Gerhart Hauptmann

“ Now, Frederick, you will get to see those ant-like little elves that are called noctiluci or night-lights. They pompously call themselves Toilers of the Light. But whatever their name, it must be admitted that they are the ones that take the light hidden in the entrails of the earth, store it up, and sow it in fields, the soil of which has been especially prepared; and when it has grown to its full size and has borne fruit a hundredfold in the shape of gold sheaves or nuggets, they harvest it and save it for the darkest of dark times. ”

“ At last, it seemed to Frederick, the great Atlantic Ocean was really behind him. Though he had landed in New York, he felt that until now he had not planted his feet firmly on the ground. Great well-established mother earth, the breadth and extent of her solidity, which he beheld again after so long a separation, at last set bounds in his soul to the fearful expanse and might of the ocean. Mother earth was a good and great giantess who had cunningly snatched the lives of her children from the giantess ocean and had put everything on a firm, everlasting basis with a hedge of safety all around. ”

“ Will you come to a man torn and distracted, lashed by scorpions, to a man who is greedy to-day and surfeited to-morrow, to a man who longs for peace and repose, and be peace and repose to him? Could you for my sake give up all that has until now filled your life, if I for your sake leave behind me everything that has wasted my existence? Shall we both begin afresh, on a new basis, simply and without any false glamour, and live and die as plain country persons? I will be tender with you, Ingigerd." Frederick hollowed his hands and held them as he had done when speaking of the Madonna. ”

“ As for the young physician, Frederick von Kammacher, he was neither a Goethe nor a Luther nor a Loyola; but he was akin to them not only in culture, but also in many a trait of genius.
It is impossible to express in words the extent in which his whole previous existence passed in review before Frederick's mental vision as the little tender sped beyond the harbour lights of Southampton, carrying him away from Europe and his home. He seemed to be parting with a whole continent in his soul, upon which he would never set foot again. It was a farewell forever. ”

“ Ingigerd Hahlström is not the only one that is enmeshed and throttled in a spider's web. Every now and then all of us have to pant for air and tear away wrappings. Then the moment comes when we no longer do the thing that has been well considered, the thing that convention has established, but the very thing that has not been considered, that takes heed of nothing, the purely instinctive thing. Call it what you will, fermentation, folly, passion, shipwreck, storm. Whatever it may be, the fact is, all at once a man again feels the desire for life expanding his lungs. ”

“ Frederick never heard it without applying menace and warning to himself. Likewise, the driving mist seemed to be a reflection of his soul; or his soul a reflection of the driving mist and also of the vessel, as it struggled onward into the unknown, unseeing and unseen. He stepped over to the railing and looked straight down the ship's side. There he could tell with what tremendous rapidity the Roland was cleaving the water.
"Isn't man's courage utter madness?" he thought. Could any one, from captain to the lowest sailor, prevent the propeller-shaft from snapping at any moment? ”

“ There was a man standing at the stern of a vessel, while the darkness of night was yielding to the dawn, bound by the invisible, glowing threads of his fate to two continents of the globe, and awaiting the new, less tormenting form of life that comes from the sun, a strange star millions of miles removed from the planet earth. All this was a miracle to Frederick, almost overwhelming him, as if he were imprisoned in marvels. In a sudden seizure of hopelessness that he would ever throw off the suffocating oppression of riddles and miracles, the temptation came upon him to leap over the railing. ”

“ In the jingling of the sleigh-bells his ear caught something like the insistent hammering ring of electric bells. It was an illusion of his hearing, but it filled him with rising horror, and a shiver went through his whole body. By the time Peter Schmidt, who instantly observed the change in his friend, had brought the horse to a stop, Frederick had already mastered his nervous attack. He did not admit it was the sinking of the Roland that had unexpectedly announced its presence again. He merely said that the noise of the bells had irritated his nerves beyond endurance. ”

“ Sometimes one engineer in the engine-room would call out to another, and the clang of the metal shovels when the stokers fed the furnace penetrated to the deck.
All of a sudden Frederick jumped to his feet; he thought he saw a ghost, or a dead-alive corpse, reeling up the companionway and making for him. It was the clothing manufacturer whom he had met at Southampton, looking more like a man in his death throes than one already dead. He gave Frederick a ghastly glance of unconsciousness and let a steward support him to the nearest steamer chair. ”

