Steppenwolf Page 2

  But the time has now come to put my own thoughts to one side and speak of actual facts. Well, the first thing I learned about Herr Haller, partly through my snooping, partly from observations made by my aunt, had to do with the way he led his life. It soon became apparent that he was not pursuing any practical profession but was a man of ideas and books. He always stayed in bed very late, often only getting up shortly before midday, when he would walk in his dressing gown the few steps from the bedroom across to his living room. A big, homely attic space with two windows, within a few days this living room already looked different from how it had when occupied by other tenants. It was filling up, and as time went by it got more and more packed with things. Pictures were hung, drawings stuck on the walls, sometimes illustrations cut from magazines, which were frequently replaced by others. There was a southern landscape hanging there, photographs of a small German country town, evidently Haller’s home, and between them bright watercolours which, as we only discovered later, he had painted himself. Then came the photograph of a pretty young woman, or young girl. For a while there was a Siamese Buddha hanging on the wall, but a reproduction of Michelangelo’s Night took its place, and it in turn gave way to a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi. There were books everywhere, not just filling the large bookcase, but lying around on the tables, on the fine old writing desk, on the divan, on the chairs, and on the floor. Slips of paper that constantly changed were inserted in them, marking the pages. And the number of books constantly grew because he brought whole bundles back from the libraries as well as very often receiving parcels of them in the post. The man occupying this room was quite possibly a learned scholar. The cigar smoke that enveloped everything fitted this picture, as did the ashtrays and cigar stubs that lay around everywhere. Yet a large proportion of the books was not academic in content, but literary. Works by great writers of all periods and nationalities made up the vast majority. On the divan, where he frequently spent whole days reclining, all six fat volumes of a late eighteenth-century work entitled Sophia’s Journey from Memel to Saxony could be seen lying around for a time.1 A complete edition of Goethe and one of Jean Paul2 seemed to be much in use, as did the works of Novalis,3 but there were also editions of Lessing, Jacobi and Lichtenberg.4 Some volumes of Dostoevsky were full of slips of paper with notes on them. Among the many books and papers on the fairly large table there was often a bunch of flowers. A set of watercolour paints lay around on it too, but it was always full of dust. Next to it were the ashtrays and – I see no reason why I should hide the fact – an array of bottles containing drink. One bottle woven in straw was usually filled with an Italian red wine he fetched from a small shop near by. Occasionally you would spot a bottle of burgundy or Malaga, and once I saw a squat bottle of kirsch being virtually emptied in next to no time, only to disappear in some corner of the room where it gathered dust without its remaining contents being reduced. Without wishing to justify my snooping, I openly confess that in the early days all these signs of a life being wantonly frittered away, however much it was occupied with intellectual pursuits, aroused loathing and suspicion in me. It’s not just that I lead the orderly life of a solid citizen, keeping precisely to a timetable. I’m also teetotal and a non-smoker, and the sight of those bottles in Haller’s room was even less to my liking than the rest of his bohemian clutter.

  When it came to food and drink, the stranger was just as irregular and capricious in his habits as he was when sleeping and working. Some days he didn’t go out at all and apart from his morning coffee had absolutely nothing to eat or drink. At times, the only remaining trace of a meal my aunt found was a banana skin, yet on other days he would dine in restaurants, sometimes good, fashionable ones, sometimes small pubs in the suburbs. He didn’t appear to be in good health. Apart from the difficulty with his legs – climbing the stairs to his room was often a real struggle – he seemed plagued by other infirmities. Once he remarked in passing that he hadn’t managed to digest his food or sleep properly for years. Primarily I put this down to his drinking. Later, when I occasionally went along with him to one of his pubs, I witnessed him rapidly downing the wines as the whim took him, but neither I nor anyone else ever saw him really drunk.

