by Hermann Hesse, David Horrocks, Hermann Hesse, David Horrocks
‘Aim at the chauffeur,’ Gustav ordered swiftly, just as the heavy vehicle was racing by beneath us. And, before I knew it, I was taking aim at the blue cap of the man at the steering wheel and pulling the trigger. The man slumped at the wheel. The car careered on, smashed into the cliff wall and rebounded, only to crash heavily against the low protecting wall like a great fat bumble bee in a rage. Then it overturned and there was a short, soft thud as it jumped the wall and plummeted into the depths.
‘That’s one done for,’ Gustav said with a laugh. ‘The next one’s mine.’
And no sooner had he said it than another car came racing by, the three or four people in it looking very small in their upholstered seats. I could see part of a woman’s veil, blown back in a stiff, horizontal line from her head. It was a light blue veil, and I actually felt sorry about it because, for all we knew, it might be concealing the shining face of the most beautiful of women. Good Lord, I thought, if we really must act the bold robber we might have done better to take our cue from those great model outlaws of the past who, for all their bloodlust, drew the line at killing members of the fair sex. However, Gustav had already fired. With a jerk the driver slumped down in his seat, the car mounted the vertical rock face, tipped over and, its wheels uppermost, landed back down on the road with a loud crash. We waited, but nothing moved. As if caught in a trap, the car’s occupants remained silently lying under their vehicle. It was still humming and throbbing, its wheels turning comically in the air. All at once, however, there was a terrifying explosion and the car was engulfed in bright flames.
‘It was a Ford,’ Gustav said. ‘We need to go down now and clear the road.’
Climbing down, we took a look at the flaming heap. By the time the wreck had fully burned out, which was not long, we had cut some young branches which we used to lever it aside and tip it over the road’s edge into the abyss. For quite a while we could still hear it crashing down through the undergrowth. Two of the dead occupants, having fallen out of the car when it overturned, were lying there on the road, their clothes partly burned. The coat of one of them was still fairly intact, so I went through the pockets in the hope of finding out who he was. I discovered a leather wallet with visiting cards in it. Taking one out, I read on it the words: ‘Tat tvam asi.’12
‘Very amusing,’ Gustav said, ‘though in fact it makes no difference what the people we are killing are called. They’re poor devils like us; their names are immaterial. This world has to be destroyed, and all of us with it. The least painful solution would be to flood it with water for ten minutes. Come on, back to work.’
We threw the dead bodies after the car. Another was already on its way, tooting its horn. We shot this one to pieces right there on the road. It spun on for a stretch, reeling like a drunk, before sagging and chugging to a halt. One occupant remained motionless inside but another, a pretty young girl, got out unscathed, even though she looked pale and was trembling violently. Greeting her in a friendly manner, we asked what we could do to help. For quite a while she just stared at us like one deranged, far too shocked to be able to speak.
‘Come on, we might as well check on the old gentleman first,’ Gustav said, turning towards the passenger who was still stuck there in his seat behind the dead chauffeur. He had short grey hair and intelligent, light-grey eyes that were open, even though, to judge from the blood flowing from his mouth and the worryingly stiff and crooked look of his neck, he seemed to be very badly injured.
‘Allow me to introduce myself, Sir, my name is Gustav,’ said my companion, addressing the old gentleman. ‘We’ve taken the liberty of shooting your chauffeur. May I ask with whom we have the pleasure of speaking?’
The old man’s small grey eyes gazed coolly and sadly at us.
‘I am Senior Public Prosecutor Loering,’ he said slowly. ‘You have not only killed my poor chauffeur, but me too, for I can feel my end is near. Tell me, why did you shoot at us?’
‘Because you were driving too fast.’
‘We were driving at the normal speed.’
‘It may have been normal yesterday, Your Honour, but it isn’t normal today. Today we are of the opinion that any speed a car is driven at is too high. We have now taken to wrecking cars, all of them, and the rest of the machines too.’
‘Even your shotguns?’
‘Their turn will come too, if we have time. By tomorrow or the day after we’ll presumably all be wiped out. As you know, our continent was terribly overpopulated. So the idea now is to clear the air.’
‘Are you shooting indiscriminately at everyone?’
‘Certainly. It’s a shame to kill some of them, no doubt. I would have been sorry, for instance, to see the pretty young lady die. I suppose she’s your daughter.’
‘No, she is my typist.’
‘So much the better. And now get out of the car, please, or let us pull you out, because it’s going to be destroyed.’
‘I prefer to be destroyed with it.’
‘As you wish, but let me ask you one more thing, if I may. You are a public prosecutor. I’ve never been able to understand how anyone can bring themselves to make a living from prosecuting others, the majority of them poor devils, and then sentencing them. But that’s what you did, isn’t it?’
‘It is. I did my duty. It was my office, just as it was the office of the executioner to take the lives of those I sentenced to death. Now you yourselves have taken on the same role, haven’t you? You too are taking lives.’
‘Correct. Only we are not killing because it is our duty to. We are killing for pleasure, or rather out of displeasure, out of despair at the way the world is going. That’s why we take a certain delight in killing. Did it never delight you?’
