CHAPTER FOURBEATRICE
Without having seen my friend again, I traveled at the end of the holidays to St. ——. Both my parents came with me, and handed me over with all possible care to the protection of a master of the school, in whose house I was to board. They would have been numb with horror, had they only known to what sort of fate they were leaving me.
It still hung in the balance whether I should become with time a good son and a useful citizen, or whether my nature would break out in other directions. My last attempt to be happy under the roof of my father’s house and the spirit prevailing there had lasted for a considerable period, and at times had almost succeeded, only in the end to fail completely.
The curious emptiness and isolation which I had begun to feel for the first time in the holidays after my confirmation (how I learned to know it later, this emptiness, this thin atmosphere) did not pass immediately. The parting from home was for me peculiarly easy. I was really rather ashamed of not being sadder—my sisters wept without reason, I could not. I wasastonished at myself. I had always been an emotional child, and at bottom, tolerably good. Now I was quite changed. I was completely indifferent towards the outside world. For days together my sole occupation was hearkening to my inner self, listening to the flood of dark, forbidden instincts which roared subterraneously within me. I had grown very quickly in that last half-year, and appeared lanky, thin and immature. The amiability of boyhood had completely disappeared from my character; I realized myself that it was impossible to like me thus, and I by no means loved myself. I had often a great longing for Max Demian; on the other hand, I hated him not seldom, and looked upon him as responsible for the moral impoverishment of my life, to which I resigned myself as to a sort of nasty disease.
In the beginning I was neither liked nor respected in our school boarding house. First they ragged me, then kept out of my way, looking upon me as a rotter and an eccentric character; I was pleased with myself and I even overplayed my part, withdrawing into my solitary self, growling occasional cynicisms. Superficially I appeared to despise the world in most manly fashion, whereas in reality I was secretly consumed by melancholy and despair. In school I could fall back on a knowledge amassed at home. The form I was in was not so advanced as the same form in the school I had just left, and so I acquired the habit of despising myschool contemporaries, regarding them as mere children.
This attitude lasted a year and longer. My first holiday visits at home brought no change, I went gladly away again.
It was in the beginning of November. I had formed the habit of taking short, meditative walks in all kinds of weather, during which I often experienced a sort of joy, a joy full of melancholy, contempt of the world and contempt of self. I was sauntering thus one evening through the damp, foggy twilight in a suburb of the town. The broad drive of a public park stood completely deserted, inviting me to enter. The road lay thick with fallen leaves, into which I dug voluptuously with my feet. It smelt damp and bitter; in the distance the trees stood up tall and shadowy, ghostlike in the fog.
At the end of the drive I stood still and undecided, staring into the black foliage, scenting eagerly the damp odor of decomposition and death, which seemed to be in harmony with my own mood. Oh, how insipid life tasted!
A man, with the collar of his raincoat blowing about him, came out of a side path. I was just going on when he called to me.
“Hello, Sinclair!”
It happened to be Alphonse Beck, the senior boy of the house. I was always glad to see him and had nothing against him, except that he always treated me as he did all the younger boys, in an ironical and grandfatherly manner. Hepassed for being as strong as a bear, was said to have great influence on the house master, and was the hero of many school stories.
“What are you doing here?” he asked affably, in the tone the seniors always used when they condescended on occasion to talk to us. “Composing verse, I bet?”
“Shouldn’t dream of it,” I disclaimed gruffly.
He laughed, came up to me, and we chatted together in a manner to which I had not been accustomed for some time past.
“You needn’t be afraid, Sinclair, that I shouldn’t understand. I know the feeling, when one goes for a walk on a foggy evening—the thoughts autumn inspires in one. And one writes poetry about dying nature, of course, and spent youth; which is very much like it. Read Heinrich Heine?”
“I am not so sentimental,” I said in self-defense.
“Oh, all right. But in this weather, I think, it does a man good to find a quiet place where one can take a glass of wine or something. Are you coming with me for a bit? I happen to be quite alone. Or wouldn’t you care to? I wouldn’t like to lead you astray, old man, if you are one of those model boys.”
