Harry Haller’s Records

She went away and an old house porter took me up two flights of stairs. But first he asked me where my luggage was, and when he heard that I hadn’t any, I had to pay down what he called “sleep-money.” Then he took me up an old dark staircase to a room upstairs and left me alone. There was a bleak wooden bedstead and on the wall hung a sabre and a coloured print of Garibaldi and also a withered wreath that had once figured in a club festival. I would have given much for pyjamas. At any rate there was water and a small towel and I could wash. Then I lay down on the bed in my clothes, and, leaving the light on, gave myself up to my reflections. So I had settled accounts with Goethe. It was splendid that he had come to me in a dream. And this wonderful girl⁠—if only I had known her name! All of a sudden there was a human being, a living human being, to shatter the death that had come down over me like a glass case, and to put out a hand to me, a good and beautiful and warm hand. All of a sudden there were things that concerned me again, which I could think of with joy and eagerness. All of a sudden a door was thrown open through which life came in. Perhaps I could live once more and once more be a human being. My soul that had fallen asleep in the cold and nearly frozen breathed once more, and sleepily spread its weak and tiny wings. Goethe had been with me. A girl had bidden me eat and drink and sleep, and had shown me friendship and had laughed at me and had called me a silly little boy. And this wonderful friend had talked to me of the saints and shown me that even when I had outdone myself in absurdity I was not alone. I was not an incomprehensible and ailing exception. There were people akin to me. I was understood. Should I see her again? Yes, for certain. She could be relied upon. “A promise is a promise.”