Steppenwolf

Harry Haller’s Records “For Madmen Only”

The day had gone by just as days go by. I had killed it in accordance with my primitive and retiring way of life. I had worked for an hour or two and perused the pages of old books. I had had pains for two hours, as elderly people do. I had taken a powder and been very glad when the pains consented to disappear. I had lain in a hot bath and absorbed its kindly warmth. Three times the post had come with undesired letters and circulars to look through. I had done my breathing exercises, but found it convenient today to omit the thought exercises. I had been for an hour’s walk and seen the loveliest feathery cloud patterns pencilled against the sky. That was very delightful. So was the reading of the old books. So was the lying in the warm bath. But, taken all in all, it had not been exactly a day of rapture. No, it had not even been a day brightened with happiness and joy. Rather, it had been just one of those days which for a long while now had fallen to my lot; the moderately pleasant, the wholly bearable and tolerable, lukewarm days of a discontented middle-aged man; days without special pains, without special cares, without particular worry, without despair; days which put the question quietly of their own accord whether the time has not come to follow the example of Adalbert Stifter and have a fatal accident while shaving.

But for the present, there you stand, beautiful and quiet as ever, and I love you for it.”

From the black mouth of an alley a man appeared with startling suddenness at my elbow, a lone man going his homeward way with weary step. He wore a cap and a blue blouse, and above his shoulders he carried a signboard fixed on a pole, and in front of him an open tray suspended by straps such as pedlars carry at fairs. He walked on wearily in front of me without looking round. Otherwise I should have bidden him a good evening and given him a cigar. I tried to read the device on his standard⁠—a red signboard on a pole⁠—in the light of the next lamp; but it swayed to and fro and I could decipher nothing. Then I called out and asked him to let me read his placard. He stopped and held his pole a little steadier. Then I could read the dancing reeling letters:

Anarchist Evening Entertainment

Magic Theatre

Entrance Not For Everybody

“I’ve been looking for you,” I shouted with delight. “What is this Evening Entertainment? Where is it? When?”

He was already walking on.

“Not for everybody,” he said dully with a sleepy voice. He had had enough. He was for home, and on he went.

“Stop,” I cried, and ran after him. “What have you got there in your box? I want to buy something from you.”

Thus it was I found myself late at night in a distant and unfamiliar part of the town; and there I went into a public house from which there came the lively sound of dance music. Over the entrance as I went in I read “The Black Eagle” on the old signboard. Within I found it was a free night⁠—crowds, smoke, the smell of wine, and the clamour of voices, with dancing in a room at the back, whence issued the frenzy of music. I stayed in the nearer room where there were none but simple folk, some of them poorly dressed, whereas behind in the dance-hall smart people were also to be seen. Carried forward by the crowd, I soon found myself near the bar, wedged against a table at which sat a pale and pretty girl against the wall. She wore a thin dance-frock cut very low and a withered flower in her hair. She gave me a friendly and observant look as I came up and with a smile moved to one side to make room for me.

“May I?” I asked and sat down beside her.

“Of course, you may,” she said. “But who are you?”

“Thanks,” I replied. “I cannot possibly go home, cannot, cannot. I’ll stay here with you if you’ll let me. No, I can’t go back home.”

She nodded as though to humour me, and as she nodded I observed the curl that fell from her temple to her ear, and I saw that the withered flower was a camellia.

Soon Hermine appeared once more. She was not pleased with me. She scolded me and said that I was not there to wear such a face and sit idling at tea-tables. I was to pull myself together, please, and dance. What, I knew no one? That was not necessary. Were there, then, no girls there who met with my approval?

I pointed out one of the two, and the more attractive, who happened at the moment to be standing near us. She looked enchanting in her pretty velvet dress with her short luxuriant blonde hair and her rounded womanly arms. Hermine insisted that I should go up to her forthwith and ask her to dance. I shrank back in despair.

“Indeed, I cannot do it,” I said in my misery. “Of course, if I were young and good-looking⁠—but for a stiff old hack like me who can’t dance for the life of him⁠—she would laugh at me!”

Hermine looked at me contemptuously.

“And that I should laugh at you, of course, doesn’t matter. What a coward you are! Everyone risks being laughed at when he addresses a girl. That’s always at stake. So take the risk, Harry, and if the worst come to the worst let yourself be laughed at. Otherwise it’s all up with my belief in your obedience.⁠ ⁠…”

She was obdurate. I got up automatically and approached the young beauty just as the music began again.