JOSEPH KERKHOVENS THIRD

EXISTENCE

Other Books by Jacob Wassermann

TH E JEWS O F ZIR N D O R F

JOSE PH K E R K H O V E N S
T H I R D E X IST EN C E

FABER: OR T H E L O S T YEARS

(2nd Impression)

A N ov el

T H E TR IU M PH O F YO U T H

(3rd Impression)

by

TH E W O R L D S IL L U S IO N
(2nd Impression)

JACOB W A S S E R M A N N

T H E M A U R IZIU S CASE
E T Z E L A N D E R G A ST
W O R L D S ENDS

Translated from the German by

W EDLOCK
(2nd Impression)

M Y L IF E AS GERM AN AN D JEW

EDEN

and C E D A R P A U L

(Members of the Translators' Guild)

LONDON
GEORGE ALLEN

& U N W IN L T D

M USEUM STR EET

T h e G erm an o rig in a l was fir s t p u b lish ed in 1934

FIRST

PUBLISHED

IN

GREAT

BRITAIN

A l l rights reserved
PRINTED
UNWIN

IN

GREAT

BROTHERS

BRITAIN

LTD.,

BY

WOKING

1 93 4

T R A N S L A T O R S PREFACE
E a r l y in January, when we were busily engaged upon the trans
lation of Joseph Kerkhovens Third Existence, which was (as events
turned out) to be Jacob Wassermanns last work, the news
reached us of his sudden death from heart failure on New Years
morning 1934. T h e tidings came as a considerable shock to us
(though we had never met the man): partly because so charming
a character breathes through this quasi-autobiographical novel,
since Wassermann, to those who can read between the lines,
is obviously himself Kerkhoven and in part Herzog; but
also because a year and a half earlier we had translated the same
authors Bula Matari, II. M . Stanley, Explorer, published by
Cassell & Company, Limited. W e had had a good deal of corre
spondence with the author about certain details of that remarkable
work, a correspondence which had privileged us to number
ourselves among his friends. Another great adventurer and
explorer had attracted Wassermanns pen, for he had written
of Columbus. But it is as a novelist that Wassermann has chiefly
become famous; and many, though by no means all of his novels
have been translated into English, and published in London
by Messrs. George Allen & Unwin, Limited. Arnold Bennett
called him the biggest of modern German novelists. O f The
Worlds Illusion, a reviewer declared that it was One of the
greatest works of fiction of this or any other century. In the
preface to The Triumph of Youth, a mediaeval fantasia, Emil
Ludwig wrote: I consider Jacob Wassermann to be one of the
greatest authors of our time. T h e Bookman, which is not
usually lavish of praise, wrote of Wedlock: It is a magnificent
achievement. Faber or The Lost Years is a notable work. Notable,
too, is the volume of short stories entitled Worlds' Ends, translated
by Lewis Galantiere.
Born in the Bavarian industrial town of Fiirth in 1873, the
son of a Jewish trader in a small way of business, Wassermann
had considerable difficulty in developing his talent for writing,

JOSEPH

K E R K H O V E N S

THIRD

EXISTENCE

and the first book to bring him fame was a story of Jewish life
entitled The Jews of Zirndorf, recently translated by Cyrus
Brooks. Yes, Wassermann was of Jewish extraction, though he
did not look like a Jew (one would rather have regarded him
as a Spaniard, predominantly of the Mediterranean type a
type which is fairly common in Franconia), and his writings
were by no means confined to Jewish themes. Throughout his
career ran the tragedy by which the lives of so many German
Jews are devastated, the tragedy of a profound spiritual conflict
between his Jewish origin and his German nationality. That
conflict deepened during the last years of his life and brought
increasing sadness owing to circumstances which are familiar
to us all. Formerly a member of the Prussian Academy of Art,
Wassermann was, with other Jewish savants, deprived of that
distinction by the present German government. He was included
among the many distinguished authors in the First Official
Black-List for Prussia, the list published last spring of writers
whose works were banned from German public libraries.
In M y Life as German and Jew, Wassermann has given a
detailed account of the difficulties that beset those who are
brought up as Germans, feel as Germans, but are ostracised
from German life because they have Semitic instead of
Nordic blood in their veins although perhaps no race on
the European continent is more of a hotch-potch than that which
is called the German. M y Life as German and Jew was written
more than a decade ago; but the recent English translation
contains a concluding chapter entitled Twelve Years Later.
T h e work is free from bitterness, but not free from pain. Not
even in the concluding chapter is any specific mention made
of the official persecution of the Jews which has disgraced the
Hitlerite regime.
Enough of this painful topic. Let us return to Joseph Kerk
hovens Third Existence, which is a typically German book, and
in which none o f the characters are ostensibly Jews. It is the
third volume of a trilogy or saga, the two first volumes of the
series having been published in English as The Maurizius Case

TRANSLATORS'

PREFACE

and Etzel Andergast. Though a sequel, it can be read as a novel

by itself, sufficient indications being given to link it on to the
story of Joseph Kerkhoven, a neurologist and psychologist, and
his wife Marie, two of the leading characters in the second
volume of the sequence. Their lives become intertwined with
that of the famous novelist Alexander Herzog and his second
wife Bettina (Herzog himself, in an interlude, recounts the story
of his first and unhappy marriage). These four main characters
are brought together at the close in Kerkhovens sanatorium
beside the Lake of Constance, where the third existence is
fulfilled. What are these three existences ? The first is described
in Etzel Andergast, when Kerkhoven had a very close friendship
with a man named Johann Irlen, and ended with a period of
apraxia which occurred during the days following Irlens death.
T h e second existence continues through Etzel Andergast and
through the first part of the present volume. T h e third exis
tence, and the philosophy that develops during it (round which
the discussions at the sanatorium centre) begin with Kerkhovens
knowledge that his death is imminent.
In part Joseph Kerkhovens Third Existence is devoted to a
study of the illusions many of which wreck our lives, but some
of which are perhaps necessary to them. Sigmund Freud, it will
be remembered, writes of religion under the fierce title The
Future of an Illusion. Jung, like a good many other scientists,
believes that religion is an illusion, but also a necessity to the
bulk of mankind, and therefore to be encouraged. WassermannKerkhoven, under the shadow of imminent death, goes farther.
He returns to religion (not to Christianity) as something that
is real and true. A rt, it has been well said, was given to us
that we might not be slain by truth. But for WassermannKerkhoven naked truth, is not really true it is to many a
Gorgons Head, and must be veiled in the higher truth of
religion. T o which Wassermann even adds a mystical belief
in immortality. He goes back, explicitly, to a philosophy in
which modern science is affiliated to the religious mysticism of
six hundred years ago, the days of Eckhart, Tauler, and the

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JOSEPH

KERKH O VEN S

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Friends of G od; he discloses a path full of woes, leading,

through death, from earthly love to divine.
In a lecture given by the dying man in defiance of medical
advice, Humanitat und das Problem des Glaubens, the author
develops this creed along systematical lines, and the lecture will
be found in S. Fischers D ie neue Rundschau for February
J934- (Fischers publication of this lecture given in Holland by
Wassermann, is an interesting indication that the Hitlerites are
relaxing, in some measure, the strictness of their ban upon every
manifestation of Semitic thought). English readers who would
like to read the statement of an almost identical scientific credo
by a British scientist will find it in Julian Huxleys Essays of
a Biologist (London, Chatto & Windus, 1923); though Huxley,
while trying to revivify the idea of God, has not much to say
about immortality.
Julian Huxley has not much to say about immortality, for
a biologist unless he leans upon revelation knows nothing
of immortality except that of unicellular organisms and the
germplasm. T h e individual metazoon is mortal. But Jacob
Wassermann, as a mystic and an imaginative writer, transcends
biological limitations. T h e First Book of the novel is named
Syneidesis, a rather vague term in the Greek, meaning both
consciousness and conscience. Wassermann uses it in a
sense at once wider and more precise, writing of it as the law
of biological consciousness, of syneidesis, with a meaning which
may in part denote the phase in evolution wherein the Simian
became man through self-awareness, a process followed by
awareness of death and a craving for immortality. Later, how
ever, the author expands this concept of syneidesis as follows,
in a way which has affiliations with Samuel Butler, Bernard
Shaw, and Bergson: The life-force; the vital impetus; the
god-body; the god-brain, the divine substance; and, in ampli
fying counterpart thereto, the unknown impulse in mans spiritual
life, that something which resembles a pulsating heart, the
substance of the vital programme . . . the sustainer of syneidesis;
the infallible, primary, ineradicable consciousness of protoplasm

TRANSLATORS

PREFACE

11

and the cell-State. Still later, in Book Three, of which the

sub-title is The World of Faith, the doctrine blossoms, during
the conversations at Seeblick, into a specific (but still mystical)
conviction of personal immortality. The mortal puts on immor
tality by being transformed into" G od. This is the dying
Kerkhovens, the dying Wassermanns, confession of faith. Love
is not a state of knowledge or cognition; that is illusion. Love
is a condition of divine obscurity, and only amid obscurity does
faith burgeon.
Thus as a thinker Jacob Wassermann wobbled like most
of us, and to an extent which makes it difficult to classify him.
He was prophet and seer more than thinker, one of those whom
(in On the Rocks) Bernard Shaw describes as ghosts from the
future, speaking back into our distracted epoch, and trying to
give it a lead. In Joseph Kerkhoven's Third Existence are descrip
tions of two interlacing worlds, one, a world of finite doubt and
torment, the other a world of infinite felicity and trust. Wasser
mann, being both Herzog and Kerkhoven, knew both worlds
from personal experience. Through all the episodes of the great
trilogy, we sense the heavy, feverish, and terror-stricken atmo
sphere of earthbound spirits; a frenzy, an agony, a perplexity,
and a supplication. But in Kerkhoven himself, after the third
existence has begun, there develops a wonderful serenity of
mind which may be a message from days to come, though
couched in the terminology of long-past centuries. Realising that
death is imminent, Kerkhoven rests, and awakes refreshed
because he is sure of himself, in harmony with himself, a creature
outside of time and space, at peace with his destiny. In the
language of those days long past, you may call it, if you like
to talk theistically, the peace of God, which passeth all under
standing. Freudians may say that, subconsciously, Wassermann
knew this to be one more illusion, and that was why he made
Alexander Herzog mislay the manuscript of Joseph Kerk
hovens great work on Illusion!
It will be seen that Joseph Kerkhovens Third Existence is
typically a philosophical novel ; but this preface would fail

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of its purpose if it allowed so much talk about philosophy to

scare readers away from the novel. T h e book is full of character
and incident, and is entirely readable, like all the late authors
writings. Although, even as Joseph Kerkhoven knew his death
to be close at hand, so probably did Jacob Wassermann, one
feels that another volume was needed and intended to complete
the series; a volume in which Etzel Andergast would reappear
upon the stage, but that book was destined to remain unwritten.
In any case, Joseph Kerkhovens Third Existence is a worthy
crown to the great novelists career, and cannot fail to have
the success it deserves. For, whether we accept Wassermanns
Taulerian mysticism or not, we are all of us, nowadays, suffering
in an age that has lost its faith not only in God; but in man,
as a member of a society that has failed to develop a collective
intelligence and a collective will for order commensurate with
its complexities. I f Kerkhovens religious faith will help us to
develop that collective intelligence and collective will without
which man will perish, then, indeed, it is better that the Gorgons
Head should be veiled.
Tim e will show, and, meanwhile, Jacob Wassermanns last
novel is a profoundly interesting contribution to a worldwide
problem.
EDEN AN D CED AR PAU L
PR O V E N CE ,

April

19 3 4

CONTENTS
B O O K ONE

Syneidesis
PAGE 17

BO O K TW O

Alexander and Bettina

PAGE 177

BOOK THREE

Joseph and Marie

or the World of Faith
PAGE 479

BOOK

ONE

Syneidesis

SYNEIDESIS
i

O ne day in the early autumn of the year 1929, Joseph Kerkhoven

was overwhelmed by the discovery that his wife, whom he

fondly loved, and his young friend and pupil Etzel Andergast,
whom he had trusted without reserve, were on intimate terms.
The two persons dearest to him in the world had betrayed him,
and the continuance of his ordinary life became inconceivable.
The deadliest stroke was the unexpected onslaught on his own
person, when for years he had deemed himself impregnable to
the bludgeonings of fate. Daily subjected to unspeakable hard
ships, he had gradually learned to forget self; and it had never
occurred to him that a crushing blow could be dealt him.
Destiny was for him a general term. He had acquired a firm
and (as he now learned) an illusory conviction that private
misfortune, personal suffering, individual pain, could not touch
him. Working for others, and wholly devoted to their service,
the man, Kerkhoven, had slipped from his mind so completely
that he was now moved only by the outward mechanisms of life.
Accustomed to pull the strings of other puppets, he no longer
remembered what it was like to be thrust under the wheels of
the Car of Juggernaut. At last he was to be reminded of the
difference between the wound a surgeon has to treat for another,
and the wound which is made in ones own quivering flesh.
2

Incredible as the words may sound, it was true that only in the
moment of catastrophe did it dawn upon him that the ties
between himself and his wife were his very heart-strings. He
felt that Marie and his relationship to her were elements of his
pre-natal being, and that he had lived with her for years without
becoming aware of the fact. Is not this a common oversight,
and should a man feel guilty because he has been guilty of it?
W e have to accommodate ourselves to circumstances, and to

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JOSEPH

K E R K H O V E N S

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regard much of what happens as determined by our own

peculiarities.
A ll the same, things might have gone badly with him had he
been alone during the first days of the shock. Not that he would
have laid violent hands upon himself. His self-preservative
instinct and his talent for the appraisal of values would have
prevented suicide. There would, however, have been grave risk
of mental disintegration, of nervous decay. But the questions,
How shall I live henceforward? How can one live down such
a betrayal, so complete a shattering of confidence? led him
back to Marie. It was as if, when out walking, one misses a
companion, and turns eagerly to look for him, even though one
is aware he has deliberately led one into a trap. Besides,
Kerkhoven was a doctor of medicine, and he felt it incumbent
on him to help others without thought of self. It was plain that
Maries spirit was broken.
3

He did not wish to pass judgment; he wanted to know. He was

eager to learn how and when his wife and his friend had come
to stray from the path. This notion that Marie and Etzel had
gone astray throws a strong light upon the condition of a ^ a n
who, in ordinary circumstances, was not prone to think in terms
of moral reprobation. It was the beginning of a momentous
internal conflict. As for Marie, emotionally and spiritually
distraught, she found alleviation and a possibility of requital in
the avowals he impetuously demanded.
She must make a clean breast of it, for otherwise she would
be a prey to shame, bitterness, remorse, and despair. T o yearning,
also, which would be worst of all; to a hopeless longing for the
man who had forsaken her, and had fled to an undiscovered
bourne. It was not to Joseph as her husband that she now
unbosomed herself with the frankness of a penitent at the
confessional; but to Joseph as her friend, as the only person
able to understand what had happened. She asked this under
standing of him with the naivety characteristic of persons stricken
to the soul; begging him not to arraign her, but to put himself

SYNEIDESIS

and his suffering out of consideration; making it clear to him

that she looked up to him, and could speak frankly to him about
her sorrows. She was to blame, intolerably to blame; but she
would only be able to acknowledge her fault, if he did not account
her blameworthy.
This was no longer the Marie whom he knew, or had believed
himself to know. She was a woman who had had a unique and
irrevocable sensual experience, and one she would not repudiate.
She was willing to sacrifice her person. Do with me as you
w ill, she seemed to say. Drive me away from you; deprive
me of my children; call me a cheat and a liar. These things do
not matter; but I cling to my recent experience.
Kerkhoven was confronted with an enigma. He fancied he
had a faculty for insight into the hidden depths of the mind,
but he could not fathom what was going on in his wifes. No
doubt his perplexity was the outcome of the loving ties between
them, of the invisible navel-string that united the pair. She has
plunged into abysses where I cannot reach her, he reflected.
He ceased to note, or forgot, his own crashing fall; for it was
a consolation to him to figure himself as one who bends forward
in the attempt to rescue another. She lent herself to this notion,
lifting imploring hands to him, begging for help. But, so far, he
lacked power to raise her up. He wanted to know. First he must
know everything. Full knowledge would bring deliverance.
4

Even now, however, Marie would make no acknowledgment of

sin.
Had he never noticed how lonely she was in her married life ?
How she lacked companionship? How she had moved along
close to him, after him, round him continually hoping that he
would turn to her once more? How from month to month and
from year to year she had unceasingly tried to make the best of
her loneliness; and how the unsatisfied need had, by degrees,
preyed upon her spirits and aroused a tumult in her mind?
Had he never suspected? What had he been doing, then; of

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JOSEPH

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what had he been thinking? A thousand times she had asked

herself what he could be about; had blamed herself for being
selfish and exacting; had reminded herself of the great tasks he
was called upon to fulfil, of the profession which monopolised
his time and his energies, until he had become nothing more
than a name and a function, a mere lodger in his own house,
one whose bed had to be made and for whom meals had to be
provided at stated intervals; one who kept doors and windows
open for the free admittance o f lives, even the most valueless;
all, excepting the life of the person who was pining away by his
side. How had this been possible?
Kerkhoven could not deny that her description of what had
taken place was accurate. He had been too sure of her! The
upshot of such overweening confidence had been that Marie
was reduced to being nothing more than part of the furniture
of his home; a part that happened to be alive, indeed, but could
be relied upon to keep its place in the establishment without any
trouble being taken. T h e accusation was justified. It grew plain
to him that in every genuinely human alliance the deadly sin is
for either o f the partners to rest content with the certainty that
all is well. Still, he could plead extenuating circumstances. His
life had been strenuous, overfilled with duties and claimsMsvents
had proved too much for him both as husband and as father.
His crowning mistake had been a belief that Marie approved
and supported him in his behaviour. He had made the great
blunder of fancying her willing to renounce a life and a happiness
that should be peculiarly her own.
5

So much for the counter-charge. Bitter enough forsooth, in spite

o f its being phrased delicately. Y et what was the good of phrasing
an exculpation delicately when nevertheless every word shouted
the fact: you have betrayed me? T h is is what cut Marie to the
quick. If it were true that she had acted the traitor, how could
she hope to expiate the fault? No, it was not true. U p to the last
she had with all her strength fought against her passionate desire.

SYNEIDESIS

21

Joseph, if you only knew! You would not then speak of

betrayal.
What should I know?
It has nothing to do with you or with me. Nothing to do
with my love for you.
All very pretty, to be sure. Perhaps in retrospect you honestly
think so.
You are mistaken. Both for myself and for him you were
always a kind of guardian angel, from the very first, all the
time.
I know. I know. He was pleased to set me up as a divinity
so as to have an excuse for yielding to his human frailty, just as
a pious burglar will kneel down and offer up a prayer before
breaking into a house. But you, Marie, you?
She did not answer at once. What he said seemed to her
crazy, seemed inconsistent with his character and his outlook
on life. She could only look at him in astonishment. Then,
tentatively, she reminded him of the many times she had waited
for his home-coming, how she had signed to him and he had
not seen, how she had called to him and he had not heard.
Not merely had he not heard, but he had actually sent Etzel
to replace him.
Have you forgotten? Have you forgotten the letter wherein
I told you I could no longer bear my solitude, that I wanted
you, my husband, at my side, the man fate had given me and
not the doctor with his celebrity and his work and his short
quarter-hour visits snatched from higher occupations, not the
famous physician with his head among the clouds and his eyes
staring into the illimitable spaces o f the universe? I wanted my
man, the whole of him, with his eyes, his skin, his hair, his
heart, and his breath. Joseph, Joseph, did I not make my meaning
plain? Could you not read between the lines of that letter that
my heart was torn, that my arms were outstretched, aching to
hold you, to press you to me? That I was athirst, that I was
consumed with longing? Forgive me. This sounds so theatrical
when it is actually spoken; and yet that is exactly how I ve been

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JOSEPH

KERKH O VEN S

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EXISTENCE

feeling. A crisis, if you like. And what have you done? Not
budged. So when the youngster brought me your message
he . . . What did you suppose? That hed change the current
o f my thoughts? Was it not natural in the circumstances that I
should feel you wanted to be quit of me and my love? Did you
not force me into the path I followed? Was it a crime to fancy
that you had set your heart on our doing what neither he nor
I had ventured to think of doing?
Her body trembled. Her glibness of tongue was decidedly
morbid. She was at one and the same time fighting for her
husband and for herself. W ith her face supported between her
hands, she gazed at him distraught. Kerkhoven endeavoured to
loosen the convulsive grip of her fingers upon her cheeks. A t last
he managed to say:
. I thought . . . the children. . . . After all, you are their
mother. I ve always looked upon you as a true mother to
them. . . .
Marie sobbed convulsively, and with a wry smile returned to
the charge.
The fact of being a mother does not compensate for every
thing. Motherhood may very well turn out to be a dudgeon into
which one thrusts away the woman and wife, to put her out of
harms way. You recognise that as clearly as I do. One can be
a mother and housekeeper and mistress of the home, or anything
else you like, but you cannot expect a woman of thirty-six to
live as though she were a widow while her husband dwells under
the same roof and is a man of flesh and blood. Surely you
understand that much?
He understood only too well, although he had never expected
to hear her speak so frankly about such matters. Kerkhoven was
taken aback. What would have been the good of saying: M y
road to join you has been strewn with a hundred sufferers begging
for help and relief; the clamour these poor wretches raised
stifled the sound of your voice. Had there been a thousand or a
million supplicants, still that would not have altered the fact
that here and now, in my very presence, is a creature, utterly

SYNEIDESIS

23

broken, a woman who has called to me in vain, and who, for me,
weighs heavier in the balances of fate than the entire universe
put together.

6
He felt that in the present crisis it was incumbent upon him to
devote as much o f his time as was practicable to Marie.
Kerkhoven cried off his lectures, declaring that he was too ill to
deliver them; refused to allow his work to encroach upon his
private life; was loth to answer telegrams and telephone calls.
In a word, what a few weeks earlier appeared impossible of
attainment came about quite naturally. Nobody and nothing
afforded him the slightest interest save Marie. I f an urgent
request for his services came from Berlin, he would return
immediately the consultation was over.
From morning till night he was, whenever possible, at M aries
side. Should he leave the room for a moment, she would have
an attack of giddiness, would suffer from nausea and shivering
fits; indeed the rigor was at times so violent that her teeth
chattered like pebbles in a box, and she would be seized with
violent colic. Hands uplifted, she implored him not to leave her
alone. She followed him into his study, his bedroom, or the
garden, while her head spun like a top. I f he persuaded her to
go to bed, she would obey as soon as he promised to stay by
her. Even at night she refused to be alone. She had his bed
brought into her room and placed beside hers. Hardly could she
bear to take her eyes off him. It seemed as if she dared not let
him out of her sight. Only if she constantly kept him in view,
could she feel assured that he did nothing, thought nothing, felt
nothing that would separate him from her. What she dreaded
most was his private reflections.
She could not sleep without sedatives. T h e fear of fears was
awakening in the morning, for with awakening came fear. Fear
is a word that drops lightly from the tongue though few realise
what it means. T o depict it one needs to employ the gaudiest
colours. Toads seemed to crawl over her body, the skin exuded
a slimy moisture, the brain was pressed within iron bands, the

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JOSEPH

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heart beat wildly like that of a hunted beast, the stomach was
an alien monster tortured with cramps, light was a glare, smelling
and tasting became horrible, ones children with their endearing
ways and their questions put one on the rack, and if a visitors
foot kicked accidentally against the bed-post one could scream
with the agony of it.
Kerkhoven knew what fear meant. He had made a special
study of it in its every manifestation, and had found a name for
its many grades and aspects. But for all his experience of this
disease, in the case before him he was at fault. He was forced
to recognise something which he did not wish consciously to
accept and yet had to accept, namely: sensual ties and com
plications, abysses of sensual disintegration to which the exhausted
nerves bore witness, for in them memory persisted as the memory
of a life that has ceased persists in an excised heart which is
artificially induced to beat upon the experimenters table. The
pendulum swung to the other side; the twitchings of ardour
continued in the cold; a shudder occurred as a metamorphosis
of what once was pleasure. Such medical analyses proved highly
detrimental to him, for through them he was goaded into an
attitude of self-martyrdom. Kerkhoven became obsessed with the
desire to inflict a mortal injury upon the being whc,.had held
Marie in his arms. M urder alone could free him, and restore
his peace of mind. A bestial impulse, a despicable inclination no
doubt; but how was he to react against this inner urge? It was
like a voracious appetite, rendering him frenzied because of his
incapacity to overcome it. He was a creature to be pitied.
Marie was ready to tell him all he wanted to know, for this
was an infallible way of keeping him by her side; and so long
as he was there, fear was held at bay. She was, therefore,
reconciled to furnishing suitable answers to his unending
questions, although the pain of talking over her experience was
excruciating. Nevertheless, she felt instinctively that he did not
wish to be spared and, consequently, she did not spare him.
Even suffering procures a simulated pleasure. When she had
sufficiently lashed herself with words, her dreams and her

SYNEIDESIS

25

longings would stray into the domain of her lost happiness, of

which she would proceed to speak with content and even with
intoxication her confused narration rising and falling like the
curve on a temperature chart. A t one moment she would describe
how she had suffered morally and spiritually through being
forced to lie and to misrepresent and because of her lovers
tyranny, whereas at another moment she would not admit that
she had done wrong, and would defiantly champion the rights
(so-called) of a free person. In one breath she would empty the
vials of hatred and bitterness upon the name of the lover to
whom she had given herself, and therewith intensify Kerkhovens
distress as he listened to her words; but in the next breath she
would speak of Etzel with the reverential tenderness customary
when speaking of the enshrined dead.
This Marie was unknown to him. She was no longer the
woman who had borne him two children, and had been a comrade
to him upon his difficult road. He recalled how, sixteen years
before, something similar had happened, when he had first made
her acquaintance after, heedless of her own physical and mental
peculiarities, she had given herself to an unprincipled adventurer.
But then he had understood, for he had just begun to understand
himself and his own experiences. Now he was confronted by a
human being with an inaccessible secret, hidden by a curtain of
fear. Yet he, Kerkhoven, was to be the guardian of the black
curtain! Although he was burning with the desire to learn what
lay behind, it behoved him at all costs to prevent the raising of
the curtain and the disclosure of the secret. A t the same time,
he had to behave as if he knew, for Marie posed as though she
were revealing the most secret places of her mind.
An impossible situation! He was no longer a physician, no
longer a healer, no longer a father confessor, no longer a rescuer.
His impatience to pull aside the curtain made his duties as
watchman repulsive. He had become a non-physician, an anti
physician, one who tears open partially healed wounds. The sex
in him had been mortified. T h e man had been humiliated, the
homunculus (infuriated) was on the defensive. He entered a

26

JOSEPH

KERKH O VEN S

THIRD

EXISTENCE

phase of debasement, in which his form and character were

sacrificed. Need we be surprised that, with Marie, he plunged
into the abyss?
7

Was Etzel Andergast the seducer or the seduced? This seemed

to Kerkhoven the crux of the whole business. Marie kept her
own counsel; indeed the answer appeared to her a matter of no
moment. A power exterior to themselves had driven the young
man and the woman into one anothers arms: the Master. He
knew of the liaison, he countenanced the liaison; that decided
the matter and wiped away any smirch that might have clung
to it. Unused to yielding to anger, Kerkhoven swallowed his
gruel as best he might. Fine mastery, that had made him a
figure of fu n ! Fine magnanimity, that had made him a cuckold!
Marie was horrified both at the word and at the idea. Were
liberal-mindedness and medical understanding things that
existed only outside the home?
Joseph, remember who you are!
Whether she had been seduced or not, what she wanted her
husband to grasp was that the young fellow had swept her off
her feet. Never had a man paid her so much attention, been so
considerate and tender, so chivalrous; never had she realised
how greatly she yearned to be made love to in that way until
she had already yielded to his fascination. Every tim-,, Marie
mentioned Andergasts name, she expatiated upon this enthralling
characteristic. On such occasions, Kerkhoven felt as if a spectre
were standing behind him ready to clap him on the shoulder.
He had always to be on hand, always to have time for talks
with Marie, must never shirk giving himself trouble in her
behalf, must invariably be alert to catch the significance of her
wayward moods, to anticipate her wishes, to guess her thoughts.
In addition, he knew that she revelled in the feeling that she
had been the initiator, that she had awakened Etzel to the
realisation of the love life. . . .
All this, Kerkhoven understood very well. What puzzled him
was her harsh and explosive censures of her youthful lover, her

SYNEIDESIS

27

accusations, her declaration that he was a tyrant. W hich was

Kerkhoven to believe; which constituted the true portrait?
Marie would hasten to affirm that Etzel had shown such qualities
only after fate had drawn the twain together. Conscience pricked
the lad; he was morbidly jealous of his rival, his senior; he had
urged her to decamp with him, and then they would marry. . . .
At the outset she had considered such propositions mad, and
she had laughed at the boy. Then he set about finding ways of
wounding her, of arousing her jealousy, of scolding her, of
railing at her. In the end he had declared: I ll bring you to
your knees! He meant her to capitulate, no matter what might
ensue. That had been the culmination of the affair. Then, then
at last, Joseph had taken a hand in the game.
What did he mean by bringing you to your knees ? asked
Kerkhoven, mystified. Capitulate? I dont understand.
I would have yielded to his will. Gone off with him. Married
him. Oh, I was as mad as he!

8
Marie brought to her knees by a mere boy! Marie, his proud
Marie? Kerkhoven could not get over that. T h e idea haunted
him, bored into his brain like an auger. How could such a thing
come to pass? He must know, he absolutely must know; and at
the very next talk, he put his question.
T h e household had already retired for the night, and Marie
and Joseph were alone in the sitting-room. She was ensconced
in an armchair; he sat on a dumpy nearby, holding her ice-cold
hands in his. For a long time she looked deep into his eyes
without saying a word. Then that terrifying sensation of euphoria
she had come to know so well flooded her being, altering her
demeanour so that she seemed to be playing a part.
Do you not understand? The power that an unsullied being
can exercise . . . the charm . . . oh, its indescribable . . .
particularly the charm, the exquisite sweetness of it all. . . .
One encounters that so rarely among men. Cant you understand

28

JOSEPH

K E R K H O V E N S

THIRD

EXISTENCE

that when a man comes to a woman absolutely pure . . .

intact . .
Why did the word intact so horrify and wound Kerkhoven
when he had already been horrified and wounded by everything
Marie said ? Ones ideas of a persons character are apt to become
fixed, so that the use of an unexpected term opens the windows
on to a mind one had thought familiar, to reveal things which
had been overlooked for a lifetime. A brilliant flashlight is thus
thrown upon what hitherto had been dimly surmised. Kerkhoven
was not lacking in imagination, and this faculty had served him
in good stead during the years he had practised the healing art.
Now he turned it ruthlessly against himself, re-living the scenes
between the two lovers and suffering the agonies of the damned.
He had to look on, yes, look on without being able to blot out
the pictures which presented themselves before his minds eye,
and denied the blessed repose of forgetfulness. He saw them in
one anothers arms; he saw them looking desirously into one
anothers eyes; he saw them never satiated with mutual caresses;
he saw them going to meet one another at the place of
assignation. . . . But these were preliminaries merely. Further
torture was to follow. W ith a quasi-perverse voluptuousness, he
participated in her unclothing, in their passionate embraces, in
the growing delirium of the encounter, in the climax of their
ardours, in the subsequent languor when they lay 'imply
entwined. M ating, that was the expression which beat upon
his brain; a loathsome word to his way of thinking. Mating,
mating; adulterously mating. . . . These images, one and all of
them, besieged him, mocked him, poisoned and strangled him.
His spirit, his heart, the centres of his living personality, sucked
in the unmitigated horror, awakening jealousy which was
nourished to repletion on the past, rendering him as restless as
a madman and clouding his mind as with an eclipse.
9

Marie was alive to the situation. It was certainly a serious one.

She guessed what was going on in her husbands head. Did she

SYNEIDESIS

29

not know him better than he knew himself? Often it was as if

she were gifted with second sight, so clearly was she able to put
a finger on his most hidden feelings. In her despair, the only
ray of hope had been to find in him a tower of strength. Her
reliance on him had been invested with a kind of mystical
glamour, so that he had appeared as solid as a rock. How
frequently, in the most trying circumstances, had he not proved
himself unshakable. Now that she saw him vacillating, a prey to
phantoms, looking to her for support, to her who had dragged
loose from her moorings, her grief and disappointment knew no
bounds.
Instead of being helped, she had to expend her energies in
helping him. But what sort of help could she give? It would
have to be something which would kill his pain in the germ.
She felt vaguely what was needed of her. In spite of exhaustion,
her feminine instinct was on the alert, so that she sympathised
fully with Josephs mortification as erotic companion who had
failed unwittingly in his duties as husband; she knew that he
needed to be reassured in his manly pride; for were he not, the
torment he was suffering would turn sour, and undermine his
sexual self-confidence. All this had nothing to do with the
physical side of lo v e; her blood was as stagnant for the moment
as the water in an abandoned quarry. But she could serve him
as friend and comrade; yes, devote herself to him as a friend
with whom one shares joy and trouble alike. She would need to
make use of her mother-wit, would need to be cunning and
self-sacrificing if she were to succeed in relaxing the tension of
his soul. Not so very hard in the circumstances to have recourse
to a little misrepresentation; a woman is apt at the game, and
men are easily beguiled!
Her heroic resolve was, however, not only vain, but it made
matters worse. W hat happened invariably happens when the
body refuses cooperation with the will. Strength of purpose was
mastered by an excessive irritability of the nerves. Functional
capacity was paralysed by the intensity of her resolution. Defeat
followed defeat. Kerkhoven ate his heart out, for his shame was

3o

JO S E P H

KERKH O VEN S

T H IR D

E X IS T E N C E

becoming plainer day by day. He was a vanquished man. Y et

he was loth to surrender, and his defencelessness led him to
thoughts of suicide. He was like a boxer who enters the ring
with a temperature at fever point, and who mistakes the delusive
energy thus imparted for a sign that he is unconquerable. An
added horror was that he could not rid himself of the feeling
that he must measure his strength with an opponent whose
watchful eye was constantly upon him, and whose strength
(belauded by Marie) was specially galling to him and contributed
to his mad imaginings. The man of forty-nine wished to challenge
the stripling of twenty-three to a combat, wanted to annihilate
a rival who had fled like a coward for it was thus that Kerkhoven
looked upon Etzel. But the endeavour to belittle this rival, to
conquer this rival, to rid his mind of this rival and squeeze him
out of Maries blood, was unavailing. Josephs fixed idea was
that he could act as substitute for the absconding Andergast,
and that Marie would not notice the substitution; he imagined
that the passionate experience might be continued with himself,
her husband, as partner; that Marie would lend herself to the
game; indeed, desired nothing better. Each mistake Kerkhoven
made was worse than the previous one.
Marie was on the rack, and accepted her martyrdom. Though
the role she was assuming was ^nerely that of the loving wife,
in truth she had to play the part of the Good Samaritan and to
bind up Josephs wounds. Though her endearments were
fruitless to help him, still she could console him. His astonish
ment at her tenderness cut her to the quick. His galloping pulse
filled her with anxiety. She put her arms around him, and
whispered:
There, there, my dear; try to compose yourself, be patient,
your body is wiser than your mind. . .
He was no more than a boy in her embrace, an unhappy son,
a mad, shamefaced, and sobbing child.
Man could sink no lower. There was nothing left of his
spiritual possessions, of his personal dignity, of his acquirements,
o f his manifold activities, of the worlds appreciation for all he

S Y N E ID E S IS

31

had done. He was empty, finished, plundered. Late one evening

in the laboratory he selected a bottle containing a quick-acting
poison, and slipped it into his pocket. On getting back to Lindow,
he found a wire awaiting him. It came from the Dutch Colonial
Ministry. He was invited to go to Java for six months to study
an endemic disease of the brain that was rife among the indigenes.
Was this a sign? Were the higher powers taking a hand? He
shrugged. Half an hour later he marched up to the fireplace and
dropped the bottle of poison into the flames. It exploded with
a loud report, and Kerkhoven smiled grimly.
10

Two creatures clinging convulsively to one another in the hope

that with their combined efforts they may sooner escape from
the whirlpool such was the course things took. Marie left the
Lindow estate to see after itself. She looked forward to the
coming winter with a shudder. Every day brought fresh desolation
in its train. Every hour of the sleepless night possessed a horror
all its own. W hy could not one be snuffed out like a candle?
Life under such conditions was a crime against nature. When
delirium overtook her, even the maddest ideas seemed to her
possibilities, such as that the beloved fugitive was standing at
the door begging for admittance, or that the telephone bell
sounded and when she took up the receiver she heard his voice
over the wires. Or it might be that Joseph had summoned Etzel
to a final interview in order to thrash the matter out, and that
she would see her dear one for a last time. When the evil mood
was upon her, she felt capable o f taking revenge. Then her
longing might be turned into hate. Etzel had no business to
leave her thus to her misery, to flee from the Master who had
formed him, set him on his feet, imbued him with the concept
of what is meant by a human soul.
One evening they had gone to the Philharmonic to hear a
concert given by the Don Cossacks. Afterwards, Marie said:
Joseph, my dear, could you not write him a few lines. . . .
It would prove, I am sure, a relief to you, to him, and to myself.

32

JO SEPH

K E R K H O V E N S

T H IR D

E X IS T E N C E

Kerkhoven coloured. T h ey were sitting at supper, and he

glared down at his plate. Then, in a broken, spasmodic voice,
he managed to answer:
Write? T o him? T h ats a quaint idea. What do you hope to
get out of it? In what way do you fancy itll do him good?
Marie stretched her arms across the table, and took his right
hand in both of hers.
T ell him, she said softly, tell him you have forgiven him.
Thats the only way of saving the situation for us. . . .
Though she spoke of us, in the back of her mind she was
thinking you. T h e idea had come to her during the concert,
and it acted as if a crowbar had raised a huge block of ice from
her chest. It was incumbent on her to give her husband back
his reason for living, restore him to himself, raise him out of
the pit into which her conduct had precipitated him. Her duty!
After all, his state of mind had been occasioned by her, and as
she had listened to the mournful cadence of the Russian songs
she had come to believe that a letter from Joseph to Etzel was
the only way out.
I cannot see, Marie continued, how else you and I can
reconstruct our life together.
Kerkhoven got up and wandered aimlessly round the table.
How can I write when I do not know where the hell he is?
No one knows of his whereabouts. Nobody.
He tried to withstand her influence, which he felt was a kind
of bondage. This idea, as it forced itself upon him, put him
farther out of humour.
Still, persisted Marie tentatively, you were once an intimate
at his mothers house. . .
When last I heard from her she was living at Baden-Baden.
Then, after a moments hesitation: Your suggestion is im
possible, Marie. M y unhappy pride would suffer too much.
I simply cant do it. I d be giving myself away a trifle in excess
of . .
But does one give oneself away by acting in a generous
spirit? You are apt to place extreme values upon things. Indeed

SYNEIDESIS

33

you are no longer yourself. If you were yourself, everything

would be different.
Kerkhoven, in a strange state bordering upon unconsciousness,
muttered:
One thing I could do . . . I must do . . . seek him out,
find him . . . it is surely possible to trace . .
His features
were convulsed; he clenched his fists.
Look me in the eyes, my dear, besought Marie, raising her
hands in supplication. Her blue satin dress made a beautiful
contrast to the amethyst coloured chair she was sitting in, and
her face, with its closed eyes, shone like frozen milk.
I see no way out, answered Kerkhoven in a sepulchral
voice. I feel as though I were standing over the void.
Then, suddenly, he strode up to her and placed his powerful
hand on her head. Her hair felt like warm hay in the noontide
sun. A wan smile flickered over her features as she raised her
eyes to his, while he spoke words which betokened that a new
day had dawned.
Y ouve been caught in elemental forces, Marie, forces beyond
our control. This much at least I know. You are enmeshed in
a world where the darkest powers reign supreme . . . in a kind
of primeval night. Such a thing happens rarely on our planet.
Most people keep clear of those regions. W eve got to strive
with all our energy to close the breach made in the wall . . .
tend it like a wound. . . . For we cannot go on living so long
as it is gaping. . .
Hearing these words Marie sprang to her feet, flung her arms
round her husband, pressed him to her heart.
Oh Joseph, my dear, she sighed, and laid her tortured face
on his shoulder.
ii

All the same, a terrible conflagration had taken place. It was

necessary to clear up the mess and to see whether any of what
remained could be made use of in the rebuilding. Yes, a general
overhaul was needed. There ensued talks between the twain
B

34

JOSEPH

K E R K H O V E N S

THIRD

EXISTENCE

which no longer related to the abyss of misery into which they

had plunged, but which gradually led them on to higher planes.
They seemed to have passed the lowest point, although the
night still encompassed them.
They had become inseparable. Never before had they been so
united. One might have thought that for the first time they had
got to know one another. They made, incidentally, a great
discovery, namely that their years of wedded life had been a
period of growing estrangement rather than of mutual under
standing. Now they met again as fresh acquaintances. Strangers,
it is true: but such a situation might prove salutary in the
extreme. Marie was able in the long run to persuade him that
he was the initiator, that he had exorcised the demons that
tortured them both. Unless their nerves and their senses could
find peace, all methods of salvation would prove nothing better
than a childish game. Joseph recognised that he had been remiss
in the performance o f his conjugal duties. Renunciation must be
the first step towards reinstatement. Marie, however, refused to
relinquish the idea that a man who genuinely loves a woman
must leave her free, free as an Arab of her beloved. After
lengthy cogitation he agreed that she was right. Nevertheless,
he asked:
Dont you think that in our case its a bit late to . . .
It is never too late, she answered decidedly.
All right, then, agreed.
So it was arranged that she was to be free, that no thought
of his and no wish o f his was to bind her in any way. He was
to be an invisible protector, that was all. A difficult position?
Perhaps. But is renunciation ever easy?
In his view it was only by such means that he could regain
his position and release her from the trap in which she had been
caught. Thus only could he relieve her of the fear which possessed
her, and blot out the memory of her passionate interlude. He
would need the utmost tact, for Marie must on no account
become aware of what he was trying to do. So much for a
beginning. Thereafter he would have to furnish her with new

SYNEIDESIS

35

ingredients for her spiritual nourishment, food which would

content her soul to satiety; he must create in her a sense of
tension, of perpetual motion thus far, at least, he had read in
the book of her character, that he no longer considered her
recent love-affair as a chance happening, or as a lawless debauch,
as a frivolous lapse from the fidelity she owed him as his wife,
but as an act of dire necessity caused by a drought in the springs
o f affection.
I ve got to recognise that much at least, he communed,
otherwise I shall never be able to understand M arie.
But Marie, whose intuition registered his every emotion like
a seismograph, knew that he was overshooting the mark. W hy
take things so deeply to heart? W hy load the scales so heavily?
Could he not imagine what had taken place, without allowing
himself to be influenced by his personal participation or non
participation? Nothing had happened to him, and yet he was
behaving like a man who had suffered a grievous wrong. W hy
could he not look at the matter naturally and reasonably, as
Joseph Kerkhoven should look at it, and not with the outraged
feelings of one who thinks it necessary to make a parade of his
love? For this love was nowise impugned. Could he not see that,
for a Joseph Kerkhoven, his attitude was bad form?
She was eternally coming back to this question. Although by
nature she was not of a joking disposition, she now put herself
about to appear gay, to make the house cheerful for him, to
make him laugh at his own deaths-head demeanour, to tease
him into a more playful mood. Her sense of humour was
sufficiently well developed to save many a painful situation,
although a few moments earlier she had imagined she could
never find relief from the despondency which oppressed her.
Occasionally, even Kerkhoven mustered a smile in response. It
did not seem improbable to him that in some remote future he
might assume the sovereign role Marie had assigned to him.
But the body set itself up in opposition; his virility, a heritage
from past generations of men, who had for centuries been
guaranteed complete and sole possession of the mate-woman,

36

JOSEPH

K E R K H O V E N S

THIRD

EXISTENCE

put up a dull, idiotic, and senseless resistance, so that as man

he fought desperately agfinst the theft and the dishonour.
These feelings lie in the blood of every man, and no amount of
change or of custom can eradicate them. A wife is not an object
a man can lend to another, a something that can be taken
possession of by the first person who happens to come along.
Such a state o f affairs would destroy domestic order, would
defile the holy of holies, would deprive the family of its bond
o f unity, would cut the ground away from true connubial
comradeship, would disturb the tranquil waters of married bliss
which act as a barricade against lust and amorous adventures.
The domestic hearth must be safeguarded. Surely a man may
demand that as an elementary right? No, freedom to desecrate
the home cannot be permitted. That would be a misconception
of the word freedom.
Marie shook her head disconsolately at Josephs reasoning.
She found this perpetual boring into the past a most despairing
process. By day and by night they talked the issue over, and
never reached a satisfactory conclusion. Th ey moved round and
round in a circle. Y et he was all the while incomparably tender
and considerate. He was never at a loss to find means which
acted as balm to her spiritual need. They went for long rambles
together, over fields and meadows, through woods. He ordered
rare flowers and succulent fruits to be sent from town, brought
home ancient woodcuts and prints for M aries delectation. He
who had hitherto regarded the ornamental as superfluous, now
came to realise what a delightful part it could play in life. Often
one might have fancied he was trying to benumb his senses by
an exaggerated attention to material things. He became aware
that his sexual inadequacy had had unfavourable repercussions
upon his intellectual and spiritual powers. Only through achieving
Maries psychical regeneration could he hope to become the
physician he had once been. Their new life must be based upon
love, upon a hallucination of the heart. No other means was
possible, for he had tried all things and had found them
lacking.

SYNEIDESIS

37

12

A man named Karl Buschmann had frequently called at

Kerkhovens town flat begging for an interview. Since the Master
had temporarily retired to his country estate at Lindow a meeting
had never taken place, but the man had written letter after
letter, each one more urgent than the last, beseeching the doctor
to grant him the necessary consultation. Kerkhoven was used to
receiving hundreds of missives as pressing, but something
uncommon in this individuals method of expression made him
consent to see his petitioner.
One forenoon, at the appointed hour, a wretched creature
presented himself. He appeared to be in an advanced stage o
consumption, about twenty-eight years of age, and had been
released a couple of weeks earlier from prison, where he had
done six years for high treason. He and his twin brother Erich
had belonged to the same revolutionary association and had been
condemned at the same time. Kerkhoven gathered that someone
had committed perjury. Erich had died about eighteen months
ago, while still in prison. Apart from this brother, Karl had no
friends, and no one to love. T h e two had formed but one united
personality. They were persons of family, the father having been
a colliery owner, killed during the war. T h e boys had gone to
the same school, the same college, the same technical institute.
As adolescents they had become members of the same political
party and had taken part in the Spartacus campaign. Identical
outlooks, identical objectives, identical books; they shared the
same bed. The only thing that differentiated them was that one
was christened Karl whilst the other was called Erich. When
Karl was informed of his brothers death he lay as one stricken,
refusing food, and, for a time, totally blind. This was not an
imaginary blindness, but something absolute. Karl lost all sense
of the passage of time, suffered from nervous crises. Once he
was the object of a homosexual assault by the man who shared
his cell, and when he lodged a complaint he was beaten half
dead during the night. Still, this had nothing to do with his
reasons for consulting D r. Kerkhoven. What he wished to be

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THIRD

SYNEIDESIS

EXISTENCE

advised about was the things that had happened since his release.
T h e only way he couldfldescribe his condition was that he was
suffering from atrophy of his organs and his feelings. Food
stuck in his gizzard, he could not digest even the little he
swallowed, water was as nauseous to him as alcohol, he could
no longer differentiate colours, his skin lacked sensation, he was
unable to distinguish one sound from another, human voices
drummed on his ears like bugle-calls, the rustle of paper seemed
like the tinkling of glass, he had a dread o f the world around
him, and he could only rid himself of this anxiety when he held
a woman in his arms. Indeed, he could never have enough of a
womans company; this seemed to be the only sensation, the
only power left him. He felt that madness was imminent, that
he was suffering from an unquenchable thirst. Women appeared
to be aware of his longing, and threw themselves upon h im ; but
for some time now he had been unable to satisfy their needs. It
was horrible, especially since he took no further interest in himself,
in his higher aspirations. All he still possessed was a vague
memory of what he had once been; that in earlier days he was
an entire man whereas now, since Erichs death, he was no more
than half a man. What could a fellow do in this beastly world?
Oh, Doctor, cant you do something to help me? he implored.
Kerkhovens eyes probed the man. He had always expected
that time would wash such an anomaly on to his shores, a
creature resembling the Golem of the old Jewish myth, a thing
begotten of anti-divine and anti-creative forces. This meeting
was bound to be. What was one to say? What advise? It needed
some extreme visitation of the sort to make Joseph fully aware
of his own impotence, to bring home to him the fact that his
easy-going methods were in danger of being proved utterly
inadequate, that he himself ran the risk of becoming a cheat
and a self-deceiver. I f one took charge o f anothers fate, the
healing art would be placed higher than the individual sufferer.
That would be a wrong course, for it might send the patient over
the edge; impossible to fancy that mechanical and external aid
would prove helpful in this kind of case. No, the man himself

39

must be made to cooperate in his own salvation. It would need

a hard fight, a physical and moral combat wherein every organ,
every nerve, every brain-cell would take part, if the poor devil
was ever to live a proper life again. He must be forced to take
up the reins of his own destiny, must be frightened into a
realisation of his responsibility towards himself; his will would
need to be drilled and disciplined; he would have to be trained
to make up his mind, to utter the decisive Yes or No which
would prepare the soil for a thorough regeneration, and would
put an end to the desire for death.
But to treat a patient thus meant a revolution in the whole
o f Kerkhovens system, and to consider so vast a change in his
practice would necessitate time and reflection. He would be
obliged to lay new foundations, to gather fresh experience, and
these he could not expect to achieve without dogged work and
a transformation in himself and his mental outlook. Here, too,
renunciation was indicated. As he looked deeply and searchingly
into the mans glittering eyes, he became aware that the pupils
were not reacting normally. But there was no time just then to
investigate the cause. He talked comfortingly, felt the unhappy
creatures pulse, took his blood-pressure, tested the reflexes.
Then he prescribed a multiglandular preparation, and felt that
any other medicine might prove equally efficacious or in
efficacious. He was no longer capable of seeing, or feeling, or
knowing. When Kerkhoven let the man out of the front door
with some further encouraging words, he recognised that his
patient had gained nothing by the visit, but went away as
disquieted as he had come. Joseph watched young Buschmann
walk listlessly down the drive, and thought:
There goes my double; another, a dead Kerkhoven, a Golem.
For the rest of the day he remained in his study, silent,
uncommunicative.

13
On the last day of October, Joseph and Marie spent the afternoon
in the open air; and in the evening, after dinner, Kerkhoven
said:

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I ve got something special I want to talk over with you.

Go ahead, answered Marie, looking at him expectantly.
You may have been wondering why I have put aside all my
customary occupatiojjp.
Marie shook her head emphatically.
Well, I may be wrong, he went on. Perhaps you took
everything as a matter of course.
L ets suppose I have been wondering. . . . What about it?
Kerkhoven cocked his head to one side like a bird, and gazed
upward.
You see, in any case things could not have gone on much
longer as they were. It has been growing clearer and clearer to
me that I was on the wrong track, that I was working in the
void.
Working in the void? Lots of people use that expression
nowadays. What form has it taken with you?
Lack of cohesion between my field o f operations and my
inner dynamic.
Marie became more attentive.
By your inner dynamic you mean that part of you which
is contraposed to the practical man who has to fulfil certain
professional obligations?
Thats about it. One inclines to succumb to routinism, to
repeat oneself day after day. Daily work, whether of hand or
of brain, is incessantly repetitive.
Yes, but without such repetitions one cannot exert far-reaching
influence, and that is what you want, surely.
I dont know. I used to want that, but what you call a
far-reaching influence implies renouncing the attempt to exert
a profound influence, to plumb the heights and the depths. This
is the problem of problems. W e moderns are fighting, so to say,
for a new dimension. We put the finest metals of life into
building the old structure, and all we have got for our pains is
dross.
What are you going to do about it?
Make an end. Begin from the beginning. Turn back, so as

SYNEIDESIS

41

to discover the exact point where I diverged from the right

path.
He spoke decisively and hastily.
I cannot as yet get hold of anything tangible in what you
say, Marie put in hesitatingly.
T ry to grasp what I am driving at, and dont let yourself be
frightened by what I am about to tell you, M arie, he answered,
taking her hand between his own two. I intend to give up my
practice for a while, to break with the past. A man cannot make
his livelihood out of a profession when he is no longer convinced
that it fits him like his skin. You need to be the master of your
craft, not its slave or its dog. A ll this seems to me as plain and
simple as wishing a person good morning; and yet when one
meditates upon it, the matter becomes a question of life or death.
Marie looked at him, intensely interested, as though she were
trying to read a cypher.
It would not be the first time you have given up everything
to start afresh, she observed musingly. Fifteen years ago you
did the same thing and certainly not to your undoing. It seems
to be a law of your being, my dear.
Joseph nodded.
That time, likewise, it was on account of you. Strange dont
you think so? But do you quite realise what such a resolve will
mean for us ?
I fancy so.
During recent years w eve been living luxuriously, like
successful speculators.
I am ready for anything, Joseph. You surely do not think
that I am like a hen clucking round the nest?
Easy enough to say one is ready for anything. But reflect a
moment. You have your personal tastes, you like to dress prettily,
youve got used to having plenty of money to spend.
I am not dependent upon such things, Joseph. From one
day to another I am capable of change. But there must be
something to make it worth while, and, to speak frankly, I expect
to be given this something.
B*

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Good. W ell first of all have to sell this estate and give up
the flat in Berlin. Close down the clinic. What money remains
over after we have settled outstanding debts will have to provide
necessaries for you and the children. I ll get along as best I may.
T he means I propo^S to adopt will come up for discussion later.
I ve long had a project in view, but I cannot speak about it yet.
All the same, so that you may have your share in my thoughts,
I will tell you that it concerns a small sanatorium, a place I
have often dreamed of inaugurating, somewhere in southern
Germany. . . . T ill I get my sanatorium, I have a lengthy
furrow to plough.
Why? W hy put it off?
Because, he hesitated, because I have a great mass of
work to get through first. You know about it already, my book
on Illusion.
She looked at him searchingly.
Joseph, my dear, that is not the true reason. You are hiding
something from me.
Right, quite right. But I do not know, Marie, whether . . .
I fear . . . T h ats the hardest thing of all I have to say to
you. . .
Marie shivered. She guessed. But she would not press him.
Her eyes were fixed steadily upon his. His attitude, as he sat
leaning back in his chair with the light shining down on his
massive head and brow, made a profound impression on her.
He looked beautiful, and she was always sensitive to beauty
even though her heart was ravaged and her mind distraught
with grief. Those who did not know her well were apt to
stigmatise her as an aesthete.
14

After a prolonged silence, Marie said:

I too . . . well you can understand that I cannot wait about
for chickens ready roasted to fall into my mouth. In all these
years I ve done precious little thats of any value. Yes, theres
been the estate to manage but I ve merely given orders, never

SYNEIDESIS

43

done any labour myself. Even the children I ve neglected, just

allowing them to grow up as best they could. Not so many years
remain before theyll have to be launched on a career of one
sort or another, and I ve done nothing to prepare them for what
life holds in store. Th ey may go to the dogs for all I know.
W eve coddled and pampered them. . . .
You are right. A hard time lies before every one of us. For
a thousand years mankind has not been faced by anything so
critical.
I, too, continued Marie, have been living like a princess.
And yet there are certain duties to perform. . . . I ve done
nothing. That was fine what you said about beginning over again,
Joseph. It applies to myself just as much as to you. I scarcely
know yet what I shall do. The future is still clouded. M ay I
tell you a dream I had last night? It seemed to me that I was
flying higher and higher. I was alarmed and sorrowful, for I
had a vague feeling I should never see you again. Then I reached
such an altitude that I knew I was near to God. One thing only
did I desire that He should look at me. This seemed more
important than life itself, that He should catch sight of me. In
order to attract His attention I shifted my ground, going hither
and thither in search of I l k glance. M y endeavours availed
nothing, and in my distress I began to weep bitterly. A t that
moment I started to fall quite slowly from the elevation, softly
and slowly I descended, and a great joy took possession of me
for I felt G ods eye was upon me; otherwise, how account for
the smooth facility o f my falling? The nearer I drew to earth,
the happier did I become. I awoke in a condition of intense
happiness, and with the persistent impression that God had
looked upon me, had seen me. Weird kind of dream, wasnt it?
Y es, admitted Kerkhoven.
Again the two of them sat silent for a while. Then Marie
began:
Now, my dear, its your turn for confidences. What is it you
find so difficult to tell me? No need to be anxious. I m no coward,
as you very well know.

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Kerkhoven leaned so far forward that his hands, which hung

limply between his knees, almost touched the carpet. This was
a characteristic attitude of his at times when he had a momentous
communication to make. A t length he said:
Its difficult to explain, extremely difficult; and yet it is the
only way, so that in the end we . . . Marie, you will have to
give me every ounce of help you can spare, otherwise we shall
not succeed in . . . I fancied it might be fairly easy to tell
you . . . because . . . He abruptly drew himself up and
threw back his head. His face was pale, as he continued: We
shall have to part, Marie; part for a longish time. Marie in her
turn went pale, and looked at him mutely. If you ask for
reasons, I cannot give you anything specific or adequate. It is a
resolution I have come to, and you can only give or withhold
your consent. W ith her elbow propped on her knee and her
chin leaning in her hand Marie gazed at him. Save for the
impetuous throbbing of her throat, she did not stir. W e have
lived through something terrible together, Marie . . . Oh,
please dont put in any comment. A t present I am the ruin of a
man, and as such I cannot live beside you. No, I could not do
that, you are too dear to me. Only recently have I come to realise
how much I love you. There was plenty of love lying around,
so to speak; but I had no idea how deep, how immense it was.
I have to tell you this so that you may better understand what I
am driving at. Not only our relation to one another is involved
. . . although that is the key to the situation. No good trying
to hide the fact that I am emasculated both as man and as
physician. Any further endeavour to patch the matter up would
only make the evil irreparable. This will mean a period of
abstinence. W e shall have to break our bonds for a while. A
person such as I is hard put to it to imagine what, from the
practical viewpoint, such renunciation signifies. Perhaps I shall
look up Andergast. Dont be frightened, beloved. M y idea may
be a mad one. But I have invested too much spiritual capital in
that young man to . . . And hes made off as if he were an
embezzler. Maybe I shall have to look him straight in the face

SYNEIDESIS

45

for three short seconds in order to know what I want to

know.
N o, cried Marie, and her voice sounded cold and sad, you
must not think any more of doing that.
Kerkhoven rose from his chair, and paced up and down the
room.
What is the good o f vacillating? I do not mean to leave any
thing undone that needs to be done, in order to make me feel
a free man once more. T h e whole of our life together depends
upon this. When a man has constantly avoided gratifying his
natural impulses, it is occasionally worth while for him to commit
a folly. I shall be nameless, no longer a famous doctor; and as
a perfectly unknown individual I can permit myself a certain
amount o f relaxation. Are you beginning to grasp what I am
aiming at? Nameless, homeless. A phrase is perpetually drum
ming through my head about going into the wilderness. Where
have I got it from? Do you recall Tolstoys flight when he was
eighty? How he died in a wayside station amid the snowy
steppes? You were grown up when that happened, so you
cannot fail to remember. Grand, it was. A memento. A prophecy
lived out in the flesh. Oh, never fear! I shall not die. I dont want
to die. Ones instincts cannot deceive one as to what is likely
to happen. Biological certainty; thats fundamental. But it needs
implicit trust. In the present instance it is you who must have
implicit trust. If you can honestly feel this trust, then you will
take a hand in the fashioning of the man I hope to be.
He spoke excitedly, and Marie managed to get in the question:
Then you dont intend that I shall know where you are?
Kerkhoven pressed his hand to his forehead as he replied:
Cant tell yet. H alf measures are what I most dread. As a
start, I m going to drift, without a programme of action. A few
days ago I received an invitation from the Dutch Colonial Office.
Th ey want me to join a mission of enquiry which is about to
set out for Java. I m turning the proposal over in my mind.
Four weeks remain before I need come to a decision, and four
and a half months before the expedition sails. I shall have enough

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to live on. But you must not be asking me how the matter is
taking shape. Hard on you, doubtless. Nevertheless itll have
to be so. I m terribly in earnest, Marie. One day I ll write to
you. If at that moment you are as prepared as I am then no
further obstacle will lie between us.
*5

T h e grandfathers clock in the hall struck one. Marie, in her

turn, got up. She went over to the window and, pushing the
curtain aside, looked forth into the night. T h e complexity of
her emotions was indescribable. What her husband proposed
appeared to he? such a madcap adventure, was so surprising,
so menacing, that she found it hard to believe the words had
actually dropped from his lips. The man who paced to and fro
in the room behind her seemed another being from the Joseph
Kerkhoven she had known these many years. This man was
not the same who had so lovingly and fraternally shared in her
life. She was faced by a stranger, severe and unexpectedly
resolute. It was, almost, as if Joseph Kerkhoven had already
taken farewell of her, was already voyaging to a far-off land,
and as if her heart ached at the parting. Could she carry the
burden he was laying upon her? She must find an answer to
this question. Suppose she broke down under the strain ? Suppose
the task she had vaguely imposed upon herself was no more
than a dream wish? Suppose she found it impossible to live
alone, and the voice she heard assuring her she could build her
own character up anew was no more than flattery and delusion ?
Had she the strength to make a fresh start ? Had she the strength
to wait? Besides, what guarantee had she that he would not
break down, and in the end give up the attempt. Could she tell
whether he would come back to her? Could she tell whither
this impulse would lead him? A man o f titanic nature, a giant
oak; but such trees can be uprooted by the blast, and what would
happen to her then ?
While pressing her forehead to the cool window-pane her
eyes travelled upward and she caught the flash of a falling star.

SYNEIDESIS

47

It left a trail like a gleaming lance-head. A convulsion shook

her. She remembered her dream, and with bowed head asked
herself: Is that G ods glance?
Then she felt Kerkhovens hands laid gently on her shoulders.
Marie leaned against him, and her hands groped their way
towards his. He gripped her wrists, and she said solemnly as
if uttering the bridal pledge:
Yes, Joseph, I w ill.
16
For two weeks Kerkhoven was busy setting his affairs in order.
He had to see officials, meet his colleagues on the medical board,
issue instructions to his assistants, and so forth. Marie made
herself responsible for the winding-up of the two households.
She engaged an expert to value the Lindow estate, which she
had admirably managed during recent years. Several possible
buyers were soon on the scene. She proposed taking a little
flat in Berlin for herself and the children as soon as her husband
had sailed. But she thought of renting the place for no more
than six months, as she wished to settle on the Lake o f Con
stance hoping to find in the neighbourhood a suitable school
whither to send the elder boy, Johann. Her husband concurred
in the plan, having no desire to return to Berlin.
Marie, neither by word nor sign, endeavoured to lure K erk
hoven from his purpose. She never questioned him, never
betrayed any weakness, kept a stiff upper lip, and her outwardly
calm demeanour betrayed nothing of the gnawing anxiety which
overwhelmed her whenever she was by herself.
His luggage consisted of a small trunk and a leather handbag.
He reflected carefully over each article as he packed it, won
dering whether he would really need it or not.
T h e clutter one gathers around one in the course of life
clogs the wheels of the spiritual machinery. Possession spells
being possessed, he cried exasperated.
What you say has a deal o f truth in it, my dear, answered
his wife.
Next day she sold the greater part of her jewelry.

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T hey avoided any reference to the parting; Marie, indeed,

assumed a cheerfulness she was far from feeling. Five minutes
before the final goodbye, she was hard put to it not to burst
into tears, for his plan suddenly appeared to her a criminal
challenge to fate. Was it necessary that he should take such
a line? His look reassured her, and she never put the question,
for he appeared calm and contented. Marie turned with quivering
lips towards her children, who were gazing up sadly and in
quisitively into their fathers face. His last words were:
Take care of them, and take care o f yourself.
I

17

T h e negotiations with the Dutch government were lengthy, and

occupied many weeks. Tw ice Kerkhoven had to go to Amster
dam, and once he was obliged to meet an under-secretary in
Diisseldorf. A t length it was agreed that he and three other
gentlemen would form the mission, and would sail for Batavia
by the S.S. W ilhelmina on April 20, 1930. He brought the
news to Marie.
Before all these arrangements were concluded, and even after
everything had been fixed up, Kerkhoven visited many cities,
until the end of the year 1929 found him in the little university
town where he had practised as a young medical man. He
relived those distant days when he had first met Marie who
was then a girl of eighteen, and thought about his long-dead
friend Irlen. He shunned social intercourse, and chose his
quarters in that part of the town where he might be reasonably
sure his name was unknown. Meanwhile his book was slowly
consolidating. T h e notes he had been collecting these many
years past were being licked into shape from scores of chance
jottings. T h e full title of the work was to be: Pathology of
Illusion and its Influence upon Religion, Social Institutions,
and Legislation. If for research purposes he was forced to go
to a public or collegiate library, had to visit some hospital or
asylum and thus had to come into contact with doctors, students,
librarians, or what not, he made use of a letter of introduction

SYNEIDESIS

49

furnished him under a false name by a professional friend in

Berlin. It was not until he reached Zurich, where he wanted
to consult a famous brain anatomist, that he disclosed his
identity. T h e alias would have caused him a needless amount
o f explanation and would have proved irksome should he, at
some future day, wish to cross the frontier for purposes of study.
He was becoming more and more interested in the structure
and functions of the brain.
Never had he lived so actively in reality and at the same time
outside reality; liberation from one set of entanglements and
a forging himself on to another chain, so that his sense organs
were acutely alive and sharp and precise. He worked fourteen
hours a day without a trace of fatigue. Should he go for a twelvemile walk, he had merely to take four hours sleep followed
by a cold bath, to be keen and ready for labour. He took to
a vegetarian diet, hoping thereby to school his body to the new
conditions of existence. After losing a stone in weight, he felt
so light and invigorated that it seemed he must have reduced
by at least fifty pounds. T h e animal juices regained their health.
His nerves, though more sensitive, were more obedient. He set
about studying the rhythm of his breathing, his heart-beats, his
movements, quite dispassionately, quite objectively. He had
never taken much stock in yoga or similar Asiatic disciplines
that were advocated by many amateurs in these matters. He
was firmly convinced that the race to which he belonged had
its own characteristics; believed that European life and regimen
had caused specific changes in the metabolism of those who
inhabit our continent changes which began many centuries
ago, so that if a general law of amelioration applicable to Euro
peans could be formulated at all, its working must be continued
for centuries in order to be effective. Still, one who became
his own physician, one who systematically trained and subtilised
the instinct for dealing with his own body, one who could
succeed in directing sight and hearing inwards and could educate
himself into an extreme attention to his own experiences, might
look for remarkable achievements on the part of an organism

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so transformed and trained. It was not a question of avoiding

pain or preventing illness, nor yet of selfish anxieties; but, rather,
o f learning how to deal with the short-lived mass of protoplasm
which makes up a human being, in such a way as to develop
therein hitherto unsurmised powers of help, and exemplary
faculties of one sort and another.
18
One thing, however, was against him. He could not rid himself
of a torturing unrest, and this was the chief hindrance to the
cleansing pro^ss he had imposed upon himself. Absorbed as
he was in the investigation of the nature of illusions and delusions,
and wishing to push his studies farther than any had done
before him, he stumbled upon the very evil from which his
own brain was ailing. This discovery made him at times lose
heart, and at others promoted in him a longing for revenge.
Again, an idea of fighting a duel would pass through his head;
not a duel with pistols, not a hand-to-hand fight, but a spiritual
combat wherein everything should be thoroughly thrashed out,
a combat which would at one and the same time be a settling
of accounts and an act of atonement. Kerkhoven found it almost
impossible to forget the wrong that had been done him, and
the ingratitude of the young man who owed wellnigh everything
to him. He wanted to be given satisfaction. The form mattered
little: Etzel might show remorse or contrition, he might explain
how events had come to pass, might make a general confession
such as is undertaken among Catholics who return to the fold
after having lapsed for long years from the faith. Thus, at least,
the crime might be expiated. But it was terrible not to know
how betrayal was reacting upon the betrayer, to reflect that the
culprit had escaped retribution in silence and flight. It was
asking more than mortal man could bear. Reason was powerless
to persuade Kerkhoven into another point of view. His spiritual
regeneration was not far enough advanced for him to throw off
the oppression which weighed on him as heavily as though he
had suffered a public affront, or had been placed in the pillory.

SYNEIDESIS

Si

And though he might assure Marie that he had been living

in a world of dead moral concepts, in a world of unworthy
resentments and ridiculous ideas as to what constituted a mans
honour, he knew very well that if he succeeded in hoaxing her
into believing him, himself he could not blind to the urgent
need he felt for a full settlement of accounts.
W e have to remember all that Etzel Andergast had meant
to Joseph Kerkhoven if we are to understand the doctors state
of mind. The young man had been his spiritual son and heir.
Such a son is more to a father than the child of his loins. The
coming generation of disciples was for him personified in Etzel.
He had rejoiced in his pupils whole-hearted dependence, for
it had been assumed by one of the most independent spirits
he had ever met. T h is dependence had its foundations in a
realm of experiences such as can be acquired by a youth only
during a peculiarly fruitful era and by one whose destiny holds
extraordinary possibilities. Kerkhoven had made a hero of
Andergast, had looked upon him as a young Hercules, as a
future leader. The striplings love and respect had warmed the
Masters heart, for they had acted as a spur and an endorsement.
Was it possible, was it thinkable, that so upright and candid
a man could have set himself deliberately to deceive and betray,
and could be guilty of the hypocrisy his absconding would seem
to imply? What excuses could be made for Etzel? Some mis
understanding might exist, something that even Marie had failed
to discover. Kerkhoven had penetrated to the heart of M aries
secret, but of Etzels secret he knew nothing. Marie had emerged
from the investigation transfigured, whereas her fellow-culprit
had never so much as put in an appearance. In these circum
stances, the case was still unsettled. Order had not yet been
re-established in Kerkhovens inner world.
Perhaps, as he had hinted to Marie, the storm in his emotional
life would have been calmed if the young man who had betrayed
him, had stood before him with such a bearing that Kerkhoven
could be confident of the offenders desire for absolution. Joseph,
however, could not but ask himself whether, in entertaining this

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desire, he was not animated by a more contemptible longing

for vengeance than that of the ordinary man who wants to fire
a pistol at his enemy. However this might be, he suffered from
a wound that refused to heal. Driven by impulse, therefore,
rather than as the outcome of a deliberate act of will, he set
out in search o f the enemy.

T h e only clue to Andergasts whereabouts was the lads mother.

Kerkhoven still remembered Sophia von Andergasts address,
for she was a lady with whom he had corresponded in years
gone by. He called up the image of this wife and mother who
after sevei% inner conflicts had regained serenity of mind. To
go and look her up would be a bold deed, and Kerkhoven
hesitated, for a false situation might be created were he to
present himself in any other guise than that of the guardian
and teacher of her son the position he had once rejoiced to
hold.
He knew that she had left Baden-Baden about eighteen months
ago. Still, he journeyed to her house on the Hebelweg and was
received by a venerable old dame who looked at him askance
until she learned the object of his visit. Then she unbent, and
grew most gracious and enthusiastic. Although his present
mission was a delicate one, Kerkhoven did not allow his mind
to become troubled. He knew his own gifts, and the one he
valued more than any other was his power of persuading strangers
to open their hearts to him, to bring them in the course of what
appeared to be casual conversation to confide in him wholly.
T his power had lately grown considerably. He could sense as
much, just as a mathematician is aware when his thought-process
gains in clarity and speed.
Sophias last letter dated from the previous summer, and in
this she mentioned a plan of migrating to Fex, and setting-up
house in the Engadine.
She certainly went to live there, and, so far as I know, she
may be there still. It was my daughter who gave me the news,

SYNEIDESIS

53

for while she was on holiday at Zuoz she had a line from
Sophia.
Would it be indiscreet to let me see the letter in question?
asked Kerkhoven.
T h e old lady opened a drawer, and took out a bundle of
correspondence neatly tied. Kerkhoven was startled when his
eyes fell upon the handwriting, for it was crabbed, neat in the
extreme, and the lines were widely interspaced. Also there was
a very broad margin to the left of the text. T h e whole presented
a vivid picture to an expert in caligraphy.
I have letters from Frau von Andergast, said Kerkhoven,
but the writing was totally different from this, being what
w ed call a large hand, loose and flowing. I wonder what influences
were at work to bring about so considerable a change.
It has often puzzled me, too. Indeed, I mentioned the fact
to her once.
T h e cause must be looked for in a change of the emotional
sphere, said Kerkhoven thoughtfully. Not only that, but it
is something that has affected her psychological automatism.
Here we have all the signs of purposive concentration.
You are very near the truth, but I am not at liberty to
furnish details, answered his hostess with obvious reserve.
T h ey conversed quietly about one thing and another till, quite
casually so it would seem, Kerkhoven referred to Etzel. At
mention of the young mans name, the old lady shook her head,
and sighed.
Three days later, about noon, Kerkhoven got down from the
Engadine autocar at Sils-Maria, and from there wandered up
the Fextal. He had already climbed a considerable part o f the
way, when it occurred to him that he ought to have made
enquiries before leaving the village. As it was, he lacked any
definite goal, and yet was loth to turn back. Snow covered the
slopes, and the air was enchantingly pure, while the blue sky
was delicately veiled with a rosy film of mist. From time to
time he heard the call of a marmot among the undergrowth.
T h e altitude, coupled with the stiff ascent, had taxed his heart

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and lungs, so that he stayed progress for a while near a farm

stead which resembled a small castle of ancient days. He looked
up towards the glacier, and closed his eyes as though dazzled
by its glittering brightness. When he opened them again, he
noticed a tall man leaning against the gate-post of the farmyard.
His hands were thrust deep into his trouser-pockets, a brier
pipe was between his lips, and he was scrutinising Kerkhoven
with the whimsical expression so often seen on the face of a
native when contemplating a foreigner. Kerkhoven passed
the time of day with the man, who returned the strangers
greeting politely. He seemed to be a peasant farmer very much
at home in the place; but in the course o f subsequent conversation
Kerkhoven was to learn that his interlocutor was a painter who
had come up from the Pratigau and had installed his home and
his studio here.
The mans sunburnt face brightened when Kerkhoven men
tioned the name o f Andergast. Taking his pipe from his
mouth, he pointed with it to a medium-sized house on a neigh
bouring hillside. T h e shutters were closed, and it was evident
that the place was untenanted.
Gone? queried Kerkhoven.
Yes, both she and he, answered the artist laconically.
Kerkhoven tried to appear unconcerned.
He? Was there a man staying with her?
Yes, her son; the whole winter.
Did you know them personally?
No.
Saw much of them?
Yes, often enough.
Not very sociable, I gather.
Certainly the young fellow did not look as if he cared tc
associate with other mortals, exclaimed the painter.
Happen to know where they are now?
Not exactly.
Well, then, inexactly?
Just gossip round and about.

SYNEIDESIS

55

What do the gossips say?

Any special interest in the couple?
Y es.
Well, the lady is said to have gone to Chur. T h eyll probably
give you her present address at Sils-Maria post-office.
And her son?
H es supposed to have gone off to Russia.
Russia? How could any one have got to know that?
A relation of yours? asked the man, rather taken aback at
Kerkhovens excited manner.
No, no. H es not a relation, but . . .
D ont bother to explain. Its pretty certain, however, that
he went to Russia. His mother stayed on after he had gone,
and received letters from Moscow.
Sure?
In a little place like this every one knows all there is to know
about everybody!
Kerkhoven meditated a while. He had travelled so many miles
to no purpose!
W ont you step in a moment? asked the man, looking at
him sympathetically.
Mechanically, Kerkhoven followed as the painter led the way
into a delightfully appointed studio. T h e two men drank a glass
o f kirsch each, but soon the conversation flagged, and in a
quarter of an hour Kerkhoven took his leave. On making en
quiries in Sils-Maria he learned that Frau von Andergast was
living at Chur in the Weisskreuz Gasse, the house being locally
known as the Domherr Haus. Next day at eventide, Kerkhoven
arrived at Chur and put up at a modest inn. T o himself he
seemed to be playing the part of sleuth in a detective story.
20
T h e whole journey was like a chase after a will-o-the-wisp.
What did he hope to gain by the search? Was he wanting to
hear from the mothers lips that Etzel had fled from his wrath
to the ends of the world ? Besides, could he be sure that she knew

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anything about what had happened ? What would be the upshot ?

It was as if he were suffering from spiritual tetanus. One false
step might ruin everything. But his good genius guided him.
Kerkhoven slept little that night. At six next morning he was
already roaming the streets. The quaint old city was still en
veloped in the mists of a wintry sunrise. Impossible, of course,
to pay a call at so early an hour. Still, nothing prevented him
from finding the ancient chapter-house. It was a beautiful
structure. He looked up at it from the opposite side o f the
alley-way, delighting in its graceful form and the garlands of
flowers sculptured round the window recesses.
Ten minutes he stood thus in contemplation. Then the housedoor opened, and a woman stepped forth. Clad in black, with
a black scarf wound about her head, the lady walked with a
very upright carriage. Her face was long and pale, her eyes were
sunken. Although the space of the street divided them, K erk
hoven stepped back into the shadow of a doorway so as not
to be observed. T h is must be Frau von Andergast, he thought.
Something indefinable in her aspect and her gait reminded him
o f Etzel. She might almost have been taken for the lads elder
sister. Without: raising her eyes, the lady made her way swiftly
along towards St Lucius Cathedral. He followed at a distance
o f about twenty paces. For a moment the dark figure was sil
houetted against the metallic sheen of the sky, then it was
swallowed up in the twilit depths of the church.
Kerkhoven hesitated whether to wait for her outside or to
follow her into the building. What pretext could he find for
addressing her? Seriously considered, there existed no plausible
reason for his encroaching on her retirement. Yet he felt irre
sistibly drawn to seek her out. He entered the church by the side
door through which she had disappeared. The sudden change
from the light outside to the devotional gloom within, affected
his vision, so that he could see nothing clearly till his eyes had
become accustomed to the darkness. T he candles alight for Mass
on the high altar guided him into the nave. There, on the steps
leading up into the choir, Sophia was kneeling, so absorbed in

SYNEIDESIS

57

meditation that his scrutiny of her appeared to him to border

on criminal inquisitiveness. Embodied prayer, was the ex
pression which rose to his mind. A duet between her and an
unsubstantial being far away in eternity. In the bend of her
neck, the droop o f her shoulders, the relaxation of her limbs,
the folds of her head-wrap, Kerkhoven found an expression so
poignant that it seemed to be a message from another world.
It turned his thoughts and feelings into a different channel. If
such a thing is possible in this world of ours, then I m no better
than an elementary schoolboy. I know nothing. True, many
others were present, and they, too, were kneeling and praying;
but, compared with the figure he was contemplating, they were
no more than simulacrums. These were genuine only in the
sense that action and body are genuine. Doubtless Kerkhovens
mind was somewhat distraught by the events o f recent months,
so that he had become more than usually impressionable in
regard to things outside his ordinary circle o f activities and
thoughts to things that were, indeed, beyond his power to
understand. He was only capable o f surmising, and of hoping
to comprehend such a phenomenon in years to come. He felt
as though he were standing on the lowest ring of a spiral which
curled up aloft into the infinite and which enthralled him like
an architectural dream.
He turned, and tiptoed from the sacred fane. T h e sunshine
greeted him on the threshold as if liberating him into a greater
and more illuminating existence. The shadow that had oppressed
him was lifted. He had been purified by the mother of his enemy
as she knelt in prayer. This, likewise, was a new sensation for
Kerkhoven. He had never felt the need for absolution, and had,
therefore, never sought it. Grace had been given him, and he
had received the gift. He smiled for the first time for many
months.
21

Four days remained to Joseph Kerkhoven before the W ilhelmina was scheduled to sail. He broke the journey to Rotter
dam at Freiburg-in-Baden, in order to look up a friend of his

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youth who was professor at the University. Th ey partook of

a midday meal in a small tavern, and then fixed up for a further
meeting late the same night. As Kerkhoven was returning to
his hotel, his eye caught sight of a poster announcing a lecture
to be given that evening by Alexander Herzog, a writer whose
work had interested him for decades, and whose books he had
never failed to read. He was glad of an opportunity to see the
author in the flesh, and bought a ticket. This was the prelude
to their acquaintance, an acquaintance which was to have farreaching consequences.
The lecture was not on any special topic as Kerkhoven had
expected, but was a quasi-extemporised recitation in which the
illusion o f being a true story was enhanced by the use o f the
personal pronoun I throughout. A peasant was telling how
he killed his only and late-begotten son, and excused his deed
on the ground o f an overwhelming conviction that the heir to
his name and property was a failure from every point o f view.
In the course o f the dramatic trial which ensued the judge,
who was one o f the narrators o f the affair, showed clearly that
the fathers self-accusation was false, since the son, crushed by
having to live with so hard and unapproachable a parent, had
put an end to his life, and that the peasant only took the blame
upon his shoulders because he was responsible for opening his
sons eyes to the real situation, and therefore looked upon him
self as the boys spiritual murderer.
Kerkhoven was on the stretch during the whole recitation.
T h e problem was one which resembled many o f those he had
recently been attempting to solve, such as the right of life and
death over others, the justification for cutting short an unworthy
life once it had been proved to be harmful to the community,
and that the moral purpose of the individual who decides to
use such a prerogative is indubitable. A revolutionary reversal
o f extant laws and outlooks especially for a physician, since
it invalidated the accepted view that a doctors duty to society
is to heal, and did this quite independently of current theories
o f eugenics and sterilisation. T h e experiment would be a dan

SYNEIDESIS

59

gerous one, nay criminal, unless one could ensure the most
serene unselfishness in those to whom its execution was en
trusted. Besides, what would become of the Paracelsian doctor
whose ideal was lovingkindness ? That notion could not be
revived until gentler times came, when human beings would
once more be able to kneel and pray. Obviously this story of
Herzogs put in question the worth of an individual life, for the
son had only committed suicide because the father, a man with
a dominant personality, had succeeded in convincing the son
of his own worthlessness, and had thus roused in the latter the
will-to-death. W ell, thought Kerkhoven, here we certainly
have a pointer, and it seems that imaginative writers are to be
the pace-makers for our race.
An even deeper impression than the story was produced upon
Kerkhoven by the author himself. Alexander Herzog was a man
of middle height, possessed o f a pleasing and well-modulated
voice. His eyes were dark and gloomy, his gestures reserved.
Though close upon sixty, he looked under fifty years of age.
His most striking feature was his forehead. It was so high, so
impressive, that in comparison with the remainder o f his face
it appeared almost as though it were an artificially imposed
structure. His entire aspect bespoke sadness and suffering. T h e
whole man produced the impression of a ceaseless inner activity,
so that the picture he presented was that o f an individual affected
with spiritual pain, a victim of starvation of the sensual life,
prisoned both in the world and in himself, yet able now and
again to find possibilities of escape to wrest himself from
the grip of the daimon whose presence was plain enough to
all those who had eyes to see. The longer Kerkhoven sat lis
tening entranced to the speaker, the more confirmed grew this
picture. It stamped itself so deeply into his memory that hence
forward he could never forget it. While he journeyed over the
seas to the Dutch Indies it accompanied him, and leapt up
clearly before him during his wanderings in Java. As we shall
see later, this recurrent memory of Alexander Herzog was, so
to say, fore-ordained.

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22

Kerkhovens transfer to a tropical island produced almost

exactly the effect he had anticipated, namely a modification of
the very stuff and substance o f his being, a change which
approximated at the outset to a feeling o f having lost himself,
since the memories of his earlier life were more or less com
pletely effaced. It remains an open question whether a man
close on fifty can afford to forget without renouncing his moral
and intellectual responsibilities, and, if he does, what powers
he is to put in their stead.
Kerkhoven had never had experience of ocean travel. During
the voyage he had been the prey to a most peculiar illusion:
it seemed to him that he was moving in a vertical direction;
that the intensity of the perpendicular light suspended the ships
horizontal movement. Hitherto, moreover, he had known nothing
of the sun. Tropical sunlight was a new element. It stirred stag
nant blood and stagnant feelings. For hours in succession he
seemed free from the unceasing drag of gravitation.
The faces of men were different, the faces of the clouds were
different, and so were the faces of the flowers. Nature took on
huge proportions and was immoderate, the vegetation seemed
to swell with a monstrous sap, the weather was heavy as in
the primeval chaos, the climate and atmosphere were dangerously
stimulating at the higher altitudes and mortally enervating in
the plains, there were thirty-eight active volcanoes all behaving
like giant forges fixed in the sky and whose growls could be
heard emerging from the bowels of the earth.
Colour proved even more overwhelming. T h e eye of a
northerner is used to gentle misty hues, assuaging and bene
ficent; but here sight was blinded by the intensity of colouring
and the sharpness of outline. Everything, live matter or dead,
seemed to be in flames, glowing at the core with a red light,
and edged in clear-cut silhouette by violet bordering on black.
The reds, greens, blues, and yellows of blossoms, stuffs, and
insects were like an eruption from hidden craters of colour, and
struck at the spectator as if stabbing him in the retina.

SYNEIDESIS

61

Just as life was enhanced beyond the limits of the compre

hensible so, as Kerkhoven was soon to discover, was death.
Never had he seen such ruthlessness. So far he had witnessed
deaths coming, had recognised it, had fought against it; but
he had not hitherto felt that it was a permanent guest within
his own body. Perhaps as a medical man he should have known
better. Twentieth-century European men are as stuck in their
own egos as flies in amber. They need to go through a melting
process in order to be released. A new concept came to K erk
hovens mind: death in driblets; the gradual ripening of death
within the organism, until it evolves the final death. What did
this signify but that disease, crime, and illusion must be mani
festations of premature death?
23

T h e scientific investigations upon which Kerkhoven and his

colleagues were engaged, often necessitated a journey up country.
T h e specific form o f encephalitis they were studying had broken
out sporadically soon after the communist uprising in Java and
had for five years claimed many victims. Laymen were inclined
to believe that the malady was caused by the bite of a certain
snake. Others, again, held the hypothesis that it had been
introduced by the Chinese and was an ingredient o f the opium
they imported. M any European doctors on the spot spoke of
it as a comatose form o f malignant malaria. After dissecting a
certain number of brains on the post-mortem table, Kerkhoven
became convinced that the trouble was a localised organic
disease. Since he suspected that the infection might arise from
soil or water, he undertook a careful survey, and felt pretty sure
his theory was correct. He, therefore, addressed a memorial to
the Dutch Government on his findings, and suggested that the
people living in the infected areas should be removed to salu
brious localities. Such wholesale deportation and resettlement
would have proved extremely costly, and, since the commission
was not unanimous on the point, Kerkhovens suggestion was
turned down. He was lucky in effecting several cures, but

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remained sceptical as to the therapeutic value o f the methods

he employed. These cures, however, were bruited far and wide,
so that one day a Malay doctor from Buitenzorg paid him a
visit and requested to be accepted as Kerkhovens pupil. With
a genial smile, Kerkhoven rejected the application, saying:
I m not far enough advanced for that. M y success looms
bigger than is warranted by the facts.
24
He felt he was moving in a dream world as, with his colleagues
or merely attended by a native servant, he travelled into the
interior, skirting the vast, terraced farms, riding through aban
doned towns and temples which the jungle had invaded, looking
on ruins whose beauty o f contour and detail filled him with
amazement. When he stayed to contemplate the age-old statues
o f Hindu gods, the eightarmed Lora-jonggrang who stood upon
the back of a kneeling bull, the colossal figures of the Thousand
Tem ple at Ghandi Seva, the sevenfold enclosures o f the temple
o f Boro-Budur with its seven hundred statues, all these seemed
to him to be works created by a race of giants. His movements
were accompanied by the ghostlike cry of the wild peacock,
which left a trail o f dazzling colours in its wake when it flew
across the path.
But the impression produced upon him by the European
civilisation of Java was most unfavourable. T h e ways of life and
the governmental methods of the West, when imposed upon the
indigenes, might be compared with the attempts o f an unhappy
and seriously diseased individual to convince a healthy and
happy person that his (the sick mans) condition was infinitely
preferable and more advantageous, while making the hale person
as ill and unfortunate as himself. If the desired change could
not be effected by kindness, it was to be effected by force. Still,
it seemed to Kerkhoven that the colonial system in the Dutch
Indies compared favourably, in respect o f leniency and intelli
gence, with what he had read of similar systems in other parts
of the world. Being, however, determined to avoid arousing

SYNEIDESIS

63

animus by criticism, he had as little truck as possible with the

European settlers, planters and high officials. T h e only friends
he made in Java were a young married couple, William and
Mabel Hardy. T h e man was British consul. T h e wife was
exceedingly good looking.
25

T h e customs of the natives proved an inexhaustible source of

interest and cogitation for Kerkhoven. He never tired in his
endeavours to penetrate their inner significance. Other Euro
peans, ignorant and prejudiced, were inclined to look upon such
things as savage superstitions. Kerkhoven was already aware of
the existence o f unknown forces in man and in nature, and,
no more than any other scientific observer, did he need demon
strations to prove so obvious a fact. Nevertheless, he was at
times hard put to it to find the dividing line between outward
custom and that which is mysterious and worthy o f respect in
religion and myth. His observations were jotted down in innu
merable notebooks, which he intended to incorporate into his
big work on Illusion.
A curious custom was brought to his notice when the rainy
season was due and yet failed to set in. Tw o men, armed with
rods, beat each other on the naked flesh until blood was drawn.
When they felt the blood flowing over their skin, they were
convinced that this was a sign of coming rain. T h e natives
believed that the soul was a bird, and mothers were wont to
place their children in a hen-coop as soon as the youngsters
began to toddle, and then proceeded to entice them forth by
calling: cluck, cluck, cluck. T h ey thought that earth, heaven,
and the human body were sibs, and when, therefore, seedtime
was over, the farmer and his wife would pass the night in the
field and have conjugal relations there in order to secure the
fertility of the land. Should an accident occur, or should the
family have a run o f ill-luck, a pot o f water containing a selection
o f herbs would be placed over the fire, and when the concoction
began to boil the mistress o f the household had to inhale the
fumes until she became intoxicated and fell into convulsions.

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Then, in her delirium, with wild gestures and awful grimaces,

she would chase the evil spirit out of the house. A special
day was devoted to casting out devils, the night of the
black moon. Fruits and meat were set at a cross-road, and
then a horn was wound calling the demons to the banquet,
while the men ran hither and thither in the darkness with torches
kindled at the sacred lamp; the women, old folk, and children
who had remained at home would meanwhile make a deafening
noise with clappers and rice-pounders; whereupon the spirits
flocked to the cross-road, and as soon as they had all assembled
round the repast there ensued a silence which nothing disturbed
till sunrise. Crowns of thorns were hung up on the doors on
such nights to warn off friends, for as soon as the evil spirits
were busy over the meal, those who had sick persons on their
hands fetched the sufferers from the places where they were
hid and brought them into the home so that the demon should
not enter in again for every illness has its appropriate demon.
Rice, which is the main constituent of the native diet, is a god,
and the indigenes invariably refer to it with the utmost reverence.
When the harvests have been garnered, a wedding feast is held.
T h e young man is called the Rice Bridegroom, the girl, the
Rice Bride. After the ceremony, the married couple are con
ducted to an elaborately decorated hut where they have to remain
undisturbed for forty days.
26

Since Kerkhovens medical work brought him into daily contact

with the natives, and they were able to enlist his sympathy and
understanding, he could keep his mind free from prejudice and
dislike in relation to the world of their imaginings.
A discovery which was of special significance for himself was
the peace of mind they enjoyed and the fact that they were all
o f one mind, looking upon any mental disturbance or bodily
sickness as a sin that had to be expiated by the whole com
munity, for it constituted a betrayal of the godhead. One day
a man suffering from a painful enlargement of the spleen stepped
forth naked before the assembled villagers, begging the elders

f
SYNEIDESIS

65

and the priests to kill him, since, sick as he was and outcast
from the favour of the gods, he was no longer worthy to live
among them.
Was it not, Kerkhoven asked himself, his friendship with
Irlen far more than his subsequent marriage with Marie, which
was once again pointing out to him the way he should go ? Had
not an unexpected combination of circumstances, the favour
of fortune, provided him with direct confirmation concerning
the law of the biological consciousness, of syneidesis, which the
great brain anatomist in Zurich had discovered and made known ?
He often thought of the evening when he had sat opposite that
man of might, seventy-five years of age, a giant in body as well
as in mind, who, from the throne of his wisdom, contemplated
the human medley, contemplated life and death, with the won
dering smile which is the indisputable prerogative of genius.
One day Kerkhoven said to Mabel Hardy whom he saw almost
daily:
If some one asked me to find a formula which would express
my existence to date, I should say that it had been a preparation
for another life to come, a life whose outlines were already
dimly perceptible. I dont mean by that the life beyond the
grave, but a continuation of the life I have begun on this earth
of ours. Once before, I had to take up life anew. It is quite
clear to me that one cannot expect to come out of the furnace
precisely as one went in.
Such words made a profound impression on Mabel, for all
her dreams were set in that super-world which he had so
cautiously placed in some distant future. Still, she did not take
Kerkhovens methods of expression very seriously. She con
sidered that he was apt to be carried away by mistaken enthusiasm,
and in spite of her devoted belief in him she felt convinced
that he was deceived as to his gifts and capacities, to the detri
ment of those qualities which would really be of value to him
and his work. He had cured her of a profound nervous depression
from which she was suffering in the early days of their acquain
tance, and he had done so without having recourse to any
c

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special arts or methods, almost without her realising what he

was about. O f course he had taken no fee, not being entitled
(even had he wanted) to practise for money under the Dutch
flag. Since then, she had placed him higher than any other
person in her estimation. She looked up to him with a faith
so unquestioning that there was an atmosphere o f childlike
innocence about it. Likewise, her social relationship with him
had something of the girlish fragrance of a maid o f seventeen,
rarely met with in a woman of her years for she was twenty-six
at the time of their first meeting. She was fond of saying:
I cannot look upon it as a chance happening that you and
I have fallen in with one another in this way. I ve been waiting
for you; our meeting was fore-ordained.
For all her devotion to Kerkhoven, she loved her young
husband, who had a fine nobility of character and was by no
means a fool. But Kerkhoven became restless. He recognised
that this woman was making something blossom within him,
which had been dormant for years.

27

M r. and M rs. Hardy returned home in October. Kerkhoven

and his fellow members on the commission, travelled by the
same boat. During the voyage the friendship between Mabel
and Joseph became more tender. Mabels beauty was perhaps
no more than a peculiar kind of prettiness she had a delicately
sculptured face, very English in type. Not only men, but the
women she encountered, were apt to fall under her spell, her
features were so pure, her demeanour was so gentle. Sometimes
when Kerkhoven was sitting by her, he had the impression that
never in all his life had he met so charming a woman; she was
quiet and self-contained, and her smile and her laugh captured
ones love immediately. Like a child ! The witchery she exercised
over him often made him uneasy, and led him into exaggeration.
One afternoon, as they were pacing the promenade deck together,
Kerkhoven blurted o u t:

SYNEIDESIS

67

If I had a grown-up daughter a thing that very well might

be I should feel calmer when I m with you.
Do you lack calm? I never noticed. . .
Well, I ve come to imagine something quite unsuitable in
a man of my years.
You must not always be speaking of your years. W hy should
I be worried with figures, when figures mean nothing to m e?
But I feel the weight of my years.
Quite wrong. W ere you any more buoyant ten years ago,
or twenty? Besides, what has age to do with our friendship?
T h ats neither here nor there. You know it as well as I.
Her large brown eyes looked steadily up at him as if in
petition. What could she be aski'ng of him? T h e same thing
she had begged for all along: that he should not worry, that
he should not doubt either himself or her. She knew that this
was the danger that threatened him, and she was frightened
for his sake.
So long as he had remained single-hearted and had merely
wished to gain her respect, he had preserved his equanimity.
It was flattering to feel that such a womans attention was
focussed upon him. But once he had allowed himself to be
singed by the strangely cool flames, and when his kindly passivity
had changed into shy devotion shy, because he had determined
to renounce his right to love he became divided in his mind,
and it was this state o f inner disunion that Mabel feared and
deplored, for she was guileless to the very depths o f her soul.
Whenever Kerkhoven disclosed his plans and ideas to her,
she was greedy to hear more. Her whole being was afire, filled
with faith and expectancy. He made of her, on such occasions,
a kind of missionary, eager to promote the happiness o f man
kind. Mabel had been reared in strictly Christian principles,
though her people belonged to no particular church or sect.
But her upbringing had cultivated in her an enthusiasm for
anything which suggested the image of Jesus.
Kerkhoven often spoke to her of his past, telling her how
he had started upon his career, o f his first marriage and the

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hard struggle he had faced in order to break free, o f his friend

ship with Irlen, o f his two little boys, and of Marie. T o Marie
he was constantly returning, showing the greatness o f her
character, her moral courage, her gracious spirit, her affectionate
ways, her energy of mind, and the depth and stability of their
mutual relations.
I ve always guessed it must be so, said Mabel thoughtfully;
even before I got to know you intimately. Strange, isnt it? I
admire your wife immensely, and quite unreasonably. Pretty hard
on her to have you gone. . . . I should like her and me to become
great friends. There is so much we could give one another.
Kerkhoven regarded his past life as one regards a house one
has rented and which one has left long ago. For many years
he had so completely ceased discussing himself and his private
affairs that to delve into such memories was as difficult as it
would have been for him to report upon the happenings o f an
earlier century which were known to him only through the
writings o f historians. But M abels glowing interest lured his
past out o f him bit by bit. He never looked at her while he was
relating these things. It would seem that he was ashamed to
speak so candidly and frequently about himself. Nevertheless,
such talks did him good. Every woman a man loves is in a
measure a resurrected mother, a saviour.
They agreed to correspond while she was in England. In the
spring, Mabel and her husband looked forward to spending a
holiday on the continent. They had a tiny house on the shores
o f Lake Geneva. As they were parting, Mabel gave Kerkhoven
a photo of herself. When they were shaking hands for the last
time, she turned her head aside in order to hide her tears. He
kept his room for three days, feeling wretched, before he could
make up his mind to send a wire to Marie announcing his safe
arrival at Genoa, and then to continue his journey.
28
After Joseph left for Java Marie having moved into a little
three-roomed flat in Niebuhr Strasse her younger boy, Robert,

. SYNEIDESIS

69

fell ill of a fever. M arie rang up D r. Ellen Ritter, an old friend,

and begged her to come and see the child. She was chief of
the receiving-room at the childrens hospital on Prenzlauer Berg.
A reserved woman as a rule, on this occasion she was com
municative and rather excited because a sad case had come
under her notice that very afternoon. A girl of eight, suffering
from a brain tumour, a jolly little maid whom all the doctors
and nurses were fond of, had been admitted too late and had
died on the operating table. T h e details concerning this childs
family life were o f so harrowing a nature that Marie could
hardly believe her ears.
But such things are impossible, she exclaimed, horrified.
Are you sure its true?
Ellen Ritter shrugged, as much as to imply that she could
tell o f far worse cases.
If you will take the trouble to come to the hospital for one
single hour, youll see a thing or two, my dear, I can assure
you, she said.
Oh, may I ? Certainly I ll come along, cried Marie eagerly.
But the doctor did not take her seriously, and soon changed
the subject.
Tw o days later, at ten in the morning, Marie entered the
receiving-room, and sat petrified for two and a half hours looking
at all Ellen Ritter did with the little patients. A t the end of
that time she had come to a resolution.
No longer could she live on the margin o f horrible things,
knowing they existed and yet doing nothing to help. She knew
that in China, two million people died yearly o f starvation
but then, China is very far away. Besides, two million . . . Can
anyone imagine such a multitude? I f one could, one would
surely fall dead on the spot. Now here, nearby, within reach
o f hands and eyes . . . W hy had she allowed herself to be so
walled in as not to see ?
T h e question was, how to begin. Could she venture to devote
herself to the Service of Man? Real service, not just look see.
T h e daily round, convention, red tape all that sort of thing

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would paralyse her impetus. She would have had a feeling as

if, when the city was in flames, she was applying to the authorities
for permission to put out the fire.
Organised charity appalled her, and yet for the life o f her
she could not see how one individual unaided could do anything
to relieve the mass o f suffering which encompassed her.
How is one to set about doing something when one is the
slave of ones sympathies? she asked Ellen Ritter. Ought one,
in all circumstances, to suppress personal feeling?
T o a certain extent, yes. I should like to say entirely.
But I am an incorrigible individualist, Ellen. Your social
foundations can be sent to perdition for all I care, if a human
being stands before me asking for help. I must be allowed to
love if I am to help. You, o f course, find such a notion old
fashioned and harmful. But how can I feel otherwise than I do?
Come down off the high horse! You wont effect much with
love, said the doctor coldly, nobody gives us any thanks for
our pains. W hats your idea, anyhow?
Well, it seems to me that in such matters example is better
than ostentation. Suppose I take charge o f ten or five or even
three poor little mortals and really save them, I shall have achieved
more than if I harried myself with a hundred and, because of
lack of suitable accommodation and other necessary arrange
ments, failed to do them a haporth o f good. If every one were
o f my opinion thered be far less misery in the world. People
have got to be made to think along these lines.
Incurable optimist, answered Ellen Ritter. People can
only be brought to think rightly at the point of the pistol, not
by example. I m afraid you are still living in the nineteenth
century, my dear. Best look at your calendar and see what year
it is!
In spite o f this discouragement, M aries plans were almost
made up.
29
In addition to the three rooms she had been occupying, Marie
hired three more, which happened to be vacant, on the same

71

storey. A t the hospital, which she now visited almost daily,

ninety per cent of the children who were brought to the receivingroom for examination were seriously ill; tuberculosis, skin
diseases, and hunger-oedema being the commonest maladies.
Such were kept under treatment. Most of them, likewise, had
grave symptoms of mental defect, so that expert treatment in
this direction was requisite. Not wishing to stand about idle,
Marie answered telephone calls and made arrangements for the
transport of the patients. Those who were discharged as not
requiring treatment were in fairly good condition, and beyond
the need of immediate help. But amid the mass o f letters and
reports there were numberless requests from parents and guar
dians, and heartrending descriptions by welfare workers. The
place was an ocean of misery.
One day, when M arie had turned over a pile o f such docu
ments, she asked Ellen whether there would be any objection
to her noting some addresses and making personal enquiry about
the cases.
T ry, if youve courage enough, said the doctor, with her
characteristic laugh. Outside help is always welcome. The
official supply o f funds never goes far enough. Y ou agree with
me, dont you my dear Hansen?
T h e man she addressed was a young doctor who acted as
her assistant. Marie had noticed, to her discomfort, that he took
an unseemly interest in her. He often stood stock-still, staring
at her through his spectacles, as if the sight of her reduced him
to despair. What a nuisance, she thought.
30

Armed with a selection of addresses, Marie started her cam

paign. She visited various quarters of the town, and saw things
and human conditions that made her heart melt within her.
Never shall I be able to laugh again. Never again shall I know
happiness, were the thoughts that haunted her mind. Children
glared at her as though she were the Devil himself. Welfare
work was everywhere looked upon with suspicion and hatred;

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the childrens heads were stuffed with the crudest nonsense,

lies which made them look askance at any help that was offered.
M any a youngster stood gazing up at her, motionless, like a
galvanised corpse, and the childrens vacant stare made Marie
wonder at times whether they were capable of understanding
the simplest language. All of them seemed to have come into
this world with suspicion planted in their minds. Hunger, dirt,
rough ways, despair, were such natural conditions of life, that
they could not conceive of any others. Even among the more
intelligent, there lurked in their eyes an almost animal expression
o f sadness. T h ey dwelt in ill-smelling hovels, crowded together
like sheep in a pen. Their skin was of a greyish-yellow hue,
like that o f certain poisonous mushrooms. When their lips
parted, it was to disclose colourless gums.
No use wasting time in crying my heart out, said Marie
to herself. One has no right to give way to tears, especially
such people as I who have sat aloft in comfort like impudent
idols when all the while these horrors have been going on. I
wonder what sort o f consciences those so-called charity workers
have, that they can actually take a salary for attending to the
most elementary needs of these poor helpless little creatures.
How can one go back to a decent home, and eat and sleep,
after seeing this? Can a woman go on day after day doing what
is necessary for her own children in such circumstances? What
will our youngsters think of us when, later, they come to realise
that their parents have fed them on lies, and have hidden away
a world of misery and madness ?
Marie had intended to succour five or six children, but once
her eyes were opened to the facts it was difficult to impose a
limit. Above all, she would have to be careful not to exceed
the means at her disposal; if she did, that would be the beginning
of the end. She needed assistants who would give their services
freely. W ith Ellen Ritters help she selected two girls: Fraulein
Anna Bertram, the daughter of a member of the Board of
Education; and Grete Kohl, a red-haired, rather wizened little
minx with a heart o f gold. For a time Marie toyed with the idea

SYNEIDESIS

73

of getting Aleid, her daughter by her first marriage, to join in

the work, for the girl had now reached an age when such activities
were within her competence. But Aleids answer proved evasive.
Grandma wont hear of my leaving her. . . . It is very difficult
for me to get away from Dresden just now, because I have
started to . . .
Marie had long ago realised that her daughter was lost to her.
Yes, even when parents have done everything possible for their
offspring, the young people are bound to go their own way.
A problem which provided endless hours of meditation was
how she could make the changed conditions in the home in
telligible to her boys. Robert was five and Johann was nine.
She knew that no one can be so autocratic as a child. A mother
is looked upon as its exclusive possession. Her quandary was
rendered even more difficult by the fact that since Josephs
departure she had come to be on very intimate terms with her
little sons. Would not this newly acquired intimacy come to
grief if, of a sudden, she were to expect her own children to
share her with a pack o f unknown girls and boys? Probably
the best way out o f the dilemma was to use a certain amount
o f cunning, to suggest that for games and frolics of all sorts
the more the merrier. T h e boys were less reluctant than she
had expected. Johann, indeed, showed the keenest enthusiasm,
for his childish vanity was tickled by the idea that he was to
act as guide and helper to his mothers protegees. Robert vacil
lated between curiosity and jealousy; but in the end he came
to look upon the venture as a huge joke. T h e next question
was how best to divide her time between her sons and the new
inmates of her household. She had recently been giving many
hours a day to her children, and if they should feel themselves
neglected they would very naturally harbour a grudge against
her. In that case she would lose on the one hand, in the realm
of blood-ties so to speak, what she gained in the realm of service.
Marie had imagined everything could be settled far more
simply, naturally, and easily. Her mistake was that she had
reckoned only with herself and her desire to help, and had
c*

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forgotten to take the other members of the household into

account.
3i
T h e initial impetus would be lacking if she could not look upon
her work as something other than a philanthropical undertaking.
From the outset, her passionate nature had clothed her mission
with a very different character. She detested lukewarmness and
half-measures, so that she could only get into stride if her body
and spirit were one, for this alone would permit her to enter
into action, carry out an idea, fall in love, admire another human
being, with an enthusiasm bordering on intoxication. She be
longed to that category o f women whose spirit wilts when life
denies them exaltation. In addition, Marie was possessed by
an insatiable curiosity, and this needed to be roused if her
sympathies were to be enlisted. Her relations to strangers were
governed by such things as whether she was attracted, whether
she could make them open their hearts to her, whether she
could stir them and they her. All the more so in such circum
stances as the present. She was not, therefore, moved by the
direct pressure o f a peculiarly distressing case, but allowed her
sympathies to be captured by the unconscious appeal o f the
eyes and voice of the child in question, by its personality, its
originality of character, and so on. Thus, her judgment became
clouded, and the difficulty o f deciding engendered conflicts.
Then, it had become plain to her that, in average cases, mere
bodily care would not suffice for her wards, and she herself
would remain unsatisfied. Little had been done when they were
washed and freed from vermin, when they were dressed in clean
clothes and put into clean beds, and when suitable food had
been provided for their hungry little maws. Th ey would have
to be amused, o f course, told stories, taught pleasant games,
sent to kindergarten but even this was only a beginning; mere
details, to salve the protectors conscience. T h e essential thing
was a transformation in her own outlook. She and they lived
in worlds apart. Between her and them there was a great gulf
fixed. This severance did not depend upon caste differences,

SYNEIDESIS

75

upon deep-rooted prejudices, or upon the comfort she had lived

in as contrasted with generations o f oppression and privation
on the other side. T h e chasm was deeper than this, and Marie
could not plumb it. M uch as she puzzled over the matter, the
reason eluded her.
32

T h e first child to come under her roof was a boy of eight. She
had found little Heinz Binder sharing one small room with four
younger brothers and sisters, his mother, and three lodgers who
were out o f work. T h e father was a habitual drunkard, and had
never even tried to earn a livelihood for his family. Since in
his drunken excesses he constituted a danger to his wife and
children, the authorities had secured his entry into an inebriates
home. T h e woman was hard put to it to make a living, for odd
jobs such as she could do were becoming more and more difficult
to find. One day, returning from a fruitless hunt for work, she
made up her mind to kill herself. A neighbour had the four
youngest in charge. Heinz was at school. When he came home
at noon he found his mother hanging by a cord to the windowframe. W ith amazing presence of mind, the boy rushed to the
drawer where the knives were kept and cut the cord. He then
summoned the neighbours. T h e woman was still breathing. An
ambulance took her to the hospital.
Marie went to see Frau Binder there in order to talk over
what could be done for Heinz. She could hardly believe her
eyes when she learned the womans age. Twenty-nine! Y et she
looked not a day under fifty. Tw o of the little ones needed
medical care, and were taken to the childrens hospital, one o f
them suffering from Potts disease, the other from severe
anaemia. Tw o others were made welcome by a chauffeur and
his wife. There remained to be seen what could be done about
Heinz. T h e boy was suspicious, and refused to go along with
Marie. She was wearing a fur coat and gloves, and he could
not fathom what such an unusual apparition could mean. She
took his hand and spoke sofdyjto^him ; but the child began to
grin in a strange way that might signify almost anything:

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contempt, incredulity, dismay, astonishment, extreme mistrust.

He wrinkled his forehead; then, using great precautions, he
tapped gently with his forefinger on the face of M aries gold
wrist-watch. In the end, however, he allowed himself to be
carried off.
Her experience with Sabine Samisch was much the same.
T h e girl was ten years o f age, had attempted to commit suicide,
and had, therefore, to be sent for a couple of months to a home
for mental cases. On being discharged, she firmly refused to
go home, and, so Marie was told, had lived for a week with
a coal-chandler in his cellar dwelling. She was one of eight
children, ranging between the ages o f two and fourteen. T h e
mother had been placed in a lunatic asylum the previous summer,
and the household, deprived of its natural caretaker, had gone
to rack and ruin. T he father was a furniture-removal man,
unemployed. But his penniless condition did not prevent him
bringing home a woman most nights. He had five different ones
in close succession. Sometimes the hussy of a night-time would
stay on the next day, and ill-treat the children. Sabine could
have stood nearly all these goings-on, save for the rumpus
raised in the middle o f the night by her fathers return. Then
he would either beat the woman unmercifully so that her screams
awakened the neighbours, or he would insist upon arousing his
own children that they might witness his debauches. One day
Sabine set fire to her bed, having previously poured paraffin
upon it. She was saved from the flames at the last moment. . . .
What could one find in common with such a distracted
creature ? Would not every word one uttered sound hollow and
unmeaning? One would need to be God Himself to bring a
ray of happiness into this troubled countenance. Marie did her
best. But her heart was sore on finding she could not succeed
in attracting the childs attention from the lovely shoes worn
by the beautiful lady.
Next day, leaving her furs behind her, Marie set forth in
a coat that might have been worn by anybody. But no matter
how simply she dressed, she met with the same results. She

SYNEIDESIS

77

had a hard lesson to learn, trying to suit herself to her company,

and reaping scant success.
One morning she was given the name o f a dairyman in the
Kohler Strasse. T h e mans wife had taken in a little boy of
four. After a deal o f questioning, she found that the childs
name was Chaim. Obviously a Jew. He was ragged and hungry,
had evidently run away from home, and heaven alone knew
what he had been up to during all the days o f truancy. T h e
police made enquiries, but the search for Chaims parents
proved fruitless. T h e dairymans wife was genuinely sorry for
the little fellow, but she was poor and had a number of children
of her own, so could not keep Chaim. T h e boy was the shyest
creature Marie had ever met. When she took him by the hand,
he wriggled away and crept under the bed, from whence she
heard him sobbing. Then, quite unexpectedly, he gained con
fidence, looking up at her with velvety eyes. When he reached
M aries flat, he stopped dead as he contemplated the room
which seemed to him like a palace out o f fairyland. M aries
heart went out to him in an instant, and her affection became
even more marked when, a short time after, he was claimed
by his relatives. She had then to fight for him as if he were
her own child.
33

It was exactly a week after Marie had taken Chaim in charge

that the boys mother presented herself and demanded to be
given back her child. Her name was Malke Papier and she had
half a dozen other children who huddled together in one small
attic room in Riickert Strasse. O f course she had every right
to claim her son. Endless had been her enquiries, so she avowed,
and she had walked miles and miles before she was successful
in tracking down his whereabouts. Chaim, however, struck out
with feet and hands, refusing to go. Indeed, no sooner did the
woman enter the room, than a look of terror contorted his
pinched white face, and he ran to Marie, clinging to her skirt.
Marie marvelled at the childs distress, for she knew how
intensely clannish family life is among the Jews, amounting

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to a veritable cult of unity. She was soon to learn the reason

for the boys fear. Because of his Jewish name and appearance,
he had been knocked about and unmercifully teased by the
Christian children o f the locality. In the end, reduced to despair,
the poor little fellow had decided to run away from home and
set out into the wider world. He had become inordinately
attached to Marie, who seemed like a beautiful angel from
heaven. T h e thought that he would be torn away from her
was the greatest misfortune that could happen to him. A t the
first interview with Frau Papier, as has been said above, Marie
was puzzled by the boys refractory behaviour. She considered
that the mother was exercising an elementary right in claiming
her son, and, since the woman seemed a pleasant enough person,
Marie begged that Chaim might be granted a weeks grace
during which he might be brought to reason. This suggestion
apparently satisfied Frau Papier, and with that she took her
departure.
Next evening M arie had to go to the other end o f the town
to see two little girls, ten and eleven years old respectively,
who were the daughters of a cobbler. It was the younger, Hede
by name, who took M aries fancy and who was in greater need
of care. T he home was more like a pig-sty than a human habi
tation. T he father (as is frequent in cases o f destitution) was
a soaker, and unemployed. T h e mother had been laid up in
bed since Christmas. Marie arrived on the scene between eight
and nine for she had been kept late helping Ellen Ritter, and
when she had finished in the receiving room she found Dr.
Hansen waiting for her. He insisted upon accompanying her
part of the way. She had great difficulty in shaking him off.
As she came near the place where the cobbler and his family
lived, her ears were assailed with shouts, screams, cries of
Police and M urder. A mob of men and women were
clustered round the door. Addressing a girl who had nothing
on but a nightgown and a glaring red shawl flung over her
shoulders, Marie enquired what was amiss. In an almost in
comprehensible Berlinese dialect, the slattern replied:

79

Being in the next room, Miss, I could hear everything that

went on. He come home half n hour ago that tight he could
hardly walk. She, poor things been ill, and I could hear her
moaning in agony all by herself in the dark. T h e two kids had
gone to bed, too. Then he come along up, and yelled and bawled,
because he couldnt find the matches and candle. I could hear
him smashing up the home, throwing glasses, plates, and bottles
on to the floor. It made a fine litter I can tell you. At last he
found the bit of candle end and lighted it. And just because
his poor missus was too sick to get up and help him, he started
swearing something horrible. She begged and prayed him to
be quiet, for she really was at the end of her strength, and this
fair set his back up. He got hold of his awl and struck at her
with it, wounding her in the breast and on the arm. T h e girls
sprung out of bed, Kathi running down into the street to cry
for help, while Heda stood by her ma trying to shield her. O f
course the poor, weak kid could do nothing against such a
raging furious madman. He struck at her, too, so that the blood
flowed awful, and she fell of a heap. Then the wife, ill as she
was, crawled as best she could out of her bed and I heard her
groaning as she made for the window. She pulled it open and
threw herself out four storeys high, think o f it and crashed
into the yard just as me and the neighbours was coming along
as quick as may be to get hold of the man. . .
Marie felt the whole affair weighing on her like a nightmare.
Voices came from every direction, bodies pressed upon her, the
air was laden with the stench of sweat and blood, coarse spirits
and tobacco smoke. She was anxious to get to the wounded
child upstairs. Just as at last she reached the door she heard
some one say that the woman was dead. This was denied by
another voice, which declared that she was still breathing but
very near her end. T h e police appearing at this moment, there
was a movement in the crowd which enabled Marie to slip into
the house. Entering the room, she found the drunken cobbler
was being held by four stalwarts. She knelt down by the un
conscious child, and wiped the blood from its mouth and eyes.

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Then, suddenly, the man wrenched himself free and, before

she could escape, his huge fist had come down in a mighty
blow upon her temple. When she regained consciousness, she
found herself lying in an ambulance. She begged the attendant
to be so good as to have her driven home. Grete Kohl, scared
almost out of her wits, undressed her, while Anna Bertram
telephoned for D r. Ritter who arrived within a very few minutes.
T h e shock had sent M aries temperature up, so that it was
over ioo.
W ell have to damp down your zeal a trifle, said the doctor
dryly.
T o which Marie answered, shivering a little as she spoke:
Damp down my zeal as much as you like Ellen, but you
cant make me forget. . . . I know now . . . I know. . . .

34

On the following afternoon Dr. Hansen was announced. Marie

had kept her bed all day, and, since she objected to admitting
the tiresome fellow to terms o f intimacy, she told the maid to
say that her mistress felt much better but was not at home to
callers. Meanwhile, however, Hansen had been making up to
young Johann, and had persuaded the child to take him along
to M others bedroom. Full of apologies, the doctor stood bowing
in the doorway.
Be off with you, Johann, cried Marie, greatly annoyed.
T he boy disappeared, wondering why Mummy was so cross.
D r. Hansen never budged from the threshold. He spoke hardly
above a whisper.
Please, I beg of you to allow me five minutes . . . only five
minutes. I ve been quite ill with anxiety, and could not keep
away any longer. I felt it imperative that I should see you.
What am I to understand by this? asked Marie resentfully,
motioning her visitor to a chair. I fail to catch your drift. Do
you intend to make a nuisance of yourself?
Without noticing M aries reluctant gesture inviting him to
be seated, Dr. Hansen pursued with drooping head:

SYNEIDESIS

81

I can quite understand that it is difficult to grasp what I

am up to. I do not understand myself. I am mad. . . . Absolutely
crazy . . . I . . . I dont want anything . . . except to be permitted
to look at you, to hear the sound of your voice . . . Nothing
more.
Marie contemplated him coldly. His face was lean and flat,
though his chin protruded aggressively. He looked as if he were
being devoured, consumed by some inner demon. He was
repugnant to her. She had no idea how to handle the situation,
and felt very unhappy, for she knew that vexation and trouble
would be the inevitable outcome. Trouble, distress, and sore
ness of heart, bitterness and mutual recrimination this is what
the future holds for us, she thought. Marie knew all the proper
things a woman was expected to do and say in such circum
stances, that she should reprove him, make him listen to reason,
herself appear reasonable and just, try and make him see how
unfairly he was behaving. But she could not do these things,
for her mind was in a state of hopeless confusion; she looked
hither and thither for a way out of the mess, but found none.
In the end, she turned her eyes away from her troublesome
admirer, who stood there with a hang-dog air, his hands con
vulsively clasping one another. She glanced down at the small
piece o f pasteboard on which the name Eugen Hansen was
engraved. Hateful name, hateful card, detestable man, she
thought.
He made as if to go, drawing his limp and lifeless hand
over his forehead as he moved towards the door. From the
passage came the shrill voice of a woman, expostulating; a fat,
guttural, and common voice. Marie recognised it as that of
Frau Papier. In spite o f the agreement to leave her son in peace
for a few days, she had come back to claim him. All of a sudden
M aries compassion was aroused, and, flinging caution to the
winds, confiding in her power to meet any future difficulty, she
made a request of the intruder.
You would do me a great service, Doctor, if you could
deal with that woman. She wants her son back, but the

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child wants to stay here. A day or two ago, she promised to

temporise.
Hansen bowed his head, and soon he could be heard outside,
trying to persuade Malke Papier to be reasonable. Grete Kohl,
likewise, took a hand; then Anna Bertrams voice was joined
to the others. W hile this parleying went on, the door leading
from her room into the childrens day-nursery was gently pushed
ajar and little Chaim s face appeared timidly in the opening.
Gaining courage, he slipped into the room, but stopped in the
middle to raise imploring hands towards Marie. She beckoned
him to her bedside, placed an arm round his shoulders, and
whispered:
Its all right, old chap; no ones going to take you away. No
fear!
The youngster stared up with glowing eyes full o f gratitude
and said proudly:
I ll pray for you, sos you will soon be quite well again.
I know some prayers.
Profoundly moved, Marie kissed the lad on the forehead
and, since the clamour in the passage had abated, she told him
he had better get back to the nursery and his playmates. No
sooner had the door closed upon Chaim, than an overwhelming
sensation of weakness assailed her, and she burst into tears.
35

Thereafter, Malke Papier turned up daily; then, every three or

four days. She berated Marie, threatened to appeal to the police,
hinted that the childs soul was imperilled by further stay under
a Gentile roof, that her son was being hidden away from her,
that those welfare people were being appealed to in order
that a certificate could be furnished proving that Chaim was
neglected in his own home, and so forth. Marie offered the
woman money to keep away. Frau Papier took it, and remained
quiet for three days. Then her unsavoury visits recommenced.
There was nothing for it but to deliver up the child. When
Chaim was informed of the inevitable, he was dumbfounded.

SYNEtDESlS

83

Marie promised him solemnly that she would go to see him

as often as possible. Hardly had he been home a week, than
he went down with a virulent form o f scarlet fever. For days
the child hovered between life and death. In the fourth week
o f his illness suppurative inflammation o f the lymphatic glands
set in. He had been taken to the childrens hospital and had
Ellen Ritters most devoted attention. Dr. Hansen kept Marie
regularly informed as to Chaims progress.
So plastic and so attractive a child was an exceptional specimen.
T h e other youngsters to whom Marie gave asylum were stubborn
and refractory in the extreme. As always, it was not the individual
with whom she fruitlessly endeavoured to deal, but the whole
world to which that individual belonged. And she grew to dread
this world more and more; it filled her with the dismay which
a finely tempered man invariably feels when confronted with
the amorphous mass o f humanity; and when Josephs concept
o f days to come crossed her mind, she began to despair of
the possibility of safeguarding her dreams o f the future from
being crushed under the load of this amorphous mass. These
unmerciful childrens eyes put her in the pillory. She could not
rid herself of the cold horror that beset her; it enveloped her,
it had no end, just as death seemed to have no end. Her weapons
were paltry, her means of assistance were paltry, her words were
paltry, she had nothing to offer, she herself was paltry.
One evening she came into the nursery at bedtime with a
basket o f apples in her hand. Each child received an apple,
and soon there was nothing to be heard but munching and sucking.
Then her eyes fell upon a boy alone in a corner, as if he were
sulking. He was six years old, K urt Muchler by name, son of
a bookbinder who had emigrated to Argentina leaving his family
destitute behind him. Marie approached the child, offered him
his allotted apple, and asked:
W ell, Kurt, old man, whats up?
He shrugged, and at first refused to answer. Then, pointing
to another boy a year older than himself who was fussing about
his bed and laughing knowingly, Kurt said ruefully:

84

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EXISTENCE

Walter Gieseke says there aint no God, and no Jesus neither,

he says. Its all nonsense, he says.
Marie felt a pang at her heart. She sat down on a low chair
and gathered the thirteen children round her Johann and
Robert were of the company. Then, taking the struggling Walter
by the arm she asked:
How can you know such a thing, little man?
Walter reflected for a moment, and then said:
I just know, and thats about all. If there was a God, things
wouldnt be as they are.
He looked at her, a challenge in his eyes.
W ell, answered Marie dejectedly, all the same it may be
that God is there, only does not show himself to everyone in
the way they expect.
The boy smiled, incredulous.
Yes, he said slyly, but thats where the catch comes
in.
The child had seen too much in the seven years he had been
on earth, he knew too much. . . .
Marie looked at her charges. Ah, such young faces, such frail
and immature bodies, standing before her in their blue-striped
cotton nightgear. Thirteen pairs of eyes looking eagerly to her
for an explanation, sceptical eyes, forming a barricade between
the world of childhood and the world of grown-ups. Their
previous experience was what they appealed to in their minds
against the lies of these grown-ups. That was what made them
utter a No which was, for them, like the sound of the last trump.
N o, they said, we do not agree with you, we do not trust you,
we do not believe you; no, and yet again, no.
For the first time Marie understood. She took the tiny
blasphemer on her lap, stroked his hair, and said:
Perhaps you are right, Walter. Neither you nor I know
anything precise about the matter. But before you and I met,
we, too, did not know anything about one another. I might have
said, theres no little boy in the whole world called Walter
Gieseke. And yet you are here right enough, I can touch you.

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85

I f anybody said that there was no little Walter Gieseke youd

have a fine laugh, wouldnt you ?
T h e children sniggered. Walter looked crestfallen. He felt
as if some one were pulling his leg ; but he could not see how he
could deny the logical sequence of M aries argument, and this
made him angry. Marie, too, was angry. She realised that she had
got out o f her difficulty by a trick, and rather an objectionable
trick at that. Now she was ashamed. She rose, and dragged
Walter into the midst o f his little comrades. A few lines of a
poem she had learned by heart long ago floated through her
mind, and she quoted them aloud with impressive solemnity.
I am in this darkened world,
As a candle none has yet lit;
Be still, contentious heart;
Who stays me, I know well.
T h e children looked up at her, speechless with surprise.
Just surprise, nothing more! It was of no avail to try and get
into touch with their minds.

36

Nor was it o f any avail to try and keep out o f D r. Hansens path,
or to reproach him for his infatuation. He listened humbly,
eagerly, attentively but he refused to leave her in peace, tracking
her down wherever she went. He invariably knew where to find
her, though it was hard to explain how he was so well informed
as to her movements. He rang her up on the vaguest pretexts.
He sent her flowers, which she promptly returned. He wrote
letters, and typed the address so as to make sure she would open
the envelope. Love-letters, composed in an extravagant style,
letters whose tone was hyperbolical, and yet whose language
never overstepped the limits of decorum and respect. He did not
trouble to hide the fact that he had resolved to win her in the
end, even if it meant following her to Greenland and being
clapped into gaol for ten years.
T h e mans completely crazy, she thought and yet she
could not see how to defend herself.

