ROUNDABOUT WAYS

George had slept for a long time; suddenly the train stopped. He looked up; numbers of people were getting in. His compartment, with the Winds drawn, remained empty. At the last moment — the train had started — a couple asked him if there were seats. He moved politely to one side. The man collided with him and did not apologize. George, who found the least sharpness in a society of well-bred monkeys refreshing, contemplated him in surprise. The woman misinterpreted his look and, they had hardly sat down before she apologized in her husband's stead: he was blind. 'I would not have thought it,' said George, 'he moves with astonishing assurance. I must explain, I am a doctor and have many blind patients.' The man bowed. He was tall and spare. "Will it disturb you if I read aloud to him?' asked the woman. The timid devotion on her face had charm, doubtless she lived for this blind man alone. 'On the contrary! But you must not take offence either if I should fall asleep.' Instead of the sharpness he had longed for, courtesies fluttered to and fro. She took a novel out of her travelling bag and read aloud in a deep, flattered voice.

Peter must look rather like this blind man by now, rigid and gnawed. What could have got into Peter's calm mind? He lived alone and without a care; he had not the least contact with any individual. That he should have become distracted by the impact of the world on him — it sometimes happened with sensitive minds — was not to be thought of in his case; his world was his library. He was distinguished by a colossal memory. Weaker heads might come to ruin through too much reading; but with him each syllable that he acquired remained clear-cut from the next. He was the opposite of an actor, always himself, only himself. Instead of dividing himself among others, he measured them from the outside against himself, and he knew himself only from the outside and through his head. In tliis way he had escaped the very great dangers which must undeniably arise from preoccupation with the culture of the east, pursued in solitude and over many years. Peter was safe from Lao Tse and all the Indians. Out of his own austerity he leaned towards the moral philosophers. He would have found his Confucius in one place or another. What then could have come over him, a creature almost sexless?

'Once again, you drive me to suicide!' George was listening to the novel with half an ear, the reading voice sounded pleasant, he understood its inflexions; but at this absurd statement of the hero in person, he could not help laughing out loud. 'You would not laugh, sir, if you were blind!' an angry voice came at him. The blind man had spoken; his first words were rude. 'I'm sorry,' said George, 'but I don't believe in that kind of love.' 'Then don't interrupt a serious person's pleasures ! I understand love better than you. I'm blind. That's no business of yours!' 'You misunderstand me,' George began. Then he noticed the woman; she was gesticulating vehemently, alternately she put her finger to her lips and folded her hands, he must for God's sake say no more; he said no more. Her lips thanked him. The blind man had already raised his arm. To defend himself? To attack? He let it fall and ordered: 'Go on!' The woman read on, her voice trembled. With fear? With joy at having met a man of such delicate feeling?

George suddenly saw the danger with which Peter imagined himself threatened: he was afraid of going blind! Perhaps his eyes were bad. Perhaps he had to give up reading now and again. What could have worried him more? A single hour which did not fit in with his daily plan, was enough to fill him with strange thoughts. Everything was strange to Peter which had to do with nimself. As long as his head was busied with selected facts, information, theories, weaving them together, tabulating them and relating them to each other, he was certain of the usefulness of his solitude. Really solitary, alone with himself, he had never been. After all, this was what made the learned man: being alone so as to be with as many things as possible simultaneously. As if in these conditions a man could himself truly be even with one thing alone. Probably Peter's eyes had been overstrained. Who could say whether he was careful to read in a good light? Perhaps, contrary to his custom, and his contemptuous attitude, he had been to a doctor who had recommended unconditional rest and quiet. This very quiet, extended over several days, might have brought on his final quietus. Instead of indemnifying the illness of his eyes by the soundness of his ears, instead of listening to music and people (what is richer than the intonations of men?) he must surely have paced up and down before his books, doubted the goodwill of his own eyes, implored them, cursed them, recollected with terror that one day's blindness of his childhood, been struck with horror lest he should again become blind, and for a long time, he must have raged, despaired and — because he was the proudest and harshest of men —called his brother to him before he approached a neighbour or an acquaintance for the least helpful word. I'll get rid ofthat blindness, George decided. I never saw an easier cure in prospect. Three things for me to do: a thorough examination of his eyes, a careful test of the lighting arrangements in his flat, and a cautious and loving talk which will convince him of the meaninglessness of his fears, always supposing that they had no real foundation.

