Despair Read online

  A clever Lett whom I used to know in Moscow in 1919 said to me once that the clouds of brooding which occasionally and without any reason came over me were a sure sign of my ending in a madhouse. He was exaggerating, of course; during this last year I have thoroughly tested the remarkable qualities of clarity and cohesion exhibited by the logical masonry in which my strongly developed, but perfectly normal mind indulged. Frolics of the intuition, artistic vision, inspiration, all the grand things which have lent my life such beauty, may, I expect, strike the layman, clever though he be, as the preface of mild lunacy. But don't you worry; my health is perfect, my body both clean within and without, my gait easy; I neither drink nor smoke excessively, nor do I live in riot. Thus, in the pink of health, well dressed and young-looking, I roved the countryside described above; and the secret inspiration did not deceive me. I did find the thing that I had been unconsciously tracking. Let me repeat--incredible! I was gazing at a marvel, and its perfection, its lack of cause and object filled me with a strange awe. But perhaps already then, while I gazed, my reason had begun to probe the perfection, to search for the cause, to guess at the object.

  He drew his breath in with a sharp sniff; his face broke into ripples of life--this slightly marred the marvel, but still it was there. He then opened his eyes, blinked at me askance, sat up, and with endless yawns--could not get his fill of them--started scratching his scalp, both hands deep in his brown greasy hair.

  He was a man of my age, lank, dirty, with a three days' stubble on his chin; there was a narrow glimpse of pink flesh between the lower edge of his collar (soft, with two round slits meant for an absent pin) and the upper end of his shirt. His thin-knitted tie dangled sideways, and there was not a button to his shirt front. A few pale violets were fading in his buttonhole; one of them had got loose and hung head downward. Near him lay a shabby knapsack; an opened flap revealed a pretzel and the greater part of a sausage with the usual connotations of ill-timed lust and brutal amputation. I sat examining the tramp with astonishment; he seemed to have donned that gawky disguise for an old-fashioned slumkin-lumpkin fancy dress ball.

  "I could do with a smoke," said he in Czech. His voice turned out to be unexpectedly low-tuned, even sedate, and with two forked fingers he made the gesture of holding a cigarette. I thrust toward him my large cigarette case; my eyes did not once leave his face. He bent a little nearer, pressing his hand against the earth as he did so, and I took the opportunity of inspecting his ear and hollow temple.

  "German ones," said he and smiled--showed his gums. This disappointed me, but happily his smile vanished immediately. (By this time I was loath to part with the marvel.)

  "German yourself?" he inquired in that language, his fingers twirling and pressing the cigarette. I said Yes and clicked my lighter under his nose. He greedily joined his hands roof-wise above the trembling flame. Blue-black, square fingernails.

  "I'm German, too," said he, puffing smoke. "That is, my father was German, but my mother was Czech, came from Pilsen."

  I kept expecting from him an outburst of surprise, great laughter perhaps, but he remained impassive. Only then did I realize what an oaf he was.

  "Slept like a top," said he to himself in a tone of fatuous complacency, and spat with gusto.

  "Out of work?" I asked.

  Mournfully he nodded several times and spat again. It is always a wonder to me the amount of saliva that simple folk seem to possess.

  "I can walk more than my boots can," said he looking at his feet. Indeed, he was sadly shod.

  He rolled slowly onto his belly and, as he surveyed the distant gasworks and a skylark that soared up from a furrow, he went on musingly:

  "That was a good job I had last year in Saxony, not far from the frontier. Gardening. Best thing in the world! Later on I worked in a pastry shop. Every night after work, me and my friend used to cross the frontier for a pint of beer. Seven miles there and as many back. The Czech beer was cheaper than ours and the wenches fatter. There was a time, too, when I played the fiddle and kept a white mouse."

  Now let us glance from the side, but just in passing, without any physiognomizing; not too closely, please, gentlemen, or you might get the shock of your lives. Or perhaps you might not. Alas, after all that has happened I have come to know the partiality and fallaciousness of human eyesight. Anyhow, here is the picture: two men reclining on a patch of sickly grass; one, a smartly dressed fellow, slashing his knee with a yellow glove; the other, a vague-eyed vagabond, lying full length and voicing his grievances against life. Crisp rustle of neighboring thornbush. Flying clouds. A windy day in May with little shivers like those that run along the coat of a horse. Rattle of a motor lorry from the highroad. A lark's small voice in the sky.