“ He ran after her.
"It is so hard for me," she said, "because life and not death has robbed me of you."
Frederick groaned aloud. A great stone seemed to be lying on his breast. He heard the rushing of waters. He saw the flood come leaping through all the valleys, over the tops of all the hills, wave upon wave, from all sides. The moon was shining. He saw Angèle climb to a little skiff lying moored somewhere; and the tide carried away the skiff with her in it. The waters overwhelmed his house.
Again the wandering began, hand in hand with Achleitner and the smoke widows across the ocean desert. ”

“ Should existence in the shining light possess lesser reality than existence in the dark?" "No, it should not," was the answer that came from everything within and about him, filling him with youthful, almost childlike joy.
Frederick had pushed back his slouched hat, had unbuttoned his light overcoat, and was standing with his arms crooked over the railing. He looked out upon the sea. He felt the pulse beats of the engines, his ears were filled with the pliant, melodious chords of the Viennese waltz; the whole world had turned into a brilliant, lively, sparkling ballroom. ”

“ The next day at about noon Doctor Wilhelm and Frederick helped Mrs. Liebling on deck. Her appearance there made a gruesome impression upon those who had not seen her since she had been dragged, a lifeless corpse, from the boat to the Hamburt. The sailors, though most solicitous to read Ingigerd Hahlström's wishes from her eyes, even before they were conceived, kept at a distance from Mrs. Liebling and cast shy glances at her, as if still in doubt whether she was a real human being. If the sea gives up its dead, why should not little Siegfried emerge from his death chamber? ”

“ Now deep, intense silence prevailed throughout the vessel, which was like a dead thing; a silence, in which every now and then a step or a hasty tread on the heavy carpet in the gangway was audible. Through the thin walls came the dull, confused murmur of many voices. Doors banged, and when they opened, brief, broken sounds penetrated from the cabins, evidence of the bewilderment and alarm of their tenants. The thing that was particularly weird to Frederick in that swaying corridor, creaking like a new boot and lighted by electricity, was the incessant ringing of electric bells. ”

“ Shortly before ten o'clock in the morning of the sixth of February, Captain Butor, standing back of Ella Liebling, who was sitting under the telescope merrily kicking her thin legs, spied land. It was a tremendously stirring moment when the news was carried to the passengers. The steward that called it into Frederick's cabin and the next instant disappeared little realised how his brief announcement, "Land!" affected the stranger. Frederick closed the door, shaken by great, hollow, toneless sobs coming from the depths of his being.
"Such is life," went through his heart. ”

“ He meant Achleitner.
Ingigerd gave a short laugh. "Do you take me for Joan of Arc?"
"Not exactly that," rejoined Frederick, "but if you would allow me, I should like to regard you as still a girl, a distinguished little lady, whose reputation cannot be too carefully guarded against the faintest blemish."
"Reputation!" sneered the girl. "You are very much mistaken if you think I ever cared for anything of the sort. I'd rather be disreputable ten times over and live as I please, than have a good reputation and die of boredom. I must enjoy my life, Doctor von Kammacher." ”

“ Whatever Wilhelm and Frederick said related merely to their difficulties in the life-boat, or to the trip on the Roland before it overstepped that moment in eternity which determined its awful fate.
"Captain," said Frederick, "you don't know how astonishing it is to be raised from the dead. Conceive a man who has taken definite leave of everything that was dear to him in life, who has felt the rattle in his throat, and received extreme unction, and death, death itself, has settled on his flesh and limbs. I still feel death in my joints. ”

“ The cook's melodies undoubtedly charmed back his home to him, though in colours less glorious and alluring to himself, perhaps, than to the artists, whether they had been in Italy or not. Frederick leaned his head back and closed his eyes. The dining-room was filled with the fumes of cigars and cigarettes, and the electric bulbs shone as in a mist. Frederick's thoughts carried him far, far away. His arm hung at his side limply, while a Simon Arzt cigarette burned to a stump between his fingers—throughout his adventures, his silver cigarette case had remained safe in his pocket. ”

“ It seemed inconceivable that in that intricate, raging chaos, a single minute could pass without a collision, or a collapse, or a killing. How could one possibly pursue one's own affairs quietly amid that shrieking, that hammering, that clanging, that mad uproar?
During these last moments together, the involuntary passengers of the Hamburt had become as one in heart and soul. Frederick had not lost his cash in the disaster, and he persuaded Ingigerd Hahlström not to reject his services during her first days on land. All agreed not to lose sight of one another in New York. ”