  I shall never forget our first encounter of a more personal kind. We knew each other only in the way next-door neighbours tend to in rented accommodation. Then one evening, coming home from work, I was astonished to find Herr Haller sitting on the stairs close to the landing between the first and second floors. He had sat down on the top step, and moved to one side to let me pass. Asking whether he was unwell, I offered to accompany him right to the top.

  From the look Haller gave me I realized that I had roused him from some sort of trance. Slowly he began to smile that appealingly pitiful smile of his that so often saddened my heart. Then he invited me to sit down next to him. I declined to, saying I wasn’t in the habit of sitting on the stairs outside other people’s flats.

  ‘Oh, quite so,’ he said, smiling more intensely, ‘you are right. But wait a moment longer. You see, I must show you why I felt the need to stay sitting here for a while.’

  As he spoke, he pointed to the landing outside the first-floor flat occupied by a widow. There, against the wall on the small area of parquet floor between the stairs, the window and the glass door, was a tall mahogany cupboard with old pieces of pewter on it. On the ground in front of it, resting on small squat stands, were two large plant pots, one containing an azalea, the other an araucaria. They were attractive-looking plants, always trim and immaculately well tended, and they had already made a favourable impression on me too.

  ‘You see,’ Haller continued, ‘this little patio with the araucaria has such a fantastic smell, I often can’t pass by without stopping for a while. Of course there is a good smell to your aunt’s home too, and she keeps everything as tidy and clean as one could wish, but this spot with the araucaria is so spick and span, so well dusted, polished and washed down, so immaculately clean that it is positively radiant. I just have to take a deep breath and fill my nostrils with it every time. Can’t you sense it too? The way the smell of floor polish and a faint after-scent of turpentine together with the mahogany, the moistened leaves of the plants and everything combine to produce a fragrance that is the ultimate in bourgeois cleanliness, a superlative example in miniature of meticulous care, conscientiousness and attention to detail. I don’t know who lives there, but there must be a paradise of cleanliness and dust-free bourgeois existence behind that glass door, an Eden of order and painstaking devotion to little routines and chores that is touching.’

  Since I remained silent, he went on: ‘Please don’t think I’m being ironic. The last thing I would want to do is pour scorn on this orderly bourgeois way of life. It’s true, of course, that I myself live in a different world, not this one, and it may well be that I couldn’t survive for even one day in a flat like that with its araucaria plants. Yet even though I’m an old Steppenwolf, inclined to snap at people, I am the son of a mother, and my mother too was a respectable housewife who grew plants and saw to it that the living room, the stairs, the furniture and the curtains were presentable. She always did her utmost to make her home and life as neat, clean and tidy as was humanly possible. That’s what this whiff of turpentine, that’s what the araucaria reminds me of, and that’s the reason why every now and then I’m to be found sitting here, gazing into this little garden of order and rejoicing at the fact that such things still exist.’

  He wanted to stand up but, finding it a struggle, didn’t object to my giving him a bit of a helping hand. I still didn’t break my silence, but I was under some sort of spell that this peculiar man was now and then able to cast on people, just as he had previously on my aunt. We made our way slowly up the stairs together and then, standing outside his door, the key already in his hand, he looked me full in the face again and in a very friendly manner said: ‘You’re just back from work? Well you see, that’s something I have no
knowledge of, living a bit apart as I do, a bit on the margin of things. But I believe you also take an interest in books and the like. Your aunt once told me you had been to grammar school and were good at Greek. As it happens, just this morning I found a sentence in Novalis. Can I show you it? I’m sure you’ll be delighted with it too.’

  Taking me with him into his room, where there was a strong smell of tobacco, he drew out a book from one of the piles and leafed through it, searching.

  ‘This is good too, very good,’ he said. ‘Just listen to this sentence: “One ought to take pride in pain – all pain is a reminder of our exalted rank.” Marvellous! Eighty years before Nietzsche! Only that’s not the saying I had in mind – wait a bit – now I’ve got it. Here you are: “Most people have no desire to swim until they are able to.”5 Isn’t that a laugh? Of course they don’t want to swim! After all, they were born to live on dry land, not in water. Nor, of course, do they want to think. They weren’t made to think, but to live! It’s true, and anyone who makes thinking his priority may well go far as a thinker, but when all’s said and done he has just mistaken water for dry land, and one of these days he’ll drown.’

