Steppenwolf (23 page)

‘Maria,’ I said, ‘only a goddess is as extravagant with her favours as you are tonight. Don’t go wearing us both out, after all it’s the masked ball tomorrow. What kind of partner are you going with? I fear he may be a fairy-tale prince and you’ll be seduced by him, my little flower, never more to return to me. Tonight you are making love to me almost as devoted lovers do for the last time when they are about to part.’ Pressing her lips right inside my ear, she whispered:

‘Don’t say a word, Harry. Any time may be the last time. When Hermione takes you, you’ll never return to me. Perhaps she will take you tomorrow.’

I never experienced the characteristic feeling of those days, their strangely bitter-sweet alternating mood, more powerfully than in the night before the ball. Happiness was what I experienced as a result of Maria’s beauty and her winning ways; the opportunity to relish, feel and breathe countless sensual delights that I, as someone getting on in years, had never known until now; a chance to splash around like a child, rocked by gentle waves of pleasure. And yet this was only on the surface. Inside me, everything was laden with meaning, tension and destiny. While amorously and tenderly engaged in the touching sweet nothings of lovemaking, seemingly afloat in a warm bath of pure happiness, in my heart I could feel my destiny propelling
me forwards at a headlong pace, whisking me along at a gallop like a frightened steed towards the abyss into which I would plunge, filled with fear and longing, in total surrender to death. In much the same way that only a little while ago I had still been shyly and timidly resisting the agreeable frivolity of exclusively sensual lovemaking and feeling afraid of Maria’s radiant beauty, all the benefits of which she was willing to lavish upon me, so now I was feeling afraid of death. However, I knew that this fear I was experiencing would soon turn to willing and liberating surrender.

While we were silently absorbed in the energetic play of our lovemaking, more intimately at one with each other than ever, my soul was already taking leave of Maria and everything that she had meant to me. Before the final curtain, she had taught me childlike trust once more in the surface play of things, how to find joy in the most transient of experiences, how to be both child and animal in the innocence of sexual intercourse, a condition I had known only on rare and exceptional occasions in my earlier life. The reason was that sexuality and the life of the senses almost always had a slightly bitter taste of guilt about them for me, alongside the sweet but worrying taste of forbidden fruit, something anyone with an intellectual bent needs to guard against. Hermione and Maria had now shown me this garden in all its innocence and I had been grateful to be their guest in it, but it was too beautiful, too warm, and the time was fast approaching for me to move on. To go on pursuing the crown of life, to continue to atone for the infinite guilt of life, was what I was destined for. An easy life, an easy love, an easy death were out of the question for me.

From things the girls had hinted at, I gathered that quite special delights and sensual excesses were being planned for the next day’s ball, or immediately after it. Perhaps this was the finish, perhaps Maria was right in sensing that we were lying together
for the last time tonight. Tomorrow, perhaps, my fate was to take a new turn. Full of ardent yearning, full of suffocating dread, I clung desperately to Maria, fitfully and hungrily exploring once again every path and all the undergrowth in her garden, once again sinking my teeth into the sweet fruit of the tree of paradise.

The next day I made up for the sleep I had lost that night. In the morning I went to the public baths, before going home totally exhausted. There, having shut out the daylight from my bedroom, I discovered in my pocket, as I was undressing, my poem. Forgetting it again, I immediately lay down and slept right through the day. Maria, Hermione and the masked ball were forgotten too. Waking up in the evening, it was only when having a shave that I realized the ball was already due to start in an hour and I needed to look among my things for a dress shirt. I finished dressing in good spirits and went out for a meal before things began.

This was to be the first masked ball I had participated in, for although I had now and again attended such festivities in earlier years, sometimes even finding them fun, I had not joined in the dancing but merely been an onlooker. And it had always struck me as strange that other people should talk about them and look forward to them so enthusiastically. Today’s ball was now a special event for me too and I was looking forward to it, if somewhat nervously, with eager anticipation. I decided, since I had no partner to take with me, to leave it late before going, which is what Hermione had also recommended.