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One Sunday, when, over the telephone, he had clamoured for

an interview, she consented to receive him that same afternoon.
She dreaded the meeting, but she considered that she had the
advantage of him in so far as her mind was untroubled whereas
he was as mad as a hatter. Contrary to expectation, he behaved
with exemplary calmness, though at times his eyes betrayed him.
For one and a half hours he spoke of himself, of his childhood
and adolescence spent among people who had seen better days,
but whose spiritual life had utterly decayed. He told her of his
loneliness, o f the sterility o f his present mode o f existence, of
his scepticism in regard to his fellow-mortals, the world in general,
God, and science. T h e only salvation from such a situation,
in which he was perpetually on the verge o f suicide, he declared
was the strange passion he had conceived for her.
O f course you will say that mine is a typical destiny, seeing
that I am a typical man, he continued without allowing her
time to put in a word. Still, Frau Marie oh, please do not
worry about m y using your name I realise that you could, i f
you chose, squash me like a louse. W hats the good o f me
anyway? But I would like you to reflect that a man such as I,
suffocating beneath customs and conventions, or, if you prefer
under the curse of a career. . . . .
What do you mean, cried Marie in surprise, by the curse
o f a career ?
I mean exactly what I say, the curse o f a career. I know
I am talking to Joseph Kerkhovens w ife ; but what comparison
is there between a Schiller and a penny-a-liner? What part
have we nonentities in the career of a Schiller? Besides, in the
end, every Schiller is an incurable visionary, if not actually a
charlatan who throws dust into peoples eyes. Character? Who
has character? T h e man who can prove his possession of it.
The small fry are ground to powder. But if one of the small fry
aspires towards a star, then you see the picture of Eugen Hansen 1
His voluptuous delight in self-abasement and self-torment
produced on Marie the effect of a personal insult. She could
not but agree that he was right when he described his life as

SYNEIDESIS

87

worthless and himself as a poor creature; but never before

had she had dealings with a man of his kidney. She did not know
what to say. Any argument she might have used seemed to her
as futile as it would be to say to a cripple: You need only pull
yourself together, and you will no longer be lame. Besides,
she had no particular taste for attempting to educate a mental
invalid. She was sorry for Hansen; but compassion is a form of
contempt, and if she showed contempt for him, the man
completely lost control. What especially enraged him was her
being occupied in welfare work. She was risking her nobility
o f mind, her freedom, her feminine personality; in a word all
that raised her above the scum she was trying to help.
I had a dream recently about a precious jewel lying in a box
filled with excrement. I need not explain the bearing o f my
dream.
When he was silent after this outburst, he contemplated her
with the penetrating virile glance which made her icy cold, though
it drove a blush to her cheeks.
Her whole nature remained aloof and critical so far as he was
concerned. She could not help him out o f his gloom and his
despair. In this matter, likewise, she was paltry!
37

She asked herself: W hat is lacking to me? W hat makes me so

weak, so inadequate, so incapable? During nights of lonely
pondering she became aware o f a vacancy within herself, and
had the impression that there was a stony desert where there
ought to have been growth and fruitfulness. Attempting to'
discover when this aridity had begun, she came to the conclusion
that it had always been the same with her. Unquestionably, the
substratum of her life had gradually been charred, with the result
that the germs o f fertility had been killed. T h e spiritual upheaval
and the stir of the senses that had occurred during recent years,
in conjunction with the decisive settlement with Joseph, had
loosened the soil and had liberated her from her selfish absorption
in her own sorrows. T here had ensued a sense o f liberation,

SYNEIDESIS
88

JOSEPH

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EXISTENCE

as if she had quitted a room whose walls, ceiling, and floor

consisted exclusively of mirrors. Y et did it not seem as if, by the
remove, she had gained only lawlessness, the arbitrariness o f a
life which she had allowed to approach hers? One can permit
life to come very close, perhaps one ought to; but in that case
one must have the courage of those who are afraid o f nothing,
neither of threats nor humiliations. Instead of that, she had to
struggle against doubt and fear, and was unable to discover
within herself the significance of the new, although that discovery
would have protected her like the wall of a fortress. She craved
for the guidance to which she had become accustomed. Y et on
closer examination she recognised that this craving was not
directed towards the absent Kerkhoven. It went back, rather,
to half-submerged memories, forgotten dreams, suppressed
youthful impulses, questions that had never been answered,
images that had once been vivid and had then paled to a heartfelt
need, a complicated picture, a face hidden in the shadows.
Often she became aware of a strange ardour within her. It
was a feeling as if she had fallen in love with an unknown man,
and this feeling aroused a sense of confusion. She had to acknow
ledge that by degrees everything to which she had looked for
support had crumbled away: devotion to human beings; the
petty details o f domesticity; her love for art; books; even nature,
with which she had so long and so closely been associated.
Y et it was not from personal disillusionment, not out of resignation
and voluntary relinquishment, that she was seeking access into
a new domain which for the time being was as inaccessible as a
landscape in the moon. What happened was happening within
her; and, in a way, in opposition to herself. It came as a com
mission from the epoch to which she belonged, and was charged
by that eras boundless need. Among the persons with whom
we come into contact, there are some who resemble the hands
o f a clock because they point to the spiritual hour. Silently there
is assembled within them what dwells unrecognised within the
breasts of countless thousands as desire and privation. Like these
ordinary persons, she had hitherto lived thoughtless y ; but now

89

she was suffering to the pitch of bodily torment from the aim
lessness of her world, its bald pursuit of narrow aims, its savagery,
its hatred, its bloodthirstiness, and its mendacity. Even while
Joseph was still at her side, she had often experienced this
throttling fear of the world, notwithstanding the straightforward
ness of his will, notwithstanding his readiness to sacrifice himself,
and notwithstanding the power of his intelligence. Whither
Husband? she might have called to him. You seem to me
bewitched. Have you no heaven over your head, nothing to lean
upon outside yourself, must you always rush to extremes?
She had been sorry for him. In a letter she wrote him early that
summer was the passage: Our earthly existence seems to lack
meaning. Mankind seems to have no definite goal. A very little
reflection leads us, whithersoever we turn, to the question, What
is it all about? W hat is the inner meaning? When and where
is fulfilment? L ife as we know it cannot be all there is. That
would be so incredibly stupid!
What drove her to a belief in the inexpressible power so vaguely
adumbrated in the mind of humanity, was a thoroughly chaotic
impulse, sustained on a flood of enthusiasm, which permeated
her entire being. She could find no name for this sentiment;
indeed, she did not venture even to seek a name to describe it.
If she called it G od, she was not any more advanced. God
was a word that had been soiled by millenniums of misuse, had
become suspect and had lost all charm. T h e presiding genius
she imagined for herself, had neither face nor form; it was
merely a ray from the human imagination, a twinkle of starlight
in the night. T h is notion, withdrawing her as it did from a
personal concept o f the deity, paralysed her desire to help the
miserable creatures with whom her present life brought her into
contact. If she could not enfold all these fathers and mothers
and children in her arms and carry them upwards to the godhead,
she must at least raise them into the anteroom of the divine. Her
concept of the divine was not remotely incomprehensible,
as is the idea of God whom man is incapable o f contemplating.
One can give oneself up to the boldest speculations concerning

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religion so long as their verisimilitude and content do not need

to be tested in the light of everyday duties and the unceasing
struggle for existence. It is so easy to lapse into gush where
religious speculation is concerned and gush was something
Marie abhorred. Since she kept herself on guard against religious
enthusiasm, it gradually became clear to her why she failed to
penetrate into the childrens minds, why she could not bridge
the chasm which separated her from them at least to outward
seeming, if it could not be bridged in reality. Nevertheless, every
child she brought under her roof was a source of heart-searching
to her. She brought its ultimate destiny, its inheritance, its
family life, its past, to abide with her. She refused to believe
that any case was hopeless, incapable of improvement, innately
wicked. Although human nature as a whole seemed to her immu
table, a childs temperament was still plastic and might be changed
for the good. T h e educational possibilities o f love were occupying
her mind, but only in cloudy formulation. She found herself
unable to fulfil these possibilities. W hy? In the first instance,
Marie held the town responsible. Yes, the town was to blame.
It was a veritable honeycomb o f insalubrious dwellings. It was
like a mammoth brain dissected out to show the convolutions
and bloodvessels; it was a horrible semblance of something in
the nature of organic life, but was really organised death. Clean,
good work was not forthwith acceptable as such; in the best
event, it was talked about; and i f not, was paraded before an
indifferent public. Oh, how Marie wished to get away from it all.
T h e sooner the better. Only then could she make something out
o f her life and character.
But these were not the sole reasons why she did not hit it
off. She was denied grace. She possessed none of that genuinely
great humility which alone could make her undertaking successful.
T h e humility of those who bow their heads in reverence before
any affliction, be it even leprosy or lunacy, malice or murder;
those who have transcended impatience, have got beyond petty
nervous irritability, have become almost care-free; those who
are nothing more than vessels (in the religious sense of the term),

SYNEIDESIS

91

receptive pitchers held in an invisible hand. She knew her own

lack in these respects; or, if she had not known it before, she
now recognised it with pitiless severity. She knew no less clearly
that she was as far from fulfilment as from the lunar landscape.
Before she could reach the goal of her desire, she would need the
key wherewith to unlock the door behind which she was prisoned
as Marie Kerkhoven, a person bearing an ineffaceable stamp.
She would have to blow up, or batter down, the tenement
Marie Kerkhoven. But she shrank from this undertaking
because she clung to the familiar form, because she was afraid
o f the suffering so radical a change would involve, because she
was a captive of self-love.
What was to be done? Where did there exist anyone whose
deeds or personality or destiny would help her to win through ?
Victory was impossible without the aid of a living associate, a
real and palpable mortal, of like substance with herself. This
associate must be found.
38

Her resolution to quit Berlin came to her suddenly. T h e spur

was Eugen Hansen. One evening she had gone to the chemists
and, the warm June night inviting, she took a further stroll in
the park. It was late when she got home, and the household had
gone to bed. On entering the sitting-room and switching on the
light, she found Hansen seated near the window, silent and stiff,
just as if he had not noticed her advent.
Goodness, M arie exclaimed, what on earth are you doing
here ?
Slowly, he turned towards her, a wry smile contorting his
features.
Pray keep calm, Frau M arie, he murmured.
He went on to explain that he had told the maid he would wait
until her mistress returned because he had a very important
message to communicate.
This is really too much, cried Marie wrathfully. Is there
no means of protecting oneself against such intrusions ?

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He got up and went to her as she made for the bell, staying her
hand.
You mean to summon your domestics, he said. T h ey ll
arrive too late. All will be over by the time they come. Hansen
pulled a pistol from his pocket, and contemplated it thoughtfully.
A cold shiver ran down M aries back. Certainly the man was
not joking. There was nothing melodramatic about his behaviour;
his dress was slovenly; his whole aspect was gloomy and
indifferent.
You have nothing to fear for yourself, he continued in the
same harsh voice, and with a strained smile twisting his lips,
though I must admit it would make a tidy headline quite
sensational M urder and Suicide in Niebuhr Strasse. A fine
scoop for our newspapers. T h e wife o f the famous physician
Dr. Joseph Kerkhoven the victim of a rejected lover . . .,
and so forth. Still, theres no question o f any such thing really.
M y original plan was to finish with it all before you got back.
I wanted you to see what you had made o f me. Agreed, there
was a streak o f revenge in the idea. Well, I just could not do it
until I had once more, one last time, looked upon your wonderful
face, Marie. Your life is worth a thousand such as mine, and the
best thing for me to do is to lay my worthless carcass at your feet.
The only action possible in such circumstances is for a nitwit
like myself to make some kind of demonstration. . . .
Eugen laid his finger on the trigger, and slowly raised his
eyes towards M aries mouth. Ever since girlhood, she had felt
curiously uneasy and bashful when a man looked at her m outh;
and now, in spite of the horrible suspense, this same feeling crept
shudderingly over her. She moved backward towards the wall,
seeking support. Not that she was anxious or weak! Laying the
palms of her hands against the wall, and throwing her head well
up, she said calmly:
Go ahead, get on with the job. Shoot yourself. W hats all
the talk about? T h e worlds well rid of a worm like you. Shoot,
and have done with it.
Ten seconds o f silence followed this outburst. Hansen looked

SYNEIDESIS

93

like a whipped cur. His arm sank nerveless to his side. He visibly
collapsed. Marie dragged herself to the sofa, and sat down.
She pointed to a chair nearby, and said:
Please be seated. Had you not better hear what I have to
say?
Hansen hesitated, then obeyed. Wisps o f hair clung to his
damp forehead. Marie went on:
If you fancy you can bring pressure to bear on me by that kind
o f blackmail, you are very much mistaken. No use protesting.
Blackmail, I repeat; thats the word for it. Listen. I am not a
woman who can easily be shocked because a man asks her to
sleep with him. Such things are absolutely indifferent to me.
But I dont allow men to force me into consent, see? You needed,
in the first instance, to prove that you were worth having. If
you had blown your brains out, it would have left me as cold as
if you had put a ten-pound note on the table for the pleasure of
a night together. I m not in the least touched, believe me. W hy,
I hardly know you. What is there about you to attract me? So
far you have shown neither consideration nor tender regard
nor manliness. You expect me to give myself to you merely
because youve got a maggot in your head that you want to possess
me. And you come here like a thief in the night to lay hands upon
something that is not given to you spontaneously. No, my friend,
I dont go in for such adventures. Y ou ll get nothing out o f me
by these tactics.
Hansen leaned his elbow on the arm of the chair, and, chin in
hand, listened attentively, feeling utterly crushed.
You are speaking the truth, he said gloomily, staring into
vacancy, but it does not help me in the least. I ask you as I
might ask Joseph Kerkhoven were he present what am I to do ?
How am I to regain in some measure my peace o f mind?
No one can advise you, only yourself. Your own will must
be your master.
Sorry, but thats a platitude.
Really? O f course anything one human being says to another
is subject to misinterpretation.

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Ive got relations living in Sweden. Perhaps theyll take me

in. I might have a try for the Rockefeller endowment. . .
Excellent.
If only I could be sure, Frau M arie, that you believed in me,
even to the most insignificant extent; that I was not a mere speck
of dirt in your esteem. . .
Idiocy number two, D r. Hansen. T h e first serious effort
you make to recover from your madness will raise you in my eyes.
I must be able to respect my friends thats an elementary need
o f my character. Once I lose respect, I m at a loss; I, myself,
not the other person.
T ru e?
Absolutely. I f you had asked me, I should have advised you
to go away, to Sweden, to the Mediterranean, to anywhere you
had a fancy for. Y ou must make yourself master of your fate;
you must impose certain duties on yourself; put an end to all
this silly self-hatred, and detestation of the world in general.
Unfortunately, I am not just now a fit counsellor, being myself
at the crossways. M y life is in a state of conflagration. If you
only had realised that fact, your morbid ideas concerning me
would have disappeared.
Hansen meditated for a while, his eyes downcast, studying the
carpet. Then he stood up, and spoke in a different tone altogether.
I ll do my best, to forget you, Frau Marie . . . not you
yourself, but the mistake I have made concerning you. Perhaps,
in your turn you will reproach me with uttering a platitude if I
say, You have made a new man o f me. Can anybody make
new people out of those whom fate brings together ? Is there any
such creature as a new man ? Thank God there is such a woman
as you on earth. That suffices. Y es, he persisted, when Marie
shook her head, yes, that is enough so far as I am concerned.
He went, and Marie remained motionless where she was until
long past midnight. She was inexpressibly tired. Vaguely, she
wondered why. Despairingly she asked herself:
How am I to find strength to carry out what I have it in
mind to do ?

SYNEIDESIS

9S

Again and again, the young doctors question rang in her ears:
Is there any such creature as a new man ?
39

A fortnight later, she took train with her two boys to Diirrwangen,
a little place on the borders of Franconia and Swabia. Here she
intended to stay till the end o f summer, before moving farther
south. T h e sister o f her friend Tina Andenrieth, a warm-hearted
young woman who was married to de Ruyters the automobile
manufacturer, had offered Marie the use o f a country house
in the neighbourhood of Mersburg. She could enter into posses
sion in the autumn, and could convert it into an asylum for waifs
and strays. Herr de Ruyters had even placed a little capital at
her disposal. Marie could not make up her mind, for she still
felt that such an undertaking exceeded her powers. She needed a
period of collection. Besides, she felt uneasy about Joseph and
his movements. Since the end of M ay there had been no news
o f him. From time to time her body yearned for his proximity.
She dreamed that danger threatened him. Bitterness of heart
assailed her when she reflected that a husband had no business
to condemn his wife to so protracted a period o f widowhood.
There were days when she could not recall what he looked like.
A t other times she felt that she could actually hear the deep
tones of his voice, as if he stood close beside her, and spoke loving
words in her ear. T h e children asked impatiently for news of
Daddy. They looked upon his absence as something discredit
able, and hardly believed their mother when she expatiated
upon how wonderful were the adventures and how daring the
exploits he was engaged upon. Marie loved to tell them about
what their father was doing. Such tales made him human, clothed
him with flesh and blood, made him a friend and a husband
such as hitherto she had never possessed. She was happy in the
realisation of all he meant to her. In August she thought: Only
four months to run. In September, three. Tim e moved at a
snails pace. She was thirty-eight years old, but felt so young
that she could still hate old Father Tim e for going slowly.

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Meanwhile, as she had said to Eugen Hansen, her life was in a

state of conflagration. Maybe this applied even more to her heart
than to her life. . . .
40
There were two reasons why she had chosen so out-of-the-way
a place for a holiday: childhood memories; and the charm of
the landscape. Her grandparents had lived there, and, as a little
girl, she had often stayed with them in this retired spot. The
frame-house stood just without the walls of the village, as she
remembered it, though strangers were now living in it. This oldworld corner of Germany gave peace to a heart distressed; it
was like a ruin which a kindly growth of ivy had clothed and
softened.
Another attraction had been that M aries teacher, a greybeard,
Kaspar Neidhardt, had lived here for twenty years. He had been
an intimate of M aries grandfather. When the old man was
pensioned off, Martensteig, a barrister o f note, had induced him
to settle in Diirrwangen. T h e latter had even presented Neidhardt
with a cottage, so that the retired pedagogue might pass the
remainder of his days in peace, giving himself up to his philo
sophical and musical pursuits. Marie felt she owed a great deal
to Neidhardt. He had been an influence in her girlhood, a
humanist such as is rarely found in the modern world. She had
corresponded with him regularly until 1925; thereafter she had
almost forgotten him, but during the last days in Berlin his per
sonality had arisen as a figure of reproach before her eyes. She
had, therefore, decided to look him up.
Too late! He was not exactly dead, but he lived on as a smoored
fire. T he old man was hard put to it to remember who she was.
He asked her some quite idiotic questions. Most of his time was
spent in cutting out gilded paper patterns; or he would sit
for hours at a time with half-closed eyes by the bedside of his
grand-daughter. At one time he had been famous as an organist;
but the years had, as it were, buried his love for music, so that
for weeks on end he did not touch the keys. Then, of a sudden,
he would climb the organ-loft of the village church and pour

SYNEIDESIS

97

forth melody as if he were a youngster instead o f being a veteran

of seventy years. These spurts of musical energy were noted by
those who happened to be present, and were retailed to Marie.
She longed to hear him play. Once, when she was a child, she
had heard him play the organ on a Good Friday, and his playing
had made her feel that she ought to die. If she continued to live,
she felt, it would be a mortal sin. She was told by the gossips
in Diirrwangen that he had played the organ only twice during
the previous year, and that requests were o f no avail, one had to
wait till the spirit moved him. In the end, Marie was privileged
to hear him, but by then another vital experience had so taken
possession of her that music, even the most sublime, seemed to
her no more than a forbidden pleasure.

4*
Neidhardts grand-daughter formed the centre of the picture.
As a girl of sixteen she had fallen from a ladder while at play
with some schoolfellows. Since then, she had been bedridden,
unable to move. Johanna was now nearly twenty-three years
old. Day in, day out, the poor girl lay on her back, staring into
vacancy. She ate hardly at all, some days taking merely half a
glass of milk and on others a little honey and water. T h e doctors
could not localise the trouble, but there was evidently a disorder
of the motor and sensory tracts.
For brief spaces Johanna was free from pain, and it was during
one of these interludes that Marie made her acquaintance. T h e
girl was terribly thin, and held her hands crossed upon her
emaciated bosom. Her great, patient eyes moved Marie pro
foundly. But Marie had no idea of the force which resided in
this poor, broken invalid. True, the girl was ill, she was slowly
dying, yet in her way she was showing fortitude and heroism.
Marie felt, however, that there was something above and beyond
these that sustained Johanna.
The pains set in anew during the second week in September.
So fierce were they that for considerable periods the sufferer

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seemed to lose consciousness. Her arms twitched convulsively,

her neck stiffened, her face turned ashen grey. Long ago she had
accustomed herself to do without medicaments, and had made her
grandfather promise to see she was not doped. No plaint ever
passed her lips. On the contrary, while she was enduring terrible
agony, a strange cheerfulness of expression spread over her
face. Marie was not allowed to see her the first day, and the old
man wandered about the house muttering prayers. But on the
evening of the second day Marie was introduced into Johannas
room. T h e petroleum lamp was shaded with a scarf. In one
corner a nursing sister sat as motionless as a statue. Kaspar
Neidhardt stood near the door saying the Lords Prayer. Marie
came to a stop a couple of paces from the bed, as though glued
to the floor. An ecstatic smile lit up the girls features, and with
every access o f pain this extraordinary smile became more ardent.
There was something unearthly about it. Yes, unearthly; and
never before had Marie grasped the real significance o f this
trite expression.
Kindred phenomena are not unknown. We hear of abnormal,
perhaps indeed morbid, spiritual states bordering on mystical
ecstasy, conditions that men of science are as helpless to explain
as the layman. In Johannas case, pain did not make her lose
contact with the world about her; she was not transfigured by
suffering. She was not severed from her earthly environment,
nor was there need to mention the term miracle where she was
concerned. Nevertheless, that smile came from a region beyond
the ordinary. It was o f a quality which, Marie felt sure, betokened
conquest over self, so that the person able to produce such a
smile in such circumstances must have brought about a funda
mental change in the inner being. I do not mean to imply that
Johannas mentality and purpose in life had been suddenly
transformed. That is not the way such things happen. A ll that
had occurred had been a slight deviation into a new path. Marie s
personal troubles were too recent for her to be able to shake off
the burden of dread which weighed her down, and penetrate
to the heart of the mystery before her eyes. But deep within

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99

her she felt a premonition that, on a day to come, she would

know.
Revelation was granted her on the very next day, as she sat
in the church listening to old Neidhardt playing the organ.
He had not closed his eyes all night. Marie had left at eleven,
and Kaspar had stayed by his grand-daughters bedside until the
morning was far advanced. Then he said he would like to go to
church, and his intimates knew what that meant. He probably
needed to pour his heart out in music after witnessing the
torments the invalid girl had gone through. Marie was sitting
at breakfast with her boys, when the sound of the organ floated
into the room from the church a few minutes walk from the
little inn where she had put up. Hastily she rose and made for
the church.
And it came to pass that she closed her heart to the virtue of
the music, defending her soul from it as from something mis
leading, as a temptation; she felt incapable o f penetrating into
the supramundane realm it opened up, and yet the earthly
appeal, she was convinced, meant no more than sensual enjoy
ment. No sensual intoxication, no voluptuous harmonies must be
permitted to interfere with the blossoming of the delicate germ
which she knew was developing within her, but whose scope
and depth she still ignored. I must keep on the alert, she mused.
I must not let my heart be lulled so that my work suffers. I
must be steadfast, must not allow myself to be led astray by that
which lures and weakens and turns me aside from my purpose.
It was hard for her to live up to her resolution, for hers was a
poetical nature very much dependent upon dreams. Not only did
she love music, she understood it; she had never surrendered
to the magic of tone in blind enthusiasm. Beauty was for her
an essential element o f life. Had it not been for art, the world
would have seemed to her a desert. When, as during the years
at Lindow, she had for a time been starved of the sight o f beautiful
pictures and statues, or when she had lacked leisure and energy
to immerse herself in poesy, the sense of privation had been a
spiritual torture. She was amazed, now, to find within herself

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a barrier against such things. This barrier was fashioned by the

self-preservative impulse. She had often found that an overenthusiastic devotion to the beautiful alienates us from our
duties to our fellows, and lulls the conscience to sleep.
Subsequently she was in a bad mood. Her nerves were so
irritable that she could not endure the chatter of the children.
A yearning has taken possession of m e, she thought; it
can be nothing else. But closer self-examination disclosed that
behind the yearning there lurked an obscure feeling, an oppressive
sense o f uncertainty and insecurity, as if she had sustained a
serious loss without yet knowing what it was. Towards evening
she went to see Johanna and would have liked to kneel beside
the girls bed and beseech the invalid to console her. Johanna was
still in the quasi-coma that resulted from excess of pain, but the
convulsive twitchings had ceased. All at once she directed a
spiritualised and radiant glance at Marie a glance full of
compassion, sisterly and clairvoyant. Marie knew instinctively
that danger threatened, that something serious was happening
or had happened to Joseph, something that might have a disastrous
effect upon her life and his. Overwhelmed with anxiety, she
cabled to him for news. Three terrible days passed before he
wired that all was going well. This assurance did not relieve her
anxiety. Almost with terror, she recognised the passionate
intensity of her newly awakened feeling. Once more the defensive
impulse rallied, once more she tried to rescue herself from
the clutches o f the sweet and the benumbing, but this time in
vain.

42

One who lives alone can retain self-command and is answerable

only for himself or herself. Those whose lives are joined in couples
are subject to other laws. T h e twofold being has imposed upon
it restrictions owing to which the paths the members o f the pair
might have chosen had they lived apart are modified, be it only
physically, as by the influence of gravity. Marie realised this on
the first day of her reunion with Joseph Kerkhoven. T h e joy
at seeing one another again and having one another again was

SYNEIDESIS

101

a shattering experience. There was no sign of weakness about

him, no sign of his being effete; she was no longer a prey to
anxiety, no longer did she harbour anothers image in her heart.
There were moments when happiness so overwhelmed her that
she could not resist flinging her arms round his neck and sobbing
on his shoulder; and she was able to forget the gnawing heartache
of the past months when she had to bear alone the sense of her
spiritual insufficiency, and the darkness of the world without.
Yes, for a little while she was able to forget; the blood in her
forgot, the woman in her forgot
Is it right for us to be so young, so mad? she asked wonderingly. Our behaviour strikes me as being almost godless.
Fear of age makes people old, answered Joseph. W e are
the age we appear to be. Godless? Oh, Marie, for this one night
I have sacrificed a year o f my life.
Marie shrank into herself. What he said did not seem straight
forward. There was a hint at exaggeration in his phrase, which
made her uneasy.
Leaving the children with a friend in Stuttgart, she had gone
to meet Kerkhoven at Milan. From there they travelled along the
Ticino valley and put up for a few days at a little place set in
the midst of vine-clad hills. On their long walks, Kerkhoven
talked and Marie talked. Y et it was as if each were keeping
essentials back, were concealing something that actually occupied
the front place o f the mind. M aries intuitive sense very soon
made her aware of this, whereas Kerkhoven noticed nothing.
She could not bring herself to speak o f the terrible spiritual
experiences she had had; perhaps the knowledge that he was
hiding something from her tied her tongue. How could she tell
him o f the crisis she had been through, and from which she had
not yet completely emerged? He seemed to her a trifle more
self-absorbed than he had been. Perhaps he was longing to get
back to work after the enforced leisure of the voyage. He would
have to start anew, but had not yet made up his mind as to where
he should settle and along what lines he was to proceed. He
discussed various projects with h er; but no matter how loquacious

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he was, Marie all the time sensed the presence of that thing he
was hiding from her. She would search his sunburnt face for a
solution to the riddle, and wondered what was the matter with
him.

43
She noticed that he received letters from England at fairly regular
intervals, and that he answered each one as it came. Joseph had
told her how he had made friends with a young married couple
while he was in Java. He mentioned the fact with assumed
indifference, hoping by his tone not to betray the further fact that
his interest in the wife exceeded his interest in the husband.
The first time he mentioned M abels name, Marie thought she
detected an emotional vibration in Josephs voice. T h is made
her suspicious, and she became amazingly cunning and artful
in her questions. She was delighted when he blushed like a
little boy.
Now then, she cried, smiling indulgently, out with it.
Own up. Y ou re in love, eh?
M e, in love? Nonsense.
It would seem so. You dont play the hypocrite well, not
being cut out for the part. I always know when you are not
telling the truth.
Marie, you see things that are not there. U p to your old
tricks, little woman.
In this instance you could easily cure me of m y old tricks
as you call them. Y ou r Mabel has probably given you a picture
o f herself.
M y Mabel? M arie, youre crazy!
Marie laughed heartily.
Well you see, she said, if you were a really good comrade
youd have shown me her picture long ago, without my having
to ask.
Looking a trifle ashamed of himself, Kerkhoven drew the
photo from its hiding-place. Marie contemplated it in silence.
Then she coloured slightly, and said as she handed it back:
Beautiful.

SYNEIDESIS

103

That was all. From this moment she never referred to the
subject again, and her surreptitious observation o f her husband
appeared to cease. Four weeks went by, busy weeks during which
Kerkhoven acquired a place named Seeblick near Steckborn
on the Lake of Constance, wherein to carry out his plans, and
where Marie, with the money the de Ruyters had given her,
installed a pavilion in the park as a centre for her child-welfare
activities. Then, unexpectedly, Mabel Hardy appeared upon the
scene. On her way to Geneva, unaccompanied by her husband,
she had come to Constance and had taken rooms in the Insel
Hotel. She rang up Kerkhoven to tell him she had arrived,
was intending to stay a week, and was expecting him.
Marie was on the rack the whole o f that week. Never had she
known such torture.

44
Every day, Kerkhoven drove over to see Mabel. Though he was
terribly pressed for time, he could always spare two or three
hours for this woman. When he returned from his visits to her
he appeared ten years younger, he was like a winged creature,
all aflame.
An amorous cure seems to have a marvellous effect on you,
said Marie, trying to seem rejoiced. You are so refreshed after
your visits. . .
You simply must get to know her, returned Kerkhoven.
T h eres no objection on my side, I assure you, answered
Marie.
Next day, he took his wife with him. Marie was prepared for
something unusual, in the way of feminine beauty, for she had
seen M abels photo, and knew that no portrait ever does justice
to the original. But the vision which presented itself, far exceeded
expectations. Marie was completely bewildered. She was inex
pressibly sensitive to what is called charm, and she was always
keenly appreciative o f beauty. In this respect she was as lacking
in jealousy or envy as if she were the mother o f all the lovely
and attractive women in the world. Mabel received her
unaffectedly, with an innocent candour which, in some undefin-

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able way, implied that Mabel occupied a subordinate position in

relation to Joseph, that she recognised the limits of her own
privileges and the extent o f M aries rights. Marie was almost
disarmed, although anger and dislike stirred within her. She
could not help feeling that Mabel, good-naturedly and un
consciously, was working to detach husband from wife. Just
when the new alliance between herself and Joseph had been
consolidated, when the past had been atoned for and the future
looked rosy, there cropped up this woman, wits turned by a
romantic ideal o f friendship, to trample upon the young plant
and make everything go awry.
Marie did her utmost to maintain a friendly attitude and to
keep her head cool. I f she lacked shrewdness and foresight, a
quarrel between herself and Joseph would be inevitable. But of
what use are good intentions when ones sense o f dignity has
been outraged, when something akin to a secret understanding
seems to threaten, when one suspects the formation o f a triangle ?
That there could be such a disturber of the peace as this new
comer touched M aries pride, her most sensitive point. During
the further course o f the interview it was borne in upon her
that a conspiracy was going on. W ith her capacity for self-torture,
she was doubtless over-ready to encourage this notion. Still,
it was plain to her that never had Joseph been so talkative, so
cheerful, so lively; and the recognition was intensely painful to
her. She absented herself for a tim e; when she rejoined them,
she had the impression that they had been sitting hand in hand
and had wrenched asunder at her approach. M arie smiled,
and yet she felt troubled. Kerkhovens constrained and excited
manner made her furious, and hurt her profoundly. He seemed
to her crazy, and made her feel uncomfortable. Even Mabel
became suspect. Was she blind? Was she so dense that she did
not see what was happening ? It seemed impossible that a woman
should be so lacking in insight.
Mabel had come on a visit to the Kerkhovens new establish
ment, and when the hired car drew up to fetch her, Joseph took
it as a matter o f course that he should see his guest home.

SYNEIDESIS

ios

Y o u ll come too, wont you? said Mabel.

Marie shook her head, pretexting too much work. But Mrs.
Hardy would not be denied, and in the end Marie yielded to
persuasion, so guileless and charming did the younger woman
appear.
All three sat on the back seat, Kerkhoven in the middle.
Darkness enveloped them as they drove along, and the conver
sation gradually petered out. Marie knew, as if she could see
with her bodily eyes, that Mabel had slipped a hand through
Josephs arm. Awareness came to her as though by electric
transmission; and while she continued to stare in front of her,
ostensibly unmoved, she was hard put to it not to jump out o f
the automobile, so intolerably painful to her were the sensual
radiations which (as she fancied) emanated from the man beside
her. Perhaps her imagination was playing her a trick ; but the pain
she suffered was real enough. Sentiments and judgments were
a matter of good or bad taste so far as Marie was concerned;
and, from the viewpoint o f good or bad taste, such a fleshly
commotion was odious. But was it for her to despise the man
whose masculine quality and power none knew better than she ?
Marie realised that she possessed greater mobility o f thought,
that she had a livelier temperament, a keener faculty for observa
tion, and a shrewder understanding of human characteristics
than her husband. Often, indeed, they had laughed together
over his amusing absences o f mind. But she had never ventured
seriously to criticise him, for he constituted the absolute in her
life, he was her criterion, her unshakable pillar of strength.
Easy enough to get irritated with him because he failed in little
things; his slowness and imperturbability were at times immensely
trying to her patience; but he was consistent, he had form and
substance, so that his strange trueness to type both in his defects
and in his merits endowed him with the secure gait of a sleep
walker or one who is hypnotised. M aries amazing mixture of
imagination and rational faculty made these things plain to her.
Another woman, less well endowed, might have come to grief
in her dealings with such a man as Joseph Kerkhoven.

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These thoughts raced through her head as the car slid along
the road which had been whitened by a light fall o f snow. Like
wise, Marie remembered, her husband had remained singularly
free from erotic adventures during the years of their married
life. T h e most beautiful and enticing women had left him cold ;
and if one had laid herself out to attract him, he had treated
her manoeuvres as a huge joke. Marie had never understood
why he was so ascetic, seeing that he was o f a passionate dispo
sition. She was by no means flattered, for she was far from
ascribing his abstinence to the power her own physical charms
might exercise over him. She attributed it, rather, to his tenacious
will, to his obdurate dislike for casual amours a dislike rooted
in his desire to avoid discomfort and to a fervent love for his work.
What were the special qualities that had enabled this English
woman to disturb his circles; what were the characteristics in
her which had transformed him into an ardent young man?
Or was it only the outcome of the surge of sexual feeling
which often occurs at the climacteric? Impossible! He was a
man who squandered nothing, because he had nothing left to
squander.
But this new tie he had formed was exquisitely painful to her.
What was she to do about it? What would be the wisest plan?
Should she magnanimously allow things to take their course
with the smile of one who would remain victress in the end?
There was something shameful about such a scheme, and shrewd
ness of the kind often recoiled upon itself. Should she make scenes,
insist upon her rights? That would be paltry. Anyhow, she
would keep her eyes open, must not allow herself to be taken
by surprise, must maintain a grip on herself.
As things turned out, however, her intentions were shattered
upon the rocks of fact. When the car stopped in front of the
hotel, Kerkhoven jumped out and extended a hand to help
Mabel down. Marie could not recall that he had ever shown such
courtesy to herself. Then he said three or four times: Farewell,
M abel, speaking to her formally as you not thou which
reminded Marie that he had given himself away during the

SYNEIDESIS

107

excursion by addressing Mabel as thou, and that Mabel had

replied with like familiarity. He bade farewell in so gentle a tone,
and his eyes shone the while! M aries heart was sore within her.
What ailed her, she enquired o f herself? Was it nothing but
common jealousy ?
As she and her husband drove back to the sanatorium, Marie
was tongue-tied, conspicuously so. Kerkhoven, too, held his
peace, but in a different fashion, that o f a man whose mind is full
of pleasing images. It was as if Marie were off stage. She was
mute, too, after they got home, mute while they sat at supper
together, as though they were in different worlds. She went to
bed earlier than usual. When he came to rest, after midnight,
having worked for some hours at his book, and when he was
about to switch off the light, she entered his room in her night
gown and sat down on the edge of his bed. He looked at her in
astonishment, although even yet he did not perceive how deeply
moved she was.

45
What bee have you got in your bonnet, Joseph? she began,
and her voice sounded harsh, far harsher than she could have
believed possible. He stared at her and she went on: I mean,
what precisely have you in mind? I should really like to know.
Surely you cannot expect me to continue being a complaisant
onlooker?
Kerkhoven betrayed anxiety.
I dont understand, M arie, he stammered.
You must know what you are up to, said Marie, in the
shrill tone that excitement invariably brought into her voice,
Either you are amusing yourself, in which case I ask you to
put an end to such folly; or you are in earnest, and, if so, I shall
have to clear out.
Marie, what are you talking about? I promise you . . . I
had not the faintest idea that . . . amusing myself . . . in
earnest. . . . But there is no question of one or the other. . .
I recognise that you have not the faintest idea o f what is going

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on. All the more reason for me to put in a timely word, and tell
you how things are shaping themselves.
Things? What things? Please explain.
Marie looked him straight in the eyes, as one would look at
a child which lies when caught red-handed.
I can understand how unpleasant it is for you to be taken
unawares, she cried mockingly. You have always resented
being called to account. But, you see, Joseph, I cannot allow
myself to become the victim of how shall I express it? of
let us say, your thoughtlessness. I refuse to suffer the petty
betrayals and trickeries on the part of my husband that most
women close their eyes to. If you want to be successful in such
arts and wiles, you must get up earlier in the morning!
Kerkhoven was horrified by her whole demeanour. He felt
like a man who had gone to fish a river and who, having settled
in nicely to a good days sport had been informed that he was
fishing in private waters. Such a possibility had never occurred
to him. Never had he imagined that Marie would have raised
objections. There was not the ghost of a reason . . . at least
so he was pleased to think. In this surmise, he was not only
cheating Marie, but himself likewise. T rue he had not been
very observant of her recently, but his lack of observation was
that of a person who ceases to notice a priceless ornament
merely because it is always present for the seeing and is safely
under lock and key behind a glass door. He said with extreme
seriousness:
You are, honestly, barking up the wrong tree, M arie; and its
not so easy to explain. There is nothing between Mabel and
myself to give you a moments uneasiness. Our friendship is
. . . well it is like something out o f a fairy tale. Even the word
friendship does not apply, properly speaking. Mabel is the most
unusual creature its ever been my lot to know. . . .
Good God, man! exclaimed Marie, disconcerted.
I mean, he went on quickly, alarmed at the reaction to his
statement, I mean, from a particular point of view, in her
attitude towards love. Its almost like a plant, a sweet, slumbering

SYNEIDESIS

i o9

emotion. . . . Besides, she is only twenty-five. . . . No, I ll

not deny, there is a quality about her face. . . . Oh Marie,
cant you allow the short, innocent dream to continue?
Marie clasped her hands, and laid her chin on the taut knuckles.
Then, very softly, trying hard to hide her despair:
Short dream, or any other way you choose to describe this
relationship . . . I tell you frankly, I cannot give my consent
to its continuance. I f you want to have a liaison with her, have
it by all means. Go to bed with her if her virtue and her bourgeois
upbringing can permit her to consent. I m nothing loth. W hy
shouldnt you? But I cannot stand your slavish devotion, all
this languishing for love on a background o f fleshly desire, the
store you set upon renunciation. No, thats sloppy, it horrifies
me and disgusts me.
You dont mince your words, anyway, said Kerkhoven,
wounded to the quick.
Precisely! I did not intend to. You and your Farewell
M abel business, just as if you were the tenor in an opera. O f
course youll have been saying, my worthy Marie, she sees
nothing and hears nothing. But I can assure you I m not as
unobservant as you seem to imagine.
She got up, but Kerkhoven pulled her down on to the bed again.
A moment, Marie. You cant go off like this. You must
know need I even say so? that our bond has absolutely
nothing to do with this business. So far as you are concerned,
you are the guiding genius o f my life. . . .
T h ats not true, Joseph. I dont believe you. I dont believe
a word you say any more, said Marie, throwing herself across
the bed and weeping bitterly.
A smile that was half indulgent and wise, and half self-conscious,
flickered round Kerkhovens mouth. He bent over her, stroking
her arms and hair, speaking tender and soothing words. Slowly,
he gathered her to his breast. Soon, she ceased crying. She
clung to him desperately, as if she feared she might fall into an
abyss once she relaxed her hold. Her lips sought his. Her head
span; it seemed to be on fire. He put out the light.

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Never had he held her thus, not even on the night o f their
reunion. He was shaken with amazement. No longer was she
merely giving herself to him. This was something outside his
experience, it was a liquefied glow. . . . Nothing remained of
his calm and collected Marie, whose senses were so difficult
to rouse. . . . Women were capable of greater variety in their
love demonstrations than were men. . . . Dim ly, Marie was
aware, amid the empurpled intoxication and joyance of her
passion, that now was the moment to efface for ever the visage
of another woman from her husbands mind if he were not to
behold that in imagination while clasping her, his wife, in his
embrace. Strange, thought Kerkhoven, I ve had to live on this
earth for fifty years before experiencing this miracle. In the
presence of destiny, we are all like little children, and never
grow up. . . .
46
Next day he had a long talk with Mabel. Again and again he
returned to the need for breaking off relationships, o f cutting
the ties of friendship ruthlessly and once for all. Kerkhoven did
not disclose what had taken place between Marie and himself.
There was no need too. Mabel made a shrewd guess. She under
stood. W ith bowed head and trembling lips, she laid her hands
in his, whispering:
You realise . . . I did not want anything . . . I feel myself
bound just as you . . . One has certain obligations . . . Enough
for me to know that you live on this earth. That knowledge
suffices, my dear.
He answered:
I have m y moorings over there, by her side. I stand and fall
with her. Y ou , M abel, were . . . you are . . . how shall I describe
it? There are people who make a new being out of a man . . .
But what are words? Every one I utter is superfluous . . . It
would be an affront to her if I . . . Oh, M abel, can you under
stand? One needs a special kind of language, a language only
spoken by spirits, to express these intangible thoughts and
feelings. . . .

SYNEIDESIS

hi

Yes, a spiritual idiom that is whats needed, affirmed

Mabel softly. And one should love as if there were no present
reality and as though we were bodiless. And we should live as
if there were no death. . . . She bent down swiftly, and kissed
his hand.
Mabel was no more than a grown-up child, with a lively
imagination, and no abiding-place in the realm of reality.
Kerkhoven had long since known this, just as he knew that she
would have crumpled up if he had ever approached her with
intent to satisfy his physical cravings. Now her dreams were
shattered, nor might he any longer dream of her; but as they
parted, though they said no word, his lips and hers spoke of
unending gratitude.
Has she gone? asked Marie next morning.
Yes, she has gone, for good and all.
Th ey looked at one another mutely while the seconds ticked
past. Then Marie drew near to him, and bowed her head.

47
Here we must leave the Kerkhovens private life, and deal with
them in relation to outside events, which will in due course lead
us to the fateful hour when they met Alexander Herzog in the
flesh.
T h ey were brought into contact with him by two remarkable
chains o f circumstances. Although these concatenations were
almost simultaneous, they were nowise inter-related. Y et each
o f them was far-reaching in respect alike o f its causes and its
consequences, and each of them imperiously motioned K erk
hoven towards the solution of problems with which he had been
wrestling inwardly for years. That was why he felt as if a bell
had sounded at the appointed hour.

48
On a day towards the end o f December, Kerkhoven received
the following telegram;

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M y father, Martin Mordann, is suffering from severe nervous

breakdown. Please wire if you can take him into your sanatorium.
Agnes Mordann.
While scanning the lines mechanically, over and over again
Joseph reflected:
Another piece o f flotsam from a past age. What can I hope
to do with such wreckage? Impossible to patch him u p ; hes
ripe for the grave. W ere I to take him on I could only do a bit
o f botching, and I promised myself never to descend to that
sort of thing. . . .
At this place it seems to me advisable to introduce a parenthesis
for the readers information. Tw enty years earlier, Martin
Mordann had been the banner-bearer of a huge army o f mal
contents, and his fiery articles had brought him renown during
the last days o f the empire. He had risen to celebrity about the
beginning of the century. In him was incorporated the spirit of
uncompromising opposition, of impassioned negation. There
was an undeniable kinship o f ideas between him and Rochefort,
the founder o f the Parisian weekly La Lanterne. Those who
wished to flatter called him the Aretino o f the North. During
the course o f his career as political agitator he had, undoubtedly,
been instrumental in bringing many abuses to light. On the other
hand, his newspaper had proved the focus o f unsavoury scandals
which for three decades had disquieted, and excited the interest
of, the German nation. His pen was dipped in vitriol. His style
was eloquent, but every article breathed fury and satirical
bitterness. His enemies were legion. Especially was his name
execrated among patriotic circles, and their hatred knew no
bounds. Kerkhoven, as he stood musing with the message in
his hand, recalled having read somewhere recently that the man
had been the object of an armed attack in Berlin. M ight it
oot be that the nervous collapse mentioned in the wire was a
sequel to this assault ?
After a while, Kerkhoven decided to accept the fellow as
patient. As a physician, he could not very well refuse his aid.
Tw o days later, Mordann. and his daughter arrived at Seeblick.

SYNEIDESIS

49

113

A fat, plethoric man, clean-shaven, eunuchoid in type, with

burning eyes glaring at you from beneath bushy brows such
was Kerkhovens first view o f the new inmate of Seeblick.
Mordann was a man o f sixty, and, though he was huge, and
corpulent as a hippopotamus, he was as active as an acrobat.
There was an uncanny element in his agility, for it seemed to
conflict with the mans nature. He produced the impression of
deliberately trying to create surprise, fascination, an imposing
presence. Even his voice had unexpected qualities, for it was so
high-pitched and squeaky as to be quite out of keeping with the
massive bulk of flesh. A typical refugee, and of a typically un
wholesome physique, Mordann thoroughly enjoyed the role of
martyr. Still, Kerkhoven was not going to make any deductions
from first impressions.
Agnes was a gaunt, faded woman with bitter eyes and mouth,
a doctor of philosophy. She obviously worshipped her father.
He was the only being in the world whom she trusted. She
looked upon him as a national hero, an apostle of truth, the
victim o f his mission and his beliefs. During recent days he
had shown symptoms o f persecution mania which had alarmed
her. He was suffering from insomnia. Day and night he wrote
endless letters to all and sundry, wherein he tried to justify his
actions. He locked himself into his room, and sat there listening,
trembling, bathed in a chill perspiration. For years before the
recent aggression, his nerves had been on the rack. He had
spent three weeks in a nursing-home to recover from the
attempted assassination, but very soon after his dismissal he
suffered a relapse. T h e doctors advised her to take him to the
south, and not to delay departure.
She was sitting in Kerkhovens consulting-room while she
gave these details o f the case. Evening had drawn in, and from
the lake came the sound of a steamers siren. Agnes, her legs
crossed, smoked uninterruptedly.
Was there any special motive for the assault? asked K erk
hoven. Was it on general political grounds?

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She hesitated, and then put a counter-question.

Need we speak about that ?
I ought to know.
Two days earlier our house was broken into. Fathers
writing-table was ransacked, and his library rifled. T h e
burglars did not find what they sought.
And what was that?
Letters.
Letters?
E r . . . family letters.
May I beg you to be a trifle more explicit? I am not putting
you through this catechism out of inquisitiveness.
They are the letters written by Count Brederode to his
mistress.
How did they get into Herr Mordanns hands?
They were offered him for sale.
Compromising documents?
Y . . . es.
Politically speaking?
H m . . . that too.
M ay I ask from which point of view ?
I hardly think that I should answer that.
The more fully informed I am, the better shall I be able to
deal with the case.
Old Count Brederode was mixed up in the separatist
conspiracy. T he Versailles Treaty, the fact that the German
delegates had signed it, converted him into an inveterate enemy
o f the existing regime. He had dealings with the French govern
ment. One of the numerous cases where a man commits high
treason out of love for his country. T he old mans son set his
heart on getting back those letters.
W hy did he not succeed? You must really forgive my
pertinacity, but it is such points which illuminate a patients
symptoms.
Somewhat tartly, Agnes Mordann replied:
M y father, acting on principle, has made it a rule never to

SYNEIDESIS

us

let the tiniest scrap of paper escape him once it has come
into his hands if such papers can serve him as material
for . . .
W ell, material for what?
Same as what legal gentlemen term exhibits. Martin
Mordann is the lawyer and the judge of his epoch. He needs
witnesses and proofs.
But that must mean a terrible accumulation of material.
Undoubtedly.
T h e documents cover the whole field o f his activities, I
suppose. That is to say, many persons in the public eye stand
or fall at his will . . .
Agreed.
How does it work out in practice?
A thoughtful smile spread over her face.
Have you never heard of my fathers celebrated filing cabinets ?
There are more than eighteen thousand names on the index,
with full particulars . . .
Kerkhoven sprang to his feet, and paced the room in con
siderable agitation.
Filing cabinets! Most interesting! A dangerous undertaking
when one reflects that . . .
Ah, but its all tucked away in safe hiding.
Y ou misinterpret me. T h a ts not what I was driving at.
What I mean is that such a possession is a heavy burden for
any mans mind. Perhaps I should be more accurate were
I to describe it as a weight upon the imagination. Its as if a
person had boxes of explosives for years in his house. Every
minute of the day he must have the feeling that at any time
he may blow up the whole neighbourhood, and thus become
the murderer of a lot of innocent people. T h is must be the
key to your fathers trouble. Yes, obviously; and, very inter
esting, too.
Agness eyes followed the doctors figure as it marched up
and down. She was taken aback by what he said, and found it
difficult to grasp the significance of his words.

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Well, we shall see, Kerkhoven continued. T h e first thing

to do is to secure him a few nights of quiet sleep. Then . . . w ell
see.

5
Kerkhoven could not rid his mind of those filing cabinets. It
was as if some one had told him o f the habits of a hitherto
unknown and peculiar insect. T h e more he pondered the subject,
the more it intrigued him. Curious kind o f brain, he mused,
strangely fanatical collector, to be able to sit for hours at a stretch
before a writing-table in order to keep a record of the crimes and
offences o f thousands of unsuspecting fellow-mortals. A
monstrous detective, capable o f tripping up almost any public
personality, of paralysing activities, of bringing suspicion upon
men and women just because of a mania for collecting details
of their lives and for using his information at the appropriate
time. Who can escape? Whose life is so clean, whose character
so spotless that there may not be a tiny macule to stain the
shield; who can say frankly, I have absolutely nothing to hide?
A grand keeper o f the secrets o f half Europe; warder of m orals;
an all-powerful policeman buttressed by an elaborate system of
espionage; a creature who, with ant-like diligence, has for decades
hoarded up actual happenings, which, taken singly, were insigni
ficant trifles but which could, when used to advantage act as
a poison and even bring death. Such a man needed to be studied
from his very foundations. O f what nature was the force he
wielded ? What was the feeling of power which had accumulated
within him so that he had become in the course of forty years
a kind of director of public opinion whether for good or bad,
whether to the honour or the detriment of the epoch, mattered
little? Since these machinations now lay behind him, since he
was played out, Mordann was no more than the wraith of his
former self, an empty mask, begging to be cured. Kerkhoven
wondered, why? There were already so many living corpses
haunting the earth that it might be surmised humanity would
have to suffer for the plenitude.

SYNEIDESIS

117

51

Tw o days after Mordann had been admitted to Seeblick, the

head-nurse of the sanatorium, a young woman named Else
Schmidt, came running to her employer with a scared face
saying that the old fellow was furious because the doctor had not
paid him a visit yet.
Being a naughty boy, is he? said Joseph pleasantly. W ell
have to calm him down. Is his daughter with him?
Yes, Doctor.
Please tell her that I wish to see my patient alone.
Mordann occupied the largest room in the house. It had
windows in two walls, being a corner room, and commanded
a fine view of park and lake. T h e first thing to strike the doctors
eyes as he entered was the number of bottles and salves adorning
the dressing table. Every imaginable toilet-water and hair-tonic
stood cheek by jow l with mouth-washes, tooth-pastes and
powders, manicure sets; there were brushes of many sizes,
scissors, knives, boxes of face-powder, perfume sprays. One
might have thought this to be the dressing-room of an actress.
In addition, the place was scrupulously clean and neat. T h e
daughters room, into which Kerkhoven had glanced on the
preceding day, might have been a students den, so untidy and
hugger-mugger did it look with its scattered clothes and books
and note-blocks. Such a contrast gave Kerkhoven food for
thought.
Mordann greeted his host with a surly good-day, not even
taking the trouble to withdraw his hands from his trouser
pockets. Then he said curtly:
No one can accuse you o f worrying your patients with your
assiduity, most worthy doctor. I m not here for my pleasure.
Years ago, in Berlin, they told me about your supercilious ways.
Not much use trying your high and mighty airs on me. Cant
for the life of me understand why my daughter sets such store
on you. I ve never held with you charlatans. Schweninger:
yes, he was fine. But hes the only one. Ever met him? Regular
genius. He took no stock in all this nerve therapeutics, as you

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call it. If Nature did not come to his aid, he just left matters to
take care o f themselves. And what are you proposing to do with
me, Doctor, should you deign to occupy yourself with my
unworthy person ?
T h e typical speech o f a maniac, thought Kerkhoven to him
self. Aloud he said:
You are quite mistaken in thinking I have neglected you.
There are such things as indirect observation and treatment,
and this is often more beneficial than direct intervention.
Medical tarradiddles!
Not very polite, are you ? But I have no intention of measuring
m yself with the extended field o f your experiences, Herr
Mordann. H ows the injury to your head? Any pain?
Yes, especially when weve a spell of wet weather. Then the
pain spreads right down to the eyes. Cant read. C ant write.
Horrible.
Was it a fracture o f the skull?
Seems to me my brains suffering sympathetically.
I have not seen any reason to believe that.
How can you tell off-hand ?
I think it is so, thats all.
Just a glance, and you know, eh? Playing the magician!
Felicitations.
Id like to examine the wound if I may, to see how it has
healed.
W ith a sigh, Mordann sat down, while Kerkhoven palpated
the scalp with its bushy grey hair. His fingers moved along a
fiery scar which ran like a red string from the coronal suture to
the lambdoid suture.
What strange hands you have, observed Mordann, looking
up uneasily into Kerkhovens face.
Strange hands? W hat do you mean? . .
Because they make me f e e l . . . oh, its such a queer feeling . . .
He ducked his head in order to escape the doctors touch,
and leapt to his feet.
A bit of a magician, after all, he cried. You give me the

SYNEIDESIS

11 9

creeps when you touch me . . . I dont like it . . . cant expect

me to play the part of an experimental guinea-pig . . . if you
ever do that again, I ll pack my bags and go . .
I cannot recall that I have asked you to visit me, said
Kerkhoven icily. Better tell me what you expect me to do for
you. Am I to treat you as a guest of the family or as a sick person
needing a physicians care? Once you have decided these
questions, you can stay or go as the fancy pleases you.
Mordann shrugged his shoulders. A queer, bleating laugh
escaped him, and he held his hand before his mouth so that his
decayed teeth might not be noticed.
You are right. I am a detestable creature. D ont take any
thing I say amiss. People have played ducks and drakes with me.
Go ahead. You probably want to ask all manner of questions.
Anyway, I m not denying that you impress me favourably.
W ell, what do you want to know?
T ell me what you can recollect of that dastardly assault.
Had you been warned? Did you know any o f your assailants
personally?
No. It was pitch-dark. A rainy night. Half-past-three in the
morning. I d just come from the Pressmens Club. Drove in a
taxi as far as Halensee, and meant to do the remainder on foot.
For thirty years I had done that when I was getting home late.
That was the only bodily exercise I ever took. You know what it
is to be the slave o f ones pen. M uch to be pitied. Warned, you
ask? O h, yes. Friends had warned me right enough. Besides, I
had received anonymous threats. But I snapped my fingers at
that; bluff so far as I was concerned. I simply dont know what
cowardice means. W ell, I walked along under my umbrella,
pretty quickly as is my wont, when at the junction o f Herbert
and Lynar streets four ruffians told me to stop. T h ey wore
yellow raincoats, and there were four of them mark that well.
Such rascals have to hunt in packs. Too chicken-hearted else.
I could not see their faces, and I had no time to call for help.
Before you could say knife theyd dealt me a whack on the
head that made me feel like kingdom come. I must have lain

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there, a mere bundle o f clothes, for ages; and they probably

thought I was done in, the scallywags yes, scallywags, rapscal
lions, murderers! Do you fancy the authorities made any effort
to secure the offenders ? Not a bit o f it. All their sleuth-hound
tactics were nothing but window-dressing. Th ey were deter
mined the affair should be hushed up and forgotten as soon as
possible. Th ats the sort of thanks one gets for trying to keep
the Augean stables o f Germany clean these thirty years, for
showing up the drones of our community, the sycophants, the
bloodsuckers, for bringing a flash-light to bear upon the foul
machinations o f the monarchy and the republic alike, in peace
time and during the war. Gratitude, indeed! Gratitude!
His voice cracked. T h e toneless crowing had nothing human
in it; the mans face had turned ashen yellow, and his forehead
was beaded with perspiration. Kerkhoven was puzzled as to
whether the fellows indignation was genuine or whether he
was becoming delirious. It was a delicate question to decide.
M any would have said that the whole scene was a fake, and
played with great skill. In that case, what was the object? T o
what kind of public did Mordann hope to appeal? It could
surely not have been acted in the hope of deluding a doctor for
whom the patient had scant respect? This was, indeed, a case
out of the ordinary, a new kind of mind for Kerkhoven to
explore.
An obvious feature was the patients fear. T h e assault, alto
gether apart from the wound to his head, must have produced
a tremendous impression, given him a profound moral shock.
But these reflections brought Kerkhoven face to face with further
problems. Was not Mordanns consciousness fundamentally
disordered? Was not the trouble one of those forms of morbid
vanity which destroy the moral sense so that the individual
thus affected becomes an intellectualised automaton? Surely
that was the only theory which could account for the sick mans
utter lack of a sense o f responsibility, of a feeling of culpability
the mania of the imaginative writer who fancies himself to
hold the worlds image in his hands when he has secretly

SYNEIDESIS

121

smashed the mirror in which he has been contemplating it. For

Kerkhoven, these meditations threw much light upon his
patients condition.

52
Wrapped in a shabby dressing-gown, Mordann crouched on the
edge of his bed, while Kerkhoven stood near the window.
I f I am correctly informed, the aggression was connected
with some letters, said the doctor. You must, it seems to me,
have had reason to expect such an assault.
U p went Mordanns head, as he inquired suspiciously:
Hullo, has Agnes been blabbing?
M y dear Sir, I can do nothing for you if you refuse to be
straightforward with m e, snapped Kerkhoven, intentionally
exaggerating the acerbity of his voice.
Mordann made a gesture, as of a cat whose saucer of milk
has been taken away. He gave in.
Very well; just as you like, he murmured, adding after a
moments pause: Better examine my heart, Doctor; that would
be more useful than worrying your head about my private
affairs. I fancy there may be valvular trouble.
O f course. But your private affairs give me indications for
general treatment. Cant tell you much about your heart if I
ignore the kind o f life youve been leading.
Trying to be funny, are you? All right. W hat is it you want
to know?
I should like you to tell me why you refused to hand over
those letters to young Brederode. T h e family, I am sure,
attach a sentimental value to them.
A y, ay, assented Mordann, in his squeaky voice, while
pulling his legs up so as to sit tailor fashion on the bed an
attitude which appeared ludicrous in the extreme, seeing how
corpulent he was.
And they offered a handsome reward, didnt they?
Y ou re right there, hee-hee! Tw enty thousand marks was
the sum they proposed.
I cant help wondering what advantage you thought to reap

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by holding those letters in custody. Your paper had ceased

publication for more than a twelvemonth. Y ou seemed to have
given up your erstwhile activities, and I cant for the life of me
see you getting into harness again.
Mordann took an ankle in each hand, and looked askance at
his interlocutor.
You think I m a confirmed invalid? he asked anxiously.
Honestly? Am I as good as dead already in your eyes? Come,
tell me the truth. No need to hide anything from m e.
Hysterical bluff, was what Kerkhoven thought o f this speech.
T h e mans mouth hung open, disclosing his unseemly teeth.
I am no hand at absent treatment, said the doctor, and
I do not jum p at a diagnosis, Herr Mordann; nor, since you
know so much about these matters, need I explain to you that
our bodily states are rhythmical. W e all feel this for ourselves,
and when our organism takes an unfavourable turn, one person
will say, Luck is against me just now ; another, Circumstances
have changed. You made a mistake in letting external influences
bring your machine to a standstill. A voluntary decision would
have made an important difference in your affective life.
That may be your view, but I am not a man to abdicate
voluntarily. I detest Fontainebleau.
Quite. T heres your danger point. T o keep to your own
parable, o f what use will the letters be to you in St. Helena ?
M y dear Sir, I m not a person who can be browbeaten.
Give me a sounding thwack on the head? Bon! But bow that
same head before a blackmailer? Never! I d rather bust. . . .
Had they bargained with you before the assault ?
Rather! But . . . well, you see, the documents are irreplace
able, unique. It suited those who had seen the material, it suited
all the wire-pullers, to bespatter my name with filth, to stigmatise
me as a traitor and agitator. But I intend to show the world
where the real traitors and agitators are to be found. Once the
true history o f this period has been published, I shall see to it
that the mask shall be wrenched from the faces of these hypo
crites, these betrayers o f the nation, these perjured privilege-

SYNEIDESIS

123

hunters, these . . . T h e y ve deprived me of my trusty sword,

but they cannot deprive me of my conviction that one of my
successors will raise that sword anew. T h ats how the matter
stands, most honoured Sir.
Kerkhoven could not but admire Mordanns rhetorical
flourishes. He knew that he had before him a genuine tribune of
the people, for whom the spoken word is all-powerful, whose
passionate utterances goad him forward to passionate deeds,
though in the last resort such action is ineffective. T h e sick
man fixed a challenging eye upon his companion, who remained
pensive. T h e bastions he had set up around him were impregnable
because they were not constructed out of solid material, but
were malignant and yielding as a bog. It was a desperate under
taking to try to get nearer such a being, to lure him from his
fastnesses, to wrestle with him, so as to discover of what he
was composed, to reveal how dangerous he could be, to see
how much one had to fear him, and to what extent one could be
gentle and make allowances.
We cannot expect that your presence in my house will
remain a secret, Herr Mordann, said Kerkhoven, rousing
himself from his reverie. A man so well known as yourself . . .
I m afraid the news will spread like wild-fire. T h e attempted
assassination . . . W ell, they are sure to have another try. I
dont see how I can protect you.
What? Do you honestly believe . . . they would venture . . .
But we are on Swiss territory.
D ont set too much store upon that fact. I could give you
examples . . .
Mordann sprang from the bed in one mighty bound, and
stumped up and down the room, snorting vigorously. As he
passed by the dressing-table he seized a phial and sprayed
himself with eau-de-cologne. Meanwhile the strangest sounds
continued to issue from his mouth, inarticulate noises, which
were only stopped by an immense yawn produced by sheer
excitement. Kerkhoven studied his movements with scientific
interest. This manifestation of fear, of a hunted beast, formed

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a ludicrous and tragical contrast with the I d rather bust of

a few short minutes ago, and revealed the mans duality of
character. But Kerkhoven was prepared. He knew a fair amount
now about his patients personality. After a while, he went over
to Mordann, took him in friendly fashion by the arm, and said:
Please, stand still for a moment.
He pulled Mordanns dressing-gown open, and clapped his
ear to the mans hairy chest. As he listened, he knitted his brows,
perplexed. Bad, he was thinking. Heard at the apex, the
first sound is too loud; there is a diastolic murmur; valvular
insufficiency; bad prognosis. But in such cases a doctor often
keeps his thoughts to himself. Standing up and squarely facing
Mordanns anxious look of enquiry, he said with a reassuring
sm ile:
Nothing wrong with the heart.
Mordann breathed a sigh o f relief.
Yes, and while terminating our first consultation, continued
Kerkhoven cheerfully, I m going to issue my first orders for
your treatment.
And what may they be?
Those letters have got to be given up.
Mordann let out a groan that had the quality of a noise an
animal makes when it is at bay. His eyes turned green, as he
screamed in his queer falsetto voice:
You are in error if you fancy . . .
Those letters are going to be handed over, Kerkhoven
interrupted quietly. I ll give you time to think about it. Abuse
me as much as you like, but the letters will have to be given
back.
He nodded a kindly farewell, turned on his heel and dis
appeared, leaving his patient speechless with amazement.

53
For half an hour thereafter, Mordann stormed round the room
He bellowed for his daughter. As soon as she came, he told her
that they would have to leave at once, that the doctor was an

SYNEIDESIS

125

impossible creature who in the exercise of his profession over

stepped the limits of the permissible.
Go? All right. But where to? asked Agnes, crushed, and
wondering what could have taken place at the interview.
Curiously enough Mordann kept silent as to this. Suddenly
he was seized with a pain in the chest, and panted for breath.
Agnes got the assistant to help in putting the sick man to bed.
He flung the ice-bag petulantly on to the floor, and yelled for
the doctor as if to show what the latter had been responsible
for, as if to take revenge by displaying his condition. Quite
frequently, among those suffering from heart-trouble, this
vengeful spirit may be noticed. Kerkhoven had gone to Friedrichshafen to fetch a patient, Frau Thirriot. She was being
nursed in the hospital, and the doctors at Friedrichshafen had
asked Kerkhoven to take over the case. She was suffering from
a very peculiar form of crossed neurosis.
By the time Kerkhoven got back, Mordann had quieted down.
He begged the doctor to place a hand upon his chest, saying:
You have a talent for making a man as superstitious as an
old woman. But the hearts sound, isnt it? Perfectly sound?
You promise. Only a bit nervy, eh ? Better have an X -R ay made
this afternoon, dont you think?
M any laymen have an amazing respect for scientific apparatus,
and Mordann was no exception. His whole body was poisoned
with nicotine, for he smoked fifteen Havanas a day, and seemed
to have an unquenchable thirst for his favourite beverage, coffee.
Kerkhoven gave the man a sound rating, and Mordann swallowed
the pill with a bitter grimace. He was typical o f those people
who neglect their organism and give it a hell o f a time, while
simultaneously being in love with their bodies. T h ey challenge
nature to do her damndest, and when she leaves them in the lurch
they sniff at her as if she were a traitor. Such persons take short
views, they have no stability of character, they can impose no
restraints. Like all over-intellectualised people, Mordann did
not begin to live until night was at hand. Since his highly nervous
and irritable condition prevented him just now from working,

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i.e. from scribbling for hours at a stretch, he evolved grandiose

schemes for his daughters edification, keeping her up till three
or four in the morning, discussing the plan o f making a volume
o f reminiscences which she could take down by hand to his
dictation so soon as he was strong enough for the mental effort.
T h is book was destined, he felt sure, to make history, and
for its publication the world would wait with bated breath.
Since Kerkhoven had broached the subject of the Brederode
letters, old Mordann had known no peace o f mind, but was
constantly worrying his head about them. T h e doctors per
sonality and character fascinated him, though he refused to
admit it for a second, partly out o f the peculiar jealousy so
commonly found in men of Mordanns type, and partly because
he was sceptical of all human activity except, o f course, his
own. He wondered what Kerkhovens motives could be;
why the doctor had insisted upon the restitution of the docu
ments. Such a thing had never happened to him before. T h e
business excited him unduly. He felt it impossible to remain in
doubt and uncertainty. Argumentative by temperament, with
boundless ambition, a morbid need for wielding power and
influence, a passionate desire for self-assertion, Mordann could
not rest until he had discovered the reason why Kerkhoven
had made such a point about returning those letters to the
Brederode family. N ot able to hold out any more, he at length
asked the doctor to come and see him, pretexting a collapse.
Every night he found fresh excuses, so as to enjoy Kerkhovens
company. He displayed obvious signs of delusion and anxiety
states during these interviews.
Perhaps I ve fallen into the hands of a police-informer,
he said to himself. I wonder if he is in the pay of my political
opponents, and hopes to make me innocuous? Means for that
are easily come by. T h ey are spying upon me. T h eyve lured
me into a trap; and were I to make an attempt to escape, I
should be a lost man. Does not Agnes know about this plot?
Maybe shes taking a hand in the game. . . .
T his last suspicion was particularly distressing to him

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127

because there was no evidence that it contained a particle of

truth. During recent years Agnes had become his secretary and
sole confidant, knew of all his comings and goings, had been let
into the secrets o f his life. Food for thought, if you will. On the
other hand, her blind idolisation of him made him feel that his
suspicions were completely unfounded, were mad. T h e fact
that he could harbour such thoughts frightened him for his
sanity.
An obstinate and bitter struggle was thus engendered between
the two men, which led in the end to Kerkhoven being forced
to throw aside reserves and step forth into the open. Agnes,
noting the results of the doctors methods on the patient, was
aghast. One day she stopped him and hissed:
What are you up to? Y o u re killing him. Cant you see that
hes falling away terribly? Is that your object? Is this your
cure ?
Wait for results. Y o u ll soon see, answered Kerkhoven.
He was not so sure of himself as he would fain appear to be.
His experiment was a dangerous one, and none knew that
better than himself.

54

Mordann was absolutely determined not to recognise K erk

hovens moral authority. Kerkhoven, for his part, maintained
that morality had nothing to do with the question, his
aim being merely to relieve a psychical oppression, as a surgeon
removes a foreign body from the tissues. Mordann growled, and
asked derisively:
How so, M r. Magician? I m not keen on mixing up medical
attentions with the care o f my soul. I f I need a priest, I know
where to find one. But Martin Mordann and theological dis
cussion are not compatibles, I assure you.
I can quite understand that. Anyway the cure of souls is
another story and I am using the term soul to cover the
whole field o f the mind, the psyche. Our studies in this realm
are only beginning, so to say. As for theology, since you have

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brought up the matter, its as far away from God as . . . well,

as statecraft is from the peace o f nations. I would ask you to be
good enough to allow me to practise m y profession in the
manner which seems right to me.
I ve no objection. But what authority have you for poking
your nose into my private life and notions? W hat you are
asking o f me is neither more nor less than an interference with
my most cherished ideas. Y ou are trying to make me play the:
traitor to the principles of a lifetim e.
I am not surprised to find the eminent writer who is sitting
before me at this instant excogitating arguments calculated to
protect himself against every assault.
Y o u ll never see me licking your hand because you choose
to flatter me. Be a trifle more subtle in the future, most worthy
Sir.
I am not interested in the letters themselves. Th ey are of
importance only as a symptom . . .
What the devil are you driving at? Symptom? A symptom
of what?
A symptom o f error, covering a whole lifetime.
What? What? What? Y ou re enough to drive a man crazy.
Kerkhoven hesitated. Should he make a bold cut, and
introduce the bistoury into this ailing mind? No less delicate
a matter than when a surgeon is about to perform an operation
which is to spell life or death to the patient. A surgeon has such
adjuvants to his skill as chloroform, and local anaesthesia; but
how was a physician to calm and immobilise an alert and
despairing brain? Besides, how could he be sure that his
knowledge sufficed? Medical science was not sacrosanct. Was;
he incapable of making a false diagnosis? Was the life and
death, the kill or cure operation he contemplated not, rather,
a moral assize than an act of salvation? How can mortal man
be sure of his motives, how can he overcome his scruples so as
not to despair o f the issue ?
I see, Herr Mordann, he began slowly, that I shall have
to make clear to you that which your great perspicacity would

SYNEIDESIS

129

doubtless make clear were you not momentarily out of sorts.

I know that the world recognises you to be an outstanding
psychologist, the revealer and discoverer of secrets. This is what
has made you famous, and the glory you have reaped is your
due. But it is likewise the cause of your present affliction. . . .
Now, now, now, what kind of a grotesque are you paint
ing

W eve got to look things squarely in the face, then we can

avoid untoward consequences. . . . The connexion is obvious.
In the course of your career you have come into possession of so
many secrets . . . by legal or illegal means is not for me to
judge . . . besides, it is not really of any consequence how you
came by your knowledge . . . the only thing that matters is the
goal you have in view . . . the goal . . . yes, thats what catches
a m an.. . . You desired power . . . power at any price, power over
individuals, over groups, over whole parties, over the entire
country. Am I right in surmising that you were put upon
during youth and adolescence? If I remember rightly, you once
wrote about the horrors of a helot existence. That gives the
show away. T h e will-to-power strangled and frustrated all
the other impulses, so that your nature, the conformation of
your entire life, your humour became concentrated upon this
one issue. You therefore set yourself to discovering secrets, and,
through your knowledge of these secrets, to become the master,
to dominate the world at large, to be feared, to become the chief
disciplinarian, the headmaster, the person in authority, so that
you could say to yourself: I can destroy you if I will, for I
know your secret. Oh, I understand your line of thought only
too well. One feels as if one were God, the God of Vengeance,
the God of Retribution. No need for . . . what did we say? . . .
for theology. . . . God himself needs no theology to justify His
existence. But you have forgotten to take one thing into account
your human frailty, your capacity for carrying so great a
burden; each of us, and you too, since you are a man as any
other, possesses an instinctive consciousness and a spiritual
consciousness. I m not moralising, never fear. This is a dynamic
E

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piece of evidence from the point of view of power. W hat I

am in search of is the possibility for reorganising the phenomenon,
Martin Mordann, and making a new man of him. Sixty years
old, you say. Perhaps more than sixty? W eve already had a talk
about the ebb o f the vital rhythm. . . . I have not yet found a
suitable formula to describe these ebbs and flows of vitality.
Human life seems to tend towards a seven-year periodicity. If
a man has been a spiritual spendthrift, it would appear that,
towards the close of the seven-year period, he is peculiarly set
in the direction o f . . . death. When a human being reaches the
sixtieth year of life, a decisive question arises: life henceforward
and its persistence stands upon the biological knowledge one has
gained in the course of previous decades . . . presuming that life
beyond sixty is, really, life, and not one of the many forms of
senile arrest which culminate in the death-agony. That is why
the flaming-up o f genius in elderly persons is so wonderful.
One has merely to think of Titian, of Verdi, of Goethe, of
Tolstoy. . . . Y ou told me that I was trying to make you play
traitor to your ideal. But you have betrayed that ideal long since.
Please dont lose your temper, for I am simply stating a fact.
Y ou played the traitor by throttling intuitive warnings. Did
you never notice that Tim e was turning his back on you? You
must have noticed, but you refused to see. That is my point.
T h e power with which one makes too free is shipwrecked in the
last resort upon the power which remains an ultimate mystery
even for you a power which is not among those in your filing
cabinets, Herr Mordann. If you restore the letters, you will be
acting, so to say, in accordance with a natural process. You
will be completing a symbolical action, against which only the
outworn phenomenal form of Martin Mordann continues to
protest. T h e spirit, I may call it the evil spirit, which cannot
disaccustom itself from playing the rebel not the human
being at all.
Mordann, as he sat at the table, chin on fist, looked like a
gnome, a rueful and tongue-tied gnome. Kerkhoven, clasping
his hands about his knee as he sat opposite his patient cross

SYNEIDESIS

131

legged, had an expectant air. Very softly and insinuatingly he

enquired:
Where have you deposited the letters?
A t a bank in Basle.
Would you consent to my sending a line to young
Brederode. . . .
No, certainly not, never, screamed Mordann, turning a
tortured face towards the doctor. Y ou re crazy to suggest such
a thing. I m not to be browbeaten, take my word for it. You
are trading on your position, to force me into doing what I
do not want to do. You are in their pay. You mean to reduce
me to . . .
I have often noticed, interrupted Kerkhoven coolly, that
professional writers are singularly lacking in imagination. . . .
So I am no more than a scribbler, am I, a miserable penshover who has outlived his day, according to you, cried
Mordann sharply, for his vanity was pricked on its most tender
spot. Yes, I see. According to your theory, if I had not so
voraciously clung to my vision of Power, I might have made a
better use of my knowledge. I might have turned everything
topsy-turvy; not one stone would have been left upon another;
the whole humbugging system would have collapsed ten years
earlier. A t critical moments my first question has always been
whether what had to be destroyed was worth more than what
had to be preserved.
That is precisely your illusion that anything needs to be
destroyed. And please do not take the words amiss you are
arrogant to fancy that you personally can preserve anything. . . .
But, God blast you Sir, I had a mission . . . I was charged
to . .
By whom?
What dyou mean by whom ? Who ever charges a man to
act as he thinks right, to be what he is?
T h ats the crux, said Kerkhoven, bending forward, and
leaning his arms on the table. A man stands at the cross-roads
between freedom and destiny. What a man has to consider is

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K E R K H O V E N S

th ird

existen ce

how much freedom he will fight for and how much destiny he
w ill accept.
I fail to understand. You are taking me out of m y depth
though I have an inkling. . . . Besides, what have I got out of
it all? Wealth? I have barely enough to live on. Honour? People
rail at me as if I were a mad dog. What rewards, what satis
factions have I had? T h ey are all within myself, and nowhere
else in the wide world. He struck his chest to emphasise the
words within m yself, thereby producing a hollow sound as
though he were beating an empty wooden box.
The awful thing about a man like you, put in Kerkhoven
sadly, is that he is so swathed in the rags of dialectic that he
does not see, does not feel the pullulating life around him, is
not aware of the simple life against which he is constantly
rubbing shoulders. G ive in! Just for once, acknowedge you are
beaten. Itll do you no end of good. A moment ago I spoke of
a lack o f imagination. T h a ts the thing that is killing you a
suicidal spirit . . . a . . . T ry to picture that young fellow
Brederode . . . his feelings under the circumstances . . . I ve had
enquiries made. . . .
Aha! M y prophetic soul. . .
No, no. Nothing like what you are suspecting. I ve made
enquiries, thats all. For my own information, and in order to
guide me in my treatment of you, my patient. W ell, the present
count indulges in a kind o f father-worship, makes a regular
cult of the old mans memory, and the thought that the faintest
breath o f scandal could besmirch this revered picture makes
him ready to commit almost any crime to preserve it from
injury. H ell never believe that his father did wrong, even when
the evidence is written down in black and white before his eyes.
H is fathers incorruptibility has become a dogma. He believes
the letters to be forgeries; and yet he dreads their publication,
lest a slur should thereby come upon his fathers fair name.
C ant you remember his face? He called on you three times.
D id he not leave an impression of genuine honesty behind him ?
Or do such items fail to influence you? T ry to picture the situa

SYNEIDESIS

133

tion: youve on the one hand a fellow-mortal whose founda

tions are threatened, to whom you are in a manner of speaking
able to give an ideal, and on the other hand you have a bundle
of papers in a safe. . . .
I ve no ideals to give to anyone. The worlds not left me any
to bestow.
When I ask you to decide on a certain course, it is not for
his sake, but for your own.
I wont do it. Go to hell. No, no, and again N o , cried
Mordann jumping up.
Kerkhoven seized him round the shoulders to support him,
for the sudden movement coupled with excitement made him
totter. The doctor, too, felt giddy, for the interview had been an
exhausting one. W hen he looked into his patients face he read
the signs of approaching death.

55
In accepting Frau Thirriot as patient in his house, Kerkhoven
could not be expected to foresee what far-reaching consequences
would ensue. It was as if an invisible hand were guiding him,
for other purposes than his own. Notwithstanding all his
experience of the workings o f destiny, the complications in
which he became involved were so formidable that they often
made him shudder. He could not but be reminded of the
remarkable disclosure of the innocence of that Leonhart
Maurizius who had spent nineteen years in gaol and had at
length been set free through the instrumentality of the seventeenyear-old Etzel Andergast. T h e present case concerned a young
couple who had six years before been sentenced to penal
servitude for life; and the revelation that there had been a
terrible miscarriage o f justice came, not from a lad, but from a
woman of forty-five who was suffering from nervous irritability
to a degree which made her practically irresponsible. In a life
like Kerkhovens, subject to the reign of law, decisive occurrences
move in concentric circles.

SYNEIDESIS
134

JOSEPH

K E R K H O V E N S

THIRD

EXISTENCE

Here is the story as it was revealed during the trial. In

December 1925, a pharmaceutical chemist named Karl Imst,
a man in the middle thirties, was arrested, together with his
mistress, Jeanne M allery, on suspicion o f having murdered
Frau Imst, K a rls wife, by administering poison. T h e investi
gation revealed an unusually gloomy picture of married life.
Imst had got to know Selma when he was a student, and had
married her directly after the death of his father who had left
sufficient fortune behind for the young couple to buy a chemists
shop and thus set up in business. From the start, husband and
wife fell out. She complained that Karl was cold and lacking
in tenderness; he accused her of nagging, o f pettiness, o f a
domineering trend. He used her ill; she treated him, if anything,
worse. She picked a quarrel over the merest nothings, and if
her husband was not handy she scolded the maid. Five years
after the wedding a boy was born; but the childs arrival did not
better their relationship. W hen, in despair, he sought his
pleasures away from home, Selma railed at him for being a
debauchee. She also took it into her head to say that during
one of their scenes at night he had suggested she should make
away with herself if life with him was so intolerable. T h e physical
side was no better suited than the temperamental, for she made
such constant demands upon him that he was incompetent to
satisfy her needs. Though she was frigid, her sexual appetite
was insatiable.
One Eastertide, Imst went off for a little holiday, and made
Jeanne M allerys acquaintance. Her home was in Geneva, and
she was a mathematical student at the university there. During
the vacation, she was staying with friends in Langental. A
holiday friendship ripened into passionate love. About this time
the conjugal disputes became so frequent that Karl felt his
home life to be a hell. T he wife had for years been keeping a
diary in which she noted every squabble, every offensive word,
every slight, every act of neglect on the part of her husband.
Since she was a woman of no culture and was scantily endowed
with intelligence, this scribbling mania was a most uncanny

trait. During the subsequent trial, the diary played an important

part as evidence against the accused.
T h e liaison between lovely Jeanne Mallery and Karl Imst
could not long remain a secret, and caused many a scene of
jealousy and spite. During one of these rows, the question of a
divorce was mentioned. Selma agreed that this would be the
only way out of their terrible situation; but the necessary steps
provoked much bitterness and exasperation. Neither spared the
others feelings; neither showed any forbearance or mercy. T h e
child was a bone of contention. Selma wished for complete
separation of child and father, not even consenting to occasional
visits as provided in the statute-book. After wearisome discussions,
endless legal proceedings which were costly both financially
and spiritually, the divorce was decreed in November 1924.
As the guilty party, Karl Imst was not to re-marry until a year
had elapsed, and this decision was pregnant with further worry,
annoyance and tragedy. Since Jeannes companionship had
become essential to him, both as dispenser in his shop and as
home-maker, they set up house together. Tongues immediately
began to wag. In addition, he let himself in for punishment on
account of illegal concubinage.
O f far more disastrous a nature were his meetings with his
divorced wife. T h e pretext for these meetings was the child.
Imst was inordinately fond of it and could not stomach the
thought of separation. W hen he saw his sometime wife, a few
months after the court had pronounced its decision, she pre
sented herself to him under a new light. She appeared greatly
depressed, and her demeanour led Karl to suspect that she
wanted to talk her heart out to him. T h e child had obviously
been coached by Selma, for little Konrad cuddled close to his
father when he took the youngster on his knee, and with
endearing gestures begged him to come back to M um m y.
Selma added her entreaties, saying that she could not bear the
loneliness of her lot, that there was not a soul to befriend her.
When she saw that Karl was listening sympathetically, she
grew bolder and no longer beat about the bush, but came straight

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JOSEPH

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THIRD

EXISTENCE

to the point, suggesting the possibility of their marrying once

more. Not now, of course, not immediately, she could well
wait for a year or even for two years; so long as she had a definite
goal before her she would feel that some one at least was coming
to her aid. She even admitted to having vexed him sorely in the
past, that she had often abused and insulted him. Everything
would be different henceforward. At bottom Imst was a tender
hearted creature, and he found it very difficult to stand firm
against such pleading. Like all persons o f weak character, he
easily forgot the evils committed against him, let bygones be
bygones, and readily believed in peoples promises and pledges,
even when these were so preposterous that most would have
regarded them as crazy. Daily visits to his son comfirmed him
in his desire to provide a home for this beloved little being.
He promised Selma that they should contract a second marriage
in order to compensate the child for the suffering caused by the
divorce. On his return to Jeanne, his heart was tom by the
conflict his agreement with Selma naturally raised within him,
and whose full significance he only realised when he saw his
sweetheart again. He felt that he had cheated and betrayed this
faithful and loved woman who had given him the only joy he
had so far known during adult life. He lacked the necessary
strength of will to tell her what he had done. She had a fore
boding that something was amiss. At length, unable to contain
himself any longer, Karl blurted out the truth; and once more
his infirmity of will kept him from pursuing the path he himself
had chosen. Pressed as he was on the one hand by his mistress
and on the other by his wife, by his passion for the former and
by a misdirected sense of duty towards the latter, the ground
seemed all at once to be cut away from under his feet. He
vacillated; life completely lost its savour; he stood irresolute.
Jeanne pleaded the rights of her heart and reminded him of his
past experience with Selma. She became if possible more lavish
in her tokens o f love and loyalty, though determined not to
bring moral pressure to bear on her afflicted lover. Her rival
was less scrupulous. While Jeanne was still begging and praying

SYNEIDESIS

137

Karl not to leave her, Selma had taken counsel and had devised
with her solicitor a plan whereby the younger woman was to
be bought off. Imst, feeling that this high-handed procedure
was more than he could stand, asked his mistress to go away
for a time and stay with some friends of hers in Appenzell. She
yielded to his wishes; but sent appealing letters, urging him
not to forsake her, and telling him that she had no other friend
in the world but Karl Imst. Too late! T h e divorced couple
were married a second time, and Selma with her little son moved
into K arls house.
Jeanne returned one November evening, ill and miserable,
to find her rival installed. What was she to do ? Where could she
go? She asked the maid whether Frau Imst was at home to
visitors, and Selma laid herself out to receive the young woman
in the most friendly fashion. She invited Jeanne to spend the
night under her roof, assuring her that further details could be
arranged when Karl returned from his trip into the country
districts. The upshot was that Jeanne Mallery became, for the
nonce, an inmate o f the house wherein her rival reigned supreme.
Relishing her victory, Selma was quite amenable to the idea of
giving hospitality to Jeanne until the latter had had time to
look round, and make a fresh life for herself. Anyway, for the
time being, the two women concluded a treaty o f peace, sharing
in the housework. In addition, Jeanne took up her job in the
dispensary and the shop, while Selma concentrated upon the
management of the home. So far as Imst was concerned, the
new arrangement seemed to be a boon he had hardly ventured
to hope for.
But the treaty o f peace was no more than a pretence. The
wife, very probably, nurtured a grudge against Jeanne, since she
soon realised that the liaison between her husband and his
mistress continued as undisturbed as if a fresh marriage
had never taken place. Perhaps her intention had been to
put the pair to the test. Certainly, by keeping them under
her eyes, she could nourish her concealed hatred o f her
rival and could foster the self-torment which still revived
E*

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THIRD

EXISTENCE

in her as nothing else could a semblance o f the life o f the

senses.
One evening, when Karl came home late from business, the
volcano erupted. Selma would listen to no excuses, but over
whelmed her husband with invectives, accusing him of leading
a life of pleasure instead of attending to his duties as husband
and father, of spending his time in pot-houses, and the like
all of which was purely imaginary. K arls dander was roused.
He gave Selma tit for tat, answering that for two years he had
enjoyed peace, and if she was going to begin her old pranks
anew she could pack her trunks and be off. He was not going to
stand her tantrums any longer. Selma was taken aback by so
energetic a speech. She had imagined that she alone could
declare war or ensue peace; now, when in Jeannes presence, she
was spoken to as if she were of no account, an unquenchable
rage began to gnaw at her vitals. In the long run, Imst was sorry
to have lost his temper, but all endeavours at a reconciliation
were wrecked upon the shoals o f Selmas obstinacy and defiance.
A day or two later she was laid up and kept her bed, declaring
that she had a splitting headache, felt giddy, and was suffering
from nausea. Imst, much concerned, asked whether she had
taken anything to account for her condition. She replied in the
negative. He wanted to ring up the doctor. Selma declared that
no doctor was needed. In order to avoid further discussion,
Karl decided to fall in with her wishes, gave her a dose of
pantopon, and ordered a special regimen. During the next two
days, the patients condition improved at times and then became
worse. On the evening o f the third day definite symptoms of
stomach trouble and abdominal trouble were manifest. Selmas
pulse was feeble, she broke into a cold perspiration, had dis
orders of vision, and heart-weakness. Imst sent for a doctor.
Almost the first question the medical man asked was: Has she
taken a drug? Again Selma denied having taken anything.
She declared that she had been seized with illness about three
in the afternoon, and that since then she had felt worse and
worse. No definitive diagnosis was possible. T h e doctor suspected

SYNEIDESIS

139

poison. At eleven that same night Selma died. Next day, the
doctor, supported by Imst, demanded a post-mortem examina
tion. Large quantities of arsenic were found. Tw o days later,
Karl Imst and Jeanne M allery were arrested.

56
Public opinion vacillated between the ideas of murder and
suicide. The men o f law, however, decided that it was a clear
case o f murder, and the whole legal enquiry worked along the
line o f this conviction. There could be no doubt whatever as to
the culpability of the pair. Acting on this theory, the authorities
from the outset treated Karl Imst and Jeanne M allery as
criminals. Th ey were kept under lock and key during the eight
months that the tedious hearings lasted, being allowed no
amenities, neither books, nor clean linen, nor soap, nor better
food than that provided by the prison authorities. When January
came, and there was a cold snap, they were left to shiver in their
cells. Friends of Karl and of Jeanne tried in vain to ameliorate
at least the physical conditions under which the couple languished;
but a deaf ear was turned to supplications. This, however, was
merely the framework o f a systematic torture worthy o f the
M iddle Ages. The examining magistrate brought every imagin
able threat and humiliation to bear in order to extract a con
fession of guilt from one or other of the twain; he set verbal
traps, so that all unbeknowst the statements of to-day might
contradict those o f yesterday. T h e most innocent utterances
were twisted and turned, and in the end they became evidence
against the prisoners; misinterpretation was piled upon mis
interpretation. Imst was suspect because he had not immediately
sent for a doctor; Jeanne was suspect because she had nursed
the sick woman. Suspect, too, was the husbands taciturnity
after the death of his wife; and again suspect, was the fact that
he had spoken so frankly. He was expected to remember every
word he had said, to recall each detail of his comings and goings;
when his memory failed him, this was a sign of his guilt. Was
he excited ? Another sure sign of guilt. Was he calm and collected ?

14

JOSEPH

K E R K H O V E N S

THIRD

EXISTENCE

Guilty again. Three days before the death, Karl had shifted the
position of a piece of furniture in the hall a highly suspicious
action, for was it not performed in order to give more room
when the coffin was taken out? He was suspect because he had
not recognised at once the dangerous condition o f his wife,
because he had not noticed how white and stiff were her hands
towards the end, how blue her nails. Jeanne Mallery was suspect
because she could not recall whether she had given the patient
coffee or tea to calm the pains; when, after long reflection, the
accused stated that she had made coffee that afternoon she was
asked. Why coffee and not tea? She could not remember
who had been the last to leave the shop, nor when and how often
the poison cupboard had been opened. These lapses of memory
were regarded as evidence of her systematic desire to wipe out
and forget the part she had played in the tragedy. The conse
quence was that the case became wrapped in deeper mystery.
A t any time of the day or night and without showing the slightest
consideration for the mental or physical state of the accused,
they would be hauled out o f their cells and asked the same
questions over and over again; at every interview they under
went a process of vivisection. Gradually they were reduced to
such a condition of collapse that they could no longer recall
what had occurred, they could not remember which wholesaler
had furnished them with the poison, where it was usually kept,
how often the orders for it were issued; the course of Selmas
illness and its increasing violence, likewise, grew blurred. Frau
Im sts diary, though much of what she had written was
obviously untrue, proved a valuable source o f information. She,
poor lady, on the face of it, had been shamefully deceived and
betrayed by her husband; she, a noble-minded being, faithful
and loyal in her duties as wife and mother, a victim of her love
for her lawful spouse. T h e reverse of the medal showed a boozer,
and his wanton mistress, the latters aim being to legalise their
immoral relations even at the cost of crime, and Jeanne was
supposed to have induced a feckless man to clear an inconvenient
obstacle out of the path of her ambition.

SYNEIDESIS

141

Such, in the end, was the view taken by the public, the jury,
and the judge. The accused might say what they liked, might
protest their innocence; in vain! In vain, too, was the eloquent
pleading of counsel for the defence. The awful sentence was
pronounced, the verdict given, and Karl Imst and Jeanne M allery
were led to their lifelong entombment. Short of memory as ever,
the outside world soon forgot them.

57
One day when Marie Kerkhoven was talking to the nurse, Else
Schmidt, the latter mentioned the case of Karl Imst and Jeanne
Mallery. She seemed to know every detail. T h e man was her
first cousin. From earliest childhood they had been like brother
and sister. Else was convinced of K arls innocence. She con
sidered that he was quite incapable of committing the crime
for which he had been condemned. Jeanne M allery, too, was
the victim o f a gross miscarriage of justice. T h e thought that
these two were suffering for a wrong they had never done,
haunted the young nurses mind so that it had become an
obsession. Her manifold occupations as sick-nurse were no
more than a futile attempt at distraction. During the prolonged
enquiry, she had succeeded, after unremitting endeavour, in
getting permission to see Karl. This single visit had sufficed
to make her conviction even stronger, were that possible, that
her cousin was innocent. Though several years had now elapsed,
the girl went white with emotion as she related the story to
Marie. She had attended the trial throughout, had kept an
observant eye upon Karl and Jeanne, had watched the witnesses,
had listened to the tirades of the prosecuting counsel, to the
pleadings of the counsel for the defence. It had needed her
utmost self-command, when sentence was pronounced, not to
rise in the court and cry aloud: Stop! Stop! For G o d s sake
do not do this thing. It is you who are the murderers. This
man and woman are innocent. For weeks after the trial she
was very ill. She had in her possession innumerable press-

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cuttings concerning the affair, had copies o f the whole enquiry,

had the evidence given by the experts, and knew her material
by heart, so long had she pored over it.
A t first Marie imagined the young woman to be the victim of
a fixed idea. But Else Schmidt was eminently sensible and
steady-minded. Kerkhoven constantly referred to her calm and
collected ways. T h e more Marie heard of the case, the greater
became her interest, and the profounder her feeling that two
guiltless persons had been wrongfully condemned. In her turn,
she studied the material Else had collected, and her feeling became
conviction. She was inordinately stirred, made the affair her
own; she, in turn, deemed herself personally responsible for the
miscarriage of justice. She knew no peace of mind, for her
thoughts constantly circled around those two in their prison
cells, and she wondered what it must feel like to suffer as they
were suffering, knowing themselves to be innocent. Such
reflections were almost more than she could bear.
But Else, she said one evening, if neither Karl Imst nor
Jeanne M allery had anything to do with the crime, who killed
Selma?
W ho? reiterated the other, her eyes wide with surprise.
Who? How can you ask such a question?
I know, I know, murmured Marie, there were never
more than two explanations. It was either murder or suicide.
Y et it is not clear to me why she should have made away with
herself. O f course she was embittered, was filled with despair.
Above all, she had lost belief in her own self. But life still called
her. . . . And then to take such a resolve. . .
Can you honestly not see any reason? Really? Truthfully?
Y et the motive is plain . . . it is so obvious. . .
T h e two women looked deep into one anothers eyes, and
M arie trembled.
One cannot think such a thing possible, she whispered,
horrified.
Think it right out to its logical conclusion, said Else darkly.
Your conclusion will be the correct one.

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No, no! I dare not. It would be too ghastly, cried Marie

in her distress.
T h e other shrugged, and answered gloomily:
If we had proof . . . so long as we cannot produce the proofs,
theres no hope of a revision of the sentence. But for the life of
me I cannot see how we are to come by the necessary proofs
unless God Almighty intervenes!
Quash the sentence: that was Elses unique aim. She was
indefatigable in her enquiries, corresponded with the barristers
who had acted on behalf o f Karl Imst and Jeanne M allery,
was in communication with the highest legal authorities, with
chemists, with doctors of the law. Her means did not permit of
her taking drastic action. She harboured the secret hope that
M arie would be interested and would win Joseph Kerkhoven
to the cause. If a man of Kerkhovens calibre, backed up by the
weight of a great name, came into the field, he could make
publicity, and that would be a substantial advance. M arie,
possessed of that sacred fire of impatience which characterises
those who still believe in right and justice, talked the matter over
with Joseph. Again and again she returned to the charge, until
he learned to know the details of the case as well as she. He was
even persuaded to study the documents. How well he knew her.
T h e spiritual source o f her action was not hidden from him:
he saw in it an act of transfiguration which enriched his picture
of Marie with fresh features, giving him a new conception o f
her nature. His only reason for hesitating was doubt as to his
own capacity to deal with so thorny a problem.
Outside my range, he said. No knowing where itll lead
me. T o do the thing properly would need the whole of a mans
time, hed have to devote his life to it. Remember what happened
to Etzel Andergast. His intervention nearly did for him. I ts
altogether outside my province, I repeat. One must be cautious
as to what one takes up. . . . Still, I ll think it over. . ..D ont
fear that it will slip from my mind, Marie. Trust m e!
Events, however, took their own course, and swept K erk
hoven into participation far sooner than he had wished or

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expected. Strange and eerie that the man who had become
destiny itself for M arie should be involved in these events, the
man who had awakened her to the full meaning o f life so that,
from being an idle spectator, she had learned to play her part
in it. Not that Kerkhoven intervened of his own free will. He
was forced by circumstances. But the fact that he was drawn
into the matter gave Marie confidence and energy; for a clear
recognition of the inward consistency of what happens to us
steels the heart and strengthens self-confidence.

58
For three years, Emilie Thirriot had been suffering from a
somewhat unusual form of delusion and o f self-torture. She
had a daughter of seventeen; but she believed that the midwife
had substituted this girl for her own baby, who was, as she
imagined, a boy. T h e m idwifes name had long since slipped
from Em ilies memory, for her confinement had taken place in
a nursing-home; but she had a definite mental picture o f the
woman, artificially constructed no doubt, or at any rate no more
than three or four details had remained. She recalled that the
womans cap was adorned with rose-coloured ribbons, and
that she wore Russian boots coming up to the knee. A queer
combination, no doubt but what could one expect from a
woman suffering as Emilie Thirriot suffered ? She had set about
trying to find this midwife. Any papers thrown carelessly in the
street or into dustbins were carefully collected and examined;
she made enquiries at various hospitals, set the police to work,
and, herself, would trapes about the town for days on end, in
felt-soled slippers, hoping to drop upon the person who wore a
cap with pink ribbons and was shod in Russian boots. A t times
she addressed total strangers, and when they turned away she
would follow them, upraiding them. In the end, she was kept
under medical observation, for her sanity was doubted. Since
she was not considered a danger to the public weal, she was
set at liberty, though a young psychiatrist was told off to keep
her under observation. This doctor, after a time, reported that

SYNEIDESIS

14s

the symptoms were becoming worse, and he advised further

institutional treatment. She was living in a two-roomed apart
ment with her daughter, who had a job in a factory. She avoided
having anything to do with the girl, as one shuns infection.
She never looked her daughter in the face; and, when the young
girl entered the room, the afflicted woman would cringe away
into a corner, would go livid, and would tremble. T h e mother
never touched anything that belonged to the girl, be it a dress,
or the chair she usually sat upon, or the bed in which she slept.
O n a certain day, she refused to cook the dinner which they
w^re to share, for, while peeling the potatoes the knife had
slipped and she had cut her finger. In a state of great agitation,
she ran to put the wound under the cold-water tap, and washed
it clean. Long after the blood had ceased to flow, she continued
to cleanse her hand with soap and a brush. Then she threw all
the potatoes into the kitchener, peeled and unpeeled alike,
together with the knife which had cut her, so that everything
was consumed in the fire. Next she noticed that there was a drop
o f blood on the floor. Immediately she seized a pail of water
and a clout, knelt down and, sobbing, scrubbed and rubbed
until all vestige of the stain was effaced. On this, as on many
similar occasions, she gave the impression o f one suffering from
intolerable pricks o f conscience.
T h e medical men, who were called in consultation, could
make neither head nor tail of so perplexing a malady. Anxiety
states became more frequent. She was soon a danger to the girl,
who felt at a loss what to do for her mother when the latter
started to whimper and cry directly they were in one anothers
company. In the end, it was thought desirable to separate the
two women. Frau Thirriots brother went to Colmar and took
his sister home with him to Friedrichshafen. After a time, she
was placed in a clinic, whence, as already stated, Kerkhoven
took her in charge. He immediately recognised that he was
faced by an enigma. This was, indeed, a darkened mind difficult
to delve into, burdened with an anxiety which seemed to be of
age-long standing, an ancestral legacy. He went cautiously to

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work. The questions he asked at the outset touched upon things

quite outside the personality o f his patient and the experiences
of her life. Gradually he came to the conclusion that he had to
do with a deeply buried phenomenon of the world of delusion.
Layer by layer he dug down beneath the surface o f conscious
ness, and once more he was amazed to find that apparently
simple phenomena turned out to be the most entangled and
most shrouded in darkness. By discreet questionings Kerkhoven
slowly aroused in Emilie an interest in herself as the heroine of
a wonderful story; he made her curious as to her past, and as
to the hidden causes for her mental disturbance. He made her
dig for herself not, as is the case with certain analysts of the
mind, with the object o f bringing a lot of rubbish to the light
of day, but in order to provide the woman with material, hitherto
cast aside and unutilised, wherewith to build her personality up
anew.
Her delusion was a terrible one. She fancied that her whole
body was composed o f poison; in especial, her spittle, blood,
breath, and excreta; this poison acted solely upon her daughter.
Without desiring or doing anything she felt convinced that her
doom was to kill her daughter, to-day, to-morrow, a year hence;
that she was destined to become an unwilling murderess, because
o f the horrible properties of her own poisonous nature. For
this reason she had scoured her hands so carefully to rid them
of the cut; for this reason did she put aside the objects she had
touched; she hoped hereby to guard the girl from contamination.
In the higher planes of consciousness the woman was convinced
that she loved her child as a decent mother should; in actual
fact, beneath the cloak of love, there existed an unfathomable
and primitive hatred, packed away from her conscious mind,
but lying there as a source of mental irritation and conflict
between her wish to destroy and her duty as woman and mother.
Her life, as the years passed, had become a martyrdom.
How enigmatical is the darkness which encompasses the
human soul! Could her longing to give birth to a boy and the
disappointment at having a girl be the root cau^e of her derange

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ment ? There certainly exist women whose desire for a son is as

implacable as a law o f nature, and who feel that Providence has
betrayed them when the body cheats them in this matter. Her
search for the midwife might, then, be interpreted as a pretext
for putting the blame on to anothers shoulders- an exaggerated
sense o f guilt coupled with an evasion of responsibility being
typical of almost every delusion. Her inability to discover the
guilty person, a shadowy figure, a caricature without face or
name, had switched her morbid mind into the path of selfdestruction, a path which in her case was incredibly devious and
obscure. But perhaps the root of the matter went deeper than her
memories, her mental images, and her impressions; it may have
reached back far beyond the days of her unhappy marriage,
about which she had little to tell, except for hints that she had
married the wrong man (this being the probable explanation of
the changeling delusion). It may have reached back to the
mother who in early childhood had handed her over to the care
o f strangers; it may have reached back for generations, to the
tough-minded peasants and handicraftsmen who had fled from
France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and had been
unable to return to their Alsatian homes until the French revolu
tion had taken place. Part of the tribal and national history is
incorporated into every individual life. What a family has
suffered and experienced generation after generation, what
those who thus suffered and experienced took down with them
in silence to the grave, may suddenly and without obvious reason
crop up in a later link o f the chain, nature harshly sacrificing
the individual, who is not consciously aware of what happened
long before to the stock.
Frau Emilie Thirriot was about forty years of age, a chubby,
friendly-looking woman, very tidy in her dress, with nothing
out o f the ordinary in her appearance except her catlike, ambercoloured eyes. These strange eyes of hers would at times assume
the expression one encounters in persons gifted with secondsight. Kerkhoven was quick to notice this peculiarity, and
determined to follow up the clue. A t first, in her morbid

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imaginings, she presented herself to him as foredoomed to

become a murderess, as one of those spectral figures met with
in Grimm s tales, a kobold not devoid of a certain gloomy charm.
Then, with a pendulum swing to the other side, she would
manifest herself as the counterpart, as one of those excessively
rational beings for whom two and two invariably make four,
and who yet are tormented by secret doubts they obstinately
deny entertaining. Such transformations and such apparent
contradictions were no longer a source of wonder to Kerkhoven,
who had long been familiar with the multifariousness of the
human mind. But the special case was peculiar. He seemed to
be witnessing the metamorphosis of a person who was a prey to
delusions, the stripping off of the morbid ego.

59

T h e atmosphere of the Kerkhoven establishment acted most

beneficially upon Emilie. T he house was quiet and isolated, its
inmates were equable and considerate, the rooms cheerful and
full of flowers which Marie renewed daily. All these things
combined to brighten the patients spirits, distracted her thoughts,
kept her from brooding. For years she had ceased to see any
women but her daughter. Nurse Else pleased her greatly, so
gentle and forbearing were the young womans ways. Every
day the invalid waited impatiently for her visit, and while the
girl was in the room Frau Thirriot could not take her eyes off
her. She showed much the same, though a somewhat more
deferential, attachment to Marie since the latter had had a
few friendly talks with her. Indeed, this attachment amounted
to devotion, and the poor womans face would beam with delight
if she caught sight of Marie even at a distance. How she
gradually came to discover that Nurse Else had something on
her mind and was constantly busied with a single thought, it
was impossible to ascertain. Kerkhoven was inclined to believe
that at the first encounter thought transference had been at
work.
One day Marie and Else were sitting in the garden discussing

SYNEIDESIS

i 49

a pamphlet which lay on the table between them. T h e author

was a young lawyer who set out plainly and dryly to give the
whole history of the Imst-Mallery trial. From time to time a
voice was thus raised casting doubt upon the justice of the
condemnation. It was as if the country had a guilty conscience.
In this pamphlet, too, the author led up to the conclusion that
there had been a miscarriage of justice; but he had to admit that
unimpeachable grounds for demanding a retrial were not yet
forthcoming. Else, greatly excited as she invariably became
when this subject was broached, took the booklet and read
aloud the last words. Then she flung the little volume on to the
table again, and a look of despair spread over her features. At
that moment Emilie Thirriot came out of the house, and
advanced towards the tree beneath which Marie and Else were
sitting. She asked whether she might join them. Marie gave
her a friendly nod, and was surprised at the queer expression
with which the woman was contemplating Else. Her face was
vacant and washed out, as if some one had passed a brush over
it and had obliterated all the characteristic traits. But in the
amber-coloured eyes there shone a lurid light, an expression
strangely mingled o f absorption, curiosity, and knowledge, and
beyond any power to control. Else sprang to her feet, and ran
into the house. Marie sadly watched her go, and entirely forgot
the presence of Frau Thirriot until, as if awakening from a
dream, the woman stammered out the w ords:
I know now . . . I know now . . . a woman . . . a man . . .
in prison . . . I see . . .
Marie clutched the edge of the table and stared at the speaker,
whose features and voice suddenly became normal again as
she said:
T h e loveliest thing about your hair is the brown sheen of
it like chestnuts in autumn when they first split their husks.
Do you remember how beautifully shiny they are ?
Marie smiled indulgently, as if a child were in its awkward
way trying to flatter her. She then got up and went in, her heart
and mind torn by conflicting thoughts and feelings. The

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pamphlet lay forgotten on the table. After a while Frau Thirriots

eyes fell upon it. Taking it in hand she began to scan its pages.
Like most half-educated persons she moved her lips as she
read. An onlooker would have been hard put to it to decide
whether the subject made any impression or not. She seemed,
rather, to grow tired than interested.
60
Next time Marie saw Nurse Else, she repeated the words about
the prison which the visionary had stammered forth. For a
minute Else stood speechless. Then, folding her hands, she
whispered:
Oh, if it could only be . . .
Go on. Could only be what?
Do you think it possible that we might, by means o f tele
pathy . . . it seems to me . . the woman has a strange m anner.. . .
Oh, I must speak to the doctor about it. . . . One could never
have expected a neurotic . . . Y e s , I simply must have a talk
with D r. Kerkhoven . . . at once.
Kerkhoven listened attentively. Then he said:
I ve just seen her, and she gave me this pamphlet to return
to you.
Has she read it?
Yes, but she does not seem to have understood much about
it.
Do you think she ought to know the details if we . . .
You mean, if we put her to the test? I fancy not. It wont
be a drawback to the experiment if she knows the facts before
hand, but I do not think it is necessary for her to know. Here
we are dealing with a case of dissociation of consciousness, and
the two states of consciousness are in no way linked with one
another. The best proof of this is that, so far, she has not the
faintest notion of any connexion between the contents of the
book and yourself.
But are we not mistaken in believing that a woman suffering
from so severe a neurosis can possibly have telepathic gifts

SYNEIDESIS

iS i

hidden away within her ? Surely such a thing is seldom met with ?
Seems to me they are two contradictory elements, negative and
positive, respectively.
Th ats a very perspicacious remark, Nurse, and it convinces
me that you have a fine flair for our speciality. It was my first
thought, likewise. But we are not privileged to see Nature at
work in her laboratory. Shes always springing fresh surprises
upon us. Our energies are, certainly, bi-polar. Y et what you call
positive and negative might just as well be a causal relationship,
a masked process o f recovery, just as general paralysis can be
cured by malaria. Understand?
Yes, Doctor; I follow you easily. And do you think we
might venture . . .
Yes, without a qualm.
And suppose we get results. . . . I mean . . . if hitherto un
revealed facts are brought to light . . . how shall we be able to
make a practical use of our knowledge?
Wait and see. There are possibilities. But dont set your
hopes too high. Such experiments are apt to be disappointing.
Besides, the world is sceptical about occult powers. W ell have
to find some one who will be above suspicion as witness, and
who will take down a shorthand report of the proceedings. I
think Fraulein Mordann is just the person we need. W e could
arrange for a first sitting to-night.
Nurse Else clasped her hands on her breast, and walked away
as if treading on air.
61
T h e sitting took place in Kerkhovens study. This was an attic
room, fifty feet by thirty, with huge beams running from one
end to the other. Six tall standing lamps illuminated it, and in
addition there were flood-lights concealed behind the beams
and joists. T h e windows, over which the curtains were now
drawn, had been built high in the walls. Marie and Else sat
together on a carved bench; Agnes Mordann, who after some
hesitation had agreed to act as secretary, took up her position
at a book-strewn table in the middle of the room, where she

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had deposited her scribbling-block and half a dozen finely

pointed pencils. Emilie Thirriot, with anxious mien, crouched
on the extreme edge of a deep leather-covered armchair. Kerk
hoven, after pacing the room for a while, sat down opposite his
patient on a stool near the fireplace.
W e want you, Frau Thirriot, to tell us certain things in
which we are all interested, and Nurse Else especially so, he
began in a voice so low that the woman was forced to attend if
she would catch his words. You must forget where you are,
and go right away from here into a particular house. Can you
find the house? Five people live together in that house. The
husbands name is K arl; the wifes name is Selma; the young
womans name is Jeanne; and then there are the little boy and
a serving-maid. What is happening in this house, Frau Thirriot?
The wife appears to be ill. It is a day in December. T h e sick
woman has gone to bed. Can you tell us what is the matter with
her?
Frau Thirriots gaze wandered away from him towards Else
and M arie; then she looked blankly into vacancy. Again the
washed-out expression came across her lineaments as if a brush
had passed a grey colouring matter over all; again the lurid
light shone in the amber-coloured eyes. She sighed, and bowed
her head twice or thrice.
Ah, that is a long, sad story, she murmured sleepily. They
have not lived happily together. Yes, it was a wretched existence.
W hy did the man marry her again when he had at length got
quit of her? It did not do any one any good. He might at least
have kept Jeanne out of the house. The wife is furious about it,
though she is trying not to show her mortification, and though
she herself arranged matters so. But that was only make-believe.
She is always like that, thinking o f some horrible combination,
and when the inevitable consequences follow, she puts the blame
on others. Ah, she is ill to live w ith.
What happened between man and wife before the wife
took to her bed? asked Kerkhoven.
There was an awful quarrel. Y es . . . wait a minute . . . the

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153

things shes saying to him . . . and he, too, is lashing out with
his tongue. They are fighting like mad. Jeanne is trying to make
peace. Karl is willing to call a truce, but Selma is continuing to
slang him. Outside the room Jeanne says to him: Are you sorry
now for the line you took? Can you see what it has led to? He
takes both her hands in his, and casts his eyes heavenward.
Meanwhile Selma . . . wait, yes, wait a minute . . . shes sitting
at her desk and is scribbling in a book . . . writing, always writing
down these quarrels. Her thoughts, too, are set down. But . . .
why, whats this ? She is writing down false statements . . . lies,
yes. . . . A h , what sort o f a women . . . lies. . . . What is she
doing that for?
Emilie sat silent, and stroked her forehead with her finger
tips. Else was obviously startled, and was about to ask Emilie
a question when Kerkhoven made a sign for her to be still.
Go on talking, Frau Thirriot, he said, we are getting a
clear picture of what you are describing. T h e wife, Selma, writes
a pack of lies down in her diary. Queer! What does she think
to gain by that?
Emilie continued to rub her forehead with her fingers.
She has a plan . . . a mean plan . . . but I cannot see clearly
. . . no, I dont know yet . . . maybe, she herself has nothing
definite in view. . . . She feels that she must rend and destroy
everything she comes into contact with. . . . W hat she would
prefer above all would be to set the house on fire. She is in a
fever. She had made one attempt to put an end to herself and
the child. That was in June. Then she dismissed the idea. She
fancied by such a threat to bring her husband to his knees, for
his pity was readily aroused. Once she tried to poison him.
Her mind is constantly preoccupied with ideas of murder. Ah,
she is torn . . . incurably. . .
T h e speakers face puckered. Her endeavour to see into the
past was costing her an immense amount of energy. Marie and
Else could hardly breathe. Even Agnes Mordann threw away
her cigarette, and looked apprehensively at Frau Thirriot.
L et us, for the moment, confine ourselves to the evening

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SYNEIDESIS

when that dreadful quarrel took place, said Kerkhoven. I

want to know what actually occurred to follow the happenings
hour by hour. I hope this w ill not be too difficult.
I ll see. W ait a b it

Each time she made use o f this phrase, her head sank on her
chest and her eyes were half-veiled by her lids.
A t about what time did the husband get home that night?
I fancy it must have been after half-past-nine. . .
No. Earlier. Seven minutes before the half-hour.
Is there a clock in the room ?
Yes, on the chest of drawers there is an old clock of French
workmanship.
And what time did it mark when the quarrel came to an
end?
A quarter past ten.
Are we in Selmas bedroom?
Her bed is there, yes.
When Karl and Jeanne left her, did she go to bed ?
She undressed___I see her in a white bed-wrap with motherof-pearl buttons.
You see that quite distinctly?
Yes, most distinctly.
Then you will also be able to follow all her subsequent
actions that night.
The company was spell-bound, for it was in the morning
after this night that Selma fell sick.
For a minute or two Frau Thirriot muttered unintelligibly
to herself, and her four auditors leaned forward to catch what
she said. Gradually the words took shape, and this is what they
learned:
We are in Selma Imsts bedroom. An electric lamp is alight
on the bedside table. The house is still. Selma listens and listens.
O f a sudden her bony features are convulsed and she carries on
as though she had gone mad, laying about her with clenched
fists, biting the pillow, sobbing and groaning- all this to attract
her husbands attention, and force him to her side. Nothing

155

stirs in the house. Towards midnight she switches off the light.
She can get no sleep. At half-past one she turns on the light again,
gets up, sits at her desk, writes a few lines in her diary. H ell
be paid back for all he makes me suffer. Fate will punish him ,
is what she scribbles down. [These were the very w ords; and
Emilie had never seen the diary.] Then she creeps back into
bed, and tosses about sleepless till half-past four. Again she
gets up, goes into the kitchen, draws water from the tap, and
makes a pot of tea. W ith the cup full of tea she returns to her
room. Setting the cup down on the night-table, she shuffles
about in her bedroom slippers. From time to time she passes
the fingers of both hands through her hair, and groans softly.
She stops before the mirror, and contemplates her anguished
face. It is now a quarter to six. She goes up to the chest of drawers,
and tries to open the second drawer from the top. It is locked;
and she hunts everywhere for the key, wringing her hands in
despair. At length she finds the key behind the French clock.
Opening the drawer, she flings stockings and handkerchiefs
into the air while she looks and rummages until she lights on a
long, narrow box, wrapped in a square of silk. Lifting the lid,
she discloses a white powder, steps over to the bedside-table,
puts a heaped teaspoonful of the powder into the tea, stirring
the mixture while muttering unintelligible syllables with
twitching lips, and drinks the cup to the dregs. Then she shakes
into a piece of paper as much again as she has already taken,
twists the ends so that it looks like a little sack and stuffs it
away in the table drawer beneath a handful of cotton wool.
She now goes off to the toilet with the box, pours what remains
of the powder into the closet-pan, and pulls the flush. Leaning
down, she looks into the pan to make sure that all the powder
has been washed away. She stands for a while wondering what
to do with the box. This she feels must be cleared out of the way.
Best would be to burn it; but the maid is not yet up, and the
stove has gone out. Tim e presses. A t any moment the pains
may begin. When the maid brings up her morning tea she means
to take the second dose of the powder. Or perhaps she will wait

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till the midday meal, or till the afternoon. She means to do the
thing thoroughly, and not a speck of the powder must be left
in the drawer of the bedside table. Shivering with cold, she
stands hesitant in the unwarmed passage, turning ways and
means over in her mind. Her glance falls upon the little door
in the back o f the stove. She opens it, and pushes the box far
back into the hole. This done, she returns to her room, slips
into bed, lays herself full length with her arms stretched outside
the bedclothes along her flanks. At about half-past six her bowels
begin to burn, and she feels deadly sick. She rings for the maid
whom she can hear at work in the kitchen. . .
62
No words can describe the impression produced by this visionary
reconstruction. T h e big face of the seer with its obliterated
features; the sleepy, drawling voice; the queer way in which she
sat perched on the extreme edge of her commodious chair as if
some one had forced her into that position and were holding
her down; the fleshy hands lying inert in her lap; the retelling
o f events that had taken place six years before as if they were
happening in the present; the revelation of things which no
mortal man knew o f or could have known of; the uncanny
exactitude o f the character portrait, together with Selmas
innermost thoughts and material actions all this was enough
to unnerve the most callous of beings; it worked as though time
and space had suddenly been abolished, as if the past were a
mystification, as if cause and effect were not what they seem
logically to be, and as if life had taken on a totally different
visage. Even Kerkhoven found it hard to preserve the scientific
attitude of a medical practitioner. Every one felt that the fates of
two persons were hanging in the scales of this hour. Moreover,
the sacredness o f judicial norms was proved to be erroneous and
a delusion.
If the box could still be found in the aperture of the stove
into which Selma, according to the visionary, had flung it, this
in itself would be sufficient evidence that not all the facts o f

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the case had been known at the date of the trial, and an appeal
might be lodged for a further hearing. Kerkhoven had the verbal
report of the sitting placed in the hands of the barrister who
had never doubted the innocence of the accused. The latter had
researches made on the spot and, in very fact, the incriminating
object was found exactly where the seer had said it was. The
house still belonged to Imst, but had been uninhabited since the
trial, nobody feeling inclined to become a tenant under that
ill-omened roof. Among the rren o f law and the public alike,
this find created a great stir and excitement. I f it did nothing
else, it at least showed how carelessly and with how prejudiced
a mind the examining magistrate had carried out his duties.
Not only had he failed to ascertain whence the accused had
procured the poison, whether from Im sts own shop or from
some other source; but he had likewise omitted to make a
thorough search o f the house. O f course the box might just as
well have been thrown into the stove-hole by Imst or Jeanne
Mallery. If one chose to be sceptical as to the seers revelations,
this could serve as explanation as well as any other, and by
many it was accepted as probable before more far-reaching
revelations had been made by the medium. One of the most
astounding of these revelations was that Selma Imst, shortly
after the divorce, had had a liaison with a student of Greek
nationality, and no more than twenty years of age. It was at
this time that she took to arsenic as a means whereby her physical
powers for the love-enterprise might be enhanced. In a word,
she had recourse to it as an aphrodisiac. Such an accusation
against a woman whom the judge and the prosecuting counsel
had held up as a model of virtue created a sensation. Enquiries
were made circumspectly and yet assiduously. Unexampled had
been the negligence with which the preliminary examination
had been conducted. Every point of Frau Thirriots disclosures
was confirmed. T h e friend with whom Selma had stayed in
Aarau admitted that the latter had often been visited by a young
man whose name by now had escaped her memory. Anyway, in
the spring of 1926, he had left the district, and no one was able

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to say where he had gone. But the house of this friend, being
searched, a trunk belonging to Selma was found in the attic.
Herein were discovered notes and letters of a highly com
promising character. Among other papers was found the duplicate
o f an anonymous letter, written three days before the end of
the trial, wherein the writer informed the judge that he had
known the dead lady most intimately, and, so far as he was
concerned, it was a clear case of suicide; she had always had
suicidal inclinations, and she invariably threatened to kill herself
if things did not go precisely as she desired. For some inexplicable
reason no attention was paid to this letter at the time o f the
trial. Even counsel for the defence had not deemed it of sufficient
importance to insist upon the writer being found and brought
in as witness. Kerkhoven was convinced that this elusive young
man was mainly responsible for leading Selma Imst into her
mania for taking poison. Maybe he himself had perverted tastes,
and it had tickled his vanity to find that he could enslave a
woman o f such a domineering disposition, in despite of the
considerable difference in age and of her essentially prudish
nature.
Frau Thirriot worked backward, from the end of the tragedy
to the beginning, linking up each motive with the preceding
one. Since she was obviously overtired and there were so many
incidents to be considered, a good deal had to be left in the dark at
the first sitting; one of these points being the matter upon which
so much stress had been laid at the trial concerning the time
when the second dose of poison had been taken the one which
had been stored in a piece of paper and hidden in the bedside
table. Evidently Selma had kept this portion in reserve, in case
the dose first taken was not enough to kill. What unflinching
resolution! H ow demoniacal a clinging to her purpose! It was
obvious that she had laid her scheme, detail by detail. T h e
most awe-inspiring part of Emilies clairvoyance was her own
overwhelming horror whenever she mentioned Selmas name,
though she mitigated the impulse to suicide, speaking of it in
general terms only, as if afraid of being too precise on this

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particular issue. T h e hidden and yet indisputable fact of suicide,

worked upon Em ilies audience to so great an extent that it
appeared inhuman. Nurse Else had suspected this all along,
and Emilies revelation was no more than a confirmation. But
M arie was so greatly shaken that she begged her husband, in
spite of the late hour, to stay with her a little while. She felt
it impossible to go to rest without having talked matters over
with him.
Next day, Emilie Thirriot had several fainting fits, so that,
for the time being, it was impossible to go on with the experiment.
Not until many weeks later did a second seance take place, this
time in the presence of several lawyers and medical experts.
63
First o f all, please tell m e, began Marie ere her husband had
had time to close the door, what you make of it all. Is it credible ?
Do you believe it possible that a human being is capable of
contriving such a plan, and, what is more, carrying it out?
Since you ask, answered Kerkhoven staring at the floor, I
gather that you yourself are . . . He paused, hesitating.
No need to mince your words, cried Marie. She killed
herself in order to take vengeance on her husband and Jeanne
M allery!
Its possible and even probable, he agreed. But that does
not necessarily imply that she also had the intention to get them
involved in a murder charge.
Oh, come now, Joseph, can anyone doubt that she had the
scheme in mind? T h e deliberate, malicious, and devilish business
with the box . . . the way she refused to call in a doctor . . .
the entries in the diary that were intended to bring suspicion
on the two . . . to incriminate the man so as to cast a slur upon
his name. . . . Surely thats enough. And yet you want me to
believe . . .
You asked me whether I believed such a thing possible, but
it seems to me you need no answer from me, said Kerkhoven
smiling. Not very logical of you. Further, you are falling into

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a very common error in ascribing an action to deliberate intent

when it was probably the outcome of an instinctive urge. An
action thus committed may often be far more gruesome than
one that has been carefully thought over. But responsibility in
the latter case is of a different order.
Instinctive urge, indeed! Thats quibbling. A human being
is a united whole, and cant be divided up into a conscious half
and an unconscious half. If you will have me believe that your
science holds evil to be something that need know nothing
about its own existence, then it seems to me that this science of
yours is no more than an idol which has been persuaded by its
priests to make a livelihood out of crime and sin.
Th ats not the point, Marie, said Kerkhoven with the
indulgent smile of a man whose profession demands patience
of him, and who, therefore, keeps himself in hand. Its not a
question of . . .
But it is, it is, interrupted Marie, vigorously shaking her
head at him. T h e picture we have been given shows such a
magnitude of villainy, such arch-cunning, that, twist and turn
the facts as you will, one cannot help asking oneself whether our
ideas of soul, feeling, love, and so forth can have any meaning.
A woman into the bargain! A wom an! a creature of my own se x !
Marie turned about, and leaned her aching forehead against
the cool door-post. She was shaken with sobs. Kerkhoven
walked up and down for a while, deep in meditation. Then he
came near to her, and said with a shaky voice, so profoundly
was he, too, m oved:
I respect your tears, Marie . . . but, honestly, I do not know
what more there is to say . . . except . . . that we have to
take the world as we find it . . . must compromise. Perhaps
one other thing remains to be mentioned. . . . Even in the case
we are discussing . . . agreed, the woman acted with malice
prepense . . . still, reflect for a moment . . . think of the
absolutely crazy amount of energy she needed to carry out her
plan . . . she forgot that it meant her own death . . . in her
absorption in the dream of seeing her husband and his beloved

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brought to book by herself, a corpse, placed under lock and key

by herself, a corpse. . . . Even in death she would still act as
judge, would still rule their lives. . .
Yes, yes, whispered Marie. W ell? What of all that?
I find there is an element of the sublime in it or, if you object
to the word, it is a remarkable phenomenon just as a thunder
storm is a remarkable phenomenon. A t any rate, so far as I am
concerned, I stand dismayed before such an achievement. Quite
recently I was told an extraordinary yarn. A t the hospital in
Alicante a rebellion broke out among the lepers. T h ey over
powered the nurses and attendants, streamed out of the building,
made for a neighbouring village, and demanded of the farmers
the toll of a kiss. I cant think why the story should have come
back to my mind at this instant. But just fancy, those lepers
wanting to be kissed! And imagine this Selma Imst whose last
pleasure it was to know that from the grave she would wield the
sword of revenge and pay those two out for having made her
suffer so acutely.
How could she be absolutely sure? Events might have run
another course.
Thats what makes persons whose impulsive energies guide
them through life so extraordinary. Th ey hardly ever make a
mistake. Its as if they were in league with a god indifferent to
good or evil.
Marie stood with bent head, contemplating her fingers. She
felt cold all over. There was an expression of frightened attention
about her whole person. It was as though she were listening to a
voice which warned her that if she pursued her way along this
road she would be lost. An abyss opened before her. T h e abyss
of knowledge and understanding. How could she avoid going
down into it, seeing that she yearned for knowledge and under
standing just as much as she yearned after the things that could
never be taught or comprehended ?
Vaguely, Kerkhoven surmised what was at work within her.
But he, too, was vacillating. How near he was to sacrificing
the world of reality and to taking up arms on behalf of M aries

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world he was to realise next day in the course of a lengthy dis

cussion with Martin Mordann.
64
Mordann was in bed. He complained that he could hardly
breathe, and that he had a pain round his heart. His forehead
was damp with perspiration. On the invalid table that crossed
the bed lay a scattering of books, letters, manuscripts. The
window was open; and, since he feared the draught, on his head
he wore a grey golf-cap. On the first phalanx of his left thumb
he was wearing an immense signet ring o f great antiquity, a
ring as large as a bishops. There was something paradoxical
and challenging about these various peculiarities. His movements
were jerky, and recalled those of a capricious and ailing woman.
He greeted Kerkhoven with a grin, saying:
So you played about with occultism last night. Oh, I ve heard
all about your goings on. None can accuse my daughter o f being
an adept, but what she told me sounded scatterbrained enough.
I said to her, Y o u ve got a fine bee in your bonnet, my child.
T h eyve been hoaxing you, and youve fallen into the trap.
I had a rare laugh, you may be sure.
It delights me to know that I have procured you some
amusement, Herr Mordann. Unfortunately the sitting itself
was by no means pleasurable.
I know, I know. Y ou want to snatch the prey out o f Dame
Justices tigerish maw. No go; youll never succeed. I know to
my cost. Cases like those of Jean Calas and Dreyfus are not
rarities nowadays. Its no joke playing the part of your Yoltaires
and Zolas, I can tell you. But I never tried to go to work by using
a medium. Highly original. A nice change from healthy reason.
Y ou re right. W eve not met with much success so far by
using our healthy rational faculties, answered Kerkhoven,
laughing.
Mordann scrutinised him through half-closed lids.
Between you and me, Doctor, do you honestly place any
faith in that hum bug?

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Kerkhoven sat down on the edge o f the bed, and laid a finger
on his patients pulse.
Hum bug? he enquired. D o you refer to certain unex
plored forces of blood and mind? Granted, a man swims against
the current when he so much as admits there may be something
in it.
W ell, you see, any court of law would send you to blazes.
Its just as if one went to battle armed with a toy sword.
Still, criminal telepathy has now been accepted, though it
is a theory that has yet to be officially recognised.
Good, oh, good, chuckled Mordann. And you actually
believe that a dithering old woman, endowed with so-called
second-sight, is able . . . well, let us say, is able to restate a
conversation I had with Prince Bismarck on M ay sixteenth,
eighteen hundred and ninety three a historic date, mark you.
A private interview. There were no witnesses. Not a soul in the
whole world ever heard a word of it excepting our two selves.
I made some notes about it for my own edification, thats all.
And you believe that this psychopathic witch-wife of yours is
capable of . . .
He had pulled himself up in the bed, and glared at Kerkhoven
with mocking triumph.
Not only do I believe it, but I hold it as not at all improbable.
T h e gift depends upon certain influences, and upon certain
powers of concentration. . . .
Bosh! M y dear doctor, youre enough to send a man over
the edge. . .
Occasionally it does one no harm to be pushed over the
edge, as you say. You are not in a position to judge, because the
appurtenant experience is lacking.
I m not to be caught by such tricks. You and your experience !
A fellow who keeps his eyes skinned and refuses to have dust
thrown into his face is invariably excluded from the congregation,
and comes under the ban o f the Church. T h ats why priests of
all categories lead the large majority o f people by the nose. W hats
the upshot ? What are you asking me to do ? Give up a position

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o f intellectual security and go in for a metaphysical course of

treatment which will make my head buzz, so that I say Y es and
Amen to all your hocus-pocus. T he approved way is first to
discredit the rational faculty, and thereby to bring mankind
down to a lower level. A s if he were not already only too prone
to lapse from his high estate! T he whole thing can be reduced
to the question: How do you reconcile your occultism with
religion ? Or do I err in supposing you to be a believer ?
Maybe that question is the crux of the matter. I cant tell.
Besides it has nothing to do with religion
With what, then?
Obedience; a specific form of obedience; with obedience to
oneself.
Dont understand.
It would take you too far afield, Herr Mordann.
Now my good man you dont need to bother your head
about that. You can take me as far afield as you like. T h e question
is whether you wont get out of breath in the process, not whether
I shall.
You and I live worlds apart; we belong to different epochs
and speak a different idiom.
Thats a new idea to me. Hitherto nothing human was alien
to me.
Agreed. But what of the divine?
Mordann started.
W hats that you say ? W ell, of all the . .
His piercing and horrified eyes wandered round the room.
Then, suddenly, he crumpled up with mirth.
Youre priceless, he cried in glee. I ve caught you neatly.
Saint Darwin and Saint Haeckel must be turning in their graves.
Ultra-modern fog, manufactured by a mystically enlightened
man of science who appeals to the divine when he really means
a lot of conjuring tricks and sorcery!
He gurgled with laughter behind his hands. But all at once
his mirth gave place to a fit o f convulsive coughing, which shook
him in every fibre of his body. Hi arms flapped about aimlessly,

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his head waggled on his fat neck, his face went blue, the veins
on his forehead swelled.
Kerkhoven rang for Nurse Else.
Camphor injection! Q uick!
T h e cough seemed as if it wanted to burst the mans chest
open. It produced a sound that was a mixture of barking and a
rattle in the throat, it hissed like the wind from a pair of bellows,
squeaked like a rusty wheel, it was as horrible to listen to as would
be a materialised death-agony, and it penetrated to every corner
o f the house. Kerkhoven got hold o f the sufferers arms, and held
them in the air.
Oh God, hes dying, said a hoarse voice in his ear. Agnes
Mordann stood at his side. She was only half dressed, and had
not stopped to put on slippers but stood in her stockinged feet
close to the bedside, a lighted cigarette held aloft in her left
hand.
Throw that thing away, cried Kerkhoven peremptorily.
Yes, o f course, she answered, flinging the stump out of the
window.
As the nurse returned with the syringe, the coughing ceased
no less abruptly than it had begun. T h e man lay back among his
pillows, eyes closed, fists clenched, breathing irregularly. Agnes
leaned over him.
Do you want anything, Father? she asked. Then, turning
to Kerkhoven, in a hardly audible voice: Is there still hope?
He made a warning gesture and stepped into the middle
o f the room. She followed.
No immediate danger.
Can you save him? Is it in your power to do so? Or is he a
condemned man ?
Kerkhoven knitted his brows.
D o you realise what the world will lose if a man like that
dies? she asked threateningly.
Yes, I know very w ell.
One thing you cannot know, and that is . . . I do not mean
to survive him. . . .

