The Sleepwalkers

by Hermann Broch

  Elisabeth said: “Why do we live here? In the south there would be days like this all the year round.” Joachim recalled the southern face of the Italian with the black moustache. But in Elisabeth’s features it was impossible now to descry those of an Italian, or even of a brother, so removed were they from humanity, so akin to the landscape. He tried to find in them again their ordinary shape, and when it suddenly reappeared, when the nose became a nose again, the mouth a mouth, the eye an eye, the transformation was once more startling, and he was comforted only by the smoothness of her hair, which was not too insistently waved. “Why? Don’t you like the winter?” “Your friend’s right; one ought to travel,” was her answer. “He wants to go to India,” said Joachim, and thought of its olive-skinned races and of Ruzena. Why had he never once thought of travelling abroad with Ruzena? He was aware of Elisabeth’s eyes on his face, felt caught, and turned aside. But if anyone was to blame for this fever for travel it was Bertrand. His need to compensate himself for the lack of an ordered life and to deaden his regrets by business deals and exotic journeys was infectious, and if Elisabeth was yearning for the south it was perhaps because she regretted—even though she had refused Bertrand—that she was not travelling by his side. He heard Elisabeth’s voice: “How long have we known each other?” He cast it up; it wasn’t so easy to determine; when he was a twelve-year-old boy home for the holidays he had often visited Lestow with his parents. And at that time Elisabeth was only a few weeks old. “So I’ve known you always, all my life,” decided Elisabeth, “and yet I’ve never really been aware of you; I’ve always counted you among the grown-ups.” Joachim said nothing. “And I suppose you’ve never been aware of me either,” she went on. Oh yes, he said, he had, one day when she suddenly blossomed out as a young lady, all at once and most surprisingly. Elisabeth said: “But now we’re almost contemporaries.… When is your birthday, by the way?” And without waiting for an answer she added: “Can you still remember what I looked like as a child?” Joachim had to think back; in the Baroness’s drawing-room there hung a portrait of Elisabeth as a child that obstinately displaced the actual memory. “It’s queer,” he said; “I know very well what you looked like, and yet …” He wanted to say that he could not find the child’s face in hers, although of course it must be there, but as he looked at her once more her face ceased to be a face at all, and was simply hill and valley again, covered with something called skin. As if she wanted to challenge his thoughts she said: “With a little effort I can see what you looked like as a boy, in spite of the moustache.” She laughed. “That’s really funny; I must try to do it with my father too.” “Can you see me as an old man as well?” Elisabeth eyed him keenly: “That’s queer; no, I can’t … but wait a minute, yes, I can: you’ll be still more like your mother, with a nice, round face, and your moustache will be white and bushy.… But what about me as an old woman? Shall I create a very dignified impression?” Joachim declared himself incapable of imagining it. “Oh, don’t be gallant, do tell me.” “Excuse me, I’d rather not. There’s something unpleasant in suddenly looking like one’s parents or one’s brother or anything else than oneself … it makes so many things meaningless.” “Is that your friend Bertrand’s opinion too?” “No, not so far as I know: why should you think so?” “Oh, only that it would be like him.” “I don’t know, but Bertrand seems to me so much concerned with the external details of his busy life that he simply never thinks of things like that. He is never fully himself.” Elisabeth smiled. “You mean that he always sees things from a great distance? Through the eyes of a stranger, as it were?” What was she thinking of? What was she hinting at? He despised himself for his curiosity, he felt that he was unchivalrous, and at the same time realized anew that it was an unchivalrous proceeding to let a woman fall into another man’s hands instead of shielding her, shielding her from everybody. Yet he was really pledged to marry Elisabeth. But Elisabeth looked far from unhappy as she said: “It has been lovely; but now we must go home for lunch, they’re expecting us.”

  They rode homewards, and the tower of Lestow was already in sight when she said, as if she had been reflecting on their conversation: “It’s queer, all the same, how closely intimacy and strangeness are knit together. Perhaps you are right in not wanting to think of growing old.” Joachim, preoccupied with thoughts of Ruzena, did not understand her in the least, but this time he did not concern himself about it.