  He had now captured my interest and I stayed in his room for a short while. From then on it was no rare thing for us to bump into one another on the stairs or in the street, when we would exchange a few words. To start with, just as when we met by the araucaria, I always had a slight feeling that he was poking ironic fun at me. But this wasn’t the case. He had nothing but respect for me, positive respect, as for the araucaria plant. His isolation, his rootless existence ‘swimming in water’ had honestly convinced him that it was sometimes actually possible, without any hint of scorn, to regard with enthusiasm the everyday activity of normal citizens, for instance the way I went to work punctually in the office, or some expression used by a servant or the conductor of a tram. To begin with this struck me as a quite ridiculous and exaggerated response, the kind of whimsical sentimentality typical of a gentleman flâneur. However, I was increasingly forced to recognize that because of his very nature as alienated lone wolf, living as in a vacuum, he did in fact positively admire and love the small world most of us conventional people inhabit. It represented all that was solid and secure, homely and peaceful, but it was remote and unattainable since, for him, there was no road leading there. He showed genuine respect for our charwoman, the good soul, always raising his hat to her. And whenever my aunt had occasion to chat with him for a while, pointing out to him some item of laundry that needed repairing, say, or a loose button on his coat, he would listen to her with remarkable attention, weighing her every word. It was as if he were making indescribable, desperate efforts to force his way through some tiny chink into her little peaceful world, hoping to find a home there if only for a brief hour.

  As early as our first conversation by the araucaria he called himself Steppenwolf, and this too I found a bit off-putting and disturbing. What kind of way to talk was that, I wondered. However, force of habit taught me to accept the term as valid, and soon it was the only thing I myself called the man in my private thoughts. Even to this day I couldn’t conceive of a more apt and accurate word for such a phenomenon. A stray wolf of the steppes, now part of the herd of city-dwellers – there could be no more compelling way of picturing him, his wary isolation, his wildness, his restlessness, his homelessness and his yearning for home.

  Once I was able to observe him for a whole evening. I was at a symphony concert when, to my surprise, I saw him sitting close to me, though he hadn’t noticed my presence. The concert began with some Handel, a fine and beautiful piece, but Steppenwolf sat there immersed in himself, cut off from both the music and his surroundings. He was looking down at his feet like someone who didn’t belong there, a solitary and alien presence, his expression cool but careworn. Next came a different piece, a little symphony by Friedemann Bach, and I was quite astonished, after only a few bars, to see my strange loner start to smile and abandon himself to the music. He was completely absorbed, looking so engrossed in joyous reverie, so lost in contentment for what must have been a good ten minutes, that I paid more attention to him than to the music. When the piece came to an end he roused himself, sat up straighter and made as if to stand, apparently intent on leaving. However, he remained in his seat after all, listening to the final piece as well. This was a set of variations by Reger, a composition that many felt to be rather long and wearying. To begin with Steppenwolf showed willing, continuing to listen attentively, but he too switched off again, putting his hands in his pockets and withdrawing once more into himself. This time, however, there was no sign of joyous reverie. He appeared to be sad and, in the end, cross. His face was grey and lifeless, its expression again distant. He looked old, unwell and discontented.

  After the concert I spotted him again in the street and followed in his footsteps. Hunched up in his coat, he was making his way tiredly and listlessly back towards our district of town. Outside a small, old-fashioned pub, however, he came to a halt and, glancing at his watch as if to make up his mind, went in. Obeying a momentary impulse, I followed him. There he was, sitting at the bar of this petit bourgeois establishment, being greeted by landlady and waitress as a familiar customer. I said hello to him too, joining him at the bar. We sat there for an hour, during which I drank two glasses of mineral water while he ordered half a litre of red wine, followed by another quarter. I told him I had been at the concert, but he didn’t pursue the topic. Reading the label on my water bottle, he asked whether I wouldn’t care for some wine too. It was on him, he said. When he heard that I never drink wine, his face again assumed a vacant expression and he said: ‘I suppose you are right not to. For years I too lived abstemiously, even fasting for long periods, but at the moment I’m again under the sign of Aquarius, a dark and damp sign of the zodiac.’

