Frederik van Eeden
The Quest
XII
He had sunk into a deep sleep – to depths where no dreams come.
In slowly rising from those shades to the cool grey morning light, he passed through dreams, varied and gentle, of former times. He awoke, and they glided from his spirit like dew-drops from a flower. The expression of his eyes was calm and mild while they still rested upon the throngs of lovely images.
Yet, as if shunning the glare of day, he closed his eyes to the light. He saw again what he had seen the morning before. It seemed to him far away, and long ago; yet hour by hour there came back the remembrance of everything – from the dreary dawn to the awful night. He could not believe that all those horrible things had occurred in a single day; the beginning of his misery seemed so remote – lost in grey mists.
The sweet dreams faded away, leaving no trace behind. Pluizer shook him, and the gloomy day began – dull and colorless – the forerunner of many, many others.
Yet what he had seen the night before on that fearful journey stayed in his mind. Had it been only a frightful vision?
When he asked Pluizer about it, shyly, the latter looked at him queerly and scoffingly.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
Johannes did not see the leer in his eye, and asked if it had really happened – he still saw it all so sharp and clear.
"How silly you are, Johannes! Indeed, such things as that can never happen."
Johannes did not know what to think.
"We will soon put you to work; and then you will ask no more such foolish questions."
So they went to Doctor Cijfer, who was to help Johannes find what he was seeking.
While in the crowded street, Pluizer suddenly stood still, and pointed out to Johannes a man in the throng.
"Do you remember him?" asked Pluizer, bursting into a laugh when Johannes grew pale and stared at the man in horror.
He had seen him the night before – deep under the ground.
The doctor received them kindly, and imparted his wisdom to Johannes who listened for hours that day, and for many days thereafter.
The doctor had not yet found what Johannes was seeking; but was very near it, he said. He would take Johannes as far as he himself had gone, and then together they would surely find it.
Johannes listened and learned, diligently and patiently, day after day and month after month. He felt little hope, yet he comprehended that he must go on, now, as far as possible. He thought it strange that, seeking the light, the farther he went the darker it grew. Of all he learned, the beginning was the best; but the deeper he penetrated the duller and darker it became. He began with plants and animals – with everything about him – and if he looked a long while at them, they turned to figures. Everything resolved itself into figures – pages full of them. Doctor Cijfer thought that fine, and he said the figures brought light to him; – but it was darkness to Johannes.
Pluizer never left him, and pressed and urged him on, if he grew disheartened and weary. He spoiled for him every moment of enjoyment or admiration.
Johannes was amazed and delighted as he studied and saw how exquisitely the flowers were constructed; how they formed the fruit, and how the insects unwittingly aided the work.
"That is wonderful," said he. "How exactly everything is calculated, and deftly, delicately formed!"
"Yes, amazingly formed," said Pluizer. "It is a pity that the greater part of that deftness and fineness comes to naught. How many flowers bring forth fruit, and how many seeds grow to be trees?"
"But yet everything seems to be made according to a great plan," said Johannes. "Look! the bees seek honey for their own use, and do not know that they are aiding the flowers; and the flowers allure the bees by their color. It is a plan, and they both unfold it, without knowing it."
"That is fine in sound, but it fails in fact. When the bees get a chance they bite a hole deep down in the flower, and upset the whole intricate arrangement. A cunning craftsman that, to let a bee make sport of him!"
And when he came to the study of men and animals – their wonderful construction – matters went still worse.
In all that looked beautiful to Johannes, or ingenious, Pluizer pointed out the incompleteness and defects. He showed him the great army of ills and sorrows that can assail mankind and animals, with preference for the most loathe-some and most hideous.
"That designer, Johannes, was very cunning, but in everything he made he forgot something, and man has a busy time trying as far as possible to patch up those defects. Just look about you! An umbrella, a pair of spectacles – even clothing and houses – everything is human patchwork. The design is by no means adhered to. But the designer never considered that people could have colds, and read books, and do a thousand other things for which his plan was worthless. He has given his children swaddling-clothes without reflecting that they would outgrow them. By this time nearly all men have outgrown their natural outfits. Now they do everything for themselves, and have absolutely no further concern with the designer and his scheme. Whatever he has not given them they saucily and selfishly take; and when it is obviously his will that they should die, they sometimes, by various devices, evade the end."
