Part 6

He pressed his hands together and looked like a madman. “My body seeks the earth, the depths, pollution, and the night,” he said. “My innermost being gapes like a wound; I feel the thongs and weight of doom and the terror of time; I pray for prayers; I am a shadowy figure in the ghostly procession of created things in travail; the grief that fills the air of the world grinds me to dust; _mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!_”

The feeling of pained embarrassment grew in Christian. He simply looked at Becker.

Suddenly, a repeated knocking sounded at the outer door. Becker started and listened. The knocking increased in loudness and speed.

“It has come after all,” Becker murmured in consternation. “I must leave. Forgive me, I must leave. A car is waiting for me. Stay a few minutes longer, I beg of you.” He took a valise that lay on the bed, looked about vaguely, pressed his mutilated hand to his coat, and murmured hastily, “Lend me five hundred francs. I spent my last money at noon. Don’t be angry with me; I’m in a fearful hurry.”

Mechanically Christian took out his wallet and gave Becker five bank-notes. The latter stammered a word of thanks and farewell, and was gone.

Christian left the house fifteen minutes later in a bewildered condition. For hours he wandered in the valleys and on the hills around the city. He took the night train back to Berlin.

During the many hours of the journey he felt very wretched in body and soul.

XVIII

In his flat he found many begging letters, one from his former valet, one from a Society for Succouring the Shelterless, one from a musician whom he had met casually in Frankfort. There was also a letter from the bank, requesting his signature on an enclosed document.

Next day Amadeus Voss asked for six thousand marks; the widow Engelschall, loudly lamenting that her furniture would be sold unless she met a promissory note, asked for three thousand.

He gave and gave, and the act of giving disgusted him. In the lecture halls of the university they came to him--the merest strangers, the most indifferent persons. Wherever he appeared, even in an eating-house, people came to him and told him of their troubles, and were diffident or brazen, and begged or demanded.

He gave and gave, and saw no end to it and no salvation in it, and felt a leaden heaviness steal over him. And he gave and gave.

He saw greed and expectation in every eye. He dressed himself more plainly, he cut down his expenditures to the barest necessities; the gold towered up behind him like rolling lava, and burned everything he touched. He gave and gave, and people asked and asked.

And so he wrote to his father: “Take my money from me!” He was aware of the strangeness and the unheard-of nature of what he asked, so he accompanied his request with elaborate reasons and persuasive phrases. “Assume that I have emigrated and have been lost sight of, or that I live far away under a false name, or that through your fault or mine there had been a definite breach between us, that you had therefore reduced my allowance to a minimum, but that my pride forbade my accepting even that, since I desire to stand on my own feet and live by the work of my hands. Or else imagine that I had wasted my means, and hopelessly mortgaged the capital and interest still due me. Or, finally, imagine that you yourself had become impoverished, and were forced to withdraw all assistance from me. At all events, I want to live without independent means. I have lost all pleasure in living with them. It is hard, I know, to explain that to any one who has money and has never been without it. Do me this favour! First of all, dispose of the sums that are banked in my name; next stop the income that has hitherto been paid out to me. The money is all yours, indisputably so. During our conversation last year you gave me very clearly and justly to understand that I have always lived on the fruit of your labour.”

Lastly he made the proposal to which he had referred in his imaginary conversation with Ivan Becker. “If it wounds your sensibilities to make a personal or practical use of the money which I am returning to you who gave it--use it to build orphanages, homes for foundlings, hospitals, institutions for the disabled, or libraries. There is so much misery in the world, and so much suffering that needs to be alleviated. I cannot do these things. They do not attract me; indeed, the very thought of them is disagreeable. I do not deny that this specific inability argues a weakness in my character; so if you determine to expend the money upon charities, don’t do it in my name.”

He ended thus: “I do not know whether it even interests you to have me say that I think of you affectionately. Perhaps in your heart you have already cast me off and separated yourself from me wholly. If any bond is to continue to exist between us, it can only be, however, if you do not refuse me your help in this matter, which is, from one point of view, so difficult, and from another, so perfectly simple.”

The letter remained unanswered. But several days after it had been sent, a friend of the Wahnschaffe family, Pastor Werner, called on Christian. He came both on a mission from the Privy Councillor and of his own impulse. Christian had known him since childhood.

XIX

Very attentively the clergyman examined the room, the shabby, ugly furniture, the window shades bordered by sentimental pictures, the dirty, white-washed walls, the dim, little lamp, the split boards of the flooring, the imitation leather of the sofa, the chest of drawers which was broken and which bore a cheap plaster of Paris bust. A dumb yet fiery amazement appeared on his face.