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A dry, sharp laugh escaped her; it sounded queerly like her

fathers. Then she turned and went from the room. Her big
feet in the brown stockings created a singularly unpleasing
impression.

65
A ll this had been strange, uncanny, resembling a scene staged
under strong illumination so that the details stood out with
blinding clearness, until the lights were turned down for a minute
or two when at supper Marie had words with Joseph because he
had allowed young Johann to play truant from school thus, a
family jar blotted out matters of vital interest. For no particular
reason, the boy had pestered his father to let him have a day
off until, in a weak moment, Kerkhoven had consented.
And do you know how he spent the afternoon? queried
M arie snappishly. Playing around that old ruined wall at the
bottom o f the garden. It was a lie about his having a headache.
If you continue to encourage him in such cheating, a pretty mess
youll make of his education. Y o u re simply garnering trouble
for the future. In general, your ideas of bringing up children
are questionable especially for the great Joseph Kerkhoven.
T h e Lord preserve us from applying any of them to the young.
Really, on this issue, your blindness is remarkable.
Kerkhoven looked the culprit he felt, though he could not
resist smiling at the boys choice of a playground. About forty
feet of wall had crashed down with a thundering noise a few nights
before, and on the following day Marie had read in a newspaper
that an earthquake had taken place in Japan at that very moment.
She had got a local mason to give an estimate for the repair, and
was aghast at the amount. On laying down the newspaper she
had said rather peevishly:
A pretty penny that wretched earthquake has let us in fo r!
Whereat he had burst into hearty laughter.
So you are convinced there is a causal connexion between
the earthquake in Japan and the disaster to our w all?
O f course I am. W hy, I even felt the shocks. It happened
about half-past-two in the morning. I woke with a feeling of

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desolation upon me, and then came the rumbling and crashing
of the wall falling down. . . .
Kerkhoven thought to him self:
T h ats quite possible. Women are specially sensitive to such
happenings, and Marie perhaps more than any.
Still, that an earthquake and a broken wall could have any
relationship to pedagogical error on his part, seemed to him so
deliciously inconsequent that he could not help teasing Marie
a little about her lack o f logical reasoning. She took his playful
ness amiss, reproaching him with negligence in the fulfilment
of his paternal office. It always fell to her lot to forbid the children
their pleasures, whereas he had a light task of it by weakly
yielding. Naturally the boys felt that Mother was the severe
taskmistress, whereas Father was a dear and one could get round
him.
Cant you see that for yourself, Joseph? Cannot you realise
that in the end the position will become untenable? Y ou, who
display so much wisdom and foresight in other affairs, who are
so unerring in your judgments of men, behave with so little
common sense in regard to your own children that I feel sure
bad will come of it.
You exaggerate, Marie. Honestly, you are grossly
exaggerating.
No, I m not, Joseph. That you can think so please forgive
me if I wound you makes me even more anxious. It is not
worthy of you, and of all your splendid characteristics. Love
purchased at such a price is bought too dear, and becomes a
crime.
She was right, he said to himself. Yes, he understood. Her
thought-processes were so marvellously clear. Y et, curiously
enough, his pride as a man, as a member of the superior sex,
revolted, now and again, against the inexorable logic of her
conclusions. He felt at such times much as a thief taken redhanded, and who is morally indignant when the stolen property
is found in his pocket. Still, as on the present occasion, he
invariably made good resolutions, and promised to amend

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his ways. Yet the good resolutions were merely another form of
weakness, for he knew very well that we are as incapable of
changing our fundamental characteristics as we are of modifying
a law o f nature. Nor could Marie alter her opinion that the
earthquake in Japan was the cause of the garden wall collapsing.
Our conceits and our self-knowledge have about as much relation
to reality as legends have to history.
T he kiss with which Joseph parted from Marie was a token
both of contrition and of protest. T o leave her out of humour
and unreconciled gave him a feeling as if, after putting up at
an inn, he had departed without paying the reckoning. This
alienated him from her, and she must have noticed that during
the wrangle he had only been attending with half his mind.
He was obsessed by the problem o f how to deal with Martin
Mordann. The fat, impish, intelligent face refused to remove
itself from before his mental vision, the face of the rebellious
old swashbuckler who had been forced to lie still. That terrible
coughing fit, too, rang in his ears and prodded him as though it
were the devils pitchfork. And the waxen pale countenance of
the daughter, with her devotion for her hated father, her deter
mination to kill herself if he died as if she were frightened to
go on living delivered of his crushing proximity. Sinister indeed
were these wheels within wheels. Never had a doctor been in
such a quandary, thought Kerkhoven as he paced to and fro
for unending hours in his rambling study; never was a death so
clearly needed as in the old mans case; never had a destiny
reached a more logical end. But how could he deliberately
permit a fellow-mortal to die ? Was he not condemning the man
to death, as Agnes had said with a womans mysterious and
penetrating insight? It is all very well to say in theory that a
patient must be saved by his own endeavours; must take into
his own hands the fate, must accept the responsibility, which
are beyond the scope o f a healer when death has tapped the
invalid on the shoulder. True enough; but the doctor must resist
death, must never join hands with death. The doctor has no
right over life and death. The imperishable soul lies outside the

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domain of human justice. Even if we regard illness as a form of

vice, even if maladies be the outcome of delusion or of crime,
he who arrogates to himself the privileges of executioner when
but one cell in a sick mans body is striving for renewal, is sinning
against the life-force. How strange that this mysteriously lucid
and comprehensive notion which had been formulated by his
friend in Zurich should suddenly and insistently occupy his
mind. The life-force; the vital impetus; the god-body,the godbrain, the divine substance; and, in amplifying counterpart
thereto, the unknown impulse in mans spiritual life, that some
thing which resembles a pulsating heart, the sustainer of the
vital programme, to quote his Zurich friend once more, the
sustainer of syneidesis; the infallible, primary, ineradicable
consciousness of protoplasm and the cell-State.
Eleven oclock had struck before he went to see how Mordann
was progressing. A thick green scarf had been draped round the
bedside lamp. Agnes was sitting by the bed, rigid and wide-eyed.
She took no notice o f Kerkhovens presence, not even changing
the direction of her gaze. He laid his ear to the patients chest
to note the condition of the breathing. The man lay as if asleep.
T h e temperature chart was on the table. T h e last entry, made in
Nurse Elses hand, registered io i . Kerkhoven stood up. His
eyes rested for a long while upon Mordanns face.
Here lay the man of filing-cabinet fame, the rebel, the alarmist,
the indefatigable writer, the master of words. Here lay the dying
tribune of the people. Kerkhovens dreamy and penetrating glance
bored through the skull, and made its way into the illuminated
and busy night of the brain. He saw the convolutions, the tracts
of yellowish-grey fibres quivering like the belts of a machine,
the plexuses, the twitching membranes, the hidden switchboards,
and the cerebro-spinal fluid making its way through narrow
channels. He saw the thoughts scurrying from post to post,
giving danger signals under stress of imminent death; he saw
the brightening and fading of images combining to form a
panorama that recorded sixty febrile years; he saw the dread
that enwrapped all as if in a pale mist; the ambitious dreams,

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flying swift as bullets; the delusions like a viscid black juice

clogging the finest fibrils a vast and admirably organised realm.
Where was there place in this realm for good and evil, truth
and falsehood, right and wrong, the hateful and the lovable?
Where, even, was there place for the utilitarian formula, the
distinction between the desirable and the undesirable? A t this
very instant, the busy activities might cease, or to-morrow,
or three days hence. Within a hundredth o f a second, eternal
rest might come into this walled cosmos, despite its power
(so long as life lasted) o f grasping the infinite. The illumination
would be over; there would be nothing left but darkness, the
darkness of what we call death, which is no less incomprehensible
than what we call life.
That will happen whether I will or not, mused Kerkhoven,
whether I try to hinder it or not. Perhaps I could have postponed
the end; perhaps I have, unconsciously, neglected to do so;
but against that we have the limits set by nature, the demand
that we shall trust our own instinctive promptings so as to be
in harmony with an inner and acknowledged law of existence.
He recalled how he had given the poison to Irlen who was
doomed to die soon and who longed for death: murder committed
for the sake of pity and love. At that time, during his first existence,
he had acted for his friend, the only friend he had ever possessed.
T hat body, too (could he ever forget it), had been the occasion
for precisely such a vision of organic working as he was now
privileged to have. To-night he stood with folded arms by the
bed of an enemy, and was giving death free passage. Mordann
was not, indeed, his enem y; but the enemy of his kind, the enemy
of God. . . .
He slipped softly from the room.
Agnes continued to sit motionless.

66
Next day Nurse Else told Kerkhoven with a look of astonishment
that Agnes Mordann, acting apparently at her fathers bidding,
had gone to Basle. T h e patient had rallied wonderfully after

SYNEIDESIS

171

yesterdays attack. He was remarkably alert, and had dictated a

long letter to his daughter before breakfast. Towards midday,
Agnes got back and the nurse came to tell the doctor that Herr
Mordann wished for an interview, adding:
And theres something queer about them both. Th ey are
having a great altercation.
Kerkhoven made all speed to rejoin his patient. Before entering
the room, he stood for a moment at the door. No sound came
through it. He knocked. No reply being given, he went in. Agnes,
her eyes full of hostility, was standing with her back to the table,
braced up on her hands which clutched the edge fiercely. Mordann
lay in bed staring gloomily before him. Gripped in his hand was
a packet of letters tied with blue tape. He seemed to be cold,
though in spite of the warm March weather all the windows were
shut, and in the Dutch tiled fireplace a cheerful blaze was
crackling. A t times he cowered back among the pillows, for he
hated the noise o f burning wood. Kerkhoven, from hygienic
motives, refused to burn coal in the house; he would use no other
fuel than beech logs. Mordann had complained daily, begging
that his room, at least, might be warmed with a coal fire. He
looked upon these open grates as antediluvian monsters, and
when in one of his more than usually cantankerous moods,
preferred to lie in the cold.
Kerkhoven felt at once that a mighty quarrel had just taken
place. He looked questioningly at Agnes, but for all answer she
shrugged her shoulders.
T ell her to begone, growled Mordann.
I ve got to know what youre up to, whats going on between
you two. I promise not to interfere, I shall not say a w ord ; but I
must be present.
She went excitedly towards the centre window which was
slightly bayed, flopped down on to a chair, rummaged among a
pile of newspapers, selected one, and opened it with ostentatious
rustling.
You see, Doctor, said Mordann tartly, thats all the
thanks you get by having children.

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Thank God you have not got children but only one child,
came like a hiss from Agnes lips.
Right, right, theres something in that, answered the father,
asthmatically.
Silence reigned for a while. Then Mordann enquired in a
harsh voice:
How much longer do you give me . . . to live, Doctor? I
want a straightforward answer. Yes, I want to know the truth.
A short, harrowing laugh came from the window-nook.
Only an ignoramus or a charlatan would venture to give you
precise information as to that, answered Kerkhoven. I am
neither the one nor the other.
That was a capital roar, old lion. But it does not intimidate
me. Its nothing out of the usual. Cowardice, thats what it is.
Pull yourself together, and behave like an honest man.
You place too high a value on my capacity. . . .
Mordann drew himself up into a sitting posture. In his eyes
was a look of anguished pleading.
Look here, man, I urgently need six more weeks of life.
Bring all your talents to bear and use all the remedies your
science suggests to you toxic drugs, philtres, conjurers patter,
anything you like but I must have those six weeks.
Kerkhoven, with a curious movement suggestive of a bird,
rotated his head on his neck, and then asked, showing no
particular desire to know:
M ay I be permitted to enquire to what end ?
Most certainly. Before I m under the sod I want to refute
the lies and calumnies that are current concerning me. You
cant expect me to die peacefully while I m still besmirched
with garbage. I ve got to shut their maws, for they will not mince
their words when I am in the grave. I owe this much to myself,
I owe it to the whole of my past. In a word, I wish to write the
story of my life these last twenty years.
I can understand that very well. But, even if I could prolong
your life beyond the allotted span a thing you can hardly expect
me to do why should you waste this precious breathing-space

SYNEIDESIS

173

in useless discussion, why poison your last few weeks of life with
needless self-justification, with bitterness, hatred, and denun
ciation? T ry to die at peace with yourself and the world.
Damned rot! Have all of you gone stark mad? She, too,
Agnes over there, keeps on telling me not to let myself in for a
posthumous lawsuit, that what I have fought for and succeeded
in bringing about will speak for itself, will bear witness in my
behalf when I am dead. Piffling nonsense! C ant you see ? Is it
impossible to get the fact into your thick heads that all I possess
in the world is my fair name, that I leave nothing behind me
but my unsullied buckler. If those curs get their fangs into my
good name as they have into my person, they may well go in
fear o f the hand which will stretch itself from my tomb to seize
them .
These words, which were shrieked rather than spoken, shook
Kerkhoven profoundly, for they revealed that, besides the mans
persecution mania, Mordann was suffering from a form of
delusion which he had never met with before. Tribune delusion,
paper-immortality delusion; a deluded belief in the perdurability
of the printed word, of a name, as if it were something real, an
actual deed, stood behind these empty shells, this intoxicated
and arrogant desire for power, these filing cabinets with their
eighteen thousand entries. A memorable experience, mused
Kerkhoven; and a memorable moment that had brought such a
man before his very eyes. . . .
N ow you know what is at stake, continued Mordann.
If you can help me to carry my scheme to fruition, I shall . . .
I ve been thinking over the Brederode business . . . and I
say again, if you can keep me going another six weeks, I will
hand over the letters. Martin Mordann is not in the habit of
accepting gifts. I shall pay you for those six weeks, or, even for
five weeks. Y o u ll have the letters. Agnes went to fetch them this
morning. Here they are.
He held out the package, with a horrible and wheedling smile
lighting up his face, using the bundle as though it were an
appetising lure. Agnes could bear the revolting scene no longer.

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She sprang to her feet, let fall the paper, and left the room.
Kerkhoven sat down quietly on his patients bed, and laid a hand
on Mordanns shoulder as if he were trying to calm a person
suffering from delirium.
T ry to be reasonable, Herr Mordann, he said in a kindly
tone which he had so far never been able to introduce into his
voice during intercourse with this patient. How is it possible
that a man of your intelligence can harbour such an extraordinary
superstition? I cannot promise to prolong your life by a second,
once your day has come. You, yourself, alone have the power to
do so. How? By what means? I have already spoken to you about
that.
Frenzy and despair seized the sick man. His tongue clove to
the roof of his mouth. Then he succeeded in mumbling:
Again . . . referring . . . to the divine ? Again to . . . how
did you name it? . . . obedience? You dare to approach me
with that kind of idiotic, obscurantist claptrap ? Go to the d evil!
I never want to set eyes on you again. I ll pay whats owing, and
clear out. . . .
The almost unintelligible words stuck in his throat. Kerkhoven,
filled with pity, rose to depart. Thereupon, flinging back the
bedclothes, Mordann leapt up and scuttled towards the fireplace
on disgustingly hairy legs. Before Kerkhoven could intervene,
the bundle of letters was amid the flames. Mordann tottered on
his spindle shanks, then sank in a heap on to the floor, and
nothing remained of him but a mountain o f flesh covered by a
ludicrous rag o f chequered shirt.
Forty-eight hours later he died, and three days after that all
the newspapers of Europe, with flaming headlines, announced
that Martin Mordann, the famous publicist, had passed away,
the last of the great fighters on behalf of freedom and democracy.

BOOK

TWO

Alexander and Bettina

ALEXANDER

AND

BETTINA

67
M ar tin M o rdann s body was cremated. Agnes took the urn

containing his ashes to Vitznau on the Lake of Lucerne. Three

weeks later, on April 9th, she went for a boating excursion to
Beckenried. T h e boat capsized, and she was drowned. On that
same ninth of April, the great savant in Zurich, Kerkhovens
prop, the man he looked up to most in the world, the leader
in unexplored realms of science and general knowledge, passed
away likewise. Ever since his return from Java, Kerkhoven had
at regular intervals taken a week off so as to see his friend
and to spend many hours at the masters institute for cerebral
anatomy. Kerkhoven had been in Zurich about five days, and
on the eve of the masters death, read aloud the last work
that was ever to be penned by that revered hand. At half-past
one the same night, sitting at his writing-table, the veteran of
seventy-four laid his pen aside for ever and peacefully fell
asleep. A perfect death, unaccompanied by noise and comniotion, by sickness or pain, in the midst of his never completed
and always completed work. Few mourned him, few had heard
of him ; his fame lay in the future. When Kerkhoven stood
contemplating the body, he loved death. Before him was a
magnificent picture of collectedness, peace, and strength.
On that same ninth of April, in the evening, at a party of
friends who had foregathered to commemorate the passing of
this great man, Joseph Kerkhoven met Bettina Herzog for the
first time.

68
'l'his seems an appropriate place to give the reader some infor
mation concerning the dead investigators theories. His prime
interest was the study of disorders of the brain, considered from
the anatomical outlook. Disturbances of the organs rhythmical
working, those of the juices in which the nerve fibrils are bathed;
those that affect the ganglion cells; the changes that may ensue

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upon or give rise to mental disorder; the obscure interconnexions

between vascular and nervous functioning; the difficult problem
of heat-stasis; the nature of the process by which substances
pass from within the blood-vessels into the brain tissue and
back again. T h e deceased had contended that some of the
substances which filter from the blood into the brain are noxious
to brain tissue; and these substances, he held, are not introduced
into the human being from without, but are elaborated in his
own organism, are part of his fated biological inheritance
whereby his mind is affected.
Unheard-of perspectives were thus opened up. On the one
hand his theories provided new foundations for diagnosis and
enlarged the field of therapeutic practice beyond anything
dreamed of as possible hitherto; on the other hand it was a
revival o f ancient medical views (another remarkable proof of
the unity of knowledge), of what was known as the humoral
pathology, which the Zurich investigator had deliberately in
corporated into his system. Thus, the human body, set in
motion and guided by an omnipresent spirit or organic being
(which could in the strict sense of the term be styled a super
spirit or super-being), was no longer to be regarded as a more
or less admirably finished machine, as a vitalised automaton,
as a mere product of chemical affinities and reactions.
No, it was something far more than this, something whose
nature was still barely conceivable, a nucleus of energies, a
nucleus interwoven into the universal life, belonging to and
inseparable from eternity. Furthermore, the energies of this
nucleus, according to the masters crowning formula, which
seemed strangely unscientific and anachronistic, were held
together by love. According to one of his latest utterances:
Among the highest of the functions of the central nervous
system, among those upon which human happiness primarily
depends, must be numbered the settlement of accounts be
tween the innermost ego and the all, and between the inner
most ego and the activity or inactivity of particular biological
and physiological forces,

ALEXANDER

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69
In a certain sense, Bettina Herzog was in full flight, her stay in
Zurich being no more than a postponed exile. She herself was
convinced of this; so were the two or three friends whom she
had made the journey to see. One of these friends, a young
X -ray specialist, wishing to cheer her up, had persuaded her
to come with him to the party. In a low-ceilinged, overheated
room whose four walls were lined with books, about a dozen
persons had assembled, among them four women.
As Kerkhoven entered, Bettina was overcome by a strange,
tense feeling which was by no means unfamiliar to her. She was
assailed by this feeling whenever she found herself in the same
room with persons from whom a special kind of atmosphere,
either mental or physical, emanated and this, whether the
company was a large one or a small one. T h e longer she was
exposed to the influence, the more intense became her discomfort,
which was the product of an instinctive endeavour to discover
the source of the magnetic attraction.
Scrutinising each face, she at last lighted upon one which she
recognised at once as being the author of her uneasiness. T o
outward appearance the man looked like a wealthy farmer or
landowner. Such persons are often to be found in Switzerland
visiting upper middle-class circles; but, since in the present
instance the gathering was composed exclusively of medical
practitioners and scientific investigators, this surmise would
appear to be incorrect. His chin was masked by a short beard
which in the dim light looked yellowish in colour later, she
found that it was streaked with grey. A man of fine physique, he
sat on a chair that was a great deal too small for him. He had
pushed himself back into the shadows. He had not crossed his
legs, and the attitude he was obliged to assume created an im
pression that he was far from comfortable.
In spite of herself, Bettina could not take her eyes off his hands,
which were broad, bony, and absolutely motionless as they lay
over his knees. Th ey looked like twin animals, cowering, on the
watch, protective.

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He had been introduced to her, but she had failed to catch

the name. She softly enquired of her hostess who the man might
be.
Dr. Joseph Kerkhoven. Have you never heard of him ?
N o, acknowledged Bettina simply.
She caught the sound of his voice as he spoke to his neighbour.
A man with a voice like that . . . was Bettinas innocent
and comforting thought.
But except for an interchange of commonplaces, she did not
speak to Kerkhoven that evening. Though courteous, he was
obviously not a master of words. . . .
70
A few days after the party she went to Dolders for tea, and as
she sat sipping she saw Kerkhoven no more than a few feet away
leaning on the balustrade which framed the terrace. She had a
confused feeling that she had fixed up to meet him here. Again,
as at the party, she was inexplicably alarmed and excited.
Bettina was able to obtain a clearer impression of his personality.
His whole demeanour conveyed a taste for seclusion, a freedom
from inquisitiveness, a severe and weighty reserve, inward peace.
She hoped he would recognise her; and yet she was angry with
herself for having such a wish. I m crazy, she reflected; what do
I want of the man ? A doctor to boot. Doctors did not attract her.
Then he looked in her direction, for a second or two seemed to
be trying to recall her face, and she smiled a greeting towards
him. A spontaneous little nod, not meant to signify more than
a token of recognition. He bowed politely in return. His farmer
like appearance had not led her to expect so courteous a gesture.
After a while he got up rather clumsily and came to her table.
Frau Alexander Herzog, I believe? he asked in that marvel
lous voice which, Bettina thought, was enough of itself to instil
confidence.
With gentle raillery she replied, correcting him :
Yes. Bettina Herzog, Doctor.
He scanned her face closely for a moment, with the penetrating

ALEXANDER

AND

BETTINA

18 1

glance which physicians alone possess. Then he asked if he might

have the pleasure of her company.
This took place at twenty-past five. When he bade her good
night in the hall of the hotel where she was staying and where
they, the only guests apparently, had been talking since they
returned from Dolders, it was five minutes to nine. Bettina,
forgetting she had eaten no evening meal, went straight to her
room, and retired to bed exhausted and in a state of intense
mental upheaval.

71
T h e conversation had started with Kerkhoven asking after
Alexander Herzog and telling Bettina about the profound
impression left on his mind by the lecture he had heard in Frei
burg. He said that the mans tortured appearance was specially
noticeable, and he asked whether there had been any cause to
account for it.
N ot only has been, exclaimed Bettina. The cause still
exists.
She informed him that Alexander Herzog was suffering from
an organic trouble which was due to years upon years of constant
irritation and excitement. When Kerkhoven casually remarked
that she herself was not a brilliant picture of health, he got a
brief glint of grey-green eyes and an apathetic shrug.
Were it otherwise, it would be a miracle, she murmured.
Bettina was ill at ease. She doubted whether it was right to
talk freely. It seemed to her unthinkable. Besides, this man
who was showing her so much sympathy had probably more
than enough of other peoples trials and sorrows to bear and to
relieve. She sat looking at him. Little by little she plucked up
courage, and in the end all signs of hesitation disappeared. She
was unable to explain to herself this urgent need to speak her
heart out. Once started, her story rushed like a torrent which,
after being dammed up for an unbearably long time, breaks
through the banks and sweeps down the valley. And in the
telling, her story seemed to her so incredible, so improbable,
so fantastic, and so mad, that she could not but fear her newly

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EXISTENCE

acquired friend would take her for an hysterical liar. Y et she

could not even now bring herself to recount her experiences in
full detail, to disclose the events in their proper chronological
order, to say precisely what had occasioned them. When she
looked at him to see how he was taking it all, doubt would
assail her anew. For the most part he sat with head sunk and
half-closed eyes his fingers playing with invisible crumbs
on the glass-topped table. Occasionally, he raised his eyes, and
nodded to her encouragingly with an expression which seemed
to say, I knew about that a hundred years ago.
W ell, now youve got a sketchy idea, Bettina said after
talking breathlessly for two hours on end. M y life means Ganna.
Alexander Herzogs fate is Ganna. His and my unhappiness is
Ganna.
Kerkhoven fell into a brown study. After a while he asked
whether Bettina had a letter or other document in Gannas
handwriting. Delving into her bag, she produced an envelope
and handed the contents to him. He held the sheet before him
and contemplated, without reading, the large, pointed, hastily
written words. T h e shape of the letters had something weird
and fanatical about them. Having studied the caligraphy for a
time, he read from the beginning to about half-way through, then
he covered part of the sheet with his large hand and gazed
dreamily in the air while his features darkened. He asked abruptly:
Have you heard from your husband?
Heard from him? No. W hy?
How long is it since you left home ?
Six days. W hy?
He answered with unexpected decision:
I do not think you should have left him at so critical a time.
Bettina went a shade paler, as she whispered:
I simply could not endure it any longer. . .
She was annoyed to find that he was focussing his attention
upon issues which an old and ingrained feeling of defiance
made her loth to face squarely. Anyway not just now. Not at
this juncture. She had played second fiddle long enough. In

ALEXANDER

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183

this particular hour she wanted to be the centre of interest.

He guessed the current of her thoughts, but shook his head at
her, saying:
I understand very w ell.
She breathed once more.
Have you any grounds for suspecting? . .
she began,
resolved to turn her back on her own troubles.
In relation to him? T o be sure I have.
What do you think I ought to do?
T h a ts not so easily decided.
D o you think I ve done wrong in confiding my woes to you?
Have I acted without due consideration?
He laid his hand, or, rather, his finger-tips on her arm, and
said:
Please dont get such an idea into your head.
One does not always think before one speaks. Stealing other
peoples time is not my way as a rule.
Please do not bother about that, he answered somewhat
impatiently. W ill it make you easier in your mind if I tell you
I have no time of m y own?
All the more reason to be on guard, exclaimed Bettina,
clasping her hands round her knee. Then she whispered: Queer,
only now do I realise that this has been the most critical moment
))
Always the special case. . . .
She looked up at him enquiringly. Then, in a lighter tone,
he continued:
W e invariably come up against secretions if you w ill
forgive me the pun. There is an organ within you which desires
to put the catastrophe out of sight.
Catastrophe! Is it as bad as that?
I cannot get the notion out of my head. Especially where
Alexander Herzog is concerned.
It seemed to Bettina that her heart stopped beating for a
space. Clearly her narrative had lacked precision, and she had
failed to tell him the most essential points.

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Do you think you could do something? she stammered,

aghast at her own temerity.
He smiled somewhat aloofly.
That was a silly question, I know, she went on shyly.
But I cannot help asking myself whether human power is of
any avail.
Human power is not much to boast of, and yet it is limitless.
So far as I can see the case is a peculiar one, although in certain
points it is typical. But . . .
But?
Better not press me too closely. I must think matters over
carefully to begin with. M y information is too scanty. A ll I can
be quite sure about is that this man must be saved. Then ,
seeing how wan and pale Bettina looked, he added: And he
can only be saved if you . .
He looked her through and through. A shiver ran down her
back. She wanted to get up and go right away. He asked in so
muted a voice that she sensed rather than heard the w ords:
Am I right in supposing you have ceased to love him ?
Shaken to her very soul, Bettina sat looking down at the tips
o f her shoes.
That . . . how can one . . . Oh, no . . . such a thing is
not . .
She broke off, and her head bent lower.

72
There was no shadow of doubt in Kerkhovens mind that Bettina
Herzogs longing to see a little of the outside world, to unburden
her heart, to rub shoulders with her fellow-mortals was due to the
twelve years of cloistral seclusion she had led with Alexander.
Yes, from the age of twenty-eight, for close upon twelve years,
she had been tucked away among the Styrian mountains, alone
with Alexander Herzog, and had nearly broken down under the
strain. For months past she had ceased enjoying normal sleep ;
every letter, or wire, or telephone call brought on an orgy
of palpitation (so she expressed it). T o Kerkhovens expert

ALEXANDER

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185

vision, hers was obviously a case of profound mental depression.

T o forget, only to forget, was the refrain which ceaselessly
went through her mind day in day out. T o be again with people
who conversed upon neutral or general topics, who were inter
ested in pleasant, cheerful, and beautiful things. T o forget
the horrible, gruesome pall of despair which clung to her home
and poisoned the air she breathed. Kerkhoven considered that
she was exaggerating, for she possessed the mobile imagination
o f an artist. Undoubtedly, he thought, she is exaggerating.
Still, as he watched her, and listened to her, the conviction grew
upon him that his surmise lacked foundation. Her clarity, her
sobriety, the vivid reality of her facts and statements, showed
that she was not guilty of exaggeration. T h e mingling of external
calm with internal fervour reminded him of M aries temperament.
Such a juxtaposition of incompatibles produced a wonderful
impression of vitality. It was the same with Marie. Yes, it all
fits in , he said to himself; I think I m on the right track.
When Bettina further informed him that she was a musician,
had in earlier days composed songs and sonatas which had
been considered good, played the violin, and so forth, he realised
that these artistic gifts sufficiently accounted for her excessive
sensitiveness and emotional excitement. But, proceeding with
her narration, she said:
For long years now I have bidden farewell to music, have
laid my fiddle away, my Guarneri, and it lies in its case on a
shelf like a coffined corpse in a churchyard.
She had no outlet now for her undoubted gifts, and the process
of crippling with which she saw herself menaced had generated
a condition of hypochondria which verged upon melancholia.
Persons of a primitive and animal disposition are able to make
provision for untoward circumstances; but Bettina, whose
senses were so acute, whose development had gone forward
upon so spontaneous a road, was at a loss unless she could find
a saving hand to rescue her. Kerkhoven kept his gaze steadily
fixed upon her while she told him about her life during the last
six months a strange and perilous affair. . . .

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Its getting late, he said at last, rising to his feet. You want
rest. During the next few days you may need me. I shall stay
in Zurich till the end o f the week. You can ring me up anytime
between ten and two.
He jotted a telephone number down. She thanked him, much
moved by his generous friendliness, little suspecting how soon
she would require his help and support. T he next day, in the
midst of her sorrow and perplexity, she recalled his words, and
wondered whether the man was a prophet.

73
By the first postal delivery, she received a letter from Alexander
couched in the following term s:
Ever since you left, dear Bettina, I have had the beginnings
o f a manuscript lying on m y work-table. It bears the singular
title: Confessions of an Atheist. I had thought to dig down
to the very roots of m y spiritual existence in the hope of finding
the fundamental error. I think you will agree that, in the absence
o f such an error, so overwhelming a failure, my present situation
would be unaccountable. Y et when I read the thing through
to-day, I recognised that my endeavour was futile. In the course
o f his career, every author has to face up to the fact that, by the
immense use he has to make of words, these come in the end
to lose both meaning and weight. Th ey grow featureless. What
he writes under such conditions, lacks absolute validity, can never
be incontrovertible. Th at is my case now. What I have written
fails to carry conviction, lacks the relentless force o f truth.
As I fluttered the pages from the end backward to the beginning,
each sheet seemed to me a dressed-up piece of putrefaction.
What has it profited me, Bettina, to mould and to forge?
I ve launched a score of books upon an unappreciative public.
What have I accomplished thereby? Has the torture of creation
been to any purpose? Where is the harvest for all I have sown
during the fifty-nine years of my life ? Even from among my most
intimate circle, from my home, I have been unable to exclude
ugliness and a nightmare of horror. A sorry plight for those

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187

whom I have lured into a deceptive belief in me. What is the

use of building where there are no foundations, of constructing
an edifice which no one will inhabit, in whose very existence no
one believes but myself? M y books are no more than ghosts,
swathes cut in a cornfield of illusion. Waste, waste; nothing
but wasted effort. There exists a disease of creation just as there
is a disease of action, such action which is a flight from the deed
itself. True, there is also a form of creation which is a deed, but
such creation transfigures and is akin to the divine. Into this
holy land the devil does not venture to set foot his breath would
fail him if he tried.
Elemental sadness has overwhelmed me, Bettina. It presses
on me like a strait-waistcoat. No longer is my thought-process
systematic or consistent. Dim ly I am groping for something,
but I am unable to find out what precisely this something is.
Can it be myself? Has m yself been, in days long past and in some
inexplicable way, stolen from me ? I have sought it and claimed
it everywhere, yet never has it been given back to me. It has
been a struggle not to throw the above-mentioned manuscript
in the fire. Y et I cannot bring myself to do it. Perhaps because
I am incapable of drawing the ultimate conclusion. M y ego in
its entirety, spiritual, mental, and physical, is in hopeless disorder.
M y feelings are no longer subject to my control, my sense of
time is disturbed; often it seems to me I am walking on my head.
I have only been playing with puppets, in a darkling world of
house and home, wife and children, debits and credits. Yesterday
I said to myself in a moment of mental stupor: there must be
a profound significance underlying the fact that men who wish
to meet themselves or God must go into the wilderness. Were it
not for our little son Helmut, I do not know what would happen
to me. Right inside me I feel there is a command to do som ething;
but what, it is hard to understand. Your letters are so queer.
What can be the matter? T h ey are so impersonal. One might
think you were writing from China or California. In the night
I ramble from room to room, and wonder why the doors and
windows are all shut. . . .

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74
B y the time Bettina had read this letter, her cheeks and hands
were as cold as ice. Tw o hours were needed for her to regain
sufficient composure to go out. As she was about to leave the
hotel, the porter told her there was a telephone call from Ebenweiler (the village where she had her home). She recognised
her maids voice over the wire.
Oh, M aam, I did not want to worry you, but .. .
Well, what is it, Anna? T ell me quickly.
The masters not been seen these three days. .. .
What ? Not been seen ? D o you mean hes goneon a journey ?
No, M a am. He just went off with his knapsack last Thursday,
without saying a word to any of us, and theres been no news of
him since.
T h e receiver in Bettinas hand seemed as heavy as lead.
Have you made enquiries? Gone to the police? Sent out a
search-party?
Yes, everything possible has been done, M aam.
Does anyone know which way he went?
He was seen in Steinach, and on Saturday afternoon in
Lossachtal. A sportsman . .
In Lossachtal did you say? But that is five hours by rail from
our place. . .
I know, M a am; and w ere all afraid something may have
happened.
I m coming home at once, Anna. G et in touch with the
mayor. Phone to all the towns and villages. Rope in the wireless.
Pull all the strings you possibly can. I ll get back as quickly as
communications allow.
She hooked up the receiver. Her teeth chattered. Pale as wax,
she made enquiries at the office as to when the Vienna air-mail
started. From Vienna she would have another seven hours
train journey. T h e air-liner started at six o clock every morning,
she was informed. H er next thought was that she would hire
a car. That would mean a fifteen hours drive even if she were
lucky enough to persuade a driver to make the journey. A lex

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anders car was out of action, for Ganna had issued a writ o f
attachment. Otherwise this would have served for at least half
the way. Then there was the express which left Zurich at eleven
every night. By taking this, she could reach home the following
afternoon. While making these enquiries, it seemed to her that
her heart must break with impatience. Railway-guide in hand,
she rang up Kerkhoven. She did so as precipitately, as unre
flectingly as one calls up the police when burglars are in the house.
Tw enty minutes later she was receiving him in her room.

75
W hile telling him the news, Bettina ran from window to door,
and from door to window back again, like a wild creature in a
cage. As she did so, she feverishly opened one trunk or the
other, seized this article or that, a gown, a pair of shoes, a book,
meaning to pack, but dropping the things before her purpose
was accomplished. She wanted to show Kerkhoven the letter
she had received that morning, could not find it, searched the
blotter and her bag. Meanwhile Kerkhoven followed her move
ments, fully realising how unhappy she was at the idea that
he would consider her slovenly. As a matter o f fact, he had
been struck by the tidiness of the room, thinking to himself,
this denotes accuracy o f mind and a love of order. One
cannot mistake such signs in the room a woman is living in.
Then she remembered that she had put the letter away in her
suit-case. She handed it to Kerkhoven. He read it with close
attention, several times, for the crabbed hand was not easy to
decipher. When he lighted upon the phrase, go into the
wilderness, he faltered. He sadly shook his head, while the
hand which held the missive sank to his side. Bettina, who
incessantly wrung her hands as she marched to and fro, suddenly
stopped and asked anxiously:
W hats the matter? How does it strike you?
This is so strange, he answered, pressing a certain line in
the letter as if he would fain put his finger through it; mighty

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strange. I too, once . . . the phrase is familiar to me . . . how

well I understand him. . . .
What phrase are you referring to?
The one about going into the wilderness. Ah, how well I
understand . . . an amazing analogy . . .
Bettina stood thoughtfully beside him, looking very small and
pale. With resolute cordiality, Kerkhoven said:
Now my dear lady, please sit down and calm yourself. Stop
wringing your poor hands, and tell me as accurately as you can
the message you received by the phone. Then well talk matters
over quietly.
She looked at him with a tense expression mingled with
grateful trust, a feeling which had grown and blossomed within
her like one of those fabulous plants which spring up for all
men to see under the conjurations of a fakir. Great indeed was
her need for some one in whom she could trust whole-heartedly.
Nothing else in the wide world did she crave for so ardently.
Obedient, she took a chair opposite him and recalled word for
word what the maid had said. Elbow on knee, chin cupped in
his hand, Kerkhoven listened.
Did you, before you left, have words with him? A mis
understanding?
No, nothing of the sort.
Was he put out in any way?
Put out? Good God hes been put out for years. Put out'
is too feeble a phrase. . . .
Yes, a chronic and abnormal lack o f cheerfulness. . . .
This letter shows that well enough. . . . What I meant was . . .
whether there was any reason . . . any unusual reason. . . .
Not that I know of. M erely the daily ration of horror. . . .
she answered with a wry smile.
H es not given to extravagant behaviour, to sudden outbreaks,
to . . . Or . . .?
No, hes not that way inclined. I ve never known a man more
collected, more equable, more nicely balanced than Alexander.
What I should have imagined.

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Yes. Still, when one lives under the lash, hunted down by
seven-and-thirty lawyers, with daily visits from the bailiff,
perpetual law-suits, so that one no longer knows whether
one is standing on ones feet or on ones head, with no time to
breathe, with no sense of security, with no hope that things may
improve . . .
Her face puckered, her control broke down, and, a prey to
despair, she screamed:
Oh, why cannot she be killed? W hy cannot she be wiped
from off the face of the earth? W hy not? Oh, why not?
She turned in her seat, pressed her face in her hands, and then
leaned her forehead on the back of the chair. Kerkhoven rose,
and placed his hand on her head. Flushed with shame, Bettina
muttered:
Forgive me, please forgive me. Its a sin to behave like this . . .
and silly into the bargain. But at times I feel I cannot go on
any longer. . . . And now the added anxiety about Alexander
. . . I am scared . . . it frightens me. . . .
Listen to me, said Kerkhoven. You must go home, and
not bother if the hours seem long. Better reserve a sleeper for
the night. I ll give you something quite an inoffensive drug
which will give you a peaceful night. Y o u ll sleep as soundly
as an infant. Bettina smiled at him through her tears. And
if you can bring yourself to believe me, it is my impression that
nothing serious has happened to your husband. I fancy he wanted
to hide his tracks. I mentioned the word analogy a moment
ago. Some day I shall tell you about that. W ell, my supposition
which is almost a certainty rests upon an analogy. . . . He
is in hiding. He needed to free himself from the chain. . . . It
is only what we doctors call a fugue. Can you understand? If
I am right, you ought to have news of him in two or three days.
Bettina, her heart filled with trust, and hope renewed, looked
up at Kerkhoven like a child at its beloved teacher.
Y es, she said. Yes. I am so grateful to you . . . without
you I do not know how I should . . .
There, there, dont worry about that, he interrupted,

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smiling down at her. What I particularly want you to take to

heart is this: possibly, and highly probably, Alexander Herzog
will . . . I mean that all these things cannot fail to have con
sequences . . . he may develop a . . . he may be very depressed,
morbidly so . . . his nerves are on edge. . . . Keep me
informed. Wire to me or give me a call by phone Steckborn,
Seeblick, will find me. I m at your service. If you think it neces
sary, or desirable, that I should come, you need but ask. I would
do a great deal for Alexander Herzog.
Bettina sprang to her feet, holding out both her hands:
Thats the most comforting thing you could have said to m e,
she cried. Now I no longer need despair.

76

Kerkhoven went again to see Bettina in the afternoon. A t tenthirty the same evening he took her to the station. He gave her
detailed instructions as to how she was to act if his prediction
concerning Alexander Herzog proved correct. Nor did he overlook
the fact that she needed to take care of herself, for she was very
weak and her nerves were shaky. Furthermore, with a marvellous
insight into the material and spiritual background, he spoke
o f Ganna Herzog and her destructive and maniacal persecution
of Alexander and Bettina. He told her the story of Karl Imst
and Jeanne Mallery, in order that she might know into what
dark abysses a woman could fall, when disappointment in love
and life had deprived her of ordinary human kindliness. T h e tale
made Bettina shudder.
But in our case things are different, she objected. Alex
ander lived with Ganna for nineteen years. He cared for her
every need, he carried the burden of her, and never turned away
from the sacrifice. She bore three children by him. He is a man
o f mark in the world, and there are many who look up to him.
How can one endure the thought that a mad creature like Ganna
may possess the power to murder him ?
Kerkhoven did not wish to acknowledge that this question
touched the core of his profound psychological interest. He had

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a keen nose for scenting out the unusual. Bettinas appearance,

her way of speaking, of looking about her, of walking, Alexander
Herzogs fugue, the letter he had written to his wife, all these
details made it possible for the physician to sketch in outline
the daimonic figure o f the woman who was capable of bringing
into the lives of these two beings so much unrest, so much pain,
and so much horror. In like cases, by a study o f spiritual effects
he had often been able to argue back to the scope of activity
and the nature o f the person who had produced those effects;
starting from the periphery of the movement and working
towards the centre of the movement. T he proof had nearly always
stood the test. Taking the case before him, contemplating it in
all its ramifications, its shocks, its convulsions, he had to admit
that a hard task lay before him.
Bettina could not help reiterating her thanks. When she had
said Goodbye to him and had taken her place in the train, she
felt a pain at her heart as if she were parting from a friend. He
stood waving his hand until the night swallowed up the last of
the carriages.

77
It was true that none of the household had seen Alexander
Herzog go out. For this reason it was impossible to say which
direction he had taken. When on Wednesday his enigmatical
disappearance was commented upon in the newspapers, several
persons said they had seen him here or there and had recognised
him. The fact that he had started with no more gear than might
be stuffed into a knapsack made it highly probable that he had
gone for a climb and had come to grief in the mountains. Though
search parties were sent out, their efforts proved unfruitful.
He, himself, at a later date, could not recall whether he had
fixed on a definite goal. Mechanically, he went to the station,
and took his place in the first train that happened to stop. At
ten oclock that night he got down, and pursued his journey
in another train. He had fallen off into a doze when, at mid
night, the guard shook him awake again at the place to which
his ticket had been taken. He found himself in a large village

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and put up at the inn. Next morning his head ached so fiercely
that he was obliged to keep his bed, and he did not leave the
hostelry until the afternoon. He was making for the station,
when he changed his mind and walked along the highway ten
miles to a neighbouring market town. Again he sought the shelter
o f an inn. T he information which, after he was found, he fur
nished concerning the first days of his planless wanderings, was
scanty in the extreme. Only fugitive pictures and impressions
remained in his memory.
While he walked, he would at times have the unpleasant
sensation of being double. He felt as though he were walking
beside himself, and philosophised sullenly over his incompre
hensible actions. A reflection that was constantly, though ob
scurely, returning to his mind was that it must be possible to
clear a living body out of the world. This out o f the world
became an obsession. T h e road was fatiguing and lacked dramatic
interest; walking did not come as easily as o f yore. A t times
weariness struck him like a sledge-hammer. He felt wretched
because his buoyancy had gone. I ve got slack, he said to
himself, I ve frittered away too much of my life. One thinks
there are provisions and to spare in the larder, but on opening
the door one finds it bare.
Especially fatiguing was a tramp he took along an endless
valley in the rain. He flung himself down on the wet moss;
his back and his feet ached exquisitely. Only then did he begin
to ask himself what he had in mind to do, whither he meant
to go. A stony radiance gathered round him, and fog was thick
in the air and on the ground. He felt he resembled K ing Lear
on the heath but he had no Fool and no Cordelia to bear him
company. He had lost Cordelia; the Fool followed him like
a shadow. This was a death-dealing Fool, the bitterest Fool the
world had ever known, and it followed him about everywhere
he turned, screaming at him in a hollow, raging, and challenging
voice. Gannas voice. . . .
Another picture, too, dug itself into his brain: he saw himself
climbing up a slope where the trees were felled, and his knap

ALEXANDER

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19s

sack weighed like a heavy rock on his back; the bark had been
stripped off the tree-trunks, which shone in the wet like bars
o f gold ; there was a disused saw-mill in a little hollow ; he crept
into a corner nearby the water-wheel, pushed his sack under
his head and fell into a sleep of exhaustion which lasted twelve
hours.
Somewhere or other he had been driven along in a motor bus,
talking to the peasants, to a schoolteacher, to a man who worked
on the railway. The teacher pleased him greatly, for he proved
to be a serious and reflective young fellow. When once more
he was alone, he remembered a scene he had been the centre
of a few months earlier in a German town. He had delivered
a lecture, and afterwards between eighty and a hundred young
people gathered round him, and assailed him with questions,
the answers to which they declared would be of the utmost
importance to them. Their eager eyes, their alertness, their
bright faces, rose vividly before him. Strange that they should
have chosen him as counsellor and finger-post, him who had
now gone forth to find himself. . . .
A whole day he had rested in a lumbermans hut, and sud
denly at nightfall he went off on tramp again. T h e luminous
sheen upon the mountain-tops had enticed him forth. Over the
peaceful landscape the moon shone down, turning the snow to
a pearly grey. W ith a sensation that almost amounted to greedi
ness he scaled the heights, leaving the mists below, and stepping
upward into the night as into a blue-vaulted cathedral. A goat
track wound among the rocks. For hours he kept to this path,
while the moon hung like a yellow-flamed fruit in the sky, and
threw every blade of grass into relief, each with its clear-cut
shadow. Abruptly the path ceased. He sought it until daybreak.
Clouds gathered, fog descended. He walked a hundred paces
to find himself back at the very spot where he had been before
taking those hundred paces. A dark something rose in front of
him. Was it a wall of rock? A bank of fog? A fellow mortal?
Himself? If it were himself he might be able to discover why
he had lived to the threshold of old age outside himself, without

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a brother, without a friend, without Cordelia; he might have

it explained why a Ganna had to set herself up against him so
as, unscrupulously, to contrapose a caricature to the holy ecstasy
for it was a holy thing which he served. He felt he had a
right to an explanation, to illumination on this point; such a
small mercy, surely he had a right to it; one ray from above,
a sign, a meaning. . . .
Was it permissible to turn back when one was expecting so
great a gift? He crept deeper in among the rocks, he wrapped
himself round in the woollen blanket of fog, he scrambled up
amid the snows, he felt thirsty and slaked his thirst with a
handful of snow, he glanced down at his watch. It had stopped.
An uncanny portent for a man who had, so to say, lived watch
in hand, for a man to whom every passing hour stood as a
witness. He turned to the right, he turned to the left, a flock
o f chamois sprang like ghosts over a ridge; his heart beat wildly,
the solitude resounded like a mighty bell. No, he must not turn
back . . . not turn back. . . .
And he did not turn back.
Towards nightfall two sportsmen returning from the chase
found him lying unconscious among the brushwood. They made
a stretcher as best they could out of branches, and carried him
down to the valley. Since, on coming to, he refused to say who
he was and he had no identity papers upon him, he was conveyed
to the hospital in the nearest town.

an excited and half-demented wire from Ganna which she did

not answer. Telephone calls followed, but Bettina refused to
go to the apparatus. Since, however, she wanted at all cost to
keep the woman away for Gannas presence, Gannas mere
proximity would, Bettina felt, drive her crazy she told the maid
to say that all was going well and good news was to hand. At
noon on Saturday came a wire from the head of the hospital
where Alexander lay. H alf an hour later, Bettina was off in a
hired car. At five, after a four-hour drive, she arrived at the
hospital. Breathless with suspense, she enquired if her husband
could be taken home. She was told that since no specific illness
had been discovered the journey would certainly do the patient
no harm. The somewhat grumpy doctor who was in attendance
was obviously at a loss, and his temper was not of the best as
he added:
He just lies there, and stares blankly before him.
By six she had got Alexander with her in the car, and at half
past ten, in storm and rain, they pulled up at their home in
Ebenweiler. Anna helped to put him to bed. During the long
journey he had not uttered ten words. Wrapped in rugs, he
had sat in the corner, hollow-eyed, gazing into vacancy. Bettina
was so absolutely exhausted, however, that she was glad of the
quiet, and dosed off and on as the car sped along over rough
roads and smooth. A kind o f somnolent indifference enshrouded
her, and she was content to feel his hand in hers.

78
Bettina reached home on Thursday. Little Helmut ran to kiss
her, his face radiant at her return. His first question was,
Wheres Daddy? How could a child of his age be expected
to realise that tragedy was in the air? She immediately got in
touch with the authorities; had notices printed giving a detailed
description of Alexander and had them put up in the neigh
bouring tow ns; sent a dozen telegrams; and got the whole village
on the move. Tw o anguishing days went by; she could not eat,
or sleep, not venturing even to go to bed, On Friday she received

His condition did not greatly improve. At times, after hours of

brooding, he might take a book in hand, but his eyes travelled
over the pages which conveyed no meaning, and soon he would
let the volume slip from his lifeless fingers. T h e food they
brought was pushed aside with every sign of disgust. Occasionally
he would seek Bettinas hand, and press his lips to it. Only
when Helmut, warned by his mother to be very quiet, stole up
to the bed on tip-toe and craned his little head to get a glimpse
o f his father, did Alexander show the flicker of a smile. The

79

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local doctor could make nothing of the case, saying it might

be this or it might be that. He could deal with a straightforward
disease; but the patient was not suffering from an illness to
which a name could be put, which could be looked up in a
medical dictionary, but from some anomalous complaint which
he had never before met with in the course of his practice. No
use prescribing medicines; and, as for questioning the invalid,
that was equally useless for he got no answer. T h e trouble was
mental; but here one was getting on to slippery ground. Really,
a psychological specialist should be called in ; only, if he suggested
such a thing, how would the wife take it ?
On Sunday, the day after she brought Alexander home, she
got into touch with Seeblick. She had twelve minutes conver
sation with Kerkhoven telling him how she had found the
fugitive, describing the apathy into which his senses were
plunged, furnishing particulars with so much precision that the
doctor could not help saying with a note o f gentle raillery:
Y ou ve missed your vocation. Such a report would have done
credit to a medical practitioner.
Bidding her give him another call on Thursday, he promised
to tell her what line o f action he had determined on. When,
on the appointed day, she gave her report, he detected a tone
o f despair in her manner of speaking. Immediately, he proposed
to come if his presence would bring her any peace of mind. For
a second or two she could not answer. Then she said :
Oh, if you really did that. . . .
T h e same feeling which had come over her when, in the
Zurich hotel, he had placed his hand upon her head, flooded
her now.
Very well, came his sonorous voice over the wire, for not
even three hundred miles could dim its resonance, you may
expect me on Thursday.
80
It was necessary to prepare Alexander for Kerkhovens visit,
even though the expectation of it might be disagreeable to him
That evening Bettina took her place by his bedside, and began

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to tell him about her meeting with Joseph Kerkhoven. A t first

she was careful to avoid mentioning that he was the famous
neurologist, confining herself to a description of his charac
teristics. Since Alexander knew that in her impulsive way
Bettina was prone to make sudden friendships with persons
who meant something to her and brought fresh interest into
her life, there was nothing to arouse suspicion when she laid
stress upon the mans congenial and engrossing personality
that is to say, if he was paying any heed at all. She could not
be quite sure on this point, and lest he should notice her anguish
at his dumb inertia, she exaggerated, and painted the picture
in the most vivid colours. Next day she returned to the charge,
mentioning in addition that there was a possibility of D r. K erk
hovens coming to see them at Ebenweiler on his way to Vienna.
O f course she would have to put him up. He had longed for
many years to make Alexanders personal acquaintance:
He has read your works, he loves them and appreciates them.
He heard the lecture you gave in Freiburg. He had much to
tell me concerning that evening, and the impression you left
upon him.
A fleeting look o f curiosity passed over Alexanders face, a
ray o f contentment such as no author can avoid, even though
he be lying on his death-bed, when he learns that his works
are admired. Bettina then went on to expatiate upon the achieve
ments of her new friend in the realms o f science and medicine,
saying that he had by his researches revolutionised the methods
o f neurological therapeutics (here, too, she allowed her tongue
to run away with her). She felt that a misgiving had arisen in
Alexanders mind at this piece o f information; yes, he felt sus
picious. He said nothing, however, and remained as dumb as
before, looking at his hands. Then, suddenly, Bettina wept. He
went pale, and made a gesture as though he wished to take her
in his arms. . . .
81
Bettina met Kerkhovens train.
When I was younger, such a journey would have been

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childs play, he said. At least twice every month I d be all

day travelling and not feel a penny the worse. Nowadays . . . not
that I m tired, not in the very least . . . but my relationship to
time has altered. M aybe that is because one becomes poorer in
this commodity year by year; or may be one comes to realise
ever more keenly the essential futility of life.
I cant picture you tired, said Bettina.
He laughed as he rejoined:
Y ou re not far wrong. I ve always been on the go. Diligence
was wellnigh a vice with me. T o take a rest gave me an uneasy
conscience. A day was a worthless thing unless there had been
a programme o f action, an aim towards which I could strive.
T o spend an hour with persons who did not need me made me
feel as though I were standing before a burned-out house.
Same here, said she.
And its bad, very bad. Not to be encouraged. I ve had to
learn to take a breathing-space. Do you know what it means
to breathe with ones whole being ? Y ou ll have to teach yourself
how to do it.
Willingly, if youll show me the way.
She took him to the room she had prepared for him. They
stepped out on to a little wooden balcony. A magical landscape
stretched before them lake, forest, craggy heights, and a distant
glacier. Kerkhoven could not restrain a cry o f delight.
What a heavenly situation. It makes one want to stay.
Y es, answered Bettina, its lovely now that spring has come,
and on such a day as this. But remember, we have to pay for
it with five or six months of wintry weather when sometimes
for weeks on end theres not a ray of sunshine, the air is damp
and cold, fogs hang about the ground and blot out the view,
never the sight of a fellow-mortal with whom to exchange a
word, always alone with sorrow while ones husband is buried
in his work. . . . But what am I thinking of, she exclaimed,
pulling herself u p ; complaining again? That will never do.
There, there, he assured her soothingly, you dont need
to have any reserves from me. Quite otherwise. Just say any

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thing you please. Itll do you good. If one is for ever on guard
the result is internal stagnation, and a dread of life.
Only too true, terribly true.
She showed him her work-room. Bettina was very proud of
this room, for, in the course of many years, she had collected
a number of beautiful things around her, antique furniture,
Chinese embroideries and vases, landscape paintings, studies of
flowers, rare pieces of porcelain. T h e walls were adorned with
French tapestries woven during the Second Empire, bearing
designs of angels and vignettes of blossoms on a turquoise-blue
background. This was why the place had been christened the
Blue Room. Everything was immaculately clean and orderly,
restful to the eyes, befitting the picture Kerkhoven had
made o f her in his mind. T h e ample writing-table was covered
with papers, and when Bettina was called to the phone (Kerk
hoven noticed with displeasure that it had been placed on her
bedside table), he cast an eye over the documents. T h ey con
sisted of lawyers letters, messages from law courts, summonses,
distress warrants. Bettina came back, visibly paler and agitated.
Kerkhoven did not try to hide what he had done during her
absence, but said:
I ve been indiscreet, as you see. Th ats part of my profession.
And does this load sit on your shoulders then ?
Yes. Alexander has long since left all that to me, apart
altogether from . . . I never have a minutes peace. I fight tooth
and claw for husband, child, home, future. . . . M y cradle-song
did not give me to understand that a large part of my life was
to be spent in fighting lawyers, officials, and a . . . ah, I cannot
find the word to describe . . . And just at this moment, too . . .
She ceased as the door gently opened and Alexander Herzog
stood in the opening, shaven, bathed, dressed. . . .
Oh, Alexander, you darling, she cried surprised and joyful.
Well, you see, I felt I owed it to our guest to give him a
welcome, he said somewhat diffidently, going towards K erk
hoven with outstretched hand.
Delighted to make your acquaintance, answered the doctor.

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82
Bettina left the two men by themselves, while she went to see
about tea. After tea, too, she pretexted other things to do. The
next day, she carried on the same manoeuvre, always finding
an excuse to absent herself. Never allowing the real aim of
Kerkhovens visit to escape her memory, she even denied herself
his company, being content with one short hour a day though
she needed his support and had looked forward greatly to
strengthening their acquaintance. Even under this restricted
regime, he had time to open up before her eyes a world hitherto
unsuspected. He gave her back her poise, her self-assurance,
her self-confidence, her proper pride, and the realisation o f her
own value in the world. She had long been denied the joy of
being treated by a man as his intellectual equal; there was
certainly no priggishness or arrogance on his part in his con
versations with her; any subject which interested her, he was
delighted to thrash out as between comrades. The question of
intellectual equality did not arise where Alexander was con
cerned, for he was the most silent companion imaginable, and
was as tucked away in himself as a nut in the shell. In order
to reach his kernel, one needed first to break through the outer
husk of reserve and this was not an exhilarating occupation for
Bettina. She had no liking for extracting nuts from their shells,
and yet circumstances made it necessary for her to undertake
the job at times.
Kerkhoven used the utmost caution in his talks with Alexander
Herzog. He made no allusion to the authors present state of
health, and avoided a premature penetration of the Ganna
realm. He soon became fairly sure that, through a tragical
enchainment of weaknesses and evasions, Alexander had bur
dened himself with a heavy load of guilt in respect of Bettina;
his sense of guilt oppressed him, and it seemed now beyond
adjustment. What Kerkhoven set himself to do was: unob
trusively to arouse Alexanders attention; to travel along the
authors line o f thought; to present himself to the man whom
he had really come to see as a patient as no more than the

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practising psychologist wishing to exchange ideas with one who

was by profession a psychologist in the realm of imaginary
creations. T h e plan did not turn out badly. Alexander Herzog
produced the impression o f the corpse of a man in a yawning
grave, who is still knuckling the sand out o f his eyes, and who
dares not rise to his feet because he cannot free himself from
the weight of earth beneath which he has been lying. His
admiration for Kerkhoven was almost childlike. T h e isolated,
hidden, ascetic life Herzog had been leading for years, had rent
asunder all familiar ties, and had created within him the notion
o f being forsaken. He kept up a vast correspondence with every
imaginable type of person in Europe and America, people who,
finding themselves in a difficult situation and mental conflict,
turned to him for advice. But personal contacts were few and
far between. He had forgotten what it was to rub shoulders
with his fellow-men, and his intimate friends were for the most
part dead. Increasingly, as the years went by, he came to rely
upon Bettina and his little son for spiritual companionship. Thus
it was extremely hard for him to step out of the narrow circle
which had formed around him, and his work had replaced the
outer world so far as he was concerned. Kerkhoven felt that a
truth and a deep conviction underlay some words Alexander
had written in that letter to Bettina: there exists a disease of
creation. He buried himself in work; made himself invisible
behind his dreams and visions, pictures of a world more real
than the one immediately encompassing him, and hid there
while the Ganna storm howled outside, threatening to smash
to shivers the material existence he led from day to day. But
no one can cut himself off from life, can refuse to live a life
in common with others; in the long run one cannot take refuge
in flight and thus escape visible, palpable reality. When the
earth quakes and the walls of the house are riven, even the
most confirmed anchorite will feel terrified; on looking up he
will perceive that he is sitting amidst ruins; and not only are
objects around him shattered, charred, destroyed, but every
thing within himself likewise. Gone are his illusions; the world

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o f phantoms which he had upbuilded is no more than a rout

o f hobgoblins; the ideas for which he lived are lies; the men
he loved, he has thoughtlessly sacrificed while he spun in the
void. A cataclysm has overtaken him.
Such was Alexanders condition when Kerkhoven appeared
upon the stage. T h e doctor penetrated to the heart of the situation
at the first glance, even though Alexander did not seem inclined
to unburden himself. Aided by his fundamental naivety of soul
and his capacity for self-deception he shuffled out of his mind,
though he knew it well, the aim of Kerkhovens visit, and actually
contrived to believe that it was out of friendliness towards
Bettina that the doctor had come so far afield. From the first
this had given him a twinge of jealousy; impelled by this feeling,
he forgot his own mental disorder, and made up to Kerkhoven
like a woman who wishes to oust a rival. T o his surprise and
delight he found in Kerkhoven a conversational partner; one
who was not only his equal but from certain points of view
was his superior. He could not measure himself with Kerkhoven
where practical experience and insight were concerned; and the
doctors sound judgments, far-reaching vision, precise knowledge
of men of all classes and types, amazed him. What a life the man
must have behind him! And how lightly he carried it. Every
word he spoke was pleasant and genial, with never a trace of
conceit. Nor was it necessary to point your story; he met you
half way, guessing even your thoughts before they were framed
in words, and had the generosity to allow you to speak them
yourself instead of taking the words out of your mouth. Indeed,
it was a treat to converse with such a man. Yes, at last he had
met one with whom he could talk on equal terms, about books,
about pressing problems of the spiritual life, about the experience
of a landscape, about the enigma o f self-observation, and about
that most thorny of all questions, one which had formed the
nucleus of Alexander Herzogs cogitations for years illusion.
Alexander failed to notice how from day to day, from hour
to hour, he was being drawn out of himself more and more.
But Kerkhoven was alive to the fact. This was his purpose.

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Kerkhoven and Bettina wandered along the path bordering

the lake. He had spent the morning in Alexanders company,
and had not yet shaken off the impression the interview had
produced.
A dark and brooding mind; exceptionally so, said the
doctor, and a prey to his instincts in a way I have seldom
met with before. He is full of ideas concerning a settlement
of accounts; perpetually is he driven towards an examination
of conscience. T h ats one side of the medal. And the other?
All his activities are hampered by an unconscious and primitive
urge to postpone decisions, to defer judgment. He cannot break
away from this circle. . . .
A very correct characterisation, admitted Bettina in a sub
dued voice. Still we must not forget the achievement which
lies behind such truths. One is so apt to forget. And by one,
I mean myself. Perhaps a man of his quality can only be accurately
appraised from a distance.
You are right. It is the same with mountain masses which,
they too, can only be appreciated in their totality from afar.
He is undoubtedly a massive whole, weighty and extensive, and
hard to approach. Such as he ought to have no intimates; neither
wife nor child. Their very existence conflicts with what people
speak of as the sanctity of family life. But, I have to admit, he
is highly congenial to my humour. Foolish expression, highly
congenial. M y feeling goes so much wider afield. It has nothing
to do with what you call his achievement. . . . O h, o f course . . .
that too has to be reckoned with . . . I m not a barbarian . . .
but the man has taken my fancy to such an extent . . . I might
even say and please do not misunderstand me he moves me.
. . . I could never have believed, that at my time of life . . . but
there are moments when one actually feels tender towards him
. . . He broke off with a laugh.
W hat you say has given me a great deal of pleasure, and if
I m to be quite honest I must add that I hardly expected things
to be otherwise. I have known . . . have felt like that myself,

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when I flung m yself and my troubles at random on to your

shoulders. You must not mind, for it really is so.
We dont know yet who has won thereby or who is likely
to get the most out o f it, Kerkhoven answered politely and
warily.
Enough of these Chinese formalities, my dear doctor; its
tim e we came to more serious matters. M ay I ask what you think
of Alexander Herzog as a case?
He hesitated a moment before replying:
Not so easy to answer as you may imagine. I ll be frank
with you. His collapse is far more extensive and far more pro
found than might appear on the surface. In addition to the
long-standing organic trouble, I find there is a manic-depressive
state. Accompanying these are cyclothymic vacillations, such as
are characteristic of the artistic temperament, a morbid uprising
o f the soul followed by depression, periods of soaring activity
followed by periods o f paralysis. You need not be frightened.
These symptoms alone are nothing to be so very anxious about.
W hat puzzles me is . . . how to deal with that woman who
weighs on you as on him, though immeasurably heavier upon
him . . . shes like the knife of the guillotine coming down on
the neck of a victim . . . in all my life I ve never met with such
affair. . . . Y et, that notwithstanding, I m faced by a riddle. I
have not spoken to him about G anna; at the merest hint I saw
him shrink back into his shell. He gives me the impression of
being scared to touch upon the topic. It bites deep into him . . .
as if an ulcer were gnawing at his vitals. But to get at this vital
point . . . to throw a light on it . . . He stopped and reflected
for a minute. T ell me, my friend . . . could I persuade you
to . . . Oh, no; thats not your job. . . . I ll have to do it
m yself.
What have you in mind? Please explain.
A gesture, an act which will set him free. A spiritual self
deliverance.
I m all at sea.
We often have recourse to self-portraiture as a means o f

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treatment. Could not we make use of his faculty, his passion

for identifying himself with an object and at the same time
divorcing himself from that same object . . . by these means
to give particular truth precedence over generalised truth . . .
factual truth over detail. . . . Got my idea? If we could persuade
him to write the whole thing down on paper . . . reconstitute
from the start . . . incident by incident . . . year by year. . .
An old peasant woman went by carrying a basket on her head;
she greeted Bettina, country fashion, but looked suspiciously at
the stranger. For a while, Bettinas eyes travelled meditatively
over the lake. After a prolonged silence, she said:
That may be a way out. Yes, maybe thats the solution. . . .
Without speaking any further they strolled back to the garden
gate. Not until reaching this gate was Kerkhoven able to wrench
himself away from his reflections. He contemplated the thick
carpet of moss from which sprang the lofty pines and fir trees.
Then he said:
A beautiful place. A lovely piece of property, an exquisite
possession.
W hich may be filched from us to-morrow or the day after,
cried Bettina bitterly. Perhaps not so speedily as that, but in
the end. . . . Possession is a trifle exaggerated. . . .
That woman? Ganna? Is her hand on this, too?
Where is her hand not, I should like to know? It clutches
at everything.
But you can protect yourself. . . .
Easy to say so; but its to no purpose.
H ow do you manage, then?
One sends in counter-charges. . . .
You have your legal terminology at your finger-tips, it would
seem.
She ignored his playfulness and retorted angrily:
Anyway, I ve kept the home-fires burning so far successfully
by using her own weapons against herself. . . . Could it be
otherwise? Corsaire corsaire et demi? Set a thief to catch a
thief!

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84
T hat evening, after Bettina had withdrawn to her room, the
two men went to the library. Alexander switched off the electric
candles in the chandlier, and kept only a standing lamp alight
He sat down on one side of the huge table which was stacked
with books. Kerkhoven took a chair opposite. He was the first
to speak.
To-morrows my last day. I simply must get back to work;
I ve been away a disgracefully long time.
A pity. M ust you really go? I ll miss you.
Thats a feather in my cap, said Kerkhoven, smiling. I
can honestly say the same of yourself. W e shall certainly meet
again shortly.
I m not so certain. You know, I m a regular cave-bear.
Yes, I know. But nevertheless, five or six weeks hence youll
come on a visit to my place.
Herzog looked up falteringly.
Is that an invitation or a command?
Both. I ve got a job for you, and since you are master of
your time and I am not, whether you will or not, youll have
to consent to returning my visit.
A job, did you say? Y o u re pleased to have your little joke
at my expense.
M ay I talk to you for a moment as if I already had the
privilege of calling m yself your friend?
W hy so solemn? You make me feel quite ashamed of
myself.
Is that really how you feel? Then why dont you speak your
mind frankly to me? W hy cannot you bring yourself to open
your heart, and tell me what is burdening it ? You are perpetually
wrestling with a resolve. W hy hide your true self?
Alexander Herzogs face darkened. He sat brooding, while
his fingers mechanically fluttered the pages of a book. Then
he said:
I am an old man, Dr. Kerkhoven. I hardly like to admit
it, but thats what I am. I can no longer go to confession, man

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to man, eye to eye. T h e inalterability of all that happens . . .

oh, dont I see it, too plainly, too painfully. . . . One cannot
get away from the nature one was born with. One imagines it
brings relief to talk oneself out, to foist on to anothers back
some of the garbage and horror one has accumulated about
oneself in the course of a lifetime. . . . What do you take me
for ? That sort of thing cannot help me.
Kerkhoven shook his head.
In the first place you may be anything you please but you
are not an old man. You dont look a day more than forty-five.
Theres not a grey hair in your head. Amazing. A sort of pig
mentary magic! In the second place, I should like to know
what age has to do with the trust, the confidence, a man owes
again I use the word subject to your sanction a man owes
to his friend ?
You are most kind, D r. Kerkhoven. But you see its all so
difficult. If my room is stuffy and full of smoke, I can open
the window and let the fresh air in. But when ones entire life
is a thing besmirched, when the past, the future, ones heart
and mind and imagination, are smothered in filth and horror
and when, in addition, one has to say to oneself: You did nothing
to prevent it; you took no steps, but quietly looked on while
all was being contaminated; instead of guarding your soul and
heeding its warnings, you have thrown it into the mouth of
Moloch Work and left it there so long that your inmost life
has been scarred and tarnished. In such circumstances, what
hopes can you hold out that the air will be cleaned by opening
a window?
Again Kerkhoven shook his head.
What you say about your work is a delusion. If I failed to
contradict you outright, you would have reason to reproach me.
M y dear Sir, my honoured master, you are to-day a man who
. . . but why waste words? Your conscious mind cannot deceive
you in such a matter. What a man has created out of his thoughts
and his work flows back to him. As to your other point . . . I
am not sure , . . I cannot see clearly. . . . But even here, is it

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not possible that you take an abnormal view, that you are allowing
your eyes to mislead you so that you see a caricature ?
No, my friend. N o! N o! Not alone have the eyes been
affected in the process, but the whole sensory and sensual
apparatus has been drawn in. O f course it is possible that I
am suffering from a sickness affecting both the senses and the
sentiments. . . . M ight well be. . . . But the process by which
they have been made ill that is a terrible reality.
Kerkhoven allowed a few seconds to elapse, before he asked
very softly:
How long did you live with that woman ?
Close on nineteen years.
You had three children by her?
Yes. A son and two daughters.
Children grown u p ?
The eldest is thirty, the youngest sixteen.
On pleasant terms with the children?
Yes. On the whole, good. T he youngest I am specially fond
o f her.
And the two elder ones? Are they a moral support to you?
Hardly. T h eyve been torn between father and mother ever
since earliest childhood. The mother is a volcano o f energy, and
possesses a power for hatred, a lack of joy, and a recklessness
which overpass description. T o a certain extent, the children
had to be sacrificed. In those days they were always having to
make a choice between myself and her. T h ey were never able
to come to a decision, not in their inner being.
W hy did you marry her?
Oh God, why does a man marry? I was twenty-eight. I
had no home, no place I could go to. . . .
Was it love?
I dont know. . . . Oh yes, it was love at least to begin
with. . . .
Hm! A man ought to know, muttered Kerkhoven to him
self. L ets get down to essentials. What sort of love was it?
We must tap the roots. Have you ever tried to find out how it

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began ? The course it took, step by step, social claims, the amount
o f free personal choice. . . . Yes, all these points must be faced
and tracked down. . . . Then, quite suddenly, everything w ill
become clear. . . .
He had risen as he spoke, and now paced up and down the
room, his arms crossed behind his back. Alexander Herzogs
eyes followed him; they were full of disquietude and excitement.

85

Kerkhoven at last came to a halt. Swaying slightly as he stood,

leaning over the table and thus bringing himself closer to
Alexander Herzog, he said:
Perhaps you have now grasped the kind of job I want you
to take over: a clear and comprehensive statement. Nothing in
the nature of a case-history. Certainly not. But a work, a genuine
piece o f work, embodying your relation to reality. A work con
ceived within the framework of your own philosophical outlooks,
your own experience of the instinctive life, your own profound
knowledge. It would be a document, and for you yourself it
would be the solution and a liberation. Your own nature, the
spiritual law of your being, will write it for you or, if you
prefer, it will write itself.
Spellbound, Alexander Herzog sat looking up with great
brown eyes into Kerkhovens face. At length he stammered:
You believe . . . You think that will . . . Pray forgive me,
but your suggestion takes me unawares. . . . Your idea is . . .
Yes, I see . . . might manage something. . .
M y impression is that the fruit has long since been ripe for
the gathering. You need merely stretch forth your hand. I shall
curtail my part in the business, restricting my action to the
functions of a guide. I shall show you where the fruit hangs
ready for you to pluck it. Rightly considered, L ife has presented
you with a mighty gift irrespective o f the attitude you happen
to have taken up towards her. Pain and wretchedness and sorrow,
all men are permitted to go under and get submerged by them,
when their energies for resistance break down; you, alone, may

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not. It is your duty to be the master of the slings of fortune.

T his woman, this Ganna, so far as I can see, seems to me
without a parallel; a creature such as God does not often set
up on two legs. Yet if I were to ask you to describe her now,
in conversation and I admit my curiosity is immense you
might try to make her character comprehensible, to portray this
or the other quality, such and such a mad freak and monstrosity.
But with the best will in the world you would not succeed in
making me see her face and realise with full vividness the species
she belongs to. In the end you would say in despair: only if
a man has lived through it can he realise what it was like.
Surely I need not remind you, of all people, of the miraculous
and mysterious power for character delineation bestowed on the
creative artist. . . . That would be presumption on my part.
N or need I emphasise the point, that there is probably no other
way of ridding yourself of the evil.
Alexander Herzog sprang to his feet.
Where did you get that idea from? he asked in amazement.
Kerkhoven chuckled.
Oh, one just stumbles over an idea now and again . . . he
said quizzically.
Now it was Alexander Herzogs turn to pace the room. There
seemed on the surface to be no logical drift in the words he
muttered as he walked.
Extraordinary . . . as if an angel from heaven . . . and it
never entered my head . . . everything fixed up . . . in two
months . . . in four weeks . . . nothing madder could have
shaped itself in a dream. . .
He spoke as a man intoxicated.
I must not hide from you, said Kerkhoven, breaking in on
the tumult, that I read the letter you sent your wife at Zurich.
There you mentioned a work you had begun Confessions of
an Atheist. Confessions? Well, I havent much use for them.
Too convulsive as a rule, to please me; they contain too much
introverted vanity. Atheist? This is our main bone of conten
tion. Godless, indeed! I ask you, can a man who creates other
human beings, or, if you prefer, draws portraits of his fellow -

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mortals, be a godless man? There is an immense difference

between the gloom of the godless and the melancholy of the
searchers after God. Next time we meet, I shall tell you about
Martin Mordanns death. He died under my roof. Yes, so it
was. His whole life was one continued confession of an atheist
an unintentional confession and a sadder end it has never
been my lot to witness. But you were saying . . .?
Alexander Herzog stared at Kerkhoven absentmindedly. He
had evidently not heard a word.
T h e only thing I m afraid of, he pursued, ignoring the
others interruption, is that such an undertaking will lead into
all the depths and abysses of existence, and that too great a
load of betrayal will ensue. You know what I mean. Ruthless
unveiling . . . pitiless exposure. The writer would need courage
which nothing could appal. . . .
Agreed, so long as he was not frightened at sight o f T ru th

Truth is a relative concept.

What you call betrayal has been, in any event, atoned for
through suffering. At the moment when you get beyond the
mass o f suffering, at that very moment you transcend truth.
The compass which will guide you is fixed in your own breast.
You will not forsake the foundations of your being, your instincts.
.Even if you wished to break loose, you could not do so.
T h ats comforting.
I think so too.
Stone upon stone, I ll have to build up a whole universe. . . .
Clay in the potters hand, dear friend.
And if I am struck with a palsy?
Such a thing is impossible. W ith the first step you will go
forward as on wings.
There are times when a man is frightened of his own creations.
I f I am to set down faithfully my activities and my life, my
errors and sins . . .? how can I, out of this my person, create
a figure of my imagination . . .? Never have I ventured to do
such a thing . . . ordinary human shame and diffidence have
held me back. . . . Is it possible to portray oneself as one really

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is . . .? shall I be able to believe that it is myself . . .? I, myself

. . .? dare I allow the portrait to be that of myself. . .? can a
man venture to put his hand to such an undertaking . . .?
That, too, is intimately interwoven with what you have
suffered. It seems to me, it is merely a question of taking the
plunge. O f course, I am speaking as a layman. Your gaze must
not be allowed to stray on to externals. You will be, so to speak,
hovering twixt heaven and earth, in the void, alone with your
God like Moses on Mount Sinai.
That sounds fine. But I m afraid you over-estimate my
powers. For the moment I am not sure o f my medium; I cannot
imagine how I am to live the hours from morning until nightfall.
It is possible that, having got half-way on my road to Sinai
I shall not be able to go any farther.
Should that happen, and it very well might, seeing how
constantly your life is threatened with disaster in this place,
well, i f it should, you will just pack your trunks and come to
me at Seeblick. Indeed your transfer there would have many
advantages. Y o u and I have so much to talk over. D id I not
warn you that we should meet again in five or six weeks time?
I ll see to it that you get perfect quiet. Y ou will be as hard to
find, as if you were tucked away on a Polynesian Island.
In five or six weeks . . . when I ve got into m y stride . . .
when the charmed circle has been broken. . . .
Just go your own pace, said Kerkhoven with a smile. You
are quite capable of producing in the time a fully fledged drama
o f the whole o f our earthly existence.
Be that as it may, I feel you have done me an immeasurable
service, an invaluable service, replied Alexander Herzog with
bowed head.
There is nothing you could have said that gives me greater
pleasure. Now lets go to bed, and have a good sleep. Both of
us need a rest. Goodnight, Herr Herzog.
He went up to his host meaning to shake hands before
parting, but Alexander was so sunk in thought that the doctor
turned on his heel without disturbing him and made for the

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door. Before he could reach it, Alexander came on hurrying

feet, and clasped hands for a full thirty seconds. Then they
separated for the night.

86
Bettina accompanied Kerkhoven as far as Salzburg, for she had
much to talk over. In addition, this half-holiday from the menace
which unceasingly hovered over her home was a blessed relief.
Ganna Herzog, with the aid o f la .vyers in her pay, was at present
engaged in a campaign with a view to damaging as far as possible
Alexanders fair repute and, o f course, Bettinas into the bar
gain. She threatened him with an action for bigamy, basing her
attack upon a formal error committed in drafting the instrument
o f divorce. Moreover she accused him of embezzlement, because
he was no longer able to comply with her exorbitant demands
for money. Although it was plain enough that he had bled
himself white in the endeavour to provide for his first family,
she was firmly convinced that he had large sums o f money safely
hidden away.
And we have nothing, cried Bettina, absolutely nothing,
not enough even to live on for one month.
But this is madness.
O f course it is madness, but a madness no legal code can
protect one against, said Bettina with flashing eyes.
She sat immersed in her own gloomy thoughts. Then she
reflected that she must make the position clear with regard to
the doctors fees for he, too, had to earn a living. After a while
she swallowed somewhat painfully, and said with a gasp:
I cannot tell you how annoyed I am that the business about
our financial situation should have cropped up just now, before
we had made arrangements with you . . . it looks too much
like an avis au lecteur . . . but I did want to know . . . please
dont be vexed. . . .
Aha! You want to know the length of my bill, Kerkhoven
asked drily.
Yes, please.

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Thats easily done. One hundred thousand Swiss francs.

Her jaw dropped, and he repeated with a self-satisfied smirk,
Yes, one hundred thousand francs or nothing. I could not
take less. And since we are neither of us of a bargaining dis
position, well settle on the nothing. I ll let you know later how
much my out of pocket expenses have been. T h e remainder
I hope you will put to my credit in your book of friendship.
Agreed?
But Bettina was beyond speech.

87
Alexander Herzog got up unusually early. He spent part
o f the morning in the library, foraging among books, and
pondering; tried to write some letters, but tore up the half
finished attempts; put a manuscript block before him on the
writing-table; took some old diaries out of a drawer; went to
the nursery for a talk with Helmut, but did not stay long. Then
before luncheon he strolled into the village. After the meal, he
swallowed a dose of bromide to steady his nerves, read his
letters, which had just been delivered, idly fluttered the pages
o f some books, and thereafter for a time stood motionless at the
window, contemplating his favourite tree, one of those mag
nificent hornbeams which are almost a forest in themselves. As
he looked into the tangle of foliage, a thought crossed his mind
the world of illusion. The world of illusion the term was
like a flash of fire in his brain.
Seating himself at his desk, he picked up his pen and began
to write, with a sense of impending toil, like a man facing a
mountain who, with stern resolve, begins the excavation by
which it is to be tunnelled.
He wrote far into the night. T he task had taken possession
of him. Day followed day, and he went on steadily with his
work. Process interlinked with process, image with image, face
with face; past became present; forgotten days were vividly
recalled; the life he had lived wa* a dark, sweet, thrilling inter

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play of clouds, shadows, confusion, guilt, and pain. T h e writer,

nevertheless, sunk in reverie as he guided the destinies of the
puppets that moved through his dream like satellites round the
controlling orb, remained thoughtful and cool, equally unper
turbed by love and by hate.
Follows what he wrote:

Ganna
or
World of Illusion

M IR R O R O F Y O U T H
S ix in th e Family. She had five sisters, four older than
herself, and one younger. Every one in the town knew the six
Mewis girls. When they were walking in company, they produced
the impression of a little army of amazons a phalanx ranging
from Lydia with her classic beauty to Traude with her graceful
charm. The commander of the army and the father of the six
girls was Professor Johann Gottfried Mewis, a shining light in
the legal faculty, full of vigour, a Barbarossa type. Six daughters
and no son, one o f Dame Natures little jokes. Humorous
prophets declared they would be founders of a new racial stock.
T h eir mother, Alice M ewis, had been one of the Lottelotts of
Diisseldorf. Lottelott and Griinert, United Steelworks. She was
an heiress. T h e family, respected and envied, being in easy
circumstances, had a house to themselves, instead of living in
a flat.
D u c k lin g . As far as bodily advantages were concerned,
there could be no question that Ganna was less gifted than her
sisters. From early days, she had been aware of the fact. The
way people treated her confirmed the information of her lookingglass, and she knew herself to be the ugly duckling among five
swans. W ell, as an ugly duckling, she had to hold her own
against these five arrogant swans. But it would not suffice to
hold her own; she wanted to triumph over them, being ex
tremely ambitious, and filled with dreams of a splendid future.
These were not the ordinary vague fancies of girlhood, but
definite pictures and ideas. She felt predestined for great
things, although the actual path had not yet opened itself
before her.
She was a difficult child to manage, and I have been told
that violent scenes and tantrums were frequent. When she was
ten years old, Professor Mewis used to give her a whipping
twice a week, as a preventive measure, to wean her from lying.
Savage; utterly futile, except to cause Ganna much needless

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pain. What were regarded as Gannas falsehoods were, un

questionably, nothing more than protective fantasies and flights
o f imagination. The whippings made her hard-hearted, and
filled her with vengeful feelings; they made her yell like a stuck
pig. Often, she flung herself on the ground, and thrashed wildly
with arms and legs. This infuriated her father. Once Frau Mewis
had to send for the doctor, because Gannas paroxysm o f fury
seemed unending. Irmgard, the fourth of the daughters, shrugged
her shoulders, and declared the whole thing was put on. Ganna,
she said, was doing her best to simulate an epileptic fit, having
seen such a fit a few days before in a schoolfellow.
I tell the tale as it was told to me. I was likewise informed
that the professor treated her very roughly on another occasion.
Like all tyrants, he was subject to outbursts of wrath, and in
one of these he had shouted at her: Y ou are a nail in my
coffin! Ganna, thereupon, fell on her knees, and lifted her
clasped hands towards him. Her sisters, with shuddering delight,
were listening outside the door, and thenceforward, when they
were alone with Ganna, they nicknamed her Coffin-Nail.
This shows that a duckling among five swans has a poor time
of it. Swans are cruel and pretentious birds.
Shes cocksure she is better than we are, said the sisters,
making common cause against her. Ganna shirked participation
in household tasks, and was therefore held responsible for any
thing that went awry. If a box of handmade paper was m issing;
if the bath overflowed; if a vase was broken; or what not who
was to blame? Ganna, of course. Look at her standing there,
with lowered eyes and the face of a martyr, scorning to defend
herself! How typical! D ont take so much trouble to feign
innocence, Ganna. W e see through your pretences!
They want me to lie! Punctuality was a fetish in the
Mewis household. T he professor had decreed that every one
should turn up for the mid-day meal on the tick. W hat usually
happened was that when the others were already seated Lydia,
Berta, Justine, Irmgard, Traude, the father and the mother, and
old Kummelmann Gannas chair was still empty. It was part

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of the family tradition that Ganna had a strong dislike for regu
lated times and seasons. Professor Mewis made as if he did not
notice his fifth daughters absence, but the muscles of his fore
head twitched. Frau Mewis looked uneasily at the door, and
suffered torments. A t length the missing member of the
family rushed into the room, her face flushed, her eyes suffused,
her hair untidy, and, while the father, tangling his fingers in
his red beard, glared at the late-comer, her sisters, models of
virtue, looked complacently at the tablecloth, fully convinced
that Ganna would now relate one of her customary fables. Poor
Ganna kept them waiting. She stuttered, cleared her throat,
looked so forlorn in her distress that she might have inspired
compassion; but eight pairs o f implacable eyes were fixed upon
her. Not a friendly word, not a helpful glance; and the story
she concocted to excuse her unpunctuality was by no means
ingenious. Beneath the critical glare, her words grew more and
more confused, until at length she dropped her excuses in despair
and seized her soup-spoon. Since at a later date I several times
witnessed such scenes, I have good reason to know that they
always ran much the same course.
T h e upshot was to produce in Ganna the conviction Th ey
want me to lie? She had to tell lies in self-defence. Lying
became as necessary to her as the discharge of ink to a cuttlefish
trying to escape its enemies. Truth did not satisfy them; they
would not believe i t ; it did not help her to a peaceful life. With
the result, that all her experience became a somewhat dis
creditable adventure, and by decrees her spirit ceased to feel
at home in the realm of unadorned reality.
Several Swans leave the Home Pond. About 1895, when
Ganna was seventeen, the elder sisters began to get married off.
One after another, as if through the spread of an infection, they
fell in love, became engaged, wedded, set up households o f their
own, and were not to be seen except in the company of the
respective husbands, whom they treated in public with an almost
unseemly display of affection. T h e memory o f three weddings in
brief succession was inexpressibly painful to Ganna. Her idealistic

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sentiments were mortified by the mingling of love with domes

ticity, of marriage settlements with public and private caresses.
So, at least, I believe. She made no secret of her contempt, of
her feeling that these fine swans had soiled their plumage. I
have seen an entry in the girlish diary she kept in those days.
There she wrote frankly: Nothing would ever induce me to
give myself to a man who seemed to me to fall short in the
spiritual sense. When Lydias husband, a professional womanhunter, made amorous advances to Ganna, she bit his thumb
so savagely that he had to wear a rubber finger-stall for weeks.
Shes a regular little devil, was what he invariably said of her
thenceforward whenever her name was mentioned.
Although the three whitest of the swans had thus been cleared
out of the way, two others remained, and thet.2 were more of
a nuisance to our duckling, being nearer to her in age. Nor
did the married sisters cease from pluming themselves upon
their exemplary behaviour and disposition as contrasted with
the lonely Ganna, backed up in this as they were by their
husbands, who were all well content with the decorousness,
intelligence, and domestic virtues of their spouses.
G a n n a s W o rld a p a r t. -She did not attempt to hit back.
What was not freely accorded her, she provided for herself on
the quiet, and with remarkable cunning. Artfulness is the usual
weapon of one whose reasonable expectations are left unfulfilled.
She even turned her scatterbrainedness to account in the securing
o f minor advantages. A culprit who can make his judges laugh,
predisposes them to clemency. I know persons who are
deliberately foolish because folly has become for them a means
o f livelihood. Gannas blunders were a source of unceasing
amusement to her friends and relatives. She put letters in the
wrong envelopes, confused one name with another, forgot
appointments, mistook times and places, left her umbrella
behind, lost her gloves, went out by the wrong door, answered
malapropos, lost her way when out walking. It was an unceasing
comedy o f errors. Have you heard about Ganna M ewiss
latest escapade? was a stereotyped question in her circle. T h e

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newsmonger would go on to relate how, a day or two before,

on a lovely summer morning, she had gone for a walk in the
woods, carrying under her arm a hairbrush which she believed
to be a copy of Nietzsches Beyond Good and Evil. Priceless,
exclaimed the auditors, and split their sides with laughing. These
little blunders were innocent, amiable. T he best of it was that
she was always ready to laugh at herself for her oddities, with
a laughter so charming that it made people forgive the prepos
terous things she often did in her absence of mind. She lived
in a world apart, which seemed to have been specially fashioned
for her own inhabiting.
Very like her Father. Professor Mewis did not cudgel
his brains about educational problems. When direct orders did
not suffice, there was nothing left but force. T he rebellious
spirit that animated her made him harden his heart against her.
If she were only off our hands, he was wont to say to his
wife; could we but find a husband for her! Frau Mewis shook
her head dubiously. In view of Gannas being so scantily fur
nished with feminine charms, it seemed to her mother that there
was little likelihood of discovering a man who would relieve
Professor Mewis of his daughter. Later she admitted this to
me with a laugh.
Nevertheless the professor was often inclined to think that
Ganna was more his own flesh and blood than the other, the
better-behaved girls. T he sturdy frame, the defiant brow, the
bold glance; the girls insistence upon her rights (real or sup
posed), her dictatorial ways and her hot temper did it not
seem as if Dame Nature had started to make a boy of Ganna,
and had only changed her mind at the last moment? Not one
of her sisters could vie with her in strength or tenacity. W ell,
these were .good points. And there was another. Often when
he was ready to burst from impatience and anger, she suddenly
seemed to him so quaint that he had forthwith to take refuge
in the next room, lest his amusement should become plain to
her, and his authority therefore be undermined.
What her Father meant to her. For her part, she was
H

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afraid of him. He clouded her youth, burdened it, laid it under

a spell. But respect, profound respect, was linked with her dread.
Substantially, she felt that it was good for her to be ruled with
a rod of iron. In childhood she was more keenly aware o f this
than when she was passing from girlhood into womanhood.
Perhaps the feeling was the outcome of the mysterious instinct
which for so many years protects and envelops the souls core, until
the wrappings are gradually burned off by desire and by will.
But even when she was growing up to become a young woman,
she was still at times aware of the obscure menace of her own
temperament, and realised her need to be kept under a tight
hand. Thus she once dreamed that a flaming whip lashed down
at her out of heaven; and the alarm in which she sought to
avoid the blow, helped her across an abyss into whose depths
she would otherwise have sunk to perdition.
Despite her perpetual revolt against her father, and despite
the innumerable wiles to which she had recourse in order to
evade his rule, she had unalloyed regard for his authority, which
her whole being recognised as supreme. Enraged and perturbed
though she was by the corporal punishment he administered
(continued until she was eighteen), a strange sense of volup
tuousness stirred within her whenever he struck her. He alone
was entitled to do this. No other human being in all the world
held such a right over her. When his powerful voice resounded
through the house, and when the inmates cowered in alarm,
her own dread was tinged with gratification. Something within
her said: He is master here, and it is good there should be
a master.
His outbursts of wrath were for her elemental phenomena,
as wonderful as a spouting geyser or a forest fire. Is it possible
for qualities to be used up? Humility, for instance; have we
only a restricted supply of it, and will the sources dry unless
they are incessantly renewed? Never again, I am certain, did
Ganna encounter a man like her father whose presence and
influence made her feel, axiomatically: I am glad that he is
master here, master even over m e! This was her ruin.

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Playing at Literature. Now I come to a ticklish subject.

In those days the cultured classes professed a sanctimonious
interest in written works o f imagination. It was good form to
talk of the modern movement, to have read Germinal and The
Kreutzer Sonata, to be in the know as regards the latest scandal
in theatrical circles; even though it was bad form to show too
intimate an acquaintance with such matters. One must be familiar
with the names of the books and their authors, in order to be
able to play a part in cultured conversation, even though
these names had little more significance than the names of the
dishes in a bill of fare. Young people talked much about life,
though they had never taken up a straightforward attitude
towards it; and they posed as enthusiasts for art when all they
could do in this field was to assume airs of superiority and to
parrot opinions they had read in the newspapers or heard
expressed by one who ranked as an authority.
A man who had some other profession than literature was
not supposed to show undue interest in imaginative creations,
for this would indicate that he was disposed to neglect his proper
avocation. Women, on the other hand, were free to indulge
a literary bent. Since they were the dictators of taste and the
leaders of fashion, their influence promoted a watering-down;
for, like the men, they were specially inclined to admire writers
of the second and third rank. Geniuses, first-rank creators, they
ignored. Those were the days of pinchbeck and of alloy.
As far as Ganna was concerned, however, matters were rather
different.
She imaginatively creates a World. She was confident
of being in the forefront of the true connoisseurs; where un
discovered country is showing on the horizon; where young
and tender fame is beginning to sprout, that, cared for by
devoted hands, it may grow into the strong tree of immortality.
In actual fact, there was something of an illuminate about her.
She was capable of being intoxicated by a work of imagination.
She knew good from bad, and had a contempt for mediocrity.
Tw ice a month she got together a number of friends and

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admirers, male and female, to tell them of her discoveries in

the literary world, and (simultaneously shamefaced and excited)
to read aloud some o f her own compositions. When she did
this last, her voice, usually clear and penetrating, was as muted
and husky as if her larynx had been choked with flour. It having
been bruited abroad that a critic upon the staff of a leading
newspaper had said of her philosophical essays that, though
undisciplined, they bore the unmistakable stamp o f genius, her
adherents rejoiced, although she, who had communicated the
intelligence which delighted them, was inclined to throw cold
water on their joy.
These literary meetings were held in the M ew iss back drawing
room, and had a semi-occult character. None of the other sisters
were allowed to attend them, Ganna taking the precautions of
a priestess who is determined to prevent divine service from
being desecrated by the gaze of the profane. An unqualified
person who had ventured into this holy of holies would have
been stabbed to the heart by a dagger-thrust from Gannas eyes.
Every one in the house knew this, and the young woman was
allowed to do as she pleased.
The meetings were no mere pastime, were not an amusement;
and those who participated in them took them very seriously
indeed. With how much justification could not then be deter
mined. For Ganna they were the higher world, a term which
was current in her circle, though somewhat derisively used. Was
it real, this higher world ? Did it exert an ennobling, an
enlightening influence? Hard to say! Ordinarily it does so;
and a strange light is thrown upon human nature by the fact
that an enthusiasm for imaginative literature and poesy is often
nothing more than the container of an inward vacuum, and
deliquesces into gush when the moment comes for an awakening
to lifes responsibilities. Even if the devotion be genuine, it is
to be turned to practical account, and no moral inferences are
to be drawn. Whether this was to prove so in Gannas case,
remained uncertain. Some day, no doubt, she would reach the
parting of the ways. She was still groping, in search of guiding

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principles, above all on the look-out for a model. No other

individuals could serve her as models, nor could the world of
actual life. Only in books, she fancied, was there to be found
the ideal of which she was in search, a creature like herself,
a phantasmal being full of enthusiasm, confidence, and sincerity.
T h e image fascinated her, it was her own poetical creation; she
fell in love with i t ; it justified her to herself.
As a matter of course a poet or other imaginative writer, if
duly accredited, was for Ganna the true significance of the
universe, the redeemer from the insufferable triviality of the
M ewiss world, from the marsh with the five exemplary swans.
She dreamed of herself as foreordained to play the part of an
Aspasia. But one who is to be an Aspasia, needs a Pericles and
an Athens. Even to be a Rahel Vamhagen, one wants a Goethe.
But where was a Pericles or a Goethe to be found in the unheroic
world of 1898? However, the function of dreams is to transform
the unreal into reality.
Myself. In M ay of this same year I removed from Munich
to Vienna. Shortly before, I had published a novel, The TreasureSeekers, and the book had attracted attention. Noted critics had
praised it beyond its merits, and had commended me for
sounding a new note a foolish phrase which had caught
on. Perhaps they had been impressed by the obscurity of the
contents, had regarded the disorderliness of the exposition as
a mark of genius. To-day I am astonished that it secured so
friendly a recepU n, that the immature work of a man of twentyfive was so favourably regarded.
T h e book achieved what is called a literary rather than a
material success. It did not become a best-seller, or relieve
me from my crushing financial embarrassments. Substantially,
I had run away from M unich, partly to get out of reach of my
creditors; and partly because a love-affair in which I had been
one of the principals had brought me into such discredit that
my best friends cold-shouldered me, and respectable citizens
crossed themselves when I was pointed out to them in the
street. In Vienna I had few acquaintances. No more than half

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a dozen admirers, and one can only count on admirers if one

does not ask them for practical help. It was a puzzle to me
what I was going to live upon in the Austrian capital, since
I had the most casual sources of income, and had no inclination
to earn my bread in the sweat of my brow. Happily I got into
touch with a few persons of means, who not only showed sym
pathy for me, but, having an itch to hobnob with a celebrity
of sorts, were willing to help me out now and again with a loan.
In a quiet quarter behind the Votivkirche, at number 8
Lackierergasse, I rented a huge room, in which the furniture
seemed to have been assembled haphazard from a second-hand
dealers. During the daytime I slept, spending the nights in
company with fellows of my own kidney at cafes or in the
Prater, where at that date there was a pleasure-ground called
Venice in Vienna a ludicrous and monkeyish imitation of
Venetian landscapes, with bridges and canals all complete. On
my way home, very late at night, I sang loudly as I made my
way through the narrow streets, and (like a drunken student)
rattled the point of my stick over the closed shutters of the shops
that I passed.
A day came, however, when I had had enough of the town.
Packing a knapsack, I set off on tramp: across the Moravian
plain, through the southern highlands, in the Bohemian forest,
along the Danube; with no means of transport but Shankss
mare, having rarely more than ten crowns in my pocket, per
fectly content with my own company, but glad now and again
to have a chum to talk to. For instance, there was a young fellow
named Konrad Furst, who had cottoned to me when I first
came to Vienna; like myself, he had literary ambitions, but was
a shallow-pated fellow, whose leading interest in life was amorous
adventure. Still, I valued him for his desire to be my travelling
companion, ascribing this to his admiration for me. I have
always been tickled in my vanity when people make much of
me. Then there was a certain David Muschilow, a red-haired
Jew, dramatic and art critic for the newspapers, who plumed
himself on his incorruptibility and his mordant wit. He was

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not quite so incorruptible as he fancied; and his wit got on my

nerves a little, for I am suspicious of witty people. Nevertheless,
both these men were good comrades. Th ey believed in me,
shared food and money with me, and were ripe for a lark.
O n the whole I was pleased with the change in my sur
roundings, for the fresh air and association with the friendly
Austrian countryfolk gave me the feeling that I had been reborn.
When autumn came to put an end to a gypsy life, I returned
to my sordid diggings in the capital (the room had been kept
at my disposal for a very moderate retaining fee); supplemented
the furnishings by the hire o f a cottage-piano whose keys were
browned with age; and made myself an infernal nuisance to
my neighbours by hammering at it for several hours a day.
Then I was seized by the desire for fresh literary creation,
though I had feared that the sources were dried up. Night after
night, when I returned home after having spent the evening
with my friends, I sat for a couple of hours at my writing-table
and let my imagination roam.
Effect of a Book. Strangely enough it was through her
fathers instrumentality that Ganna made acquaintance with
my Treasure-Seekers. One day a colleague of his at the university
had pressed the book into Professor M ewiss hand, with the
declaration that it was one of those which positively must be
read. Protesting somewhat crabbedly that he never read novels,
the professor nevertheless put the book into his pocket. U n
willingly he turned the pages, was enthralled in spite of himself,
and, having finished the volume, was forced to admit that there
was something in it after all. Being a professor of law, he
had been interested in the account o f a criminal trial though
this was no more than the framework of something more sig
nificant which lay beyond his scope. He could not appreciate
the artistic qualities which the book indubitably possessed. The
impassioned diction and the gloom of the whole setting were
uncongenial to him. Still, to the colleague who had recommended
him the volume he said: Not b ad ; the authors worth watching.
A good deal, this, from a professor of law!

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Ganna saw The Treasure-Seekers by chance when she wan

dered into her fathers study. She knew the name; it had long
been on her list. This was at seven in the evening. She took
it away with her, and by three in the morning she had read
it from cover to cover, had gulped it down whole, with the
eagerness of one who is swallowing an elixir and is afraid lest
a drop should be spilt. W hy this greed? I have often puzzled
over the question. M y book was certainly alien to her, could
not fail to be so, to repel her rather than to attract for its
charm must have been purely literary, and it was comprehensible
only to one who had had kindred experiences. However this
may be, the impression it produced on her was ineffaceable and
unquestionably genuine. Later, she often referred to the matter,
and perhaps she was inclined to exaggerate the strength o f this
first impression much as the winner of the big prize in a lottery
will be apt to declare that his fingers twitched prophetically
when he bought the ticket. There was a foreboding at work,
a conviction o f spiritual kinship. Soon afterwards she came
across my portrait in a publishers catalogue. Cutting it out,
she stuck it up with drawing-pins on the wall beside her book
shelf. As she did this she made a vow (I had the information
from one of her literary associates as well as from herself) never
to rest until she knew me personally. I may mention that the
print in question was extremely flattering. It has been lost; but,
as far as I can remember, it made me look like an idealised
brigand-chief.
A n I n te r m e d ia r y a p p e a rs . During the summer o f 1899,
Ganna learned from one of her girl-friends that I had been
living in Vienna for a year. But he leads a retired life, and it
is not easy to get to know him. Ganna had inflated fancies
about an authors existence, imagining that a craftsman of the
pen must be surrounded by a court, much like a crowned ruler.
She made a wry face when told by those better informed that
I was little more than a pauper. It was disagreeable to her that
her regal imaginings should be disturbed. She would have
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under by letters from other admirers. Besides, if the letter should

be ignored, she could not see any other prospect of getting into
touch with me. She reconnoitred my surroundings, and sought
acquaintanceship with various persons who were said to know
me. She told me once that she felt as if she were entering a
fiery circle whenever she came into contact with those who
had been in contact with me. She heard more and more about
me, met people who knew others that I met daily. She envied
these persons, was jealous of them. In the first letters she wrote
me, she told me so. At length, one day when the winter was
far advanced, she visited Frau von Brandeis, an old friend of
her mothers. This lady kept open house, as the phrase goes,
though on a modest scale. I had supped there several times.
Gannas conversation was always the outflow of her most heart
felt thoughts, so the girl made no secret of her longing to meet
me. Frau von Brandeis, herself something o f a bluestocking,
was not likely to misunderstand the nature of the interest. If
that be your chief desire, it will be easy enough to gratify. Come
to supper next Tuesday, and I will invite him too. T h e old
lady told me afterwards that Ganna, exuberantly thankful,
coloured red and white by turns, and kissed her hand without
saying a word.
First Meeting. A peculiarity by which I am still affected
constrains me to do whatever I am asked. It is as if I were
afraid of wounding or even of merely offending those who have
troubled themselves to make the request. Perhaps in many cases
this is merely the outcome o f sloth, which leads me, thought
lessly, to move in the direction of a push. That was why I
unhesitatingly accepted Frau Brandeis invitation, although I
had been unutterably bored at her supper parties on previous
occasions.
I have but a vague memory of the impression Ganna made
on me that evening. There remains the picture o f a young
woman whose dress was somewhat motley in its colouring, and
who was exceedingly restless in her movements. As to whether
she was well-dressed or otherwise, I cannot say. I have no eye

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for such matters. She was fond o f glaring colours, and for
decking herself out with shawls and flounces and furbelows.
A t table she said, with a smile and a side-glance at me, that
she had had an attack of vertigo on the staircase leading to Frau
von Brandeis flat. H er extravagant and hurried way of talking
put me off; but my hostess had warned me that the girl was
wildly enthused at the prospect of meeting me, so I was able
to make allowances for the exuberance of her behaviour. Two
or three times I scrutinised her inconspicuously. She was plain;
her features were too large; she was freckled, with bright blue
eyes; and her cheekbones were unduly prominent: but her
mouth was rendered charming by full, red lips, excellent teeth,
and an agreeably innocent smile. Her unusually small hands
were rather strenuous and masterful in their gestures. She was
aware of this trait, and tried to moderate it.
L et me repeat, however, that my first impression was vague,
and that this picture of her did not form itself clearly in my
mind until after several meetings. T o begin with I was little
interested in Fraulein Ganna M ewis, for I was thinking more
about my work than my actual surroundings. For my part, I
cannot have appeared attractive or amusing, cannot even have
looked like a man o f the world. In those days of poverty, when
I went out in the evening I sported a frock-coat, rusty, shiny
from long wear an antediluvian garment whose defects were
not compensated, but intensified rather, by a flowing and artis
tically tied silk necktie. When the meal was finished, I retired
to the smoking-room, and settled into an uncomfortable chair
(the best I could find). As I had expected, Ganna soon joined
me, and we had a good talk. M uch that she said surprised me.
I forgot her restless, crepitant mobility, as I came to recognise
her originality. All her utterances were characterised by a strange
mingling of folly and penetration. From time to time, the in
fection of a charmingly innocent smile made me smile in
response. What especially struck me was that she was inves
tigatory, appealing, and that she seemed to feel round her as
if in a dream. A strange being, I thought again and again.

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Y et already on the way home I had ceased to think of her at

all. O r when, as happened from time to time, I recalled her
urgent words and glances, and was reminded of the veneration
with which she manifestly regarded me, discomfort overwhelmed
me.
Magical Indications. Next day I received an express letter
from her. W hats the hurry about? was my thought. There
was nothing in the missive to warrant its having been expressed,
but the handwriting was as impulsive as her speech and her
gestures had been. Large, pointed, stormy characters, resembling
a meeting o f rebels against constituted authority. I cannot
remember whether I answered, but to the best of my belief
it was not until I had received a third or a fourth letter that I
troubled to reply. She wrote to me almost daily, and all her
communications were expressed. Only a few lines each time,
but in a finished epistolary style, not in telegraphese. I grinned
over them, thinking: A young woman who is writing to a
professional author feels that she must mind her P s and Q s.
W hat was the content? M oods: her happy amazement at the
new impetus which had entered her life; a request that I
should not thrust her out of my m ind; a greeting because the
weather was so fine; anxiety lest I should be ailing, for she
had had a bad dream. She was fertile in pretexts.
W hy did I at length make up my mind to answer? W ho can
tell? When one is so immoderately admired, one is impression
able. Even the most confirmed misanthrope has a weak spot at
which his vanity can be touched. But I was far from being a
misanthrope. Although I had had my share of unpleasant ex
periences, I did not begin to mistrust people until they had
twisted my neck metaphorically speaking, of course. Maybe
Ganna had never dared to hope for an answer; but as soon
as I began to answer, I gave her the right to expect further
replies. Thus does one commit oneself!
It was my careless way to leave letters lying about. A t this
time I was involved in a liaison with an actress, a charming
young woman, and very shrewd. One day she picked up a letter

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from Ganna, and, my protests notwithstanding, read it with a

sarcastic smile. Then she said.
Youd better watch out!
Why? What do you mean?
I cant explain, but youll have trouble with that girl if you
dont watch out. Just a feeling I ve got, nothing more.
Such was my first warning, which I recall very clearly after
all these years.
One day I happened to meet Frau von Brandeis, who made
a point o f asking whether I had liked Ganna Mewis. She sang
Gannas praises at great length. T he girl was highly intelligent;
an idealist; had a heart of gold; the family was a shrine o f civic
virtues. Buttonholing me, she whispered that it was a lucky man
who could wed one o f Professor M ewiss daughters. T h e for
tunate wooer would be in clover for the rest of his life. Just
think, a simple university professor with so many daughters who
could provide each o f them with a dowry of eighty thousand
crowns! I broke away rather impatiently; but, for all I could
do, the importunate old ladys figures went on singing in my
head. What can you expect? A man who is never sure whether
he will have cash enough to pay the rent of his room when the
month comes round, is naturally tempted, after such a con
versation, to do sums showing how all that money would free
him from financial worries for sixty or seventy years. Silly to
think of it and yet . . .
Meanwhile I had had other meetings with Ganna, and these
were on neutral ground. Complaisance breeds complaisance.
Nor must I conceal the fact that I was better pleased with her
each time. There was something irresistibly stormy in her nature
which set my more placid disposition athrill. T o my way of
thinking she had a remarkably self-contained and unified character.
T h e only thing that continued to alienate me a little was an
undue emphasis in her locutions. One day she said that the
sheen of the work upon which I was then engaged radiated from
my brow. I answered coldly that I liked people with dry hands
and a dry speech that the reverse was intolerable. W ith a

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startled and remorseful look she expressed her whole-hearted

agreement with my sentiments. But even now she overdid it,
like one who uses the loud pedal while playing some simple
air. Then I was touched on the raw when we were out walking
together and she expounded the basic theme of the book I had
on the stocks. Since I had not said a word to a soul about this
matter, I had good reason for being surprised. It was a motif
o f decline and fall exemplified in a particular social stratum
Parsifal in a modern setting.
No one but you could manage it, she said earnestly. No
one in the world but you.
I had all the discomfort o f a housewife who finds that the
cat has got into the storeroom. The door was locked, the win
dows were closed, there was not so much as a mousehole in the
wall, so that the intrusion smells o f sorcery. Divination? Perhaps.
That was Gannas own explanation. What she gave me to under
stand was, that she had lived herself into my thoughts, that
she was my destiny, was a part of me. O f course I may, without
realising it, have picked up a motif that was in the air at the
tim e; or she may have understood a hint I do not remember
to have given. Still, there certainly was something of the sibyl
about Ganna. She was a white w itch ; an energetic and courageous
fairy. It pleased me that with maidenly humility she craved for
my companionship; enjoyed my thrifty conversation, my sparse
instruction. Other women had not spoiled me in these respects.
The Inevitable happens. Thus it came to pass that she
cajoled me into promising to visit her in her home. W e settled
the day and the hour, and Ganna made arrangements suitable
for the reception o f an heir apparent. Orders were issued to
the sisters that none o f them was on any account to disturb her
interview with me. Subsequently Irmgard and Traude com
plained bitterly o f the system of embargoes which Ganna had
established during those early days. They would, they said, have
liked so much to have a talk with me, but Ganna refused to
allow them. When I entered the hall, a figure vanished wraith
like through an open door, and all I had time to glimpse was

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a stare o f astonishment in two dark eyes; and when, conducted

by Ganna, I again passed through the hall, on my way out this
time, another wraith flitted through another door, but now the
inquisitive eyes were blue.
Thenceforward I was a frequent visitor, and Ganna always
entertained me with an admirable afternoon tea. I had made
up my mind that the affair should come to an end when I
resumed my tramping life in the summer; but if I had seriously
wanted to carry out my purpose, I ought not to have told Ganna
my itinerary. Worse still, in my thoughtless communicativeness
I confided to her that in early autumn I was going to meet
a few friends close to the Upper M ond See, where I intended
to immure myself in a farmhouse and finish my book. Bubbling
over with delight she replied that this fitted in admirably with
her own plans. Her mother had rented a small villa close to
the Atter See. She and her sisters would probably be there until
October was well advanced. On her bicycle she would be able
to look me up, for it would only be about half an hours spin.
I was more than a little startled, and cursed myself for having
been so loose-tongued. Y et what could I have done? One must
talk about something; and if one is a little afraid o f stilted topics,
and of answering questions which, however innocently asked,
open up intimate topics, one is thrust back upon hard facts.
It was Gannas little way to cross-examine me. Her eyes brimmed
with tears whenever I showed even the most friendly reserve
or returned evasive answers. She had, she assured me, no one
whom she could trust. In her own family she lived as a stranger;
her sisters were her enemies; her father and mother did not
understand her; she would die o f spiritual starvation unless I
continued to supply her with the manna which alone could
nourish her. Her words touched me to the quick. I had already
seen plainly enough that the role of Cinderella was forced upon
her.
W ill you write to me? she asked, with a hungry look that
was almost irresistible.
I hesitated to promise. She urged, and at length I gave way.

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O h, well, I said, I ll see if I can manage to.

She seized my hand with a grip like that of a famished beast
of prey. Never shall I forget it.
Really and truly, you will write to m e?
I was anxious as I assented, but her charmingly innocent and
happy smile made the pledge seem harmless.
Some belated Marginal Notes. Once more came the
letters. Express letters. Once more the pointed, rebellious
characters marched across the page. Th ey combined to form
words, which spoke o f everlasting devotion, unfailing gratitude,
o f mated souls, and foreordained mutual dependency. I was
taken aback. Were these things so trivial that one could write
about them thus unreservedly and on the spur o f the moment?
But, truth to tell, I read with only half an eye. Often, when
I opened one of her letters, I felt as though it was essential
for me to thrust away the little hand which was gripping me
as if with the claws of a beast of prey. That summer my road
would still have been open before me, if only I had honestly
faced the situation. Instead, I humbugged myself. Freedom is
of inestimable worth. Woe unto him who allows himself to be
tricked out of this precious gift. He will pay for it in tears of
blood. It must be remembered that my mother had died when
I was a very little boy.
Contemplating myself retrospectively it seems to me that a
person like myself can only be understood by those who realise
that he is a typical recluse. M y merits and my defects are alike
rooted in this. I was always as close to truth as a machine-minder
to his machine, and yet I failed to perceive it. I tired myself
out in the endeavour to recognise it; but the images I formed
of it, the experiences it furnished me, were radically transmuted
by the process of galvanisation they underwent in my imagina
tion. Light grew heavy, fair turned dark, warnings fell upon
deaf ears, even pain and pleasure were often no more substantial
than breath upon a window-pane. I was so much introverted,
was plunged in so deep a Rip-van-Winkle slumber, that the
necessity for action was a serious shock to the organism, startling

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the spirit out o f its remote hiding-place and compelling it to

undertake a long journey.
This may explain a good deal. For when, one morning in
September, Ganna dismounted from her bicycle in front o f the
lonely farmhouse where I had rented an attic, and I hastened
downstairs to welcome her, what I saw was not a deeply flushed
face, a blouse wet with perspiration, a confused and wellnigh
febrile glance. It would have repelled me to notice these things.
I saw a creature fashioned by my own imagination. M y dominant
feeling was compassion. It was, perhaps, the transferred com
passion of the poets when they metamorphose a flesh-and-blood
figure into a product o f their own inspiration, and clothe it in
the trappings o f mystery which alone can charm them. A
tortured being, I said to myself; and my heart was enlisted
in her service. A fugitive, a loving woman, came to meet me,
a victim for the sacrifice, a hunted animal in search o f refuge
and a protecting breast, consumed by her own inner fires,
urgently in need o f tenderness and protection. Ought I to have
put up barriers? Ought I to have been cautious and considerate,
saying: Away with you! There is no place for you in my life!
There was a place. T rue, if I felt as I did, if I regarded her as
I did in my mood o f pity and self-sacrifice, during that moment
which was pregnant with the destinies o f thirty years it was
because o f Gannas overmastering will and o f the witchery in her
which had blinded me. But o f these things I was then unaware.
Alm ost a Confession. As we rowed across the lake, whose
banks were made glorious by the autumn fadings, I told her
about my past. I was now twenty-seven, and the story of my
life had been little else than an unending succession o f want
and care. Unless my vision was distorted, every day had been
a sordid struggle for the barest essentials of food, clothing, and
shelter. I did not go into details. W hy trouble her with these
degrading and detestable items? It would have seemed as if I
were making envious complaints. Maybe, too, my reticence was
the outcome o f a conviction that she, who had grown up amid
luxurious surroundings, would never be able to grasp the nature

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of a life of hardship and privation. Besides, I had an obscure

feeling that she would have liked such avowals, to strengthen
hopes I did not wish to nourish. Still, I must have been more
communicative than I intended, for several times her expression
was that o f a mother watching a sick child. I spoke much o f
my lonely tramps, saying that only in the countryside could
I endure solitude, which crushed me in the town. Towns
provided me with nothing more than dry bread, and not always
with that.
I hardly know what has saved me from despair, what has
enabled me to keep my end up through it all. W hy does one
go on foolishly hoping? There seems to be an inner light as
guide. Y et one is often tempted to let oneself slip into the dark
river beside which one has crouched in the attempt to escape
from ones fellows. W hy should one not seek death when ones
mind is filled with horror and disgust? It is strange, Ganna;
it is strange. At times when one craves for death and is ready
to die, there is still a little flame of eagerness for life. Then a
comrade one has forgotten appears. Then one meets a girl one
has never seen before. She smiles as she looks at you, and appears
to know all about your troubles. In the depths of misery, even
the most trifling happiness is of inestimable worth. Such was
the origin of that love-experience into which for three irrecover
able years I plunged as into a bottomless stream, and which,
when its painful end had come, left me even more impoverished
in spirit than I had been before.
What was going on in Ganna ? Thus, or in some such
words, did I talk to Ganna. But her side of the matter? T o
begin with, she was completely swept off her feet. In this con
nexion I must mention something rather ludicrous. Since the
first days of our acquaintance she had kept a memorandum book
about me, filled with thoughts and reflections concerning my
unworthy self, complicated disquisitions upon my character,
and page-long accounts o f the moral content o f my writings.
I did not know of this until much later, and I must confess that
I had a good laugh when she showed me the M S . book. Typical

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Ganna, I said to myself. She is one of those who, when they

fall in love, hasten to provide materials for a doctorial thesis
upon this condition when one feels ones life rising as if on
wings. But at the time when I made this jejune comparison,
I was already in a rather critical mood. Ganna took her notions
o f life out of books, and these notions stood towards reality as
a painted tiger stands towards the real tiger who gets his claws
into your shoulder. Still, what I had told her revolutionised
her ideas of me, and I could not but feel that she no longer
regarded me as utterly out of reach. That she was greatly shaken
by my recital was obvious; but it had become plain to her that
she had something to offer, something which (she hoped) I
should not be disposed to refuse. M y mode of life taught her
that there had been no improvement in my material circum
stances. I lived upon expectations, upon faith in my creative
genius, upon the kindly help o f friends, and upon the calculating
magnanimity of my publisher. In a word, I had no solid economic
basis. M y plans hung in the air, and my brow was furrowed
with anxiety. T he melancholy which often overpowered me could
be read in my eyes.
These considerations had their natural effect in Gannas
ingenious brain. What was the use o f being well off, if . . .?
W hy had the Lottelotts accumulated so much lucre ? T h e reason
was not far to seek. I t was within her power to help the m a n
she loved. Not merely to help him; she could establish him in
his spiritual prerogatives. The jubilation that overwhelmed her,
convinced her that she could hold sway over this man for whom
she wished to conquer the world. I did not fail to understand
her shining eyes and her caressive glances. But patience, Ganna,
patience! Do you wish to confer on him what you call your
wealth unconditionally, unselfishly, to-day, to-morrow, in a
storm o f enthusiasm, regardless o f conventions, settlements
and bonds ? That would be a splendid impulse, no matter whether
it should be practicable or not. Or must you have security,
a pledge; must the mans whole personality, his whole future,
be pawned to you in return for your bounty ?

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True, no such alternatives were explicitly stated; they loomed

vaguely in the background of our conversation. I do not think
Ganna understood the intimate significance of what was at stake.
W hy should not the man pawn himself? This would solve all
difficulties, would clear all obstacles out of the way. If he was
willing, she would make him incredibly happy, would cherish
him as the apple o f her eye, would be his slave, the guardian
of his treasure-house, his muse, the steward o f his renown, the
herald of his greatness. Everything, everything should be his,
declared her flashing eyes, her beseeching glances. Everything
should be his: her dreams, her ambitions, her talents, her life.
But, for my part, I had not yet fully grasped the situation.
The Charm of Novelty. One day she blurted out the whole
thing. Without preliminaries, and with the courage which, shortly
before, had led her to mount a bicycle and start riding without
any instruction in the art. I was perplexed, and for a considerable
time I could not grasp what she was driving at. She was afraid,
at first, to dot the is and cross the t s; and made several fresh
starts, speaking ever more plainly and eloquently of actual
possibilities, as she referred with increasing emotion and in a
spirit o f prophecy to the splendid developments of life and work
opened out by her proposal. Thinking the matter over after all
these years, I cannot but smile, for instinctively she behaved
like a salesman in a shop, who does not begin by producing
his most valuable goods, but shows them towards the end, and
with a feigned reluctance, after he has outwearied his customer
a little. When I had finally seized her drift, I was at a loss for
a seemly answer. I had never expected such an offer. It was as
if some one had asked me to become a settler on the moon.
I laughed at the idea, treating it as preposterous.
Perhaps there is not another man in Europe, I protested,
less fitted than I for married life.
But as the affair proceeded, by degrees her arguments took
effect. T h e first day I was outraged and antagonised; the second,
I was merely annoyed; the third, I was no more than a trifle
reluctant. In the long run I could not withstand her urgency,

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her vows and pleadings, her febrile anxiety to serve me. She
succeeded in convincing me (if not wholly) that she was not
parsimonious, but wanted to give with both hands. There was
no calculation, no chaffering. She was overflowing with tender
ness. Her eagerness to please me, to forestall my wishes, bor
dered on an obsession, and often filled me with shame. Had
I had any inkling that this sentiment of shame was the outcome
o f an unconscious impulse towards self-defence, I might have
acted differently. No doubt she seemed a trifle ridiculous to
me in her visionary schemes; but she was charming as well.
A man can find a woman charming though he does not love
her, being in that perilous condition o f uncertainty when resolves
clash with and neutralise one another. If I surrendered my hand
to her clasp, she sat as if under a spell during which a minute
seemed a joyful eternity; then she would lean forward and
devotedly press my fingers with her lips; whereupon I would
be moved to say D ont do that, please dont ! Such devotion
was new to me. T he woman I had loved, my first love, when
m y passion knew no restraints and I was ready for folly or
crime (and indeed near to crime), had coldly tolerated my
passion, had betrayed me and scandalously exploited me. That
was a wound which still festered. There was a delight in receiving
without having perpetually to give, unthanked and disdained.
Will you or Wont you ? Meanwhile things ran their
course. I did not say Y es and I did not say N o . A yes
would work havoc with my life, would make it like a planetary
system in which the invasion o f a comet from outer space had
suspended gravitation. A no, on the other hand, was difficult
to utter. Not that I lusted after the fleshpots of Egypt, but I
will not deny that I was somewhat weary o f the extant con
ditions o f my life weary of the petpetual difficulty in making
ends meet; o f the embarrassed looks o f my acquaintances when
I asked them for a loan; of the holes in my socks, which there
was no one to darn; o f the frayed sleeves o f my shirts; and of
the daily humiliations I had to endure from those who reserve
their utmost contempt for poverty. I should be glad to be freed

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from bitternesses and mortifications; glad to be able to fall asleep

o nights without racking my brains as to how I was to pay for
permission to use the bed. I should be glad to have no more
pecuniary cares. Ganna was right in believing that the manifold
petty troubles I had to endure would wear me out in time.
But that was no reason for casting sheeps eyes at the groaning
boards o f the well-to-do; at their richly supplied cellars, and
their jealously guarded money-bags. I moved in a different
world.
Nevertheless one o f my gravest defects was that I was almost
invariably overpowered by any one endowed with strength of
will and fixity o f purpose, because these qualities aroused in
me such enduring astonishment that I did not begin to put up
a fight until the person of stouter metal had already laid me
low. Then I persuaded myself that I had done my best, and
was glad to be saved the trouble of further resistance. Thus
Ganna had her way with me. During these days her eyes had
an expression such as can be noticed in Marathon runners who
gaze steadfastly towards the goal, each determined to reach it
before his competitors. W hy did she feel so pressed for time?
I did what I could to restore her peace of mind. She thanked
me in extravagant terms, but looked as if stricken to the heart.
I guessed her to be the slave of her impulses; and unless I
wished her to regard me as a pitiful bungler, I must try to free
her from her prison-house. But in the endeavour to do this,
I was forging my own chains.
One rainy afternoon she sprinted over, panting, on her bicycle,
tore upstairs to my room, flung her arms round me, and looked
at me as if she were about to be sent to the scaffold. Alarmed,
I asked what was the matter. W ith closed eyes, she shook her
head. Then, tearing herself away, she rushed out on to the little
veranda, climbed up the balustrade, turned half round towards
me, and, with a hysterical note in her voice, said:
Unless you make me yours, I shall throw myself into the
lake; I swear it.
Ganna! I exclaimed, imploringly.

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The farm was built on the edge of the water, which plashed
against the west wall. T he plunge of twenty feet might have
had serious consequences, but plainly she was mad enough to
carry out her threat.
Ganna! I called once more.
She looked at me, half appeased, half distraught, and stretched
out her arms. Seizing her by the elbows I said reluctantly:
Drop it, Ganna, please. D ont be so silly.
W ill you or wont you ?
I hardly knew whether to laugh or to show temper.
I will, yes, I w ill, was my hasty answer, for I wished to
end this painful scene, though I felt while speaking as if I-had
unexpectedly drained a cup of poison. She j'umped down from
her perch, fell on her knees in front o f me, and covered my
hands with kisses.
In later days I often thought over this affair, and my invariable
conclusion was that she had, for practical purposes, held a pistol
to my head.
Hands up, or I shall fire that was what it amounted to.
Whether the pistol was loaded or unloaded was irrelevant. Who
could tell? T o threaten with a loaded pistol is bad; but to do
so with an unloaded weapon, to bluff, is perhaps worse. A t the
time, however, I had no suspicion, and the possibility that she
might be bluffing never entered my mind. Besides, bluff is
too coarse a word, even if the pistol was not loaded. For me,
Ganna was a woman in the grip of elemental passions. I cannot
tell whether what moved me was masked selfishness or honest
compassion; but what I said to myself was If I thrust her
away, I shall destroy her. I could not face the responsibility
o f forcing her to an attempt at suicide. I admired her courage,
her resolution, her bold all-or-nothing. Strangely enough, more
over, the scale was turned towards assent by a stirring of my
own senses. W hile I grasped her thin elbows I felt as if I held
her quivering body in my embrace. She seemed to me so delicate,
so fragile. Tenderness and fragility in women has always awakened
my own tender emotion and inflamed my blood. Up till then

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I had done no more than passively resist the onslaught of her

feelings.
Perhaps that imagery o f a hold-up with a pistol is out of
place. So great was the tumult within her that she was no longer
able to distinguish between the warrantable and the unwarrant
able. Impulse, blind impulse, had taken charge. When there
is a rockfall in the mountains, the individual stone does not
deliberate whether it will dash out a wayfarers brains. Gannas
impulsiveness, her inarticulate passion, affected me like one of
the forces of nature.
Fedora. There had been a little colony of us beside the
lake, but we were thinning out as the season advanced. In fact
only two remained: my friend Fedora Remikova, a young
pianist from St. Petersburg; and D r. Eduard Riemann, an
extraordinarily able and well-informed fellow o f about my own
age, philosopher, scholar, and man of the world in easy cir
cumstances. I was more and more drawn to him, for I have
rarely met an individual so clear-headed and straightforward.
T h e two, who were close friends, had both of them been struck
by my wool-gathering wits and my discontent. Having often
seen me in Gannas company, they had come to the conclusion
that she must be the cause of my depression. Fedora had not
hesitated to question me about the matter. M y answers were
evasive, but I said I should like to introduce Fraulein Mewis
to her for I wished to see what impression the girl would
produce on so single-hearted and unprejudiced a person as this
Russian woman. W e arranged for a tea-party, at which Riemann
was also to be present.
T h e affair did not go off very well. Ganna was extremely
nervous. Her feeling was that she had been brought for my
friends to make a searching examination, and her mood was
that o f a criminal in the dock. Her attempts to appear perfectly
at her ease were almost convulsive. Fedora sensed her constraint,
and looked at her sympathetically. In course of conversation,
references were made to a work which at that date was being
widely discussed, Das Buch eines Rembrandtdeutschen, and an

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argument ensued between Ganna and Riemann, the latter having

no great admiration for it. I f I remember aright he stigmatised
it as a collection o f paradoxes for the mediocrities of the in
tellectual world. Ganna protested too strenuously. She was no
match for Riemanns extensive knowledge and masterly logic;
but, failing to realise this, she treated the philosopher with the
arrogance o f an opinionated flapper. Riemann smiled good
naturedly. His answers were courteous but devastating. Fedora
said little, but when her eyes encountered mine their expression
was questioning and critical. I admired Gannas courage, her
display of wide reading, and her readiness o f repartee. M y
friends unfavourable judgment o f her distressed me. In my
mind I made common cause with her, as if I myself were being
misunderstood, because an unlucky concatenation of circum
stances had prevented Ganna from showing herself to the best
advantage.
Her failure to produce the desired good impression on Fedora
and Riemann had not escaped her notice, and she tried hard
to improve matters. This was a mistake. T h e Lord knows
why she should have set so much store upon making Fedora
an adherent. She was lacking in fine instinct as far as such
things were concerned, and always behaved as if sympathy could
be enlisted by force. Ganna brought Fedora nosegays plucked
with her own hands, and wrote the most affectionate letters.
T o begin with, she believed that Fedora and I had been con
nected by ties closer than those of mere friendship. When Fedora
rectified this misunderstanding in the dispassionate terms with
which one contradicts a false statement in a newspaper, Ganna
embraced her fervently. This was an unpardonable error. Shortly
afterwards, when Ganna came to say goodbye, the day before
returning to Vienna, Fedora made a big mistake, being foolish
enough to advise Ganna against marrying me.
D ont do it, for his sake at least, if not for your own.
Ganna, eyes flashing with wrath, answered:
W hats in your mind, Fedora? How can you say such a
thing? Alexander and I belong to one another for all eternity.