A little while after we sat clinking our thick glasses in a little tavern in the suburbs, drinking wine of a doubtful quality. At first I wasn’t much pleased, still it was rather a novelty forme. But unaccustomed to wine, I soon became talkative. It was as if a window had been flung open within me, and the world shining in—for how long, how terribly long, had I not eased my heart by talking. I gave full play to my imagination, and once started, I related the story of Cain and Abel.
Beck listened to me with pleasure—someone at last, to whom I was giving something! He clapped me on the shoulder, told me I was the devil of a good fellow and a clever rascal. How I reveled in communicating my opinions, as I relieved myself of all the pent-up thought of the past months! My heart swelled with pride at finding my talents recognized by someone older than I was. When he called me a clever rascal the effect was like a sweet, strong wine running through me. The world lit up in new colors, thoughts came to me as from a hundred sources, wit and fire blazed up in me. We spoke of masters and schoolfellows, and I thought we understood one another wonderfully well. We talked of Greeks and of pagans, and Beck wished absolutely to draw me out on the subject of women. But on this point I could not converse. I had no experience, nothing to relate. True, all that I had felt and imagined was burning within me, but I could not impart my thoughts, not even under the influence of wine. Beck knew much more about girls, and I listened to his tales with glowing eyes. The things I heard were unbelievable. What I should never have conceivedto be possible entered the sphere of commonplace reality and seemed self-evident. Alphonse Beck, who was perhaps eighteen years old, was already a man of experiences. Among other things, he told me that girls liked boys to play the gallant with them, but in general were too frightened to go any further. You could hope for more success with women. Women were much cleverer. For instance, there was Mrs. Jaggelt, who sold pencils and copybooks, who was much easier to deal with. All that had happened behind the counter in her shop was unprintable in any book.
I sat on captivated; my head was swimming. To be sure, I could not exactly have loved Mrs. Jaggelt, but still, it was unheard of. It seemed as if things happened, at least to older people, of which I had never dreamed. There was a false ring about it, to be sure, everything seemed more trivial and commonplace, and did not coincide with my own ideas about love, but still, it was reality, it was love and adventure, someone sat next to me who had lived it in experience, to whom it seemed a matter of course.
Our conversation had reached a lower level, had deteriorated. I was no longer a clever little fellow, I was just a mere boy listening to a man. But even then—in comparison with what my life had been for months and months, this was delicious, this was heaven. Besides, as I gradually began to realize, all this was forbidden, absolutely forbidden, everything from sittingin a public house, down to the subject of our conversation. In any case, I thought I was showing spirit; I was in revolt.
I can recollect that night with the greatest clearness. We both of us wended our way home at a late hour under the dimly burning gas lamps through the cool, damp night, and for the first time in my life I was drunk. It was not agreeable, it was in the highest degree unpleasant, but there was a sort of charm about it, a sweetness—it smacked of orgy and revolt, of spirit and life. Beck bravely took me in hand, and although he grumbled at me as being a bloody novice, he half carried, half dragged me home, where, by good fortune, he was able to smuggle us both through a window which stood open on the ground floor.
But a maddening pang accompanied the sobering up as I painfully awoke after a short heavy sleep. I sat up in bed and saw that I was still wearing my shirt. My clothes and shoes lay round about on the floor, smelling of tobacco and vomit. And between headache, nausea and a maddening thirst, a picture came before my mind on which I had not set eyes for many a long day. I saw my home, the house where dwelt my parents. I saw father and mother, my sisters and the garden. I saw my peaceful, homely bedroom, the school and the marketplace. Demian and the confirmation class—and all this was bright, lustrous, all was wonderful, godly and pure, all that, I realized now, haduntil yesterday belonged to me, had waited for me. But now, in this hour, it was mine no longer, it spurned me and looked upon me with disgust. All that was loving and intimate, all that I had received from my parents since the first golden days of my childhood, each kiss mother had given me, each Christmas, each godly bright Sunday morning there at home, each flower in the garden, all that was laid waste, I had trampled on it all with my foot! If the police had come for me then and had bound me and led me away to the gallows as a desecrator and as the scum of humanity, I should have acquiesced; should have gone gladly. I would have found it right and fitting.
