Pictor's Metamorphoses Part 7

"Ah," he said benevolently, "and indeed, why not? So far, you have pleased us quite well; and that we've never before had a poet as a member is basically no obstacle. Frankly speaking, for my own part, it has always been my opinion up until now that a poet is someone who has written his collected works and has been dead for quite some time. Now you, on your part, ought to do something that will ingratiate you and demonstrate your good intentions."

I explained that from the bottom of my heart I was prepared to do so, and asked him to advise me how I could best introduce myself to the gentlemen.

"Well," he said, "it doesn't have to cost you the whole world. For example, you could tap on your gla.s.s, stand up, and say to them that in sympathy with the guild and its senior member-who now rests in the bosom of G.o.d-it would give you pleasure to compose a poem about the deceased and to pay for today's consumption of wine."

"The idea of paying for the wine," I said gratefully, "appeals to me a great deal. But how shall I compose a poem about a dead old man whom I did not know, never saw, and about whom I know nothing, except that he was a tailor and had the honor of belonging to your guild?"

"You are a stranger here," my patron said. "Otherwise, you would know that our senior member was no more a tailor than the guild master or I or any of the other members. You yourself certainly are no tailor and yet you, too, want to become a member of our guild."

"But what then was the dead man's profession?"

"I don't know exactly, I believe that formerly he was the manager or the owner of a liquor concern; he was an educated man with impeccable manners. But you don't need to be so worried about your poem, you don't have to put a tailor in it, only perhaps the red silk banner with golden scissors; and you should make some lovely statement about death and human life and reunions and the like. That's what people like to hear on such occasions."

He began to grow impatient; we were standing in the doorway to the inn, and inside the cozy little parlor the gla.s.ses were ringing. I did not have the courage to detain him any longer and I let him get back to his friends; after a while I followed him meekly, but I found that, with the rolls and the good wine, gradually my courage and my good spirits were reviving. I stood up and extemporaneously composed a rhapsodic ode, and perhaps it is a pity that it was never written down. It had more power, verve, and a broader popular appeal than any of my other poems, and the men were exceedingly pleased with it. They became quite pensive; deeply moved, they nodded heartily in agreement; they cried out "bravo" and got up all together to clink gla.s.ses with me, to compliment me, and to bid me welcome as a member of their guild. I was moved to tears, and after all the handshaking I was about to announce that the wine was on me, when, in one of those moments of great clarity-which, after a lot of drinking, can blaze up like lightning-it came to me that the contents of my rather slender wallet might not-indeed, no longer could-suffice to pay for the wine. And so I remained silent; overwhelmed and happy, I mutely raised my gla.s.s to the many who were drinking my health. They were honored to take me into their time-honored guild: I was safe, never again would my work be under surveillance or forbidden; everything had been done in accordance with form and order.

And yet, never again did I hear from the Tailors Guild. This was the one and only time that I followed its lovely silk flag, the one time that I-a non-tailor among non-tailors-had partaken of rolls and wine with them, had regaled the guild brothers with verses and fraternized with them. On a few rare occasions it has happened that a face seemed familiar to me, and I have pondered over whether it might belong to one of my fellow guild members; but the owner of the face soon went past me and vanished. And so, of the whole experience, nothing has stuck with me but the memory of those two hours in the circle of the bereaved revelers.

