Lenz Read online

  The next day Kaufmann wanted to leave, he talked Oberlin into going to Switzerland with him. The desire to meet Lavater in person, whom he had long known through letters, determined him. He agreed. The preparations delayed their departure by a day. This perturbed Lenz, to rid himself of his constant torment he had been anxiously clinging to everything; at certain moments he became deeply aware he was fabricating it all to his own advantage; he dealt with himself like a sick child, he rid himself of certain thoughts, overpowering emotions only with great anguish, then was again driven back onto them with even greater violence, he shivered, his hair nearly stood on end, until he finally emerged victorious after the most extraordinary exertions. He took refuge in a figure who always hovered before his eyes, and in Oberlin; his words, his face did him an immense amount of good. So it was with anxiety that he contemplated his departure.

  Lenz was uneasy about remaining in the house on his own. The weather had turned mild and he decided to accompany Oberlin into the mountains. On the other side, where the valleys meet the plain, they parted. He returned back alone. He wandered through the mountains this way and that, broad planes inclined into the valleys, little woodland, nothing but powerful lines and in the distance the wide smoky plain, a brisk breeze in the air, nowhere a trace of man other than here and there an abandoned hut where shepherds spent the summer, aslant on a slope. He grew still, perhaps even dreamy, everything blended into a single line like a wave rising and falling between heaven and earth, he felt as if he were lying beside an endless ocean that was gently rocking up and down. Sometimes he just sat there, then he began walking again, but slowly, dreamily. He was following no path. It was pitch dark when he came to an inhabited hut, on the slope down to Steintal. The door was locked, he went to the window through which a gleam of light was shimmering. A lamp illuminated little more than a single spot, its light fell on the pale face of a girl who was resting behind it, eyes half-open, quietly moving her lips. Further back in the dark sat an old woman who was singing out of a hymnal in a raspy voice. After much knocking she opened; she was half-deaf, she brought Lenz some food and showed him a place to sleep, continuing her singing all the while. The girl had not moved. Some time later a man came in, he was tall and haggard, traces of gray hair, with a restless troubled face. He went over to the child, she jerked convulsively and grew restless. He took a dried herb from the wall and laid its leaves on her hand and she quieted down, droning intelligible words in drawn out, penetrating tones. He recounted how he had heard a voice in the mountains and then had seen sheet lightning over the valleys, he had been seized by it too and had wrestled with it like Jacob. He fell to his knees and quietly prayed with fervor while the sick girl sang in drawn-out, softly lingering tones. Then he went to bed.

  Lenz dozed off into dreams and then heard the ticking of the clock in his sleep. Through the quiet singing of the girl and the voice of the old woman came the rushing of the wind, now near, now far, and the moon, now bright, now veiled, threw its shifting light over the room as in a dream. At one point the sounds grew louder, the girl was speaking clearly and distinctly, she was saying how there was a church on a cliff on the other side. Lenz looked up and she was sitting behind the table, eyes wide open, and the moon cast its quiet light on her features from which an unearthly radiance seemed to pour, while the old woman rasped on, and amid this shifting and failing of the light and the singing and the speaking Lenz finally fell fast asleep.

  He woke up early, everyone was asleep in the twilit room, even the girl had become quiet, she lay pitched backwards, hands folded under her left cheek; the ghostliness had disappeared from her features, her expression was now one of indescribable suffering. He went to the window and opened it, the cold morning air drove against him. The house lay at the end of a narrow deep valley that opened to the east, red rays shot through the gray dawn sky into the twilit valley that lay in white mist and they glinted on the gray rocks and struck the windows of the huts. The man woke up, his eyes met a picture illuminated on the wall, they stared fixedly at it, now he began to move his lips and prayed quietly, then loudly and ever louder. Meanwhile people came into the hut, they fell to their knees in silence. The girl lay there twitching, the old woman rasped her song and chatted with the neighbors. The people informed Lenz that the man had come to the region long ago, no one knew from where; he was reputed to be a saint, he could see the water under the ground and conjure up spirits, and people made pilgrimages to him. Lenz also learned that he had ended up very far from Steintal, he left with some woodcutters who were headed that way. He was glad to be in company; he had now become increasingly uneasy about the powerful man who seemed at times to be speaking in fearsome tones. Also he was afraid to be with himself when he was alone.