"But it is their own fault!" cried Johannes. "Why do they wilfully withdraw from nature?"
"Oh, stupid Johannes! If a nursemaid lets an innocent child play with fire, and the child is burned, who is to blame? The ignorant child, or the maid who knew that the child would burn itself? And who is at fault if men go astray from nature, in pain and misery? Themselves, or the All-wise Designer, to whom they are as ignorant children?"
"But they are not ignorant. They know…"
"Johannes, if you say to a child, 'Do not touch that fire; it will hurt,' and then the child does touch it, because it knows not what pain is, can you claim freedom from blame, and say, 'The child was not ignorant?' You knew when you spoke, that it would not heed your warning. Men are as foolish and stupid as children. Glass is fragile and clay is soft; yet He who made man, and considered not his folly, is like him who makes weapons of glass, careless lest they break – or bolts of clay, not expecting them to bend."
These words fell upon Johannes' soul like drops of liquid fire, and his heart swelled with a great grief that supplanted the former sorrow, and often caused him to weep in the still, sleepless hours of the night.
Ah, sleep! sleep! There came a time after long days when sleep was to him the dearest thing of all. In sleep there was no thinking – no sorrow; and his dreams always carried him back to the old life. It seemed delightful to him, as he dreamed of it; yet, by day he could not remember how things had been. He only knew that the sadness and longing of earlier times were better than the dull, listless feeling of the present. Once he had grievously longed for Windekind – once he had waited, hour after hour, on Robinetta. How delightful that had been!
Robinetta! Was he still longing? The more he learned, the less he longed – because that feeling, also, was dissected, and Pluizer explained to him what love really was. Then he was ashamed, and Doctor Cijfer said that he could not yet reduce it to figures, but that very soon he would be able to. And thus it grew darker and darker about Little Johannes.
He had a faint feeling of gratitude that he had not recognized Robinetta on his awful journey with Pluizer.
When he spoke of it, Pluizer said nothing, but laughed slyly; and Johannes knew that he had not been spared this out of pity.
When Johannes was neither learning nor working, Pluizer made use of the hours in showing him the people. He took him everywhere; into the hospitals where lay the sick – long rows of pale, wasted faces, with dull or suffering expressions. In those great wards a frightful silence reigned, broken only by coughs and groans. And Pluizer pointed out to him those who never again would leave those halls. And when, at a fixed hour, streams of people poured into the place to visit their sick relations, Pluizer said: "Look! These all know that they too will sometime enter this gloomy house, to be borne away from it in a black box."
"How can they ever be cheerful?" thought Johannes.
And Pluizer took him to a tiny upper room, pervaded with a melancholy twilight, where the distant tones of a piano in a neighboring house came, dreamily and ceaselessly. There, among the other patients, Pluizer showed him one who was staring in a stupid way at a narrow sunbeam that slowly crept along the wall.
"Already he has lain there seven long years," said Pluizer. "He was a sailor, and has seen the palms of India, the blue seas of Japan, and the forests of Brazil. During all the long days of those seven long years he has amused himself with that little sunbeam and the piano-playing. He cannot ever go away, and may still be here for seven more years."
After this, Johannes' most dreadful dream was of waking in that little room – in the melancholy twilight – with those far-away sounds, and nothing ever more to see than the waning and waxing light.
Pluizer took him also into the great cathedrals, and let him listen to what was being said there. He took him to festivals, to great ceremonies, and into the heart of many homes. Johannes learned to know men, and sometimes it happened that he was led to think of his former life; of the fairy-tales that Windekind had told him, and of his own adventures. There were men who reminded him of the glow-worm who fancied he saw his deceased companions in the stars – or of the May-bug who was one day older than the other, and who had said so much about a calling. And he heard tales which made him think of Kribblegauw, the hero of the spiders; or of the eel who did nothing, and yet was fed because a fat king was most desired. He likened himself to the young May-bug who did not know what a calling was, and who flew into the light. He felt as if he also were creeping over the carpet, helpless and maimed, with a string around his body – a cutting string that Pluizer was pulling and twitching.
Ah! he would never again find the garden! When would the heavy foot come and crush him?
