Demian - Hermann Hesse

Beatrice

 At the end of the holidays, and without having seen my friend again, I went to St. ------. My parentsaccompanied me and entrusted me to the care of a boy's boarding-house run by one of the teachers at thepreparatory school. They would have been struck dumb with horror had they known into what world theywere letting me wander. The question remained: was I eventually to become a good son and useful citizen ordid my nature point in an altogether different direction? My last attempt to achieve happiness in the shadow ofthe paternal home had lasted a long time, had on occasion almost succeeded, but had completely failed in theend.

The peculiar emptiness and isolation that I came to feel for the first time after Confirmation (oh, howfamiliar it was to become afterwards, this desolate, thin air!) passed only very slowly. My leave-taking fromhome was surprisingly easy, I was almost ashamed that I did not feel more nostalgic. My sisters wept for noreason; my eyes remained dry. I was astonished at myself. I had always been an emotional and essentiallygood child. Now I had completely changed. I behaved with utter indifference to the world outside and for dayson end voices within preoccupied me, inner streams, the forbidden dark streams that roared below the surface.

I had grown several inches in the last half year and I walked lanky and half-finished through the world. I hadlost any charm I might ever have had and felt that no one could possibly love me the way I was. I certainly hadno love for myself. Often I felt a great longing for Max Demian, but no less often I hated him, accusing him ofhaving caused the impoverishment of my life that held me in its sway like a foul disease. I was neither likednor respected in my boys' boarding-house. I was teased to begin with, then avoided and looked upon as asneak and an unwelcome oddity.

I fell in with this role, even exaggerated it, and grumbled myself into aself-isolation that must have appeared to outsiders like permanent and masculine contempt of the world,whereas, in truth, I often secretly succumbed to consuming fits of melancholy and despair. In school Imanaged to get by on the knowledge accumulated in my previous class--the present one lagged somewhatbehind the one I had left--and I began to regard the students in my age group contemptuously as merechildren. It went on like this for a year or more.

The first few visits back home left me cold. I was glad when Icould leave again. It was the beginning of November. I had become used to taking snort meditative walksduring all kinds of weather, walks on which I often enjoyed a kind of rapture tinged with melancholy, scorn ofthe world and self-hatred. Thus I roamed in the foggy dusk one evening through the town. The broad avenueof a public park stood deserted, beckoning me to enter; the path lay thickly carpeted with fallen leaves which Istirred angrily with my feet.

There was a damp, bitter smell, and distant trees, shadowy as ghosts, loomedhuge out of the mist. I stopped irresolute at the far end of the avenue: staring into the dark foliage I greedilybreathed the humid fragrance of decay and dying to which something within me responded with greeting. Someone stepped out of one of the side paths, his coat billowing as he walked--I was about to continue whena voice called out.

"Hello, Sinclair. " He came up to me. It was Alfons Beck, the oldest boy in ourboardinghouse. I was always glad to see him, had nothing against him except that he treated me, and all otherswho were younger, with an element of ironic and avuncular condescension. He was reputed to be strong as abear and to have the teacher in our house completely under his thumb. He was the hero of many a studentrumor.

"Well, what are you doing here?" he called out affably in that tone the bigger boys affected when theyoccasionally condescended to talk to one of us.