He glanced with friendship at the rude blind man opposite and thanked him in silence for his presence. He had shown him the right interpretation of the telegram. A sensitive mind derives either advantage or injury from every contact, because each will awaken thoughts and recollections. The indolent are wandering institutions, nothing flows into them, nothing makes them overflow, frozen and isolated, they drift through the world. Why should they move? What moves them? Accidentally they belong to the animal kingdom, but in fact they are vegetables. You could nip their heads off and they'd go on living, they have their roots. The stoic philosophy is suited to vegetables, it is high treason to animals. Let us be animals! He who has roots, let him uproot himself. George was glad to know why the train was carrying him so fast on his way. He had got into it blindly. Blindly he had had that dream of his childhood. A blind man had got in. Then suddenly the train found its direction: to the healing of a blind brother. For whether Peter really was blind, or only feared it, was for a psychiatrist one and the same thing. Now he could sleep. Animals >ursue their desires to their climax and then break off. Most of all they ove the frequent changes of their tempo. They eat to completion and ove to satiation. Their rest they deepen into sleep. Soon he too slept.

The reading woman, between the Unes, caressed the beautiful hand on which he had supported his head. She thought he was listening to her voice. Now and again she emphasized a word; he was to understand how unhappy she was. She would never forget this journey; soon she must get out. She would leave the book behind, as a souvenir, and — she implored — might she not have one look? She got out at the next station. Her husband she propelled in front of her, usually she drew him along behind her. In the door she held her breath. Without looking round —she was afraid of her husband, her movements aroused his anger — she said, daring much: 'Good-bye!' For how many years had she waited to speak in such a tone. He could make no answer. She was happy. Weeping softly, a little intoxicated with her own beauty, she helped the blind man out of the train. She mastered herself and cast no glance back towards the window of his compartment, where in her mind's eye she saw him. He must have seen her tears, and she was ashamed. She had left the novel with him. He was asleep.

In the morning he washed. In the evening he reached his destination. He put up at a modest hotel. At a better known one his arrival would have been a sensation, since he was one of those half dozen scientists whom the newspapers faithfully expose to public adulation at the expense of all their colleagues. He put off his visit to his brother to the following day so as not to disturb his night's rest. Because his impatience tormented him, he went to the opera. Listening to Mozart he felt pleasantly secure.

That night he dreamt of two cocks. The larger was red and scraggy, the smaller well-clipped and cunning. Their fighting lasted long, it was so exciting that one forgot to think. You see, said a spectator, what men are coming to! Men? crowed the little cock. What men? We're cocks. Fighting cocks. None of your iokes! The spectator withdrew. He grew smaller and smaller. Suddenly it was clear that he too was only a cock. But a cowardly one, said the red cock, it's time to get up. The small cock agreed. He had won and flew away. The red cock stayed. He grew larger and larger. His colour grew with his body. It hurt the eyes to look at him. They opened themselves. À huge sun bulged over the window-sill.

George hurried and barely an hour later was standing in front of the house, No. 24 Ehrlich Strasse. It was more or less respectable and quite without character. He climbed up the four floors and rang. An old woman opened the door. She was wearing a starched blue skirt and grinned. He felt like glancing down at himself to see if all was not as it should be, but controlled himself and asked: 'Is my brother at home?'

Immediately the woman stopped grinning, stared at him and said: 'Excuse me, there's no brother here!

'My name is Professor George Kien. I want Dr. Peter Kien, the well-known scholar. He certainly lived here eight yean ago. Perhaps you know if there is anyone in the building who would know his address in case he's moved.'

'Better say nothing about that.'

'One moment, please. I've come specially from Paris. You must surely be able to tell me whether he fives here or not.'

'I ask you, you ought to be thankful.'

'Why thankful?'

'Some people aren't fools.'

'Of course not.'

'The stories there are!'

'Perhaps my brother's ill?'

'A fine brother! You ought to be ashamed!'

'Kindly tell me what you know!'

'And what do I get out of it?'

George took a piece of money out of his pocket, gripped her arm and placed the coin with friendly pressure on her hand, which had opened of itself. The woman grinned again.

'You'll tell me what you know about my brother, now, won't you?'

'Anyone can talk.'

'Well?'

'All of a sudden you're dead. More, please!' she tossed her shoulders.

George pulled out another coin, she held out her other hand. Instead of touching it, he tossed the coin down from above.

'I may as well go again!' she said and gave him an ugly look.

'What do you know about my brother?'

'More than eight years ago. It all came out the day before yesterday.'

It was eight years since Peter had written to him. The telegram had come the day before yesterday. The woman must have got hold of something of the truth. 'So what did you do?' George asked in order to spur her into a fuller account.

'We went to the police. A respectable woman goes to the police right away.'

