Klingsor's Last Summer by Hermann Hesse Read Free Book Online

anguish, I kept silent, let him talk, and watched with pain and a strange gloating delight the way everything went wrong and turned worse and worse, how he suffered and was disappointed, how he appealed in vain to all my better instincts.
    When he asked, “Did you steal the figs?” I could only nod. I could not bring myself to do more than nod feebly when he wanted to know whether I was sorry. How could this big, intelligent man ask such foolish questions! As if I would not have been sorry! As if he could not see how the whole affair hurt me, how it twisted my heart. As if at this point I could have taken any pleasure in my act and in those wretched figs!
    Perhaps for the first time in my life I felt, almost to the verge of understanding and consciousness, how utterly two well-intentioned human beings can torment each other, and how in such a case all talk, all attempts at wisdom, all reason merely adds another dose of poison, creates new tortures, new wounds, new errors. How was that possible? But it was possible, it was happening. It was absurd, it was crazy, it was ridiculous and desperate—but it was so.
    Enough of this story. It ended with my being locked up in the attic all Sunday afternoon. This harsh punishment lost a part of its terrors for reasons that were my secret. For in that dark, unused attic there was a box, covered with dust, half full of old books, some of which were by no means intended for children. I made light for reading by pushing aside one of the roof tiles.
    Shortly before I went to bed that sad Sunday night my father cajoled me into talking with him briefly, and that made peace between us. When I lay in bed I had the certainty that he had completely forgiven me—more completely than I had forgiven him.

Klein and Wagner

1
    I N THE EXPRESS TRAIN , after the precipitate actions and excitements of his flight and the border crossing, after the whirl of tensions and dangers, and still profoundly astonished that all had gone well, Friedrich Klein collapsed inwardly. Now that there was no longer any reason for haste the train seemed to him to be moving southward with a strange impetuousness, carrying its few passengers speedily past lakes, mountains, waterfalls, and other wonders of nature, through numbing tunnels and over gently swaying bridges. It was all foreign, beautiful, and rather meaningless, pictures from schoolbooks and postcards, landscapes remembered as seen before but really of no personal concern. So now he was in a foreign land where he would henceforth belong. There was no returning home. The money question had been settled; he had it with him, all in large bills safely stowed away in his breast pocket.
    There was, in the back of his mind, the pleasant and reassuring thought that now nothing more could happen to him, that he was safely across the border and for the present protected by his false passport. He brought this thought repeatedly to the forefront of consciousness, craving to warm and satisfy himself with it; but this pretty thought was now like a dead bird that a child tries to revive by blowing on its wings. It was not alive, did not open its eye, fell like lead from the hand, gave no pleasure, had no glitter. It was strange, as he had noticed frequently during these past days, that he was far from being able to think what he pleased. He had no authority over his thoughts. They ran along as they wished, and do what he might they dwelt on ideas that tormented him. It was as if his brain were a kaleidoscope in which the shifting images were directed by another’s hand. Perhaps this was due only to his long spell of insomnia and agitation; his nerves had been bad for a considerable time. At any rate it was unpleasant, and if his mind did not manage to find its way soon to something like calm and joyousness, he would be desperate.
    Friedrich Klein felt for the revolver in his coat pocket. That revolver was another of those items belonging to his new equipment,