Herman stood up. He picked up his satchel and put it under his arm. He put his hat upon his head. He was an old man.
“Herr Professor,” muttered Joseph.
But Herman walked away. His step was slow and feeble. The young man watched him go. A pattern of light and shade lay on his bent shoulders. For a long time afterwards, Joseph sat on the bench, his head bowed, his fingers placed over the swastika on his arm as though to hide it.
He was not too early for his first class, and his largest, after all. They were already assembled, the young men. Some of them were in the new uniform. Because he was so popular, many students had to stand at the rear of the room. They preferred the discomfort to being in the class of another. His classes always ended on a burst of involuntary applause, and utter silence always prevailed when he was speaking. They all loved him. They delighted in his phrases, his gentle ironic humor, his sudden flashes of lyrical prose. They loved his lack of affectation, his warm humanity, his tenderness for them, his friendliness and simplicity. A word of praise from him would send a student off in a rosy daze, which lasted for hours. When he entered his classroom, every eye turned to him in excited anticipation, affection, and respectful pleasure. When they greeted him he would return the greeting with kind delight, as though grateful, and a little confused and surprised.
They greeted him as usual with glances of affection, smiles, anticipation. Many of them stood up, thrusting out stiff arms, and crying: “Heil Hitler!” Their mates watched this demonstration with indifference or amusement or approbration and some with contempt.
But all of them remarked that the Herr Professor seemed preoccupied, even distracted, and that his stooped figure showed marked decrepitude and listlessness. He mounted his platform. He listened to their greetings. He smiled, and it was the smile of a man in deep suffering. Only his eyes were intensely bright and alert, though sunken behind their spectacles.
He lifted his hand. Silence fell immediately, respectful and waiting. Books were open. His satchel lay unopened before him. All at once every student was aware that something momentous was about to take place, something frightfully important. The silence in the great room became thick and breathless. Every head strained forward, and every smile was wiped away. The very sunlight, streaming through the ancient windows, had an ominous glitter in it. Beyond the room, with its closed doors, other classes were convening with joyful noise and bustle. But in this room there was an abrupt and heavy silence.
He looked at them all. His eyes travelled slowly from face to face, as a man looks at a jury, despairing and impotent, but pleading. He spoke, his voice stow, lifeless, almost inaudible at first:
“I stand before you. I am no longer your teacher. You are no longer my students. You are judge and jury. I am the condemned man. I am self-condemned, waiting for punishment. For I have betrayed you. Today I am confessing my betrayal to you, hoping only that you will understand, and hoping that out of your hatred from me you may take hope and strength for the dark and terrible future.”
They were amazed. They stared at him, hypnotized, blinking. They glanced at each other, as though seeking enlightenment. He saw their faces before him, a little pale, altogether bewildered. He loved them. He was a father confronted by the eyes of his betrayed, lost children.
He said, speaking as though from the depths of profound exhaustion and pain:
“A year ago, even a month ago, or a week ago, or perhaps a day ago, I might have saved you. I did not. That was because I did not quite know myself. Now I can only show you the way to salvation, to save yourselves. Tomorrow, perhaps I can have the consolation of knowing that I have saved a few, if not all. I must borrow a metaphor from a certain Book which few of you know. I must be like the sower it relates, whose seed fell on stony ground, or perished in the hot byways, or was trampled upon on the highway. But perhaps a few of the seeds will fall in fertile earth, and a new harvest shall grow, to feed the soul of a starving Germany.”
He opened his satchel now. He withdrew from it an old book bound in flaking black leather. They stared at it, incredulously, and then at him. He did not open it. He merely pressed his hands on it, and leaned on it, as though it were a rock and he a passer-by, faint with sun and lostness.
Now his face was strained and passionate with pleading and anguish.
“I have taught you that there is no such thing as good or evil. I was an academic fool, dry and ironic, throwing ridicule on the old and ‘narrow’ concepts of theologians. In the academic and scientific worlds there was no good or evil. Art was beautiful, and beyond good or evil. Science saw nothing but survival and theory. This is what I have taught you.
“And I have taught you to look only for form and line, for phrase and liquid movement. I have taught you sterility and the pedant’s castrated laughter. I led you into the temples of Art and showed you beautiful shapes and dead lips. I did not light a fire on the cold altar for you. I said: ‘There is no altar.’ I asked you to admire the shapes in the empty, dusty light.”
He paused. He was breathing with difficulty. “I did not tell you, because I did not know, that anything which is dead, even Art, is without value. I did not know that its function is to live and breathe, to bring a warm beauty and comfort and living hope to men. I said that in a poet’s meter, in an artist’s prose, there was the delight of perfection. But the message in them I did not know, and so could not tell you. Once I knew. But I had forgotten. My crime is my forgetfulness.”
Not a young man moved nor stirred. They might have been statues before him, showing awakened life only in their intent eyes. The grayness of his exhaustion and sorrow deepened on his face. But his voice was still quiet.
