Steppenwolf

by Hermann Hesse, David Horrocks, Hermann Hesse, David Horrocks

  I, at any rate, found it impossible to leap back into the realm of reality and probability, as Hermione had done, with the ease of a tightrope-walker.

  ‘So one day I’m going to kill you?’ I asked, still slightly in a trance, whereas she was already laughing again and busily engaged in cutting up the roast duck on her plate.

  ‘Of course,’ she replied with a dismissive nod. ‘But enough of that, it’s time to eat. Order me a little more green salad, Harry, there’s a dear. What’s wrong with you, have you no appetite? I think you need to learn all those things that come naturally to other people, even the enjoyment of food. Just look at this, for instance. It’s the leg of a duck, dear boy, and easing the lovely light-coloured flesh from the bone is an act of celebration. You have to savour the excitement of it, feel with all your heart as thankful for it as a man in love does when first helping his girlfriend out of her jacket. Do you see? No? You’re a dunce. Pay attention, I’ll give you a bit of this lovely duck leg, then you’ll see. There, open your mouth. – Oh, what a silly fool you are! I don’t know, now he goes sneaking a look at the other people, afraid that they might see him taking a titbit from my fork! Don’t worry, you prodigal son, I’m not going to show you up. But you really are a poor devil if you need the permission of other people before you can enjoy yourself.’

  The scene just before this seemed more and more divorced from reality. It was increasingly difficult to believe that only minutes ago these eyes of hers had been staring at me so gravely and frighteningly. In this respect, alas, Hermione was like life itself, forever fickle as the moment, never predictable in advance. Now she was eating, and the duck leg and the salad, the gateau and the liqueur were taken seriously, objects to rejoice in and pass judgement on, to discuss and go into flights of fancy about. Each plate that was taken away marked the beginning of a new chapter. This woman, who had seen through me so comprehensively, who seemed to know more of life than any wise men, was so skilled in behaving as a child, so adept at playing whatever little game life momentarily offered, that I automatically became her pupil. Whether it was wisdom of the highest order or the simplest form of naivety, it did not matter. Anyone knowing how to live for the moment, to live in the present as she did, treasuring every little wayside flower with loving care and deriving value from every playful little instant, had nothing to fear from life. How was I supposed to believe that this cheerful child with her healthy appetite and her playful attitude to wining and dining was at one and the same time a dreamer, a hysterical woman wishing herself dead, or a vigilant, calculating woman who deliberately and cold-bloodedly intended to make me fall in love with her and become her slave? That couldn’t possibly be the case. No, she was simply such a total creature of the moment that she was exposed not just to any amusing idea that occurred to her, but equally to any fleeting dark tremor from remote depths of the soul. And she lived both to the full.

  The Hermione I was seeing for the second time today knew all there was to know about me. It seemed impossible to me that I could ever keep anything secret from her. It might be that she had not fully understood my intellectual life, would not perhaps be able to keep up with me where my interests in music, in Goethe, in Novalis or Baudelaire were concerned – but even this was doubtful; she would probably have no difficulty with these things either. And even if she couldn’t – what, I asked myself, remained of my ‘intellectual life’? Wasn’t it all in ruins, devoid of meaning? But as for my other, personal problems and interests, she would understand them all, of that I had no doubt. Soon I would talk to her about Steppenwolf, about the Tract, about each and every thing that until now had existed only for me, matters I had never spoken a word about to any human being. I could not resist making a start on this straight away.

  ‘Hermione,’ I said, ‘something really odd happened to me the other day. A stranger gave me a little printed booklet, the kind of cheap pamphlet you get at fairgrounds, and in it I found the whole story of my life, everything of importance to me, described in exact detail. Don’t you think that’s remarkable?’

  ‘And what’s the title of the booklet?’ she asked casually.

  ‘It’s called “On Steppenwolf: A Tract”.’

  ‘Oh, “Steppenwolf” is marvellous! And that’s what you’re supposed to be? You are Steppenwolf?’

