The Sleepwalkers

by Hermann Broch

  Teltscher had been a few times in the restaurant and already put on the airs of an old and regular customer. Esch felt guilty at bringing such riff-raff to Mother Hentjen’s place, instead of something better. He would have liked to fling the fellow off the lorry. A Judas like that to sit down in Martin’s place, a lout who had no idea that there were better, more refined, more highly respectable men in the world; who had no idea that Martin had been struck down by the hand of a man who would think it beneath him even to spit on a mere knife-thrower! And this juggler, this pimp, gave himself the airs of a conqueror, as if Martin’s seat belonged by rights to him. Conjurers’ tricks; mere juggling with dead things, sterile labour full of lies and trickery.

  They had arrived at Mother Hentjen’s. Teltscher clambered down first from the lorry. Esch shouted after him: “Here! Who’s to unload this stuff? Supervising and spying round, that suits you all right, but when it comes to real work you make yourself scarce.” “I’m hungry,” Teltscher retorted simply and pushed open the restaurant door. No use arguing with a Jew; Esch shrugged his shoulders and followed him. And to disclaim any responsibility for this sort of customer he said jestingly: “I’ve brought you a fine customer this time, Mother Hentjen, well, I couldn’t find anything better at the moment.” But suddenly everything seemed not to matter: Teltscher might sit in Martin’s place, and Martin in Nentwig’s; one could not make head or tail of it, and yet somewhere it was all as it should be. Somewhere it was not a matter merely involving human beings, for human beings were all the same and nothing was changed if one of them melted into another, or one of them sat in another’s place—no, the world was not ordered according to good and evil men, but according to good and evil forces of some kind. He looked furiously at Teltscher, who was performing conjuring tricks with his knife and fork, and now announced that he would extract a knife from Mother Hentjen’s bodice. She started back with a shriek, but already Teltscher was holding up the knife between his thumb and first finger: “Mother Hentjen, Mother Hentjen, fancy you carrying things like that about in your bodice!” Then he proposed to hypnotize her and she became petrified at the mere suggestion. That was past the limit, and Esch let fly at Teltscher: “You should be locked up.” “That’s a new trick,” said Teltscher. Esch growled: “Hypnotism is against the law.” “An interesting chap,” said Teltscher, jerking his chin towards Esch, and by this gesture inviting Frau Hentjen also to find the interesting chap a source of amusement; but she was still petrified with fear and mechanically fingered her coiffure. Esch silently digested the success of his intervention to rescue Mother Hentjen, and was satisfied. Yes, he had let one of them go, that man Nentwig, but it wouldn’t happen a second time; even if it wasn’t a matter of the individual, and even if people melted into one another, so that one fellow couldn’t be told from the next; the wrong done existed apart from the doer, and it was the wrong alone that had to be expiated.

  When later he accompanied Teltscher to the Alhambra he felt light-hearted. He had acquired a new kind of knowledge. And he almost felt sorry for Teltscher. And also for Bertrand. And even for Nentwig.

  He had now managed at last to extort from Gernerth a guarantee of a hundred marks a month from the receipts in consideration of his collaboration—what would he have had to live on otherwise?—but the very first evening brought him in no less than seven marks. If that continued his revenue for the month would be doubled. Frau Hentjen had steadfastly refused to attend the opening performance, and next day at lunch-time Esch told her excitedly of its success. When he reached the most interesting, one might almost say the crucial, point of his narrative, and told how Teltscher had ripped up one of the girls’ tights and only loosely tacked it together again, so that during the wrestling it could not help bursting at a certain prominent protuberance, and went on to say that this incident would be repeated evening after evening; while at the very memory of it he still found himself so overcome by laughter that repeatedly he had to help out his words with dumb show, suddenly Frau Hentjen got up and said she had had enough. It was scandalous that a man whom she had taken to be a decent fellow, a man who once had followed a respectable occupation, should sink so low. She withdrew into the kitchen.

