I managed to stay in H. for the summer semester. Instead of being in the house, we were now almost always in the garden by the river. The Japanese, who by the way had really lost in the wrestling match, was gone, and the Tolstoy man was also missing. Demian kept a horse and rode with endurance day after day. I was often alone with his mother.

At times I marveled at the peacefulness of my life. I had been used to being alone for so long, to practicing renunciation, to struggling with my torments, that these months in H. seemed to me like a dream island where I was allowed to live comfortably and enchanted only in beautiful, pleasant things and feelings. I suspected that this was the beginning of that new, higher community that we were thinking of. And ever and ever I was overcome by deep sadness at this happiness, because I knew well that it couldn’t last. I wasn’t allowed to breathe in fullness and comfort; I needed torment and hassle. I felt: one day I would wake up from these beautiful images of love and stand alone again, all alone, in the cold world of others, where for me there was only loneliness or struggle, no peace, no coexistence.

Then with redoubled tenderness I nestled myself close to Frau Eva, happy that my fate still had these beautiful, quiet features.

The summer weeks passed quickly and easily, the semester was already coming to an end. The farewell was soon imminent, I wasn’t allowed to think about it, and I didn’t, but hung on the beautiful days like a butterfly on the honey flower. That had been my happy time, the first fulfillment of my life and my acceptance into the alliance – what would come then? I would fight through again, suffer longing, have dreams, be alone.

On one of these days this feeling came over me so strongly that my love for Mrs. Eva suddenly flared up painfully. My God, how soon I no longer saw her, no longer heard her steady, good step through the house, no longer found her flowers on my table! And what had I achieved? I had dreamed and lulled myself into comfort instead of winning her, instead of fighting for her and taking her forever! Everything she had ever said to me about real love came to mind, a hundred fine, admonishing words, a hundred quiet temptations, promises perhaps – what had I made of it? Nothing! Nothing!

I stood in the middle of my room, gathered all my consciousness and thought of Eva. I wanted to gather the strength of my soul to make her feel my love, to draw her to me. She had to come and long for my embrace, my kiss had to rummage insatiably in her ripe love lips.

I stood and tensed until my fingers and feet were cold. I felt that strength was coming from me. For a few moments something inside me contracted tight and tight, something bright and cool; For a moment I had the feeling that I was wearing a crystal in my heart, and I knew that was me. The cold reached my chest.

When I woke up from the terrible tension, I felt that something was coming. I was exhausted to death, but I was ready to see Eva come into the room, burning and delighted.

The clatter of hooves now pounded up the long road, sounded close and hard, and suddenly stopped. I jumped to the window. Below Demian got off his horse. I ran down.

“What’s wrong, Demian? Nothing happened to your mother?”

He didn’t listen to my words. He was very pale, and sweat was running from both sides of his forehead down his cheeks. He tied the reins of his heated horse to the garden fence, took my arm and walked with me down the street.

“Do you know something yet?”

I didn’t know anything.

Demian squeezed my arm and turned his face toward me with a dark, pitying, strange look.

“Yes, my boy, it’s starting now. You knew about the great tension with Russia – “

“What? Is there war? I never believed in it.”

He spoke quietly, even though no one was around.

“It hasn’t been explained yet. But there is war. Count on it. I haven’t bothered you about it since, but I’ve seen new signs three times since then. So there will be no end of the world, no earthquake, no revolution. It will be war. You’ll see how it works! It will be a joy for the people, everyone is already looking forward to getting started. Life has become so boring for them. — But you’ll see, Sinclair, that’s just the beginning. It will perhaps be a big war, a very big war. But that too is just the beginning. The new begins, and the new will be terrible for those who cling to the old. What will you do?”

I was dismayed, it all still sounded strange and improbable to me.

“I dont know and you?”

He shrugged.

“As soon as there is mobilization, I will move in. I’m a lieutenant.”

“You? I didn’t know a word about it.”