“I am asked to inform you,” Pastor Werner said, “that your father is of course ready to comply with your request. What else, after all, can he do? But I need not conceal from you the fact that his anxiety about you is very grave, and that he finds your actions wholly incomprehensible.”

Christian answered a little impatiently. “I told him months ago that there wasn’t the slightest ground for anxiety.”

“You must admit,” Werner objected gently, “that your latest plan does involve the question of your very existence. Have you taken up any occupation that secures you from need?”

Christian replied that, as his father was aware, he was definitely preparing himself for a profession. The measure of his talent and success was, of course, still in question.

“And until that profession begins to pay, what will you live on?” the pastor asked. “Let me repeat to you the words which your father cried out at our last interview: ‘Does he intend to beg? Or to accept gifts from the charitable? Or starve? Or trust to chance and false friends? Or take refuge in shady and dishonourable things, and yet be forced at last, a remorseful fool, to ask for that which he now casts aside?’ I have never in all these many years seen your father in such a state of mind, or heard him express such grief and such passion.”

“My father may calm himself,” Christian replied. “Nothing of what he fears is likely to happen; nor what, perhaps, he hopes, namely, that I shall ask my patrimony back again. It is as inconceivable as that the bird should return to the egg or the burning log to the tree whence it came.”

“Then you did not intend to renounce all pecuniary assistance at once?” the pastor asked, feeling his way carefully.

“No.” Christian hesitated. “I suppose not. I’m not equal to that; not yet. One has to learn that. It is a difficult thing and must be learned; and life in a great city would involve fatal and disturbing elements. Then, too, I have assumed certain obligations; there are several people who have definitely been counting on my help. I don’t know whether they could follow my own course. I haven’t in fact, any programme at all. What good would it do me? My great aim just now is to get into a situation that is clear and reasonable, and get rid of all sorts of stupid torments. I want to drop the burden of the superfluous; and everything is superfluous except what I and those few people absolutely need on the most stringent estimate. But every supposed need, I think, can be reduced, until such gradual renunciation produces a profit.”

“If I understand you correctly,” the pastor said, “it is your intention to retain such a portion of your fortune as will secure you against actual need.”

Christian sat down at the table and rested his head on his hand. “Yes,” he said softly. “Yes. But there the great difficulty arises. I cannot fix the boundary between necessity and superfluity in terms of money. Unhappily I was brought up amid conditions that make it hard for me to have a practical opinion on this net basis. I lack a norm of what is necessary and what is dispensable, and I lack it especially where others are concerned. You’ve understood me quite rightly. I want to retain a part, but only a very small part; and I hate to bargain with myself over the exact amount. The whole question of money is so absurd and trivial; it is only dragged in the wake of the really important things. One thing I couldn’t endure; and that would be to invest a capital, however modest, and use the interest. Then I’d be a capitalist again, and back in the world of the protected. But what other way is there? You’re an experienced man. Advise me.”

The clergyman considered. From time to time he looked searchingly at Christian; then he lowered his eyes and reflected again. “I am rather confounded by your words,” he confessed at last. “Much that you say surprises me--no, everything--yet it also seems to give me a certain insight. Very well then; you ask my advice.” Again he thought, and again observed Christian. “You renounce your personal fortune as well as the income which the firm and family have paid you. So far, so good. This renunciation will be officially acknowledged. I am also willing to believe that you will never ask back what you now renounce. The manner in which you bind yourself impresses me more than many solemn oaths would do. You are through with your past. That, too, will be respected on the other side. I understand the spiritual pain caused you by the question as to what leeway you should permit yourself in the matter of your personal and bodily needs during the period on which you are entering, and which will be bitter and full of necessities for self-conquest. I understand that. The problem is one of inner delicacy, of spiritual modesty. To consider it runs counter to your feelings and attitude. Yes, I understand that.”