‘You are starting to bore me. Be so kind as to finish your task. If duty means nothing to you …’
He fell silent, tightening his lips as if intending to spit, but all that emerged from his mouth was a trickle of blood that stuck on his chin.
‘Wait,’ Gustav said politely. ‘It is true the concept of duty means nothing to me, not now at any rate, but it once concerned me a great deal in my official capacity as a professor of theology. What’s more, I was a soldier, serving in the war. Yet what I considered my duty, and all the things I was ordered to do, whether by figures in authority or my superior officers, was anything but good. In every case I would have preferred to do the opposite. However, even if duty has no meaning for me now, I do recognize the concept of guilt. Perhaps they amount to the same thing. By being born of a mother I am guilty, condemned to live, obliged to belong to a state, to serve it as a soldier, to kill, to pay taxes in support of armaments. And now, at this moment in time, the guilt that attaches to living has again led me, as it once did in the war, to the point where I have to kill. But this time I don’t find killing repugnant. I have totally accepted the burden of guilt because I have no objection to this stupid, congested world being blown to smithereens. I’m happy to lend a hand, and to perish myself in the process.’
In spite of the blood sticking to his lips, the public prosecutor made a great effort to produce a bit of a smile. The result was not marvellous, but his good intentions were clear for all to see.
‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘In that case we are colleagues. Now please do your duty, Colleague.’
In the meantime the pretty girl, having sat down at the edge of the road, had fainted.
At that moment yet another car could be heard tooting its horn as it approached at full speed. Pulling the girl to one side a little, we pressed ourselves up against the rocks and allowed the oncoming car to crash into the wreckage of the other one. It braked sharply and reared upwards, but managed to come to rest undamaged. Quickly picking up our guns, we trained them on the newcomers.
‘Out you get!’ Gustav ordered. ‘Hands up!’
Three men emerged from the car, their hands in the air.
‘Is any one of you a doct
or?’ Gustav asked.
The answer was no.
‘Then please be so good as to release this gentleman carefully from his car seat. He is badly injured. Then you can take him with you in your vehicle to the next town. Come on! Get a hold of him!’
The old gentleman was soon bedded down in the other car and they all drove off at Gustav’s command.
Meanwhile our typist, having come to again, had been watching the proceedings. I was glad to see that our actions had brought us such handsome spoils.
‘You have lost your employer, Fräulein,’ Gustav said. I hope the old gentleman’s relationship with you went no further than that. Now I’m taking you on. Make sure you do a good job for us. There, and now we need to get a bit of a move on. Things will soon get uncomfortable here. Can you climb, Fräulein? Yes? Then let’s be off. Best go up between us, that way we can give you a hand.’
We all three of us now clambered up into our tree house as fast as we possibly could. Once we were up there the young lady started to feel unwell, but we gave her some brandy and she had soon recovered sufficiently to be able to appreciate the splendid view we had over the lake and the mountains, and to tell us her name was Dora.
Immediately afterwards, yet another car had arrived below us. Without stopping, it cautiously rounded the wrecked vehicle, then accelerated at once.
‘Cowardly shirker!’ Gustav exclaimed with a laugh as he shot down the driver. The car hopped and skipped a little before lunging at the wall and smashing it in. It ended up hanging diagonally over the abyss.
‘Are you used to handling guns, Dora?’ I asked.
She wasn’t, but we taught her how to load a rifle. She did it clumsily at first, howling with pain when one of her fingers got caught, and demanding a plaster to stop the bleeding. However, when Gustav pointed out that this was war and asked her to please show us what a good, brave lass she was, she managed well.
‘But what’s to become of us?’ she then asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Gustav said. ‘My pal Harry likes good-looking women, he’ll be a friend to you.’
‘But they’ll come after us with policemen and troops and kill us.’
‘There is no police force any more, or anything of that kind. The choice is ours, Dora. Either we don’t worry and simply stay up here, shooting to bits every car that goes by, or we ourselves take a car, drive off in it and get fired on by others. It’s all the same whichever side we take. I’m for staying here.’
Down below there was another car. We could hear the clear sound of its horn. In no time we had put paid to it, and it lay there on the road, its wheels uppermost.
‘Strange,’ I said, ‘that there is so much fun to be had from shooting. To think I used to be an opponent of war!’
Gustav smiled. ‘Indeed. The thing is, there are far too many people in the world. It wasn’t so noticeable before. However, now that everyone not only wants their share of fresh air but also a car of their own, you simply can’t help noticing the problem. Of course what we are doing isn’t rational. It’s puerile, just as the war too was puerile, enormously so. At some stage in the future humankind is going to have to learn to keep its growth in check by rational means. For the time being we are reacting to an intolerable state of affairs in a pretty irrational manner, but by reducing our numbers we are basically doing the right thing.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘what we are doing is probably mad, but it is probably good and necessary nonetheless. When human beings push common sense too far, attempting with the aid of reason to order things that are not accessible to reason, it is not good. It gives rise to ideals like those of the Americans or those of the Bolsheviks, both of which are extraordinarily rational but nevertheless violate and impoverish life terribly because they simplify it in a way that is so utterly naive. The image of humankind, once a lofty ideal, is currently turning into a cliché. Perhaps mad people like us will be the ones to restore its nobility.’