  Quite taken aback, Esch remained where he was and dried his eyes, still wet with laughter. In one corner of his heart he had a feeling of guilt, and in that corner he admitted that Mother Hentjen was right; the bursting tights on the stage were vaguely akin to the knives which no longer ought to be thrown there; yet Mother Hentjen certainly did not have the faintest suspicion of this, and her anger was really incomprehensible. He had a feeling of respect for her, he had no wish to swear at her as he did at that fool Lohberg, yet she would certainly have got on better with Lohberg, for as a matter of fact he wasn’t so refined as Lohberg. He contemplated the portrait of Herr Hentjen over the mantelpiece to see whether it had any resemblance to Lohberg, and when he had looked long enough at the features of the late restaurant-keeper they did actually melt into those of the Mannheim tobacconist. Yes, wherever one looked it seemed that one figure melted into another and that one could not even distinguish the living from the dead. Nobody was what he thought he was; a man imagined he was a chap with his feet planted firmly on the earth, pocketing his seven marks a night and going wherever he pleased; and in reality he was just sometimes in one place, and sometimes in another, and even when he made a sacrifice it was not himself who made it. An irresistible desire overcame him to produce some proof that this was not so and that it could not be so, and even if it was impossible to prove it to anybody else he was resolved to show that woman in there that he wasn’t to be confused either with Herr Lohberg or with Herr Hentjen. Without further ado he went through to the kitchen and said to Frau Hentjen that she mustn’t forget the wine auction at Saint-Goar next Friday. “You’ll get plenty to keep you company without me,” responded Frau Hentjen from the hearth. Her opposition exasperated him. What did this woman want from him? Must he only say things to her that she herself prescribed and wanted to hear? He could not help thinking of the orchestrion, which anybody could set going. And yet she couldn’t stand the orchestrion. If the kitchenmaid hadn’t been there, for two pins he would simply have fallen on her as she stood there by the hearth, to convince her of his existence. So he simply said: “I’ve arranged everything; we take the train to Bacharach, then the steamer to Saint-Goar. We’ll arrive there about eleven o’clock in time for the auction. In the afternoon we can walk up to the Lorelei.” She stiffened a little under the firmness of his decision, yet she tried to give her reply a mocking inflection: “Great plans, Herr Esch.” Esch was now sure of himself. “Only a beginning, Mother Hentjen: by the end of next week I expect to have made a hundred marks.” Whistling to himself he left the kitchen.

  In the restaurant he looked again through the newspapers he had brought with him and marked in red pencil the notices of the opening performance. When he found no word of it in The People’s Guardian he felt irritated. Yes, they could let a comrade and friend of theirs who had sacrificed himself lie in prison. But they couldn’t put in a measly little report of the wrestling performance. Here, too, things must be set in order. He felt within him the strength required for it and the faith that he would succeed in mastering and resolving the chaos in which everything was so painfully entangled, in which friend and foe, sullen and yet resigned, were so inextricably involved.

