Free The Sleepwalkers by Hermann Broch Page B

his sword-hilt, Joachim remained standing as if the nearness of the garrison band provided him with protection and new strength against the Evil One. Bertrand’s image arose, iridescent, uncanny. It emerged and vanished again: “vanished in the labyrinth of the city,” the words came back to Joachim, and “labyrinth” had a diabolically underworld ring. Bertrand was concealed in all those shapes, and he had betrayed everybody: Joachim, his fellow-officers, the women, everybody. But now he noticed that Bertrand’s representative had crossed Spandauerstrasse in good style at a sharp trot. Joachim thought with relief that henceforth he would keep Ruzena out of reach of them both. No, he could not be accused of stealing Ruzena; on the contrary it was his duty to protect Elisabeth as well from Bertrand. Oh, he knew, the Devil was full of wiles. But a soldier must never fly. If he fled he would deliver Elisabeth defencelessly to that man, he would himself be one of those who hid in the labyrinth of the city and were afraid of the horses’ hoofs; and it would be not only an avowal of his guilt as a thief, it would mean also the renunciation for ever of his attempt to tear from that man the secret of his treachery. He must follow him farther, yet not surreptitiously like a spy, but openly as was fitting; and he would not keep Ruzena concealed either. So in the middle of the Stock Exchange quarter, though admittedly in the vicinity of the garrison band too, everything suddenly grew quiet round Joachim von Pasenow, as quiet and transparent as the clear blue sky which looked down between the two rows of buildings.
    He had now a somewhat vague, yet urgent, wish to catch up the man and tell him that he was going to take Ruzena out of the casino and from now on make no secret about her; but he had taken only a few steps when he saw the other waddling hastily into the Stock Exchange. For a moment Joachim remained staring at the entrance: was this the place of metamorphosis? Would Bertrand himself come out now? He considered whether he should take Bertrand at once to meet Ruzena,and decided no: for Bertrand belonged to the world of the night clubs, and it was from that very world that he must now rescue Ruzena. But that would come all right; and how lovely it would be to forget all about it and wander with Ruzena in a still park beside a still lake. He stood still in front of the Stock Exchange. He longed for the country. The traffic roared round him; above him thundered the trains. He no longer stared at the passers-by, even though he felt that they were foreign and strange. He would avoid this neighbourhood in future. In the midst of the hubbub round the Stock Exchange Joachim von Pasenow held himself stiff and erect. He would be very good to Ruzena.
    Bertrand paid him a visit of condolence, and Joachim was again not quite clear whether to regard this as considerate or presumptuous: one could take it as the one or the other. Bertrand remembered Helmuth, who had visited Culm occasionally, though seldom enough, and his memory was extraordinarily exact: “Yes, a fair, quiet youth, very reserved … I fancy he envied us … he couldn’t have changed much later either … and he resembled you.” That, now, was just a little too familiar again, almost as if Bertrand wished to exploit Helmuth’s death for his own advantage; however, it was no wonder if Bertrand remembered all that had to do with his former military career with such astonishing exactitude: one liked to recall happy times that one had lost. Yet Bertrand did not speak at all in a sentimental way, but quietly and soberly, so that Helmuth’s death assumed a more human and natural aspect, and in some way, under Bertrand’s touch, became objective, timeless and endurable. To his brother’s duel Joachim had not really devoted much thought; all the opinions that had been pronounced on it and the comments recurring again and again in the letters of condolence pointed in