The Sleepwalkers

by Hermann Broch

  The day had ended better than it began. As he went home Esch brooded over the problem of raising the rest of the money, and Fräulein Erna came into his mind.

  Strong as was Erna’s temptation to bind Esch to her by financial obligations, she remained firm even here to her principle of parting with nothing except to her affianced husband. When she archly intimated this resolve Esch was indignant: what kind of a man did she think he was? Did she imagine he wanted the money for himself? But even as he said this he felt that it was beside the point; that it was not really the money that was in question, and that Fräulein Erna was much more in the wrong than she could ever be made to understand; of course the money was only a means of ransoming Ilona, of shielding defenceless girls from ever having knives hurled at them again; of course he didn’t want it for himself. But even that was by no means all, for over and above that he wanted nothing from Ilona herself—not he, not at the cost of other people’s money—and he was quite glad, too, to be in that position; he didn’t give a fig for Ilona, he was thinking of more important things, and he had every right to be angry when Erna supposed him to be self-seeking, every right to tell her rudely: well, she could keep her money, then. Erna, however, took his rudeness as an admission of guilt, exulted in having unmasked him, and giggled that she knew all about that, thinking meanwhile of a commercial traveller in Hof, who had not only enjoyed her favours, but had involved her in the more serious loss of fifty marks.

  It was altogether a good day for Fräulein Erna. Esch had asked her for something which she could refuse him, and besides she was wearing a pair of new shoes that made her feel gay and looked well on her feet. She was ensconced on the sofa, and as a saucy and slightly mocking gesture she let her feet peep from under her skirt, and swung them to and fro; she liked the faint creaking of the leather and the pleasant tension across her instep. She had no desire to abandon this delightful conversation, and in spite of the rude end that Esch had put to it she asked again what he wanted so much money for. Esch once more remarked that she could keep it; Lohberg had been glad enough to get a share in the business. “Oh, Herr Lohberg,” said Fräulein Erna, “he has plenty, he can afford it.” And with that waywardness which characterizes many phases of love, and in virtue of which Fräulein Erna would have given herself to any chance comer rather than to Herr Esch, who was to be granted nothing except in wedlock, she was very eager now to infuriate him by giving the money to Lohberg instead of to him. She swung her feet to and fro. “Oh, well, in partnership with Herr Lohberg, that’s a different story. He’s a good business man.” “He’s an idiot!” said Esch, partly from conviction and partly from jealousy, a jealousy that pleased Fräulein Erna, for she had reckoned on it. She turned the knife in the wound: “I wouldn’t give it to you.” But her remark was strangely ineffective. What did it matter to him? He had given up Ilona, and it was really Korn’s business to redeem her from those knives. Esch looked at Erna’s swinging feet. She would open her eyes if she were told that her money was really to be applied in helping her brother’s affair. Of course even that wouldn’t do what was needed. Perhaps it was really Nentwig who should be made to pay. For if the world was to be redeemed one must attack the virus at its source, as Lohberg said; but that source was Nentwig, or perhaps even something hiding behind Nentwig, something greater—perhaps as great and as securely hidden in his inaccessibility as the chairman of a company—something one knew nothing about. It was enough to make a man angry, and Esch, who was a strong fellow and not in the least afflicted with nerves, felt inclined to stamp on Fräulein Erna’s swinging feet to make her quiet. She said: “Do you like my shoes?” “No,” retorted Esch. Fräulein Erna was taken aback. “Herr Lohberg would like them … when are you going to bring him here? You’ve simply been hiding him … out of jealousy, I suppose, Herr Esch?” Oh, he could bring the man round at once if she was so anxious to see him, remarked Esch, hoping privately that they would come to an understanding about the theatre business. “No need for him to come at once,” said Fräulein Erna, “but why not this evening for coffee?” All right, he’d arrange that, said Esch, and took himself off.

  Lohberg came. He held his coffee-cup with one hand and stirred in it mechanically with the other. He left his spoon in the cup even while he was drinking, so that it hit him on the nose. Esch spread himself insolently, asking if Balthasar and Ilona were coming, and making all kinds of tactless remarks. Fräulein Erna took no notice of him. She regarded with interest Herr Lohberg’s rachitic head and his large white eyeballs; truly, he looked as if it would not take much to make him cry. And she wondered if, in the heat and ardour of love, he would be moved to tears; it annoyed her to think that her brother had pushed her into an unsatisfactory relation with Esch, a brute of a man who upset her, while only two or three houses farther away there was a well-established tradesman who blushed whenever she looked at him. Had he ever had a woman, she wondered, and to satisfy these speculations and to provoke Esch she skilfully piloted the conversation towards the subject of love. “Are you another of these born bachelors, Herr Lohberg? You’ll repent it when you’re old and done and have nobody to look after you.”

