Frederik van Eeden
Little Johannes
'That is the clock,' said Pluizer, 'it is always cheerful, year in, year out. It sings the same song every hour, with the same vigour and vivacity; and it sounds more gleeful by night than even by day, as if the clock rejoiced that it has no need of sleep, that it can sing at all times with equal contentment, while thousands, just below, are weeping and suffering. But it sounds most gladly when some one is just dead.'
Again the jubilant peal rang out.
'One day, Johannes,' Pluizer went on,' a dim light will be burning in a quiet room, behind just such a window as that yonder; a melancholy light, flickering pensively, and making the shadows dance on the wall. There will be no sound in that room but now and then a low, suppressed sob. A bed will be standing there, with white curtains, and long shadows in their folds. In the bed something will be lying – white and still. That will have been little Johannes. And then, how loud and joyful will that chime sound, breaking into the room, and singing out the first hour after his death!'
Twelve was striking, booming through the air with long pauses between the strokes. At the last stroke, Johannes, all at once, had a strange feeling as though he were dreaming; he was no longer walking, but floating along a little way above the ground, holding Pluizer's hand. The houses and lamps sped past him in swift flight. And now the houses stood less close together. They formed separate rows, with dark, mysterious gaps between them, where the gas lamps lighted up trenches, puddles, scaffoldings and woodwork. At last they reached a great gate, with heavy pillars and a tall railing. In a winking, they had floated over it and come down again on some soft grass by a high heap of sand. Johannes fancied he must be in a garden, for he heard the rustling of trees hard by.
'Now pay attention, and then confess whether I cannot do greater things than Windekind.'
Then Pluizer shouted aloud a short and awful name which made Johannes quake. The darkness on all sides echoed the sound, and the wind bore it up in widening circles till it died away in the upper air.
And Johannes saw the grass blades growing so tall that they were above his head, and a little pebble which but just now was under his feet, seemed to be close to his face. Pluizer, by his side, and no bigger than he was, picked up the stone with both hands and threw it away with all his might. A confused noise of thin, shrill voices rose up from the spot he had cleared.
'Hey day! who is doing that? What is the meaning of it? Lout!' they could hear said.
Johannes saw black objects running in great confusion. He recognised the quick, nimble ground-beetle, the shining, brown ear-wig with his fine nippers, the millipede with its round back and thousand tiny feet, in the midst of them a long earthworm shrank back as quick as lightning into its burrow! Pluizer made his way through the angry swarm of creatures to the worm's hole.
'Hey there! you long, naked crawler! come up and show yourself once more with your sharp red nose!' he cried.
'What do you want?' asked the worm from below.
'You must come out, because I want to go in; do you hear, you bare-skinned sand-eater!'
The worm cautiously put his pointed head out of the hole, felt all round it two or three times, and then slowly dragged his naked ringed body up to the surface. Pluizer looked round at the other creatures who had crowded curiously about them.
'One of you must go first with a light – no, Master Beetle, you are too stout, and you with your thousand feet would make me giddy. Hey, you ear-wig! I like your looks. Come with me and carry a light in your nippers. You, beetle, must look about for a will-o'-the-wisp, or fetch a chip of rotten wood.'
The creatures were scared by his commanding tones and obeyed him.
Then they went down into the worm's burrow; the ear-wig first, with the shining wood, then Pluizer, and then Johannes. It was a narrow passage and very dark down there. Johannes saw the grains of sand glittering in the dim blue gleam. They looked like large stones, half transparent and built up into a smooth firm wall by the worm's body. The worm himself followed, full of curiosity. Johannes saw the pointed head come close up behind him, and then stop till the long body had been dragged after it. Down they went, without speaking, far and deep. When the path was too steep for Johannes, Pluizer helped him. They seemed never to be coming to an end; still fresh galleries of sand, and still the ear-wig crept on, turning and bending with the sinuosities of the passage. At last this grew broader, and the walls opened out. The grains of sand were black and wet, forming a vault overhead, down which driblets of water made shining streaks, while the roots of trees came through in coils like petrified snakes.
And suddenly there rose before Johannes's eyes an upright wall, black and high, cutting off all space beyond. The ear-wig turned round.
'Here we are. The next question is how to get any further. The worm ought to know; he is at home here.'
