"DEMIAN" by HERMANN HESSE

Chapter 6.3 JACOB WRESTLING

"Pistorius, " I said suddenly in a fit of malice that both surprised and frightened me. "You ought to tell me one of your dreams again sometime, a real dream, one that you've had at night. What you're telling me there is all so--so damned antiquarian. " He had never heard me speak like that before and at the same moment I realized with a flash of shame and horror that the arrow I had shot at him, that had pierced his heart, had come from his own armory: I was now flinging back at him reproaches that on occasion he had directed against himself half in irony. He fell silent at once. I looked at him with dread in my heart and saw him turning terribly pale.

After a long pregnant pause he placed fresh wood on the fire and said in a quiet voice: "You're right, Sinclair, you're a clever boy. I'll spare you the antiquarian stuff from now on. " He spoke very calmly but it was obvious he was hurt. What had I done? I wanted to say something encouraging to him,implore his forgiveness, assure him of my love and my deep gratitude. Touching words came to mind--but I could not utter them. I just lay there gazing into the fire and kept silent. He, too, kept silent and so we lay while the fire dwindled, and with each dying flame I felt something beautiful, intimate irrevocably burn low and become evanescent. "I'm afraid you've misunderstood me, " I said finally with a very forced and clipped voice. The stupid, meaningless words fell mechanically from my lips as if I were reading from a magazine serial.

"I quite understand, " Pistorius said softly. "You're right. " I waited. Then he went on slowly: "In as much as one person can be right against another. " No, no! I'm wrong, a voice screamed inside me--but I could not say anything. I knew that with my few words I had put my finger on his essential weakness, his affliction and wound. I had touched the spot where he most mistrusted himself. His ideal way "antiquarian, " he was seeking in the past, he was a romantic. And suddenly I realized deeply within me: what Pistorius had been and given to me was precisely what he could not be and give to himself. He had led me along a path that would transcend and leave even him, the leader, behind.

God knows how one happens to say something like that. I had not meant it all that maliciously, had had no idea of the havoc I would create. I had uttered something the implications of which I had been unaware of at the moment of speaking. I had succumbed to a weak, rather witty but malicious impulse and it had become fate. I had committed a trivial and careless act of brutality which he regarded as a judgment. How much I wished then that he become enraged, defend himself,and berate me! He did nothing of the kind--I had to do all of that myself. He would have smiled if he could have, and the fact that he found it impossible was the surest proof of how deeply I had wounded him.

By accepting this blow so quietly, from me, his impudent and ungrateful pupil, by keeping silent and admitting that I had been right, by acknowledging my words as his fate, he made me detest myself and increased my indiscretion even more. When I had hit out I had thought I would strike a tough, well-armed man--he turned out to be a quiet, passive, defenseless creature who surrendered without protest. For a long time we stayed in front of the dying fire, in which each glowing shape, each writhing twig reminded me of our rich hours and increased the guilty awareness of my indebtedness to Pistorius. Finally I could bear it no longer. I got up and left. I stood a long time in front of the door to his room, a long time on the dark stairway, and even longer outside his house waiting to hear if he would follow me.

Then I turned to go and walked for hours through the town, its suburbs, parks and woods, until evening. During that walk I felt for the first time the mark of Cain on my forehead. Only gradually was I able to think clearly about what had occurred. At first my thoughts were full of self-reproach, intent on defending Pistorius. But all of them turned into the opposite of my intention. A thousand times I was ready to regret and take back my rash statement--yet it had been the truth. Only now I managed to understand Pistorius completely and succeeded in constructing his whole dream before me.