“Now I know what I had forgotten: that good and evil exist in the narrowest and most rigid concepts. But we must always try to remember, without sentiment, and without reproach, that men are inherently evil. But what do I mean by ‘evil’? I mean those uneliminated instincts of primeval life, such as self-preservation, murder, violence, and the madness which is the consciousness of wild beasts. Civilization has called these instincts evil, because they conflict with an ordered society in which civilization and its beauties and its goodness can survive, and in which it can go about its slow and painful duty of eliminating man’s primitive nature.
“There are a few men everywhere who are fully men, having freed themselves of this nature. They realize that all men are slowly crawling up from the primordial ooze, but the majority crawl so slowly that their crawling is almost imperceptible. It is the duty of these few to assist the upward crawl. If they fail in their duty, as I have done, the movement is slowed, will even stop, even though men like me throw pretty flowers upon the ooze and try to call attention to the form and shape of their petals and their leaves, while men struggle to their death in the mire beneath.”
He lifted his hands with the slowness and heaviness of a sick man trying to rouse himself. He looked at them with despair.
“How can men like me satisfy our consciences if we run away, or keep silent, and let the ooze envelop once more these poor, half-conscious beasts? We must stand on the high banks, or even descend into the ooze, to give hope and strength, to urge and expostulate, to reach the blind deaf ear, to hearten the inevitable groping towards the light!”
His hands dropped. He leaned again on the book. His head fell on his breast. Not one young man moved a muscle. Only lips parted, as though it were an effort to breathe in that atmosphere of grief.
He lifted his head. They could hardly endure the wild sorrow in his eyes.
“I did not go down into the ooze to you, to help you and hearten you. I ignored the ooze. I called attention to the flowers I threw upon it. I gave you no staff and no rod. I gave you nothing by which you might live. And when the darkest hour came, I did not give you my hand, nor did I call to you. You sat at my table, and I did not give you bread. The table was set with vases and ancient vessels of beauty, and I called your attention to the shapes and the colors of them. But there wa
s no water in them to quench your natural thirst, and no wine to inspirit you. I thought you could live by form alone. And so, you sat there, and one by one you died. And the light went out, and I was alone in the darkness.”
They listened. Some thought the darkness drifted into the room like mist, obscuring faces, changing them. Some thought the room was filled with dying men. They looked at the professor, and it seemed to them that he was all lamentation and despair, all misery and agony.
“And so,” he said, in that strange, but penetrating and whispering voice, “the darkness spread over Germany. And now it is spreading over the whole world. Men like me watched it spread. We saw the lights go out, one by one. We did nothing. We thought to ourselves: ‘It will pass.’ But it is not passing. It is growing thicker and thicker. And those who should have lighted it had only empty lamps in their hands. We sent you out with empty lamps! We drove you into the darkness without a single taper to guide you, without a single call to bring you home!”
His voice had risen. It had become a cry. The students shivered. Some of them uttered faint strangled sounds. But some shot to their feet, crying out savagely: “You are a traitor! You are an enemy of the new Germany! Heil Hitler!”
Instantly confusion prevailed. The turmoil in the hearts of the young men became visible in their contorted, moved, or enraged faces. Many shouted to their fellows in uniform: “Sit down! Take off those swastikas! Be quiet!” Some leaped to their feet and began to strike out with dull blows. Others, terrified or infuriated, struggled to reach the doors, shouting. Cries of “traitor!” “Herr Professor!” “Down, you dogs!” echoed through the great room. Others cried: “He is not finished! Let him speak! Speak, Herr Professor!” And then, fainter and deeper, there were groans of “My God! O my God!”
But Herman watched it all with blind eyes. He swayed a little as he stood on his lonely platform in the midst of that wild and gasping confusion. He had opened the Book. He was looking for a place. It was his awful preoccupation, the tears on his face, his fumbling hands, his bowed head, which brought momentary and suspended order into that room. The young men at the doors, flushed, uniformed and infuriated, paused, and looked back over their shoulders. The young men in their seats leaned forward, the better to listen and see. Dust rose from the floor, choking, turned to gold in the ominous sunlight. And now again there was intense silence.
He looked up. He held out his arms to them. He smiled at them with love and sadness and tenderness.
“I must go away now. I must leave you. I must wait for the death your murderers and your destroyers will prepare for me. But I have this last word for you. Go out, and remember that you can light the empty lamps I have given you. You, by taking thought, by simplicity and fortitude, by hope and faith, by fearlessness and courage, by gentleness and compassion, can save Germany yet, can save the whole world. It is in your hands to do this thing. It is my punishment that I cannot. But I shall leave you with some consolation if I know that you will set your hands against madness and fury, against hatred and oppression, against cruelty and tyranny, against all the spirits of evil which have broken down the gates and have entered the city.
“You must be prepared to fight to the end, and to die. Your work is before you, stern and dreadful. It can end only in agony and death. But you will know that your deaths will be like a fire on a high hill, helping to lead others home, and to peace. That is all I can leave you now: this hope, and all my love, and all my prayers for you.”
He lifted the book. He began to read. His voice was like a great strong wind blowing through the echoing halls of the ages from the lips of a man who had never died, and whose spirit wandered forever among the spirits of men:
“Even the youths shall faint and be weary and the young men shall utterly fall, but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint.”