Christian nodded, and the pastor continued in a raised voice. “Then listen to me. What I shall propose is subtle and difficult. It is almost like a game or a trick. You may remember that I am chaplain of the prison at Hanau. I try to help the souls of the lost and the outcast. I study these people. I know their inmost motives, the darkness of their hearts, their frozen yearnings. I dare to assert that there is not one of them who cannot, in the higher sense, be saved, nor one whose heart will not be reached by simple words earnestly realized in action. That awakens the divine spark, and the vision of such an awakening is beautiful. I serve my cause with all my strength, and the improvement and transformation of some of my flock has been so complete, that they have returned into society as new men, and bravely resisted all temptations. I admit that success often depends on my ability to save them from immediate need. Here is my problem. Kindly people help; the state, too, though in its frugal manner, contributes. But it is not enough. How would it be if from the fortune which you are returning to your father a capital were to be deducted the interest of which is to be used for my discharged convicts? Don’t draw back, but hear me out. This capital would be in good securities and would amount, let us say, to three hundred thousand marks. The interest would be in the neighbourhood of fifteen thousand marks. That would suffice. A great deal of good could be done with it. To touch or sell the securities would be a privilege reserved to you alone. From the capital itself you take in monthly or quarterly installments such sum or sums as you need to live on. To draw and expend the interest should be a privilege reserved to me and my successors. All these conditions must be secured by legal means. The purpose, as you see, is a double one. First, the plan will effect a great and needed good; secondly, it furnishes an inherent norm and aim for you. Every superfluous or thoughtless expenditure of yours jeopardizes a human soul; every frugality you practise is at once translated into concrete human weal. That gives you a point of orientation, a line of moral action. It is, if I may call it so, an automatic moral mechanism. I judge that the independence you desire will be achieved in two or three years. Within that time you can hardly use up even one-tenth of the capital according to your present standard of life. Of course, even this plan involves a problem for you, but it is a problem that would, I think, attract you. You don’t have to think of my humanitarian aims. I know that in your letter to your father you expressed your dislike of such aims, a dislike which I have no means of understanding. But I could tell you things and relate circumstances that would show you how the subtlest fibres of humanity are poisoned, and what a sacred duty it is to plough up the spiritual soil in my particular little field. If you could once see face to face some of these men restored to freedom and hope, your heart would be won for my cause. It is such visible evidence that instructs and converts.”

“You have too high an opinion of me,” Christian said, with his old, equivocal smile. “It’s always the same. Everybody overestimates me in this respect and judges me wrongly. But don’t bother about that, and don’t ask about it. It doesn’t matter.”

“And what answer do you make to my proposal?”

Christian lowered his head, and said: “It’s a nice little trap that you are setting for me. Let me consider it a moment. I am to feed, one might say, on my own charity. What a horrible word that is--charity. And by feeding on it myself I, of course, diminish it. And that, you think, will constitute a sort of moral gymnastic for me, and make it easier to realize my purpose----?”

“Yes, that was what, since you have chosen this path, I had in mind.”

“Well, if I disappoint you, you will have nothing to regret but your own modesty,” Christian continued, with a peculiarly mocking expression. “You could ask twice or even three times the sum you named, and I would probably or, rather, assuredly not refuse. For into whose pockets the millions go that I refuse, is a matter I care little about. Why don’t you do that and thus decrease your own risk?”

“Is your question inspired by distrust of the cause I represent?”

“I don’t know. Answer it, if you don’t mind.”

“I’ve explained the situation to you. The circumstances themselves are the guide to what I can and ought to ask for. On the one hand there is an urgent need. On the other hand there are definite considerations that not only set a natural limit, but forbid my using this opportunity in such a way as to give a handle to the malicious and quarrelsome.”

Christian continued his purely argumentative resistance. “Do you think it means anything to me or attracts me to know that you will give some discharged criminal, whose moral nature you think you have saved, one or two hundred marks to start life anew? That doesn’t mean a thing to me. I don’t know those men. I don’t know how they look or act or talk or smell, or what they’ll do with the money, or whether it will really be of service to them. And since I don’t know that, the arrangement has no meaning to me.”

Pastor Werner was taken aback. “To be sure,” he replied. “But I do know them, you see.”

Christian smiled again. “We’re very differently constituted; we neither think nor act alike.” Suddenly he looked up. “But I’m not making these objections to create difficulties. Quite the contrary. You personally ask me for assistance and I personally render it. In return you do me the service of acting as my paymaster and showing me how to solve my problem. I hope you will have no reason to complain.”

“Then you do consent and I may proceed to make definite arrangements?” the clergyman asked, half delighted and half doubtful still.

Christian nodded. “Go ahead,” he said. “Make what arrangements seem best to you. It’s all too trivial to bother about.”

“What do you mean by that exactly?” Werner asked, just as Eva had once, between laughter and amazement, asked his meaning. “A while ago you also said that what was really important was dragged down by these matters of money. What is the truly important thing to you?”