  ‘Yes, it’s me. I’m somebody who is half human and half wolf, or imagines he is.’

  She didn’t respond. As she gazed intensely, searchingly into my eyes and inspected my hands, the look on her face was for a moment deeply serious and sombrely passionate again, as it had been before. I felt I could guess what she was thinking. She was wondering whether I was wolf enough to carry out her ‘final order’.

  ‘Of course it’s something you’ve imagined,’ she said, reverting suddenly to her cheerful self. ‘Or, if you like, a poetic fancy. But there is something to it. You’re not a wolf today, but when you walked into that ballroom the other day, looking like a zombie, there was indeed something of the beast about you. That’s exactly what appealed to me.’

  An idea must suddenly have occurred to her because she interrupted herself, then added, as if shocked: ‘Words like “beast” and “predator” sound so stupid. We shouldn’t talk of animals like that. I grant you they are often frightening, but they are nonetheless truer than human beings.’

  ‘Truer? What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Well, just take a look at any animal, a cat, a dog, a bird or even one of those beautiful big creatures in the zoo, a puma, say, or a giraffe. Surely you can’t help noticing that they are all true, that not a single animal is at a loss to know what it should be doing or how it should behave. They have no desire to make an impression. They are not play-acting. They are as they are, like stones and flowers, or like stars in the sky. Do you see?’

  I did.

  ‘Animals are usually sad,’ she continued. ‘And when human beings feel very sad, not because they’ve got toothache or have lost money, but because for once in a while they sense what everything, the whole of life, is like and are truly sad, then they always look a bit like an animal. At such times they look sad, but truer and more beautiful than they normally look, believe me. And that’s how you looked, Steppenwolf, the first time I saw you.’

  ‘So, Hermione, and what do you think about that book with the description of me in it?’

  ‘Oh, you know, I’m not one to spend all my time thinking. We’ll talk about it some other time. You can simply give it me to read one day. No, on second thoughts, if I should ever get round to reading again, give me one of the books you’ve written yourself.’

  Asking for some coffee, she seemed inattentive for a while and absent-minded, but then, having apparently thought her way through to some satisfactory conclusion, she suddenly beamed at me.

  ‘Hey, listen!’ she exclaimed joyfully. ‘It’s come to me now!’

  ‘What has?’

  ‘What I was saying about the foxtrot. I couldn’t get it out of my head the whole time. Tell me, have you got a room that the two of us can dance in for an hour or so every now and then? It needn’t be very big, that doesn’t matter, but there mustn’t be anyone living below you who is just the sort to come up and make a scene if the ceiling starts to shake a bit above. Yes? That’s fine then, very good. In that case you can learn to dance at home.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said shyly, ‘so much the better. But I thought you needed music to do it to.’

  ‘Of course you do. Listen, you’ll buy your own music, at most it will only cost as much as paying some woman for a course of dancing lessons. You’re saving on the teaching. I’ll do that myself. That way we’ll have music as often as we want, and we can keep the gramophone into the bargain.’

  ‘The gramophone?’

  ‘Yes, of course. You simply buy one of those small gramophones and a few dance records to go with it …’

  ‘Splendid,’ I cried, ‘and if you really succeed i
n teaching me to dance, then you can have the gramophone as your fee. Agreed?’

  Although I said this with considerable force, it didn’t come from the heart. I couldn’t imagine a contraption like that, for which I had absolutely no liking, in my study with its books, and there were lots of things about dancing that I also objected to. I had thought I might give it a try one day if the opportunity arose, although I told myself I was far too old and stiff now ever to learn properly. However, embarking on it straight away like this was a bit too swift and sudden for my liking. Everything in me combined to resist the idea, all the objections I, as an old, spoiled connoisseur of music, had to gramophones, jazz and all kinds of modern dance music. To expect me to tolerate the sound of American hit-tunes in my room, my refuge, my thinker’s den with its volumes of Novalis and Jean Paul, and to dance to them, was simply too much to ask. But it wasn’t just anyone doing the asking. It was Hermione, and it was her business to give orders. It fell to me to obey. And I obeyed, of course I did.