'Come on; show us the way,' said Pluizer.
The worm slowly dragged his jointed body up to the black wall and felt it inquisitively. Johannes could see that it was of wood. Here and there it had fallen into brownish powder. The worm bored his way into one such place and the long, wriggling body vanished with three pushes and pauses.
'Now for you,' said Pluizer, pushing Johannes into the little round opening. For a moment he thought he should be suffocated in the soft damp stuff, but he soon felt his head free, and with some trouble worked his way completely through. A large room seemed to lie open before him; the floor was hard and moist, the air thick and intolerably oppressive. Johannes could scarcely breathe, and stood waiting in mortal terror.
He heard Pluizer's voice, which sounded hollow, as in some vast cellar.
'Here, Johannes, follow me.'
He felt the ground before him rise to a hill – and he climbed it, clutching Pluizer's hand in the darkness. He trod, as it were, on a carpet which yielded under his foot. He trampled over hollows and ridges, following Pluizer who led him on to a level spot where he held on by some long stems which bent in his hand like reed-grass.
'Here we can stand very comfortably. Bring a light,' said Pluizer.
The dim light came on from a distance, up and down with its bearer. The nearer it approached, and the more its pale gleam spread in the place they were in, the more terrible became Johannes's anguish of mind. The eminence on which he stood was long and white; the support he clung to was brown, and lay about in glistening waves and curls.
He recognised the features of a human being, and the icy level on which he stood was the forehead. Before him lay the sunken eyes, two deep, dark hollows, and the blue gleam fell on the pinched nose and ashy lips which were parted in the hideous, rigid smile of death.
Pluizer laughed sharply, but the sound seemed smothered by the damp, wooden walls.
'Is not this a surprise, Johannes?'
The worm crept up along the plaits of the shroud: he glided over the chin and the stiffened lips and into the mouth.
'This was the beauty of the ball, whom you thought lovelier even than an elf. Then her hair and dress shed sweet fragrance; then her eyes sparkled and her lips smiled. Now, – look at her!'
With all his horror there was doubt in Johannes's eyes. So soon? The splendour was but now – and already – ?
'Do you not believe me?' grinned Pluizer. 'Half a century lies between now and then. Time and the hour are no more. What has been shall always be, and what shall be has ever been. You could not conceive of it, but you must believe it. Everything here is the truth. All I tell you is true! True! – and Windekind could not say that.'
With a nod and a grimace he leaped round the dead face, and played the most horrible antics. He sat on the eyebrows and raised the eyelids by the long lashes. The eye, which Johannes had seen bright with gladness, stared dull and white in the pale light.
'Now onwards!' cried Pluizer. 'There is more yet to be seen.'
The worm came creeping up from a corner of the mouth, and the dreadful march began once more. Not back again, but along new paths, no less long and gloomy.
'This is much older,' said the earthworm as he made his way through another black wall. 'This has been here a very long time.'
It was less dreadful here than before. Johannes saw nothing but a confused mass, out of which brown bones projected. Hundreds of insects were silently busy here. The light startled and alarmed them.
'Where do you come from? Who brings a light here? We want no light.' And they hastily vanished into the folds and crevices. But they recognised a fellow-creature.
'Have you been in the next one?' asked the worms. 'The wood is still hard.'
The first worm denied it. 'He wants to keep the find to himself,' said Pluizer to Johannes in a low voice.
Then they went forward again; Pluizer explained everything, and pointed out persons whom Johannes had known. They came to an ugly face with prominent, staring eyes, and thick dark lips and cheeks.
'This was a very fine gentleman,' said he in high glee. 'You should have seen him – so rich, so fashionable, so arrogant. He is as much puffed up as ever!'
And so they went on. There were lean and haggard faces with white hair that shone blue in the feeble light, and little children with large heads and old-looking, anxious features.
'These, you see, died first and grew old afterwards,' said Pluizer.
They came to a man with a flowing beard and parted lips, showing glistening white teeth. There was a round black hole in the middle of his forehead.
'This one lent Death a helping hand. Why had he not a little patience? He would have come here in the end.'
Through passage after passage, one after another, they passed, no end of them – straight-laid figures, with rigid, grinning faces, and motionless hands laid one over the other.
'Now I can go no further,' said the ear-wig. 'I do not know my way beyond this.'
