"How strong you are," she said thoughtfully.
"You mean bulky, don't you?"
"No, I mean muscular," she laughed softly.
It was not a very appropriate beginning. Sadly and angrily, I continued to row. After a while I asked her to tell me something about her life.
"What would you like to hear?"
"Everything," I said. "Preferably a love story. Then I'll be able to tell you one of my own in turn. It is very brief and beautiful and it will amuse you."
"Well, let's hear it!"
"No, you first. You already know much more about me than I do about you. I would like to know if you've ever been really in love or whether--as I'm afraid--you are far too intelligent and proud for that."
Erminia pondered for a while.
"That's another of your romantic notions," she said, "to have a woman tell you stories at night in the middle of a lake. Unfortunately I can't do it. You poets are accustomed to finding words for everything beautiful and you don't even grant that people have hearts if they are less talkative about their feelings than you. Well, you couldn't be more wrong in my case, for I don't think anyone can love more passionately. I am in love with a man who is married, and he loves me just as much. Yet neither of us knows whether we will ever be able to live together. We write to each other and occasionally we meet..."
"Can I ask whether this love makes you happy or miserable, or both?"
"Oh, love isn't there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure."
This I understood so deeply that I was unable to repress a little moan, which escaped my lips instead of a reply. She heard it.
"Ah," she said, "so you know what it's like. And you are so young still! Do you want to tell me about it now--but don't unless you really want to."
"Perhaps another time, Erminia. I don't feel up to it now and I'm sorry if I've spoiled your evening by bringing up the subject. Shall we turn back?"
"As you wish. How far from shore are we actually?"
I made no reply but dipped the oars violently into the water, swung the boat about, and pulled as though a storm were drawing near. The boat glided rapidly over the water. Amid the confusion and anguish and mortification seething within me, I felt sweat pouring down my face; I shivered at the same time. When I realized how close I had been to playing the suitor on his knees, the lover rejected with motherly and kindly understanding, a shudder ran down my spine. At least I had been spared that, and I would simply have to come to terms with my misery on my own. I rowed back like one possessed.
Erminia was somewhat taken aback when I left her as soon as we stepped on shore. The lake was as smooth, the music as lighthearted, and the paper moons as colorful and festive as before, yet it all seemed stupid and ridiculous to me now. I felt like hitting the fop in the velvet coat, who still carried his guitar ostentatiously on a silk band around his neck. And there were still fireworks to come. It was all so childish.
I borrowed a few francs from Richard, pushed my hat back, and marched off, out of town, on and on, hour after hour until I began to feel sleepy. I lay down in a meadow but woke again within the hour, wet with dew, stiff, shivering with cold, and walked on to the nearest village. It was early morning now. Reapers on their way to mow clover were in the streets, drowsy farmworkers stared at me wide-eyed from stable doors, everywhere there was evidence of farmers pursuing their summer's work. You should have stayed a farmer, I told myself, and stalked shamefaced through the village and strode on until the first warmth of the sun allowed me to rest. At the edge of a beech grove I flopped down on the dry grass and slept in the sun until late afternoon. When I awoke with my head full of the aroma of the meadow and my limbs agreeably heavy, as they can only be after lying on God's dear earth, the fete, the trip on the lake, and the whole affair seemed remote, sad, and half forgotten, like a novel read months ago.
I stayed away three whole days, let the sun tan me, and considered whether I should not head straight home--now that I was underway--and help my father bring in the second crop of hay.
Of course, my misery was not overcome as easily as all that. After I returned to the city, I fled the sight of Erminia. But it was not possible to keep this up very long. Whenever we met afterward, the misery rose up again in my throat.