Now, as concerns the poem I produced on that occasion in such an unusual fashion and which met with such thunderous applause, after more sober consideration I must say: it is better, it is a blessing that it was never written down and that no record of it exists. It was a product of circ.u.mstances which did not suit me and which all my life I have made many a sacrifice to avoid and prevent. The poem arose out of my forced accommodation to a situation which I found strange and unsuitable; and it arose out of a state of intoxication, which, to be sure, had less to do with the excellent white wine-of which I have nothing but the most pleasant memory-and far more to do with the unaccustomed atmosphere of fellowship, a feeling of belonging, of community, breast to breast and shoulder to shoulder-a good climate perhaps for politicians, pastors, and the lions of the lecture halls, but not for poets or people with similar callings, for whom not society but seclusion and solitude are salutary. That poem which seemed so beautiful and was such a great success I have indeed forgotten, which in itself proves that the verses were bad; but I have not forgotten-rather, it is with some amount of remorse and shame that it has stuck in my memory-the final sentiments of that rhymed sermon, the foolish and fainthearted, disagreeable and tasteless thoughts that certainly Death awaited us all, but it would be some consolation to know that once the grave had swallowed us up, our comrades, rallied around the dear old flag, would remember and memorialize us by making a libation. Such oil, such unctuous nonsense flowed from my lips, to the great delight of those honorable men who sat around the table, and whose hearts beat higher because of it; and just as my feeling of membership and security in this circle had been a fraud, leaving me feeling just as alone, wary, and suspicious of the magic of fellowship as I had always been, so, too, presumably, had the others' enthusiasm, camaraderie, and human kindness been a soap bubble and a pretty lie. And if later on I was really quite pleased that my membership in the guild of "tailors" entailed no further annoyances-no new gatherings, fraternizings, and ceremonies would take place, no entanglements and obligations would present themselves to me, still it was also the case that the others, my cherished brothers and fellow tailors, the deeply moved and gratefully enthusiastic auditors of my verses, the stouthearted shakers of my hands, later on really didn't give a d.a.m.n about me. Once again society, the general public, the official world had approached me with menacing demands; after the appearance of the policeman on the clattering motorcycle, it seemed as if once again the world wanted either to forbid me to practice my profession or else to make me pay for the toleration of it with disproportionate, colossal, and intolerable sacrifices-and then all this culminated in a ceremony and a joke; the world wanted nothing more of me than two or three hours of drinking in a room full of harmless people, who on the next day no longer knew me and no longer required that I recognize them; all this was precisely the loveliest, the most delightful part of my guild story.

This, esteemed Friend, was what happened to me in Flachsenfingen. Altogether different things transpired shortly thereafter, when, once again exhorted to effect a voluntary and spontaneous change of residence, I resettled, this time in the Western Cultural District. This district enjoyed a reputation for intense cultural activity and an enterprising spirit, and this was a determining factor in my choice of it; moreover, there was the widespread if unsubstantiated rumor that the Director of Normalia, whose name is mentioned only with awe and respect, frequently sojourns here. Frankly speaking, considerations primarily opportunistic decided me in my attempt to resettle in the Western District. My personal finances needed to be put in order. In Flachsenfingen, not only could I not succeed in earning any income to speak of, but I had also run up debts; and after a comparatively short stay there, the invitation I received to change my place of residence voluntarily could probably be attributed more to these economic irregularities than to other causes. Now, according to all my sources, if they did not lie, the arts and sciences were appreciated and flourishing in the Western District; schools, universities, nurturing of the arts, museums, libraries, publishing houses, and newspaper chains were said to be on a high plane of development in this district, and there were also supposed to be compet.i.tions, state commissions, and academies here. If I succeeded in establishing myself and again bringing respect to my name, once so well known, it would be on the grounds of my accomplishments, or on the grounds of my formerly respected place in the world of letters, and if this was so, material success could not long elude me. Furthermore, whether I would remain in the Western District as a respected, safe and secure, successful man and live a happy and contented life, paying high taxes and enjoying high esteem, or whether on the other hand I would take all I had earned there and return to the cherished landscape of my Ur-Normalia and live or pension myself off there for life, did not for the time being concern me very much. The powerful attraction of the park, the ovum of our state, had never entirely released me from its spell; and with all due respect for the spiritual full bloom of the Cultural District, still the joy of swimming along in a stream of a.s.siduous cultural activity did not appear to me unconditionally worth all the concomitant efforts; this "joy" had to mean more to younger, more ambitious people than to us old folk who love peace and quiet. But, on the other hand, the Western District had a strong attraction for me-owing to those aforementioned rumors concerning the special relationship between the Director of the Realm and this particular province. To learn more of him, the great unknown one, to establish a relationship with him or even with one of his high functionaries and co-workers, and to be able to penetrate even one of the many mysteries surrounding him, conceivably could have meant a great deal to me, as it could have to you, esteemed Patron. I only had to wait a few days in the Flachsenfingen Holding Station for Voluntary Emigrants, until a transport left for the Western Cultural District. The bus probably held between thirty and forty pa.s.sengers, all of us intellectuals or artists, except for two young people with cheerful and pleasant faces and manners, who, as I learned from a fellow pa.s.senger, a journalist, should be cla.s.sed among the barbarians. These two young people were more to my liking than the majority of my colleagues, among whom only two seemed really congenial, two men with long gray hair and long gray beards, typifying a kind of artist-long forgotten and only seldom encountered nowadays-who, by hair, beard, and manner of dress, betoken a n.o.ble seclusion from the world and a harmless absentmindedness, and for which I must ashamedly admit I have always felt a certain sympathy. Of course, just now the young barbarians were eyeing these two n.o.ble, reclusive, beautiful gray-beards with scorn and undisguised contempt on account of their outmoded frisures and habiliments. The cheerful youths simply did not know enough to recognize the artistic tradition which the excellent graybeards, at least in their outward appearance, called upon themselves to continue. Moreover, the communicative journalist informed me that one of these silver-haired men was a colleague of mine, a poet. And while we stopped for gas and food and were being fed in the tavern of an inn, I had the good fortune to be able to cast a glance at what seemed to be a poetic composition he had only recently begun. He was seated right next to me, and before him on the table was a little notebook. It was still new and empty; only the first page was inscribed with a few lines penned in a coquettish calligraphy-lines which, my spy eyes whetted by curiosity, I managed to decipher. They read: Papagallo.