“Yes, it was one of my adjustments. You know, I never liked to attract attention to the outside world and always tended to do a little too much to be correct. I think I’ll be in the field in eight days – “

“For God’s sake -“

“Well, boy, you don’t have to take it sentimentally. I actually won’t enjoy commanding gunfire on living people, but that will be beside the point. Each of us will now get into the big wheel. You too. You will surely be dug out.”

“And your mother, Demian?”

Only now did I remember what had happened a quarter of an hour ago. How the world had changed! I had summoned all my strength to conjure up the sweetest image, and now fate suddenly looked at me anew from a threateningly terrible mask.

“My mother? Oh, we don’t have to worry about them. She is safe, safer than anyone in the world today. —You love her so much?”

“You knew it, Demian?” He laughed brightly and completely freely.

“Little boy! Of course I knew it. Nobody has ever said Mrs. Eva to my mother without loving her. By the way, how was that? You called her or me today, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I called — — I called for Mrs. Eva.”

“She felt it. She suddenly sent me away saying I had to go to you. I had just told her the news about Russia.”

We turned back and said little more; he untied his horse and got on.

It was only in my room upstairs that I felt how exhausted I was, from Demian’s message and even more so from the previous tension. But Ms. Eva heard me! I had reached her with my thoughts in my heart. She would have come herself – if she hadn’t – – How strange all this was, and how beautiful, actually! Now a war was coming. Now what we had talked about many times was about to begin to happen. And Demian had foreseen so much of it. How strange that the current of the world should no longer run past us somewhere – that it now suddenly passed right through our hearts, that adventures and wild fates were calling us, and that now or The moment would soon come when the world needed us, when it wanted to transform itself. Demian was right, it wasn’t sentimental. The only strange thing was that I was now supposed to experience the solitary affair of “fate” together with so many people, with the whole world. Well then!

I was ready. In the evening, as I walked through the city, every corner was buzzing with great excitement. The word “war” everywhere!

I came to Mrs. Eva’s house and we had dinner in the garden shed. I was the only guest. Nobody said a word about war. Only late, shortly before I left, Mrs. Eva said: “Dear Sinclair, you called me today. You know why I didn’t come myself. But remember: you now know the call, and whenever you need someone to carry the mark, call again!”

She rose and led the way through the garden twilight. The mysterious one walked tall and princely between the silent trees, and above her head the many stars glowed small and delicate.

I’m coming to the end. Things moved along quickly. Soon there was war and Demian, strangely strange in the uniform with the silver-grey coat, drove away. I brought his mother back home. Soon I also said goodbye to her, she kissed me on the mouth and held me to her breast for a moment, and her big eyes burned close and hard into mine.

And everyone was like a brother. They meant the fatherland and honor. But it was fate that they all looked into the uncovered face of for a moment. Young men came out of barracks, boarded trains, and on many faces I saw a sign – not ours – a beautiful and dignified sign that meant love and death. I too was hugged by people I had never seen, and I understood it and happily returned it. It was an intoxication in which they did it, not the will of fate, but the intoxication was sacred, it came from the fact that they had all had this brief, stirring look into the eyes of fate.

It was almost winter when I arrived in the field.

In the beginning I was, despite the sensations Shooting, disappointed in everything. I used to think a lot about why it is so rare for a person to be able to live for an ideal. Now I saw that many, indeed all, people are capable of dying for an ideal. But it couldn’t be a personal, free, or chosen ideal; it had to be a shared and adopted one.

But over time I realized that I had underestimated people. As much as the service and the common danger uniformed them, I still saw many, living and dying, magnificently approaching the will of fate. Many, very many, not only during the attack but at all times, had that fixed, distant, somewhat obsessed look that knows nothing about goals and means complete surrender to the monster. No matter if they believed and thought whatever they wanted, they were ready, they were useful, the future could be formed from them. And the more the world seemed focused on war and heroism, on honor and other old ideals, the more distant and improbable every voice of apparent humanity sounded, this was all just the surface, just as the question of the external and political aims of the war remained only surface. Something was developing deep down. Something like one new humanity. Because I could see many, and some of them died at my side – they had a feeling that hatred and anger, killing and destroying were not tied to the objects. No, the objects, like the targets, were entirely random. The primal feelings, even the wildest ones, were not directed at the enemy; their bloody work was only an emanation from within, from the soul divided within itself, which wanted to rage and kill, destroy and die in order to be able to be reborn. A giant bird fought its way out of the egg, and the egg was the world, and the world had to fall into ruins.