In recent times I had seldom been to the Steel Helmet, my former refuge where disillusioned men sat whiling away their evenings, supping their wine and playing at being bachelors. It no longer suited the style of life I was now leading. That evening, however, I was drawn to it willy-nilly. My current mood, a
mixture of nervousness and gaiety resulting from the sense that my fate was about to be decided and the time had come to say my farewells, meant that all the stations of my life, all the places steeped in memory, were once again bathed in that painfully beautiful light that attaches to things past. And this was the case with the small, smoke-filled pub where, not long ago, I had still been a regular; where, not long ago, that crude narcotic, a bottle of country wine, was all I needed to get through one more night in my lonely bed and make life bearable for one more day. Since then I had been sampling other substances, stronger stimulants, and savouring poisons that were sweeter. It was with a smile on my face that I now entered the old place to a welcome greeting from the landlady and nods all round from the taciturn regulars. The roast chicken I had been recommended arrived and my rustic tumbler was filled to the brim with crystal-clear young wine from Alsace. The scrubbed white wooden tables and the old yellow panelling had a familiar, friendly look about them. And as I ate and drank I had the increasingly strong sensation of time running out, of formally taking my leave of things and scenes with which my previous life had been inextricably entwined. Never having managed to tear myself away from them fully, I now felt the time was almost ripe for me to make the break, and the feeling was at once sweet and painfully intense. So-called ‘modern’ individuals call this sentimentality. They are no longer fond of inanimate things, even those most sacred to them, their cars, which they hope to exchange for a better model as soon as possible. These modern individuals are well drilled, efficient, healthy, cool and muscular. They will give a splendid account of themselves in the next war. I had no desire to emulate them. Neither modern nor old-fashioned, I had dropped out of time and was drifting along close to death, and willing to die. I had nothing against sentimental feelings; I was pleased and thankful that this burned-out heart of mine could still experience
feelings of any kind. So I luxuriated in my memories of the old pub, my fondness for its clumsy old chairs, its smell of smoke and wine, the warm glow of familiarity and something akin to homeliness that all these things brought to me. It is beautiful to take leave of things. It puts you in a gentle frame of mind. I felt a fondness for the hard chair I was sitting on and for my rustic tumbler, a fondness for the cool, fruity taste of the wine from Alsace, a fondness for each and everyone known to me in that room, for the faces of the drinkers perched dreamily on the bar stools, those disillusioned figures I had long thought of as my brothers. What I was experiencing here were the sentimental feelings of a typical bourgeois, given just a touch of added spice by an old-fashioned, romantic attachment to the atmosphere of pubs that stemmed from my boyhood, when such establishments with their wines and cigars were still forbidden things, strange and glorious. Yet no Steppenwolf reared up and bared his teeth, threatening to tear my sentimental feelings to shreds. I went on sitting there peacefully, basking in the glow of the past, in the now feeble rays of a sun that had already set.

A street trader came in, selling roast chestnuts, and I bought a handful from him. Then an old woman came with flowers and I bought a few carnations for the landlady from her. Only when I was about to pay and reached in vain for my usual coat pocket did I again become aware that I was in evening dress. Masked ball! Hermione!

However, I couldn’t bring myself to go to the Globe Rooms just yet. There was still ample time. And besides, I felt reluctant to go, held back by misgivings of one sort or another, as had been the case recently every time I had been facing such an evening’s entertainment. I had a horror of entering vast, overcrowded and noisy rooms, for instance, and still felt as intimidated as a schoolboy by the strange atmosphere in this world of the playboy, and by the prospect of having to dance.