A short time ago, or so we hear tell, a parrot was born in the vicinity of Morbio; one who, while still in school, already so far surpa.s.sed his brothers and colleagues in age, wisdom, understanding, virtue, and goodwill before G.o.d and man that his fame began to redound in distant cities and countries, like the fame of Achmed the Wise, or that of the one whose name we utter only with the greatest deference, Sheik Ibrahim.

I was filled with admiration for the style in which this tale was written, one that felicitously combined the elegance, grace, and polish of cla.s.sical tradition with the modern sense for the simple and the monumental. Much as he appealed to me, I had not believed the silverbeard capable of such an accomplishment, and it would have been a great pleasure for me to become better acquainted with him. But unfortunately his artistic temperament must have sensed that his nascent composition was being spied on by the curious, possibly philistine, or even envious eyes of a colleague. Suddenly and forcefully he slammed his notebook shut, and his eyes, full of genius and wisdom, punished me with a look of such unspeakable contempt that shamefacedly and sadly I retreated into myself and left the table before the end of the meal ...

(Here the ma.n.u.script breaks off.).

Christmas with Two Children's Stories.

WHEN OUR QUIET little Christmas celebration had come to an end-it was not quite 10 p.m. on December 24-I was tired enough to look forward to sleeping through the night and especially pleased at the prospect of two whole days without mail or newspapers. Our big living room, the so-called library, looked every bit as disheveled and fatigued as but far more cheerful than we felt inside; for although we had celebrated only as a threesome-master, mistress, and cook-the little Christmas tree with its spent candles, the confusion of colored, gold, and silver papers and ribbons, and on the table the flowers, the stacks of new books, the paintings, water-colors, lithographs, woodcuts, children's drawings, and photographs propped up-some of them erect, some weary and nearly collapsed-against the vases, all this gave the room an unaccustomed, festive air of superabundance and agitation, a touch of the annual fair, of the treasure house, a breath of life and of absurdity, of childishness and playfulness. And the air was charged with scents, as disorganized as they were wanton, the closely mingled scents of resin, wax, scorched things, of baked goods, wine, and flowers. Furthermore, the room and the hour were crowded with the pictures, sounds, and scents of many, very many bygone holidays, to which old people are ent.i.tled; since my first grand experience of it, Christmas has returned to me more than seventy times-and if my wife has in her many fewer years and Christmases, it is for that reason that the strangeness, the remoteness, the extinction, and the irretrievability of a sense of home and security were even greater in her than in me. If the last few strenuous days of giving and wrapping gifts, of receiving and unwrapping them, of reflecting on real and imaginary obligations (neglect of the latter often more bitterly takes its revenge than neglect of the former), of the whole somewhat overheated and overly rushed activity of Christmas in our restless age already have taken their toll, then the re-encounter with the years and holidays of so many decades has been an even more arduous task. But at least the latter was a genuine and meaningful one, and genuine and meaningful tasks have the virtue of not merely making demands on one and wearing one out, but also of aiding and fortifying one. Especially in a decaying civilization, one that is diseased with a lack of sense and slowly dying, for individuals as well as for the community as a whole, there is no other medicament and nourishment, no other source of strength that enables one to go on, than the encounter with that which, in spite of everything, gives meaning to our lives and our actions and justifies us. And in the recollection of a whole lifetime of holidays and gatherings, in listening to the sounds and stirrings of the soul-even as far back as the colorful wilderness of childhood, in gazing into beloved eyes long since extinguished, there is demonstrated the existence of an intelligence, a unity, a secret center we have circled around-now consciously, now unconsciously-all our lives. From the pious Christmases of childhood, redolent of wax and honey, in a world seemingly sane, safe from destruction, incapable of believing in the possibility of its own destruction, through all the changes, crises, shocks, and reevaluations of our private lives and of our age, there still remains a core, a sense, a grace residing in no dogma of the church or of science, but in the existence of a center around which even an imperiled and troubled life can always form itself anew, from just this innermost core of our being, a belief in the accessibility of G.o.d, in the coincidence of this center with the presence of G.o.d. For where He is present, yes, even the ugly and apparently meaningless may be borne, because, for Him, seeming and being are one and inseparable, for Him everything is meaning.

