“Chaos,” Wernicke says. “Is it really chaos? Or is it only so for us? Have you ever considered how the world would be if we had one more sense?”
“No.”
“But with one sense less?”
I reflect. “Then you would be blind, or deaf, or you couldn’t taste. It would make a big difference.”
“And with one sense more? Why should we always be limited to five? Why couldn’t we perhaps develop six someday? Or eight? Or twelve? Wouldn’t the world be completely different? Perhaps with the sixth our concept of time would disappear. Or our concept of space. Or of death. Or of pain. Or of morality. Certainly our present concept of life. We wander through our existence with pretty limited organs. A dog can hear better than any human being. A bat finds its way blind through all obstacles. A butterfly has a radio receiver that enables it to fly for miles directly to its mate. Migrating birds are vastly superior to us in their orientation. Snakes can hear with their skin. There are hundreds of such examples in natural history. So how can we know anything for certain? The extension of one organ or the development of a new one—and the world changes, life changes, and our concept of God changes. Prost!”
I lift my glass and drink. The Moselle is tart and earthy. “And so it’s better to wait till we have a sixth sense, eh?” I say.
“That’s not necessary. You can do what you like. But it’s a good thing to know that one more sense would knock all our conclusions into a cocked hat. That puts an end to too much solemnity, doesn’t it? How’s the wine?”
“Good. How is Fräulein Terhoven? Better?”
“Worse. Her mother was here; she didn’t recognize her.”
“Perhaps she didn’t want to.”
“That’s practically the same thing; she didn’t recognize her. She screamed at her to go away. A typical case.”
“Why?”
“Do you want to listen to a long lecture on schizophrenia, mother complexes, flight from one’s self, and the effects of shock?”
“Yes,” I say. “Today I do.”
“You won’t hear it. Only the essentials. A split personality is usually flight from one’s self.”
“What is one’s self?”
Wernicke looks at me. “We’ll not go into that today. Flight into another personality. Or into several. Usually, however, the patient keeps returning for a shorter or longer period into his own. Not Geneviève. Not for a long time. You, for example, have never seen her as she really is.”
“She seems quite reasonable as she is now,” I say without conviction.
Wernicke laughs. “What is reason? Logical thought?”
I think about the two new senses we are to have and make no reply. “Is she very sick?” I ask.
“According to our experience, she is. But there have been quick and often amazing cures.”
“Cures—from what?”
“From her sickness,” Wernicke says, lighting a cigarette.
“She is often quite happy. Why don’t you leave her the way she is?”
“Because her mother is paying for the treatment,” Wernicke explains dryly. “Besides, she is not happy.”
“Do you believe she would be happier if she were healthy?”
“Probably not. She is sensitive, intelligent, obviously full of imagination, and probably the bearer of a hereditary taint. Qualities that do not necessarily make for happiness. If she had been happy, she would hardly have taken flight.”
“Then why isn’t she left in peace?”
“Yes, why not?” Wernicke says. “I have often asked myself that question. Why operate on the sick when you know the operation will not help? Shall we write down a list of whys? It would be long. One of the whys would be: Why don’t you drink your wine and shut up? And why don’t you pay attention to the night instead of to your immature brain? Why do you talk about life instead of living it?”
He stands up and stretches. “I must make my evening rounds in the closed wards. Want to come along?”
“Yes.”
“Put on a white gown. I’ll take you to a special ward. Afterward you’ll either be sick or able to enjoy your wine with profound thankfulness.”
“The bottle’s empty.”
“I have another in my room. Perhaps we’ll need it. Do you know what’s remarkable? For your twenty-five years you’ve seen a considerable amount of death, suffering, and human idiocy—nevertheless, you seem to have learned nothing from all of it except to ask the silliest questions imaginable. But probably that’s the way of the world—when we have finally learned something we’re too old to apply it—and so it goes, wave after wave, generation after generation. No one learns anything at all from anyone else. Come along!”