Sauntering along, I happened to pass by a cinema with its bright lights and gigantic coloured posters. I walked on a few steps but then turned back and went in, thinking that I could sit there nice and quietly in the dark until about eleven o’clock. Following the boy-usher with his torch, I stumbled through the curtains into the dark of the auditorium where, having found a seat, I was suddenly immersed in the Old Testament. It was one of those films produced at great expense and with considerable sophistication, allegedly not for profit, but with noble and sacred intentions, so that even schoolchildren were taken to see them in the afternoon by the teachers responsible for their religious instruction. This one, enacting the story of Moses and the Israelites in Egypt, involved an enormous contingent of people, horses and camels in addition to the splendour of the ruling Pharaoh’s palaces and scenes of Jewish hardship in the hot desert sands. I saw old Moses, a splendidly theatrical Moses, his hairstyle loosely modelled on Walt Whitman’s, striding through the desert with a long staff, looking grim and fiery like some Wotan at the head of the Jews. I saw him praying to God by the Red Sea, saw the Red Sea parting to form a passageway, a sunken track between mountainous masses of water dammed back. (Quite how the production team had contrived to stage this was an issue that might be debated for hours by the members of confirmation classes taken by their ministers to see the film.) Then I saw the Prophet and his fearful people striding across, while behind them the Pharaoh’s war chariots came into view. I saw the Egyptians hesitating at the sea’s edge and shrinking back before plucking up their courage and daring to wade in. Then I saw the mountainous masses of water closing over the Pharaoh, resplendent in his golden armour, and over all his chariots and warriors. I couldn’t help thinking at this point of a wonderful duet for two basses by Handel, a glorious musical setting of this event. In addition I saw old Moses climbing Mount Sinai, a
sombre-looking hero in a sombre wilderness of rocks, and there I watched Jehovah communicating the Ten Commandments to him by means of storm clouds, thunder and lightning, while at the foot of the mountain his good-for-nothing people were erecting the golden calf and indulging in pretty uproarious merrymaking. To sit there and witness all this was such a bizarre and incredible experience for me, seeing the sacred stories with their heroes and miracles which, long ago in our childhood days, had conjured up a first, dim awareness of another world beyond the merely human, now being enacted in exchange for a modest admission fee in front of a grateful cinema audience which was sitting there quietly munching the sandwiches they had brought with them to eat. The whole thing was a fine vignette of our times with their vast junk culture on sale at knock-down prices to the masses. My God, to avoid an obscenity like this, it would have been better if at that time, in addition to the Egyptians, the Jews and indeed all other human beings had immediately perished too, meeting a violent but respectable end instead of dying the kind of dreadful, unreal, lukewarm death we were nowadays. Ah well, what was the point?

The film and the issues raised by it had done nothing to reduce the secret qualms I had about the masked ball or my undisclosed reluctance to attend it. On the contrary, it had had the unpleasant effect of increasing them, and, with Hermione in mind, I had to jolt myself into finally making my way to the Globe Rooms and venturing in. By now it was late, and the ball had been in full swing for some time. Sober as I was, and shy, I was caught up in a milling throng of costumed figures even before I had a chance to hand in my coat. I was nudged and jostled as if I were a close acquaintance; girls invited me to accompany them to the champagne parlours, and clowns clapped me heartily on the shoulder, addressing me with the familiar ‘du’, but I was having none of it. With some difficulty I squeezed my way through the
overcrowded premises to the cloakroom and when I had been given my numbered token I made sure I put it carefully in my pocket, thinking I might need it again soon if the general hubbub became too much for me.

The revels extended to every part of the large building. There was dancing in all the main rooms, even down in the basement, and every corridor and flight of stairs was inundated with dancers in fancy dress, the sound of music and the laughter of groups scurrying to and fro. I sneaked apprehensively through the throng, moving from the Negro band to the homespun rustic musicians, from the vast, brightly lit main hall to the corridors and stairways, the bars, buffet restaurants and champagne parlours. Bizarre, zany paintings could be seen hanging on most of the walls, the work of the latest artists. The ball had attracted everyone: artists, journalists, academics, businessmen and also, of course, all the local fun-loving men and women about town. In one of the bands I saw Mr Pablo blowing enthusiastically on his curved horn, and when he spotted me he called out a loud greeting. Carried along by the crowd, I ended up in one room or another, going up one staircase and down the next. In one passage down in the basement the artists had created a make-believe hell in which a gang of musical devils were drumming away like madmen. I gradually started to keep an eye out for Hermione or Maria. Setting off in search of them, I made several efforts to get through to the main hall, but each time I either lost my way or had to give up because of the surge of people moving in the opposite direction to mine. By midnight I still hadn’t found anyone. Feeling hot and dizzy already, although I hadn’t danced, I threw myself in the nearest chair I could find, and ordered some wine, surrounded by people who were all total strangers to me. Noisy festivities of this sort, I concluded, were not the thing for an old man like me. Drinking my glass of wine in a resigned frame of mind, I stared at the naked arms and backs of the
womenfolk, eyed the many grotesque costumed figures wafting by me, and had to put up with their constant nudging and pushing. The few girls who asked to sit on my lap or wanted to dance with me were sent on their way without so much as a word. ‘Sulky old so-and-so,’ one of them cried, and she was right. I decided to raise my spirits and give myself some Dutch courage by carrying on drinking, but even the wine didn’t taste good and I scarcely managed to down a second glass. And bit by bit I became aware of Steppenwolf standing behind me and sticking out his tongue. I was out of place here, a forlorn, lifeless figure. There was no doubt I had come with the best of intentions, but I just couldn’t get into the right party mood. The deafening roars of enjoyment, the laughter, all the high jinks going on around me struck me as stupid and forced.