V.
At present Hamburg seemed to Albert even more prosaic than ever. He felt more lonesome, everybody bored him. As the master hums so do the hirelings sing. Everyone in the bank treated him as if he did not belong there, and the little courtesy he received was perfunctory, and out of respect for his uncle. They had no regard for a young man who wrote poetry and talked philosophy. Aaron Hirsch was the only one who showed him proper respect, but even he looked around as if afraid to be caught talking familiarly with the young idler.
On the day of his return from his uncle’s villa, Aaron clasped his hand and held it rather affectionately for a moment or so.
“I’ll bet you had a wonderful time. Isn’t the villa wonderful! Salomon in all his glory never had a finer palace. And the grounds!” He shrugged his shoulders with an expression of the inexpressible. “It made me think of the Garden of Eden. And that stream running through the woods back of the mansion—It’s just like the river Hiddekel in the Bible! Yes, sir, a veritable Garden of Eden, with no beguiling serpent to cause trouble in the family—”
Aaron laughed a loud “Hi-hi” and “Ho-ho!” but he presently checked himself, with a serious grimace on his face.
“You don’t seem very happy—” He eyed him scrutinizingly. “Perhaps there was a beguiling serpent after all.” He emitted a forced little laugh.
“There is a beguiling serpent in every Garden of Eden,” replied Albert in a jesting tone.
Hirsch then began to talk of other things.
“I should like to take you to the Reform Temple,” he was saying, “where all the aristocrats go. I? No, I don’t belong there. I am an old-fashioned Jew, and orthodoxy is good enough for the likes of me. And to tell the truth—” he moved closer to Albert and lowered his voice as if he were about to confide a secret—“I don’t care much for this hocus-pocus reform. If I want to pray to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, I need no groaning organ or chanting choir to carry my prayers to heaven. No, not me. Whenever I visit the Reform synagogue I am reminded of the time the Prussian King was here last winter. There was so much parading and drumming and shooting of cannon in his honor that when he addressed the people no one could hear a word he said. Yes, my child, I am an old-fashioned Jew. I love my Hebrew prayers with all their trimmings as I love my Chalet cooked in the old way—I prefer it to the best Rost-Braten prepared by your uncle’s chef. When I want to pray I wrap myself in my talis and pray. I don’t care for the Protestant hymns Judaised. I prefer a heart-to-heart talk with my God in the language we both understand—God and I—and no elocutionary nonsense. I mean no offense, God forbid—no, no, I know my place and mean no criticism of my betters. Your esteemed uncle belongs to the Reformers, and I get my bread and butter from him. Indeed, I do not mean to criticize my superiors, but when I get to the Temple I get the shivers, so help me God! There is no warmth in it. Doctor Kley, the preacher, is afraid to make a gesture with his arms for fear he might be mistaken for a Jew—” Hirsch bleated long and juicily—“and the congregation sit as if they are afraid to stir and awaken God from His slumber. A hearty prayer for me! The God of Israel never cared for Hamburg manners.”
“Why don’t you try and convert my uncle?” Albert goaded him on.
“I convert your uncle? There are too many conversions already; and far be it from me—a common, everyday man—to proselyte. Aaron Hirsch knows when to talk and when to hold his tongue.”
“Why not turn Christian and be done with it?” asked Albert, hiding an inner chuckle.
Aaron placed the index finger at his elongated nose and, glancing at the young man sideways, his head slightly inclined to one side, said, “Christianity, my child, is no better than Judaism. There is Catholicism for instance—I went into a Catholic church the other day and the sadness of it all and the flickering of candles and the smell of incense made me feel that God had just died and had not been embalmed soon enough. No, no, my child, a living, cheerful God for Aaron Hirsch!”
“How about the Protestant religion?”
“That’s a little better, I own. I visited the Old Protestant Church only last year. No crosses, no effigies, no incense, no smell of the dead—honestly, if they left Jesus out of their ritual I might be tempted to let the Protestants join our synagogue.”
Albert found Hirsch stimulating. As in the case of books Albert did not find Hirsch valuable for his own sake but for his jabber that aroused new thoughts in his brain.
After business hours he could not remain in his room and yet would accept no invitations to call upon those who desired to show him hospitality. He often left his room in self-defense against Frau Rodbertus’ monologues. She was tall and flat, her hair parted in the middle, a gown sweeping to the floor and only betraying the tips of her slippers. Her face was always in repose, her lips pouting, as if she were ready to be painted at any moment. She habitually had her hands clasped in front of her, even when standing, and when in action (she never stopped talking) she slightly moved her head from side to side with the coquetry of a young girl on her first introduction to a presentable young man. Albert had no difficulties in finding out that the pretty girl he saw at her house on the day of his arrival was the daughter of a French emigré, a relation of hers.
Although, as directed by his uncle, Aaron volunteered to show him the city, Albert preferred to make his own discoveries. He tramped the streets, dropped into cafés, studied the people about him and when bed-time came was exhausted and irritated. There was no variety of types here to arouse his lively imagination. Big, rotund men with red faces, and insipid flaxen haired youths with expressionless eyes and duel scars; stout, dull women, and flighty girls who flaunted their sex in the face of every passerby on the Jungfernstieg.
He would return to his room overwhelmed by a feeling of sordidness. No new thoughts, no fresh sentiments, nothing but stagnation. He was in despair. He feared the poet in him had suddenly died. An alarming thought raced through his brain one evening. Was the ambition of his youth a vain dream? He picked up a volume of Goethe, of Lessing, of Klopstock, but they received no response from his soul; they did not thrill him; their beauty was meaningless to him; their imageries evoked no visions in his mind. A terrible fear possessed him. Was he becoming sterile? Was his imagination barren? He tried to express his present despair but even that failed him. His mind was a blank. He felt like a singer who suddenly finds his voice failing. He had not yet learned that beauty often springs from sorrow, that despair often begets ecstasy.