shook my head and looked away. Soon I was deep in thought.
I saw that I had been absent too long, it would be hard for me to adapt. I’d have given a good deal for a pair of shoes or stockings, my bare feet were miserably cold from the wet street. But everyone else in the room was barefoot too.
After a few hours they came for me. I was taken to Office 285, Room 19f. This time the policeman stayed with me. He stationed himself between me and the official, a very high official, it seemed to me.
‘You’ve put yourself in a very nasty position,’ he began. ‘You have been living in this city without an existence permit. You are aware no doubt that the heaviest penalties are in order.’
I made a slight bow.
‘If you please,’ I said, ‘I have only one request. I realise that I am quite unequal to the situation and that my position can only get worse and worse. – Couldn’t you condemn me to death? I should be very grateful!’
The official looked gently into my eyes.
‘I understand,’ he said amiably. ‘But anybody could come asking for that! In any case, you’d need a demise card. Can you afford one? They cost four thousand gulden.’
‘No, I haven’t got that much money. But I’d give all I have. I have an enormous desire to die.’
He smiled strangely.
‘I can believe that, you’re not the only one. But dying isn’t so simple. You belong to the state, my dear man, you are obligated to the state, body and soul. You must know that. But by the way – I see you’re registered under the name of Sinclair, Emil. Could you be Sinclair, the writer?’
‘That’s me!’
‘Oh, I’m so glad. Maybe I can do something for you. Officer, you may leave.’
The policeman left the room, the official shook my hand.
‘I’ve read your books with great interest,’ he said in a friendly tone, ‘and I’ll do my best to help you. – But, good God, how did you get into this incredible situation?’
‘Well, you see, I was away for a while. Two or three years ago I took refuge in the cosmic, and frankly I had rather supposed the war would be over by the time I got back. – But tell me, can you get me a demise card? I’d be ever so grateful.’
‘It may be possible. But first you’ll need an existence permit. Obviously nothing can be done without that. I’ll give you a note to Office 127. On my recommendation they’ll issue you a temporary existence card. But it will only be valid for two days.’
‘Oh, that will be more than enough!’
‘Very well! When you have it, come back here to me.’
We shook hands.
‘One more thing,’ I said softly. ‘May I ask you a question? You must realise how little I know about what’s been going on.’
‘Go right ahead.’
‘Well, here’s what I’d like to know: how can life go on under these conditions? How can people stand it?’
‘Oh, they’re not so badly off. Your situation is exceptional: a civilian – and without papers! There are very few civilians left. Practically everyone who isn’t a soldier is a civil servant. That makes life bearable for most people, a good many are genuinely happy. Little by little one gets used to the shortages. When the potatoes gave out, we had to put up with sawdust gruel – they season it with tar now, it’s surprisingly tasty – we all thought it would be unbearable. But then we got used to it. And the same with everything else.’
‘I see,’ I said. ‘It’s really not so surprising. But there’s one thing I still don’t understand. Tell me: why is the whole world making these enormous efforts? Putting up with such hardships, with all these laws, these thousands of bureaus and bureaucrats – what is all this meant to preserve and safeguard?’
The gentleman looked at me in amazement.
‘What a question!’ he cried, shaking his head. ‘You know we’re at war: the whole world is at war. That’s what we are preserving, what we make laws and endure hardships for. The war! Without these enormous exertions and achievements our armies wouldn’t be able to fight for a week. They’d starve – we can’t allow that!’
‘Yes,’ I said slowly, ‘you’ve got something there! The war, in other words, is a treasure that must be preserved at any cost. Yes, but – I know it’s an odd question – why do you value the war so highly? Is it worth so much? Is war really a treasure?’
The official shrugged his shoulders and gave me a pitying look. He saw that I just didn’t understand.
‘My dear Herr Sinclair,’ he said. ‘You’ve lost contact with the world. Go out into the street, talk to people; then make a slight mental effort and ask yourself: What have we got left? What is the substance of our lives? Only one answer is possible: The war is all we have left! Pleasure and personal profit, social ambition, greed, love, cultural activity – all that has gone out of existence. If there is still any law, order, or thought in the world, we have the war to thank for it. – Now do you understand?’
Yes, now I understood, and I thanked the gentleman kindly.
I left him and mechanically pocketed the recommendation to Office 127. I had no intention of using it, I had no desire to molest the gentlemen in those offices any further. Before anyone could notice me and stop me, I inwardly recited the short astral spell, turned off my heartbeat, and made my body vanish under a clump of bushes. I pursued my cosmic wanderings and abandoned the idea of going home.
*‘If the War Goes On Another Two Years’ was originally published under the pseudonym Emil Sinclair, which Hesse used again when he published Demian in 1919.
Christmas
December 1917
Even before the great reminder, I always felt vague misgivings at Christmas time, an unpleasant taste in my mouth. Here was something pretty but not quite authentic, something universally trusted and respected but which nevertheless inspired a certain secret distrust.
Now that the fourth wartime Christmas is coming, I cannot dispel that taste in my mouth. True, I shall celebrate Christmas, because I have children and wouldn’t want to deprive them of a pleasure. But I shall celebrate this children’s Christmas in the same spirit as I celebrate the prisoners’ Christmas in the course of my war work – as an official gesture, a concession to a time-worn tradition, a dusty sentimentality. For the past three years we have been treating these unfortunate prisoners of war like hardened criminals, and now we send them pretty little boxes and packages with snippets of evergreen in them – it’s touching, sometimes I myself am moved, I imagine the feelings of a prisoner who receives his little present, the flood of memories that come over him as he smells his bit of evergreen. But at bottom that too is sentimentality.
All year long we keep the prisoners in confinement, though they have done nothing but let themselves be surprised by enemy action, and then on
