Peter Camenzind by Hermann Hesse Read Free Book Online

drinker. I silently made a vow never to go drinking again and longed for the day of my departure.
    Finally it came and I left, but I did not keep my vow. The golden Vaud, the dark-red Veltliner, the Neuchâtel, and many other wines and I began a long acquaintance and have become the best of friends since.

Chapter Three
    D RESSED IN A NEW BUCKSKIN SUIT and carrying a small chest filled with books and other possessions, I arrived in Zurich, ready to conquer a piece of the world and to prove as quickly as possible to the roughnecks back home that I was made of different stuff from the other Camenzinds. For three wonderful years I lived in the same drafty attic with its commanding view, studied, wrote poems, longed for and sensed myself imbued with everything that is beautiful on earth. Although I did not have a hot meal every day of the week, every day and every night my heart sang and laughed and wept with joy and cleaved fervently, longingly to life.
    This was my first real city. Greenhorn that I was, I walked about wide-eyed and bewildered for several weeks. It never occurred to me to admire genuinely or be envious of city life—I was too much of a farm boy for that—but the multitude of streets, houses, and people delighted me. I observed how alive with carriages the streets were; I inspected the moorings on the lake, the plazas, the gardens, the ostentatious civic buildings and churches; I saw crowds hurry off to work, students dawdling, the well-to-do on outings, dandies preening themselves, foreigners ambling aimlessly about. The fashionably elegant and haughty wives of the rich seemed to me like peacocks in a chicken yard, pretty, proud, and a little foolish. No, I was not really shy—only awkward and stubborn—and I had no doubts that I was man enough to become thoroughly acquainted with this lively city and to make my way in it.
    Making the acquaintance of a handsome young fellow who lived in two rooms on the second floor of my house, and who was also a student in Zurich, was the first move I made in this direction. Actually I did not take this step myself, for he came up to me. I heard him practicing the piano every day, and listening to him, I felt for the first time something of the magic of music, the most feminine, the sweetest of the arts. I would watch him leave the house, with a book or a score in his left hand, in his right a cigarette whose smoke trailed behind him as he walked off with easy and graceful steps. I was fascinated but I kept my distance. I was afraid of making the acquaintance of someone so easygoing, free, and well-to-do, fearing it would only humiliate me and underscore my poverty and rough manners. Then he came up to see me: one evening there was a knock on my door. I was startled, for no one had called on me before. He entered, shook my hand, introduced himself, and his behavior was as easy and natural as though we had known each other for years.
    â€œI wanted to ask whether you would like to play some music with me,” he said. I had never touched an instrument, much less played one. I told him this, adding that except for yodeling I was without art but that his piano playing had often drifted pleasurably and temptingly up to my room.
    â€œHow wrong can you be!” he exclaimed. “Judging from your looks, I could have sworn that you were a musician. Very strange. But you can yodel. Then you must yodel for me. Please, just once. I love the sound of it.”
    I was dismayed at the thought and explained that it was impossible for me to yodel to order. It was only possible on a mountain top, at least out in the open air, and it would have to come spontaneously.
    â€œWell then, yodel on a mountain. Is tomorrow all right with you? We could go for a walk somewhere, toward evening. Just walk about, talk a little, climb some mountain, and then you can yodel to your heart’s delight. Afterwards we can go eat at some village inn. You have the time, don’t