'Let us turn back,' said the worm.
'One more, one more!' cried Pluizer.
So on they went.
'Everything you see here, actually exists,' said Pluizer, as they made their way forward. 'It is all real. One thing only is not real, and that is yourself, Johannes. You are not here; you cannot come here.'
And he laughed maliciously as he saw Johannes's terrified and bewildered face at these words.
'This is the last, positively the last.'
'The way stops here. I am going no further,' said the ear-wig crossly.
'I will go further,' said Pluizer; and where the path ended he began grubbing the earth with both hands.
'Help me, Johannes.'
And Johannes, submissive with wretchedness, obeyed, scratching away the fine damp soil. Silent and breathless they worked away till they came to the black wood.
The worm had drawn back his ringed head and disappeared. The ear-wig dropped the light and turned away.
'It is impossible to get in, the wood is new,' said he as he withdrew.
'I will do it!' said Pluizer, and with his clawed fingers he tore long white splinters cracking out of the wood.
A fearful anguish came over Johannes. But he could not help himself; there was no escape.
At last the dark thing was opened. Pluizer seized the light and hurried in.
'Here, here!' he cried, running to the head.
But when Johannes came as far as the hands, which lay quietly folded over the breast, he stopped. He gazed at the thin white fingers, dimly lighted from above. On a sudden, he recognised them, – he knew the shape and turn of the fingers, the look of the long nails, now blue and dull. He recognised a brown spot on one of the forefingers. These were his own hands.
'Here, this way!' Pluizer called from the head. 'Only look, do you know him?'
Hapless Johannes tried to stand up and go towards the light which winked at him; but he could not. The gleam died into total darkness and he fell senseless.
XII
He had sunk into deep sleep – that sleep which is too deep for dreams.
When he came out of the darkness – very slowly – into the cool grey light of dawn, he passed through varied and peaceful dreams of an early time. He woke up, and they glided off his soul, like dew-drops off a flower. The look in his eyes was calm and sweet as they still gazed on the crowd of lovely images.
But he closed them again quickly as though the glare were painful, to shut out the pale daylight. He saw just what he had seen the morning before. It seemed to him far away and a long time ago. Still, hour by hour, he remembered it all, from the dreary day-break to the terrible night. He could not believe that all these horrors had come upon him in a single day. The beginning of his wretchedness seemed so remote, lost in grey mist.
The sweet dreams vanished, and left no trace on his spirit; Pluizer shook him, and the dreadful day began, gloomy and colourless; the first of many, many more. But all he had seen last night in that terrible walk dwelt in his mind. Had it been no more than a fearful vision?
When he asked Pluizer doubtfully, he looked at him with mockery and amazement.
'What do you mean?' he said.
But Johannes did not see the sarcasm in his eyes, and asked whether all this, which he still saw so plainly and clearly, had not indeed been true.
'Why, Johannes, how silly you are! Such a thing could never happen at all.'
And Johannes did not know what to think.
'We must set you to work at once, and then you will ask no more such foolish questions.'
So they went to Doctor Cypher, who was to help Johannes to find what he sought.
But as they went along the crowded street, Pluizer suddenly stood still, and pointed out a man in the throng.
'Do you remember him?' asked Pluizer, and he laughed aloud when Johannes turned pale and stared at the man in terror. He had seen him last night, deep under ground.
The doctor received them kindly and imparted his learning to Johannes, who listened to him for hours that day – and for many days after. The doctor had not found what they sought; but was very near it, he said. He would lead Johannes as far as he himself had gone, and then, together, they would be sure to achieve to it.
Johannes learned and listened, diligently and patiently – day after day, and month after month. He had very little hope, but he understood that he must go on now, as far as possible. He thought it strange that the longer he sought the light the darker it grew around him. The beginning of everything, he learned, was the best part of it, but the deeper he got the duller and more obscure it became. He began with the study of plants and animals, of everything about him, and when he had studied these a long time they all turned to numbers. Everything resolved itself into numbers – pages of figures. This Doctor Cypher thought quite splendid; he said that light would come to them as the numbers came, but to Johannes it was darkness.
Pluizer never left him, and drove and urged him on when he was disheartened or weary. His presence marred every moment of enjoyment and admiration. Johannes was amazed and delighted when he learnt and saw how exquisitely flowers were constructed, how the fruit was formed, and how insects unconsciously helped in the process.