That was the state of my feelings. I, who had gone about despising the world! I, who had been so proud in spirit and who had shared Demian’s thoughts! So I appeared a filthy pig, to be classed with the scum of the earth, drunk and befouled, disgusting and common, a dissolute beast, carried away by abominable instincts. So I appeared, I who came from those gardens whose bright flowers had been purity and sweet gentleness, I who had loved Bach’s music and beautiful poetry! I could still hear, with aversion and disgust, my own laugh, the drunken, uncontrolled, convulsive and silly laugh which escaped me. That was I!
But in spite of everything there was a certain enjoyment in suffering these torments. I had lived for so long a blind, dull existence, for solong had my heart been silent, impoverished and shut up, that even this self-accusation, this self-aversion, this entirely dreadful feeling was welcome. At least it was feeling; flowers were flaring up, emotion was quivering therein. I experienced in the midst of my misery a confused sensation of liberation, of the approach of spring.
However, as far as outward appearances went, I was going fast down the hill. The first debauch was soon followed by others. There was much drinking at school, and other things not in accord with study. I was among the youngest who carried on in this way, but from being just tolerated and looked upon as a mere youngster, I soon rose to be considered as a leader and a star. I was renowned as a daredevil and could drink with the best. Once again I belonged entirely to the dark world, to the devil, and I passed in this world for being a splendid fellow.
But at the same time I was in a pitiful state of mind. I lived in a whirl of self-destroying debauchery, and while I was looked up to by my friends as a leader and the devil of a good fellow, as a cursed witty and spirited drinking companion, my anxious soul was full of apprehension. I remember on one occasion tears started to my eyes when, on coming out of a tavern one Sunday morning, I saw children playing in the street, bright and contented, with freshly combed hair, and in their Sundayclothes. And while I amused and often terrified my friends with monstrous cynicisms, as we sat at dirty tables stained with puddles of beer, in low public houses, I had in my heart a secret, deep reverence for everything at which I scoffed—inwardly I was weeping bitterly at the thought of my past life, of my mother, of God.
There is a good reason for the fact that I was never one with my companions, that I remained lonely even in their midst, that I suffered in the manner above described. I was a hero of drinking bouts, with the roughest of them, I was a scoffer after their own heart. I showed courage and wit in my ideas and in my talks about masters, school, parents, the church—I listened to their smutty stories unflinchingly and even ventured one or two myself—but I was never about when my boon companions went off with girls. I remained behind alone, filled with an ardent desire for love, a hopeless longing, whereas to judge from my conversation I must have been a hardened rake. No one was more vulnerable, no one more chaste than I. And when from time to time I saw young girls pass by in the town, pretty and clean, bright and charming, they seemed to me like wonderful, pure dream women, a thousand times too good and too pure for me. For a long time I could not bring myself to enter Mrs. Jaggelt’s stationery shop, because I blushed when I saw her and thought of what Alphonse Beck had told me about her.
The more I realized how different I was fromthe members of my new set, how isolated I was in their midst, the less easy was it for that very reason to break with them. I do not really know whether the toping and bragging ever caused me much pleasure, and I could never so accustom myself to hard drinking that I did not feel the painful consequences after each bout. I was as if coerced into doing this. I did it because I had to, because I was otherwise absolutely ignorant of a course to follow, I knew not where to begin. I was afraid of being long alone. I was frightened of the many tender, chaste, intimate moods to which I constantly felt myself inclined, I was afraid of the tender notions of love which so often came to me.
One thing I lacked most of all—a friend. There were two or three schoolfellows whom I liked very much. But they belonged to the good set and my vices had for a long time been a secret to no one. They avoided me. With all I passed for a hopeless gamester under whose feet the very earth quaked. The masters knew much about me, severe punishments were several times inflicted on me, my final expulsion from the school was waited for with more or less certainty. I knew that myself; for a long time I had ceased to be a good pupil; I got through my work by hook or by crook, with the feeling that the state of affairs could not last much longer.