“I can’t explain that to you. But I feel the triviality of all this. All I am doing is the merest beginning, and everyone overestimates it absurdly and makes a mountain of this molehill. I haven’t reached the real difficulty yet. And that will consist in earning back all one has given away--earning it back in another manner, and so, above all, that one does not feel one’s loss.”

“Strange,” murmured the pastor. “It is strange. To hear you talk, one would think you were discussing a sporting event or a matter of barter.”

Christian laughed.

The pastor came up to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. His eyes were serious as he asked: “Where is the woman whom you ... have taken in?”

Christian’s reply was a gesture in the direction of Karen’s flat.

A thought that was strange and new seemed to flash into the clergyman’s mind. “Then you don’t live with her?” His voice sank to a whisper. “You are not living together?”

“No,” Christian answered with a frown. “Certainly not.”

The pastor’s arm dropped. There came a long silence. Then he spoke again: “Your father is stricken to the heart by a feeling as though several people whom he loves had succumbed to the same disease. He tries to hide his emotion, but he doesn’t succeed. Before he had any reason to be anxious about you, he once spoke to me of your sister Judith. He used the expression, ‘self-degradation.’ He described her as afflicted by a perverse impulse toward self-degradation.”

Christian swept the matter aside with a vivid gesture. “Oh, yes, Judith! She flings a trivial challenge at the world. That’s no self-degradation. She’s curious as to how far she dare go, how far others will go for her, and what the upshot will be. She confessed as much to me. She’ll plunge into water and be affronted because it’s wet; she’ll go through fire in the hope that it won’t burn her. After her experiment she’ll hate both fire and water. No, I have nothing in common with that.”

“You speak very harshly for a brother,” the pastor said with gentle reproachfulness. “However that may be, this new trouble has wounded your father to the very core. He feels that all his life’s effort is being negated from within, and that the fruit of all his toil is rotting in his hands. He stood on the very peaks of success. What does it mean to him now? His own flesh and blood rises up against him. His hand seemed blessed; he feels it withering now. His wealth carried him to a very great height. Now he is lonely there, and the son who, above all others, should rejoice in that station, turns from him, and fills him with a feeling for which he knows no name but shame and disgrace.”

Christian did not answer. He seemed quite indifferent. Werner continued: “I ask you to consider the social structure of mankind. Cruelty and force may seem to cling to it, yet there is something infinitely delicate and venerable within. You might liken it to a tree, deep-rooted in the earth, expanding in the air with many branches and twigs, buds and blossoms. It has come to be through some action of God, and no one should contemn it.”

“Why do you tell me that?” Christian asked, with a subtle withdrawal of himself.

“Because your father suffers. Go to him, and explain yourself and your ways. You are his son; it is your duty.”

Christian shook his head. “No,” he answered. “I cannot.”

“And your mother? Do I have to remind you of her too? I did not think I should have to admonish you in her name. She waits. All her days are one long waiting.”

Once more Christian shook his head. “No,” he said, “I cannot.”

The pastor buried his chin in his hollow hand and looked dully at the floor. He left with divided feelings.

XX

Crammon desired a friend. The one who was lost could never be replaced. The hope of winning him back still smouldered within, but the empty space in his bosom was desolate and chill. To install a lodger there seemed wise and would be stimulating.

Franz Lothar von Westernach had the first claim upon the place. They had agreed by letter to meet at Franz Lothar’s country house in Styria, so at the beginning of spring Crammon left Vienna. At Nürnberg he left in the lurch a certain handsome Miss Herkinson in whose car he had travelled from Spa.

To an acquaintance whom, by a mere chance, he met in the dining-car, he said, “I can no longer bear the noise that young people always make. The subdued and clarified attracts me now. The fifth decade of our lives demands milder ways.”

Crammon found Franz Lothar in the thick of a mental struggle. His sister Clementine wanted him to get married. Laughing and yet helpless, he confided the state of affairs to Crammon. His sister had picked out a girl of excellent family, and was sure that the alliance would have a wholesome influence on her brother’s career, as well as on his uncertain and idle way of life. All preliminaries had been arranged, and the parents of the young lady had intimated their full approval.

Crammon said: “Don’t let them take you in, my son. The affair can have none but a disgraceful outcome. I do not know the girl in question personally. But she is a vampire. Her ancestors were among the most infamous robber knights of the Middle Ages. Later they came into conflict with the empire on account of cruelty to their serfs. You can imagine what your future would be.”