Frightful is the thought how many friends I have lost, how many persons whom I had once thought so valuable and unreplaceable have died as far as I am concerned. And even more painful is the thought that this is the experience of all of us. Every one of us finds persons who accompany us a short distance, their hands in ours, their arms about us lovingly, and we think this will continue for ever, and then we come to a turn in the road and they have vanished. Or they travel along a road that seems to run very near our own. So near one another do we travel that we can almost touch hands even though our paths are not the same. And gradually our paths diverge. We are still within sight of one another. We can still converse with one another. Then this, too, becomes impossible. If we shout we may make ourselves heard on the other highway, but there is no reply. They are gone!
First, there were the friends of our childhood! Among these there were some whom we termed friends but who were really only a plaything, like the rocking-horse and the wooden sword. They were created only for the purpose of playing a role in the rich world of our fantasies. There was something impersonal about our friend—he did not yet cling to us. Mother used to say to us: “To-day you have a new friend!” And we were ready to accept him as such at once unless he was unsympathetic to us or obstinate or inclined to lord it over us. Of course no one could be forced on us, no matter how earnestly mother demanded it. Gradually there developed in us that dark and puzzling concept, made up of the fusion of numerous primary impulses, which we call “friendship.”
Then one came along who was more to us than all the others. In his presence life was much more beautiful and richer than we had supposed; when he was absent we longed for him. When he came all our pains were forgotten. Ah, what great loves and hatreds we were capable of in the blessed era of our first friendship!
It is incomprehensible to me that I have lost the friend of my early youth. On one occasion our teachers interfered and separated us. Why they did so I do not know. But I was a wild, unruly youngster; they may have feared that by my example I might poison the inexperienced soul of my friend. But of what avail were prohibitions in the presence of our great friendship! We met secretly behind dark hedges, where no teacher’s eyes could discover us. As evening approached we roamed out upon the meadow beyond the city, as far as the cemetery wall upon the gentle slope of the mountain, where we could lie down at our ease and gaze up at the stars, while we discussed the many serious questions which were beginning to trouble the souls of the maturing youngsters. When night came and wrapped the white buildings and the green gardens in a dark veil, and when the distant trumpet summoned the soldiers to their barracks, and at the sound there sprang from many an obscure nook frightened couples who quickly embraced again and said hurried farewells, we grasped each other’s hands feverishly, and it seemed as if we could never, never be separated. Once we were angry at each other. It had been a serious dispute. Both of us were obstinate, for months we sulked and did not speak to each other. But one day my friend’s heart melted. He confessed that he had suffered the tortures of jealousy, and that he made up only because he feared he might lose me for ever.
He was quite right. Slowly I had become half a man. Instinctively I had found among the High School pupils one who had my own inclinations, who spent sleepless nights with me in measuring verses on our fingers, fearing we might be too late for immortality. If it was the sensuous that had to be disposed of formerly, it was now the supersensuous that forced itself between the innocent pleasures of life. Now we could sit in the moonlight for hours speculating on the mysteries of existence, infinity, and immortality. Every time we discovered something beautiful we were happy for days thereafter.
He was not our only friend in those days of youthful enthusiasms. Then we had many, many friends. And when we sat in the close cafés and with palpitating hearts sang the old student-songs, and the pitcher filled with beer was passed around, we spoke of “eternal friendship” and “eternal loyalty.” The “eternal” pledge was sealed by the shaking of hands, and we really felt like brothers. Every one had his good qualities which were admired, his weaknesses which were smiled at indulgently, and his strength which was feared. Each one seemed unreplaceable, and once when death snatched one of our friends from our midst we all cried like little children who want their mother.
And when we scattered in the directions of the winds, one going to the High School, the second into the army, the third into a vocation, our passion flared up again, and we swore to come together again after a certain number of years had gone by. What merry, spirited, and lusty boys we were!...
If only I had not seen them again, these friends! If only they could have continued to live in my memory as a precious heritage from a period that was rich in hopes and poor in disillusionments. It is with a shudder that I recall the evening, when, after many years of separation, we had a reunion. Were these my living friends? No, these had been dead many years. I sat among corpses, among alien corpses who spoke a language that was not mine. One whom fortune had made a millionaire sat there vain and self-conscious. Absorbed in himself and morose sat one who clung to his grandiose fantasies in the modest station he occupied. A third kept looking at his watch uneasily because he had promised his wife to be home before ten o’clock. The fourth stroked his paunch and was absorbed in the mysteries of the menu. A fifth gazed at his highly-polished finger-nails and yawned. The sixth and the seventh—but enough! They looked at one another strangely, and on the lips of all was the unuttered question: “Why in—did we come here?”
These were friendships which had been made when we were still in our childhood. Later on the matter was not quite so simple, and it took a long time before we found one with whom we could become as one. In reality, we are still like children. We want to find a playmate for our thoughts and feelings. We let each other speak and we listen, and we call that “being understood.” That is not so easy as one would like to believe. There are people who cannot listen and people to whom we cannot listen. But ultimately one finds the right person, one to whom we can entrust our secrets, one with whom we share our joys and our woes. But for how long? How strange! The fate of these friendships is sealed the moment a third person acquires the right to participate: a woman. Marriage is the rock on which most friendships split. What was formerly a question for two is now a question for three. And if the friend too marries it becomes a question for four. But how difficult it is to find four persons whose hearts beat harmoniously! What new elements now enter into the previous requirements “to understand each other!” Vanity, jealousy, envy, disfavour.
And thus we lose one friend after the other. And one day we find ourselves in an all-souls’ mood, and place wreaths on the graves of the dead who are dead to us. We ask ourselves anxiously whose the fault was that we are so lonesome. And if we are not honest we blame the others. But if we are honest we see that we were not free from guilt and from all the hateful things that human beings say about one another, and we realize that it is man’s destiny to be alone. The more pronounced our individuality becomes, the more sharply our qualities are outlined, the more difficult is it to lose oneself in a crowd. We are not capable of keeping our friends. We demand instead of giving. And that is why we lose them and weep at their graves.