Kromer.”
I came home, and it seemed to me as if I had been away a year.
Everything looked different. Between myself and Kromer there now stood
something like future freedom, something like hope. I was lonely no
longer! And then I realized for the first time how terribly lonely I
had been for weeks and weeks. And I immediately recollected what I had
on several occasions turned over in my mind: that a confession to my
parents would afford me relief and yet would not quite liberate me. Now
I had almost confessed, to another, to a stranger, and as if a strong
perfume had been wafted to me, sensed the presentiment of salvation!
Still my fear was far from being overcome, and I was still prepared for
long and terrible mental wrestlings with my evil genius. So it was all
the more remarkable to me that everything passed off so very secretly
and quietly.
Kromer’s whistle remained absent from our house for a day, two days,
three days, a whole week. I dared not believe my senses, and lay
inwardly on the watch, to see whether he would not suddenly stand
before me, just at that moment when I should expect him no longer. But
he was, and remained, away! Distrustful of my new freedom, I still
could not bring myself to believe in it whole-heartedly. Until at
last I met Frank Kromer. He was coming down the street, straight in
my direction. When he saw me, he drew himself together, twisted his
features in a brutal grimace, and turned away without more ado, in
order to avoid meeting me.
That was a wonderful moment for me! My enemy ran away from me! My devil
was afraid of me! Surprise and joy shook me through and through!
In a few days Demian showed himself once again. He waited for me
outside school.
“Hullo,” I said.
“Good morning, Sinclair. I only wanted to hear how you’re getting on.
Kromer leaves you in peace, doesn’t he?”
“Did you manage that? But how did you do it? How? I don’t understand
it. He hasn’t come near me.”
“Splendid. If he should come again--I don’t think he will, but he’s a
cheeky fellow--then simply tell him to remember Demian.”
“But what does it all mean? Have you had a fight with him and thrashed
him?”
“No, I’m not so keen on that. I simply talked to him, as I did to you,
and I made it clear to him that it is to his own advantage to leave you
in peace.”
“Oh, but you haven’t given him any money?”
“No, kid. You have already tried that way yourself.”
I attempted to pump him on the matter, but he disengaged himself. The
old, embarrassed feeling concerning him came over me--an odd mixture of
gratitude and shyness, of admiration and fear, of affection and inward
resistance.
I had the intention of seeing him again soon, and then I wanted to talk
more about everything, about the Cain affair as well. But I did not see
him. Gratitude is not one of the virtues in which I believe, and to
require it of a child would seem to me wrong. So I do not wonder very
much at the complete ingratitude which I evinced towards Max Demian.
To-day I believe positively that I should have been ruined for life if
he had not freed me from Kromer’s clutches. At that time also I already
felt this release as the greatest event of my young life--but I left
the deliverer on one side as soon as he had accomplished the miracle.
As I have said, ingratitude seems to me nothing strange. Solely, the
lack of curiosity I evinced is odd. How was it possible that I could
continue for a single day my quiet mode of life without coming nearer
to the secrets with which Demian had brought me in contact? How could
I restrain the desire to hear more about Cain, more about Kromer, more
about the thought-reading?
It is scarcely comprehensible, and yet it is so. I suddenly saw myself
extricated from the demoniacal toils, saw again the world lying
bright and cheerful before me. I was no longer subject to paroxysms
of fear. The curse was broken, I was no longer a tormented and
condemned creature, I was a schoolboy again. My temperament sought
to regain its equilibrium and tranquillity as quickly as possible,
and so I took pains above all things to put behind me all that had
been ugly and menacing, and to forget it. The whole, long story of my
guilt, of my terrifying anxiety, slipped from my memory wonderfully
quick, apparently without having left behind any scars or impressions
whatsoever.