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Fedora told me this a few days later, with a frosty laugh. I

can still picture her as she stood in the curve of the grand piano,
holding a handkerchief to her mouth. She was morbidly obese,
and was subject to attacks of asthma, which often came on when
she was practising. T o relieve the paroxysms she inhaled the
vapour of a fluid sprinkled on her handkerchief. Although her
figure was shapeless, her appearance did not lack charm, for
her stout body was surmounted by a Bellini head with wise
and penetrating eyes. She asked me:
W hats the actual position between you and Ganna?
Ganna is going to speak to her father about our marriage.
W ith your authority and consent?
Certainly.
But are you quite easy in your mind? No pricks of con
science?
Losing patience, I replied:
You are unjust to Ganna, who has a splendid character.
Really, Fedora, you are ungenerous, as one woman so often is
to another.
Fedora shrugged her shoulders:
These are delicate questions, my friend; extremely delicate.
Next morning I received a letter from her. I kept it for years,
but it got mislaid during the move to Ebenweiler. I know most
of it by heart.
Y ou ought to think twice and thrice before you take the
step you are contemplating. I implore you to wait and reflect
before committing yourself irrevocably. You cannot but love
your own future, love it as a pregnant woman loves her unborn
child. Your responsibility in this respect is heavy, for enormous
things are at stake. Venerate what destiny holds in store for
you. I am sore at heart. W hat disappointment can be keener
than when a friend fails to keep a pledge made to a friend,
which is likewise a pledge made to the world ? I f therefore you
are already definitively engaged,[this will seem to me treasonable,
and I should prefer not to meet you again.
This epistle did not have the effect Fedora had hoped for.

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It estranged m e; and I suspected motives which were incon

sistent with the writers nobility of purpose. The spirit of
contradiction made me take Gannas side. It would not suffice
to reciprocate her affection; I must be m y betrotheds faithful
knight and protector.
Next day I learned that Fedora and Riemann had departed.
Ganna takes a Vow. There is a matter of minor impor
tance which I have omitted to record. Only at that time was
it of moment, owing to my lack o f experience. Tw o evenings
before Ganna was to return to Vienna, we were sitting on the
shore o f the lake. After a long silence, I turned to her and
said:
All right, Ganna, it shall be as you like. But on one con
dition. I want a solemn pledge from you that you will give me
back my freedom if ever I should ask for it.
Ganna, assuming the manner o f an innocent child, who has
been mortified and ill-treated, answered reproachfully:
O f course, Alexander. How could you imagine I should
refuse? I should be unworthy of you in that case.
O f course, Alexander, is not enough, I rej'oined. You
must make me a solemn vow .
Contemplating me with girlish innocence, she raised her right
hand and pledged herself in G ods name. I was satisfied.
You may believe it or not; I was satisfied. I paid no heed
as to how the words might be interpreted or misinterpreted;
to the possible workings of tim e; to the significance of the word
G od in a philosophically enlightened mind such as Gannas.
T h e notion was that of a fool. When did a man genuinely in
love ever want such an assurance? When did a woman who
earnestly desired a man as husband ever refuse to give such
an assurance without a qualm, in the name of sun and moon,
of God Almighty, and all the angels in heaven? T h e years
change the most sacred of oaths into a jest, and memory is an
arch-traitor.
But when she left me that evening, I thought of her most
tenderly. There were moments when I mistook this feeling for

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love. Then I would say to myself: Love is a globule of quick

silver ; to seize it needs half a lifetim e; it divides between finger
and thumb, and you can never pick up the whole of it. Com
radeship was what allured me. Spiritual harmony (thus did I
reason) made love superfluous. There can be nothing wrong
in allowing oneself to be loved without giving love in return,
provided there is some other compensation. I could give tender
ness, tender understanding, tender protection, tender guidance,
tender trust. That was my path, and I was confident it was the
right one. I failed to notice that I was losing my way amid a
casuistry of sentiments.
Astonishment in the Mewis Household. Ganna had
promised me to say nothing about our engagement as yet, but
reticence was too hard for her, and within three days she had
blabbed the news to every one mother, sisters, other relatives,
friends. Frau Mewis made no secret of her consternation. M y
views have changed during the last thirty years, but at that time
the social system to which I belonged seemed to me absurd.
One of the follies of the epoch was that the well-to-do members
o f the middle class were as ready to talk of misalliance as were
the aristocracy. The last to hear of the proposed marriage was
the professor. Frau Mewis was afraid to inform him. If he
refused his consent, there would be violent scenes, and she
would be held accountable. You have been privy to the affair,
her husband would say. You have failed to keep a tight hand
over Ganna. T h e pressure on her was like that of the deep
sea on a sunken ship. It is only a question of time when the
wreck will fall to pieces. T h e more observant of her daughters
had long since begun to notice recurrent symptoms of mental
disorder. Her trouble was that which affects four-fifths of all
women of her station, the malady of lack of regular occupation,
o f a futile position, of automatic childbearing. When Ganna at
length told her father, and, inexplicably, the avowal did not
raise a storm, the old lady breathed freely once more.
I expected he would give her a thrashing, she said to
Irmgard and Traude. An author, a man of no account, with

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neither prospects nor money. Really, your father is a puzzle to

me. >>
I cannot m yself account for the fact that the professor received
Gannas news without an explosion of wrath. No doubt, he had
read my Treasure-Seekers. He did not (as did his wife) regard
me as of absolutely no account in the world. But an author
one is glad to have on ones visiting-list, and an officially recog
nised son-in-law, are not in the same street. Later, with peals
o f laughter, he assured me that he had believed hardly a word
o f Gannas communication, being convinced that the girl had
been letting her fancy run riot. A t any rate he decided not to
take the matter seriously until I approached him with a request
for her hand.
W ell, you have approached m e, he said triumphantly, with
a slap on the shoulders which was so hearty as to be painful.
He gave himself away a little with this immense cordiality, dis
closing how glad he would be to rid himself of Ganna. His
other daughters dominant feeling was stupefaction.
Shes got round Alexander Herzog, and shes got round Dad.
Our Ganna must have bewitched the pair of them.
In the swans language, bewitched denoted what I repre
sented to m yself as Gannas Pythian faculty.
A Suitor. M y conversation with the professor seemed to
me sufficiently important to be recorded in my diary, and I can
reproduce it here.
So you want to marry my daughter?
Its not so much that I want to marry her, as that she wants
to marry me 1
He looked at me open-eyed.
All right, he said, accepting the correction. Let us put
it that you are not averse to the idea.
No, I am not averse to it.
W ell, then, we can come down to hard pan. I suppose you
are able to provide for a wife ?
I m afraid your supposition is ungrounded, Professor. I am
not even able to provide for m yself.

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Engagingly frank. But you have prospects of better times?

Again I must rob you o f an illusion. I see no likelihood of
anything of the kind.
I dont understand. You are already of considerable note as
an author.
That doesnt bring enough grist to my mill, nor will it, so
far as I can see. I have no private means.
What do you live on, then?
Debts.
How much?
About three thousand marks.
T h a ts not a vast sum. You are young, and can look forward
to a pecuniary as well as to a literary success.
Perhaps so, but I dread pecuniary success as an author.
Dread it! W hy?
Because it would be a sign that I had made concessions
to popular taste, to the prevailing fashion. I dont want to make
such concessions.
I respect your determination. But how, in such circumstances,
can you think of marrying m y daughter?
T o be quite open with you, Professor, I could not think of
marrying her unless I knew her to be well off.
This was greeted with a hearty laugh, and the shrewd reply:
You mean, rather, unless you knew me to be well off?
T h a ts right.
A t any rate, youre not shy of the truth.
Truth-telling is my profession. Money is of little moment
to me. I want Ganna for my companion on lifes journey. I
think we shall suit one another. But I shall have to get on without
her if I am expected to provide for her in the ordinary middleclass sense of the term. Ganna knows that as far as earning a
livelihood is concerned, I must be free. I did not come, Sir,
to ask for your daughters hand, although my visit may have
that semblance. I came to give you an unvarnished account o f
my position, since Ganna is absolutely certain that she can only
be happy as my w ife.

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Yes, Ganna. But what about yourself?

I m very much attached to Ganna, and if I marry her shall
do so with great expectations you will understand I am not
now talking o f worldly goods. But for my part, this marriage
is not indispensable to my happiness.
I understand. Still, you surely dont mean to imply that,
with your talents, you have no hope of being able, in due time,
to earn a suitable income?
It is not probable, though of course not impossible. An
author may make money, though he continue to follow his own
bent. W e live in a barbaric age, Professor.
You surprise me! I thought we lived in an era of advanced
and still progressive civilisation.
I think you are under a delusion.
T h e professor did not press his point, but returned to a more
immediate question:
The interest on the capital I shall give my daughter as dowry
will keep the wolf from the door. That is all.
No more is needed.
He rose, shook me warmly by the hand, and said:
W e seem to have come to an understanding, and I can
welcome you as a member of my family.
The same day he had a brief talk with Ganna, who left his
study overjoyed, laughing and weeping at the same time.
Tribal Taboos. Every family is a suction-apparatus. It
greedily sucks in the stranger who is to form a part of it, though,
shy and hesitant, he may resist being thus absorbed into an
alien life. I had to become acquainted with my five sisters-in-lawto be, three brothers-in-law, uncles, aunts, cousins, and family
friends. It took me a good while to get to know them all apart,
and to fit the right names to the right persons. In a play with
a big cast, one has to study ones programme in order to know
which actor is on the boards. I forgot that I was m yself to be
one of the performers, and the initiation into a sort of bloodbrotherhood was tedious. There seemed no good reason why
I should immediately begin to say du to persons I had never

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known before, and I was astonished at the ease with which they
all began to thou me and to expect the same familiarity from
me in return. I was introduced to a number of new conventions,
and found that most o f my manners and customs were a breach
o f these. I was expected to consider them sacrosanct; but during
the first days and weeks I involuntarily came to regard many
o f them as on the same footing as the taboos of a South Sea
village, and I felt like a civilised traveller among primitives. T h e
whole business intimidated me. T h e dinner parties, the family
conclaves, were noisy, tedious, and exhausting. Gradually, how
ever, I became less sensitive. Such a process of adaptation is
usually looked upon as salutary, but I think that in many cases
it is the outcome o f a clouding o f the senses and a blunting
o f the nerves. I was regarded as rough-hewn, and it became
a point of pride with them to put the right polish on me. Gladly,
and perhaps a little flattered, they welcomed me into the kinship;
yet they were afraid of me as a wildling, and confined me in
an invisible cage, the family cage treating me as if I had been
a savage beast trapped in the jungle, exhibited for money at
a fair, and contemplated with alarm even though it has been
so thoroughly tamed as to have no thought o f escape.
These are posthumous observations, and I could supplement
them but for the fear that the harshness of m y present views
may contrast too strongly with my behaviour and my feelings
in those early days. For soon I was wholly theirs, attuned to
my new environment. As a novice I let myself be ensnared,
became subservient to the local interests, played the part that
was expected of me, cultivated a taste for the pleasures they
enjoyed, and soon believed that the South Sea village in which
their activities were carried on was the wide world. Enthusiasm
overpowered me, my judgment being obscured by the luxury
in which I had become a participator. Each of the fine houses
I entered, seemed to me a replica of the imperial court. I looked
upon every bank-manager as an omnipotent being. T h e in
credible dulness o f their social life escaped my notice; and I
failed to detect in their vacant countenances the spiritlessness

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of persons who are blowing soap-bubbles and whose only

aspiration in each case is to blow a bigger one than his neigh
bours. I did not perceive that they had no sense of values; that
all their activities were aimless; that they only stuck to one
another like burrs, and not in virtue of any proper system of
articulations: I did not perceive these things, or, if I perceived
them, it was merely with half an eye, for I allowed myself to
be lulled to sleep. I did not yet understand the law of the kraal,
did not yet realise the sinister power of the kraal, though its
tentacles had already gripped me. In all families it was the sam e:
sisters, brothers, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, nephews and
nieces increasing in numbers from year to year every one of
them belonged to the kraal; their weal and woe were those of
the kraal; and those who did not belong to the kraal were out
siders, were suspect, were potential enemies.
What accounted for my fascination? When a mustang is
lassoed, at the touch of the rope on its neck it begins to tremble,
and no longer tries to escape. Was that really my situation?
Was I not, rather, a deserter, a renegade? I did not attempt
to think the matter out, and can honestly say I did not know.
Certainly, I never felt quite sure of myself, and this sense of
insecurity must account for my having brought Riemann to the
M ewiss. It was easy to find a pretext. I had promised Ganna,
her sisters, and the one of the brothers-in-law I liked best, to
read them some chapters of my new book. T h e reading took
place, and I had no reason to complain of a lack of understanding
in my audience. Or was it that Gannas fervour carried me
away, that her obvious delight deceived me as to the impression
I was producing on the others ? Is it not possible that they were
a little like the grown-ups who listen with complaisance to the
lively but fantastic tales of boys who have been playing at Red
Indians? Or were they in the mood o f those who contemplate
the dancing figures of angels and devils thrown on the screen
by the cinema when a trick-film is being reeled off? Anyhow,
in the mind o f one of those present, a mind which had hitherto
been estranged from me, the seed did not fall upon stony

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ground; it struck root. I refer to Irmgard. But this I was not

to learn till years had elapsed.
G u sh . In Ganna, meanwhile, there had been a wonderful
change. No more unruliness, no scenes, the nickname CoffinNail seemed forgotten. She had become an obedient daughter,
an affectionate sister. When her father came home of an evening,
she rushed upstairs to his bedroom for his fur-lined slippers,
and knelt down to unlace his boots. She spent her mornings
in the kitchen, a place she had hitherto shunned as the focus
of the unspiritual, eager to discover what could be concocted
out of flour, oil, greens, sugar, and root-crops. It was very dull,
she would never be able to learn these mysteries, not even how
to boil an egg; but she must make the best of it. Such was the
tribal custom, and initiates had explained to her that a good
housewife must know how to cook. Influenced by contemporary
literature, a faithful disciple of Nietzsche and Stirner, she had
heretofore had the profoundest contempt for family life and the
family traditions. But now the happy sunshine in her breast
gilded everything in the household, even the lowliest of the
domestics. She actually showed extreme consideration for old
Kiimmelmann, with whom she had been at daggers drawn ever
since she could remember.
What on earth have you done to our Ganna? asked her
sisters and her mother. She is a different person!
When they told me how quarrelsome and disobedient she
had always been, and what madcap pranks she had played, I
was incredulous, for the only Ganna I knew was gentle, dreamy,
smiling, and tender.
One thing struck me as extraordinary. U p till now, her mind
had been stuffed with tags of verse, great names, and idealist
ambitions. How had she all at once become capable of remem
bering twenty or thirty birthdays, death-anniversaries, com
memoration days, family jubilees, and the like? Betwixt night
and morning she had discovered in herself a dormant affection
for her remotest relatives, leading her to call on distant cousins
and far-away connexions by marriage. T h e swans declared:
1

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Ganna wants to take her happiness out walking, wants to make

a parade of Alexander Herzog. This was spiteful. Perhaps it
would be juster to say that Ganna was animated by a desire
to make amends. She had so long been regarded as a pickle,
as an enfant terrible, that she now wanted to become a young
woman o f good repute.
I dont know why this new trait disquieted me. There seemed
to me something convulsive in it, something hectic, an un
wholesome mingling o f policy and sentimentalism. It got on
m y nerves, but I lacked courage to say anything to her about
it. When she noticed my uneasiness, she plunged into despair,
and cross-questioned me till I found it necessary to pretend
there was nothing amiss if only to save myself from being
tortured by the unhappiness in her eyes. But there was one
matter concerning which I felt impelled to utter a word of dis
content. There lived in a back street of the inner town an elderly
couple named Schlemm, related somehow or other to an extinct
branch o f the Westphalian Lottelotts (for there were Lottelotts
also in Cologne). These Schlemms were frightful bores: he was
deaf and feeble-minded; she cackled incessantly like a hen.
Ganna paid court to them, agreed with everything they said,
stroked their wrinkled hands, called them U ncle and A unt,
dilated upon their wisdom and their venerable aspect. One day
I allowed m yself to be talked into calling on them, for Ganna
insisted that the old dears one wish was to make my acquain
tance before they died. This was pure fancy on her part, but
I complied with the imaginary desire. I was a puppet, and she
pulled the strings I thought the half hours visit would never
end. But what bothered me most was Gannas tearfulness. I
simply couldnt understand it. W hy so much affect about my
interview with these two dodderers? There seemed no sense
in it.
I m so desperately sorry for them , she said in excuse when
we had come away, and I could not conceal my irritation. Uncle
Schlemm suffers so much from liver-trouble, and Auntie has
cared for him so devotedly these three-and-forty years.

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She looked at me piteously with her great blue eyes, and I

was fretted, though I hardly knew why.
The Marriage Settlement. Between Christmas and New
Year, two or three days before the beginning o f 1901 and the
opening of the twentieth century, I went by appointment to
the office o f the M ewiss family solicitor. T h e professor had
arrived before me. There was a barrister present, a man whose
aspect was a strange combination of the ferret and the drillsergeant, and who greeted me ceremoniously. T h e solicitor,
smoking an American cigar, sat upon a leather-covered couch,
where he had made room for himself by shoving aside piles
of legal documents. He handed me a foolscap manuscript to
read the typewriter had not yet come into use for such pur
poses. The amount of the dowry was stated in both words and
figures, but the stipulations as to the respective rights of hus
band and wife in regard to this sum were couched in a German
that was absolutely unintelligible to a layman. There was some
thing about revocability in the event o f a divorce. T h e word
meant nothing to me, and, since I asked no questions about
it, no one thought fit to enlighten me. T h e matter bored me.
I signed, my thought being: T h e professor is an honourable
man. W hy should I hesitate? I deemed it would be ill-bred
to enquire. Twenty-five years later I understood what I had
signed. A quarter o f a century elapsed before I was aware that
I had been diddled. Is the term too harsh? It was done in the
family spirit, and without intentional disloyalty. I could have
asked the meaning o f the unfamiliar term. Or I could have
asked leave to bring a solicitor who would represent my interests.
But this idea never entered my mind. It was the first time I
had had anything to do with men of law. A lawyer, I thought,
is the human incorporation of law, of justice. No harm can come
to me in the office of my prospective father-in-laws solicitor.
I had ultimately to pay for this childlike faith.
Riemann. W ith surprise and discomfort I had become aware
that my former friends were turning me the cold shoulder. Even
Fiirst and Muschilow fobbed me off whenever I proposed a

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meeting. O f course I guessed the reason. T h ey disapproved of

my intended marriage; there was a lot of chatter among them
about Ganna; one of them went so far as to write me an angry
letter in which (like Fedora) he broke off our friendship, and
was impertinent enough to tell me I was throwing m yself away.
I chucked the letter into the fire.
But what touched me on the raw was that for some time
Riemann had been keeping out of m y way. I wanted to have
a talk with him, and, knowing that he spent his evenings at a
chess club of which I was m yself a member, I betook m yself
thither fairly late one night, asked him to come into a room
where we should be alone, and spoke my mind plainly.
I know what you have against m e, I began hotly. Fedora
has poisoned your mind. T he whole thing eludes comprehension.
You hang together like conspirators. What have you against
Ganna? Is it not enough that I am in love with her? Ought I
to have asked your consent to the marriage?
T h e question is not so simple as that, my dear Alexander,
answered Riemann, in the somewhat comic nasal tone habitual
to him. You have a few dozen friends, here and elsewhere,
who have been following your career with definite expectations;
very high expectations indeed. These friends find it hard to
stomach the idea that you should sell yourself as you are doing.
Forgive my bluntness.
Sell myself, Riemann! You cant be in earnest. Sell myself?
W hat a horrible expression to use.
How otherwise can we phrase it? What else can we think?
W e none of us feel that Ganna M ewis is a suitable wife for you.
W hy not?
That is difficult to explain. W e are anxious about your future.
You are taking the wrong turn, which will lead you into an
unsuitable environment. W e are afraid you are acting in defiance
o f your own convictions, of your better self.
There is nothing in the world, Riemann, for which I would
sell myself, to use your own detestable phrase. Surely you know
that, without my protestations.

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Not directly, I agree. Y ou would not sell yourself directly.

How, then, indirectly?
T h e modes of such a sale are often extremely complicated,
and there are no limits to the possibilities for self-deception
I have given the matter long, careful, and frank considera
tion.
I dont doubt your word for a moment, yet still I urge you
to get out of this proposed marriage. Go away from Vienna.
Take the next steamer to India, to South Africa, wherever you
like. If you lack funds, I will gladly provide them. L et me act
as negotiator in breaking off the engagement.
Good God, man, youre talking nonsense. Matters have gone
too far, even if I were willing.
I dont agree.
Its not only that I have entered into a formal engagement,
but I cannot . . . I cannot live without Ganna.
That is another story but I dont believe you now.
I dont know what youre driving at, Riemann; but anyhow
I shant be in chains when I marry. If it doesnt turn out well,
there are always ways and means of getting free.
He contemplated me with benevolent sarcasm, saying:
Alexander, you will never know much about human nature.
Do you really think its so easy as all that to break away from
an unhappy marriage?
Angrily I was about to interrupt him, but he went on making
his own points:
Besides, my dear fellow, have you ever troubled to study
the mother carefully? T o use the mildest terminology, Frau
M ewis is in a condition of unceasing mental irritability. You
have to think of hereditary taint. O f course there are six girls,
and some of them seem healthy enough, but Ganna shows her
mothers least desirable traits. Her mental balance is unstable.
Th at is plain to any one who knows the signs.
T h e implication was distasteful to me, and I thrust the argu
ment aside as has, alas, always been my way with disagreeable
arguments.

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I refuse to think o f such possibilities, I said. They lead

us into waters too deep for human understanding, and tempt
us to usurp G ods craftmanship we who are poor human
bunglers.
We cannot shirk our task there, my friend. In our day, that
has become G ods way of stimulating our advance.
On that fundamental difference we parted. I did not go to
bed, but wandered through the snowy streets for hours, and
then sat till dawn in a suburban tavern frequented by carters
and marketwomen.
Wedding Presents. A number of tables had been placed
side by side for the display of the wedding presents, and Ganna
and I were standing in front of them. There were sofa-cushions
with covers of secessionist design, queerly shaped lamp-shades,
distorted bronze statuettes, metal frogs and other animals as
candlesticks, the Church of St. Stephen and the Tom b o f the
M edici as paper-weights, nymphs with holes in their heads as
scent-bottles, gondolas as table ornaments, photograph frames
bordered with gilt fir-cones. Nor was the practical side o f life
neglected, for there were books, cutlery, table-silver, dinner
services, orders for house-linen and furniture. (We were to
travel for a year before settling down.) I was much edified by
the show. Never before had I seen such an assortment of
valuables for my private use and pleasure. All the things seemed
to me handsome, and of the best quality. True, there was a
sense of unreality about it. What was real to me? Not even
my shirt, not even my pen. Continuous association with persons
who mistook shadow for substance, was extraordinarily fatiguing.
N ay more. I now and again felt that it was killing something
within me, though precisely what I could not tell. But my new
associates, since they mistook shadow for substance, were like
wise impelled, logically enough, to regard substance as shadow.
Such was their nature. Here, at the show of wedding presents,
underneath my foolish pleasure in material acquisitions, I for
the first time began to dread lest Ganna, whom I was to guide
through life, whose life was to be joined to mine, might be a

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participator in these perpetual attempts at partial assassination.

What was the significance of that glow in her eyes, of her obvious
jubilation? No doubt she had a dissociated consciousness, living
partly among ordinary human beings, and partly in the realm
o f the stars. She was a princess about to be married; a being
from the land of faery who had soared into unknown regions
of bliss. She confused persons with things, and things with
persons. When one wakes in the morning with the impression
that one is a rose or a sunlit cloud, one finds it impossible to
take up the threads of life among the unimaginative; one stam
mers, and gives the impression of being more than a little queer.
Spurious Gothic, spurious Baroque, spurious Renaissance what
do such things matter? Th ey were tokens o f affection, signs
of victory.
Look at this. she said ecstatically, Aunt Jettchens gift;
and Uncle Adalberts; and Frau Pfeifers: how sweet of them
to send!
I was infected by Gannas delight, as if she had given me a
magic potion.
The Wedding. The potion was still acting when we were
married, on a snowy day in January. M y memories are those
o f a tumult that lasted for hours. Shrill feminine voices, raucous
masculine voices, the clashing of crockery, the grating of chairlegs on the floor, the popping of champagne corks, the smell
o f roast meat, sweet and sour tastes, incessant coming and
going, verbose congratulatory telegrams, much shaking of hands
(some of which were dry and others clammy, warm or cold,
rough or smooth, mobile or stiff). A marriage ceremony, humili
ating and mortifying, because of the amassing of futile formulas
designed to restrict moral freedom, and resembling those of
prison regulations. T h e sight of Ganna, robed in white, moving
like a sleepwalker, or seated at the table with the self-conscious
and shamefaced simper of the conventional bride. Her mother,
too, laying an arm round my shoulders, guiding me to one o f
the window-seats, and, with rolling eyes and an uncanny smile,
saying strange and unexpected things; m y mother-in-law, a

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spectre at the feast, to whom no one but myself paid the slightest
attention.
Speech after speech. Those of my brothers-in-law were stuffed
with culture and literary allusions; that of one of the professors
colleagues, a member o f the philosophical faculty, who, in a
stentorian voice, sang Gannas praises in terms suitable for the
unveiling of a memorial; then that of an infantry general yes,
a real, live general (I had never sat at table with one before)
who raised his glass to the gifted and agreeable young husband,
and expressed the hope that I should continue to advance along
the paths of science and art.
The whole affair seems to me, in retrospect, to have been
a condensed representation of the manners and customs of the
time. One might call it a matinee showing the Life of an Affluent
Member of the M iddle Class, with the accompaniment of a
slightly intoxicated orchestra of four performers.
But I did not feel myself to be a disinterested spectator. I
was part of the show, a deeply moved and leading member of
the cast. When at length, after the professor had said a few
pithy concluding words, his six daughters, his sons-in-law, and
half a dozen of his grandchildren who had been brought to the
feast for this special purpose, defiled past him and kissed him
by turns on the forehead; when he thereupon stood up in their
midst, towering over them, a semi-royal patriarch and undis
puted chief of the kraal, so that one could not but look forward
for thirty generations, for a thousand years, during which his
personality would be a saga and a symbol; and when Ganna,
overwhelmed by the greatness of this historic moment, flung
herself sobbing into his arms and murmured her thanks for all
he had done in her behalf I, too, was carried away, and venerated
this red-bearded father of the tribe as my patron and protector.
Then came a hasty departure, deep breaths of the fresh winter
air, and the drive to the station, alone with Ganna, who had
now become Ganna Herzog.

E PO CH O F C E R T A IN T IE S
The Problem of Tw in Solitude. We journeyed by long
stages, though with many halts, from the Tyrolese mountains
to Sicily. We were very happy.
Never had I spent more than three days alone with any
one before, neither with one of my comrades nor with a
woman. It was fortunate that I was used to close quarters,
having, as already related, lived in Vienna in a bed-sitting-room.
W e had agreed that our wanderings were to be conducted on
an extremely modest scale. Ganna found it wonderful to have
a husband whose business was done in his own head, and who
could, as far as externals were concerned, bring his ideas into
shape for the printer at any hotel table.
Freedom from pecuniary embarrassment was like a dream. Yet
the dream was not pleasurable and without a tinge of pain.
When a burden one has carried for years is suddenly lifted from
ones shoulders, the sense of relief is not necessarily unalloyed.
There is a struggle for accommodation to the new conditions,
a need to breathe in a different way. I had always had as much
solitude as I wanted. Now I was never alone, whether by day
or by night. Ganna was perpetually on hand, wanting to be
seen and heard, to be cherished and loved. T o give love also.
If love could be shovelled out of the ground, she would have
shovelled it, were it only to convince me that her supply was
inexhaustible.
But all kinds of untoward incidents may occur when husband
and wife are prisoned in a room with two beds, and when the
available wall-space is hampered with piles of trunks. For in
stance, I sit reading a book. Ganna, eager to avoid disturbing
me, moves on tiptoe as she walks about the room. Unfortunately
there is a chair in the way, and she knocks it down with a tre
mendous clatter. O r she drops a tumbler. Or she lets the top
of one of the trunks fall with a bang. A thousand piteous excuses.
How unlucky! But when one has been unlucky, one must be

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petted and consoled. She is continually at war with material

objects. She mislays her purse, and there is a fearful rumpus.
She posts a letter in a private letter-box instead of in a pillar
box, is frightfully sorry, and must be petted to restore her
equanimity. No one but a brute could be vexed with her for
addressing total strangers in a mellifluous voice as if they had
been Uncle and Auntie Schlemm; she was in a brown study.
W hy be angry because, when going out for an afternoon con
stitutional, she takes as many books as she would have needed
if reading for an examination ? What she is doing is ridiculous,
and I laugh at her. She sees that it is ridiculous, and joins in
the laughter. But this does not prevent her doing the same thing
another time. She lives in a world peopled with her own fancies,
and deals with them like the fabled bird that tried to pluck
grapes from a cluster painted by Apelles. I should like to bring
a little order, a little consistency, into her mind; but I find it
a tough job. Ganna is one o f those who cannot gather experience
and guide their actions accordingly. But experience can no more
be passed on from one to another than can pain. It grows plain
to me that her character needs moulding; that it is formless,
and I must give it form. It took me a long time to learn that
the task was beyond m y powers; that she would never be clay
in the hands of the potter. Not because she was too soft or too
hard. Both soft substances and hard can be moulded. But that
which is gelatinous is not plastic; and a fluid, whose only shape
is that of its temporary container, is unaffected by the working
of the potters thumb.
Sweetheart. In her innocence she believed that a woman
could make the man she loved happy by self-sacrificing devotion
that this was all-sufficient. Y et she was incapable of un
reserved self-sacrifice, because her will was persistently rebel
lious. She wanted to surrender her will, but could not; and this
was the germ of disaster. She was an uncontrolled and uncon
trollable force of nature. All through life she was outraged by
any attempt to bridle or sublimate her elemental passions. She
simply could not understand the endeavour. Only through the

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strength of her primitive impulses was she kept in a precarious

poise between a poetic spirituality and the levels of earth. I
felt instinctively that I must not try to rob her of her pristine
simplicity in this respect.
N or was I the man to inaugurate such an educational process.
I had so overwhelming a veneration for the inalterable thus-andno-otherwise of every living creature, that I was afraid o f
meddling with or throwing light upon the obscure and primitive
elements of a fellow-being. But a lover who is unduly cautious
cannot hope to modify his beloved. I was not a master in the
art of love, were it only because my senses were held in thrall
by a sort o f guilty darkness. These things have to be said, for
otherwise the reader would never understand the course taken
by the joint life of myself and Ganna.
Guilt! I dislike the word, and yet from the outset there had
been guilt in my relationship to Ganna. Guilt, because I felt
no passionate desire to possess her, as a counterpart to her
desire to be possessed by me. Only by slow degrees did I realise
this. When it had become clear to me, I had, with a secret terror,
to ward off as best I could Gannas passionate advances. She
misunderstood me. Better so, or she would have fallen headlong
out o f her heaven, and that would have been a responsibility
greater than I could bear. I had to do my best to keep her in
her heaven. It was not difficult. She took refuge in a fiction,
picturing me as Robert Browning and herself as Elisabeth
Barrett. This example of a highly intellectualised union made it
possible for her to interpret as the expression of a metaphysical
tie my increasing dislike for the caresses she craved. I could
not but admire the vigour with which she lived herself into
this work of fiction; and, indeed, my admiration for her had
not waned in the least. I was able to discuss with her all my
plans of work. Very soon after we had begun to live together
she could use the technical terms of pencraft with the ease and
accuracy of one who has been at the job for years. When the
news from Germany made it impossible to doubt that my new
book was having a material as well as a literary success (the

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material success did not bring me in much money, for I had

changed my publisher, and the previous one had made me pay
a forfeit and refund his advances), I noticed that she had lost
the equanimity which had hitherto characterised her. It seemed
as i f she no longer felt sure of me. In reply to frank questioning,
she hesitatingly admitted that this was so.
It behoves me to protect you from the allurements of the
world and the sweets o f fame.
But why, Ganna? I asked in astonishment. What are you
afraid of?
Otherwise I shall have no guarantees for the future.)
Guarantees? What need have you of guarantees?
Obviously the present does not suffice.
But Ganna, I protested, you surely dont want to carry
me about with you in a marsupial pouch, as the female kangaroo
carries its young ?
Yes, that is exactly what I should like to do, she answered,
with a sly though amiable smile.
She did not feel sure enough of me, and longed for guarantees.
W hat could I do but stroke her hair soothingly, and call her
Sweetheart, the most affectionate pet-name in the language.
Banking Account and Necessity. A t Taormina we put
up in a pot-house. It was a filthy place. T he beds were buginfested. As if this were not enough, there were no mosquito-nets,
so we were devoured by mosquitoes. Ganna tried various fumi
gations as soon as the skies darkened and our tormentors set
to work, but the chief result was that we were suffocated for
the rest of the night. By paying two lire more a day we could
have secured habitable quarters, but Ganna would not agree
to this. One of her chief cares in life was to make ends meet.
Making ends meet was one of those spell-binding phrases
which, as the years passed, loomed up ever and again upon
the horizon of our marriage like fireflies at nightfall. T h e notion
o f making ends meet was interwined with that of balance
at the bank. T h e balance at the bank was the biggest, the
most sinister, of the spell-binding fireflies. Her father had im-

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pressed on Ganna that whatever happened she must not impinge

upon her capital, must never spend a farthing more than the
interest upon her dowry. A man who consumes his capital is
capable of any crime, the professor had menacingly declared.
This dictum had been adopted by Ganna as one of her guiding
principles. Her father, who loomed more imposingly as we
receded from Vienna, was the high-priest of her capital, a
revered fetish; his mighty hand was stretched forth to protect
the gilt-edged securities from which the balance at the bank
was derived.
Ganna knew, o f course, that the nice round sum of eighty
thousand crowns had been diminished by the amount required
to pay my debts. She had excogitated a financial scheme whereby
the deduction was to be made good. T h e interest on her capital
(at four and a half per cent) brought in an annual income of
3,600 crowns. O f these we were to spend only 3,000, the re
maining 600 being restored to the capital. A ny excess of expen
diture over income was to be made good by my literary earnings.
This seemed to me an admirable plan, but it involved drawing
the purse-strings tight. Every bug and every mosquito in Signor
Pancrazios hovel helped to cement the system ordained by the
high-priest and to strengthen the foundations of the tabernacle
in which the gilt-edged securities were kept. In the most touching
way, Ganna took endless trouble to persuade me that the con
temptuous tone in which I referred to these sacred securities
was the outcome o f levity and ignorance. She spoke conjuringly
of the ethic of self-denial, and of how it was a moral duty to
wrest from the hands of Destiny the sword wherewith she per
petually threatens the salt of the earth. Immersed in the study
of Plato, holding in uplifted hand the pencil with which she
made marginal notes, her youthful brow furrowed with care,
she would dilate upon avayKt), dread Necessity, before whose
decrees we must all bow. Her words impressed me. I agreed.
In very truth, it was not my money. Although I was entitled
to draw cheques upon the current account, I complied with
Gannas thrifty proposals. I was in the position of a man

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whom pride and self-respect forbid to touch anothers pre

rogatives.
An Elemental? I made an excursion to the top of Etna,
having promised Ganna to return in three days. Losing my way
among the lava-fields, and overtaken by bad weather, I had
to shelter in a shepherds hut. These misadventures delayed
m y return by six hours. Ganna had awaited me in grievous
anxiety. Towards six o clock in the evening she expressed her
alarm to Signor Pancrazio and his people. By eight she was
clamouring for an appeal to the police and the sending of a
rescue expedition of carabinieri. When eleven struck, the com
bined persuasions of her host, the members of his household,
and the German-speaking guests could not restrain her from
putting on her rain-coat and, sobbing as she went, hurrying
along the pitch-dark country road, followed by Pancrazio and
his two sons, who were at length able to induce her to come
back to the inn. On my arrival at about midnight, she screamed
like a madwoman as she threw herself into my arms. T h e Pancrazios, impressed by such violent conjugal affection, treated
her thenceforward with the extreme respect one can find no
where but in Italy. A servantmaid of twenty-four furnished an
explanation for this excess of emotion by suggesting that the
Signora must be expecting. This soon proved to be the case.
When, two days later, Sicily was being powdered by the south
wind with dust from the Sahara, when a yellow blight veiled the
landscape, when Etna began to erupt and the terrified populace
inaugurated processions, Ganna said, with her sibylline gaze:
Now, Alexander, you can understand why I was so anxious.
I felt that these convulsions were at hand.
I wondered how I should be able to cope with such unrestraint
in the future, and was ready enough to believe that there might
be some mysterious connexion between Ganna and the dark
forces of nature. I also tormented my brains in the attempt to
explain how so elfin a being as Ganna could have emerged from
the commonplace surroundings of the M ewis family.
Return to Vienna. Gannas pregnancy was not in the pro

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gramme. W e had decided not to have a child during the first

two years of our marriage. Wandering about the world without
a fixed home is impracticable if you have to trail an infant along
with you. It was in Rome that my wife, trembling with happi
ness, made me the great avowal. No monarch can ever have
had a livelier sense of responsibility than had Ganna in her
expectation of maternity. She sent to Vienna for treatises on
the subject, and dieted herself strictly in accordance with ideas
o f her own. Having discovered a German doctor who practised
in the Italian capital, she had consultations that lasted for hours.
She treated her body with the most affectionate care, walking
on tiptoe both in the hotel and in the streets. Her one thought
was the coming baby. H er one concern was that it should be
beautiful, and also fit to become a person of note, being con
vinced that it lay within her own competence to secure these
goods. She had a peasantwomans faith in maternal impres
sions, and took the utmost care to avoid the sight of anything
ugly or horrible. She went every morning to the Vatican Museum,
to sit with rapt gaze in front of the masterpieces of sculpture
in that famous collection. Having bought a photograph of the
Naples fresco of the recumbent Narcissus, she hung it on the
wall above her bed, and, with autosuggestive intent, contem
plated it just before falling asleep and immediately after waking.
She was confident that her unruly will would exert a powerful
influence upon the development of the embryo in her womb.
I had to feign acceptance of these superstitions, for scepticism
and irony upon so sacred a matter infuriated her. Indeed, she
had no appreciation of irony; could never regard herself as
ludicrous; surrounded her own actions with a nimbus which
acted as armour against irreverence. Besides, there was some
thing more momentous about her pregnancy than about that
of an ordinary woman. It provided the security, the guarantees,
for which she had languished.
Since she did not wish her child to be born in a foreign land,
and wanted to have the members of her family round her on
the great occasion, we returned to Vienna in the autumn,

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The Yellow Room. I dreaded this return. The prospective

claims of the family, the unconcerned way in which they would
sequestrate my person, were a terror to me. I feared a life that
would have to be carried on with no ramparts. If I was once
for all to adopt the career of a respectable middle-class tax-payer,
with a balance at the bank to safeguard him against vicissitudes;
if I was to become the pet and the pride of the Mewis clan,
of the Schlemms and the Lottelotts then Fedora and Riemann
would have been right, then I should have sold myself into
bondage. But Ganna knew how to talk me out of my fears.
She was full of such confidence and enthusiasm in the joys of
a life of tranquil domesticity, that I was ready to comply.
After a long bout of house-hunting we rented a small furnished
flat, ground-floor, opening on the garden. T h e owners had gone
south for the winter. It was in one of the western suburbs, a
long way from where the M ewiss lived. We took these furnished
rooms because Ganna did not want to settle down yet, and we
had not money to spare for the equipment of unfurnished rooms.
Procrastination was for her tantamount to economy. On the
street side, the rooms looked on a winding lane, along which
were ranged bungalows with tiny garden-plots separating them
from the pavement. Every twenty minutes, a steam-tram roared
down the street, and the locomotive was fitted with a mechani
cally worked bell which could be heard clanging in the distance
long before and after the tram passed the house. What had
attracted Ganna to the place was a big room whose wall giving
upon the garden consisted entirely of glass. Thus on this side
the room was well lighted, but, being very deep, it was so dark
at the back that the gas had to be kept burning all day. It was
at one and the same time our reception-room and dining-room,
my study, and my bedroom; for, during the weeks before Gannas
confinement, I slept here on a divan installed between two but
tresses. T h e walls were colour-washed in lemon-yellow, and a
curtain of the same tint divided the room in twain. Beside the
walls left and right were plaster-casts pedestailed on boxes
covered with cretonne. These were mementoes of our visit to

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Rome. One was the Dying Gladiator, the other the Boy with
a Thorn in his Foot.
I have dwelt so long upon the description of this room because
of the momentous part it played in my destiny. W e still know
very little about the influence of rooms upon our moods, thoughts,
and resolves. An inch more or less in height or breadth will
effect a complete change in the feeling of the place. In this
yellow room I was never really at home, for I felt there as if
I was wearing an overcoat bought from an old-clothesman, a
garment much too large for me, which hung round me like
a sack. When I awoke in the night to find the white glimmer
from the snow-covered garden shining through the chinks in
the curtains, I should have liked to go out by the window and
play some boyish prank perhaps bombard the absurd place
with snowballs. Or I wanted a brownie to come, sit down at
the writing-table, and do my work for me; because my book
was at a standstill, and had been for weeks, while the roaring
of the tram and the hideous clangour of the bell had racked
my brain. It is not well to be with a much-occupied woman
when one has a difficult picture to paint, a delicate web to weave.
Nor was I bothered with only one woman; there were many.
During the numerous waking hours of the day there seemed
to be lots of Gannas about, each wanting something different,
each full of herself, each joyfully and excitedly planning, each
with special requests and many of them were strangers to whom
I had to be introduced.
I am allowed Pocket-Money. A layette had to be provided.
Rent must be paid. Servants must get their wages. I needed
a thick overcoat; Ganna, a new cloak. T h e interest on her dowry
did not suffice for these disbursements. W e broke in upon the
capital, and this proved a nightmare to Ganna; we sold some
of the gilt-edged securities, a step she regarded with horror.
I became infected with veneration for the holy of holies. There
is nothing more invasive than money and the money-spirit. On
the first of the month, when I went to the bank in order to
draw the housekeeping money. I felt like a thief. The pay-clerk,

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a lean man wearing gold-rimmed spectacles, was old M ewiss

vice-gerent, and would cross-question me as to my doings.
A man who consumes his capital is capable of any crime.
Gannas little hands kept guard over the bank-balance. The
cashier pushed the notes across the counter, and I seemed to
hear the capital rustling. I counted them timidly; and, as I
put them away in my wallet, it was with the impression that
I had somehow cheated the man in the wire cage, and was
making off with ill-gotten gains. I walked out of the place with
a hang-dog air, and had no peace until I had handed the whole
sum over to Ganna. Ganna kept the accounts. Ganna gave me
m y pocket-money. Yes, my pocket-money, as if I were a boy.
It seemed perfectly natural. What need has a man of money,
when he is provided with food, clothing, and shelter? In
self-defence, I should have liked next month to explain all
this to the pay-clerk. Then he would have regarded me more
leniently.
There is something out of Gear. Arent we going to
have dinner before long? I would ask pettishly, when the clock
in the yellow room struck two.
Very soon, Alexander, said Ganna (one of the multifarious
Gannas), disconcerted. Only half a tick.
But what the slatternly maid-of-all-work proceeded to serve
up would beggar description. Meat roasted to a cinder. Pastry
as hard as a board. Soups whose only title to the name was
that they steamed. All brought in with great zeal, and with much
fussing upon Gannas part.
Gannas fussing, her immense pains, need a paragraph, if not
a chapter, to themselves. Think o f a storm of energy, which
has no result, but is dissipated in the void. Wellnigh scientific
thoroughness, the best intentions in the world, and the upshot
like that o f using a blacksmiths hammer to swat a fly upon
a window-pane. Every movement has been carefully coordinated,
the procedure is radical, but (as any one but Ganna would have
foreseen) the window-pane is shattered to smithereens. Ganna
is amazed at the smash. She stands at the stove, wearing an

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apron, stirring eggs and flour with a spoon; on the sideboard

lies open a volume of H olderlins poems, to which she is dreamily
paying far more attention than to her cookery. When the neg
lected pancake has been burned underneath and has stuck to
the pan, she finds nothing better to do than wrangle with the
maid. I, who can put my finger on the core of the trouble, say
sententiously:
Look here, Ganna, reading Holderlin and making pancakes
are incompatible; you cant have it both ways, and must choose
one or the other.
Ganna admits that I am right, but finds it hard to follow
my rede, being simultaneously full of the divine afflatus and
of practical purpose. Without exaggeration, one may say that
she sweats endeavour. When she wishes to do something for
me, distance and disagreeables count as nothing. But everything
is wrecked by her trying to do too many things at once. I f she
wants to secure me quiet for my work, she invariable upsets
a chair in the process (I speak symbolically). T h e house is
possessed by little devils, who have a down on her. Her excess
of zeal mars whatever she attempts. I am interested in this zeal,
and admire it greatly; but misdirected zeal is not the atmosphere
in which domestic tranquillity thrives. I feel as if I were in a
ship incompetently steered, so that it continually wallows in the
trough o f the sea.
Then there was incessant trouble with the servants. Our first
maid stayed six days; the second, three; the third, a fortnight;
and of those that followed, the longest incumbency lasted three
weeks. Ganna could not account for this perpetual flitting; and
to me, also, at first, it was an enigma. Only by slow degrees
did a light dawn on me. I discovered that, under Gannas sway,
every mistake was regarded as a crime. It was extraordinary.
I f a woman came to do the washing, she departed under sus
picion o f being a thief. Another with some slightly unusual
characteristics was looked upon as a devastator. Since Ganna
had not the ghost of a notion how to make a bed or polish a
door-handle, her orders on such subjects were treated with

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silent contempt. She never knew how much time was needed
to do a particular piece of work properly, with the result that
either she demanded the impossible or else she was humbugged.
She did not understand the speech or the mentality of common
folk. Her own rather stilted language took her servants aback,
and they mistrusted her. At one moment, butter would not melt
in her mouth; and the next, she would speak roughly to under
lings. T he middle-class arrogance and the literary culture of this
daughter of the M ewiss made it impossible for her to consider
servingfolk as o f the same flesh and blood as herself. Directly
the slightest clash occurred, she was in a fury, and her eyes
blazed. A t first I was able to intervene as peacemaker, but after
a time, when I attempted to do so, her wrath was directed
against me. I was compelled to let matters take their course,
for otherwise the skirmishing in the household would have been
too exhausting.
One of these maids, Resi, was able to twist Ganna round her
fingers, by the grossest flattery. Then came an evening when
the young woman cleared out the contents of the linen-cupboard
and vanished. A certain Kathi had several followers, and when
Ganna caught one o f them in the kitchen there was a terrible
hubbub. Pepi was taken into custody by the police, upon sus
picion of arson at a previous mistresss. Hanna proved to be
syphilitic. When we discharged her, her fancy man forced his
way into the house and threatened me with a revolver. Occa
sionally we employed charwomen, as dirty and untidy as if they
had been rounded up from a slum in a police raid. Some of
our domestics made a practice of carrying off flour, rice, and
pots o f jam under their skirts. T h e whole morning, our rooms
stank o f burnt milk. Maids-of-all-work came and maids-of-allwork went. Ganna spent innumerable hours at registry-offices.
In the evening after such a visit she would return radiant,
declaring she had discovered a pearl. Tw o days later, the pearl
would turn out to be a rotten pea. At times Ganna was dis
couraged, and I had to comfort her. Now and again, one of
her sisters would come to lend a hand not without malicious

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joy. T h ey took a black view of our future. Ganna may know

a lot about books, but she is completely ignorant of practical
life. Such, plainly enough, were their unspoken thoughts.
The Hermitage. When Gannas labour-pains began, I
bolted. I know I ought to be ashamed of having to make this
confession, but I was driven away by my weariness with domes
ticity. I spent the whole afternoon among the wild beasts at
Schonbrunn. M y flesh was creeping. I had heard Gannas yells.
Th ey were much more violent than those of other women in
labour. Her temperament made her protest savagely against pain.
This was a defensive reaction. W hy should I suffer, I, daughter
o f Professor Mewis, wife of Alexander Herzog? Her protest,
her defensive reaction, was useless. She had to suffer. I suffered
with her, but did not want to be within sight or sound of her
suffering. Men are apt to be cowardly on these occasions, but
something more than this ordinary male cowardice made me
run away; I was sore at heart because it had not been passion
on my side which had led to her present suffering.
W hen I got home, it was to find a dark hairy creature lying
upon white linen. A son, as Ganna had foretold, but not, so far,
showing any resemblance to Narcissus. In a bed which had been
beautifully tidied up, lay Ganna, her auburn locks covered by
a cap with blue ribbons. W ith a happy smile, she stretched out
one of her little hands towards me, and said:
D ont you think hes lovely?
Yes, lovely, I replied, though I fancy I must have looked
rather stupid.
W hen the baby was put to her breast, her eyes filled with
tears, and she seemed to be thinking that never before had a
woman given birth to and suckled a child. W ell, I said to
m yself unsympathetically, we go on doing these things just
as our primitive forefathers did. T o the hairy amphibian we
gave the name of Ferdinand or Ferry for short. As babies go,
he was indeed exceptionally good-looking. In this respect, too,
Ganna had got her way.
More and more often, now, did I ask myself what had made

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me perpetually subject to her will. I am not myself lacking in

will-power; being weak of will only insofar as it is my disposition
to shun any misapplication of energy. When our tenancy of the
dwelling with the yellow room came to an end in the spring,
we moved to a place where the foxes barked goodnight to one
another. It was an inn called The Hermitage, and since then
it has (thanks be) disappeared from the face of the earth. A
gloomy hole it was, far worse than Signor Pancrazios tavern.
It reminded me of the murder-den in the folk-tale, where the
guests were done to death and buried in the cellar. Its one
advantage (decisive for Ganna) was that it was cheap. Also she
had had more than enough of her sisters tutelage, and was
weary of the unceasing trouble with servants. So we would go
to this romantic hovel! Ganna said the time had at length come
for her to give renewed attention to her higher duties. The
resolve seemed to me timely, so I offered no objection. True,
I had no very definite idea what these higher duties were. Still,
I supposed that she herself knew !
I did my work in a gloomy cell with a leaky roof. When the
weather was fine, the racket made by excursionists in the garden
tore my thoughts to tatters; and, at any odd time, Gannas
disputes with the nurse had the same effect. What had been
the use of it all, if I were now to live like a vagrant? A balance
at the bank, I decided, resembled pate de foie gras; to eat it
when fresh is bad form. The nurse I have just mentioned,
Oprcek by name, was crazy. She lulled the child to sleep with
smutty songs; and, when Ganna took her to task, she flatly
denied having done so, pulled her skirts above her knees, and
muttered Tsech maledictions.
I remember a night when I was awakened by my little sons
piercing cries. Ganna, in great excitement, was flapping about
the room and was making infusion of camomile by the light
o f a candle much in need of snuffing. Oprcek was holding a
pillow with the baby on it in her arms, singing the most dis
gusting songs, and dancing a nigger dance. Ganna begged me
to fetch a doctor. It was a long step to the nearest medicos,

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but my wifes anxiety got the better of my sleepiness. I dressed,

and set forth into the dark. While I was footing it to the out
skirts of the city, I wondered what evil concatenation of cir
cumstances had driven me out on such a mission when the wind
was blowing hard and the rain was falling in torrents. I have
never been able to forget that hour.
The Other Side of the Shield. In the autumn, at length,
we settled down. W e rented the top storey of a fine villa on
the edge of the thirteenth district. The place had to be furnished
throughout, and the consequent depletion of the bank balance
was terrific. Ganna had many sleepless nights.
T h e house belonged to an elderly married couple named
Ohnegroll [Lackspite], Never was a name more preposterously
misapplied. The husband was malicious and ill-tempered; the
wife, a Fury. In the garden were flower-beds tenanted by terra
cotta gnomes with conical hats. Every day these statuettes
annoyed me as much as if they had picked my pocket. A garret
served me as study and often as bedroom. It commanded a viewover what had once been a field of grass, where throughout
the day a merry-go-round revolved, to the accompaniment of
a piano-organ. In the evenings, however, the place was perfectly
quiet, and my work went on undisturbed through the winter.
When spring returned the lust for travel took possession of
me. Ganna would not leave the baby, so I arranged matters
with Konrad Fiirst, and we journeyed south. In Ferrara, my
travelling-companions money ran out; I had to finance him,
and by the time we got home he was seven hundred crowns
in my debt. Less than a week after our return, he wrote asking
me to meet him at a cafe and, when I kept the appointment,
he implored me (with tears in his voice) to lend him an additional
thousand. It was a debt of honour ; he had lost the money
at the card-table, and if he did not settle on the morrow he
would have to blow out his brains. I answered coldly that such
rodomontade did not impose on me; still, I was willing to help
him out of his scrape on the understanding that thenceforward
we should be strangers. The breach would cause me no sorrow,

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for I had grown weary of Fiirst, of his frivolous mode of life,

and his aristocratic airs.
Since I was expecting a large remittance from my publisher,
I thought I should be able to make good the deficiency in our
bank balance before Ganna discovered it. The publisher, how
ever, was behind time, and I had to explain matters to my wife.
I was prepared for a fit of temper, but not for such an outburst
of wrath as actually ensued. For a little while, she stared at
me, speechless. Then:
But, Alexander! she stuttered, her lips blue. But Alexander!
she repeated.
She had the aspect of one whose most cherished ideals have
collapsed. She stamped up and down the room; tore the cloth
off the table; thrust chairs out of the way with her knees; clasped
her hands to her temples; and then began to rail at me like a
fishwife. How could I have such a rascal for a friend? A man
who would trade upon the good-nature of one who had a
family to support! She would not sit quiet under such rascality,
but would write the swindler a letter he would not forget in
a hurry, and would not be likely to stick up on the looking-glass
above his mantelpiece! And so on, and so forth.
She had good reason to be angry. She pinched and pared
wherever she could; looked at each crown three or four times
before paying it away; haggled in the market over the price of
vegetables; would not buy herself a new pair of shoes until the
old ones had split in several places. Still, she ought not to have
stormed at me as she did, and the only result was to make me
lose the sense of guilt which had previously afflicted me. Although
she soon calmed down, and came with tears of penitence to beg
my forgiveness, she had planted a sting which remained in my
flesh. She had shown me the other side of the shield. There
was an obverse to her charmingly innocent smile.
A t a Concert. As when threads are floating upon a turbid
fluid and slowly coalesce to form controlled figures, so did
Gannas discontent make her life opaque, her relation to people
and things anomalous. Certain recurrent scenes and clashes

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were typical of this, and have been deeply graven in my memory.

Here is one instance. I have got tickets for the philharmonic
concert, which begins at seven. Three quarters of an hour must
be allowed for the drive to the concert-hall. A t a quarter to six
I remind Ganna that it is time to dress. She is in a long chair
on the veranda, ostensibly reading, but letting her thoughts
wander. The book is about the esoteric significance of the preRaphaelite movement. In the other hand, as usual when reading,
she holds a pencil for making marginal notes.
A ll right, she says, with a start; I ll go directly.
She lays down her book on the leaded veranda where it
remains (to be found next morning drenched with rain), and
hurries off into the bedroom. Ten minutes pass, and another
ten. I, who have been ready some time, in hat and coat, am
watching the clock. A t last I pluck up courage to go and see
what has become of Ganna. I find her in the bathroom, stripped
to the waist, engaged in washing her hair at ten minutes past
s ix ! M y temper gives way. Ganna says:
For G ods sake dont get cross, Alexander, and dont try
to hurry me. I m being as quick as I can.
She is the victim of circumstances! Her best intentions are
frustrated by the malice of chance!
Everyone is against poor Ganna. Even you!
Amid sighs, pantings, and complaints, she is ready at twentyfive to seven. But she must have just a look into the nursery,
take an impassioned farewell of Ferry, for the umteenth time
give needless directions to the nurse, and then we rush off to
the tramway halt.
There we have to wait ten minutes, Ganna with a wounded
air and compressed lips. As soon as she has taken her place in
the tramcar, she discovers she has forgotten to bring her satchel
containing her money and the opera-glasses. Recriminations:
It happened because you would hurry me so. You oughtnt
to treat me like that, seeing all the trouble I take for your com
fort and to please you.
I dislike having this sort of wrangle before strangers. Ganna

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does not mind in the least. It is one o f her sovereign prero

gatives. W hy do I answer her, when I had much better hold
my tongue ? I am desperately sorry for her, but really she tor
ments herself needlessly. I try to appease her, for I feel bad
when she is in a quarrelsome mood. I suppose it is her witchery
that makes me so pliable.
When we reach the hall we have to wait in the corridor till
the next interval. I go on talking to her in the attempt to persuade
her that she is in the wrong this being the surest way of
strengthening her conviction that she is in the right. Still, by
now her anger has degenerated into aimless babble.
When we are admitted, she takes her seat with an air at once
resigned and enthusiastic. Music stimulates her like a glass of
brandy. I have long since realised that she is as unmusical as
a block of wood; that she has no grasp of the structure of a
musical composition, of its general trend, its successive motifs;
that she does not know good music from bad, whether music
has any substance in it or not; that you could palm off on her
the overture to a light opera as a Bruckner symphony, and she
would immediately begin to gush about its nobility and
sincerity but this knowledge does not make me doubt that
she is genuinely and strongly moved by music. I feel Ganna
to be a part of myself. I can no otherwise; did I cease to do so,
it would be all up with me. From time to time, of course, the
sight of her intoxication with what I know to be second-rate
music makes me feel ashamed for her, offends my critical sense;
but then I have only to remind myself with what rapt and helpful
enthusiasm she listens to me hour after hour when I read my
own writings aloud to her, how I sense the leaping in her blood
and the delight in her heart as I do so. By this intoxication I
am gratified; why, then, should I despise it when it is shown
for others creative work? Unless I am to hold that interest in
any one but myself must be fallacious!
Social Intercourse. I had lost touch with most of the
friends and acquaintances of the days before my marriage. In
some instances the relationship had died a natural death; in

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others, my old associates had entered official or business life;

in others, finally, they had dropped into the intellectual under
world. A good many people were inclined to stigmatise me as
a cold-blooded exploiter of my fellows, as one who sucked them
dry and threw them away. Especially prone to say this were
those who had wanted to do as much to me. There lurks in all
of us a cannibal appetite. If you give part of yourself to any
one, he wants the whole; and should you resist being devoured,
the would-be eater says you are disloyal. I was also considered
arrogant. In actual fact, I was, and still am, extremely shy. But
it was true that I could not endure the self-satisfied ignorance
of the philistine about my personality and my doings, the way
in which he regarded me with an overweening tolerance, like
that of a neighbour who surrounds his garden plot with a wall
high and strong enough to resist a bombardment.
Ganna was always preaching to me about the need for being
on ordinary terms with ordinary mortals. She said I must come
out of my ivory tower.
You must mix with your fellows, she insisted. You need
to gather every-day impressions.
I had no objection to mixing with my fellow s; but she meant
the sort of fellows who were at home one evening a month,
who gave crushes and wanted to have persons of note on show.
Her ambition was to see me take my proper place in the
great world, meaning by this the circle of intellectuals, busi
ness folk, and financiers in which her family had moved during
her girlhood. She was proud of being Frau Alexander Herzog,
and wanted to enjoy the advantages of her social station. Every
invitation to a dinner, a dance, or an evening party was an
honourable confirmation of this rank. She had, however, no
critical sense which might have enabled her to understand the
real status of the society in which she mixed with so much
content. When she heard her name whispered as she passed,
she tingled with delight, thrilled to the roots of her hair. If
a barrister or a university instructor kissed her hand, she beamed.
When an official of fairly high standing took her in to dinner,

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she was as excited by the honour as a girl training for the stage
to whom an important role has unexpectedly been assigned.
I was perfectly willing to bestow upon these celebrities the
veneration which Ganna believed to be their due. I knew m yself
to be of no particular account, for I did not suffer from swelled
head. Such intellectual achievements as have been placed to my
credit never made me think too much of myself. I believed that
Ganna knew the ropes; that (to vary the metaphor) she would
find her own level and help me to find mine. I allowed myself
to be drawn into the vortex, and meekly followed her into the
best houses, as she called them seriously, and I (in m y secret
thoughts) with an inevitable tang of sarcasm. It occurred to
me, however, from time to time, that it behoved us to repay
all this hospitality in kind. One could not go on for ever accepting,
and give nothing in return. But Ganna declared that this was
not expected from artists and men of letters. Since her statement
suited my inclination, I believed what she said, thus placing
myself on the same level as the famous tenor who was only
invited because his name appeared so frequently in the news
papers; or at a lower level, since the tenor would occasionally
pay for being invited by singing without fee. Besides, it would
have been difficult for us to give dinner parties, inasmuch as
we kept a very bad table When Ganna gave a family party, as
she did sometimes, I was aware that my relatives-in-law were
often hard put to it not to show disgust at the taste and suspicion
concerning the ingredients o f a dish. Ganna had not the remotest
idea that there was anything wrong with the food served at
home. For her, eating was equivalent to stoking an engine; and
she consumed an underboiled potato with as much relish or
contented lack of relish as she consumed a pineapple.
One evening we went to an at home at Bugattos. This
individual was much courted at the time, being a banker of
note and a power in the financial world. I can recall being
troubled by a good many disagreeable feelings. Ganna, how
ever, was in her element, surrounded by a circle of professors,
doctors, barristers, councillors of one sort and another, industrial

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magnates, and their womenfolk. She was advancing extravagant

opinions, and was defending them with the utmost zeal. T h ey were
highly contentious, were paradoxes for the most part, were not
her original thoughts, but culled from books and periodicals; yet
unquestionably she was making an impression, and was highly
pleased with her success. A very original young woman, her
hearers were obviously thinking. Her success pleased me like
wise, since I knew it would put her in a good humour for days.
When her brilliant qualities had been publicly recognised, she
was much easier to get on with. T h e only thing that dis
gruntled me was that she spoke of my husband far too often.
I dislike this possessive prefix.
Nevertheless I was becoming intolerably bored. I hated having
to sit for an indefinite time listening to vacant chatter, particularly
to Gannas obsequious verborrhoea. It was growing plain to me
that she was making an exhibition of herself. The way she
rattled on, her provincial coquetry, her giddy-patedness, were
an increasing distress to me. Was she too dull-witted to see
that she was putting me to shame; to grasp the ambiguity of
my position; to realise that she was going too far with her parade
of knowledge; to understand how offensive was her adulation
of women because they wore costly jewels and fine dresses, of
men because they had large incomes and used titles before their
names? No, she had absolutely no idea. She went on frothing
like yeast, and rejoicing in her facile triumphs. Tw o or three
times I went up to her, and hinted that it was time to go. W ith
looks, not words, she begged that we should stay on, since she
was enjoying herself so much. When we finally got away, she
asked me, on the return journey:
Alexander, what have I done to annoy you? W hy are you
out of humour? I should have had such a glorious evening, had
it not been for your moodiness. Every one else was charming
to m e.
She did not understand, so what more was there to say? But
she had plenty more to say, and went on arguing about the
matter, until I lost my temper, answered angrily, and thus put

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myself in the wrong. That was what Ganna had been waiting
for, and she vengefully turned the advantage to account.
You systematically make enemies o f people, so it is not to
be wondered at if the sales of your books are unsatisfactory.
A venomous remark, which did not hurt me any less because
it confused too distinct issues. T he wrangle continued after we
got home, lasted so long that at two in the morning the Ohnegrolls, who slept in the room beneath ours, knocked on the
ceiling with a broom-handle. This infuriated Ganna yet more.
She went on berating me, no longer in the mellifluous tones
she had used in Bugattos drawing-room when talking to dig
nitaries and the wealthy, but in the litigious bellow of a termagant
who will use any possible rhetorical device to browbeat an
adversary. T he absurd, the astonishing thing is that I was brow
beaten! When I recall the matter after these many years, I
cannot but think that her elfin ways must explain my weakness,
a blind impulse that dulled my wits.
The Hothouse of the Feelings. I think with horror of the
days when Ferry was out of sorts. If the child had the slightest
rise in temperature, Ganna was almost beside herself. T h e nurse
was severely cross-questioned. Had there been the slightest
error, of omission or commission, whether in diet or other
respects, there was a tremendous row, and she would be given
notice. (When the boys temperature came down, notice would
be withdrawn.) Images of all conceivable diseases from which
a child might suffer, chased one another through Gannas mind,
and these possible dangers drove her crazy. Still, danger can
be avoided if its oncoming is recognised in time and if its causes
are averted. According to Gannas philosophy, human beings
make their own fortune and misfortune, wield over themselves
powers of life and death. One who is guided by skilled medical
advice and acts in accordance with the wisdom of science, cannot
suffer serious mishap. Microbes she regarded as the gravest
among threatening dangers, and she conducted the fight against
them after the manner of a flea-hunt. One would be all right
if one had learned from doctors and bacteriologists the art by

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which they tamed and drilled these mischievous and unruly

creatures. In the case of almost every illness Ganna was able
to tell you how you had got it and who was to blame for you
or others were always to blame. If she had an attack of rheu
matism, she remembered how, weeks ago, when we had gone
to visit Aunt Clara, I had persuaded her not to wear her furlined coat. Ganna kept a close watch upon natures workings.
She believed in doctors as a pious Catholic believes in the
Blessed Sacrament. At the least sign of disorder, she sent for
our family physician, or, more likely, consulted the appro
priate specialist. In her eyes, every qualified practitioner was
a deity. Woe to the deity, however, if he did not effect a speedy
cure. Then she committed blasphemy, and, a typical pagan
savage, ran from the first god to another.
I often protested against this doctor-fetishism, but in vain.
It was the outcome of the excess of her feelings, which were
cultivated in a hothouse, until they flourished so luxuriously as
to overgrow everything. For her feelings were the mirror and
the measure of all things. T o try and stay their course was as
fruitless as to beg a hurricane to blow from another quarter.
I came to dread her lack of moderation. Since my own energy was
directed into another field, it failed me when I wanted to use
it to control her. Often I thought it better to close my eyes
rather than see something I did not want to see. The more
burdensome the reality became to me, the more did I seek relief
in painting a fancy picture of Ganna. She is a daimonic creature,
I said to myself; an elemental. This conception of her took
enduring possession of me. Daimonic, elemental in this
connexion, the words really mean little. They are empty terms,
false coins; attempts to explain the inexplicable by the sup
posititious working of unknown spiritual forces. But at this time,
Ganna was not as yet completely out of gear, and I could have
made her machinery run more smoothly had I been more
watchful and had I been of sterner stuff.
Snapshots of Ganna. Even in those early days, however,
it was extraordinarily difficult to escape being influenced by some

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of her ensnaring characteristics; her droll fits of forgetfulness,

her foolish little blunders, her way of living in a dream. They
still had the charm of youth, and were embellished by her
persistent happiness.
She is lying on the sofa in her bedroom (abominably untidy,
as ever), reading Goethes Italian Journey, underlining freely,
and making marginal notes. In the nursery, the infant is squalling,
my daughter Elisabeth, for there has been an addition to the
family; in the sitting-room, Ferry is banging away on the key
board of the piano; in the passage, the cook and the housemaid
are disputing hammer-and-tongs; on the veranda of the floor
beneath, Frau Ohnegroll is scolding some one in a voice like
that of a barking cur. None of this racket disturbs Ganna. She
does not hear it. Her mind is elsewhere. Then, recalled to
realities for a moment, she catches sight of a rose I gave her
the day before. She smiles, jumps up, and carries the glass
containing the rose to the toilet-table, turning the mirror so
that, when she lies down again, she can see the image as well
as the actual rose. Now she has two roses.
Again, it is M ay. No matter how wet or cold the weather
is, the notion of M ay is inseparably connected in Gannas
mind with the notions of sunshine and blue sky. There
fore, although an icy wind is blowing and there are heavy
showers every few minutes, she sallies forth in a light summer
dress, carrying only a small parasol to protect herself from the
wet. She passes a fruit-stall, and notices the first cherries of
the season. Splendid, she thinks; I ll buy Alexander some
cherries. She gets a pound, in a paper bag. The bag is defective,
has a hole in one of the bottom corners. Since she is alone,
there is no one to hurry or bother her, and she can moon
along enjoying this fabulous M ay weather to her hearts content
while, one after another, her cherries drop out of the bag,
and at regular intervals the pavement behind her is besprinkled
with them. Most of the passers-by grin at her and say nothing,
but at length a kindly woman draws her attention to what is
happening. Horror! Luckily, however, the street has not been

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thronged, so she retraces her steps and picks up the cherries

that have not been squashed flat!
An unpractical, clumsy, touching woman, this Ganna of mine.
A Ganna who must be cherished, must be protected from wounds
and other injuries. If only one were safe from disastrous erup
tions that may explode at any time out of the volcanic
depths.
Don Quixote in Petticoats. As time went on, I got to like
Irmgard better and better. Our conversations, which had been
casual at first, became serious, and were soon carried on during
long walks we took together for, in contrast with Ganna,
Irmgard was a grand walker. She also differed from her sister
in being free from self-conceit, and was grateful to me for taking
pains to give her more joy in life and to strengthen her selfconfidence. Though of strong character, she was both diffident
and cheerless, having had experiences which had damped her
courage. She was pretty in her own peculiar way, reminding
me of the figurines of some of the Egyptian princesses.
As circumstances were, we might have been expected to fall
in love with one another. This did not happen, owing, I suppose,
to a spell cast over both of us by Ganna. Irmgard had oldfashioned and strait-laced notions about conjugal fidelity, and
the thought of a love-affair with her sisters husband would have
been revolting to her. Nor did I venture to overstep the charmed
circle. T o arouse Gannas suspicion would have started a con
flagration. But indeed we were not perfectly sure of ourselves,
and this kept us watchful. When Irmgard spoke of our relations,
she trembled like a child in the dark, and I myself was not in
much better case. We continually assured one another of the
purity of our feelings, and were so restrained that every hand
shake was deliberately cold, as if Ganna had been looking on.
Always when Irmgard and I were together, Ganna was an in
visible third, present in our minds, keeping sentinel lest she
should be robbed of a glance, an aroma, a smile, a thought.
It was perhaps nothing more than feminine curiosity, with
a tinge of jealousy in it, which led Irmgard to ask me, one day,
K

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what attracted me to Ganna. She had given much thought to

the matter, without discovering the explanation. I did not know
how to answer, so I said :
Cant you see that Ganna is the ordering principle in my
life?
Ganna a principle of order? Ganna?
I saw that it would be difficult to make Irmgard understand
what was in m y mind. After a little further reflection, I was
able for the first time to give a name to the image I had formed
o f Ganna.
She is a new type, I said; a feminine Don Quixote.
Irmgard shook her head. She knew Ganna, and the jump
from Coffin-Nail to an idealist woman tilting at windmills
was too wide for her. Hesitatingly she protested that I must
be letting my imagination, the lively imagination of a writer,
construct a picture of a non-existent being.
I dissented.
A few days later, Ganna came to Irmgard, planted herself
squarely in front of her sister, and said, in the tone of a policeman
making an arrest:
I forbid you to flirt with my husband!
Irmgard answered indignantly:
I know Alexander is your husband, but I did not know you
regarded him as your prisoner!
Get a husband for yourself, and leave mine to me, went
on Ganna.
Telling me about the interview afterwards, Irmgard said that
Gannas tone was that of a costermongers wife defending the
barrow when there is a commotion in the street.
Your attempts to make up to him behind my back are posi
tively scandalous, screamed Ganna.
Irmgard laughed, and pointed to the door.
Go home, if you wish to make a scene about scandalous
behaviour, she said. As far as I can understand, you have
come to me to complain about Alexander. I am not his nursery
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Thus Irmgard kept a bold front; but after Ganna had departed
in a rage, she burst into tears.
When she related these incidents to me, she asked, somewhat
acidly:
W hat do you think now of your theory that Ganna is a
feminine Don Quixote? Can you show me the element of
sublimity in the folly of her present attitude?
Y ou must not judge Ganna by particular actions, I rejoined.
You only understand her as a whole, as a person whose character
lacks restraint. Her errors, her passions, her fallacious inferences,
are the outcome o f something grand in her. W hy not call it
splendid folly ? Y our sisters have always made mock of her.
T h e ludicrous in her lies very deep, in the region where she
fights phantoms. For her, everything becomes a phantom: human
beings, the world, you, I, her own self. She has no sense of
reality.
Irmgard looked at me reflectively.
Poor Alexander, she whispered.
W hy do you say Poor Alexander ?
I only meant . . .
Go on.
I only meant that perhaps you are the one who has no sense
of reality!
Real Human Values. I notice that Ganna is extremely
disquieted. She listens, she spies, she looks at me with the
searching glance of the forsaken lover on the stage. She sets
verbal traps, in the hope that I shall betray myself. When these
fail, she tries heavy artillery.
I am the most miserable woman in the world, she exclaims,
tramping to and fro in the room as if she would like to knock
down the walls.
You are seeing ghosts, Ganna. The unhappiness is a figment.
Irmgard is far too conscientious to become involved in the sort
of liaison you are talking about.
Irmgard? She would wade through slaughter to get anything
she wants!

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Ganna, you misjudge her.

What about yourself? Would you play me false?
I havent the remotest inclination to do anything o f the
kind.
She flings herself into my arms.
Honestly? You swear it? You swear that you have not an
intimacy with her?
I burst out laughing. What she says is so crude. I feel as if
she had slapped my face, and laughter is my only possible
defence. She takes my hand in both hers, scrutinises the palm,
and says, as if longing to mitigate the harshness of m y con
demnation :
The line o f the heart is very faint. Have you no heart,
Alexander?
Perhaps not, I rejoin. But what you are talking about
seems to me concerned, rather, with the line of the head.
Is that so? she answers, greatly relieved. I thank God
for it.
She draws the inference that perhaps she ought to enhance
her charms, to make herself more alluring. She therefore buys
a costly bottle o f a fashionable scent, and forthwith empties a
whole teaspoonful of it on herself, never realising that one can
have too much of a good thing.
I am not sufficiently refined, she complains, with an under
tone of pride; I have no talent for playing the part of a
cocotte.
O f course you havent, Ganna, I chime in heartily; but I
seize the opportunity of adding that one need not be a cocotte
to avoid looking like a draggle-tail when one is at home. She
takes the hint, and promptly spends thirty-five crowns on the
purchase of a spurious kimono (Austrian not Japanese), which
makes her look like Sarastro in the Magic Flute. But the slippers
she wears when she sports this gorgeous robe are greasy, and
down at heel; while, since she never fastens up her stockings
unless she is dressed to go out, the upper ends of them hang
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sausage-skins. Sensing my unvoiced disapproval, she says

pettishly:
Oh, I know my stockings are down, for my suspenders need
mending; but that has nothing to do with real human values.
O f course not, and I had said nothing of the sort. But real
human values are not a secret fund upon which one can only
draw in sublime moments; and which in other respects warrant
the wearing of a sham kimono, ragged slippers, and trailing
stockings.
A C r y in the Night. A t this period, matters took the
following course with Ganna. If, in the daytime, we had had
a quarrel or a serious difference of opinion, her bitterness and
dissatisfaction would become intensified during sleep, and would
find vent in an explosion. She would wake up with a yell, not
usually repeated, which rang through the house and aroused all
the inmates. By degrees this cry in the night, from being no
more than startlingly unpleasant, came to overcast my life with
gloom. When it sounded, I woke up with a pang as if a knitting
needle had been driven through my brain from ear to ear. Then
I leaned over her in the darkness, and did my best to soothe
her. (Later, we decided to sleep in separate rooms. Then, if
startled by the cry, I would jump up and hasten to her bedside,
with a cold shiver running down my back. Often I had an angry
suspicion that the hideous yell had been uttered in order to
summon me; not of set purpose; but because she did not wish
to be alone, wished to convince me that I must not forsake her,
and herself that she still played a large part in my life; because
she was jealous of my sleep. But who could fathom her motives ?)
She would tell me the dream which had culminated in the cry.
T h ey were strange dreams as a rule; the dreams of one with
a passion for self-torment, and who was in despair because fate
had cheated her; gloomy and primitive dreams, abstruse like
everything that went on in her mind below the level of waking
consciousness. For instance: she had dreamed of Irmgard, who
stood before her red-haired and with a blood-stained mouth;
blood-stained because Irmgard held Gannas heart in her hand

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and was biting pieces out of it as if it had been a red-cheeked

apple.
The woman I was holding in my arms, the woman I wanted
to console, was for me the mother o f my children, rather than
my wife. Her accumulated sufferings, plaints, and reproaches
poured forth like a cataract. In her febrile eloquence, hundreds
swelled into thousands, what happened yesterday was confused
with incidents o f long ago, fact and half-fact with fancy; and
when I had refuted one accusation, she would revive a charge
I had already dealt with thrice over. It was as uncanny as when,
without knowing or having looked at the pattern of a carpet,
one fingers the confused threads at the back. Her brain was
a reservoir for the turbid waters which had been running into
it for days and were now overflowing. Irmgard, Irmgard, and
again Irmgard. Where had I met her, how long had we been
together, and what had we talked about?
If you betray me, Alexander, I dont know what will happen,
except that I shall certainly kill myself.
Then she would blame me for undermining her authority
over the servants.
But Ganna, you have no authority.
You countermand my orders.
Certainly, when they are contradictory.
Did you not stand by inert yesterday when the governess
was so impudent to m e?
I could not possibly support you. You treated her as if she
were a dog.
This answer enraged her, and she began to rail against me
more furiously than ever. T he turbid flood continued to pour
out of the reservoir; while I, listening as I stared into the dark
ness, felt as if my head were going to burst.
Next came the turn of the budget. I never made my pocketmoney suffice. Our capital was melting away year by year. That
rascal Fiirst had not repaid a farthing of what he owed. Did I
wish to reduce the children to penury? Then, I was so cold,
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Ganna, Ganna, how can you possibly say such a thing as

that I am unloving?
Yes, you are. You break away from me whenever you have
the chance. Accept invitations from your aristocratic acquain
tances, though I am not included in the invitation. Are
you ashamed of me, Alexander? I f you are, please say so
frankly.
Everything seemed spinning round me.
D o settle down to sleep again, dear.
Th at was all I could say.
The Father dies and the Mother goes mad. In the
summer of 1905, Professor Mewis died from a heart attack.
Gannas sorrow was beyond bounds. Hitherto fate had treated
her so leniently that death had almost escaped her notice. W hy
should the sword fall, and so suddenly, upon the consecrated
head of the Mewis family? She began to idolise the deceased;
to collect relics, photographs of him; to fill a notebook with
his sayings. She wove a legend, and had it in mind to write
a biography. T o her sisters annoyance she declared that she
had been his favourite daughter, and sincerely believed her own
assertion.
Anyhow this god of her worship, the man with the heavy
hand, was no more. T h e mere mention of his name, while he
lived, had continued to produce a strong impression on her.
T h e idolatry I have described was her last token of respect for
him. N ow that he was gone, there was no embodied authority
before which she must bow.
Soon after the professors death, his widows mind gave way,
and for several months every year she had to be put under
restraint. Her incipient mania had free outlet now that her
husbands controlling hand was withdrawn. Ganna visited her
mother at the asylum once or twice a week, and always pestered
me to accompany her. Once I complied. W e were shown into
a room with barred windows. T h e madwoman sat in an arm
chair, fiercely tearing a newspaper into tiny pieces. She was
never content unless she was tearing up or destroying: news

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papers, letters, a book, an article o f clothing. Sometimes she

would smear the walls with excrement.
She showed no pleasure at our coming. With gleaming eyes
and raucous voice, she told us that she was being illegally
detained, and that she had written about it to His Majesty the
Emperor. Ganna sprang affectionately to her side, but my own
lips were sealed. Though I had liked the old lady well enough
in her quiet days, I found her repugnant in her present malady.
Sickness of mind does not arouse sympathy like sickness of b o d y;
but, rather, dread and repugnance. It was a terrible thought to
me that the blood of this deranged woman flowed in the veins
o f my children.
Is he always so glib of tongue, this husband of yours? she
said sarcastically to her daughter, or has he become so through
living with you ?
Ganna regarded this as a paean upon me and our marriage!
Next the patient began to talk in extravagant terms about
the merits of my last book, and to declare that all the inmates
o f the asylum had read it with great enthusiasm. I could listen
no longer.
Let us go, Ganna, I urged. When we reached the door,
I said a brusque goodbye, and bolted.
Conflicting Tempos. A conflict of tempos affected our
nerves, our moods, our very embraces. It showed itself, of
course, most plainly in our gait.
Come for a walk with me, says Ganna. Never mind if
youve made another appointment. Come with me.
I comply, but the enterprise, begun so gladly, ends in wrangling
and discontent. She has no capacity for active exercise, though
she will not acknowledge the fact, and reproaches me for deli
berately tiring her out in order to prove her incompetence. I
ignore this horrible accusation; I cannot answer all her charges;
the attempt to reason with Gann^ would drive me crazy. It
would be charming to have a country walk with her, but the
pleasure in the prospect evaporates during the preliminaries.
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impedimenta; she lugs along with her all kinds o f things she
considers indispensable a book; a thick cloak; a rug, in case
we want to lie down; an umbrella, though there is not a cloud
in the sky; a big hand-bag containing food, notebook, facecream; a straw hat hanging by its chin-band over her arm. O f
course she cannot carry all this herself, so I must take my share
o f the load. I want to walk for exercise, she wants to revel in
the expedition. Enthusiastic comment on the landscape bores,
m e; she dilates upon the beauties of every hill within sight. In
her ecstasy she links her arm in mine; but since this forces
me to keep step with her and to mind my paces as if I were
an invalid, I impatiently unhitch and press on ahead. (I am a
quick walker as I am a quick breather, a quick eater, a quick
liver. How, then, can we keep pace? There is organic incom
patibility.)
This leads to recriminations.
Surely a woman who has borne you two children and has
suckled each of them for eight months, needs some consideration ?
Her husband should not bustle her about so heartlessly as you
bustle me.
It is true that I am inconsiderate, that I behave in a way
which brings her bodily weakness home to her; that I lack
chivalry. But I wish she had left out that bit about bearing chil
dren. In her view, to bear children and to nurse them at the
breast are what for a military commander the winning of battles
is praiseworthy deeds for which she must be honoured with
the crown of the Mater Dolorosa. She talks as if children were
only begotten through some uncanny malice on the part of the
male; and as if the woman who brings them into the world,,
an innocent victim, were entitled to levy tribute on him for the
rest of her life because of his despicable breach of trust. As soon
as Ganna has erected such an argumentative bastion as this, she
continues her advance at the storming-pace. She questions
heaven.
W hy should it be my lot, of all people in the world, to have
a ruthless egoist as my life-companion; I who (God be my
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witness) am so absurdly moderate in my demands that I have

long since ceased to expect anything for myself; I who am left
in solitude at home day after day, while he seeks distraction
elsewhere?
It may be true, Ganna, it may all be true, what you are
saying, but do stop railing at me. Cant you see how you are
making every one stare at us? Do stop!
But she does not stop, neither on the way home, nor at supper.
There is an unceasing douche of complaints, which I receive
in silence, unless my temper gets the better of me and I lash
out in reply. I cannot always control myself; but, above all,
I cannot control Ganna. W e feel differently; we look at things
differently; there is a perpetual conflict between our respective
tempos. When such a foolish dispute has raged for hours, my
only resource is, at long last, to sit down at the piano, open
a sheet of music, and, with clumsy, untrained fingers, murdering
the composition, begin to hammer out one of Chopins Preludes
or one o f the pieces in Schumanns Carnival.
Instantly Ganna is transformed. Leaning back rapturously
in an armchair she listens with the widely opened eyes of a
child at prayer. W hat has induced me to try to charm her with
my prentice hand at the keyboard? Perhaps I do it because
thus only can our conflict of tempos be resolved into an un
rhythmical chaos; because I know that she will then ask my
forgiveness, will kneel beside me and caress me. T h e difference
between us is still there, but she can forget it in a moment as
only angels or devils can forget. I cannot forget. Alas, I can
never forget, and my mood grows gloomier and gloomier as
the months pass.
The Mystical Tie. During the period when Irmgard had
become engaged to a man named Leitner, a mining engineer,
I made the following entry in my journal:
For Irmgard I was only a resting-place, a peg on which she
could temporarily hang her longing. Since she gave me up, it
has been as if she had given herself up, as if she had withered
and faded. Not even a god can help those who abandon them

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selves. Only a winged soul keeps young. For such a soul, love
is innate. It does not need to receive love, but gives forth love
from its surplus store; its trouble is not lack, but superabundance.
A gain :
There is a sorrow so intense that one longs to stretch oneself
at full length on the ground and weep; so intense that when
one speaks, it is with a wounded tongue; so intense that the
air weighs on ones shoulders like an alp. Y et things have but
taken their natural course. It is lovely when two human beings
walk freely side by side, and belong to one another in imagination.
Then there is a bitter-sweet flavour even in the pain of loss,
and what has slipped away indefinitely and without perturba
tions has been midway between passion and a brotherly-sisterly
affection; has not even been shattered, for it remains enshrined
as a golden memory. Night after night, I have anxiety dreams!
Yesterday evening in the park, when we bade farewell to one
another, speaking freely for what was to be the last time, and
when she was standing before me pale and motionless, a shootingstar flashed across the sky.
Traude having married a Berlinese manufacturer called
Heckenast, Irmgard felt uneasy and lonely in the nest. It was
natural, therefore, that she should listen favourably to Leitners
wooing, for the man was a good fellow, and intelligent. M y
own feeling for her was as strong as ever, although at this time
I had begun to enter into close relationships with other women.
Irmgards image was very dear to me. I was extremely depen
dent on women. When I lacked the experience o f erotic intoxi
cation, the bewitching entanglement o f the senses, I felt only
half alive. Irmgard knew this well enough, and had never made
any claim upon me. On the evening mentioned in the last extract
from my diary, after a long silence I grasped her hand and kissed
it fervently. She drew back in alarm. Then she asked, almost
as if talking to herself:
How do things really stand between you and Ganna?
No change. There can be no change.
Have you never thought of a separation?

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I shook my head, saying:

No, never. That would be almost a life-or-death matter.
But you are unfaithful to her, and yet you cohabit with her,
she said, with a touch of contempt. You have had a second
child by her. What can you be thinking about?
Oh, I admit the justice o f your criticism, I answered sadly;
but my marriage, my relationship to Ganna, lies above the level
o f discussion. T h e children apart, there is something that makes
separation impossible. . . . I cant explain it. You must accept
it as a fact.
Then you are only playing with those others?
Nonsense, Irmgard. You know well enough that I dont play
with anybody. W hat youve got to understand is that there is
a mystical tie between myself and Ganna.
Is that so? rejoined Irmgard dubiously. She did not believe
me, but she had neither the energy nor the wish to undermine
my faith in the mystical tie. Y et she was mistaken in her
scepticism. T h e mystical tie was real enough, compounded of
a sense o f guilt and o f a fear of ghosts. It was also permeated
b y a sense of overshadowing doom, for I believe myself to be
one of those who, half consciously, half unconsciously, carry
their destiny about with them as part of the living substance
o f their present selves.
Gannas Tolerance. If I remember aright, the end of
sexual intimacy between Ganna and myself began when we
left the Ohnegrolls. T he flat had become too small for us, so
we rented part of a house on the northern outskirts of the city
among vineyards at the foot of the Kahlenberg. A t first only
half of the storey we wanted was free. W e moved in November,
and until M ay I had to take refuge with my work in an attic,
once more. T his did not trouble me. I slept under the roof
as if I had been in a world of my own. T h e ceiling was so low
that I could touch it with upstretched hand. When I had bolted
the iron door behind me, I was completely alone with my
imaginative constructions. T h e descent six months later to the
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though even then I had a room well away from the rest of them.
There was an increasing lack of repose about Ganna. She was
at war with every one. She quarrelled even with the in-dwelling
owners of the place: because the day assigned for the use of
the laundry did not suit her; because the main door was closed
too early; because they had scolded her cook; because there
was gossip about us among the neighbours; or what not. Always
there was a grievance. Perpetually I had to mediate, compose
differences, apologise. On fine evenings, the guests in the vine
yard taverns made a damnable row. W hat could I do but flee
from the house when its atmosphere became intolerable ?
As soon as Ganna came to realise that I was unfaithful to
her, it was a great distress to her. Still, I have never learned
what was really going on within her at this period. I often found
her in tears; sometimes she flashed out at m e; now and again
it seemed to me that she had accepted the situation, and had
decided to tolerate my lapses, much as so many working-class
women put up with a husbands spending his evenings in a
pothouse. Since, for her sake, I was as discreet as possible in
my amours, she could console herself with the fact that she did
not know the woman in the case. Anyhow it was only a mis
tress. She herself remained the lawful wife. No casual loveaffairs o f mine should shake her dominant position in this respect.
She also cherished the delusion that, in a sense, she retained
the supervision of m y liaisons. Whenever a new woman entered
m y life, began to engross m y thoughts and affections, Gannas
first endeavour was to find out how dangerous this rival might
be, to what extent the invader challenged the wifes rights of
possession. Her general behaviour was guided in accordance with
the principles o f a sovereign domestic policy. A man such as
I, she said (and it was often repeated to me), would be spiritually
impoverished if he lacked a succession of fresh experiences. It
was essential to the fostering of my creative imagination that
I should not be allowed to stagnate in the fam ily; and I toiled
so incessantly that I needed occasional distraction. The upshot
was (had I clearly understood, though I closed my eyes to a

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clear understanding o f this matter) that she aimed at a sort of

literary investment o f my amorous experiences, which were
regarded in the light o f capital. W hat was expended in passion,
time, and money (travelling and presents, for instance), was to
produce interest in the form of imaginative creations. Every stir
o f my emotions, every impetus, could be transformed into the
materials for a book; the book would be printed and paid for;
if the sales were good, there would be a rich return on the outlay.
Such was Gannas insight. One must have insight, she said;
but she begged me, for her sake, not to give too much of myself
-as if her book-keeping balance would be unfavourably affected
by erotic extravagance on my part. These women are vampires,
and would like to suck the blood out of your body, she said
warningly; and, to convince me that such vampire-women had
practised their blood-sucking ways in all ages, she read me suit
able extracts from Gorres Christliche Mystik.
Let any one who is disposed to smile at this, bear in mind
that it happened over a smouldering abyss, in which there
was hidden a very different Ganna, gloomy as the Fates.
Claudia Frohmann. Whether Gannas attitude was one of
angry submission to the inevitable or one of a complaisantly
simulated blindness, depended a good deal upon the characteristics
and behaviour of my lady-friend o f the moment. Thus she took
quite a fancy to a handsome Belgian woman named Yvonne
who, in rare visits to our house, treated her with the utmost
consideration. A remark of Yvonnes had come to Gannas ears
and had charmed my wife, probably because she did not under
stand its esoteric meaning. I should never try to estrange
Alexander Herzog from his wife, for that would sow the seeds
o f irreparable disaster. Yvonne could not have known that her
utterance was prophetic. She admitted to me, once, that Ganna
was the most disquieting person she had ever encountered.
Occasionally she would wrench herself out of my arms as if
Gannas little hand had seized her by the throat. When I pro
posed to travel with her, anywhere she liked and for as long as
she liked, she quaked with fear, and pantingly replied:

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For G ods sake, no. Y ou must not leave her. Even if you
came away with me, I should always feel that you were with
her.
As far as Yvonne was concerned, Ganna had no uneasiness.
M y sister-in-law Justine informed me one day that Ganna had
said to her with a furtive smile: Just fancy; he has an intimacy
now with a Belgian countess! Even Justine, who was rather
dull-witted, found this snobbishness unpleasing. For m y part,
I was saddened and revolted by it. Y et there was no remedy.
I was content to avoid scenes, which embittered my life with
Ganna.
Such scenes, however, were intolerably frequent during my
liaison with Claudia Frohmann, a woman of exceptional charm,
though by no means beautiful; so agreeable, so witty, so sensitive
and yet so bright and cheerful, that I fell over head and ears
in love with her at first sight. It was a love of the nerves and
the skin, but more stimulating to me than any of my previous
amours, for she was full of surprises, of mysteries which chal
lenged m y self-control. But Ganna would allow me no veils to
conceal my nakedness from her piercing gaze. As soon as she
was on the track o f one o f my lapses, she would not rest
content without a full confession. It was only on such terms
that I could purchase her tolerance. Her reward was that she
must be in the know, lest some outsider should be able to tell
tales her ignorance o f which would make her feel like a fool.
From the outset she had an ineradicable mistrust of Claudia,
this being determined, partly by her sensing the young womans
instinctive dislike o f herself, partly because she recognised the
intensity of the fascination Claudia exerted over me, and partly
because even she could not escape the lure of Claudias modernity
and refinement. Still, she had contented herself with the know
ledge that she herself was the stronger, that she herself held
the trump-cards. W hat mortified her beyond endurance (as I
can very well understand) was that the Frohmanns, who were
popular and o f good standing, boycotted her socially. D ay after
day, I went to their hospitable house a house from which she

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was excluded. There seemed to be a collective animus against

her, and I found this extremely distressing. For once in a way
I could see Ganna objectively, as she appeared to strangers, as
a neutral figure. And this figure had to me the look o f a cari
cature. M y own position was extremely awkward. Although the
Frohmanns never said to me in so many words W e really
cannot endure Frau H erzog, their feeling was plain enough.
I ought to have sheltered Ganna, to have shunned their com
pany. I did not do so, and thus I betrayed her. When I reproached
Claudia, she shrugged her shoulders, and then went on to explain
that she had once been present, at a hall in a working-class
quarter, where I was to tell the children some fairy-tales. Ganna,
who had come to listen, bringing with her the eight-year-old
Ferry, pushed the little lad in front of her as she elbowed her
way through the crowd, saying in tones loud enough for every
one to hear: Go to the front row. Its your right, since Daddy
is lecturing. Then she had turned to one of the ladies on the
committee and demanded a glass o f milk for my husband ;
my husband always needs it when he is lecturing, to keep up
his strength. By the time the milk had been procured, I was
already on the platform. Ganna seized the glass and handed
it up to me with the devoted air of a slave-girl. Ever since,
declared Claudia, she had had goose-flesh on hearing the name
o f Ganna Herzog.
I remembered the incident well, and I tingled with shame
when Claudia referred to it. All the same, I defended Ganna,
saying that those who did not know her intimately were prone
to misunderstand her. She was unworldly; but was a most
affectionate mother, and profoundly devoted to myself. Claudia
remained silent, and I saw that she could not forgive me for
having such a wife as Ganna. T he two women were chemically,
temperamentally, incompatible. Once, when her defences were
down, Claudia told me that she might have been less ready to
yield to my love-making had she not been so sorry for me
because I was unequally yoked with Ganna. At that time I
could not understand her words. People dont know the real

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Ganna, was my thought. As if I m yself had known the real

G anna!
I could not take it amiss that Ganna should speak ill of Claudia
and of the Frohmanns in general. For her, they were a hostile
clique. It was at about this date that she began to make frequent
use of the word clique, which for her denoted a set of people
who were a thoroughly bad lo t; cold-hearted, envious, calumnious,
and making it their chief aim in life to injure the poor lamb,
Ganna. By degrees she became so much incensed against Claudia,
that I began to be afraid of what she might do in a tantrum
to tarnish the girls reputation, and perhaps (in view of Claudias
extreme sensitiveness of disposition) to wreck her detested rivals
peace of mind. I would spend hour after hour of the night,
fruitlessly endeavouring to mitigate Gannas detestation for
Claudia. Unfortunately in the end a clash occurred through
which Claudia was lost to me for ever.
One July afternoon I had persuaded my beloved to come to
my study, where I wished to read aloud something I had written.
Ganna and the children were out for the day, and I was sure
we should be undisturbed. However, when Claudia came, there
was no question of the reading. The weather was frightfully
hot. She had a bad headache. She took down her hair, and
crouched apathetically in a corner of the study; I sat in front
of her, holding her hand, and talking in low tones. She was
subject to fits of depression; of which I could sometimes rid
her in this way.
T h e door opened, and Ganna stood upon the threshold,
Claudias face turned as whi,te as a sheet. Literally, I think,
her heart stopped beating for a few seconds. I sprang to my
feet, and stared at Ganna. In her flashing eyes I could read
fierce triumph: So I have caught you at last! There had been
no misconduct. There was nothing to justify suspicion, unless
it was that Claudia had taken her hair down. That speaks
volumes, said Ganna next day. Anyhow, for Ganna the situation
was plain enough. She had caught us red-handed. Still, she
did not venture to raise a clamour. M y expression was unpro-

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pitious. Turning on her heel, she went out, slamming the door
behind her so violently that some o f the books in the shelves
fell down. Claudia, still deadly pale, whispered, You shouldnt
have exposed me to this ; put up her hair as quickly as she
could; gathered her belongings; and went out through the other
door to the ante-room and the staircase.
I sat there with one thought in my mind: Its all over now !
A t nightfall, Ganna came in, very quietly. Not a word of reproach
did she utter. She sat down behind me, and stroked my hair
gently with her slender little hands. What was passing through
her mind? Was she delighted at having put Claudia to rout,
and at being alone with me once more? Obviously, she had
nothing to fear if all these love-episodes ended in her being
left alone with me, mistress of the field. She would see to it
that after every amorous campaign I should come back to her
repentant; injured or uninjured; but preferably injured, for then
she could nurse me back to health. She was the lawful wife, who
could declare with radiant happiness: The woman is not yet
bom that can take him away from me; and if one should ever
be born, then woe unto her!
The Moral Postulate. If friends who read this shake their
heads in surprise and disapproval, let me assure them that I
fully understand their sentiments. I can hear them asking: How
could you behave like that? Had you no eyes for the dangers
that were threatening? Was it compatible with your sense of
loyalty and decency thus to bring increasing mental distress upon
your wife and to undermine her sense of security ? For, that you
distressed her cannot be doubted, although, with her incurable
optimism, she might be able to feign indifference even in her
secret self-communings. Your relationship with her was falsified,
your existence was rotten to the core. How could you go on
leading such a life?
But those who should arraign me in such terms would be
confounding the picture I am drawing here with my vision of
m y life at the time it was being lived. How hard do I find it to
ignore, more or less, the experiences of the subsequent twenty

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years, so as to revive the outlooks of those days. Fate often

deals with us like the author of a detective novel. Piece by piece,
step by step, there is disclosed something which in its entirety
remains hidden until the final revelations; and the astonishment
we then feel arises only because our insight and our judgment
have been tricked.
I had invincible faith in Ganna. Although my liaisons with
other women became more and more frequent, and I could
never resist the lure of the senses, I remained attached to her
in a way which was enigmatic even to myself; and the tie that
bound us, which on her side worked like an elemental force,
was an iron law that determined my behaviour. Impossible to
work against it; impossible any attempt to sever it. Relations
with other women could never be more than temporary aber
rations. I assured her of this often enough, thus confirming her
feeling of security, and making her unruly. But however boldly
she overstepped the bounds (and she did so more boldly as year
followed year), nothing shook my confidence in her, nothing
reduced my admiration for her merits, my faith in her intel
lectual and spiritual comradeship above all since I often failed
to notice such infringements or to understand their nature.
For instance, without my knowledge or consent, she published
in a German weekly a lengthy article on me and my writings
an intelligent and readable essay, though too richly inter
spersed with the aesthetic flourishes of the period. Some of my
friends were critical, not of the contents, but of an authors wife
venturing to assume the role of his interpreter. I demurred,
saying that the article was brilliantly penned (here I exaggerated),
and asking what was there to hinder a wife from taking an
objective and dignified view of her husbands literary activities.
I will not pretend that I was satisfied as to the soundness of
my arguments, but I could not leave Ganna in the lurch.
Still more surprised were my intimates when my book The
Seven Dances of Death, at which I had been working for four
years, was published with a dedication to Ganna a dedication
which acknowledged her helpful understanding besides expres

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sing my affection for her as wife and companion. This testimony

was absolutely sincere. I have never written a line in which
I was false to my true self, have never been able to touch up
a feeling. The dedication was a free g ift; and yet such ostensibly
free gifts are sometimes mysteriously extorted, if only by the
dumb expectation of, the unexpressed demand for, a return in
kind. Besides, the real Ganna and the Ganna of my imagination
were totally different beings. They were fused now and again
by gratitude, or by what I regarded as such, though it was an
obscure sentiment of duty mingled with a sense of guilt. For
I was persistently tormented by this sense of guilt. It seems
inconceivable that I should have felt guilty, since, if I had done
any wrong, if I owed any gratitude, I had atoned and had dis
charged my debt day after day and year after year with my
whole personality. It was as if one who has long since been
tried and discharged as not guilty should (as sometimes happens)
continue to pester the public prosecutor with proofs of his
innocence. M y guilt complex made me sanctify marriage with
moral postulates with which I made no attempt to comply; it
made me idealise Ganna preposterously, and write her the most
affectionate letters when (as frequently happened) I was away
from home. In the realm of poesy, I fabled a supramundane
tie between us, while failing to see that the actual man Alexander
Herzog no longer had any firm ground to stand on. I elevated
Ganna into a principle, an idea; she and the children were one,
were three hearts that beat in tune with mine and to whose
service I must devote my life. Ganna knew this and built upon
it. The foundation seemed to her strong enough for anything.
Exhaustion of the Capital. O f the handsome dowry,
scarcely a tenth remained, and money troubles made Ganna
sleepless. Like the last pieces of wood thrown upon a dying
fire, the depleted bank balance threw a flickering light upon
a frivolous mode of life, an unwarrantable confidence in princely
revenues, in a word, upon a thriftless domestic economy. No
doubt I made a considerable income by my writings, but not

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enough to cover our expenses. M y expectations from this source

were always greatly in excess of the results. There was no
prospect of that reconstitution of the dowry the thought of
which had been Gannas consolation when we first broke in
upon the capital.
A careworn accountant, therefore, she spent her days bending
with furrowed brows over the huge housekeeping book, adding
up column after column of refractory figures. In addition to
the large sums that had to be paid out for rent, wages, travelling,
insurance, food, and clothing, there were innumerable minor
disbursements for soap, string, tram-fares, charity, postage,
cobbling every farthing was scrupulously entered.
Ganna, youre giving yourself a lot of trouble for nothing.
W hy on earth dont you simply put aside a lump sum every
week for petty cash?
She would not do it. Ganna had no faculty for taking a general
view, could not see the wood for the trees, and covered up her
incapacity by undue attention to detail. She had to burden her
head with a thousand trifles, and if this led to confusion it was
pardonable in a woman who always took a volume of Nietzsche
or Novalis to bed with her, and dreaded lest the trivial round
might paralyse her faculty for sublime flights. Unfortunately,
as an outcome of these worries, she often forgot what was due
to me and to her own self-respect. She berated me as if I were
a servant whenever I spent money in a way she considered
extravagant. Well, the financial outlook was indeed threatening;
the wolf was already at the door. I had a very dear friend in
Berlin, a man with great talent, but in dire poverty. I gave him
pecuniary help from time to time; trifling sums. Ganna was
outraged by my doing this. I ought to leave such luxuries
to richer persons, who could afford them. She quoted proverbs:
Charity begins at home ; and Dear is my shirt, but dearer
is my skin. I ought to think of my family first. W ith the seven
teen hundred crowns which that rascally friend of yours, Fiirst,
still owes, she could have taken the children to the seaside for
the summer, and they urgently need change of air.

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It seems to me that the need is not so urgent as you make

out. As far as I can see, the children are in splendid health.
Have you forgotten, replied Ganna angrily, how D r. Blau
said that Elisabeth had a tendency to bronchitis?
Dr. Blau? M y dear Ganna, for the sum you waste on doctors
fees, you could not only go to Biarritz, but could buy yourself
half a dozen Paris frocks instead of always wearing arty dresses
of your own designing, which make you look like a frump.
You dare to reproach me for dressing simply? You think
that when we are so near ruin I ought to wear Paris frocks ? That
I shouldnt send for a doctor when the children are ill? O f
course I know you could see them suffer and never turn a
hair!
What could I answer? That I should not be so ready as she
was to send for Dr. Blau or D r. Roth, because I had more faith
in the healing force of nature than in medical prescriptions?
Useless to talk in that way to Ganna, to whom fact and expe
rience were of no moment, whose actions were guided by un
reasoning impulses which produced short-circuits in her mind
and threw the whole illuminating apparatus out of gear.
When she brings me the housekeeping book, holding it out
to me solemnly as if it were the Tables of the Law, or when
she delivers a crushing record of my economic sins, I am no
longer a creative spirit, no longer a Pericles with his Aspasia.
I have become for her the conscienceless devourer of her dowry,
o f the sacrosanct capital which Mewis, the father of the tribe,
had provided for her and her children as a lifelong usufruct.
With passionate loquacity she boasts of saving at least a hundred
crowns a month by the discovery of a cheaper source for the
supply of fruit and vegetables, and fails to see that thrice as
much as this alleged saving is squandered through the incapacity
and disobedience of her domestics. But I dare not hint at this,
for I should only fan the flames of her wrath. I am in a blind
alley. Often and often I think: Oh, Ganna, what am I to do
that your mind may be at rest once more, and your intelligence
clear? There was no hope of such a recovery, and if there

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had been it would have been dashed by subsequent events.

Ganna was now thirty-two. Few persons are modifiable after
this age, and she was less so than most by dispositions and
inheritance.
A Field looms on the Horizon. At that time it was the
custom for women of the cultured middle class to parade a
monkeyish affection for their children. There was much solemn
discussion about the advantages of hardening young folk
instead of coddling them, about nursery hygiene, about
educational methods at lectures and debates as well as in
private. One might have hoped that the offspring of these wellto-do ladies, whose means enabled them to put their fads into
practice, would have developed into a generation of new types,
morally and physically competent to bring a better human race
into being. It cannot be said, however, that there are as yet any
signs of such a hopeful dawn.
Ganna had refused to send the children to school. Th ey were
to have private tuition, always a costly affair. She considered,
however, that every schoolroom was a focus of infection; and,
over and above this, she was fiercely opposed to the prevailing
methods of instruction. Teaching must always be individual,
never collective; the peculiarities of each child must be taken
into account; a harmonious development of the personality could
not otherwise be achieved. A ll very fine, but where were the
institutions in which these theories could be applied ? For me,
the new educationists were suspect. Their idolisation of the child
of those days has been responsible for the unruliness of the
present grown-ups.
I told Ganna she must bear in mind that one of the main
objects of education must be to produce a community-sense in
children; that if they were unduly protected from the need for
sacrifice and subordination, were invariably sheltered from the
harshnesses and jolts of life, they would become unsocial egoists;
and a day of reckoning would arrive when they would be at a
grievous disadvantage, a prey to shame and vengeance, as com
pared with the millions who had been exposed to hard knocks.

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I might as well have talked to the wind. T o Ganna and such

as she, the world must seem inalterable, since they have no
faculty for internal transformation. She let her fancy riot con
cerning the tyranny of schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, whose
aim, she said, was, not to instil knowledge and promote culture,
but to act as censors and as the watchdogs of conventional
morality. Were not the papers full o f accounts of child-suicides ?
She would not have Ferry and Elisabeth put into strait-waistcoats.
Your schools are penitentiaries, she shouted, with the
fanaticism of a revivalist preacher. I would rather be hanged,
drawn, and quartered, than condemn my children to a life in
such institutions. M y children! Oh Ganna, Ganna! M y
house, m y husband, m y children. For you this unhappy
pronoun was the alpha and omega of life.
What did she intend to do? Ferry was nearly ten, and some
thing must be decided on his behalf. He could no longer be
kept from association with lads of his own age as if he were
a prince of the blood. What about Elisabeth? The children had
been brought up in a hothouse, but it was time to break the
glass walls and give them a breath of fresh air. T o my way of
thinking, I was fighting Ganna in secret for the childrens souls.
T h e issue was decided, not by love or the will to love, but by
what I term a persons atmosphere. No one had yet been
able to discover how the fathers blood and the mothers mingle
to form the childrens heritage and fashion their destiny; it was
still uncertain whether father and mother contributed more
than arrogant pretensions. For all we then knew, heredity might
be a myth, but the influence of environment was indisputable.
Gannas coddling of Ferry and Elisabeth was a danger to them.
But was I myself so far from coddling them as to have any
right to pass judgment upon Ganna ? I had a soft way of saying
to myself, You cant be too loving as if the love one bestows
were a panacea to render the recipient immune to unhappiness
and suffering; as if experience had not taught me that when,
in a frost we take off a warm overcoat, we feel the cold more
than if we had not been wearing it.

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One fine day, Ganna was moving along through the streets
of our suburb when she happened upon a fenced field where
the grass was growing heavenward and waving in the breeze
like a green flag. A thought flashed into her mind: This is
where the children must have their school. A pregnant hour!
Instantly there rose before her minds eye what might be done
with the place: well-built frame-houses, open sheds for the
classes, adequately ventilated dormitories for the boarders, an
assembly room, a lawn-tennis ground, a gymnasium. W hy should
she not have such a place built according to her designs ? It was
only a question of funds.
Within a few minutes, as she stood rooted to the spot, and
looked affectionately at her discovery, the following considera
tions passed through her mind. What do moneyed people exist
for, except to provide money? Those who supplied what was
needed would have a share in the profits, and the capital could
be repaid if the undertaking were successful. Found a jointstock company; establish a school community. A splendid field
like this was a fine property in itself, but perhaps it was going
cheap. Within a few years, the site would have increased so
much in value that the increment would defray the prime cost
o f the scheme, in the very unlikely event of its not being a
paying educational proposition. But pupils would flock hither
from Austria and Germany, if propaganda were carried out on
the grand scale. Alexanders literary connexions would secure
publicity. The venture would be a gold-mine. She would keep
the field as her own property. What would the price be? Sixty,
perhaps seventy thousand. T h e district was developing, and in
a few years the site would be worth half a million. This would
secure for me an independent life, and free me from pecuniary
cares in my old age. Meanwhile the children at this open-air
school would have a heavenly time of it.
Ganna saw no difficulties. She did not remember stories she
must have read in childhood, that of Alnaschar, The Barbers
Fifth Brother, in the Arabian Nights Entertainments, and L a
Fontaines fable of Pierrette et le Pot-au-Lait^

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It is a psychological enigma that persons of Gannas tem

perament may be favoured by fortune for a long time, until
the tension between dream and reality leads to catastrophe. On
a closer view, however, we see that their foundations are weakened
from the start by the cleavage in their motives. T h ey try to
insure themselves against failure and to drown the warning
voices o f intelligence and conscience by buttressing their imme
diate purpose with a remoter one which seems to them un
selfish. Thus, however, instead of (as they think) multiplying
the sources o f energy, they dissipate their forces; and, while
hoping to keep paths of escape open, they barricade these. That
is what happened to poor Ganna when, with her usual im
petuosity, she set out, not only to conjure up from the ground
an educational paradise for her own children; but simultaneously,
b y means of a grandiose speculation, to secure her beloved
husband against the shafts o f fate. The combination of the two
schemes frustrated both, transformed both into illusion.
Foundation of the School and what it involved. L et
us follow her next steps in the matter. T h ey were both bold
and practical. She learned that the field belonged to a Frau
Nussberger, widow o f a vinegrower. She called on the old lady
in due form, was told that the field was in the market, and that
the price was a hundred and twenty thousand. Ganna posed
as the representative o f a group, and began to bargain. She had
the impression that the owner would be stiff about the price,
but there was a mortgage o f forty thousand which could be left
unredeemed, and this reduced the amount of cash needed to
eighty thousand. T h e same day she went to see her friend D r.
Pauli, who liked and respected her. He was one of the leading
barristers in Vienna, and a man of influence. She expounded
her scheme, in which he was greatly interested, and he promised
to help. How was the field to be had? Here Ganna was already
informed. Frau Nussberger wanted hard cash. Further nego
tiations showed, however, that a comparatively small amount
o f ready money would suffice, if adequate security were given
for the payment of the balance. Ganna devoted all her powers

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of persuasion to reducing the amount of spot cash. Relatives

were called in, daughters, grand-sons, sons-in-law, the whole
Nussberger clan, all expecting to make their bit out o f the deal.
Interminable discussions. She succeeded in reducing the sum
immediately required to two thousand crowns a remarkable
achievement. But where were the two thousand to be had? It
was out o f the question to take them from our own bank balance,
which was our last stand-by. Some person o f means must be
found who would be sufficiently interested in the great scheme
to take the risk and supply what was needed. D r. Pauli had
persuaded some of his friends to participate in the founding
of the school community, and one of them was willing to
advance the deposit. Gannas masterstroke was that she per
suaded the interested parties to allow her to have the title-deeds
to the field made out in her name instead of in that of the school
community. She once tried to explain to me how she had
managed this, but I have no talent for such matters, and the
explanation was too complicated for me to understand. M y chief
wonder was that she showed such a head for business, and I
could only think that the gift had been inborn.
Now progress was rapid. T h e number of participators, all
persons of means, increased day by day. I was amazed to find
how many parents there were who wanted to save their children
from the disagreeable strictness of the ordinary school education,
and who had a lot to say about liberty, a minimum programme,
and modern principles. T h ey were manifestly well informed
concerning the snares that beset our path through life, and
jum ped at the chance of securing (by paying an appropriate
premium) a privileged educational position for children whom
teachers of the old school would have stigmatised as slothful.
Even greater was my astonishment at Gannas indefatigable
zeal and her seeming efficiency. Adjoining the field was a country
house with a spacious garden. From the first, Ganna had noticed
this with the keenly observant eyes o f a military commander.
It was to let. She rented it, intending to buy it later. Thus
with house and field her preliminary requirements for a boarding

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school were already satisfied. Exciting negotiations went on,

mostly at our flat. In retrospect I seem to myself to have been
like a man who has got mixed up in a street row, and is eager
to find out what was the origin o f the dispute. Gannas reports
became more and more confusing. She had no time for tranquil
conversation. Early in the morning she rushed off into town,
to return late in the afternoon, tired, breathless, and famished.
Then she had a lot of writing to do. Dozens o f letters every
d ay; prospectuses which must be sent to the printer; newspaper
articles; pedagogical essays; pronunciamentos in the name of
the school community; requests to the Board of Education;
curricula for the classes; plans for the economic side of the
affair. She showed staying-power, circumspection, and manysidedness beyond what I could have believed possible. H er room
became an office. T h e servants did as they liked, while Ferry
and Elisabeth were left entirely to themselves. I fled the house
during the day. When I got home in the evenings, it was to
find all the rooms packed with strangers. Lawyers, officials,
school-teachers, journalists, female enthusiasts, place-hunters
o f dubious character, thronged the dwelling, consumed bread
and butter, drank vast quantities of beer, wine, brandy, and
tea, argued loudly and at great length, and inquisitively scanned
the books and M S S . in my library. There was always somebody
at the telephone, most often Ganna. Telegrams galore. Tedious
reports were read, and delegations were elected to wait on the
authorities.
The school community began its activities; the share capital
had been subscribed when the first rebellion broke out. Ganna,
said the dissentients, had exceeded her competence. She had
acted in defiance of the articles of association; had encroached;
had made injudicious appointments, putting square pegs into
round holes. For instance, she had chosen for headmaster a
handsome young fellow, Borngraber by name, who had nothing
better to recommend him than some turgid testimonials and
his ingratiating manners. Soon it became apparent that the man
was a bad egg, and was intriguing against her. I dont really

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know the details, and can only be guided by what I heard from
Ganna. W ith her fearlessness o f the trite, she said: I have
warmed a viper in my bosom. But this viper was not the only
one of the crowd to turn against her. Every day there were fresh
adversaries, tale-bearers, traitors, conspirators. Borngraber
became the centre of a faction. So did Ganna. This feud was
not the best way o f starting a sound educational enterprise.
What on earth has gone wrong? I wondered. Ganna would
not hurt a fly. W hy, then, are these people so angry with her?
Various persons came to me with complaints and accusations.
It was all beyond me, so I asked Ganna to throw light upon
what I had been told. According to her, she was a victim of
envy and malice, and the rival clique was trying to wrest the
direction of affairs from her hands. I must espouse her cause.
M y word would be decisive. If I threw my weight into the
scales, none of them would venture to side against her.
I did not agree that my word would carry so much weight,
but I wanted to help her if I could, for I felt as if she had
a pack of hounds baying on her trail. She was terribly distressed.
She was sacrificing herself for great ideas, and this was her
reward! Easily recognisable became the figure of the female
Don Quixote in a hostile world. Something must be done. I
discussed matters with the teachers, with the perfidious Born
graber, with Dr. Pauli, with an aulic councillor who was honorary
patron o f the school and whom Ganna trusted. M y intervention
was futile. I did not know myself in this contentious atmosphere.
A medley of irritated voices unnerves me. I am not cut out for
the part of mediator, for I cannot decide between the contending
parties.
Some of the disputants informed me that Ganna had given
me erroneous reports upon certain vital points. When she became
aware that I had vacillated, she railed against me.
What am I to do, Ganna? I asked in despair. Th ey are
all buzzing round me like angry wasps.
I visited the chairman of the board of directors, Privy Coun
cillor Schonpflug. I found the man congenial, but he said:

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ALEXANDER

Y ou must excuse me for expressing the opinion that Frau

Herzogs behaviour is not perfectly straightforward.
I answered curtly that there could be no possible ground for
suspicion as to my w ifes absolute sincerity. When I told Ganna
about that, she asked me to embody m y opinion in a short
memorial to the board of directors.
That will stop the mouths of my enemies.
I could not refuse. Had I done so, I should never have had
another hours domestic peace. A ll the same, I was exposing
myself to the danger of being proved a liar, for Ganna was
eminently capable o f self-deception when excited, and might be
less innocent than she supposed. However, I penned a con
vincing declaration of her singlemindedness and of the moral
sublimity o f her doings. Then I fled for safety to Ebenweiler,
and stayed there for several weeks.
Tragedy of the Male. Before I relate the progress and
the conclusion o f the school affair, which grew continually more
irksome and offensive, I shall refer to my own experiences during
these years before the war and the earlier part of the war; two
o f these experiences having been especially noteworthy, because
o f the marked influence they had on the configuration of the
future. One was the birth of my daughter Doris. T h e other
was the gift of a house yes, a whole house, standing in its
own grounds, bestowed on me by a young married couple with
whom for some years I had been on the most cordial terms. I
had spoken to both o f them more than once about the difficulty
of securing in a flat the quiet and other conditions needful for
literary work. I could not concentrate, with the result that my
days were wasted and my nights often disturbed. In the most
magnanimous way they offered me the sum needed to build
a country residence. This offer seemed too good to be true,
and took my breath away, so that I dared neither refuse nor
accept. T h e thing was unexampled. I wondered whether I had
the right to grasp at the skirts of happy chance. Surely to do
so would be to trade upon my friends? How allow any one to
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by the giver; how show gratitude for it, since gratitude which
one cannot reciprocate becomes a burden? I was not equipped
with the open maw of those men of genius (and, indeed, I did
not deem myself a genius) who take the help of their admirers
as a matter o f course. For that, I was too much permeated with
the bourgeois spirit of pacts and contracts and tit for tat. T h e
formulas of nothing for nothing, and value for value received,
were constituents o f my blood. I could not imagine there was
any service I had done my friends which would warrant their
making so princely a return.
Ganna had no scruples. It seemed to her perfectly natural
that people should spoil me a little. When they did so, she said,
they were only paying back some of the abundance I had given
them.
Nonsense! I rejoined uneasily. There are thousands of
my sort. Ninety per cent of them drop into the gutter. One
may consider oneself well off if one has enough to eat and a
bed to sleep in. W hat am I that I should expect to live in Luxury
T ow n? W e are too brazen in our demand for security.
Ganna protested vigorously. She was the child of a luxuriant
and pretentious epoch, in which spiritual values and mental work
had their quotation on the stock exchange like ordinary shares.
Although she did not say so in plain words, she thought a great
deal more of me because I was a man to whom people could
give a house in this casual way. Nothing of the sort had hap
pened since the days of the M edici. She sang hosannas about
the great event to all the winds of heaven, and when I urged
discretion she did not understand me.
Anyhow, we now had a neutral territory, where we could act
in common to further our joint interests. There was occupation
for Ganna. She had to be filled with fuel like a stove, and could
then do twenty things at once, all of them with the same fervour.
W hen we were discussing the plans for the house, were looking
for a site, were negotiating with the architect, examining designs,
buying furniture and other essentials for my part, too, I shook
off the passivity which had taken possession of me in all matters

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that concerned her, and at least allowed m yself to be swept away

by the stream. Lest she should become aware that I was still
in a sense passive, that I was only driftwood in the rush of her
impetuosity, I sometimes stroked the little hand which gave me
sweets, and tried to persuade myself that I was something more
than flotsam. T h e weaker party in a marriage has plenty of
chances of showing lack of character.
Ganna did not need much cunning or pains to induce me
to have the title-deeds of this house, which had been given
specially to me as a place for study and a home of refuge made
out in our joint names. Thus in due form Ganna became co
proprietor of the villa. It never occurred to me that in agreeing,
I surrendered my first and only guarantee of independence; that
I confirmed Ganna in her sense o f ownership an ownership
which gave her sway over, not only the house and grounds, but
my body and my soul.
So far, however, I was no more than outwardly affected. In
retrospect I seem during these years to have been walking along
a deep lane, from which a view of the surrounding landscape
was obtainable only at long intervals. I sensed the approach of
great events. The thundercloud was still below the horizon, but
gave forth electrical radiations, which made me uneasy, as birds
are before a storm. T h e country and its inhabitants were under
an evil spell; I had an uncanny feeling when, late in the evening,
I strolled through the streets of a German town where I was
staying; I suffered like a sleeper who dreams that his house is
on fire. It seemed to me that I was being summoned to work
in new and unfamiliar spheres; that what I had hitherto achieved
was scarcely worth considering; it was inadequate, not wide
enough in its appeal, and couched in obsolete forms. I felt that
people were waiting for me to deliver my message; felt, but
did not know. I was still far from the border I had to cross,
far from my true self. Unless I could break the crust that
enveloped me, I should be stifled by it.
M y senses were involved in the conflagration. Furious appetite
alternated with satiety. No woman satisfied me, none could give

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me what I vaguely sought: an image of my own nature; ultimate

peace from the stirrings of my blood. I raced from one to
another, and often my feeling was that I had to open each new
conquest like a box with unknown contents, or to peel her like
a fruit which thereafter one throws away in disgust. This was
not the outcome of unqualified lust. Perhaps there was an element
of misunderstanding, which leads us to confound shadow with
substance, and to content oneself with the former because the
latter fails to satisfy. Maybe it was the outcome o f the tragedy
o f the male, who is in search of the chilly region of symbolism,
and on the way forgets his imaginative yearnings in the embraces
of warm-blooded lamiae.
In the days after the assassination of the heir to the Austrian
throne, I was with Ganna and the children at Ebenweiler, in
the farmhouse where we had spent nine summers. I had arranged
with my lady-friend of the moment (a handsome young widow,
timid and spoiled) that she was also to spend part of the hot
season at Ebenweiler. T he scheme was frustrated by the political
situation. M y friend was in the Engadine, and, since the trains
were overcrowded and travelling was risky, she decided to stay
there. She had a morbid aversion for letter-writing. As she
neither came nor sent word, I was full of wrath with her for
breaking tryst. T h e heat was tropical that July, and this, in
conjunction with the rumours of impending disaster, the general
sense of anxious expectation, and the manifest imminence
of a catastrophe, increased my irritability, so that I wrote an
angry letter to the Engadine, breaking off our relations. The
same afternoon I sought out Ganna and flung m yself into her
arms with a sort of vengeful impetuosity. I did not utter a word,
and I kept my eyes closed. I must have looked like an assassin!
Nevertheless, by one of natures mysterious workings, the fruit
of this despairing and uncontrolled embrace was a child who
showed exceptional internal harmony and poise. M aybe for the
very reason that I desired, not Ganna, but another woman! As
far as Ganna was concerned, I doubt if she detected anything
peculiar except that it was peculiar for us to have conjugal

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relations at all. From top to toe she was enwrapped in her own
ego as the silkworm pupa is enwrapped in its self-spun cocoon.
But in my own memory every moment o f this cohabitation is
deeply graven. I recall distinctly the disorder of Gannas reddishbrown hair, illuminated from time to time by the lurid blue
o f lightning-flashes for a thunderstorm was raging; I recall a
great bunch o f alpine roses that stood in front of the mirror;
places in the ceiling where the whitewashed plaster had fallen
aw ay; the cry o f a bird that perched for a moment on the window
sill ; the loud rustling of the leaves o f the old hornbeam; a spider
that ran across the pillow . . .
When my daughter Doris was born, Ganna and I were already
settled in the new house.
Truth Dawns. -Not until then did the troubles connected
with the school community attain the dimensions of a catas
trophe, profoundly affecting my life and Gannas. T h e main
dispute arose out o f the fact that Ganna obstinately refused to
transfer the legal ownership of the field to the company. The
shareholders considered it intolerable that the chief site upon
which the school buildings had been erected should be in private
hands, and that the owner, though a member of the concern,
should draw a considerable sum as rent. A t stormy meetings,
Ganna was given to understand that this arrangement was both
immoral and unbusinesslike. It made a very bad impression,
said the critics, that she should pose as the idealist who had
founded the undertaking while grasping at the lions share of
the material advantages. Persons who feel they are being done
out of profits which they ought to be making, are apt to be
peculiarly harsh in their strictures upon those who want to
secure tangible as well as moral gains. Either you are a
trader, they say, or else you are a priest. You cant have it
both ways. T h e heads o f the opposing faction went so far as
to declare Gannas position radically unsound. Their contention
was that she had got possession o f the field by a shady deal,
and that they had proofs.
Ganna was furious, and the world became for her a gloomy

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place. She vowed she would rather perish than surrender the
field. Not a square foot, not a blade of grass, would she hand
over. It was inevitable that our children, for whose sake the
enterprise had been inaugurated, should become aware that
their mother was unpopular. There was no question of their
occupying the preferential status of which Ganna had dreamed;
but it does not seem to me that there was any ground for her
lachrymose contention that they were treated worse than the
other pupils, and suffered spiritual damage. I told her that it
seemed to me a very good thing if they were brought into contact
with the harsh realities of life. This made Ganna exceeding
w ro th :
Y ou dare to find excuses for those scoundrels, she said,
spitting fire. A weakling, as usual. Every one knows that you
turn against your unhappy wife when you have a chance. God
will punish you.
What a way to attack me! I had never turned against her.
As for G ods punishments, what did she know about them?
She only called upon the name of God for purposes of male
diction. For her, God was Ganna Herzogs special constable,
volleying His thunderbolts at evildoers who committed crimes
against His beloved Ganna.
She intruded into the classrooms to tell the teachers home
truths. Naturally this did not better the situation. Ferry rebelled
against going to school any more; the mother had sinned, and
the childrens teeth were set on edge. She could now find no
epithets vile enough for the description of the teaching which
hitherto she had extolled. T h e teachers, who had all been
Froebels and Pestalozzis, now became depraved rascals. Any
means were acceptable to her in the attempt to oust Borngraber
from the headmastership, though for a time she had certainly
been a little in love with him. She conspired with the school
servants and the charwomen. Day after day, she hobnobbed with
persons in whom the name of Herzog had long ceased to inspire
respect. Association with them was a continual source of friction
and exhaustion. Like every one with an axe to grind, she was

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a prey to inciters and talebearers. It seemed to me impossible

that she could keep her hands clean.
Our home life went from bad to worse. She was tired out
in the evening when she came back from the fighting front,
and for supper gulped down the hotted-up remnants o f the
mid-day meal without tasting them or knowing what she ate.
Then she rushed off to the nursery, where the sluices of her
accumulated maternal tenderness were opened; for, since its
display was restricted to this brief period of the day, she tried
to make up by intensity what was lacking in steadfastness, and
ignored circumstances which might lead her darlings to regard
her in any other light than that cast by the momentary outburst
of affection. Y et if either of the children did anything to arouse
her impatience or failed to yield to one of her caprices, she
would fiercely scold the very person she had just been fondling.
As for contradiction, which Ganna could never bear from any
one, when it came from the children, it made her foam at the
mouth.
I f the telephone-bell rang, she shuffled out into the passage
in her down-at-heel slippers, and her reiterated hulloing was
a sore trial to m y nerves. Ten or twenty times she would shout
Hullo into the mouthpiece, with a long-drawn-out stress upon
the last syllable, as if she were a huntsman shouting to another
in the forest. I always knew whether the person at the farther
end of the wire was one who wanted to get something out of
her, or one out of whom she wanted to get something. In the
former case her voice was sharp, acerb, and masterful; in the
latter, it was sugary, beseeching, and servile.
After supper and the visit to the nursery, it was her way to
come to my study to do her hair, an occupation which lasted
an inordinate time, while she dreamed, built castles in Spain,
or brooded over grievances. T he comb rustled through her
reddish-brown locks, while her blue eyes, widely opened, stared
into the void. What might be amiss, no one could guess; she
hardly knew herself; but her expression of unfathomable suf
ferings touched me to the quick. Then, when I thought she

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was about to go to bed, to seek repose for her tortured spirit,

something forgotten would occur to her, and she would seat
herself at the writing-table to pen an article or letter filling many
pages. Next day it was usually found to be of no moment.
One of the characteristics of hell is that it always contains
higher grades of pain and horror than one has previously
experienced. When we think that nothing worse can happen,
we are still only in the anteroom, and a worse circle of the
inferno opens. Such was my situation when Ferry and Elisabeth
had to leave the school community and go to one of the State
educational institutions. I dont know to this day whether they
left voluntarily or were expelled. Ganna declared that they were
expelled as an act of vengeance, and I took her word for it,
having no inclination to provide fresh material for quarrels by
trying to discover the truth. T h e heads of the State educational
institutions looked askance at any one coming from the com
munity school. Ganna was in great trouble when the various
high schools refused to admit Ferry in the middle of a term;
and still greater was her indignation when she was told that
the boys acquirements were not adequate to his years.
I was myself greatly distressed. I felt responsible for m y sons
education, but how could I fulfil my responsibilities when Ganna
had usurped them, constituting herself a supreme court against
which there was no appeal ? Now was to be made plain what she
had wanted to have the boy spared: mental insecurity, educa
tional arbitrariness. I had no time to wrestle with her, no time
for an attempt to secure on her behalf what she demanded from
me and from the world as an unchallengeable right. No, I lacked
both time and energy to argue with her and make her see the
error of her ways. I thought (perhaps foolishly, perhaps pre
sumptuously) that Providence intended me to devote myself to
other purposes. Gannas world was a world of unqualified liberty;
and to serve her without challenge was the only way to happiness
of a kind. I can recall hours when, as if my salvation depended
on it, I tried to overcome her stubbornness; to make her gentler,
urbaner, more perspicacious. But the endeavour was like the

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attempt to mould a face out of water. She once said to me, in

a rare mood of contrition:
For you I ought to be a saint, but I cannot become saintly
without mortal sin.
I have never forgotten this distressing, nay dreadful utterance.
A n abyss had suddenly opened, at the bottom of which I per
ceived Ganna fighting ghosts.
What of myself? What was my position? A poor mortal in
fates grip. T he war seized me, rent me in sunder as a storm
w ill split the ice that covers a lake, set me flowing and over
flowing. From being a quiet dreamer, a frozen dreamer, I became
a fully awakened man whose breast was filled with the experiences
and sufferings of many. Sleep and repose forsook me. I abandoned
m y strong isolation; tried to help and to serve; sought for a soul,
and should have perished from despair had I not at length
discovered one in Bettina Merck.
Ganna noticed nothing. W e never discussed these matters,
had no opportunity for serious discussion, so immersed was she
in her own affairs. There was something uncanny in the small
extent to which the worldwide catastrophe affected her. Her
participation in the events which were shaking five continents
to their foundations was no more active than that of a little girl
who is seized with incredulous wonder when the skies are red
dened by a distant conflagration. She was never fully convinced
that the tidings of disaster which continually came to hand were
based upon hard facts. There was a routinist quality in her
alarms, as if war news were fictional, the outcome of a universal
conspiracy to tell these horrible stories; whereas the palpable,
the veritable world, Gannas world, the world of Ganna the
child, had no connexion whatever with these fabulous happen
ings.
I volunteered for active service during the first weeks of the
war. At that time, no decent fellow bothered to think whether
his countrys side in the war was right or wrong, and none of
us knew the fundamental significance of war. One was part of
a whole. This whole was, or at any rate seemed to be, a living

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organism; was aware of itself as nation, as fatherland, as the

focus of being and becoming. Making a plausible excuse to
Ganna, I took the night train to Vienna, and went to the Con
sulate. The consul, who knew me personally, said that there
was such a rush of volunteers that I was not needed, and had
better go quietly home. However, I insisted upon being medically
examined. The doctor found me unfit, because I had a cardiac
neurosis. Considerably disappointed, I returned to Ebenweiler
and told Ganna what I had done. She was beside herself with
indignation.
How could you dream of such a thing, Alexander; you, the
father of children under age, you, with a family to support; have
you no conscience ?
Now it was my turn to be indignant. I fancy I came to realise,
that day, that my explanation of Ganna as a feminine Don
Quixote had, after all, been a mere expedient, and that the real
Ganna was nothing of the kind.
W hats wrong with your heart ? she went on excitedly, when
I told her of the doctors report. Nothing serious, I believe,
except that you dont take reasonable care o f yourself. You
smoke too much and sleep too little, as I have often told you.
No, Ganna, I answered. Y ou ve got hold of the wrong
end of the stick. Living means to wear out ones heart. I ve
worried too much. Have you never learned that worry does
much more harm than too much tobacco and too little sleep?
She was greatly mortified, wanted to know what I had had
to worry about, demanded particular instances. I could not give
her any. What would have been the use? She would have con
tested each, and we should have talked for hours without con
vincing one another. Still, she pressed her point, and at length
said:
Alexander, have I given you any cause for complaint ? Surely
I ve been a good wife to you?
Certainly, Ganna, you have been, and are, a good wife to
me.
Honour bright?