One early spring night I stood guard in front of the farm we had occupied. A weak wind blew in capricious gusts, armies of clouds rode across the high Flemish sky, somewhere behind them a hint of the moon. I had been restless all day, some worry bothering me. Now, in my dark post, I thought deeply about the images of my life so far, about Ms. Eva, about Demian. I stood leaning against a poplar tree and stared at the moving sky, whose secretly twitching brightness soon became large, swelling sequences of images. I felt on the strange thinness of my pulse, the insensitivity of my skin to wind and rain, the sparkling inner alertness that there was a guide around me.

A large city could be seen in the clouds, from which millions of people streamed out and spread out in swarms over vast landscapes. In the middle of them stood a mighty divine figure, sparkling stars in her hair, as big as a mountain, with the features of the woman Eve. The features of the people disappeared into it, as if into a huge cave, and were gone. The goddess crouched on the ground, the mark on her forehead shimmering brightly. A dream seemed to have power over her; she closed her eyes and her great face was contorted in woe. Suddenly she screamed brightly, and stars burst out of her forehead, many thousands of shining stars, which swung in magnificent arcs and semicircles across the black sky.

One of the stars roared towards me with a loud sound, seemed to be looking for me. – Then it crashed into a thousand sparks, roaring, it tore me up and threw me to the ground again, the world collapsed on top of me with a thunder.

I was found near the poplar tree, covered with earth and with many wounds.

I was lying in a cellar, guns roared above me. I was lying in a wagon and bumping over empty fields. Most of the time I was asleep or unconscious. But the deeper I slept, the more acutely I felt that something was pulling me, that I was following a force that was master of me.

I was lying on straw in a stable, it was dark, someone had stepped on my hand. But my inner self wanted to go further, it pulled me away more strongly. Again I lay on a cart, and later on a stretcher or ladder, feeling more and more like I was being told to go somewhere, feeling nothing but the urge to finally get there.

Then I reached my goal. It was night, I was fully conscious, I had just felt the pull and urge inside me. Now I was lying in a hall, bedded on the floor, and felt that I was where I was called. I looked around, there was another mattress right next to my mattress, and someone on it leaned forward and looked at me. He had the mark on his forehead. It was Max Demian.

I couldn’t speak, and neither could he or didn’t want to. He just looked at me. On his face was the glow of a traffic light hanging on the wall above him. He smiled at me.

He kept looking into my eyes for an infinitely long time. He slowly pushed his face closer to mine until we were almost touching.

“Sinclair!” he said in a whisper.

I gave him a sign with my eyes that I understood him.

He smiled again, almost as if in pity.

“Little boy!” he said, smiling.

His mouth was now very close to mine. He continued to speak quietly.

“Can you still remember Franz Kromer?” he asked.

I winked at him and could also smile.

“Little Sinclair, be careful! I’ll have to go away. Maybe you’ll need me again someday, against the Kromer or otherwise. If you call me then, I won’t come so rudely on a horse or by train. You then have to listen to yourself, then you will realize that I am inside you. Do you understand? – And something else! Mrs. Eva said that if you ever felt bad, then I should give you the kiss that she gave you gave me. . . Close your eyes, Sinclair!”

I closed my eyes obediently, I felt a light kiss on my lips, which always had a little blood on them that never wanted to lessen. And then I fell asleep.

In the morning I was woken up and told to be bandaged. When I was finally fully awake, I quickly turned to the neighboring mattress. There was a strange person lying on it that I had never seen.

Bandaging hurt. Everything that happened to me since then hurt. But when I sometimes find the key and descend completely into myself, where the images of fate slumber in the dark mirror, then I only have to lean over the black mirror and see my own image, which is now completely like him, him, mine Friend and guide.