  Lohberg blushed. “I’m only waiting for the right girl, Fräulein Korn.”

  “And she hasn’t turned up yet?” Fräulein Korn smiled encouragingly and pointed her toe under the hem of her skirt. Lohberg set down his cup and looked helpless.

  Esch said tartly: “He hasn’t tried yet, that’s all.”

  Lohberg’s convictions came to his support: “One can only love once, Fräulein Korn.”

  “Oh!” said Fräulein Korn.

  That was clear and unambiguous. Esch was almost ashamed of his unchaste life, and it seemed to him not improbable that this great and unique love was what Frau Hentjen had felt for her husband, and perhaps that was why she now expected chastity and restraint from her customers. All the same it must be dreadful for Frau Hentjen to have to pay for her brief wedded bliss by renouncing love for ever afterwards, and so he said: “Well, but what about widows, then? At that rate, a widow shouldn’t go on living … especially if she has no children …” and because he was observant of what he read in the illustrated papers he added: “Widows ought in that case really to be burned, so that … so that they might be redeemed, in a manner of speaking.”

  “You’re a brute, Herr Esch,” said Fräulein Erna. “Herr Lohberg would never say such things.”

  “Redemption is in God’s hands,” said Herr Lohberg, “if He grants anyone the great gift of love it will last for all eternity.”

  “You’re a clever man, Herr Lohberg, and lots of people would be the better of taking your words to heart,” said Fräulein Erna, “the very idea of letting oneself be burned for any man! The impudence …”

  Esch said: “If the world was as it should be it could be redeemed without any of your silly organizations … yes, you can both look incredulous,” he almost shouted, “but there would be no need for a Salvation Army if the police locked up all the people who deserved to be locked up … instead of the ones that are innocent.”

  “I wouldn’t marry any man unless he had a pension, or could leave something for his widow, some kind of security,” said Fräulein Erna, “that’s only what one is entitled to expect from a good man.”

  Esch despised her. Mother Hentjen would never think of talking in such a way. But Lohberg said: “It’s a bad provider who doesn’t set his house in order.”

  “You’ll make your wife a happy woman,” said Fräulein Erna.

  Lohberg went on: “If God blesses me with a wife, I hope I can say with confidence that we shall live in true Christian unity. We shall renounce the world and live for each other.”

  Esch jeered: “Just like Balthasar and Ilona … and every evening she gets knives chucked at her.”

  Lohberg was indignant: “A man who drinks cheap spirits can’t appreciate crystal-clear water, Fräulein Korn. A passion of that kind isn’t love.”

  Fräulein Erna took the
crystalline purity as a reference to herself and was flattered: “That dress he gave her cost thirty-eight marks. I found that out in the shop. To fleece a man like that … I could never bring myself to do it.”

  Esch said: “Things need to be set right. An innocent man sits in jail, and another runs around as he pleases; one ought either to do him in or do oneself in.”

  Lohberg soothed him down: “Human life isn’t to be lightly taken.”

  “No,” said Fräulein Erna, “if anyone should be done in it’s a woman who has no feelings where men are concerned … as for me, when I have a man to look after I’m a woman of feeling.”

  Lohberg said: “A genuine Christian love is founded on mutual respect.”

  “And you would respect your wife even if she weren’t as educated as yourself … but more a creature of feeling, as a woman should be.”

  “Only a person of feeling is capable of receiving the redeeming grace and ready for it.”

  Fräulein Erna said: “I’m sure you’re a good son, Herr Lohberg, one that is capable of feeling gratitude for all his mother has done for him.”

  That made Esch angry, angrier than he knew: “Good son or no … I don’t give that for gratitude; as long as people look on while injustice is being done there’s no grace in the world … why has Martin sacrificed himself and been put in jail?”

  Lohberg answered: “Herr Geyring is a victim of the poison that’s destroying the world. Only when they get back to nature will people stop hurting each other.”

  Fräulein Erna said that she too was a lover of nature and often went for long walks.

  Lohberg went on: “Only in God’s good air, that lifts our hearts up, are men’s nobler feelings awakened.”

  Esch said: “That kind of thing has never got a single man out of jail yet.”

  Fräulein Erna remarked: “That’s what you say … but I say, a man with no feelings is no man at all. A man as faithless as you are, Herr Esch, has no right to put in his word.… And men are all the same.”

  “How can you think so badly of the world, Fräulein Korn?”

  She sighed: “The disappointments of life, Herr Lohberg.”