Our tree had long stood dark and a bit foolish on its little table, for some time the sober electric light had been burning as on any other evening, when we became aware of a different kind of brightness at the window. The day had been alternately clear and overcast; beyond the lake valley, on the slopes of the mountains, long, drawn-out, thin white clouds, all at the same alt.i.tude, had stood from time to time; they appeared fixed and immovable, and yet, whenever one looked out at them again, they had vanished or had a.s.sumed different shapes, and by nightfall it looked as if we would have no sky at all overnight, that we would be embedded in fog. But while we were busy with our celebration, our tree with its candles, our giving of gifts, and memories which came thicker and faster-outside, a great deal had gone on and run its course. When we became aware of this and turned off the lights in the room, we found that an exceedingly beautiful and mysterious world lay outside, shrouded in great stillness. The narrow valley at our feet was filled with fog, upon whose surface a pale but strong light played. Above this bale of fog, the snow-covered hills and mountains arose, all standing in the same uniformly distributed but strong light. And over all these white tablets, the bare trees and forests and snow-free rock formations were like letters of the alphabet, scrawled by a sharpened quill, numerous mute hieroglyphs and arabesques that concealed secrets. But on high, above all this, a mighty sky-white and opalescent-surged with swarms of clouds through which the full moon shone; a restless and undulating sky ruled by the light of the full moon, and the moon vanished and reappeared amid supernatural veils that dissolved and thickened again; and when the moon won itself a piece of clear sky, it was surrounded by elfin cool iridescent lunar rainbows, whose glistening, gliding series of colors repeated themselves in the rims of the irradiated clouds. Pearly and milky the exquisite light flowed and rippled through the sky, reflected more weakly down below in the fog, swelled and diminished as if alive and breathing.

Before I went to bed I lit the lamp again, cast another glance at my gift table, and like children who on Christmas Eve take a few of their presents to their rooms and if possible into bed with them, I, too, took a few things with me to have and to hold a little before going to sleep. These were the presents from my grandchildren: from Sibylle, the youngest, a duster; from Simeli a drawing, a farmhouse with a starry sky over it; from Christine two color ill.u.s.trations for my story about the wolf; from Eva a painting executed with verve and force; and from her ten-year-old brother, Silver, a letter written on his father's typewriter. I took these things up to the study, where I read Silver's letter once again, then I let the things lie there, and fighting heavy weariness I went up the stairs to my bedroom. But I still could not fall asleep for some time, the experiences and images of the evening kept me awake, and my series of thoughts, not to be warded off, ended each time with the letter from my grandson, which read as follows: Dear Nonno! Now I want to write a little story for you. It is called: For The Dear Lord. Paul was a pious boy. In school he had heard quite a lot about the dear Lord. Now he also wanted to give him something. Paul looked at all his toys but nothing seemed good enough. Then Paul's birthday came. He got a lot of new toys, and among them he saw a thaler. Then he cried out: That's what I'll give to the dear Lord. Paul said: I'll go out to the field, I know a nice place where the dear Lord will see it and come to get it. Paul went to the field. When he got there he saw a little old woman who could not walk without support. He was sorry for her and gave her the thaler. Paul said: Really it was meant for the dear Lord. Many greetings from Silver Hesse.

