“Yes,” said I, “what we are doing is probably mad, and probably it is good and necessary all the same. It is not a good thing when man overstrains his reason and tries to reduce to rational order matters that are not susceptible of rational treatment. Then there arise ideals such as those of the Americans or of the Bolsheviks. Both are extraordinarily rational, and both lead to a frightful oppression and impoverishment of life, because they simplify it so crudely. The likeness of man, once a high ideal, is in process of becoming a machine-made article. It is for madmen like us, perhaps, to ennoble it again.”
With a laugh Gustav replied: “You talk like a book, my boy. It is a pleasure and a privilege to drink at such a fount of wisdom. And perhaps there is even something in what you say. But now kindly reload your piece. You are rather too dreamy for my taste. Any moment may bring a few buck, and we cannot kill them with philosophy. We must have ball in our barrels.”
A car came and was dropped at once. The road was blocked. A survivor, a stout red-faced man, gesticulated wildly over the ruins. Then he stared up and down and, discovering our hiding place, came for us bellowing and shooting up at us with a revolver.
“Get off with you or I’ll shoot,” Gustav shouted down. The man took aim at him and fired again. Then we shot him.
After this two more came and were bagged. Then the road was silent and deserted. Apparently the news had got about that it was dangerous. We had time to enjoy the beauty of the view. On the far side of the lake a small town lay in the valley. Smoke rose from it and soon we saw fire leaping from roof to roof. Shooting could be heard. Dora cried a little and I stroked her wet cheeks.
“Have we all got to die then?” she asked. There was no reply. Meanwhile a man on foot went past below. He saw the smashed-up motorcars and began nosing round them. Leaning over into one of them he pulled out a gay parasol, a ladies’ handbag and a bottle of wine. Then he sat down contentedly on the wall, took a drink from the bottle and ate something wrapped in tinfoil out of the handbag. After emptying the bottle he went on, well pleased, with the parasol clasped under his arm; and I said to Gustav: “Could you find it in you to shoot at this good fellow and make a hole in his head? God knows, I couldn’t.”
“You’re not asked to,” my friend growled. But he did not feel very comfortable either. We had no sooner caught sight of a man whose behaviour was harmless and peaceable and childlike and who was still in a state of innocence than all our praiseworthy and most necessary activities became stupid and repulsive. Pah—all that blood! We were ashamed of ourselves. But in the war there must have been Generals even who felt the same.
“Don’t let us stay here any longer,” Dora implored. “Let’s go down. We are sure to find something to eat in the cars. Aren’t you hungry, you Bolsheviks?”
Down in the burning town the bells began to peal with a wild terror. We set ourselves to climb down. As I helped Dora to climb over the breast work, I kissed her knee. She laughed aloud, and then the planks gave way and we both fell into vacancy—
Once more I stood in the round corridor, still excited by the hunting adventure. And everywhere on all the countless doors were the alluring inscriptions:
Mutabor
Transformation Into Any Animal Or Plant
You Please
Kama Sutra
Instruction In The Indian Arts Of Love
Course For Beginners; Forty-Two Different
Methods And Practices
Delightful Suicide
You Laugh Yourself To Bits
Do You Want To Be All Spirit?
The Wisdom Of The East.
Downfall Of The West
Moderate Prices. Never Surpassed
Compendium Of Art
Transformation From Time Into Space
By Means Of Music
Laughing Tears
Cabinet Of Humour
Solitude Made Easy
Complete Substitute For All Forms Of
Sociability.
The series of inscriptions was endless. One was
Guidance In The Building Up Of The
Personality. Success Guaranteed
This seemed to me to be worth looking into and I went in at this door.
I found myself in a quiet twilit room where a man with something like a large chessboard in front of him sat in Eastern fashion on the floor. At the first glance I thought it was friend Pablo. He wore at any rate a similar gorgeous silk jacket and had the same dark and shining eyes.
“Are you Pablo?” I asked.
“I am not anybody,” he replied amiably. “We have no names here and we are not anybody. I am a chess-player. Do you wish for instruction in the building up of the personality?”
“Yes, please.”
“Then be so kind as to place a few dozen of your pieces at my disposal.”
“My pieces—?”
“Of the pieces into which you saw your so-called personality broken up. I can’t play without pieces.”
He held a glass up to me and again I saw the unity of my personality broken up into many selves whose number seemed even to have increased. The pieces were now, however, very small, about the size of chessmen. The player took a dozen or so of them in his sure and quiet fingers and placed them on the ground near the board. As he did so he began to speak in the monotonous way of one who goes through a recitation or reading that he has often gone through before.
“The mistaken and unhappy notion that a man is an enduring unity is known to you. It is also known to you that man consists of a multitude of souls, of numerous selves. The separation of the unity of the personality into these numerous pieces passes for madness. Science
