In the holidays I went once to the house in which, years before, Max
Demian and his mother had lived. An old lady was walking in the garden.
I entered into conversation and learned that the house belonged to
her. I enquired after the Demians. She remembered them very well. But
she did not know where they were living at that moment. As she felt
my interest, she took me into the house, searched through a leather
album and showed me a photograph of Demian’s mother. I scarcely had any
recollections of what she was like. But when I saw the little picture
my heart stood still. It was my dream picture! There it was, the tall,
almost masculine woman’s figure, resembling her son, with traits
of motherliness, traits which denoted severity, and deep passion,
beautiful and alluring, beautiful and unapproachable, demon and mother,
destiny and mistress. That was she!
I was filled with a wild wonder, when I learned that my dream picture
lived on earth! There was a woman, then, who looked like that, who
bore my fate in her features! Where was she? Where? And she was
Demian’s mother!
I started on my travels soon after. A strange journey! I went
restlessly from place to place as impulse directed, always in search of
this woman. There were days when I met shapes which reminded me of her,
and which resembled her. These shapes led me on through the streets
of strange towns, into railway stations, into trains, as in a tangled
dream. There were other days when I saw how useless my search was. Then
I sat inactive, anywhere, in a park or the garden of a hotel, in a
waiting room; I looked into myself and tried to make the picture live
in me. But it was now shy and elusive. I could not sleep, I only nodded
for a quarter of an hour or so on railway journeys through country
unknown to me. Once in Zürich, a woman followed me, a pretty, rather
forward woman. I scarcely noticed her and went on, as if she were air.
I would rather have died at once, than have shown sympathy for another
woman, even if only for an hour.
I felt that my destiny was leading me on. I felt that fulfillment was
nigh. I was mad with impatience, to think that I could do nothing to
help myself. Once at a station, I think it was at Innsbruck, I saw, at
the window of a train which was just moving out, a form which reminded
me of her, and I was miserable for days. And suddenly the form appeared
again to me at night in a dream. I woke up with a feeling as of shame,
realizing the fruitlessness and senselessness of my chase, and I went
home by the most direct route.
A couple of weeks later I matriculated in the University of H----.
Everything disappointed me. The course of lectures I followed, on the
history of philosophy, was just as vain and mechanical as the common
ground of student life. Everything was so much according to pattern,
one person did as the other, and the boyish faces, although inflamed
with a forced gaiety, looked so distressingly vacant. It was like the
gloss of a ready-made article! But I was free, I had the whole day to
myself, and lived quietly in a beautiful old building outside the town.
I had a couple of volumes of Nietzsche on my table. I lived with him,
feeling the loneliness of his soul, sensing his destiny, which impelled
him onwards unceasingly. I suffered with him, and was happy that there
had been one who had gone his way so inflexibly.
Late one evening I wandered through the town; an autumn wind was
blowing and I heard the student societies singing in their taverns.
Tobacco smoke rose in clouds through the open windows; songs were being
roared out, loudly and tensely; but the noise did not soar up, it fell
dully on the ear, and was lifelessly uniform.
I stood at a street corner and listened. From two cafés the flood of
song rolled forth into the night. Everywhere community, everywhere
this huddling together, everywhere this unloading of the burden of
destiny, this flight into the warm proximity of the herd!
Two men passed me by slowly. I caught a phrase of their conversation.
“Isn’t it just like an assembly of youths in a nigger village?” said
one. “They all do the same things. Even tattooing is in fashion. Look,
that’s the young Europe.”
The voice rang suggestively in my ear. I followed behind the two in the
dark street. One of them was a Japanese, small and elegant. I saw his
yellow smiling face shine under the lamp.
The other spoke again.
“Well, I don’t suppose it’s any better with you in Japan. People who do
not follow the herd are everywhere rare. There are a few here, too.”
Every word went through me. I felt pleasure and dread. I recognized the
speaker. It was Demian.
In the windy night I followed him and the Japanese through the dark
streets, listening to their conversation and enjoying the ring of
Demian’s voice. It had the old tone, the old, beautiful sureness and
tranquillity, and it had the same power over me. Now everything was
right. I had found him.
At the end of a street in the suburbs the Japanese took leave and
closed a house door behind him. Demian took the way back. I had
remained standing, and awaited him in the middle of the street. With
beating heart I saw him approaching erect and walking with an elastic
step. He wore a brown raincoat and carried a thin stick, hanging from
his arm. He advanced without altering his regular stride until he got
right up to me. He took off his hat, displaying his old, bright face
with the determined mouth and the peculiar brightness on the broad
forehead.
“Demian!” I called.
He stretched out his hand to me.
“So it’s you, then, Sinclair? I expected you.”
“Did you know I was here?”
“I did not know for certain, but I hoped it might be true. I saw you
first this evening. You have been behind us the whole time.”
“You recognized me then at once?”
“Of course. You’re very much changed to be sure; but you have the sign.
We used to call it the mark of Cain, if you recollect. It is our sign.
You have always had it; for that reason I became your friend. But now
it is clearer.”
“I did not know. Or rather I did. I once painted a picture of you,
Demian, and was astonished that it was also like me. Was that the sign?”
“That was it. It’s fine that you are here now! My mother will be glad
as well.”