'That is beautiful!' he exclaimed. 'How exactly it is all arranged, and how delicately and accurately contrived!'
'Yes, amazingly contrived,' said Pluizer. 'The pity is that the greater part of this ingenuity and accuracy comes to nothing. How many flowers produce fruit, and how many seeds become trees?'
'But still, it seems to be all wrought by some grand plan,' said Johannes. 'Look, the bees seek honey for their own ends and do not know that they are serving the flowers, and the flowers attract the bees by their colours. That is a scheme, and they both work it out without knowing it.'
'That all looks very pretty, but it fails in many ways. When the bees have a chance, they bite a hole through the flower and make the whole internal structure useless. He is a clever Contriver indeed who can be laughed to scorn by a bee!'
And when he came to study the organism of men and beasts, matters were even worse. Whenever Johannes thought anything beautiful or well adapted, Pluizer would demonstrate its imperfections and inefficiency. He expatiated on the host of ills and woes to which every living creature is liable, selecting by preference the most disgusting and terrible.
'The Contriver, Johannes, was very shrewd, but in everything he made he forgot something, and men have as much as they can do to patch up these defects as best they may. You have only to look about you. An umbrella, a pair of spectacles – for shelter and better sight – these are specimens of man's patching. They are no part of the original plan. But the Contriver never considered that men would have colds, and read books, and do a thousand other things for which his plan was inadequate. He gave his children clothes without reflecting that they would outgrow them. Almost all men have by this time long outgrown their natural outfit. Now they do everything for themselves, and never trouble themselves at all about the Contriver and his schemes. What he failed to give them, they simply take by brute force; and when the obvious result is that they must die, they evade death, sometimes for a long period, by a variety of devices.'
'But it is men's own fault,' said Johannes. 'Why do they wilfully deviate from the laws of nature?'
'Oh, silly Johannes! If a nursemaid lets an innocent child play with fire and it is burned, whose fault is it? The child's, who knew nothing about fire; or the nurse's, who knew that it would burn itself? And who is to blame if men pine in misery and disobedience to nature – they or the all-wise Contriver, compared with whom we are ignorant children?'
'But they are not ignorant, they know – '
'Johannes, if you say to a child: Do not touch that fire, it will hurt you – and if the child touches it all the same because it does not know what pain is, can you then plead your own innocence and say: The child was not ignorant? Did you not know that it would not heed your advice? Men are as foolish as children. Glass is brittle and clay is soft. And He who made men and did not take their folly into account, is like a man who should make weapons of glass and not expect them to break, or arrows of clay and not expect them to bend.'
His words fell like drops of liquid fire on Johannes's soul, and his heart swelled with a great grief to which his former woes were as nothing, and which often made him weep in the silent, sleepless hours of the night.
Oh, for sleep! sleep! There came a time after long days, when nothing was so dear to him as sleep. Then he neither thought nor suffered; in his dreams he was always carried back to his old life. It seemed to him beautiful as he dreamed of it, but day by day he could never remember exactly how things had then been. He only knew that the vexations and cravings of that former time were better than the vacant, stagnant feeling of the present. He once had longed bitterly for Windekind; he once had waited hour after hour on Robinetta. How delightful that had been!
Robinetta! Did he still long for her? The more he learnt the feebler that craving became. For that too was dissected, and Pluizer showed him what love really was. Then he felt ashamed, and Doctor Cypher said that he could not as yet express it in numbers, but that he should soon accomplish this. Then things grew darker and darker round little Johannes. He had an obscure feeling of thankfulness that he had not seen Robinetta in the course of that fearful expedition with Pluizer.
When he spoke of it to Pluizer he made no reply but a sly laugh; but Johannes understood that this was from no desire to spare him.
Those hours which Johannes did not spend in study or work Pluizer took advantage of to show him the life of men. He managed to take him everywhere – into the hospitals where sick people lay in great numbers – long ranks of pale, haggard faces with a dull, suffering expression – and where unearthly silence reigned, broken only by coughing and groaning. And Pluizer showed him how many of them could never leave the place. And when at a fixed hour streams of men and women came pouring into the place to visit their sick relations, Pluizer said: 'You see, they all know that they too must some day find their way into this house and these gloomy rooms, only to be carried out in a black chest.'