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How can you be so foolish as to ask for my word of honour

about such a matter? T h e very idea is childish.
Never before had I had so strong a conviction that she was
a slave to abstract formulas, a devotee of despiritualised concepts,
in love with her own picture of herself a picture no longer
animated by any living characteristics.
Gannas Testam ent. -Meanwhile, things had gone so far
that the school company had demanded from Ganna the sur
render of the field, under threat of prosecution if she refused.
She could name her own price, so long as it was reasonable.
Hard for Ganna to decide what would be reasonable in this
matter! In her visions by day and her dreams by night she had
built upon a steady increment in the value of the site; this
increment was to make me independent of financial cares
though I had no inclination to be freed from them in such a
way. W ith an almost incomprehensible tenderness she clung
to what she called her dear little field, smiling as she spoke
o f it, with an expression no less beatific than when she was
suckling our little Doris. What goes on in the mind of such a
woman as Ganna? W ho can tell?
But the pressure brought to bear on her was too strong, and
it broke her nerve. Vacillating between defiance and weakness,
possessive greed on the one hand and dread on the other,
between bitterness and the craze for speculation, she could not
decide. She asked all and sundry what she had better do her
sisters, her brothers-in-law, her servants, her tradespeople, the
gardener , but if any of them advised her contrary to her
secret wishes, she was put out, and replied by lengthy expositions
o f her standpoint and of the charms o f the field.
She called a special meeting of the shareholders. There were
tedious discussions, angry disputes. In the end, Ganna promised
to come to a decision next day. Then she sent the board of
directors a registered letter in which she stated a price. The
instant the missive had been posted, she repented, and wrote
to cancel the offer. Th ey will think me a perfect fool, she
exclaimed. The site is worth at least thrice as much, and they

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are all well-to-do people. I wont let myself be bullied into

parting for a song. I warned her, saying that, although I under
stood very little about the matter, she seemed to me to be playing
a dangerous game. Further negotiations and quarrels, then a
deadlock. Her brothers-in-law urged moderation. T h e directors
had made her an offer which D r. Pauli considered a very hand
some one, and he strongly advised her to accept. Nothing would
induce her to do so; she was being skinned. Her price was much
higher. A long argument would sometimes make her admit that
her demand was extortionate, but an hour afterwards she
was back upon the old platform, and would not abate a crown.
She ran from pillar to post, talked interminably to her supporters,
railed at all who were not of her way of thinking, wasted her
friends time, dilated upon the intrigues that were going on to
intimidate her, spoke of the vast sums of which her enemies
were trying to rob her, asked every one unceasingly: Shall I
or shall I not? A t this price or at that? Under these conditions
or those? Shall I or shall I not regret it if I accept their offer?
Would it not be a crime committed against my husband and
my children if I were to sacrifice my beloved field to that scum ?
She could think of nothing else, neglecting her person, her
household duties, myself, the children. She was hardly ever at
home for a meal. Sometimes she would sit down on a seat in
the park and munch an apple, or would rest a while in a shelter
containing penny-in-the-slot machines while she listened with
bedewed eyes to the noise of a gramophone as if it had been the
philharmonic orchestra. Her vacillations, her troubles, her rest
lessness, her wrangles, her confused arguments, the garbage of
a dispute carried on by unworthy means all recoiled upon me.
I was to have the last word. But I knew from long experience
that this last word would only be penultimate. Every evening
and far on into the night she sang the same song with its weari
some refrain, that the whole business was being done for me,
that she was fighting only for my sake. I ought to recognise
that much, at least. If you will admit it, I will drop the affair.
D o you admit it? D o you admit it? Pure echolalia crazy

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repetition. What was I to answer? I knew she would not drop

the affair, whatever I recognised or admitted.
The unending talk became insufferable: the involved pseudolegal expositions; the casting of unwarrantable suspicion upon
persons who were either well-disposed towards her, or were at
least free from the unsavoury motive which animated Ganna
for all that she wanted was to make money. I was sick of the
unappetising compost of profit and spirituality. The affair of
the field had raised a lot of dust, and I found it eminently dis
tasteful to have my name mentioned in this connexion. Councillor
Schonpflug spoke to me in the club, imploring me to restrain
Ganna from further follies; otherwise legal proceedings would
have to be taken, and perhaps the case would even come into
the criminal courts. It was horrible, debasing; I must put an
end to it.
One morning, when I was ready to go out, I went to Gannas
bedroom to say goodbye. She had just come from the bath,
wrapped in a red-and-white check peignoir. The instant she
caught sight o f me she began to harp on the usual string. At
noon she was to have an interview with D r. Pauli. Would I
come? I could be o f the greatest help to her. If you come,
I shall never forget your kindness. Y es, I thought, and
if I dont come, you will never forgive me.
O f late, I had been cold towards her, for I cannot assume
kindliness when my feelings take another turn. I had grown
morose, laconic, distant. I reproached myself for my lack of
warmth, but my heart was chilled, and I could not find a word
to bridge the chasm that had yawned between us. Not even
now, for I detested discussions in a lawyers office. With a shrug
o f the shoulders I said:
Sorry, but its impossible.
Ganna instantly assumed the offensive. M y first impulse was
to ignore her railing, and depart. But her words stuck like glue,
and hampered my movements.
It is scandalous that you wont help me, when I have sacri
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But Ganna, I never asked you to sacrifice yourself for me

in that way. You could have done much more for me as house
wife and by attending to your maternal duties.
At this, her temper went up like a rocket.
W hat ingratitude. I bleed m yself white for a man like you,
a monster like you, and get no thanks for it.
You have no reason to expect gratitude, I answered, with
a calm that might have brought Ganna to her senses, but had
no effect on her; any more than I expected such a life as you
have led me.
Ganna laughed contemptuously.
What sort of life would you have led, but for me? You would
have gone hungry to the end o f your days; surely you know
that?
I dont know what sort of life I should have led, but for
you. What I do know is that life with you under present con
ditions has become intolerable. Either you will make an end
o f this affair o f the field and will sell it, or else I shall go my
own way and shall get a divorce.
Hardly had the ominous word been uttered, than Gannas
features were convulsed. I had never used it before, and she
had never expected to hear it from me, for she felt as sure
of me, felt me to be as much a part of herself, as if I had
been one of her own limbs. I was for her a basic certainty.
Maybe the word divorce lurked in some closed chamber of
her mind, as high explosives can be hidden in a cellar. She
uttered a horrible yell, which lasted fifteen seconds or more,
and ran frantically up and down the room. She was beside
herself with agitation. Y et I could not help feeling that she
found this complete loss of self-control agreeable. It was tinged
with pleasurable expectation, such as an epileptic is said to
experience just before the onset of a fit. While with frantic
movements she was tearing off the peignoir, she overwhelmed
me with a flood o f crazy invectives. Again and again she flung
at me the word of terror, Divorce. It came as a question, a
shout, a scream, a howl, while her eyes flashed and her fingers

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looked like a birds claws. I silently endured this dreadful out

burst, which revealed to me a new Ganna; but she, though
stark naked, ran to the window and leaned over the metal balus
trade as if about to fling herself down. In a flash there came
back to me the scene upon the veranda of the farmhouse beside
the Mondsee, sixteen years before, when she had mastered me
by the same trick. People like Ganna, I sadly reflected, hold
sway over others by the eternal recurrence of the similar; they
may forget in the intervals, but their true nature crops up again
in times of stress. Grieved and angry though I was, I remained
calm. She will not do it, I thought; and even if she does,
there is little danger. The fall will be no more than a dozen
feet; she will come down on the turf; at most she will break
two or three ribs. But the situation was made grimly ludicrous
by my certainty that what she did was no more than a theatrical
display, that she had no serious thought of suicide. N ow my
own temper gave way, and I lost control as I had not lost it
for years. The pot boiled over. W ith a bound, I reached the
window, seized her by the shoulders, flung her on the bed,
and pummelled her savagely with my bare fists. Even to-day
I cannot conceive what possessed me. I thrashed her as if I
had been a drunken wife-beater, as if I had been a rough carter.
I, Alexander Herzog, gave m y wife a sound drubbing. Ganna
was passive. This disarmed me. Because she took it all so quietly,
I desisted, ran off to my study, locked myself in, flung myself
into an armchair, and brooded over my unhappiness.
What was Ganna doing meanwhile? I learned this later, by
chance. I found a sealed envelope upon her writing-desk, en
dorsed in menacingly large letters with the words M y Testa
ment. In astonishment, I asked her when and why she had
made a will. She answered, tearfully, that she had written this
testament (last, solemn words, not a will in the legal sense)
in the very hour when I had beaten her. I earnestly begged her
to make no further references to so painful a matter. But she
insisted on telling me of her despair, and of how she had sworn
to dispose of the field that very day.

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Thenceforward there was a private legend in our house, a

legend that was used against me like a dagger-thrust. Ganna
persistently cherished the illusion that I had interfered when
she was about to make me a millionaire. This fiction was her
mainstay under all subsequent bludgeonings of destiny. She
resembled conquered nations and political parties hungry for
power, which cannot exist without a scapegoat. There is no
difficulty in finding scapegoats, for practical action is impossible
without divided responsibility.
Burdened by Ganna with this moral mortgage, and prepared
(with my usual complaisance) to pay the interest she demanded,
I opened a new chapter in my life, the new chapter to which
all I have as yet written is the prelude.

ALEXANDER

B E G IN N IN G O F T H E E N D
Whatever creeps and crawls, is driven to the pastures
by Gods scourge. H e r a c l i t u s .
I become acquainted with Bettina. I met Bettina Merck
at the house of some friends named Waldbauer, a young married
couple. T h e husbands specialty was the history of art. Bettina
was then five-and-twenty. I was forty-two. She had been married
seven years, and had two children, both daughters. M erck, who
was little older than his wife, was head of a large china-manufactory, having inherited the place from his father. Bettinas
father had been a famous composer and conductor, whose
musical gifts she shared. On friendly terms with Kainz and
M ahler, he is still remembered as one of the last sustainers of
the Old-Austrian tradition. M any of his songs have become
folk-songs, and live on in popular memory detached from the
name of the composer. I knew him personally, and had a very
distinct memory of him as a refined and gentle creature. He
had a peculiar vein o f amiable humour, and perhaps amiability
had been his salient characteristic. When I said as much,
Bettinas eyes shone. She had been devoted to her father, and
revered his memory.
What especially struck me about her that first evening was
a sort of laughing verve. Strangely enough I was a little alienated
by it, for it seemed out of keeping with the times and the general
condition of the world. Shes just like her father, was my carp
ing thought; always frivolous, always in triple time. Anything
amusing that was said, brought from her a hearty response o f fullthroated laughter. At times the room was filled with her laughter,
which was contagious, spreading to other members of the company
as if by radiation. This, too, troubled me. W hy? As a child I
had been liable to attacks o f weltschmerz if I saw another boy
eating bread and butter when I had none. When I slowly thawed,
and kindled in response to her cheerfulness, it was with the

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prim reserve of a schoolmaster who, when conversing with an

unduly vivacious pupil, must keep a watchful eye upon his own
dignity.
A few days later we met in a tramcar, and promptly began
a talk. As before, I felt her cheerfulness to be a challenge, for
it contrasted strongly with my own mood and with that of most
of my associates. I had a foolish feeling that she wanted to
bounce me. Foolish, I repeat, for there was no such thought
in her mind. I recall how I stared after her in amazement when
she left the car and walked across the road. It was her springing,
dancing gait which astonished me. Is one justified in walking
like that nowadays? was my thought, wrapping myself once
more in my ridiculous disapproval as if in a fur rug which one
had cast aside for a time, dubiously, because the air had grown
a trifle warmer.
I cannot remember how it happened that soon afterwards we
began to go for walks together. I think I must have taken the
initiative, and must have made the appointment by telephone.
Y et I dont now recall what led me to do this. It often happens
that trifling incidents leading to extremely important decisions
remain obscure and undiscoverable. Perhaps the timbre of her
voice, a glance, a movement of her hands, a smile, something
she said, may have determined my course of action; I cannot
tell. Nor can I remember how soon it was after I first met her
that I gave her the proofs of my new novel to read, the first
of my books to have a wide and lasting success. T h e scene was
laid in a German town of moderate size, of which it gave a
circumscribed picture; the characters were treated in a balladesque
style; it was in a gloomy vein, like most of my works; but its
success showed that it made a popular appeal. It was a tribute
to my German homeland; a concrete expression of gratitude
to the German nation; in a sense, a war-gift, since I could not
take up arms in my countrys defence.
As already said, I do not remember the circumstances in which
I gave Bettina the book, but I have a fairly clear recollection
of what she said after reading it, for this was different from

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what I had expected. I had hoped it would arouse her enthusiasm.

M y vanity as author made me all the readier to believe this
because I knew she had liked my earlier writings, and I reckoned
her among the inner circle o f my admirers. T h e fact had over
come my first antagonism to her let me admit this frankly,
although it does not bear witness to the dispassionateness of
my judgment. Now, however, I encountered, instead o f the
enthusiastic admiration I had hoped for, a dry aloofness which
upset me considerably. She was the first woman I had encoun
tered who approached my work in a critical spirit. Ganna, who
had no standard of comparison, and was prone to be lavish in
her use o f superlatives, had spoiled me, no doubt, so that it
was natural I should find Bettinas courageous reserve extremely
trying. She said that many parts of the book had moved her,
that she had found most of the characters true to life; but that
on the whole she considered the work ponderous, not in the
realm of thought but in that of feeling, and structurally; that
my style was rather confused and barbarous. These criticisms
were sound; but naturally an author in such circumstances wants
to justify himself or to explain, and I still see the marked interest
and attention in her greenish-grey eyes as I expounded my
views. She had a quick intelligence, a marvellous power of
imaginative insight; and I was particularly struck by her keen
understanding o f my feeling for rhythm in its most subtle shades
and oscillations. Y et she could not endure the petty-bourgeois
world which this book depicted; it seemed to her a queer place,
full of embryos and ghosts, lacking impetus, and in erotic matters
dull, vaporous, and constrained. She took the opportunity of
referring to the converse of the Austrian, to that which it was
now the fashion to extol as truly German, to that which she
and her friends spoke of as the New German; and she also
mentioned, as an attitude she disliked, that o f the hard-shelled
Prussians who had a contempt for Austrian lucidity, gentleness
and urbanity. Listening to her and looking at her, I said to
myself: You are not merely the daughter of an artist, but are
an artist yourself. It was true. She was an artist to her finger

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tips, and through and through, with an energy and an inward

consistency that astonished me considering her sex. What reason
for surprise that she speedily became my confidant and comrade ?
T h e ties that we formed were inevitable, in view of our respective
temperaments and my peculiar position at the time.
Now I come to a strange point. It was long before I was clear
in my own mind as to my relationship to Bettina. I did not
even know whether I liked her or not. When, very gradually,
in my heedless way, I discovered that I was very fond of her,
I also discovered, to my amazement, that I was not in the least
in love with her. Even when, at length, this fondness had taken
possession of my body, my soul, my heart, my brain, my whole
personality, I still believed that there would be nothing more
than a sublime companionship, bearing with it no responsibilities,
no obligations. What did this signify? Such a thing had never
happened to me before. Perhaps the reason was that there was
nothing enigmatic or covetous about her, no desire to conquer
and bind, no demand for pledges and vows; that she simply
relied upon my friendship, patiently awaiting the upshot. A n
other part of the explanation may have been that she was never
clutching or greedy, that she was not obsessed by ulterior aims,
and that she had so strange and glorious an idea of what happi
ness gives and ensures. I am convinced it was this, her levity,
as I had thought it in a bad sense, but which now became levity
in a good sense, her levity and verve, entered into my life as
an entirely new and influential element. In the case of others
I had known, there had always been something uncongenial,
their outlooks, their character, their tastes, their conception
of 1ife in general; these became shallows on which the promise
of mutual liking was stranded. In her, there were no shallows.
. . . W e did not merely get on well with one another, but
drew closer together day by day. It was as if after spending
many years beneath cloudy skies that filled the mind with gloom,
one had moved to a sunny clime. I could not but wonder, Will
this glorious weather last? Can it possibly last? W ill she not
imbibe the poison of my sadness?

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A November Evening. For a long time Bettina refused to

enter my house. There were many who had described me as
a man who devoured a virgin every morning for breakfast, and
her self-respect forbade her to come like a dog when I whistled.
A t least that is how, subsequently, when in a light-hearted mood,
she explained her reluctance. She was also annoyed because,
when I first asked her to come, I made no mention of her
husband. Then we had a formal evening party, at which Paul
and Bettina Merck, the Waldbauers, and others of their circle,
were among the guests. T rue, they did not thaw until Ganna,
who among them was in an uncongenial element, had withdrawn.
Bettina did not like our house. She did not say so, but I felt
it. She was chilled, as soon as she crossed the threshold. Some
times I asked her what was the matter, but she merely shook
her head, and would give no articulate answer. I knew her tastes
were sober, and could understand her being repelled by our
rather fantastic furnishings; but it soon became plain to me that
this was not the chief trouble. There was an instinctive antagonism
between her and the mistress o f the establishment. In fact, she
could not hide from me that she found Ganna incomprehensible
and uncongenial; and when, in my talks with her, I spoke of
Gannas character and temperament, dilating upon the intel
lectual and moral qualities by which Ganna was distinguished,
Bettina listened attentively, eagerly, but without a syllable of
comment.
Y et I knew Bettina to be a keen observer, so that often, when
we had seen something together, and afterwards she described
a number of details I had never noticed, but which she had
accurately and swiftly perceived, I felt like a raw youth. Yet
she was not one of those gifted persons who plume themselves
on their gifts. She knew how to hold her tongue, and was often
silent until the need for speech became urgent. So observant
was she, however, that she saw and heard many things which,
for one reason or another, she had decided not to see or hear.
An excellent description of her character could have been based
upon what she noticed or chose to ignore. For example, like

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all our friends and acquaintances, Bettina knew, not only that
Gannas attitude towards my playing her false (Bettina called
it playing false, though the term was hardly fair in view of
the openness of my lapses) was one of perfect equanimity, but
that my wife actually gloried in it, because of her conviction
that she herself was the lawful spouse as compared with those
other women who were merely concubines upon whom for a
space I bestowed my fickle favours. Bettina knew this, but sup
pressed the knowledge, partly for the sake of all women, since
my conduct and that of my light of loves was a humiliation
for her sex, and partly for the sake of Ganna. She opined that
those who failed to ignore the depths to which human beings
can descend, were casting a slur upon their fellows. I, who at
that time had the usual corrupt outlook of a libertine, shrugged
m y shoulders, and considered Gannas tolerance an estimable
trait.
Unfortunately (unfortunately for me, since I strongly desired
Bettina to respect Ganna), the following incident took place in
Bettinas presence. Ganna, who suspected that the piano-teacher
was skimping Elisabeths music-lessons, had told the housemaid
to keep an eye on the clock. Informed that the lesson had been
eight minutes short of the stipulated hour, Ganna rushed out
into the passage (where Bettina was putting on her cloak) and
gave the disconcerted Fraulein a tongue-lashing.
I pay you for the punctual discharge of your duties. Not
only must you come at the proper time, but you are cheating
if you leave before the hour is up. Unless you can give full
measure, you neednt trouble to come again.
I had grown accustomed to such scenes and was callous; but
Bettina, more sensitive, turned deadly pale. I pay you for
so and so. How horrible that one woman should speak like that
to another! A t a later date, when Bettina and I were talking
over the affair, she told me she had been hard put to it not to
tell Ganna to mind her manners. I had been comparatively
unconcerned by my w ifes tantrum. Ganna is what she is,
I said to myself (and others). One must take the rough with

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the smooth. Thus, in my turn, I suppressed my knowledge

o f much that went on.
Y et I could not but realise that a gradual change in the situa
tion was in progress. For some tim e it had been impossible for
me to treat Ganna with the frankness which, during the worst
storms of our marriage, had still sustained in me the illusion of
its irrefragable unity, and had preserved Gannas belief that she
was the dominant feminine personality in my life. I kept out
o f her way, lowered my eyes when with her, was cold and stand
offish. Above all (and this was new in our life together), I was
persistently untender, never caressed her, though always, up till
now, there had been an alms of tenderness for poor Ganna.
A t length this consolation, this form of bribery and corruption,
had become impossible to me. Bettinas arrival upon the scene
made it impossible. I dont mean for a moment that she con
sciously stood in the way. But her sincerity was so outstanding
that it infected me, and made me strive to be equally sincere.
One evening in November lives in my memory as horrible.
I came home late, after a delightful experience. Bettina had
been playing the violin to me, for the first time during the seven
months since we met. She played a violin Suite by Bach, and
ended up with the great Chaconne. So full of melody, of energy
and fire, that m y pulses were sympathetically stirred as if I had
myself been interpreting the music. A memorable hour, which
had disclosed a hidden and profounder Bettina behind the
cheerful child o f this world who was already known to me.
I entered the hall in my house, the hall which was also our
dining-room. Its whitewashed walls stared soberly at me, and
the foolishly twisted electric-light brackets threatened me like
extended arms. I had intended to run up to the night nursery
for a glance at the sleeping little Doris, to swallow a mouthful
or two, and then go to work in my study. But at the diningtable Ganna was seated, her eyes fiercely reproachful, her lips
twitching, her arms folded, a silent statue of complaint and
accusation.
T h e wiser course would have been to take no notice, to say

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goodnight and retire to my den. Instead, I stayed, and gave

her an opening for cross-questions.
W hy are you so late? Where have you been?
O f course she knew well enough where I had b een ! She
went o n :
What has happened to you, Alexander? Have you forgotten
me completely? Am I nothing to you, now?
Then, with increasing bitterness:
Your whole time is given to that woman. You make a
parade o f going about with her. T h e veriest strangers are
talking o f it.
I was silent, as I walked up and down the room and stared
gloomily into the corners when I turned. Ganna continued:
You cannot say that I have ever put obstacles in the way
o f your living your own life. But for that very reason I am now
being tortured to death.
M y sustained silence irritated her beyond endurance. She
wrung her hands.
I cannot understand your behaviour, Alexander. Such a man
as you! She twists you round her fingers. Have you no com
passion for m e?
Another evening wasted, was my thought. But if I go
away now, with a cordial Goodnight, she will be all right to
morrow, for she has a short memory.
I was infirm of purpose. I could not clear out, and thus put
an end to the deplorable scene, nip it in the bud. W hy not?
I was too cowardly! L et me explain. Ganna had a most dis
quieting effect upon my imagination. No one could rival her
there, and it was the secret o f her power over me her power
which grew and grew. She knew this, and traded on it. She
knew that I could never summon up heart to leave her alone
there, brooding. So long as I was within reach or within call
she could work up a catastrophe, however short her memory
might be. I pictured this catastrophe, though I did not know
what form it would take. She might break a looking-glass, might
call the servants out of bed, might even attempt to do herself

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a mischief. W ith her, anything was possible. Between one minute

and the next, she would deliberately switch off her power of
judgment, and then she ceased to be accountable for her actions.
She would not shrink from making a public scandal. In Eben
weiler, at the climax o f one of our quarrels, she had fled from
the house on a stormy night, and I had had to call up some of
the countrymen to search for her in the mountains. If that sort
o f thing should happen, the peace o f mind needful for m y work
(always an unstable peace ) would be troubled for weeks to
come. M y usual impulse when danger threatened was to patch
things up until whatever work I happened to be doing was
finished; then we should be able to come to terms. I was, of
course, humbugging myself, for such work as mine is never
finished. Before one book is completed, another is on the stocks;
a new creative undertaking is afloat, and there can be no pause
for negotiations. It had become almost a fixed idea with me
that my presence was the only way of preventing Ganna from
planning an attempt on my life for my work was my life. (To
some extent this idea proved correct in the sequel.) At the same
time I knew that it was my presence which stirred her courage to
frenzy. I was on the horns of a dilem m a! What man of feeling
can bring himself to leave a woman alone in her hour of trouble,
when he knows that if he does so he will devastate her life,
withdraw the props that buttress it ?
Thus I sacrificed myself to her whimsies. T o avoid what my
imagination pictured as worse, I accepted an intolerable burden,
and faced a volcanic eruption. Ganna poured forth a flood of
invectives against Bettina. I lost self-command, and tried to
shout her down. She scored the trick, for nothing could minister
to her vengefulness more successfully than to throw me off my
balance. We slanged one another to our hearts content, evil
words flying to and fro like poisoned arrows. Then the inner
door was quietly opened. Startled out of sleep, Elisabeth had
come down in her nightie and was standing on the threshold.
Drowsily, but profoundly distressed, she contemplated her
parents. The memory of the childs astonished and reproachful

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look still makes me blush. I took her in my arms and, petting

her silently, carried her back to bed. When I returned to Ganna,
she was dissolved in tears. She could weep. Alas, I could not
find that solace.
Ganna defends the Fortress by a Sally. A whipped dog
could not suffer more than Ganna. It seems to her that the
world has gone crazy for I am her world. She cannot grasp
what has happened, and feels as if her heart were being slowly
cut out of her breast. A t nights she lies sleepless and brooding.
By day her tear-dimmed eyes appear to see nothing. She ponders
unceasingly in the attempt to discover what she can have done
amiss; but, with the best will in the world, she cannot see that
she has erred. Her intentions (so she believes) have always been
good, and she has unfailingly done her duty. Surely people
should have compassion on her, as a poor, weak woman with
a burden too heavy for her. Because, in her view, I have no
bowels o f compassion, everything has gone awry. She declares
that I must be under an evil spell, for otherwise I could never
forget her love, could never forget that no other woman in the
world is so devoted to me as she. She has, indeed, an inalterable
conviction that I shall never forsake her; have I not sworn
it a thousand times ? W hy then do I not take her by the hand
to lead her out of the maze of sorrows? She builds hope for
herself upon the fancy that I am only putting her love to the
test. Still, she exclaims with the charmingly innocent smile
which lights up her face now and again, I need not be quite
so drastic in my methods; I need not positively break her heart.
Could I not give her a hint from time to time that she will be
my very own Ganna once more, when she has stood the test?
Could I not take her out for a walk? Could I not show her a
little tenderness, as I used to do? She wonders why men are
so stupid, men who could manage women easily, and always
go the wrong way to work. But this philosophical amazement
at the stupidity of my sex, does not ease her smart.
W hy has there suddenly arisen so much excitement, so much
dread, so profound a sense of loss, when for years upon years

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she has been tolerant of my lapses, as she has been accustomed

to call them? Because she is shrewd enough to realise that
there is an inexplicable difference this time. But what is
there anomalous about Bettina Merck, she asks herself, and
asks me, too, sometimes? She studies Bettina, tries to take a
just and dispassionate view, and fails to understand what
peculiar charm I find in my latest flame. T o her way of
thinking, Bettina is distinguished neither by beauty nor by
intelligence. I f there were exceptional intelligence, she could
understand. Besides, Bettina lacks the grace of early youth. She
is getting on, as the phrase goes. Obviously, then, Ganna
argues, subtle arts must be at work; arts which I am too simple
and straightforward to withstand.
Bettina Merck must be a clever woman to bamboozle
Alexander. I wish I could be equally clever, but I am too
honourable to use such tricks. Besides, she is profligate, and
does not care in the least what people think. Or it may be she
succeeds because she has such an easy time of it. The Mercks
are well-to-do people, and the husband is away at the office
all day, so that the wife can spend as much time and money as
she likes upon dressmakers, hairdressers, and so on. I, on the
other hand, have to pinch and peel; I have no time to cultivate
my bodily graces. I have always known that to keep a man at
her beck and call, a woman must continually appeal to his senses,
must be corrupt, heartless, must stick at nothing.
I record these reflections of Gannas, as they became known
to me, partly from her occasional outspoken utterances or hints,
and partly from my own intuitive insight into her mental
workings. Their interest lies in their twofoldedness, their con
trasted lights and shades, shrewdness and stupidity, fear and
hatred, folly and savagery, suspicion and sense of insecurity.
Had her thoughts been less fragmentary, her feelings more
consecutive, this experience would have crushed her. But her
disconnectedness extended even to her sufferings, so that at
intervals she was peaceful and contented as corks bob up to
the surface again and again in troubled waters. True, the periods

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grew shorter and shorter in which she was able to dream herself
out of the present and to contemplate the future without dismay.
She sustained shock after shock, as life showed her its teeth.
She was smitten to the heart when she learned that I had read
aloud parts of my new book to Bettinas circle. It aroused in
her a fiercer jealousy, far worse than physical jealousy could
be, that I had not asked her to be present on the occasion. She
had the terrible feeling of being shut out. Y et matters had
reached such a pass that I did not want Ganna as a member
o f my audience, because my friends did not want her there.
T h ey could not endure her; she did not fit in; did not under
stand their ways, was hopelessly out of tune with them. O f
course they did not say so, but I could not fail to be aware of
it. I suffered with Ganna, suffered because she suffered; but
what could I do about it? The discord would have been in
tolerable, to have Ganna and Bettina in the same room, and
myself between them, no more than a voice. In the attempt to
console her, I took refuge in a lie, telling her that her feelings
and her judgment were of such moment to me that I needed
her alone with me. T h e presence of others would interfere with
out mutual contact. Although she only half believed me, per
haps this subterfuge helped to assuage her disappointment for
a time. Since, however, the relief could be no more than
temporary, my falsehood was crueller and more treacherous
than the naked truth would have been.
Had Ganna had a little more knowledge of the world, had
she possessed only a trifle more self-control, my friends would
not have found it so hard to make allowances for her queer,
impulsive, and unmannerly behaviour. (I myself, at this date,
closed my eyes to some of her more sinister qualities.) But she
did everything possible to make herself hated, nay dreaded. Her
tiny hands could rend like the claws of a beast of prey; her
tiny feet could trample mercilessly upon others feelings. One
day she rang up Paul Merck on the phone, told him she had
heard that his children were suffering from chickenpox, and
that in these circumstances all communications between the

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two families had better be cut off. She ended with the unpar
donable words :
I must urgently request you, Herr Merck, to forbid your
w ifes meeting my husband so long as there is any danger of
infection.
Paul Merck, being a well-bred man, could hardly believe his
ears.
You must excuse me, Frau Herzog, he said, but I am
not accustomed to forbid my wife anything. She judges for
herself.
He hung up the receiver as if it had been red-hot, seized a
thick pamphlet, and tore it to pieces in his rage. (I had the
information from Bettina.)
When the story came to my ears, my flesh crept, and the
next time I met Merck I did what I could to find excuses for
Gannas rudeness. I went on to say what a remarkable
woman she really was, dilated on her merits in terms that made
Paul and Bettina stare at me aghast. T h ey were silent during
my tirade, until Merck found it impossible to stifle a sceptical
chuckle, which served only to inflame my advocacy. Bettinas
face was unmoved, betraying no more doubt or curiosity than
if I had been talking of a woman at the antipodes, of some one
she had never met and was never likely to meet.
Ganna, however, had made up her mind to talk matters over
with Bettina, who might perhaps see a way out of the impasse.
Ganna felt as if she were about to put her head into a lions
mouth, but had enough self-confidence to be hopeful of the
result, and therefore made a formal appointment. Bettina looked
forward to the interview with a palpitating heart, but showed
no sign of agitation, receiving Ganna as courteously as any other
guest. Very soon afterwards she gave me a sketchy account of
what had taken place, but did not fill in the details till
months had passed, when the depressing first effects had
worn off.
A charmingly laid tea-table, well-made tea of delicious quality,
plates of thin bread and butter the butter thin as well as the

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bread, as rationing conditions dictated. But for Ganna it was

a banquet. She was underfed, anxious, and tired. Her dress was
at least three years old, and when new had not been much to
boast of. Bettina felt very sorry for her, pressed food on her,
and poured out cup after cup of tea. Ganna enjoyed the meal.
As she ate and drank, her eyes roved about the room, and she
reluctantly admitted how tastefully it was furnished.
Yes, you certainly have excellent taste. But this sort of thing
takes up a lot of time.
W ell, that doesnt matter, if one has the time to spare.
No, but it leads one to pursue ones own interests too
exclusively, said Ganna didactically a thrust which had been
carefully prepared.
That depends what sort of interests you mean.
Ganna laughed harshly:
I mean that most of your interest is concentrated upon beauty
culture.
Bettina was surprised at Gannas insight.
I see in Alexander how alluring these petty externals may
prove, went on Ganna, and how contagious is devotion to
them. Since he met you, none of his suits are good enough for
him, though he used not to bother about such things. Now there
is only one shop where he can buy a necktie fit to wear, and
he must have the crease in his trousers freshened every week.
It seems to me absurd!
Such matters were not absurd to Bettina, but she was civil
enough to join in her guests somewhat forced cachinnation.
T o Gannas way of thinking the moment seemed to have come
for the blow she had planned:
But you must not imagine, Frau M erck, she said in a
cutting tone, that these demi-mondaine arts will enable you
to capture my husband. Others have tried the same methods
in vain. Simply out of the goodness of my heart I will tell you
that the foundations of my marriage to Alexander are so well
and truly laid, that nothing can shake them. Come what may,
he will never dream of our separating. I am quite easy in my

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mind about that, but I should be sorry for you to entertain

false hopes.
Bettina had to pull herself together. Never had she had such
a shower-bath of abominations poured upon her head. Her first
impulse was to answer in kind, to shout back:
Woman, what on earth are you talking about ? Decent people
neither do such things nor speak of them .
She managed, however, to keep her temper, and to answer
with a smile:
Your first impulse was right, Frau Ganna. You had no need
to say anything of the sort to me. N o one is planning to capture
your husband.
Ganna laughed scornfully.
No one had better try, she said, and rose to take leave.
Bettina saw her into the passage and helped her on with her
cloak, sending a pleasant message to the children. Ganna was
touched, and said farewell with thanks for a pleasant visit,
without the ghost of a notion how foolishly and rudely she had
behaved. On the contrary, she held her head high, and con
gratulated herself upon her victory.
Bettina, left alone, felt sick and giddy. She opened the window,
for a breath of untainted air. Her feet were icy cold, her finger
nails blue. She felt frozen to the marrow. Going into the bed
room, she undressed and tumbled into bed. This horrible day
had been spent in the kingdom of death. She must escape from
the memory of it. A week elapsed before she could tell me about
the visit, and even then she shivered as she spoke.
Circe.- Since all my previous liaisons had come to an end
peacefully within a year or two, Ganna, despite her uneasiness,
confidently expected the same issue to my relationship with
Bettina. But when her expectations remained unfulfilled, her
balance was completely upset. Gloomy ancient superstitions
came to life in her, and sometimes quite seriously she gave
utterance to the belief that Bettina must have administered a
love-potion. Anyhow, her sense of the danger that I might
become the lasting thrall of this latest rival grew so poignant,

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that she sought ways and means for delivering me from Bettinas
supposed nets. Upon this foundation she built one of those
indestructible fictions with whose aid she was wont to keep her
head above the water. I must be suffering from a reluctantly
endured sexual slavery, must be tormented by the longing to
escape from the bonds of the heartless Circe and to return to
the arms of my true-love, Ganna. But Circe, the cruel deceiver,
would not allow this; she threw me into an enchanted slumber
with her philtre, robbing me of my virility so that I repudiated
Ganna for her sake, which was all the easier because the sorceress
was able to make Gannas virtues assume the semblance of vices.
But Ganna was not satisfied with this fairly harmless perversion
of the truth. She gradually managed to convince herself that
Bettina must have had a hand in bringing about the forced sale
of the school-field and not Bettina alone, but the whole Waldbauer clique had been a party to the machinations, for the
main object of these people and their hangers-on had been to
calumniate Ganna, to estrange me from her, and thus to lay
her low.
Refutation of these absurdities was fruitless. The notion
gathered strength, became affiliated with other delusions, made
the air I had to breathe asphyxiating and the skies overhead
gloomier and gloomier.
M y Fault and Bettinas. I ought to write a great deal more
about Bettina, but the task is difficult. Every image of her seems
to me so close that to sketch it in outline is impossible, and I
must confine myself to showing step by step what changes she
produced in my inner and outer life. I think this will give a
clearer idea of her nature and personality than if I were to write
at considerable length about her qualities, her appearance, or
her changing moods. The person with whom one is really living
in intimate contact becomes invisible, just as one is invisible
to oneself; one has only intimations of a presence, in which
one has become immersed, and in whose being one is oneself
in turn revealed. In such circumstances the word love ceases
to have any definite meaning.

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Manifestly I must from the outset have had occasion to think

a good deal about Bettinas marriage. Although we did not dis
cuss the matter in set terms, it seemed to me indubitable that
she would never debase herself to half-measures or insincerity.
By degrees I came to understand how things were between
herself and Paul. Fundamentally, their relationship was em
bryonic. They had grown very fond of one another when quite
young, and had entered into what was intended to be a sort
of trial-marriage. It had not turned out badly. During the early
days there had been minor storms. Then they had sworn a
treaty of friendship, and now lived in cordial mutual under
standing. Recently both had felt that their relations were tending
towards new order and clarification. T h ey often spoke of this
frankly and cheerfully. Bettina had no private means. I entered
marriage as a pauper, she once told m e; and if needs must,
I shall depart from it in the same condition. Another time:
Marriage is not an almshouse. Husband and wife are unified
for their childrens sake; apart from the children, what per
manent tie need there be between myself and the man who has
possessed me, when he no longer wants me or I no longer want
him? T o be free was the first requisite in life. M any of her
friends considered that she trusted too much to the favour of
fortune. T o her, this phrase seemed pretentious. T o put the
matter simply, she did not worry about the future, was not
afraid of what life would bring. She did not need a man to
support her, and had a contempt for security.
The months in Vienna were disorganising for both of us. By
now, our senses had been blunted to the news of the massmurders on the fighting fronts. Faith in the justice of our cause
had been undermined and was crumbling. Intimates, who had
gone to the fight in a rush of enthusiasm, were returning ruined
in body and mind, unfitted for any occupation, lost beings. M y
half-brother, to whom in childhood I had been deeply attached,
had fallen in the battle of the Somme. No letter, no word of
greeting; the silence of death. T h e lies which were being told
by both groups of belligerents in order to maintain the war-

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spirit were sickening. Nothing could exceed the impudence with

which profiteers flaunted their ill-gotten gains. While they danced
and drabbed night after night, the mothers of half-starved chil
dren stood in queues day after day outside the butchers and
bakers shops. Often of an evening I would go for a walk with
Bettina through the unlighted suburban streets, our hearts
numbed by the signs of universal misery. Once more I applied
for combatant service, but the futility of the endeavour was made
plain even to myself by a long and severe attack of biliary colic.
I dont know how I could have endured my life but for Bettina,
and her sympathetic understanding of my work.
Are we justified in finding so much satisfaction in one an
other? I asked her in perplexity. Are not we challenging fate
by doing so? Tw o poor mortals, who strive for a moments
happiness amid the gloom as if the awakening, when it comes,
would not be worse than ever!
Bettina could not agree. In all humility, she could not agree.
There was a bird of ill-omen that hooted o nights in the garden
behind her house. In imitation of its cry, she had named it
Giglaijo ; and when she heard it, her blood froze. But she
had a blessed capacity for forgetting the evil and the hateful.
When the new shoots began to thrust up through the soil and
the sun to rise higher in the sky, she revived at the coming of
spring after the chill of winter. But she had her hours of sadness,
and the dark hours of the cheerful are often darker than those
of persons who by temperament lack brightness.
When the summer began, we were able to get away from the
melancholy town. It had become a fixed usage with us to go
to Ebenweiler at the opening of June and to stay there till the
middle of September. Ganna did not arrive with the children
until July, when the school holidays began, and the weeks
Bettina and I had to ourselves were an island of the blest in
the wide sea of the year. In the valley which had become so
homelike, we could forget that the world was in flames. Not
that we mocked at the great assize; but nature, in her sublime
grace, condoned it. When the thunder of the heavy guns was

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heard far away to the south, it sounded like the muttering of

G ods wrath against those who were desecrating His earth; the
ice-clad peaks were like barred doors by which the march of
death was stayed. Everything belonged to us twain: the forests,
the lake, the rivulets, the bridges, the white paths. There were
starlit evenings when the tremulous firmament threw its golden
sparkles upon our couch of love; and there were wet nights
when the flames of hate upon earth seemed to have been
quenched. I wandered to and fro from my house to Bettinas
and from Bettinas back to mine at all hours of the day and the
night: in the evening, when the cows were driven to be watered;
in the morning, when the peasants were hammering their scythes.
T he day was called Bettina, the night was called Bettina, life
was called Bettina.
But when Ganna came, we had to pay for those weeks of
ecstasy. She arrived with numberless trunks, hold-alls, and bags;
each child had its own toys; she brought books for every con
ceivable mood, enough reading matter to last for five years
solitary confinement. When I uttered a reproachful word or two
concerning this excess of baggage, she had a ready answer.
Where were all her dresses, her hats, her fourteen pairs of shoes ?
She had not troubled to bring these. But surely she had done
well to bring a long chair for herself? And her Schopenhauer.
What sort of a husband was I, wishful to restrict his wife, in
matters intellectual, to a diet of bread and water ?
I had often begged her to keep away from Ebenweiler. She
had a delightful house in the outskirts of Vienna. W hy was she
not content to send the children with the nurse, who, under
my supervision, would look after them all right ? This suggestion
was angrily received. She would not be thrust out of my life.
Was she not my lawful spouse? Do you want me to make
things easier for you and your mistress, so that people may
believe I have abdicated? I will not be so complaisant as that!
As for the nature of your relations with her, it is an open secret!
In the first summer of our intimacy, Bettina rented a cottage
less than a mile from our farmhouse. It was rash of her to

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establish herself so near Ganna, but she had taken a fancy for
the cottage, and it was not until the fourth summer that she
could bring herself to choose a different one at the other end
of the valley. Also we realised too late that we had made a mis
take in having our love-nest at Ebenweiler, where I had become
a marked figure through years of summer-residence. But I was
fond of this nook in the mountains, and it provided so perfectly
the environment I needed as a contemplative and creative writer.
No other summer resort would have suited me as well; and,
had we found one, Ganna would certainly have hunted us out
there. If I was well known at Ebenweiler, I was also liked there,
and perhaps, it was there, after all, I could best hope to escape
being anathematised for my free union with Bettina.
Ganna, however, was quick to seize her opportunity, to make
the most she could of our open challenge to respectability. She
assumed the airs of a martyr in order to arouse compassion.
Had she been less sedulous to create a Ganna-party, she
would have had more adherents; but, as usual, she over-acted
her role. Still, there was an obvious tendency to cold-shoulder
Bettina. Calumnious tongues did their evil work. Every other
day, almost, Ganna sent her a dictatorial letter or an imperious
message. Bettina ignored all this, and walked as if on wings;
but some of the mud splashed her ankles. She did not seem to
notice that she was being cu t; or, if it wounded her for a moment,
the sight of a lovely flower-bed, or an hours violin-playing,
would enable her to forget. She was not one to lower her eyes
humbly. Gossip was nothing to her. An acquaintance urged
discretion. W hy did she go about with me so openly? W hy
shouldnt I? she answered. How otherwise would people
become accustomed to the situation?
Still, this publicity was our danger-point. We ought to have
been more discreet. It was a mistake to slap Gannas face as
we did. Naturally she grew bitter. We were running up a debt,
which we should have to pay in after years, with usurious
interest. If there persisted in Ganna any remnants of womanly
self-respect, we stripped her of them unheeding, and in the
M

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intoxication o f our love for one another we were deaf to the

voice o f reason. No doubt I had long since despaired o f the
attempt to make a companion of Ganna; but had I not been
remiss for fifteen, sixteen, or seventeen years? Should I not have
cleared the decks, by force or in kindness, should I not have
made every conceivable sacrifice in order to break away from
her; instead of (a weakling, a coward, and animated by a mis
taken sense o f duty) continuing to trapes about by the side of
a woman between whom and me there had long ceased to be
anything in common? As for Bettina, in her pride, in her aloof
ness from all that was turbid, involved, enigmatical, and gloomy,
she closed her eyes and shrugged her shoulders as she went
her own way. That was bold, that was strong, that was nobly
defiant; and yet it was mistaken, and sowed the seeds of disaster.
Human beings have to live among their fellows. T h e truth
o f each one of us is only the truth of his own circle of associates.
What is general to the species, what is universal in the way
o f qualities, shows itself in the particular only through a prism
where it is dispersed into its elements. Observed experience is
very different from experience personally undergone, and the
difference, the contrast, can never be obliterated, for the ego
and the not-ego have been foes since the world began.
The Case of Klothilde Haar. What finally dashed my
hopes of living at peace with Ganna was, indisputably, the
Klothilde Haar business. T h e months before the summer of
1919, the last during which I was running a joint household
with Ganna, were a nightmare.
When the Austrian monarchy collapsed and had been torn
to shreds; when Germany was in the throes o f revolution; when
the towns were being poisoned by the odour of the corpses that
were rotting on the battlefields, and influenza as virulent as
bubonic plague was threatening to sweep away what young lives
remained; when want was turning the desperate into criminals,
and was making bandits of those who had been willing to throw
away their lives in defence of their country; when in the East
a new world had arisen, and in the West the old one was com

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mitting suicide in the form of what were called peace treaties

while all these changes were in progress, Ganna, in her little
domestic State, was turning things topsy-turvy, was heaping
dissension upon dissension, and was transforming the lives of
her daily associates into a private h ell; for no better reason than
that she was a prey to the delusion that Klothilde Haar was a
creature of mine and Bettinas, commissioned and paid by us
to drive her, Ganna, out.
This woman Haar had entered our household after the birth
o f Doris. She was in the middle thirties, cold, morose, rather
slothful, and not altogether to be trusted. A t first, however,
Ganna could not praise her too highly, chiefly because Klothilde
idolised our little daughter. Such a crazy passion for their charges
is not uncommon in nurses. Otherwise, she had no tender feeling
for any one on earth.
I had of late years found it necessary to take over the house
keeping, because Ganna could not cope with its difficulties. I
had made the mistake of giving Klothilde certain privileges
which were a mortification to Ganna. For instance, the nurse
kept the key of the storeroom, and was accountable to me for
the flour, sugar, rice, and butter which she bought in accordance
with my directions. I could not watch idly while the children
were being underfed. Ganna was too unpractical to buy a pound
o f butter when it was needed.
When I found that Klothilde was in touch with surreptitious
dealers, and she proposed to turn these relationships to advantage
for the household, I closed with the offer, and did not haggle
about prices. This was enough to enrage Ganna, who, herself
ascetic, regarded expenditure upon food and drink beyond what
was barely necessary to satisfy hunger and quench thirst as
superfluous if not positively criminal. A further trouble was that
Klothildes go-between in the clandestine traffic was her lover,
a man named Wiist, who had succeeded in keeping away from
the front while the war lasted, and was now, like so many others,
in search of a job. After dark he would smuggle into the house
whatever he had been able to shark up during the day; then

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Klothilde handed me the bill, usually a stiff one, to tell the

truth; and the long prices were not made any shorter by the
womans spiteful grin.
The bringing of Wiist and his shady doings into the affair
was a severe irritant to Ganna. She used the most opprobrious
terms in addressing Klothilde. Nor was the latter mealy-mouthed
in her replies. At length the friction became so severe that the
maid threatened to lodge a complaint of defamation against her
mistress. I said angrily to Ganna:
You must not let matters go to the length of a public
scandal.
Ganna rejoined:
That thievish woman will never carry out her threat. You
neednt think she will renounce the fat pickings you have been
fool enough to put in her w ay.
Klothilde, who was a confirmed eavesdropper, took a sadistic
delight in such scenes. So intense was her hatred of Ganna that
she clung to her situation, if only to feast her eyes upon her
enemys torments. For my part, I did not wish to send her
packing, for at that juncture faithful service was so difficult to
secure that I might have found it extremely hard to replace her
by any one equally devoted to Doris; besides, she cooked well,
and kept the house going after a fashion.
Clashes between Ganna and Klothilde became more frequent.
Sometimes there would be a thundering row late at night, the
wrangling voices penetrating to my study, so that I had to plug
my ears with cotton-wool. When, after dark, Herr WTiist slipped
into the passage with his spoils, Ganna, who had been on the
watch for him, would receive him with volleys of abuse. One
day when I was out, the fellow was so much angered by the rough
side of her tongue that he made as if he were about to assault
her. Ferry rushed to protect his mother, and, being a strong
lad, and having seized his adversary by the throat, brought him
to the ground. The two continued to wrestle on the floor, while
Ganna telephoned for the police. She ordered Klothilde out of
the house, but Klothilde refused to budge without a written

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exoneration, since Ganna had accused her of stealing some eggs.

Meanwhile I had come in, and the alleged culprit appealed to
me.
As far as I can remember, I said, the eggs were used in
the ordinary way.
Ganna boiled over with wrath, and yelled like a dog whose
tail has been trodden on.
Did it ever before happen to a wife that her husband should
be in league with a thievish maid and the womans souteneur?
This is to put a worse affront on me than your daily outrages.
But I have long known Bettina Merck to be the soul of the
conspiracy. She planted Klothilde Haar and Wiist in the house
to make my life more of a burden to me than it was already.
Y ou neednt pretend incredulity. W hy, its the talk of the tow n!
Ganna! I exclaimed, taking her by the shoulders and giving
her a good shake.
I drew her into the adjoining room.
Ganna, be reasonable. Surely youre not in earnest?
In earnest? O f course I am. I have proof.
Proof? How can you have proof of anything so absurd?
W hat is your proof?
She stood facing me, tongue-tied.
As to the talk o f the town, the Haar business certainly
became the talk of the neighbourhood. One night a stone was
flung through the window of Gannas bedroom. Another, the
front door was smeared with dung. When I passed through a
knot o f men in the road, some one shouted after me in a shrill
voice:
W hy the hell dont you knock her foul tongue down her
throat?
When I had closed the front door behind me, the sound of
the objurgation seemed to echo through the house.
I went to my study and sat down to write, but on the blank
page I fancied I could read the words:
W hy the hell dont you knock her foul tongue down her
throat?

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Verses. I could not bring m yself to talk to Bettina about

this matter, for shame sealed my lips. T o criticise Ganna would
have implied self-criticism. Still, I am far from supposing that
Bettina knew nothing about it. She must have known, not from
listening to gossip (which was never her way), but from my
silence, which to her was eloquent. I am not good at conceal
ment. As the saying goes, I wear my heart upon my sleeve ;
and my friends have often made merry over my futile attempts
to hide something. M y moods, my experiences, my very thoughts,
were plain to all who cared to read; and Bettina, with her fine
perceptions, read them the instant I had crossed the threshold.
She never questioned me. That would have served no useful
purpose. W hat she wanted was to help me in my troubles. She
did not think that two persons who loved one another should
always be talking to one another about their sorrows and diffi
culties. T he better course was to coax them away. For her, even
in those gloomy days, the sky was never wholly overcast; there
were rifts in the clouds, rifts through which the sun shone. If
we pulled ourselves together, followed our good genius, were
not pretentious, the powers that ruled us would not be lastingly
ungracious. Fiddle in hand, it was even possible to charm out
of them things which made life still worth living.
I find it hard to express all that this meant to me her faith
in the future, in our ability to reach the goal, in the victory
of an energetic will over gloom and peril. I contemplated her
with admiration, and even with envy. She was surrounded by
persons who were eager to oblige h er; and she sought out others
who were in need of help: a poor woman who made a living
by going out to do needlework, who was half-starved, and for
whom she found jo b s ; a young artist to whom she gave letters
of introduction; a friend who had been invalided home from
the front, whom she cared for and provided with food. She was
unceasingly busied in helpful activities, not with the pose of
being a Good Samaritan (which was foreign to her tempera
ment), but making a sport of them, as it were, trying to compensate
people for the disfavours of fortune, and not letting her left hand

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know what her right hand was doing. Y et I never knew any
one who was so frequently and so spitefully misunderstood as
she, with her cheerfulness and her smiling straightforwardness.
This often puzzled me. Perhaps it was because she was a little
too ready of speech, too sure of herself; and because she would
not allow herself to be led by the nose, but valiantly pursued
the truth as she saw it. Naturally this mortified many persons.
What a comfort to have some one with whom one can associate
without unceasing contention. She had invariably so much to
tell me about the days doings, when we met in the evening,
and there was generally enough food for conversation until far
on into the night.
During this period I wrote a number o f sonnets addressed
to her, and will incorporate three o f them here:

I
I dreamed of thee mid lovely flowers wild,
And in a landscape twixt the sun and moon,
Which, like Diana, on thee gently smiled,
Dianas smile itself a gracious boon.
O f Terra thou a happy confidant,
A trusty heart, a handmaid true and tried.
When dream had passed and day was vigilant,
Becamest thou at dawn my chosen guide.
T h y merit this, that deed should follow deed,
With proud rejection of accustomed pain;
Resistance, too, of darkness slothful reign,
O f thriftless effort and of restless speed.
Thus art thou to my nature strangely kin;
In every form thou hast, a spirit twin.
II
If thee as sister I have known so late,
So late have chosen thee as greatest friend,
Not until now have recognised my mate,
Nor wedded thee until this summers end;

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I suffer much for having been so slow:

Too swift, too swift, the passing of the years,
As flight of bird when the storm-wind doth blow;
And short, ah short, lifes evening, sad with tears.
Thy youth, methinks, must loathe my many scars,
October blasts will surely chill thy May?
Athwart a desert ran my lifes highway;
Past sheaves and flowers led thy pilot-stars,
But, still uninjured, I can upward climb;
The love that binds us can defy harsh time.

Ill

Thou stone I lift, what hidest thou from me?

I seek thee, God, but cannot see thy face.
0 sun and moon and stars and beast and tree,
You show yourselves, then vanish without trace.
But thou, with soul that calls to me as mate,
Thou holdst me in thine arms. O f wind the sough
Perhaps thou art; thy name irradiate
Maybe an empty sound and ghostly stuff.
1 deem myself with thee perhaps deceived
By images unreal as those in glass.
The heart I love (unhappy wight, bereaved),
I fear its substance tenuous as gas.
Nor no, nor yes. The oracles are dumb.
Before this mystery, my sense is numb.
The Resolve. That autumn came the great change in my
life.
On a balmy October day we had been for a long tramp in
the hills. Returning, we sat on a bench near the village street,
rejoicing in the loneliness which had descended upon this
beloved summer resort with the coming of autumn. After a
prolonged silence, during which we had been looking across the
meadows wreathed in the mists of evening, Bettina said:

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Alexander, have you considered what we had better do next

winter?
I looked at her dumbfounded, for at first I did not understand
her drift.
What need is there for any change? I enquired.
If you see no need for a change, dear, please forget my
question, she said, with downcast eyes.
I realised that she was not talking at random, but of some
thing serious; and guessed what the something was, for I
had a guilty conscience, which prompted me. I muttered:
O f course I see what you mean. . . . I have been thinking
about the matter a good deal of late. . .
Then I broke off. Bettina continued, feeling her way:
Does it seem right to you that we should go on living with
a bandage over our eyes? That you should return to live with
Ganna year after year? I dont know . . .
She paused, and for a second or two my heart stopped beating.
What dont you know? I asked Bettina.
Taking her courage in both hands, she whispered:
I dont know whether I can go on living as we do. I m afraid
not.
I stared at the ground, and my lips formed words that still
seemed unmeaning to me:
You think I ought to leave Ganna?
Bettina had never spoken of it before, but during the last few
days I had come to feel that she was waiting for this decisive
step, as the sole means of deliverance. She had not, hitherto,
been able to bring her thought to utterance. Even now, it was
in gestures, in looks, more than in words, that her wishes, her
sense of an inevitable necessity, found expression. I felt that
I must not fail her, for our whole relationship was at stake.
What about the children? I asked.
The children, yes. They make it hard. Yet I cannot forget
that two of them are almost grown up, have grown up under
your guidance.
But Doris still has need of me, Bettina.

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True, but why should she lose you? W hy should not she
spend most of her time with us?
I did not wholly take in her words; and what I did under
stand of them, filled me with remorse. How much I had to
make good to my children! What is worse for young people
than the continued presence of a mother who is never composed,
is always agitated, at odds with herself, at war with mankind,
knowing nothing about her fellow-creatures ? Defensive impulses
are rife in them; her affection is burdensome, her punishments
seem sheer brutality; they become animated by secret resistances,
and have no good will to meet her wishes; the core of their
nature, instead of developing freely, is confined within a hard
shell of protective reactions. Was I now to leave them to her
tender mercies, when there was nothing but my presence to
save them from the worst ?
Bettina said gently:
I have made no more than a suggestion. The matter is in
your hands. During these four years, you have ripened some
thing within me, and I can no longer endure the open secret
o f our liaison. T he position is a false one, and there is no
justification for it.
You dont need to tell me that, Bettina. I know. But Ganna
will never agree to a divorce.
I am not thinking of divorce, she answered; but of some
thing, my dear, which will establish our relations on a clean and
frank footing. That to begin with, anyway.
W hat? I exclaimed. You would face it out before the
world?
She smiled, in sufficient answer.
But if I take no steps to get a divorce, I persisted, do you
know what lies before us ?
She nodded. Long since, she had contemplated that issue
without flinching.
Where should we live? In Vienna? Out of the question. She
would m a k e the position impossible. If you think otherwise,
you dont know h er!

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Bettina had thought it all out, and developed her plans. We

should stay on in Ebenweiler, a nook remote from the world.
A roomy and comfortable villa could be rented from a certain
Frau Wrabetz, at a reasonable price for the winter. It would
be too costly for us during the season, and we should have
to remove to a farm; but we could return to it the following
winter. She put the scheme before me with tranquil confidence,
like one explaining matters to an intelligent child, and yet not so
as to wound my pride, for she managed to convey the impression
all the time that I was taking the initiative.
I was of two minds, torn between conflicting visions: one
gloriously happy, and one overcast with gloom. M y will was
palsied. How at forty-six could I start life anew, rebuilding it
so thoroughly that no stone of the old life would be left standing
upon another? Instinctively I sought for counter-arguments.
Tim idly I hinted that she herself was not free. This she swept
aside with one of those gestures which made words needless.
It implied :
I shall be free whenever the day comes on which I must be
free for your sake.
This helped me to make up my mind, and I said :
All right, I will write to Ganna to-day.
I read dissent in her expression, and asked what was amiss.
But, Alexander, the objection is plain. You must speak to
Ganna, not write.
Agreed, I replied. But surely it will be better to break it
to her by letter. Besides, it will help her if she sees in black
and white that there is no question of divorce ?
M y timidity puzzled Bettina.
Surely you are master of your own life? Who else has any
right to be?
Still, it will come as a frightful shock to Ganna!
I think you will make a mistake, a dangerous one, if you
encourage false hopes in Ganna. You should not bind yourself
by any written pledge against divorce.
She never said anything stronger than I think when such

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problems were being discussed; but experience had convinced

me that what she thought was almost invariably right, and
pointed to the best way out of a difficulty.
I think you should return to Vienna and see Ganna, were
it only for the convenience of settling up matters in your house.
She went on to explain that a friend of hers and mine could put
me up for a few days. This would make my breach with Ganna
less glaring than if I went to stay at a hotel.
That part of the plan alarmed me once more. It seemed so
sudden, so irrevocable. As if what we had in view could be
anything else than irrevocable! If Alexander and Bettina were
at length to set up house together, Alexander could not possibly
in the interim return to his old home and live there as Gannas
husband.
If you did that, she would never believe you were in earnest.
O f course you are right, Bettina. There must be no shilly
shallying.
All the same, I tacitly went my own way. I lacked courage to
follow her counsel, and to accost Ganna in the flesh, without
warning her by letter of what was afoot. Not for me, like my
namesake of Macedon, to cut the Gordian knot! Bettinas
intentions were translucent. She wanted to make me happy;
to be happy with me; to help me free myself from a heavy
burden. But for my part, I was taken by surprise. I had never
contemplated the possibility of breaking away from Ganna
openly, although I had long since come to recognise that our life
together was a failure. No doubt my ingrained unwillingness to
take decisive action had always held me back from effective
resolve. One of the dichotomous classifications of human beings
is into persons of action and those who stay put. Most emphati
cally, I belong to the latter category. In me, this trend is associated
with a measure of fatalism, which it would be unjust to stigma
tise as infirmity of purpose, although it is undoubtedly tinged by
weaker qualities, such as a love of comfort and an undue inclina
tion to become confirmed in my habits. For persons of this type,
the new always assumes an alarming aspect. Above all, no

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change; no fresh struggles to break the daily routine: the familiar

frictions already give me more trouble than enough. A philistine
attachment to material things played its part. The house had
become a harbour of refuge; I liked the bed in which I was
accustomed to sleep; I liked the familiar writing-table, mahogany
showing at the edges, a green-baize cover spotted with ink, and
on it a dozen objects endeared by association. Then there were
stronger affective ties; there was little Doris, who was passionately
attached to me, so that her life circled round mine. She was only
four. How was the poor child to be made to understand that her
father was going away to live in another house with another wife
than M um m y ? Would not she cease to love me ? Would not she
forget me ? Would not her forgetting me leave a scar in my mind ?
Such thoughts, however, saddening though they were, were
but the framework of my dread of Ganna. This dread over
shadowed me so much that I dared not confess it frankly to
Bettina. The thought of Ganna was a nightmare, was omni
present. Perhaps custom played its part; the daily round of
contention, the carrying of a burden and the settlement of a claim
all that I looked upon as my duty, and, even now, after
these many years, regarded as a mystical bond. Bold plans of
flight stormed through my head. Would not that be the best way
of escaping one woman to join the other ? In my state of mental
confusion, Bettinas lucid insistence upon one thing or the
other, seemed to me a savage onslaught upon my existence.
Had she not been the person I most dearly loved in all the
world, the person whose loss would have been unbearable, I
should, during these first days of vacillation, probably have
refused to comply, and should (crushed, doubtless, and broken)
have returned to live in hell with Ganna. If only Ganna were a
reasonable woman, I mused; open to persuasion, modifiable
by argument, in touch with the world of ordinary mortals;
how lovely it would be to live with Bettina, how joyful and
light-hearted I should at length become! But the need for an
explanation with Ganna was a horror to me.
At length, however, I made up my mind. When a person of

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the inert category decides at long last for action, he moves

amid events with the assured gait of a sleepwalker, and even
his mistakes may be helpful. Since, moreover, it is natural for an
author to believe that what he writes must be more convincing
than what he says by word of mouth, while the penning of a
letter soothes his nerves without any risk of the jarring inter
vention of the person whom he is addressing, I sat down and
wrote at considerable length to Ganna. First things first. It was
impossible, I said, that matters could be allowed to continue in
their present course. For years I had been subject to unceasing
stresses, and there must be a radical change. I earnestly hoped
that Ganna would help me, and not make difficulties. I ended
with a solemn assurance that neither Bettina nor I had any thought
o f a divorce, but merely wished to live together openly in a free
union. This insincere attempt to soften the blow was, as Bettina
had foreseen, a serious blunder, the root cause of all the misery
that ensued.
A few days afterwards, I returned to Vienna, becoming the
guest of Baroness Hebenstreit, a young war-widow and a friend
o f Bettinas. I found it disagreeable to be thus a casual visitor
in the town where I had a home of my own and children. Ganna
regarded it as an unpardonable insult.
A Shoreless Sea. T h e whole affair seemed incredible to
her. Oh yes, she had read the letter, twice,five times, ten times;
but what did a letter amount to? She needed something positive.
A letter was not positive evidence. A letter could be recalled.
A letter might have been written under alien influence, under
irresistible coercion. (Thenceforward the notion of alien influence,
of irresistible coercion, became firmly established in her mind,
and was the starting-point of much of the ensuing disaster.)
In a postscript I had written that I was leaving for Vienna on
Monday and would call on her Tuesday afternoon. C all ?
C razy! Did a man call on his own wife, call at his own house ?
On Monday evening I telephoned to her to give her my address.
Now she had positive evidence I was not coming home. Her
last illusion crashed.

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When she had recovered from the shock, she began to think
about what she would tell her friends, her brothers-in-law,
her sisters, her mother, the children, the servants. What was
happening was something worse than misfortune; it was inex
piable disgrace. She could not conceive how, under the shadow
of this disgrace, she would be able to meet peoples eyes! Although
she tried to console herself with the belief that the trouble would
last only a few days, still she had to face the terrible fact that I
had taken refuge among strangers. T h e strangers would pass the
news on to other strangers. This would mean that she had been
slighted.
T o avert gossip, she telephoned to a number of acquaintances
(who were greatly astonished to learn that I had returned from the
country earlier than had been expected) that our house was under
repair, and that, in the circumstances, Frau von Hebenstreit had
been good enough to put me up for a few days. Although, as a
part of each of these phone calls, she asked some question or
gave some additional information, introducing her main point
as an irrelevant detail, the people at the other end of the wire
drew their own conclusions, and she started the very gossip she
had wanted to avoid. She took the same path as far as the children
were concerned, in the endeavour to correct fate and to hush
up the truth. The children did not believe her. Naturally they
understood there must be something amiss when Daddy went to
stay in another house instead of coming home. Probably they had
been expecting trouble of this sort for a long time.
When I was made aware of these devices, I perceived as clearly
as if I had actually been present how she was going about the
house furtively, talking in whispers instead of in her natural
voice; how the Ganna full of forebodings was assuming the mask
of a confident Ganna, one of them a figure to commiserate, and
the other enough to provoke anger; how every time the telephone
bell rang she must be rushing to the instrument with eyes widely
opened in expectation; how at certain times of the day she would
incessantly pace to and fro in my study, conjuring up my figure
at the writing-table, looking at this spectre reproachfully, and

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from time to time muttering the stereotyped objurgations I

had so often heard: That woman. . . God will punish her. . . .
He will visit it upon her children. . . . He will destroy her.
Then there was the other Ganna, unruffled by such fury; the
distressful Ganna, whose tears streamed down, while she wiped
them away with clenched fists. When, at the appointed hour,
I opened the front door and entered, she flung herself into my
arms with a stifled cry.
It would be unending to describe, even in outline, all the
conversations between Ganna and myself at this juncture. They
were staged in the study, on the terrace, in the garden, in her
bedroom, in the street. They went on day after day, almost without
cessation, morning, noon, and night. T o summarise, they were
fatiguing and futile attempts of two persons to induce one another
to do things which were beyond the power of either. One of
them wanted to tear a band in sunder; the other, having noticed
that it was worn into holes, wanted to patch and darn it. One
of them wished to forsake a cold hearth; the other insisted that
the fire was still burning brightly, a sacred fire, which it would be
criminal to extinguish. One wished to close the account, since
all the money had been spent; the other wished to keep it open,
and clamoured for further credit. Conversations as old as the
hills, as barren as gravel, as painful as toothache. But in this case,
Gannas peculiarities gave them a new meaning and far-reaching
importance.
I came with the kindliest intentions. Hoping to induce her to
agree to a separation, I was as good-natured as possible. I spoke
of the nineteen years we had lived together, and how these years
made it incumbent upon her to avoid light-heartedly poisoning
the remembrance of them. Ganna agreed, but added that this
was my duty no less. I referred to the appreciation she had always
shown for my work.
Certainly, answered Ganna. I have never ceased to
love and admire your work; but is not that a reason why you
should refrain from a step which would involve my mental
ruin?

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How can you know that ? I burst in. Are you not presuming
e?. your power to read the future ?
M y feelings tell m e, she said, as if she had the foreknowledge
of the Parcae. Never have they deceived me, in matters where
my welfare and my road were at stake.
She did not understand. She did not want to understand. W e
made no progress.
I gave a pledge, saying:
You will never lose my friendship, if, in this momentous
hour, you are equal to the occasion.
She was shaken. She wept.
What you ask of me is so hard, she moaned; so frightfully
hard.
O f course it is hard, I replied. But you must not deprive
me of the right to manage my own life as I think best. This much,
at least, you must have learned from me, that ones vocation,
ones course through life, cannot be arbitrarily determined by
another.
She assented with a sob, but in the same breath took refuge in
the argument that she had to fight for the sake of her children.
I ventured to point out that they were my children too.
In your blind following of impulse, you pay no heed to that!
Mastering my temper, I replied:
Anyhow, your children will not be taken away from you.
Nor do I wish to be cut off from my children. For their sake you
must control yourself. Th ey have already suffered too much
from witnessing our quarrels.
Your fault! Your fault, she exclaimed, weeping.
M y fault, perhaps, I admitted; although it is never fair
to say that one party is exclusively to blame in such matters.
It takes two to pick a quarrel. No matter for that, now. What I
want you to understand is that I shall never get over my disap
pointment unless you are great enough to yield. You have within
you all the elements of goodness and greatness; you love poetry,
pictures, wisdom. I have unfailingly believed in you. Are you
going now to convince me that my faith was wrong ?

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She looked at me in despair, saying:

I am so utterly alone in the world.
T o be alone will give you strength, I answered jesuitically.
I need you, but at a distance, which will lighten the shadows
of the bad times we have had together, which, in retrospect, will
gild the past.
She was profoundly moved. Giving me her hand to hold, she
vowed, with a tremor in her voice, that she would comply in
all respects.
You dont know yet, Alexander, what sacrifices I am capable
o f.
I kissed her forehead gratefully, overlooking that my attempts
to persuade her served only to convince her that she ought not
to part from a man who said such lovely things to her.
What ought I to do? T ell me what I ought to do? she
whimpered.
Surely there can be no doubt about that?
Gladly I would shed my blood for you to the last drop. But
there is one thing you must never ask of me a divorce.
I am not asking that. All I ask is that you should loosen your
grip; should accept the new state of affairs with dignity; and
not burden me with a responsibility which really belongs to
you.
I ought never to have said that, for when I did so I was heed
lessly giving the prescription of the medicine with which I was
slowly poisoned.
I have always been a true friend to you, she resumed;
there is nothing petty about me, though there may be about
others, who hurt me for no reason.
For no reason, Ganna? Now you are tearing down what we
have so laboriously been building up.
Because you are thinking of divorce, she sighed; and a
divorce would kill me.
She looked at me savagely, and, in my folly, it seemed to me a
suitable moment for reminding her of the oath she had sworn
nineteen years before at the lakeside.

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Have you forgotten, Ganna, your vow to give me back my

freedom at any time I might ask for it?
Forgotten? O f course not! she answered, sobbing.
W ell, is such a pledge to have no meaning?
She was dismayed, for though she knew well enough that the
oath of an inexperienced girl could have no real significance, it
was not for her to negate its moral importance.
You cannot justly deny that I have kept my word, she said
after a while, with a martyrised expression, and carefully avoiding
the use of the word oath. Or, libertine that you are, do you
honestly think I have given you any ground for complaint in
that respect?
We were afloat on a shoreless sea. Ganna seemed to be never
weary of these discussions, which were her delight, her torment,
her stimulus, her hope. She could have gone on talking to all
eternity. In order to protract the argument she would, at critical
moments, seem to give way; and then, an hour later, withdraw
her concessions. When I left in the evening, she would accom
pany me, often for a long distance, trying to keep step in order
to refute my old complaint that she walked too slowly; while
(breathless in consequence) she panted forth a spate of reasons
real and fancied, promises, charges, and enumerations of my sins
in new and ever-new wordings.
I cannot think what you see in that Bettina of yours. After
all, shes only a woman, and I m just as good as she. If you
would but tell me whats her special attraction, perhaps I could
attract you in the same way. It must be a trick of some sort, and
I can learn it, for I am docile.
Night after night, I was almost dead from fatigue when I
dropped into bed.
The Counterpart. Bettina returned to Vienna a week after
me, to dismantle her rooms. One evening I went to see her at
the flat, and found her in the already half emptied dining-room.
She was wearing a fur-lined cloak, for there was neither coal nor
wood in the place, and the weather had turned cold. Her children
had already been sent to Frau W rabetz villa at Ebenweiler.

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I kept on my overcoat likewise. There was no need to tell her

all I had been going through. The mere sight of me conveyed
enough information. I asked after Paul.
Gone away.
W here?
T o the factory.
She conveyed a sense of tension as in a violin string which has
been too tightly stretched.
He left by the five-thirty this afternoon. I saw him off at the
station. Are you cold?
Icy, I answered.
She ran into her bedroom and came back with four pairs of
trees which she had taken out of shoes previously packed. Kneeling
in front of the stove, she made a blaze with some old newspapers
and threw in the trees. Since they were hard-wood, they burned
well, and warmed us a little.
If we burn the chairs and tables too, I said, we shall be
quite cosy!
She smiled absent-mindedly, and I felt anxious about her,
fancying she must have had a quarrel with her husband.
Have you had any trouble, you and Paul?
Trouble? Not a bit of it.
Tell me, dear, how did he take our proposal?
She didnt answer immediately, running to collect a lot of
old boxes in order to keep the fire in. Then, with a break in her
voice and tears running down her face, she said:
At noon to-day, we agreed upon a separation.
I stared at her in amazement, thinking: How quickly and
easily such matters can be settled among reasonable people!
What about the children? I asked.
Oh, o f course he has agreed to my keeping them. I stared
at her, wonderingly and enviously.
Phantoms and Fictions. One sleepless night, Ganna had
a brain-wave. Early in the morning she sent me a note by special
messenger. Would I come at once ? She had thought of a way out
of our difficulties. What was this wonderful scheme? I could

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scarcely believe my ears. W e were all three to live together,

myself as husband with two wives. This was a serious proposal!
Are you dreaming, Ganna, to think such a thing possible?
W ere not in Cuckoo-Cloudland, and the idea is not worth
discussing.
She was annoyed.
W hy not? she asked. Have you forgotten Count von
Gleichen?
Really, Ganna, I replied, with considerable irritation,
these instances from the world of fable do not help us.
World of fable ? Not a bit of it. I give you a historical instance,
and you talk about fables. True, that was a long time ago; but
surely we are moderns?
Cut out the modern, please, if by modernity you mean an
unappetising hotch-potch of feelings and a preposterous
situation.
M uch piqued, Ganna rejoined:
Really, Alexander, I did not expect to find you so middleclass in your outlook, afraid to realise in your own life the ideals
you have proclaimed in your novels.
I could not recall having ever idealised Count von Gleichen,
but Ganna insisted that I had done so. She emphasised the
advantages of her plan, stumping up and down the room. She
had not yet tidied her hair, and she was wearing a grey knitted
slip-on, with sleeves to the wrists. She talked interminably.
W ith good will, everything becomes possible. The sacrifices
must not be all on one side. M y rights take precedence. Bettina
must curb her selfishness. Is there not room in the house for us
all?
I made no answer, but fluttered the pages of a book I pretended
to be looking at.
Let me have a talk with her about it, went on Ganna eagerly.
If she has any good in her, she will agree.
Bettina was to be the ostensible head of the house, for this
position would tickle her vanity. She, Ganna, would be the real
housekeeper.

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If any disputes should arise not that there will be any, for
I shall be as good as gold but if any disputes should arise, you,
Alexander, w ill be the arbiter.
I do not know, even now, whether Ganna took her Countvon-Gleichen idyl seriously. It would be waste of time to enquire,
for she could not distinguish between dream life and real; and
when she let her fancy run riot it was not guided by the vestiges
o f logic which may be found even in the wildest dreams. The
happenings in that imaginary world o f hers were the product
o f a waking delirium. Day after day she returned to the charge
with her wish-fulfilment dream of a triple union, and she fashioned
the most elaborate arguments in its favour. As for my stubborn
resistance to the scheme, that must be the outcome of Bettinas
counter-suggestions. O f course I should have been ashamed to
breathe a syllable about the crazy notion to Bettina; and I could
never have been so base as to betray the foolish imaginings of
the woman I had lived with so long to the woman I hoped to
live with henceforward.
When Ganna at length realised that her efforts in this direction
were unavailing, her view was that her noblest intentions had
been wilfully frustrated. I f those to whom she had unselfishly
offered her hand, refused to make peace, they must have weighty
reasons, and were probably aiming at Gannas ruin. How natural
the suspicion that Bettina M ercks real object was to get possession
o f the house! T he wicked design dated from long since, when
Bettina had planted Klothilde Haar upon the innocent Ganna.
Circe had twisted me round her fingers, for I was hopelessly
pliable, and had become a party to the fell design. Having
secured the house, Bettina would be its sole mistress, and,
having sent Ganna into exile, would lead a princely life there.
That was what would happen to poor Ganna, unless she took active
measures to prevent it. So vividly did this picture of Bettina
triumphantly installed in Alexander Herzogs house present itself
to Ganna, that she often groaned loudly and gnashed her teeth.
When informed that Bettina and Paul had agreed to a friendly
separation, instead o f looking upon this as an example to follow,

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she regarded it as a confirmation of her worst suspicions and as

part o f the conspiracy. T h e solid ground o f reality had slipped
from under her feet; but reality was superfluous to her, for, in
her aloofness from the world, she mistook her fancies for
actualities. Her ownership o f the house was threatened. T h e
house! This notion swelled, as notions and images often do in
dreams; the notion of ownership, of a place where she had taken
root, o f absolute security.
Accordingly, she felt more and more ready to fulfil what she
regarded as her heroic offer to share her dearest possessions,
husband and home, with her arch-enemy. She had made the
proposal in the hope of averting my departure, and when her offer
was contemptuously rejected she had at least the gratification o f
having convinced herself of her own nobility.
Everything transformed itself in Gannas mind to suit Gannas
fancy. She had no doubt that she had been a model w ife; the
impersonation of amenability, punctuality, and order. Though
endowed with these virtues, she had been calumniated to me. Her
enemies had defamed her to me until I had felt impelled to
break away. The same enemies who had had Klothilde Haar in
their pay. T h e same enemies whose machinations had prevented
her making me a millionaire by means of the school field. Ganna
also succeeded in persuading herself that we had lived together
like turtle-doves for nineteen years, that no cloud had ever
darkened the heaven of our conjugal happiness. This conviction
hardened into a legend resembling many of those which disfigure
our school history-books.
Since, however, something had obviously gone wrong with
this turtle-dove existence, and since, no less obviously, the fault
was not Gannas, some one else must be to blame. T h e culprit
must be exposed and tracked down by an unremitting hunt.
Phantoms and fictions, woven out of thin air, multiplied unceas
ingly. Words and deeds of long ago were misinterpreted; opinions
were twisted aw ry; matters that had no bearing one upon the
other were speciously shown to be interrelated. A number of
envious, malicious, mendacious and mischief-making persons

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were projected upon the screen of the past; and, surrounded by

these malignants, walked the serene figure of Ganna, as guardian
angel of her beloved Alexander.
Day after day this film was turned for my edification, and day
after day I was asked to bear witness to the truth o f the picture.
W hy did I stay on; why did I look and listen? W hy did I not
pack my traps and clear out forthwith? Hard to say! I think
there must be something radically wrong in my make-up. I find
it impossible to pursue my course when this means leaving
spiritual devastation behind me. Not because I am a softy,
not because I am excessively tender-hearted. M y self-preservative
impulse is fairly strong. I am not unduly open-handed, not over
ready to help, not a pigeon for every ones plucking. When I
am asked to make sacrifices, I look twice and thrice before com
plying. There is something else the matter with me. Not, indeed,
one thing; for the flaw is stratified.
First of all, I have ingrained in my nervous system a sense of
the simultaneity of all happenings. As a necessary outcome of
the excessive spiritual sensibility therewith associated, I tend to
transfer myself into periods other than the actual present, and
imaginatively to project myself into the personalities o f those
with whom I come in contact. Owing to this transmutation, it
is as if I actually saw, heard, smelt, tasted, and touched what these
others are seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching, with
a greater expenditure of energy than if my own senses were being
directly stimulated, or if I were faced by concrete difficulties. In
this way I come to resemble a surgeon who cannot bring himself
to perform an operation he knows to be indispensable, and who,
instead of anaesthetising his patient and getting to work,
numbs his own conscience by giving himself a hypodermic of
morphine.
Next, I have within me a moral law ; there speaks to me a higher
voice whose utterances I cannot ignore. Here was this wife o f mine.
No matter what her defects might b e ; no matter that she might
have made her own bed; no matter whether I, Bettina, or the
world at large might or might not approve her doings and her

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character still, I was linked to her; long ago I had pledged myself
to h e r; I was responsible for her, whatever might be said to the
contrary; I had had three children by her; without me, she would
have no aim, no grip, and would be lost in the wilderness. In
such circumstances, was I really going to play the deserter?
Could I shake the dust off my feet and begin a new life ( a new
life, what a fools paradise it is!) without having completely
shed the trammels o f the old ? But for that, I must sweep away the
phantoms and the fictions. It seemed possible. I did not yet know
that these phantoms and fictions had a terrible tenacity, and a
frightful power for growth that, like the jinnee in the Arabian
Nights when liberated from the brass bottle, they would swell
till the sky was overcast. No, I could not break away. I was not
cold-blooded, not brutal enough. I wanted to save part of Ganna
for myself out of the wreckage. A memory, a sense of gratitude,
a feeling of respect.
Joy lost, A ll lost! Since week followed week, and, despite
my best endeavours, it proved impossible to come to terms with
Ganna, I decided to break the threads, and go to Ebenweiler,
where Bettina was awaiting me. I packed books, manuscripts,
clothes, underlinen; Ganna watching me in consternation, while
the children, perplexed and downcast, ventured a question now
and again. T h e hour of departure arrived, and Ganna came to the
station. What could be said to mitigate the pain of this leavetaking? Ganna talked and talked, almost inarticulately. She was
afraid of my catching cold, of a railway accident; everything was
so uncertain now; I must be careful about my diet: talk, talk,
talk until the train started. Even then, she ran along the platform,
waving her hand. T h e picture stays with me. It was characteristic
of Ganna.
Seventeen hours in the train. T h e Austrian railway traffic was
still much disordered. T he compartment was dirty; the carriage
shook like a diligence on a rough road; the window-glass had been
broken, and the window boarded up; the roof was leaky; the
lamps past work. Looking out into the gathering darkness, I
seemed to see Ganna running beside the train and waving her

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hand. In the night she stood at the door of the compartment

begging to be let in, her voice choked with tears.
Ebenweiler next morning, under snow glistening in the sun
shine. T h e familiar landscape hac^a new visage, its tranquil
charm having given place to majesty. Bettina was waiting for me
on the platform, her cheeks reddened by the cold, -her greyishgreen eyes radiant with happiness. We drove in a sleigh to the
villa, half-buried beneath the snows. Christmas weather!
I had never dreamed how peaceful, how fascinating, a properly
ordered household could be. Such a thing was outside the range
o f my previous experience. That winter I began a lengthy spell
o f hard mental work, which I was able to carry on despite the
distresses I am about to describe. I was sheltered and safeguarded.
Partly by the landscape, which was soothing to my ruffled nerves;
but above all by Bettinas far-seeing, noiseless, cherishing, and
apparently effortless care for my well-being and tranquillity.
She made me feel as if I were safely hidden away in the interior of
the mountain on whose slopes we were living. The clamour of the
world and the contentiousness of Ganna might have been a
thousand years, a thousand miles away. In the ecstasy of the first
few months I felt as if m y dream of twin souls fused into one had
at length been realised.
Bettinas two little girls were at the outset rather shy of the
new head of the family. One of the hardest things to find out for
us grown-ups is what children think of us. W ith mingled distrust
and reserve, these two were waiting to see how things would shape
themselves. M y insatiable demand for quiet, my sensitiveness to
noise, were for them what muzzle and lead are for puppies that
want to romp untrammelled. They might reasonably have com
plained that I was always trying to check their exuberance. They
did not complain. But they took me rather seriously, and I know
that I was the topic o f earnest talks they had before going to sleep
at night.
What troubled me most was that, notwithstanding the
favourable change in the outward complexion of my life, I could
not find joy. Or, rather, joy could not find me. When she came to

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call, I announced that I was not at home. No matter how long

she might stand at the door, I would not let her in. This was a
great disappointment to Bettina, the first in our life together;
and the disappointment became more bitter month by month.
It was inevitable that she should ask herself why she was unable
to help me to soar, as she had hoped. But how can any one soar
who is doing all he can to make himself heavier instead of lighter ?
She had expected to be a lamp for m e; but how can any one be a
lamp for a man who blows out the flame because he feels more
comfortable in the dark ? I was touched to notice that, whenever
my spirits rose, whenever I smiled, the day became for her a
red-letter day. If I smiled, her heart leaped with delight.
Y et it became less and less possible for me to smile. Fortunate,
indeed, that Bettina had so much inward provision of material
for smiles although there was a risk now that the sources might
run dry. In a community where every one wooed my favour, and
all looked on me with friendly eyes, I tended to become taciturn,
to brood, to play the hermit. This was Bettinas one dread
in life darkened skies, a perpetual succession of days without
laughter or smiles. In such conditions, her violin meant nothing
to her, music made no appeal, melody ceased to well up within
her, the world was dumb. In an unguarded hour, she told me so,
though hesitatingly, and I saw dread in her eyes. M y colossal
stupidity is proved by its having been necessary for her to tell
me. I saw what was at stake, and that I must never allow Bettina
to be parched by my dreariness. At any cost, I must achieve joy.
Since it was Ganna who stood between me and jo y ; since it was
because of Ganna that I could no longer laugh or smile, Ganna
must be induced to restore my possibilities of cheerfulness, my
freedom from care, my good spirits. T h is must be effected at
any cost, for otherwise I should lose Bettina, which would mean
that I should lose all.
But one who sits on a powder-barrel after the fuse has been
lighted, finds it hard to laugh or smile.
Alarum s and Excursions. The first of my troubles came
from Gannas letters, each of them running to six, eight, or ten

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pages. Compared with them, a shower of lava-drops would have

been refreshing. Ganna stretched her arms across the two hundred
miles by which we were separated, and tried to drag me back to
her side. Her words resounded across the same distance, demand
ing help, advice, consolation; in the name of the children, of
the law, of imperishable love. What was not written in plain
words, rustled, screamed, clamoured, and sobbed from between
the lines; lurked behind the pointed, headstrong, crazy writing.
Complaints about how sad it was to live in a house whose master
was absent. Is there no way out, Alexander ? Must I be trampled
on like this? Doris, she said, was pining for her daddy. It was
very hard to keep Ferry and Elisabeth in order; now that they
were growing up, they needed a man to hold sway over them;
could I reconcile it with the promptings o f conscience to leave
them to their own devices at so critical an age and in such
troublous times? Dreams, forebodings, bugaboo stories. Pin
pricks of one kind and another. M r. A . or M rs. B. had expressed
astonishment at the behaviour of a man whom, up till now, he
or she had regarded with the utmost respect. Her sisters were so
kind to her in her troubles; every one sympathised with her
most keenly; people were exceedingly considerate.
Then the house, the beloved house, began to intrude into the
correspondence, with devastating effect. A water-pipe had burst,
flooding the hall. Something had gone wrong with the discon
nexion o f the sink; the sanitary inspector had complained; the
effluvium was a danger to the childrens health. One o f the
chimneys had been blown down in a storm. A stove was needed
in Doriss room, for the central heating was inadequate, and there
was a shortage of coke. The carpenter had sent in his bill, and
she could not spare enough of the housekeeping money to settle
it. She was in debt to the tradespeople, who kept on dunning her
until she was driven to despair. What was she to say to them ?
M y husband is travelling. He will be back soon. Then you will
be paid. But they did not believe her, and were rude.
This brings me to Gannas dealings with money, the most
undesirable among her character-traits. Since we were then

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passing through the inflation period, the spectre loomed

gigantic.
She found it impossible to adapt herself to the devaluation
of the currency, and was horrified at the figures she had to enter
in her housekeeping book; two hundred crowns for a kilogram
o f butter; fifty crowns per dozen for eggs; five hundred crowns
for a pair of shoes; two thousand crowns spent upon tutors
salary and servants wages. Ganna fighting with money that
ceased to be really money, that melted away in her fingers while
pretending to be more and more, that mocked her with enormous
figures of a standard which had no stability was a Ganna reduced
to despair, a Ganna whose foundations had been shattered, a
Ganna whose calculations had become mere panic. As week
followed week, hundreds swelled to thousands, thousands swelled
to tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions. When a
fowl cost eighty thousand crowns, a telegram to me ten thousand,
and when the butchers bill for the month was a million and a
half, she collapsed under the burden of such figures. It seemed to
her sheer nonsense. Since for her money and moneys worth
had been sacrosanct, the only certainties in an uncertain world,
she was in the position of a fervent believer to whom some one
has given (supposing such a thing possible) convincing proof that
there is no God. No firm standing-ground remained. Natural
laws had been abrogated. The result was a permanent anxietystate, like that of a nightmare which partly accounts for the
disastrous developments that ensued. She became obsessed
with the notion that the otherwise unaccountable revolution in
values would never have occurred if I had not forsaken her. It
gave her a perverse and delusive satisfaction to believe that my
faithlessness, my supposed treachery, explained the misfortunes
of the nation and the collapse of capitalism.
This crazy idea peeped out in every letter. They were full of
facts and figures. No amount of money sufficed her. Others
looked ahead, accumulated reserves, took precautions; Ganna
was invariably caught unawares. She had no sense of time, but
lived from moment to moment. Stranger still, she did not really

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live between the moments, but persisted without spirit or

sense from one pulse of time to the next, so that her breath
less flurry was no better than an unceasing decline into non
existence.
Under stress of want, her old belief in sorcery revived. She had
some bank-managers on her visiting-list. For her, a bank-manager
was a wizard, who could work miracles with money. These war
locks must know the innermost secrets o f the witches sabbath
in the money market. She pestered them for tips, and sent me
cipher despatches containing the names of securities I was to
buy. In this way she was helping me, and she was convinced
I must be making vast sums by the speculations I was supposed
to be carrying on under her inspired guidance. With this delusion
soon became associated an ineradicable belief that Bettina and
I were squandering a fortune in wanton luxury, whereas she,
despised and rejected, Ganna-Genevieve of Brabant, must
suffer the direst poverty.
The riot of figures in Gannas letters tormented me like horse
flies in summer. I should have kept her amply supplied with
funds, had I had funds to supply. Neither Bettina nor I was
interested in the counters we call money. Again and again,
I sent what we could spare, and more, suiting the amount to the
greatness of the need. Meanwhile, however, the collapse of the
German mark had made vast inroads upon my income, which
had now (as far as real values were concerned) become derisory.
It was reckoned in figures whose concluding noughts meandered
across the page, but the purchasing power of this huge sum
was far less than had been that of the moderate amount in earlier
years. Had it not been for some foreign royalties, I should not
have been able to pay my way. Still, of the shadow money I
sent a large proportion to Ganna. It was too little. When the
inflation period was over, her financial ship was leaking so badly
that it threatened to founder at short notice. Her frantic appeals
for aid disturbed the quiet of my study. I continued to respond
to these appeals, as generously as possible, ignoring the needs
of what was now my real household; but nothing I could send

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sufficed Ganna. Every warning that thrift was essential was

regarded as an insult. She wrote back that I was withholding an
abundance, which I lavished upon myself and Bettina. If I
managed now and again to provide her with a considerable sum,
it was she who did the lavishing, prompted by her optimist
conviction that I could tap inexhaustible springs; and when her
funds ran out (as they always did far sooner than she had
expected), she was utterly at a loss, sat in despair contemplating
her red-lined account books, fingering the piles of unpaid bills,
hunting in pockets and drawers, insisting that she must have
been robbed and ending by the despatch of another begging
letter to me.
Playing with the mammoth figures, to which by this time she
was accustomed, had become agreeable like the attempt to solve
a cross-word puzzle. The millions and the billions gratified her
craving for the unlimited, her feverish love of speculation. Cal
culating with these preposterous sums was like playing at magic or
astrology. Substantial values no longer mattered; the semblance
was there, bewitching in its magnitude. When prices had climbed
to incredible heights, she found consolation in the hope that
(although in another water-tight compartment of her visions
I was a Croesus) it would become impossible for me to maintain
two wives and two households, and that I should therefore be
forced to return to the bosom of my rightful family. This was not
a mere wish, not simply a play of fancy; it was a firm conviction.
She considered my homecoming imminent. T h e evil days of
trial, disgrace, and abandonment would soon end, for ever.
A Mental Morass. She would not accept her fate. Her
temperament was fundamentally rebellious. I learned that shortly
before her mothers death (which took place at this juncture), she
had had a violent quarrel with the poor octogenarian because the
old lady had reproached her for her lack of humility. The word
touched her on the raw.
Humility, Mother? Do you think your humility has done
you much good?
Ganna was forty-four when her mother died, and this death

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removed the only person who might still have exercised authority
over her.
One day she said to herself: I will no longer be financially
dependent upon that heartless husband of mine. Speculation
was rife. Phantom money could be picked up by handfuls in the
streets. After talking matters over with a number of so-called
friends and reputed experts, Ganna decided to found a film
periodical. The cinema had become the rage, and, as far as its
spiritual side was concerned, there was a manifest kinship
between Gannas mental processes and the technique of the
movies. Illusion was the essential feature of both. T o Ganna,
illusion was irresistibly attractive in all its forms: hocus-pocus,
astrology, mazdasnan, cheiromancy. They supplied her with
ample opportunities both for self-assertion and for self-efface
ment; for contemplating the whole created universe as a divine
fraud.
As in the case of the school, a financier was speedily forth
coming. The owner of a printing establishment. People were
eager to rid themselves of the spurious money which was so
abundant, in the hope of getting genuine money at a premium
in return, and with this end in view they grasped at every chance.
Ganna did not tell me that she had invested a considerable amount
of her own money (or, rather, of mine) in the scheme. The
exploiters and projectors who were her associates would be able
to fleece her whenever they pleased. Pending this disagreeable
but unforeseen eventuality, she would continue to regard them
as public benefactors. More and more she had come to believe
that suitable contacts were the prime requisites for success in
the literary world, so she hunted up persons of repute among
them, my own intimates and was very angry with any of them
who fobbed her off with unmeaning courtesies instead of giving
solid help. Being prone to extremes, she would then swing over
from admiration to contempt, regarding as a worthless wight one
whom the day before she had extolled as an exemplar of the
virtues. She was editor, sub, book-keeper, and business manager
rolled into one, writing until her fingers were sore, and running

ALEXANDER

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hither and thither until so tired that she could scarcely set one
foot before the other. On the morning when the first issue was
published, she hurried from newspaper shop to newspaper shop,
from kiosk to kiosk, asking how the sales were going, and giving
hints as to the way in which these could best be pushed. She
ignored the astonished or compassionate glances which reminded
her of her true position.
A film periodical well, she would not lose caste by founding
one. Get busy! was my thought. You will learn by experience.
But the shady financial side o f the enterprise caused me grave
anxiety. There was too much make one hand wash the other
about it to please me; too much you scratch my back and I
will scratch yours. It was borne in on me that the whole affair
had an unsavoury smell, and that my own reputation for fair
dealing was likely to be tarnished by it. I received hints and plain
warnings. I felt as if I were in a room where improprieties were
going on behind a screen. In such circumstances one listens
uneasily without knowing what is really afoot.
The worst feature of the affair was the content of the periodical.
Gannas contributions were hastily penned short stories of
incredible triteness. One of them was a malicious caricature of
a woman widely known for philanthropic activities whom
Ganna, for some inscrutable reason, regarded as her deadly foe.
Then there were the wretched, not to say, infamous productions
o f certain scribblers male and female whom Ganna had taken
under her wing, and for whom she was now able to provide
a chance of getting their lucubrations printed and (it was to be
hoped) paid for. Finally, the advertisements, which were to
provide the financial foundation; the acknowledged advertise
ments and the disguised puffs usual in such publications.
T h e name of the responsible editor was Herzog my name
as well as Gannas. Stacks of the unsold returns leaned against
every wall of every room in her house, and when little Doris
had nothing better to do, she fluttered the pages as those of a
picture-book. Once, when the child was staying with me, I found
her reading the rag, and I snatched it out of her hands. M y head
N

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seemed to be encircled with an iron band; I was bogged up to the

knees.
Ganna and the Meaning of Words. During the first
winter Doris came to stay with me at Ebenweiler, affectionate as
ever, for affection was the key-note of her character. Prolonged
negotiation had been required before Ganna would agree to
this visit. When, in subsequent summers and winters, I wanted
Doris to spend the holidays with me, Ganna made many diffi
culties. It was too risky, she declared, demanding safeguards
and imposing conditions. She had persuaded herself, and tried
to persuade me, that the child could only thrive under her care;
that nothing could compensate for the lack of Gannas watchful
ness and devotion. M y intentions were doubtless excellent, but I
lacked the moral faculty to carry them into effect. I was under the
influence of a person whom Ganna had the best of reasons for
mistrusting. She assured every one who would listen that it was
impossible for her to allow her darling child to associate with a
woman who was living in an immoral intimacy with me. She chose
to forget that it was through her own fault that this immoral
intimacy had come about. T h e upshot was shameful in the
extreme, and led to a perpetual chaffering between Ganna and
myself as to the terms on which Doris could be allowed to visit
me.
When Doris was laid up with a slight cold, Ganna would report
severe tonsillitis and high fever, in the hope that alarm would
bring me post-haste to Vienna. She wanted to stir me up, to
make my conscience uneasy, lest I should forget her in the
companionship of the detested Bettina. You can hardly be
surprised, she wrote, that the children are so often ailing,
since you withhold from their mother the funds needed to safe
guard them against illness. T o this I replied that even during
the worst months of the inflation period I had managed to keep
her well supplied, and I mentioned the amount, not in millions
o f Austrian crowns, but in Swiss francs. Her answer was the
stormy cry of some one who has been cheated, for her firm
conviction was that she was being cheated of whatever it cost me

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to live with Bettina. There was, she declared, no reason why

she should be rationed, she had been nowise to blame, her
demands were justified before God and before men.
One o f her supreme difficulties was that words had no precise
meaning for her. She produced them by an alchemical process
o f her own devising which was not guided by reason. Her verbal
associations were arbitrary. I had watched her development for
two decades, and all the time her vocabulary had developed along
its own peculiar lines. She could not distinguish between good
and bad, never noticing whether there was a bridge between them,
or whether they were severed by an unfathomable abyss. Lyrical
enthusiasm and poisonous brew, beseechings and threats, true
and false, fondness and dislike, sentiment and business all
hopelessly confounded. Hyperbolical style side by side with
the coldest calculations. O f four successive sentences, the first
would be an outburst of self-pity, the second a plaint, the third
a demand for money, and the fourth a declaration of love. While
penning gush about one of my books, she would interpolate
an attempt to use the children as pawns in her game; would
ask, plainly or under a mask, tangible compensation for her
willingness to allow them to stay with me a while. Above all,
she would ask me to see her often for a friendly talk, and
would repeatedly insist upon the renewal of the pledge that I
had no thought of trying to get a divorce. I had to bare my breast
to this storm.
Thumbnail Sketches. Bettina and I go for a walk in the
starlight. T h e lake gleams, the sky looks like a dark curtain
pierced with numberless holes, a curtain that hangs in front of
a silver-blue fire. T h e M ilky W ay is a huge arch of silver spangles.
So quiet is the world that we have a foretaste of the blessed
tranquillity of death. Gannas wild and whirling words, Gannas
alarums and excursions, are shut away from us by doors of steel.
One who could see Bettina and me, standing arm in arm, might
think us immersed in prayer.
There are mornings when we toboggan down the slopes,
which are covered with freshly fallen snow like a fairy carpet.

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There are dark woods on either hand. The air is filled with the
merry laughter of Bettinas two daughters, who will soon have
to return to their father in Vienna, to attend high school there.
Then we stroll across the frozen lake, which drones menacingly
in the night, with a note that makes us think of the sighing of
some huge saurian of bygone days. Wooden sleighs, drawn by
oxen, glide swiftly over the smooth surface. The skis of the
accompanying peasants make a noise like the tearing of paper.
In the early days o f spring, it is as if nature angrily stripped
off a garment that had become too tight. Torrents flow down
the rocky channels worn during thousands of years; avalanches
fall with a thunderous roar; heather and hepatica thrust up
shyly from the moss and the grass; the season of irresistible
growth has begun; March has a different odour from February,
April from M arch; we make excursions through the forest,
visiting nearby valleys as if on a tour of inspection through our
realm. Often Bettina suddenly grasps me by the hand and, face
close to mine, looks at me fixedly and asks:
Are you content, Alexander? T ell me, are you happy?
I nod a thankful affirmation. What else can I do? Life would
otherwise be unbearable to us both, as worthless as a scrap of
rusty iron.
In the Charmed Circle. For years, divorce loomed as the
desirable issue; by degrees it became clearly visible as the neces
sary escape from an otherwise intolerable situation. There is a
demand that things should be set in order, a demand that comes
from the sphere of social life, independent of craving for
individual liberty. No hypocrisy about this matter was permissible,
no attitude of organised arrogance. There became active within
me a longing in which my sense of self-respect and my feeling
o f social duty were jointly incorporated; together with that con
viction of undischarged obligations to Bettina, obligations
which (in anxious hours of meditation) I described as the accu
mulated tithes of joy or as internal reparations.
That was the immediate requisite in the struggle with Ganna.
If the person who had burdened us with too heavy a load could

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be induced to remove it, to take off the halter, and restore freedom
of movement, the panting wretches would be able to breathe
easily once more. But Ganna could not be induced to agree to
a divorce. Her first objection was that divorce was impossible
unless, after as before, she could be sure of my friendship. O f
course, I said, there was no doubt about that. In reality the
difficulty was insuperable. How could I guarantee the persistence
of my friendship, as Ganna understood the term? By a sealed
bond! I must give a written pledge, committing myself for all
time. So foolish was I, that I argued the point. Instead of saying
Y es without demur, and penning the stipulated document
forthwith (which would, after all, have only led to the emergence
of a new and perhaps more preposterous claim), I honestly
tried to convince her that the wish for a documentary pledge of
lifelong friendship was absurd, that friendship must be wooed
and safeguarded, and that it could not be embodied in a formal
contract, like the lease o f a house. Ganna was impervious to
argument. All that penetrated her understanding was my refusal,
which was a proof of my ill-will. All I wanted was to make her
give way. People were continually playing upon the pliability of
her disposition more than others! L et me remind you of your
undertaking, of the letter you wrote me in October 1919. I
could not deny having written that foolish screed as, in my
anger, I called it. Thereupon her wrath boiled over.
Never, never, would you point a dagger at my breast, were
you not hypnotised by your mistress. She orders you about as
she pleases.
I could not repress a smile when Ganna spoke of Bettinas
orders. Ganna misinterpreted the smile, regarding it as an
acknowledgment o f guilt.
There can be no question but that you have promised to
divorce me, for Bettinas sake. O f course, I cant prove it, but I
know thats what she expects of you as a return. I shall show
M y Lady Merck that she has miscalculated. I m not so pliable
as she imagines, and shell find shes struck a snag.
Y et this time, too, it was by no means Gannas intention to

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confront me with a definitive refusal. She wanted to bargain, and

for that she must keep me in suspense. Bargaining and suspense
would ensure my being within call. Still, if I could be just,
with the justice that is possible to none but God, I should have
to admit that love for me was also a motive a cruel love, a love
that belonged to the realm of darkness rather than to the realm
o f light, but still love, as it shows itself in such a heart as Gannas.
Naturally cruelty and gloom were more obvious to me than love
in the good sense of the term ; but she was suffering just as much
as I (or, at least, so I fancied); and I was therefore patient and
considerate. She invariably supposed that when I was vexed, it
was on her account; and that when I was antagonistic, it was as
a reaction to her antagonism; thus in either case she could gratify
herself with the thought of being my partner in the game. For
that reason she fooled me with promises, repudiating to-day the
agreement of yesterday and retracting a thousand times what
she had solemnly assured me a thousand times before. I f she
wired, Come, everything can be satisfactorily arranged, and
I came full o f hope, it was to find once more that nothing could
be arranged; yet the failure, she was sure, was not due to sabotage
on her part, but (she sincerely believed) to a lack of good will on
mine.
I m not ready, she would say in August; you must give
me another three months.
I gave her three months respite.
In November:
I cant make up my mind yet. You mustnt put a pistol to
my head. Matters are still too uncertain for me to come to a
decision. But I give you my word of honour to comply with your
wishes next M arch.
In M arch:
I will think it all over very seriously. Still, I can tell you this
much already, that you are not in a position to support two wives.
It is my duty to save you from ruin.
Subterfuges, Ganna. We must find a basis for agreement.
Surely that is possible?

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I have been humbugged so often. Do you want to force me

to betray my children?
Ganna, you know, or you ought to know by this time, that
I am not the man to leave my children in the lurch.
Not you, Alexander, but your mistress. In that respect I
want safeguards which you do not seem able to provide.
W hat safeguards, Ganna? Can I do more than pledge you
my body and my life ?
It was futile. Ganna clung tenaciously to her pound o f flesh.
She was under an obsession; but behind the obsession gesticu
lated and machinated a crafty, pettifogging attorney. I shut my
eyes to this, and would see only the murmuring sleepwalker,
the unhappy woman caught in a snare, the tormented tormentor,
the lonely woman Ganna, to whom I owed atonement, whom
I must compensate for my breach of the moral law. Ganna
the anxious mother, the disappointed companion, the ill-treated
wife, the woman who could not face reality hid from me Ganna
the fury, Ganna the sharp practitioner. I, too, was a dreamer.
I, too, was hallucinated. I, too, moved within a charmed circle.
Lawyers take a Hand in the Game. M y friends advised
me to consult a lawyer. They were anxious about my condition
because I had grown so irritable. I was now over fifty, and the
strain I was enduring was perhaps too much for me. I was
recommended to Herr Chmelius, a solicitor of repute, whom I
had met and liked in private life, and who, it now transpired,
had been instrumental in securing a speedy divorce for Bettina
from Paul Merck. Bettina, however, had never mentioned his
name to me. She had, in fact, a prejudice against lawyers. Nor
had I, for my part, hitherto had anything to do with the members
of this tribe. It was to be different henceforward.
I arranged, to begin with, that Chmelius was to be Gannas
financial adviser, and to keep watch on her expenditure, for her
demands were becoming so exorbitant that I could not cope
with them. Ganna, at first, refused to have anything to do with
Chmelius as controller of the finances, having learned that four
years earlier he had acted for Bettina, and scenting a conspiracy.

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no consideration for anothers time, she expected everyone

engaged upon her affairs to make them his exclusive concern,
and berated him like an idle schoolboy if he rebelled against this
monopolisation. Furthermore, even though she was gratified
at having special allowances made for her impecuniosity, she
could not free her mind from the suspicion that cheap work or
gratis work must be scamped work. In this divided mood, she
grew continually more tempestuous, excitable, quarrelsome,
muddle-headed. All her acquaintances were classified in two
categories: supporters and adversaries. Between the opposing
armies, as those who would lead her and her friends to victory,
stood the children of light, the lawyers those engaged in her
cause, it need hardly be said; for the representatives of the
opposing faction were the scum of the earth.
She was perpetually at the telephone, ringing up (with a
hundred hullo-o-os) the offices of the various solicitors, including
that o f Herr Chmelius. This paymaster could never satisfy her
exorbitant demands. T h e dialogue might have been stereotyped.
Great Scott, Frau Herzog, short of funds again? But I sent
you a large sum only last week! T o this Ganna would piteously
reply that she had had a number of unforeseen calls upon
her purse. She was very fond of the word unforeseen. Indeed,
her whole life was overshadowed by the unforeseen, and she
would not allow any one to advise her to take thought for the
morrow. When matters grew desperate, she would put her house
keeping book under her arm and drive into the city to call on
Chmelius, in order to show him, figure by figure, how thrifty
she was. What was written was sacred. She had a fetishist faith
in words and figures. T h e entries in her account-book were
as infallible, to her way of thinking, as the balance-sheet of the
Reichsbank.
In like manner, she looked upon every one of her missives as
no less important than a papal bull. D id you not receive my
conciliatory letter o f the sixteenth? You have sent no reply to
my exceedingly moderate proposals. Is it possible that my recent
communications have miscarried ? Please wire immediately

He was enlisted in Bettinas service and was under her influence!

Chmelius was able at his profession, well-mannered, and there
fore perhaps a little hesitant. Although his letters to Ganna were
invariably civil and considerate, they aroused her fierce indig
nation. What on earth was the man planning? What right had
he to give her advice, to speak and write to her about divorce?
It was unwarrantable!
She instantly applied to Herr Pauli to represent her interests
as against Chmelius. Pauli was well disposed towards her, and
was willing enough to espouse her cause; but he was an extremely
busy man, and, though he admired her energy, her ingenuity,
and her enterprising spirit, he found interviews with her
exhausting. He felt it impossible to receive her twice a day, as
she wanted; and he was exasperated by her continual chopping
and changing. He therefore passed on the case to a friend and
colleague, Herr Grieshacker. T he latter, in his turn, soon wearied
o f Gannas importunacy, and shifted the responsibility to a
third lawyer, Herr Schonlein, with the result that the case of
Ganna Herzog was simultaneously annotated and memorialised
by the three o f them.
Only annotated and memorialised, for no specific action was
taken. Not one o f the three knew what Ganna wanted, any more
than she did herself. Did she want a divorce ? No. Was she rigidly
opposed to a divorce? Such seemed to be her general trend, but
she carefully avoided saying so in set terms. Then what are we
taking all this trouble for? asked the solicitors. Ganna was acting
like a farmer who has reason to expect a nocturnal onslaught,
and therefore has a police cordon posted round his lonely farm
stead. T he advantage of consulting Pauli was that he made no
charge for his services. Knowing her financial embarrassments,
he had also begged his colleagues to be extremely moderate in
their fees. Generous indeed, but he did not foresee that it was
likely to prove disastrous to all concerned. It produced in Ganna
a sort o f lawyer-habit, and made her change her solicitor as
readily as she changed her stockings. Since she had no conception
o f the limits nature imposes upon a mans capacity for work and

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on receipt of this to let me know whether you got and read the
missive in question. This anxiety was the outcome o f the
delusion that her letters to me were intercepted by Bettina.
Nothing could drive the notion out o f her head. Chmelius, she
thought, had been the instigator of the crime. She could never
forgive me for having imposed the man as intermediary in money
matters; that was what had opened her eyes once for all. As for
divorce, there was no use in my thinking o f divorce any more;
it was not merely impracticable, but the very idea was inhuman.
Certainly she would not reopen negotiations unless I got rid of
Chmelius. If I continued to succumb to the evil influences of
m y environment, I might, she said, give up the game as lost.
Indeed, my hopes were utterly dashed. I felt that if Jesus in
person had come to plead my cause, he would have made no
headway with Ganna.
Nowhere could she find rest; in no house, no room, no
company; not over any book, not in any bed. She suffered from
gall-stones, heart-trouble, shortness o f breath; consulted special
ists and quacks; used ointments and drank herbal remedies;
rushed off to Carlsbad, to the Adriatic, to stay with her sister
Traude in Berlin; would be afoot one day for eighteen hours out
o f the twenty-four, and the next would declare herself danger
ously ill. But her illness was imaginary, a flight from her terrible
unrest. Amid the hopeless confusion of her affairs, the collapse
o f the film periodical passed almost unnoticed. She was greatly
in arrears with her payments to the printer, and the man sued
her. Probably, in the endeavour to pay him instalments, she
incurred other debts, although she assured Chmelius that this
was not so. It was a puzzle how she managed to spend so much
money, or, rather, where she got so much money to spend.
D id she fritter it away upon secret friends? Were there blood
suckers in her circle? Was she animated by a gloomy wish to
destroy, in which other obscure motives were intermingled?
Instincts of love and hate, jealousy and self-preservation, selfdestruction and wish-fulfilment? Herr Chmelius told me he had
informed her that during the last year she had received more

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39s

than half my income. Thereupon she made a scene, told him

he was either cheating or being cheated, for she had trustworthy
information that I earned more than five times as much as he
declared. I said to him:
I know her way of talking! How can I prove to her that she
is wrong? When a person believes that he owns so and so, how
can it be proved that he does not ?
Chmelius answered sarcastically:
You will never be able to convince Frau Herzog of anything
unless you resume conjugal relations.
Thus the negotiations into which Ganna had entered with
a semblance of good will proved to be nothing more than a
sham fight. In her nocturnal ponderings, she had excogitated
three clauses to which I was to agree. She knew perfectly well
that they were impracticable, but her insistence upon them would
make it possible for her, when negotiations had been broken off,
to play the innocent, and to say:
I did my best, and you were to blame for the failure.
Since these three points were, after their kind, unique
sanctions, I will mention them. First of all, I was to renounce
m y paternal authority over my daughter Doris, who was still
under age. This was a legal masterpiece of Gannas, for no
law-court in the world would have endorsed such a repudiation.
Secondly, I was to provide each of my daughters with a dowry.
T h e sum specified was a large one, but where on earth I was to
put my hand on it was not specified. T h e kraal demanded it.
T h e kraal insisted: Provide for your offspring; what happens to
you does not concern us; you, renegade that you are, can go
to the devil, since you will not come to your senses and break
away from your concubine; things being as they are, you must
provide for your lawful offspring to all eternity. The third
stipulation was that Bettina must give a formal undertaking not
to interfere with my spending a stated portion of each year with
Ganna. She believed that such an undertaking could be legally
enforced, was practicable; and, further, she regarded it as an
expedient thanks to which whenever suspicion of undue

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influence entered her head, she would be able to hale her rival
before the cadi. When Herr Chmelius was shown these three
choice examples of Gannas art of strangulation he exclaimed:
I have had many strange experiences in my practice as a
lawyer, but this is unexampled!
A t e . In the course of the suit which the printer of the film
periodical brought against Ganna, she had a quarrel with Herr
Schonlein. I never learned the cause of the breach, but only
that there were violent scenes in Schonleins office, and that at
length the lawyer refused to have anything more to do with her.
She complained bitterly to Herr Pauli, who tried in vain to smooth
matters over; and since Herr Grieshacker had also long since
found it impossible to work for her, on Paulis advice she went to
Herr Stanger-Goldenthal, a lion of the law-courts, and a specialist
in divorce cases. He, so she confided to me, was an adviser after
her own heart the first. Quick to recognize what Ganna wanted
of him, he scented a great coup. It is the nature of the law (in
the litigious sense) that it befools those who have recourse to it,
and that it keeps them on tenterhooks until they have forfeited
their property, their courage to face life, and their belief in human
justice. True, this applied to me more than to Ganna. She had
become immunised, having, in this fetid atmosphere, already
lost her dignity, her proper pride, and her energy.
You need only leave it to me, dear lady, said Herr StangerGoldenthal, after studying the documents, and I shall be able
to settle matters to your entire satisfaction.
His demeanour convinced Ganna that she had nothing to
fear. He was a kindred spirit, and a weight was lifted from her
mind. During the early days of her acquaintance with the man
she spoke of him with obsequious veneration.
Chmelius was horrified at her choice of a new adviser, for he
had already had dealings with Stanger-Goldenthal. He even
ventured to remonstrate, with the only result that Ganna smiled
craftily, like some one who has found the philosophers stone
when told its possession will do him harm, and naturally thinks
that his adviser wants to filch his treasure. Herr Chmelius did

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his utmost to dissuade her, even going to talk matters over with
Herr Pauli. He made a written record of the substance of the
conversation, which is preserved among the documents, and
which I will quote.
Chmelius: It cannot have escaped your shrewd observation
that Frau Gannas machinations are a torment to my client, that
they impair his capacity for work, and tend, as the saying goes,
to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Pauli: Nevertheless, no one but Alexander Herzog can induce
Ganna Herzog to agree to a divorce.
Chmelius: In twenty or thirty years, perhaps!
Pauli: His great mistake is that he declares the marriage to
have been unhappy. This assertion wounds his wife beyond
endurance.
Chmelius: But why should Herr Herzog want to have the
union dissolved, if it has been happy?
Pauli: Because of the evil influence at work on him. That is
obvious.
Chmelius: M y dear colleague, I ventured to hope that you
would not have allowed yourself to accept the view of that
ecstatic.
Pauli: Even if she be an ecstatic, is not an ecstatic the best
mate for an imaginative writer? Frau Ganna has shown me
many of Herr Herzogs letters. Real love-letters. I have also
seen M S. and printed dedications of his books, in which he
fervently describes her as his companion and collaborator. I
really dont know what you are driving at.
Chmelius: Does the past attitude of our clients come into the
present question ? Besides, you know as well as I do how the past
can be retouched.
Pauli: Still, there can be no doubt that the Herzogs marriage
would have been stable enough had not Frau Merck appeared
on the scene.
Chmelius: O f course. That is the way such things come to
pass. W e have to face the facts.
Pauli: Well, Frau Gannas sufferings and her fidelity to her

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husband are among the facts. Alexander Herzog ought not to

overlook them.
Chmelius: What would you have him do?
Pauli: Return to her!
Chmelius: Back to the penitentiary?
Pauli: Are we not all prisoners of circumstance? Unless you
are a fortunate exception to the universal lo t!
Chmelius: But what about the woman he loves?
Pauli: At his age a man ought not to sacrifice his good name,
his honour, and the future of three children to an amourette.
Chmelius: I dont understand where his honour, as you call
it, comes in.
Pauli: Such a man as Alexander Herzog has to keep another
honour untarnished than what middle-class moralists denote
by that term. Does he not know that we all have need for renounce
ment at times? Has he no respect for the established social
order?
Pauli, who was walking up and down the room, laughed wryly.
Chmelius broke off the conversation. He had come in order to
discuss the affair dispassionately with another man of law, but
left greatly puzzled because he had encountered prejudice and
partisanship. Soon he rallied, as the ingrained cynicism of his
profession gave him the clue, and he recalled that Paulis own
conjugal experiences had been most unfortunate- a much-loved
wife having bolted with a paramour. Thus, though Herr Pauli
was an honourable man, his attitude towards me was the expres
sion of a personal grievance, o f a desire for sexual vengeance.
A week later, Pauli died suddenly of apoplexy. Many deplored
his loss, and Ganna was thunderstruck. She took to her bed for
three days. While laid up, she employed her leisure in compiling
a memorial upon the questions in dispute. She sent this draft
to Stanger-Goldenthal for him to rephrase it in legal terminology,
for Ganna was not until later to acquire a mastery of this jargon.
Still, it was so appropriate to the purpose that the lawyer
congratulated her on it. When he had legalised it to his taste,
had given it the requisite ambiguity and incomprehensibility,

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it was ready for Chmelius and myself to cudgel our brains

over.
There was no light in the darkness. A hopeless tangle of
proposals, disquisitions, obscurations, charges, suspicions, cun
ning distortions, misstatements, and sophistries. T h e lawyers
bombarded one another with letters, and bombarded their clients
with letters; the clients volleyed back at the lawyers and at one
another. Typewriters rattled, telegraph machines ticked, tele
phones buzzed, express messengers hurried along; every one of
those concerned made something out of it, except the individual
who, with his hard-earned money, his peace of mind, his blood,
and his life, had to defray this expenditure of materials and of
nervous energy and who reaped no harvest but paper.
Behind the turmoil stood its originator, Ganna, imperturbable,
out of reach, with a front of brass, a deceptive perhaps on her
lips, but an absolute no in her secret heart; goddess of discord
and infatuation, like the gloomy Ate, ill-omened daughter of
Zeus. Indefatigably, stone upon stone, course after course, she
was building her huge edifice of illusion, which had so many
points of contact with reality, and was nevertheless stamped
with the seal of destruction.
Caspar Hauserchen. I now come to a period in my life
which, although it had the outward signs of success and happiness,
bore within it the germs of disaster. For a long time, however,
I was blind to what was going on underneath. In 1923, the
Buchegger estate at Ebenweiler fell into my lap, literally fell into
m y lap, for I had never dreamed of possessing so glorious a
place. No, I must correct that statement. I had let my fancy play
with the thought. Whenever, during the previous quarter o f a
century, I had walked past it, I had been aware of regarding it
as a castle in Spain. It would be so lovely a habitation in
which to live and work. T h e grounds extended (nay, they still
extend) to the lake-shore, and the mansion is surrounded by an
extensive park. After the revolution, the last Count Buchegger
sold it to a Dutch gentleman, who, when he had bought the
place, did not feel at home there. T h e new owner, having learned

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that for years I had been on the look-out for a permanent residence
o f my own at Ebenweiler, inspired by a Maecenas mood, offered
it to me for half of what he had paid for it.
Perpetual removes from the Wrabetz villa to an adjoining
farmhouse, and in autumn back again to the villa, had become
a nuisance, a recurring unsettlement. We might almost as well
have been vagrants. Y et where was I to lay my hands upon so
much as the very moderate sum the Dutchman asked? Besides,
a good deal would have to be spent upon making the place
habitable for the rigorous winter. No doubt there was a super
abundance of furniture, plate, house-linen, and other requisites,
which, taken by themselves, were worth half the purchase-price;
but although a moderate deposit was all the owner asked (the
balance, left on mortgage at a low rate of interest, being payable
in a number o f yearly instalments), I could see no possibility
of finding the immediately necessary capital. I had always lived
from hand to mouth, and had no savings. M y expenses had been
heavy, needing a large income to defray them. Hitherto, luck
had favoured me in the latter respect; but from month to month
I never knew whether I should be able to pay next months
bills. M y existence was a hazardous one, without solid foundation.
Manifestly in the individuals life there is often a recurrence
of similar happenings. While I was see-sawing between avidity
and the conviction that I had no choice but to refuse, a friend
who had recently become well-to-do offered to help me. When,
dubiously, I explained the situation and took him to see the
house, he was on fire for my seizing the opportunity, and gener
ously proposed to lend me the whole sum needed for the purchase
and the alterations. T he interest was so low and the period for
repayment by instalments so long-drawn-out, that I could only
accept with thanks. Thus once again, as had happened years
before, a friend's magnanimity provided me with a haven of
refuge.
Arrangements were made with a German architect, who
engaged masons, carpenters, tilers, plasterers, glasiers, stovefitters, and so on. Lorries filled with materials arrived. During

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four months, walls were being torn down, others erected,

windows repaired, verandas newly floored. The place became a
hive o f industry; and in October Bettina and I, like two children
allowed on the stage where a fairy-play is about to be performed,
removed to our new home. Bettina was then four months
pregnant.
I must not hide the fact that Bettina had been anxious at the
prospect of the change in our material surroundings. T h e new
entourage seemed to her pretentious for simple folk like ourselves.
She uttered warnings. Appearances could not deceive her. The
difficulties that were entailed cropped up again and again in her
conversation. For decades we should have debts to pay; the staff
needed to run such an establishment would be large and costly;
the upkeep would be expensive if we did not want the place to
go to ruin; we should have a much higher standard of life than
we had been accustomed to. In the long run, the financial burden
would be too heavy for me. One must reckon with the possibility
o f bad times; lean years would follow fat ones. I should make
a mistake if I were to become the thrall of material possessions.
I laughed at her fears, being too confident of my own earning
capacity. Fate could not touch me, I declared, if only I could be
freed from the incubus of Ganna. Bettina, though she stilf
trembled at the thought of the future, allowed herself to be lulled
by my inviolable faith in my star. She was less consistently light
hearted than of yore, but in the sad hours she ran to me as a beast
pursued by its enemies runs to its burrow.
I shall manage all right, I said; and if anything goes wrong,
we shall simply shake off this harness. But nothing will go wrong.
It is such a relief to me that you and our child will have an abidingplace and a little property when I am gone.
Bettina smiled.
If w ere going to talk already about what will happen when you
are dead, can you really picture me as a property-owner ? Look
at my fingers.
She held up her hands, and I looked at them wonderingly.
These fingers of mine cannot hold anything fast. Long ago

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a clairvoyant told me that I should never have any debts, but

should never own any property.
Still, for all her fears, she was comforted by the thought that
her baby would have a fixed nest, and not be driven out twice
a year. A stronghold in a contentious world. For herself, she
needed no stronghold. She knew how to defend herself. But the
youngster (from the first she was certain it was to be a boy)
must, like Caspar Hauserchen, be early hidden. If, through
Gannas stubbornness, he was to be deprived of his fathers
name, there was all the more reason to establish protective walls
between him and the Ganna-world which attached so much
importance to legitimacy. Soon she ceased to be afraid. In the
early weeks of pregnancy she had, though not ordinarily a tearful
woman, often wept from fear. It was then that she wrote her
Song of an Unborn Child, one of the finest of her compositions,
and the first time she played it to me I had no idea that she was
with child.
That same evening after she had gone to bed, when I was
reading in the bedroom by lamplight, she called me to her side.
Clasping my hand in hers, she told me, hesitatingly, in low tones
for she did not know whether I should welcome the news.
Indeed, I was startled, for I knew the coming of this child
would create a situation in which I must throw off my weakness.
Caspar Hauserchen must be provided with his place in the world.
W e looked at one another long and earnestly. The brown specks
in Bettinas grey eyes were more distinct than usual. I kneeled
beside the bed and kissed her hands, one after the other, many
times. . . .
Temporarily, a New Ganna. I do not know, and can only
guess, what was Gannas state of mind when she heard of my
buying the Buchegger estate. Her subsequent behaviour disclosed
so strange a medley of wrath, bitterness, excitement, sympathy,
and vague hope, as to defy accurate description. Her first feeling,
certainly, was that she had been shamefully defrauded. Her
go-betweens had hastened to inform her that I had paid half
the purchasing price, or more, in cash. Since every rumour

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about me, even the most absurd, was accepted by her as an

article of faith, and exaggerated into a craze, she believed that
the sum I had handed over, without winking, was fabulously
large. Naturally she said to herself that, while I was keeping her
on short commons, I had a fortune to spare for that woman.
No well-disposed and reasonable person (so she thought) could
venture to deny that it was for Bettinas sake I had purchased
the princely domain, that Bettinas intrigues had induced me
to squander the aforesaid fortune upon acquiring it.
Y et at this very time she wrote me a letter conveying, in
exaggerated terms, her gratification on my getting possession
of so fine an estate. If her delight was not unalloyed, she said,
this was because she had learned the wonderful news from
strangers, and had been disturbed by questionings as to how
she could have forfeited my confidence. W hat had especially
made her rejoice, she went on, was the knowledge that I had
been able to disburse so enormous a sum of money, for this led
her to infer that (thanks be!) there was now no ground for the
financial worries of which I had made so much in the past. I
must not take her frankness amiss. Her one interest in life was to
promote my happiness and welfare.
I hastened to let Ganna know she had been misinformed as
to the amount I had paid. She did not believe me. I referred
her to the records of the land registration office. She did not
believe these records. M y fancied wealth had become an inviolable
part o f her wish-fulfilment dreams, which were rose-tinted by
the witchery of money. T h e fact that I was now well-to-do
buttressed her claims on my purse so effectively, that she nestled
in the comforting delusion.
Still, I had ceased to care that she should regard me as a
successful gold-digger who was cheating her, his comrade, of
her share of the spoils. There must be an end now of shifts and
subterfuges, and of lawyers tricks. She must be made to bow
before the inevitable. She must bend or break, said I to myself,
as I seated myself in the train for Vienna.
When I told her that Bettina was with child, it had the effect

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o f a thunderclap. She was utterly disconcerted. Bettinas going

to have a baby, she murmured. Your baby? It seems incredible.
But I shall love it as if it were my own. You believe me, dont
you, Alexander? She burst into tears. I had to make it plain to
her that there was something more vital than that she should
vow to love and cherish the coming child. You know what I
mean ? I want it to be born in lawful wedlock. She nodded an
eager affirmation.
" O f course, Alexander, o f course. I will see Herr StangerGoldenthal to-day; will telephone to him immediately for an
appointment. L et us talk matters over in a quiet and friendly way.
No menaces, no coercion. I will show you that I am the old
Ganna. . . . You must be tired and hungry after the journey. Let
me cook you a little soup.
Her large, blue eyes were brimming over with tears. She was
touched to the core by her imaginary picture of Ganna as the
self-sacrificing friend and spouse; of the old Ganna, or a new
one. And I, poor fool, I believed that my tidings had really
changed her for good.
Stanger-Goldenthal. T o this extent she was true to her
ardent pledge, that she hurried off the same day to see Herr
Stanger-Goldenthal, and informed him of the new feature in the
situation. She did not, however, as she had promised, instruct
him to begin divorce proceedings. She had never honestly
intended to do so. A ll she had wanted was to show her good
will, and it aroused her ill-will that good will should be expected
to translate itself into action.
I called on Herr Chmelius to tell him that Ganna was in a
better frame o f mind, and that he could take steps accordingly.
Considerably surprised, Chmelius got into touch with StangerGoldenthal, to be even more astonished when the latter said:
You have been misinformed. I have received no instructions
from Frau Herzog to sue for a divorce.
Reporting this to me, Chmelius said :
I m afraid youve been humbugged again.
I returned to G anna:

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Your lawyer declares you have not given him the promised
instructions.
T h e man is a liar! exclaimed Ganna. I had a hard task
to persuade him, but in the end he agreed to put matters in train
within three days.
I believed her. Evidently Stanger was to blame for the delay,
so I asked Chmelius if he had any objection to my writing to his
colleague.
None whatever, answered Chmelius.
I therefore wrote to Stanger-Goldenthal in the most disin
genuous terms, a heart-to-heart letter, not as a litigant to the
solicitor for the other side. It was a little epic, the story of my
married life, and an account of the reasons that had made it
impossible for me to go on living with Ganna.
His answer was couched in sarcastic term s:
I will assume without demur that the charges you bring
against your wife are well-founded. This being granted, the
question arises whether, in your married life, you were lord
and master, as the institution o f matrimony and the social order
based thereon expect the husband to be. I leave it to your own
conscience to answer in the affirmative or the negative. Your
masterly memorial, a logical string of pearls, cannot be regarded
as a legal weapon but as a human document. For the first
time it became clear to me that these were irreconcilable
opposites. The blame for the dissensions that have arisen
between you and Frau Herzog lies, for the most part, un
questionably, upon your shoulders. I f my client really wants to
divorce you, I shall try to carry out her wishes. If, on the
other hand, she remains opposed to a divorce, I shall do my
utmost in the ensuing struggle to defend her position as your
lawful wife.
I was consternated. What did this twaddle signify? Ganna
had told me she agreed to a divorce. Was it conceivable that at
this supreme moment she was playing double, as of old? I read
to her that part o f Stangers letter in which he spoke o f her
intentions. She was obviously disconcerted, talked at random for

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a while, and played the innocent. At bottom, however, she was

furious, and went to make a scene at Stangers office, accusing
him of giving her away to me, o f having implied to me that she
really wanted to divorce me. Thereupon, incensed against
me, the lawyer w rote:
Dear Sir, I do not think you have acted straightforwardly
in communicating to Frau Herzog a detached fragment o f my
previous letter. Thereby she has been misinformed. M y client
has been led to believe that I am in favour of a divorce. It is not
so. I am opposed to her suing for a divorce. But she remains
free to act as she thinks best. She must not feel that pressure is
being exercised on her, even by myself as her friend and legal
adviser.
M y head was in a whirl. This rigmarole passed human under
standing. Again I called on Chmelius, and put the crown on my
stupidity by expressing the wish to visit Herr Stanger-Goldenthal
at his office.
In a personal interview we may be able to clear up the mis
understanding.
I still believed in talking things out; I still believed there must
be a misunderstanding. I had faith in the influence of my per
sonality and in the effect o f truth-telling with about as much
reason as a man beset by footpads might expect to soften their
hearts and induce them to refrain from robbing him by assuring
them that he had a classical education. Chmelius shrugged his
shoulders:
T ry it, he said. It may do good, and can do no harm.
Seeing how desperate I was, he did not wish to prevent my
trying any path, even the most unlikely. He himself saw no way
out of the impasse.
Herr Stanger-Goldenthal let me know that he would be
honoured by my visit. T he interview lasted an hour and a half.
He was wearing an invisible official gown, the real man being
hidden away from me behind the dignity that enwrapped him as
the chartered defender of the moral ideal o f marriage. An
admirable actor! He made me feel as if I had no standing-ground,

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and as if I were trying to talk with my mouth full of treacle.