Pluizer ridiculed him whenever he spoke of Windekind, and, gradually, he began to believe that Windekind had never existed.
"But, Pluizer, is there then no little key? Is there nothing at all?"
"Nothing, nothing. Men and figures. They are all real – they exist – no end of figures!"
"Then you have deceived me, Pluizer! Let me leave off – do not make me seek any more – let me alone!"
"Have you forgotten what Death said? You were to become a man – a complete man."
"I will not – it is dreadful!"
"You must – you have made your choice. Just look at Doctor Cijfer. Does he find it dreadful? Grow to be like him."
It was quite true. Doctor Cijfer always seemed calm and happy. Untiring and imperturbable, he went his way – studying and instructing, contented and even-tempered.
"Look at him," said Pluizer. "He sees all, and yet sees nothing. He looks at men as if he himself were another kind of being who had no concern about them. He goes amid disease and misery like one invulnerable, and consorts with Death like one immortal. He longs only to understand what he sees, and he thinks everything equally good that comes to him in the way of knowledge. He is satisfied with everything, as soon as he understands it. You ought to become so, too."
"But I never can."
"That is true, but it is not my fault."
In this hopeless way their discussions always ended. Johannes grew dull and indifferent, seeking and seeking – what for or why, he no longer knew. He had become like the many to whom Wistik had spoken.
The winter came, but he scarcely observed it.
One chilly, misty morning, when the snow lay wet and dirty in the streets, and dripped from trees and roofs, he went with Pluizer to take his daily walk.
In a city square he met a group of young girls carrying school-books. They stopped to throw snow at one another – and they laughed and romped. Their voices rang clearly over the snowy square. Not a footstep was to be heard, nor the sound of a vehicle – only the tinkling bells of the horses, or the rattling of a shop door; and the joyful laughing rang loudly through the stillness.
Johannes saw that one of the girls glanced at him, and then kept looking back. She had on a black hat, and wore a gay little cloak. He knew her face very well, but could not think who she was. She nodded to him – and then again.
"Who is that? I know her."
"That is possible. Her name is Maria. Some call her Robinetta."
"No, that cannot be. She is not like Windekind. She is like any other girl."
"Ha, ha, ha! She cannot be like nobody. But she is what she is. You have been longing to see her, and now I will take you to her."
"No! I do not want to go. I would rather have seen her dead, like the others."
And Johannes did not look round again, but hurried on, muttering:
"This is the last! There is nothing – nothing!"
XIII
The clear warm sunlight of an early spring morning streamed over the great city. Bright rays entered the little room where Johannes lived, and on the low ceiling there quivered and wavered a great splash of light, reflected from the water rippling in the moat.
Johannes sat before the window in the sunshine, gazing out over the town. Its aspect was entirely altered. The grey fog had floated away, and a lustrous blue vapor enfolded the end of the long street and the distant towers. The slopes of the slate roofs glistened – silver-white. All the houses showed clear lines and bright surfaces in the sunlight, and there was a warm pulsing in the pale blue air. The water seemed alive. The brown buds of the elm trees were big and glossy, and clamorous sparrows were fluttering among the branches.
As he gazed at all this, Johannes fell into a strange mood. The sunshine brought to him a sweet stupor – a blending of real luxury and oblivion. Dreamily he gazed at the glittering ripples – the swelling elm-tree buds, and he listened to the chirping of the sparrows. There was gladness in their notes.
Not in a long time had he felt so susceptible to subtle impressions – nor so really happy.
This was the old sunshine that he remembered. This was the sun that used to call him out-of-doors to the garden, where he would lie down on the warm ground, looking at the grasses and green things in front of him. There, nestled in the lee of an old wall, he could enjoy at his ease the light and heat.
It was just right in that light! It gave that safe-at-home feeling – such as he remembered long ago, in his mother's arms. His mind was full of memories of former times, but he neither wept for nor desired them. He sat still and dreamed – wishing only that the sun would continue to shine.
"What are you moping about there, Johannes?" cried Pluizer. "You know I do not approve of dreaming."
Johannes raised his pensive eyes, imploringly.
"Let me stay a little longer," said he. "The sun is so good."
