The Quest
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His office was far from luxurious in appearance. The steps were worn, and the door-mat was trodden to shreds. It was a dreary and sombre place. Large posters and caricatures were pasted on the walls, and on the table, lay many pamphlets and papers. Also there were writing-desks, letter-boxes, and rush-bottomed chairs. Two clerks sat there writing, and a few men, with hats on and cigars in their mouths, were talking. There was a continual running to and fro of people – printers' devils, and men in slouch hats.
Dr. Felbeck himself had a pale, thin face, square jaws, bristling hair, and a black goatee and moustache. His eyes were deep-set, and they looked at Johannes keenly, in a manner not fitted to put him into a restful and confiding state of mind.
"This young person," said Van Lieverlee, "wishes, as you express it, to turn his back upon his bourgeois status, and to swell the ranks of the struggling proletariat. Is that what you call it?"
"Well!" said Dr. Felbeck. "He need not be ashamed of it, and you might follow his example, Van Lieverlee."
"Who knows what I may yet do," said Van Lieverlee, "when the proletariat shall have learned to wash itself?"
"What!" said Felbeck. "Would you, a poet, have washed and combed proletarians, with collars and silk hats? No, my friend; with their vile and callous fists they will smash your refined and coddled civilization, like an etagère of bric-à-brac in a parlor!" Dr. Felbeck vented his feelings in a blow at the imaginary etagère. The attention of a clerk on the other side of the room was arrested, and he stopped his work. Van Lieverlee, too, looked somewhat interested.
"A revolution appeals to me," said Van Lieverlee. "With barricades, and fellows on them with red flags, straggling hair, and bloodshot eyes. That isn't bad. But you people of the Society of the Future! – Heaven preserve us from that tedious and kill-joy crowd! I would ten times over prefer an obese, over-rich banker with his jeweled rings, who, waxing fat through the misfortunes of simpletons, builds a villa in Corfu, to your future citizen."
"You do not at all understand it yet," said Felbeck, with a slighting laugh. "You are bound to have such notions because you belong to the bourgeois class of which you are an efflorescence. You are obliged to talk like a bourgeois, and versify like one. You cannot do otherwise. You cannot possibly comprehend the proletarian civilization of the future. It is to be evolved from the proletarian class to which we belong, and with which your young friend wishes to connect himself, as I perceive with pleasure."
The clerk across the room came nearer, to listen to the speech of his chief. He was an under-sized young man whose pomaded black hair was parted in the middle. He had a crooked nose straddled by eye-glasses, and thick lips from between which dangled a cigar – even while he spoke. He wore a well-fitting suit, and pointed shoes with gaiters.
"May I introduce myself," said he. "I am Kaas – fellow-partner Isadore Kaas."
"Pleased to meet you," said Van Lieverlee. And Johannes also received a handshake.
"Have you come to register yourself?" the partner asked.
"In what?" asked Johannes, who had not yet exactly gotten the idea of things. "In the proletarian class?"
"As a member of the party," said Kaas.
"What does that imply?" asked Johannes, hesitating.
"It implies," said Felbeck, "that you renounce the privileges of the class to which you are native, and that you range yourself, under the red flag, in the ranks of the International Workingmen's Party – with the struggling proletariat – the party of the future."
"Then what have I to do?"
"Sign your name, make a small contribution, attend the meetings, read our paper, spread our doctrines, and vote for our candidates in the elections."
"Nothing else?" asked Johannes.
"Well, is not that enough?"
"Did you not speak of privileges I must renounce?"
"There, there!" said partner Kaas, "do not make too much of that, to begin with. Don't be frightened. For the present, nothing further is required of you."
"Oh, I was not afraid," said Johannes, a trifle vexed that he should have been misunderstood. "I was even hoping that I might be able to do more."
"So much the better! So much the better!" said Kaas, stepping hurriedly over to his desk again, and eagerly hunting for a pen. "That settles it. Your name, if you please."
But Johannes was not, for the time being, in a very compliant mood. Since he had dared the octopus he had found that he had more than one string to his bow.
"No, I came for something else. I have a dear friend who lives and works for the poor and oppressed. I am looking for him. I saw him last, at the great strike of the miners, in Germany. Since that time I have heard nothing from him, but I know, surely, that he is with the working people. Mijnheer van Lieverlee has told me that you were in the midst of the labor movement. Could you not help me?"
