The seeker of adventure

(translated by Barry Scherr)

…Denn eben wo Begriffe

fehlen,

Da stellt ein Wort zur rechten

Zeit sich ein.

(Faust)

I. A Trip

The traveller Ammon Root returned to his native land after an absence of several years. He stayed with Tonar, an old friend of his, who was the director of a joint-stock company and a person with a shady past-but also a fanatic for decorum and probity. On the very day of his arrival Ammon quarrelled with Tonar over a newspaper editorial, called his friend a minion of the minister, and stepped outside for a walk.

Ammon Root was one of those people who are more serious than they appear at first glance. His travels were not mentioned by the newspapers, nor did they cause a single map to make the slightest change in its depiction of the continents, but they were still absolutely necessary for him.

“To live means to travel,” he would say to those people who were attached to life just on the side of it that is most warm and steamy, like a hot pie. Ammon’s eyes – two eternally greedy abysses – ransacked heaven and earth in their search for new spoils; abysses – everything he saw plunged headlong into them and was packed away once and for all in the fearful crush at the bottom of his memory, to be kept for his own use. In contrast to tourists Ammon saw far more than the museums and churches where the viewers, pretending to be experts, seek ethereal beauty in poorly-executed paintings.

Out of curiosity Ammon Root stopped in at a cafeteria that served vegetarian food. About a hundred people were sitting in the large rooms, which smelled of varnish, paint, freshly-dried wall-paper, and some other particularly abstinent odour. Ammon noticed the absence of any old people.

An extraordinary silence, which was out of keeping with even the concept of food, inspired the appetite of anyone coming in to be prayerfully delicate and bodiless, like the very idea of herbivority. The pious but ruddy faces of the health fanatics cast indifferent glances at Ammon. He sat down. The dinner, served to him with a ceremonial and somewhat accentuated solemnity, consisted of a repulsive gruel called “Hercules”, fried potatoes, cucumbers, and some insipid cabbage. Ammon poked around with his fork in this gastronomical paltriness, ate a piece of bread and a cucumber, and drank a glass of water; then he snapped open his cigarette case, but he remembered that smoking was prohibited and looked around gloomily. At the tables mouths were chewing sedately and delicately in a death-like silence. Ammon was hungry and sensed opposition welling up within him. He well knew that he could just as easily have not stopped in here – nobody had asked him to do so – but’ it was hard for him to resist his chance whims. Staring at his plate, Ammon said in a low voice, as though to himself, but clearly enough so that he could be heard:

“What garbage. I’d love to have some meat now!” At the word “meat” many people gave a start, and several dropped their forks; all pricked up their ears and looked at the impudent visitor.

“I’d really like some meat!” Ammon repeated with a sigh.

Somebody coughed emphatically, and another person began to breathe noisily in the corner.

Ammon grew bored and went out into the foyer. A servant handed him his coat.

“I’ll send you a turkey,” said Ammon, “eat to your heart’s content.”

“Oh, sir!” objected the emaciated old servant, sadly shaking his head.

“If only you were used to our regimen… ”

Ammon went out without listening to him. “Now the day’s been spoiled,” he thought, as he walked along the shady side of the street. “That cucumber has stuck in my throat.” He wanted to return home and did so. Tonar was sitting in the living room at the open piano; he had finished playing his favourite bravura pieces but was still under the spell of their great liveliness. Tonar liked everything that was definite, absolute, and clear: for example, milk and money.

“Admit that the article is stupid!” said Ammon as he entered. “I’d like to give that minister of yours my boot in the… but the police inspector is an efficient fellow.”

“We,” retorted Tonar without turning around, “we businessmen look at things differently. Loafers like you, corrupted by travels and a romantic outlook, admire anyone who plays at being a Harun-al-Rashid. To be sure, instead of harassing the speculators who finagle us on the stock market, it is much easier to don a false beard, hang around various dens, and booze it up with petty thieves.”