  The tramp had lapsed into silence; then spoke again, pausing to expectorate. One thing and another. On and on. Sighed sadly. Lying prone, bent his legs back till the calves touched his bottom, and then again stretched them out.

  "Look here, you," I blurted. "Don't you really see anything?"

  He rolled over and sat up.

  "What's the idea?" he asked, a frown of suspicion darkening his face.

  I said: "You must be blind."

  For some ten seconds we kept looking into each other's eyes. Slowly I raised my right arm, but his left did not rise, as I had almost expected it to do. I closed my left eye, but both his eyes remained open. I showed him my tongue. He muttered again:

  "What's up? What's up?"

  I produced a pocket mirror. Even as he took it, he pawed at his face, then glanced at his palm, but found neither blood nor bird spat. He looked at himself in the sky-blue glass. Gave it back to me with a shrug.

  "You fool," I cried. "Don't you see that we two--don't you see, you fool, that we are--Now listen--take a good look at me...."

  I drew his head sideways to mine, so that our temples touched; in the glass two pairs of eyes danced and swam.

  When he spoke his tone was condescending:

  "A rich man never quite resembles a poor one, but I dare say you know better. Now I remember once seeing a pair of twins at a fair, in August 1926--or was it September? Now let me see. No. August. Well, that was really some likeness. Nobody could tell the one from the other. You were promised a hundred marks if you spotted the least difference. 'All right,' says Fritz (Big Carrot, we called him) and lands one twin a wallop on the ear. 'There you are,' he says, 'one of them has a red ear, and the other hasn't, so just hand over the money if you don't mind.' What a laugh we had!"

  His eyes sped over the dove-grey cloth of my suit; slid down the sleeve; tripped and pulled up at the gold watch on my wrist.

  "Couldn't you find some work for me?" he asked, cocking his head.

  Note: it was he and not I who first perceived the masonic bond in our resemblance; and as the resemblance itself had been established by me, I stood toward him--according to his subconscious calculation--in a subtle state of dependence, as if I were the mimic and he the model. Naturally, one always prefers people to say: "He resembles you," and not the other way round. In appealing to me for help this petty scoundrel was just feeling the ground in view of future demands. At the back of his muddled brain there lurked, maybe, the reflection that I ought to be thankful to him for his generously granting me, by the mere fact of his own existence, the occasion of looking like him. Our resemblance struck me as a freak bordering on the miraculous. What interested him was mainly my wishing to see any resemblance at all. He appeared to my eyes as my double, that is, as a creature bodily identical with me. It was this absolute sameness which gave me so piercing a thrill. He on his part saw in me a doubtful imitator. I wish to lay stress, however, on the dimness of those ideas of his. He would certainly not have understood my comments upon them, the dullard.

  "I am afraid there is not much I can do for you at the moment," I answered coldly. "But leave me your address."

  I took out my notebook and silver pencil.

  He smiled ruefully: "No good saying I live in a v
illa; better to sleep in a hayloft than on moss in a wood, but better to sleep on moss than on a hard bench."

  "Still, I should like to know where to find you."

  He thought this over and then said: "This autumn I am sure to be at the same village where I worked last year. You might send a line to the post office there. It is not far from Tarnitz. Here, let me write it down for you."

  His name turned out to be Felix, "the happy one." What his surname was, gentle reader, is no business of yours. His awkward handwriting seemed to creak at every turning. He wrote with his left hand. It was time for me to go. I put ten crowns into cap. With a condescending grin he offered his hand, hardly bothering to sit up. I grasped it only because it provided me with the curious sensation of Narcissus fooling Nemesis by helping his image out of the brook.

  Then almost at a run I returned the way I had come. When I looked over my shoulder I saw his dark lank figure among the bushes. He was lying supine, his legs crossed in the air and his arms under his head.