  He came home. But the past night had made a powerful impression on him. The world had felt luminous to him, and within himself something was stirring and swarming toward an abyss toward which he was being swept by an inexorable force. He burrowed into himself. He ate little; half the nights in prayer and feverish dreams. The pressure building, and then beaten back in exhaustion; he lay there in hot tears, and then suddenly regained strength and got back up on his feet, cold and calm, his tears like ice to him, he had to laugh. The higher he drove himself the deeper he plunged. Everything streamed back together again. Twinges of his former condition played through him, searchlights cast through the wild chaos of his mind. During the day he usually sat in the room downstairs, Madame Oberlin moved back and forth, he sketched, painted, read, grasped after any distraction. Hastily from one thing to the next. He now especially fastened upon Madame Oberlin as she sat there, her black hymnal before her, next to a house plant, her youngest child between her knees; he also fussed over the child a great deal. He was at one point sitting there and was suddenly seized by anxiety, he sprang to his feet, paced back and forth. The door half open, he heard the maid singing, at first unintelligible, then came the words

  In this world no joy for me

  My sweet love is gone away.

  Which struck him to the core, he almost fell apart hearing it. Madame Oberlin glanced over at him. He gathered up his courage, he could no longer remain silent, he had to bring it up. “Dearest Madame Oberlin, could you tell how that young lady is doing, whose fate weighs upon my heart like a hundredweight?” “But Herr Lenz, I know nothing of this.”

  He fell silent again and paced rapidly up and down the room; then he began again: You see, I want to leave; God, you are the only people with whom I could bear to live, and yet — and yet, I have to leave, to go to her — but I cannot, I must not. — He was highly agitated and disappeared.

  Toward evening Lenz returned; dusk was settling over the room; he sat down next to Madame Oberlin. You see, he began again, when she walked through the room that way, half-singing to herself, and every step of hers was music, there was so much joy in her, and this flowed over into me, I was always at ease when I watched her or when she leaned her head on me that way, and God! God — how long since I have felt at ease . . . Wholly a child; it was as if the world were too wide for her; she withdrew into herself, she sought out the tightest little spot in the entire house, and there she would sit, as if her entire happiness depended on this one small spot, and then I would feel the same way too; I could have played like a child back then. Now I feel so confined, so confined, you see, sometimes I feel as if my hands were hitting up against the sky; O I’m suffocating! Often it’s as if I feel a physical pain, here on my left side, in the arm I used to hold her with. Yet I can no longer picture her, the image escapes me, and this tortures me, only when my mind clears completely do I feel happy again. — He often spoke to Madame Oberlin about this on later occasions, but usually only in fragmentary sentences; she hardly knew how to answer, but it helped.

  Meanwhile his religious torments persisted. The emptier, the colder, the deader he felt inside, the more he was driven to awaken a fiery passion within himself, he had memories of the times when everything used to well up
in him, when all his emotions left him panting; and now so dead. He despaired of himself, then he threw himself down, wrung his hands, stirred everything up within himself; but dead! Dead! Then he implored God to send him a sign, he burrowed into himself, fasted, lay on the floor dreaming. On the third of February he heard a child had died in Fouday, he clung to this like an obsession. He retired to his room and fasted for a day. On the fourth he suddenly burst into Madame Oberlin’s room, he had smudged his face with ash and requested an old sack; she was taken by fright, he was given what he wanted. He draped himself in the sack like a penitent and set off in the direction of Fouday. The people in the valley were already used to him; he was the object of many odd tales. He entered the house where the child lay. People were calmly going about their business; they showed him a room, the child lay in a shift on a bed of straw on a wooden table.

  Lenz shuddered when he touched the cold limbs and saw the half-open glassy eyes. The child seemed so forsaken and he himself so alone and isolated; he threw himself on the corpse; death terrified him, raw pain shot through him, these features, this quiet face were soon to rot away, he fell to his knees, he prayed with the full misery of despair that God send him a sign and bring the child back to life, he being so weak and wretched; then he burrowed deep into himself and tunneled all his willpower toward a single point and sat there for a long time, rigid. Then he got up and took the child’s hand and said loudly and firmly: Arise and walk! But the walls echoed back his voice so dispassionately they seemed to mock him, and the corpse remained cold. He fell to the ground, half out of his mind, then, driven back onto his feet, fled into the mountains. Clouds raced over the moon; now total darkness, now the elusive foggy landscape reappearing in the moonshine. He raced this way and that. A song of hell triumphant was in his breast. The wind roared like a chorus of Titans, he felt as if he could thrust a colossal fist up into the heavens and grab God and drag him down through his clouds; as if he could grind up the world between his teeth and spit it into the Creator’s face; he cursed, he blasphemed. He reached the ridge of the mountain, the uncertain light dilating down into the white masses of rocks, the sky a stupid blue eye and the silly moon just hanging there, ridiculous. Lenz had to laugh out loud, and as he laughed atheism crept over him and held him fast in its firm and quiet grasp. He no longer knew what had so disturbed him earlier, he was freezing, he wanted to go to bed now, and he made his way cold and imperturbable through the uncanny darkness — everything was empty and hollow to him, he broke into a run and went to bed.