  We met in a café the next afternoon. When I arrived, Hermione, already sitting there drinking tea, smiled and showed me a newspaper in which she had discovered my name. It was one of those reactionary, mud-slinging rags from my home country that from time to time would publish defamatory articles against me. I had been an opponent of the war as it was taking place, and when it was over I had occasionally urged calm and patience, the need to behave humanely and self-critically, while combating the nationalistic hate campaign that was becoming more shrill, mindless and unrestrained by the day. Now here was yet another attack of that sort, badly written, partly the work of the editor himself, partly cobbled together by lifting passages from the many similar pieces that papers sympathetic to the same line had already published. It is well known that nobody writes as badly as those seeking to defend ideologies that have outlived their time. None ply their trade with less effort or attention to detail. Having read the piece, Hermione had learned that Harry Haller was a harmful pest, a wretch without any allegiance to the Fatherland. And it went without saying that the Fatherland was bound to be in a sorry state as long as people like him, with ideas like his, were tolerated, and the nation’s youth was being taught to embrace sentimental humanistic ideas instead of being trained to take warlike revenge on the hereditary foe.9

  ‘Is this you?’ Hermione asked, pointing to my name. ‘If so, Harry, it seems you haven’t half made some enemies. Does it bother you?’

  I read a few lines. It was the same old stuff. For years I had been familiar with every single one of the hackneyed phrases used to defame me, to the point where I was sick and tired of them.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘it doesn’t bother me, I got used to it long ago. On a few occasions I’ve expressed the view that all nations and indeed all individual human beings, instead of rocking themselves to sleep by mulling over false political questions as to who was the “guilty party”, ought to be taking a searching look at themselves, asking to what extent they themselves, by their mistakes, their failure to act and their habitual bad practices have a share in the responsibility for the war and all the rest of the world’s miseries. Only in this way, I argued, could the next war perhaps be avoided. Of course, the reason they can’t forgive me for saying this is that they themselves are totally innocent. The Kaiser, the generals, the big industrialists, the politicians, the press – none of them are in the least to blame, none of them is guilty of anything! You might think all is wonderfully well with the world, if it weren’t for the fact that over ten million slaughtered men are lying buried in the ground. And look, Hermione, even if articles full of smears like this no longer have the power to annoy me, they do sometimes make me sad. Two thirds of my fellow Germans read newspapers of this kind, every morning and night they read articles written in these strident tones. They are being manipulated every day, admonished, incited, made to feel anger and discontent. And the aim and purpose of it all is yet again war; the next, coming war, which will probably be even more horrific than this last one was. All this is clear and simple enough for anybody to grasp; anyone could reach the same conclusion after merely an hour’s reflection. But nobody wants to, nobody wants to avoid the next war, none of them want to spare themselves and their children the next bloody slaughter of millions, if the price they have to pay is to reflect for an hour, to look into their own hearts and ask to what extent they themselves have a share in and are responsible for the chaos and evil in the world. None of them are prepared to do this! And that’s the reason things will go on as before. Day after day, thousands of people are eagerly engaged in preparations for the next war. Ever since I realized this, it has had a paralysing effect on me, reducing me to despair. I have no Fatherland left and no ideals, all that kind of thing is just window-dressing for the gentlemen who are preparing the next round of slaughter. There is no point in thinking, saying or writing anything humane; there is no point in turning over good thoughts in one’s head because for every two or three people who do so there are, day in, day out, a thousand newspapers, magazines, speeches, public and secret meetings that are all striving to achieve the opposite, and succeeding too.’

  Hermione had been listening sympathetically.