  Suddenly I felt limp, dizzy, dead-tired, as after some long and disgusting orgy. The reason for this sickly-sweet afterglow was that he had, with a cool show of absent-mindedness, pocketed my silver pencil. A procession of silver pencils marched down an endless tunnel of corruption. As I followed the edge of the road I now and then closed my eyes till I all but tumbled into the ditch. Then afterwards, at the office, in the course of a business conversation, I simply craved to tell my interlocutor: "Queer thing has just happened to me! Now you would hardly believe ..." But I said nothing, thus setting a precedent for secrecy.

  When at last I got back to my hotel room, I found there, amid mercurial shadows and framed in frizzly bronze, Felix awaiting me. Pale-faced and solemn he drew near. He was now well-shaven; his hair was smoothly brushed back. He wore a dove-grey suit with a lilac tie. I took out my handkerchief; he took out his handkerchief too. A truce, parleying.

  Some of the countryside had got into my nostrils. I blew my nose and sat down on the edge of the bed, continuing the while to consult the mirror. I remember that the small marks of conscious existence such as the dust in my nose, the black dirt between the heel and the shank of one shoe, hunger, and presently the rough brown taste tinged with lemon of a large flat veal cutlet in the grillroom, strangely absorbed my attention as if I were looking for, and finding (and still doubting a little) proofs that I was I, and that this I (a second-rate businessman with ideas) was really at a hotel, dining, reflecting on business matters, and had nothing in common with a certain tramp who, at the moment, was lolling under a bush. And then again, the thrill of that marvel made my heart miss a beat. That man, especially when he slept, when his features were motionless, showed me my own face, my mask, the flawlessly pure image of my corpse--I use the latter term merely because I wish to express with the utmost clarity--express what? Namely this: that we had identical features, and that, in a state of perfect repose, this resemblance was strikingly evident, and what is death, if not a face at peace--its artistic perfection? Life only marred my double; thus a breeze dims the bliss of Narcissus; thus, in the painter's absence, there comes his pupil and by the superfluous flush of unbidden tints disfigures the portrait painted by the master.

  And then, thought I, was not I, who knew and liked my own face, in a better position than others to notice my double, for it is not everyone who is so observant; and it often happens that people comment upon the striking resemblance between two persons, who, though acquainted, do not suspect their own likeness (and who start denying it hotly if told). All the same, I had never before supposed it possible that there could exist such perfect resemblance as that between Felix and me. I have seen brothers resembling each other, twins. On the screen I have seen a man meeting his double; or better to say an actor playing two parts with, as in our case, the difference of social standing naively stressed, so that in one part he was a slinking rough, and in the other a staid bourgeois in a car--as if, really, a pair of identical tramps, or a pair of identical gents, would have been less fun. Yes, I have seen all that, but the likeness between twin brothers is spoiled like an equiradical rhyme by the stamp of kinship, while a film actor in a double part can hardly deceive anyone, for even if he does appear in both impersonations at once, the eye cannot help tracing a line down the middle where the halves of the picture have been joined.

  Our case, however, was neither that of identical twins (sharing blood meant for one) nor of a stagewizard's trickery.

  How I long to convince you! And I will, I will convince you! I will force you all, you rogues, to believe ... though I am afraid that words alone, owing to their special nature, are unable to convey visually a likeness of that kind: the two faces should be pictured side by side, by means of real colors, not words, then and only then would the spectator see my point. An author's fondest dream is to turn the reader into a spectator; is this ever attained? The pale organisms of literary heroes feeding under the author's supervision swell gradually with the reader's lifeblood; so that the genius of a writer consists in giving them the faculty to adapt themselves to that--not very appetizing--food and thrive on it, sometimes for centuries. But at the present moment it is not literary methods that I need, but the plain, crude obviousness of the painter's art.

  Look, this is my nose; a big one of the northern type, with a hard bone somewhat arched and the fleshy part tipped up and almost rectangular. And that is his nose, a perfect replica of mine. Here are the two sharply drawn furrows on both sides of my mouth with lips so thin as to seem licked away. He has got them, too. Here are the cheekbones--but this is a passport list of facial features meaning nothing; an absurd convention. Somebody told me once that I looked like Amundsen, the Polar explorer. Well, Felix, too, looked like Amundsen. But it is not every person that can recall Amundsen's face. I myself recall it but faintly, nor am I sure whether there had not been some mix-up with Nansen. No, I can explain nothing.

