“No.”
“But it’s so simple,” Wernicke says impatiently. “The only hard thing was to get to the heart of the matter, but now—” He rubs his hands. “Besides, by good fortune the other man, the former family friend called Ralph or Rudolf or something of the sort, is no longer in the way. Divorced three months ago, killed in the last couple of weeks in an automobile accident. So the cause has been eliminated, the road is free—now at last you must catch on?”
“Yes,” I say and would like to slap a chloroform mask oh the cheerful scientist’s mouth.
“Well, you see! Now we have to face the solution. Suddenly the mother is no longer a rival, the meeting can happen, carefully prepared for—I’ve been working on it for a week already and everything’s going well; you’ve seen for yourself, Fraulein Terhoven went to devotion this evening—”
“You mean you’ve converted her? You, the atheist, and not Bodendiek?”
“Nonsense!” Wernicke says, irritated by my dullness. “That’s not the point at all! I mean that she has become more open, more accessible, freer—didn’t you notice that the last time you were here?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you see!” Wernicke rubs his hands again. “Coming after the first severe shock, that was a very cheering result—”
“Was the shock, too, a result of your treatment?”
“It was in part.”
I think of Isabelle in her room. “Congratulations,” I say.
In his absorption Wernicke does not notice my irony. “The first short meeting and the treatment naturally brought everything back; that was the intention, of course—but since then—I have great hopes! You understand that right now I don’t want anything to distract—”
“I understand. You don’t want me.”
Wernicke nods. “I knew you would understand! You, too, have a certain amount of scientific curiosity. For a time you were useful, but now—what’s wrong with you? Are you too hot?”
“It’s the cigar. Too strong.”
“On the contrary!” the tireless scientist explains. “These Brazilians look strong—but they’re the mildest of all.”
That’s true of many other things, I think, laying the weed aside.
“The human mind!” Wernicke says enthusiastically. “When I was young I wanted to be a sailor and adventurer and explorer of primeval forests—ridiculous! The greatest adventure lies here!” He taps his forehead. “I guess I explained that to you once before.”
“Yes,” I say. “Often.”
The green husks of the chestnuts rustle under my feet. In love like a mooncalf! I think. What does that fact-finding beetle mean? If it were only as simple as that! I walk to the gate and almost bump into a woman coming slowly from the opposite direction. She is wearing a fur stole; she does not belong to the institution. I see a pale, faded face in the darkness, and the scent of perfume lingers behind her. “Who was that?” I ask the watchman at the exit.
“Someone to see Dr. Wernicke. Been here a couple of times before. I believe she has a patient here.”
Her mother, I think, hoping it is not true. I stop outside and stare up at the buildings. A sudden rage seizes me, anger at having been ridiculous and then a contemptible self-pity—but in the end all that is left is helplessness. I lean against a chestnut tree and feel the cool trunk and do not know what to do or what I want.
I go on and as I walk I feel hetter. Let them talk, Isabelle, I think, let them laugh at us as mooncalves. You sweet, beloved life, flying untrammeled, walking safely where others sink, skimming where others tramp in high boots, but caught and bleeding in webs and on boundaries the others cannot see, what do they want of you? Why must they so greedily pull you back into their world, into our world; why won’t they permit you your butterfly existence beyond cause and effect and time and death? Is it jealousy? Is it insensibility? Or is it true, as Wernicke says, that he must rescue you from something worse, from nameless fears that would come, fiercer than those that he himself conjured up, and finally from decline into toadlike idiocy? But is he sure he can? Is he sure that he will not break you with his attempts at rescue or force you more quickly into what he wants to save you from? Who knows? What does this butterfly collector, this scientist, know of flying, of the wind, or the dangers and ecstasies of the days and nights outside space and time? Does he know the future? Has he drunk the moon? Does he know that plants scream? He laughs at that. For him it is all just a retreat reaction caused by a brutal experience. But is he a prophet who can see in advance what is going to happen? Is he God to know what must happen? What did he know about me? That it would be quite all right if I were a little in love? But what do I myself know about that? It bursts forth and streams and has no end; what intimation did I have of it? How can one be so devoted to someone else? Didn’t I myself constantly reject it during those weeks that are now as unattainable as the sunset on the far horizon? But why do I lament? What am I afraid of? May not everything turn out all right and Isabelle be cured and—
There I stop short. What then? Will she not leave? And then her mother will be part of the picture, with a fur stole, with discreet perfume, with relations in the background and ambitions for her daughter. Isn’t she lost to me, somebody who can’t even scrape together enough money to buy a suit? And is that perhaps the reason I am so confused? Out of stupid egoism—and all the rest is just decoration?
I step into a cellar café. A few chauffeurs are sitting there; behind the buffet in a wavy mirror reflects my haggard face, and in front of me in a glass case lie a half-dozen dry rolls and some sardines that have turned up their tails with age. I drink some schnaps and felt as though my stomach had a deep, tearing hole in it. I eat the rolls and sardines and some old, cracked Swiss cheese; it tastes awful, but I stuff it into me and then devour some sausages that are so red they can almost whinny, and I feel more and more unhappy and more and more hungry and as if I could eat the whole buffet.
“Boy, you have a wonderful appetite,” says the owner.
“Yes,” I say. “Have you anything else?”
“Pea soup. Thick pea soup; if you just break some bread into it—”
“All right, give me the pea soup.”
I devour the pea soup, and the owner brings me as a gift another slice of bread with lard on it. I polish it off too, and am hungrier and more unhappy than before. The chauffeurs begin to take an interest in me. “I once knew a man who could eat thirty hard-boiled eggs at a sitting,” one of them says.
“That’s impossible. He would die; that’s been proved scientifically.”
I stare at the scientist angrily. “Have you seen it happen?” I ask.
“It’s a fact,” he replies.
“It’s not a fact at all. The only thing that has been scientifically proved is that chauffeurs die young.”
“Why would that be?”
“Because of the gasoline fumes. Slow poisoning.” The owner appears with a kind of Italian salad. A sporting interest has prevailed over his sleepiness. Where he got the salad and mayonnaise is a puzzle. Surprisingly, it is fresh. Perhaps it is part of his own supper that he has sacrificed. I consume it too, and leave—with a burning stomach that still feels empty—and no whit comforted.
The streets are gray and dimly lighted. There are beggars everywhere. They are not the familiar beggars of other times—now they are amputees and the dispossessed and the unemployed and quiet old people with faces that look as though they were made of rumpled, colorless paper. I am suddenly ashamed that I have eaten so thoughtlessly. If I had given what I have devoured to two or three of these people, they would be filled for a night and I would be no hungrier than I am. I take what money I have with me out of my pocket and give it away. It is not much and I am not impoverishing myself; by ten o’clock tomorrow morning, when the dollar is announced, it will have lost a quarter of its worth. This fall the German mark has had tenfold galloping consumption. The beggars know it and disappear immediately, since every minute is costly; the price of soup can rise several million marks in an hour. It all depends on whether the proprietor has to market tomorrow or not—and also on whether he is businesslike or himself a victim. If he is a victim, then he is manna for the smaller victims because he raises his prices too late.