We are sitting in the Café Central—Georg, Willy, and I. This night I did not want to stay at home alone. Wernicke has shown me a ward in the insane asylum I had never seen before—where the war casualties are, men with head wounds, men who were buried, and men who went to pieces. In the mild summer evening this ward stood there like a dark dugout amid the song of nightingales. The war, which has already been almost forgotten by everyone, still goes on ceaselessly in these rooms. Grenades explode in these poor ears; the eyes reflect, just as they did four years ago, an incredulous horror; bayonets continue to bore into defenseless stomachs, hourly, tanks crush the screaming wounded, flattening them like flounders; the noise of battle, the crash of hand grenades, the splitting of skulls, the roar of mines, the suffocation in collapsing dugouts, they all have been preserved here through a horrible black magic and go on silently in this pavilion in the midst of roses and summer. Orders are given and inaudible orders are obeyed. Beds are trenches and dugouts, constantly buried and constantly excavated anew; there is dying and killing, strangling and suffocation; gas sweeps through these rooms and agonies of terror find expression in shouts and creeping and horrified groans and tears and often simply in a silent cowering in a corner, compressed into the smallest possible space, with faces pressed hard against the wall—
“Stand up!” youthful voices suddenly shout behind us. A number of guests spring up smartly from their tables. The café orchestra is playing “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles.” This is the fourth time tonight.
It is not the orchestra that is so nationalistic, nor the host. It is a group of young ruffians trying to make themselves important. Every half-hour one of them goes to the orchestra and commands the national anthem. He does this as though he were riding forth to battle. The orchestra does not dare to refuse, and so the anthem rolls out instead of the overture to “Dichter und Bauer.” Then each time comes the command “Stand up!” from all sides—for one has to rise from one’s seat when the national anthem is played, especially since it has brought two million dead, a lost war, and the inflation.
“Stand up!” screams a seventeen-year-old ruffian who could not have been more than twelve at the end of the war.
“Kiss my ass,” I reply, “and go back to school.”
“Bolshevist!” shouts the youngster, who almost certainly doesn’t know what that means. “Here are some Bolshevists, comrades!”
The purpose of these good-for-nothings is to start a row.
They keep ordering the national anthem, and each time a number of people do not get up because it seems so silly. Then with blazing eyes the brawlers descend on them, looking for a fight. Somewhere a couple of cashiered officers are directing them and feeling important too.
A dozen are now standing around our table. “Stand up or there’ll be trouble!”
“What trouble?” Willy asks.
“You’ll see soon enough! Cowards! Betrayers of your country! Up!”
“Get away from our table,” Georg says. “Do you think we need directions from minors?”
A man of about thirty pushes his way through the crowd. “Have you no respect for your national anthem?”
“Not in cafés when it’s being used to start a brawl,” Georg replies. “And now cut out this nonsense and leave us in peace!”
“Nonsense? Do you call a German’s most sacred feelings nonsense? You’ll pay for that! Where were you during the war, you shirker?”
“In the trenches,” Georg replies, “unfortunately.”
“Anyone can say that! Prove it!”
Willy gets up. He is a giant. The music has just stopped. “Prove it?” Willy says. “Here!” He lifts one leg a little, turns his posterior lightly toward the speaker and there is an explosion like a medium-sized cannon. “That,” Willy says conclusively, “is all I learned from the Prussians. Formerly I had nicer manners.”
The leader of the crowd has sprung back involuntarily. “You said coward, didn’t you?” Willy asks grinning. “You seem a little jumpy yourself!”
The host has come up accompanied by three husky waiters. “Quiet, gentlemen, I must insist! No arguments here!”
The orchestra is now playing “Birdsong at Evening.” The defenders of the national anthem retire with dark threats. It’s possible that they will fall on us outside. We look them over; they’re sitting together close to the door. There are about twenty of them. The battle will be pretty hopeless for us.
But suddenly unexpected help arrives. A dried-up little man approaches our table. He is Bodo Ledderhose, a dealer in hides and old iron. We were with him in France. “Children,” he says, “I’ve just noticed what’s going on. Am here with my club. Over behind those columns. We’re a full dozen
and can give you a hand if those ass-faces want to start anything. Agreed?”
“Agreed, Bodo. You were sent by God.”