"What's his name?" asked Dr. Felbeck.
"They know him as Markus," replied Johannes, although it cost him an effort to speak the dear name in that place.
"Markus?" repeated the gentleman, considering. "Markus only?"
"Markus Vis," said Johannes, with yet more reluctance.
"Oh! He!" exclaimed partner Kaas.
"Markus Vis?" said Felbeck, turning round to the others in the office. "Is that – ?"
"Yes, yes!" interrupted Kaas, "the very same who caused that row at the Exchange."
"Gee! That confounded anarchist!" cried one of the soft-hatted smokers.
"Is he a friend of yours?" asked Dr. Felbeck, with a disdainful sniff.
"Yes, Mijnheer, my best friend," said Johannes, firmly.
"Well, young man, you consort with odd and dangerous friends.
"Do you know where he is?" asked Johannes, quite undisturbed.
"Not I," declared Felbeck, scornfully. "Do any of you happen to know?"
"I rather think somewhere in the neighborhood of Bedlam," said another man.
"Trommel," called Felbeck to a clerk who had kept on writing, "where does Vis hang out at present?"
"Markus Vis?" said partner Trommel. "Well, for the nonce, at the office of an iron foundry. He has a job there."
"That's a neat berth for him," remarked one of the smokers. "You'll see what a boot-licker he'll be after he puts on a collar."
"What foundry is that?" asked Van Lieverlee.
"In the 'de Ruiter,' of your uncle Mijnheer van Trigt," replied partner Trommel.
"How long has he been there?" asked Van Lieverlee.
"For two or three weeks past."
"Is he a tall dark fellow with a beard, and curling hair, and a jumper?"
"That is it – exactly!" said various voices.
Van Lieverlee swung round, strode up to the window, threw back his head, pulled out his handkerchief, and snorted into it. The bystanders could hardly tell whether he was sneezing, or laughing, or indisposed.
"Excuse me!" he cried out. "Something comical occurred to me."
Then he snorted again, and one could plainly see that he was laughing.
"A Mahatma!" they heard him murmur, in the middle of his laughing. "Oh! Oh! but that is good! A Mahatma!"
Those present looked rather perplexed at this outburst, as if waiting for further explanation.
"If I only had had that description earlier, Johannes," said Van Lieverlee, recovering from his fit of laughter, "we need not have annoyed these gentlemen. Your friend is in my uncle's office. I have seen him several times."
"Then will you go there with me?" asked Johannes. His voice was still firm, but I assure you his eyes were full of tears. However, he controlled himself in the presence of those men and partners.
"Of course, of course! Sometime!" said Van Lieverlee, in high glee; and he actually began laughing again. He made a pretense of trying to control this outburst, but such was his manner that Johannes would have liked to strike him straight in the face.
He did not do it, however, but went down the steps with Van Lieverlee without having enrolled in the proletarian class.
"Well, good-by!" said Van Lieverlee, when they were in the street, giving Johannes' hand an immoderate shake. "I must go to the Soos.10 Sometime we will go to the foundry. I'll make some inquiries, first. We'll go sometime – of course – of course!"
With his mouth still twisted in irony, and humming a song, he passed on, in affected indifference. That evening – alone – Johannes hunted for the foundry. But the office was closed and dark, and there was no one about to give him information.
He found in his own little room a small bit of cheer – a vase of forget-me-nots, from Marjon.
XI
"Wistik, dear," said Johannes, "let me hold your hand. You are such a good and true friend. I am not sorry any more that I slipped from under Windekind's mantle to listen to you."
"One must not admire oneself – I have always said that," replied Wistik, "but it is very true that I am good, and do not deserve all those mean things said of me. And what is the truth may be acknowledged, even if it be called boasting. Neither bragging nor decrying, but the truth – that is my idea."
Thereupon the little fellow nodded proudly, and set his cap on more firmly.
They were sitting on a rocky coast. To the left the sun was shining brightly upon a steep wall of rose-red rocks. To the right was a gentle upward slope, where trees were growing, with delicate silver-grey foliage. In front of them lay the wide waters of the sea – almost motionless, but slightly stirring with the fresh wind, and sparkling in the light. There was nothing to be seen save red rocks, blue sky, and water. The blue, crystal-clear water lapped and gurgled and splashed about the hollows and chinks in the stone at their feet, and then disappeared in the clefts and caves, where the sea-weed and the coral were. How bright it was! How fresh and spacious!