On that evening I was not successful in conjuring up still another memory, the one my grandson's story reminded me of. Not until the following day did it turn up of its own accord. In my childhood, when I was the same age my grandson is now-that is, ten-I had also once written a story as a present, for my younger sister's birthday. Aside from a few schoolboy's verses, it is the single poetic composition-or shall I say the sole poetic effort-that has been preserved from my childhood years. I myself had not given it a thought for decades; but a few years ago, I don't know on what occasion, this bit of juvenilia was returned to me, presumably by the hand of one of my sisters. And although I could only indistinctly remember it, still it seemed to me that it bore some similarity or kinship to the story which my grandson, some sixty years later, had written for me. But even if I was certain that my childhood story was in my possession, how would I ever find it? All our bureau drawers were chock-full; tied-up portfolios and stacks of letters with addresses that were no longer valid or no longer legible were everywhere; everywhere were handwritten or printed papers saved from years or decades ago, saved because one could not make up one's mind to throw them away, saved out of piety, out of conscientiousness, out of want of energy and decisiveness, out of an exaggerated esteem for the written word-this once "valuable material" which might one day be useful for some new project, saved and enshrined, just as lonely old ladies keep trunks and attics full of large and small boxes where they save letters, pressed flowers, locks of children's hair. Even if all year long one incinerates tons of paper, immense amounts pile up around a man of letters who only seldom has changed his place of residence and who is getting on in years.

But now I was obsessed by my wish to see that story again, if only to compare it with that of my contemporary colleague Silver, or perhaps to make a copy of it and send it to him as a present in return. I tormented myself and my wife with it for an entire day, and I actually found it in the most unlikely place. The story was written in 1887 in Calw and goes as follows: THE TWO BROTHERS.

[for Marulla].

Once upon a time there was a father who had two sons. One of them was handsome and strong, the other was small and crippled; thus, the bigger despised the smaller. The younger one did not like this at all and so he decided to go wandering in the wide wide world. When he had gone a ways, he met up with a carter, and when he asked the man where he was going, the carter replied that he had to transport the treasures of the dwarfs who lived in a mountain of gla.s.s. The little one asked him what he would be paid. The answer was that he would receive a few diamonds in payment. Then the little one also very much wanted to go to the dwarfs. And so he asked the carter if he thought the dwarfs would take him in. The carter said he did not know, but he took the little one with him. Finally they reached the Gla.s.s Mountain, and the overseer of the dwarfs paid the carter very well for his trouble and dismissed him. Then he noticed the little one and asked him what he wanted. The little one told him all. The dwarf said he had only to follow him. The dwarfs gladly accepted him and he led a splendid life.

Now, we also want to take a look at the other brother. For a long time, things went well for him at home. But when he got older he had to join the army and go to war. He lost the use of his right arm and had to beg. And so as a poor man he came upon the Gla.s.s Mountain and saw a cripple standing there, but he hadn't the faintest notion that the cripple was his brother. The latter, however, recognized him at once and asked what he wanted. "Oh, my good sir, I am so hungry that the least little crust of bread would make me happy." "Come with me," the little one said, and led him into a cave whose walls sparkled with countless diamonds. "You can have a handful of these, if you can get the stones out by yourself," said the cripple. With his one good hand the beggar now tried to pry loose some of the diamonds, but of course he did not succeed. Then the little one said: "Perhaps you have a brother. I'll permit you to let him help you." Then the beggar began to weep and said: "Indeed, I once had a brother, he was small and misshapen like you, but he was so good-natured and kind, he certainly would have helped me, but a long time ago I heartlessly drove him away from me, and it's been a long time since I've known anything of him." Then the little one said: "I am your little brother. No longer need you suffer want, stay with me."

That some similarity or affinity exists between my fairy tale and that of my grandson and colleague certainly is not the erroneous notion of a doting grandfather. The average psychologist would probably interpret the two childish attempts along the following lines. Obviously, each of the two storytellers-the pious boy Paul and the little cripple-identifies with the hero of his story; and each creates for himself a situation of double wish-fulfillment: to begin with, a ma.s.sive receipt of gifts-be they toys or thalers or a whole mountain full of precious stones-and a secret life among the dwarfs, among his peers and far from the grownups, the adults, the "normal" ones. But, above and beyond this, each of the storytellers devises for his narrator a role of moral glory, a crown of virtue, for each of them compa.s.sionately gives his treasure to the poor (which in reality neither the ten-year-old old man nor the ten-year-old youth would have done). This may well be correct; I have nothing against it. But it also seems to me that the wish fulfillment comes to pa.s.s in the realm of the imaginary and the playful; at least for myself, I can say that at age ten I was neither a capitalist nor a jewel merchant, and never to my knowledge had I seen a diamond. On the other hand, at that age I was already acquainted with Grimm's Fairy Tales and perhaps also with the tale of Aladdin's Lamp, and for the child the conception of a mountain of jewels was less a notion of wealth than a dream of unspeakable beauty and magical power. And this time, too, it struck me as strange that the dear Lord was not in my fairy tale, though for me He was presumably more of a reality than He was for my grandson, who had only become curious about Him "in school."