“Not that. But this is no place for respectable people. We just dropped in for a glass of beer. Unfortunately the host here has the best beer in the city. Otherwise he’s an unprincipled asshole.”
It strikes me that Bodo is going a bit far to demand principles from so simple a human organ; but it is elevating just the same. In bad times one ought to make impossible demands. “We’re going soon,” Bodo continues. “Are you?”
“Right away.”
We pay and get up. Before we reach the door the guardians of the national anthem are already outside. As though by magic they suddenly have cudgels, stones, and brass knuckles in their hands. They stand in a half-circle in front of the entrance.
Bodo suddenly is between us. He pushes us to one side and his twelve men walk through the door in front of us. “Something you want, you snot faces?” Bodo asks.
The guardians of the Reich stare at us. “Cowards!” says the leader finally, the man who was about to fall on three of us with twenty men. “We’ll catch you yet!”
“Very likely,” Willy says. “That’s why we spent a couple of years in the trenches. But see to it that you always have odds of three or four on your side. Superior force is very reassuring to patriots.”
We walk down Grossestrasse with Bodo’s club. The sky is full of stars. There are lights in the store windows. Sometimes when you are with wartime comrades it still seems strange and splendid and breathtaking and incomprehensible that you can wander about this way, free and alive. Suddenly I understand what Wernicke meant about thankfulness. It is a thankfulness not directed toward anyone—a simple gratitude at having escaped for a while longer—for eventually, of course, no one really escapes.
“What you need is another café,” Bobo says. “How would ours do? We haven’t any roaring apes there. Come along, we’ll show it to you!”
They show it to us. Downstairs they serve coffee, seltzer water, beer, and ice cream—upstairs are the assembly rooms. Bodo’s club is a singing society. The city crawls with clubs, which all have their weekly meetings, their statues and bylaws, and are very serious and self-important. Bodo’s club meets Thursdays on the second floor. “We have a good polyphonic male choir,” he says. “Only we’re a little weak in first tenors. It’s a funny thing, but probably a lot of first tenors fell during the war. And the rising generation isn’t old enough yet—their voices are just starting to change.”
“Willy is a first tenor,” I tell him.
“Really?” Bodo looks at him with interest. “Sing this, Willy.”
Bodo flutes like a thrush. Willy flutes in turn. “Good material,” Bodo says. “Now try this!”
Willy manages the second too. “Join our club,” Bodo now urges him. “If you don’t like it you can always resign later.”
Willy demurs a little, but to our astonishment swallows the bait. He is immediately made treasurer of the club. In return he pays for two rounds of beer and schnaps and adds pea soup and pigs’ knuckles for everyone. Bodo’s club is politically democratic; but among the first tenors they have a conservative toy dealer and a half-communistic cobbler; one cannot be choosy in the matter of first tenors, there are so few of them. During the third round Willy announces that be knows a lady who can also sing first tenor and bass as well. The members of the society are silent, doubtfully chewing their pigs’ knuckles. Georg and I take a hand and explain Renée de la Tour’s accomplishments as duettist. Willy swears that she is not really a bass but by nature a pure tenor. There ensues a hugely enthusiastic response. Renée is elected to membership in absentia and is thereupon immediately made an honorary member. Willy pays for the necessary drinks. Bodo is dreaming of inserting mysterious soprano parts that will drive the rival sing clubs crazy at the yearly contest because they will think Bodo’s club contains a eunuch, especially since Renée will naturally have to appear in male attire since otherwise the club would be classified as a mixed choir. “I’ll tell her this very evening,” Willy announces. “Children, how she will laugh! In every key!”
Georg and I finally leave. Willy keeps watch over the square from the second-story window; like an old soldier he reckons on the possibility of an ambush by the guardians of the national anthem. But nothing happens. The market square lies peaceful under the stars. Around it the windows of the bars stand open. From Bodo’s meeting place come the melodious strains of “Wer hat dich, du schöner Wald, aufgebaut so hoch dort oben?”
“Tell me, Georg,” I ask as we turn into Hackenstrasse, “are you happy?”
Georg Kroll lifts his hat to an unseen presence in the night. “I’ll ask you another question,” he says. “How long can one sit on the point of a needle?”