“But if somebody’s an interesting person,” said Ammon, “then I appreciate him for that alone. You have to appreciate truly interesting people. I’ve known a lot of them. One, a hermaphrodite, was wed to a man and then, after getting divorced, married a woman. A second, who was once a priest, invented a machine that sang bass; he grew rich, killed a circus snake with his teeth on a bet, kept a harem in Cairo, and now is a cheese merchant. A third is remarkable for being a true phenomenon. He possessed a startling ability to concentrate the attention of all those around him exclusively on himself; everyone was silent in his presence, and only he spoke-a little more intelligence, and he could have done whatever he pleased. A fourth blinded himself of his own volition, so as not to see people. A fifth was a sincere, forty-year-old fool; when people asked him what he was, he answered that he was a fool and laughed. Interestingly, he was neither a madman nor an idiot, but simply a classical fool. A sixth… the sixth… is myself.”

“Yes?” Tonar asked ironically.

“Yes. I’m against false humility. I have seen a lot during the forty-five years of my life; I have experienced a lot, and I have participated a lot in others’ lives.”

“But… No!” said Tonar after a silence. “I know a truly interesting person. You bundles of nerves live in want. You always have too little of everything. I know a person who leads an ideally beautiful normal life, who is perfectly well-bred and possesses outstanding principles, and who lives in the healthy atmosphere of farm work and nature. By the way, that is my ideal. But I am not a person of one piece. You ought to have a look at him, Ammon. His life is to yours as that of a juicy red apple is to a rotten banana.”

“For God’s sake!” exclaimed Ammon. “Show me this monster!”

“As you wish. He’s from our circle.”

Ammon laughed when he tried to imagine a peaceful and healthy life.

Eccentric, hot-tempered, and brusque – at times he felt vaguely attracted to such an existence, but only in his imagination; monotony crushed him. There was so much appetizing mental lip-smacking in Tonar’s account that Ammon became interested.

“If it’s not ideal,” he said, “I won’t go, but if you assure… ”

“I guarantee that the most immoderate claims…”

“I’ve never yet seen such a person,” interrupted Ammon. “Please write me a letter of recommendation by tomorrow. Is it very far?”

“A four-hour ride.”

Ammon, who was pacing up and down the room, stopped behind Tonar’s back; carried away by the impressions that were in store, he put his hand on his friend’s bald spot, as though on a lectern, and recited:

 

My native fields! To your serenity,

To sparkling moonlight shining pensively,

To languid mists meandering through winding vales,

To the naive allure of ancient myths and tales,

To rosy cheeks and eyes with hearty gleam,

I have returned; and now your features seem

Unaltered, while the very soul of grace

Preserves my dream amidst this native place!

 

“Are you really forty-five years old?” asked Tonar, settling heavily into his armchair.

“Forty-five.” Ammon approached the mirror. “Who is there to pull out my grey hairs for me? And will I indeed be travelling, travelling, travelling for a long time yet – perhaps forever?”

II. Arrival

Early in the morning Ammon saw the blue and white snow of mountains from his train window; their jagged thrust stretched in a semicircle around a hilly plain. A sunny stripe of the sea was shining in the distance.

The white station-building, with wild grape vines entwined about its walls, cordially came running up to the train. Emitting puffs of exhaust steam, the engine came to a halt; the cars clanged, and Ammon disembarked.

He saw that Liliana was a truly beautiful place. The streets along which Ammon drove, in the carriage that he had hired to go to Dogger’s, were not impeccably straight; their gentle winding caused the eye to constantly expect extensive vistas. Meanwhile Ammon was quite diverted by the buildings’ gradually unfolding diversity. The houses were dotted with little balconies and stucco moulding, or they displayed semi-circular towers; grey arches against a white facade and roofs turned up or down, like the brim of a hat, provided diverse welcomes to the onlooker. All of this had quite an attractive appearance, immersed as it was in the majestically blooming gardens, the flower-beds, the sunlight, and the sky. The streets were lined with palms; their umbrella – like tops cast blue shadows onto the yellow midday earth. Now and then in the middle of a square there would be a fountain, as ancient as a granddad and full of water that rippled from the falling spray; in places a winding stone staircase rose in a side-street, and above it, shaped like an eyebrow, would arc a small bridge, as light as the arm of a girl held akimbo.