  ‘Yes,’ she now said, ‘you’re right, I agree. Of course there will be another war; you don’t need to read the newspapers to know that. And of course it’s something you can feel sad about. But it’s not worth it. It’s just the same as someone feeling sad about the fact that, whatever they do to combat it, they are despite all their efforts inevitably going to die one day. When you are fighting death, Harry, dear, the cause you are fighting for is always fine, noble, splendid and honourable, and the same is true of the fight against war. However, it’s always hopeless too, like tilting at windmills.’

  ‘That may be true,’ I exclaimed heatedly, ‘but by pointing to such truths as the fact that we are all bound to die before long and therefore nothing matters a jot you simply reduce the whole of life to something shallow and idiotic. So, what are we supposed to do? Just jettison everything, give up all our thought, all our striving, all our humanity, allow ambition and money to go on ruling us and wait over a glass of beer for the next mobilization to take place?’

  The look Hermione now gave me was remarkable, full of amusement, full of mockery, mischievousness and comradely solidarity, yet at the same time so weighty, knowledgeable and immeasurably serious!

  ‘That’s not what I mean you should do,’ she said, sounding just like a mother. ‘And anyway, knowing that the fight is bound to fail doesn’t make your life shallow and idiotic. Life is much shallower, Harry, if you are fighting for something good and ideal in the belief that you are bound to achieve it. Are ideals necessarily there to be achieved? Do we as human beings live only in order to abolish death? No, we live to fear death, then to love it again, and it’s precisely because of death that the brief candle of our lives burns so beautifully for a while. You are a child, Harry. Now do what you’re told to and come with me. We have a lot to do today. I’m not going to worry about the war and the press any more today. What about you?’

  I was certainly in no mood to either.

  We went together – it was our first walk with each other in town – to a music shop. There we looked at gramophones, opening and closing their lids, and getting the shopkeeper to play them for us. When we had found one that was perfectly suitable, nice, and cheap, I wanted to buy it, but Hermione was determined to take much longer over it. She held me back, insisting that I first visit a second shop with her, where I had to look at and listen to all systems and sizes from the dearest to the cheapest. Only then did she agree to go back to the first shop and buy the set we had found there.

  ‘You see,’ I said. ‘We could have saved ourselves the trouble.’

  ‘Do you think? And then tomorrow we might have seen the same gramophone on display in another shop window for twenty francs less. And anyway, it’s fun to go shopping, and everything that is fun should
be enjoyed to the full. You still have a lot to learn.’

  With the help of a porter, we took our purchase to my lodgings.

  Hermione inspected my living room closely, praising the stove and the couch, trying out the chairs, picking up some books and standing for quite some time in front of the photograph of my loved one. We had set down the gramophone between piles of books on a chest of drawers. And now my lessons began. Putting on a foxtrot, she demonstrated the first few steps for me, then, taking me by the hand, she started to lead me in the dance. I tried obediently to match her steps, but I kept bumping into chairs. I was listening to her commands but not understanding them, and since I was just as clumsy as I was keen to do what I was told, I kept treading on her toes. After the second dance she threw herself on to the couch, laughing like a child.

  ‘My God, how stiff you are! Just take a few steps forwards as you do when going for a walk. There’s absolutely no need to strain. I can hardly believe it, you’ve even worked up a sweat already! Come on, we’ll take a rest for five minutes. Look here, once you can do it, dancing is just as easy as thinking. And it’s much easier to learn. Perhaps now you won’t get quite so impatient when people are reluctant to learn how to think, but instead call Herr Haller a traitor to his country and are willing to allow the next war to happen without lifting a finger against it.’

  She left after an hour, telling me not to worry, I was sure to be better at it next time. This was not my view. I was very disappointed with my own stupidity and clumsiness. It seemed to me that I hadn’t learned a thing during the last hour and I didn’t believe a second attempt would be any better. No, dancing called for the sort of qualities I totally lacked: gaiety, innocence, nonchalance, verve. Ah well, wasn’t that what I’d known all along?