"I never see Windekind, now," said Johannes. "It is truly sad, for Father Pan's kingdom was most beautiful. But I am resigned, and I believe you when you say that still more beautiful things are to be found. Did I not once think the dunes the most beautiful of all, and fear I never should feel at home anywhere else? But now this strange land seems to me even greater, and I feel at home here also. Where are we, dear Wistik?"
"What difference does it make?" said Wistik, who never willingly admitted he did not know a thing.
"It does not matter," replied Johannes. "The main thing is that I know that I am I – Johannes, and that I see things good and clear; that yesterday I was at that office, and that I sought for Markus at the foundry. And I know too that I might now be seen lying asleep. But yet I am not dreaming, for I am wide awake – quite wide awake, and I remember everything."
"Exactly," agreed Wistik. "Do you recollect what Markus said about remembering?"
He paused a moment, and then went on in a tone that grew softer and more solemn.
"Remembrance, Johannes, is truly a holy thing; for it makes the past —present. Now the future to it … and then we should be…"
"Where, Wistik?"
"In that still autumn day, where the gold on the tree-tops never fades, and a branch never breaks. Do you remember?" asked Wistik, hardly above a whisper.
Johannes nodded, in silence. After a while he said:
"It is splendid, Wistik, that I still remember, even in the night, and stay awake and knowing things, even although my body is asleep in bed. I will not be dead and lie down like a log, forgetting everything, as some do in sleep. Neither will I dream all sorts of nonsense, as if every night I grew foolish. That is shameful. I will not do so."
"Right, Johannes! No one wishes to be dead, and no one wishes to be foolish. And when human beings sleep they are dead, and when they dream they are foolish. None of that for me!"
"I shall try to live in my sleep, and to be wise in my dreams," said Johannes. "But it is hard, and time flies so fast!"
He gazed at his hands, his limbs, and his whole body. He had on his handsomest suit. In amazement, he asked:
"What body is this I have on, Wistik? And how silly to wear clothes. What clothes are these?"
"Do you not see? They are your own clothes."
So it was. Johannes recalled them precisely. And he held in his hand one of Marjon's blue forget-me-nots.
"I do not understand it, Wistik! That I have a dream-life – that I travel with you in the night, that I do understand. But how did my clothes get here? Do my clothes dream, too?"
"Why not?" asked Wistik.
Astonished, Johannes continued to meditate. The water swirled and splashed all about the hollows in the rocks. The exquisite warbling of a yellow-finch rang sweet and plaintive from between the clefts.
"But if everything can dream, then everything must be alive – my trousers too, and my shoes."
"Why not?" said Wistik again. "Just prove to me that they are not."
The way to do that was not clear to Johannes.
"Or perhaps," he resumed, "perhaps I make everything – rocks, sea, light, and clothing. One or the other; I dream it and make it, or it dreams everything itself and makes itself."
"It cannot be any other way," assented Wistik.
"But then, I could make something else if I wished to."
"I think so, too," said Wistik.
"A violin? Could I make a violin, and then play on it?"
"Just try it," said Wistik.
Behold! There was the violin – all ready for him. Johannes took it, and passed the bow over the strings as if he had handled it all his life. The most glorious music came from it – as fine as any he had ever heard.
"Oh, Wistik! Do you hear? Who would ever have thought that I could make such music!"
"'Vraagal can do all that Vraagal wills,' said Pan."
"Yes," said Johannes, musing an instant, and forgetting his violin, which forthwith vanished. "Pan also spoke of the real Devil, you remember. He said that I must ask you to show him to me."
Wistik had drawn up his little knees and placed his arms about them, his long beard hanging down in front to his shins. Sitting thus, he threw a sidelong glance at Johannes, to see if he intended to do it. Then his entire little body began to tremble. "Shall we not take a little fly out over the ocean?" he asked.
But Johannes was not to be diverted.
"No, I want to see the real Devil."
"Are you sure, Johannes?"
"Yes," replied the latter. He felt himself a hero, now, after having defied the octopus.
"Think well about it," said Wistik.
"What does he look like?"
"What do you think?"
"I think," said Johannes, beginning to look stern and angry, "I think he looks like Marjon's sister."