'Of course, of course. Thank you for the assistance you must have rendered to my brother.'

'If you please . . . Knocked flat, the police were.'

'But what had he done?' George imagined his brother, slightly unbalanced, complaining to oafish policemen of his eye trouble.

'Stolen, he did! He's no heart....'

'Stolen?'

'Murdered her, that's what he did! It's not my fault, is it? She was the first wife, I'm the second. He hid the pieces. There was room behind the books. Thief, that's what I always said. Day before yesterday the murderer was found out. I've got the shame of it. Why was I such a fool? I always say, one shouldn't. That's what people are like. I thought, all those books. What's he up to between six and seven? Cutting up corpses. Took the pieces out for his walk. Not a soul noticed. Stole the bank book, he did. I've nothing to hold on to. I might starve. He wanted me to. I'm the second. Then I'll have a divorce. Excuse me, he'll have to pay me first! Eight years ago he ought to have been locked up! Now he's put away downstairs. I've locked him in. I won't be murdered in my bed!' She burst into tears and slammed the door.

Peter a murderer. Quiet, lanky Peter, whom all the other boys at school bullied. The stairs swayed. The roof fell in. And George, a person of the utmost fastidiousness, dropped his hat and did not pick it up. Peter married. Who would have believed it? The second wife, more than fifty years old, ugly, freakish, common, not able to utter a single human sentence, escaped an assault the day before yesterday. He cut the first one into pieces. He loves his books, and uses them as a hiding place. Peter and truth! If only he had lied, all his childhood lied, black and blue! So this was why George had been sent for. The telegram was a forgery, either of his wife or of the police. That legend of Peter's sexlessness. A pretty legend like all legends, made out ofthin air, idiotic. George the brother of a blue-beard. Headlines in all the papers. The greatest living sinologist ! The highest authority on eastern Asia! A double life! His retirement from the direction of the institute. Aberration. Divorce. His assistants to succeed him. The patients, the patients, they will be tormented, they will be ill-used! Eight hundred! They love him, they need him, he cannot leave them. Resignation is impossible. They cling to him on all sides, you mustn't leave us, we'll come too, stay with us, we've no one else, they don't talk our language, you listen to us, you understand us, you laugh with us; his beautiful, rare birds; they are all of them strangers there, each one from a different land, not one understands his neighbour, they accuse each other and do not even know it; he lives for them, he can't forsake them, he will stay. Peter's affairs must be seen to. His catastrophe is bearable. He was all for Chinese characters, George for human beings. Peter must be put in a home. He lived alone too long. His senses broke loose with his first wife. How could he control this sudden change? The police will give him up. Possibly he will be allowed to take mm to Paris. It is evident that he is not responsible for his actions. In no circumstances will George retire from the direction of the institute.

On the contrary, he stepped forward, picked up his hat, dusted it, and knocked politely but firmly at the door. Scarcely was his hat back in his hand than he was again the assured man of the world, the doctor. 'My dear lady,' he lied, 'my dear lady!' A youthful admirer, he re-repeated the two words, imploringly and with a fire which seemed ridiculous even to him, as though he were himself the spectator to the play he was acting. He heard her preparations. Maybe she has a pocket mirror, he thought, maybe she's powdering herself and will listen to me. She opened the door and grinned. 'I would like to ask you for some particulars!' He sensed her disappointment. She had expected a further passage of affection, or at the very least a repetition of that 'my dear idy'. Her mouth stayed open, her expression grew sour. 

'I ask you. Murderer, that's all I know.'

'Shut up!' bellowed the voice of a mad bull. Two fists appeared, followed by a thick, red head. 'Don't you believe the bitch! She's a cow! No murders in my house! As long as I've anything to do with it, not on your life! Owed me for four canaries, though; if you're his brother, highly bred little birds, bred them myself. He paid. Paid well. Yesterday night it was. Maybe I'll open my patent peep-hole for him again to-day. He's gone off his head. Do you want to see him? Gets his food all right. Whatever he asks for. I've locked him up. He's frightened of the old woman. Can't stand her. Nobody can stand her. Have a look now! What she's done with him! Knocked him all to bits, she has. She doesn't exist any more for him, he says. He'd sooner be blind. Quite right, he is. She's a sh—of a woman! If he hadn't married her he'd have been right enough, right in the head too, I say!' The woman tried to speak; with a sideways thrust of his arm he knocked her back into the flat.

'Who are you?' asked George.

