Steppenwolf

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

  In that first strange night and the following days Maria taught me a great deal, not only bewitching new games and sensual delights, but also fresh understanding, fresh insights, a new kind of love. The world of dance halls and nightclubs, cinemas, bars and hotel tea rooms, which I, as an aesthete and recluse, still considered somewhat common, taboo and beneath my dignity, was the only world that existed for Maria, Hermione and their female companions. It was neither good nor evil, neither desirable nor detestable. It was in this world that their brief lives full of yearning flourished. They were at home in it, experienced in its ways. They liked a glass of champagne or a chef’s speciality in the grill room in just the same way that you or I might like a composer or writer, and they would lavish the same amount of enthusiasm and emotional involvement on a new hit dance tune or the sickly sentimental song of a jazz singer that people like you and me would on Nietzsche or Hamsun.11 Chatting to me about Pablo, the good-looking saxophone player, Maria mentioned an American song he had occasionally sung to them. She talked of it as if spellbound, with a degree of admiration and love that gripped and moved me far more than the ecstasies any highly educated person might go into over pleasurable aesthetic experiences of an exquisitely cultivated kind. I was willing to share in her enthusiasm, no matter what the song was like, because Maria’s fond words and the look of longing that lit up her face were opening up wide gaps in my aesthetic defences. Of course there were some things of beauty, some few exquisitely beautiful creations that in my view were beyond all criticism or dispute, first and foremost Mozart. But where should one draw the line? Hadn’t all of us connoisseurs and critics in our youth fervently adored works of art and artists that seemed to us nowadays to be of doubtful quality or embarrassing? Wasn’t this something we had experienced in the case of Liszt, Wagner, perhaps even Beethoven? Wasn’t Maria’s glowing, childlike emotional response to the popular song from America an aesthetic experience just as pure, just as fine as that of any senior schoolmaster spellbound by Tristan and Isolde or any orchestra conductor going into ecstasies over Beethoven’s Ninth? And didn’t this accord remarkably well with the opinions of our Herr Pablo, confirming that he was right?

  That handsome Pablo! Maria, too, seemed to be extremely fond of him.

  ‘He is a good-looking chap,’ I said, ‘and I too like him a lot. But, tell me, Maria, how can you, besides him, also be fond of a boring old chap who isn’t good-looking, is even starting to go grey, and can neither play the saxophone nor sing love songs in English?’

  ‘Don’t say such ugly things!’ she said, telling me off. ‘Don’t you see it’s quite natural? I like you too. There’s something attractive, loveable and special about you too. You mustn’t try to be different from what you are. It’s not right to go talking about things like this and demanding explanations of people. Look, when you kiss me on the neck or the ear, I can sense that you are fond of me and find me attractive. You have a way of kissing, a bit on the shy side, that tells me: “He’s fond of you, he appreciates your good looks.” I like that very much, very much. Yet with a different man, on the other hand, I may like exactly the opposite: the fact that I seem to count for nothing in his eyes, so that when he kisses me it’s as if he is doing me a favour.’

  Again we fell asleep. Again I woke to discover that I still had my arms around her, this beautiful, beautiful flower of mine.

  And, strange to say, this beautiful flower nevertheless constantly remained the present bestowed on me by Hermione. The latter constantly interposed herself between me and Maria, masking her fully. And at one juncture I suddenly thought of Erika, my poor girlfriend, the woman I loved who was somewhere far away, and cross with me. She was scarcely less good-looking than Maria, though not in such full bloom, not as liberated, less gifted in those ingenious little touches Maria brought to the art of lovemaking. For a while I could picture her clearly and painfully, the object of my love, her fate deeply bound up with mine. Then her image faded away again into my sleep and was forgotten, far off, an absence only half lamented.

  After being devoid and deprived of them for so long, I saw many images from my past surfacing before me in this way during that lovely night of tenderness. Released now by the magic of Eros, they welled up from the depths in all their abundance, making my heart momentarily stand still, so enchanted and at the same time saddened was I to realize how rich the picture gallery of my life had been, how full poor Steppenwolf’s psychological firmament had been of eternal stars and constellations. I had a vision, gentle and blissful, of my childhood and mother, like some faraway mountain range, infinitely blue and remote. I heard the chorus of my friendships resound with brass-like clarity, beginning with the legendary Hermann, the psychological counterpart of Hermione. Fragrant and unearthly, like marine flora emerging moist from the water to display their blooms, the images of many women drifted into view; women I had loved, desired and celebrated in verse, and only a few of whom I had won or attempted to make my own. My wife appeared too, with whom I had lived for many a year, and who had taught me the values of companionship, conflict and resignation. In spite of all my dissatisfaction with our life together, the profound trust I placed in her had remained alive in me until the day when, deranged and sick, in an act of sudden desertion and wild rebellion, she abandoned me. And I realized how much I must have loved her, how deeply I must have trusted her for her breach of trust to have had such a grave and lifelong impact on me.