"Why?" asked Wistik.
"Because I hate her! Because whatever I think beautiful she always spoils for me, and spoils it through the remembrance alone. She looks like Marjon, and she also looks like that dear friend about whom I am always thinking; and yet she is not the same – she is ugly and common. She kissed me once, and it has spoiled my life."
"Wrong, Johannes! He does not look in the least like that," said Wistik.
Suddenly, Johannes noticed that the bright light was growing dimmer, and that the great firm rocks began to quiver and shake as if seen through heated air, uneven glass, or flowing water.
Then, all at once, he knew, without descrying it, through an inner feeling of nameless distress, that It was sitting behind him.
It! You know well, do you not, what it was? It – the same that sat by the pool when that poor young girl was drowned – It was sitting behind him, huge and deathly still. Sunlight, sea, and rocks – the whole beautiful land, grew hazy and vague.
"He is here," whispered Wistik, "behind us. Bear up, Johannes! You yourself wanted it."
"What shall I do?" asked Johannes, now very nervous and terrified.
"Do not be afraid! For God's sake, do not be afraid! If you do you are lost."
"Shall I cry to God, or to Jesus? Or cross myself?"
"He cares not a bit for such things; he laughs at them; he knows all about them. He makes fun of prayers and the sign of the cross. The main thing is to keep on the alert, and not to be afraid. He will be very friendly, and show you all kinds of pretty and interesting sights, and he will try to make you sleepy and afraid. But you must not fear and must not forget. Above all, keep fast hold of Marjon's flower. And here … look!"
With his nervously trembling little fingers Wistik fumbled in the small satchel that always hung by a strap over his shoulder, and took from the jumbled lot of pebbles, scissors, lead-pencils, and dried plants, a little mirror on the frame of which his name was neatly engraved. Then in a voice shaken and nearly speechless with emotion, he said: "Hold that good and fast! It is your salvation. Go now, dear boy. Go!"
And the good little fellow wept.
"Are you not going with me?" asked Johannes, in agitation.
"I am his greatest enemy," said Wistik; "he cannot endure the sight of me. But I will stay in the neighborhood. Call me once in a while, and I will answer you. Then you will know that you are safe…"
"Welcome, Johannes!" said a gentle, friendly voice, and a soft warm hand clasped his own. "You are not embarrassed in my presence, I hope."
Could that be the Evil One? A nice, polite person like that, with such taking manners, and such a caressing voice? Johannes looked round, in amazement, to the place where It was. He could not distinguish clearly, nor look straight at the speaker, but he seemed to be an ordinary, modish gentleman, with a frank, smiling face – well dressed in a brown suit and a straw hat.
"Would you not like to make acquaintance with me and my Museum?" continued the speaker. "It is an excellent collection – sure to please you. But what have you in your hand? Not a mirror, is it? Fie! You must throw it away. I have no patience with such mirrors. I abhor them! They foster only conceit."
The soft hand essayed to take away the mirror, but Johannes held it fast, and said firmly: "I will keep the mirror."
He had scarcely said this when there flitted across that smiling, honest-looking face a shade of indescribable malice. It was very brief, but plain enough to cause Johannes a shudder, and to convince him that truly the Evil One stood before him.
But instantly the face became again most frank and winning, and he heard:
"Very well, then, as you please. We will begin by making the acquaintance of my subjects – all of them friends, comrades, or relatives."
Just then Johannes heard again the well-remembered whispering and giggling which he had heard while watching the little hands. On all sides, amid much rustling and shuffling, he heard breathing, coughing, and sniffling – all sorts of queer human sounds, as if the place was thronged with people. But still he could see nothing.
"You fancied I was very different, did you not, Johannes? That I had horns and a tail? That idea is out of date. No one believes it now. Thank God we are forever above that foolish separation of good and evil. That is untenable Dualism. My kingdom is as good as the other."
"What is your name?" asked Johannes.
"They call me King Waan.11 Yes, indeed! I am a king, if I do appear so humble. Besides, external pomp is out of fashion. I am a constitutional, bourgeois, democratic king. Here, Bangeling!12 Come here! This is my most trusty helper – my right hand, in fact."
Johannes shuddered at the sight of Bangeling – a shrinking, stooping, pale, and loathsome youngster. His eyes were red-rimmed, and glanced shiftingly right and left – never straight in front. His lean knees knocked against each other, and every moment his rag-covered body twitched with terror, and he cried: "Oh, Heaven! Oh, God! Now you will catch it! It is too late! Too la-a-ate!"