But he did most of the talking, impressively, with the utmost
self-confidence, with the mien of a judge upon the bench. I felt
giddy and sick. When he showed me out, with many assurances
of esteem, m y feeling was one of profound discomfiture and
abject humiliation.
Herr Chmelius now thought it desirable to ask Ganna, most
politely, whether she had come to a decision, and what her
definitive intentions were. Her answer was typically muddled.
T h e pledge she had given me remained in force, but she must not
be hustled about the matter at this inappropriate time. T h e birth
day festivals of some of her nearest relatives were about to be
celebrated, and must not be overshadowed by anything so
unsavoury as talk about impending divorce. Besides, her hearttrouble was worse than usual, and her doctors had given her
strict injunctions to avoid excitement. Though for me time
pressed, and I was eating my heart out with impatience in view
of Bettinas condition, Ganna talked of January. It was now
September. She gave me her sacred word of honour that by
January she would, in concert with Herr Stanger-Goldenthal,
have drafted the necessary plea for a divorce. Then I must
grant her four weeks, during which we could discuss matters
amicably. This was an indispensable proviso; but if I made the
concession she asked, all difficulties would be smoothed out of
the path. Worn out by the daily fruitless interviews with Ganna
and the lawyers, I wanted to get back to Bettina. What could I
do? Give Ganna a better heart; myself, a better understanding?
Weary and at a loose end, I returned to Ebenweiler, where,
credulously I assured the credulous and not much interested
Bettina that Ganna intended to divorce me in January.
W hen, in January, I returned to the fighting-front, Chmelius
did actually hand over to me the instrument of divorce, the
definitive plea, which had in the interim been excogitated by
Ganna and cast in due legal form by Stanger-Goldenthal. M y
adviser gave it to me without a word, but his expression showed
what he thought of it. I read it carefully, and returned it, no less

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speechless. I felt as if I must have fallen into the hands o f horsechanters.

Should I really explain here what was expected of me by this
document? I cannot. M y pen goes on strike. Moreover, I shall
in any case have to tell before long of the boots and the thumb
screws which were set to work upon me when I decided, cost
what it may, to put an end to the whole disgraceful traffic
instruments o f torture which (through an easily understood mental
blindness) seemed to me acceptable and almost tolerable in
comparison with the murderous train of paragraphs which Stanger
and his confederate (Ganna, my wife) now paraded before my
astonished eyes. For the first time I realised my situation, and
gained so terrifying a picture of Gannas true nature, that for a
time I was turned to stone, as if I had looked upon the Gorgons
head.
No, I must correct that statement. One cannot speak o f Gannas
true nature and her false one. She had an impish nature
betwixt good and evil. There were in her fathomless abysses
into which the light of day never shone. In her make-up there
was something spurious and fundamentally illogical. She was
not a Gorgon, therefore. T he Gorgon was consistently sinister,
so that one knew what one had to face; was not so freakishly
incalculable as to produce the impression o f a being that had never
fully emerged from the primal chaos.
T ell me, I said aghast to Chmelius, what am I to live upon
if I am to shoulder this mountain o f obligations ? What does the
woman think I am to live upon ?
I cant imagine, answered Chmelius dryly. That is what we
shall have to ask her.
She does not merely wish to confiscate all my possessions and
my work, but proposes, over and above, to go on draining the
blood out of my body. She is like a savage who chops up the
corpse of the enemy he has slain, in order to roast and devour
the morsels. Have such preposterous demands ever been made
before in a divorce-suit ?
Would you like me to send you a truck-load of the corre

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spondence 1 have had about the affair? asked Chmelius ruefully.

Still, I must settle things somehow. I have no choice.
W ell, answered the lawyer, if you must, you must. Then,
in G ods name, sign this Treaty of Versailles. But you wont do
it with my help and approval.
Is there no judge, no law, no act o f indemnity, which can
deliver me?
Only in the Land of Dreams.
Dumbfounded, I went my ways.
What is wrong with Bettina ? T h e two years that ensued
before the divorce took place were years of the most intense,
the most exhausting struggle. M oney was needed, and more
money, and yet more; documents and contracts; charters and
pledges of security; and, again and again, when the issue seemed
in sight, it vanished like a mirage in the desert. T h e calm of the
Buchegger estate did not bring adequate solace; nor Bettinas
brave front, nor her marvellous faculty for dealing with everyday
difficulties; nor devotion to work; nor the way in which our
friends stood by u s ; nor even our little Helmut, the son granted
us by heaven, comfort though he was to his mother and me from
the hour of his birth.
M y fundamental mood was one of increasing gloom. Shame at
my ineffectiveness gnawed at my vitals. Bettina was a perpetual
witness of my trouble and my weakness. I did not know what
was wrong with her, but that something was wrong I could not
doubt. This much was plain, that joy had departed from her life;
that she could not laugh or smile. She watched the unceasing
inundation of letters from Ganna, and the snowstorm of legal
documents. These were difficult winters for us both.
During a visit to Berlin, I broke down completely for a time.
Organic heart trouble had supervened upon the cardiac neurosis
which had kept me out of the war. T h e doctor whom I consulted
advised rest and freedom from worry. How could I get rest,
how could I secure freedom from worry, while Ganna stormed
menacingly through my world; while my beloved companion
could not but look upon me as the plaything of a malignant

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troll; and while the innocent eyes o f my last-born child seemed

to be asking me, Where are my rights as a son? I could get no
rest alive, and yet I must not die.
Hornschuch. M uch as I liked Herr Chmelius, I could
no longer hide from m yself that, overburdened with work, he
lacked energy. He felt so himself, and had several times urged
me to take another legal adviser if I could find one to my taste.
A t this juncture a young solicitor was strongly recommended to
me, Hornschuch by name, who had recently settled in the Ebenweiler district and had speedily acquired an extensive country
practice. He had been four years at the front, had become a
commissioned officer, and had been distinguished for his courage.
After the war he felt a disinclination for city life and the society
of his former friends. A longing for solitude peculiar in a man of
action only forty years of age had driven him into voluntary
exile and a somewhat primitive manner of life.
In his legal career, in his determination that justice should
prevail, he showed the swashbuckling courage which had charac
terised him as a soldier. His chief interest was in cases in which
the client had suffered grievous wrong. He regarded it as his
mission to unearth miscarriages o f justice, and to quicken the
snails pace o f official procedure by ferocious and at times
dangerously scurrilous memorials. It was natural that the
authorities should eye him with disfavour. But all that I had
heard of him had redounded to his credit. So one day I went
to look him up at his cottage, which was about an hours walk
from where we lived. No plate to show his business; no office;
he received me as if I had been a private caller. He looked
young for his years, had Mongolian features, and defiant eyes.
He listened to my tale in silence, and almost without a movement
o f face or hands. Then he said :
I should like to see the documents. Perhaps youll ask my
colleague Chmelius to be good enough to send them along.
I did as requested, and for several weeks thereafter Hornschuch
made no sign. Then, late one autumn afternoon, he called on
me, and the following conversation took place:

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Hornschuch: Since you wish me, a nobody in the legal

world, to act for you instead of Chmelius, you must try to get
your adversary to give Stanger-Goldenthal the go-by. One good
turn deserves another.
Herzog: How do you think I could manage that?
Hornschuch: Very simply. Out of whom do you think this
gentleman with the imposing double-barrelled name expects
to get his fees when all is said and done?
Herzog: Out o f me, I presume.
Hornschuch: D o you entertain the hope that his admiration
for you is likely to make him reduce the amount of his bill?
Herzog: Certainly not.
Hornschuch: Hadnt you better make sure?
Herzog: I might try.
Hornschuch: Not m ight, but must.
Herzog: And when he has named a figure, what then?
Hornschuch: Then you can tell him you will pay, but not
until the divorce has been decreed, and on reasonable conditions.
Herzog: He will only laugh at me.
Hornschuch: L et him laugh. Leave the rest to me.
Herzog: You think the main thing is to deprive him of
interest in procrastination?
Hornschuch: Precisely. If you follow my advice, he will
compel his client to see reason and take an irrevocable step.
Should she refuse, he will throw up the case.
Herzog: Very likely you are right. But in the latter event,
Ganna will go to another lawyer, and how can we tell whether
we shall be better off?
Hornschuch: That likewise you will have to leave to me.
Be content, for a while, to let me act as your brain.
Herzog: W ell and good. But I should like to know your
forecast.
Hornschuch: Since, as you rightly suppose, Frau Ganna
will refuse to take the irrevocable step, you will in due course
ask my double-barrelled colleague to send you his bill. You will
then tell him that in view of the largeness of the amount, and his

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failure to get the divorce settled, he must look to his client, your
wife, for payment. When matters have reached this pass, he will
not be mealy-mouthed with her, you may be sure. H e will
half-strangle her; and if she wants to breathe freely, she will have
to put her affairs in the hands of the solicitor we shall approve.
Columbus and the egg! Things ran almost precisely the course
Hornschuch had predicted. I had repeatedly implored Ganna
to quit an adviser whose abilities were wholly directed towards
the continuance of the dispute instead of towards its settlement,
towards tangling the threads instead of disentangling them;
but she believed in Stanger-Goldenthal as if he had been one
o f the evangelists, or more strongly than she had ever believed in
all the evangelists put together. When an alliance is formed
between two persons whose delight it is to fish in troubled waters,
to mutter abracadabras and similar incantations, they become
(as the phrase runs) as thick as thieves, being united by closer
ties than are honest and straightforward people. But when Ganna
was suddenly presented with the bill for the entente cordiale,
and when the formidable total disclosed to her how costly had
been her litigious enthusiasm; when she learned that every talk
with her lawyer on the phone had been as expensive as a dinner
at a fashionable restaurant; that each of her stimulating confer
ences with Stanger had run away with more money than her
ordinary household expenses for a week she cried haro with
the loudest, and was ready to denounce her erstwhile ally as a
rogue and a cutpurse. She had only one consolation, that she could
assure herself and me she had severed connexion with this clever
man-of-law for my sake, and because I wished her to do so.
Then came a brief interregnum, a period when she was lawyerless
and suffered like a morphinist deprived of his custonary doses of
poison. She wrote to me savagely: You have gained your end,
which was to rob me of legal guidance and protection. When
I replied by telling her about Hornschuch, and urged upon her
the idea of our having him as joint adviser and as mediator in
our differences, the name sounded to her like rumblings from a
thunder-cloud. She had never heard of him, she knew nothing

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about him, but she detested him with the consuming hatred of
the maniac who is impelled to crazy acts in order to avert an
unimaginable peril.
Sixteen to Twenty Gannas. In a conversation I had with
Hornschuch, he told me that one of the chief obstacles in the
way of a speedy settlement was my continued personal association
with Ganna. He advised me not to answer her letters and to
discontinue my meetings with her. I explained to him that I
must see her occasionally for the sake of my children, especially
Doris.
Since you have to go to Vienna every few weeks, said
Hornschuch, why dont you arrange for the young folk to come
and see you somewhere else than at your old home ?
No good. If I sent for them, Ganna would come too.
Hornschuch countered with a remark that pricked me:
Have you never thought how mortifying your continued
association with Frau Ganna must be to Frau Bettina?
Nothing o f the sort, I protested. Impossible. He was mistaken.
There was no sign of anything of that kind.
He smiled, mockingly!
In truth, he was not mistaken. Looking back to-day, my
blindness, my stupidity, seem barely credible. Had I been gifted
with the powers of observation which are generally supposed to
be part o f a novelists equipment, I should long ere this have
become aware that my frequent conversations with Ganna, my
repeated visits to her house, my meetings with her elsewhere
in Vienna or at half-way halts between Ebenweiler and the
capital, were very hard for Bettina to stomach.
It had become plain to her that the detestable struggle in which
she had, all unwillingly, become involved, destroyed more
happiness and more life than could ever be made good. She took
no stock in the spoils of a dubious victory. There was no attrac
tion for her in the prospect of being made an honest woman of ;
middle-class respectability and marriage certificates meant
nothing to her; and not for any such fancied goods would she
have been willing to bow the knee to Ganna or pay tribute to her

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rival. The very thought of such a thing hurt her pride, impaired
her sense of womanly dignity. One day she said to me frankly:
I dont care a straw about this divorce you are working so
hard to secure.
I was dumbfounded.
Not for Helmuts sake? I asked.
Helmut? What on earth does it matter to Helmut?
Are you content that he should grow up illegitimate, without
the right to use my name ?
Y ou re back in the Middle Ages, retorted Bettina, fired by
the anti-kraal spirit. He can get along well enough without the
name of Herzog. Hornschuch tells me he will be legally entitled
to my maiden name, my fathers name, which is just as good as
Herzog.
Y es, I said in consternation. Yes. O f course it is just as
good.
But the trouble was that, for Bettina, Ganna seemed to be
living with us; Gannas parrot-like voice echoed through the
rooms; the aroma of Gannas close-fistedness made its way
through doors and windows; and there was no master in the house
to exclude her unwelcome presence. M aybe I sensed Bettinas
disappointment in some out-of-the-way corner of my brain,
but I shut my eyes against what I did not wish to see. Though
it sounds as if I must have been feeble-minded, I had not even
yet abandoned the hope of bringing Ganna to her senses. I did
not always let Bettina know when I went to see Ganna. A t this
time Ganna was staying in a nearby summer resort. I made all
kinds of pretexts, some of them absolute falsehoods, and visited
her secretly, as if I had been a lover going to his mistress. There
was something perverse about my behaviour. But my conver
sations with Ganna left traces upon my countenance. When
Bettina saw a dark shadow under my eyes, she knew what had
happened. She, who had hitherto slept as peacefully as a healthy
child for eight or ten hours at a stretch would now lie sleepless
till dawn. No way of preventing my suicidal and treacherous
conduct occurred to her. She never said a word about it to

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Hornschuch. Ganna, who wanted to make him believe that her

heart and mine beat as one, that our two spirits had but a single
thought, wrote to him occasionally, and declared that we were on
the road to a full understanding. All lie s!
W ith a feeble, foolish hope I went again and again to Ganna,
thinking, This time I shall pull it off to come away worn
out by fruitless discussion, but still hoping for better luck next
time. A t night I would awaken from haunted slumbers, in
which bitterness o f soul had made me toss from side to side;
would awaken to find sixteen or twenty Gannas standing round
my bed, pouring stereotyped chatter into my tired ears:
I will make you a firm offer next time you come.
It is abominable of you to call me extravagant. D ont you
know I enter everything I spend in an account-book ?
I shall comply with all your wishes, if you will only deprive
me of any pretext for saying no.
Since it is to happen against my will, I must, for my own
satisfaction, be able to say to myself that I am not disadvantaged
thereby.
You can rail at me. You can load me with calumnies. M y
withers are unwrung, and my conscience is clear.
Everything depends upon you, Alexander. Nothing lost so
far. For the sake of your peace, I shall set you free. But of course
I can only do so upon proper conditions.
I f the thermophore gives you palpitations, put a piece of
wet flannel between it and your skin.
There cannot be many women in my situation whose only
thought still is to do their best for their husbands happiness.
I am walking hand in hand with you under a rainbow to the
Last Judgment.
Bettina cannot fail to know that you will perish if the bond
that unites you and me is severed.
You are doing yourself incalculable harm by your attitude
towards me.
And so on, and so forth. Cassandra gives place to the cajoler;
the driver of a hard bargain, to the anxious spouse; promises

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alternate with threats; petitioning with quarrelsome greed.

One Ganna assumes the visage of a Madonna; another looks
like a Fury; a third is wearing a soiled check dressing-jacket;
a fourth, a spurious kimono from beneath which unfastened
stockings flap on the floor like empty sausage-skins; one speaks
with a sugary voice, another brawls like a fishwife; one shouts
an unending Hullo-o-o-o into the telephone, another begs
despairingly for money, throwing herself on her knees and
sobbing; one seems to be taking refuge in the fourth dimension
when she has made a hopeless mess of things in the other three,
another is scribbling copybook maxims on scraps of paper. T o
each and all of them I am to be accountable; to each and all
of them I must prove this and explain that. W hy? Prove what?
Explain what? That I am a fool, and ripe for a lunatic asylum.
Ganna gives me the Divorce as a Birthday-Present.
Hornschuch had quietly been making his preparations, like
a bird of prey soaring at such a height that he looks a mere point
in the blue, but ready to swoop the instant he catches sight of
a possible victim. He was corresponding with Herr Heckenast,
who represented Gannas interests and was spokesman of the
kraal. He was also in touch with Gannas new solicitor, Herr
Fingerling. Ganna had refused to accept Hornschuch as our
joint attorney, saying that one must have ones own lawyer,
just as one must have ones own husband. Hornschuch was fairly
content with her choice of Fingerling, and my impression is
that the latter was what conjurers call a forced card
that Hornschuch had managed to influence Gannas choice.
Although Herr Fingerlings information came from Herr Erich
Heckenast in Berlin, and although Heckenast professed to be
guided by the will of his sister-in-law Ganna, something o f the
nature of an agreement began to emerge from the fog of
controversy.
But directly the end came in sight, Ganna grew increasingly
uneasy. Her situation resembled that of a man wanted by the
police, who has changed his hiding-place again and again, but
is at length collared by a smart detective. She tried to escape

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from the dreaded grasp. Her main endeavour had been that the
new instrument of divorce (which for weeks, like the draft of
a diplomatic document, had been travelling to and fro between
her, Heckenast, and the two lawyers, for additions and erasures,
for criticism and comment) should impose on me financial
burdens and other obligations so onerous that I should refuse
to sign. Still, one never can tell. Bettina might make me commit
myself to the impossible. Ganna no longer felt at ease. She
might herself be caught in the trap she had so carefully baited.
Furthermore, she was over head and ears in debt. StangerGoldenthal was demanding his pound of flesh like a Shylock,
threatening to distrain upon the house, of which she was partowner. She wrote to Hornschuch imploring him to arrange with
me that a substantial sum should be paid to Stanger upon account.
In that case, gratitude would induce her to hurry on with the
divorce. But Hornschuch was adamant, replying, Divorce first,
then cash.
In this extremity, Ganna decided to disappear from the scene,
to take refuge in foreign parts. Her reasoning was primitive.
If two people are to be divorced, they must both be on the spot.
If I am out of reach, no one can make me sign anything. She
packed her trunks with all possible speed, got together what
money she could, and set out with Elisabeth and Doris for the
French Riviera. T w o days before leaving, she wrote to tell me
of her plan, and tried to enlist my sympathy by the news that
her intractable asthma was driving her south; but I was not
deceived, and guessed her real motive for the journey. As for
keeping her in Vienna once she had made up her mind to go,
that could only have been done by putting her behind bars.
Still, I forbade her to take Doris. This autumn, for my little
daughter of eleven, after many unsuccessful attempts and
numerous removals from pillar to post, a satisfactory school had
been found, for which mercy no one had been more thankful
than the child herself. Now her work was to be interrupted in
the middle of term and she was to be swept away into a strange
land. M y angry prohibition was answered by a refractory tele-

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gram from Ganna, followed up by an express letter, in which

she explained at great length that Doris was suffering from
overwork and needed sea air. T h e school was a wretched place,
where the poor darling had to get up at half-past-six in the
morning. She was going to send Doris to a dancing-school in
Nice, and the sweet pet was wild with delight at the thought.
I tore up the letter, and asked Hornschuch to inform Ganna
once more, categorically, that she was on no account to take Doris
to Nice. I thought that these instructions from my lawyer
would suffice.
The same day I had to leave for Munich on business. Very soon
after I entered my room in the hotel I was rung up on the phone
from Ebenweiler. T h e call was from Bettina, who implored me
on no account to go to Nice. Greatly astonished, I asked what she
thought could induce me to take such a journey. The answer w as:
Ganna has wired from Nice to say she is already there with
the two girls, and of course she asks you to send her money.
But Bettina, why on earth do you suppose I should think
of going to Nice ? This is the first I have heard of Gannas being
there. So shes taken Doris, after all? T h ats really the lim it!
Now Bettinas voice was replaced by that of Hornschuch,
who earnestly besought me to do nothing rash. Unless I was
careful he could not be answerable for the consequences to
Frau Bettina. Thereupon he rung off.
What did all this mean? Slowly a light dawned. Bettina was
afraid lest I should hurry south to bring back Doris, and that
the result would be my reopening personal negotiations with
Ganna. During the telephone conversation I had suddenly
realised that she doubted m y assurance I was ignorant of Gannas
departure, and this made me anxious and heavy-hearted. I
returned as soon as possible to Ebenweiler.
Acting on my instructions, Hornschuch now wrote to inform
Ganna that her monthly allowance was cut off. She protested,
in a furious wire that ran to forty words, and sent another
telegram (still longer) to her brother-in-law Heckenast. This
gentleman dispatched an imperious and ill-mannered wire to

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me, and another to Hornschuch. Hornschuch wrote to Fingerling

expressing great annoyance with the latter for having allowed
his client to go away when important discussions were in pro
gress, and for having (worse still) supplied her with funds for
the journey. Fingerling wrote to Heckenast expressing much
vexation at his clients wilfulness. Heckenast wrote angrily to
Ganna telling her to come home. Ganna wired a curt refusal.
She would not allow any one to order her about. I was surprised
that the wires between Nice and Berlin and between Nice and
Ebenweiler were not fused by the heat o f the messages they were
conveying.
Meanwhile, her money had run out. She could not pay her
hotel bill, and had to borrow from strangers. T h e strangers grew
suspicious when she did not repay the loan at the promised time,
and became unpleasant. She telegraphed that she was going to
sue me for alimony. Ganna-letters and Ganna-telegrams buzzed
round me like shrapnel. Our village post-office was kept busy!
Amid this turmoil, the instrument of divorce was being
drafted. Fingerling, harried by Hornschuch, brought so much
pressure to bear on Ganna, that she was forced to return from
the Cote d Azur. Hornschuch journeyed to Vienna for an
interview with Heckenast at Fingerlings office. I was to be ready
to follow Hornschuch at a given signal. T h e signal came, and I
followed.
Scene: M y brother-in-law Heckenasts room at the hotel.
Dramatis personae: Heckenast, Hornschuch, Fingerling, and
Herzog. Topic: T h e great bargain. We chaffered over every
point, and the points were so many that after three hours talk
an end was not yet in sight. Heckenast was a typical Prussian
martinet. He made the rest of us feel that his mere presence was
an honour to Austria, now so small and impoverished. He was
as dispassionate as a paper-knife. Though he was considerably
younger than myself, his manner towards me was that of a morally
self-confident uncle towards a reprobate nephew; his middleclass susceptibilities had been incurably wounded by the dis
graceful behaviour of this deserter from the kraal. He would be

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a tower of strength in defence of the rights and interests of his

sister-in-law Ganna. He was thoroughly matter-of-fact. If
these matter-of-fact people could get full control, there would
be no place left in this world o f ours for compassion or
imagination.
Herr Fingerling was a lean, red-haired, courteous man, who
strongly favoured a friendly settlement. He had been promised
a good round fee of twenty-thousand schillings as soon as the
instrument of divorce had been signed, and would have been
glad to have the sum in his pocket. Now and again he beckoned
Hornschuch, and whispered a word or two in the country lawyers
ear. The latter, quick of movement, laconic, swift in parry,
reminded me of a fencer. A skilful lawyer, he found it easy to
push the stiff Prussian into a corner; but Heckenast remained
firm about conditions which seemed to me intolerably severe.
Though Hornschuch did his best for me, I could not but feel
that he over-estimated my resources and my earning capacity.
Still, what could I do? Matters had gone too far. It was like a
rockfall in the mountains. One who gets in the way, is crushed.
I stood with my back to the window, beneath the shower,
the hailstorm, of paragraphs, figures, and commitments. M y
thoughts moved in two spheres. One of these was remote from
the slaughter-house in which I played the part of bullock. What
concern have I with this rattling of the chains of atonement?
All they want of me is money. Well, let them have the dross and
be damned to them. They can skin me alive, but my soul remains
my own. T he other train of thought was full of care: How
shall I ever be able to provide so much money, year after year,
as nominated in a bond which is more like a screw-press than a
piece of paper ? M y life will be a galley-slaves ; my future pledged
to sanctions and reparations. This is still what Chmelius called
the earlier and yet more preposterous proposal, a private Treaty
o f Versailles. It involves that my brain and my imagination are
to be pawned to Ganna for the rest of my life, as securities for
the monstrous payments she demands.
At length a bargain had been struck. Heckenast sent for drinks,

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we clinked glasses, and solemnly shook hands. As I went down

stairs with Hornschuch, he said:
I think I can congratulate you.
There is no certainty that Ganna will sign, I rejoined;
but Hornschuch tried to reassure me:
Herr Heckenast does not seem to be a man to let himself
be trifled with, and Herr Fingerling wants his money.
In the street, my lawyer gripped me by the hand, and,
with a smile of satisfaction (for he was proud of his victory),
went o n :
Put money in thy purse. Lots of money. Money for Finger
ling, money for Stanger-Goldenthal, money for Gannas debts,
ransom. Have you as much as will be wanted on the nail?
I can help you if necessary.
I have got together all I can. I think it will suffice.
This was at two in the afternoon. At four we reassembled in
Fingerlings office, Ganna arriving in her brother-in-laws
company, and a notary public being also present. One might have
thought that five minutes would have been enough for the
formalities of signing and attesting the instrument of divorce.
Actually, five hours elapsed before Ganna could be induced
to subscribe her name to the deed.
It was like an amputation, said Fingerling afterwards,
when he gave an account of the matter to a colleague.
A t five, Ganna was still insisting, nay screaming, that she would
never, never consent. After we had all used our best persuasions
for another hour, she was near to fainting, and needed restora
tives. A t seven, she declared that a number of emendations
must be made in the document.
Impossible, exclaimed Heckenast and Fingerling. We have
pledged ourselves to what is there inscribed, fully impowered to
do so as your representatives.
She swore by the lives of her children that nothing, nothing,
would induce her to sign a document which would make her the
most miserable woman in the world. She accused her brotherin-law of having been bribed by me and Bettina. She threatened

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to poison herself. She was the victim of a gang of blackmailers.

Fingerlings brow was beaded with perspiration. Heckenast,
losing patience for the first time, took her by the shoulders,
shook her, and roared that if she did not come to her senses he
would have her shut up in a lunatic asylum. This frightened her,
and she became as still as death. W ith hanging head, tears stream
ing down her face, she sat at the writing-table and signed. Then,
after a deep sigh, she flung herself on the couch and howled
like a child for twenty minutes while the rest of us looked at
one another in consternation.
Next day, when the matter was put through the court, was
my birthday. I was fifty-three. In the anteroom Ganna came up
to me with a smile, the charmingly innocent smile of her
girlhood, and said to me in honeyed tones:
Alexander, I give you the divorce as a birthday-present.
I was struck dum b; just as I was struck dumb an hour later,
when, with trembling hands, she stuffed into her vanity-bag
the notes for many thousand schillings which I had counted out
to her on the table. Spellbound, I looked at the clutching little
hands. They were clutching the banknotes, but had they at long
last released their grip of Alexander Kerzog? We shall see.
A Glance at the Instrument of Divorce. W hile this went
on in Vienna, Bettina waited at Ebenweiler. T o comfort her
in her loneliness, she had asked Lotte Waldbauer to stay with
her. At noon, Hornschuch phoned to let her know that the
divorce was effected. When Bettina came back from the hall
into the blue room, Lotte saw she was on the point of fainting.
It has been too dearly bought, she murmured; too dearly
bought.
Then she lost consciousness. She was not thinking of money
or moneys worth; for not until next day, when Hornschuch
returned, did she know what I had pledged myself to.
She read the instrument of divorce carefully, as was her way.
For a time, with lowered eyes, she sat in silent meditation. Then
she said softly:
This is horrible.

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Hornschuch was disappointed, and showed it, for he thought

he had earned her thanks. Bettina held out a hand to him:
You must not think that I undervalue your kindness, or
make light of the trouble you have taken. But what fearful
obligations Alexander has accepted! How could he sign ? A man
who has to make his livelihood by the labour o f his brain!
Hornschuch was at a loss for words. Not now, nor for a long
time to come, was he able to doubt that he had put through
an excellent piece o f work. Being a lawyer by profession, he
looked through legal spectacles. M ost people are like that. It
is the trick their profession plays on them. T h e talented and
the honest are hoodwinked by the ideal they have formed of
it, the others have their eyes fixed upon advancement and gain.
Those who make the world go round, wear blinkers. It was as
lawyer that Hornschuch contemplated Bettina. For her part,
she was under no illusions about the situation. She knew with
her clairvoyant intelligence that the throttle-bond (as she called
it) had not laid the spectre that haunted us. She said:
I would rather live free from care in a log-hut, than in a
palace where that spook is one of the inmates.
Painful though the topic is, I must give a summary of the
obligations imposed on me by the instrument of divorce. First
o f all, I had to pay the debts Ganna had been running up for
years. Next, I was responsible for the legal expenses. Including
Stanger-Goldenthals bill and the fees for the instrument of
divorce, they amounted, in round figures, to about forty-eight
thousand schillings. Gannas monthly allowance was larger
than the salary o f a minister of State. Besides this, a con
siderable sum had to be paid over during the next three years
to constitute what was called an emergency fund for Ganna.
It was right and proper that I should provide for the children,
and there was no need for imposing this upon me in the instru
ment o f divorce as a legal obligation. Still, Ganna insisted, and
so I was formally inscribed as a payer of tribute to my own
offspring. Furthermore, the house which my friends had be
stowed on me fourteen years ago was to become the unencum

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bered and exclusive property of Ganna. W ell and good, there

was no reason for jibbing against these stipulations. T h e material
burden was heavy, but a stock-exchange speculator, a bankmanager, a large-scale manufacturer, would, without winking,
have taken it upon his shoulders to gain his ends; and even
larger pecuniary liabilities would not have troubled his sleep.
If you want freedom, in such circumstances as mine, you must
pay ransom (Hornschuchs word!). In the extant social order,
divorce is a business matter, and release from the trammels of
an undesired sexual union is an article of commerce. W ell and
good. But the two last clauses in the document were monstrous.
Ganna was made legatee of one-third of all that I might make
by my writings and of any other property of which I might
die possessed; and as guarantee for the payment of her allowance
she was accorded a lien of a hundred thousand schillings upon
the Buchegger estate. T h e former of these clauses was tanta
mount to the disinheriting of Bettina, since besides Ganna there
were four children among whom the inheritance would have
to be shared out. T h e latter made the Ebenweiler property
unsaleable, and therefore practically valueless.
The making over the house in Vienna, the lien upon the
Buchegger estate, and the right to inherit a third of all my
worldly goods, were based upon the marriage settlement of
twenty-five years before, which I had signed so heedlessly. Now
at length I was to learn what that word revocability signified.
It signified that in the event of divorce I had to refund the
dowry not once only but twice. I owed my divorced wife two
hundred thousand schillings. T he reader will agree that the
kraal was doing good business in the way it was able to shear
the poor sheep that had blundered into its net. All honour to
the kraal. Bow the knee before securities. Ganna was being
amply repaid for her adventurous voyage into the seas o f litera
ture and the higher life. Bettina and Caspar Hauserchen
might be reduced to beggary, but Ganna could sleep peacefully
upon her securities as upon a couch of rose-leaves. M ight she,
indeed ? I know that I touch here upon the limit of the credible;

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but these so-called securities served in the end to tear her life
to tatters, and therewith to devastate mine as well.
Money. T o begin with, the money-scourge was a stimulus
to effort, and did not inflict obvious wounds. M y working powers
were intensified T h e experiences of recent years had been so
painful that they had brought about a sort of mental renovation
and had transformed m y outlook upon the world. One need
but know intimately the sufferings of a fellow-mortal, and he
becomes the source and the focus of our knowledge of all man
kind. Still more, if the suffering mortal be oneself. W hat con
sumes us inwardly, becomes the material for artistic creation,
if we are strong enough to persist. Almost every illness sub
limates the organism. I no longer followed the arbitrary call
of an imagination that roamed afar; but surrendered to the lure
of the present, which was more powerful than it had been when
I lived in the hurly-burly. Moreover, fate had granted me this
boon, that while at work I could forget my troubles; although
they came back with a rush, so that I was overwhelmed with
dread of life, with anxious premonitions, when imaginative
creation was laid aside, and I was once more an ordinary being
among ordinary beings.
T h e semblance of repose which Bettina and I enjoyed during
the first period of our legal marriage made us blind to the
crushing extent of the obligations with which it had been bought.
T o fulfil these obligations, to defray the necessary expenses of
our household, and to pay the instalments owing to my
friends to say nothing of taxes , meant that I had to provide
a very large sum every year; and though during the first two
years fortune favoured me, and in a frenzy of creation
I earned more , than ever before, I was soon in grave straits,
and had to borrow a considerable amount at usurious
interest.
Since at first, however, income seemed to keep pace with
expenditure, my mood was that of a gambler who, trusting to
luck, goes on increasing his stake; or that o f a person who is
so deeply in debt, whose future is so hopelessly embarrassed,

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that he throws foresight to the winds, shuts his eyes to the fact
that he is squandering money, and defies the inward monitor
that enjoins thrift. I began to live on a large scale, entertained,
expanded my library, bought a motor car, and travelled widely
with Bettina. T h e serious upshot was that Ganna (who kept
herself informed as to my doings) was strengthened in the belief
that I was amply supplied with funds, that she had been grossly
deceived, that the instrument of divorce had cheated her out
o f her rightful share of this phantom wealth.
To describe my attitude towards money at this period, I may
use the paradoxical formula, selfish indifference. Like all who
have emerged from poverty into relative comfort, I valued the
pleasures and advantages money can bring; yet I did not love
money, but despised it. Or rather, I despised money when I
had any, and at such times could not picture the state of being
without it. I was neither avaricious nor carefree. Though it would
not be fair to describe me as having luxurious tastes, a certain
dull sensuality made it extremely hard for me to renounce
habitual pleasures.
Bettina was of a different temperament. She neither loved
money nor despised it. W ith a sound grasp of realities, she knew
that money is important as a means for the satisfaction of needs.
In many respects, also, as a means for the provision o f super
fluities, of things o f beauty, of those simple things which are
often much harder to obtain and far more costly than the ornate.
During the years before I had accommodated myself to the new
circumstances, and when she (partly in order to make things
easier for me, and partly because rendered enthusiastic by my
passionate creative impetus she carefully avoided questioning
me or trying to restrain me) had become inspired by a feeling
of secret defiance, she too lent herself to the illusion of an
inexhaustible spring of wealth. She bought new dresses, deco
rated our home, spent money upon the garden, and was happy
at being able to surround herself with lovely things, which she
did with perfect taste. She liked having people to stay with us,
old friends for the most part, for she was exceedingly loyal.

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But as to her new acquisitions, she was never immoderate or

grasping. Ownership meant nothing to her. T o know that a
beautiful object was there, that she might feast her eyes on it,
was what she wanted, not to have it for her very own. For
the rest, she remained devoted to music and to our Caspar
Hauserchen.
So things went on until these scintillating dreams of beauty,
peace, and art burst like soap-bubbles, and terrible reality
glowered at us.
Ganna makes ready for the Onslaught. What about
Ganna? The material severance of the ties between us did not
lead her to recognise that we were spiritually sundered. The
mood in which she had taken up her solitary life was pregnant
with disaster. She felt as one feels in a banqueting-hall when
the guests have dispersed and the lights have been extinguished.
The place was very still, very dark, and she was utterly alone.
O f course there were the children. But, except for Doris, they
were grown-ups who no longer needed a mother, as Ganna
understood the term; no longer needed a tender guardian to
minister to their requirements. They lived in a chilly world that
was foreign to hers; had their own opinions, their own experi
ences, their own friends, contacts in which she had no share.
Like some one emptying an old flat before moving into a
new dwelling, she ransacked drawers and boxes and cupboards
for mementoes of our early wedded life photos, gifts we had
made to one another, and what not. She was never weary of
feasting her eyes on them, for they reminded her how happy
she had been in those days. In fancy she conjured up the
reminiscence of an unalloyed bliss such as she had never really
known. She reread her diary penned in girlhood, and could not
understand how things had turned out so different from her
youthful imaginings o f the coming time. She made the distressing
discovery that dreams lie. This came home to her, indeed, only
during casual flashes o f awareness, as when a sunbeam pierces
through the crack in a shutter to enter a darkened room. When
it happened, she hastened to draw a curtain over the crack.

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Her favourite occupation was to read and reread the letters

I had written to her during the first ten years. Greedily she
absorbed their contents. She arranged them in chronological
order and numbered them. T o vivify them more than mere
reading could do, she set to work upon copying them. Having,
in the course o f many weeks, finished this job, she took the
transcripts to a typist, and had manifolds made of the whole
collection. One set, neatly bound, was sent to me. I was puzzled,
for a time, as to what she had in mind. No doubt her secret
intention was to enlighten posterity concerning the true relation
ship between Ganna and Alexander Herzog. She looked upon
posterity as something akin to a fire-insurance company.
Every day was to her like a curtain with holes in it. Through
each hole, the past peeped. How was she to spend the weary
hours? No more documents, no pleadings, no interesting and
stimulating negotiations. Sometimes she opened the works of
her favourite poets and philosophers. Th ey conveyed no message
to her now, but talked only of might-have-beens. There are
persons who take a voluptuous delight in the sadness of mighthave-beens, wallowing, as it were, in pseudo-existence. During
the summer she reread all my books, one after another, and
when we next met she declared, with a mingling of hypocritical
regret and open satisfaction, that the books I had written in
the days when she and I lived together were incomparably
better than those published after I had left her for Bettina. It
was on the tip of her tongue to say: I have always known that
God would punish you, and He has punished you. T h e old
incantation! This talk took place one fine evening in the garden
o f her house. When I arrived she was lying on a long chair,
wrapped in rugs, and gazing into the firmament, where the stars
were beginning to flash out. I wondered: What is she looking
for up there? She could lie for hours staring skyward like this,
as if in pious ecstasy, while rebellious and discontented thoughts
were racing through her head. W hat did she expect from the
stars? What did she want, what fancies did she indulge in, while
overarched by the eternal vault?

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There was one topic she could never dismiss, for it irked
her like a festering wound. Again and again she returned contentiously to the reminder that I had promised, had vowed, to
remain her friend, if only she would divorce me. Now she was
waiting for the promised friendship, the fulfilment of my pledge
to give her moral support. M y failure in this respect was a bitter
disappointment to her. T h e time I spared for her was always
too little. I talked to her of many things, she said, but never
of friendship. When I made a move to depart, she asked me, in
a pet, why I couldnt spend the whole day with her. If I did
spend a day with her, she wanted an assurance when I left that
I would keep the morrow free for her. Sometimes when I came
to see her I drove in the car, which I left standing at the front
door. She made remarks about this car, with a smile which was
intended to show that she was nowise envious, but its wryness
disclosed her true sentiments. She regretted having agreed to
the divorce, with a regret which gnawed at her by day and by
night. Sometimes came an outburst of wrath, in which she would
declare that she had let herself be outwitted by Hornschuch
and Bettina. She was nearly beside herself with spleen that
Bettina could drive far and wide with me in that wretched
automobile, while she herself, forsaken and betrayed, the scorn
of her supplanter, was prisoned within four walls.
I asked her how I was to show the promised friendship in
any other way than by carefully rebuilding amicable relations,
as I was honestly trying to do; by our both learning gradually
to forget the unhappy past. Unhappy past? T h e expression
infuriated her.
How can you bring yourself to say anything so brutal,
Alexander?
Then she went on to remark that it was rather absurd she
should have to tell me how to show my friendship for her.
Simple enough. W e could go to the theatre together, or to
concerts, thus making plain to the world that when civilised
persons like ourselves were divorced, this did not necessarily
imply a complete breach in friendly relations. W e could make

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a pleasant little tour together in spring or autumn. I could stay

at her house when I had occasion to come to Vienna; she would
give tea-parties and at-homes where I should be able to make
her new friends acquaintance. She returned to the charge again
and again. It would be splendid if I would do as she wished
in this matter. Nothing else could compensate her for the
immense sacrifices she had been forced to make. Instead of this
she was being fobbed off with alms. Shameful! Shameful!
I could scarcely believe my ears. These preposterous wishes,
these avaricious claims, were what she was brooding over when
star-gazing. She did not care a damn about the stars. All that
concerned her was the mental recapitulation of the inj'ustice with
which she had been treated.
Many years before I had written of her in one of my note
books: She is blind at heart, and has the temperament of a
salamander. Not an exhaustive description of her character;
only a couple o f pointers. So blind at heart was she, that she
never perceived what was due from her, what it was reasonable
to expect of her, what she owed to others. Her salamander
temperament made her ignore the obligations of time and space,
disregard prohibitions and commandments. She was like a
numeral outside the accepted mathematical notation: something
frankly unthinkable. But in the mental and moral spheres one
can always find a metaphor for the unthinkable so great is the
power o f human thought.
When penning this record, I have persistently endeavoured
to portray a chaotic love that transcended all bounds and became
suicidal. A psychological debauchery, in fact. Are not we inclined
to use the term love as if it were a skeleton-key, able to open
every lock? D o not talk to me of hate-love, o f persecution-love,
and the like; Gannas love was none o f these. If we were to
speak o f it as love-illusion, we should be nearer the mark.
Illusion, glamour, is an unstudied element, infinitely mysterious.
No mirror has wholly reflected it, no pen fully described it,
for its roots lie in the unexplored depths of the human race.
In Gannas fancy, everything that was now to happen had

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been prearranged, blow for blow. Not by a preconcerted plan,

not as the expression of a definite will; but it was as clearly
determined as in a boiler it is determined that when the pressure
reaches a certain level, steam will escape by the safety-valve.
Since she could not have me in the flesh, she must have me in
some other way. How? By making me her target. She was, so
she conceived, predestined to touch me on the raw. M y tenderest
spot should be the bulls-eye of her target. Arrogance is the
country cousin of illusion. If she could not be my nearest and
dearest, she would make me rue it; if I would not let her work
my weal, then she would fulfil her influential mission by working
my woe. Illusion is all-powerful.
The Bleeding Psyche. I must be careful not to lose the
thread of my discourse. It is the intermingling of triviality and
improbability in the events that tend to make irrelevancies invade
the field o f memory. T h e sober truth o f the facts conflicts with
the witches sabbath to which they gave rise, when they had
traced their determinisms with fanatical consistency.
One day Ganna informed me that, collaborating with a
journalist of her acquaintance, she had filmed The TreasureSeekers. She reminded me that eight years before I had given
her a written authorisation. Meanwhile, however, I had disposed
o f the film rights to an American company. M y conviction was
that I had told her this, either by word of mouth or by letter.
She denied it. Certainly, amid the press o f work, I might have
forgotten to do so. Now I warned her that one could not sell
the same thing to two different persons. She insisted upon her
ownership of the film rights. M y secretiveness about the sale
to the Americans (this secretiveness had already become a fact
for her) was an additional proof of the way in which I had
always tried to conceal from her the amount of my income.
I said that only through such casual additions to my earnings
had it been possible for me to keep her and the children in
funds during the inflation period. She remained incredulous,
and began a detailed statement of my supposed riches ignoring
that in any case she received the larger moiety of these riches

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such as they were. T h e disposal she had made of the film rights
was, she said, definitive, irrevocable. She had signed a contract
w ith the journalist, and he would sue her if she tried to back
out.
But how can you enter into a contract concerning something
which does not belong to you? I asked.
M y solicitor, Herr M attem , takes a different view.
This was the first I had heard of the new solicitor, and the
tidings that she had a legal adviser against me left me no resource
but to consult my own Hornschuch. During the last stages
o f the unpleasant wrangle which ensued, I was travelling with
Bettina in foreign parts. Press-cuttings were sent me containing
sensational accounts o f the lawsuit, obviously inspired with
venom against myself. Simultaneously came sheafs of prolix
telegrams from Ganna, protesting that she had nothing to do
with the authorship of the comments, which obviously proceeded
from some one who wished to make mischief between us.
But how does she know where we are? asked Bettina.
I had to admit that I had told her our itinerary. Bettina kept
her thoughts to herself.
In the end, Hornschuch managed to get the affair settled out
o f court. I had to pay Gannas journalistic friend a considerable
sum to indemnify him for work he had never been properly
authorised to undertake. Ganna, in the end, renounced the
compensation she had demanded, saying she valued m y friend
ship more than the money, but making it plain that in her then
pecuniary circumstances she was consenting to a great sacrifice.
A t this juncture she was cherishing schemes for independent
authorship, and submitted some of her writings to me, in the
hope that I could help her to get them published. It was, she
said, absolutely essential for her to earn money. I could not
see the necessity, for the allowance I was making her in accordance
with the terms o f the instrument of divorce was more than enough
to meet all reasonable requirements. Still, wishing to be com
plaisant, I did my best in defiance of my literary conscience,
for her effusions seemed to me neither amusing nor interesting.

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I did not tell her m y unfavourable opinion, for this would only
have led to endless discussion, and might have induced her to
abandon an occupation which was comparatively harmless.
Alas, it was not long before she conceived a new scheme, and
a far more dangerous one. In the hope of making money out
of the house, she decided to build another storey and to let
the ground-floor. Not a bad idea, but it involved capital outlay,
which in her circumstances meant trenching on her reserves (if
she had any), and contracting a mortgage. I felt it incumbent
on me to warn her of the danger of running into debt. She would
not heed my warning. It was her unhappy way, as soon as she
had made up her mind to obtain possession of a thing, to pawn
it in advance, so that when she did at length get her little hands
on it she grasped only semblance and never reality. She was
like a man who runs till he drops in the attempt to overtake
his own shadow. When the futility of the endeavour dawned
on her, she lashed out at the shadow, demanding from it, in
her blind wrath, compensation for her trouble, her disappointed
hopes, and her outlay of time and money. But the shadow was
only my substitute, so the living Alexander had to pay the piper;
resistance was useless, Alexander always had to pay.
Still, the plans for reconstructing the house did not, as I had
expected, put an end to her literary schemes. From time to time
she had uttered mysterious hints concerning a book on which
she was at work, and of which she had great expectations. As
far as I could gather, it was to be a statement of accounts, a
description of her life and sufferings, an avowal of her inviolable
love for and fidelity to her husband. She declared several times
that, when drafting this work, she had thought chiefly of me,
her supreme object being to convince me how greatly I was
mistaken. When I had read the book ( seriously and attentively,
she added with emphasis), there could be no doubt that, over
whelmed by the force of the description, I should unhesitatingly
return to her. All this was conveyed in her own peculiar idiom
at once menacingly, cajolingly, and plaintively.
In an early section of these memoirs, I wrote about Playing

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at Literature. It was a harmless and easy-going world I had

in mind; a world simple-minded in its self-deception, and rather
touching in its endeavour to use literature and art as fig-leaves
to cover its nakedness. That was an affectation of thirty years
ago. The priggishness of Gannas youth contrasts with the fierce
iconoclasm of to-day as a toy-pistol with a Lewis-gun. At those
literary tea-parties of long ago, the guests used pea-shooters and
pop-guns; but the modern iconoclasts are supplied with the
latest machinery of devastation. They use fiame-projectors, lay
verbal mines, throw verbal bombs, poison the world with printers
ink. Every dissatisfied fool, every one who lusts to cut a figure
in the world, discharges his longing for revenge from a writingtable into the public street. No questions are asked as to whether
he has a vocation to write, as to whether his message is truthful
and honest. Paper is cheap, the compositor is willing, words
have a price in the market, the war-cry of our time is W rite!
and it drowns the wail of human misery, which is suffocated
beneath a mountain o f print.
Is it surprising that Ganna, having caught the prevailing
infection, should have sought salvation in authorship? Had not
she been born, so to say, with a pen in her mouth? Had not
writing seemed to her since early childhood the main purpose
o f existence, her most vital manifestation, her platform, her
refuge, her consolation? This passion, which resembled a vice
as closely as, outwardly considered, a good book resembles a
bad one, was uncontrollable. I think it was the main cause of
her unhappiness, her mental disturbance, her godlessness; for
it replaced in her that mirror of the heart in which every
spiritually gifted creature can see itself, with death standing
behind as in the old macabre pictures. She never thought of
death; she knew nothing of the Godhead; and over the mirror
of the heart she had pasted a sheet of paper in order to write,
write, write.
The book, a short novel, had a pretentious title, The Bleeding
Psyche. A publisher, who hoped it would raise a scandal, had
jumped at it. His hopes were disappointed, for there was only

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a storm in a teacup. The letter Ganna sent me to accompany

the book was like a written genuflection. Renewed assurances
of undying love, renewed references to the disgraceful necessity
for having to earn money. Taking it all in all, the missive was
the stammer of an uneasy conscience.
I fluttered the pages, to read monstrosities. M y first impulse
was to hide it, lest Bettina should get hold of it. But when I
was alone in my room, I took it now and again from beneath
the pile of books under which I had thrust it, impelled by the
need that urges one to examine an obscene curio which at first
one could hardly bear to look at. What was printed there, black
upon white? Behind a cloud of sentimentality and saccharine
romanticism could be discerned a foul caricature of Bettina, the
depiction of her reputed sins and malicious deeds, together with
a horrible scene of adultery in which the readers sympathies
were to be enlisted on the side of the deceived husband. The
Bleeding Psyche was Ganna, the white archangel Ganna,
persecuted and desecrated by the Lesbian scum Bettina.
Friends and acquaintances wrote to assure me of their sym
pathy; but here and there, from the lurking-places of envy,
hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, whispers of malicious
delight could be heard. Ganna did her best to advertise the
botched novel, getting the journalistic hacks she knew to write
paragraphs about it. In the long run, I spoke to Bettina of the
book, for she had heard about it from Hornschuch and from
various other people. Never have I known anything finer than the
way in which she ignored the mud that Ganna flung at her.
It was impossible but that she should feel deeply wounded. She
hated being talked about, whether kindly or unkindly; and no
power on earth could have induced her to read or even to touch
the volume containing Gannas lucubrations. As far as I was
concerned, only one thing mattered, and unfortunately I was
too slow to realise it namely, what was to be my own attitude
towards this volley of spite, what behaviour I should adopt
because of it.
Am ong the Roses. Bettina was in the garden, spraying the

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roses to rid them of aphides. She growled now and again, when
one of the trees was severely infested. T he solution she was
using was in a big galvanised iron tub, beside which Helmut
was playing, dabbling in the water, and splashing with great
enjoyment. Suddenly there came a cry; he had leaned over too
far, and had fallen into the tub. I heard the sounds of distress,
and rushed out in alarm to see what was the matter. Bettina
had already fished out the struggling youngster. Tranquilly, she
laid him in the sun to dry. Seeing that I was greatly alarmed,
she said calmly, though with a loving look at the little son we
both idolised:
/ Dont worry, Alexander. This is not the first time hes had
a ducking, and it wont be the last.
Then she resumed her attack upon the plant-lice.
G u e r illa W a rfa r e . I wrote to Ganna that for the time
being I could have no direct relations with her. As regards
business and household matters she must apply to Hornschuch.
Only five lines. But why for the time being ? D id not the
phrase imply that already I was wilting? For the time being!
Ganna, who had a fine flair for my weakness, drew her own
inferences, and was encouraged to laugh at my brave words.
For the time being! Unriddle it, reader, if you can; the task
lies beyond my capacity. I cannot deny that I am an enemy
of the absolute Never again. This hostility was perhaps a
law of my character, inseparable from the nature of one who
invariably sees the two faces of the world, the affirmative and
the negative. Mysterious determinisms are at work here; the
mental and the mentally caused are as closely akin to the
treacherous as thought is to inaction.
Ganna would not acknowledge that there was a breach. Her
letters were honeyed. Since I did not answer them, she compiled
a prolific defence of The Bleeding Psyche and sent it me through
the instrumentality of Herr Mattern, accompanied by the opinions
of noted critics. As I still made no sign, she commissioned other
intermediaries to defend her cause. I told them that when one
has eaten garbage, time is needed to recover from the consequent

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digestive disturbance. Thereafter she was silent for a while, but

reopened communications with a demand for money. Her
allowance did not cover her expenses. T h e clothing and educa
tion of the girls cost more than half of the total sum provided
for as alimony in the instrument of divorce. Unforeseen expen
diture cropped up once more. Various payments were in arrear,
and she instructed Herr Mattern to send me a note of them.
Some of the arrears dated from before the divorce, although
it had been understood at that time that she had given me a
full statement of her debts, a settlement of which had been part
of our agreement.
I asked her why a signed and sealed arrangement was to be
binding on me without qualification, but was to have no per
manent validity where she was concerned. There could be no
question, I said, of my increasing her allowance, that the inter
minable fret was making me ill, and that she must leave me in
peace. The doctors had ordered me a long stay in Marakesh.
I had written to the children about this. Ganna implored me
to come and see her before leaving, and I was weak enough to
comply. Nor was she satisfied with one meeting; there were
several. Ganna, her brow furrowed with care, expatiated on her
lack of funds, produced her account-books, and piles of unpaid
bills. I might have insisted that this was no concern of mine;
that I had settled her debts as per contract, and that her monthly
allowance was punctually paid. But I wanted quiet, and not
to be pestered with complaints; I had had a lucky year, and
was about to make an expensive journey; so, although I had
intended to put the sum by for a rainy day, I agreed to make
her a present of ten thousand schillings, four-fifths of which
I handed over on the nail. A few weeks afterwards, in a news
paper where a great friend of hers was one of the chiefs of staff,
there appeared an interview with her in which she declared she
had to fight tooth and nail to induce her divorced husband to
make proper provision for their youngest child. Obviously, in
a fit of rage, she had talked heedlessly to a man who wanted
to make a scoop. When she saw her words in black and white,

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she was alarmed, and cabled to me a solemn assurance that she

was nowise responsible for the publication. The matter left me
cold; but, since I knew she was lying, I refused to pay the
remaining two thousand schillings. Meanwhile she had found
it convenient to forget that I had made her a free gift, and she
demanded the balance of the ten thousand as a debt. She had
already pledged herself to hand over the money to a third party,
and she threatened to sue me for the amount. The fact that I
had given her so large a sum to which she had no claim was
enough, in her wayward mind, to convince her that she had
an unchallengeable right to it; and, furthermore, my pliability
strengthened her delusion that I was an Austrian Rockefeller,
and that only the incapacity and rascality of her lawyers had
deprived her o f her rightful share in my wealth.
She was perpetually engaged in the study of the instrument
o f divorce, carrying it about with her by day, and having it
on her bedside-table by night. Although she knew it by heart,
she read it over and over again as a devout Jew reads the Talm ud.
A vulnerable point was the object of her unremitting search.
A t length she found one in the clause relating to the monthly
allowance. Before the divorce, her representatives had stood out
for a third of my income. This demand I had steadfastly rejected;
for, knowning Ganna as I did, I was sure it would provide
occasion for unending ferretings into my affairs and claims for
statements o f account. Thereupon an agreement had been
reached concerning a lifelong payment of a fixed allowance,
which was described as the equivalent of a third of my income.
This gave her a loophole. As usual, she complained that she
was being cheated. The clause, she said, was invalid and unjust,
and she must be paid a third of my actual earnings. When I
pointed out that these were uncertain, that she was better off
with a fixed allowance, which in lean years would be more than
a third o f my income, she laughed incredulously. Indeed, the
laugh was on her side, for, whatever happened, she had the
famous lien. When bad times came, she could insist upon her
full allowance, and, if it was not forthcoming, she could fore

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close on the Buchegger estate. A t present, the presumable third

share seemed to her more lucrative, and through her claim to
enquire into my pecuniary circumstances she secured a means
of intruding into my life and a chance of dictating my actions.
W ith this end in view, she established a wildly ramified system
of espionage. She acquired information about my expenditure,
about the way in which Bettina and I lived, knew how many
servants we had, what guests I entertained; she kept a record
of the editions of my books and of the royalties that accrued
from translations; and upon the basis of this accumulation of
data she established her new and urgent claims, in support of
which she appealed to morality, humanity, and justice. Since
I refused to negotiate with her about this matter, there began
a new flood of memorials and lawyers letters. I suppose the
alterations in the house had made her unusually short of money.
T o raise funds for this purpose she had mortgaged the place
again and again. Her financial position went from bad to worse.
M y greatest distress was the thought o f Doris, now fourteen
years o f age. Most of the money paid for the childs education
was misapplied by Ganna, who emptied it into the bottomless
pit of her debts; so I agreed to a considerable increase in the
educational allowance, reserving to myself the right to revoke
the concession should Ganna make any attempt to regard her
self as legally entitled to the payment. T h is proviso made her
extremely angry, for it seemed to her to imply a lack of confidence
on my part. In March I entered into the agreement and made
the first payment. In October, however, Ganna insisted that the
sum for the first quarter of the current year ought to have been
paid to her. She regarded the arrangement as retrospective!
Came an avalanche o f letters, and two new lawyers appeared
upon the scene. At Hornschuchs the documents in the case
o f Herzog versus Herzog made a pile which nearly reached the
ceiling. In despair he came to me, in despair he stood facing
Bettina, and declared:
This passes human understanding.
Bettina is Homeless and I am hemmed in. Whatever

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the reason, I failed to notice that Bettina was losing courage, hope,
and, worst o f all, confidence. I failed to notice that, in much
distress, she drew away from m e; that she felt lonely, disappointed,
betrayed. Failed to notice that she no longer took delight in the
house, that the beautiful countryside made no appeal to her,
that the flowers were withered and lovely things had grown ugly
to her. Failed to notice that she was always chilly, and that her
fingernails were usually blue with cold. She devoted most o f her
remaining energy to little Helmuts education, being careful,
above all, to avoid any emotional outbursts in his presence; but
I was blind to the fact that in this respect I was for her an awful
example.
Had Ganna succeeded, at this late hour, in making a breach
between myself and my darling Bettina? Bettina was not prone
to tears. She did not accept Kierkegaards dictum, that it is
a disgrace for a Christian to remain dry-eyed. What troubles
she had were in the depths, while she kept a smile on her face.
She was like the goose-girl in the fairy-tale, who told the kings
son that he might put her in the heated over before she would
complain. I doubt, indeed, if Bettina would have uttered a com
plaint if thrust into a heated oven. It was thus that she made
it easy for me not to notice that anything was amiss with her.
I recall that once I was almost awakened to the position, when
she wrote to me (though not quite openly), that strange thoughts
o f independence often surged up in her mind; and that when
she thought o f the freedom she had enj'oyed in girlhood, she was
inclined to sever all ties and go forth into the wide world,
absolutely and exclusively self-reliant. I was startled by the
avowal, but my skin was so thick that I missed its significance.
I did not really know her. She could never have brought herself
to say to m e: L et us drop the whole thing, Alexander; let
us separate. Although, unlike most women, she was far from
regarding herself as indispensable, she knew that I should never
have got over her leaving me, should never have even under
stood her flight. Rarely has any human being exhibited so much
magnanimity of thought and feeling as she towards me. She

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had no doubt that I needed her, and she complied with my

need, to the extent o f allowing me to exploit her. Indeed, it was
m y way to batten upon whatever I needed in life, upon whatever
protected me, strengthened me, and gave me rest. Her too! I
know she did not doubt that I loved her. She knew it too well;
knew my love for her to be mountainous in its immensity a
trackless mountain, rough-hewn, unscalable, titanic. She must
make the best of it, such as it was, a strange, an exacting love,
hard at times to recognise as love. But had she, on her side,
ceased to love me ? I often asked myself this distressing question,
much as a hypochondriac, amid his fancied ailments, dwells
upon the thought o f death. For I could not doubt that Bettina
would no longer bestow love where she had ceased to feel respect.
T h e admiration which in childhood she had entertained for her
father had determined her general relationship towards her
fellow-mortals and her whole life as woman. Since her delicate
sensibilities responded only to highly imaginative and subtilised
stimuli, her love could not persist except in a sublimely spiritual
region. Y et she could not exist at all without bestowing love.
I ought to have known, then, why she felt like a stranger in
her own house. She attended to her domestic duties, saw to
it that everything was orderly and tranquil, looked after Ferry
and Elisabeth and Doris when they came to stay with us, enjoyed
the visits of her daughters at holiday times but all these things
went on outside the real Bettina. I understand now. One who
does his duty to the uttermost, and yet does nothing but his
duty, may set a shining example to others, and, while doing
so, be a plague and a burden to himself. In hours of loneliness,
the artificial props o f the sense of duty will crumble, and the
whole edifice of his being crumbles, to sink into an ocean o f
sadness.
Now, too, I can understand her continually increasing desire
to get away from the house for a time. She wanted to collect
herself, to find herself, to reassemble her own personality. She
took long, solitary walks in the mountains. Sometimes she went
to Vienna, to stay with her friend Lotte Waldbauer, or spent

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a few days at Salzburg with her former master in the elements

o f music and composition. She was fond o f the speed and detach
ment o f motoring. After a sleepless night she would often start
alone, early in the morning, having left a note upon my writingtable. I missed her on these occasions, much as one misses ones
hat when the wind has blown it over a cliff. She departed, and
then, as she mockingly said, returned to her duties ; disappeared
again, but, while away, was suddenly seized with a longing for
Caspar Hauserchen; back once more, and hugging him to her
breast, she would perhaps, had it been possible, have taken him
away with her. There was no peace of mind left to her; she no
longer regarded herself as one of fortunes favourites; she felt
homeless.
Yes, my feeling when she was away was merely that of a man
whose hat has been blown off. Strange is the ignorance of us
men who believe that we possess a woman because we have
possessed her. Even the most spiritual among us are blinded
by the lure o f the senses. Even the most spiritual among us are
still brute beasts, who regard the stable and the cave as taboo.
I have no other excuse for m y blindness and my deafness
beyond this that my eyes and my ears were under the spell
o f Gannas persecution. Things had reached such a pass that
my pulses began to throb when a letter from her was delivered.
T h e thought of an interview with her became a nightmare, and
yet the incredible fact was that whenever I visited Vienna I
went to see her in order to prevent her coming to see me. I
became familiar with the most horrible kind of sleep, that in
which one lies as if desecrated, as if ripped up, because the
malice of fate has become insufferable. Y et one sleeps; and while
one sleeps, one tries to settle accounts with fate. One rallies
to ones own defence; one tries to justify oneself; one achieves
nothing; one rails into the void, bubbling over with demands
and complaints; one is full of wrathful amazement; and one
awakens crushed by misery. When I tried to work, I sat at my
desk like a man at each of whose temples an enemy holds the
barrel of a loaded pistol. Whenever I left the house, I was over

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whelmed with anxiety about Helmut. Unfathomable dread, the

fear o f Ganna-demons! I was always waiting in suspense for
her next method o f attack, wondering where the conflagration
would break out this time. Matters went on like this for years
and no end was in sight. W ith a vain longing, I wished to reverse
the movement of time, to turn back the wheel so that I might
never have met her. By what right did she thus play havoc with
my life? What sort o f creature was she that she was entitled
with impunity to disregard pledges and undertakings, that she
might devastate a world which she pounced on as her prey a
world o f illusion, full of illusionary contracts and illusionary
battles ?
But I anticipate.
Three Decent Law-Abiding Persons. By the tricksy
logic of events, during these years the inland revenue authorities
discovered that since the divorce Ganna had omitted to pay in
come-tax, and they demanded a prompt settlement of the arrears
to date. Being almost doubled by a fine for attempted evasion,
the sum swelled to a very large total. Ganna protested, but
protest is futile when the State has resolved to fleece a citizen.
She was only able to secure a respite, though she invoked the
aid o f several lawyers. T h e customary devices of those who put
off the payment o f overdue income-tax served only to increase
the sum due. Had she still possessed the money which, in
accordance with the stipulations of the instrument o f divorce,
I had paid over to her as an emergency fund, this would
have served her turn. But she had spent the last stiver o f it
long since. The house was mortgaged up to the hilt, and the
interest on the mortgages was a perpetual drain on her resources.
Her other debts were increasing month by month.
In her difficulty, she applied to me. W e had an interview, at
which she urgently begged me to make m yself responsible for
her income-tax. One of her lawyers, she said, had told her that
this was the only way in which the claim could be reduced to
a moderate figure. She had written to me earlier in the same
sense. I had consulted Hornschuch, who told me that the scheme

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was probably the mask for an attempt at illegal evasion, and

advised me not to let myself become entangled in the labyrinth.
But even had the danger been imaginary, I could not have
helped Ganna out o f the toils. I told her that I was myself in
such low water that it would be very difficult for me to discharge
existing obligations. She laughed as scornfully as if I had refused
to pay her luncheon at a restaurant. Then I was incautious
enough to say that a possible way out o f the difficulty would
be for her to renounce her lien on the Buchegger estate. I f she
did that, I might be able to raise money on mortgage. She stared
at me with flashing eyes and burst into tears, behaving as if the
lien in question was her best-loved child which I was trying
to kidnap. During her outburst o f hysterical wrath, the first
articulate word I could catch was blackmail. M y offer to help
her in the way I proposed was tantamount to blackmail! She
had been prepared for any atrocity but that! M y suggestion
that she should renounce her one solid security showed what
she had to expect from me! I was foolish enough to defend
myself. She had the instrument of divorce as security, over and
above the lien on the Buchegger estate; and I quoted a remark
once made to me by a legal friend to the effect that such a
document was like a razor, so sharp that you cut yourself when
you merely touched the edge. W ith ill-concealed triumph she
rejoined that this was true enough, but that the lien was part
of the instrument of divorce, and it would be scandalous to
infringe the latter, by however little. Since she was so angry,
and continued to stigmatise me as a would-be blackmailer, I
took up my hat and departed.
There ensued several weeks, during which she writhed piti
fully beneath the screw-press of the income-tax authorities. She
paid small sums on account. T o appease her other creditors
she had adopted the system of occasionally paying one off out
right while incurring yet more onerous obligations to the others
for the sake o f extended credit. Her allowance from me and the
rent for the ground-floor o f the house were pledged months
in advance. O f course the lawyers (there were now three or

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four of them) who interviewed the authorities on her behalf

and drafted memorials for her, did not work for nothing. She
paid them with promises and notes-of-hand. I was puzzled how
she carried on, for the notes-of-hand of an insolvent have little
cash value. Then an initiate explained to me that Gannas
instrument of divorce would enable her to live upon credit for
years, inasmuch as the successive loans were not endorsed upon
the deed, each new lender need know nothing about the previous
ones, and for every one in turn the name of Alexander Herzog
seemed sufficient guarantee. Aha, thought I, an instrument
of divorce is not only a razor, but also a goldmine. So far, so
good. What other marvellous virtues may still lurk in it?
Although Gannas life under such conditions was a wretched
one, besieged by duns, snowed under by promissory notes, and
menaced by the inland revenue authorities, still, she was used
to it, had undergone adaptation to it, so that it would not have
seemed to her intolerable but for the risk of losing her house.
If there should be a forced sale, through foreclosure of the
mortgages, all would be lost. So, at least, she repeatedly declared,
terror-stricken at the thought. I was able to watch, and still
more to divine, the gradual growth of her attitude towards these
important pieces of real property. Her house, on the one hand,
and her lien on the Buchegger estate, on the other, aroused in
her that frenzied conviction of ownership, sustained by which
she could walk upon the waters of life. As long as she maintained
her grip upon both, she was safe from storms and from the risk
of foundering. T h e house in which she lived and the Buchegger
estate which belonged to Bettina (as regards one and the other
I was, in her eyes, a mere pawn), were related, the former to
the latter, much as a treasure which has already been dug out
o f its hiding place is related to a treasure still in the robbers
cave but obtainable as soon as the magic formula, the open
sesame, shall have been discovered. She luxuriated in the splen
did vision of being in days to come mistress of the lovely mansion
beside the lake, and of seeing her rival driven forth bag and
baggage.

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Meanwhile, her embarrassments thickened day by day. When

her four solicitors, Sperling, Wachtel, Greif, and Tauber, had
vainly tried to crack the nut of the inland revenue authorities, a
fifth legal adviser whom she summoned to her aid, Storch by
name, had a brilliant idea. In the course o f a lengthy interview,
he told her that if she were living in conjugal relations with me,
the authorities would not have been able to demand income-tax
from her. Ganna eagerly assented. No learned disquisitions were
needed to bring the melancholy fact home to her. But the lawyer
did not content himself with this glimpse into the obvious. M ore
lay behind. Making a careful study of the instrument o f divorce,
he had detected in it a flaw. A formal error? Gannas head
began to swim, and the man of law assumed for her entranced
eyes the aspect of a seraph. What did he mean by his mysterious
hint? He smilingly explained that those who had drafted the
document had, by an oversight, failed to specify that I was a
German citizen.
How does that affect the issuff? asked Ganna, her hand
pressed to her palpitating heart.
W ell/ replied Storch, it would be a ground for contesting
the validity o f the divorce.
Ganna was alarmed. There was a voluptuous tinge in the
alarm, but she was genuinely alarmed, and she informed the
seraph that I had remarried. That made no difference, rejoined
the seraph. Whereupon Ganna, still pleasurably frightened,
exclaimed:
But if the divorce is invalid, then Alexander has committed
bigamy!
Wishing to damp her ardour, the seraph, with the caution
proper to his profession, told her that such terms must not be
used heedlessly. What he had in mind for the moment was that
if the divorce could be shown to be invalid, it would be possible
to bring pressure to bear upon the inland revenue authorities.
Herr Storchs discovery was so far correct, inasmuch as my
divorce from Ganna had been made absolute before an Austrian
lawcourt. T he German courts had been ignored. Since I had

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lived many years in Austria, the divorce was valid so far as

Austrian law was concerned. Hornschuch had foreseen that
difficulties might ensue, and had urged Ganna to write a letter
declaring herself willing, should occasion arise, to take the
formalities requisite to legalise the divorce in Germany. She
had agreed, but had forgotten to carry out the undertaking.
When her memory was jogged, she excused herself from ful
filling it, saying that the embarrassments of her situation pre
vented her doing what was wanted.
T o tell the story in proper order, Ganna was in an ecstasy
as she returned home from the interview with Storch. The
lawyers guarded statement seemed to her sufficient ground for
the belief that our divorce could be quashed was, in fact,
invalid. In that case she was still Alexander Herzogs lawful
wife. She treated agreements she did not wish to keep as she
treated her servants whom she flung out of the house when
they ventured a word of remonstrance. Above all, as a loving
wife, she was impressed by the danger of my position. In
joyful horror she realised that by marrying Bettina I had com
mitted a crime. When leaving Storchs office, she had thought
merely that I had put myself in an awkward position, especially
if I would not listen to reason ; but by the time she entered
the tram, she pictured me in the penitentiary. The day before,
she learned that I was about to go to the sanatorium where
I had to spend a few days for treatment twice or thrice a year;
and she knew that Bettina would accompany me thither. A ll
the better, was her thought. A t last I shall be able to get
that woman out of the saddle. Her desire, for the moment,
was to spare me as much as possible. She would tell me the
disastrous news in a private interview, and with the utmost
delicacy. No doubt I might refuse to see her or to call on her;
but she hoped I should not, since she would tell me she had
news of the utmost importance to communicate, a matter which
concerned my honour and my reputation. In fancy, she could
hear me imploring her clemency; in fancy, she could picture
Bettina kneeling before her.

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On the morning when one of her spies notified her o f my

arrival at the sanatorium, she rang me up on the phone. She
was told that the doctor did not allow me to answer telephone
calls, or to be troubled with business matters of any kind. M y
condition demanded the utmost consideration.
Very well, then, answered Ganna, in exasperation; I must
have a talk with Frau Bettina. T he matter is of extreme urgency.
Herr Herzogs very existence is at stake.
This was reported to Bettina, who was not yet fully armed
against the wiles Ganna used when determined to secure an in
terview. There might be something behind this talk of a serious
and urgent affair, so unwillingly Bettina went to the phone.
Ganna was too much excited to speak plainly, and could only
stutter. She did not wish to disclose her plan of campaign, but
she could not keep the tone of triumph out of her voice,
though she tried to betray nothing but anxiety. There had been a
disastrous turn in the income-tax business (such were the
tidings she conveyed to Bettina). She must talk matters over with
me and with Bettina as well. The legal advisers o f both parties
must be present. Procrastination would be suicidal.
But cant you let me know in plain terms what is amiss?
Then Ganna blurted the whole thing out. From her voice,
Bettina could infer her excitement. T h e divorce was invalid.
M y marriage to Bettina was invalid.
One of the shrewdest of my lawyers, a man of high standing,
told me the dreadful news. W e must discuss the situation at
once, as three decent, law-abiding persons. When three decent,
law-abiding persons hold counsel together in order to avert
disaster, they are sure to achieve a satisfactory result. T h e first
essential is to settle the income-tax difficulty. Everything else
can be arranged on friendly terms.
Bettina, confused by the spate of words, answered:
Really, Frau Ganna? Thank you, I will let Alexander know.
Half disconcerted, but smiling indulgently, she passed on to
me the news that Ganna had bellowed through the phone. I
shrugged m y shoulders, without an inkling of all that was involved.

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Thirty or Forty Lawyers. When her affectionate peace

proposal remained unheeded, she poured out her indignation
in a letter. I am outraged, she wrote. Her state of mind was
obvious. She was outraged because, in her view, we had
rejected the proffered hand of friendship. Had it been possible
to expect that, in this unprecedented way, we should rush
voluntarily towards destruction ?
She was determined to have no reason to reproach herself
for having failed to do all that was possible to avert the disaster
threatening me and Bettina. She therefore wrote me a second
letter, stuffed with legal terms and moral platitudes -a masterly
composition in the vein of Tartufe. It was endorsed Bearer
to await answer, but I did not answer. Then she instructed
Herr Storch to write to me about the law-questions that were
involved. I consigned this epistle to the waste-paper basket.
Immediately thereafter she quarrelled with the seraph (why, I
do not know), and engaged a new adviser, Herr Kranich, who
also sent me a lengthy communication wherein the income-tax
imbroglio and the divorce problem were skilfully interwoven.
Ganna let me know through an intermediary that Kranich was
an ex-member of parliament, for she hoped I should be im
pressed by the fact. Impressed or not, I did not answer his
letter.
She called to see me at the sanatorium, but was not admitted,
though she made a scene in the porters lodge, slanged the
matron, and ogled to the physician-in-chief. Now she con
sidered that she had done everything she could to ward off the
danger that hung over my devoted head. A seventh solicitor,
Herr Schwalbe (God alone knows why she thought it necessary
to engage yet another), wrote to inform Hornschuch that his
client was about to sue for the invalidation of the divorce.
Hornschuchs apparent equanimity made Ganna very angry
indeed. It was a dangerous symptom; the man was a lion in
the path; at all hazards, he must be cleared out of it. She com
piled a letter running to twenty-two foolscap pages and sent
it to the legal authorities, hoping to get him struck off the rolls.

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In it she accused him of malpractice and of exceeding his in

structions; to bring about the divorce, he had, without my
knowledge or orders, reduced her allowance. Again these wild
charges of blackmail! T o protect himself, Hornschuch had to
bring an action against her for defamation of character. I was
called as witness, and had no choice but to declare the accusation
unfounded. Carried away by my feelings, I made a strong im
pression on the court, showing the perpetual persecution to
which Ganna had subjected me since the divorce, and though
I did not wish to make a parade of my woes depicting myself
as the Knight of the Doleful Countenance. Ganna was sentenced
to the payment of a heavy fine. Since all the money she could
disburse came from me, was the fruit of my toil, the upshot
was that I was mulcted of the sum in question! When the court
had pronounced its decision, Ganna came up to me, took a pear
out of her vanity-bag, handed it to me shyly with the mien of
the girl who asks a distinguished person for his autograph, and
whispered:
Its an Alexander pear, the kind you are so fond of.
What was it she had said years before ?
I give you the divorce as a birthday present.
Always the same lapse into the world of illusion! In this case,
the illusion that she was a devoted wife.
Mastered by the obsession that she must expose and defeat
the Hornschuch-Bettina conspiracy, Ganna now instructed an
eighth lawyer, Herr Fischlein, to sue Bettina for having publicly
described Ganna as a liar. This was pure fiction, for Bettina
had never called Ganna names. But Gannas venomous hatred
of Bettina took no account of facts. There was to be a great
washing of dirty linen in public; and the more lawyers engaged
in the laundry-work, the better. T he way she presented matters
to herself must have been, more or less, as follows: The idiots
[Bettina and myself] cannot see that the game is up. W ell, they
are asking for it, and my conscience is clean. Engaging yet
another lawyer, the ninth, Herr Pelikan, she now sprung her
chief mine the attempt to show that the divorce was invalid,

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and that my marriage to Bettina was null and void, or a biga

mous union. Hornschuch countered this by a demand that she
should show cause, which came before the departmental court,
and upset Ganna very much; for it was her nature to regard
any steps she took against Bettina and me as fully justified and
pleasing to God and man, whereas any retaliation on our part
was wicked and entitled her to raise a great outcry. However,
I had no choice but to betake myself to Vienna and procure
counsel's opinions upon the validity of the divorce and my
second marriage. A ll this cost time, money, nervous energy, and
took my thoughts from my work. I was crushed by the burden,
and could talk o f nothing else. When friends greeted me, I
poured out the tale of my woes in season and out of season.
In the hotel I spent hours at a card-table playing patience. It
was a form of dope!
W hy did Ganna now weaken in her campaign of vengeance,
offer to withdraw her suits if we could make certain concessions,
and try to excuse herself for having brought them? W e must,
she said, have compassion upon her in her sufferings. This was
but an interval of weakness, the brief hesitation of an incendiary
before he applies his torch to the haystack. T h e Count-vonGleichen idyl was revived in a new setting. She conveyed to
Bettina a proposal that the two of them should go shares in
me. (How, if you please ? As two cats might go shares in a mouse ?)
Ganna was to be the lawful wife in Vienna; Bettina was to be
the lawful wife at Ebenweiler; the respective claims were to be
nicely adjusted. Since this fine idea was received with incom
prehensible silence, she applied to a priest famed for his philan
thropic undertakings and begged him to bring about a recon
ciliation between herself and me. Lord knows what tale she
poured into his ears, but the clerical worthy wrote me a most
presumptuous letter. I thought to myself that it would be bad
form to ignore priestly intervention; but instead of contenting
myself with a few lines, as I had done when dealing with
Stanger-Goldenthal, I filled seven pages with a description of
Gannas character and my intolerable situation.

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Shaking off her attack of timidity or fatigue or whatever it

may have been, Ganna now returned to the charge with redoubled
energy. Who was her most formidable enemy? Hornschuch. He,
then, was the first to be dealt with. She made proposals which
might allure him to negotiate with her, treating him as a beast
of prey to which from time to time fragments of meat are
thrown. Sops to Cerberus. She loathed him from the
bottom of her heart, but she had such a superstitious faith in
lawyers that she lost her head and did the most absurd things.
She telephoned to him several times costly trunk-calls. In the
midst of all her other undertakings, she was again and again
seized with the fancy for travelling to Ebendorf, where Hornscurch now lived. It was four miles from Ebenweiler, and was
the seat of the district court. Just a pleasure-trip, though a
seven-hour night journey by train is not that to most people.
But she had nerves of steel. She had three aims on these journeys.
First af all, to cajole Hornschuch into believing in the justice
o f her cause. Secondly, it acted as a stimulus on her to be near
the district court. O f course she had engaged a local solicitor,
the eleventh or the twelfth. He was a political adversary of
Hornschuch, and she hoped he would help her in the defeat
o f her deadly foe. Thirdly, in the dining-room of the hotel
where she put up, she made useful acquaintances, provincial
magnates and tritons among the minnows of the little country
town, whose favour she wooed by stressing her reactionary
sentiments and taking a hand in the party game. When the
company was regaling itself with beer of an evening, she would
tell her inquisitive hearers touching stories of her conjugal
martyrdom and of the shameful way in which she was persecuted
by a certain lady of Ebenweiler.
One day between Christmas and New Year, she made a fresh
onslaught on Hornschuch, imploring him to induce me to pay
the supplementary allowance on behalf of Doris which for some
months past I had ceased to commit directly into her
hands. She thought it inexpedient to allude to the fact
that nonetheless I had supplied what was needed for

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the child. When Hornschuch reminded her of this trifle, she

answered tempestuously that she was Doriss mother, and that
unless the money were entrusted to her personally, she did not
regard it as given.
I understand, answered Hornschuch, with what Ganna
called his Mephistophelian smile. Your daughter is a living
promissory note which you exhibit to the father when you are
in desperate straits. A splendid idea!
N o, protested Ganna. But what I cant endure is that
Frau Bettina should decide how much my child shall receive from
her father. That is shameful.
Frau Bettina has nothing to do with the case, said Hornschuch
coolly.
She looked furious for a moment, then burst into tears, and
gave him so piteous an account o f her pecuniary situation that
he was, so he told me, quite carried away. Perhaps, he said,
it would be possible to come to some arrangement with her
creditors, but for that she must make a clear statement of her
debts without any reservations; and, above all, she must dismiss
her lawyers. Now the fat was in the fire! Conditions? He dared
to make conditions! Thank him for nothing, she was not so
low as that yet. Dismiss her lawyers ? T h e last straw. Then she
would be defenceless in face of Madame Bettinas persecution.
She was not such a fool as he thought. She knew that attempts
had already been made to have her declared non compos mentis.
God be thanked, the intrigue had been futile. She laughed
bitterly, and looked at Hornschuch as if he had been a criminal
caught red-handed. How had it been rendered futile? enquired
Hornschuch.
In this way, if you want to know. I went at once to a distin
guished alienist, who, after twenty minutes conversation, gave me
a signed certificate to the effect that I was in perfect mental health.
She began to rummage the bundle of documents she was
carrying, in search of this particular treasure, of which she was
obviously as proud as a petty conjurer is of a testimonial from
one of the big guns of his profession.

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Since her interview with Hornschuch had led to nothing, she

hired a sleigh and turned up half an hour later at the Buchegger
mansion. Our maid knew her by sight, and would not let her
in. We were having tea, Bettina and I and Doris, who was
staying with us for the Christmas holidays, and we heard Ganna
storming at the front door. Bettina drummed on the tablecloth
with her finger-tips, and said, in low tones:
D ont go out to her, Alexander. D ont go out.
I went out, however. What else could I do? I could not let
the woman continue to make a scene. I spoke to her roughly:
What do you want?
What do I want? Money of course!
She clamoured, howled for money, interspersing her demands
with invectives and reproaches. A few yards away stood the
sleigh, and the driver, sitting on the box, solemnly shook his
head while the altercation was going on. His action (strangely
enough) made a profound impression on me. The startled ser
vants had assembled in the passage. Infected by Gannas shouting,
I began to shout back at her. No one in this house had ever
heard me raise my voice in anger before, and the only person
in the world who could thus make me lose control was Ganna.
I cannot recall how, at last, I induced her to get back into the
sleigh. I stood at the front door waiting until the vehicle with
the be-belled horse and the head-shaking driver had vanished
in the darkness. Re-entering the house, I called to Bettina. She
had locked herself in her room. Doris was standing beside the
tea-table, and stared at me with widely opened, anxious, and
compassionate eyes. I went to my bedroom and flung m yself
on the bed.
The before-mentioned incidents were only Gannas outpost
skirmishes. Ere long she made a calculation showing that I owed
her twenty-five thousand schillings. How this fine, round sum
was made up, I dont know. It might just as well have been half
a million. Doctors bills, dressmakers bills, arrears from
previous years, unforeseen expenses by the dozen, outfits
for the children, columns of figures like those published in the

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newspapers after the drawing of a lottery. I believe the mere

drafting the account gave her almost as much pleasure as the
pouching of the cash would have done. When she sued me for
the amount, the county court dismissed the case for lack of
evidence of the alleged debt, although she had engaged two able
new solicitors to support her plea. Without troubling herself
for a moment about the impossibility of collecting the debt and
the triviality of the claim, Ganna said to herself: If I cant
enforce my rights in my own Austria, perhaps I shall be able
to do so in what has become my adoptive country as Alexander
Herzogs wife. She found lawyers ready enough to push her
claim in Berlin, three of them at once, and the suit was drafted
in the most approved style. But by this time the twenty-five
thousand had grown into thirty-nine thousand, through the
addition of the amount demanded by the inland revenue autho
rities. I was gratified to learn that Gannas intoxication with
figures did not prevent her having a certain mercantile exactitude.
A t the same time, having now established a sort o f branch-office
in the capital of the German Reich, where there was no lack
of lawyers, she set a-going her plea for the nullification of the
divorce. In this matter she had brought her eggs to the right
market. The discrepancy in divorce laws as between Austria
and Germany was favourable to her interesting venture, being
one of those weak places in the rock of the law where sharp
practitioners like to put their drills to work.
She had social successes, too, in the German capital, making
acquaintances with numberless persons to whom she could
recount her woes. Since none of these had any knowledge of
the true state of affairs, she could pitch whatever tale she pleased,
and found widespread credence and sympathy. By giving away
a vast number of complimentary copies of The Bleeding Psyche,
she consolidated her position as champion of the ideal of con
jugal affection, who was being slowly starved to death by a cruel
husband and the light woman with whom he had become in
fatuated. She frequented the cafes which were the favourite
haunts of men of letters, and where she could advertise her sad

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nobility o f mind. Even usurers weep, when I tell them of my

sorrows, she said once amid the sympathetic bleating o f an
exalted literary circle. Perhaps she was not far wrong. It may
well be that, in contrast with the petrifaction which all other
spirits have undergone since the days of Balzac and Dickens,
the soul of the modern usurer has been humanised. A t any rate,
the upshot of her sentimental j'ourney to the Neo-German
Olympus was that I was deluged with anonymous letters full
o f vile abuse and of exhortations to mend my ways. In addition
I received lawyers letters innumerable. T h e lawyers were the
shock-troops to prepare the way before the case came into court.
One of them wrote unequivocally that, unless I paid over the
thirty-nine thousand before a specified date, he would have my
dues from my German publisher sequestrated. I tore up this
effusion, like two or three hundred others of similar origin and
tenor. The threat could not but rouse a smile. M y disastrous
unthrift and the workings of the wonderful instrument of divorce
had put me so much on the wrong side of the account with
my publisher, that it was long since there had been anything
for Gannas clutching little hands to sequestrate. She had,
however, persuaded her lawyers that I had a large sum hidden
away in foreign parts and that my publishers accounts had been
cooked. Acting on this theory, she sued the publisher. By this
time, moreover, to crown all, she was beginning to brandish
the sword of a bigamy charge. Some of my friends, hearing of
the matter, wrote to beg me not to let the scandal go so far.
But what could I do? Whine for pardon? Go to court and say:
Please protect me from the lawyers who are devouring me
alive; take the devil into custody, for otherwise it will be all up
with me ? Absurd. The court would have taken me into custody.
One day, I said to Hornschuch:
Tell me please, and dont laugh at me if my question sounds
childish, these lawyer-folk, they are human beings, intelligent,
experienced, honest for the most part; dont they understand
what is going on, and how they are being used in a bad
cause?

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Hornschuchs only answer was a sardonic smile. This was

his favourite way o f evading the need for reply when he had
none to give. It was very effective.
By now there must have been seventeen or eighteen
lawyers who were in Gannas pay, or whom she had employed
and dismissed, or whom she did not dare to dismiss because
she could not pay them what she owed. To-day, when I write,
the number has increased to somewhere near fo rty; I dont know
exactly, for the names of some of them have escaped my memory
during the arid proceedings. Most of them must speedily have
become aware that the support they were giving to Frau Ganna
Herzog served only to incite her litigious impulses and could
never still her craving. What, then, induced them to devote
their intelligence, their acquirements, their working powers to
the service of a woman whose morbid desire it was to twist
the rigid dicta of the laws, and turn them to her own account !
Presumably they said to themselves: W e shall pouch our
gains when the adversary is at the last gasp, and will pay
any price for repose. But, if that were so, how glaring a
comment upon the prevailing uncertainty o f the law, upon
its ambiguity, upon the deadly systematisation of the
executive, upon the judges aloofness from everyday life,
upon the thorny path which those have to tread who come
into conflict with the authorities, and upon what incorporates
them all, the State, helpless and tyrannical, Cronus devouring his
own children.
Ganna could not be fitted into a clinical pigeon-hole.
Pathology explained nothing in this case. There was something
peculiar about an army of three and a half dozen lawyers. The
idea of some mysterious tie forced itself on me more and more.
T h e tie must be that Ganna found exotic pleasure in the atmo
sphere of discussion, expectation, consultation, onslaught, cun
ning, utterance and counter-utterance; found therein a substitute
for intimacy with another being; found also a substitute for the
torment that grows pleasurable when one can torment that other
being, and for the torment that is no less pleasurable when one

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fancies it undeserved. The atmosphere of lawyers offices, the

smell of ink, o f dusty documents, and o f blotting-paper, un
questionably had a sensual influence upon her. W ith each new
lawyer, she entered into a sort o f new marriage with a tormentor.
When she conversed with one of them, at court, in an office,
or in her own home, she manifested a strange, mellifluous
coquetry, a willingness to oblige, and a gratitude which might,
indeed, at any moment give place to quarrelsomeness and to
such scenes as are common between husband and wife. It
had become a habit with her to get into touch by telephone,
as soon as office hours began in the morning, with what I may
call the lawyer-in-ordinary of the moment; to ask unimportant
questions, give needless instructions, but in truth simply to hear
his voice and make sure that he had not grown unfaithful to
her since last night. Thus the electric wires became nerves of
pleasure. Telephone and telegraph were wonder-working appa
ratus by means of which, though absent in the flesh, she could
get into touch with the consciousness o f the lawyer who was
for her the man of the moment, whose time and thought were
essential elements of her daily food. Into what obscure abysses,
into what chaos, does one descend, when one plumbs the depths
o f such a sp irit!
A Conversation in another World. One day, Bettina and
I had occasion to go to Munich, for a consultation with a lawyer
in that city about Gannas attack on the validity of the divorce.
Before we started, Helmut had breakfast with us, and was much
perturbed at our departure.
W hy are you going away again so soon? he asked.
Because we have to, I replied.
W hy both of you? W hy cant Daddy go alone? he per
sisted.
Stroking the lads hair, Bettina answered:
I m going because Daddy wants me with him.
He pondered for some time, then looked roguishly at his
mother and declared:
I know why.

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What do you mean, little man? I enquired.

Like it is with animals, he rejoined proudly.
Bettina and I stared at one another in perplexity.
I dont understand, Helmut, she said.
Still with that cunning twinkle, Helmut answered:
Safety.
For a time, he pondered once more. Th en :
Look here, Mummy, we three are the real family, arent we?
You and Daddy and I all belong together?
O f course we do, Helmut.
Was I there, when you first got to know one another ?
No, darling.
Was God there?
Oh, yes, He was there. H es everywhere.
Did He laugh?
W hy should He laugh?
Perhaps because He was pleased that I was going to be your
little Helmut.
A t this moment the cat, which had been walking about the
table, tail in air, jumped into the boys lap.
He looked at her affectionately, and, wishing to emphasise
his superiority as a human being, asked mischievously:
Have you eyes? Have you really got eyes?
Helmut makes it hard for us to leave him , said Bettina
to me afterwards.
Tw o Women. Before the eventful January day of which I
am about to write, I had already become aware that something
decisive was going on in Bettina; but I lacked courage to ques
tion her. For a considerable time we had been strangely taciturn,
like prisoners who have been too long together in one cell. Her
silence made me uneasy, for persistent silence was contrary to
Bettinas nature.
On the day in question, Hornschuch phoned at about nine
to let us know that Ganna was back in Ebendorf, having come
thither from Berlin in connexion with one of her suits before
the district court. She had brought proceedings to enforce the

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direct payment to herself of the money I provided for Doriss

education, and also payment of an allowance for the childs
maintenance during the two months which Doris spent with
us in the summer holidays. By the wording of the instrument
o f divorce, I was wrong as regards the last matter, but to my
lay intelligence it seemed to me I was being asked to pay twice
over, and my means were so depleted that I withstood the
extortion. On a smaller scale, it was like the kraals demand for
a refund of double the amount of Gannas dowry.
In pursuit o f her claim, Ganna induced the district court to
lay an embargo upon my account with the Ebendorf branch
o f my bank. This was of little moment, for I had no more than
a trifling sum to my credit there, and had enough cash with
me for current expenses. When I wanted more, I could make
provision through other sources than this branch bank. All the
same, it was disagreeable, for such incidents make tongues wag
in a small place.
After Hornschuchs communication at nine, things moved as
swiftly as in the fifth act of a melodrama. At nine-twenty, a
messenger from the lawcourt arrived with a subpoena. A t nineforty-five, phone call from Gannas Ebendorf attorney inviting
Bettina and m yself to a friendly interview. At ten-ten, wire
from a Berlin solicitor demanding m y presence at a conference
on a specified date. Ten-thirty, Ganna on the phone; very
angry; if we would not come to the proposed friendly inter
view, she could not answer for the consequences, and would
be unable to avert the impending disasters. (We were too
familiar with this bombast for it to have much effect on us.)
Eleven-three, express letter from a Viennese solicitor announcing
that Frau Ganna Herzog had assigned him the February and
March instalments of her alimony. Eleven-fifteen, messenger
arrived with letter in which Ganna reiterated the demand for
an interview already made over the phone, but in phrases which
made Bettinas blood run cold. T h e letter was directed to Bettina,
who had opened it and read it before I saw it. It was a confused
epistle, but its general tenor was fairly clear, and made Bettina

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feel that strangling fingers were closing round her throat. Wishing
to know the worst, she rang up Hornschuch.
Y es, he said, Frau Ganna is playing a bold game. A t
Ebendorf, she has been talking at large about the way in
which Alexander is living bigamously with you, and about
the license for your marriage to him having been obtained on
false pretences.
This license had been secured at short notice through the
German consulate in Vienna, in a perfectly legal way; but Ganna,
whose imagination worked like that of a writer of detective
novels, was convinced (and had put it about) that Bettina
and I had used false papers an offence punishable by
imprisonment.
Bettina, who was in any case off colour that morning, was
alarmed by the consequences she foresaw of this turn in the
campaign: calumnious whispers, and the flaming-up of longsuppressed hatred. She told Hornschuch about her disquietude.
He tried to calm her. In justification, she read him some of the
more savoury passages in Gannas letter.
Splendid! he exclaimed. W eve got her now! Those are
libellous expressions. Those are actionable. I ll serve a writ on
her.
Poor Bettina was in a mood to break the telephone.
N o, she shouted into the receiver. Y o u ll be good enough
to do nothing of the kind. D ont forget that the woman of whom
we are talking bears the name of H erzog!
Pause. Then Hornschuchs voice, much deflated:
A ll right, Frau Bettina. As you please.
W hen I entered the Blue Room, it was to find Bettina lying
on the sofa, beneath a heap of rugs, pale and shivering. On
foggy days she was always the shadow of her bright self, and
the troubles that now beset us would have made the day a
foggy one had there been never a cloud in the sky. I looked
at her in silence, not knowing how to comfort her. Suddenly
she said :
I have made up my mind to have a talk with Ganna.

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M y expression must have conveyed that I fancied she had

taken leave of her senses. She sat up with a jerk.
I shall write and ask her to come here and have a private
talk with me, Bettina repeated, in a high treble which reminded
me of Helmuts, and which she only used when she had lost
self-control.
W hy? What good can it do?
I have been wrong, went on the treble. I blame myself
for having persuaded myself that I need take no notice of her.
It was rotten of me, it was wicked, it was foolish. She must
be open to argument, if I talk to her as woman to woman.
I stared at her in gloomy amazement.
Do you really think you can achieve anything with Ganna
by argument? You might as well talk to a stone wall. You know
that, in all these years, I have never been able to influence her.
Bettina broke in im patiently:
I must try, Alexander. I must try. I must be able to say to
myself that I have tried.
She scribbled a few lines and sent the gardener with the letter
to the inn where Ganna was staying at Ebendorf. Ganna was
thrilled with delight by the invitation to the Buchegger mansion.
A t last! Was it because they had realised their error, or only
because they were afraid? She rushed to the telephone and rang
up Bettina. So terribly excited was she that she was barely
intelligible. She would be enchanted to have a talk with Bettina,
but on no account at Buchegger. It must be on neutral ground,
and her lawyer must be present.
No lawyer, insisted Bettina. Only you and I. I f you feel
it embarrassing to come to the house alone, I will meet you in
the road and conduct you hither.
Ganna gave way. Tim e and place of meeting were arranged.
But when, an hour later (it was now a quarter to one), Bettina
met Ganna in the village, it was to find that the latter had brought
a lawyer with her after all. Bettina was dumbfounded by this
breach of the understanding, and looked so fiercely at the law
man that he thought it better to withdraw. Not, however, with

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out an ill-mannered sally. One of the dozen attorneys who were

managing Gannas lawsuits for her, he took off his hat, bowed,
and said:
I trust, Madam, that you will not suppose me guilty of any
attempt to interfere with your wedded happiness!
As if replying to some offensive but invisible creature, Bettina
said:
L et me beg you to leave my wedded happiness out of the
question.
Then, with a gesture, she invited Ganna to accompany her.
Bereft of her legal supporter, Ganna wilted visibly. In silence
she endeavoured to keep step with the angry stride of Bettina.
She was wearing a black knitted cap and a striped fur jacket.
In one hand she carried a leather brief-bag stuffed with the
legal documents she took with her wherever she went, and which
were as necessary to her as samples and price-lists are to a
commercial traveller. Whenever she met an acquaintance, even
the least intimate, she poured forth an account of the progress
of her affairs, producing the instrument of divorce, her petitions
and memorials, copies of the various legal decisions, the official
estimate of the value of the Buchegger estate, the consolatory
letters of her champions and would in the end become so much
worked up as to forget where she was, whence she had come,
whither she was going, and to whom she was speaking.
Bettina, talking light-heartedly though she felt anything but
light-hearted
, looked at her companion from time to time out
of the corner of her eye. It was thirteen years since she had
last seen Ganna, at that dreadful tea-party. How much had
happened since then! Almost enough to fill a lifetime. Some
thing lovely, sublime, unspeakably joyful, had come to her since
then; Caspar Hauserchen, whose advent had lain altogether
outside the range of her expectations: but also much that was
horrible, bitter as wormwood, and involving irreparable loss.
Did the woman walking beside her divine anything of either?
Assuredly not. Ganna Herzog had no vision, was a daughter
of the horse-leech and therefore gravel-blind. Her very gait was

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that of a blind woman. How pitiable she looked. Could nothing

be done to help her? It must be very sad to be like Ganna. But
such as Ganna are unapproachable, clad in the spiked armour
o f self. . . .
Bettina took Ganna into the house, helped her off with her
coat, and showed her into the dining-room, where the two sat
down to lunch. Ganna ate with wolfish appetite and barely
intelligible exclamations of thanks. Meanwhile, hostess contem
plated guest. W ith her mass o f yellowish-red hair (a helmet
through which, as if through a wig, white strands peeped here
and there), Ganna recalled the aspect of some strange idol. One
would hardly have thought her over fifty. Her figure was still
slender, for she had not run to fa t; the play of her features and
the movements o f her hands were vibrant with a remarkable
energy o f will. T h e look in her eyes was almost one to arouse
terror, being fierce, and inspired by an overwhelming deter
mination to rule.
Gradually Bettina was able to induce her to break her stubborn
silence, to enter into conversation. She took Gannas hand, that
small, clutching hand, as if to do so had been her chief wish
for years, and, pressing it affectionately, exclaimed:
Woman, woman, take thought what you are doing. You are
laying your world in ruins. Have compassion on yourself, at
least!
Ganna looked at Bettina in amazement. Her mouth twitched,
her eyelids twitched; she burst into tears. Nodding like a Chinese
mandarin, she wept, wept, wept.
I must, she stammered. I must. I have no choice.
She m ust; she had no choice!
Poor soul, poor soul, thought Bettina; why should one
be afraid of her ?
Suddenly she became inspired with courage and confidence;
felt that she could make Ganna do whatever she liked. W ith
the utmost care, she chose words that could not wound. She
was tender, considerate, sisterly, although she had to fight down
a sense of nausea, and a feeling of horror. Not to give way to

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these unpleasant sensations was vital. So much was at stake! Also

she said to herself, as she looked at her guest: After all, there
must be some redeeming qualities in you to explain the fact
that Alexander could live with you for nineteen years. These
redeeming qualities I must unearth, must get a pry on them, to
show you that you owe him respect, comfort, gratitude yes,
even a little gratitude, that must be stressed. She paid court
to Ganna, in a way that was simultaneously childlike and clever;
as if she had been an elder, more experienced woman dealing
with a younger. Hereupon, however, Ganna instantly grew hard
and suspicious; and when Bettina spoke of the need that she
should give way upon certain points, she riposted with the
customary formula:
W hy should I give way; I of all people? M y whole life has
been spent in giving way.
Bettina went on to speak of the money troubles which weighed
me down; and Ganna grinned contemptuously, declaring that
she was better inform ed:
I know for certain that he has large sums deposited in foreign
banks.
At this Bettina could not help but laugh, whereupon Ganna
was taken aback and began to stutter. Something indefinable
in Bettinas look and manner conveyed to her a truth which
it was hard for her to accept, and which she would speedily
forget, because it ran counter to one of her most cherished
convictions.
It is possible, she admitted, pursing her lips as was her
way when unwelcome facts were brought home to her, it is
possible that Alexander has not been lying on a bed o f roses ;
and she murmured a few sympathetic phrases. But when Bettina
went on to speak of the infamy of trying to invalidate the divorce
and my remarriage, and to declare that Ganna was doing herself
irreparable harm in the eyes of all right-thinking people, the
visitor lost her temper:
What can you be thinking of, Frau Bettina? Let me assure
you that you are making a great mistake.

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She rattled out the names of twenty of thirty friends of both

sexes who accepted her own view of the matter and would
support her through thick and thin. Bettina, transformed now
into the strict judge, took her sternly to task, referring to the
moral order and to the mutual confidence without which social
life would collapse. Ganna was frightened, sobbed piteously,
and said she had been given no choice but to act as she had done;
people had treated her so badly; each day began and ended with
despair. No one had more good will than she; no one loved the
good and the noble as fervently as sh e; she yearned to be under
stood, longed for rest and comfort and a little respect. What
was she to do ? I f she had such splendid chances as Bettina, was
able to live from years end to years end beside the beloved
man in glorious isolation, she would be different. But, despite
all the pains she had taken, things had not turned out like that
for her. What was she to do, then? What did Bettina want of
her?
Sound a truce, answered Bettina. Call off your war-dogs!
She took the sobbing woman in her arms, difficult though
it was for her to make this demonstration of kindness. She
disliked Gannas wiry hair, unpleasing personality, disagreeable
odour the smell of clothes that have been kept too long in
boxes, the smell of bad powder and cheap scent, o f railway
carriages and unventilated hotel-rooms. Nevertheless she took
Ganna in her arms and spoke affectionately:
These manifold activities of yours tend mainly to promote
your own unhappiness. All that you want to prevent, happens
because you want to prevent it. Everything breaks to pieces in
your hands; and when you try to seize the fragments, they turn
against you. D on t you see that for yourself?
Ganna, dissolved in tears, answered:
Yes, I see it for myself. I see, too, what a treasure Alexander
has in you; and I realise what blunders I have made.
I think that was the first time in her life Ganna ever owned
to having made a mistake.
Bettina listened contentedly to the avowal, realising what was

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happening. She believed that something was, indeed, happening,

so she persevered and persevered; spent seven hours with Ganna,
from one oclock till eight in the evening. By that time they
had come to an understanding of sorts, which was immediately
committed to paper and signed by both. Part of the money which
Ganna was demanding, and which she might have a fairly
reasonable right to expect, would be paid by instalments. The
amount was specified. T h e supplementary amount for Doris
was to be paid over to Ganna. I would hold out the hand of
reconciliation, would help Ganna with word and deed, and
would cease to avoid her. In return, Ganna undertook to with
draw all the suits now pending, to have the embargoes and
sequestrations cancelled, and within a brief time to have the
divorce put through in Germany.
W hen this treaty of peace had been concluded, Bettina sum
moned me. As soon as I appeared in the room, Ganna stretched
out both hands toward me, and said plaintively:
How ill you are looking, Alexander. W hats the matter?
I made as if I did not hear the words, but could not forbear
glancing at myself in the mirror.
Ganna and I have had a long talk, with a satisfactory out
come, said Bettina to me, pointing to the signed document
on her writing-table.
I stared at Bettina, stared at Ganna; but said nothing. Then
Ganna came out with a request. She wanted a little money, for,
so she declared, she had not even enough to pay her hotel-bill.
Bettina shook her head:
First you must fulfil your promises, Frau Ganna, she
insisted, motioning with her chin towards the document.
But I, regardless of Bettinas warning glance, had taken out
my note-case and given Ganna three notes, amounting to fully
a third of the sum which, by the terms of the contract, Ganna
was to receive, after fulfilling her pledges. Bettina turned her
face away with an expression of despair, instantly understanding
the utter idiocy of what I had done. I had had ample reason
to know that when Ganna held money in her hands she forgot

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agreements, signatures, promises, solemn oaths. Bettina had

grasped my blunder. What she had not grasped was the feeling
which had led to it: Away, away, away; away with the money,
away with the woman! What reduced Bettina to despair was
that I should so light-heartedly, so thoughtlessly, so stupidly,
destroy what she had built up by the nerve-racking work of
many hours.
I saw Ganna to the door. On the threshold she stood still
and glared at me reproachfully. I leaned forward, lifted her
hand, and pressed it with my lips. Bettina could hardly conceal
her amazement. W hats the man about? was her thought.
W hy on earth does he kiss her hand? Here, once more, she
failed to understand. I was dominated by the feeling: Away
with the woman, away with her, away! It was sheer comedy,
this token of respect, whereby Ganna became to me for ever
more a stranger, a stranger in this house, a stranger in my world.
It was an instinctive action in the form of empty ceremonial,
its only significance being the ultimate inward severance from
Ganna.
The Devil rides over the Ruins. The upshot of these
turbulent preliminaries was nothing. The embargoes and seques
trations were not cancelled; the lawsuits were not with
drawn; nothing was done to have the divorce put through in
Germany. But let no one venture to imagine that Ganna was
in any way to blame for the breach of the undertakings. So
vigorously did she wash her innocent hands, that the soapsuds
spirted. Had she not given appropriate instructions to her
Ebendorf solicitor? O f course she had, but the obstinate fellow
had refused, on technical grounds o f legal procedure, to carry
them out. Could any one deny that Hornschuchs policy had
been conducted along the lines of malicious passive resistance ?
Assertions to the contrary were valueless. Assertion was not
proof.
In a scholastic epistle to Bettina:
Every one knows that in my actions I am correct to the
point of pedantry. That is why I indignantly reject the charge

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of having failed to fulfil my pledges. There cannot be a shadow

of doubt that in this instance, as in all previous ones, it has
been the other side which has broken faith.
D ixit Ganna.
T o crown the edifice, a pinnacle of arrogance! She could not
dream o f taking steps to have the divorce ratified in Germany
until there had been a year o f probation during which she could
become convinced that my desire for peace was sincere. The
badger slips out of the building, deposits a heap of dung, and
grins when the dogs bark on the trail.
Bettinas feelings were those of one who, at dire personal risk
and with stupendous effort, had rescued a fellow-mortal from
a burning house, and, for thanks, was spat upon by the salvagee.
She could not get over her distress, and collapsed after her own
fashion very softly, very quietly, but as much run down as
if she had gone through a grave illness.

I have records of fourteen legal decisions; twenty-two writs

of execution; eleven distraints; three official valuations of the
Buchegger estate; four charges of defamation of character; two
complaints brought before the child-protection authorities; five
special decrees; impounding of the motor car; forced sale of
my writing-table; fifty-seven lawyers letters within six weeks;
sequestration o f the account with my publisher because I was
no longer able to pay Gannas monthly allowance when my
income fell to a derisory figure; suit brought by Ganna against
the publisher; Ganna in Berlin, Ganna in Munich, Ganna in
the county town, Ganna in Ebendorf, always turning up un
expectedly as if by airplane; always with drawn sword, always
strangling in the grip of creditors; proposals of mediation; plans
for betterment; clamour that she could not answer for the
consequences unless I would be reconciled to her.
It is hardly an exaggeration to say that not one stone of my
life was left standing on another.

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Without mentioning other debts, what Ganna owed to her

lawyers amounted to a fortune. Remember that these vast sums
were for the payment of the mercenaries who were making war
upon me under her orders; that month by month I had with the
utmost labour to provide the funds with which (if she could
not pay their entire bills) she kept these legal swashbucklers
arrayed against me it will be seen what a hideous farce, what
a dance of death, had become my world through the collabora
tion of forty lawmen with their clerks and other aids. I wrote
to Ferry, begging him to make his mother listen to reason ere
it was too late. He took train from Milan, where he was working
as engineer in an automobile factory, and conjured her to cease
from her follies. She was furious, charging him, her own son,
with having been bribed by Bettina. When I heard of this out
rageous accusation, I felt as if the devil were clawing m y heart
out of my body.

After that, however, a wonderful thing happened, a very great

experience. It began with Bettinas saying one day:
T o carry on this struggle is beyond your strength, Alexander.
You are going to rack and ruin. From to-day on, I am going
to take charge.
With her, such resolutions were always the outcome of pro
longed and careful consideration. When she took a resolution,
she acted. Having made up her mind, she got to work with
inexorable consistency. There was something radiant and coer
cive about her will power. Being of an active disposition, she
respected action highly, and had a contempt for dreamers. Again
and again I have noticed that when she seemed to be dreaming,
she was really thinking, was getting to the bottom of things with
philosophical earnestness.
On this occasion she had come to the conclusion that, in
defiance of her better self, she had for years been leading a life
of lukewarm comfort, the sheltered life of a princess, an on
lookers life; and this made her hot with shame. She transformed

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herself, so to say, between one moment and the next. That was
a peculiar grace of hers, to me an incomprehensible wonder.
T o one whose life is spent almost exclusively in contemplation,
mutable and active persons are the embodiments of incompre
hensibility. A t this juncture, she dropped everything else her
musical studies, her violin, her books, her correspondence with
friends, her interest in things of beauty, all that had made life
endurable to her in our mountain wilderness (as she some
times termed it in melancholy hours) for the pursuit of this
one end. Even Caspar Hauserchen was ignored, together with
other joys and distractions.
She went radically to work, studying the documents, the
agreements, the relevant laws and ordinances. She had lengthy
interviews with Hornschuch, sometimes spending the whole day
with him. She answered the complaints and the lawyers letters,
attended the lawcourts, went to see the inland revenue authori
ties, watched income and expenditure, and reformed our whole
economy (whose unthriftiness had at length become plain to
her) with the keenness of an auditor. By day and by night she
was on the alert to save me from intrusions. She parried Gannas
thrusts with such shrewdness that one might have thought she
had been many years a lawyer. Her lucid understanding, her
intuitive knowledge o f everyday life, invariably disclosed to her
the one practicable route. She dreaded no danger, she shunned
no exertion; she was stingy neither with time nor with sleep
nor with health; the moral courage which exuded from her very
finger-tips, often gave her a sort of boyish delight in the scuffle.
She took train to Vienna, to negotiate with persons of influence;
to Berlin, to engage a lawyer, and to tell my publisher the true
story of what had been going on. Yet, however speedy and
impromptu her determinations, she never failed to inform me
of them and to secure my approval, to take the edge off the
accusation sure to be levelled against her by Gannas partisans
who were much perturbed by the new development that she
was managing my affairs on her own initiative and behind my
back. She took everything into consideration, spied all the weak

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spots in the enemys armour, ready at any moment to take the

wind out of the enemys sails. The whole woman had become
fight and flame. It was such a spectacle as I had never seen,
nor had ever hoped to see.
It had, however, an alarming, a disastrous side. Bettina was
bound to me in another spirit than that of the Ganna world.
Indeed, I may call it the anti-Ganna spirit. She was absolutely
free from illusions. Fate had revealed her to me and had made
her my companion that I might participate in truth and reality,
instead of in falsehood and semblance. Such was the significance
o f all I had suffered and experienced if an existence like mine
can be said to have any significance whatever. But now, whether
by some whim of providence, or as a supreme test whose purpose
was not yet disclosed, the counter-Ganna had been forced into
Gannas path, had been compelled in her own despite to enter
the lists against Ganna, to confront Ganna, to follow Ganna
like a shadow into dark and thorny thickets. Could this lead
to good? Was it good in itself? In composing the first of the
three sonnets quoted above, I had in mind that Bettina was like
Diana. Had I not now become the assassin of the gentle goddess
in her? True, Diana was a huntress, but her hunting-ground
was not the realm of spooks, she did not hunt witches and
warlocks, she did not have her course determined by that of the
Ganna demons. Was there not a risk of Bettinas becoming the
hunted instead of the huntress ?
As if events had only been awaiting their chance of realising
this terrible thought, I soon became aware that Bettina was
suffering physically. She fell off in weight, grew irritable, had
transient attacks of fever, sometimes looked like one suffering
from the effects of an unknown poison. Her imaginative life
had been interrupted, for my sake. By my fault, dating from
long ago. Was Ganna the stronger, after all? Diana, hunting
a witch, had herself been bewitched and paralysed. Since I was
first haunted by this terror (it is now three weeks), my main
thought has been, how I could possibly withdraw Bettina from
the accursed region. But when I spoke of it, she only laughed.

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Her courage was like the crystal-clear tone of a glass bell.

Nothing could daunt her.
'

Yesterday, June 26th, I received from the lawcourts the fourth

demand for the oath of manifestation which Ganna wants to
force from me. L et me describe the plain fact. It relates to the
property which she believes me to have somewhere, safely
smuggled out of sight. The three previous times, I have pro
tested against the oath. Once, acting on Bettinas advice, I went
on a journey; once I put in a medical certificate showing that
I was not in a fit state of health to attend the court. I have never
taken an oath in my life. It seems to me that it would be dis
honourable, utterly unreasonable, opposed to all decent feeling,
that, invoking the name of God, I should swear to such a woman
as Ganna that I do not possess the treasures which she now
wishes, literally speaking, to extort from my soul. Let me frankly
admit that I dread such a thing as if it were an assassins dagger.
Bettina is perplexed by my horror.
W hy does the thought disturb you so much? You have
nothing to hide. It is a mere formality.
T o me it seems much more than a mere formality. It is a
binding act, whereby the words one uses become indissoluble
fact. If I were to take this oath of manifestation, I should deliver
myself defenceless into Gannas hands. She would never cease
hunting for evidence of infringement. All my daily doings, every
note I changed, would be spied upon by her and her henchmen.
They would nail me down to the terms of the oath as I was
nailed down by my signature to the marriage bond of thirty
years ago.
Perhaps you are right, said Bettina. But in that case, the
only thing you can do is to go away for a time. G o !
But where could I go? Into the mountains again, as I did
recently, before D r. Kerkhoven appeared upon the scene? No,
that would lead me into a blind alley. By my fugue I made

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myself rather ridiculous, both to myself and to Kerkhoven. If

such a path does not lead to death, or to a changed life, it is
a farce. After my talk with Bettina, I roamed about the house
and the garden for the whole afternoon; unable to read, to work,
to think, even to look at things. A t bottom, it is not this essen
tially absurd oath that I am afraid of, but the futility of a life
out of which the bottom seems to have dropped. W hy has my
existence proved a failure? In the attempt to answer the question,
I have followed the advice of this remarkable man and have
stripped the wrappings from my life; have, as truthfully as I
can, shown how fate has dealt with me, have tried to depict
faces and forms. But what have I, in the end, accomplished?
A t times, I must admit, I have had a feeling of release. The
unsparing straightforwardness of my avowal has worked like an
absolution bestowed on me by some gracious being. So far,
unquestionably, my friendly adviser has put me on the right
track.
Yet, after all, there is nothing to show for it but sheaves of
paper, bearing a written record which is facile, ambiguous, and
perhaps challengeable in a higher forum than that of the writer.
There is an incoercible remnant, the lees of cleavage and human
frailty. Recently I said to Bettina that the whole of the beginning
impressed me as if, with a hammer which is refractory to the
hand, one should strike one nail on the head of another nail.
The head of the under-nail breaks off; the point of the upper
nail is blunted.
What, then, is lacking? An arm that will help me across an
obstacle whose nature I do not yet understand. The breath of
one who will breathe into me the spirit of true understanding.
This inspiration must illuminate me like a lightning-flash in
the darkness. Then the devil who is riding over the ruins of
my life would vanish with a scream into the yawning mouth
of his inferno.
Rather a forced image, that. I have lost my sense of measure
ment. When Kerkhoven said: Six weeks hence you will be
under my roof, I laughed incredulously. To-day the eighth

ALEXANDER

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475

week has come to an end. I wanted to prove his prophecy false.

Yet his words ring in my ears like a command. Often he seems
to me like a judge upon whose sentence ones life thenceforward
will turn. I dont think I shall much longer make it a point of
pride to be refractory.

BOOK

THREE

Joseph and Marie

or
The World of Faith

JOSEPH
THE

AND

WORLD

MARIE,
OF

OR

FAITH

88
T h e Imst-Mallery appeal came before the courts sooner than
any one had imagined possible. A group of sympathisers was
formed, and negotiations began. Ever since the verdict six
years before, a Berne lawyer had made the case his special
business, and had determined to get the sentence quashed.
T h e revelations made by the medium played no part in the
affair so far as the legal experts were concerned. The facts
that had come to light in the discovery of the box and Selmas
liaison with a youth of twenty were sufficient grounds on which
to demand a re-examination of the case. T h e assize was held on
June 5th; two days later, the prisoners were given their freedom.
K arl Imst and Jeanne Mallery were re-invested with their
rights o f citizenship; each was given a lump sum as compensation,
and in order that they might start to build up their lives again.
When Nurse Else was told the news, she fainted for joy.
Marie, who had devoted all her time and energy to the matter
in recent weeks, attending committee meetings and dealing with
masses o f correspondence, felt inexpressibly relieved. She sug
gested that the two should be housed for a time in Seeblick.
Probably theyll not know where to go, she said to Joseph.
T h eyve lost everything, house, friends, their ties with the world.
Maybe they are so out of touch with their fellows that they will
be unable to mix in society for a while.
Kerkhoven agreed to the proposal. He wrote to the governor
o f the prison in Langenau, and at the same time sent a line to
Karl Imst. Nurse Else enclosed a note to her cousin in the latter
communication. Tw o days later came the answer. Imst gratefully
accepted the kind invitation for himself and his fellow-sufferer.
On June 8th Kerkhoven, accompanied by the nurse, went over
to Langenau to fetch the twain. Th ey were housed in the rooms
recently occupied by Mordann and his daughter.

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89
Karl was rather boorish in appearance, square-built and clumsy.
The long years of imprisonment had imparted an ashen pale tint
to his face, and had made him shy and diffident. His gait was
tottering, through lack of muscular exercise. Jeanne had once
been a good-looking girl, one of those Swiss-Latin beauties, whose
aristocracy of race is shown more in deportment and gesture than
in actual features. All charm had now vanished, and she looked
nothing better than a worn-out woman of the petty-bourgeois
class. She was so excessively sensitive that noises such as
hammering, wood-chopping, whistling, let loose a flood of
tears.
Kerkhoven, on making a medical examination, found in the
man a general inadequacy of organic functioning. His sight,
his breathing, the digestion, his sense of equilibrium, all had
suffered; he lacked nervous energy, and his heart and kidneys
had become gravely affected. In the mental and spiritual spheres,
impulse and incentive were absent. Imst expressed a desire to
see his eight-year-old son, who had been taken in by relatives
living in one of the midland cantons. Kerkhoven immediately
sent for the boy, but when the youngster came, Imst took no
notice of the little fellow ; nay more, he seemed to have a positive
dislike for the child.
T he poor mans unrecognisable, said Nurse Else. And
to think that he used to be so full of life, a mixture of young
scamp, sportsman, mountaineer, and ski-runner. H es no more
than the ruin of his former self.
One of the strangest features of the situation was that Karl
and Jeanne, after the first few days of reunion, seemed to shun
one another. Or, rather, Imst avoided Jeanne, and none could
fathom the reason. Else, who was peculiarly touched by the
condition of the two, racked her brains for a reason. She assured
Kerkhoven that Jeanne was fretting herself to death over this
neglect.
What do you think can possibly be the cause? she asked
despairingly.

JOSEPH

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481

Im afraid it may be something pretty serious, said

Kerkhoven.
A day or two later she told him that Karl had asked for a
mattress to be placed between the double doors, leading from
his room to Jeannes, in order to keep out the noise. Kerkhoven
pondered this news for a considerable time.
90
T h e Imst-Mallery case provided him with so many opportunities
for drawing general conclusions, for studying the connexion
between crime and the powers of the State, and between the
infliction of punishment and society, that he decided to introduce
it into his book. Public opinion, founded upon prejudice and
hearsay, had proved in the present instance so formidable a
weight in the balance, that justice and straight thinking had
from the start no chance of prevailing. Prejudice had spread like
a virulent contagion among those who had imposed their will
upon what passed as justice, collective illusion inflicting a grievous
injury upon certain individuals. Here was a hidden source of
disorder in the functioning of the social organism, and surely
one whose elucidation came within the province of the physician.
Since Kerkhoven, at any rate, regarded it as irrefutable that in
the narrowest spheres of social life, where the welfare of incon
spicuous persons is concerned, nothing can happen which does
not, with the inexorable logic o f a physical or chemical process,
affect the community, the nation, mankind at large the destinies
o f Imst and Jeanne were symptomatic, more rather than less
because the two were mediocrities, because they were persons
o f average intelligence and at a low level of culture.

91
Kerkhoven usually paid Imst his daily visit at an early hour in
the afternoon. He nearly always found the man seated before
a chess-board, absorbed in solving a problem. These chessproblems were gleaned from the Sunday papers old ones as
a rule of which a big bundle was pushed under the bed. A short
Q

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JOSEPH

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brier pipe protruded from one side of his mouth, but he rarely
smoked, merely using the stem to chew on. Kerkhoven behaved
to his patients much as a good host at an inn will behave towards
his guests: he tried to disturb them as little as possible, and
yet to keep them amused and happy. When he asked Imst a
question, the latter never made a direct reply but invariably
enquired, Beg pardon? or You were saying? It produced
the impression that he wanted to gain time before committing
himself, this being a ruse much in vogue among persons of a
suspicious or timid disposition.
Karl seldom went out for a walk. His curiosity as to the
outside world was dead. It had become known locally that he
was staying at Seeblick, and although no one ever thought of
annoying him, he imagined that Peeping Tom s and sensationmongers besieged the door by day and by night. T h is idea,
and the consequent seclusion, were a weaklings attempt to
revive self-confidence in the form of a defensive reaction.
Kerkhoven invited him to play a game of chess. Imst excused
himself, and seemed amazingly perturbed.
W hy dont you want to play chess with me ? asked Kerkhoven.
I do not play well enough.
But I am the merest amateur myself, rejoined Kerkhoven,
laughing.
Imst was, however, not to be persuaded. In the end, the doctor
thought he had discovered the cause of refusal; the man was
afraid of losing; Imst could not bear the idea of losing, for he
would not only lose the game but likewise the tiny spark of
self-respect that still remained to him.
92
A t last a day came when Kerkhoven felt he might, without
incurring too grave a risk, ask a few questions.
You cant realise that youve been set free, can you ?
Free? Free? God, no indeed.
T h e voice that spoke the words sounded weary and full of
resignation.

JOSEPH

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MARIE

483

But why not? Everything went off extremely well. Complete

rehabilitation. The gate to life flung wide again. . . .
Imst sadly shook his head.
L ife? he said. W hat sort of life? W hy have we got to
muck about in this idiotic world at all? How am I to use my
freedom ? No sense in it, no sense whatever.
Still, it seems to me that you get a good deal of pleasure
out of solving chess problems, objected the doctor with a smile.
If it is not a very sensible way of passing the time, it is at least
a very pleasant one.
M aybe. But its about on a level with, let us say, a man who
has to eat his excreta in order to save himself from dying of
hunger. Because he does so you must not run away with the idea
that such food tastes good to him.
When, next day, they sat before the inevitable chess-board,
Kerkhoven said after a lengthy silence:
If you move the Knight to KB2, it seems to me youll mate
in two moves.
Imst, with his head propped on both hands, looked at the
speaker in surprise.
Then you do know something about the game. Unfortunately
that move would be disastrous, for then the K ing could take the
Bishop.
A muffled cough came from Jeanne M allerys room. Kerkhovens eyebrows went up, as though he knew nothing about
the mattress between the door. He went to open the door, and
when he saw the stuffing, he murmured, Hm. H ows this?
and closed the door again. Returning to the table he tapped his
patient on the shoulder, and said:
Something amiss with the woman in there, shes fading
away before our very eyes.
Imst remained silent.
T h e padding between the doors is there for another
reason than keeping out the noise. Imst continued to sit mum.
W hats up between you two ? I think you owe me an explana
tion.

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Imst stared down at Kerkhovens powerful hand which was

spread out on the table as a support.
I cant, Doctor. Please forgive me, but I really cant.
Not even if you were helped ?
Thats not possible, Doctor. T heres not a soul who could
help.
You never can tell. W hy not yourself? In any event, the
way you are treating her is absolutely brutal.
Imst jumped as if pricked by a pin. Then, taking a seat at the
mans side, Kerkhoven said softly:
You no longer love her. Well and good. No one can
reproach you on that score. But you must remember that she
has shared in your afflictions, and the most elementary con
sideration . .
Theres nothing to be gained by cross-examining me,
interrupted Imst in a voice muted to a hardly audible whisper.
You have been most awfully kind, Doctor, and I am duly
grateful. But so far as this thing is concerned. . . . Its none
o f my doing, take my word for it.
I was thinking it might be some sexual trouble. One often
meets with them in such cases.
I dont think there is, answered Imst in a low tone.
Then there is only one other possibility, said Kerkhoven.
meditatively, not taking any notice of Im sts tortured mien.
Unconsciously, you are holding Jeanne Mallery responsible
for what occurred. Unconsciously, you wish to take revenge on
her, knowing her to be the innocent cause. As you sat in your
cell, did you not often say to yourself, had it not been for Jeanne
this would not have happened ? I fancy the thought was never
out o f your mind.
There is some truth in what you say. But how do you know?
Because we all of us have a tendency to shunt responsibility
on to others shoulders. Its a fundamental instinct.
I dont quite catch your meaning, Doctor.
Think it over for a bit.
Imst drew his tobacco-pouch out of his pocket, and, with

JOSEPH

AND

MARIE

485

assumed indifference, stuffed the bowl of his pipe. His hands

trembled. Suddenly, he cried in despair:
She cant get away from Selma. Cant break away. Just you
have a try at living with a corpse, Doctor. Three of us together
and one a corpse!
Kerkhoven understood.