  These images – there were hundreds of them, some I could put names to, some not – were all present again, having emerged young and fresh from the well of this night of love, and I realized again something I had long forgotten in my misery: that they constituted everything of value that my life possessed. Remaining indestructibly in existence, they were fixed for ever like the stars, experiences I could forget but not destroy. Their sequence represented the saga of my life, their bright starlight the indestructible worth of my existence. My life may have been arduous, wayward and unhappy, my experience of humankind’s bitter fate causing me to renounce and reject a great deal, but it had been rich, proud and rich, a life – even its misery – fit for a king. No matter how pitifully I might waste what little time was left to me before finally going under, my life was essentially a noble one. It had a profile and pedigree. Not content with cheap rewards, I had aimed for the stars.

  It is already some time ago, and a lot has happened and changed since that night so that I can only remember little of it in detail: odd words we exchanged, odd gestures and amorous acts of profound tenderness, bright, starlit moments when we awoke from the heavy sleep that followed our exhausting lovemaking. However, it was during that night, for the first time since my decline, that my own life looked back at me once again with relentlessly beaming eyes; that I was once again able to see fate at work in what I’d considered mere chance events and to recognize the ruined landscape of my existence as a small part of some divine plan. My soul could breathe again, my eyes see, and for a few moments I sensed intensely that all I needed to do in order to gain admittance to this world of images and become immortal was to gather up the scattered, fragmentary images of my life as Harry Haller alias Steppenwolf and raise them to the level of one rounded portrait. After all, was it not the point of every human life that it should be a determined attempt to reach such a goal?

  The next morning, after she had shared my breakfast, I had to smuggle Maria out of the building, which I succeeded in doing. That very same day I rented a small room for the two of us in a nearby part of the town, to be used solely for our meetings.

  Dutifully putting in an appearance, my dancing teacher Hermione made me learn the Boston. Strict and unsparing, she wouldn’t let me miss a lesson because it had been decided that I would attend the next masked ball with her. She had asked me for money to pay for her costume, but refused to give me any information as to what it would be. I was still forbidden to call on her or even to know where she was living.

  T
his period leading up to the masked ball, a matter of some three weeks, was extraordinarily beautiful. It seemed to me that Maria was the first woman I had really loved. I had always demanded a degree of intellect and education from the women I loved, without ever fully noticing that even the most intellectual and relatively best-educated woman never responded to the Logos in me, but rather clashed with it. I used always to take my problems and ideas along with me to my rendezvous with women, and it would have seemed quite impossible for me to spend longer than an hour loving any woman who had scarcely read a book, hardly knowing what reading meant, or was unable to tell the difference between a Tchaikovsky and a Beethoven. Maria had no education. She had no need of such diversions or surrogate worlds because all her problems were directly sensuous in origin. Her art, her mission in life, consisted in striving to achieve as much sensual and sexual happiness as was humanly possible, in seeking and enticing from her partner in love – by means of the senses she had been endowed with, her exceptional figure, her colouring, her hair, her voice, her skin, her vivacity – a sympathetic response and a lively, gratifying counter-play to everything she was capable of, to every supple adjustment of her curves, every extremely delicate modulation of her body. This was something I had felt when dancing shyly with her on that first occasion. Even then I had picked up the clear scent of an ingenious, highly refined sensuality in her, and had been enchanted by it. And it was certainly no coincidence that Hermione, omniscient as she was, had put this girl Maria in touch with me, for she had the scent of summer, of roses about her. It was the hallmark of her whole being.

  I was not fortunate enough to be Maria’s sole or preferred lover. I was one of several. Often she found no time for me, sometimes one hour in the afternoon, on very few occasions a whole night. She refused to take money from me, which was probably Hermione’s doing. However, she was happy to accept gifts and when, for instance, I gave her a dainty new purse made of shiny red leather she didn’t object to the two or three gold coins it contained. That little red purse, by the way, prompted her to laugh right in my face because, charming though it was, it was long since out of fashion and no longer selling well. From Maria I learned a great deal about matters such as this, about which previously I had known and understood less than I did any Eskimo language. Above all I learned that these little playthings, fashionable accessories and luxuries are not just tawdry kitsch, invented by money-grabbing manufacturers and dealers, but quite legitimate, beautiful and diverse objects. They constitute a small, or rather large, world of things, all of them designed with the sole aim of serving Eros, refining the senses, breathing fresh life into the dead world we inhabit and magically endowing it with new sexual organs, from powder and perfume to dance shoes, from rings to cigarette cases, from belt buckles to handbags. These handbags were not handbags, the purses not purses, flowers not flowers, fans not fans – no, all of them were the visual and tangible material of Eros, of magic, of stimulation. They functioned as messengers, touts, weapons, battle cries.

