Doctor Faustus (70 page)

“He knows you can take a joke.”

“So I can. But he did not need to rub it in like that, after Serenus had borne down so hard with his loyalist propaganda.”

“He is a schoolmaster. We have to let him instruct and correct.”

“With red ink, yes. At the moment I feel quite indifferent to both of them—now I am here and you have something to tell me.”

“Quite right. And when we talk about the excursion we are actually on the subject—a subject about which you could oblige me very much.”

“Oblige you?”

“Tell me, what do you think of Marie Godeau?”

“The Godeau? Everybody must like her—surely you do too?”

“Like is not quite the right word. I will confess to you that ever since Zurich she has been very much in my mind, quite seriously, so that it is hard to bear the thought of the meeting as a mere episode, after which she will go away and I may never see her again. I feel as though I should like—as though I must—always see her and have her about me.”

Schwerdtfeger stood still and looked at the speaker, first in the one eye and then in the other.

“Really?” said he, going on again, with bent head.

“It is true,” Adrian assured him. “I am sure you won’t take it ill of me for confiding in you. It is precisely because I feel I can rely on you.”

“You may rely on me,” Rudolf murmured.

Adrian went on: “Look at it humanly speaking. I am getting on in years—I am by now forty. Would you, as my friend, want me to spend the rest of my life in this cloister? Consider me, I say, as a human being who suddenly realizes, with a sort of pang at the lateness of the hour, that he would like a real home, a companion congenial in the fullest sense of the word; in short, a warmer and more human atmosphere round him. Not only for the sake of comfort, to be better bedded down; but most of all because he hopes to get from it good and fine things for his working energy and enthusiasm, for the human content of his future work.”

Schwerdtfeger was silent for a few paces. Then he said in a depressed tone: “You’ve said human and human being four times. I’ve counted. Frankness for frankness: something shrinks together inside me, it makes me squirm when you use the word as you do use it in reference to yourself. It sounds so incredibly unsuitable—yes, humiliating, in your mouth. Excuse me saying so. Has your music been inhuman up till now? Then it owes its greatness to its inhumanity. Forgive the simplicity of the remark, but I would not want to hear any humanly inspired work from you.”

“No? You really mean that? And yet you have already three times played one before the public? And had it dedicated to you? I know you are not saying cruel things to me on purpose. But don’t you think it’s cruel to let me know that only out of inhumanity I am what I am and that humanity is not becoming to me? Cruel, and thoughtless—anyhow cruelty always comes of thoughtlessness. That I have nothing to do with humanity, may have nothing to do with it, that is said to me by the very person who had the amazing patience to win me over for the human and persuaded me to say du; the person in whom for the first time in my life I found human warmth.”

“It seems to have been a temporary makeshift.”

“And suppose it were? Suppose it were a matter of getting into practice, a preliminary stage, and none the less worth while for all that? A man came into my life; by his heartfelt holding out he overcame death—you might really put it like that. He released the human in me, taught me happiness. It may never be known or be put in any biography. But will that diminish its importance, or dim the glory which in private belongs to it?”

“You know how to turn things very flatteringly for me.”

“I don’t turn them, I just state them as they are.”

“Anyhow, we are not speaking of me but of Marie Godeau. In order always to see her and have her about you, as you say, you must take her for your wife.”

“That is my wish and hope.”

“Oh! Does she know?”

“I am afraid not. I am afraid I do not command the means of expression to bring my feelings and desires home to her. It embarrasses me to play the languishing swain in the company of others.”

“Why don’t you go to see her?”

“Because I shrink from the idea of coming down on her with confessions and offers when on account of my awkwardness she has probably not the faintest idea of my feelings. In her eyes I am still the interesting recluse. I dread her failure to understand and the hasty repulse that might be the result.”

“Why don’t you write her?”

“Because it might embarrass her even more. She would have to answer, and I don’t know if she is good at writing. What pains she would have to take to spare me if she had to say no! And how it would hurt me! I dread the abstractness of an exchange like that—it strikes me it could be a danger to my happiness. I don’t like to think of Marie, alone, by herself, uninfluenced by any personal contact—I might almost say personal pressure—having to write an answer to a written proposal. You see, I am afraid of both ways: the direct attack and the approach by letter.”

“Then what way do you see?”

“I told you that in this difficult situation you could be a great help to me. I would send you to her.”