  As he was walking through the theatre during the interval he suddenly caught sight of Nentwig, and he started so violently that it brought to his mind a phrase, “struck to the heart.” Nentwig was sitting with four other men at a table, and one of the wrestlers, a bath-robe flung over her tights, was sitting with them. The bath-robe gaped and Nentwig was occupied in widening the opening by adroit movements of his pudgy hands. Esch walked past with his head averted, but the girl called out to him, so that he had to turn round. “Hallo, Herr Esch, what are you doing here?” he heard Nentwig’s voice. Esch hesitated: then he said briefly: “ ’Eveni
ng.” Nentwig did not feel the rebuff, but lifted his glass to him, while the girl said: “You can have my chair, Herr Esch. I must go back to the stage now.” Nentwig, who had been drinking, held Esch’s hand firmly clasped, and while he poured out a glass of wine for him looked up at him with a sentimental, vinous gaze. “No, fancy meeting like this, it’s quite an unexpected pleasure.” Esch said that he too was needed on the stage, and Nentwig, still holding his hand, gurgled with laughter: “Aha! going to see the ladies behind the scenes. I’ll come too, I’ll come too.” Esch tried to make Nentwig understand that he was here on business. At last Nentwig grasped it: “Oh? So you’re employed here? A good post?” Esch’s vanity would not allow him to admit this. No, he wasn’t employed here; he was a partner in the concern. “Think of that, think of that,” said Nentwig in astonishment; “a good business, a nice little business, obviously a nice little business”—he looked round at the well-packed hall—“and he forgets his good old friend Nentwig, who would always be glad to share in a thing like that.” He became quite alert: “Who caters for the wine, Esch?” Esch explained that he had nothing to do with the catering; the proprietor looked after that. “Hm, but all the rest”—Nentwig made a grand comprehensive gesture embracing the hall and the stage—“you’re concerned in all that? Come, drink a glass of wine anyway,” and Esch could not avoid clinking glasses with Nentwig, and must shake hands with Nentwig’s companions too, and drink to them. In spite of the cunning with which Nentwig had cornered him he could not summon up the hate he ought to have felt against Nentwig. He tried to bring to his mind again the sins of the head clerk; he did not succeed; there had been something fishy in the balance sheet, something very fishy, and Esch sat up a little straighter so as to keep his eye on the one policeman in the hall. But Nentwig’s guilt had grown so strangely shadowy and contourless that Esch became aware at once of the senselessness of his intentions, and somewhat awkwardly and a little ashamed of himself he put out his hand for his wine-glass. Meanwhile Nentwig gazed with swimming eyes at his good old book-keeper, and it seemed to Esch as if along with those swimming eyes the whole plump form of Nentwig was dissolving into indeterminacy. This vinegar faker had treacherously accused him of erroneous book-keeping, had tried to deprive him of his livelihood and his existence, and would always go on conspiring against him. Yet one could hardly feel angry with him now. From the inextricable coil of happenings an arm projected, an arm with a threatening dagger in its hand, but if one were to discover that it was Nentwig’s arm the whole thing would turn into a stupid and almost sordid episode. Death dealt by the hand of a Nentwig could scarcely even be called murder, and a sentence pronounced over Nentwig would be nothing but the shabbiest form of revenge for a mistake in book-keeping that was not a mistake at all. No, there was little point in handing over a head clerk to justice, for it was not a matter of striking down a hand, even if that hand held the threatening dagger, it was a matter of striking a blow at the whole thing, or at least at the head of the offence. Something inside Esch told him: “A man who sacrifices himself must be decent,” and he decided to take no further notice of Nentwig. The fat little man had again sunk back into his drunken doze, and when the strains of The Gladiators’ March began, to which the wrestlers, under Teltscher’s direction, now came marching on to the stage, Nentwig did not notice that Esch had disappeared.

  When Esch walked into the manager’s office Gernerth was sitting with a glass of beer before him and lamenting: “A fine life this, a fine life!… ” Oppenheimer was toddling up and down wagging his head, indeed his whole body wagged: “Can’t see what there is to upset you so much.” Gernerth’s notebook was lying before him: “The taxes simply eat everything up. Why are we toiling and slaving here? To pay the taxes!” They could hear the resounding smack of sweating women’s bodies coming to grips on the stage, and Esch felt indignant that this man sitting here should talk of toiling and slaving, merely because he was making calculations in a notebook. Gernerth went on with his lament: “The children must go away for a holiday; that costs money … where am I to get it?” Herr Oppenheimer evinced sympathy: “Children are a blessing and children are a trial; don’t you worry too much, it’ll come all right.” Esch felt sorry for Gernerth, a good fellow, Gernerth; all the same the affairs of the world became confused again when you reflected that out there on the stage a pair of tights must presently burst so that Gernerth’s children might go away for a holiday. Somewhere or other there was cause for Mother Hentjen’s disgust at the whole business, though not where she imagined it to be. Esch himself could not tell where it lay; perhaps it was simply the muddle and confusion that filled him with disgust and rage. He went out; in the wings some of the wrestlers were standing about, their bodies smelling of sweat; to clear a passage for himself Esch seized them from behind by the thick arms or by the breasts, hugging them tightly, until one or two began to laugh wantonly. Then he stepped on to the stage and took his place as clerk at the so-called jury bench. Teltscher, the referee’s whistle between his teeth, was lying on the floor peering sharply under the arched body of one girl, who was resisting the efforts of another to flatten her out, efforts ostensibly great, but only ostensibly, of course, for the girl underneath was the German representative who was bound to free herself forthwith by a patriotic upward heave from ignominious captivity. And although Esch knew by heart this prearranged farce he experienced a feeling of relief when the almost beaten wrestler got on to her feet again: and yet he was filled with indignant pity for her opponent when Irmentraud Kroff now sprang upon her and, amid the patriotic acclamations of the audience, pressed the shoulders of the enemy against the mat.