  When I now jokingly picked up on this reference, implying that I found it improbable that he of all people should believe in astrology, his response was to again adopt the polite tone of voice that I often found hurtful. ‘Quite right,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid astrology is yet another branch of knowledge I can’t believe in.’

  Taking my leave of him, I went home. He didn’t return until the early hours, but his steps sounded the same as usual and as always he didn’t go to bed immediately, staying up for another hour or so in his sitting room with the light on. Living next door to him, I could of course hear his every movement.

  There was another evening that I haven’t forgotten either. I was at home on my own, my aunt having gone out, when there was a ring at the front door. I opened it to find a pretty young lady standing there, and when she asked after Herr Haller I recognized her as the one in the photograph in his room. After showing her the door to his lodgings, I withdrew. She stayed up there for a while, then I heard them go down the stairs together and out of the building. They were engaged in lively conversation, cheerfully joking with one another. I was amazed to discover that this hermit of a man had a lover, and such a young, pretty and elegant lover at that. All I had assumed about him and the kind of life he led was again called into question. But scarcely an hour later he was already back home again, on his own, trudging up the stairs with sad steps, then quietly stealing to and fro for hours in his sitting room, just like a wolf in a cage. The lights were on all night in his room, almost till morning.

  Though I know nothing of this relationship of his, I just want to add that I did see him with the woman once more. They were walking arm in arm along one of the streets in town, and he looked happy. Once again I was amazed to see how childlike and graceful his otherwise careworn and lonely face could appear. I could well understand the woman’s feelings, just as I understood my aunt’s affection for this man. Yet in the evening of that day too he came back home sad and miserable. Encountering him at the front door, I noticed, as was often the case, that he had his Italian wine bottle with him, under his coat. And he sat up there in his lair with it half the ni
ght long. I was sorry for him, but what else could he expect, having chosen to lead so miserably forlorn and vulnerable a life?

  Well, I think that is enough of my gossiping. I feel no need to report further on Steppenwolf or add to my descriptions of him since what I have already said should suffice to demonstrate that he was leading a suicidal life. Nevertheless, I don’t believe he did take his own life that day when, though he had settled all his outstanding debts, he quite unexpectedly left town and, without saying goodbye, disappeared without trace. We have never heard a thing of him since, though we still keep a few letters that arrived for him after his departure. He left nothing behind apart from his manuscript, written during his stay here, in which he penned a few lines, dedicating it to me and indicating that I could do with it whatever I liked.

  I had no possible means of checking how far the experiences recounted by Haller in this manuscript corresponded to reality. That they are for the most part imaginative fictions, I don’t doubt, but not in the sense of stories arbitrarily invented. I see them rather as attempts to express deeply felt psychological processes by presenting them in the guise of things actually occurring before our eyes. I suspect that the partly fantastical things that happen in Haller’s writings originate from the last period of his stay here, and I have no doubt that they are based on his experience of some slice of external reality. During that period our lodger’s behaviour and appearance did indeed change. He was away from home a very great deal, sometimes for whole nights, and his books lay untouched. On the few occasions I encountered him at that time, he seemed strikingly vivacious and rejuvenated, sometimes positively cheerful. True, this was immediately followed by a new spell of profound depression when he lay in bed all day without wanting food. And it was also during that time that an extraordinarily violent, indeed brutal row took place between him and his lover, who had reappeared on the scene. All the tenants were up in arms about this, and Haller apologized to my aunt about it the next day.