To hear and see this repeatedly, without becoming frightened oneself, was not easy; but Johannes pressed his flower close to his breast and cried:
"Wistik!"
"Ay, ay!" he heard his good little friend shout.
But the voice sounded from above, and far away. And suddenly Johannes had a very distinct sensation of falling, fast as lightning, down fathomless depths, although everything around him remained the same.
"Are we falling down below?" he asked.
King Waan gave Johannes a falsely-sweet smile. "One should not ask such impolite questions when making a visit," said he.
"Get away!" cried Johannes to Bangeling, who was now standing close beside them, twitching and whining. Then a throng of frightful figures pushed forward, trying to approach him, grinning, twisted, misformed faces – some with big purple noses, others with drooling lips – still others pale, and passive, with closed eyes, but with scornful muttering mouths.
Johannes knew these figures well; he had often when a child seen them in his dreams. And doubtless you also have seen many of them in the night – just before the measles broke out, or after you have eaten too much pie for dinner.
And you were very much afraid of them, were you not? Perhaps as much as formerly Johannes was. But this time he was not in the least afraid. When they came too near, he called out in a fierce voice: "Back!" Then they grew pale, and crumpled up like withered toadstools.
"This one is Ginnegap!"13 said the Devil, pointing out a girl-like being with open mouth, dull eyes, and a finger in each nasty nostril, who was constantly tittering. "Another excellent assistant of mine. Here are Labbekak14 and Goedzak;15 charming twins, compact of goodness and charity. Just look! They quiver and quake like jelly. They have no bones, and they never did any wrong. If they do not belong in heaven, who does?"
"Of course they have no sense," said Johannes.
"But here, then – this one – an old acquaintance of yours. Maybe you think he has no wits, either?"
Who was it Johannes saw there? Pluizer, in truth – his old enemy Pluizer! But he lacked a good deal of looking so pert and fierce as formerly. Upon seeing Johannes he hid himself behind the back of a stout, dumpy demon.
"A little to one side, Sleur!" said the king to the bulky devil. "Give Johannes a peep at his old friend."
But Sleur did not budge. He was very sluggish. Pluizer called out:
"Does Death know about it, Johannes – that you are already here?"
"What is this place, really?" asked Johannes. "Hell? Is it here that Dante was?"
"Dante?" asked the Devil. And all his retainers whispered and tittered and chattered: "Dante? Dante? Dante?"
"Surely," resumed the king, "you must mean that nice place full of light where it is so hot and smells so bad; where sand melts; where rivers of blood are seething, and the boiling pitch is ever bubbling; where they scream and yell and curse and lament, and swear at one another."
"Yes," said Johannes. "Dante told about that."
"But, my little friend!" said the Devil, affably, "that is not here, as you can very well see. That is not my kingdom. That is the kingdom of another who, they say, is called Love. With me, no one suffers. I am not so cruel as that. I cause no one pain."
"I know that well," said Johannes, "for so long as I have pain I am alive and am warned. Is it not so, Wistik?"
"Yes!" cried the little fellow, his voice now sounding as if far in the distance – up above.
"We are falling all the time!" said Johannes, in great alarm.
"Do not think about it. Does it make you dizzy? I thought you were so level-headed. Just give this a look. This is my cabinet of curiosities."
And before Johannes knew that he had entered anything he found himself in a very small, close room. It was exactly like a bathroom with low ceilings, and was brightly lighted.
"You did not think to find it so well lighted here, did you?"
"Trick-light!" shouted Wistik, his voice coming faintly from above.
"Look! Here lies an acquaintance of yours."
And King Waan pointed to a straight white form that lay on the stone floor. It was Heléne; and Johannes saw that she was calmly sleeping.
Two imps stood looking at her; one was Bangeling; the other, equally small and dirty, stood gnawing his nails. His head, with its misshapen ears, was much too big for him. He had on a barret-cap of aniline blue velvet, with russet ribbons, a pale-green blouse of Scotch plaid, and short trousers, as purple as spoiled berry-juice.
"That is Degeneracy," said Waan. "These two brought her here; a deserving deed. We hope to keep her. Look! See how peacefully she sleeps."