  When Frau Hentjen got up the dawn was just breaking. She opened the window to see how the day promised. The sky arched clear and cloudless over the dark, grey yard, which lay below her in motionless silence, a little rectangle within dark walls. The clean washtubs from last washing day were still standing down there. A cool wind, imprisoned between the walls, smelt of the city. She trailed up to the kitchenmaid’s room and knocked at the door; she didn’t intend to leave without her breakfast; on the top of everything else that would be the last straw. Then she carefully began her toilet and drew on the brown-silk dress. When Esch called for her she was sitting morosely at her morning coffee in the restaurant. She said morosely: “Let’s go,” but at the house door it occurred to her that Esch too might want some coffee; it was got for him hastily in the kitchen, and he drank it standing. The sun was already up, but the bright strips of sunshine that lay on the cobbles between the long shadows of the house walls did not improve the temper of either. Esch merely announced curtly and abruptly: “I’ll get the tickets,” and then: “Platform five.” In the carriage they sat side by side in silence; but when they reached Bonn he leaned out, inquired whether there were any fresh rolls to be had, and bought her one. She ate it morosely and resentfully. After Coblenz, when the passengers as usual crowded to the window to admire the Rhineland scenery, Frau Hentjen too felt moved to follow their example. But Esch did not budge from his place; he knew the neighbourhood so well that he was sick of it, and besides he had not proposed to indicate the beauties of nature to Frau Hentjen until they were on the steamer. Now he felt annoyed at her for anticipating this pleasure and for listening to the edifying explanations of the other people in the compartment. So every tunnel that interrupted the view was a salve to his ill humour, and his irritation mounted so high that at Ober-Wesel he peremptorily called her away from the window: “I had a job myself once in Ober-Wesel.” Frau Hentjen looked out; there was nothing of interest to be seen in the station. She replied politely: “Yes, you’ve been in lots of places.” Esch was not yet finished: “A wretched job it was, I stuck it out all the same for a few months on account of a girl in the place … Hulda, her name was.” Then he could just get out and look for her, was Frau Hentjen’s furious rejoinder, he needn’t trouble himself on her account. But presently they arrived at Bacharach, and for the first time in his life Esch exper
ienced the helpless feeling which descends on the pleasure-tripper who, standing in a railway station, has a vacant hour in front of him. According to his programme they should have had a lunch on the boat, but simply to cover his embarrassment he now suggested that they should go to a restaurant that he knew. But as they were walking through the narrow streets of the town which lay so quiet and peaceful in the clear morning light, suddenly in front of one of the timbered houses Mother Hentjen exclaimed: “That’s where I would like to live, that would be my ideal.” Perhaps it was the flowers in the window-boxes that touched her, perhaps it was simply the feeling of release that often comes over people when they are on unfamiliar ground, or perhaps her bad temper had simply exhausted itself—in any case the world had become brighter; at peace with each other they gazed at everything, climbed up as far as the ruins of the church, of which they could not make very much, hurried too soon to the landing-stage for fear of missing the boat, and did not mind in the least when they found that they must wait for half-an-hour.