“Me?”

“You, Rudi. Would it seem so absurd to you if you were to consummate your service to me—I am tempted to say to my salvation—by being my mediator, my agent, my interpreter between me and life, my advocate for happiness? Posterity might not hear of it—again, perhaps it might. It is an idea of mine, an inspiration, the way something comes when you compose. You must always assume beforehand that the inspiration is not altogether new. What is there in notes themselves, that is altogether new? But the way it looks just here, in this light, in this connection, something that has always been there may be new, newalive, one might say; original and unique.”

“The newness is my least concern. What you are saying is new enough to stagger me. If I understand you, I am to pay your addresses to Marie for you, ask for her hand for you?”

“You do understand me—you could scarcely mistake. The ease with which you do so speaks for the naturalness of the thing.”

“Do you think so? Why don’t you send your Serenus?”

“You are probably making fun of my Serenus. Obviously it amuses you to picture my Serenus as love’s messenger. We just spoke of personal impressions which the girl should not be quite without in making her decision. Don’t be surprised that I imagine she would incline her ear to your words more than to anything such a sober-sides as my Serenus could say.”

“I do not feel in the least like joking, Adri—because in the first place it goes to my heart and makes me feel solemn, the role you assign to me in your life, and even before posterity. I asked about Zeitblom because he has been your friend so much longer—“

“Yes, longer.”

“Good, then only longer. But don’t you think this only would make his task easier and himself better at it?”

“Listen, how would it be if we just dropped him out of our minds? In my eyes he has nothing to do with love-affairs and that sort of thing. It is you, not he, in whom I have confided, you know the whole story, I have opened to you the most secret pages in the book of my heart, as they used to say. If you now open them to her and let her read; if you talk to her of me, speak well of me, by degrees betray
my
feelings, and the life-wishes bound up with them! Try her, gently, appealingly—‘nicely,’ the way you have—try if she, well, yes, if she could love me! Will you? You don’t have to bring me her final consent—God forbid! A little encouragement is quite enough as a conclusion to your mission. If you bring me that much back, that the thought of sharing my life with me is not utterly repugnant to her, not exactly monstrous—then my turn will come and I will speak with her and her aunt myself.”

They had left the Rohmbühel on their left and walked through the little pine wood behind it, where the water was dripping from the boughs. Now they struck into the path at the edge of the village, which brought them back home. Here and there a cottager or peasant saluted by name the long-standing lodger of the Schweigestills. Rudolf, after a little while, began again: “You may be sure that it will be easy for me to speak well of you. So much the more, Adri, because you praised me so to her. But I will be quite open with you—as open as you have been with me. When you asked me what I thought of Marie Godeau, I had the answer ready that everybody must like her. I will confess that there was more in that answer than there seemed. I should never have admitted it to you if you had not, as you put it with such old-world poetry, let me read in the book of your heart.”

“You see me truly impatient for your confession.”

“You’ve really heard it already. The girl—you don’t like the word—the woman, then, Marie—I am not indifferent to her either; and when I say not indifferent, even that is not quite the right way to put it. She is the nicest, loveliest feminine creature, I think, that has come my way. Even in Zurich—after I had played, I had played you and was feeling warm and susceptible, she already charmed me. And here—you know it was I suggested the excursion, and in the interval, as you do not know, I had seen her: I had tea in Pension Gisela, with her and Tante Isabeau, we had such a nice time… I repeat, Adri, that I only come to speak of it on account of our present talk and our mutual frankness.”

Leverkühn was silent a little. Then he said, in an oddly faltering and neutral voice: “No, I did not know that—about your feelings nor about the tea. I seem to have been so ridiculous as to forget that you ars flesh and blood too and not wrapped up in asbestos against the attraction of the lovely and precious. So you love her, or let us say, you are in love with her. But now let me ask you one thing: does it stand so that our intentions cut across each other, so that you want to ask her to be your wife?”

Schwerdtfeger seemed to consider. He said: “No, I hadn’t thought of that yet.”

“No? Did you think you would simply seduce her?”

“How you talk, Adrian! Don’t say such things! No, I hadn’t thought of that either.”