'You see in me your brother's best friend. Benedikt Pfaff, signature, police constable, retired, once called Ginger the Cat! I look after the house. Though I say it myself! I keep a sharp eye on the law. Who are you? Profession, I mean?'

George asked to see his brother. All the murders, all the anxieties, all the malevolence in the world had vanished: The caretaker pleased him. His head reminded him of the rising sun of early that morning. He was crude, but refreshing, an untamed, stout fellow such as one rarely sees now in the cities and homes of civilization. The stairs groaned. Instead of carrying it, this Atlas smote the wretched earth. His powerful legs oppressed the ground. Feet and shoes seemed made of stone. The walls echoed to his words. How could the tenants endure it, George wondered. He was a little ashamed because he had not immediately seen that the woman was a cretin. The simple structure of her sentences had convinced him that her imbecilities were true. He put the blame on the journey, on the Mozart opera of yesterday, which had for the first time in years dragged him out of the daily course of his thoughts, and on his expectation of finding an invalid brother, but not necessarily a cretinous housekeeper. That the austere Peter should have happened on this absurd old thing was a light in his darkness. He laughed at the blindness and inexperience of his brother, who had certainly telegraphed on her account, and was glad that the damage could be so easily repaired. A question to the caretaker confirmed his assumption: she had kept house for Peter for many years and had made use of this, her original function, to insert herself into a more respectable one. He was filled with tender feelings for his brother, who had spared him the inconvenience of murder. The simple telegram had a simple meaning. Who could tell but to-morrow morning already he might be back in the train, and the day after pacing through his wards;

Below in the entrance hall Atlas came to a stand in front of ? door, pulled a key out of his pocket and unlocked it. 'I'll go fust,' he whispered, and put a stumpy finger to his mouth. 'Professor, my friend!' George heard him saying inside the door. 'I've got a visitor for you! What do you give me for that?' George went in, closed the door, and was astounded at the bare little closet within. The window had been boarded up, a little light fell on a bed and a cupboard. Nothing could be seen clearly. A repellent smell of stale food crawled round him, involuntarily he put nis fingers to his nostrils. Where was Peters There was a scraping, such as one hears in the cages of animals. George felt along the wall. It was really there where he had thought; how appalling, this tiny room. 'Open the window,' he said aloud. 'Can't be done!' came the answer, in Atlas' voice. So Peter's eyes were the trouble, not only the wife; that was evident from the darkness in which he lived. Where was he? 'Here he is,' bellowed Atlas, a lion in a rabbit hutch, 'still at my patent!' George took two steps along the wall and collided with a neap. Peter? He bent down and felt the skeleton of a man. He lifted it up. The man trembled, or was it the draught? no, everything was closed, now someone was whispering, flat and toneless like one dying, like one dead, could he speak.

'Who is it?'

'It's George, your brother George, don't you hear me, Peter?'

'George?' Life came into the voice.

'Yes, George. I wanted to see you, I've come to visit you. I come from Paris.'

'Is it really you?'

'Why, do you doubt it?'

'I can't see here. It's so dark.'

'I knew you at once, by your thinness.'

Suddenly someone ordered, stern and harsh —George almost started — 'Leave the room, Pfaff!'

'What's that?'

'Please, would you mind leaving us alone?' George added.

'Immediately!' commanded Peter, the old Peter.

Pfaff went. The new gentleman was too grand for him. He looked like a president or something of the sort. He probably was. He would have plenty of time later to pay the Professor back for his sauce. In part payment he slammed the door, out of respect for the President he did not lock him in.

George laid Peter on the bed; he hardly noticed the difference when he no longer had him in his arms; he went to the window and pulled at the boards. 'I'll cover it up again soon,' he said, 'you need air. If your eyes hurt you, close them for the moment.'

'My eyes don't hurt.'

'Then why do you spare them? I thought you'd been reading too much and were taking a rest in the dark.'

'Those boards have only been there since last night.'

'Did you nail them up so tight? I can hardly get them away, I wouldn't have thought you had so much strength.'

'That was the caretaker, the landsknecht.'

'Landsknecht?'

'A venal brute.'

'I found him sympathetic. In comparison to other people in your entourage.'

'I did once too.'

'What has he done to you, then?'

'He behaves shamelessly. He's growing familiar.'

'Perhaps he does that to show you his friendship. You can't have been long in this little room?'

'Since the day before yesterday, about noon.'

'Do you feel better? Your eyes I mean. I hope you brought no books with you.'

'The books are upstairs. My little hand-library was stolen from me.'

'What a stroke of luck! Otherwise you'd have tried to read here. That would have been poison to your tired eyes. I believe even you are anxious about them now. Once you didn't care about them at all. You've treated them disgracefully always.'

