by Thomas Mann
But six learned professional alienists had established the insanity of the King and declared the necessity for his internment.
Those compliant alienists had done what they did because they were called on to do it. Without ever seeing Ludwig, without having examined him even according to their own methods, without ever having spoken a word to him. A conversation with him about music and poetry would just as well have convinced those idiots of his madness. On the basis of their verdict this man was deprived of the right to dispose of his own person, which doubtless departed from the normal, though it by no means followed that he was mad. They degraded him to the status of a patient, shut him up in his castle by the lake, unscrewed the door-knobs and barred the windows. He had not put up with it, he had sought freedom or death and in death had taken his doctor-jailer with him: that was evidence of his sense of dignity, but no convincing proof of the diagnosis of madness. Nor did the bearing of his entourage speak for it, they having been ready to fight on his behalf; nor the fanatical love of the peasants, eager to die for their “Kini.” When they had seen him driving through his mountains, at night, alone, wrapped in furs, in a golden sledge with outriders, in the gleam of torches, they had seen no madman, but a King after their own rude romantic hearts. And if he had succeeded in swimming across the lake, as he had obviously meant to do, they would have come to his rescue on the other side with pitchforks and flails against all the medicos and politicians in the world.
But his frantic extravagance was a definite sign of an unbalanced mind; it had become intolerable; and his powerlessness to govern had followed upon his unwillingness to govern: he had merely dreamed his kingship, refusing to exercise it in any normal form. In such a way no state can survive.
“Oh, nonsense, Rudolf. A normally constructed minister-president can govern a modern federated state even if the king is too sensitive to stand the sight of his and his colleagues’ faces. Bavaria would not have been ruined even if they had gone on letting Ludwig indulge his solitary hobbies, and the extravagance of a king meant nothing, it was just words, a pretext and swindle. The money stayed in the country and stonemasons and gold-beaters got rich on his fairy palaces. More than that, the estates had paid for themselves over and over, with the entrance fees drawn from the romantic curiosity of two hemispheres. We ourselves had today contributed to turn the madness into good business… Why, I don’t understand you, Rudolf,” I cried. “You open you? mouth in astonishment at my apologia, but I am the one who has the right to be surprised at you and not to understand how you, precisely you—I mean as an artist, and anyhow, just you…”
I sought for words to explain why I was surprised, and found none. My eloquence faltered; and all the time I had the feeling that it was an impropriety for me to hold forth like that in Adrian’s presence. He should have spoken. And yet perhaps it was better that I did it; for my mind misgave me lest he be capable of agreeing with Schwerdtfeger. I had to prevent that by speaking myself, in his proper spirit. I thought Marie Godeau also was taking my action in that sense, regarding me, whom he had sent to her about the day’s excursion, as his mouthpiece. For she looked at him while I was working myself up, as though she were listening to him and not to me. For his part, indeed, he had an enigmatic smile on his lips, a smile that was far from confirming me as his representative.
“What is truth?” he said at last. And Rüdiger Schildknapp chimed in at once, asserting that truth had various aspects, of which in the present case the medical and practical were perhaps not the highest ones, yet even so could not quite be brushed aside.
In the naturalistic view of truth, he added, the dull and the melancholy were remarkably enough united. That was not to be taken as an attack on “our Rudolf,” who certainly was not melancholic; but it might pass as a characterization of a whole epoch, the nineteenth century, which had exhibited a distinct tendency to both dullness and gloom. Adrian laughed—not, of course, out of surprise. In his presence one had always the feeling that all the ideas and points of view made vocal round about him were present in himself; that he, ironically listening, left it to the individual human constitutions to express and represent them. The hope was expressed that the young twentieth century might develop a more elevated and intellectually a more cheerful temper. Then the conversation split up and exhausted itself in disjointed speculation on the signs, if any, that this might come to pass. Fatigue began to set in, following on all our activity in the wintry mountain air. The time-table too put in its word, we summoned our driver, and under a brilliantly starry sky drove to the little station and waited on the platform for the Munich train.
The homeward journey was a quiet one, if only out of respect for the slumbering Tantchen. Schildknapp now and then made a low-voiced remark to Mlle Godeau. I reassured myself, in conversation with Schwerdtfeger, that he had taken nothing amiss. Adrian talked commonplaces with Helene. Against all expectation and to my unspoken gratification and amusement, he did not leave us in Waldshut, but insisted on accompanying our Paris guests back to Munich and their pension. The rest of us said goodbye at the station and went our ways, while he escorted aunt and niece in a taxi to their pension—a chivalrous act which in my eyes had the meaning that he spent the last moments of the declining day only in the company of the black eyes.
The usual eleven-o’clock train bore him back to his modest retreat, where from afar off he announced his coming by the high notes of his pipe to the watchful and prowling Kaschperl-Suso.