"What do you find in the sun?" asked Pluizer. "It is nothing but a big candle; it does not make a bit of difference whether you are in candle-light or sunlight. Look! see those shadows and dashes of light on the street. They are nothing but the varied effect of one little light that burns steadily – without a flicker. And that light is really a tiny flame, which shines upon a mere speck of the earth. There, beyond that blue – above and beneath us – it is dark – cold and dark! It is night there – now and ever."
But his words had no effect on Johannes. The still warm sunshine penetrated him, and filled his whole being with light and peace.
Pluizer led him away to the chilly house of Doctor Cijfer. For a little while the image of the sun hovered before his vision, then slowly faded away; and by the middle of the day all was dark again.
When the evening came and he passed through the town once more, the air was sultry and full of the stuffy smells of spring. Everything was reeking, and he felt oppressed in the narrow streets. But in the open squares he smelled the grass and the buds of the country beyond; and he saw the spring in the tranquil little clouds above it all – in the tender flush of the western sky.
The twilight spread a soft grey mist, full of delicate tints, over the town. It was quiet everywhere – only a street-organ in the distance was playing a mournful tune. The buildings seemed black spectres against the crimson sky – their fantastic pinnacles and chimneys reaching up like countless arms.
When the sun threw its last rays out over the great town, it seemed to Johannes that it gave him a kind smile – kind as the smile that forgives a folly. And the sweet warmth stroked his cheeks, caressingly.
Then a great sadness came into Johannes' heart – so great that he could go no farther. He took a deep breath, and lifted up his face to the wide heavens. The spring was calling him, and he heard it. He would answer – he would go. He was all contrition and love and forgiveness.
He looked up longingly, and tears fell from his sorrowful eyes.
"Come, Johannes! Do not act so oddly – people are looking at you," said Pluizer.
Long, monotonous rows of houses stretched out on both sides – dark and gloomy – offensive in the soft spring air, discordant in the springtime melody.
People sat at their doors and on the stoops to enjoy the season. To Johannes it was a mockery. The dirty doors stood open, and the musty rooms within awaited their occupants. In the distance the organ still prolonged its melancholy tones.
"Oh, if I could only fly away – far away to the dunes and to the sea!"
But he had to return to the high-up little room; and that night he lay awake.
He could not help thinking of his father and the long walks he had taken with him, when he followed a dozen steps behind, and his father wrote letters for him in the sand. He thought of the places under the bushes where the violets grew, and of the days when he and his father had searched for them. All night he saw the face of his father – as it was when he sat beside him evenings by the still lamp-light – watching him, and listening to the scratching of his pen.
Every morning after this he asked Pluizer to be allowed to go once more to his home and to his father – to see once again his garden and the dunes. He noticed now that he had had more love for his father than for Presto and for his little room, since it was of him that he asked.
"Only tell me how he is, and if he is still angry with me for staying away so long."
Pluizer shrugged his shoulders. "Even if you knew, how would it help you?"
Still the spring kept calling him – louder and louder. Every night he dreamed of the dark green moss on the hillslopes, and of sunbeams shining through the young and tender, verdure.
"It cannot long stay this way," thought Johannes. "I cannot bear it."
And often when he could not sleep he rose up softly, went to the window, and looked out at the night. He saw the sleepy, feathery little clouds drifting slowly over the disk of the moon to float peacefully in a sea of soft, lustrous light. He thought of the distant dunes – asleep, now, in the sultry night – how wonderful it must be in the low woods where not a leaf would be stirring, and where it was full of the fragrance of moist moss and young birch-sprouts. He fancied he could hear, in the distance the swelling chorus of the frogs, which hovered so mystically over the plains; and the song of the only bird which can accompany the solemn stillness – whose lay begins so soft and plaintive and breaks off so suddenly, making the silence seem yet deeper. And it all was calling – calling him. He dropped his head upon his arms on the window-sill, and sobbed.
"I cannot bear it. I shall die soon if I cannot go."
When Pluizer roused him the following morning, he was still sitting by the window, where he had fallen asleep with his head on his arm.
The days passed by – grew long and warm – and there came no change. Yet Johannes did not die, and had to bear his sorrow.
One morning Doctor Cijfer said to him:
"Come with me, Johannes. I have to visit a patient."