Every man listened, and to many it seemed that the words sounded like a trumpet, a promise, and a deliverance. All of them, in spite of themselves, were inexpressibly moved. The words were written in fire, invincible and unquenchable, powerful and singing.
He closed the book. He looked at them all, and all his heart and soul was in his eyes, all his pleading. He lifted his hands as though to give them a blessing.
“God be with you, and keep you,” he said, and there were tears in his eyes.
They were silent. Some of them wept openly. Some of them extended hands to him. The young men at the doors hung their heads. He stepped down from the platform, and moved towards a door. The uniformed students hesitated.
And then, one by one, as though ashamed, they fell back, and he went out alone.
19
Therese had not even approached the environs of the University since Eric Reinhardt’s death, though before that she had been a frequent visitor. There was so much there of sanctity, age, urbanity, wisdom, peace and promise, so much of hope and tranquillity. She had seen the libraries of New York, Washington, Paris and Vienna, but the library at this University, even allowing for the partisanship of a national, seemed to her to be vastly superior, Everything that was good in Germany, the very soul of Germany, was in those quiet corridors, the lofty still rooms armored with books. No matter what storms raged in the souls of men, here was sanctuary, here was the voice of enduring greatness.
But today, it was like a house of pestilence to her, a mockery of health and life, a graveyard. The voices of the dead stood mute on their shelves, and there were holes in their ranks, burned out by the fire of hatred, ignorance and bestiality. Heine, Wasserman, Mann: they were absent, and so many more! All at once, even in her distraction, there rose the fierce hope in her, that some day Karl would be so honored by his absence, and that in the public squares the Germany of today would pay him the supreme honor of burning his books! In that way the very soul of his writings would ascend to heaven, would blow over the world, impregnating the minds of men with immortal ashes of thought and nobility. She thought of the funeral pyres of the past, both of men and books. How their incandescence had lighted the dark places of the world with everlasting flame, showing the pits and caverns, and the bridges of progress winding thinly over the abyss! Only by heroic death, selfless, pure and unafraid, could the masses of confused mankind find their way, safely and strongly, to the fields of peace. “Greater love hath no man …” Through her exhausted and incoherent thoughts, it was strange how often these days the quotations of her father (who had been so banal, so gross, so inept and so stupid) would cry out like trumpets. Perhaps it was because not even the tarnish of selfish, narrow and circumscribed minds could forever blacken the shining silver of truth.
She waited in the library, feeling that here was not life, but death. She waited for Kurt Erlich. She remembered, with loathing, that he was a member of the Party. He might be able to help Herman Muehler. She had left Elizabeth Muehler more composed, after that one heart-breaking and agonized cry. Strange, the composure and fortitude of the British! Once, she had believed they came from lack of imagination. Now, she believed they came from some rocky core that could not be shaken.
The library was dim and hushed. She sat in a leather chair, watching the doorway, unconscious of the bent heads of students at distant tables. An old man entered uncertainly, shadowy in the dusk. His steps were faltering; he peered about him, fingering his spectacles. He was bent and tired, and moved as though he could barely see. There was an air about him of distraction and hopelessness, of engrossment with private suffering and despair. Therese watched him with sympathy. Suddenly, a shock forced her upright in her chair, her heart beating with dread and fear. For she saw that the old man was Kurt Erlich.
Incredulous, disbelieving, she stared at him. What a dreadful change had taken place in the burly and vital man! She could hardly recognize him. Even when he saw her, and came towards her, smiling a little, she repudiated his identity. She had not seen him since that night he had visi
ted her home, demanding to see his brother. That had not been so long ago—surely, O God! not more than a week or so ago! But years had passed over him in the interval. His flesh had shrunk, his hair whitened. Furrows were cloven deep in his gray, fallen face. His clothes hung upon him like the clothing of a scarecrow. About his watery and blinking eyes were wrinkles of suffering and sleeplessness. His shaking lips were dry and colorless. He had not shaved recently; she saw the glimmer of silver on his sunken cheeks, his bony chin.
“Kurt!” she gasped, staring at him with distended eyes.
He sat down beside her. The mere effort of walking had made him breathless. In his left temple there was a large bruised spot, purple and suffused. She saw it. The horrible sickness so familiar to her lately struck at her heart. Her legs relaxed suddenly with it, and she could taste salt in her mouth.
“Kurt!” she gasped again, and closed her eyes against the sight of him.
He leaned towards her, and took her hand. “Therese,” he said. His voice was hoarse. His breath in her face was fetid, like the breath of the dying. She had a sudden paralyzing fear that she would be sick, right there before him, in the library. She struggled to control herself, to still the tremors of her revolted stomach. She swallowed the flood of salt water in her mouth. Her leaden face was covered with a film of cold sweat.
She forced herself to open her eyes. Everything swam before her. She tried to smile. For a moment she had forgotten, in her extremity of physical illness, why she had come. She forced herself to remember, forced herself to shut out his face, his dying aspect.
“Kurt, something dreadful has happened.” Her whispered voice could hardly be heard. “They have arrested Herman Muehler—they said he was a Communist—subversive. I do not know. But you can do something, Kurt?”