“It’s when you learn to get the mastery over yourself. You can be
immortal, and have magical powers as well. Have you never practised
such experiments?”
On my evincing curiosity with regard to those practices, he was
mysteriously silent, but when I turned to go he burst out in
explanation.
“For example, when I go to sleep or when I wish to concentrate my
thoughts I do such exercises. I think of something or other, a word
for instance, or a name, or a geometrical figure. Then I think it into
myself, as strongly as I can. I try to get it into my head, until I
feel it is there. Then I think it in my neck, and so on, until I am
quite full of it. Then my thoughts are concentrated and nothing more
can disturb my repose.”
I understood to a certain degree what he meant. Yet I felt he had
something else in his mind, he was oddly excited and hasty. I tried to
make the questions easy for him, and he soon gave me an indication of
what immediately concerned him.
“You are also continent?” he asked me anxiously.
“What do you mean by that? Do you mean it from the sex point of view?”
“Yes, yes. I have been continent for two years, since I knew of what I
have told you. Before that I practised a vice, you know what. You have
never been with a woman, then?”
“No,” I said. “I haven’t found the right one.”
“But if you should find her, the one you consider the right one, then
would you sleep with her?”
“Yes, naturally. If she had nothing against it,” I said with some scorn.
“Oh, then you are on a false track! One can only perfect one’s inner
forces if one remains entirely continent. I have done it, for two whole
years. Two years and a little more than a month! It’s so hard. Often I
can scarcely hold out any longer.”
“Listen, Knauer, I don’t believe that continency is so terribly
important.”
“I know,” he parried, “they all say that. But I did not expect to hear
it from you. Whoever will go the higher spiritual way must remain pure,
unconditionally!”
“Well, then, do so! But I don’t understand why one man should be purer
than another, because he represses his sex instincts. Or can you switch
off all sexual matters from your thoughts and dreams?”
He looked despairingly at me.
“No, that’s just it. God! and yet it must be. At night I have dreams
which I couldn’t relate even to myself. Terrible dreams, terrible!”
I recollected what Pistorius had said to me. But however much I felt
his words to be right I could not pass them on. I could not give advice
which did not result from my own experience, advice the observance
of which I did not yet feel myself equal to. I was silent and felt
humiliated that someone should come to me for counsel when I had none
to give.
“I have tried everything!” wailed Knauer beside me. “I have done all
that a man can do, with cold water, with snow, with gymnastic exercises
and running, but all that doesn’t help a bit. Each night I wake up out
of dreams on which I dare not think. And most dreadful of all, I am by
degrees losing everything that I had gained spiritually. It is almost
impossible for me any longer to concentrate my thoughts or to lull
myself to sleep. Often I lie awake the whole night through. I shall
not be able to bear that much longer. Finally, when I can carry on the
struggle no further, when I give in and make myself impure again, then
I shall be worse than all the others who have never struggled against
it. You understand that, don’t you?”
I nodded, but could say nothing to the point. He began to bore me, and
I was horrified at myself, because his obvious need and despair made
no deep impression on me. My only sentiment was: I can’t help you.
“Then you know nothing that would help me?” he asked at last, exhausted
and sad. “Nothing at all? There must be some way! How do you manage?”
“I cannot tell you anything, Knauer. People can’t help one another in
this case. No one has helped me, either. You must think of something
yourself, and you must obey the prompting which really comes from your
own nature. There is nothing else. If you cannot find yourself, you
won’t find any spirits, either.”
Disappointed, and suddenly become dumb, the little fellow looked at me.
Then his look suddenly glowed with hate, he made a grimace at me and
cried with rage: “Ah, you’re a nice sort of saint! You have your vice
as well, I know! You pretend to wisdom, and secretly you stick in the
same filth as I and all of us! You’re swine, swine, like myself. We are
all swine!”