  I often wondered who it was Maria really loved. I think of all people she loved youthful Pablo the most, he of the saxophone, the dreamy black eyes and the long, pale, noble and melancholy hands. I would have judged Pablo to be a rather languid, spoiled and passive lover but Maria assured me that, though it took a long time, once aroused, he was rougher, more muscular, masculine and demanding than any boxer or horseman. In this way I got to know intimate details of this or that person: the jazz musician, the actor, women, girls, men from our milieu. I knew all sorts of secrets, had insight into alliances and enmities that lay beneath the surface, was slowly initiated into and became familiar with this world in which I had been a completely alien presence with no links whatsoever to anyone. About Hermione too I learned a great deal, but above all I was now in frequent contact with Herr Pablo, whom Maria loved very much. She also used his secret substances from time to time, occasionally procuring these delights for me too, and Pablo was always ready, indeed especially keen, to oblige me. Once he told me in no uncertain terms: ‘You are unhappy so much of the time. Nobody should be like that, it’s not good. I’m sorry for you. Try smoking a little opium.’ My opinion of this cheerful, clever, childlike and yet unfathomable human being was constantly changing. We became friends, and not infrequently I accepted some of the drugs he had on offer. It was with a degree of amusement that he observed my infatuation with Maria. Once he organized a ‘party’ in his room up in the attic of a hotel in the suburbs. Since there was only one chair, Maria and I had to sit on the bed. To drink, he served us a mysterious, wonderful liqueur he had mixed from the contents of three small bottles. And, once I was feeling in a really good mood, he suggested, his eyes sparkling, that the three of us should have an orgy. Abruptly refusing, since for me that sort of thing was out of the question, I nevertheless cast a brief sidelong glance at Maria, wondering what her attitude might be. She did, like me, immediately say no, but I could sense from the glint in her eyes that this was an opportunity she was sorry to miss. Pablo was disappointed by my refusal, but he didn’t take offence. ‘Pity,’ he said. ‘Harry has too many moral scruples. It can’t be helped, yet it would have been so beautiful, so very beautiful. However, I know something we can do instead.’ Each of us now got to take a few pulls on a pipe Pablo had filled with opium. Sitting motionless, our eyes open, all three of us underwent the experience he had suggested, Maria trembling with delight. Afterwards, when I felt slightly unwell, Pablo laid me on the bed and gave me a few drops of medicine. And as I closed my eyes for a few minutes, I felt the briefest and faintest touch of lips on each eyelid. As if believing that the kisses came from Maria, I let it happen, but I knew full well they came from him.

  And one evening he had an even greater surprise in store for me. Appearing in my flat, he told me he needed twenty francs. Could I let him have them? If so, he offered, I could take his place that night with Maria.

  ‘Pablo,’ I said, shocked, ‘you don’t know what you are saying. There’s nothing we in this country consider more despicable, Pablo, than letting another man have the woman you love in exchange for money. I didn’t hear what you just proposed.’

  He gave me a pitying look. ‘You refuse to do it, Herr Harry. Very well. You are always making things difficult for yourself. Still, if you prefer it that way, don’t spend the night with Maria, just give me the money. You’ll get it back. I need it urgently.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For Agostino, you know who I mean, the lad who plays second violin. He’s been ill for a week now and no one’s looking after him. He hasn’t got a penny of his own, and now I’ve run out of money too.’

  Mainly out of curiosity, but also by way of self-punishment, I went with him to the garret, a truly wretched garret, where Agostino lived. Pablo took him some milk and medicine, freshened up his bed for him, aired the room, and put a neat, skilfully fashioned compress round his fevered head. All this was swiftly and gently done, with the expertise of a good nurse. That same night I saw him playing until the early hours of the morning in the City Bar.

  Often I would talk to Hermione at length and in a matter-of-fact way about Maria, about her hands, her shoulders, her hips, about the way she laughed, kissed and danced.

  ‘Has she shown you this yet?’ Hermione once asked me, going on to describe a particular trick of the tongue when kissing. I asked why she didn’t demonstrate it to me herself, but she earnestly refused. ‘That can wait till later,’ she said. ‘I’m not your lover yet.’

  I asked her how she came to be familiar with Maria’s kissing skills and many an intimate detail of her body that only a man making love to her could know.

  ‘Oh,’ she cried, ‘after all, we are friends. Surely you don’t think we keep things secret from one another? I should know, I’ve slept with her and played with her often enough. Believe me, you’ve got yourself a fine girl there, one who knows more than other girls do.’

  ‘But, Hermione, I stil
l think there must be some things even the two of you keep secret from one another. Or have you also told her everything you know about me?’

  ‘No, that’s a different matter. Those are things she wouldn’t understand. Luckily for you, Maria is wonderful, but there are things private to the two of us of which she has no idea. Of course I told her a lot about you, a lot more than you would have wished at the time. After all, I had to seduce her for you. But as for understanding you, my friend, in the way I understand you, that’s something Maria will never be capable of, or any other woman either. I’ve also found out quite a few new things about you from her, so I am well informed, at least as far as her knowledge of you goes. I know you almost as well as if we had often slept with one another.’

  When I was next together with Maria it was strange and mysterious, knowing as I did that she had held Hermione close to her like me, that she had fondled, kissed, tasted and examined her limbs, hair and skin exactly as she had mine. Visions arose in me of new, indirect, complicated relationships and connections, new opportunities to experience life and love, which made me think of the thousand souls mentioned in the Steppenwolf tract.

  In that short period between getting to know Maria and the day of the grand masked ball I was positively happy, yet I never felt that I had found some kind of ultimate bliss or salvation. Instead, I had a very clear sense that all this was merely a prologue and preparation. There was a strong forward impulse to everything, but the real thing was still to come.