Chapter Four
THE MISERY OF UNREQUITED LOVE accomplished what had been beyond my father's powers. It made me into a hardened drinker, and the effect of drink on my life has been more lasting than anything I have described so far. The strong sweet god of wine became my faithful friend, as he remains even today. Who is as mighty as he? Who as beautiful, as fantastic, lighthearted, and melancholy? He is hero and magician, tempter and brother of Eros. He can do the impossible; he imbues impoverished hearts with poetry. He transformed me, a peasant and a recluse, into a king, a poet, and a sage. He fills the emptied vessels of life with new destinies and drives the stranded back into the swift currents of action.
Such is the nature of wine. Yet, as with all delightful gifts and arts, it must be cherished, sought out, and understood at great cost and effort. Few can accomplish this feat and the god of wine vanquishes thousands upon thousands; he ages them, destroys them, or extinguishes the spirit's flame. However, he invites those who are dear to him to feast and builds them rainbow bridges to blissful isles. When they are weary, he cushions their heads; he embraces and comforts them like a mother when they become melancholy. He transforms the confusions of life into great myths and plays the hymn of creation on a mighty harp.
At other times he is childlike, with long, silky curls, narrow shoulders, and delicate limbs. He will nestle against your heart, raise his innocent face up to you, and gaze at you dreamily, astonished, out of big, fond eyes in whose depths memories of paradise and kinship with a god surge and sparkle like a forest spring. The sweet god also resembles a stream wandering with deep rushing sounds through the spring night; and resembles an ocean that cradles sun and storms in its cool waves.
When he communes with his favorites, the storm tide of secrets, memories, poetry, and premonitions floods and intoxicates them. The known world shrinks and vanishes, and the soul hurls itself with fear and joy into the uncharted distances of the unknown where everything is strange and yet familiar, and the language of music, of poets, and of dreams is spoken.
I must first recount how I discovered this secret.
Sometimes I would forget myself for hours and be perfectly happy--I would study, write, or listen to Richard play the piano. Yet not one day passed without some slight unhappiness. At times it would not overwhelm me until I had gone to bed, so that I moaned and leaped up, only to fall asleep late at night, sobbing. Or it would stir within me after I had seen Erminia Aglietti. But usually it would come upon me in the late afternoon, at the onset of those beautiful, wearisome summer evenings. I would walk down to the lake, untie one of the boats, and row until I was tired and hot, but then I would find it impossible to return home. Into a tavern then or a beer-garden. There I sampled various wines, and drank and brooded. The next day I occasionally felt half sick. A dozen times I was overcome by such ghastly misery and self-disgust that I resolved to stop drinking altogether. Yet then I would go out and drink again and again. Gradually, as I learned to distinguish among the wines and their effects, I began to enjoy them with a genuine awareness. Finally I decided in favor of the dark-red Veltliner. The first glass tasted harsh and provocative, but then it clouded my thoughts, so that they became calm and dreamy; as I continued to drink, it cast its spell over me and began to compose poems as if by itself. Then I would behold myself surrounded by all the landscapes I had ever loved, bathed in a delicious light, and I could see myself wandering through them, singing, dreaming. Then I sensed life coursing through me. This whole experience resolved itself into comfortable melancholy, as though I heard folksongs played on a violin, and knew of some fortune somewhere that I had been close to and that had passed me by.
It so happened that I gradual
ly drank less often by myself, and now did so in the company of all sorts of people. As soon as I was no longer alone, the wine affected me differently; I became gregarious yet not exuberant. I felt a strange cool fever. An aspect of my character suddenly blossomed forth that belonged less to the species of decorative garden flower than to the species of thistle or nettle. As I became more eloquent a sharp, cool spirit would take hold of me, making me self-assured, superior, critical, and witty. If there were people whose presence irked me, I quickly began needling them--delicately at first, then coarsely and stubbornly until they left. Since childhood, I had never found people indispensable or had great need of them. Now I began to regard them with a critical, ironic eye. I preferred inventing and telling stories in which people's relationships with one another were represented satirically or were bitterly mocked. I had no idea how I came upon this deprecatory tone; it erupted from me like a long-festering sore and it was to stay with me for years. If, for a change, I happened to spend an evening drinking by myself again, I would again dream of mountains, stars, and melancholy music.