  Simpering, that is what I am. Well do I know that I have proved my point. Going on splendidly. You now see both of us, reader. Two, but with a single face. You must not suppose, however, that I am ashamed of possible slips and type errors in the book of nature. Look nearer: I possess large yellowish teeth; his are whiter and set more closely together, but is that really important? On my forehead a vein stands out like a capital M imperfectly drawn, but when I sleep my brow is as smooth as that of my double. And those ears ... the convolutions of his are but very slightly altered in comparison with mine: here more compressed, there smoothed out. We have eyes of the same shape, narrowly slit with sparse lashes, but his iris is paler than mine.

  This was about all in the way of distinctive markings that I discerned at that first meeting. During the following night my rational memory did not cease examining such minute flaws, whereas with the irrational memory of my senses I kept seeing, despite everything, myself, my own self, in the sorry disguise of a tramp, his face motionless, with chin and cheeks bristle-shaded, as happens to a dead man overnight.

  Why did I tarry in Prague? I had finished my business. I was free to return to Berlin. Why did I go back to those slopes next morning, to that road? I had no trouble in finding the exact spot where he had sprawled the day before. I discovered there a golden cigarette-end, a dead violet, a scrap of Czech newspaper, and--that pathetically impersonal trace which the unsophisticated wanderer is wont to leave under a bush: one large, straight, manly piece and a thinner one coiled over it. Several emerald flies completed the picture. Whither had he gone? Where had he passed the night? Empty riddles. Somehow I felt horribly uncomfortable in a vague heavy way, as if the whole experience had been an evil deed.

  I returned to the hotel for my suitcase and hurried to the station. There, at the entrance to the platform, were two rows of nice low benches with backs carved and curved in perfect accordance with the human spine. Some people were sitting there; a few were dozing. It occurred to me that I should suddenly see him there, fast asleep, hands open and one last violet still in his buttonhole. Peop
le would notice us together; jump up, surround us, drag us to the police station ... why? Why do I write this? Just the usual rush of my pen? Or is it indeed a crime in itself for two people to be as alike as two drops of blood?

  Chapter Two

  I have grown much too used to an outside view of myself, to being both painter and model, so no wonder my style is denied the blessed grace of spontaneity. Try as I may I do not succeed in getting back into my original envelope, let alone making myself comfortable in my old self; the disorder there is far too great; things have been moved, the lamp is black and dead, bits of my past litter the floor.

  Quite a happy past, I dare say. I owned in Berlin a small but attractive flat, three and a half rooms, sunny balcony, hot water, central heating; Lydia, my thirty-year-old wife, and Elsie, our seventeen-year-old maid. Close at hand was the garage where stood that delightful little car--a dark-blue two-seater, paid for in installments. On the balcony, a bulging round-headed hoary cactus grew bravely though slowly. I got my tobacco always at the same shop, and was greeted there by a radiant smile. A similar smile welcomed my wife at the store which supplied us with eggs and butter. On Saturday nights we went to a cafe or to the pictures. We belonged to the cream of the smug middle class, or so it would seem. I did not, however, upon coming home from office, take off my shoes to lie down on the couch with the evening paper. Nor did conversation with my wife consist solely of smallish numerals. Nor again did my thoughts always stick to the adventures of the chocolate I made. I may even confess that certain Bohemian tastes were not entirely foreign to my nature.

  As to my attitude toward new Russia, let me declare straightaway that I did not share my wife's views. Coming from her painted lips, the term "Bolshevik" acquired a note of habitual and trivial hatred--no, "hatred" is, I am afraid, too strong a word here. It was something homely, elementary, womanish, for she disliked Bolsheviks as one dislikes rain (on Sundays especially) or bedbugs (especially in new lodgings), and Bolshevism meant to her a nuisance akin to the common cold. She took it for granted that facts confirmed her opinion; their truth was too obvious to be discussed. Bolsheviks did not believe in God; that was naughty of them, but what else could one expect from sadists and hooligans?