93
Jeanne Mallery suffered from extremes of gaiety and the profoundest melancholy, there being no transitionary period between
the two states. When Marie or the nurse took her for a stroll in
the park, she behaved as if intoxicated and her tongue clappered
like a waterfall, the words tumbling out disconnectedly, and
frequently containing no sense at all. Left for five minutes alone,
however, she became a totally different creature; lifeless, with
hunched shoulders, staring blankly, and trembling at the slightest
noise.
Although such symptoms often occur among prisoners
subjected to rigid solitary confinement, Jeanne Mallery had
shown none of them during the period of her imprisonment.
Kerkhoven made enquiries at the prison, and the doctor stated
that no kind o f hallucination, either visual or aural, had mani
fested itself in M allerys case; but, during the whole of the six
years imprisonment, she had been in a condition of complete
mental hebetude.
It seemed as if her liberation from prison had led to something
which might be compared to the breaking-up and falling-off
o f a crust, to a process technically known as a retrogressive
irritability of the sense organs. But Kerkhoven was not fond of
dealing with his patients in categories. He preferred to treat
each individual case separately, and excluded from his studies
all facile generalisations. In the case in question, he beheld a
woman whose liberation had thrust her back into the past.
She had expiated nothing, forgotten nothing; the struggle she
had begun with Selma for the possession of the beloved Karl
pursued its course, just as if the years in the prison had not

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been, just as if she had merely dreamed that the wife was dead.
So far as Jeanne was concerned, Selma was still the implacable
creditor, who demanded atonement and a settlement of accounts.
Selmas plaint overwhelmed in Jeanne both the past and the
present. Although life held nothing for her but Karl now that
the possibility of being reunited to him had come, instead of
being able to give herself up to the happiness she had pined for,
this happiness was a w ill-o-the-wisp. She was strangled by
the old sense of guilt, the old fears, the old persecution. Herein
we have proof of the superhuman power which can still be
exercised by persons with demoniacal strength of will, not only
when alive, but long after they have left this earthly theatre to
join the shades.

94
Kerkhoven was not surprised when he learned from Marie that
she had come to a conclusion in regard to Jeanne M allerys
trouble.
I feel sure, she said, that the poor thing imagines she
actually murdered Selma Imst. She finds it impossible to believe
that she has been released from gaol and is living under the same
roof with K arl.
This was, indeed, the logical consequence in a chain of gloomy
and illogical thoughts. Marie spent an evening occasionally in
Jeannes room, hoping to provide distraction and to lure her
from her obsession. T h e woman was at her worst just before
going to sleep. Marie told Joseph that no sooner did Jeanne get
into bed than she started to tremble violently, while muttering
unintelligibly, with vacant eyes. Then she would be shaken
by a violent fit of sobbing. Marie was so disturbed by these
nocturnal scenes, that Kerkhoven advised her to give up her
evening visits.
But I cannot leave her alone in her plight, protested Marie.
Isnt there some means . . . cannot you do something . . .
O h, Joseph, what are you waiting for?
A climax, the culminating moment of her misery, when we
may hope an abreaction will occur.

JOSEPH

AND

MARIE

487

Could she not be brought to face up to reality, to see the

obvious?
What do you consider the obvious? That which you call
reality is just as intangible and just as much a figment of the
imagination as M allerys obsession.
Queer, but as you were speaking I became aware you were
right, said Marie, taken aback. It is a case o f the devil and the
deep sea!
You are merely using a parable to explain a parable, answered
Kerkhoven drily. You should remember, too, that one who finds
himself between the devil and the deep sea is usually an adven
turer in search of g ain !
Towards ten o clock that night, as the doctor was going
upstairs to his study, his progress was arrested by the sound of
an excited womans voice. He stopped to listen. No second voice
could be heard, therefore it was one person alone speaking.
He turned about. T h e story below was in darkness, for he had
just switched off. A t the end of the passage the door leading into
Jeannes room was open and a ray of light issued through it,
reaching to where he stood. He saw Jeanne Mallery in a long
white nightgown stretching down to her feet, which were unshod.
She was walking towards him, but the felt floor-covering made
her movements inaudible. Her voice was querulous, beseeching,
raised in adjuration. T h e words she uttered were disconnected.
Her gestures, like her speech, were full of pleading and entreaty.
She moved as if she were a sleep-walker. Kerkhoven could not
help thinking of Lady Macbeth. He strained his ears to catch
the words she was speaking to an imaginary companion. All he
could hear was a name, Selma, and tag-ends of sentences
such as, now look here, or please, or try to understand,
Selma, or I beg of you, Selma. The remainder was swallowed
up in hasty, badly articulated, anxious and monotonous whis
perings. Else appeared on the landing. Kerkhoven just had
time to make his presence known, and thus to stop the nurse
from accosting the patient. He himself took her gently by both
hands and led her back to her room. She was neither frightened

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nor surprised, but let him do what he wanted. He spoke soft

nothings to her, promising to protect and guard her. Lifting her
into bed, he drew the clothes over her and stood for a while
by her side stroking her forehead. Her eyes stared up at him,
absently, with a strained expression in their depths. He was
struck by her youthful appearance. She could almost claim to be
beautiful. There was a feverish flush on her cheeks. Sitting down
on the edge of the bed, Kerkhoven held her hand until she fell
asleep. Then he put out the lamp and left the room, closing the
door noiselessly behind him.
Shell sleep the clock round, he said to the nurse, who was
waiting patiently in the passage. From to-morrow I shall have
to keep her asleep . . . make use of that Javanese remedy.
It provides permanent sleep, and is as innocuous as sugared
water.

95

Meanwhile Imst had been listening behind the partitioning

doors. He was already in bed, when the sounds of moving
about and of voices aroused him and made him get up. After
removing the mattress between the doors, he kept on the alert.
When all was quiet, he softly opened the door, opened it just
wide enough to allow a pencil of light to penetrate from his room
into Jeannes. He tiptoed to the bed, and looked down at her
long and earnestly, seeming as though he could not drink his
fill of her. T he young womans face had not a line in it, was
childlike and fresh as if passion had never warmed it. Ten years
had been wiped off. What could have happened ? As if compelled
by a force outside himself, Karl lay down beside her. W ith heart
beating furiously, he waited; she did not wake. He turned
his face towards her and murmured breathlessly:
Jeanne . . . Jeanne . . . dont you hear me? . . . Listen,
Jeanne.
She did not wake. Kerkhoven, Master of Sleep, had fettered
her consciousness. Her soul had plunged into depths of
exhaustion, and it lay there now unapproachable and at rest.
Jeanne, said Karl again, calling softly, clutching the pillow

JOSEPH

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489

where her head lolled, Jeanne dear, Selma is dead, seven years
dead; you need not be frightened of her any longer. Jeanne . . .
listen, my love, Jeanne . .
She did not wake, but sighed and raised her arms till they
were clasped round his neck. Yet she did not wake. With a
wild cry he hugged her to his breast. She did not wake. He
trembled in every limb, sweat broke out all over his body, and
he suddenly freed himself to dash back, crazed, despairing,
impotent, into his room. Jeanne did not wake.

96

Marie had promised to take Robert and Johann for an expedition

to Frauenfeld. The boys had been looking forward to this outing
with great glee. Since little Konrad Imst seemed very forlorn,
Marie in her pity had asked him to come too although between
him and Johann, who was two years older, war had been declared,
very soon after they had met for the first time, only two or three
days ago. Their hatred for one another was primitive and
irrational, like the constitutional enmity between a couple of
dogs who dislike one anothers smell. A t their first encounter,
Marie had to intervene and restore peace; then, after mid-day
dinner, they had come to fisticuffs, and Johann had got the
worst of it. This defeat mortified him extremely. He was too
proud to complain to his mother. T h e fact was, however, that
Konrad had gained his victory through tricks which are taboo
among self-respecting youngsters. Marie had witnessed the
affray unknown to the boys. Hardly had an armistice been
proclaimed than they were quarrelling again, and in the course
of the altercation Konrad taunted Johann with being a coward.
The elder boy turned pale with wrath, and made precipitately
for the wood, where he disappeared. Marie went to hunt him
up, and after half an hours search she found him in a bosquet
of undergrowth. With great difficulty she persuaded him to
leave his hiding-place, and when he decided to do so he behaved
like a berserker. Konrad Imst assisted at the scene, his face
contorted with malicious triumph.
Q*

490

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The outing took place as promised, and Marie set off with the
three children. While they walked along, Robert spied something
moving in the grass. It was a young titmouse, which had probably
come to grief on its probationary flight. Konrad, being more
sprightly than his junior, pounced upon the bird, made a nest
for it in his handkerchief, stroked it tenderly and ceaselessly,
and pummelled Robert mercilessly when the latter tried to claim
the tit as his property since he had seen it first. The difference
o f Konrads behaviour towards the animal and towards the
boy was so pronounced that Marie felt he must have a screw
loose somewhere. A few miles farther on they reached a small
lake, and sat down to rest on the shore. Konrad, with the utmost
care, laid his treasure in a tiny bed of moss and went off to find
worms and other small fry for the tit. Johann, who had been
noticeably depressed ever since they started, suddenly roused
himself into activity. Scarcely had Konrad disappeared, than
Johann sprang with flashing eyes towards the mossy nest, and,
with the utmost fury, crushed the birds head beneath his heel . . .
That evening, Marie told Joseph of these various happenings.
T h e conversation took place in the doctors large and rambling
study. Marie sat on a hard wooden bench near the fire-place,
her head uptilted and her gaze lost among the smoke-blackened
rafters; Kerkhoven lay back in one of the huge leather armchairs.
You can imagine my feelings. M y heart almost stopped
beating. In the first rush of disgust, I could have thrown the
child into the water. Such spitefulness! T h e brutality of the
thing. . . . What on earth is the use of education and careful
nurture? W hats the good of giving a decent example, of being
kind, of trying to cultivate sympathy and understanding? All
of a sudden, I had a bloodthirsty little animal before my eyes.
Kerkhoven answered:
Thats not fair, for a child has not yet become a human
being not in our grown-up sense,' anyway. When I was a child
I lied and cheated and stole. All decent people prophesied
that I should end my days in gaol.
So far as I m concerned, lying and cheating are nothing

JOSEPH

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491

compared to what Johann did. It was infamous. Cold-blooded

revenge against a harmless animal.
Did you have a talk with him?
No, not a word. Even when I put him to bed, I could not
bring myself to speak to him, and he did not say his prayers with
me as usual.
He must have felt pretty bad at that.
L ets hope he did. It seems to me he cant be made to suffer
enough. . . .
What about young Imst?
He behaved in the most extraordinary way. Just fancy.
When he came back with his hands full of worms how children
discover so many worms is always a mystery to me and found
the bird dead, obviously killed by Johann (for by his hang-dog
air it was not difficult to guess that he was the culprit), Konrad
smiled.
Smiled? How do you mean?
Yes, a horrible smile. As much as to say: youll never be able
to impose upon me again with all your fine airs and virtuous
indignation. Joseph, there are people who come into this world
bad from the start, common and wicked from birth . . .
I cannot either agree with you or contradict you on that
score, dearest. In any case, your day seems to have been anything
but a success.
Agreed! One plays a game with fate, a game in which fate
always says Heads I win, tails you lose. I take no stock in the
current talk about environmental influences on the one hand
and good or bad inheritance on the other. What is a poor mother
to do? Am I such a failure in this respect? Have I nourished
myself on illusions, overestimated my capacities? Advise me,
Joseph. Help me if you can.
Kerkhoven was silent. How often had he not been appealed
to before. This human call for help, how poignant it was. He
contemplated Marie for long minutes as if he wished to penetrate
to the innermost depths of her nature. Then, suddenly, M aries
attention was drawn towards the door, which had been pushed

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open. In the dark framework stood Johann, his face tear-stained

and pale, a pitiful little figure. After a moments hesitation, he
ran over to his mother, and, without a word, hid his face in her
bosom. Marie rocked the frail and trembling body in her embrace,
uttering comforting noises the while. Then she stood up, and,
with the boy still cuddled in her arms, was making for the passage
when she found the burden too great for her. Kerkhoven took the
child, and carried the repentant sinner downstairs to the nightnursery. Marie then pushed her husband gently to one side, sat
down on the childs bed, took his little hands in hers, and together,
son and mother, they said the Lords Prayer. Johanns treble
was full of sweetness and gratitude. Kerkhoven stood by listening
and observing. This, he felt, was a scene of which he must miss
no detail. A strange look of unrest glinted in his eyes.

97
W ill you come up to my study for another half-hour? he asked,
when they were once more in the passage. She nodded assent.
He slipped an arm through hers. Sure youre not too tired?
You are not tired, and yet you have done far more than I.
You never seem tired, eh? D ont know what it is to be tired, I
fancy.
The only thing that tires me is routine.
As soon as they entered the attic room, Joseph pressed her into
an arm-chair, pushed a stool under her feet, and took his place
beside her.
Tell me, M arie, he began tentatively, you have taught
the children to pray . . . to say the Our Father . . . I know you
say it with them every evening. . . . Do you believe in prayer,
while you are actually saying it? She looked surprised, and
he went on more earnestly: When you say the words Our Father
which art in heaven do you actually and truthfully believe there
is a father in heaven? Think it over. T o believe in a vague way
isnt quite the thing, seems to me.
I hardly know how to answer, retorted Marie, covered
with confusion. Its a . . .

JOSEPH

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493

You must answer with a plain Yes or N o, interrupted Joseph

impatiently. Do you believe absolutely, literally, without
equivocation or mental reservation, that our Father is actually
in heaven ?
Marie looked at him shyly and diffidently.
I hardly know, Joseph, she whispered. If I m to be quite
honest, all I can say is that I do not know.
Hm. You do not know. Perhaps we have now found the root
of all your incertitudes.
Maybe. It has always been my trouble, even in Berlin when
I was trying to do my best for those poor little waifs . . . and again
at Durrwangen with that paralytic girl . . . you remember, I
told you . . . you understand . . . it was touch and go . . . I came
almost to believe . . . and yet there was a wall I could not clim b .. . .
How is one ever to get beyond that wall ?
Kerkhoven rose to his feet, and walked up and down.
Not without complete renunciation, a kind of renunciation
that for the moment I, personally, am quite unable to contem
plate. Our Father which art in heaven . . . wonderful words. . . .
But the question is : Are you protected and covered on all imagin
able issues by these words? Listen, Marie. If one wants really
to be a believer one must be able to write a Faust or compose a
Matthew Passion. Anything else is mere approximation, an
expedient. Should a man come to me and ask: What am I to
do in order to believe ? I should counter w ith : Have you inspira
tion, revelation ? Have you done any Works ? Belief is a tremendous
achievement for mankind, a soaring into the infinite. Do you
fancy you are capable of breathing the rarefied air up aloft, in
a realm where the ego will be blasted out of your soul ?
Marie placed her finger-tips together, and answered:
M y dear, you are not helping me in the least. T h ats all
dialectical jargon. You are fighting tooth and nail against a mere
feeling.
T h e feeling is not a simple one, Marie, if it is the one you
imply. It is the end of a long and arduous process, or it is no more
than pettifogging fear, childish fear and childish trust.

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No, Joseph. You are speaking, guided by your knowledge

of men and things. You know too much. This excess of knowledge
has converted you into a theologian and a scholastic. You are
no longer able to get inside the L ords Prayer and yet, the
edifice you are constructing out of your experience may be a
larger one than any . .
I wish it might be so, said Kerkhoven sadly, coming to a
halt in front of her. Have you not noticed that all this knowledge
I have acquired, all my experience, has long since become
suspect to me, and is crumbling to dust? All I am doing is to
circumnavigate the kernel of a mystery, desperately trying to
find a passage through which I can penetrate in order to unravel
the enigma? I am not the man in the legend who imagined that
mice had sown specially large ears on to their heads in order to
hear when a cat was approaching.
Marie sat silent for a time. Then, she stretched out her arms,
drew his head down, and kissed him tenderly.
98
Bettina wrote to Kerkhoven.
It goes against the grain to thrust into your precious time
like a silly little thief into a hospitable house, in spite of what
you said once about having no time that you could honestly call
your own. Now that I know how numerous are the people
who make a claim on you, I must beware of encroaching. Y ou have
to remember that ever since childhood my world has been a
restricted one and highly conventional. M y father, from the first,
trained me to recognise distinctions and shades of differences.
He was wise. As a matter of fact, he belonged to the eighteenth
century, when reason was worshipped as a goddess; and often
he said jokingly that a person who kept his head was a hundred
fold more estimable than one who let his heart run away with
him. Later in life I allowed my mind a good deal of license, and
I sallied forth into an adventurous land of the spirit; perhaps
thereby I infringed the law of my being, and permitted the goblet
o f reality to fall to pieces in my hand. Long have I meditated

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those words of Pascal which you quoted in your last letter: Le

cceur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait pas. Yes, I think it
is true that the heart has reasons unknown to reason. But when a
woman like me has been inveigled into the dark realm of the
instincts by circumstances and fate, then all the aspirations she
is capable of tend towards clarity, form, and measure for it
must be admitted that the realm of the instincts is like a turbulent
stream, whose currents one ignores, wherein one cannot tell
to what bourne one may be carried, whether to a haven of paradise
or to the gulf of hell. You once explained to me why Alexander
was invulnerable innocent and invulnerable, were the actual
words you used. Moreover you added that certain persons
possessing a trustworthy instinctive foundation lived under a
kind of special protection a sort of guardian angel watched over
them. Did I understand you aright? But what are we others to
do, we whose subconscious fails to play so overriding a part
in our make-up ? W hat is our lot ? Mind and Logos play no role
in those subterranean regions, where terrestrial powers reign
supreme, the powers of darkness, the powers of the blood. So
far as I am concerned, I cannot live permanently in a world such
as ours where the anima has sunk into animism and totemism,
any more than I can live in a world of music consisting merely
of tones and whence mathematics has been excluded. In a day
or two, I shall write you in detail as to Alexanders condition.
He seems to be heading for a fresh crisis, even more dangerous
than the previous one and I am incapable of averting it . . .
Kerkhoven handed the letter to Marie. She read it from
beginning to end, twice, then said:
I must get to know this woman.

99

Joseph Kerkhovens unaccountable ascendancy had begun in

the last months of 1930; this ascendancy was not based on social,
medical, and scientific attainments, but solely upon human
acquirements and achievements. What interpretation are we to
put upon that vague term human, in this connexion? Staking

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ones own personality to the pitch o f self-immolation. The sick

and the suffering constituted but a narrow circle of his activities;
and insofar as his medical practice strictly speaking was concerned,
he was for the most part only too well aware of its uselessness not
to say its inexpediency. That there were sick and suffering persons
was an obvious fact. Sometimes his cases yielded to treatment;
sometimes not; a body or a mind that had been neglected or
misused might for a time be set in order again, the disturbed
function rendered serviceable, an organ forced to resume work;
pain, if not eliminated, could be assuaged, a darkened intelligence
rendered temporarily clear; one could diagnose a brain tumour
in the making, and save a life by timely intervention; heart
disease was amenable to treatment so that the patients days
were prolonged and rendered more comfortable yet, all this
was slapdash work, for a seriously damaged life was nearly always
a life lost. Disease seldom proves fertile or advantageous, suffering
worth while; if either ever did prove useful in any way, then a
physician was confronted by his sublimest function. This was
difficult to recognise when considered in detail; and to draw
a distinction led to the assumption of almost unbearable respon
sibilities.
Kerkhovens attention was further engrossed (so much
engrossed that little else seemed to matter) by the general spiritual
condition of the epoch, the unparalleled mental anguish of
our time, the anxiety caused by the difficulty of making a liveli
hood, the atrophy o f the love-instinct, the way in which
three-fourths of mankind were excluded from this worlds goods,
from work, from contact with the whole, from any kind of
fulfilment. He revived an earlier experience when he found
that any one who, whether as knower or as doer, is thus wholly
engrossed in a particular concern, an outstanding need, will
by a sort of magnetism become the target and the refuge of
those who are struggling or succumbing amid these particular
stresses o f the Age of Confusion. Provided, as aforesaid, all
his thoughts and all his feelings are ardently engaged. If that be
so, he may be living in the Gobi desert or amid the antarctic

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snows, or in the African primeval forest, and nevertheless

the emanations from his will and his intelligence, his accumulated
readiness to help, the activity of his compassionate heart, will
attract people to him as bees are attracted for miles by the
scent of flowers.
In Joseph Kerkhovens case this was no pretty fairy tale,
but a very actual fact. Endless examples might be adduced.
Countless persons, from all imaginable lands, discovered his
whereabouts, writing him long letters about their own troubles
or those of friends, comrades, and relatives. Some were penniless
and going hungry, others were political refugees, others had been
deprived of their professional status, others had come to grief
in the midst of labour, others had become impoverished betwixt
night and morning; there were persons of every class and calling,
o f every conceivable mentality, young and old, men and women,
girls and boys. All made appeal to him, intruding upon his
privacy by day and by night, telephoning and writing to him,
sending him documents, recounting the tale of their destinies,
confiding him their hopes, begging for recommendations and
introductions, for advice, for work; and if they did not come to
him about their own woes, they wanted to know how he accounted
for the worldwide crisis and whether he saw any ray of light
in the darkness.
He did his best to satisfy all comers, constituting himself
postmaster general for an army of unemployed. For every
vacancy he had an applicant. If there was an unused typewriter
somewhere and a person who needed a machine in another
place, he would wipe out the miles which separated the two
and bring them together. Was there a free bed in a sanatorium
for the tubercular, he had a patient waiting to fill it. Those who
had valuables, pictures or furniture, for sale would be brought
into contact with a purchaser, and Kerkhoven would see to it
that they were not cheated. He knew where to put his hand upon
a tutor, a bailiff, a governess, a nurse when need presented itself.
His mind was stuffed with names and addresses. Persons who
had lost everything during the crisis came to him for counsel,

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and he, like a spiritual treasure-seeker, could unearth hitherto

unsuspected gifts and capabilities among them, whereby they
were enabled to carry on for a while. Married couples whose
life for years had been rendered intolerable through misunder
standings, were reconciled by him; others through his
instrumentality, people whose temperaments were hopelessly
incompatible, were induced to separate. When he stayed in a
neighbouring town his schedule was so full that newcomers
who had failed to make an appointment had to be turned away.
Often, as he was returning home at the end of such a day, he
would remember that he had not eaten a morsel of food since the
morning. Although his material circumstances were not flourishing
(his practice brought in little, and the ready money he had
got by the sale of his possessions in Berlin some years ago was
running very low), he always had something to spare for special
cases. He found it impossible to turn a blind eye to misery,
if a hundred-franc note could relieve the situation.
Despair was not a word which had a place in his dictionary;
and he refused to wear the dramatic cloak in which the despairing
are as apt to envelop themselves as an actor in his costume.
He did not criticise either mankind or fate or the world situation;
such criticism was beneath him, and he considered it unworthy
to resist the inevitable. He listened to the most heart-rending
tales with imperturbable composure, showing a way out of
difficulties with seerlike certainty, so that many looked upon him
as a wonder, and this alone proved a help.
But even the richest nature reaches exhaustion point sooner
or later, and Kerkhovens day of reckoning was closer at hand
than he expected.

ioo
Towards the end of June, two events occurred that were of
particular moment to him. They robbed him for the time being
of his mental poise, and, in the end, led to a discovery which
would have paralysed any other man, and would have caused
him to close down all his activities in order to save himself
from the menacing danger. W ith Kerkhoven, however, the

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experience worked for good. Let me tell of them in their due

order.
One Tuesday he drove over to Zurich where, in Dufour
Strasse, he had a modest lodging for consultations. On his
arrival, he found a number of persons in the waiting-room
eager to confide their troubles as usual. Just as he had dismissed
the last o f these, the postman delivered a registered packet,
with Alexander Herzogs name mentioned as sender. Weighing
it for a moment in his hand, he mused, and then laid it unopened
on the table in his bedroom, intending to read it that same night.
He had no doubt in his mind as to the contents: it must be the
manuscript he had himself urged the writer to compose not
many weeks earlier. He felt greatly excited by the receipt of this
document, and was elated during the remainder of the day,
much as one is in suspense when one expects a certain piece of
news to come to hand at any moment, news whose import is
still unknown.
At five he went to the neurological clinic. There, too, the
waiting-room was full, and by the time he had dealt with these
cases and had gone to the laboratory to make some experiments
and learn the results of others, the town clocks chimed half-past
seven. He remained at work till nine. His shorthand writer had
been engaged to be at his rooms in Dufour Strasse at nine-thirty.
Punctually she arrived, and he dictated till a quarter to midnight.
Before taking her leave, the girl made him a cup of tea and
arranged a little collation for him. Hardly had he sat down
and begun his frugal meal than the bell sounded. T h e servant
had already gone to bed, so he was obliged to open the door
himself. A young woman, holding an attache case in her hand,
stood upon the mat. In the half light he had some difficulty in
recognising his visitor, and then it was with astonishment he
found her to be Aleid Bergmann, his stepdaughter, M aries child.
W hats up? he asked, drawing her into his room. Where
on earth do you come from?
She set the case on a chair, pulled off her close-fitting felt hat,
shook her hair out, and said in her tomboy w a y :

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Good evening, Uncle Joseph. Please dont take this midnight

raid amiss. I simply didnt know where else to go. Y ou must
help me. Just come from Dresden. When I got to the station for
Seeblick, I rang em up, and was told you were in Zurich. And
here I am. Awfully sorry, but I m dying o f hunger and thirst.
May I have a bite?
Without awaiting his leave she fell upon the victuals, poured
herself out a cup o f tea, and put away an amazing amount of
bread, butter, ham, sausage, cheese, and eggs in record time.
Meanwhile, Kerkhoven sat looking on in amazement from
the opposite side o f the table. She had greatly changed since he
had last seen her two years ago. Kerkhoven wondered how old
she might be . . . he had forgotten . . . twenty and a bittock . . .
looked more . . . mature . . . not gained much in good looks . . .
never had been pretty except in childhood. Her face was too
deathly pale and the skin too freckled . . . they showed up
unpleasingly on the white background. She had fuzzy, copperred hair; an extremely long and narrow chin. Her lips were
smeared with a crude red that did not match her colouring.
Yet there was an amazing charm about the lass her eyes. These
were of an emerald-green hue, brilliant, challenging; they lit
up the whole countenance, so that what, at a first glance, seemed
inharmonious, became on closer inspection picturesque and
exceptionally attractive.
At last she had eaten her fill. With a boyish gesture, she wiped
her mouth, and said:
I simply had to have a talk with you, Uncle Joseph. Cant
face up to Mother. D ont know what I ought to do. I m in an
awful fix ; much worse than you imagine.
You can be quite frank with me, my dear. Go ahead, and tell
me all about it. We have always been such good friends . . .
I m four months pregnant, U ncle.
Hm. Awkward, when a girls not married, Aleid. And I dont
suppose you are . . .
N o.
Who is . . .

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H es dead.
Kerkhoven started. Then he leaned back in his chair. Aleid
propped her elbows on the table, and clasped her neck in her
hands.
Ever heard of Melchior Hildenbrand ? she asked softly.
An officer in the navy, a hero, yes, Uncle Joseph, a hero. War
cripple. Perhaps there was not his equal in the whole of
Europe.
Yes, I ve heard of him . . .
W ell, they shot him two days ago. Murdered him. At night,
as he was coming home. A communist . . . and in the back,
too . . . right through the head . . .
What about you?
M e? Oh, yes, me . . . nothing much to say . . . its his
kid . .
Kerkhoven looked at her, speechless. Her unnatural calm
made him anxious for her. There was a queer, bluish hue about
her face. In her emerald-green eyes was a strained and burning
expression. A wry smile played about her lips, but it was the
smile of a martyr trying not to give way.
Splendid, eh Uncle Joseph ? D ont you think so, too ? Splendid
people . . . a splendid time . . .
I recall now having read about it in the papers, said Kerk
hoven, dully. W ont you tell me more . . .
Cant, she interrupted, in a shrill voice. D ont even know
how I got here . . . just wanted to get away . . . right away . . .
Some friends saw me off at the station. They got my ticket. . . .
Otherwise I might have . . . God knows what would have
happened. . . . He was condemned to death ages ago. Knew all
about it. Everybody laid themselves out to make life a hell for
me. Grandma even threatened to disinherit me. But I told her
I would. . . . Disinherit! Grand! I had no idea they were such
cowards, all of them. Listen, I believe I m going crazy, quite
mad. Have you such a thing as a drop of brandy?
She tossed her hair back out of her eyes and laughed. Then
she continued inconsequentially:

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You must hear all about him. I could go on for days talking
about Melchior. Got a picture somewhere. W ait.
Aleid sprang up and fetched the attache case. She hunted for
the key, but could not find it. Then she pressed back the spring
lock, and the lid flew open with a jerk. She had forgotten to lock
the case.
This was lent me at the last moment. Heaven knows by whom
. . . and I havent a notion whats in it.
As she spoke, she rummaged feverishly among the contents
until her hand lighted on a book. But by now she had forgotten
what she sought, and merely handed the volume to Kerkhoven.
Just been reading that, she said with hectic haste. M arvellous!
Melchior gave it me a day or two before . . . The man who wrote
that, knows everything about . . . I d give anything to have a
talk with him . .
Kerkhoven glanced inquisitively at the title-page. Tina and
her Shadow -Alexander Herzogs latest work! T h e story was
about two women, a mother and daughter, who wrecked one
anothers lives because one really experienced what the other
would have liked to experience but only experienced in the world
o f dreams. Kerkhoven knew the book well, and could understand
the profound impression it must have made on the young girl
before him. He remembered that in the next room was a lengthy
message from the author to whom this poor, wounded child
referred as to a saviour. Queer, how chance links things
together, he reflected; and the threads he himself held seemed
to glow and bum in his hands.
Meanwhile Aleid had sat down on a low stool. Her face was
like a mask, and from her great emerald-green eyes so like
those o f some exotic lizard the tears streamed down unheeded.
She did not notice Kerkhovens compassionate gaze, but licked
up a couple o f tears that had trickled to the corners o f her
mouth and asked in a toneless voice whether she could stay
the night.
O f course, my dear. I ll look up a blanket or two. You can
have a comfortable shake-down on the sofa. But of one thing

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I m certain: youll have to go to your mother. I cant keep this

from her. W hy should I ?
Aleid puckered her brows.
Funny, but so far Mother has never entered my mind. She
gives me the creeps . . . such a wonderful character . . . and
I have no character at all . . .
Do you consider that an advantage?
I cant tell . . . never thought the matter over. Ought one
to have a character? Have you a character?
Perhaps. Each o f us needs to possess at least a face . . .
A face? Agreed. I havent seen Mother for ages. W hats
she like ? I hardly know her . . .
Do you know m e?
A man is easier to know . . .
Your mother is the one creature on earth whom you need,
my dear. But you will have to open your heart . . .
Heart, Uncle Joseph! I have no heart left . . .
No braggadocio, please little girl.
Oh, I am not swaggering, believe me, Uncle Joseph. T h e
heart is something preconceived; or, let us say, a false premise.
But dont let us launch into a philosophical discussion. So you
honestly consider I should take refuge in mothers arms?
T h e best thing for you both.
In that case you must do something for me, cried Aleid,
looking at him with uncertain eyes. I dont want to be made
to talk. I dont want to explain, I dont want to be asked questions,
I am . . . She sprang to her feet, and seizing the empty tea-cup
flung it on to the floor so that it broke into a hundred pieces.
Like t h a t . . . thats what I feel like . . . Can you understand?
Aleid went to the window, opened it, breathed deeply, filling
her lungs with the cool night air. Kerkhoven knelt on the floor,
and picked up the broken crockery. After a while, the girl turned
round and said ruefully:
Poor Uncle Joseph; you really must go to bed. D ont worry
about me. I shant need any blankets. Shall just lie down on the
sofa as I am. I m so tired . . . Oh, I m so tired . . .

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101

Kerkhoven remained four and twenty hours longer in Zurich

than he had intended, and this prolongation of his stay was
entirely due to the manuscript he had received from Alexander
Herzog. Aleid slept on till late afternoon, for her uncle had warned
the servant not to disturb her in any way. He only left his digs
in order to feed at a nearby restaurant, and he cancelled his
appointments. He had started reading Herzogs manuscript
late that night, and at four o clock the next afternoon he was
still immersed in the document. From the start he had been
amazed; he felt that he had plunged into the world of illusion.
A t a later date, the following conversation took place between
himself and H erzog:
Curious! W e so often meet at the cross-roads, you and I,
said the doctor.
How dyou mean? queried Herzog.
Well, first of all that reference to going forth into the wilder
ness; and then, this question of the world of illusion. For years
I have been preparing, like a Sven Hedin, for my voyage of
discovery into the world of illusion. I hope you do not find the
analogy presumptuous?
Kerkhoven had asked Alexander Herzog to try to give a
portrait of that strange creature called Ganna. T h e author had
succeeded beyond expectations, he had not spared himself
either, nor had he minimised the horror of the reality. T h e doctor
was reduced to silence before such a document. He felt an
outsider, terribly far removed from the circumstances, and this
was perhaps to his advantage. For the pictures conjured up by
Herzog, though but shadows yet how authentic! would other
wise have crushed, have trampled him under foot. Kerkhoven
was not familiar with these effects. Never before had he used
a mirror of this kind to capture a piece of life in which he was
to play an active part. For this was a magic mirror. T h e conviction
it produced was supra-sensual. That this conviction proceeded
from the senses and was restricted to the world of perceptions,
was but semblance. The figure signified too much to be valid

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in and by itself. T h e study of it gave, likewise, a comprehensive

view o f Alexander Herzog; but at the same time it threw the
limelight upon the most intimate motive forces of the epoch.
Kerkhoven found the experience overwhelming, and remained
for hours in a condition of amazement and perplexity. Such a
man as this Alexander Herzog was unquestionably evidential
like the clairvoyant Thirriot; acted, as she did, under compulsion
by external forces though enormously better equipped with
metaphor and other means o f verbal expression. Thus he had
become an organ, a passive but articulate instrument in the
current of events and of being, communing with spirits, the
mouthpiece of so many mortals who themselves are dumb. That
was what proved so exciting, so consternating, about the affair;
that was why this stupendous manifestation seemed to fill space
Ganna, and only Ganna, drawing near to Alexander from
remote distances and then passing away to the opposite pole;
greedily swallowing the world and establishing a universe of
impudent falsehoods in its place. This phantom had no right
to rule the heart and the imagination; it must be expelled from
the sphere in which, once unchained, it continued to work
havoc; it must be exorcised; its nullity and its illusory character
must be demonstrated; a way must be found to that power
before which it was of no account and signified nothing more
than a systematised monstrosity . . .
In those hours o f solitary meditation, Kerkhoven came to
some important conclusions; a kind of mental revolution took
place, for he renounced many of his most cherished principles
and concepts. Denying himself to callers, he spent the remainder
of the afternoon and the whole evening in the laboratory. That
very day, the brain of his great friend had been delivered to the
clinic according to the dead mans instructions. It had taken
several months to prepare it for examination. Kerkhoven sat in
contemplation before the brownish-yellow and strangely compact
substance, looking into its convolutions and plexuses which were
now so rigid whereas once they had been the active centres of
such sublime thoughts, of a life far removed from any kind of

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illusion, of a life wholly pure and wholly devoted to the realm

o f ideas. Here it lay, a heap of pickled nerve-plasm, not much
bigger than a couple of fists.
Tw ice he rang up his lodging in the Dufour Strasse, and each
time was told that the young lady had not shown herself. He
thought it strange . . .
102
When he returned home about ten, the porters wife informed
him that she had seen nothing of his step-daughter. Genuinely
alarmed, he hastened upstairs, to find Aleid stretched on the
sofa. At the first glance he knew what had happened. He shook
the girl, put his ear to her heart, pushed up her eyelids, smelt
her breath. No doubt possible: she was poisoned. Veronal
poisoning. T he tip o f her nose and her hands and feet were
already cold; the pupils of her eyes were no bigger than a pins
head. As he raised her to a sitting posture, there came a rattling
sound from her throat. In two minutes he got a stomach pump
to work, and ordered the woman to prepare a hot bath. Another
couple o f minutes sufficed to get in touch with a young doctor
at the hospital, and it was arranged that an ambulance be sent.
T h e stomach having been emptied, Aleid was carried into a hot
bath, and rubbed and pummelled back to consciousness. She
could not at once be transported, however, for violent retching
set in, and kept her in pain for a full half-hour. Kerkhoven bled
her a second time. A t length, wrapped in rugs, she was carried
down to the waiting car, the two doctors taking their places beside
the couch. Kerkhoven stayed with her at the hospital till one
oclock that night, and when he got back in the small hours it
was with the certainty that the unhappy girls life had been saved.
He fell into a profound sleep. An hour later, he woke with a
start and felt extraordinarily clear-headed. He was bathed in
perspiration, and when he placed a hand on his breast it came
away dripping as with warm water. Getting up, he slipped off
his pyjamas and gave himself a good rub down. While doing this,
he stood before the looking-glass and noticed that there were
two dull brown patches on his face running diagonally upward

JOSEPH

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50 7

from the eyes. Queer, he thought, as he moved to get into bed

again. But at the first step, his knees gave way. He looked down
at his legs in surprise, somewhat as a rider might at a trusty
steed which had served him well for many a year and has
suddenly foundered beneath him. With great difficulty, he crept
back to bed, lying on the edge where the sheets were dry. In his
feet and belly and chest a formication began, while his neck
went icy cold, and his eyes flickered.
He noted these symptoms without feeling in the least alarmed.
With a faint smile he listened to his heart-beats, felt his pulse;
rather threadlike, not easy to find, he thought. What was hap
pening? Had Death taken up a lodging inside his body? Death
entered, like a moth inside a coat which one day is shaken out
leaving the owner of the garment distressed to find the hole
the insect had eaten? But an insect, a moth, these are giants
compared with the tiny thing that had started its work of
destruction within his own body. . . . O r was there a well-laid
scheme of upbuilding? Was the microscopical architect working
with a definite aim in view, taking his material from the worn
tissues, from the ashes of divine life, collecting patiently, putting
together with equal patience until each living cell was replaced
by a dead one? Would this parasite and dictator continue his
underground work until the magnificent cathedral of blood and
albumin, of phosphorus and nitrogen, fell into ruin? A tran
saction as logical as birth and as incomprehensible. Death is
incomprehensible. It may be a symbol, a concept, an idea, a
dread, anything you choose; but death can never be a reality. . .
103
Must be prepared for every eventuality, Kerkhoven reflected.
He knew that one did not get very far by self-diagnosis. A doctor
cannot examine his own bodily functions. Y et to call in a col
league would merely lead to tiresome explanations and to methods
of treatment in whose efficacy he had ceased to believe. He
would not allow himself to be lulled to rest by the assurance
that on the morrow the threatening symptoms would vanish

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leaving not a trace behind. T h e body often behaves like a false

friend, hurting one in the back, while pretending to be affable
and loyal. In such circumstances one needs to be on guard
against its machinations.
He made blood-tests at suitable intervals, took his bloodpressure, noted down certain accesses of fatigue, was aware of
a swelling in the lymphatic glands. Though fairly clear as to
what was going on behind the scenes, Kerkhoven did not give
a definite name to his indisposition. He would have to deal with
it by other means than a recognition and a knowledge of the
symptoms. . . .
But we shall draw a veil over the further development of this
process. It would be a work of supererogation to follow a Joseph
Kerkhoven in all his comings and goings, to search out the
precautions he took to safeguard his earthly tegument and behind
which, unbeknownst, he was changing an obsolete mental attitude
for a new one. Readers of Etzel Andergast will perhaps remember
the enigmatical apraxia Kerkhoven suffered from during the days
following Johann Irlens death. That was the beginning of his
second existence. T h e pains of his third rebirth were not so
agonising and catastrophic, but their effects went deeper. In the
first place, he needed to set about systematically modifying his
immediate environment; must watch his every word, glance,
facial expression; must not raise a suspicion in any ones mind;
must yield up no material for observation and comment; must
never let himself go, not even when alone. The next essential
was a prognosis, a forecast. But for the moment, this was obscure.
104

Aleid made good progress. Next day, after a lengthy visit to the
hospital, Kerkhoven returned to Seeblick. He asked Marie to
come upstairs to his study, and he told her all that had happened,
concealing nothing, mitigating nothing. He knew that Marie was
better able to bear the shock of a terrible truth if she became
acquainted with it at once. Beating about the bush would merely
rouse her to an intolerable pitch of mental excitement. She

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listened to his tale in absolute silence. Her cheeks went very

pale, but she did not say a word. When she got up to make
ready for the journey to Zurich, she could hardly drag herself
to the door. Kerkhoven was at her side immediately, his arms
about her. With closed eyes and trembling lips, she leaned her
head on his shoulder.
Thank you, dear, she murmured, you are so good, so
kind. . .
D o you think youll be all right travelling by yourself?
I can have a try, anyway, she answered. If I want you,
I shall ring you up.
She did not call him. Leaving on Thursday evening, on
Sunday she was home again bringing Aleid with her. Though
not quite herself yet, the girl was by then out of danger. The
hospital authorities had no hesitation in handing her over to
her mothers care, knowing that she would be properly looked
after at Seeblick. Even so short a journey, however, caused a
relapse. Her speech was lalling, and the corneal reflex was
absent. Kerkhoven ordered her to keep her bed until further
notice.
That same day he succeeded for the first time in breaking
through Jeanne M allerys reserve. He spent an hour and a half
in earnest conversation with her and in the end she admitted,
or at least hinted at, what was lying so heavy upon her conscience.
Not that Kerkhoven failed to realise what was amiss; but he
wanted her to admit it of her own will and not carry the hidden
burden about with her any longer. The question which troubled
her was whether one could murder a person by the mere wishing.
She did not use such words as wish murder or imagination
murder, but she had a sense of guilt upon her for having desired
to see Selma out of the way. Many an old folk-tale embodies
this idea. Should one become obsessed with the delusion,
experience has shown that an individual thus affected is prone
to believe himself endowed with occult powers if an event happens
which coincides with his secret wishes. He fancies that nature
carries out what his sinful soul has dreamed. The fundamental

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wickedness of a person like Selma Imst poisons the atmosphere,

though it seldom shows itself in its full nakedness, usually
assuming the humble garb of back-biting, niggardliness,
or untruthfulness. In Selma it took the form of niggardliness.
Jeanne told him, for instance, that when she first went to stay
with the Imsts, they had accepted her as boarder. One day she
forgot to let Selma know that she would not be home for midday
dinner, or, rather, she had sent word too late, not until eleven
o clock. Nothing had as yet been cooked, only a saucepan of
water was on the stove when the message came. But Selma was
furious, and charged her boarder ten centimes to cover the cost
of the coal and the pinch of salt that had been wasted in the
water. From such details and from a number of analogous
examples Kerkhoven was able to reconstruct a character portrait
o f the dead woman which led Jeanne to see how things had
really been. She was simultaneously horrified and impressed.
Kerkhoven showed how Selma had planned the suicide so as
to make it appear a murder; then the scales fell from the young
womans eyes. A t last she cried out:
I always guessed it was like that, and yet I did not dare
believe my own intuitions. Oh, to think . . .
Yes, things happened thus; thus they must have happened,
said Kerkhoven. T he court was satisfied that death had been
deliberately sought by Frau Imst. T h e evidence sufficed. They
did not need to unravel the motives. Nor should we worry our
heads over the matter. You know for certain now, and the sooner
you forget all about it, the better.
Is it possible to look upon such a creature as a human
being?
O f course! No use being mealy-mouthed about our fellowmortals. You see, my dear young lady, any one of us is capable
o f good deeds and of bad; and it is hard sometimes to know
when one has acted well or ill.
Jeanne Mallery looked at him pensively. Then she seized his
hand and was about to raise it to her lips, but he was able to
disengage himself before she had time to carry out her purpose.

JOSEPH

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I 5
A day later, he received an alarming letter from Bettina Herzog.
She had obviously written in great haste and perturbation of
mind. Alexander, herself, and their little son had left Ebenweiler
precipitately, and had taken rooms in an insignificant hostelry
in the Pratigau. W hy they had selected this place, it was im
possible to say. Kerkhoven got the impression that something
unforeseen must have happened to make them cut short their
journey in this way. He rang up the inn, and as soon as Bettina
answered the call, he enquired why they had not come straight
to Seeblick. Bettina explained in a harassed voice:
That was our intention. But Alexander suddenly declared
he could not see people, that he hated the Lake of Constance,
that the idea of staying in Zurich filled him with horror. So we
got down from the train, and weve been in this hole-and-corner
place for two days. I dont know what to do. It seems to me
a fit of hysteria.
There must be a reason, began Kerkhoven.
Our house has been put up for sale, and he cant get over
the fact.
Kerkhoven reflected for a minute, then he said:
Listen, Frau Bettina. D ont worry. Just stay where you are
for a few days longer. He must not be thwarted in any way,
nor persuaded to do anything he does not himself propose. Fall
in with all his wayward fancies, even the most unreasonable
things. H ell want to go somewhere else, to-morrow or the day
after. Go with him wherever the whim takes him. Keep me
informed of where you are. Courage!
During this talk, Marie had been standing behind her husband,
and it needed but a few words to supplement her knowledge.
Since he knew how interested she was in Alexander Herzog and,
after reading Bettinas letters, in the latter too, Kerkhoven said :
T h eyll soon be under this roof, youll see if they arent. You
had better learn beforehand all there is to learn about Herzogs
private life. I want you to get a definite picture in your
mind. He would certainly approve. I think I may venture. . . .

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Kerkhoven handed her the manuscript, foreseeing clearly the

impression it would make on her. T o enter Gannas charmed
circle was like having a caustic fluid applied, a fluid which
penetrated every pore; and there was no need for personal con
tact with the woman, the portrait presented by an overwrought
imagination such as Herzogs worked to the same effect. Kerk
hoven was so extremely busy during the following days that he
hardly caught a glimpse of Marie. An urgent summons had
reached him from Solothurn; then he was called to a severe
case of melancholia attonita at Waldshut in Baden. This patient
was an old friend of the Doctors ; the two men had been students
together at the university, and the man had climbed to high
ministerial rank. It was twenty-five years since they had seen
one another, but the invalid suddenly remembered his erstwhile
chum, and he set his heart on having Kerkhovens advice.
Rumours had reached him as to the doctors amazing success
in this domain of medicine; indeed, the strangest tales were
rife, not only in the immediate neighbourhood and in Switzer
land, but far afield throughout the German-speaking community.
Nor was Dame Gossip invariably kind and obliging. Especially
in the vicinity of his home there was much and increasing hos
tility, and it often seemed to him that some one was at work
stirring up the population against him. Both Marie and Nurse
Else passed on some unpleasant reports; but he took these things
in good part, though there were times when they saddened his
day for him. The two women were more concerned than he,
and were quietly trying to unearth the originator.
Marie was devoting time and energy to nursing her daughter
Aleid, hardly leaving the girl for a minute. Thus it was only
late in the evening that husband and wife could snatch a moment
for themselves. Even then, if Kerkhoven was not dead-tired,
he would be working at his book, or writing up and filing his
notes of the days events. When, towards the end of the week,
she handed him back Herzogs outpouring, she looked like a
woman who has left her bed for the first time after a severe
illness. She laid the document on his writing-table, making no

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comment. Then she took a chair at some distance from where

he sat absorbed in his task, and gazed up towards the rafters.
Ensued a long pause. A t length he could bear the oppressive
silence no longer; and in order to break it, rather than to hear
her opinion, he asked:
W ell, what have you to say about it?
What can one possibly say? I m ashamed of my own sex.
You seem to have taken the matter seriously to heart.
And have you not done so?
I have endeavoured to look at it . . . how shall I explain?
through a telescope.
Very fine so far as you are concerned, but unfortunately it
is not every one who happens to be an astronomer.
Nor was it so easy for me to remain aloof, I can assure you.
Ganna explains so many queer phenomena in life ; in her person
are assembled innumerable . . . even certain happenings in my
past are explained by . . .
You are thinking of Nina? But, heavens! Nina was an
innocent angel in comparison. . .
Agreed. Still we must not forget how tyrannical was her
love. She made perpetual claims. Its madness for one person
to imagine that exclusive possession of another is possible. Recall
the circumstances. But I was not so much thinking of Nina,
as of my mother. Youll agree that she is more intimately a part
of me, of my blood and brain. She knew no measure; being
immoderate in chastisement, and immoderate in her adoration
o f me. During my childhood she ruled me with a rod of iron,
and drove me half crazy. A y, she was a Ganna, belonged to the
same species as Ganna. You can imagine that I m in no hurry
to allow this almost corporeal Ganna to creep too intimately
into my life.
Its a marvel to me, Joseph, that you can manage to keep
so dispassionate.
Not easy, my love. Theres a reason.
I know. But you must not forget the two beings who have
not the power to assume an unruffled aloofness. . .

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How could I ever forget? . .

W ell, you see . . . it may be too late. . .
D ont worry about that, I ve got them in mind. I need them.
Kerkhoven spoke in so strange a tone, that Marie looked at
him questioningly.
What on earth do you mean by need ?
Just what the word signifies! I need them, and he prodded
the blotting-pad with the point of his pencil. There are times
when one needs this person or the other. Is that so novel an
idea to you?
Marie contemplated her husband attentively. She got up, and
stepped over to where he sat. Placing a hand beneath his chin,
she raised his head so that he was forced to look at her.
How changed you are, Joseph. You are hiding something
from me. What is it?
He shrank back in alarm. O f course Marie noticed the move
ment. He was furious at having given himself away, and tried
to pass the episode off as a j'oke, but was not successful. Marie
pressed for an answer to her enquiry. He obstinately refused
to take the matter seriously, and pretended that he could not
make head or tail of what she was driving at. In the end, she
gave up in despair, and left the room.
106
Like another Cain, Alexander Herzog wandered restlessly from
place to place. Uprooted from the home he loved, the earth and
landscape he loved, the quietude he loved, every locality was
a fresh torture. His restlessness assumed two antagonistic forms:
a longing for human companionship; and a dread of mixing
with his fellow-mortals. He was part, abdicated prince in exile
trying to win supporters to a lost cause, and part, fugitive
bankrupt afraid lest he should be recognised.
Later, when Kerkhoven was trying to discover the reasons
underlying this condition, he found a complicated medley of
motives covering a sinister malady, namely a destruction of the
consciousness of personal identity. Hence the urge towards

JOSEPH

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5*5

communicativeness, confession, declaration, and self-justification

on the one hand; whilst on the other there was the fear of being
taken for an ostracised creature, counting for nothing, a man
who had grossly overestimated his role in the world.
The works he had written in the past, works towards which
he felt as a devoted mother towards her ten or twelve offspring,
seemed to him no more than dummies; the fame upon which
he had depended for support, was a figment of his imagination;
the love and admiration which flowed to him from his many
readers, was hypocrisy; the hoped for harvest of ripened creation
he would reap as the years advanced, was wild illusion. Every
thing was smashed, so far as his intimate universe was concerned.
Bettina, though herself at the end of her tether, did everything
in her power to mitigate her husbands gloom. She fully realised
how menacing was the danger. In spite of her own profound
unhappiness, she endeavoured to inspire Alexander with selfconfidence an attribute she herself often lacked. He listened,
but shook his head.
How are you going to prove to me that, so far as the outside
world is concerned, I still exist? How satisfy me that I am of
use to my neighbour? You are thinking of Alexander Herzog
as I formerly believed him to b e ; and not the miserable vestiges
o f Alexander Herzog, artificially keeping himself alive with the
energy of a life which has already passed into corruption. Do
I still belong to the epoch, or has my epoch marooned me on
some desolate shore? Answer if you can. But you cannot answer.
Even in your eyes I am finished and done with . . . a dismissed
servant who can be well content if he is given a testimonial
saying that he was honest, diligent, and faithful. Things are so
with me. All Ganna has done is to put the axe to a rotten tree.
When he gave way to these fits of despair, Bettinas heart
quailed. If she contradicted him, he considered that she was
merely bamboozling him. He needed other confirmations than
hers. In search of these, he roamed from town to town, travelling
to Geneva, Munich, Heidelberg, Paris, St. Moritz, and back to
his Franconian homeland. Wherever he went, he would talk for

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days on end, with acquaintances and strangers alike. According

to their demeanour, he would draw conclusions as to their true
opinion of him. During every such conversation, there would
appear a querulous and anxious look in his eyes, as if he were
asking: Am I still myself? Is my world still your world? Do
I actually speak to you when I am talking, and do you hear what
I say?
That which had stirred him and hunted him forward on his
flight into the mountains now raged within him like a devouring
flame. When he was met in a friendly spirit, his initial pleasure
at the encounter was all too soon changed to mistrust. If he
was made much of, he would think, with bitterness gnawing
at his soul, that others were acclaimed with greater enthusiasm.
Should young people show him respect and admiration, he would
ascribe this to a lack of judgment; in elders, he would become
suspicious of their motives, accusing them of wishing to win
him to some reactionary cause. Women were prejudiced,
friends corrupted by their initial sympathy. Commiseration,
recognition nothing better than a rather munificent form of
tipping too little, or too much.
People rendered him unhappy; their interests bored him ; their
occupations he despised. T o his innermost heart he was con
vinced that he remained a stranger, so that he never felt genuinely
accepted and adopted. Social intercourse was an abomination;
but tete-a-tete talks fatigued him immensely. His politeness made
it impossible to keep silent when accosted; but his impatience
prevented him from being a good listener. He was too intensely
preoccupied with himself to be able to give himself up to inter
course with his fellows; and his fastidiousness could not be
satisfied with quantity or with mere stimulating companionship.
He received visitors out of a sense of duty, or to gratify his
curiosity, or because he was too frightened to say no ; at the
end of half an hour he would be dead-beat. When no one called
or took any notice of him, he felt into the blackest gloom, and
read therein a confirmation of his worst fears. Every place he
visited became unbearable so soon as he put foot in it; every

JOSEPH

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farewell was hard, whether from a person he was quite indifferent

to, or from a hotel room, or from a casual acquaintance. Stam
pede had become a necessity and a torment; settling down was
a yearning he could never satisfy.
Matters went from bad to worse. Bettina could not but ask
herself how she was going to bear up under the strain. She had
left Helmut in a friends care at Winterthur. When the dogs
were baying too close at her heels, she would take refuge with
her little son for a day or two. On such occasions, if Alexander
failed to send news of himself, she seemed like one crazed, so
great was her anxiety, and she counted the hours which separated
her from him. He sometimes said:
I shall go completely to pieces if you dont stand by me.
But when she gave him her company, he behaved like a
curmudgeon, treating her as though he considered her presence
burdensome. Indeed, everything was a burden to him, his inner
and his outer circumstances, the objects of his hate and of his
love. She tried to persuade him to take up his work, to which
he objected:
I cannot. I have no peace, no solid ground whereon to stand.
I m sucked dry.
Bettina implored him to come with her to Kerkhoven. He
replied:
On no account. I dont need a keeper.
One day she read him a passage in a letter from Kerkhoven.
T h e writer referred to the Ganna document, and then added:
Please tell your husband, that I cannot for a moment shake
off the impression produced by his tale. W hile I read, it seemed
to me that I was being dragged by the hair along a burning
street. Its not fair to send such a communication to me, and
then to become invisible. He must come and see me. I am waiting.
He has imposed a burden upon me that only he can lift. . . .
Alexander remained silent and sullen. He m um bled:
N o. Then, with a bitter laugh he added: W hy the devil
does not the man write to m e? He prowled round the room
for a while, before he spoke again: Yet what have I to complain

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of? W hats it all about, anyway? Poor old Lazarus has written
his memoirs. . . . H es probably got dozens of patients who pour
out their woes to him. . .
What is it you expect him to do ? asked Bettina. What,
indeed, could he have done?
Alexander made no reply. Maybe he had hoped that
Kerkhoven would write to him personally, and not use Bettina
as go-between. Later he came to understand that a letter of the
sort would have cost Kerkhoven days of labour if it were to
produce a desirable effect. Besides, it did not fit in with the
doctors plans.
107
Alexander decided to go to Milan where his son Ferry was living.
He felt in need of a heart-to-heart talk with the young man.
That is to say, he wanted Ferry to come to a decision, to decide
whether in future his allegiance was going to be given: to the
father who had been instrumental in setting him up in life, who
had always been a good friend, and who had invariably tried
to make up to the man for the wretchedness of a childhood and
adolescence spent between parents who were perpetually at strife;
or to the mother who, with an extravagant display of feeling
which never answered any purpose whatsoever, had encom
passed her sons life with an atmosphere of unrest and dis
ruption. A fateful alternative! Such an interview could never
lead to a satisfactory issue. Bettina knew that beforehand, but
her warnings did not prevail. Alexander was set on his project,
and there was no gainsaying him. Bettina categorically refused
to allow her husband to travel alone as he had intended.
T h ey put up at the Cavour Hotel. Ferry had promised to pay
his call at ten the same morning. A t nine-thirty Bettina left the
hotel to visit the Brera Palace. Returning about noon, she ran
into Ferry in the hall. She greeted him cordially, having always
felt extremely friendly towards him, although she knew very
well that he had never forgiven her for marrying his father.
T h e pretext for his dislike was, that he had come to believe,
or had allowed himself to be persuaded to believe, that Bettina

JOSEPH

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was too much the lady and too little the wife. Bettina knew this
as well, and smiled pensively, for her position in relation to
Alexanders elder children had from the outset been a difficult
one. It had needed all her tact and all her self-discipline to
meet this particular emergency. Ferrys personal appearance
pleased her greatly for he was tall and handsome, though of
a rather melancholy disposition. Chary of words by nature, he
often created the impression of being surly. He had not come
unscathed through life, for he had been a very precocious lad,
and, like the majority of those who reach maturity at too early
an age, he lacked self-confidence.
Bettina now asked him why he was going so soon.
W ont you stay and have lunch with us?
Hardly vouchsafing a word in reply, he hurried past her
and disappeared. She gazed after his retreating figure, feeling
greatly distressed. Then she hastened along complicated corridors
till she reached her room. Alexander, deadly white, stood before
her.
Oh, my darling, whats the matter? she cried, guiding him
to a chair into which he sank limply.
He burst into an uncontrollable fit of weeping. Bettina knelt
down and put her arms about him. She asked no questions,
but was gentle and loving, stroked his hands, murmured in
coherent but comforting words. A t last he pulled himself together.
T h e mere sound of her voice was a consolation to him. He clung
to her like a child. Not for a moment was she in doubt as to
what had occurred. Matters had taken the course she had fore
seen. In his innocence, Alexander had been completely non
plussed by finding himself face to face with Gannas son; yes,
in spite of everything, Ferry was Gannas boy and Alexander
had so greatly hoped and believed he would be met by his son,
his very own boy.
Bettina now made a huge mistake. She spoke to her husband
with the utmost frankness, forgetting that a son dare not deny
his mother, not even when she has wronged him, not even when
his love has been given to his father. No, a son must not,

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even for his fathers sake, disavow the woman who gave him
birth. In this matter there is no right or justice so far as he is
concerned. Bettina forgot this elementary truth because she was
tired, because her powers of consideration were exhausted,
because in her utter weariness of spirit she could no longer hold
the scales even. . . .
H es my own flesh and blood, protested Alexander angrily.
You cant cut such a bond with a knife.
Flesh and blood are one thing, and the tribe with its loyalties
another, cried Bettina passionately. You are sacrificing your
self to a hideous idol. You are obsessed by a mania for blood
ties, father ties, responsibility ties; and dead duties blind you
to the fact that you have living duties to perform.
Living duties ?
How can you ask? Duties towards myself, for instance. Duties
towards your youngest son. He, too, is your own flesh and blood.
Ah, but hell always be your very own boy; hell never leave
you in the lurch.
Alexander gazed blankly before him. After a lengthy silence,
he said in a toneless vo ice:
Little Helmut? A y . . . maybe . . . though I have lost faith
in every one. I dont even believe in you any longer, Bettina.
Like a poisoned shaft, fear entered the womans heart.
108
For some days thereafter, Alexander Herzog was more than
usually taciturn. It may be that he was ashamed of himself.
Bettina, to relieve the situation and with every conceivable pre
caution, began to dig down to the kernel of the trouble, shovelling
up layer upon layer of inhibitions beneath which the cause of
his mistrust lay buried. Hesitant and abashed, he reminded her
o f her enthusiastic reports and tales about Kerkhoven, of the
innumerable letters the two exchanged, of the frequent telephone
calls between herself and Seeblick, and how in spite of all her
arts of dissimulation she could not hide from him the fact that
the doctor was constantly in her thoughts.

JOSEPH

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You have put your whole trust in him, Herzog said, with
a movement of despair; and thats why you are so keen on
bringing me under his care. W hy deny it? You respect him,
you admire him, you trust him. I am no more to you now
than a dismal habit . . . and thats what I am besides being a
care. . . .
Bettina had listened, curious and silent, her sad eyes twinkling
with roguish amusement.
A ll thats sheer nonsense, she said at length, sinful and
malicious nonsense, you silly old darling Alexander. One cant
take you seriously. Or do you consider that we ought seriously
to discuss such idiocies? Look here, my dear love, w eve got
something better and more urgent to do than to waste our time
over folderols.
Well, you might at least acknowledge that you are perpetually
thinking of the fellow.
And why not? Is there any law to prevent me thinking about
any one I please? cried Bettina, cheerfully. Am I to be barred
from everything which does not happen to please M y Lord
Alexander Herzogs fancy ? Seems to me you are still under the
spell of the kraal! N o; I utterly refuse to be cloistered away
from the world. I refuse to put on sackcloth and ashes year in
year out for the sake of conjugal fidelity. There you have it
plain and flat!
W hats the link between you and him? asked Alexander
simply. Is it friendship?
Bettina shrugged, and then said:
Do you really need to put the dots on the i s? Very well,
then, lets call it friendship.
Is there such a thing as friendship?
Bettina looked at him, and said never a word.
Hour by hour, his depression grew upon him. From time to
time he spoke of Ferry, in disconnected sentences, despairingly.
One day he told Bettina the following reminiscence:
When Ferry was two years old I went into the nursery, and
found the lad sitting on the floor in a ray of sunlight. He had
R*

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a tablespoon in his hand, and was constantly carrying it to his

mouth. When I asked what he was up to, he said with obvious
delight, that he was eating the sun. Well, I m afraid the child
never had enough sunshine in his life.
Alexander was pensive for a time. W hy should he have re
called this particular incident rather than any one of a hundred
others? . . .
Ferry wrote a long, explanatory letter, and this appeared to
ease his fathers mind. But Alexander refused to show it to
Bettina. Since she considered a second interview might prove
dangerous, she used all her wiles to induce Alexander to leave
Milan promptly. He was never allowed to be ten minutes by
himself. A few mornings later, however, after she had been
writing downstairs, she returned to her room to find Alexander
in a state of panic. He was the living confirmation of what she
had just been explaining to Kerkhoven:
M y husband seems as though he had been hammered, or
hacked to pieces. I have to look on at a spiritual death. Y et I
continue to believe in a resurrection; yes, I still hope a miracle
will occur. Who is to perform the miracle? I know of no one
but yourself who could bring such a wonder to pass. Am I
expecting too much of you? You must not rob me o f my last
assurance. . . .
Herzogs Italian publisher placed his car at their disposal, and
they drove to Como. Alexander dreaded train journeys, so
Bettina put no opposition in his way when, in a fit of extrava
gance, he hired a Swiss car for ten days. He planned their trip,
and fixed where they should sleep the night. Bettina let herself
be taken whithersoever he wished. T h ey drove over the moun
tains into the Engadine; then across the Bernina and Stelvio
passes into the Tauferer and Munster valleys, by Meran and
the Dolomites to Lake Garda and back by the Julier pass and
the St. Gothard. He would settle down nowhere; human beings
got on his nerves; the landscapes could not draw an appreciative
glance out of him; the sun failed to cheer; hardly the flicker
of a smile came to his lips; he never spoke to Bettina except

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to comment upon the weather or to decide upon their night

quarters.
A ravaged piece o f humanity, thought Bettina; poor,
desolate man.
There are women who possess such nobility o f soul and so
much valour that they can keep the image of what their beloved
had once been long after the reality is quite different. T h ey are
able to treasure the old picture in the storehouses of the heart
and mind. . . .
Bettina was plotting and contriving with Kerkhoven. The
doctor urged her to bring Alexander to Seeblick without further
delay; it was time the sick man came under his personal care.
She answered that this was no easy matter, for her husband
dreaded the hand which should seize and guide him. It needed
her utmost cunning and prudence to wean him to the idea.
Kerkhoven proposed she should entice Alexander to a place
which was within easy reach of Seeblick, so that the three of
them could meet as if by chance he would take charge after
that. It was agreed that on August 8th this encounter should
take place in a hotel at Lucerne. In order to allay Alexanders
suspicions and keep him punctual to the tryst, Bettina arranged
with her friend at Winterthur to bring Helmut to join his father
on that date. Alexander was yearning for a sight of the child.
109
Fight as she might against her own feelings, Marie could not
break down a fundamental antagonism towards her daughter,
though she lavished love and understanding upon the girl. As
so often happens, it was ostensibly a trifle which made Marie
fully aware of her attitude: Aleid was a confirmed nail-biter.
This habit infuriated Marie to so great an extent that she became
unjust wherever Aleid was concerned.
She realised that the girls impudent and rebellious spirit was
no more than a mask to hide an essential nihilism. Words were
wasted in such a case. Should words be used, they needed to
be hitherto never spoken words and who of us is capable of

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inventing a speech to meet the occasion ? Sympathy encountered

scorn; faith in a higher order of things was laughed out of court.
In Aleid, passion was swamped by reason, by the palpable, by
dialectic. For Aleid, destiny no longer held sway above the stars,
but was the expression o f the clash between social ills and human
baseness. As soon as the root of all evil and of all suffering had
been thus exposed, nothing was left but a choice between weak
acceptance of things as they are and a firm determination to
shatter this sorry scheme to bits in order to remould it nearer
to the hearts desire.
Marie felt as much in her bones, realising that modern youth
was faced with a torture of mind far exceeding anything that
her own generation had even dreamed of. Uncertainty dug its
roots deeper and wrought greater havoc than the religious doubts
o f a century when God still possessed a personality and a shape.
There were no signposts, no teachers, no masters, no princes
to act as guide; only misleaders and tyrants. T h e young no
longer loved life, but death; life was a weariness and a disgust
to them. They worshipped power and despised mankind. Is
such an outlook to be wondered at seeing the world they in
herited ? Despair, fear, want, such were the achievements of their
fathers and mothers who had been so proud to call themselves
human beings.
These things M arie ever and again repeated to herself when
she meditated upon Aleids condition. But the strange an
tagonism, a feeling which almost amounted to positive dislike,
remained in spite of careful reasoning, and inevitably led to
conflicts.
no
During a violent thunderstorm, at nightfall, Marie was sitting
in Aleids room. Aleid, leaning out of window, her elbows on
the sill, stared at the threatening sky as if she would have liked
to drink in the lightnings. In a pause between thunderclaps she
said in a husky, faltering voice:
How silly to try to kill oneself with a soporific. The doctors

JOSEPH

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can deal with that easily enough, for one cant consume veronal
by the pound.
Marie thought it enough to reply:
Your nature took better care of you than your understanding.
Nature! retorted Aleid mockingly. M y nature does nothing
for me. When I want to get anything out of it, a tussle is needed.
Just as when I want to get anything out of you.
A leid!
Its perfectly true. You always assume a moral standpoint.
Rotten!
You allowed your heart to be brayed in a mortar before you
came back to us, said Marie.
Aleid laughed bitterly. There was a violet flash from one of
the coal-black clouds into the stormy lake. W ith a deep sigh,
she leaned yet farther out of the window and nodded, as if she
felt at one with the quickly following roar of thunder.
What I should like best would be to be struck by lightning,
she said moodily; but such a piece of luck is not likely to come
my way. Is there any alternative? One could jump from the
top of a tower, or out of an airplane. Splendid! W hiz down
through the air, knowing that within five or ten seconds all
would be over. Glorious!
Crazy talk, interposed Marie dejectedly.
Even so, what difference does that make to the working of
cause and effect?
Is the only use of life, to throw it away?
Nothing else, M other; nothing else.
D ont you feel that there is anything in the world towards
which you have responsibilities ?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
But the child in your womb?
I was expecting that! Did I summon it? Do I need it? Does
any one want it? Is there any lack of ill-starred and superfluous
beings ? T h e very coming of this child should show you that the
nature you idealise has no more wits than a cow.
You can say that to the mother who gave you birth?

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O f course I can. Just think for a moment. If, before I was

conceived, you had known what an unhappy creature you were
going to bring into the world, you would have been able to save
yourself a great disappointment, and to save me the whole bally
business.
't Marie sprang to her feet.
That is a wicked thing to say! she exclaimed. You make
yourself detestable.
There was silence for a time, except for the uproar outside.
T h e face of the girl, who had come away from the window, but
was still contemplating the storm, looked in the flashes as if
carven out of white stone. Her chin was propped on her hands.
N ow she m urmured:
Mother, its all so horrible.
Marie drew near to Aleid, hesitatingly, almost timidly. An
impulse urged her to lay her hand on her daughters head, but
it was hard work to overcome an instinctive reluctance. Aleid
looked at her quizzically.
If I only knew what sort of a creature you are, she said
in low tones, not too markedly evading the caress. I havent
the least idea. Everything about you is a riddle to me; your
marriage, your temperament, your whole life.
I am what I am, answered Marie, with reserve.
What does that mean? Are you nothing but a lukewarm
clarified mixture, such as medicos give one to swallow? What
ingredients of that mixture have come down to me? Show me
a way out of the labyrinth of lies, and then I will believe that
there is some meaning in the word good. What does good
mean?
I am not sure, rejoined Marie. Perhaps it only means that
it hurts us when we are bad.
Such parsons talk doesnt cut any ice with me, answered
Aleid jeeringly. W hy not say frankly: I cannot help you. I
must let you go to the devil in your own way. The most I can
do for you is to provide you with bed, food, and a few rags
of clothing. T o say anything more is tommy-rot.

JOSEPH

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She ran to the French window leading into the garden and,
once outside, threw back her head and let the rain pour down
over her face. Marie moved as if to follow her, but desisted,
and stood plunged in thought.
h i

It was not a mark of confidence on Aleids part when one night

she spoke to her mother about her dead lover. O f course she
did not use the word love, since that was an old-world notion,
part of the labyrinth of lies. Nor was she moved by any urge
to confession, but she wanted to convince her mother what
excellent grounds she and those of her generation had for re
pudiating the notion that life could offer anything worth having,
or for fancying that there was anything in the world to believe
in beyond the powers of evil, and the conviction that death ends
all things.
She displayed no emotion, speaking of the man as she might
have spoken of a casual acquaintance. She even went so far as
to make fun of his ardent patriotism and of his distress at the
political humiliation of Germany. Still, through her deliberate
sobriety of manner and her ingrained scepticism, there peeped
the image of one of those persons endowed with inexorable faith
who are ready at any moment to accept martyrdom on behalf
of their ideals.
I have some of his letters, and should like you to read them,
said Aleid.
She was sitting crumpled up, her legs crossed, her chin almost
touching the upper knee, puffing at a cigarette.
His idealism, how absurd it w as! His faith in mankind, how
preposterous. It seems much as if I were to say: I believe in
oh, in what? I believe in the making of candles. O f course
there are candles still to be found here and there; but they are
venerable antiques, used only by impoverished people who live
in the back of beyond.
She threw away the stump of her cigarette, and began gnawing
at her finger-nails.

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Friends had got together money for his flight. He refused

to run away. He took the money, two hundred marks it was,
and distributed it among needy comrades. He had no proper
home. His eyesight was greatly impaired, and he was in danger
of going blind. He knew that, and did nothing to stave off the
trouble. He loved flowers more than anything else. That will
show you what a queer fish he was. T h e greatest pleasure you
could give him was to bring him a bunch of wild flowers.
Marie sorrowfully asked herself why a man should be thought
a queer fish because he loved flowers. In this connexion,
Aleid related a horrible incident which had occurred at his
assassination. T he man who had shot him from behind, ex
claiming, Croak, you cur! was wearing a spray of lilies of
the valley. As Hildenbrand lay dying on the pavement and the
murderer leaned over him to see whether the victim was dead,
his terrified companion saw the dying man sniffing at the lilies,
to murmur with his last breath: How sweet they smell! How
sw eet!
Marie reddened with indignation at the cold way in which
Aleid related this, as if it were an anecdote about some eccentric
with whose life she had no concern. T he mother failed to under
stand the motive of the daughters dispassionateness. Marie was
hoodwinked by the cynicism into which Aleid dug her teeth
as a beaten hound will bite the stick. While the emerald eyes
were contemplating her with challenging callousness (so, at least,
Marie felt), she lost her temper, and said dictatorially:
Do stop biting your nails! It drives me crazy.
I can understand that, Mother, replied Aleid dryly. But
theres a reason for my beginning to eat myself up, and the
name of the reason is Despair. Surely you can grasp that, as
a woman of culture. Aleid is eating herself up, and does not like
the taste. Its sickening.
She laughed shrilly. Her joy in living had been sapped at the
root, and she had lost all capacity for devotion. For Marie, these
facts were soon beyond doubt. Science, art, and religion seemed
to Aleid nothing more than the lying expedients of a race kept

JOSEPH

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in thrall by idiots and criminals. If you spoke to her of reason,

of the spirit, or of justice, she shrugged her shoulders, pushed
her fingers through her red locks, and grinned like a little Satan.
T h e strange thing was that Marie could not induce herself to
talk to Joseph about Aleid. She tried to begin once or twice,
but the words stuck in her throat. She was checked by shame;
she felt as if she would be giving herself away, would be dis
closing her own disastrous inadequacy, and would also be
betraying her daughter her daughter, not his. How could she
face him once more with the avowal: I m at the end of my
resources? I have failed! Impossible.
Things would not have been so bad had not Aleids whole
personality aroused antagonism in her. T h e girls every word
wounded her; every glance, every gesture, mortified her. She
vacillated between repulsion and pity, between annoyance and
a distressful understanding. Often she asked herself: What
have I in common with this stranger to whom I gave birth in
another life? Yet frequently she felt herself and Aleid to be
of one body and one mind, so that it was incumbent upon her
to rescue Aleid and guide the girl towards a sunlit world which
she herself, indeed, contemplated only as if through veils and
at an infinite distance.
Marie was profoundly shaken when Aleid, one day, announced
her intention of going to China to work for the Red Cross. This
was an act of sheer rebellion, of revolt against a stifling inner
need. Like almost all young people, Aleid really had an ardent
longing for straightforwardness and truth, but she had moved
in circles where it was the fashion to repress such longings. At
bottom it was incomprehensible to her that the man whom she
had loved with far more passion than she had realised, the first
person in whom she had ever put faith, should have been hated,
persecuted, and murdered because he pursued an ideal, in a
spirit of self-sacrifice. W hy? W hy? W hy? She turned the ques
tion over, and over again, in her tortured brain. Whose fault
was it? How could such a thing have been possible? Her heart
was wholly given to the problem. When she declared her in

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tention of going to China, the scheme had no clear meaning

for her, nor did she know how to carry it into effect. All these
broodings and plannings were going on in the darkest corner
of a darkened mind the mind of one who was asking herself:
Are you not ashamed to be a human being? Are you not
ashamed to be alive? T o laugh? T o bite your nails?
Her daughters condition had a disastrous effect upon Marie,
so that she withered and whitened like a plant in a cellar.
112

Before Kerkhoven left for Lucerne, he had discussed with Marie

and Nurse Else where it would be best to house the Herzogs.
They had decided upon a little bungalow beside the lake, an
annex where Alexander would have more quiet than in the main
building. Absolute tranquillity was essential. There would be
room in the bungalow for Helmut as well. Meals could be sent
over, if the Herzogs preferred to feed alone.
It was a cloudless afternoon when Kerkhoven returned to
Seeblick accompanied by Alexander, Bettina, and the boy. They
liked the look of their quarters: four rooms opening out of one
another in the front, two of them bedrooms, one living room,
and a study; a bath-room at the back, and an attic for the
youngster. Whitewashed walls, light-coloured furniture, cretonne
hangings, some Chinese embroideries and old portraits. The
general impression was homelike. A peacock strutted on the
lawn. By the lake shore there was a swing, its framework standing
out sharply against the sky. Aleid, clad in a bathing dress, was
sitting in this swing. Boats with white sails glided over the darkblue waters. The yellow roof of the main building could be
descried through the beeches and chestnuts.
Helmut was promptly introduced to Johann and Robert, and
within half an hour the three boys were good friends.
It had not proved difficult to persuade Alexander Herzog to
come. When Kerkhoven appeared unannounced in the hotel
where the Herzogs were staying at Lucerne, Alexander showed
no surprise. The doctor shook hands with him as cordially as

JOSEPH

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53 *

if meeting an old friend after a separation lasting many years.

This was agreeable to Alexander, and lulled his suspicions.
Kerkhoven went on to explain that a lucky chance had sum
moned him to Lucerne for a consultation. In the course of a
lively talk, Herzog felt drawn towards this man by an elemental
force, just as he had been at Ebenweiler. In truth he had already
formed the wish to go to Seeblick, and was in a state of mind
in which he was glad to be saved the effort of deciding upon
his own movements, so he offered no opposition when Kerk
hoven, with Bettinas tacit consent, declared a stay at the sana
torium eminently desirable. No specific period was mentioned.
T h e weather was exceedingy hot, and the journey had been
exhausting.
L ets have tea on the terrace, said the doctor.
Th ey went thither. When the tray was brought out, Marie
turned up. She looked pale and tired, but the pleasure of wel
coming Alexander and Bettina gave her countenance a festal
expression which embellished it. She was wearing a very simple
gown the colour of a yellow tea-rose, and round her neck a
string of coral beads with an antique pendant of beautiful work
manship. Bettina had not changed her brown travelling costume.
Her manner showed the relaxation of one who has reached a
safe harbour after a long period of danger. W ith her bright and
winning laughter, which was contagious and would have made
even the moodiest listener smile, she told of their frenzied drive
in the hired car, without saying a word about her own distress
during the trip. Marie, however, could guess well enough how
great it had been. She felt a lively interest in and sympathy for
Bettina, and for half an hour was able to forget her personal
troubles. Bettina responded cordially and gratefully to this sym
pathy. I wonder why I feel as if I had met her before? she
thought, while relating in lively fashion an episode in which
Alexander had played a somewhat ridiculous part. Surely I
must have seen that dear face already? Yet she knew perfectly
well that she and Marie Kerkhoven were meeting for the first
time.

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Kerkhoven glanced at Bettina now and again. While seeming

to attend only to her words, he was really noting the fact that
he had seldom encountered anyone whose fleeting moods and
experiences were so faithfully and distinctly reflected in her
aspect. Pain, sorrow, depression, discomfort of every kind,
extreme sensitiveness, an enthusiastic life of the imagination;
a manifest dependence upon dreams, internal pictures, the
magical powers of the unconscious mind; the depth of the eyes,
the fugitive expressions, the pessimistic curves of the gentle
mouth, counteracted by a cheerful tilt of the nose; her extra
ordinary youthfulness, despite the signs of ancient experience,
ancient wisdom all these lineaments combined to produce a
composite face, like those seen on Lionardos canvases, although
at the same time it had the simplicity of nature unadorned. As
regarded Alexander Herzog, who scarcely opened his lips, Kerk
hovens feelings towards him had hitherto been somewhat m ixed;
an almost tender inclination having see-sawed with a masked
suspicion, with that cautious expectation aroused by the sight of
an opponent who is really ones brother after all. Now it seemed
to him, of a sudden, as if the powers had given him a special
mark of their confidence by bringing this man to him and by
placing Herzog under his care. It was as though a voice spoke
to him, saying: Henceforward you will take no step except in
company with him.
113

Jeanne Mallery could not foresee the disastrous upshot of her

folly in revealing to Karl Imst what Kerkhoven had divined to
have been the motive for Selma Imsts suicide. She told Karl
in the hope of relieving him from his sense of guilt, and she
regarded herself as fulfilling a plain duty. The result proved
her to have been completely mistaken. When she had passed
on the information to Karl, he stared at her as if he thought
what she said must be the maunderings of intoxication. In a
fury, he screamed:
You are lying, damn you! T h e whole idea is a vile invention
of Kerkhovens, to foster his self-esteem and to degrade me.

JOSEPH

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Jeanne did not know what to make of K arls attitude, but she
was utterly crushed by it.
What was going on in K arls mind? Something so absurd as
to be scarcely credible. His sense of middle-class respectability
had been outraged. Ossified notions of family pride and class
honour had sprung to life, so that he was unable to see the
overwhelming probability that Kerkhovens inferences were
sound. How could the wife of Imst, the pharmaceutical chemist,
have been so base as to plan getting her husband sent to prison
by a diabolically ingenious suicide which would assume the
aspect of murder? T h e thing was inconceivable, and therefore
it could not have happened. Indications of one sort or another,
these alleged proofs or those, counted for nothing with him;
they were wicked inventions to bring discredit upon the fair
name of Imst, and brand it with disgrace for ever. He had been
told about Thirriot, the clairvoyant. She, he considered, was a
fraud; and the whole story had been botched up in such a way
as to enable the medium to twist the past awry and give what
colour she pleased to Selmas death. Strangely enough, the
phantom of middle-class respectability had now become enor
mously more important to Karl than his own belated acquittal
from the charge of murder. He had relapsed into ancestorworship, devotion to the tribal totem. Distorting his own memo
ries, he transformed the terrible Selma into a loving and dutiful
wife and mother, while Jeanne Mallery became for him a traitress
too late recognised as such, and a servile tool of Kerkhoven.
Boiling over with rage, he announced his determination to
bring Kerkhoven to account. He would sue the doctor for
defamation of the dead womans character. Jeanne threw herself
on her knees before Karl, imploring moderation. As Karl was
renewing his threats, Kerkhoven entered the room. He had long
foreseen what was coming; and in the privacy of his own mind
he had described Karl as the demolished petty bourgeois.
When Karl now volleyed insults, and Kerkhoven tried to calm
him, the patient snapped his fingers in the doctors face. Kerk
hoven grasped him by the shoulders, forced him into a chair,

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and looked him steadfastly in the eyes. Karl crumpled up, and
murmured a few words about his head being bad. Next day
he disappeared, having secretly packed his trunk and flitted in
the grey of the morning.
This flight was a more serious matter than might have appeared
at the first glance. It transpired that Karl had gone to lodge in
a neighbouring village. Hobnobbing with peasants and fisherfolk,
he poured into their credulous ears evil tales about the goings-on
at Seeblick. One of these stories, that Jeanne Mallery was being
detained there by force, had a special vogue. Kerkhoven under
estimated the importance of the gossip set a-going by this
malevolent fool. There are always plenty of people willing to
listen to scandal. Enemies who had remained under cover, now
ventured into the open. Karl Im sts calumnies were the
beginning of a storm of intrigue which soon seriously threatened
the peace of Seeblick.

IX4
Kerkhoven sedulously avoided trying to hustle Alexander Herzog.
T h e doctor adopted an expectant attitude, leaving the patient
to his own devices, and refraining from obvious scrutiny. He
did not transcend the limits of friendly social intercourse. In
the early days, he avoided being alone with Alexander, preferring,
when he had an unoccupied hour, to pass the time with Bettina.
Since, in his general behaviour, he showed the utmost respect
for Alexander Herzog both as man and as author, the latter was
led to believe that Kerkhoven did not venture to cross the barrier
that the doctor had established between himself and his patient.
But the patient did not want this barrier. He would have liked
to break it down, but was too timid and irresolute. Bettina might
have helped him, but failed to do so, and this put him out of
humour with her. Kerkhovens diplomatic reserve gradually
aroused an intolerable tension in Herzog, so that he fancied the
reserve must hide a trap. Indeed, he was inclined to see spooks
everywhere. Matters reached such a pass that his heart beat
furiously when he encountered Kerkhoven in the house or
the grounds, and the doctor passed him with no more words

JOSEPH

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than a friendly Good-day. M y worthy host wants to starve

me out, thought Herzog. He is dealing with me in a way
that he hopes will make me pliable, but I will defeat his little
scheme.
So great was his nervous irritability and impatience, that he
would perhaps have carried out this proposal unless Marie had
been on the stage. Between him and Marie, at the first exchange
of glances and with the first mutual pressure of hands, there
had arisen one of those mysterious relationships which instantly
ripen in both partners without any exchange of words, and with
out what is called close acquaintanceship. It seemed as if there had
not been a meeting of strangers, but a reunion, when each partner
has for ages been circling round the other in boundless space,
until, through the working of gravitation, physical proximity
ensues. Neither was inquisitive about the other, neither asked
the other for the small change of information. From the first,
they talked to one another and behaved to one another like
brother and sister, unconventionally, with perfect ease. In his
laconic way, Alexander said to Bettina:
A wonderful woman, Marie Kerkhoven.
Bettina fully agreed, for Marie had taken her, too, by storm.
Marie, less of an enthusiast, said to her husband:
This Alexander Herzog is a man after my own heart. He
radiates warmth.
Kerkhoven approved M aries judgment of Herzog, just as
Bettina had approved Alexanders judgment of Marie.
Through this twofold recognition by the leading authorities,
the foundations for a loyal understanding were laid, and a tacit
alliance was promulgated.
It was Marie, then, who saved Alexander Herzog from hasty
and ill-judged steps. All the same, she instinctively avoided
talking to him about his private life. She admitted, indeed,
with natural embarrassment, that she had read his confession.
She wanted to have the cards on the table. Now that she had
got to know him personally and had so quickly struck up a
friendship with him, she would have regarded it as dishonourable

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to hide her knowledge of this matter. Alexander was neither

astonished nor annoyed, but merely ignored what she said. Marie
learned something thereby. Had she insisted, had she probed
the wound however delicately, she would have injured a sen
timent which had just begun to bud. She must be patient. It
was not her business to treat this man whom she revered, as
she might have treated one suffering from extreme mental
distress even though he were actually so suffering. Above all,
she had no right to thrust into her husbands province. Joseph
Kerkhoven was the expert, not she. Her talks with Alexander,
therefore, dealt with impersonal matters, unless the conversation
turned upon Kerkhoven, Aleid, or Bettina. One morning she
overheard Bettina playing the violin. Marie was greatly moved
as she spoke of this to Alexander.
I had never dreamed that there could be so much music
in a woman, and I was as completely taken out of myself as
if I had heard an angel singing. But you must not give me away.
It was very early in the morning. She certainly did not suppose
that any one was listening. Perhaps that was why she played
so beautifully.
I wont give you away, said Alexander with a smile. I
am so happy that she has begun playing again. Something is
stirring within her.

5
One day Kerkhoven appeared at the bungalow and invited
Alexander to come for a walk. T h ey went through the forest
and stopped to rest on an eminence. Herzog could not walk
far; for some months, now, walking had brought on severe pain
in the right foot. He had not spoken o f this to the doctor before,
but told him now. As they sat on the bench, Kerkhoven asked
him to remove shoe and sock from the affected foot, and kneeled
to examine it. Then he felt his patients pulse, tested the tension
in the artery, and said:
You ought to stop smoking. A t any rate you smoke far too
much.
Alexander made no answer. He was a creature of habit and

JOSEPH

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MARIE

537

the slave of stimulants, as Kerkhoven well knew. Words of

warning are futile in such cases. Especially when one has to
deal with a mad whose creed is a gloomy fatalism! Besides, the
imaginative man will not think about the future. For him the
only future is the moment next ensuing. Strange as it may
seem, the unmoral is at work in him.
Kerkhoven aired these views, and the two men fell into a
discussion of self-control. Alexander frankly admitted that he
had never practised self-control. In his everyday life, his work
had made it impossible.
I m afraid you have never learned how to harmonise your
work with your life, remarked Kerkhoven.
Alexander thought this criticism far-fetched.
One has to concentrate upon matters of prime importance,
he said, with a shrug.
Y es, replied Kerkhoven, but the danger for us brain
workers is unduly specialised activity, which may cause excessive
local wear and tear. Nerve cells and fibres cannot be replaced
like worn-out rails; and an unused track gets rusty.
Those views you are expounding are medico-technical,
countered Alexander Herzog. One who tries to guide his life
by them, may live to be as old as Methuselah, but he will leave
nothing to be remembered by.
M ay be so, was Kerkhovens mocking reply. W hat you
say is all right as far as theory goes, but when the pains grow
troublesome even the Michelangelos are despondent at least,
so I have been told.
Thus it began. As in a mountain excursion, we walk at first
easily along well-made paths leading up gentle slopes, until we
reach heights at which grass and trees vanish and the rocky
surfaces are disclosed; the ways grow steeper, screes and moraines
appear; we scale a cliff, climb a chimney, clamber along an
arete; and at length we reach the peaks, the glaciers, and the
snow-line so here, upon these simple beginnings of controversy
ensued a passionate struggle, each in turn being leader and led;
a toilsome march side by side amid mist and rock-falls; a climb

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from terrace to terrace; a return from an impassable difficulty

and a renewed attempt in another direction; a losing of the way
in storm and cloud, and then a further ascent; always betwixt
life and death, and betwixt heaven and earth: such were the
characteristics of the discussions we have now to describe.
116
T h ey took place, for the most part, in Kerkhovens great studio,
which Herzog spoke o f as the Refectory. A t first they used to
go there immediately after supper, for Alexander, whose body
was still in thrall to what had been his daily round at Ebenweiler,
got so tired by ten o clock that he could no longer keep his eyes
open. Then came an acute illness which laid him up for three
weeks, a violent catarrh of the nose and all the sinuses. When
this was over, he was much livelier and had more staying power.
Another such attack, said Kerkhoven jestingly, and we
shall be out o f the wood.
Now the two men often talked till midnight. Occasionally,
Marie and Bettina were there also. T h e women liked to spend
the afternoons strolling through the neighbourhood, or in a boat
on the lake. After they got home, tea and fruit were served.
When the evenings grew cool, Kerkhoven had the fire lighted
in the huge stone fireplace; and, in the flickering light, the
dark beams at the top of the enormous room looked more
picturesque than ever. When the women perceived that their
presence was not merely tolerated, but was welcome and was
regarded as necessary, their first shyness wore off, so that they
turned up uninvited almost every evening, and became members
o f the cast in this drama which ran to many acts. Sometimes
there was a fifth, a dumb participant, Aleid Bergmann, who
sat or crouched motionless in a distant comer. Generally the
others did not notice that she was there. She entered unseen,
and slipped away when it was evident that the conclave was
about to break up. God alone knows how she had found courage
the first time to cross the hallowed threshold, as, in her
sarcastic way, she styled it when talking to Alexander Herzog.

JOSEPH

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No doubt her mother had given her a hint, or had smuggled

her in one evening, having noticed that she liked to be near
Herzog. Certainly she eyed him with girlish curiosity, and hung
upon his every word. When, once, she was lying in the grass
by the lake-shore, and he came up to her and addressed her,
she was unmistakably embarrassed.
T h e decisive talks took place, not only in the Refectory, but
also in the summer-house, and in M aries study; and not only
during the evenings, but at any odd time, when there was a
chance encounter between Herzog and Kerkhoven. There would
perhaps, on occasions, be no more than a brief exchange of
questions and answers; but always these formed part of the
general tissue, which was being woven as the shuttle passed
to and fro between the pair- the tissue in which both were
ultimately enwrapped as in a spectral garment.
117
Kerkhoven had been invited to Lausanne by an American doctor,
with a view to founding an international aid society. During
the journey, thinking matters over, he became alarmed as to
Alexander Herzogs condition. He had paid but a cursory visit
to the bungalow before starting, and had carried away a most
unfavourable impression of his patients appearance. M ight it
not be possible that he had been deceived as to Herzogs general
state o f health, and had failed to pay due heed to certain
symptoms? There were positive signs o f restlessness, loss of
memory, and dissociation of consciousness a bad clinical
picture. Kerkhoven saw his patient visibly before him and
summed up the suspect traits: constant getting up from a chair
and sitting down again; going to see whether a door was closed;
taking up an object and putting it back in its place; opening
one book and then turning to another; rising from bed at night
to make sure he had not left a lighted cigarette stump lying
about; searching incessantly in cupboard and drawers for a note
of no importance and then finding the memo in its place upon
the writing-table; anxiety aroused by the daily arrival of the

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postman; and many similar peculiarities. In addition there were

troubles such as an unrelieved gloom of countenance, a childish
resistance to any kind of doctors orders, perpetual lassitude,
complete lack o f joy, apathetic self-absorption. . . .
A few days before, Kerkhoven had entered Herzogs work
room and asked whether he was disturbing his guest. Not at
all, answered the writer; but it did not escape the experts eye
that the man was thoroughly indolent, that he was lazy in mind,
mood, eye, and ear. T he doctor told Herzog that if such a con
dition of relaxation could be achieved deliberately it was whole
some rather than injurious. Looking up with shy and shifty eyes,
Alexander declared he could form no resolution, that he felt
like a piece of chalk inside, that nothing could any more con
sume him or relax him. Then he covered his eyes with his
hand. . . .
I ve waited too long, Kerkhoven said to himself. I falsely
supposed that his confession would suffice to save him and bring
absolution. . . . A grave error on my part. . . . I wanted to allow
him plenty o f elbow-room so that the old life in him should
die and the new life expand and consolidate. . . . Pretty obvious
to me, now, that I was wrong . . . guilty of monstrous levity.
I forgot that his whole existence is like a stranded vessel, and
instead of salving what remained to be saved, instead of utilising
every opportunity that presented itself, I ve tried to perform
a psychological conjuring trick as I was wont to do in the days
when I believed in such experiments. . . . Unforgivable. . . .
These reflections made him hot all over, in part because he
felt ashamed, and in part because he dreaded the consequences
o f his negligence. It became increasingly clear to him that in
spite of the revolutionary change which had taken place within
himself he had once again fallen into the sin of sacrificing a
wounded and bleeding life to an idea. He had hoped that Ganna
and the Ganna illusion would be exorcised quite simply by a
mere request to depart, to leave the mind o f the possessed. You
just wrote a prescription in accordance with the present acquire
ments of scientific knowledge, a kind of mental purgative, and

JOSEPH

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the trouble could be cleared out of the way, never to reappear.

Our great and mighty Kerkhoven need but say Apage Satanas,
and the poor little devil would be so frightened that hed betake
himself off with his tail between his legs. M ighty presumptuous,
to say the least! Conceited and weakly reliance upon theories
in a case which, more than any other, demanded his whole
attention and his entire devotion.
He felt utterly wretched, and was so exhausted as to find
it difficult to drag himself to the interview. While in conversation
with his learned American colleague, he thought: If the man
had the faintest suspicion of what it is costing me in energy
merely to listen, he would certainly not smile at me so pleasantly,
but would perhaps recall the fact that he himself is a physician
and would order me to bed. T o appear in the best of health
when he knew he was ailing constituted for Kerkhoven one of
the minor triumphs of life. Nothing delighted him more than
to be told how well he was looking and to have compliments
paid him on his superb physique. The tribute was placed to his
credit, while he could not resist a grin at the mystification. A
little private joke! On the journey home, however, he was very
near a collapse, and hastily took a few drops o f valerian. His
condition may have rendered him peculiarly sensitive to hal
lucination; anyway, he had a vision for which he was utterly
unprepared since it was the first time in his life he had experienced
a thing of this kind.
He took his place in the corner of a third-class carriage, leaned
his head against the wooden back of the seat, closed his eyes,
and wondered if he had not better wrap a handkerchief round
the electric light in order to mitigate the glare. Then, though
the train had not stopped, a woman got in and took the opposite
corner at the far end of the compartment. She was breathless, as
if she had run to catch the train and had only done so by straining
every muscle and nerve of her body. She had no luggage with
her, but spread a number of articles upon the seat beside her:
a threadbare rug, five or six books, a greasy package containing
food, and a huge bundle of legal documents from among which

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the handle of a hair-brush peeped. Her hair was dressed in an

amazing way so that it resembled a helmet (a ridiculous little
felt hat was thrust away among the provisions), the hectic flush
on her cheeks was enhanced by a coat o f paint, the great blue
eyes had a far-away and dismayed expression in their depths,
they gazed into vacancy with a strange look of empty zeal or
o f busy desolation. H er exceptionally small hands were encased
in knitted gloves, through which her fingers protruded where
there were holes. An old-fashioned and shabby cloak hung
from her shoulders. T h e entire get-up had something theatrical
about it, was disorderly, and seemed to have been collected
haphazard.
Kerkhoven recognised at once that he had Ganna Herzog
before him. It took him some time to realise that this was not
a flesh-and-blood woman but merely an apparition with every
attribute of actuality. He knew that he was the victim of a hallu
cination, and yet it was necessary to persuade himself that this
was indeed the case by recalling the womans financial circum
stances: she was not in a position to be able to afford a trip
to Switzerland. Conviction notwithstanding Kerkhoven felt
expectant and on the stretch. He watched her every movement,
her motiveless gestures and the excited glint in her eyes. What
will she do next? he asked himself. I wonder what those
books may be which she has piled up beside her ? T h e one on
top has its back to me and I can read the title: Hints on Cheiro
mancy. Raising his eyes to the womans face again, Kerkhoven
noticed a peculiar and ghostly smile fluttering about her lips,
the smile of a pouting child. Yes, this smile made one inevitably
think of a child gone mad. . . . Gradually the nightmare immo
bility that had overwhelmed him since first the vision began
relaxed, and he breathed deeply like a man who has allowed
himself to be intimidated by empty threats, and this had nothing
to do with the deceptive reality o f the apparition and its sub
sequent disappearance into the void. T h e hallucinatory figure
was in all respects a typical reproduction o f Ganna Herzog in
the flesh.

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Il8

It was nine-thirty before he got back to Seeblick. Crossing the

garden, he ran into Alexander and Bettina. Th ey were engaged
in a lively conversation which seemed far from being a pleasur
able one, for Alexander looked worried and on the rack. Kerk
hoven stopped beside them, while Bettina told him the trouble.
Th ey had been greatly alarmed that evening by a violent fit
o f weeping on the part of Helmut. T h e child was of so cheerful
and equable a disposition that such an outburst was enough
to frighten any one who knew him well. Bettina had tried to
get the little lad to tell her the cause of his grief, but for a long
time he refused. A t last he said:
I want to go home to Ebenweiler, back to m y own little room,
my garden, my lake. . . .
T o console him, Bettina had recourse to her violin, and played
him his favourite pieces. This invariably acted like a charm on
the boy, and on this occasion too it soon made him happy again.
Play something with a swing to it, M other, Helmut had
begged.
What do you advise me to do ? asked Bettina, when she had
concluded her report.
H es very much Alexander Herzogs son, said the doctor
with a smile. I ll have to think the matter over before answering
your question. Then turning to his patient he added: W ont
you come up to m y study for an hours chat? W e can discuss
this and a few other things if you like.
T h e air in the room was oppressive, and Kerkhoven pulled
the cord which opened the ventilators placed high under the
gable. Then he took a dish of pears from a niche in the wall
and invited his guest to partake. Herzog thanked him, but said
he did not feel inclined. W hile Kerkhoven sat peeling one of the
fruits he said:
I ve become your rival. Ganna appeared before me to-day.
Yes, she actually appeared. I could describe her in every detail.
A queer business . . . and he went on to recount in as matter
o f fact a way as possible the imaginary encounter.

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Alexander Herzog looked at his host dubiously and raised his

eyebrows in surprise.
W ell
? he said.
Kerkhoven laughed.
Well, what? Is there anything you wish to know?
Up till now youve observed so discreet a silence on this
point that . . . am I to assume . . . is this apparition to be taken
seriously?
Most assuredly.
What inferences do you draw . . .?
You are the sport of an illusion.
I am? But you have only now been saying. . . .
Yes, yes; youve contaminated me. In this instance, its you
who have been the master. Y o u ve succeeded in immersing me
in Ganna and the Ganna atmosphere. A highly dangerous thing
for me. . .
Only shows that Ganna is real enough. . .
Great Scott, man, shes so real that one cannot help ardently
desiring her not to exist any longer. Horridly real! Infamously
real!
Meaning? asked Herzog, blanching.
That you if I may state my opinion candidly have ex
ceeded all bounds.
I fail to follow. . . .
Truth hangs like a severed head in the room. . .
I have not a notion what you are driving at.
Kerkhoven drew yet farther back into the shadow, as though
he wished to become invisible to his companion. He placed his
right foot on his left knee, and gripped the ankle in his hand.
Take me literally. There is a truth which life beheads, for
it disrupts every relationship and falsifies every impression.
Dreams are likewise true, although they have no existence in
the world of reality.
Do you mean to imply that Ganna has no existence?
Not exactly. But she does not possess the reality you ascribe
to her.

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What sort has she then?

Kerkhoven chuckled.
You are as insistent as an examining magistrate. . . . Some
thing quite diabolical has taken place. . . . You have made use
of every means furnished by your art, all your powers of per
suasion, and the resources of your emotional life, in order to
piece together an endless series of actualities to form the sem
blance of a real being. Not a join is visible, there are no flaws
in the construction, and yet one does not feel that a flesh-andblood reality stands before one, but merely a phantasmagoria.
W hy is this so?
I do not know, answered Herzog, at a loss. If it be as
you say, then . . . but I do not know. . . .
Understand me aright, interrupted Kerkhoven, grieved to
see a look of despondency spreading over his companions
features. I have no criticism to make against the portrait as
such. Its convincing enough both to myself, and any one else
who may read your manuscript. M y objection is that you have
allowed your own creation to outgrow yourself, and to represent
herself to you as a real being. I cannot go with you thus far,
for I consider you have exceeded your instructions not the
instructions I gave you I am not so lacking in modesty as to
think that, but the instructions of a more exalted authority. What
was the object of your general confession? A cleansing, a dis
charge. . .
But that was only possible if I succeeded in making my
creature live, cried Alexander excitedly. Words can bring no
relief, only the living witness can do that. We were agreed. . .
Yes, yes. But I had pictured to myself something more like
the firmament that divides the waters from the waters, as the
Bible has it. A victory over chaos was what I had in mind.
Instead o f that, you allowed chaos to master you, and whats
more you have taken a voluptuous delight in your thraldom.
This is what I reproach you with. You lost your sense of pro
portion, your freedom of action, so that you could no longer
find a way out of the darkness for your soul and your personal
s

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consciousness. An exit must be found, however. It must be

found, I repeat. You fancy this to be impossible. But I shall
prove to you that the horrible colossus you have created, the
witchlike abstruse being you have manufactured, exists only in
your imagination, that it has no reality, that it is nothing but
illusion, Alexander Herzogs very own pet illusion.
Kerkhoven emerged from the shadows and stood towering
over his patient. At this moment Marie and Bettina entered the
room and quietly sat down in a corner.

Z19
It seems to me that at first you took Ganna to be how shall
I say? my fate, said Alexander. You looked upon her as
G ods scourge in my life. . . . Or am I mistaken?
O f course not. When I made your acquaintance, I was greatly
influenced by your situation, by your mood; I saw everything
through a magnifying glass; and then came that shattering
portrait o f her. I had to work things over in my mind.
Now everything has changed, as if in a transformation scene,
because . .
Alexander turned towards Marie and Bettina,
and said, explaining himself to them: The fact is that Joseph
Kerkhoven has discovered within himself the power of second
sight. He has encountered Gannas disembodied spirit. Looking
back at Kerkhoven, he went on: I am not giving you away?
Kerkhoven did not take amiss the undertone of irony in
Alexanders words. Bettina heard her husband, at whom she
was looking attentively, utter a surprised A h ! Marie looked
uneasy. She was obviously afraid that there might be a link
between this alleged second sight and certain signs of bodily
decay which of late she had noticed in Joseph.
Tell me what has happened, she begged.
He recounted the strange interlude in the train with his
customary dryness.
How did you recognise her as Ganna? asked Bettina.
Are you surprised, when you have read our friends portrait
of his former w ife? replied Kerkhoven with a grin.

JOSEPH

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He went on to describe Gannas appearance and gestures with

such fidelity of detail that Bettina burst out laughing.
You can laugh, said Kerkhoven; but for me, at first, it
was no laughing matter. I must admit that, to begin with, I
was damnably upset. Primarily as regards my own condition.
Never before have I had my senses thus clouded. But that is
an erroneous phrase, for my senses were extraordinarily clear.
Then, the creature of my vision was uncanny, reminding me
of . . . In childhood I was terribly afraid of bats. Most children
are, but with me it amounted to a phobia. I believed that they
crept into ones hair and that one died forthwith. One evening,
when we were out in the open and there were bats flying around,
I burst into tears. M y mother wrapped a rug round me and
carried me into the house. That was how I felt in the train this
evening. Yes, Frau Bettina, I see you are surprised, but Joseph
Kerkhoven is far from being the man of iron you fancy. Never
mind that, which is of no interest. Here is the interesting point.
As I contemplated the phenomenon, I said to myself: It all
hangs together. What I am looking at is a hallucination; not a
demon, not an Ate, not an embodiment of evil; but merely an
unhappy woman, like thousands more; abnormal, but not
insane; essentially harmless, and dangerous only when others
transform her into something she is far from being. . .
He
broke off, with the words: Did you want to say something,
Frau Bettina? for Bettina had sprung to her feet. But she, as
if sorry to have disrupted the flow of his thoughts, shook her
head and sat down again. He went on: Now, this is remarkable,
from that moment the vision was annihilated. It simply faded
into thin air. It was no longer present.
In his turn Alexander Herzog jumped up. W ith hasty strides,
he walked twice up and down the room, then halted to enquire:
You think that I am seeing a ghost?
That is what I have always told you, interposed Bettina,
as if from a great distance.
What an onlooker sees, does not diminish the sufferers
pangs, rejoined Alexander hotly.

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It would have been easier for me had I been no more than

an onlooker, murmured Bettina, with some acerbity.
Marie laid her hand gently on Bettinas arm.
Alexander is not referring to you, Frau Bettina, but to me,
as the onlooker, said Kerkhoven.
Herzog was startled, for this was the first time that Kerk
hoven had spoken o f him by his Christian name. The doctor
stepped up to him and placed a massive paw on Alexanders
shoulder.
M y dear fellow, whom I so greatly admire, he said, no
one is criticising you. Not even, let me repeat, in respect of
the creature of your imagination. L et us accept that, within
its own frame and as you have limned it. W hat we are concerned
with, and what we have to deplore, in all humility, is the man
Alexander Herzog, our friend. T o him I say that the Ganna
whom we see and o f whom we know (I use the plural inten
tionally, referring not merely to those who happen to be present,
but to a considerable number of unprejudiced observers: let
us say two dozen Joseph Kerkhovens more competent than the
Joseph Kerkhoven you know), we say, then, that the real Ganna
is not a dreadful demon, but an ordinary, average, common
place neuropath; the typical patient we use for demonstration
purposes in hospital.
You are wrong, quite wrong, replied Alexander excitedly.
I have always been told that you are too ready to pigeon-hole
your cases instead of individualising.
No doubt. But if I regarded every psychopath as a symbol
of worldwide destruction, as a werwolf menacing humanity,
I should myself be a danger to mankind.
You exaggerate. Surely you cannot deny obvious facts, cannot
deny my painful experiences ? This woman is beyond all bounds;
her greed, her lust for possessions, her vengefulness, her in
fatuated self-satisfaction, her arrogance, her mania for legal
jargon. . .
I need only invite you to accompany me on my rounds for
a week, retorted Kerkhoven tranquilly. I could show you

JOSEPH

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numberless persons of all ages and both sexes; among them

perhaps thirty cases of persons with fixed ideas, five or six
semi-criminals, others with a perpetual grievance, the spiritually
blind, those who are filled with inexplicable hatred for their
nearest associates; persons who look like any one you might
encounter in the street, but who are filled with the most frenzied
impulses, so that their thoughts circle round murder; masked
sadists; masochists, self-tormentors, who keep going only by
making life a hell to brothers, sisters, mothers, husbands, wives.
I think I told you the story of Selma Imst? Hers was one such
case. So I might spend day after day, and, if I had time, night
after night, demonstrating to you an uninterrupted succession
of persons with mental disorder, an army of lunatics, relieved
only by a modest number of exceptions, a company in a
brigade.
He paced to and fro, his arms crossed behind his back, his
head hanging.
I will admit, he went on, that Ganna Herzog is troubled
by an unusual multifariousness of illusions and delusions. It
would be a mistake, however, to doubt that she is typical,
ordinary, one case among hundreds of others. This multifarious
ness, this extravagance, how did they arise ? Who worked zealously
to bring them into being? Where there is an explosive, there
must have been a chemist to manufacture it. As far as Ganna
is concerned, you and you alone were the chemist.
Alexander Herzog stood as if rooted to the floor.
I f you go on like that much longer, he said listlessly, you
will declare that I have Ganna on my conscience, a contention
which will certainly earn you Gannas heartfelt thanks.
Pardon me, dear Alexander, said Bettina, you are talking
nonsense. D r. Kerkhoven is not imputing to you deliberate
guilt.
If not, what does he mean?
He is referring to the reciprocal action of certain qualities,
and of the way in which one shuts ones eyes to it, fails to notice
it. Am I not right? She looked enquiringly at Kerkhoven.

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Yes, you are right, Bettina, answered Marie, taking the

words out of her husbands mouth. I think Joseph means that
every relationship between human beings must be a matter of
mutual responsibility.
Kerkhoven nodded.
That is so, he assented, and it is the crux of the situation.
Take, for example, Alexander, your collapse because of the
trouble at Buchegger. No doubt, before that, you had been
cruelly pressed, and this was the last straw. Still, your intense
sorrow on account of the loss seems to me unwarrantable. I can
understand Helmut shedding tears because he is homesick,
although this betrays undue sensibility, an excessive dread of
life, in the child. But that you should take it so deeply to heart!
Bethink yourself. . . .
The matter does not bear discussing, interrupted Alexander
vehemently. That piece of land was m y very life. In the
morning, when I opened the shutters, it was to look upon the
great hornbeam like a concentration of the primeval forest; and
the silver birches; the immemorial maples, one of them divided
into five trunks, so that it looked like a giants hand; the copper
beech; the walnut tree and the many squirrels in the autumn
(you remember, Bettina ?); the dahlias and roses; beyond the
woods, towered the mountains; in my study the walls were
barricaded with books as a safeguard against misfortune, almost
against death.
He paused, and looked by turns at Kerkhoven and the two
women, as if wondering that he had to speak of these things
to them, and that, in their ignorance, they failed to understand
the intensity of his feelings. The three of them contemplated
him in silence for a while. A t length Bettina spoke.
You know well enough that in any case we could not have
kept on the house. The financial worry would have made it
impossible for me to sleep, and you would have had to devote
all your working energies to the maintenance of a beautiful
illusion.
You are trying to make out that Ganna was an instrument

JOSEPH

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of Providence, rejoined Alexander bitterly. I do not call it

an illusion to contemplate what one possesses and enjoys.
Marie said tentatively:
It is part of your sensuous temperament, Alexander, that
you cling so strongly to material things; that you want to own
them; to have trees, paths, landscapes, as your private possessions.
As a young man, you were extraordinarily independent, but by
degrees you became more and more attached to concrete objects.
W hy?
Because of Ganna, interjected Kerkhoven, before Alexander
could reply. Only because of Ganna. Its as plain as a pikestaff.
In your confession you referred repeatedly to Gannas greed
for ownership. There is a causal connexion.
What do you mean to im ply? asked Alexander dubiously.
That if I had not clung so firmly to my possessions . . .
Precisely. There is a law of correspondence in spiritual
movements. Greed arouses greed. So does resistance to anothers
greed. Quarrels about possessions are debasing. You are not
a man whose business it is to own things. That is not your
vocation, is not written in your horoscope. T o paraphrase what
my wife said just now, all material things have a soul, are pos
sessed by demons which are hostile to the human spirit. When
you are ostensibly clinging to your possessions, you are betraying
yourself to that which enslaves your possessions, you are betraying
yourself to that which enslaves you to them. That is why owner
ship involves guilt. D ont you know as much? Surely you must
know it.
Alexander was squatting in front of the fireplace, his elbows
on his knees and his head supported by his hands. Kerkhoven
went up to him and raised him to his feet.
L et us stop tormenting ourselves, he said kindly. We will
leave the ladies. Come with me, and I will see you to bed. You
need rest.
Linking arms with Alexander, he led him from the room.

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I d like to have a few words more with you, said Herzog,

when they had reached the ground floor. Theres something
weighs heavy on my mind, and I may as well make confession
at once.
With pleasure, answered Kerkhoven, leading his friend into
a little boudoir; here no one will disturb us.
The room was long and narrow, furnished with the barest
necessaries, as Alexander perceived when his host switched on
a light, sat down by a table, and motioned his guest to another
chair.
You see, its, and Herzog passed a hand over his brow,
not easy to talk about . . . theres a kind of slime, a shadow
running along the road . . . pressing one down, debasing, com
mon. . . . For a whole lifetime a man serves certain ideas con
cerning ethical transformation . . . and all at once fate proves
him to have been a crim inal. . . this evening so much has become
clear to me, I ve been made to recognise . . .
Kerkhoven guessed what was amiss. It was as if he could read
Herzogs thoughts.
D ont waste any more words, he said, assuming a charac
teristic attitude, his body leaning forward and his hands laid
palms together between the knees. I know. I know all about
it. Would it bore you to be told of a somewhat analogous situation
in my own life? It may possibly give you a pointer. Tw o years
ago I passed through a grave crisis. It wanted little but that
I should go all to pieces. M y life had come to a parting of the
ways. A t that time I had a young friend, half pupil, half son.
I had raised him out of the swamp into which he had fallen,
and had, if I may say so, made a new man of him. A great
future awaited him. He was of a characteristically modern typ e;
I had tried him and had trusted him ; had unbounded expectations
o f him. Then he betrayed me, abused my confidence shamefully.
I wont go into details, but the upshot was I had a feeling there
was no room for him and me on the same planet. There were
days when my whole thought was monopolised with the idea

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o f destroying him like vermin. Yes, even I. . . . But he bolted

to a safe hiding-place. Then I sought him out. M y first fury
had cooled, and all I now wanted was to settle accounts with
him, to see his guilt-stricken face. A crazy notion wasnt it?
Still, I had it. W ell, I learned where his mother lived. I did
not know her personally, but had heard that his misconduct
had led her to shut herself away from the world. Literally, she
had gone out into the wilderness, and there she had found God.
I travelled to the town where she lived and her house was pointed
out to me. Her son, I was told, had left her. Th ey had spent
the winter together in a remote Swiss valley. Now he had gone
away, and she had removed to this town where her house was
in the same street as the cathedral. I cannot explain what drew
me to be near her although the young man had departed. I
have often endeavoured to explain it to myself. Perhaps the lure
was no more than the mystical associations we have with the word
mother. Maybe I hoped for some mute communication, in
telligible to me alone. Early one morning, on the day I had
intended to visit her, I saw her on the way to church and followed
her unnoticed. Entering the sacred building, I perceived her
kneeling before the altar. That was all. An hour later, I left
the city, no longer wishing for a personal interview. M y peace
of mind was restored.
Because you had seen her kneeling? asked Alexander Herzog,
astonished.
Because I had seen her kneeling and praying.
But what was there in that to make so strong an impression?
Hard to say; but what I witnessed that morning made a
complete change in my outlook on life. It rarely happens that
one sees an individual in the situation which is thoroughly
accordant to his nature. Still more rarely is this situation at the
climax the individual is capable of reaching in this instance,
surrender, absorption, devotion. Most rarely of all does such
an event coincide with the internal readiness of the onlooker.
What sort of readiness do you mean? enquired Alexander
uneasily.
s*

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Readiness to believe.
Alexander Herzog was dumbfounded, and sat looking at the
floor so much embarrassed that Kerkhoven could not suppress
a smile.
Certainly that leads us far afield, he said, standing up;
far, very far.
Excuse me, Joseph Kerkhoven, stammered Alexander,
also standing up, but I have been taken aback.
You must not betray my secret, said Kerkhoven, whimsically.
T o which Alexander answered, meditatively:
Only because she was praying? Only for that reason?
Strange.
Prayer is but a word, my dear fellow, and it may mean
almost anything. I have my own special thoughts upon the
matter. Yes, thoughts quite peculiar to myself. But I think I
shall say good-night now, for I have had a long and tiring d ay;
dont feel in the humour for any more conversation. I m taken
like that sometimes. . .
He waved Alexander before him out of the room, shook hands,
and went briskly upstairs. Alexander watched him out of sight.
121
One of Alexander Herzogs crotchets was that he would never
go to bed unless Bettina was also ready to go. This, although
they slept in separate rooms! There was no consistency in his
feelings. T he demand for a regular and joint ending of their
day was an eccentrics craze with him, and was a perpetual
annoyance to Bettina. M uch as she loved him, she refused
to be treated as a living appendage of a man who, with absurd
pedantry, wanted to treat retiring to rest, getting up, going for
a walk, and meals, as joint functions. Not that he had any bad
intentions in the matter; but he was a mixture of the paterfamilias
gone wrong and o f the gentle tyrant.
Now, therefore, after he had said good night to Kerkhoven
and gone across to the bungalow, he sat in his study waiting
for Bettina. No doubt she was still in the Refectory with Marie.

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He did not switch on the light, but sat in the dark, sunk in
reverie concerning what Kerkhoven had told him, for his hosts
words had made a profound impression on him. But, as time
passed and Bettina did not come, he grew impatient. Going to
the window, he leaned out. T h e night was dark, and rather
misty, so that he could scarcely discern the outlines of the nearest
trees. Then came the sound of footsteps on the path leading from
the main building. There she is at last, he thought. But his
ears informed him that two persons were coming. T h e lightsome
walk of Bettina was unmistakable. T h e other steps were the
heavier tread of a man. It must, of course, be Kerkhoven; and,
indeed, he soon heard Josephs voice. Bettina answered. They
were conversing in low tones so that the words were inaudible,
but their voices had an intimate ring. About ten yards short of
the porch, the speakers diverged into the path leading to the
lake-shore, and soon their footsteps became inaudible. After
a while the two returned, still in confidential talk; went back
again to the lake, returned once more towards the house; neither
quickly nor slowly, but like persons who, forgetful of the passage
of time, are engaged in intimate discussion.
D ry leaves rustled beneath their feet. Sometimes an exclamation
or a soft laugh from Bettina reached the attentive ears of the
listener; Kerkhovens sonorous voice, approaching and receding,
forming the contra-bass to Bettinas treble. Alexander became
more heavy-hearted as minute succeeded minute. W hy did he
tell me he was tired, and not in a mood for further conversation ?
Such was Herzogs splenetic thought. He seems fresh enough
to tramp the garden at midnight. As for Bettina, shes profiting
by her opportunities, and doesnt care a fig that I am waiting
for her. W hy on earth should they want to be together at this
late hour ? She is desperately smitten with him. I ve known
that for a long time. Any mans vanity is tickled when a woman
makes up to him. He must be at least ten years younger than
I am, and he fascinates her. He has had such varied and interesting
experiences; has so extensive a knowledge o f human nature,
and, glib-tongued as he is, can dish it all up at a moments notice.

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She hangs on his every word. Shell get carried away one o f these
days, being never inclined to look before she leaps.
When Bettina came in, switched on the light, and saw him
wan of visage, in a state of collapse seated on the divan, she
was greatly alarmed. But she knew what his distraught expression
and his moody silence betokened; was familiar with such aspects
of dumb reproach, mute questioning, childish despair. She knew
them, but they made her extremely anxious. She did not merely
divine his thoughts, for it was as if she were able to put herself
in his place. Without questioning him as to what was amiss, she
sat down beside him on the couch, took him by the hand, and
tried to explain what Kerkhoven meant to her and what attracted
her to the doctor. She told him no more than he had been saying
to himself; and yet, stubborn and suspicious, he would not
recognise it now that it came to him from her mouth. Or, rather,
his jealousy made him refuse to admit it to her, although to himself
he admitted it frankly enough. W ith a shudder he became
aware that Kerkhovens sincerity was so overwhelming that
he, Alexander, had nothing to fear; that Kerkhovens nature was
so crystal-clear as to render the customary suspicions of a sensual
betrayal unwarrantable. Nevertheless, the woman Alexander
loved must have no other god than himself, even when it had
grown impossible for her to believe any longer in his divinity.
Alas, dethroned gods are more jealous than those who still
reign, and will never renounce their claims to worship. Bettina
understood all this, and had compassion on him because he was
trembling in fear o f losing his possession. That was the fear
she wished to relieve him of. Possessive mania; she knew how
distressing it could be, although she had shaken herself free from
it with the needless burden of home and estate and things of
beauty and other luxuries.
You gave me a picture of the world, she said. Joseph
Kerkhoven has made me understand the world. I need both
the picture and the understanding. Sensation, colour, melody
these surface impressions do not suffice me. I must know the
structure as well. That this knowledge has been vouchsafed to

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me is a boon, I feel that I have got farther on, beyond mere

intuitions and dreams. Am I to renounce this happiness because
you fancy that I am engaged in an ardent flirtation ? You cannot
be so petty as to believe that, or to want to enforce such a privation
upon me. Not Alexander Herzog! He is not the Grand Turk.
He is not a cock to fight a rival for his hens!
Alexander laughed, and took her in his arms. But 'at this
moment she was in no mood for caresses. She withdrew from
his embrace, and strode up and down the room like a man.
Besides, she went on, her glance kindling, if you would
like to know what we usually talk about, it is you. O f ten
conversations we have had together, nine have concerned you. He
is not greatly interested in what I think and do. You come first.
Your health, your work, your frame of mind, your views on this
and that then, after a long interval, I come in.
Nevertheless, he fulfils the function which you have just
described so eloquently?
Yes, nevertheless. You are the detour whereby I can reach
m y goal.
Now it was her turn to laugh, for he was so quaintly crestfallen.
. . . A ll the same, his suspicions were not laid to rest, but
continued to burrow in the depths. He would forget them for
a few hours, and then they would flash into consciousness. Some
times they cropped up in his dreams.
I am only reaping what I have sown, he said to Bettina.
M any men have suffered in like manner at my hands, and this
is how they are taking vengeance on m e.
Guilt, guilt; always the old sense of guilt! Bettina shook her
head despairingly.
122
Kerkhoven was continually at work upon the attempt to secure
the extinction, or, as he called it, the annihilation o f Ganna.
But behind every difficulty he overcame, a new one disclosed
itself. Alexander Herzog, though his character was ostensibly
simple, had an incredibly large number o f backgrounds. When
these were successively revealed, it was as if one opened door

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after door, to find oneself at length in the pathless spaces of

ultimate darkness. Y et he looked guileless, perhaps a trifle
bewitched, and, like an animal, devoid of self-consciousness.
Possession by the Ganna-demon was so far-reaching, was so
rooted in his imagination, that no words of exorcism could put
an end to it.
Perhaps things would be all right if only I could forget the
happenings of ten years.
Kerkhoven knew well enough that talk cannot heal a wound.
He had to deal, in this case, with a disease of the imagination
which monopolised, and was circumscribed, to a very rare degree.
There was no standard treatment for such a malady, nor even
an idea o f any. Research was in its infancy. T h e only possible
course was to contrapose manifestation to manifestation. T h e
doctor must build up a new image of Ganna. He hoped, thereby,
to show two things: first of all, the unessentiality, the unsub
stantiality, of Ganna (he had vainly tried to do this already);
secondly, the inward necessity of the experience for Alexander
Herzog who must be convinced that it formed merely a stage on
the way to a higher evolution, the possibility of an ascent, which
was provided for in the whole texture of his life. In this connexion,
Kerkhoven was bold enough to speak of the grace that comes
through suffering.
A ll this, however, encountered considerable difficulties,
among which Alexanders sensuousness, his thraldom to pleasure
and pain, and his psychological attitude towards the experiences
of life, were not the least. Marie had recognised this, saying to
him:
One must not immerse oneself in the evil side of things,
but must draw upon the sources of divine energy.
T o him, for the time being, these were empty words. If
Ganna had not been the embodiment of evil, how had she been
able to strike him down and to unman him, who, twenty years
before, had been ready to fight the forces o f hell?
Essentially, I was a cheerful creature, he exclaimed; con
fident, unflawed, free from dread of destiny and the future.

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Do not forget, put in Kerkhoven, that then you were

poor, had no possessions.
It was not Ganna that made me a proprietor, answered
Herzog testily.
You mistake. It was Ganna. That was her reaction on you.
The logical inference was obvious. Ganna, a child of her time,
a typical product o f the bourgeois era, differed not a whit from
M rs. X ., the bankers wife, M rs. Y ., the lawyers wife, Mrs. Z .,
the privy councillors w ife ; differed not by an iota from the servant
girl who prosecutes her seducer to obtain an allowance for the
maintenance of an illegitimate child.
You showed that most convincingly in your confession,
declared Kerkhoven.
Still, what you say is not quite correct, replied Herzog.
That was not part of Gannas original nature, though it was
perhaps predestined for her through her relationship with me.
It was predestined by the era in which we live; fore-ordained
by the decay of our society; determined by the atrophy of human
affection, which, as it seems to me, threatens the future of
mankind.
Then you look upon Ganna as no more than a link in a
chain?
Historically speaking, yes. Biographically speaking, as one
o f the members o f a predestined group, Ganna Alexander
Bettina, her function was to drive the clockwork. Do you
grasp my meaning? M ay we not conceive that only through a
progressive series o f pains are the cogwheels kept in motion
and the miracle of time-keeping effected? T h e metaphor is
somewhat fanciful, I admit.
He smiled shrewdly. Alexander stared at him in perplexity.
T h e notion seemed to him fanciful to the verge of mania; and
yet, strangely enough, it brought a sense of alleviation, had
concealed within it a scarcely definable truth namely one behind
which the problem of guilt suddenly took refuge.
For the sense o f guilt was the wall which Kerkhoven could
neither breach nor scale.

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123
Th is sense of guilt had nothing to do with consciousness, or with
the faculty o f judgment. Talking to Bettina, Kerkhoven described
it as an elemental obscuration, a rust which had eaten into the
spirit. Bettina agreed. H er term for the condition was a frozen
bad-conscience. Ganna was the origin of it, the exciting cause;
so long as Ganna existed, the sense of guilt would continue.
If he had been able to throw millions into her lap and to provide
her with all the happiness the world contains, he would still
have felt guilty. Kerkhoven had a simile for it. Ganna and
Alexander were like two superposed disks which could never
get into a concentric position and yet could never be separated,
and wherever the Ganna disk covered the Alexander disk,
there resulted the aforesaid obscuration and rusting o f the spirit.
He gave this interpretation to Alexander, explaining that this
was why Alexander could get no rest. T h e doctor asked him about
his childhood, about his father and his mother. His mothers
early death, the straitened circumstances o f the family, the
fathers desperate struggle for life, matters going from bad to
worse, the fathers remarriage to a cold-hearted, avaricious,
calculating, ignorant woman of the petty-bourgeois class all
these circumstances had had much influence on Alexanders
development. Kerkhoven had a patient and affectionate way
o f drawing Alexander out, but carefully avoided producing the
impression that an inquisition into his patients private life
was being made. Simply a friendly conversation; and though
Marie and Bettina were not always present, it was taken as a
matter o f course that they should be there whenever they found
it convenient. Thus Bettina learned a good deal which she had
never before heard about Alexanders life, and was profoundly
moved.
For a time the stepmothers figure occupied the foreground.
How long ago, thought Bettina. Fifty years; more than a
generation. In those days my father was a young conductor
having still his laurels to win in the musical world. I was not
born till a good while after that. These reflections made

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Alexander seem to her extraordinarily old, though by some over

sight o f nature he had retained his youthful appearance. His
very narrative sounded like an ancient folk-tale. T h e wicked
stepmother was a favourite topic of such stories. Nowadays a
stepmother is no longer a bugbear. It seemed plain to Kerkhoven
that this tyrannical woman had been a counter-type of Ganna,
and Alexander agreed with the interpretation. It was his own
doctrine that every individual is brought into contact again and
again with various character types in a succession of meta
morphoses, and that these determine his course through life.
Not long after the stepmother arrived upon the scene, she
had become the boys tormentor. Once she gave him a fearful
thrashing because he had torn his breeches. She kept count of
the lumps o f sugar and marked the loaves of bread. T h e pilfering
of a handful of cherries was mercilessly punished. Among her
chastisements, deprivation of food was one o f the mildest. T o
appease his hunger, he emptied the milk-jug one night, this
misdeed being followed by a savage investigation and further
punishment. On a winter morning, before break of day, she would
pull off the bedclothes to make him get up early, and at such
times she looked like a fury. A scar in his memory had been left
by her mad rage when she got wind of his first attempts at author
ship. T h is was in his fourteenth year. Thenceforward she spied
upon him, was almost always able to get hold o f his writings,
and delighted to throw them contemptuously into the fire.
In later years, Alexander had often wondered what could account
for her hatred of writings.
That was not in the least like Ganna, he said to Kerkhoven,
but the very opposite.
T h e opposite o f an action or a feeling is often the same
action or feeling in disguise, answered Kerkhoven thoughtfully.
Perhaps in the hatred o f writings, an instinctive dread of
betrayal was at work. One who does so much evil as your step
mother is necessarily afraid of betrayal. Or the trouble may have
arisen from a fundamental lack of imagination in this disastrously
commonplace character. Such as she cannot endure imaginative

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persons and dreamers, who, being hostile to acquisition and

possession, threaten the sources of what they value in life. There
is nothing the petty bourgeois detests more than imagination and
dream. But tell me, went on Kerkhoven, to whom Alexanders
reminiscences had brought unexpected illumination, what was
your fathers attitude when your stepmother mishandled you
in this way?
M y father had so galling and joyless a life, the mere earning
of a livelihood was such a perpetual strain and care, that he shut
his eyes, as far as he could, to what was going on in the house.
I remember that when he came home in the evening and my
stepmother planted herself in front of him to give him a lengthy
account of my offences, he sat perplexed, eating his soup without
a word, and staring at me while he shook his head. Then he would
suddenly leap to his feet, overpowered by rage, stride towards
me, and give me so violent a box on the ear that my brain reeled.
He was fond o f music and admired the classical composers,
but after his second marriage, he came to regard this taste as
something to be ashamed of, taking his cue from my stepmother.
M y real mother had felt imprisoned in the world of tradespeople.
T h e last image I have of my father is a strange one. I dont
know why it has persisted in my mind, for it has no special
significance except as an expression o f his perpetual embarrass
ment yes, I think embarrassment is the best word. It was only
a few days before his death, and perhaps that is why I remember
it so well. I had come back from Italy with Ganna in the first
year of our marriage. W e rented a cottage in a hamlet on the
Brenner pass. I invited my father to stay with us that he might
make Gannas acquaintance. He considered it a great honour,
being very proud of me, for he regarded the eighty-thousandcrown dowry as a climax of achievement. Ganna was most
affectionate to him, and he took her to his heart with a gratitude
which showed him to me in a new light. When he casually
remarked that he was enjoying the first holiday he had had for
thirty-seven years, he revealed to me an existence of thraldom
such as, in my blind arrogance, I had never dreamed of.

