Part 7 (1/2)
This morning I received a remarkable epistle from my mother. Its tone is very different from what I am accustomed to in her. As a rule she avoids all interference with my private affairs; and now, all at once, she writes, she doesn't think it proper that I cut myself off, as I do, from all intercourse, and open up no relations whatsoever with the prominent members of the community. She goes on to say that she has learned from trustworthy sources that very fine and cultivated families live in Reissnitz, who would esteem it a pleasure to see me in their homes, and who are probably hurt even now that I do not introduce myself to them.
She remarks that I am not intimate even with my colleagues, who would be justified in making a claim upon me. In the house of Sanitatsrat Ehrlich I would surely find the stimulus and the diversion I undoubtedly need after a severe day's work in the practice of my difficult profession. It is always a dubious matter for a bachelor to isolate himself; he develops peculiar ideas and habits, and acquires the manners of a social hermit. Who, she'd like to know, is a certain Simon Eichelkatz, to whom I devote all my spare time? Besides, it is necessary for a physician to marry--in order to inspire confidence, for the sake of appearances. I had hesitated too long; as Kreisphysikus I should have had a wife long ago; why, the very fact of being Kreisphysikus presupposes an age not exactly youthful.
I reflected a moment--she was right for three reasons. My thirty-eight years actually do make me seem old to myself. In fact, I am old; and it now occurs to me all of a sudden that I may have failed to make use of the psychological moment to seek and find my affinity. And if I never marry? Is marriage so unqualifiedly desirable? I thought of Simon Eichelkatz. But how did my mother come to hear of him? I didn't recall having mentioned him in my letters to her. As for the other points on which she touched? Ah! A flash of inspiration! Herr Jonas Goldstucker!
There it stood black on white! A very reliable gentleman had approached her in a matter referring to me, calling for discretion, etc., etc. Now, the merits of Fraulein Edith Ehrlich were known in Rawitsch also. I had to laugh; but I determined at all events to interrogate my old friend about the persons in question.
I went to him in the evening. Though he sat near the stove, with a blanket spread over his knees, he still seemed to suffer from the cold.
He also seemed tired and not so fresh as a few days before. He responded to my questioning look with:
”It's cold, Herr Kreisphysikus; a bad time for old people. Inside nothing to warm you; outside the cold! It chills you to the marrow!” He rubbed his hands and drew the blanket up. Feiwel Silbermann had stepped in, looked at him anxiously without his noticing it, and then put some more coal in the stove.
”We keep up good fires here in Upper Silesia,” said Simon, ”but what's the use when you begin to freeze inside?”
There was a touch of melancholy in his voice. I laughed and said:
”Feiwel will heat you inside, too.”
Then I ordered hot tea and rum for him at once; and a gla.s.s of mulled wine every morning during the cold weather.
I was well aware that this prescription would be of little avail; there are no remedies to counteract such symptoms of old age. But he could be given some relief; and after taking the warm drink he felt more comfortable for the moment.
”It's a remarkable thing, Herr Doktor, that man grows into a block of ice, when his time comes. He doesn't die, but he freezes. Just as outside in nature everything stiffens with the frost when the time comes; and all life dies, because the sun is gone, the great warmth.
What curdles in us, is the warm current of life, the blood. No herb grows which can prevent it. Forgive me, Herr Kreisphysikus, for speaking to you so openly. But at my age you don't make beans about things any more, and you think all sorts of thoughts--about life and death. And I've always found you a sensible man, to whom I can say anything at all; and if I now say to you: when the long winter comes upon men, nothing will help them, no doctor, no tea, and no mulled wine, you won't take offense, will you?”
”But spring follows winter,” I said more to quiet him than out of conviction. He may have felt this, because he smiled mournfully, and his faded features were suffused with a glorified light--the light that fills us with the awe of the infinite when we stand in the presence of the dead.
”What that spring is which follows the winter of our lives, no man knows. I think it is an eternal winter; and if a new life does blossom out of the grave, it is a fresh beginning, which grows from itself, and does not join on to an end without an end.” He gazed meditatively into s.p.a.ce. ”My idea is,” he continued, ”that death is the only reality on earth. Life is only a seeming. Life changes at every moment and pa.s.ses, death never changes and remains forever. Tell me, Herr Kreisphysikus, if men grow old, they live seventy years or a little more, and don't they stay dead a million years? Have you ever heard of anyone's living twice, or being young twice?”
It is not the first time I am called upon to notice the profundity of the old man's observations; but it never fails to surprise me.
”Have you never heard of the immortality of the soul, Herr Eichelkatz?”
I asked.
”Soul, Herr Doktor? What is soul? Where is it? In what is it? How does it look? Does it fly out of the body when life is at an end? By the window? By the chimney? Through the keyhole? Has anyone ever seen it?
Has someone ever felt it? Sometimes I read in the paper about spirits with whom chosen mortals talk. Do you believe it, Herr Doktor? I don't.
Has such a thing ever been proved? They are meshugge or else cheats; it always turns out that way.”
I had to laugh at the curt way in which he disposed of spiritualism and all its excrescences.
”Nevertheless, my dear friend,” I answered, ”there is probably a spiritual after-life which manifests itself in our children and grandchildren--a young spring time of life made fruitful by the impulses of our souls.”
He wrapped himself more tightly in his cover. A slight s.h.i.+ver went through his body.
”Herr Kreisphysikus, and how about those who have no children, or those whose children go away from them, or those who do not know their own children?--through no fault of their own. Why should they be worse off than the others? What have they done that they should be extinguished forever, while the others live on forever? I don't believe it. For if I did happen to see in the world a great deal about which I had to ask myself why, still I didn't see anything that had no definite plan and no compelling cause, the good and the bad. The thing might not have pleased me, and it might have seemed bad or false, but it had a law according to which it had to be carried out.”
There he was dealing with Kantian abstractions again; the categorical imperative came to him instinctively. I did not want to tire him with thinking too much, and I said:
”By the way, Herr Eichelkatz, I wanted to ask you something that is of personal interest to me. Who is Herr Jonas Goldstucker?”
He looked at me slyly.