Steppenwolf Read Free Page A

made up the vast majority. On the divan, where he frequently spent whole days reclining, all six fat volumes of a late eighteenth-century work entitled
Sophia’s Journey from Memel to Saxony
could be seen lying around for a time. 1 A complete edition of Goethe and one of Jean Paul 2 seemed to be much in use, as did the works of Novalis, 3 but there were also editions of Lessing, Jacobi and Lichtenberg. 4 Some volumes of Dostoevsky were full of slips of paper with notes on them. Among the many books and papers on
the fairly large table there was often a bunch of flowers. A set of watercolour paints lay around on it too, but it was always full of dust. Next to it were the ashtrays and – I see no reason why I should hide the fact – an array of bottles containing drink. One bottle woven in straw was usually filled with an Italian red wine he fetched from a small shop near by. Occasionally you would spot a bottle of burgundy or Malaga, and once I saw a squat bottle of kirsch being virtually emptied in next to no time, only to disappear in some corner of the room where it gathered dust without its remaining contents being reduced. Without wishing to justify my snooping, I openly confess that in the early days all these signs of a life being wantonly frittered away, however much it was occupied with intellectual pursuits, aroused loathing and suspicion in me. It’s not just that I lead the orderly life of a solid citizen, keeping precisely to a timetable.I’m
also teetotal and a non-smoker, and the sight of those bottles in Haller’s room was even less to my liking than the rest of his bohemian clutter.
    When it came to food and drink, the stranger was just as irregular and capricious in his habits as he was when sleeping and working. Some days he didn’t go out at all and apart from his morning coffee had absolutely nothing to eat or drink. At times, the only remaining trace of a meal my aunt found was a banana skin, yet on other days he would dine in restaurants, sometimes good, fashionable ones, sometimes small pubs in the suburbs. He didn’t appear to be in good health. Apart from the difficulty with his legs – climbing the stairs to his room was often a real struggle – he seemed plagued by other infirmities. Once he remarked in passing that he hadn’t managed to digest his food or sleep properly for years. Primarily I put this down to his drinking. Later, when I occasionally went along with him to one of his pubs, I witnessed him rapidly downing the wines as the whim took him, but neither I nor anyone else ever
saw him really drunk.
    I shall never forget our first encounter of a more personal kind. We knew each other only in the way next-door neighbours tend to in rented accommodation. Then one evening, coming home from work, I was astonished to find Herr Haller sitting on the stairs close to the landing between the first and second floors. He had sat down on the top step, and moved to one side to let me pass. Asking whether he was unwell, I offered to accompany him right to the top.
    From the look Haller gave me I realized that I had roused him from some sort of trance. Slowly he began to smile that appealingly pitiful smile of his that so often saddened my heart. Then he invited me to sit down next to him. I declined to, saying I wasn’t in the habit of sitting on the stairs outside other people’s flats.
    ‘Oh, quite so,’ he said, smiling more intensely, ‘you are right.But wait a moment longer. You see, I must show you why I felt the need to stay sitting here for a while.’
    As he spoke, he pointed to the landing outside the first-floor flat occupied by a widow. There, against the wall on the small area of parquet floor between the stairs, the window and the glass door, was a tall mahogany cupboard with old pieces of pewter on it. On the ground in front of it, resting on small squat stands, were two large plant pots, one containing an azalea, the other an araucaria. They were attractive-looking plants,