Doctor Cijfer was known to be a learned man, and many appealed to him to ward off sickness and death. Johannes had already accompanied him many times.
Pluizer was unusually frolicsome this morning. Again and again he stood on his head, danced and tumbled, and perpetrated all kinds of reckless tricks. His face wore a constant, mysterious grin, as if he had a surprise all ready for the springing. Johannes was very much afraid of him in this humor.
But Doctor Cijfer was as serious as ever.
They went a long way this morning – in a railway train and afoot. They went farther than at other times, for Johannes had never yet been taken outside the town.
It was a warm, sunny day. Looking out of the train, Johannes saw the great green meadows go by, with their long-plumed grass, and grazing cows. He saw white butterflies fluttering above the flower-decked ground, where the air was quivering with the heat of the sun.
And, suddenly, he felt a thrill. There lay, outspread, the long and undulating dunes!
"Now, Johannes!" said Pluizer, with a grin, "now you have your wish, you see."
Only half believing, Johannes continued to gaze at the dunes. They came nearer and nearer. The long ditches on both sides seemed to be whirling around their centre, and the lonely dwellings along the road sped swiftly past.
Then came some trees – thick-foliaged chestnut trees, bearing great clusters of red or white flowers – dark, blue-green pines – tall, stately linden trees.
It was true, then; he was going to see his dunes once more.
The train stopped and then the three went afoot, under the shady foliage.
Here was the dark-green moss – here were the round spots of sunshine on the ground – this was the odor of birch-sprouts and pine-needles.
"Is it true? Is it really true?" thought Johannes. "Am I going to be happy?"
His eyes sparkled, and his heart bounded. He began to believe in his happiness. He knew these trees, this ground; he had often walked over this wood-path.
They were alone on the way, yet Johannes felt forced to look round, as though some one were following them; and he thought he saw between the oak leaves the dark figure of a man who again and again remained hidden by the last turn in the path.
Pluizer gave him a cunning, uncanny look. Doctor Cijfer walked with long strides, looking down at the ground.
The way grew more and more familiar to him – he knew every bush, every stone. Then suddenly he felt a sharp pang, for he stood before his own house.
The chestnut tree in front of it spread out its large, hand-shaped leaves. Up to the very top the glorious white flowers stood out from the full round masses of foliage.
He heard the sound he knew so well of the opening of the door, and he breathed the air of his own home. He recognized the hall, the doors, everything – bit by bit – with a painful feeling of lost familiarity. It was all a part of his life – his lonely, musing child-life.
He had talked with all these things – with them he had lived in his own world of thought that he suffered no one to enter. But now he felt himself cut off from the old house, and dead to it all – its chambers, halls, and doorways. He felt that this separation was past recall, and as if he were visiting a churchyard – it was so sad and melancholy.
If only Presto had sprung to meet him it would have been less dismal – but Presto was certainly away or dead.
Yet where was his father?
He looked back to the open door and the sunny garden outside, and saw the man who had seemed to be following him, now striding up to the house. He came nearer and nearer, and seemed to grow larger as he approached. When he reached the door, a great chill shadow filled the entrance. Then Johannes recognized the man.
It was deathly still in the house, and they went up the stairs without speaking. There was one stair that always creaked when stepped upon – Johannes knew it. And now he heard it creak three times. It sounded like painful groanings, but under the fourth footstep it was like a faint sob.
Upstairs Johannes heard a moaning – low and regular as the ticking of a clock. It was a dismal, torturing sound.
The door of Johannes' room stood open. He threw a frightened glance into it. The marvelous flower-forms of the hangings looked at him in stupid surprise. The clock had run down.
They went to the room from which the sounds came. It was his father's bedroom. The sun shone gaily in upon the closed, green curtains of the bed. Simon, the cat, sat on the window-sill in the sunshine. An oppressive smell of wine and camphor pervaded the place, and the low moaning sounded close at hand.
Johannes heard whispering voices, and carefully guarded footfalls. Then the green curtains were drawn aside.
He saw his father's face that had so often been in his mind of late. But it was very different now. The grave, kindly expression was gone and it looked strained and distressed. It was ashy pale, with deep brown shadows. The teeth were visible between the parted lips, and the whites of the eyes under the half-closed eyelids. His head lay sunken in the pillow, and was lifted a little with the regularity of the moans, falling each time wearily back again.