CHAPTER XLI
My sympathetic readers and friends: let me go on with my tale. Over Germany destruction thickens. Rats grown fat on corpses house in the rubble of our cities; the thunder of the Russian cannon rolls on towards Berlin; the crossing of the Rhine was child’s play to the Anglo-Saxons; our own will seems to have united with the enemy’s to make it that. “An end is come, the end is come, it watcheth for thee, behold it is come. The morning is come unto thee, O thou that dwellest in the land.” But let me go on. What happened between Adrian and Rudi Schwerdtfeger only two days after that so memorable excursion, what happened and how it happened—I know, let the objection be ten times raised that I could not know it because I was not there. No, I was not there. But today it is psychological fact that I was there, for whoever has lived a story like this, lived it through, as I have lived this one, that frightful intimacy makes him an eye-and ear-witness even to its hidden phases.
Adrian phoned and asked the companion of his Hungarian journey to come to him at Pfeiffering. He must come as soon as possible, for the matter was pressing. Rudolf was always compliant. He received the summons at ten in the morning—during Adrian’s working hours, in itself an unusual event—and by four in the afternoon the violinist was on the spot. He was to play that evening at a subscription concert by the Zapfenstosser orchestra—Adrian had never once thought of it.
“You ordered me,” Rudolf said, “what’s up?”
“I’ll tell you at once,” answered Adrian. “But the great thing is that you are here. I am glad to see you, even more than usual. Remember that!”
“A golden frame for whatever you have to say,” responded Rudi, with a wonderfully flowery turn of phrase.
Adrian suggested that they should take a walk, one talked better walking. Schwerdtfeger agreed with pleasure, only regretting that he had not much time, he had to be at the station for the six-o’clock train, so as not to be late for his concert. Adrian struck his forehead and begged pardon for his forgetfulness. Perhaps Rudi would find it more understandable when he heard what he had to say.
It was thawing. The snow where it had been shovelled was melting and settling; the paths were beginning to be slushy; the friends wore their overshoes. Rudolf had not even taken off his short fur jacket, and Adrian had put on his camel’s-hair ulster. They walked towards the Klammerweiher and round its banks. Adrian asked what the evening program was to be. “Again Brahms’s First as piece de resistance—again the ‘Tenth Symphony’? Well, you should be pleased: you have some good th
ings in the adagio.” Then he related that as a lad beginning piano, long before he knew anything about Brahms, he had invented a motif almost identical with the highly romantic horn theme in the last movement, though without the rhythmical trick of the dotted quaver following the semiquaver, but melodically in the same spirit.
“Interesting,” said Schwerdtfeger.
“Well, and our Saturday excursion?” Had he enjoyed himself? Did he think the others had?
“Could not have gone off better,” declared Rudolf. He was sure that everybody remembered the day with pleasure, except probably Schildknapp, who had overdone himself and was now ill in bed. “He is always too ambitious when ladies are present.” Anyhow, he, Rudolf, had no reason to be sympathetic, for Rüdiger had been rather rude to him.
“He knows you can take a joke.”
“So I can. But he did not need to rub it in like that, after Serenus had borne down so hard with his loyalist propaganda.”
“He is a schoolmaster. We have to let him instruct and correct.”
“With red ink, yes. At the moment I feel quite indifferent to both of them—now I am here and you have something to tell me.”
“Quite right. And when we talk about the excursion we are actually on the subject—a subject about which you could oblige me very much.”
“Oblige you?”
“Tell me, what do you think of Marie Godeau?”
“The Godeau? Everybody must like her—surely you do too?”
“Like is not quite the right word. I will confess to you that ever since Zurich she has been very much in my mind, quite seriously, so that it is hard to bear the thought of the meeting as a mere episode, after which she will go away and I may never see her again. I feel as though I should like—as though I must—always see her and have her about me.”
Schwerdtfeger stood still and looked at the speaker, first in the one eye and then in the other.
“Really?” said he, going on again, with bent head.
“It is true,” Adrian assured him. “I am sure you won’t take it ill of me for confiding in you. It is precisely because I feel I can rely on you.”
“You may rely on me,” Rudolf murmured.
Adrian went on: “Look at it humanly speaking. I am getting on in years—I am by now forty. Would you, as my friend, want me to spend the rest of my life in this cloister? Consider me, I say, as a human being who suddenly realizes, with a sort of pang at the lateness of the hour, that he would like a real home, a companion congenial in the fullest sense of the word; in short, a warmer and more human atmosphere round him. Not only for the sake of comfort, to be better bedded down; but most of all because he hopes to get from it good and fine things for his working energy and enthusiasm, for the human content of his future work.”
Schwerdtfeger was silent for a few paces. Then he said in a depressed tone: “You’ve said human and human being four times. I’ve counted. Frankness for frankness: something shrinks together inside me, it makes me squirm when you use the word as you do use it in reference to yourself. It sounds so incredibly unsuitable—yes, humiliating, in your mouth. Excuse me saying so. Has your music been inhuman up till now? Then it owes its greatness to its inhumanity. Forgive the simplicity of the remark, but I would not want to hear any humanly inspired work from you.”
