Mozart looked at me with intolerable mockery.
"How pathetic you always are. But you will learn humor yet,
Harry. Humor is always gallows-humor, and it is on the gallows you are
now constrained to learn it. You are ready? Good. Then off with you to
the public prosecutor and let the law take its course with you till your
head is coolly hacked off at break of dawn in the prison yard. You are
ready for it?"
Instantly a notice flashed before my eyes:
HARRY'S EXECUTION
and I consented with a nod. I stood in a bare
yard enclosed by four walls with barred windows, and shivered in the air
of a gray dawn. There were a dozen gentlemen there in morning coats and
gowns, and a newly erected guillotine. My heart was contracted with
misery and dread, but I was ready and acquiescent. At the word of
command I stepped forward and at the word of command I knelt down. The
public prosecutor removed his cap and cleared his throat and all the
other gentlemen cleared their throats. He unfolded an official document
and held it before him and read out:
"Gentlemen, there stands before you Harry Haller, accused and
found guilty of the willful misuse of our Magic Theater. Haller has not
alone insulted the majesty of art in that he confounded our beautiful
picture gallery with so-called reality and stabbed to death the
reflection of a girl with the reflection of a knife; he has in addition
displayed the intention of using our theater as a mechanism of suicide
and shown himself devoid of humor. Wherefore we condemn Haller to
eternal life and we suspend for twelve hours his permit to enter our
theater. The penalty also of being laughed out of court may not be
remitted. Gentlemen, all together, one-two-three!"
On the word "three" all who were present broke into one
simultaneous peal of laughter, a laughter in full chorus, a frightful
laughter of the other world that is scarcely to be borne by the ears of
men.
When I came to myself again, Mozart was sitting beside me as
before. He clapped me on the shoulder and said: "You have heard your
sentence. So, you see, you will have to learn to listen to more of the
radio music of life. It'll do you good. You are uncommonly poor in
gifts, a poor blockhead, but by degrees you will come to grasp what is
required of you. You have got to learn to laugh. That will be required
of you. You must apprehend the humor of life, its gallows-humor. But of
course you are ready for everything in the world except what will be
required of you. You are ready to stab girls to death. You are ready to
be executed with all solemnity. You would be ready, no doubt, to mortify
and scourge yourself for centuries together. Wouldn't you?"
"Oh, yes, ready with all my heart," I cried in my misery.
"Of course! When it's a question of anything stupid and pathetic
and devoid of humor or wit, you're the man, you tragedian. Well, I am
not. I don't care a fig for all your romantics of atonement. You wanted
to be executed and to have your head chopped off, you lunatic! For this
imbecile ideal you would suffer death ten times over. You are willing to
die, you coward, but not to live. The devil, but you shall live! It
would serve you right if you were condemned to the severest of
penalties."
"Oh, and what would that be?"
"We might, for example, restore this girl to life again and
marry you to her."
"No, I should not be ready for that. It would bring
unhappiness."
"As if there were not enough unhappiness in all you have
designed already! However, enough of pathos and death-dealing. It is
time to come to your senses. You are to live and to learn to laugh. You
are to learn to listen to the cursed radio music of life and to
reverence the spirit behind it and to laugh at its distortions. So there
you are. More will not be asked of you."
Gently from behind clenched teeth I asked: "And if I do not
submit? And if I deny your right, Mozart, to interfere with the
Steppenwolf, and to meddle in his destiny?"
"Then," said Mozart calmly, "I should invite you to smoke
another of my charming cigarettes." And as he spoke and conjured up a
cigarette from his waistcoat pocket and offered it me, he was suddenly
Mozart no longer. It was my friend Pablo looking warmly at me out of his
dark exotic eyes and as like the man who had taught me to play chess
with the little figures as a twin.
"Pablo!" I cried with a convulsive start. "Pablo, where are we?"
"We are in my Magic Theater," he said with a smile, "and if you
wish at any time to learn the Tango or to be a general or to have a talk
with Alexander the Great, it is always at your service. But I'm bound
to say, Harry, you have disappointed me a little. You forgot yourself
badly. You broke through the humor of my little theater and tried to
make a mess of it, stabbing with knives and spattering our pretty
picture-world with the mud of reality. That was not pretty of you. I
hope, at least, you did it from jealousy when you saw Hermine and me
lying there. Unfortunately, you did not know what to do with this
figure. I thought you had learned the game better. Well, you will do
better next time."
He took Hermine who at once shrank in his fingers to the
dimensions of a toy figure and put her in the very same waistcoat pocket
from which he had taken the cigarette.
Its sweet and heavy smoke diffused a pleasant aroma. I felt
hollow, exhausted, and ready to sleep for a whole year.
I understood it all. I understood Pablo. I understood Mozart,
and somewhere behind me I heard his ghastly laughter. I knew that all
the hundred thousand pieces of life's game were in my pocket. A glimpse
of its meaning had stirred my reason and I was determined to begin the
game afresh. I would sample its tortures once more and shudder again at
its senselessness. I would traverse not once more, but often, the hell
of my inner being.
One day I would be a better hand at the game. One day I would
learn how to laugh. Pablo was waiting for me, and Mozart too.