“ Frederick enjoyed the daring of it—to be dining in festivity to the accompaniment of frivolous music in the illuminated bowels of this monster, this Roland. From time to time the mighty ship seemed on the point of encountering invincible resistance. A combination of opposing forces would rise up against the stem, producing the effect of a solid body, a veritable mountainside. At such moments the noise of the talking would die down, and many pale faces would exchange glances and turn to the captain or to the prow of the vessel. ”

“ Frederick glanced at the gigantic cylinders, in which the compressed steam was moving pistons up and down like pump handles. The pistons communicated their motion to the big shaft running aft along the keel to the stern, and the revolutions of the shaft in turn produced the revolutions of the screw propelling the vessel across the Atlantic.
Oilers holding oil cans and waste clambered in and out of the rotating masses of iron with astounding sureness and boldness. To graze one of the fly-wheels, or to step one inch within the unguarded circle of their revolution, was to receive a deadly blow. ”

“ The glasses rang, and Frederick continued rather daringly: "I wish it had been granted me to do with divine intelligence and human hands, as Goethe said, what the animal man can and must do with the animal woman." He made a cup of his hands as if to dip up water. "I feel my Madonna in the hollow of my hands like a homunculus. She is alive there. The palms of my hands are warm. They are a golden shell. Conceive my Madonna to be a hand's breadth high, of live ivory, and imagine some rosy flecks here and there on her. ”

“ Koko! Koko!" Frederick arose and let the great, rosy-white seafarer clamber on his hand. "I like animals better than I do most people I meet," she said.
The bird kept screaming "Cockatoo!" until Frederick felt it fairly applied to him.
In the meantime the Roland, sinking into deep troughs and climbing over watery mountain crests in an ocean that was like a great machine regularly at work, had plowed its way into fog. The siren was bellowing.
"Fog?" exclaimed Ingigerd. Every bit of blood vanished from her face, which was already too pale. ”

“ And now, suddenly, the world seemed to Frederick to have gone mad. The Hamburt was entering the narrow harbour, the basin surrounded by skyscrapers, veritable towers of Babel, and alive with numberless grotesquely shaped ferry-boats. The scene, perhaps, would be a ridiculous monstrosity, were it not so truly gigantic. In that crater of life civilisation bellows, howls, screeches, roars, thunders, rushes, whizzes and whirls. Here is a colony of white ants, whose activity is staggering, bewildering, stupefying. ”

“ And all the things portrayed on those small oval tsubas! The cloven turnip of Daikoku, god of fortune. The god Sennin creating a man by his breath. A shining full moon and flying geese. Wild geese flying over reeds. The moon rising from between snow-clad mountains, an oval of iron, gold and silver, no larger than a man's palm, yet suggesting the vast reaches of a moonlit night.
Frederick and Willy both marvelled at the lapidary style of this metal work, in which the artist with the finest understanding of his art displayed a wealth of composition within the smallest space. ”

“ The cabin was rolling in unison with the vessel's movement. Sometimes it seemed to Frederick as if the port-hole wall were the ceiling, and the ceiling the right wall; then again as if the right wall were the ceiling, and the ceiling the port-hole wall, while the actual port-hole wall, as if inviting him to jump, shoved itself at right angles under his feet—during which the port-hole was wholly under water and the cabin in darkness.
It is no easy matter to dress and undress in an oscillating room. ”

“ What would a physician be who would stop to moralise? Or a great statesman, who would toe the chalk-line of your middle-class ten commandments? As for an artist, when he moralises, he is a fool and a knave. And please tell me, what sort of a business would the church do if all of us were moral? There would be no church."
There was a cold gleam of audaciousness in the Swede's eyes. His utterances produced a strange impression. Even if he had pronounced fewer wild paradoxes, Frederick von Kammacher would have succumbed to his spell. ”

“ And to Frederick's horror, the liveried corpses of Pfundner, the head-steward, and his assistant stewards were slowly floating about in a circle. The picture would have been almost ridiculous, had it not been so gruesome and had it not so certainly lain in the realm of the possible. Think of all the things divers report! All the things they have seen in the cabins and gangways of submerged steamers; inextricably knotted masses of human beings, passengers or sailors coming toward them with outstretched arms, upright, as if alive and as if awaiting them. ”

“ It was not until nothing remained of the Bismarck but a dancing mist of light that its band came on deck and played. On the Roland they caught two or three trembling, fading measures of the national hymn, Heil dir im Siegerkranz. Within a few moments the Roland was again alone on the ocean, in the night, the tempest, and the snowstorm.
With twice as much fire, the band now played a quadrille by Karl, Festklänge, and a galop by Kiesler, Jahrmarktskandal; and with twice as much appetite and twice as much liveliness the passengers seated themselves at dinner again. "Fairylike!" they cried. ”