Johannes stood by the bed, motionless, and looked with wide, fixed eyes upon the well-known face. He did not know what he thought – he dared not move a finger; he dared not clasp those worn old hands lying limp on the white linen.
Everything around him grew black – the sun and the bright room, the verdure outdoors, and the blue sky as well – everything that lay behind him – it grew black, black, dense and impenetrable. And in that night he could see only the pale face before him, and could think only of the poor tired head – wearily lifted again and again, with the groan of anguish.
Directly, there came a change in this regular movement. The moaning ceased, the eyelids opened feebly, the eyes looked inquiringly around, and the lips tried to say something.
"Father!" whispered Johannes, trembling, while he looked anxiously into the seeking eyes. The weary glance rested upon him, and a faint, faint smile furrowed the hollow cheeks. The thin closed hand was lifted from the sheet, and made an uncertain movement toward Johannes – then fell again, powerless.
"Come, come!" said Pluizer. "No scenes here!"
"Step aside, Johannes," said Doctor Cijfer, "we must see what can be done."
The doctor began his examination, and Johannes left the bed and went to stand by the window. He looked at the sunny grass and the clear sky, and at the broad chestnut leaves where the big flies sat – shining blue in the sunlight. The moaning began again with the same regularity.
A blackbird hopped through the tall grass in the garden – great red and black butterflies were hovering over the flower-beds, and there reached Johannes from out the foliage of the tallest trees the soft, coaxing coo of the wood-doves.
In the room the moaning continued – never ceasing. He had to listen to it – and it came regularly – as unpreventable as the falling drop that causes madness. In suspense he waited through each interval, and it always came again – frightful as the footstep of approaching death.
All out-of-doors was wrapped in warm, mellow sunlight. Everything was happy and basking in it. The grass-blades thrilled and the leaves sighed in the sweet warmth. Above the highest tree tops, deep in the abounding blue, a heron was soaring in peaceful flight.
Johannes could not understand – it was an enigma to him. All was so confused and dark in his soul. "How can all this be in me at the same time?" he thought.
"Is this really I? Is that my father – my own father? Mine – Johannes'?"
It was as if he spoke of a stranger. It was all a tale that he had heard. Some one had told him of Johannes, and of the house where he lived, and of the father whom he had forsaken, and who was now dying. He himself was not that one – he had heard about him. It was a sad, sad story. But it did not concern himself.
But yes – yes – he was that same Johannes!
"I do not understand the case," said Doctor Cijfer, standing up. "It is a very obscure malady."
Pluizer stepped up to Johannes.
"Are you not going to give it a look, Johannes? It is an interesting case. The doctor does not know it."
"Leave me alone," said Johannes, without turning round. "I cannot think."
But Pluizer went behind him and whispered sharply in his ear, according to his wont:
"Cannot think! Did you fancy you could not think? There you are wrong. You must think. You need not be gazing into the green trees nor the blue sky. That will not help. Windekind is not coming. And the sick man there is going to die. You must have seen that as well as we. But what do you think his trouble is?"
"I do not know – I will not know!"
Johannes said nothing more, but listened to the moaning that had a plaintive and reproachful sound. Doctor Cijfer was writing notes in a little book. At the head of the bed sat the dark figure that had followed them. His head was bowed, his long hand extended toward the sufferer, and his deep-set eyes were fixed upon the clock.
The sharp whispering in his ear began again.
"What makes you look so sad, Johannes? You have your heart's desire now. There are the dunes, there the sunbeams through the verdure, there the flitting butterflies and the singing birds. What more do you want? Are you waiting for Windekind? If he be anywhere, he must be there. Why does he not come? Would he be afraid of this dark friend at the bedside? Yet always he was there!"
"Do you not see, Johannes, that it has all been imagination?
"Do you hear that moaning? It sounds lighter than it did a while ago. You can know that it will soon cease altogether. But what of that? There must have been a great many such groans while you were running around outside in the garden among the wild-roses. Why do you stay here crying, instead of going to the dunes as you used to? Look outside! Flowers and fragrance and singing everywhere just as if nothing had happened. Why do you not take part in all that life and gladness?