“No? You really mean that? And yet you have already three times played one before the public? And had it dedicated to you? I know you are not saying cruel things to me on purpose. But don’t you think it’s cruel to let me know that only out of inhumanity I am what I am and that humanity is not becoming to me? Cruel, and thoughtless—anyhow cruelty always comes of thoughtlessness. That I have nothing to do with humanity, may have nothing to do with it, that is said to me by the very person who had the amazing patience to win me over for the human and persuaded me to say du; the person in whom for the first time in my life I found human warmth.”
“It seems to have been a temporary makeshift.”
“And suppose it were? Suppose it were a matter of getting into practice, a preliminary stage, and none the less worth while for all that? A man came into my life; by his heartfelt holding out he overcame death—you might really put it like that. He released the human in me, taught me happiness. It may never be known or be put in any biography. But will that diminish its importance, or dim the glory which in private belongs to it?”
“You know how to turn things very flatteringly for me.”
“I don’t turn them, I just state them as they are.”
“Anyhow, we are not speaking of me but of Marie Godeau. In order always to see her and have her about you, as you say, you must take her for your wife.”
“That is my wish and hope.”
“Oh! Does she know?”
“I am afraid not. I am afraid I do not command the means of expression to bring my feelings and desires home to her. It embarrasses me to play the languishing swain in the company of others.”
“Why don’t you go to see her?”
“Because I shrink from the idea of coming down on her with confessions and offers when on account of my awkwardness she has probably not the faintest idea of my feelings. In her eyes I am still the interesting recluse. I dread her failure to understand and the hasty repulse that might be the result.”
“Why don’t you write her?”
“Because it might embarrass her even more. She would have to answer, and I don’t know if she is good at writing. What pains she would have to take to spare me if she had to say no! And how it would hurt me! I dread the abstractness of an exchange like that—it strikes me it could be a danger to my happiness. I don’t like to think of Marie, alone, by herself, uninfluenced by any personal contact—I might almost say personal pressure—having to write an answer to a written proposal. You see, I am afraid of both ways: the direct attack and the approach by letter.”
“Then what way do you see?”
“I told you that in this difficult situation you could be a great help to me. I would send you to her.”
“Me?”
“You, Rudi. Would it seem so absurd to you if you were to consummate your service to me—I am tempted to say to my salvation—by being my mediator, my agent, my interpreter between me and life, my advocate for happiness? Posterity might not hear of it—again, perhaps it might. It is an idea of mine, an inspiration, the way something comes when you compose. You must always assume beforehand that the inspiration is not altogether new. What is there in notes themselves, that is altogether new? But the way it looks just here, in this light, in this connection, something that has always been there may be new, newalive, one might say; original and unique.”
“The newness is my least concern. What you are saying is new enough to stagger me. If I understand you, I am to pay your addresses to Marie for you, ask for her hand for you?”
“You do understand me—you could scarcely mistake. The ease with which you do so speaks for the naturalness of the thing.”
“Do you think so? Why don’t you send your Serenus?”
“You are probably making fun of my Serenus. Obviously it amuses you to picture my Serenus as love’s messenger. We just spoke of personal impressions which the girl should not be quite without in making her decision. Don’t be surprised that I imagine she would incline her ear to your words more than to anything such a sober-sides as my Serenus could say.”
“I do not feel in the least like joking, Adri—because in the first place it goes to my heart and makes me feel solemn, the role you assign to me in your life, and even before posterity. I asked about Zeitblom because he has been your friend so much longer—“
“Yes, longer.”
“Good, then only longer. But don’t you think this only would make his task easier and himself better at it?”
“Listen, how would it be if we just dropped him out of our minds? In my eyes he has nothing to do with love-affairs and that sort of thing. It is you, not he, in whom I have confided, you know the whole story, I have opened to yo
u the most secret pages in the book of my heart, as they used to say. If you now open them to her and let her read; if you talk to her of me, speak well of me, by degrees betray my feelings, and the life-wishes bound up with them! Try her, gently, appealingly—‘nicely,’ the way you have—try if she, well, yes, if she could love me! Will you? You don’t have to bring me her final consent—God forbid! A little encouragement is quite enough as a conclusion to your mission. If you bring me that much back, that the thought of sharing my life with me is not utterly repugnant to her, not exactly monstrous—then my turn will come and I will speak with her and her aunt myself.”
They had left the Rohmbühel on their left and walked through the little pine wood behind it, where the water was dripping from the boughs. Now they struck into the path at the edge of the village, which brought them back home. Here and there a cottager or peasant saluted by name the long-standing lodger of the Schweigestills. Rudolf, after a little while, began again: “You may be sure that it will be easy for me to speak well of you. So much the more, Adri, because you praised me so to her. But I will be quite open with you—as open as you have been with me. When you asked me what I thought of Marie Godeau, I had the answer ready that everybody must like her. I will confess that there was more in that answer than there seemed. I should never have admitted it to you if you had not, as you put it with such old-world poetry, let me read in the book of your heart.”