  “But hope keeps our hearts up, Fräulein Korn.”

  Fräulein Erna gazed thoughtfully into space: “Yes, if it weren’t for hope …” then she shook her head: “Men have no feelings, and too much brains is just as bad.”

  Esch wondered if Frau Hentjen and her husband had spoken in that strain when they got engaged. But Lohberg said: “In God and in God’s divine Nature is hope for all of us.”

  Erna did not want to be outdone: “I go regularly to church and confession, thank God …” and with triumph she added: “Our holy Catholic faith has more feeling in a way than the Protestant religion—if I were a man I would never marry a Protestant.”

  Lohberg was too polite to contradict her:

  “All ways to God are equally worthy of respect. And those whom God has joined will learn from Him to live peaceably together … all that is needed is good will.”

  Lohberg’s virtue once more disgusted Esch, although he had often compared him with Mother Hentjen because of that same virtue. He burst out: “Any idiot can talk.”

  Fräulein Erna said with disdain: “Herr Esch, of course, would take anybody he came across, he doesn’t bother about such things as feelings or religion; all he asks is that she should have money.”

  He simply couldn’t believe that, said Herr Lohberg.

  “Oh, you can take my word for it, I know him, he has no feelings, and he never thinks about anything … the kind of thoughts you have, Herr Lohberg, aren’t to be found in everybody.”

  But if that were so he was sorry for Herr Esch, remarked Lohberg, for that meant he would never find happiness in this world.

  Esch shrugged his shoulders. What did this fellow know about the new world? He said contemptuously: “First set the world right.”

  But Fräulein Erna had found the solution: “If two people worked together, if your wife, for instance, were to help you in your business, then everything else would be all right, even if the man was a Protestant and the wife a Catholic.”

  “Of course,” said Lohberg.

  “Or if two people should have something in common, a common interest, as they say … then they must stand by each other, mustn’t they?”

  “Of course,” said Lohberg.

  Fräulein Erna’s lizard eye glanced at Esch as she said: “Would you have any objections, Herr Lohberg, if I joined you in the theatre business that Herr Esch was speaking of? Now that my brother has lost his senses I at least must try to bring in some money.”

  How could Herr Lohberg have any objection! And when Fräulein Erna said that she would invest the half of her savings, say about a thousand marks, he cried, and she was delighted to hear it: “Oh! Then we’ll be partners.”

  In spite of this Esch was dissatisfied. The fact that he had got his own way had all at once ceased to matter, maybe because in any case he had renounced Ilona, maybe because there were more important aims at stake, but perhaps only because—and this was the sole reason of which he was conscious—he suddenly had serious misgivings.

  “Talk it over first with Gernerth, the manager of the theatre. I’ve only told you about it, I don’t accept any responsibility.”

  “Oh yes,” said Fräulein Erna, she knew well enough that he was an irresponsible man, and he didn’t need to be afraid that he would be called to account. He wasn’t much of a Christian, and she thought more of Herr Lohberg’s little finger than of Herr Esch’s whole body. And wouldn’t Herr Lohberg come in now and then for a cup of coffee? Yes? And since it was getting late, and they had already got to their feet, she took Lohberg by the arm. The lamp above them shed a mild light upon their heads, and they stood before Esch like a newly engaged couple.

  Esch had taken off his coat and hung it on the stand. Then he began to brush and beat it and examined its worn collar. Again he was conscious of some discrepancy in his calculations. He had given up Ilona, yet he was supposed to look on while Erna turned away from him and set her cap at that idiot. It was against all the laws of book-keeping, which demanded that every debit entry should be balanced by a credit one. Of course—and he shook the coat speculatively—if he chose he could keep a Lohberg from getting the better of him; he was easily a match for the man; no, August Esch was far from being such an ugly monstrosity, and he actually took a step or two towards the door, but paused before he opened it; tut, he didn’t choose to, that was all. The creature across the passage might think he had come crawling to her out of gratitude for her measly thousand marks. He turned and sat down on his bed, where he unlaced his shoes. The balance was all right, so far. And the fact that he was at bottom resentful because he couldn’t sleep with Erna, that was all right, too. One cut one’s losses. Yet there was an obscure miscalculation somewhere that he couldn’t put his finger on: granted that he wasn’t going across the passage to that woman, granted that he was giving up his bit of fun, what was his real reason for doing so? Was it perhaps to escape marriage? Was he making the smaller sacrifice to escape the greater, to avoid paying in person? Esch said: “I’m a swine.” Yes, he was a swine, not a whit better than Nentwig, who also shuffled off responsibility. His accounts were in a disorder which it would take the devil and all to clear up.