I went away and left him standing there. He made two, three steps in my
direction, then he stopped, turned round and ran away. I felt sick from
a feeling of pity and horror. I could not get rid of the feeling until
I got home to my little room, and placing my few pictures before me, I
surrendered myself up with passionate fervor to my dreams. My dreams
came back at once, the dream of front door and crest, of mother and the
strange woman, and I saw the features of the woman so very clearly
that I began to draw her picture the same evening.
In a few days this drawing was finished, painted in as if unconsciously
in dreamy quarter-of-an-hour periods. In the evening I hung it on
the wall, put the reading lamp in front of it, and stood before it
as before a spirit with whom I had to fight until victory should be
decided one way or the other. It was a face similar to the former,
resembling my friend Demian, in certain traits even resembling myself.
One eye stood perceptibly higher than the other, the look passed over
me, sunk in a staring gaze, full of destiny.
I stood before it. Such was my inward exertion that I became cold to
the marrow. I questioned the picture, I abused it, I caressed it,
I prayed to it. I called it mother, I called it beloved, called it
strumpet and whore, called it Abraxas. Meanwhile words of Pistorius
crossed my mind, or of Demian? I could not recollect on what occasion
they had been spoken, but I thought I heard them again. They were the
words of Jacob wrestling with the angel of God. “I will not let thee
go, except thou bless me.”
The painted face in the lamplight changed at each appeal. It was bright
and shining, was black and gloomy; it closed pale lids over dead eyes,
opened them again and flashed a burning look. It was woman, man, girl,
was a little child, an animal, vanished to a speck, was again tall and
clear. At last, in response to a strong inward prompting, I closed my
eyes, and saw the picture inwardly in me, stronger and more powerful.
I wished to kneel down before it, but it was so much within me, that I
could separate it from myself no more; it seemed as if it had entirely
identified itself with me.
Then I heard a loud confused roar as of a spring storm. I trembled
in an indescribably new feeling of fear and excitement. Stars darted
before me and died out, recollections even of the first forgotten years
of my childhood, of a time further back still, of a pre-existence
and the early stages of existence, pressed through me. But the
recollections which seemed to piece together my life’s whole history
even to its most secret details did not cease with yesterday and
to-day, they went farther, mirrored the future, tearing me away from
to-day, changing me into new forms of life, of which the pictures were
very bright and blinding. But of none of them could I call up a just
image later.
In the night I woke up out of a deep sleep. I was dressed and lying
transversely across the bed. I struck a light, feeling that I must try
to remember something important that had happened. I knew nothing of
the hours just passed. I turned on the light, and recollection came
back gradually. I looked for the picture. It was not hanging on the
wall, neither was it lying on the table. I thought confusedly that I
must have burned it. Or was it a dream, that I had burned it in my
hands and had eaten the ashes?
A great inquietude convulsed me and drove me forth. I put on my hat,
went out of the house and down the street, as if under coercion.
I walked and walked through streets and squares as if blown along
by a storm, I listened in front of the gloomy church of my friend,
searched in obedience to a blind impulse, without knowing what I was
looking for. I went through a suburb, where brothels stood. Here and
there a light was still shining. Further on stood new buildings and
brick heaps, covered in part with grey snow. I went on through this
wilderness, driven forward by a strange impulse, like a man walking in
a dream. The thought of the new building in my native town crossed my
mind, that building to which my tormentor Kromer had drawn me to settle
accounts with him. In the grey night a similar building stood there in
front of me, its black doorway yawning wide. I was drawn towards it,
but wanted to shun it and stumbled over sand and rubbish. The impulse
was stronger than I, I had to go in.
I staggered over planks and broken bricks into the deserted room. There
was a mouldy smell of damp, cold stones. A heap of sand lay there, a
grey bright speck, otherwise all else was dark.
Suddenly a terrified voice called to me: “In God’s name, Sinclair,
where have you come from?”
And a human figure rose out of the darkness close to me, a little thin
shape like a ghost. I recognized, while yet my hair was standing on
end, my school companion Knauer.
“How did you get here?” he asked, as if mad with excitement. “How have
you been able to find me?”