  If there was one thing that contributed to Herr von Pasenow’s recovery it was the mail-bag. One morning while he was still in bed the thought struck him: “Who’s looking after the post-bag? Joachim, I suppose.” No, Joachim wasn’t bothering about it. He grumbled that Joachim never bothered about anything, but seemed relieved, insisted on getting up, and slowly went to his study. When the messenger appeared the usual ritual was gone through, and it was rehearsed as usual from that day on. And if Frau von Pasenow happened to be in the room she had to listen to the usual complaint that nobody wrote to him. He asked often enough if Joachim was about the place, but he refused to see him. And when he heard that Joachim had to go for a few days to Berlin he said: “Inform him that I forbid it.” Sometimes he forgot this, and complained that not even his own children wrote to him; and this put the idea into his wife’s head of getting Joachim to write a letter of reconciliation to his father. Joachim remembered the congratulations that he and his brother had had to inscribe on rose-bordered paper whenever his parents had a birthday; it had been a frightful torment to him. He declined to submit to it again and announced that he was going away. They could conceal it from his father if they liked.

  He set off without enthusiasm; if he had once objected to having a marriage prescribed for him, he now rebelled in the same way against the fact that his three days’ sojourn in Berlin plighted him to three nights with Ruzena. He found it degrading for Ruzena too. He would have preferred to put off their meeting as long as possible, and to prevent her at least from coming to the station he had omitted to mention the time of his arrival. In the train it occurred to him that he ought to bring her a present of some kind; but since neither partridges nor other game would have been suitable, the only thing he could do was to buy her something in Berlin; so it was a good thing she would not be at the station. He tried to think of a suitable gift for her, but his imagination lagged; he could not hit upon anything and wavered back and forward between perfume and gloves; oh, well, in Berlin he would find something or other.

  When he reached his flat the first thing he did was to write a note to Bertrand, who would certainly be glad to have at last an opportunity of discussing with him the weird events of his last day at Stolpin. He wrote to Ruzena also, and sent both notes by a messenger with instructions to wait for an answer. He felt pleasantly at home in his flat. The warmth of summer still brooded captive behind the shuttered windows. Joachim opened a shutter and basked in the stillness of the street; it was late afternoon, rain might fall before night, there was a grey wall of cloud in the western sky. The vines on the fences of the front gardens were red, yellow chestnut leaves lay on the pavement, and the horses in the shafts of the four cabs at the corner of the street stood with their forelegs bent in peaceful resignation. Joachim leaned out of the window and watched his valet open the others; if the man had leaned out too Joachim would have smiled and nodded to him along the house-front. And while his bags were being unpacked he stayed there at the window, gazing at the quiet, darkening street. Then he drew his head in; the rooms had become cooler, only here and there a stray patch of summer still lingered in the air, filling him with a sweet melancholy. But it did him good to feel his uniform on him again; he walked about among his private belongings, surveying them and his books. Yes, he would do more reading this winter. Then he winced; in three days’ time he was due to leave all this again. He sat down as if to show that he was a settled occupant, ordered the windows to be shut, and asked for tea. Some time later the messenger, whom he had forgotten, came back: Herr von Bertrand was not in Berlin, b
ut was expected in the next few days, and the lady had given no answer except simply that she was coming at once. To Joachim it was as if some slight hope had finally vanished; he could almost have wished that the messages were reversed and that it was Bertrand who was to come at once. Besides, he had intended to go out and buy a present. In a few minutes, however, the door-bell rang; Ruzena was there.

  When he was a cadet and learning to swim he had balked at jumping in, until one day he was summarily thrown into the water by the swimming instructor; and after all it was simply pleasant in the water, and he had laughed. Ruzena came in like a whirlwind and flew to embrace him. It was pleasant in the water, and they sat hand in hand, exchanging kisses, and Ruzena babbled on about things that seemed irrelevant. None of his uneasiness remained, and his happiness would have been almost cloudless had not his vexation at forgetting Ruzena’s present suddenly obtruded itself with renewed force. But since God had arranged everything for good, if not for the best, He led Joachim to the cupboard in which the lace handkerchiefs had been lying unremembered for months. And while Ruzena, as usual, made ready their supper, Joachim found tissue-paper and a light blue ribbon and slipped the package under Ruzena’s plate. And before they knew where they were they had gone to bed.

  It was not until next day that Joachim recollected how soon he must depart again. Hesitatingly he broke the news to Ruzena. But the outbreak of misery or anger that he had expected did not follow. Ruzena merely made the simple statement: “Can’t go; stay here.” Joachim was struck; she was right after all, why shouldn’t he stay? What spell could it have been that made him stray aimlessly about the yard at home and keep out of his father’s way? Moreover, it seemed imperatively necessary to wait in Berlin for Bertrand. Perhaps this was a breach of good form, a kind of civilian irregularity, into which Ruzena was enticing him, but it gave him a slight sense of freedom. He decided to sleep on the matter, and since he did so in Ruzena’s company he wrote next day to his mother saying that his military duties would keep him longer in Berlin than he had anticipated; a duplicate of the letter, which he enclosed, was for her to give to his father should she think it expedient. Later he reflected that there wasn’t much sense in doing that, since his father opened all the letters anyhow; but by that time it was too late; the letter was posted.

  He had reported himself for duty, and was standing in the riding-school. The riding-masters were a sergeant-major and a corporal, each with a long whip, and along the walls was ranged a restive chain of horses mounted by recruits in coarse linen tunics. The place smelt like a vault, and the soft sand in which one’s feet sank reminded him with a faint nostalgia of Helmuth and the dust he had strewn upon him. The sergeant-major cracked his whip and ordered a trot. Rhythmically the linen-clad figures by the wall began to bob up and down. Elisabeth would soon be coming to Berlin for the autumn season. But that was not quite true: they never came until October, nor could the house possibly be ready for them yet. And indeed it wasn’t really Elisabeth he was waiting for, but Bertrand; of course it was Bertrand he meant. He saw Bertrand and Elisabeth riding before him at a trot, both rising and sinking in their stirrups. It was amazing how Elisabeth’s face had melted into the landscape and how he had strained to recapture it again. He wondered if the same could have happened to Bertrand’s face; he tried to imagine that one of the figures along the wall was Bertrand rising and sinking in his stirrups, but he abandoned the attempt; it was somehow blasphemous, and he was glad that Helmuth’s face had been hidden from him. Now the sergeant-major ordered a walking pace, and the white jumping-posts and hurdles were brought out. He was involuntarily reminded of clowns, and suddenly he understood a saying of Bertrand’s, that the Fatherland was defended by a set of circus clowns. It was still incomprehensible to him how he had managed to come a cropper over that tree.

  He drove once more past Borsig’s engineering works. Once more there were workmen standing about. He had really had enough of that kind of thing. It wasn’t his world, and he had no need to barricade himself from it behind a gay uniform. True, Bertrand belonged to it, perhaps reluctantly, but still he was acclimatized; well, he had had enough of Bertrand too: the best thing after all would be to return to Stolpin. In spite of that, however, he stopped his carriage at Bertrand’s door, and was delighted to hear that Herr von Bertrand was expected that evening. Good; he would look in anyhow for a few minutes, and he left a note to that effect.

  They went together to the theatre, where Ruzena displayed her mechanical gestures as a chorus girl. During the interval Bertrand said: “That’s no job for her; we’ll have to find her something else,” and Joachim once more had a feeling of security. When they were at supper Bertrand turned to Ruzena: “Tell me, Ruzena, you’re going to become a famous and marvellous actress now, aren’t you?” Of course she was, wasn’t that just what she was going to do!“Ah, but what if you should think better of it and change your mind? We’ve gone to a lot of trouble to give you the chance of becoming famous, and what if you should suddenly leave us in the lurch and make us look silly? What shall we do with you then?” Ruzena became reflective and suggested: “Well, there’s the Jäger Casino.” “No, no, Ruzena, one should never turn back when one has begun to climb. It must be something better than the theatre.” Ruzena began to cry: “There’s nothing at all for poor girl like me. He is bad friend, Joachim.” Joachim said: “Bertrand’s only joking, Ruzena.” But he himself was uncomfortable and thought that Bertrand was overstepping the limits of tact. Bertrand, however, laughed: “There’s no need to cry just because we’re considering how to make you rich and famous, Ruzena. You’ll have to keep all of us then.” Joachim was shocked; one could see how commercial life vulgarized a man.

  Later he said to Bertrand: “Why do you torment her?” Bertrand answered: “Well, we have to prepare her, and one can operate only on a healthy body. Now’s the time.” He spoke like a surgeon.

  What Joachim had half feared had now happened. His letter had fallen into his father’s hands, and the old man had obviously begun to rave again, for his mother wrote that there had been a fresh stroke. Joachim was amazed by his own indifference. He felt no obligation to go home, there was still plenty of time for that. Helmuth had charged him to stand by his mother, but it was little that one could do to help her; she would have to bear alone the fate she had taken upon herself. He wrote that he would come as soon as he could and stayed where he was, leaving things to take their own course, performing his duties, taking no steps whatever to make a change, and with an inexplicable fear thrusting aside every thought that suggested change. For it often required an actual effort to hold things firmly in their proper shapes, an effort so difficult that many a time all those people who bustled about as if all was in order seemed to him limited, blind and almost crazy. At first he had not thought much about it, but when for a second time he saw the military spectacle in terms of a circus he decided that Bertrand was to blame for everything. Why, even his uniform refused to sit upon him as well as formerly: the epaulets on his shoulders suddenly worried him, and the cuffs of his shirt, and one morning before the glass he asked himself why it should be on the left side that he had to wear his sword. He took refuge in thoughts of Ruzena, telling himself that his love for her, her love for him, was something exempt from all ambiguous conventions. And then, when he gazed long into her eyes and stroked her eyelids with a gently caressing finger, and she took it to be love, he was often merely losing himself in an agonizing game, letting her face grow dimmer and more indefinite, until it touched the boundary at which it threatened to lose its human character, and the face became no face at all. Things were elusive as a melody that one thinks one cannot forget and yet loses the thread of, only to be compelled to seek it again and again in anguish. It was an uncanny and hopeless game to play, and with angry irritation he wished that Bertrand could be saddled with the blame for that queer state of mind as well. Had he not, indeed, spoken of his demon? Ruzena divined Joachim’s irritation, and her suspicion of Bertrand
, which had rankled in her since that last evening, flared out after a long, sullen silence with clumsy abruptness: “You not love me any more … or have to ask friend’s permission … or has Bertrand already forbidden?” And although they were angry and wounding words, Joachim was glad of them, for they came as a relief, confirming his own suspicion that the demonic root of all his afflictions was in Bertrand. And it even seemed to him like the final emanation of such an evil, Mephistophelian and treacherous influence that the aversion Ruzena shared with him should bring her no nearer, but rather, by provoking rude and uncontrolled outbursts, should put her more on a level with Bertrand and his equally offensive jokes; between his mistress and his friend, both unstable, between these two civilians, he felt as if caught and helplessly ground between two millstones of tactlessness. He felt the smell of bad company, and often could not tell whether Bertrand had led him to Ruzena, or Ruzena had been the means of bringing him to Bertrand, until in alarm he realized that he was no longer capable of grasping the evanescent, dissolving mass of life, and that he was slipping more and more quickly, more and more profoundly, into brain-sick confusion, and that everything had become unsure. But when he thought of finding in religion some way out of this chaos, the abyss opened afresh that parted him from the civilians, for it was on the other side of the abyss that there stood the civilian Bertrand, a Freethinker, and the Catholic Ruzena, both beyond his reach, and it almost looked as if they exulted in his isolation.