Laughing, Gustav responded: ‘What a splendidly clever way with words you have, old boy. You’re such a fount of wisdom it’s a joy to listen to you, and instructive too. Besides, there may even be a grain of truth in what you say. But now reload your gun, there’s a good chap, you’re a bit too dreamy for my liking. A few plump little roebuck may come running by again any moment now, and we can’t shoot them with philosophy. Our gun-barrels are no good without bullets in them, after all.’
A car arrived and immediately fell victim to our fire, blocking the road. The one survivor, a fat, red-haired man, stood by the wreckage, gesticulating wildly and looking up and down, his eyes gaping. When he discovered our hideaway he ran over with a roar and fired several shots up at us with his revolver.
‘Be off with you now, or I’ll shoot,’ Gustav shouted down to him. The man took aim at him and fired again. We then mowed him down, with two salvos.
Two more cars came, both of which we finished off. Afterwards the road remained empty and quiet. Word had apparently spread that it was a dangerous route to take. We had time to contemplate the beautiful view. Beyond the lake was a small town in the plain. Smoke was rising from it, and soon we saw roof after roof catching fire. We could hear shooting too. Dora wept a little and I stroked her damp cheeks.
‘Must we all die?’ she asked. Neither of us answered. In the meantime a pedestrian came along beneath us. On seeing the wrecked cars lying there, he started nosing around them. Leaning over into one, he fished out a brightly coloured parasol, a ladies’ leather bag and a wine bottle. He then sat down peacefully on the wall, took a drink from the bottle and ate something wrapped in silver paper from the bag, before polishing off the rest of the wine and contentedly resuming his walk, clutching the parasol under his arm. He went on his way so peacefully that I said to Gustav: ‘Could you possibly bring yourself to fire on that nice chap and shoot a hole in his head? The Lord knows I couldn’t.’
‘Nobody is asking you to,’ my friend muttered. But deep down he too had begun to feel uncomfortable with what we were doing. Scarcely had we set eyes on a human being who was still behaving in a harmless, peaceful, childlike manner, still living in a state of innocence, when all our praiseworthy, necessary activity suddenly struck us as stupid and disgusting. Ugh, all that blood! We were ashamed of ourselves. But then even generals, so they say, occasionally felt ashamed during the war.
‘Let’s not stay up here any longer,’ said Dora plaintively. ‘Let’s go down. We’re sure to find something to eat in the cars, or aren’t you Bolsheviks the least bit hungry?’
Down there in the town where fire was raging the bells started furiously and fearsomely ringing. We set about climbing down. As I was helping Dora clamber over the wooden surround of the hut, I kissed her on the knee. She gave a bright laugh, but at that moment the supporting struts gave way, and we both plunged into the void …
I found myself back in the theatre’s round corridor, feeling animated by the hunting venture. And all around me I could see the alluring inscriptions on the innumerable doors:
MUTABOR
CHANGE INTO ANY ANIMAL OR PLANT YOU LIKE
KAMASUTRA
INSTRUCTION IN THE INDIAN ARTS OF LOVE
BEGINNERS COURSE: 42 DIFFERENT WAYS
TO PRACTISE SEXUAL INTERCOURSE
HIGHLY ENJOYABLE SUICIDE
YOU’LL DIE LAUGHING
IS THE SPIRITUAL LIFE THE THING FOR YOU?
ORIENTAL WISDOM
O FOR A THOUSAND
TONGUES!
FOR GENTLEMEN ONLY
DECLINE OF THE WEST
PRICES REDUCED. STILL UNSURPASSED
THE ESSENCE OF ART
TIME TRANSFORMED INTO
SPACE
BY MEANS OF MUSIC
LAUGHING TILL YOU WEEP
CABINET OF HUMOUR
PLAYING THE HERMIT
THE PERFECT SUBSTITUTE FOR ALL SOCIABILITY
The series of inscriptions was endless. One of them read:
SUCCESS GUARANTEED
I went in through this door, thinking it worth a try.
The room I found myself in was dimly lit and quiet. There was a man sitting on the floor, oriental fashion, with what looked like a large chessboard in front of him. For a moment I thought it was our friend Pablo. At any rate he was wearing a similar brightly coloured silk jacket and had the same darkly gleaming eyes.
‘It’s not Pablo, is it?’ I asked.
‘I’m nobody,’ he explained in a friendly manner. ‘We don’t have names here; none of us here is a real person. I’m a chess player. Do you want me to teach you how to reconstruct your personality?’
‘Yes please.’
‘Then be so kind as to hand over a few dozen of your pieces.’
‘My pieces …?’
‘The pieces you saw your so-called personality disintegrate into. I can’t play without pieces, you know.’
He held a mirror up in front of me and in it I again saw my unified self disintegrate into many separate figures. There seemed to be an even larger number of them now, but they were very small, roughly as big as handy-sized chessmen. Picking up a few dozen of them with his calm, steady fingers, the chess player placed them on the floor next to his board. As he did so, he said in a monotonous voice, like someone repeating a speech or a lesson he has frequently given before: