Steppenwolf (5 page)

Thinking these habitual thoughts, I carried on walking along the wet street, through one of the quietest and oldest districts of the city. Opposite me in the darkness, beyond the street itself, stood an old grey stone wall. It was always a pleasure to see it standing there so old and serene between a little church and an old infirmary. In daylight I would often look lingeringly at its rough surface since there were few such quiet, kind, silent surfaces in the inner city. Otherwise, every one and a half square foot of ground there was occupied by a shop, a lawyer, an inventor, a doctor, a barber, or a specialist in treating corns, all of them blaring out their names at you. This time too, the old wall looked quiet and peaceful, yet something about it was different. In the middle of it I noticed an attractive little portal with a Gothic arch and, scarcely able to believe my eyes, couldn’t decide whether it
had
always been there or was a recent alteration. It certainly looked old, age-old. Presumably centuries ago this little closed gateway with its dark wooden door had been the entrance to some sleepy monastery courtyard, and it still was, even though no monastery now stood there. I had probably seen the gateway a hundred times, simply failing to take notice of it. Perhaps it caught my eye now because it was freshly painted. Whatever the case, I remained standing there, peering across at it. I didn’t venture over the road – it was so deep in mud and rainwater – but stayed on the pavement, just gazing across. Everything was already shrouded in night, but it seemed to me that there was a garland or some other colourful thing draped around the gateway. And, striving to look more intently, I now saw above the portal a bright sign on which, so it seemed, something or other was written. Despite the mud and the puddles, having looked as hard as I could, I eventually walked across.
Above the portal, on the greyish-green of the old wall, I could now see a dimly lit patch, and across this patch brightly coloured mobile letters were darting, only to quickly disappear, return again, and once more vanish. Now, I thought, they’ve even gone and abused this dear old wall by turning it into a neon advertising sign! Meanwhile I was trying to decipher some of the words that fleetingly appeared. They were difficult to read, had to be half guessed at because the letters came at unequal intervals and were so pale and feeble, fading rapidly from view. Whoever thought this was a good way to advertise his business was clearly incompetent. He was a Steppenwolf, poor chap. Why was he getting his neon letters to dart about here on this wall in the darkest alleyway of the Old Town, at this time of night, when it was raining and nobody was about? And why were they so fleeting, so random, so fitful and illegible? But wait, now I was getting somewhere, I was able to
catch several words in sequence. They read:

M
AGIC
T
HEATRE

A
DMISSION NOT FOR EVERYBODY

–
NOT FOR EVERYBODY

I tried to open the door but the heavy old handle just would not budge. The display of letters was over. It had suddenly come to a halt, in a sad fashion, as if aware of its own pointlessness. I took a few steps backwards, landing deep in the mud. No more letters appeared. The display had vanished, but I remained standing there in the mud for a long time, waiting in vain.

Then, just as I was giving up, having already returned to the pavement, I saw, reflected drop by drop on the asphalt, a few coloured neon letters flit by in front of me.

I read:

F
OR
– –
MAD
– –
PEO
– –
PLE
– –
ONLY

Although my feet had got wet and I was freezing, I stood there for quite a while, waiting. Nothing more appeared. But all at once, as I was still standing there, thinking how attractively the delicate coloured letters had flitted like will-o’-the-wisps across the damp wall and the gleaming black asphalt, something that I had been thinking of earlier came to mind again. It was the metaphor of the golden trace that shines forth only to vanish again so suddenly and irretrievably.

Chilled to the bone, I continued on my way, dreaming of that trace and filled with yearning for the gateway to a magic theatre, for mad people only. By now I had reached the area round the market where there was no shortage of nightlife. Every few yards there was a poster or billboard advertising an all-girl band, a variety show, a cinema, or a dance night, but none of this was for me. It was all for ‘everybody’, for normal people. And they were indeed the ones I saw thronging through
the entrances. Nevertheless, I was no longer so sad. My mood had brightened up. After all, the other world had extended a hand of welcome to me. A few coloured letters dancing in front of my eyes had touched hidden chords in my soul. A glimmer of that golden trace had come into view again.

I called in at the little old-fashioned pub where nothing has changed since my first stay in this city some twenty-five years ago. It even had the same landlady then, and many of the present customers were already sitting there in the same places, with the same drinks in front of them. For me, this modest pub was a refuge. True, it was only a refuge like, say, the one on the stairs by the araucaria plant. I didn’t find a home or a community there, just a quiet seat as a spectator in front of a stage on which unknown people were acting unknown plays. Yet even this quiet seat was of value. There were no crowds, no shouting, no music here, just a few peaceful citizens sitting at plain wooden tables (no marble, no enamel, no plush upholstery, no brass!), all of them enjoying their evening drink of good hearty wine. These few regulars, all of whom I knew by sight, may have been real philistines. At home perhaps, in their
philistine dwellings, they had dreary shrines to the stupid false gods of contentment. But they may also have been solitary chaps like me who had gone off the rails, silent drinkers, pondering bankrupt ideals – lone wolves and poor devils, they too. I could not tell. They were all drawn here by some kind of homesickness, disappointment or need for surrogates. The married man was seeking the atmosphere of his bachelor days, the old civil servant echoes of his time at university. They were all fairly untalkative, all drinkers who, like me, preferred to sit in front of half a litre of wine from Alsace rather than an all-girl band. Here I cast anchor. It was bearable here for an hour, or even two.

I had scarcely taken a sip of my Alsace wine when I realized that I hadn’t eaten a thing all day apart from some bread at
breakfast. Strange, all the things human beings are able to swallow. I must have spent ten minutes reading a newspaper, allowing the spirit of some irresponsible individual – one of those who chews up the words of others in his mouth and spits them out again undigested – to enter me through my eyes. I ingested a whole column of the stuff. And then I wolfed down a fair portion of the liver cut from the body of a slaughtered calf. Strange! The best thing was the Alsace wine. I am not partial to those heady, powerful vintages that flaunt their charms and are famous for their special flavours, at least not for everyday drinking. Most of all I like perfectly clean, light, modest local wines without particular names. You can drink a lot of them, and they have a good, friendly taste of the
countryside, of earth and sky and woodland. A glass of Alsace and a piece of good bread, that’s the best of all meals. But now I already had a portion of liver inside me – an outlandish indulgence since I seldom eat meat – and a second glass of wine in front of me. Strange, too, to think that decent, healthy people in some green valley or other should take the trouble to grow vines and press grapes. Why? So that in some other place far away a few disappointed citizens and helpless lone wolves might sit in silence, soaking up a little courage or good humour from their wine glasses.

What did I care whether it was strange! It did me good. It helped to improve my mood. Relieved, I was able to raise a belated laugh at the soggy mess of words in the newspaper article, and suddenly the forgotten melody of that quiet passage in the woodwind came back to me. Like a little radiant soap bubble it rose up inside me, reflecting the whole world in colourful miniature, before gently dispersing again. If it had been possible for this heavenly little melody secretly to put down roots in my soul and one day to blossom forth in me again in all its lovely colours, could I be totally lost? Even if I was a stray animal, unable to understand its environment, my foolish life did have
some meaning. There was something in me that responded to things, was receptive to calls from distant worlds above. My brain was a storehouse of a thousand images.

There were Giotto’s hosts of angels from the small blue vault of a church in Padua. Next to them came Hamlet and Ophelia, she garlanded with flowers, beautiful allegories of all the world’s grief and misunderstanding. Then there was Gianozzo the aeronaut,
²
blowing his horn as he stood in the burning balloon. And Attila Schmelzle,
³
his new hat in his hand. Or the Borobudur Temple
⁴
with its sculptures soaring to the skies like a mountain range. And though all these beautiful creations might be alive in a thousand other hearts, there were ten thousand other unknown images seen by my eyes and sounds heard by my ears that had their dwelling solely in me. The old weathered infirmary wall, stained greyish-green with age, the
cracked, worn surface of which conjured up a thousand frescoes – who responded to it, who let it enter his soul, who loved it, who felt the magic of its gently fading colours? The ancient books of the monks with their delicately illuminated miniatures, the books by German writers of one or two hundred years ago, all those dog-eared volumes full of stains, forgotten now by their nation, or the prints and manuscripts of the old composers, those tough, yellowish scores in which their musical dreams found fixed form – who heard their witty, mischievous, wistful voices, who carried their spirit and charm in his heart through a different era, one estranged from them? Who still remembered that small tough cypress tree high on the mountain above Gubbio, bent and split by falling
rocks but clinging to life and managing to grow a new, sparse makeshift crown? Who was it gave the hardworking housewife with the gleaming araucaria on the first floor her full due? Who
read the cloud messages in the mists swirling over the Rhine at night? It was Steppenwolf. And who, above the ruins of his life, was striving to locate some elusive meaning? Who was enduring a seemingly senseless, seemingly mad existence, yet still, at this last insanely chaotic stage, secretly hoping to find revealed truth and divine presence?

Holding on tight to the glass the landlady was about to refill for me, I stood up. I didn’t need any more wine. The golden trace had suddenly lit up, reminding me of things eternal, of Mozart, of the stars. For an hour I was able to breathe again, to live, allowed to exist without suffering agonies, being afraid or feeling ashamed.

When I stepped out on to the now empty street the fine drizzle, agitated by the cold wind, was swishing around the street lamps, sparkling and flickering like crystal. Now where? If at that moment I’d had the magic power to wish for something, a small, attractive room in the style of Louis the Sixteenth would suddenly have appeared, and a few good musicians would have played two or three pieces by Handel and Mozart for me. In just the right mood for that now, I would have slurped the cool, noble music as gods do nectar. Ah, if only I’d had a friend at that time, a friend brooding by candlelight in some garret, his violin at his side! How I would have stolen up on him as he passed the night in silence! Quietly climbing the twisty stairs, I would have taken him by surprise, and we would have enjoyed a feast of conversation and music for a few heavenly hours of night. I had often tasted such happiness, once upon a time,
in years gone by, but it too had gradually receded, finally deserting me. Since then there had only been lean years.

After some hesitation I set off home, turning up the collar of
my overcoat and prodding the wet pavement with my walking stick. However slowly I covered the ground, all too soon I would be back there sitting in my garret, in the pseudo-home I did not like but could not do without, for the time was long past when I was able to spend a rainy winter’s night out walking in the open air. Yet I swear to God I had no intention of letting anything spoil my good mood that night: neither the rain, my gout, nor the araucaria. And though no chamber orchestra was to be had, and no solitary friend with a violin either, still I could hear that sweet melody inside my head and I was able, quietly humming it to the rhythm of every breath I took, to play it to myself after a fashion. Deep in thought, I strode on. No, I could manage without the chamber music and without the friend. To allow myself to be consumed by an impotent
desire for warmth was ridiculous. Solitude is independence. For years I had wished for it, and now it was mine. My solitude was cold, there was no denying that, but it was also serene, wonderfully serene and vast like the cold serene space in which the stars revolve.

As I walked by a dance hall a loud blast of jazz music hit me, hot and raw like the vapour raw meat exudes. For a moment I stopped. Much as I abhorred it, this kind of music had always held a secret attraction for me. I found jazz repellent, but it was ten times better than contemporary academic music. Naively and genuinely sensual, its breezy, raw savagery could even affect the likes of me at a deep instinctual level. I stood there a while sniffing, getting a whiff of the brash, raw music, wickedly and lecherously savouring the atmosphere of the dance floor. One half of the music, the lyrical one, was schmaltzy, sickly sweet and cloyingly sentimental; the other half was wild, quirky and energetic, and yet both combined artlessly and peaceably to form a whole. It was the music of an age in decline; similar music must have been played in Rome under the last emperors. Compared with Bach and Mozart and real music, it was of course an
outrage.
But then so was all our art, all our thinking, all our pseudo-culture once it was measured against real culture. And the advantage of this music was its great honesty, endearing Negro sincerity and cheerful, childlike mood. There was something of the Negro in it, something of the American who with all his strength seems boyishly fresh and childlike to us Europeans. Would Europe become like that too? Was it already halfway there? Were we ageing connoisseurs and admirers of the Europe of old, of the genuine music and literature of yore, merely a small stupid minority of complicated neurotics who tomorrow would be forgotten and laughed to scorn? Was what we called ‘culture’, spirit, soul, or dubbed beautiful and sacred, merely a ghost, long since dead and thought to be real and alive only by us few fools? Had it perhaps never been real and alive at all? Had what we fools were striving for perhaps merely been a phantom from the start?