There are many ways by which God can make us feel lonely and lead us to a consciousness ofourselves. With me it was in this way: it was like a bad dream, in which I saw myself ostracized, foul and clammy, creeping restlessly and painfully over broken beer glasses, down an abominably unclean road. There are such dreams, when you imagine you have set out to find a beautiful princess, but you stick in stinking back streets full of rubbish and dirty puddles. So it was with me. In this scarcely refined way I was destined to become lonely and to put between myself and my childhood a locked door of Eden over against which stood merciless sentinels on guard in beaming rays of light. It was a beginning, an awakening of that homesickness, that longing to return to my true self.
I was terribly frightened when my father, alarmed by a letter from my house master, appeared for the first time in St. —— and faced me unexpectedly. When he came for the second time, towards the end of that winter, I was hard and indifferent, I let him heap blame on me, I let him beg me to think of my mother, I was unmoved. Finally he grew very angry and said that if I did not turn over a new leaf he would have me disgraced and chased out of the school, and would have me placed in a reformatory. Little I cared! When he went away I felt sorry for him, but he had accomplished nothing; he had found no approach to me, and for a few moments I felt that it served him right.
I was indifferent as to what might become ofme. In my peculiar and unlovely manner, with my carrying on and my frequenting of public houses, I was at odds with the world—this was my way of protesting. I was ruining myself thereby, but what of it? Sometimes the case presented itself to me in this wise: If the world had no use for such as me, if there was no better place for us, if there were no higher duties, then people like myself simply went to the devil. So much the worse for the world.
The Christmas holidays of that year were exceedingly unpleasant. My mother was terrified when she saw me again. I had grown taller, and my thin face looked gray and ravaged by dissipation, with flabby features and inflamed rings round the eyes. The first indications of a moustache, and the spectacles which I had but lately taken to wearing, made me look stranger still. My sisters started back and giggled when they saw me. It was all very pleasant. Unpleasant was the conversation with my father in his study, unpleasant the greeting of a couple of relations, unpleasant above all things was Christmas night. That has been since my birth the great day of our house, the evening of festivity and love, of gratitude, of the renewal of the bond between my parents and myself. This time everything was depressing and embarrassing. As usual my father read the portion of the gospel about the shepherds in the field “keeping watch over their flock by night”; as usual my sisters stood radiantly before thetable on which the presents were laid out. But my father’s voice was sad, and he looked old and constrained. Mother was unhappy; for me everything was equally painful and unwished for, presents and good wishes, Gospel and Christmas tree. The ginger-bread smelt delicious and exhaled thick clouds as of sweet remembrances. The Christmas tree was fragrant and told of things which existed no longer. I longed for the end of the evening and of the holidays.
So passed the whole winter. It was not long before I was severely reprimanded by the faculty and threatened with expulsion. It could not last much longer. Well it made no difference to me.
I had a special grudge against Max Demian, whom I had not seen for the whole of this period. In my first term at St. —— I had written to him twice, but had received no reply; for that reason I had not paid him a visit in the holidays.
In the same park, where I had met Alphonse Beck in the autumn, it chanced that in the first days of spring, just as the thorn hedges were beginning to turn green, a girl attracted my attention. I was out for a walk by myself, full of gnawing cares and thoughts, for my health was bad. Besides that I was in continual financial embarrassment. I owed various sums to my friends and had to invent excuses to procuresome money from home. In several shops I had run up accounts for cigars and such things. Not that these cares were very pressing—if the end of my school career was approaching, and if I drowned myself or was sent to a reform school, these trifles would not make much difference either. But I was nevertheless constantly facing these unpleasant things and I suffered from it.
On that spring day in the park I met a girl who had a strong attraction for me. She was tall and slender, elegantly dressed, and had a wise, boyish face. She pleased me at once, she belonged to the type that I loved, and she began to work upon my imagination. She was scarcely older than I, but she was more mature; she was elegant and possessed a good figure, already almost a woman, but with a touch of youthful exuberance in her features, which pleased me exceedingly.
It was never my good fortune to approach a girl with whom I could have fallen in love, neither was it my luck in this case. But the impression was deeper than all the former ones, and the influence of this infatuation on my life was powerful.
Suddenly I had again a picture standing before me, a revered picture—ah, and no need, no impulse was so deep or so strong in me as the desire to revere, to adore. I gave her the name of Beatrice, of whom, without having read Dante, I knew something from an English painting,a reproduction of which I had in my possession. The picture was of an English pre-Raphaelite girlish figure, very long-limbed and slender, with a small, long head and spiritualized hands and features. My beautiful young girl did not completely resemble this, although she had the same slenderness and boyish suppleness of figure, which I loved, and something of the spiritualization of the face, as if her soul lay therein.
I never spoke a single word to Beatrice. Yet at that time she exercised the deepest influence over me. Her picture fastened itself on my mind; in my imagination she opened a sanctuary for me, she caused me to pray in a temple. From one day to another I remained absent from the drinking bouts and the nightly excursions. Once more I could bear being alone, I read gladly, I liked to go for walks again.
I was much scoffed at for my sudden conversion. But I had now something to love and to worship, I had again an ideal, life was once more full of suggestion, of gaily colored secret nuances, that made me insensible to the jeers of my companions. I again felt at home with myself, although I was now the servant and slave of a picture which I revered.
I cannot think of that time without a certain emotion. With earnest striving, I again endeavored to build a “bright world” out of the ruins of that period of my life which had broken up around me, I again lived entirely and single-mindedlyin the desire to put away the dark and the bad, and to dwell completely in the light, on my knees before my gods. Still, this “bright world” I built up was to a certain extent my own creation. It was not the action of flying back or of crawling back to mother, to a security without responsibilities. It was a new service upon which I entered, invented by myself for my own requirements, with responsibilities and discipline of self. The sex consciousness from which I suffered and before which I was in constant flight was now transmuted in this sacred fire to spirit and devotion. The grim and horrible would disappear, I should groan through no more agonizing nights, there would be no more heart-beatings in front of lewd pictures, no more listening at forbidden doors, no more lasciviousness. Instead of all this, I set up my altar, with the picture of Beatrice, and in dedicating myself to her I dedicated myself to the spirit and to the gods. That part of myself which I withdrew from the powers of darkness I brought as a sacrifice to the powers of light. Not lust was my aim, but purity; not happiness, but beauty and spirituality.
This cult for Beatrice completely changed my life. A precocious cynic but a short while before, I had now become a servant in the temple, whose aim it was to be a saint. I not only renounced the evil life to which I had accustomed myself, but I endeavored to change everything,to set myself a standard of purity, nobility and dignity, which I even applied to eating and drinking, to my manner of speech and dress. I began each morning to wash with cold water, to the use of which I had, in the beginning, to force myself. I behaved with gravity and dignity, carried myself erect and acquired a slower and more dignified gait. To an observer it might have seemed rather ludicrous, but to me it was the performance of a divine worship.
Of all the ways in which I sought to find expression for my new faith, one bore fruit. I began to paint. To start with, the English picture of Beatrice I had in my possession did not bear a sufficient resemblance of Beatrice. I wanted to try to paint her for myself. Full of new pleasure and hope I carried into my room—I had recently been given a room to myself—beautiful paper, colors, and a paint-brush. I made ready my palette, porcelain bowls, glass and pencils. The fine water colors in little tubes which I had bought captivated me. There was a bright chromic green which I think I can see yet as it flashed out for the first time from the little white tube.
I began with caution. To paint a face was difficult; I wished first of all to try something else. I painted ornaments, flowers, and small landscapes from imagination, a tree near a chapel, a Roman bridge with cypresses. I often lost myself completely in this pastime, I wasas happy as a child with a box of paints. At last I began to paint Beatrice.
The first few attempts were abortive, and I threw them away. The more I tried to conjure up in my mind the face of the girl, whom I met from time to time in the street, the less I seemed able to transfer my impressions to paper. Finally I gave up the idea, and began simply to paint a face according to the guidance of my imagination, a face which gradually grew out of the one already begun, as if by itself, at the mercy of color and brush. The result was a face I had dreamed of, and I was not ill pleased with it. Yet I made another essay immediately, and each new picture was clearer, and approached more nearly to the type, but was by no means like the reality.
More and more I accustomed myself, in a dreamy sort of way, to draw lines with my brush, to fill in surfaces. My sketches grew out of a few strokes of the brush, out of the unconscious. At last one day I finished a face, almost unconsciously, which made a stronger appeal to me than the former ones. It was not the face of the girl, for I had long since given up the idea of trying to paint my Beatrice to the life. It was something else, something unreal, and yet not of less value for me on that account. It looked more like the head of a youth than of a girl. The hair was not blond like that of my pretty girl, but brown with a tinge of red; the chin was strong and firm, but the mouth wasred as a blossom. The features were rigid, like a mask, but impressive and full of secret life.
As I sat before the finished sketch, it made a peculiar impression on me. It seemed to me a sort of picture of a god or of a sacred mask, half man, half woman, ageless, the expression being at once dreamy and strong-willed, stiff and yet secretly alive. This face seemed to have something to say to me, it belonged to me; its look was rather imperative, as if requiring something of me. And there was a certain resemblance to someone or other, to whom I knew not.
The picture played an important rôle for a while, sharing my thoughts and my life. I kept it concealed in a drawer, in order that one should not get possession of it and so be able to sneer at me. But as soon as I found myself alone in my little room I took out the picture and communed with it. Each evening I pinned it on to the wall over against my bed, and gazed at it until I dropped off to sleep. In the morning it was the first object which met my gaze.
Just at that time I began again to dream a great deal, as I had constantly done when a child. It seemed to me that for years I had had no more dreams. Now they came again, quite a new kind of pictures, and often and often the painted image appeared therein, living and speaking, friendly or inimical, with the featuressometimes twisted into a grimace, sometimes infinitely beautiful, harmonious and noble.
And one morning, as I awoke out of such a dream, I suddenly realized who was the original of the picture, I recognized it. It gazed at me in such a fabulously well-known way, and seemed to be calling my name. It seemed to know me, like a mother, seemed to love me as if since the beginning of time. With beating heart I stared at the paper, at the thick brown hair, at the half-womanly mouth, the strong forehead with the wonderful brightness (it had dried that way of itself) and more and more I felt in me the knowledge, the certainty of having somewhere met the original of the picture.
I sprang out of bed, placed myself in front of the face, and gazed at it from the closest proximity, straight into the wide open, greenish, staring eyes, the right eye somewhat higher than the other. And all at once this right eye twitched perceptibly, but still decidedly, and from this twitching I recognized the picture....
How was it that I had found it out so late? It was Demian’s face. Later I often and often compared the picture with Demian’s real features, as they had remained in my memory. They were not quite the same, although there was a resemblance. But it was Demian, nevertheless.
Once, on an evening in early summer the red sun shone obliquely through my window, which looked towards the west. In the room the duskwas gathering. I suddenly had the idea of pinning the picture of Beatrice, or of Demian, to the cross-bar of the window and of gazing at it, while the evening sun was shining through. The whole outline of the face disappeared, but the reddish ringed eyes, the brightness of the forehead and the strong red mouth glowed deeply and wildly from the surface of the paper. I sat opposite it for a long time, even after the light had died away. And by degrees the feeling came to me that this was not Beatrice or Demian but—myself. The picture did not resemble me—it was not meant to, I felt—but there was that in it which seemed to be made up of my life, something of my inner self, of my fate or of my dæmon. My friend would look like that, if I ever found another. My mistress would look like that, if ever I had one. My life and death would be like that. It had the ring and rhythm of my fate.
In those weeks I had begun to read a book which made a deeper impression on me than anything I had read before. Even in later years I have seldom chanced upon books which have made such a strong appeal to me, except perhaps those of Nietzsche. It was a volume of Novalis, containing letters and apothegms. There was much that I did not understand. But the book captivated me and occupied my thoughts to an extraordinary degree. One of the aphorisms now occurred to me. I wrote it with a pen under the picture: “Fate and soulare the terms of one conception.” That I now understood.
I frequently used to meet the girl I called Beatrice. I felt no emotion on seeing her, but I was often sensible of a harmony of sentiment, which seemed to say: we are connected, or rather, not you and I, but your picture and I; you are a part of my destiny.
My longing for Max Demian was again eager. I had had no news of him for several years. On one occasion only I had met him in the holidays. I see now that I have failed to mention this short meeting in my narrative, and I see that this was owing to shame and self-conceit on my part. I must make up for it now.
So then, once in the holidays, I was parading my somewhat tired, blasé self through the town. As I was sauntering along, swinging my stick and examining the old, unchanged features of the bourgeois Philistines whom I despised, I met my one-time friend. Scarcely had I caught sight of him when I started involuntarily. With lightning rapidity my thoughts were carried back to Frank Kromer. I hoped and prayed Demian had really forgotten the story! It was so disagreeable to be under this obligation to him—simply owing to a silly, childish affair—still, I was under an obligation....
He seemed to be waiting to see whether I would greet him. I did, as calmly as possible under the circumstances, and he gave me hishand. That was indeed his old handshake! So strong, warm and yet cool, so manly!
He looked me attentively in the face and said: “You’ve grown a lot, Sinclair.” He himself seemed quite unchanged, just as old, just as young as ever.
He proposed we should go for a walk, and we talked of secondary matters, not of the past. I remembered that I had written to him several times, without having received an answer. I hoped he had forgotten this as well, those silly, silly letters. He made no mention of them.
At that time there was no Beatrice and no picture, I was still in the period of my dissipation. Outside the town I invited him to come with me into an inn. He came. With much ostentation I ordered a bottle of wine and filled a couple of glasses. I clinked glasses with him, showing him how conversant I was with student drinking customs, and I emptied my first glass at a gulp.
“Do you frequent public houses often?” he asked me.
“Oh yes,” I said with a drawl, “what else is there to do? It’s certainly more amusing than anything else; after all.”
“You think so? Perhaps. It may be so. There’s certainly something very pleasing about it—intoxication, bacchanalian orgies! But I find, with most people who frequent public houses, this sense ofabandonis lost. It seems to me there is something typically Philistine,bourgeois, in the public house habit. Of course, for just one night, with burning torches, to have a proper orgy and drunken revel. But to do the same thing over and over again, drinking one glass after another—that’s hardly the real thing. Can you imagine Faust sitting evening after evening drinking at the same table?”
I drank, and looked at him with some enmity.
“Yes, but everyone isn’t a Faust,” I said curtly.
He looked at me with a somewhat surprised air.
Then he laughed, in his old superior way. “What’s the good of quarreling about it? In any case the life of a toper, of a libertine, is, I imagine, more exciting than that of a blameless citizen. And then—I have read it somewhere—the life of a profligate is one of the best preparations for a mystic. There are always such people as Saint Augustine, who become seers. Before, he was a sort of rake and profligate.”
I was distrustful and wished by no means to let him take a superior attitude towards me. So I said, with a blasé air: “Well, everyone according to his taste! I haven’t the slightest intention of doing that, becoming a seer or anything.”
Demian flashed a glance at me from half-closed eyes.
“My dear Sinclair,” he said slowly, “it wasn’t my intention to hurt your feelings. Besides—neitherof us knows to what end you drink. There is that in you, which orders your life for you, and which knows why you are doing it. It is good to realize this; there is someone in us who knows everything, wills everything, does everything better than we do ourselves. But excuse me, I must go home.”
We did not linger over our leave-taking. I remained seated, very dejected, and emptied the bottle. I found, when I got up to go, that Demian had already paid for it. That made me more angry still.
This little event recurred to my thoughts, which were full of Demian. And the words he had spoken in the inn came back to my mind, retaining all their old freshness and significance: “It is good to know there is one in us who knows everything!”
I looked at the picture hanging in the window, now quite dark. The eyes glowed still. It was Demian’s look. On it was the look of the one inside me, who knows all.
Oh, how I longed for Demian! I knew nothing of his whereabouts, for me he was unattainable. I knew only that he was supposed to be studying somewhere or other, and that after the conclusion of his school career his mother had left the town.