What a shame that life is so short and so full of pressing, apparently important and unavoidable duties and problems; some mornings one scarcely dares get out of bed, knowing that one's large desk is already piled high with unfinished business and that twice more in the course of the day the delivery of mail will further increase the height of the stack. Otherwise, it would be nice to play an amusing and contemplative game with the two children's ma.n.u.scripts. To me, for example, nothing would be more absorbing than a comparative a.n.a.lysis of style and syntax in the two attempts. But our life is not long enough now for such delightful games. And, in the end, perhaps it would not be advisable to influence the development of the sixty-three-years-younger of the two authors through a.n.a.lysis and criticism, words of praise or rebuke. Because, circ.u.mstances permitting, something may still become of him, though not of the elder.

The Jackdaw.

IT HAS BEEN a long time since, as a returning visitor to Baden to take the cure, I have gone there with the expectation of being surprised. The day will come when the last stretch of the Goldwand will be built over, the lovely spa park converted into factories, but I will not live to see this. And yet on this visit, on the ugly, lopsided bridge to Ennetbaden, a wonderful and charming surprise awaited me. I am in the habit of allowing myself a few moments of sheer pleasure each day when I stand on this bridge-it lies but a few steps from the spa hotel-and feed the gulls with some small pieces of bread. They are not at the bridge at all hours of the day, and when they are there one cannot talk to them. There are times when they sit in long rows on the roof of the city baths building, guarding the bridge and waiting for one of the pa.s.sersby to stop, take some bread out of his pocket, and throw it to them. When someone tosses a bit of bread up into the air, the youthful and acrobatic gulls like to hover over the head of the bread-thrower as long as they can; one can watch each one and try to make sure that each gull will get its turn. Then one is besieged by a deafening roaring and flashing, a whirling and clattering swarm of feverish life; beleaguered and wooed, one stands amid a white-gray winged cloud, out of which, without pause, short, shrill shrieks shoot. But there are always a number of more prudent and less athletic gulls who keep their distance from the tumult and who leisurely cruise down below the bridge and over the streaming waters of the river Limmat, where it is calm and where some piece of bread, having escaped the clutches of the vying acrobats up above, is always sure to fall. At other times of day, there are no gulls here at all. Perhaps they have all gone on an outing together, a school or a club excursion; perhaps they have found an especially rich feeding place farther down the Limmat; in any event, they have all disappeared together. And then there are other hours when, to be sure, the whole flock of gulls is at hand, but they are not sitting on the rooftops or thronging over the head of the feeder; rather, they are swarming and raising a din importantly and excitedly just above the surface of the water a bit downstream. No amount of waving or bread-tossing will help, they don't give a hoot, busy as they are with their bird games, and perhaps their human games: gathering the tribes together, brawling, voting, trading stocks, who knows what else. And even with baskets full of the most delectable morsels you would not be able to draw them away from their uproarious and important transactions and games.

This time when I got to the bridge, seated on the railing was a black bird, a jackdaw of extremely small stature, and when it did not fly away at my nearer approach, I stalked it, more and more slowly inching closer to it, one small step after the other. It showed neither fear nor suspicion, only attentiveness and curiosity; it let me get within a half step of it, surveyed me with its blithe bird eyes, and tilted its powdery gray head to one side, as if to say: "Come now, old man, you certainly do stare!" Indeed, I was staring. This jackdaw was accustomed to having dealings with humans, you could talk to it, and a few people who knew him had already come by and greeted him, saying: "Salut, Jakob." I tried to find out more about him, and since that time I've collected quite a bit of information, all of it contradictory. The main questions remain unanswered: where the bird made its home and how it came to be on intimate terms with human beings. One person told me the bird was tamed and that he belonged to a woman in Ennetbaden. Another said that he roamed freely, wherever it suited him, and sometimes he'd fly into a room through an open window, peck at something edible, or pluck to shreds some knitted garment left lying around. A man from one of the French-speaking cantons, obviously a bird specialist, a.s.serted that this jackdaw belonged to a very rare species, which, as far as he knew, could be found only in the mountains of Fribourg, where it lived in the rocky cliffs.

