Read Online Rosshalde by Hermann Hesse - Free Book Online Page B

offend. And I haven’t got so many friends that I can afford to throw any away. I have only you. Sit down and have another glass of wine. It’s good. You won’t get wine like this in India, and perhaps you won’t find so many friends out there that will put up with your pigheadedness.”
    Burkhardt tapped him lightly on the shoulder and said, almost angrily: “Let’s not get sentimental, not now of all times. Tell me what fault you have to find with me, and then we’ll go on.”
    â€œOh, I have no fault to find with you. You’re perfect, Otto, perfect. For almost twenty years now you’ve watched me going down, you’ve looked on with friendship and perhaps with regret as I sank deeper and deeper into the swamp, and you’ve never said anything and never humiliated me by offering me help. For years you knew that I kept a phial of cyanide on me, you observed with noble satisfaction that I didn’t take it and finally threw it away. And now that I’m so deep in the muck that I can’t get out, you stand there finding fault and giving me advice…”
    His reddened, feverish eyes stared forlornly. It was only then that Otto, wishing to pour himself another glass of wine and finding the bottle empty, noticed that Veraguth had drunk up all the wine in those few minutes.
    The painter followed his eyes and laughed harshly.
    â€œI’m sorry,” he cried angrily. “Yes, I’m a little tipsy, don’t forget to take that into account. It happens every few months. I inadvertently get a little drunk … I need the stimulation, you see…”
    Placing his hands heavily on his friend’s shoulders, he said plaintively, in a voice grown suddenly high and feeble: “See here, Otto. I might have got along without the cyanide and the wine and all that if someone had offered me a bit of help. Why did you let me sink so far that I have to plead like a beggar for a little indulgence? Adele couldn’t bear me, Albert turned away from me, Pierre will leave me too some day—and you stood there, looking on. Couldn’t you have done something? Couldn’t you have helped me?”
    The painter’s voice broke, he sank back in his chair. Burkhardt had grown deathly pale. It was much worse than he had thought. That a few glasses of wine could bring this proud, hard man to this unresisting confession of his secret shame and misery!
    He stood beside Veraguth and spoke softly to him as to a child in need of comfort. “I’ll help you, Johann. Believe me, I’ll help you. I’ve been an ass, I’ve been blind and stupid. Everything will be all right, don’t worry.”
    He remembered rare occasions in their boyhood when his friend had lost control over his nerves. One such scene, which had lain dormant, deep in his memory, rose up before him in strange clarity. At that time Johann had been going with a pretty girl, a student of painting. Otto had spoken disparagingly of her, and Veraguth had broken off their friendship in the most violent terms. Then too a small amount of wine had affected the painter disproportionately, then too his eyes had turned red and he had lost control over his voice. His friend was strangely moved at this extraordinary recurrence of forgotten traits out of a seemingly cloudless past, and once again he was terrified at the suddenly revealed abyss of inner loneliness and self-torment in Veraguth’s life. This no doubt was the secret at which Johann had occasionally hinted over the years, and which, Burkhardt had assumed, lay hidden in the soul of every great artist. This then was the source of the man’s uncannily insatiable drive to create, to seize upon the world each hour anew with his senses and to overpower it. And this too was the source of the strange sadness with which great works of art often fill the silent beholder.
    It was as though Otto had never fully understood his friend until