During this time I wrote a number of sketches on society, culture, and contemporary art, a venomous little book which was the product of my barroom conversations. My historical studies, which I still pursued assiduously, provided me with background material that I used as a kind of underpinning for my satires.
This book helped me become a regular contributor to one of the larger newspapers, and I now had almost enough money to live on. These sketches soon afterward were published in book form and were even quite successful. I now abandoned philology altogether. I had reached the upper echelons; connections with German periodicals were forged as a matter of course and raised me from my previous obscurity and impoverishment into the circle of recognized authors. I was earning my living; I relinquished scholarship. I was sailing rapidly toward the despicable life of a professional man of letters.
Despite my success and my vanity, despite my satires and my unrequited love, the warm glow of youth--its lightheartedness and sadness--still enveloped me. Despite my gift for irony and a harmless touch of the supercilious, I had not lost sight of the goal of my dreams--some great fortune, a completion of myself. I had no idea what form it would take. I only felt that life would have to toss some very special luck at my feet--perhaps it would be fame or love, perhaps a satisfaction of my longing and an elevation of my being. I was like a page who dreams of noble ladies, accolades, and princely honors.
I thought I was on the verge of some momentous happening. I did not know that everything I had so far experienced was mere chance, that my life still lacked a deep individual melody of its own. I did not know yet that I suffered from a longing which neither love nor fame can satisfy. Therefore I enjoyed my slight and somewhat questionable success with all the exuberance I could command. It felt good to be in the company of intelligent people and to see their faces turn eagerly and attentively to me when I spoke.
At times I was struck by the fervor with which these souls longed for some form of redemption. Yet what strange paths they were taking toward that goal. Though belief in God was considered foolish, almost in bad taste, people believed in names like Schopenhauer, Buddha, Zarathustra, and many others. There were young unknown poets who performed solemn rites before statues and paintings in fashionably furnished apartments. They would have been ashamed to do so before God, but they knelt down before the Zeus of Otricoli. There were miserably dressed ascetics who tortured themselves with abstinence: their god's name was either Buddha or Tolstoy. There were artists who, by resorting to wallpaper in carefully selected color schemes, to music, food, wines, perfumes, or cigars, induced states of extraordinary and unusual excitement in themselves. They discoursed easily and with affected naturalness about musical lines, color congruences, and similar matters and were always looking for the "personal" touch, which generally consisted of some small, harmless self-deception or quirk. Though I found this spectacle amusing and ridiculous, I sensed how much deep-felt longing and genuine passion flared up and was consumed thus.
Of all the fantastically dressed, fashionable poets, artists, and philosophers whose acquaintance I made during that time, I cannot think of one who has accomplished anything noteworthy. Among them there was a north German my age, a pleasant little fellow, a delicate and dear person who was sensitive to everything artistic. He was considered one of the great poets of the future, and I remember listening to him recite his poems, which possessed an exceptionally fragrant, soulful quality. He was the only one of us who might have become a real poet. Later I heard by chance what happened to him: having been intimidated by bad reviews of one of his books, the hypersensitive poet withdrew altogether and fell into the hands of a patron who, instead of spurring him on, brought about his complete ruin in a short time. He lived a vapid aesthete's existence at his patron's villa with that man's nervous ladies and began to think of himself as a misunderstood hero; sadly misled, he went about destroying his reason systematically with pre-Raphaelite ecstasies and Chopin's music.
I realized the danger of frequenting this circle and later came to think of this fledgling crew of eccentrically dressed poets and beautiful souls with nothing but horror and pity. Well, my peasant nature luckily kept me from falling prey to this circus.
Nobler and more rewarding than fame, wine, love, and wisdom was friendship. It alone stirred me out of my inborn sluggishness and kept my youth unspoiled and as fresh as the dawn. Even today I know of nothing more delicious than an honest and forthright friendship between two men, and if something like homesickness for my youth overcomes me during periods of reflection, I think back upon nothing with as much longing as my student friendships.
