“They aren’t coming. Come, let’s go inside.”
“I’m going to go to bed this minute,” Simon said.
When he was already lying in bed, about to shut his eyes, he suddenly heard a shot ring out. In sheer terror, he leapt out of bed, tore open the window and looked outside. “What was that?” he shouted down into the darkness. But only his own voice echoed back at him from the forest. The forest was eerily cloaked in a deathly silence. Suddenly he heard a man’s voice speaking just below him: “It’s nothing, go to sleep. Forgive me for alarming you. I often go shooting in the woods at night, it gives me pleasure to hear the shots resound and echo. Some people whistle a melody to amuse themselves when everything all around them is so quiet. Me, I shoot. Take care not to catch cold there at the open window — the nights are still cold. In a minute you’ll hear me shooting again, and this time you won’t be frightened. I’m still waiting for my wife to return. Good night. Sleep well.” Simon lay back down. Nonetheless he couldn’t fall asleep. The man’s voice had sounded so peculiar to him, so calm, that’s precisely what was so odd. So icy — actually the voice had an ordinary friendliness about it, and that’s just what was so icy. Surely something lay behind it. But perhaps it was just that he didn’t yet know this man’s habits. “Lord knows,” he thought to himself, “there are plenty of odd fish swimming about. Life is so tedious, and this encourages the development of oddities. You can turn odd before you know it. And so Agappaia too might not see anything queer about this queer habit of his. He can just call it sporting and so lay to rest any other thoughts that might suggest themselves. All the same, I’m going to try to get some sleep now.” —But other thoughts now came to him, all having to do with nighttime: He thought of small children afraid to enter dark rooms and who cannot fall asleep in the dark. Parents instill in their children the most dreadful fear of the dark and then, as punishment, lock recalcitrant ones up in silent dark rooms. Then the child clutches at the darkness in this deep dense dark and finds only darkness and nothing more. The child’s fear and this darkness are soon the best of friends, but the child is not managing to befriend its fear. The child has such talents for feeling fear that the fear just grows and grows. It soon overpowers the little child, being such a large, dense, heavily-breathing entity; the child might wish for example to cry out, but doesn’t dare. This not daring increases the fear even further; for there must be something utterly terrifying there if the child is too frightened even to utter cries of fear. The child believes someone is listening in the dark. How melancholy it is, thinking of such an unfortunate child. How the poor little ears strain to hear something: even the thousandth part of some faint little sound. Not to hear anything at all is more frightening by far than hearing something, when a person stands in the dark listening. Even this alone: The child cannot help listening and almost hearing its own listening — sometimes it merely listens and sometimes it hearkens, for the child is capable of such distinctions in its nameless fear. When we speak of listening, this presupposes something to be heard, but hearkening is often done in vain, it is a waiting to hear, a hoping. Hearkening is the activity performed by a child locked away in a dark room as punishment for disobedience. And now let us imagine someone approaching — approaching softly, so dreadfully softly. No, it’s better not to imagine this. Better not imagine it at all. A person who imagines such a thing will die of terror along with the child. Children have such sensitive souls, how could one be thinking up terrors for such souls! Parents, parents, never shut your recalcitrant children in dark rooms if you have first taught them to fear the dark, which is otherwise so dear, so sweet—
Now Simon was no longer afraid of anything else occurring that night. He fell asleep, and when he woke up the next morning he saw his brother sleeping peacefully beside him in his bed. He could have kissed him. He got dressed as carefully as possible so as not to wake the sleeper, quietly opened the door and went downstairs. On the stairs he met Klara, who seemed to have been waiting there for some time. But Simon had scarcely said good morning before the woman, who appeared to be filled with violent emotion, threw her arms about his neck, drew him to her and kissed him lovingly. “I want to kiss you too, you’re his brother,” she said in a soft, urgent, rapturous voice.
“He’s still asleep,” Simon said. He was in the habit of gently brushing aside acts of tenderness not meant for him, but his equanimity only redoubled her agitation. She wouldn’t let him go on down the stairs, instead she held him even closer, seizing his head in her two hands and pressing kisses on his forehead and cheeks. “I love you like a brother. Now you are my brother. I have so little and yet so much, do you understand? I have nothing left, I have given it all. Will you shun me? No, you won’t, will you. Your heart is mine, I know it is — and having such a confidant makes me rich. You love your brother as no one does. With such strength and will. He told me about you. How beautiful you appear to me. You are so different from him. It’s impossible to describe you. He said this too, that one cannot quite grasp you. Yet how trustingly one throws oneself at you. Kiss me. I am yours in any way your heart desires. Your heart is what’s beautiful about you. Don’t say anything. I understand that one doesn’t understand you. You understand everything. You are fond of me, say yes, do. No, don’t say yes. It isn’t necessary, isn’t necessary at all. Your eyes have already said yes — I always knew it. I always knew there were people like you, don’t ever force yourself to behave coldly. He’s asleep? Oh, no, don’t leave yet! I must quarrel a bit more with you first. I am a foolish, foolish, foolish woman, don’t you agree?”