“ While walking in the cold sunny air next to the slim, elegantly dressed sculptor, listening to his Greek fantasies, Frederick's heart beat mightily against his ribs. Whenever the thought arose in his mind that here, in this new country, after everything that had happened, he would again see Ingigerd Hahlström dance her dance, he felt that he was no longer equal to the trial. The forces of his soul that had remained healthy were already rising in rebellion against anything that might increase the power of the little demon. ”

“ The whistles were blowing frightfully, sometimes in a prolonged blare, sometimes in abrupt toots, one after the other.
"It's the Roland with Captain von Kessel," Frederick explained to the children. "I know it. I was on the ship. I myself went down with that superb steamer." He heard shots being fired from the struggling vessel. Rockets hissed up towards the moon and burst in the sombre grey of dawn, dazzling his eyes. "All's over," he said to the children. "All those fine, brave men are doomed to rot in the water." ”

“ Not more than three paces away was the door of Ingigerd's cabin; and he was the faithful dog in three senses, the watchdog, the Cerberus, the dog crazed with the rabies of jealousy.
"Poor fellow," Frederick said aloud. "Poor, stupid Achleitner!" He felt genuine, almost tender sympathy; and over him came all the woe of the deceived lover, as we can trace it from Nietzsche and Schopenhauer down to Buddha Gotama, whose pupil, Ananda, asks: "Master, how shall we comport ourselves toward a woman?" Quoth the master: "Avoid the sight of her, Ananda, because a woman's being is hidden. ”

“ The walk to Meriden on the brisk winter day had done him good.
"How did you sleep?" asked Schmidt. "You know, you superstitious people maintain that what you dream the first night in a strange place will come true."
"I hope not," said Frederick. "My first night was rather insignificant, and things passed helter-skelter through my brain."
He said nothing of a dream he had had, in which he heard the ringing of the electric bells on the Roland. Though he fought against the impression, it obstinately transported him back to those horrid moments of the shipwreck. ”

“ The afternoon of the third day the captain, never suspecting that he was speaking to one of the survivors of the Roland, said:
"It was hereabouts that the Roland went down about three months ago."
The sea was smooth, like a sky eternally cloudless. Dolphins were sporting in the waters. The night following that afternoon, a glorious night, became Frederick's and Eva's wedding night. In blissful dreams they were carried over the place of horror which was the grave of the Roland.
At the quay in Cuxhaven, Frederick's parents were awaiting him with his children. He saw nothing but his children. ”

“ Dear Frederick,
I do not know whether this letter will find you, or where it will find you. Perhaps not until you reach New York, where it may arrive later than you. I should really like you to have your old father's and mother's greetings on your trip, which is something of a surprise to us. But we are used to surprises from you, since we have not had your unreserved confidence for a long time. I am a fatalist, and far from wishing to bore you with reproaches; but it is a pity that ever since you have been of age, so many differences have arisen in our ways of thinking and acting. ”

“ An occasion, a condition such as this he had scarcely hoped to reach in weeks, or even months, certainly not in the wild welter of New York. From the noise of the steamer and the city, from the rushing and roaring of the Atlantic Ocean, he was suddenly plunged into the silence of the grave. It affected him with a sense of desertion and oblivion. In that city of four million inhabitants, each man was strenuously pursuing his own affairs, or was harnessed into an iron yoke of duties, which deafened and blinded him to everything beside the path he had to tread.
Frederick looked at his watch. ”

“ In the protection of its vast broadside the little tender seemed to be in a brilliantly lighted harbour. The impression that the surprising presence of the ocean greyhound made upon Frederick was in a fortissimo scale. He had always belonged to that class of men—a class which is not small—whose senses are open to life's varied abundance. Only on the rarest occasions he found a thing commonplace or ordinary, and was never blasé in meeting a novelty. But, after all, there are very few persons who would be dull to the impressions of an embarkation by night, outside a harbour in the open waters. ”

“ Men and women lay stretched out on steamer chairs with that green expression of profound indifference which marks the dreaded seasickness. To Frederick's astonishment, he himself felt not the least trace of nausea, and only the sight of his fellow-passengers' misery caused him to realise that the Roland was not gliding through smooth waters, but was distinctly pitching and rolling.
He walked around the ladies' parlour, past the entrance of an extra cabin, and took his stand under the bridge, breasting the steely, salt sea wind. ”