The recollection came to me—thus, exactly thus, had I once seen him, many years ago, when I was still quite a boy. Thus had his eyes stared inwards, thus his hands had been lying motionless, close to one another, a fly had been crawling over his face. And he had then, six years ago perhaps, looked just as old and as ageless, not a wrinkle in his face had changed.
I was frightened, and went softly out of the room and down the stairs. In the hall I met Mother Eve. She was pale and seemed tired: I had not seen her like that before. A shadow came through the window, the bright white sun had suddenly disappeared.
“I went into Max’s room,” I whispered hastily. “Has anything happened? He is asleep, or absorbed, I don’t know what; I once saw him like that before.”
“But you didn’t wake him?” she asked quickly.
“No. He did not hear me. I came out immediately. Mother Eve, tell me, what is the matter with him?”
She passed her hand over her forehead.
“Don’t worry, Sinclair, nothing has happened to him. He has retired into himself. It will not last long.”
She got up and went out into the garden, although it had begun to rain. I felt that I must not follow her. So I walked up and down in the hall, inhaling the scent of the hyacinths which dulled my senses, and gazing at my picture of the bird over the door. I felt oppressively the odd shadow which seemed to fill the house that morning. What was it? What had happened?
Mother Eve came back soon. Rain drops hung in her dark hair. She sat down in her easy chair. She was very tired. I went to her, bent down and kissed the raindrops in her hair. Her eyes were bright and soft, but the raindrops tasted like tears.
“Shall I go and see how he is?” I asked in a whisper.
She smiled weakly.
“Don’t be a child, Sinclair!” she admonished loudly, as if to relieve her own feelings. “Go now and come back later, I cannot talk to you now.”
I went. I walked out of the house and out of the town, towards the mountains. The thin rain was falling obliquely, and clouds were driving at a low altitude under heavy pressure, as if in fear. Down below there was hardly any breeze, but on the heights above a storm seemed to be raging. Several times the sun, pale and bright, broke for an instant through the steely grey of the clouds.
There came a fleecy, yellow cloud driving across the sky. It collided with the grey cloud wall, and in a few seconds the wind formed a picture of the yellow and blue, of a bird of giant size, which tore itself free from the blue melee and with wide fluttering wings disappeared in the sky. Then the storm became audible and rain mixed with hail rattled down. A short burst of thunder with an unnatural and terrific sound cracked over the whipped landscape. Immediately after the sun broke through and on the mountains close at hand above brown woods glistened, pale and unreal, the fresh snow.
When I returned after several hours, wet from the rain and wind, Demian himself opened the front door to me.
He took me with him up to his room. A gas flame burned in the laboratory, paper lay about, he appeared to have been working.
“Sit down,” he invited, “you must be tired, it was a terrible storm; it’s evident, you were overtaken by it. Tea is coming at once.”
“Something is the matter today,” I began hesitatingly, “it can’t only be that bit of a storm.”
He looked at me penetratingly.
“Have you seen anything?”
“Yes. I saw a picture clearly in the clouds, for an instant.”
“What sort of a picture?”
“It was a bird.”
“The hawk? Was it that? The bird of your dream?”
“Yes, it was my hawk. It was yellow and of giant size, it flew up into the blue-black heaven.”
Demian took a deep breath. Someone knocked at the door. The aged servant brought in tea.
“Take a cup, Sinclair, do. I don’t think it was by chance you saw the bird.”
“Chance? Does one see such things by chance?”
“Well, no. It means something. Do you know what?”
“No. I only feel, it means a violent shock, the approach of fate. I think it will affect all of us.”
He walked violently up and down.
“The approach of fate!” he exclaimed loudly. “I dreamed the same thing myself last night, and my mother yesterday had a premonition, portending the same thing. I dreamed I was going up a ladder, placed against a tree trunk or a tower. When I reached the top I saw the whole country. It was a wide plain, with towns and villages burning. I cannot yet relate everything, because it isn’t all quite clear to me.”
“Do you interpret the dream as affecting you?” I asked.
“Me? Naturally. No one dreams of what does not concern him. But it does not concern me alone, you are right. I distinguish tolerably well between the dreams which indicate agitation of my own soul, and the others, the rare ones, which bear on the fate of all humanity. I have seldom had such dreams, and never one of which I can say that it was a prophecy, and that it has been fulfilled. The interpretations are too uncertain. But this I know for a certainty, I have dreamed of something which does not concern me alone. For the dream belongs to others, former ones I have had; this is the continuation. These are the dreams, Sinclair, in which I had the premonitions