“Well, then, let me tell you that your confession, your open and gratifying confession, is much more likely to make me stick to my request than to put me off it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it in more than one sense. I thought of you for this service of love because you would be much more in your element than, let us say, Serenus Zeitblom. You give out something he has not got to give, which seems to be favourable to my wishes and hopes. But aside from this: it seems now that you even to a certain extent share my feelings, though not, as you assure me, my hopes. You will speak out of your own feelings, for me and my hopes. I cannot possibly think of a more ordained or desirable wooer.”

“If you look at it like that—“

“Do not think I see it only in that light. I see it also in the light of a sacrifice, and you can certainly demand that I should look at it like that. Demand it then, with all the emphasis you can summon! For that means that you, the sacrifice recognized as sacrifice, still want to make it. You make it in the spirit of the role that you play in my life, as a final contribution to the merit you have acquired for the sake of my humanity; the service which perhaps may remain hidden, or perhaps be revealed. Do you consent?”

Rudolf answered: “Yes, I will go and do your errand to the best of my powers.”

“We will shake hands on it,” said Adrian, “when you leave.”

They had got back to the house, and Schwerdtfeger had still time to have a bite with his friend in the Nikesaal. Gereon Schweigestill had put the horse in for him: despite Rudolf’s plea not to trouble himself, Adrian accompanied him to the station, bouncing on the seat of the little cart.

“No, it is the right thing to do, this time quite particularly,” he declared.

The accommodating local train drew up at the little Pfeiffering halt. The two clasped hands through the open window.

“Not another word,” said Adrian: “Only ‘nicely’!”

He raised his arm as he turned to go. He never again saw the traveller whom the train bore away. He only received a letter from him—a letter to which he denied all answer.

CHAPTER XLII

T
he next time I was with him, ten or eleven days later, the letter was already in his hands and he announced to me his definite decision not to answer it. He looked pale and made the impression of a man who has had a heavy blow. A tendency, which indeed I had noticed in him some time back, to walk with his head and torso slightly bent to one side was now more marked. Still he was, or purported to be, perfectly calm, even cool, and seemed almost to need to excuse himself for his shoulder-shrugging composure over the treachery he had been the victim of.

“I hardly think,” he said, “you expected any outburst of moral indignation. A disloyal friend. Well, what of it? I cannot feel greatly outraged at the way of the world. It is bitter, of course; you ask yourself whom you can trust, when your own right hand strikes you in the breast. But what will you have? Friends are like that today. What remains with me is chagrin—and the knowledge that I deserve to be whipped.”

I asked what he had to be ashamed of.

“Of behaviour,” he answered, “so silly that it reminds me of a schoolboy who finds a bird’s nest and out of sheer joy shows it to another boy who then goes and steals it.”

What could I say except: “It is no sin or shame to be trusting, surely; they are the portion of the thief.”

If only I could have met his self-reproaches with a little more conviction! But the truth was that I agreed with him. His whole attitude, the whole set-up with the second-hand wooing, and Rudolf of all people as go-between: I found it forced, devious, unseemly. I needed only to imagine that instead of speaking myself to my Helene, instead of using my own tongue, I had sent some attractive friend of mine to tell her my love, to see the whole equivocal absurdity of what he had done. But why then object to his remorse—if remorse it was that spoke in his words and manner? He had lost friend and beloved at one blow. And by his own fault, one must admit. If only one could have been quite certain—if only I myself had been certain—that we were dealing with a fault, an unconscious false step, a fatal lack of judgment! If only the suspicion had not stolen into my brooding mind that he had to some extent foreseen what would happen and that it had come about as he wanted it to! Could he have seriously conceived the idea that what Rudolf “gave out”—in other words the young man’s undeniable sexual appeal—could be made to work and woo for him, Adrian? Was it credible that he had counted on it? Sometimes the speculation arose in my mind that while putting it as though urging the other to a sacrifice, he had elected himself as the actual victim; that he deliberately brought together what really did belong together, in an affinity of “niceness” and charm in order to abdicate and retreat again into his fastness. But such an idea was more like me than it was like him. Such a motive, so soft and sacrificial, such abnegation might have sprung from my reverence for him and lain at the bottom of an apparent gaucherie, a so-called stupidity that he was supposed to have committed. But events were to bring me face to face with a reality harsher, colder, crueller than my good nature would have been capable of without stiffening in icy horror. That was a reality without witness or proof; I recognized it only by its staring gaze; and for all of me it shall remain dumb, for I am not the man to give it words.