'My eyes are perfectly well.'

'Truly? Haven't you any complaints?'

'No.'

The boards were down. A sharp light flowed into the room. Air streamed through the open window. George breathed in, deeply contented. So far the examination had progressed well. Peter s answers to the well calculated questions were correct, factual, a little curt, as always. The evil was all in this wife, only in the wife; he had purposely disregarded hints in her direction. He had no fear for his eyes; the way in which he reacted to repeated inquiries about their condition argued a genuine indignation. George turned round. Two empty birdcages hung on the wall. The bedclothes had red stains on them. In the corner at the back was a wash-basin. The dirty water in it shimmered red. Peter was even thinner than his hands had already told him. Two sharp creases cut his checks in two. His face looked longer, harsher and narrower than it had done. Four penetrating wrinkles were on the brow as though his eyes were always pulled wide open. Of his lips nothing was visible, a recalcitrant slit betrayed where they would be. His eyes, poor and watery blue, examined his brother, pretending indifference; in their corners twitched curiosity and distrust. His left arm, Peter was hiding behind his back.

"What's the matter with your hand?' George took it away from his back. It was wrapped in a cloth soaked through and through with blood.

'I hurt myself?

'How did this happen?'

'While I was eating, my knife slipped suddenly against my little finger. I've lost the two top joints.'

'You must have slipped with all your weight?'

'The joints were more than half cut off. I thought, diey're lost anyway and cut them right off. To be done with the pain once and for all.'

'What made you jump so?'

'You know very well.'

'How should I know, Peter?'

'The caretaker told you.'

'I find it extremely odd that he never even mentioned it to me.'

'It's his fault. I didn't know he kept canaries. He hid the cages under the bed, the devil knows why. One whole afternoon and the next day it was still as the grave in here. Last night at supper, just as I was cutting my meat, a hellish noise broke out. The first fright cost me my finger. You must consider what quiet I am used to at my work. But I avenged myself on the wretched fellow. He likes crude jokes ofthat kind. I believe he hid the cages under the bed on purpose. He could easily have left them on the wall where they now are.

'How did you avenge yourself?'

'I let the birds go. Considering what pain I was in, a mild revenge. Probably they've come to grief. He was in such a rage that he boarded up the window. But in any case I paid him for the birds. He asserted they were priceless, he had taken years to tame them. He's lying of course. Have you ever heard that canaries sing to order and stop singing to order?'

'No.'

'He wanted to put their price up that way. You would have thought

that it was women only who wanted their husband's money. That's a great mistake. You see how I paid for it.'

George ran to the nearest chemist, bought iodine, bandages and this and that to revive Peter. The wound was not in itself dangerous; but that a man already weak should have lost so much blood worried him more. He ought to have been bandaged up yesterday. The caretaker was a monster; he thought of nothing but his canaries. Peter's story sounded true. But he must make an investigation with the culprit as well to see if they tallied in every particular. It would be best to go straight back to the flat and hear his account of what had happened yesterday as well as on earlier occasions. George did not look forward to it. This was the second time in the day that he had mistaken his man. He regarded himself—and his success as a mental specialist bore witness to it — as a great connoisseur of men. The redheaded fellow was not merely a great strong Atlas of a man, he was insolent and dangerous. His joke of putting the canaries under the bed betrayed how little he really cared for Peter, although he pretended to be his best friend. He was perfectly capable of robbing a sick man of light and air by nailing up the window with boards. He had taken no care of his wound at all. One of the first sentences he had said when George made his acquaintance was to the effect that his brother had paid him, and paid him well, for the four canary birds that he owed him. Money was his chief interest. He was evidently in league with the woman. He stayed in the flat with her. The rough handling and the rougher words he had used she had accepted, not without a half pleasure in her anger. So she was his woman. Not one of these conclusions had George drawn at the time. So great had been his relief at Peter's acquittal of murder. Now he was ashamed again of himself. He had left his wits at home. How ridiculous, to have believed a woman like that! How absurd to have been so trusting of a landsknecht — Peter's name was very apt! The fellow would laugh in his face; he had outwitted him. No wonder the pair of them grinned, they were sure of their advantage and hold over Peter. They probably intended to keep the flat and the library for themselves, leaving Peter down there in that black hole. The woman had met him with a grin when she opened the door.

George decided to tie up Peter's hand before he sought out the caretaker. The wound was more important than any explanation. He would not learn much more than he knew already. He could easily find a pretext later on to leave the little room for half an hour.