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But what I wanted to tell you was an incident at the station

when he set out for home. I bought his ticket and gave it to him.
He gazed at me as much bewildered and alarmed as if I had
handed him a roll o f gold pieces. His mouth twitched with a
smile o f embarrassment which communicated itself to me, so
I looked away from his face at the hand in which he held his
umbrella, a shabby old umbrella encircled above with a black
elastic band, and bulgy in the middle such an umbrella as one
sees in caricatures. T h e hand was worn and tremulous; might
have been that of a man of ninety instead of only fifty-six;
hairy and freckled. His forefinger was fidgeting all the time with
the metal ring which kept the spokes o f the gamp together.
This fidgety forefinger made a strong impression upon me,
manifesting as it did the embarrassment which permeated his
whole being. Later I had the foolish fancy that he must have
had a foreboding of his imminent death, and was embarrassed
as a man is who departs with a secret on his mind a secret
which he is concealing from a sense of decency. I suppose
that really the only trouble was that the proper words failed
him. He wrote beautifully, his penmanship being copperplate,
and his style was masterly from the commercial outlook; though
as far as spoken words were concerned, he could command only
the necessary minimum. . . . But I am spinning a long yarn
about matters which probably do not interest you in the least.
124
On the contrary, what you are saying is of the utmost interest,
put in Kerkhoven; you have brought your father vividly
before us. I feel as if I knew him intimately, and the strange
thing is that I see him in you. I use the word strange, thinking,
not of biological, but of optical fact.
As to embarrassment, that is very remarkable, declared
Marie. Embarrassment is only a paraphrase of a feeling of guilt.
You dont need to tell me that, I know it, interrupted
Alexander. It is by no means agreeable to me to rediscover
him in myself after thirty years.

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Involuntarily, he thrust his hand into his pocket, for Kerkhoven

was looking at his fingers.
Your father must have been extraordinarily lonely, Marie
went on. So lonely a life is scarcely conceivable. Did he ever
try to get anything besides money? Did he ever how can I
express it without pulling out the pathetic stop? look up at
the stars ?
The stars? No. M ost unlikely at any rate in the sense you
are using the words, Frau Marie.
In your home, was there never any talk of, let us say once
more, the stars?
No, I cant recall such a thing.
In all your childhood, was there no stirring, no pious feeling,
no yearning towards higher things ? Forgive me if I seem intrusive;
but surely in the lower middle class of those days there used to
be a regular performance of religious duties, a reading of family
prayers, some sort of outward ceremonial? A t least people
went to church on Sundays?
I can cudgel my brains as much as you like, rejoined
Alexander, but, honestly, there was nothing of the sort. W e were
freethinkers and proud of it.
But how could you live under such conditions? exclaimed
Marie. A child! An utterly godless child!
I was not utterly godless, Frau Marie. I often looked up
at the stars, if only for the reason that I had no liking for the way
things happened on earth.
Oh, but that amounted to nothing, answered Marie sadly.
That was only reverie. I know as much from memories of my
own youth. Later it develops into a kind of sentimental philosophy.
How wonderful that in such an environment, you could find
yourself; that your mind could grow upon such a soil until
you became what you now are. It passes understanding. An
artist would seem to be a creature apart, differing from all
others.
O f course, murmured Bettina with gentle mockery.
Marie blushed.

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Please dont misunderstand me, dear, she said. I m not

a nit-wit. For years something has fermented within me, as
Joseph can tell you. I am not talking and questioning as one
who has attained perfect repose in matters of faith, and utters
oracles. Far from it; I grope in the dark, crying: Help me to
find the way out.
It was a stimulating moment. She had spoken very quickly;
the red on her cheeks had vanished, leaving them very pale;
her eyes were bright with tears. Th ey all looked at her. Bettina,
who was sitting beside her, leaned towards her and kissed her
hand. Some one by the window rose and walked noiselessly to
the farther end of the big room and crouched down there. It
was Aleid. Kerkhoven followed the girl, whispered a few words
in her ear, and then came back to the others.
We must not doubt the solidity o f Alexander Herzogs
foundations, Joseph said to Marie. His is a religious tem
perament; or, better expressed, he is fundamentally religious.
Not that this implies very much. It is not inevitable that a higher
development will be superposed upon a religious foundation,
that good grain will necessarily grow on a religious soil. But the
religious foundation, the religious soil, is necessary to such
development, to such growth. Alexander moves in a world which
to us is closed. It is not his vocation to act in accordance with
precise knowledge. N or is it our business to teach him, but to
learn from him. He has a message to deliver to us; we have not
a message to deliver to him. Probably he is nearer the powers
invisible than any of us, though he does not know it. If he knew
it he would no longer be nearer. Were we to call him back from
his dream, he would no longer have a message for us. W e have
to accept the fact as we find it. He is wrapped in dream, as a
silkworm in the cocoon it has spun around itself.
When he is awakened from his dream theres no Alexander
left, said Bettina with a smile.
I would gladly follow him into his invisible kingdom,
Marie was beginning, when Alexander interrupted her.
Invisible? Invisible? You may call it lawless, imaginary,

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cut off from reality, or what you will. But invisible? I dont
think it is that, unless I am a fool or a humbug.
No, no, Alexander, cried Marie, raising her hands im
ploringly. Surely you must admit that what you dream and
what you imaginatively create, are not the same as what you do
as a human being. No, and again, no. Your dream is not your
life. There is so much negative in your composition. W hy is
that?
Because I have almost no certainties. I do not even feel
certain that I exist.
Have you never lived with an idea of G od ?
With the idea, y es; but with the picture, no.
You say you do not know whether you exist. I cant see
what you are driving at.
W hy not?
D ont you remember in the Matthew Passion the heart
rending outcry, It is I; I must atone ? Everything in you is
continually crying out, whether dumbly or vocally, It is I;
I must atone.
Alexander made no answer.

125
The struggle raged more fiercely, as when four persons are
assailing a closed door by which none of them is permitted to
enter. None o f them has the key, but each hopes that one of the
others has it. They study the lock and the bolts, unavailingly,
for there seems no hope of their being able to open the door.
Where can the key have got to ? Then it transpires that not one
of them knows where the key is or how to get possession of it.
Perhaps there is no key at all, and the only thing needed is to
utter a spell or to press a secret spring. Th ey look, they listen,
they deliberate, they shout in an endeavour to catch a sign from
some one on the other side. Nothing happens. Unless they get
the key, they cannot enter.
Metaphorically stated, that was the position. They could
not but ask themselves what motive was actuating these persons,

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and what was their aim. They did not form a conventicle; they
were not animated by any kind of sectarian longing or overenthusiastic ideas, and still less by a hair-splitting or abstract
search after God. Both the men and both the women had reached
the climax of their lives. Th ey were satiated with experience,
were equipped with all the knowledge of their tim e; each one of
them had appropriate daily work, professional and domestic
duties; each stood firmly upon solid earth, an active being
among active beings. What accounted for their spiritual unrest?
Their experience and their knowledge had become unsatisfying.
That was what ailed them. Th ey could no longer conceal from
themselves that their daily activities were now a joyless task.
Their recurrent affairs and incessantly repeated doings were the
working of a mere mechanism of life. Under such conditions,
one can get no further with what one has at ones disposal. One
lacks stores upon which one can draw. The cupboards and chests
which were believed to be full, prove, on examination, to be
empty. In all matters of the inward being, one finds oneself
restricted to lees, to poor, spoiled vestiges. Essential nutriment
is running short. For a time one keeps going with the pretence
that there is plenty to eat; but by degrees the pangs of hunger
grow unbearable. T h e consequences of hunger are weakness,
despair, and an insatiable craving for food.
This is not an isolated phenomenon, restricted to the four
persons who happened to be assembled at Seeblick. There is
epidemic hunger famine. There is a European famine, a plane
tary famine. The four at Seeblick were only in a peculiar position,
in so far as their nervous and mental apparatus was of a kind to
make it a peculiarly sensitive registering instrument. The
general condition of the world throbbed in all their pulses.
Kerkhoven had coined the expression traumatic tetanus
(spiritual tetanus). For twenty years, people had been living in
a sort of tetanic sleep beneath glowing leads. Now, the whole
body of mankind was twitching, was dripping with a febrile
sweat; with chattering teeth, mankind lay in the cold of outer
space, delirious with hunger, and with no prospect but death.

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Here and there, however, a few are trying to organise measures

which will deliver them from this death. Hunger gnawing at
their vitals, they move to and fro among their brothers and sisters
with an air as if they heard the stones singing. Th ey are the
pathfinders. T h ey work in secret, and this very fact gives them
strength to overcome opposition.
Consider, first of all, Marie Kerkhoven. She belonged to the
well-to-do class, had been brought up in easy circumstances,
with every advantage of taste and culture at her disposal; accus
tomed from early childhood to gratify her luxurious inclinations;
her thought-processes, determined by tradition, and her actions
safeguarded by the same power; full of charm, full of impetus;
endowed with heart and with brain; but with no proper anchorage
or safe guidance. Until she was thirty-five, she had drifted at
the mercy of winds and waves without noticing that her ship
had sprung a leak. Then had come the stresses of passion,
disillusionment and betrayal, the collapse of the man she loved
who recalled her to himself by heroic renunciation. She, who had
never been alone, suddenly found herself solitary in a world
which was no longer hers (for her world had vanished, had been
broken to pieces, had ceased to exist); and, in view of the
disorganisation of her new world, her only resource, if she was
to escape foundering in the abyss, was to set to work upon
salvaging what could still be salvaged; to leave her isolated cell
and devote herself to the service of mankind. Obeying the
inward monitor, she accepted his commands as those of a law
imposed from without only to find that the house in whose
building she wished to take part was already a ruin. Ridiculous
to try and repair the damage with a few bricks and a trowelful
of mortar when the edifice was collapsing all over the place.
Nothing could be completed, no fruit could ripen. There was no
jo y in the task; she could not put her heart into it. Y et without
these things the labour was futile. T he old buttresses were
crumbling. Every path she tried was blocked by a wall which
at least compelled her to do what she had never done before,
look upward. But if the upward glance found no response,

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despair overwhelmed her. Was there any being throned above

who could see her? Was there a world-spirit, ineffable, with
whom she could commune ? What must she do to find that spirit ?
Have faith? Faith in what? In a meaning, a figure, something
thought, something felt? Faith: a word o f many meanings,
all of them open to dispute; a word which, like some strange
bird or like a comet, describes a parabolic course from the inner
self to infinity and back from infinity to the inner self, amid the
silence of death.
In an earlier part of this book, using somewhat different
imagery, we have already spoken of the key for which Marie
was seeking. Before she could reach the goal of her desire,
she would need the key wherewith to unlock the door behind
which she was prisoned as Marie Kerkhoven, a person bearing
an ineffaceable stamp. She would have to blow up, or batter
down, the tenement Marie Kerkhoven. But she shrank from
this undertaking because she clung to the familiar form, because
she was afraid of the suffering so radical a change would involve,
because she was a captive of self-love. She had asked herself
at that time whether she would ever find any one whose deeds
or personality or destiny would help her to win through. Victory
was impossible without the aid of a living associate, a real and
palpable mortal of like substance with herself. This associate
must be found.
T h e unwitting helper was Alexander Herzog. He entered her
life at a moment when his own had reached the nadir and was
completely unhinged. When Marie stretched out her hand to
him, he seized it with as much gratitude as if it had been his
first experience of the kind, as if he had never had a Bettina.
We human beings are strange creatures: we always need a new
contact, if renovation is to ensue; we tend to make use of one
another, and grow indolent in the sweetness of a confidential
association. The passionate avowals in the written story of
Alexanders life had upon Marie the effect of a revelation. He
was a martyr, but one without a faith; and yet, in some enigmatic
way, he had found grace. He was a man with strongly developed

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metaphysical needs. Nevertheless, his kingdom was wholly

of this world. Though full of humility, he had never kneeled
before a higher power. He knew nothing of prayer, in any sense
of the term, but he seemed to stand close to the unknown God.
He was patient in suffering, bowed before the bludgeonings
of fate, yet exhibited an animal clinging to the minor pleasures
of life. He could encourage and stimulate others, while utterly
incompetent to help himself out of his difficulties. Marie found
these paradoxes extraordinarily confusing, so that she felt as if
she were looking into a witches cauldron. T h e appeasing influence
she exercised on him, gave her by degrees a self-confidence
which she had long lacked. The fact that she was a spiritual
stimulus to him, taught her how to rescue him from his world
o f shadows. All at once, it was he who found the words of which
she had been in search, who gave expression to the secret wishes
that were burning within her; he was to her a higher inspiration;
she would have liked to enfold him in her arms and say to him :
Fettered man, strike off your chains! He divined her need; he
recognised her most signal capacity, her most individual charac
teristic, her inborn gift for teaching and educating, and was able
to produce in her so strong a conviction that she possessed
this talent, that for a second time she began to try her hand
with children, more purposively than in Berlin, and not, as
there, in vain endeavours at uplifting the spawn of the slums.
Her two sons, with Helmut and Konrad Imst (whose father had
indifferently left him with Jeanne Mallery) formed the nucleus
o f an institution which was not an institution in the ordinary
sense of the word, but a playground and a home for a populace
of children the children of wage-earners, handicraftsmen,
lonely women, and political refugees. They came and went as
it pleased them; were not sought in the highways and byways,
but turned up spontaneously, driven first by curiosity, then by
the fact that they got something to eat, then by the pleasure they
took in a social life that seemed free from restraints, and by
increasing respect for a guidance which left them the illusion
o f liberty. One talked about the matter to another; and without

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any sort of advertisement there was soon such an afflux that

something had to be done to check the stream. There was no
regular instruction, no curriculum; only games, walks, and
conversations; often very strange conversations about God
and divine things, which were discussed as a form of sport.
Marie at length had the feeling of achievement, nay more, of
fulfilment. Her day was mapped out, and was rich in happenings
and insight. Fatigue was forgotten, and she felt as if she were
flying over a serried range of mountains. She had special friends
among her protegees, and when talking to them she looked like
the radiant young mother of a quiverful of children. Alexander
Herzog, who had little bent for association with young folk,
was greatly astonished at this new development in Marie, and
in a moment of enthusiasm he compared her to Our Saviour
in His dealings with children, Suffer little children to come unto
me. This word of deliverance is always spoken when a world
transformation is at hand. Marie was alarmed; not only because
of the unseemliness o f the comparison, but because she knew
herself too well, knew from experience how readily she exceeded
moderation, whether as imposed by bodily laws or as prescribed
to human beings by bonds of blood and affection. It must not
again happen that Joseph Kerkhoven would be estranged from
her because his life moved outside the sphere in which, forgetful
of self, she had become unduly immersed. She must save herself
up for him, must remain at his side both in the spirit and in the
flesh. Then there was Aleid to think of as well. Thus ties formed
around her, duty conflicting with duty, warning her that life
can only conquer the present hour, whatever the reading of the
stars may be.
126
Bettina required a lengthy period of time to recover her poise.
The initial determination of putting her experiences behind
her and writing Finis beneath, had cost her little, for to do
so meant that she was following the dictates of her nature and
temperament. True, the din still rang in her ears, the dreadful
clamour about money and possessions still made her head

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buzz, the memory o f the shuddering horror lived on in her

mind. It was hard for her at first to be as cheerful and lively as
she thought her companions expected her to be. And she felt
she must fulfil this expectation, no matter in whose company
she might be. None had ever seen her looking sad, she refused
to make a display of her woes. She had to lie about a great deal,
and sleep whenever possible, for she had many sleepless nights
to make good; there were moments when she felt sublimely
content, and things might have gone smoothly with her all
along the line if the climate at Seeblick had suited her better.
Unfortunately it was relaxing to her, who flourished best in
stronger, more invigorating air. She loved the garden with its
bounty of roses, she loved the wide skies, and the glimpse of
snowy peaks in the distance, dreaming in the azure firmament.
Taking a book with her, she would sit by the lake where the
stillness was absolute save for the plashing of wavelets at the
edge. Gulls flew silently overhead, and, in the cool of the evening,
would come down to skim over the ruffled surface of waters,
mistaking its limitless vistas for the infinitude of the sea.
Her life turned back within her who had so long been
constrained to set it upon outward things. Complete relaxation
o f mind and body came on those days only when no practical
activities were demanded of her, for there had remained over
from the nightmare past an almost morbid detestation for busi
ness and daily routine; even writing to her much loved daughters
was a burden. She longed to lead the life of an anchorite,
to forget the world, and to meditate upon the things of the
spirit; and when she witnessed M aries zeal in the new under
taking, Bettina was made uneasy in spite of a genuine admiration
for the work her friend had set a hand to. She felt, however,
that she ought to help and not play the part of idle spectator,
so she accompanied the party on some excursions, collected the
necessary refreshments, told the children stories, and when
Marie recited the lines which had served as beacon so many
years I am in this darkened world, As a candle none has yet
lit; Be still, contentious heart; Who stays me, I know well.

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Bettina set the words to music. The melody was simple and lent
itself to being sung in canon. Before long the Woodrangers
Bettinas name for M aries young charges had learned
it by heart and the song soon became one o f their favourites.
But although such joining in was not unpleasurable, and as the
days passed her attachment to Marie became deeper and more
loving, Bettina was never really happy unless she could be alone
or talking with Kerkhoven or of an evening in the Refectory.
The hours spent in that rambling room under the rafters became
more and more significant for her; what she learned then and
experienced was woven inextricably into the network of her life ;
at times her throat would be dry and her head spin with the joy
and the torment of it all, torment that was half delight and half
regret at having to sit so dumbly or so taken aback because things
which she had struggled with for a lifetime in secret, it is true,
and always kept buried out of sight now came forward into the
light with such amazing truth and clarity.
O f the quartet, Bettina was the most passionate member,
and likewise the one who yearned the most after the divine.
She made great demands on life, and claimed the highest of love
and friendship; while expecting irrefragable clearness of thought,
she was far from being satisfied with her own achievements in
this matter; she insatiably sought for explanation, solution,
decision, development, expansion, information, for lucid symbols
and crystalline tones such as music bestows; she fought against
bodily weakness especially those weaknesses to which the body
of woman is condemned, invariably leaving her in the lurch
at the moment of her utmost need; she despaired of the world
which gave her no hope of finding a place in it for such as she,
a world as different from the world of her youth as is a ragged
and smudgy canvas from a beautiful and brightly coloured picture;
she lived with a man who worshipped her and yet knew her not
and gave her so little elbow-room that she had to be happy if
she was allowed to creep away into an inconspicuous corner. All
this had created so mighty a hunger that her soul was parched
and enfeebled, nauseated by the spurious food it had so long

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been offered as nutriment, in revolt against the broken-down

emotions, the inconsequential words, the untenable theses which
had been fed to it. She longed for that which was truly alive,
that which could be contemplated and grasped; something that
her judgment approved; something she could measure her
strength with.
These were at the root of her relationship to Joseph Kerkhoven.
127
A ny one who lives almost exclusively in the domain of art and
spirit, begins, after a time, to become affected by a sort of anaemia,
a weakening of the elemental forces. Beauty and devotion to
the beautiful may act like a habit-forming drug when they
are made the ground for claiming special privileges, the right
to an existence apart from the community and having laws
peculiar to itself an existence inexorably cruel. It is as if in a
town under martial law some one were to amuse himself with
kite-flying. Bettina became distressingly aware of this after
her first fugitive glances into the life of Kerkhoven, and indeed
after her very first encounter with him. W hen thereafter, from
time to time, she had to do with him and contemplated him with
growing astonishment, watching with those sharp eyes o f hers
which nothing escaped all the movements of his body and his
mind, she came to form an entirely new idea of human behaviour;
and the world, with which hitherto she had come into contact
only at the periphery, was no longer something of which she was
remotely conscious, but a reality that appealed to her through
every nerve. T o summarise her view of him, the man was the
centre of the world; and she desired more and more strongly
to draw near to this centre, as if there alone she could find
equipoise, and discover an outlook upon happenings, sufferings,
dangers. . . . Danger, above all, for it was so terriby dangerous
to go defenceless into the firing-line. But at his side she would
be to some extent protected, for he knew the plan o f battle
and where to take cover; and he had assembled so many doughty
fighters around him that there was safety in numbers. Almost
incomprehensible to her was the multifariousness of his activities:

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how he managed to give ear to each of these assistants and to

provide each with help and counsel; showing one a dug-out
and another a way from the turm oil; giving direct aid to a th ird ;
providing weapons for a fourth; actually taking a fifth on his
back to carry the wounded man out of the medley incessantly,
indefatigably, imperturbably, cheerfully, and as if all he did
was not worth mentioning.
She said :
You ought to take care of yourself. You are wearing yourself
out.
He answered:
When I begin to take care of myself, I shall no longer be able
to take care of other people. What does taking care of oneself
mean? Is one so much capital lent out at interest? Those are
antediluvian views. It is boastful to talk of self-sacrifice, but
the notion that the few sparks which fate strikes out of one
ought to be stored in a savings-box is ludicrous.
As he spoke he had that quenched and forcibly controlled
expression which had aroused anxious forebodings in Marie
and now alarmed Bettina.
W hen she was with him, she seldom ventured to let herself
go. She was afraid that her troubles would seem to him too
trifling, and there were so many claims on him. She dreaded
his criticism; a slight, depreciatory twitching of the mouth, a
gently compassionate smile. In practical matters, he was a trusty
counsellor. Since Alexander Herzogs income had been greatly
reduced by the prevailing political and economic conditions
she spoke to him about their financial anxieties. He always
knew how to help. When, at the end of a month, it was impossible
to make certain payments that had fallen due, he found some
one willing to place a large sum at Alexanders disposal, no
less than ten thousand francs. Still, she did not like worrying
him with her private cares. When he caught her unawares,
hanging her head in discouragement, he scolded her. Th ey were
often at loggerheads. She was furious when he mockingly spoke
o f her attacks o f depression as the caprices o f a fine lady
who had been spoiled. But he was not talking seriously. He

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enjoyed disputing with her, took delight in her readiness of

repartee. When he got the worst of it in an encounter, he made
merry over his defeat, and would say, for instance:
You just wait. I shall join forces with Alexander, and then
perhaps we shall be able to cope with Pallas Athene.
,She answered with a laugh:
Y ou d better be careful. Remember]that she flayed a giant.
Watch o u t!
What she had said to Alexander, You gave me a picture of
the world, Joseph Kerkhoven has made me understand the
world, was literal truth and not a metaphorical flourish. Bettina
was never superficial or half-hearted. Either she abstained alto
gether or else gave herself up to a thing with the utmost energy.
Less than ever, as regards her relationship with Joseph, could
she be content with half-measures, since her very being was at
stake, since only with Josephs aid could she keep her head above
water in the storm-tost ocean of heart and m ind. She knewher weak
points, her lack of resources, of expert knowledge; that she was
entering unexplored territory: but she was eager to learn, were
it only to discover what sort of a man this was who had roused
so much respect in her that this feeling alone seemed to safeguard
her as if she had been sheltered in the interior of a mountain.
As long as I am under his care, no harm can come to m e,
she said to herself.
He talked to her about his scientific studies and about his
patients; he read her parts of his work on Illusion; this meant
much to her, and gave her life new depths. But only later came
the profound transformation which ensued when she realised
that his researches in the field of theory, his medical activities,
the help he was ever ready to give to his fellows whether friends
or strangers, the daily work in which misfortune became for him
synonymous with illness, and crime and vice with misfortune
were the prelude to an ascent into a region lying far beyond.
In plain words, Joseph Kerkhoven, both man of learning and
man of action, was deliberately and expressly in search o f the
road leading into eternity, in search o f a tie with the godhead.

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That was what made her friendship with him so wonderful

an experience. Thus did he set her an example.
128
T h e trains of thought to which he introduced her were, some
o f them, difficult to follow; and a considerable time elapsed
before he was willing to reveal to her his whole philosophical
trend, for he had first to satisfy himself that she was capable of
understanding it. A ll that is in course of becoming is simple in its
beginnings, he explained. A t first, the germ cell is dominated by
the formative instinct, which works in accordance with a definite
architectural plan. W hat this instinct systematically produces,
the framework so to say, has within it the faculty for finer differ
entiations, successively producing the energies indispensable
for self-preservation and the organs needed for the maintenance
of the species. Then are constructed organs of motion and sensa
tion, o f orientation and causality. T h e work thus effected is
incomparably more subtle than that done by an instrument of
precision. In the further course of the genetic processes, there
develop the creative forces requisite for the mental and spiritual
life of the creature. W e may say that a vital drama is being played.
T h e prologue of the drama begins in the most primitive stages
o f the evolutionary process. Tim idly but indefatigably, and with
innumerable variations, the same motifs are repeated, with
perpetual though scarcely recognisable additions, until at length,
after the lapse of immeasurable aeons, the titanic ensemble
fills the stage. Everything happens in such a way that, if we
suppose an onlooker, he will see nothing but action and movement
whose causes remain hidden from him; and this imaginary
onlooker, however keenly interested in the spectacle, cannot
fail to be utterly perplexed. For he sees neither beginning nor
end, and he does not know the purpose of the drama. Only one
thing grows clear to him, namely that the deepest roots of religion
the yearning for God, the question as to the purpose of life
are by no means to be sought (as science and psychology have
assumed) in the realm o f feeling; are not grounded solely upon

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the dread of the uncertainties of our lot and the fear of death;
nor even upon the wish for security, power, peace, harmony
with nature but lie much deeper, arising in remote phases of
development, before there can be any talk of consciousness,
in protoplasm itself, where the primal forces that will culminate
in the spiritual being and growth of mankind are beginning
to develop. What does this imply? Tw o things. Not only that
protoplasm, unicellular organisms multiplying by fission, are
im mortal; but also that protoplasm, as a whole, aims at eternity.
Eternity, everlastingness, absolute time, including in itself all
conceivable temporal strata and structures. From this it follows
incontrovertibly that the claim to the persistence of life does
not proceed primarily from the individual organism, but is a
claim put forward by the ego which demands continuance as
against the infinity that inheres in it. This unknown impulse
within us, the individual impetus and its most highly-developed
form the biological consciousness, guide unerringly our vital
tasks and destinies without our being aware of the fact, or not
so aware that the nature of their energies is comprehensible
to us. On the contrary, the immediate cravings and demands
o f the ego usually dazzle us to such an extent as to make us
incapable of perceiving our true future interests. Nevertheless,
this impulse is continually at work in us like a dream in a sleeper,
to crop out in decisive instants, whenever our higher spiritual
goods are imperilled, whenever a feeling is in conflict with its
origin, with its ancestry, with its vital determination. Feeling!
What is feeling? A ll feeling rests upon the concept o f life. It
is inherent in every specimen of organised protoplasm, having
multiplied as a penny invested at compound interest will become
an enormous capital in the course o f thousands of years. Out
o f feeling germinates personality; and personality is nothing
other than the connected series of snapshots of the vital balance.
It is feeling which, in the central nervous system, gives rise to
an unending succession of lightning-flashes of awareness of
past, present, and future. It is feeling which, in the cosmos,
plays the determinative role of the religious instinct.

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But from the world of the feelings to the religious world is

a long journey. Although religion indisputably belongs to the
realm of feelings and instincts, and not to the realm of sensation
and motion, psychology teaches how the boundaries are staked;
that the mission of movement and sensation is to form out of
archaic feelings a lofty spiritual edifice, by clarifying our rules
of action upon the basis of incessantly repeated frictions and
struggles, and thus crowning the development of the psyche.
But psychology itself, when confronted with the problem of
religion, balks before the attempt to consider religion psycho
logically and scientifically. Nor is the reason far to seek. The
man of science speedily discovers that in the religious domains
customary words are inexperienced assistants which leave him
in the lurch. He must coin new terms, adopt new outlooks,
possess clairvoyant gifts, shake off his prejudices, and resolutely
plumb unknown depths. Then it will become clear to him that
the religious sentiment ultimately represents the harmonising
of all our noblest impulses; that faith is the mightiest primal
form of inner experience; that no exact science is so exact as
to be able to dispense with the ingredient of faith ; that no logical
acuity, no care in the selection of material for study, no successful
experiment, can save scientific assumptions from collapse if
spiritual forces are left out of the reckoning those spiritual
forces which, on closer examination with unprejudiced eyes,
suddenly acquire a significance never before realised. T h e man
of science will find it impossible to ignore that human history
has been guided and ordered by a world impetus which has
itself, in turn, been subject to enormous vacillations and dis
turbances. L histoire nest quun itineraire des peuples vers
D ieu , wrote Quinet. That is very fine: a journey towards God.
G od: an indefinable being, no matter what name you give
him. A good which permeates the universe, a mysterious good
which increases the potency of all vital processes. It was the idea
that such a being, eluding perception, but nevertheless immanent
in the soul, could be as mutable as the lowest of creatures; that
daily and eternally, mortally and immortally, this supreme

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being is continually metamorphosing and re-creating himself

it was this idea which most effectively promoted for the
physician and investigator Joseph Kerkhoven his sense of
participation with God, and guided him on to the path towards
faith. Only on to the path, indeed; for the idea of a god who is
himself subject to the workings of destiny is a human acquisition
and sib to the experience of our senses. But with the aid of this
notion, the limitless sufferings of the world become in a measure
tolerable. W hat is once for all inconceivable by the workings of
reason, grows conceivable through im agery; as when through a
cosmic convulsion a nebula condenses into a sublime crystal
that radiates energy. But no metaphor can enable us to conceive
the inconceivable; so that we are still faced by mystery, and have
to admit that mystery is the only door leading to faith. M ystery
is formless. Faith, supreme and unconditioned, sacrifices form;
and that is the victory of the world impetus over protoplasm.
129
T h ey were in the central room of the bungalow, which was used
as living-room and study. Tea had been served two hours before,
and the tea-service was still standing on the round table between
them. Since tea, Kerkhoven had scarcely changed his position.
H e was sitting in a corner o f the sofa, his head propped on his
left hand. In the other hand he held a walnut which he looked
at from time to time. Though it was cool, now, in late September,
the window was open. The glowing ball o f the setting sun was
visible through the yellowing foliage o f a chestnut tree.
Without form, one cannot be a Christian, said Bettina
softly.
M ust one be a Christian? rejoined Kerkhoven.
I see no other possibility, answered Bettina, at least
in so far as sacrifice and grace are concerned.
Perhaps that is true, said Kerkhoven; but on the road
from becoming man to becoming God there is no succession.
Becoming man is a process which could hardly be begun in two
thousand years, to say nothing of being finished.

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But are we concerned with succession ?

Certainly we are.
Not, rather, with love and compassion?
Th ey are in the line of succession, but cannot be realised.
T h e road is too long.
Is your road shorter?
Religious faith is the affair of a small number of the elect.
That applies to the Christian faith as w ell.
Yes, but the Christian faith has grown cold during these
two thousand years.
Cannot its fervour be restored?
Not enough for the elaboration of the material. So much
new material has accumulated, especially of late generations.
In every one o f the elect, Jesus Christ glows. Y ou not
excepted, said Bettina.
Kerkhoven did not answer, and Bettina saw no reason for
breaking the silence. From the attic room there sounded the
silvery laughter o f little Helmut, who was playing at steam
ships with Robert and Johann.
At this juncture, Alexander Herzog entered the adjoining room.
Bettina had told him that Kerkhoven was coming to tea with
her, and he had gathered from her manner that she wanted to
be alone with her friend. He had cleared out, therefore; and
had taken Marie for a row on the lake. It was now a quarter to
six, and there seemed no reason why he should not come back.
He was wearing rubber-soled shoes, so his tread was noiseless.
Also, to avoid disturbing the speakers, he had opened and
closed the front door without making a sound. But that does
not tell the whole story. In part, it was true, he did not wish
to disturb them. On the other hand, he was jealous, and would
gladly have overheard their conversation. O nly a few words,
and chiefly their tones, which might tell him a great deal. But
they were silent. He stood there; the party door was ajar. ( T h a ts
all right, anyhow, was the thought which flashed through his
mind.) No sound broke the enigmatic silence, except the almost
imperceptible noises that betray the presence of human beings:

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a deep breath, the rustling of a gown, the shuffling of a foot on

the floor. Had he known the cause of this silence, his shame
would have been as great as was now his unnatural and unseemly
distress; for, as things were, what he was saying to himself was
that nothing but an undue intimacy could account for the silence
which seemed to thunder in his ears as if it would overwhelm
him. By an involuntary movement, or at any rate by one he could
not control, and which was the only possible way o f putting
an end to the painful situation, he knocked against a chair.
Thereupon Bettina, who for minutes had been aware of his
proximity, called to him by name. Her voice disclosed neither
uneasiness nor surprise. T h is comforted him a little, but when
he crossed the threshold he was as pale as death, and, as usual,
Bettina could read in his eyes what was going on in his mind.
What she read, made her blush. Anger, shame, and bitterness
struggled for mastery, and were likewise plain for him to under
stand. When he encountered her gaze, he smiled awkwardly,
and hung his head. Kerkhoven had risen to his feet. He looked
at Bettina, looked at Alexander; knitted his brows: he knew.
Hiding his astonishment, he went to the window, and mechani
cally closed it. W hile, stricken dumb, he was looking out into
the garden, Bettina left the room, and went to join the youngsters
in the attic.
130
Dont you think your attitude a trifle unworthy? began
Kerkhoven, without turning round. Is there any explanation
o f it?
Alexander, who was leaning against one o f the jambs of the
doorway, by which he had entered, made no reply.
It is distressing that a man of your calibre should be unable
to reach security, in any relationship.
Do you know of a medicament for my trouble ? asked Herzog,
with sad scorn.
Kerkhoven replied:
I have read somewhere a profound saying: T h e patient is

JOSEPH

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a physician who cures himself by the poisons o f his own manu

facture.
I am not a patient of that sort. The poisons of m y own manu
facture lay me low.
If you doubt Bettina, it is unquestionably true that the
Ganna illness, lasting for decades, has had no immunising effect.
I had believed you convalescent.
You think I doubt Bettina? It is m yself I doubt, myself!
And with good grounds, with strong confirmation.
T h ats not whats amiss. You behave towards your destiny
after the manner of a provocative agent.
There is some truth in what you say. replied Alexander,
in whom this shaft had gone home.
Or after the manner of one who is playing roulette. I m afraid
you are a gambler by temperament. One who benumbs his
senses by playing for high stakes. Y et in this matter you are
so rich that to gamble is absurd.
I am too deep in Bettinas debt, said Alexander, in a barely
intelligible murmur.
Now, at last, Kerkhoven turned round.
Incurable, he muttered. Incurable. Guilt, guilt, guilt.
When two persons live together in a true community, there is
no calculation of guilt and no organisation for the recovery of
debt. Each shoulders the others burdens as far as may be.
Nevertheless, I have failed.
When you were born, did you sign a charter never to fail?
T h e arrangement of strength and weakness within us has a
magnetic pole, and this is the centre of attraction for love.
That may be so; but the body is a stubborn beast.
What do you wish to im ply?
Something very simple; that I cannot transcend the contra
diction between the tale o f my years and my fallacious aspect
of still being a man in his prime.
W hy do you say fallacious ? You are still young, incredibly
young. W hy then fallacious ?
A man has irrefutable evidence in that matter.

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Kerkhoven went up to him, and looked him fixedly in the eyes.

It is the impatience in you, your blasphemous impatience,
he said gently. You anticipate decisions, and undertake exces
sive obligations.
It is true that I am unable to adapt m yself to the changed
circumstances. Bettina might call to me, but I am deaf. Naturally
I cannot escape painful thoughts about this matter, and I am
apt to imagine . . . to imagine that she will seek compensationa
elsewhere . . .
Kerkhoven laid both his hands on Alexanders shoulders.
Seek compensation at this address? he enquired, with a
note of tragic urgency; at my address?
Alexander could not meet the others eyes. Darkness was
falling. They could only distinguish one anothers features because
they were so close.
Can I trust you to hold your tongue absolutely and uncon
ditionally, if I tell you something? asked the doctor.
I think so.
Shake hands on it!
Alexander shook him by the hand.
A friend may make a confession of the sort, went on Kerk
hoven in a muted voice; especially when he encounters such
unfriendly foolishness as yours just now.
He sat down on the sofa and spoke into the darkness.
I have (how many shall I say?) twelve, fourteen, perhaps
fifteen; I have at most fifteen months to live.
Alexander gripped him by the arm, and asked in a whisper:
How on earth can you know? W hats up?
I have had a very careful examination made, am suffering
from endocarditis lenta, a gradual degeneration of the blood.
You are certain? No possibility of mistake?
None whatever.
No cure?
None.
Since when . . .?
I have been sure for the last six weeks.

JOSEPH

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It cant be, Joseph; its impossible, said Alexander, clasping

his hands together.
Since Kerkhovens only answer was a low hum of conviction,
Alexander asked:
How did you find out?
Kerkhoven laughed, and said:
Do you really want a clinical history? W hats the good?
The cause?
A streptococcus. I have cultivated it on gelatine plates.
Can show you them, if you like. Th ey form interesting greenish
colonies.
He rose, and walked up and down.
Its a rare illness, a royal illness. Very little is known about it.
Marie? Does she . . .?
For the Lords sake, no! Not the slightest suspicion. No one
must suspect. I made up my mind to that from the first. I must
husband these five quarters of a year as a precious treasure.
If I were to give the show away, it would be a sort of suicide. I
feel that the time which remains to me must be lived breath by
breath. What does that mean? Not easy to explain. I have to
breathe myself into another dimension, perhaps into a fourth
existence. No, dont ask me any more questions. Better not.
Perhaps I made a mistake in telling you the true state o f affairs;
but, at any rate, you know now that you can smile at yourself
for having entertained the thought that I might be cutting you
out forgive me for using so trivial a metaphor. I only told
you, to set your mind at rest.
Thereupon Kerkhoven quitted the bungalow.
Slowly, he walked to the main building. Nurse Else was
waiting to report upon the condition of a new female patient,
an actress from Mannheim, an alcoholic who had been brought
yesterday by motor and had developed delirium tremens in
the evening.
I am doubtful if she will get through, he said, writing some
instructions on a sheet of paper which he handed to the nurse.
She is perpetually seeing rats in her room, Else informed him.

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He nodded.
Yes, yes, those imaginary rats, he sighed; the whole world
is swarming with them. Poor humanity; it sees imaginary rats
everywhere.
131

Saying he had a headache, Alexander went early to bed. He

lay on his back and stared at the ceiling. He could not read.
He could not think. He could not sleep. T he hours went slowly
by, at the pace of an unshod horse making its way over marshy
ground. He lay, and gradually he floated away on a flood tide
of pictures. He saw Kerkhoven in a stone sarcophagus, lying
with crossed arms like a crusader of the Middle Ages, but the
eyes were open and beamed with an expression of ineffable
friendliness. Then he saw the doctor going down a dark street,
lantern in hand; the street was filled with the sick and wounded;
by each sufferer Kerkhoven stopped, and in the light from the
lantern each face was momentarily illumined to show renewed
animation; when he passed on, each in turn got up and followed
him, an unending procession. Then, again, a picture nearer
reality, being drawn from remembrance rather than from the
visionary realm: a forty-year-old man with no definite ailment,
but suffering from constant fits of vomiting, vomiting as though
he would bring his very soul out of his body; Kerkhoven held
the man and spoke comforting words; when at length the man
ceased vomiting the doctor covered him with his own coat and
said to those who had gathered round, Its disgust. He is dying
of disgust. It is the year nineteen hundred and thirty-one in
the agony of death. A scene of the kind had taken place a
few days earlier. Now a motiveless disquiet got possession of
Alexander, growing more and more urgent. It seemed to him
that Kerkhoven was calling him, not because the doctor needed
him, Alexander, but the other way about. By some hidden means
the message was communicated to Alexander Herzog.
He got out of bed and dressed. His watch showed him the
hour to be seven minutes past one. In stockinged feet he slipped

JOSEPH

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into the little hall and opened the door leading to Bettinas
room. Her breathing was quiet and regular. Her window was
wide open, and the place was bathed in moonlight. Alexander
stole up to the bed. She slept like a child, peaceful and content.
Her right arm was tucked beneath her head. He gazed down
at her tenderly and dispassionately. Then he turned about,
went back to his room, pulled on his shoes, and crept noiselessly
from the house. T h e moon was veiled behind a thin wreath
of mist. An owl hooted softly in the distance.
He stood before the closed door of the main building. In
following an impulse, he had not stayed to reflect that the house
would be shut up for the night. He might have rung and awakened
the man who was on duty. But he hesitated to do this. Too much
noise . . . Besides, what reason could he furnish for this midnight
intrusion? How could he tell whether Kerkhoven was keeping
vigil? Still, he felt convinced that the doctors summons had
come to him. . . . A ll the windows were dark, save for two on
the ground floor. These were in Aleids room. One was a big
French window opening into the garden. He scaled the rail of
a little balcony and tapped on a pane. After a moment, the
heavy curtain was drawn slightly back and the girls astonished
eyes peered through the glass. So soon as she recognised Herzog,
she opened a crack, and, with eyebrows still raised in surprise,
asked him what he wanted.
Please dont be vexed with me, he said. I want to see your
father and am loth to waken the household. Could you not
let me in through your room?
Anything happened ?
He shook his head, while she stared at him in growing per
plexity. Then she opened to him. She wore a red and white
check pyjama suit, her wiry copper-coloured hair was tousled,
so that Alexander could not help recalling Cezannes picture of
a pierrot. She screwed up her eyes, and said mockingly:
A consultation during sleeping hours? I cant promise that
youll find him. Even Joseph Kerkhoven sometimes takes a
nap.

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Not to-night, he answered securely, going over to the door

leading into the passage. Anyway, I shall have a try. D ont
bother about me any more. I ll let myself out by the normal w ay.
She held the door open after he had left. Then impulsively
Aleid stretched out a hand to him. He was taken off his guard
by the gesture, but seized her hand and pressed it.
He groped his way upstairs till he came to the steps leading
to the attic. Here the moonlight flooded in, thus rendering further
progress easy. But his feet were leaden. When he stood outside
the Refectory, he hesitated, and considered what he should
do. If his memory served him faithfully, the heavy oaken door
opened silently. Could he be sure the light was on inside? If
not, he would go away. T o make his presence known by knocking
was impossible. He was afraid, and felt that up to the last moment
he must keep the way of retreat clear. Then, all at once, he stood
within the church-like room, across which, in the half-light
that rose to the blackened beams and rafters from the shaded
lamp on the table (how far away it seemed!), he perceived
Kerkhoven seated at work. As the doctor leaned forward, his
bowed head and his shoulders were within the cone of rays;
and the hand of the writer moved to and fro within this strong
illumination, looking like some strange white animal creeping
over the white paper. Alexander did not stir. The sight moved
him profoundly. That man in the pencil of light, alone at so late
an hour, silently at work: the onlooker felt as though he were
contemplating his own self during the finest, the best, the most
devoted hours of his life. The thought gave him courage; his
heart warmed; to pass through the magic portal no longer
seemed so impossible to him as it had seemed a few moments
before. If he could, he would now have slipped away
unnoticed, but Kerkhoven turned his head abruptly towards
the door, as if hearing the inaudible and with an expression of
dreamy wonder in his face. Catching sight of Alexander, he
sprang to his feet, crossed from writing-table to door with the
brisk tread characteristic of him; and with a How glad I am
you have come, he seized the nocturnal visitors hand and

JOSEPH

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courteously drew Alexander towards the fireplace in which beechlogs were still glowing.
Sit down and make yourself at home, he said, just as if it
had been five oclock in the afternoon. A splendid idea to come
over and look me up 1
132
Alexander lighted a cigarette. A long time ensued before he
broke the silence, for it was hard to find words. A t length he
began to speak of the unrest which had driven him from his
bed.
I know that, like nearly every one you come in contact with,
I am too ready to steal your time, but necessity knows no law.
What you told me about yourself this afternoon has cut very
deep, making me feel almost as if I were responsible for the
death you expect so soon though my mind revolts against
accepting the idea, regarding it as unnatural, unreasonable,
disorderly. Perhaps when you caught sight of me just now you
thought I had come to cry peccavi. Not so, although I am well
aware of my sins. D ont interrupt me, as I see you are inclined
to do, with one of your old lectures upon fancied pricks of
conscience and an obsession with the voluptuous longing to atone.
Take all that as said, and accepted by me. But this time there
is something more at stake; the whole being of Alexander Herzog.
He stopped to light another cigarette, while Kerkhoven fed
the fire. Then Alexander went on:
I must confess something to you. When you told me about
your death-sentence, I was very much startled, but externally;
the feeling hardly penetrated the skin; inside, I remained cold.
No, that is not the right phrase. What you told me, disturbed
me as an attack upon how shall I say it? my stability. It has
always been so with me. When, years ago, almost the only
close friend I ever had was dying, every time I went to see him
I had to fight down my reluctance; and at the tidings of the death
o f the man I sincerely loved, there loomed behind the pain an
incomprehensible hatred, as if it had been deliberate malice on
his part to die, and also as if fate had exceeded reasonable bounds

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by infringing Alexander Herzogs rights of ownership and by

interfering with Alexander Herzogs habits. I know you will
think me inhuman; but I want you to explain what it means,
to tell me what lies behind these callously selfish thoughts and
feelings.
Herzog was strongly moved, and his eyes glowed moodily.
Kerkhoven made no answer. Alexander went on to give his own
explanation.
Obviously the mischief lies in a lack of belief in death.
Unbelief in death is identical with incapacity for life. The
strange thing is that, at bottom, I am not much interested in
myself; and this remarkable contradiction in my character, a
lack of self-interest combined with an invincible self-entanglement, is continually generating protective reactions that are
cold, harsh, and unreflective. I was talking the matter over with
Marie not long ago. What she thought was that one ought to
eradicate, to exorcise, this natural gloom ; to replace it by medi
tation, by intimate communing. That, she declared, was mans
main task, and unless he could perform it he could never link
on to higher things, perhaps could never even attain to true
self-consciousness. Easy to say, but she did not tell me how
to set about doing it. However, the knowledge has come to me
now, as all such knowledge comes, in a flash; and it came to-day,
a few hours ago.
He paused for a while, brooding. As he leaned back in the
armchair he linked his fingers behind his neck. Kerkhoven
gathered the logs together to make the fire flame once more.
Something of decisive importance has been missing from
my life, resumed Alexander; the warp of the tissue. A purposive
sequence. I have always been the slave of chance happenings
which dazzled me, carried me away. No sublimity, but only
casual impressions. That sums me up. I have been a person
sketched by impressions, as a sketch is made on paper with a
pencil. That is my moral defect: I was never the pencil but always
the sketch; never active but always passive. I speak ambiguously
but I am sure you will understand. That is why I have never

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got a grip of myself, and have been the sport of every wind.
In truth I have only vegetated as an aggregate of instincts.
A magic lantern throwing pictures on a screen. Between the
pictures were intervals of pleasurably tinged darkness. Pleasurably
tinged when I was in luck; at other times, the intervals were
restless and joyless. Yes, I am a creature of the night. I lighted
my darkness with words, as if with a hundred thousand Japanese
lanterns. That was my stimulus and my gratification, to produce
satisfactory effects by the arrangement of the lanterns. No, I
am not judging myself too harshly. I know that what I produced
was not merely decorative, but was also a genuine source of
light to others. Still, my own mind remained darkened, so
that I forgot life, and failed to believe in death. That is the
enigmatic feature of my situation. And there is another strange
thing, the creatures of my fancy went out into the world, wrestled
with evil, and conquered; whereas I remained an isolated being,
unable to overcome evil. They rose, but I stayed below. I failed
to draw the logical inferences. W hy did I fail? From indolence?
From dread? I dont know. Thus when I thought I had faith,
it was a mere fancy. When the heart is worn out, the head takes
over its functions. Now, to aspire towards the eternal with the
intellect merely, is like dancing on a tight-rope. One who does
so will resemble the rope-dancer who falls headlong as soon as
he begins to think of the five talers he will earn by the performance.
Throughout life, angels and devils have been fighting for my soul,
but the devils have invariably had the best of it. Tim e after time
they inveigled me, being perhaps able to monopolise my
imagination to the exclusion of the angels because they were
more obvious. Thus, in me, white faith was transformed into
black faith. Now you know what Ganna has signified in
m y life. She was simply and solely demoniacal reality. She was
that, but is no longer. Your work, Joseph! You have succeeded
in making her smaller and smaller until she has disappeared.
But her disappearance has left a vacuum. I feel empty, as if
the guts had been taken out o f me.
He covered his eyes with his hands and continued:

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What about God? Who is God? Does God exist?

Bending forward, he gripped Kerkhoven by the knees, and
whispered hoarsely:
The question of a simpleton. Does God exist? I have no
picture, I have no idea. I cannot say, I believe in Him . All I
can say is, I believe H im . But, even so, am I talking of a reality?
Am I not, rather, once more, fleeing from reality? Is God a
being, or merely a symbolical figment?

133
T h ey sat face to face, both leaning forward, so close that each
could feel the others breath. For a few seconds, Kerkhovens
heart almost stopped beating, and he felt dizzy. Herzogs face
looked like a landscape ravaged by an earthquake. T h e doctors
first impulse was one in which anger was mingled with com
passion ; in which pity was tinged by a feeling that the man was
pressing him too hard. Shaking off this defensive reaction, he
asked tonelessly:
You need God, then?
Yes, I need H im .
And you want me to tell you whether God exists?
You are the only man on earth who can tell me.
What do you mean?
Because you can live contemplating the certainty of death.
D ont you? That is the common lot.
The rest of us live under the illusion of infinite time. Tim e
and death are mutually exclusive. But you have evaded that
law, building death into time.
A somewhat contorted notion. W ith the aid of philosophy
mainly. . . . Y et, supposing you are right, how can a poor
being like me venture upon it? How can I make the decision
for you?
I am only asking you, as I would ask a seer, what has been
revealed to you.
You think I have seen H im ?
I ask you! I ask you!

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Do you suppose Him to be objectively visible, to have a

body, to be phenomenal? Can one teach His existence? Can
He be cognised? N o !
What else? I ask you! I ask you!
T h e fundamental error lies in the attempt to personalise
God. It is an error even when you incorporate therewith some
sort of intellectualised concept, some sort o f dream concept.
Your experience. . . . Such a man as you does not, one fine
day, arbitrarily quit the realm of experience. Reason forbids.
Experience? W hat am I to answer? Perhaps experience is
the sum of energies in atoms and electrons. Perhaps it is one of
the mysteries of internal secretion. Perhaps it inhered in the
ferments and the enzymes, whose chemical composition is
unknown to us, and which transform food and oxygen into our
bodily energies. T h ey persist for thousands of years, so that
their activity has been preserved in the muscular tissues of
ancient Egyptian mummies. Perhaps it whirls in the ether
vortices; perhaps it regulates the apparatus which conducts
stimuli to the heart, an apparatus of which we know little more
than we know o f the nebulae in outer space. For we, you and I,
have no influence upon experience; we can affect nothing, from
the flight of a fly to the birth of a Goethe. I f I draw no more
than ten breaths in accordance with my own calculations, I
shall die forthwith o f carbonic acid poisoning. Taking all experi
ence as unified, the microcosm and the macrocosm, miracles
and horrors, the unrevealed and the revealed, demons and
cherubim, energy and matter this massed experience has no
sensory existence, nor is it a pan-god conceivable by mortal
brain. There is little meaning if I say it is nameless; it lies behind
death and beyond tim e: these are outworn formulas. Or if I
say it comes in collectedness remote from the world. Or if I
say it is an internal movement; that chiefly, that before all;
and that one must be ready for it, must have had forerunners
of like mind with oneself; that there is something resembling
a genealogy o f souls. Always it can be effective nowhere else
than in the individual soul, and in moments of self-decision.

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T h e word is Obey and reciprocate! Nothing else. T h ey are

the two poles of human behaviour.
Kerkhoven had been speaking with obvious effort. As he
uttered the last words, his face became white as chalk, and he
convulsively gripped one of the pillars of the fireplace. Alexander
sprang to his side, and clasped him round the chest, but he
was too heavy to lift.
Let me be, gasped Kerkhoven. The spasm is passing.
He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, mastering the paroxysm
with iron determination. His clutch upon Alexanders hands
was like the thrusting out of deadly weakness. He said with a
sm ile:
The ghost that haunts my nights. I am never safe from
these visitations. You had better go, dear friend, day is at hand.
Alexander left, profoundly disquieted.

J34
As in a mystery play, behind the figures who are wrestling for
faith in the divine, the Prince of Lies lurks, Antichrist, to utter
from time to time a scornful comment; so, now, it was Aleid
Bergmann, trampled on by fate, a refugee from a world she hated,
who watched the heroic struggle of the quartet critically and
with deliberate aloofness. Her furtive comings and goings were a
protest; still more the stubborn silence with which she masked
her curiosity.
What the deuce is it all leading up to ? she asked her mother.
I can make neither head nor tail of it. M ight almost as well be
in church. Soon you will start singing hymns up there.
Marie answered testily:
Either you are a consummate hypocrite or you dont know
what you are doing.
Please explain.
When was it? only a few days back. Joseph was telling the
Herzogs the story of Irlen, spoke of his friends death a death
in which he participated, to undergo a resurrection. You remem
ber, o f course. Well, that evening, you did not in the least resemble

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a young woman who would rather have been looking on at a

boxing match than listening to a discussion which to us was
deadly earnest. T o me you seemed greatly moved.
M m , assented Aleid, with some embarrassment; but
that night the talk was really moving. Besides, there was a
genealogical interest. Irlen was closely related to you, Mother,
if I remember aright. Then the way in which Uncle Joseph
told his tale was admirable. He made my flesh creep. It could
not have been more vivid on the stage.
She laughed recklessly.
That was not the only time when Aleid slipped away like
an eel. Marie could never make out what the girl was really
feeling. Obviously she was attracted by these evening talks
in the Refectory, and yet she always had a derisive smile on her
lips. Often one might have thought her bored to death, or half
asleep; but when Alexander Herzog looked at her wonderingly,
or Bettina (with a concern which was partly simulated) asked her
whether she was tired and had not better go to bed, she flushed
to the temples, and began to bite her nails. Generally, she sat
huddled up on a sofa cushion, placed on the floor in the remotest
corner of the room; sometimes she curled up on the sofa, like
a cat. Occasionally she would sit up and stare for half a minute
at the others, shading her eyes with her hand, and then lie
down again, mute and apparently uninterested.
She let her mockery play most freely upon her mothers
passion for other peoples children.
This institution where kids are dealt with wholesale is a
perfect scream.
Her anger was intensified because the youngsters arrived in
increasing numbers, often from great distances, from Horhausen,
from W aldi, from Miinsterlingen, and yet farther afield; as
if a new Pied Piper were alluring them ; and because the majority
had to be turned away. As for her mother being nicknamed
T h e Childrens Saviour when she heard this phrase, Aleid
rocked with laughter. But it was painful laughter, upon a back
ground of concealment and savagery.

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Aleid avoided Bettina as far as possible, saying she cared little

for women, and least o f all for clever ones. But when Bettina,
urged thereto by Kerkhoven, played the Kreutzer Sonata,
accompanied by a young pianist who was on a visit from Badenweiler, Aleid listened as if entranced; and during the movement
with variations, her face twitched like an epileptics.
I did not know that your wife was so great an artist, said
the girl to Alexander Herzog. W hy does she hide her light
under a bushel? I think your hand must lie heavy on her so
that she keeps tight-up; or perhaps she is too proud to show off
her talents.
Alexander was annoyed, and replied that, as far as he knew,
Bettina was never inclined to show off, but regarded her musical
gifts as an integral part o f her personality. Aleid grinned
sceptically.
For the rest, she did not show towards Alexander Herzog
the cold mistrust which was her general attitude towards mankind.
Sometimes she seemed moved by an urge to be near him, without
any obvious purpose. His taciturnity pleased her; and when
she talked to him, it was usually in a chummy fashion which
tickled his fancy, seeing that he was forty years older than this
young minx. His friendship with Marie exercised her greatly.
She was continually trying to make him discuss the matter,
and was furious when he evaded her inquisition. By degrees
he gained the impression that nothing in the world interested
her more than what her mother did or left undone; but since
Aleid was extraordinarily shrewd at hiding her feelings and aims,
he did not know what inferences to draw. One day, however,
under strange conditions, his puzzlement came to an end. She
cherished with regard to him and Marie an absurd suspicion
which was a secret torment to her.

*35
After the small-hour talk with Kerkhoven, Alexander slept
very late. When he emerged from the bungalow, Aleid was
doing sentry-go on the path leading to the lakeside. She had

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been lying in wait for him. T h e instant he appeared, she stood

still and beckoned to him.
You look as if youd had a night out, Maestro, she said.
Indeed, I know what time you got to bed. Heard you come
downstairs at a quarter to four.
That so? You were listening for me? I must mind my P s
and Q s, he answered unamiably; and when she looked
enquiringly at his face, he went on: Y o u re not employed here
as night-nurse, so why the devil dont you go to sleep?
Great Scott, even babies lie awake sometimes; when they
have tummy-ache, for instance.
T h e two were standing on the shore, but the lake was hidden
by a fog-bank. It was chilly as well as damp, and Aleid was
wearing a thin white-linen dress. Alexander noticed that she
was shivering, and asked whether he should fetch a cloak. Shaking
her head, she suggested sitting down on the bench outside
the conservatory, where they would be partially sheltered from
the east wind.
You look as if you had something on your m ind, said
Alexander when they had done as she suggested. Would it
be indiscreet to ask what is the matter?
Sharp eyes! she answered tartly, lighting a cigarette with
the offensively mannish air that many women assume when
smoking. But of course its your trade to stick people on pins,
like beetles.
He frowned, which made her laugh.
Sorry, she said, put my foot into it again. Lacking in
respect! Your female worshippers have spoiled you abominably.
But dont be misled by my rough shell. I know how to behave
now hes huffy again! she exclaimed with a comical assumption
of distress. T ell me how I am to woo your favour.
I am not annoyed, retorted Alexander dryly, and I have
no favour to bestow. T ell me in plain words what you are driving
at. Skirmishing bores m e.
Now I ve flung away my chance, she said in a pet, and stood
up to leave.

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Alexander took her by the wrist.

You just stay where you are, he said authoritatively,
and dont treat me like a fool.
She looked him up and down, but did not venture to resist,
and seated herself on the bench once more. While she was
standing, he had eyed her lank figure, and noted that the signs
o f pregnancy were conspicuous. She intercepted his glance.
H er face darkened, and her mouth twitched woefully. Alexander
was sorry to have vexed her.
You behave exactly like a gutter-snipe who waves a lighted
match under ones nose, he murmured, sorely grieved. If
only you could be a little more relaxed, a little more tranquil.
Spare me this sermon-stuff, she answered, gazing into
vacancy. That sort o f thing goes in at one ear and out at the
other, so far as I am concerned. Thank you for your good
intentions, all the same.
There was a pause in the conversation. Then she turned
and faced him, asking:
Honestly, were you with Uncle Joseph last night?
He looked at her in astonishment.
O f course, o f course. Where else could I have been?
She laughed meaningly, her green eyes peering into the
brown depths of his.
W hats u p ? he asked. What on earth have you been
thinking?
I thought you had gone to M others room, she whispered
with the same peculiar laugh, half shame-faced, half malicious.
Your mothers room? A t half-past-one in the morning?
He was almost speechless with astonishment. But why on
earth . . .? Did I not tell you I was going to have a talk with
Joseph Kerkhoven?
W hy on earth? she interrupted brusquely. Surely theres
no need to put the dots on the i s. I shant do so, anyhow. Facts
suffice me, and I have eyes in my head.
Alexander looked at her as if he could not believe his ears,
and involuntarily he drew away a little.

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M ad, he said to himself, aloud. Quite m ad!

He perceived that she was trembling all over; that her hands
shook as she played with a twig she had picked up.
D ont chalk it up against me if I ve blundered, she said
hastily. M y mother, you know, is a sealed book to me, and she
fiercely resists any attempt to break the seals. Shes so deadly
serious that she makes me feel crushed. A saint? I should like to
think so, though I ve always detested saints, and its no catch to
have a mother on a plane so much higher than ones own. Still,
if she is true metal, if one could really believe in the saints . . .
She stopped, bowed her head, and her shoulders were shaken
by sobs. Alexander stroked her arm.
Child, child, he said gently. What bee have you got in
your bonnet?
Aleid withdrew her arm from his caress, and said :
Let me tell you something. Perhaps I oughtnt to, but it will
help you to understand. Tw o years ago, or rather more it was
two years ago last summer when we still owned the Lindow
estate in the M ark of Brandenburg, I had a girl spending the
holidays with m e; and there was a very handsome young fellow,
Uncle Josephs pupil or secretary. . . . Something was going
on between him and mother; something uncanny, something
wrong. T h ats how I felt it then. I was still little more than a
flapper. M y mother had completely lost her head. One day the
young man began to pay court to my friend. M erely to torment
M other, I believe. She was too crazy, too jealous, to realise that
we all noticed what a rage she was in. I shall never forget how
horrible it was. Then she fell sick, and we had to go away. I
can still see Uncle Joseph standing at the window, on the morning
of my departure. He never heard my goodbye, but stood there
like a stone statue. T h ey would not let me go to see Mother.
I think she had conceived a hatred for me. Now, only two years
after, when meanwhile, as you may imagine (seeing my present
condition), I have become a woman of experience, I find Mother
a stranger, a woman from the moon, a saint. I am in purgatory,
and she is a saint!

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She wrenched her handkerchief from her sleeve and crushed

it into a ball. Alexander could not stir a finger. T h e young
womans excited narration had thrown an unexpected light
upon the avowal Joseph Kerkhoven had made to him recently
in the boudoir. Although he would have been sorry to miss a
chance o f knowing all he could about the past history of two
persons with whom he had grown so intimate, he was distressed
that he had learned this incident about Marie from M aries
daughter, and he tacitly resolved not to hide his knowledge
from his friend. It must not be possible for her to imagine that,
behind her back, he had been delving into her past although
these private details did not lower her in his opinion; on the
contrary, they raised her still higher, and he could vividly imagine
the heavy hours through which she had passed.
Amid the silence which had fallen upon himself and Aleid,
there occurred to him an ostensibly unimportant matter relating
to his brief encounter with Aleid during the night.
I should like you to explain to m e, he began hesitatingly,
why, since you already entertained this horrible suspicion
when I asked you to let me into the house . . . why, when I
left your room to go upstairs, you gave me your hand in so friendly
a fashion ?
Did I really do that? asked Aleid, with simulated wonder.
Funny. I had forgotten. I suppose I did, if you say so. Strange.
I think you must remember, he went on, ignoring her at
tempt at repudiation. But you dont need to tax your memory,
for I believe I know the reason. You were hoping all the time that
the saint would be dragged down from her shrine although
this would have been a disaster for you. I was to be the instru
ment, the fulfiller o f your longing for self-torment. Am I not
right?
Y o u ve hit the bulls eye, retorted Aleid mockingly. A ll
honour to psychology!
Alexander was not deceived by her ribaldry. He guessed what
underlay it.
Saint! There may be something in the idea, he continued.

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Your mother has wrestled through suffering and errors. You

will find it hard to grasp all that it must have meant to her in
the way of renunciation, courage, spiritual energy.
Just as little as you can grasp, or want to grasp, what has
happened to me.
Alexander Herzog nodded meditatively.
I know it must seem like that to you. I fully admit that your
fate, so far as I have been informed . . .
By Mother, of course?
Yes, by your mother. W e are friends, and she trusts me. In
my eyes, Aleid, your fate is, so to speak, symbolical. You will
say: How does it help me if the same sort of thing has happened
to many others? I know, we all tend to revolt against the sign
that waves over us. W e all incline to prefer an excess of purely
personal suffering to our own share of collective suffering. That
is the source of your rebellion. That is what makes you so savage.
And that is why you feel your mother does not regard you as
her child, her daughter. I dont know whether I succeed in making
myself clear to you? Marie Kerkhoven is a woman . . . how
shall I express it ? Her tragical conflict is that she is tom between
ties with the world and ties with God. Making immense sacrifices,
she has fought her way upward step by step, like an aviator
rising through the clouds; then, of a sudden, her grown-up
daughter comes home and drags her back into the painful dark
ness. She has no choice but to come back, were it only for loves
sake; but naturally she is somewhat perturbed, a trifle perplexed.
That is what you falsely call her Madonna pose. Nor must you
forget that if we dig deep enough we always find, in the relation
ship between mother and daughter, a factor of jealousy which is
quite elemental. Spirit and character are powerless against
nature, thanks to which moreover they are overgrown with all
kinds of shells and husks. Especially in your case. You left her
as a child; you come back to her as a woman. Cant you under
stand what this implies ?
Aleid had listened with close attention.
There is a good deal in what you say, she reluctantly admitted.

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Then, with a rasping laugh, she continued: Besides, I dare say

I myself should find it disagreeable to be made the grandmother
of a changeling, a bastard.
When Alexander looked at her indignantly, she ground her
teeth, and made a gesture as if she wished to rip open her belly.
I dont want it, I dont want it; I shall kill it as soon as it is
born. It hasnt even a father; and I ? A piece of flotsam!
She stood up, quiet now that she had said her say; and without
a word in farewell, walked across the lawn to the house.
136
For a good while, the inmates of Seeblick had been aware that
the hostility o f the countryside was steadily increasing. Illnatured gossip was sprouting like weeds; so luxuriantly as to
make it unlikely that Karl Imst (who had been taken on as
assistant by a dispensing chemist at Steckbom) could be the
only source of mischief. Imsts chumming-up with his colleague
could easily be accounted for, since Kerkhovens disinclination
to prescribe ordinary medicaments made him unpopular among
the local chemists. Anyhow, nothing definite could be traced
to Imst; although the persistent dissemination of the rumour
that Jeanne Mallery was wrongfully being kept under restraint
and treated as a lunatic, was almost certainly the outcome of his
revengeful intrigues. But machinations against Seeblick started
before Imst left. Immediately after Martin Mordanns death,
evil whispers had begun to circulate, reinforced by masked
accusations proceeding from certain German cliques. Kerkhoven
was a notorious reactionary; he was short of funds ; had it
not been obviously to his interest to make an end of the celebrated
journalist? There were people who would have greased the
doctors palm liberally to bring this about. It is possible that
Agnes Mordann, in the interval between her fathers death
and her suicide, had set rumours of this sort agoing, and had
thus stirred up her fathers adherents, who were still numerous.
T h e talk about Mordanns suspicious death was revived
at this juncture, and it almost seemed as if the visit of two gentle

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men who came to see Kerkhoven about the burned Brederode

letters must have had some connexion with the affair. (To that
intermezzo we shall return.)
There were additional factors of unrest. T h e excursions of
Maries protegees in the woods were among the most important.
Hard to say why. One might have thought that people would
have been glad that these vagrant and necessitous children were
being kept in proper order for a few hours every day. Marie had
built a fine hall, with a gymnasium, separate workshops, and a
fairly extensive library. (The funds, you will remember, had
been supplied by her old friend, Frau de Ruyters.) The insti
tution was not a thorn in the flesh of those who profited by it,
but of those who did not need i t ; the well-to-do, the conservatives,
the mercantile class, and the officials. Such persons talked at
large, emphasising the danger of these modern ideas and
practices, which were opposed to tranquillity and order, were
revolutionary, and sowed the seed of bolshevism. Thus by one
party, Kerkhoven was stigmatised as a reactionary; and by the
other, as a demagogue. What has this foreigner come here for?
asked many. Let him go back to his own country. W eve plenty
o f good doctors in Switzerland. W hy should a lousy Swabian
come and settle here?
Matters went so far that some of the domestic staff became
infected with the prevailing discontent, and a good many of them
gave notice. Every post brought anonymous letters. The trades
people dunned for payment. When their accounts were promptly
settled, they withdrew shamefaced. In the Boten fur Stadt
und Land, a widely circulated local paper, there appeared,
now and again, scurrilous leaderettes or alleged news-items
in which the public was warned to use its healthy common
sense and avoid having anything to do with the psychological
kitchen and nerve gymnastics of the quack and eccentric at
Seeblick. One day, in the third week o f October, this local
rag discharged a peculiarly venomous shaft by announcing that
among the other undesirable inmates o f the sanatorium were a
celebrated German author and his wife, an author against whom

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a trial for bigamy was pending in Berlin. A blue-pencilled copy

was sent to Alexander Herzog. He talked the matter over with
Kerkhoven. Obviously, through her spies, Ganna had got
wind of Alexander and Bettinas place o f residence. It was
unlikely that she was directly responsible for the publication of
the item, for this would have criss-crossed the so-called recon
ciliation with Alexander which she was now pulling all strings
to effect. Probably some rival author, inspired by envy, had
discharged his gall in print. Alexander was little disturbed. Still,
in order to parry the impudent onslaught, he instructed a Zurich
lawyer to inform the editor of the newspaper that unless the
statement was withdrawn an action for libel would be brought.
A curt, but practically satisfactory rectification ensued. A ll the
same, the obscure intrigues against Seeblick went on. During
the night between the 25th and 26th o f October, all the windows
on the ground-floor of the front of the main building were
broken, and two dozen rose-trees were torn up.

137
It was the old story of an enemy of the people, the experience
o f all honest servers and helpers o f mankind. In a great city,
Kerkhoven would have been protected from attacks to which here
he was exposed through his isolation. His was so outstanding a
personality, that his mere existence and his thought-trend
challenged the hatred of the ignorant and aroused the hostility
of the masses. Had he confined himself to medical practice, to
doctoring in the narrow sense of the term, no one would have
cast a stone at him. What rendered him suspect was his outstep
ping these boundaries into the domain of the supra-physical;
his interest in forces and phenomena, which, according to
the general view, had nothing to do with his specialty for
instance, the affair with Thirriot the clairvoyant had attracted
so much attention. T h e physician is not supposed to exert a
moral and spiritual influence; not for that has the State granted
him a diploma. Let the cobbler stick to his last. The doctor who,
like Kerkhoven, goes out of bounds, is not excused because he

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does not try to make money out of his transgressions. Public

opinion will not tolerate such a breaking of bounds, for which
its guardians have as fine a scent as hounds for game. Nay, he
would have been more readily forgiven if he had made a business
o f his unorthodox healings. The cheapjack, the charlatan, the
miracle-monger whose cures are trumpeted by the newspapers
do not arouse such animus. Anything would have been better
than these anti-social occupations with lost souls, with a pack
of refugees and conspirators, who took the bread out of the mouths
of settled and respectable folk. As regards such a man, caution
was essential, and distrust was civic duty.

138
Kerkhoven was not one to stand with folded arms while people
were slinging mud at him. T o stop the talk about Jeanne Mallery,
he asked the authorities to appoint a committee of enquiry.
This was agreed to. Three civil servants, one of them a doctor,
came to Seeblick, visited Mallery in her room, asked her a number
o f questions, and drafted a report to the effect that Dr. Kerk
hovens treatment of the patient was entirely satisfactory and
that there was no improper restraint. A summary of this report
was published in the Thurgauer Anzeiger, the rival periodical
to the Boten fur Stadt und Land. But Kerkhoven was no longer
inclined to keep Jeanne at Seeblick, and, with due consideration,
urged her to go and stay with her relatives in central Switzerland.
It was easy to come to this decision because she was almost
completely cured. T h e separation from Karl Imst had had a good
effect on her. She admitted that, since then, she was able to breathe
more freely. Nevertheless, she was afraid of the outer world,
and wept when Kerkhoven gave her notice to quit. What she
found hardest to bear was having to part from Marie.
How shall I get on without Frau Kerkhoven? she said
again and again. I should be so much happier if only I could
see her from time to time.
Something had also to be done to allay prejudice against
M aries wprk on behalf of the children. Kerkhoven advised her

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to engage local assistants. The money provided by Frau de

Ruyters would allow for this. It would thus not only be possible
to secure salaried teachers known in the countryside who would
be advocates for the school, but also to check the undue affluence
o f would-be pupils and to overcome the difficulties of supervising
the unruly hordes. A t first Marie was refractory. It implied a
loss of freedom in carrying out her ideas, a loss of her fine initial
impetus, a renunciation of the principle o f self-training and
voluntary incorporation into a community. It involved a return
to a rigid programme, and acceptance of conventional notions.
Still, in the end, she allowed herself to be persuaded by Joseph,
who said:
I am not urging you to sacrifice your ideals or to run counter
to your sentiments; but I want you to avert the risk of a break
down of the whole scheme by making a few timely concessions.
Fanatics would call it compromise. But I should like you to show
me any effective activity in which compromise plays no part.
What does the word mean? Concession. Something that is
perfectly creditable. I f we concede to the world its right to
established forms, it will not so stubbornly refuse to modify
them.
Marie recognised the force of this reasoning. But in the
interim, while steps were being taken to carry out the necessary
changes in the school, the new house was fired one night by
unknown criminals, and the whole wooden structure was burned
to the ground before the fire-brigade arrived.
The conflagration caused great excitement at Seeblick. K erk
hoven was roused by the gardener at four oclock in the morning.
Huddling on his clothes, he hastened to the spot. T h e means
he had installed for extinguishing a fire proved inadequate;
the hose was leaky. Unfortunately a high wind was blowing,
and within a quarter of an hour the whole roof was flaming
like a torch. When Marie, Bettina, Aleid, Nurse Else, Alexander
Herzog, and some of the terrified patients and domestics arrived
on the scene, Kerkhoven was standing motionless amid various
articles of furniture tables, chairs, cupboards which he and

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the gardener had managed to get out of the burning edifice.

His trousers were torn to rags; his hair and eyebrows, singed.
Strangely enough, he made no answer to M aries and Herzogs
agitated questions. Arms akimbo, his face blackened with smoke,
he contemplated the raging flames and flying sparks as if the
world-egg had cracked, disclosing to him the mystery of its
fiery yolk. Bettina could not take her eyes off him. She felt as
though he himself had been transformed into a flame.
Later on, that same morning, arrived the two gentlemen to
enquire about the Brederode letters. T h ey came in a smart
motor car, presenting themselves as sent by a friend of the
family. The names they gave were probably aliases. Their
instructions, they said, were to demand what was left of the
correspondence. T h ey had not, could not have, any sort of
authority for this request; their mission was an absolutely
private one; but they gave themselves the air of police
officers, and were as peremptory as if their pockets had been
filled with search-warrants. Kerkhoven went out of his way to
be civil, although he had every right to refuse information.
He felt, however, that it accorded better with his self-respect to
avoid any sign of a hush-it-up policy in a matter where plain
disclosure of the truth was most likely to appease once for all the
person who had dispatched these emissaries. He told them,
succinctly, what had happened to the letters. Th ey looked at
him incredulously. One of them, a fair-haired man, shrugged
his shoulders; the other, blackavised, did not hesitate to breathe
a doubtful mm. Then the blond man asked Kerkhoven to
give his word of honour that things had happened as he described.
I am not accustomed to have my word doubted, answered
the doctor, though without acerbity; and your request for a
formal pledge is preposterous.
The visitors rose.
In that case we shall have to take further steps, said the
dark man icily.
Kerkhoven nodded indifferently. The two clicked their heels
military fashion; bowed stiffly, and took their departure.

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He heard nothing more of the affair, but this call had an

extremely depressing effect on him.

139
His energies were partly paralysed; his will power was often
defective. At such times, his associates seemed like shadows. He
felt very tired, especially after sundown, when he would creep
away to a retired room and endeavour, by mental concentration,
to restore the activity of organs inclined to go on strike. As night
advanced, he was able to resume work on his book. This still
lacked the last section, in which, with the wealth of his knowledge
and experience, he meant to build a bridge leading from the
sensory world of illusion to the supra-sensory world of faith,
from biology and physiology to the certainties of the divine
realm, from brain-anatomy to the spiritual structure of a supreme,
a dominant essence that determines fate. When he came to the
final chapter, he spoke of reality and time as phenomena of the
transformatory nerves. Contending that the notion of space was
a functional, mirrored projection into the neuroglia instinct
with the will-to-death, he deduced the existence of an immortality
principle which, through a victory over illusion on the one
hand, and over bodily substance (and therewith over death)
on the other, led to a perception of the unity of soul and body,
of creator and creature, to a biologico-religious form of being.
These hours of utmost tension were followed by more and
more lengthy periods of prostration which, for all his selfdiscipline, for all his studied acting, it became less and less easy
to hide from the alerter members of his household. During one
such paroxysm, he asked Bettina to fetch her violin and play to
him. Instantly and gladly she fulfilled his desire. Now, the same
thing happened day after day. Was it caprice, or the expression
of genuine inner need ? Never before had he shown any taste for
music. Perhaps it was not merely Bettinas playing which had so
restorative an effect on him, but even more her personality which
breathed through it, her vital impetus, her faith, the serenity
which welled up within her. When she tucked her fiddle under

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her chin, and drew the bow across the strings, she became
music embodied, musical form and musical rhythm, musical
image and musical tone, all in one. She was a master at impro
visation, able to combine a simple folk-melody with the lilt of a
dance, so that both soared heavenward in full-throated happiness
like larks in springtime. There was no gush about her per
formance ; no swank; she sang, or rather her heart sang within her.
Often Marie was lured by the strains, to crouch in a corner
listening, and, when it was over, to depart as quietly as she had
come.
One day, Bettina played a capriccio of her own composition,
a charming piece, in which elfin laughter seemed to make genial
fun of an unsuccessful wooers melancholy. When she had
finished, Kerkhoven gazed meditatively into space for a time.
Then he said:
That told me a good deal about you. You are not given to
self-revelation. Although you are by no means laconic, one always
has the impression of an immense fund of reserve and all the
more when your conversation is lively and excited.
Bettina, blushing a little, made no direct answer, but uttered
a few words regarding inward silence an expression which
pleased Kerkhoven. He said:
M uch that masquerades as confidential avowal is really both
deception and self-deception. We moderns are no longer satis
fied with what we can infer about one another. An impulse of
self-detestation constrains us to rip ourselves and one another
open. For instance, a short while ago, Aleid blabbed to Alexander
a painful experience she had had in connexion with her mother.
Not unsympathetically, indeed, but it was a thing which decency
should have made her keep to herself. Alexander, in his turn,
was not able to refrain from talking about the matter to Marie
although he would probably have acted more wisely if he had
held his tongue. Marie was much upset. Since then, she has done
her best to avoid being alone with Aleid.
When I was in Poland during the war, a man was brought
to me one day, a Jew, who was known throughout the neighu

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bourhood as Schloime the Silent. M any years before, he had

contracted a love-marriage with a handsome young woman. On
the whole, husband and wife had got on well for a time. But the
man was hot tempered; there were quarrels, and in one of them,
Schloime, beside himself with wrath, shouted: L et the flames
consume thee. Soon afterwards the house caught fire in the night
and the wife was burned to death. Conscience-stricken, Schloime
went to the rabbi, confessed his sin, and asked what he could do
to atone. The rabbi said: If your tongue has offended, you must
punish it by abstaining henceforward from speech. Since then,
eight and twenty years before, not a word had passed his lips.
His two sons had brought him to me in the hope that I could
work a charm which would induce him to forget his vow; but
when he stood before me, he smiled with unfathomable wisdom,
and I felt that he was more likely to help me than I to help him.
140

One Thursday in the second week of November, Kerkhoven

received an urgent call to Basle. His advice was wanted on the
case of a young man, an instructor at the university, suffering
from a traumatic intra-cranial haemorrhage. As it happened,
there was staying with the patient an old acquaintance of Kerkhovens, a great admirer of the latters scientific work, who was
head of a firm of publishers specialising in medical literature,
and above all in neurology. Kerkhoven had a talk with him,
asking whether and on what terms the firm would be interested
in publishing the book on Illusion. During the last few months,
the doctors finances had got into rather a bad way. He hoped
for an advance of royalties amounting to from six to eight
thousand marks. T he interest on a mortgage would fall due on
the 15th, and he saw no other way of raising the sum required.
The publisher jumped at the chance. Kerkhovens book was
eagerly expected in medical circles. Isolated parts of it, published
in periodicals, had attracted favourable attention; and the sum
the German firm would be willing to pay in cash as soon as the
contract was signed coincided almost exactly with what Kerk-

JOSEPH

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hoven had intended to ask. It would be better to settle the matter

at once. Next day, he was to set out for the south of France, and
correspondence with him would be difficult for a few weeks.
I f he could get the manuscript for an hour or two to estimate the
length, there would be no obstacle in the way of signing a
contract immediately.
This lifted a weight from Josephs mind. He had never
expected to get the matter settled so quickly. The only difficulty
was, how to get hold of the manuscript forthwith. Apart from the
fact that it would tire him too much to return to Seeblick, he
could not leave his patient. A trustworthy messenger could not
be found at a moments notice, so he rang up the sanatorium
and asked Marie, after briefly explaining the situation, whether
she would be good enough to bring the work to Basle. It was in
the middle drawer of his writing-table, and no extensive
preparations would be needed for the three hours railway
journey.
Unfortunately, Marie was in bed, suffering from a severe attack
of migraine. Her husband did not know this, not having seen her
before leaving home at seven in the morning. She answered
over the phone:
I m so sorry, dear, but I m laid up with a sick-headache
and cant stir. I ll ask Bettina to bring you the manuscript.
I am sure shell be delighted. Theres a train at noon, so you can
count on having your book by half-past three.
When she had rung off, she sent the maid to the bungalow.
Now came a second mishap. Bettina had taken Helmut out for
the day, across the lake to Rudolfszell. Marie reflected. Aleid
would not do; too untrustworthy, and her mother did not wish
to ask her for a favour. Nurse Else could not be spared from her
duties. There remained Alexander Herzog who, the maid said,
was at home. Could Marie venture to ask such a service from
him? Really, there was no choice. It was essential for Joseph to
receive the manuscript that afternoon. The arrangement with the
German publisher would relieve them of financial anxiety. She
could scarcely raise her head from the pillow and could not

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dream of undertaking a railway journey. Bowing before the

inevitable, she sent once more to the bungalow begging Alexander
to step across. He returned with the maid, entered the darkened
bed-room, and anxiously enquired what was amiss. She tranquillised him by smiling. Standing at the foot of the bed, he looked
at her with mute reverence and helpless compassion. When,
speaking with difficulty, with much hesitation and many excuses,
she had explained what she wanted; that she and Joseph asked
o f him an important, nay indispensable service and had no
one else to whom to turn he broke in impetuously, saying that
to speak of asking a service of him made him ashamed, and
that in any case he had intended to go to Basle in the next few
days to visit a friend. She need only get the manuscript packed
up and sent to him. He made a note of Josephs address in Basle,
and half an hour later was in the train.
Taking a comprehensive view o f these insignificant though
complicated circumstances, we cannot but feel that the loss of
Kerkhovens manuscript was a diabolical mischance. A ll the
more, seeing that Alexander Herzog, in the ordinary affairs of
daily life, was by no means distraught or absent-minded. On the
contrary. He showed meticulous exactitude in carrying out
commissions, suffering, until they were discharged, from an
exaggerated sense of responsibility. Often, when he was travelling
with Bettina, and they were staying in a strange town, she would
ask him to make some purchases for her. He wrote a list upon
a card; but this did not satisfy him. W hile he was about the
business, he was continually putting his hand into his pocket
in order to convince himself that the card was still there. In this
nstance, it was not a question of a card or of an object easily
mislaid, but of a bulky parcel weighing four or five pounds.
He knew the contents, knew them to be unique, and shortly
before, after the burning of the school-house, had taken his
friend to task for failing to have a manuscript embodying so many
years of labour typed in manifold. Kerkhoven, with a jaunty
laugh, had quoted Hamlet: T heres a special providence in
the fall of a sparrow. I f Providence watched over the fall of

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a sparrow, would He not watch over the work of a lifetime ? The

doctor could not foresee that by a preposterous run of ill-luck,
he was to be bereft for ever of this work.
141

Alexanders discomposure after the loss o f the manuscript

made it impossible for him to remember how the disaster had
occurred. He had to change at Rheinfelden. A few stations
before, at Stein (he was travelling in a third-class corridor
carriage), an old married couple got in. T h ey were both blind,
and a white poodle on a lead acted as their guide. Th ey left the
train at the next stop. Alexander wanted to give them a hand;
but the way in which the dog politely indicated that he was the
only authorised helper and that no assistance was needed, the
human sagacity which radiated from the beasts eyes, were so
fascinating to Alexander as to monopolise his attention at the
time and his memory for a good while afterwards. He pictured
the life of the two poor old things, accompanying them in
imagination to the home they could not see, or which only
became visible to them through the dogs eyes. He was still
immersed in these thoughts when he left the carriage at Rhein
felden, and crossed the rails to the platform where he had to
wait for the Basle connexion. Meanwhile, the other train had left
for Buchs. Suddenly, to his horror, he became aware that he
had lost the parcel. He must have left it in the Buchs train!
W ith a palpitating heart, and scarcely master of himself, Alexander
rushed to the station-masters office. T h e station-master did his
best to console the agitated passenger by declaring that very
seldom was anything lost on Swiss railways. Then he telephoned
to the next station on the way to Buchs. A search was made for
the parcel, and shattering news came over the wire to the effect
that it could not be found. Alexander, in despair, asked how far
the train went. It would be side-tracked at Buchs, he was told.
By this time, a crowd had gathered, persons who seemed in
stinctively to grasp that the loss was a very serious one as,
indeed, Alexanders excitement was enough to show. These

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worthies had plenty of advice to give. W hile he stood dumbly

listening to what they had to say, crushed by the misfortune, a
kindly woman, wishing to help him, telephoned to the lostproperty office of the police. Alexander, taking counsel with
himself, decided to hire a motor car and pursue the train.
Within two minutes, he had started, having promised the driver
twenty francs extra to run at top speed. T h e machine careered
furiously along the winding road. W ith clenched fists Herzog sat
beside the driver, muttering curses at the slowness of the car.
He could not think; he was benumbed with torment. A t half-past
four they reached Buchs. T he train stood in a siding. He recog
nised the carriage in which he had travelled, and had it unlocked.
He found the compartment, but the package was not there nor in
any of the other compartments. He enquired at the station, with
no result. He gave full particulars, and offered a reward of three
hundred francs for the recovery of the parcel. Then he tele
phoned to Rheinfelden: no news. He called up the intermediate
stations: no news. Jumping into the car once more, he said: Back
to Rheinfelden! Arriving there late in the evening, he drove to
a printers. T h e manager was fetched from a neighbouring inn,
and had a poster set up, which was to be displayed next morning
without fail. Alexander had to pay heavily for this overtime
work, but money counted for nothing with him now. He went
to the police and once more to the railway station. No result!
A t midnight he took a room at a hotel and flung himself into
bed utterly tired out, but could not sleep a wink. He was com
pletely broken.
142
In view of the fact that the lost article was of no value to a
casual finder, and that if he were able to read the posters it was
easy to return the parcel to the owner and secure a reward, the
complete disappearance of this voluminous scientific manuscript
seemed inexplicable. For, to cut the matter short, all further
enquiries, advertisements, and offers of a high reward, all public
and private endeavours, proved fruitless. It was as if the thick
sheaf of papers had been dissolved into its elements, or had been

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carried off by some misguided bird of prey wishing to feed its

fledgelings on paper. T h e general assumption was that a peasant
or wage-earner or illiterate pedlar had picked up the masterless
package and taken it home with him; that, having opened it and
having found that it contained nothing more interesting than
manuscript pages, he had paid no further heed to his find, but
had thrown it aside or had used it to kindle the fire. T h e last sup
position seemed the most probable; for if, subsequently, he had
come across an advertisement about the manuscript in a news
paper or read one o f the placards, he would have had a motive
for holding his tongue lest he should get into trouble.
It would take too long to describe Alexander Herzogs febrile
activities in detail. From the first, he realised the magnitude of
the loss and of his own misfortune. Something inestimably
precious had vanished; irreparable damage had been done.
Himself a writer, he could easily put himself in Kerkhovens
place, and knew that he would have been crazed with anger and
distress if anything o f the sort had happened to him. He dreaded
to think how he could explain matters to his friend; the mere
thought of having to see Kerkhoven and disclose the loss was a
horror. Had he been a young man, he could never hope to atone;
but he was old. Besides, what atonement was possible? What
compensation? T h e desperate energy he devoted to the search
was probably a manifestation of a flight from these considera
tions. It was four-and-twenty hours before he came to his senses,
sending in the meanwhile no news of his whereabouts, whether
to Basle or to Seeblick. Then it dawned upon him that such
behaviour was cowardly. His wife and his friend must be growing
anxious about him, and this was to heap fault upon blunder,
so he sent Bettina a wire. H alf an hour afterwards, towards eight
in the evening, he reached Basle, drove to the address of which
he had kept a memorandum, asked for Kerkhoven, and was
shown into the library o f the sick owner of the house. Within
three minutes the doctor joined him there, and, in a minute
more, knew the worst. Since the previous evening he had been
growing more and more nervous, and his repeated telephone

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calls to Seeblick had served only to increase his agitation and to

make the women there more anxious.

143
For a moment he flushed dark red ; then he turned deadly pale.
He reached for the back of a chair and sat down. This looked
like a voluntary movement, but was nothing of the kind. He
coughed, drew his handkerchief from his pocket, and wiped his
mouth. Then he rose from the chair, as if wishing to assure
himself that he was able to walk, moved slowly to the door, and
tried the handle to see if the latch had caught. These actions
were taken to gain time. Still he said never a word. W hile standing
by the door, he passed his fingers over his cheeks. He had spent
the day at the patients bedside and had found no time to shave.
T h e grey stubble made a rasping sound under his hand.
You look absolutely tired out, m y dear fellow, he said at
length. I will let them know at Seeblick that you have arrived.
What you need is rest. We shall see tomorrow if anything can be
done.
I have taken all possible steps, said Alexander in a toneless
voice.
He went on to tell the whole story, beginning with his mad
drive to Buchs, and ending with the bill-posting and the sending
out of paid searchers. Kerkhoven walked heavily to and fro
between the piano and the window. He smiled faintly, dreamily,
and Alexander contemplated him anxiously, saying:
Are you absolutely certain you have no duplicate?
D ont lets bother about that now, replied Kerkhoven rather
impatiently, it leads nowhere.We have to find out the meaning
o f what has happened. It must have a meaning. So that one
could say: Lord, into T h y hands I commend my spirit. Some
thing like that, but after my own fashion.
He tugged at his little beard. Then he asked:
Do you feel equal to going back home with me immediately?
T h a ts all right. I think it will be the best thing to do. No more
trains to-night, but they are putting a car at my disposal. I am

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only waiting until my patient has been taken off to the clinic.
W e shall start in an hour. Lie down on the couch here and rest.
Swallow these.
He took a glass tube out of his pocket and gave Alexander
two white tablets.
T h ey will make you stop brooding, which can do no possible
good. Besides, I feel certain, almost certain, that the lost package
will be found. One of fates little practical jokes. Keep your
pecker up, old man; and get a good rest before we start.
W ith a nod to Alexander and a smile, he left the room. All the
same, far from being convinced that the manuscript would be
found, he felt assured that it had vanished for ever. T h is was a
fact which had to be faced.
144

T h e car was a small Austro-Daimler, a two-seater. No chauffeur.

Kerkhoven drove. Next morning some one was coming by train
to fetch it back from Seeblick. T h e silent companionship of the
nocturnal drive was good for both men. Alexander was still
under the benumbing influence of the tablets. He stared as if
hypnotised at the cones of light projected on to the road. He
felt as if this light was issuing from Kerkhoven; and, as the
miles sped past, light dawned in his own mind. How mysterious
was the energy radiated by this man. It reminded one of the
earths warmth in a volcanic region, or of the heat that will still
issue from the bark of a great tree long after the sun has ceased
to shine on it.
About three miles short of Seeblick, Kerkhoven pulled up in
front of an inn. He knew the host. Having knocked at one of
the windows, when the man appeared, rubbing the sleep out of
his eyes, Kerkhoven asked leave to put the car in the garage.
Alexander was surprised. Kerkhovens explanation that he did
not wish at that late hour to disturb the household by driving
up in a car did not seem to ring true. T h e car could safely have
been left in the grounds at a considerable distance from the
house. It was not until several days later that Kerkhoven
explained the true reason.

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I wanted to walk beside you for an hour in the darkness,

without talking. A night walk cleanses the mind. Nature speaks
to us more impressively than in the daylight. I had to put you
to the test, in my company. Y ou behaved splendidly, by not
uttering a word. Thereby all possibility of a cloud between us
was removed. Are you not aware how hard we wrestled with
one another as we walked mutely through the obscurity?
H5
Marie only clasped her hands when Kerkhoven told her the
news. Her husband had had plenty of time to get a grip on him
self, and she was deceived by his composure. Still, there was a
look in his eyes which made her uneasy, and some of his gestures
alarmed her. She guessed that he must be exerting superhuman
self-restraint. It would be better, she thought, if he would
thump the table and smash the china, if he would shout at us
all and chase us out o f the house; instead, he goes about as if
he were gagged and had leaden balls attached to his feet. There
were beads of sweat on his brow, and he was continually moisten
ing his lips with his tongue. What did it all mean? T o gain
some notion of what he must be feeling, she imagined her own
condition if a child had been stolen. Kidnapped and murdered.
T h e thought made her shudder. He read what was passing through
her mind. Standing in front of her, he laid a hand on her
hair, bent back her head, looked her fixedly in the eyes, and said :
D ont let us over-estimate this misfortune. W hats not there,
book or man, wont be missed. Everything that exists cheats
us by its semblance o f necessity. T he living world is a belly with
a huge digestive apparatus. One contributes this and another that
as nutriment. Do you suppose that every Ninth Symphony and
every word of deliverance becomes known? Enough that they
arise. That they should become known is a separate dispensation.
T h e commission which has been taken away from me has merely
been assigned to some one who will come after. Nothing has
been lost. Or it has only been lost in my own egoistic feelings.
T hey must be overcome. As for the monetary disaster, you and

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I will not let our hair turn grey on that account. At least, it will
be better if we dont !
She caught his hands, carried them to her lips, and kissed
each in turn, many times.
But we have Alexander Herzog and Bettina to consider. The
effect o f the loss upon Alexander was, in view o f his tempera
ment, likely to be worse than the effect upon Kerkhoven. He
probably felt like a leper. As for Bettina, so imaginative and so
passionately sympathetic, she seemed to Marie to be strangely
at odds with her husband, whom she could not but regard as
blameworthy, although she suffered with his suffering, for she
suffered also on behalf of her friend whom this disaster had
befallen because o f the liking he had taken for herself and
Alexander. Here was a labyrinth from which there was no issue.
In her first conversation with Alexander and Bettina after
Kerkhovens return, Marie fancied that there was a breach
between them, an estrangement which neither would acknow
ledge, although Alexander had an inkling of it and Bettina was
plainly aware. It was as if Bettina were holding a pair of invisible
scales, in whose pans lay two souls, which she was meditatively
balancing one against the other. T h e pan she looked at would
sink, so she carefully, forebodingly, kept her eyes closed. This
image was extremely vivid to Marie, and she also wished to close
her eyes to it, because it was calamitous and intensely painful.
146
Tw o and twenty manuscript books full of notes, a huge pile
o f papers containing drafts, schemata, and sketches; such was
the material accumulated by Kerkhoven in the course of years.
It was all stacked on his writing-table. Since Alexander had
specially asked to be shown it, the doctor complied.
Bettina tells me that you have been thinking about a new
transcript of your book, began Alexander timidly. Marie, too.
You spoke to her concerning what you could accomplish in two
or three months if you could dictate four or five hours a day.
T h a ts so, isnt it?

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Kerkhoven looked at him askance, like some one who dis

covers, much to his surprise, that a mouse has been caught in a
badly constructed trap. He had, indeed, tried to console the
two women by telling them that with the requisite diligence,
and by careful rearrangement of his notes and sketches, his
book could be re-written. But he did not believe that he would
live long enough. Not even M arie or Bettina had believed in
the two or three months. Only this foolish fellow, this imagina
tive writer, believed. He had repressed his knowledge of Joseph
Kerkhovens imminent death because it consoled him to forget
what he had been told. He, whose own experience must have
taught him how unique is the writers inspiration, how impossible
it is to recapture a train of thought or a mode of phrasing, which
can only take form under the special illumination of a momentary
experience this man actually believed that Kerkhoven need
merely set to work and reproduce his book as a schoolboy writes
an imposition. T h e doctor smiled, and said:
Oh yes, I think it could be managed. I ve only got to make
up my mind to it. Unquestionably it is possible.
This magnanimous falsehood delighted Alexander Herzog. A
little more, and he would have flung his arms round Kerkhoven.

147

Nothing but M aries urgent requests had induced Kerkhoven to

accept L ili Meeven as patient. She was Frau de Ruyters niece
and the wife o f an Amsterdam diamond merchant. Frau de
Ruyters had written Marie a long letter. T h e Amsterdam
neurologist had recommended the family to send the patient to
Kerkhoven, whose work was held in peculiarly high esteem
among his Dutch colleagues. They spoke of him in Holland as
if he were an apostle. At first he had refused to undertake the
case, mainly because Frau de Ruyters letter did not convey a
clear picture of her nieces ailment. During these days, Kerkhoven
was no longer sure of himself. His scientific curiosity had cooled,
and he had no desire for fresh experiences. What was termed
cure became more and more questionable to him. That actress

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from Mannheim, the alcoholic, had survived her attack of

delirium tremens, and had with much labour and pains been
freed from her inclination to drink. For what purpose? That
she might return to the stage, appear in second-rate plays, and
relapse in a year or so ? He had not been able to free her from a
deep-rooted conviction o f the futility of her life, and that con
viction was the mainspring of her trouble. There were cures
thanks to which the removal of the illness left the patient little
better than a dead body, so that all the doctor achieved was to
enrich a society of living ghosts with one more wandering corpse.
A ll the same, one could not repudiate even the most depraved,
even the most useless, individuals insistent claim to life. The
doctor who ventured upon this was arrogating divine rights.
T h e contradiction would have been too much for Kerkhoven
had he not already crossed the boundary where the problem of
life or death ceased to have any meaning for him.
He therefore agreed to do what he could for L ili Meeven,
and had no reason to regret his decision. She aroused in him
another kind of interest than a purely medical one. In her there
was repeated in a concrete living object what he had experienced
in a mirrored figure; that is to say, really and directly, instead
o f imaginatively and indirectly. Thus he hit upon the remarkable
idea of a spiritual homoeopathy. Alexander Herzog would not
be able to doubt that he was confronted with Gannas double.
Kerkhoven would be able to try whether the annihilation of
Ganna had been successfully effected, or whether unresolved
vestiges o f the disturbing experience were still working evil in
Herzogs mind. Nor did the matter concern Alexander alone.
For Bettina, even more than for him, there was a drastic problem
as to the being or not being of her marriage, as to the develop
ment or decay of her personality.
148
L ili Meevin, in charge of a sick nurse, came to Seeblick. A faded
woman of forty, she nevertheless had so animated a face that
on her good days she looked as fresh and fair as a girl in her

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teens. Her blue-black hair was unkempt, and strands of it fell

over her forehead and into her huge dark eyes. Her build was
dainty, and yet she spoke with a harshly virile voice. T h e
strangest thing about her was the dress she wore, it might have
been a Salvation Arm y lasss uniform. Her whole appearance
produced a crushed impression, her clothes were shiny, thread
bare, totally lacking in taste, ostentatiously slovenly. Though
she was the wife o f a wealthy man and possessed a fortune of
her own, she looked as if she had not even the wherewithal to
buy herself a pair of gloves.
She seemed to be at ease only amid disorder. T h e nurse
unpacked and put her patients things away tidily in wardrobe
and chest of drawers. But because Frau M eevin wanted an old
pair of slippers and could not put her hand on them at once,
she angrily pulled everything out again and threw stockings,
underclothes, handkerchiefs and what not higgledy-piggledy on
the bed and chairs. T he greater part of the day she spent in
scribbling, and had already accumulated a vast heap of diaries;
every three days a new book was needed. In addition, she wrote
countless letters; once, fifteen at a sitting. As superintendent of
a sanatorium, Kerkhoven censored the correspondence before
posting it. Everything she wrote was more or less to the point,
and was in some respects exceedingly perspicacious. She had a
good style, and great facility of expression. In her letters to her
husband, affection alternated with venom. Passionate outpourings
of love would be followed by fierce reproaches because he had
robbed her of her ideals and ruined her life. There was no
justification for these charges. From conversations with her,
Kerkhoven gathered that she considered herself a heaven-born
dancer, and that her husband had stood in the way of her pursuing
an artistic career. Y et she had never danced, nor even studied
dancing. Her genius in this field was imaginary, but she luxuriated
in picturing the triumphs she could have won had it not been
for the malice of certain persons and the unkindness of fate.
When she had indulged in such reveries for a time, she would
strip stark naked and prance ludicrously round the room, uncon

JOSEPH

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cerned by the presence of unlookers of her own sex, although in

other respects she was excessively prudish. She accompanied
these dances by singing, in a hollow voice which resounded
through the house, solemn ditties in the vein of a hymn tune.
She radiated unrest. The gloomy howling that went on when
she was engaged in her dancing practice was torture to the
nerves of all within hearing. If she was asked to stop this nuisance,
she lost her temper, and began to talk of the vast sums she was
paying for her stay at Seeblick. She was perpetually grumbling
and quarrelling: either with Nurse Else, because meals were not
served punctually, because the tea was too weak, the chocolate
too strong, the soup too hot, the meat too co ld ; or with the nurse
who had come with her, whom she believed to be a spy. One
day, after she had turned the whole room upside down in search
o f her diamond ring (it was ultimately found in the dirty-clothes
basket inside a stocking), she made a horrible scene, declaring
she had been robbed. She treated women abominably, especially
the m aids; but when Kerkhoven came into the room she became
effusively amiable. Having learned that Alexander Herzog was
at Seeblick, she pestered the doctor to introduce him, until at
length Kerkhoven promised to do so, for he had his own ends
to gain. She regarded herself, not merely as faultless, but as the
exemplar and the crown of womanhood. Frau de Ruyters had
made no secret of the fact that Lili Meevin had hopelessly spoiled
her son who was known throughout Amsterdam as a neer-dowell ; but the mother spoke of him as likely to become a minister
of State, wrote him fulsome epistles, and kept him lavishly sup
plied with funds. In her own opinion, she was never in the
wrong; could not be, for she had no notion of right or wrong,
and her relationship to her associates was determined by im
moderate self-glorification.
Y et she had no delusions, and could not be considered a
lunatic. In all her actions, she retained enough control to realise
what their consequences would be. She was extraordinarily
astute, with the cunning frequently found in borderland cases,
in persons who carefully avoid going too far lest they should be

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placed under restraint. What was wrong with her was not her
intelligence but her character. A defective character cannot be
cured, and it was not because of this defect that her relatives
had sent her to Kerkhoven. Her fundamental illness was an
autosuggestive hysteria, more strongly developed than Kerk
hoven had ever seen before. She suffered from major hysteria
with epileptiform seizures, spasms, hysterical aphonia, and
stigmatisation. In her case, the symptoms of this grave hysteria
resembled those we read of in medieval trials for witchcraft.
She had a marvellous capacity for imitating the symptoms of
any disease from which she fancied herself to be suffering; pro
ducing eruptions, oedema, suppurations, muscular rheumatism
with a temperature of 105, haematemesis, or a stye; such
faithful imitations that any one not in the know would have
believed her to be afflicted with organic disease. T h e illness was
manifest, and yet it was mere semblance. It exhibited the signs
and symptoms proper to the complaint, and yet it was nothing
but a cobweb of the sick womans brain. In earlier days, even
as recently as six months ago, Kerkhoven would have treated
the malady according to the rules o f art and the teachings of
experience, as he had treated many cases resembling that which
this woman similated. Now he could see through the deceptive
tissues, through the meshes between willing and suffering,
between the desire for self-torment and the ecstasy thereof,
between the coercion of the blood and the cunning of the blood,
to reach the foundation of it all; to reach the hopeless, God
forsaken night in which this Lili and all her kind wander, vainly
seeking for a ray of light.
149
It was snowing heavily. Kerkhoven was sitting close to the fire,
a rug wrapped round his knees, his head supported on his hand.
From time to time the silence was broken by the dismal moaning
of L ili Meevin. For a few seconds the noise was intensified,
when the door of the Refectory opened. Aleid came in, and
walked across the room to her stepfather, panting after the ascent
of the stairs.

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I cant stand it any longer, Uncle Joseph; that woman will

drive me crazy with her noise. Please clear her out, or I shall do
the wretch a mischief.
But girlie, girlie, said Kerkhoven gently, stroking her cheek,
its not so bad as all that. Fancy yourself in a town, with auto
mobiles hooting beneath the window. All you need is to make
up your mind that it shall not bother you. In such cases the will is
everything.
Aleid lifted a forefinger.
Listen, she whispered; ghastly! Has Nurse Else told you
how the creature screams in her sleep at night? A nerve-racking
noise, as if a pig were being stuck. Is she really to be regarded
as a human being, Uncle Joseph ?
O f course, child. She looks upon herself as one of the elect.
If so, mankind is a horror to me an absolute horror. She
put her face in her hands and shuddered.
Kerkhoven drew her down beside him on to the arm of the
chair.
Look here, Aleid, he said earnestly, you are letting yourself
go and must pull yourself together. Its a sacred duty just now.
Sacred duty? echoed Aleid, with a despairing grin. Are
you trying to palm off that religious tosh on me? You, of all
people ?
Religious tosh ? D ont be silly, Aleid, or pig-headed. W hy
should you want to make me pity you instead of admiring
you?
She was amazed. Silently she contemplated the massive hand
which rested on hers.
How much longer, d you think? he asked confidentially, as
one woman might speak to another.
She pouted, and raised her eyebrows.
According to my estimate, he went on, it can only be a
few more days. When your child comes, are you going to receive
it as a gaoler receives a prisoner? Y ou ve plenty of time before
you in which to become a human being; but if you want to be a
mother, you must begin right away.

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She quivered at the severity of his tone. Then she was seized
once more by a spirit of wrath and defiance. With the thumb and
forefinger of her right hand, she twisted Kerkhovens wedding
ring, and muttered:
Look here! I swear I m going to strangle it. Like a servantmaid who has her baby in the water-closet. D ont imagine you
can prevent me. A child coming as mine comes, into such a
world as this it would be mad to let it live. If you had only
helped me when I first came. . . . You were my last stand-by.
But none of you has any bowels of compassion.
Kerkhoven grasped her by the shoulders and compelled her
to look at him.
All right. When you have strangled it, I will help you, he
said quietly, sustaining the fiery glint of the emerald eyes as long
as she could keep it up.
She rose, and slipped out of the room with catlike stealth.

T h e unavoidable encounter with Lili Meevin aroused in Alexander

Herzog the sort of feeling one has on recalling a bad dream one
has had many days or perhaps weeks before, and vainly trying
to remember its exact tenor. Strangely enough he was not im
mediately aware of a resemblance which had instantly struck
Bettina and had filled her with aversion for the newcomer. He
did not find the woman congenial. Her persistent and indiscreet
questioning was disagreeable. But since, like many ladies of her
class, she had the customary veneer of literary culture, and,
without undue adulation, missed no chance of letting him know
her delight in his writings, he overlooked her repulsive qualities,
and did not even see that they existed. Still, he soon began to
find her visits a nuisance: her blue-stocking talk got on his
nerves; the family anecdotes she recounted, bored him; her
self-adulation aroused his spleen; the shamelessness with which
she discussed the intimacies of her married life was repulsive;
her shifty glances, which sometimes betrayed an endless greed,
sometimes an animal melancholy, sometimes a confused enthu

JOSEPH

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siasm, were as annoying to him as her unending chatter and the

lack of precision and trustworthiness in what she said. But all
the time he had a vague feeling that behind the image he was
forming of her there loomed another image which he had known
and forgotten. As yet he had heard nothing about her morbid
conditions, which she carefully concealed from him. Indeed, he
served as a preventive, for when one of her hysterical tantrums
began, Kerkhoven needed but to mention Alexanders name and
it acted like a spell, making her pull herself together. This was
extremely instructive for Kerkhoven, resembling as it did, in
certain respects, the terrestrial relationship between isotherms.
Although he had previously told Bettina that something of the
sort might happen, he had not counted upon a curative action
of the kind. Natures wonderful cunning was at work, rubbing
off the angles from an anomalous type to destroy the magnetic
influence exerted upon a counter-type a magnetism which,
under different conditions, had already been manifested in the
case of a kindred female partner.
These are the laws with which we are concerned, said
Kerkhoven, discussing the matter with Bettina. Even God has
to simplify the rules with which he keeps the impulses in order.
Alexander was seeking as if with a bandage over his eyes.
One day, Lili Meevin sent him a note, excusing herself for not
coming over (he did not want her to come) and asking for the
loan of a particular book. As he read, he was puzzled. W hy was
the handwriting familiar? Bettina was looking over his shoulder,
reading as he read.
Doesnt it seem strange to you? he asked; even the name,
M eevin, is lik e!
He tapped the letter with his fingers and laughed. Shook his
head, and burst out laughing. He could see the past objectively
now. L ili M eevin ! Th ats what the past looked like when it
was a forgotten dream. The danger had grown innocent, the
monstrous had become small; both had been illusion. The pain
of an experience could be eradicated when the experience had
been driven out of the blood and was no more than driftwood

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in the stream of life. One must know this, must realise it, must
have faith in it. As such thoughts flashed through his brain, he
turned to Bettina, pressed her temples between his hands, and
kissed her ardently on the mouth, the chin, the eyes, the brow,
the hair, again and again.
Now your time has come, said Kerkhoven, when, in
delicate outline, she told him of this scene. You need make no
effort; indeed you must carefully avoid effort; matters will run
smooth if you rightly understand. T ell me, have you ever seen
him so cheerful? On such good terms with fate? So ripe for
Bettina? Yes, that is really so, ripe for Bettina; and Bettina
must not be idle; she must reap her harvest, cart her good
fortune, fill the garners; must be valiant, shrewd, far-seeing;
must be Bettina! She who has faith in God. Thats what your
name means, come to think of it; she who has faith in G od.
Bettina stared at him in amazement. She had never seen him
look like that, never heard him utter such words. Th ey were
standing in the snow, among the birches, near the edge of the
grounds. She lowered her eyes, slid down the bank over the snow,
climbed up to him again, and said gently:
Dear, dear M aster.
He was dumbfounded.
W hy Master ? he asked. There was some one else who
used to call me that, but I did not fare well with my mastership.
In my case, you have fared well with it, answered Bettina
with a far-away smile, for you have mastered my life.
He leaned forward and gently kissed the top of her head.
This was a caress she never forgot. But then, going home, she
went into Alexanders study. He was seated at the writing-table.
She drew close to him unheard, put an arm round him, and
breathed into his ear:
I love you. I love you.
*5 *
It was very strange! Since the loss of the manuscript, almost to
the very day, the hostilities against Seeblick had ceased, as if at

JOSEPH

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a word of command. Not only that: people of the neighbourhood

women, fathers of families, young unemployed workmen
arrived to seek a cure for all sorts of ailments: ulcers, digestive
troubles, anaemia, rheumatism, biliary colic, and what not.
Day after day, dozens turned up, and waited patiently till the
doctor could see them. It reminded Kerkhoven of the early
years of his practice. But whereas then, a novice in his profes
sion, the treatment of these uninteresting ailments had seemed
to him a hodmans task, and he had been inclined to undertake
it in rule-of-thumb fashion, expecting a call to do higher
work now he felt that to help these plain folk through their
troubles was, perhaps, a doctors true calling. It was a return to
simplicity; the relief of much petty distress; helping people to
escape from lesser perils and perhaps to avert greater ones.
There was more loving service and more worth therein than in
the treatment of those complicated cases where all his wealth o f
knowledge did not enable the physician to shake off his doubts
concerning the fundamental validity o f the science and art of
medicine, and concerning the way in which nature continued to
veil her secrets notwithstanding perpetual peeping and prying,
comparison, experimentation, and measurement, and despite skill
and intuition. Here he was dealing with things palpable, and
could really help. He had completely forgotten what an immense
boon was conferred by mitigating, and in fortunate cases dis
pelling, bodily pain. He had forgotten the grateful light that shines
in a childs eyes when one bandages a bleeding wound; how
overwhelming is the delight of a mother when the doctor puts
flesh back on the bones of her emaciated nurseling; how immense
the relief of one suffering from bums or scalds when these have
been properly dressed, with a consequent relief from torment.
Such things were easily done; the doctor had merely to play the
part of an army medical corps man in the continual fight of the
common people against lifes troubles. Among the folk, illness,
minor or major, is something far more real, far more elemental,
than among the well-to-do, for whom bodily illness is often a
mere pretext, a flight from responsibility.

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Kerkhoven would not refuse to meet these new demands,

although it was already hard enough to cope with the early ones,
to deal with the continually increasing afflux from all lands of
persons asking help and counsel. Often enough his physical
strength gave out, and he collapsed, though as inconspicuously
as possible, like a tired dog crawling into its kennel to rest. The
buttresses of his frame were crumbling. He had only one means
for keeping himself at work: to oppose the will to death in his
blood by the spirits repudiation of death: in so far as death was
arrogant enough to invade the orbit of spirit in defiance of the
spirits will and readiness to go o n ; in so far as he recognised any
other reality than that based upon the illusion of being.

152

No doubt the coincidence between the loss of a manuscript

embodying the thoughts of a lifetime and the change in public
opinion might be due to chance. But Kerkhoven did not believe
in chance coincidences. He had not a shadow of doubt that the
outer world, the world of facts, of things palpable and visible,
was subordinate to the influences of the spiritual orbit. D es
tiny, that inscrutable interrelation between collective happenings
and individual movements, functioned both in large matters and
in small like an equilibrating wheelwork; and both its moral
and its sensual workings perpetually aimed at maintaining the
balance between doing and suffering. No human being could
continue to exist without the unconscious compensations which
are wrought in him by the mysterious interactions of the organised
vital forces.
He was assured of this. Nevertheless, he had not been able
to overcome his pain at the loss. He could have borne it better
had the shuttle continued to ply as busily as of old, but the
stores o f energy that drove it were running out. No one must
know. It was bad enough that Alexander Herzog knew. How
could he have been so foolish as to disclose the secret to a man
who was on terms of such intimate friendship with Marie ? There
were times when Kerkhovens liking for Alexander Herzog was

JOSEPH

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overpowered by the dread of betrayal. If Marie learned that

Joseph knew his death to be at hand, it would be a terrible
misfortune; much as when, of two rock climbers roped together,
the lower one falls and drags the upper one from his holds.
Joseph had still to help Marie in her upward climb; the last
stage of the ascent had still to be traversed; his death and the
top of the climb must fuse in her spirit into one; she must not
regard it as catastrophe, but as fulfilment; not as a change of
substance, but as a change of contact. There was no time left
in which he could prepare her; she was not yet so far above the
earth as he; she still felt giddy when she contemplated the abyss,
was still overshadowed by the alleged tragedy of death. The only
possible preparation was to maintain silence while continuing
to climb the precipitous wall.
One evening, he took Alexander aside, and again asked him
for a solemn pledge of silence.
You know, of course, to what subject I am referring.
T h e grievousness of my offence against you is shown me,
Joseph, by the fact that you should think it necessary to repeat
the request, answered Alexander Herzog.
Kerkhoven had not expected this inference, although it dis
closed how delicate were Alexanders sensibilities.
I dont deny the connexion, he said. How can words help
us here? You have, in fact, innocently incurred a liability.
Perhaps not altogether innocently. Perhaps . . . well, lets say
no more about that. Note well, however, dear friend, I might
almost say my only friend, that we can cry quits if you devote
all your imaginative powers to seeing in me and my death, a
stage.
A stage towards what? asked Alexander, profoundly moved.
Kerkhoven smiled.
I did not expect that question from you, he rejoined.

*53

During the night he spoke to Marie about what he named the

death fiction, the illusion of death. He was sitting on the side

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of her bed for his usual half-hours talk with her before she
went to sleep. She had expressed surprise that Lili Meevin
never took a chill during her crazy dances, although at such
times all the windows were widely opened.
Any one else would get pneumonia, or at least tonsillitis;
but she takes no harm. Yet when she imagines herself affected
with pneumonia or tonsillitis, she has them right enough. The
matter is so weird, I can hardly bear to think of it. What protects
her in one case, and makes her defenceless in the other?
Hard to say, Marie. An idea can immunise, even a fixed
idea. But you are right. Hysteria of any kind, involves a meta
physical problem. Did I ever tell you of my experience in Java
with the young German surveyor ? He had an unreasonable dread
of snakes. One day he came to me, deadly pale, trembling all
over, to tell me that a venomous snake had bitten him in the
foot, and to ask for immediate amputation. I examined the foot.
N o sign of snake-bite, no redness, no swelling, nothing. He stuck
to his contention that he would die unless his foot were ampu
tated. He was beside himself with fear, but of course I refused
to operate. He died during the night with all the symptoms of
snake poisoning. Post-mortem examination showed that there
was no trace o f toxin in the blood. It was pure fancy, even the
death, though he really died.
Do you mean that we can conjure up any distress and any
pain out of nothing?
Yes, we can go all lengths in that direction. There are no
limits to mans powers of self-deception. One can believe and
disbelieve at the same time; but if a man is overpowered by the
belief he has an illness, and I give him ocular demonstration
that he has it not, his mind instantly takes refuge in super
stition. He has as great a dread of the truth, even of an obvious
truth, as that geometrician had of snakes. Strictly speaking,
Marie, death itself is only dread of the truth. Per se, it has no
truth. I mean, it is not true before God. What we have to do
is to wrestle our way through to truth as it exists before God.
If you immerse yourself in your own self with your utmost

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energy, you realise all at once that there is no death. Realise

it with the same certainty as that with which I know protoplasm
is not matter, but only organisation.
Marie looked at him long and thoughtfully.
But what about dying? she asked.
Dying is a productive act, like procreation. The circle must
close somewhere. When a star falls into the sun, does it cease
to exist? Stars feed on stars, and souls feed on other souls. The
idea of all forms is already pre-existent in the primeval nebulae
and ethereal undulations; why, therefore, should the everlasting
circulation cease at my microscopical ego? Inconceivable? Yes,
everything is inconceivable. Even that fire burns is inconceivable.
A ll you need, is to think the matter out clearly and consecutively.
You must think it out until a miracle ceases to be a miracle,
and becomes only a natural and necessary process. Every miracle
ceases to be a miracle when I live and breathe with it. How,
otherwise, could I, as day follows day, dully pass on to the
order of the day ignoring the miracle, Joseph Kerkhoven, the
ego-miracle? But I am tired. Good-night M arie.
Good-night, Joseph.
Marie lay meditating profoundly, feeling strangely serene and
lightsome.

154
Four death-dreams of Alexander Herzogs, transcribed for
Kerkhoven.
1.
I know that Bettina is at the theatre with J. K . Something
impels me to go there, and that she may not be annoyed by
my turning up, I intend to tell her that I have to set out on a
journey by rail. T h e theatre is full, so the manager gives me
the key of his private box. I am wearing a loose velvet jacket
and a shirt without a collar. Between me and the stage is an
open space, at least a mile wide. It is thronged by a raging mob,
in the middle of which I see Bettina, who holds out her hands
to me despairingly, to implore my help. T h e director bursts
out laughing at my anxiety and says: T h ats part of the show.
Thereupon, I want to fetch my dinner jacket, but as I am about

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to leave the box J. K . is standing in front of me and says com

posedly: You cant get out. You must die.
2.
I am at a meeting, a sort o f Reichstag, but in a small,
narrow hall. I am in evening dress, and yet am wearing a Panama
hat. Bismarck is president, is very angry about my hat, and waves
me to the gallery. One of the members begins to speak, reading
his speech from a dirty scrap of paper. When he has finished,
he switches off the electric standard light in front of him and
dies that very instant. Then Bismarck throws his mighty head
on to the table before him, apparently decapitated, and, while
I watch the grisly agony of this head I am thinking: That is
your punishment for being angry about my Panama hat.
3 A thunderstorm. I see lightning flashes which look like
violet rents in a wall, opening and closing with horrible speed.
I fall down, or, rather, I crouch on the ground, press my fists
into m y belly and feel that I am dead. T o my astonishment
I become aware that death is not painful and that it has not even
extinguished my consciousness. T o convince myself of this, I
play one of Bettinas compositions on the piano, with Ganna
as audience, but make so many mistakes, that Ganna has con
tinually to be correcting me, and in my annoyance I transform
the beautiful adagio into a commonplace waltz. That is the
fault of the thunderstorm, is my thought, as I slam down the
lid.
4. I am alone with Bettina. She is lying in bed and I am
sitting on the side of the bed. A strange man comes in. He
disturbs us, but for some reason or other we cannot send him
away. He is tall and rather elegantly attired, except that his
shirt-collar is open and he has no coat on. Although, when he
at length takes his departure, Bettina is tired out, she makes
up her mind to go to a party. (She does not wish to be alone
with me.) But as soon as she is dressed, in an evening frock
and wearing jewels, she lies down again and goes to sleep. I
lie down beside her, but she turns her back to me. I wait and
wait. I am holding an umbrella over us both, and I see that
the space between us is full of splinters o f glass, as the bed

JOSEPH

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of a brook is full of gravel. I get up, and run away, across rails
and points. Helmut scampers along in front of me. We reach
the station, I meet Ferry. I ask: Where is the trunk? He
points to a porter. I am very angry that he should have engaged
a porter to carry the empty trunk. (How do I know that the
trunk is empty?) The train looks like the bridge of a steamboat.
I cannot find my compartment, or the trunk. There is an in
creasing press of people, who make me anxious. I hear Bettina
calling for Helmut in a harrowing voice. T h e smoke of the engine
is choking m e I have thought long and painfully about the
meaning of this dream, but have been unable to arrive at any
interpretation. It arouses in me an extraordinarily gloomy im
pression, perhaps because the details are so trivial and are only
haunting in their interconnexion.

155
When do these dreams date from? asked Kerkhoven, as the
two men were sitting together in the Refectory'.
They belong to the last six months, answered Alexander.
That is obvious, on the face of it, as regards the dream about
the theatre, said Kerkhoven somewhat mockingly. But what
especially interests me is to learn the impulse which led you
to transcribe them in series.
That is easy to explain. I did so, because my dreams have
of late taken on quite a new character.
In what way?
The change is very striking. O f course these four are only
a few out of the many, brought together in order to demon
strate the change to myself. M y dreams used to be about
quarrels, a sense of insufficiency, menaces, the need for defence,
anxiety, anxiety, anxiety. Now, I dream as if I had escaped from
prison.
Well, what sort of dreams are these you are having now ?
We wont bother about interpretation. That is a risky game.
There is too much humbug in interpretation. Too many arbitrary
combinations, too much assumption. No one, learned or un

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learned, can trace a dream to its sources, and those who fancy
they are able to do so have no inkling of the sources. But you
were going to tell me the nature o f the change in your dreams.
That remark that you feel as if you had escaped from prison
seems to me unduly generalised.
Alexander Herzog countered Kerkhovens question with
another:
Have you ever reflected upon the nature of a message? That
is the difference. I am now continually being entrusted with
messages.
Kerkhoven played the ignoramus.
Messages? What sort of messages? From whom?
Alexander saw through Josephs game, and smiled.
W hy this cross-examination? T h e messages come from you.
Every dream contains one. When I think o f what I was before
I knew you and compare it with what I am now. . . . How can
I phrase it? . . . It is as if before I met you I had lived in a
state of perpetual poisoning by some habit-forming drug. . . .
Without Eros, as it were. . . . D o you understand? Without
Eros.
Not merely as it were, Alexander. It was actually so.
Do you know the story o f Johann Tauler, the mystic, and
the Friend of G od? Alexander went on. The real name of
the Friend of God has never become known. He was simply
called the Friend of God from the Oberland. He sought out
Tauler in Strasburg. When he heard Tauler preach, the latter,
who regarded the man from the Oberland as one of his disciples,
asked him what he thought of the sermon. The Friend of God
answered boldly that he had no fault to find with Taulers
doctrine namely that in order to enter into community with
God one must rid oneself of all sensual and conceptual notions
of God and must overcome the delight the mind is apt to take
in such notions. Taulers doctrine was excellent in these respects.
What made his words unacceptable was the moral constitution
of the preachers soul. The sermon had produced in the Man
from the Oberland the impression that Tauler was more con

JPSEPH

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cerned with his own honour than with G ods; and had not
himself yet touched the burden which he imposed upon the
souls of his disciples. He commanded Tauler to give up preaching,
to cease his activities in the cloister, to discontinue his studies,
and to devote his whole attention to considering his own lack
of love. Tauler did as he was told, becoming the mock of his
fellow-monks and of all with whom he came into contact, being
even regarded as insane. He would not have been able to accom
plish this task of self-denial had not the Friend of God, from
time to time, sent him messages of consolation and guidance,
not written or spoken, but mutely or spiritually transmitted.
When, after several years, the message came that he was to
preach once more, after, through G ods grace, he had received
the light, in the pulpit he burst into uncontrollable tears, so
that once more he became the object of general derision. By
degrees, however, he attained to harmony with the ground that
had been provided for him, as he expressed it. Remember, too,
how he speaks of the annihilation of man as against the god
head, of the annihilation of evil, and the annihilation of death.
That was six hundred years ago! O f him it is said that his fiery
tongue kindled the earth. Only because he had received his
message.
Alexander ceased, and Kerkhoven had no inclination to speak.
Life was given to the silence by the crackling of the wood in
the fireplace and by the gentle crepitation of twigs outside the
window beneath their burden of snow.

156

At this same instant, in her room on the ground floor, Aleid

was in the pangs of labour. Marie, Nurse Else, and the midwife
were with her.
Cry out, darling, said Marie, cry as loud as you can. That
will help you.
But Aleid clenched her teeth fiercely so that her face was
distorted and her eyes became mere slits. She would not cry

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out. She had determined not to. She had been in labour now
for seven hours, and the agony was terrible, as if her intestines
were being slowly torn into strips.
Let me die, she groaned. W hy dont you let me die? Or,
better, kill me. I dont want to live. I dont want the brat.
From time to time Kerkhoven came in, exchanged a few words
with the midwife, went to the bedside, and laid a hand upon
the writhing womans forehead. It seemed to soothe her a little.
She looked up at him with a frenzied, vacant glance; then her
eyes contracted into slits once more. Towards eleven o clock,
Marie, sobbing, went out of the room to j'oin Bettina who was
in a room close at hand.
I cant bear to look on any longer, the mother exclaimed,
stretching forth her arms, with clenched fists.
She would have fallen had not Bettina jumped up and
supported her.
Suddenly came a cry, only one cry, like a flash in the night
intolerable lasting three seconds an eternity. The two
women clung to one another trembling. Silence, now. They
continued to listen. They heard a peculiar rasping wail, hoarser
and much lower toned than the agonised scream of the woman
in labour. The midwife opened the door.
Blessed be Jesus Christ, the baby is born, said she.
Involuntarily Nurse Else, Marie, and Bettina folded their
hands. Kerkhoven came down from the Refectory. Alexander
remained in the passage.

In the lying-in chamber lay the young mother, holding in her

arms the baby to which she had given birth. Kerkhoven took
her by the hand.
Let me look, Uncle Joseph, she gasped.
He lifted the child carefully and showed it to her.
Is that it? she whispered. Is it really alive?
Very much alive, said Kerkhoven affectionately.

AND

MARIE

639

The expression of the emerald eyes was inscrutable.

You must accept it as a grace, Aleid, said Kerkhoven. Do
you feel that it is the crowning grace?
Yes, that is what I feel, came the answer. That is what
I feel.

POSTFACE
in the late autumn of 1933, Jacob Wassermann had
finished the foregoing book, the human world around him
seemed to him so distressful that he (for whom the work of
imaginative creation had always provided a refuge from harsh
realities) felt it imcumbent upon him to assume an active
attitude towards his environment, instead of remaining content,
as heretofore, with a merely passive one. Although Joseph
Kerkhovens Third Existence embodies much of his own spiritual
experience, he had, for intimate reasons, kept out of the
novel his sense of the call to him that he should take a part
in the positive struggle. Now, however, he was assailed from
all sides, and, as happens to a creative artist, not by mere opinions
or views however vivid but by real personalities who were,
he felt, betraying him and his cause, even though they might
regard themselves as victims rather than agents of the distracted
epoch in which we live. This worked on him physically; this
stirred his flesh and his blood; this was not a product of mere
abstract thought, but was eminently concrete. He therefore
decided to write a postface to Kerkhoven, which should cross
the t s and set the dots on the is, and should make the novel
embody a more concrete message than any of his other romances,
the message of one who was a fighter as well as a sufferer.
It was not to be. He did not live to write such a postface.
I therefore feel it my duty to tell the readers of Jacob Wasser
manns last work that he intended to write it. He also wanted
to make numerous minor emendations and embellishments, for
he was a conscientious craftsman. This was rendered impossible
by his untimely death. T h e book is therefore commended to
the readers indulgence as the authors unrevised legacy.
W hen,

M A R T A W ASSERM AN N -KARLW EIS

b u rg

im

a a b g a u , M arch

1934
x

FICTION

The Goose-Man
L a . C r.

by

8vo.

ja c o b

w asserm an n

io

s.

A full-length romantic novel in the grand style, which is also an easy

introduction to a great writers later work.. . . The riches of Wassermanns
art are never flaunted, they are contained and controlled. D aily Herald

Etzel Andergast
La. C r. 8uo.

b y Ja cob W asserm an n

io j.

It is great in conception and execution, in breadth and fullness of

canvas, in dramatic intensity and dignity of thought . . . 90 stupendous
are his powers of creation, his characters seem to act for themselves.
Time and Tide
G E O R G E A L L E N & U N W IN L T D
L o n d o n : 40 M u s e u m S t r e e t , W .C .i
L e i p z i g : (F. V o l c k m a r ) H o s p i t a l s t r . 10
C ape
Town:
73
St.
G e o r g e s
S treet
T oronto:
91
W ellington
S treet,
W est
Bo m bay:
15
Graham
R oad,
B allard
E state
W e l l i n g t o n , N .Z .: 8 K i n g s C r e s c e n t , L o w e r H u t t
S y d n e y , N .S .W . : A u s t r a l i a H o u s e , W y n y a r d
S quark

Hordubal
by

L a . C r. 81to.

TR ANSLATED

7 s.

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R. W EA TH ER A LL

Mr. Capek is a fine artist, and in Hordubal he has given modem and
original setting to an old, old tale, of which mankind never appears to
tire . . . a simple, tragic story, very movingly told. G e r a l d
the Observer

G o u ld

in

Seldom does a novel bring you so close and with such economy to the
hidden springs of action . Manchester Guardian
A tragic pastoral from a master hand. H o w a r d
Evening Standard

S p r in g

in the

Blind A lley
Cr. 8vo.

7 s. 6 d.

b y T . T h om p so n

A portrait of the life of ordinary English people in factories and small

businesses, without anger, sentiment, or facetiousness. . . . There is
humour, and plenty of it. . . . There is pathos, but no self-pity; there
is heroism, but no moral drawn from it. H e l e n

S im p son

in the

Morning Post

Mr. Thompson has enormous sense of character and the power to

present it in dialogue. B lin d A lley has intensity. Observer.

The New Pleasure

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If you want something really out of the way, read The New Pleasure:
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S trau s

in the Sunday Times

The wittiest book I have read for a long time. Bystander

Pageant
La. Cr. 8vo.

by G. B.

7s. 6d.

L a n ca ste r

Second Impression

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