Since my infatuation with Erminia, I had neglected Richard. I did not even notice it at first, but after a few weeks I began to feel guilty. I confessed everything to him; he told me that he had seen misfortune coming and pitied me. I renewed our bonds as unreservedly and enviously as ever. What ease and agility in dealing with people and life I acquired during that time I owe entirely to him. He was handsome and glad in body and soul, and life did not seem to have a darker side for him. Though he was intelligent and worldly enough to be aware of the passions and confusions of our time, they passed over him without injuring him. His walk, his speech, in fact his entire being, were supple, lighthearted, and immensely likable.
However, he showed little appreciation of my liking for wine. He would join me occasionally, but for the most part he had had his fill after two glasses and regarded my far greater consumption with naive astonishment. But when he noticed that I was suffering or about to succumb to a fit of melancholy, he would play music for me, read to me, or take me on walks. During these small expeditions we were often as high-spirited as little boys. Once, I remember, we lay in a wooded valley at noontime, threw pine cones at each other, and sang irreverent verses to pious tunes. The clear swift stream splashed so cool and inviting that at length we undressed and lay down in the cold water. Then it occurred to Richard to do a pantomime. He sat down on a mossy rock and played the Lorelei, while I drifted past him like the boatman in his ship. He looked so girlishly demure and made such faces that I, who was to affect the deepest woe, had all I could do to contain my laughter. Suddenly we heard voices. A group of tourists appeared on the footpath and we had to hide our nakedness quickly under a mound that jutted out over the stream. As the blissfully ignorant troupe passed us, Richard emitted a series of highly peculiar noises, grunting, squeaking, and hissing in turn. The people stopped dead in their tracks, turned around, peered into the water, and were on the point of discovering us when Richard popped out of his hiding place, looked at the indignant troupe, and intoned with a deep voice and priestly gesture: "Go your way in peace." He ducked away immediately, pinched my arm, and said: "That was an imitation too."
"An imitation of what?"
"Pan frightens the herdsmen," he answered, laughing. "Unfortunately there were a few women among them."
Though
he took little notice of my historical studies, he soon shared my infatuation with St. Francis of Assisi. But he would make an occasional crack even about him, which would make me furious. We imagined the blessed sufferer wandering through the Umbrian landscape, enthusiastic, like a big lovable child, rejoicing in God and filled with humble love of all mankind. Together we read his immortal hymn to the sun and knew it almost by heart. Once, as we were returning from a steamboat excursion across the lake, the evening breeze ruffling the golden water, Richard asked softly: "How does our saint put it?"
And I quoted: "Laudato si, misignore, per frate vento e per aere e nubilo e sereno et omne tempo!"
When we quarreled or insulted each other, it always ended with Richard hurling such a profusion of amusing nicknames at me that I was soon forced to laugh and my anger lost its sting. The only time my friend was even a little serious was when he played or listened to a piece by one of his favorite composers. Yet even such an event he would interrupt with a joke. Still, his love of art was a pure and heartfelt devotion and his feeling for what was genuine and important seemed to me infallible.
He had a wonderful knack for the delicate and fine art of consoling, of sympathetic sharing and easing of sorrow when one of his friends was in distress. If he happened to find me in ill humor, he would amuse me with innumerable anecdotes and his voice then had a calming and cheering quality that I was able to resist only rarely.
Richard showed a certain respect for me because I was more serious than he; yet, my physique impressed him far more. He boasted about it in front of friends and was proud to have a friend who could have strangled him with one hand. He set great store in physical prowess and agility; he taught me tennis, rowed and swam with me, took me horseback riding, and was not satisfied until I played billiards as skillfully as he. It was his favorite game, and he played it not only masterfully but with artistry, and was always particularly lively and witty at it.