I called up in my mind all my reminiscences of Max Demian, from the Kromer affair onwards. A great deal he had formerly said cameback to me. To-day everything still had a meaning, all was of real concern to me! And what he had said at our last, not very agreeable, meeting, about the libertine and the saint, suddenly crossed my mind. Was it not just so with me? Had I not lived in filth and drunkenness, my senses blunted by dissipation, until a new life impulse, the direct contrary of the old, awoke in me, namely the desire for purity, the longing to be saintly?
So I went on, from reminiscence to reminiscence. Night had long since fallen, and outside it was raining. In recollection, as well, I heard it rain; it was the hour under the chestnut trees when he first questioned me concerning Frank Kromer, so guessing my first secrets. One after another these souvenirs came to mind, conversations on the way to school, the confirmation class. And then I recollected my very first meeting with Max Demian. What had we been talking about? I could not for the moment recollect, but I took my time, I thought deeply. At last I remembered. We were standing in front of our house; after he had imparted to me his opinion about Cain. Then he spoke to me about the old, almost obliterated crest which stood over the door, in the keystone which widened as it got higher. He said it interested him and that one ought not to let such things escape one’s notice.
That night I dreamt of Demian and of the crest. It changed perpetually, now Demian heldit in his hands, now it was small and grey, now very large and multicolored, but he explained to me that it was always one and the same. But at last he forced me to eat the crest. As I swallowed it, I felt with terror that the bird on the crest was alive inside me, my stomach was swollen and the bird was beginning to consume me. With the fear of death upon me, I commenced to struggle. Then I woke up.
I felt relieved. It was the middle of the night, and I heard the rain blowing into the room. I got up to close the window; and in doing so trod on a bright object which lay on the floor. In the morning I found it was my painting. It was lying there in the wet and had rolled itself up. In order to dry it I stretched it out between two sheets of blotting paper and placed it under a heavy book. When I looked at it the next day it was dry. But it had changed. The red mouth had paled and had become smaller. Now it was exactly Demian’s mouth.
I now began to paint a new picture, namely, that of the bird on the crest. I could not recollect any more what it really looked like, neither could I form a clear image of the whole, as even if one stood directly in front of our door, the crest was scarcely recognizable, it was so old and had several times been painted over. The bird stood or sat on something, perhaps on a flower, or on a basket or nest, or on a tree-top. I did not bother about that, and began with the part I could picture clearly. In answer to aconfused prompting, I began straight away with strong colors; on my paper the head of the bird was golden yellow. I continued my work at intervals, when I was in the mood for it, and after a few days the thing was completed.
Now it was a bird of prey, with a sharp, bold hawk’s head. The lower half of the body was fixed in a dark terrestrial globe, out of which it was working to escape, as if out of a giant egg. The background was sky-blue. The longer I gazed at the sheet, the more it seemed to me this was the colored crest which I had visualized in my dream.
It would not have been possible for me to have written a letter to Demian, even if I had known where to send it. But I decided, acting under a suggestion which came to me in a dreamy sort of way, as under all my promptings of that period, to send him the picture with the hawk—whether it would reach him or not. I wrote nothing thereon, not even my name. I carefully cut the border, bought a large paper cover and wrote on it my friend’s former address. Then I sent it off.
The approach of an examination caused me to work harder than usual in school. The masters had again received me into grace, since I had suddenly changed my vile conduct. I was not, even now, by any means a good pupil, but neither I nor anyone else seemed to remember that, half a year before, my expulsion from the school had been imminent.
My father now wrote to me as formerly, adopting his old cheerful tone, without reproaches or threats. Yet I had no impulse to explain to him or to anyone how the change was brought about. It was merely chance that this change coincided with the wishes of my parents and the masters. It did not bring me into closer contact with the others but isolated me still more. I myself was ignorant of the tendency of the change in me, it might be leading me to Demian, to a distant fate. It had begun with Beatrice, but for some time past I had been living in quite an unreal world with my paintings and my thoughts of Demian, so that she quite disappeared from my mind, as she did from my view. I should not have been able to say a word to anyone of my dreams, of my expectations, of the inner change realized in me, not even if I had wished to do so.
But I had not the faintest desire ever to broach the subject.