'Then how can they ever be so light-hearted?' thought Johannes.
And Pluizer took him up to a little attic-room where a dismal twilight reigned, and where the distant tinkle of a piano in a neighbouring house made an incessant dreamy noise. Here they found, among others, one man who lay staring helplessly before him at a narrow sunbeam which slowly crept up the wall.
'He has lain there for seven years,' said Pluizer. 'He was a sailor, and has seen the palms of India, the blue seas of Japan, the forests of Brazil; and now, for seven long years, he has amused himself all day and every day with the sunbeams and the sound of the piano. He will never leave this room again; but it cannot last much longer now.'
After this day Johannes had his worst dream; he fancied himself in that little room, listening to the feeble music, in the melancholy half-light, with nothing to look at but the rising and waning sunbeams – never more till the end.
Pluizer took him, too, to the great churches to listen to what was said there. He took him to festivals and grand ceremonies, and made him intimate in many houses. Johannes learnt to study men, and it sometimes happened that he could not help thinking of his past life, of the tales Windekind had told him and of his own disappointments. There were men who reminded him of the glow-worm, who fancied that the stars were his departed friends; or of the cockchafer who was one day older than his comrade, and who had said so much about a vocation; and he heard tales which made him think of Kribbelgauw, the Spider-Hero, and of the eel who did nothing, but was fed because it was a grand thing to have a fat king. Himself, he could only compare to the younger cockchafer, who did not know what a vocation was, and flew to the light. He felt that he in the same way was creeping, helpless and crippled, over the carpet with a string round his body, a cruel string which Pluizer tugged and twitched.
Ah! he should never see the garden again! When would the heavy foot come and crush him to death?
Pluizer laughed at him if he ever spoke of Windekind; and by degrees he began to think that Windekind had never existed.
'But, Pluizer, then the little key does not exist – nothing is real!'
'Nothing, nothing. Men and numbers – those are real and exist, endless numbers!'
'Then you deceived me, Pluizer. Let me go away – let me seek no more – leave me alone.'
'Have you forgotten what Death told you? That you are to become a man, a complete man?'
'I will not! it is horrible!'
'You must. You wished it once. Look at Doctor Cypher, does he think it horrible? Become like him – '
It was very true. Doctor Cypher seemed always content and happy. Unwearied and imperturbable, he pursued his way, studying and teaching, satisfied and equable.
'Look at him,' Pluizer went on, 'he sees everything, and yet sees nothing. He looks on men as though he himself were a being apart, having nothing to do with their sufferings. He moves among griefs and wretchedness as though he were invulnerable, and meets Death face to face as though he were immortal. All he aims at is to understand what he sees, and everything is good in his eyes that comes in the way of knowledge. He is satisfied with everything so long as he understands it. That is what you must be.'
'But that I can never be.'
'Well, I cannot help that.'
This was the hopeless conclusion of all their discussions. Johannes grew dull and indifferent, and searched and searched, knowing no longer why, or for what. He had become like the multitudes of whom Wistik had spoken.
It was now winter, but he scarcely observed it.
One chill and misty morning, when the snow lay wet and dirty on the roads, and fell from the trees and roofs, he went with Pluizer for his daily walk. In a public garden he met a party of young girls, in a row, and carrying school-books. They pelted each other with snow, and laughed and gambolled; their voices rang out clearly over the snowy plain. There was no sound of feet or wheels to be heard; nothing but the tinkling bells of the horses, or the latch of a shop door. Their merry laughter sounded distinctly through the silence.
Johannes noted that one of these damsels looked at him and stared back after him. She wore a coloured cloak and a black hat. He knew her face very well, but he could not think who she was. She nodded to him once and again.
'Who is that? I know her.'
'Yes, very likely. Her name is Maria, some persons call her Robinetta.'
'No, that cannot be. She is not like Windekind. She is a girl like any other.'
'Ha, ha, hah! She cannot be like Nobody. But she is what she is. You have longed to see her so much; now I will take you to see her!'
'No, I do not want to see her. I would rather see her dead like the others.'
And Johannes would not look round again, but hurried on, murmuring: 'This is the last! There is nothing – nothing!'