After that, I would meet the jackdaw Jakob almost every day; now by myself, now with my wife, I would greet him and talk to him. One day my wife was wearing a pair of shoes whose uppers had a pattern cut out of the leather, allowing a bit of stocking to shine through the holes. These shoes, and especially the little islands of hose, interested Jakob a great deal; he alit on the ground, and with sparkling eyes he took aim and pecked at them with gusto. Many a time he would sit on my arm or my shoulder and peck at my coat, my collar, my cheek, and my neck, or tear at the brim of my hat. He did not care for bread; still, he would get jealous and sometimes downright angry if you shared it with the gulls in his presence. He accepted and adeptly picked walnuts or peanuts from the hand of the giver. But best of all he liked to peck, pluck, pulverize, and destroy any little thing-a crumpled ball of paper, a cigar stub, a little piece of cardboard or material; he'd put one of his feet on it and rashly and impatiently hack away at it with his beak. And time and again one perceives that he does all this not for his sake alone but on behalf of the onlookers, some of whom always and many of whom often gather around him. For them he hops about on the ground or back and forth on the railing of the bridge, enjoying the crowd; he flutters onto the head or shoulder of one of the members of the audience, alights again on the ground, studies our shoes, and forcefully pecks at them. He takes pleasure in pecking and plucking, tearing and destroying, he does all this with roguish delight; but the members of the audience must also partic.i.p.ate, they must admire, laugh, cry out, feel flattered by his show of friendliness, and then again show fear when he pecks at their stockings, hats, and hands.

He has no fear of the gulls, who are twice as large and many times stronger than he; sometimes he flies on high right in their midst. And they let him be. For one thing, he who scarcely touches bread is neither a rival nor a spoilsport; for another, I suppose that they, too, consider him a phenomenon, something rare, enigmatic, and a little bit uncanny. He is alone, belongs to no tribe, follows no customs, obeys no commands, no laws; he has left the tribe of jackdaws, where once he was one among many, and has turned toward the human tribe, which looks on him with astonishment and brings him offerings, and which he serves as a buffoon or a tightrope walker when it suits him; he makes fun of them and yet cannot get enough of their admiration. Between the bright gulls and the motley humans he sits, black, impudent, and alone, the only one of his kind; by destiny or by choice, he has no tribe and no homeland. Audacious and sharp-eyed, he sits watching over the traffic on the bridge, pleased that only a few people rush past inattentive, that the majority stop for a while, often a long while; because of him they remain standing, and gaze at him in astonishment, racking their brains over him, calling him Jakob, and only reluctantly deciding to walk on. He does not take people more seriously than a jackdaw should, and yet he seems unable to do without them.

When I found myself alone with him-and this happened only rarely-I could talk to him a little in a bird language which as a boy and youth I had partly learned from years of intimate discourse with our pet parrot and had partly invented on my own; it consisted of a brief melodic series of notes uttered in a guttural tone. I would bend down toward Jakob and talk things over with him in a fraternal way in my half-bird dialect; he would throw back his lovely head; he enjoyed both listening and thinking his own thoughts. But unexpectedly the rogue and the sprite would come to the fore in him again; he would alight on my shoulder, dig in his claws, and rapping like a woodp.e.c.k.e.r he would hammer his beak into my neck or cheek, until it was too much for me and I would shrug myself free, whereupon he would return to the railing, amused and ready for new games. But at the same time he would survey the footpath in both directions with hasty glances, to see if more of the tribe of humans were on the march and whether there were any new conquests to be made. He understood his position to a tee, his hold on us great clumsy animals, his uniqueness and chosenness in the midst of a strange ungainly people, and he enjoyed it enormously, tightrope walker and actor, when he found himself in the thick of a crowd of admiring, moved, or laughing giants. In me, at least, he had gained favor, and those times when I came to pay him a visit and did not find him I was disappointed and sad. My interest in him was a good deal stronger than in the majority of my fellow human beings. And much as I esteemed the gulls and loved their beautiful, wild, fervent expressions of life, when I stood in their fluttering midst, they were not individuals; they were a flock, a band, and even if I looked back to examine one of them more closely as an individual, never again would I recognize him once he had escaped my field of vision.

I have never learned where and by what means Jakob was estranged from his tribe and the safe harbor of his anonymity, whether he himself had chosen this extraordinary destiny-as tragic as it was radiant-or whether he had been forced to do so. The latter is more plausible. Presumably he was quite young when perhaps he fell wounded or unfledged from the nest, was found and taken in by people, cared for and raised. And yet our imagination is not always satisfied with the most plausible explanation, it also likes to play with the remote and the sensational, and so I have conceived of two further possibilities beyond the probable one. It is conceivable, or rather, imaginable that this Jakob was a genius who from an early age felt himself to be very different, striving for an abnormal degree of individuality, dreaming of accomplishments, achievements, and honors which were unknown in jackdaw life and the jackdaw tribe, and thus he became an outsider and loner who, like the young man in Schiller's poem,* shunned the coa.r.s.e company of his companions and wandered about by himself until through some lucky chance the world opened for him a door to the realm of beauty, art, and fame, about which all young geniuses have dreamed since time out of mind.