She would have gone on speaking in this tone, but Simon fended her off, quite gently, as was his wont. He told her he was going for a walk. She watched him walk away, but he paid not the least attention to her gaze. “I shall help her if she requires my services; of course I shall!” he said to himself. “Probably I would lay down my life for her, if her well-being required her to demand this; quite probably! Yes, it is fairly certain, considering that it would be for a woman like that. She’s got something about her. In a word: She holds sway over me, of course, but what’s the point of pondering this further? I have other things to think about. For example, I feel happy this morning — my limbs feel like fine flexible wires. When I feel my limbs, I am happy, and then I’m not thinking of any other person on earth, not a woman, not a man, I’m quite simply thinking nothing at all. Ah, how beautiful it is here in the forest on a sunny morning. How lovely it is to be free. Perhaps a soul is thinking of me at this moment, perhaps not — in any case, my soul isn’t thinking of anything at all. Such a morning always awakens a certain brutality in me, but this does no harm, on the contrary, it’s the basis for my selfless enjoyment of nature. Splendid, splendid. How the grass flashes in the sunlight. How the white sky burns all about the earth. This softening might come to me today. When I think about someone, I do so with abandon. But it’s more delicious to be as I am now. Lovely morning. Shall I sing you a song. It’s true, you yourself are a song. I’d much rather shout and run about like the devil, or fire off shots like that foolish devil Agappaia—”
He threw himself down upon the meadow and began to dream.
— 4–
That same morning Kaspar and Klara took a small brightly colored boat out on the lake. The lake was utterly placid, a gleaming motionless mirror. Now and then a steamer crossed before them, creating for a brief while broad gentle waves, and they sliced through these waves. Klara was clad in a snow-white dress; wide sleeves hung languidly from her beautiful arms and hands. She’d removed her hat: Absentmindedly, with a lovely gesture, she’d let her hair down. Her mouth was smiling across to the mouth of the young man. She didn’t know what to say, had no wish to say anything. “How beautiful the water is, it looks like a sky,” she said. Her forehead was as serene as their surroundings — lake, shore and cloudless sky. The blue of the sky had streaks of fragrant shimmering white in it. The white sullied the blue a little, seasoned it, made it more yearning and faltering and milder. The sun was half shining through, like sunshine in dreams. There was a certain hesitancy to everything, the air fluttered about their hair and faces — Kaspar’s face was solemn but serene. For a while he rowed with powerful strokes, then let the oars sink, and the boat bobbed on unguided. He turned around to look at the receding city, saw its towers and rooftops glittering faintly in the half-sun, saw industrious people hurrying across the bridges. Carts and wagons followed, the electrical tram jolted past making its peculiar sound. Wires were humming, whips were cracking, one could hear whistles and great resounding dins from somewhere or other. All at once the eleven o’clock bells rang out amid all the silence and distant trembling sounds. Both of them were feeling indescribable joy at this day, this morning, the sounds and colors. Everything was dissolving into perception and sound. Being lovers, they heard all things melded as a single sound. A simple bouquet lay in Klara’s lap. Kaspar had taken off his jacket and was now rowing again. Then came the stroke of noon, and all these working and professional people dispersed like a trampled anthill into all the streets and directions. The white bridge was swarming with nimble black dots. And when you considered that each dot had a mouth with which it was now planning to eat lunch, you couldn’t help bursting into laughter. What a singular image of life, the two of them felt, laughing. They now turned back as well; after all, they too were human and beginning to get hungry; and the closer they drew to shore, the larger the ants became; and then they disembarked and were dots themselves, just like the others. But they kept strolling blissfully up and down beneath the light-green trees. Many curious people turned to look at this strange pair: the woman in her long white gown whose train swept the ground and the churl of a lad who didn’t even have on clean trousers, who stood in such insolent contrast to the lady he accompanied. Thus do people wax indignant and form false judgments about their fellow man. All at once someone came striding quickly up to Kaspar. Indeed, it was someone who had every reason to greet him in this fashion, namely Klaus, who hadn’t seen his brother in years. Behind him came their sister and another gentleman, and now there was a general exchange of greetings. The stranger’s name was Sebastian.