The fact that I likewise tried as quickly to forget my helper and
deliverer, I understand to-day as well. Instinctively my mind turned
from the damning recollection of my awful servitude under Kromer, and
I sought to recover my former happy, contented mental outlook, to
regain that lost paradise which opened once more to me, the bright
father-and-mother world, where my sisters dwelt in the fragrant
atmosphere of purity, in loving kindness such as God had extended to
Abel.
On the very next day after my short conversation with Demian, when I
was at last fully convinced of my newly-born freedom and feared no
longer a relapse to my condition of slavery, I did what I had so often
and so ardently desired to do--I confessed. I went to mother and showed
her the little savings box with the broken lock, filled with toy mark
pieces instead of with real money, and I told her how long I had been
in the thrall of an evil tormentor, through my own guilt. She did not
understand everything, but she saw the money box, she saw my altered
look and heard my changed voice--she felt that I was healed, that I had
been restored to her.
And then with lofty feelings I celebrated my readmission into the
family, the prodigal son’s return home. Mother took me to father, the
story was repeated, questions and exclamations of wonder followed in
quick succession, both parents stroked my hair and breathed deeply, as
in relief from a long oppression. It was all lovely, like the stories
I had read, all discords were resolved in a happy ending.
I surrendered myself passionately to this harmonious state of affairs.
I could not have enough of the idea that I was again free and trusted
by my parents. I was a model boy at home and played more frequently
than ever with my sisters. At prayers I sang the dear, old hymns with
the blissful feeling of one converted and redeemed. It came straight
from my heart, it was no lie this time.
And yet it was not at all as it should have been. And this is the point
which alone can truly explain my forgetfulness of Demian. I ought to
have made a confession _to him_! The confession would have been
less touching and less specious, but for me it would have borne more
fruit. I was now clinging fast to my former paradisaical world, I had
returned home and had been received in grace. But Demian belonged in no
wise to this world, he did not fit into it. He also--in a different way
from Kromer--but nevertheless he also was a seducer, he too bound me to
the second, evil, bad world, and of this world I never wanted to hear
anything more. I could not now, and I did not wish to give up Abel and
help to glorify Cain, now when I myself had again become an Abel.
So much for the outward correlation of events. But inwardly it was like
this: I had been freed from the hands of Kromer and the devil, but not
through my own strength and effort. I had ventured a footing on the
paths of the world, and they had been too slippery for me. Now that
the grasp of a friendly hand had saved me, I ran back, without another
glance round, to mother’s lap, to the protecting, godly and tender
security of childhood. I made myself younger, more dependent on others,
more childlike than I really was. I had to replace my dependence on
Kromer by a new one, since I was powerless to strike out for myself.
So I chose, in the blindness of my heart, the dependence on father
and mother, on the old, beloved, “bright world,” on this world which
I knew already was not the sole one. Had I not done this, I should
have had to hold to Demian, to entrust myself to him. The fact that I
did not, appeared to me then to be due to justifiable distrust of his
strange ideas; in reality it was due to nothing else than fear. For
Demian would have required more of me than did my parents, much more.
By stimulation and exhortation, by scorn and irony he would have tried
to make me more independent. Alas, I know that to-day: nothing in the
world is so distasteful to man as to go the way which leads him to
himself!
And yet, about half a year later, I could not resist the temptation to
ask my father while we were out for a walk, what was to be made of the
fact that many people declared Cain to be better than Abel.
He was much surprised, and explained to me that this was a conception
by no means novel. It had even emerged in the early Christian era, and
had been professed by sects, one of which was called the “Cainites.”
But naturally this foolish doctrine was nothing else than an attempt of
the devil to undermine our belief. For, if one believes that Cain was
right and Abel was wrong, then it follows that God has erred, and that
the God of the Bible is not the true and only God, but a false one. The
Cainites really used to profess and preach something approximating this
doctrine; but this heresy vanished from among mankind a long time ago
and he wondered the more that a school friend had been able to learn
something on the subject. Nevertheless, he earnestly exhorted me not to
let these ideas occupy my attention.