The other fable I've made up about Jakob is this: Jakob was a ne'er-do-well, a mischiefmaker, a little rascal, which in no way rules out his being a genius. With his impudent attacks and pranks, he had at first bewildered and at times delighted his father and mother, siblings and relatives, and finally the whole of his community or colony. From early on, he was considered to be a little devil and a sly fellow, then he became more and more impertinent, and in the end he had so provoked his father's household against him, as well as the neighbors, the tribe, and the government, that he was solemnly excommunicated and, like the scapegoat, driven out into the wilderness. But before he languished away and perished, he came into contact with human beings. Having conquered his natural fear of the clumsy giants, he drew closer to them and joined them, enchanting them with his cheerful disposition and his uniqueness-of which he himself had long been aware. And so he found his way into the city and the world of human beings, and in it a place for himself as a joker, an actor, a main attraction, and a wunderkind. He became what he is today: the darling of a large public, a much sought-after charmeur-particularly of elderly ladies and gentlemen, as much a friend to humans as one contemptuous of them, an artist soliloquizing at the podium, an envoy from a strange world-one unknown to clumsy giants, a buffoon for some, a dark admonition for others, laughed at, applauded, loved, admired, pitied, a drama for all, an enigma for the contemplative.

We the contemplative-for doubtless there are many others besides myself-turn our thoughts and conjectures, our impulse to understand the fabulous, not solely toward Jakob's enigmatic lineage and past. His appearance, which so stimulates our imagination, compels us to devote some thought to his future as well. And we do this with some hesitation, with a feeling of resistance and sadness; for the presumable and probable end of our darling will be a violent one. No matter how much we may want to imagine a quiet and natural death for him, something on the order of his dying in the warm room and good care of that legendary lady in Ennetbaden to whom he supposedly "belongs," all probability speaks against it. A creature that has emerged from the freedom of the wild, from a secure place in a community and a tribe, and has fallen into the company of human beings and into civilization, no matter how adeptly he may adapt to the foreign surroundings, no matter how aware he may be of the advantages his unique situation provides, such a creature cannot completely escape the countless dangers concealed in this very situation. The mere thought of all these imaginable dangers-from electric current to being locked up in a room with a cat or dog, or being captured and tormented by cruel little boys-makes one shudder.

There are reports of peoples in olden times who every year chose or drew lots for a king. Then a handsome, nameless, and poor youth, a slave perhaps, would suddenly be clad in splendid robes and raised to the position of king; he would be given a palace or a majestic tent-of-state, servants ready to serve, lovely girls, kitchen, cellar, stable, and orchestra; the whole fairy tale of kingship, power, riches, and pomp would become reality for the chosen one. And so the new ruler would live amidst pomp and circ.u.mstance for days, weeks, months, until a year had elapsed. Then he would be tied and bound, taken to the place of execution, and slaughtered.

And it is of this story, which I read once decades ago and whose authenticity I have neither occasion nor desire to verify, this glittering and gruesome story-beautiful as a fairy tale and steeped in death, that I must sometimes think when I observe Jakob, pecking peanuts from ladies' hands, rebuking an overly clumsy child with a blow from his beak, taking an interest in and somewhat patronizingly listening to my parrotlike chatter, or plucking up a paper ball before an enraptured audience, holding it fast with one of his clawed feet-while his capricious head and his bristling gray headfeathers simultaneously appear to express anger and delight.

Books by Hermann Hesse.

Peter Camenzind.

Beneath the Wheel.

Gertrude Rosshalde.

Knulp Demian Strange News from Another Star.

Klingsor's Last Summer Wandering Siddhartha Steppenwolf.

Narcissus and Goldmund The Journey to the East The Gla.s.s Bead Game.

If the War Goes On ...

Poems Autobiographical Writings Stories of Five Decades My Belief Reflections.

Crisis Tales of Student Life Hours in the Garden Pictor's Metamorphoses Soul of the Age: Selected Letters of Hermann Hesse.

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