  The next day Lenz was seized with great horror at his yesterday’s condition, he was now standing at the abyss, driven by an insane desire to peer into it over and over, and to repeat this torture. Then his anxiety intensified, Sin and the Holy Ghost stood before him.

  Several days later Oberlin returned from Switzerland, far earlier than expected. Lenz was disturbed by this. Yet his spirits rose when Oberlin told him about his friends in Alsace. Oberlin moved about the room, unpacked, put things away. He talked of Pfeffel praising the life of a country clergyman. He admonished him to follow his father’s wishes, to live in keeping with his vocation, to return home. He said to him: Honor thy father and mother and so on and so forth. Lenz was quite upset by the discussion; he heaved deep sighs, tears welled in his eyes, he spoke in a broken fashion. I can’t stand it; do you want to send me away? The way to God lies only in you. As for me, I’m done for! I’ve deserted my faith, damned for eternity, I am the eternal Jew. Oberlin reminded him Jesus had died for this, if he fervently turned to him he would partake of his grace.

  Lenz raised his head, wrung his hands and said: Ah! Ah! Divine consolation. Then he suddenly asked in a very friendly fashion how the young lady was doing. Oberlin said he knew nothing of all this, but that he wanted to offer him help and counsel in all things, only he would have to first specify the place, the circumstances, and the individual. His only reply was broken words: Ah she is dead? Is she still alive? O you angel, she loved me — I loved her, she was worthy of it, O you angel. Damned jealousy, I sacrificed her — she was still in love with somebody else too — I loved her, she was worthy of it — O dear mother, she loved me as well. I am a murderer. Oberlin answered: perhaps all these people are still alive, perhaps happy; be this as it may, God would, if he just turned to him, do these people so much good through his prayers and tears that the benefit they gained from him would perhaps far outweigh the injury he had inflicted. This quieted him down by and by and he returned to his painting.

  That afternoon he returned, a scrap of fur on his left shoulder and in his hand a bundle of switches, which had been given to Oberlin together with a letter for Lenz. He handed Oberlin the bundle with the request that he beat him with it. Oberlin took the switches out of his hands, pressed a few kisses on his lips and said: these were the sole blows he intended to mete out to him, he should remain calm, work things out with God on his own, no amount of beatings could eradicate a single one of his sins; Jesus had seen to that, he should turn to him. He left.

  At supper he was as usual somewhat pensive. Yet he spoke of all sorts of things, but anxiously, hurriedly. Around midnight Oberlin was awoken by a noise. Lenz was running around the courtyard, shouting the name Friederike in a harsh hollow voice with great rapidity, confusion and despair, then he threw himself into the basin of the fountain and splashed around, got out, back up to his room, then back down to the basin, and so on several times, at last he grew quiet. The maids who slept in the children’s room beneath him said they had often, and especially that very night, heard a deep humming noise that they could only compare to the sound of a shepherd’s pipe. Perhaps it was him moaning in his hollow, ghastly, desperate voice.

  The following morning Lenz was slow to appear. Finally Oberlin went up to his room, he was lying in bed calmly, not budging. Oberlin had to repeat his questions at length before getting an answer: Yes, Reverend, you see, boredom! Boredom! O, sheer boredom, what more can I say, I have already drawn all the figures on the wall. Oberlin said to him he should turn to God; he laughed and said: if I were as lucky as you to have discovered such an agreeable pastime, yes, one could indeed wile away one’s time that way. Tedium the root of it all. Most people pray only out of boredom; others fall in love out of boredom, still others are virtuous or depraved, but I am nothing, nothing at all, I cannot even kill myself: too boring:

  O God, drowned in thy waves of light,

  Imprisoned by thy midday bright,