The rescue from my torment came from a completely unexpected source, and at the same time something new came into my life that has continued to have an impact to this day.

A new student had recently joined our Latin school. He was the son of a wealthy widow who had moved to our town, and he wore a mourning ribbon around his sleeve. He went to a higher class than I was several years older, but I soon noticed him, like everyone else. This strange student seemed to be much older than he looked; he didn’t give anyone the impression of a boy. Between us childish boys he moved strangely and exhausted like a man, or rather like a gentleman. He wasn’t popular, he didn’t take part in the games, even less in fights, only his self-confident and decisive tone towards the teachers pleased the others. His name was Max Demian.

One day it happened, as it happened here and there in our school, that for some reason a second class was added to our very large classroom. It was Demian’s class. We little ones had Bible history, the older ones had to do an essay. While we were being told the story of Cain and Abel, I looked a lot at Demian, whose face fascinated me, and saw this clever, bright, extremely firm face, attentively and intelligently bent over his work; He didn’t look like a student doing an assignment at all, but rather like a researcher investigating his own problems. I actually didn’t find it pleasant, on the contrary, I did something against him, he was too superior and cold to me, he was too defiantly confident in his nature, and his eyes had the adult expression – which children never love – a little sad with flashes of mockery in them. But I had to keep looking at him, whether I liked him or didn’t like him; But as soon as he looked at me, I withdrew my gaze in shock. When I think about what he looked like back then as a student, I can say: he was different from everyone else in every respect, had a completely unique and personal stamp, and that’s why he stood out – but at the same time he did everything he could not to stand out, wore and behaved like a prince in disguise who is among peasant boys and makes every effort to appear like her equal.

He walked behind me on the way home from school. When the others got lost, he overtook me and said hello. This greeting, even though he imitated our schoolboy tone, was so mature and polite.

“Shall we go together for a bit?” he asked kindly. I was flattered and nodded. Then I described to him where I lived.

“Ah, there?” he said, smiling. “I already know the house. There’s one of these above your front door strange thing attached, I was immediately interested in it.”

I didn’t immediately know what he meant and was amazed that he seemed to know our house better than I did. There was probably some kind of coat of arms as a keystone above the arch of the gate, but over time it had been flattened and often painted over; as far as I knew, it had nothing to do with us or our family.

“I don’t know anything about it,” I said shyly. “It’s a bird or something like that, it must be very old. The house is said to have once belonged to the monastery.”

“That could be true,” he nodded. “Take a good look at it! Things like that are often very interesting. I think it’s a sparrowhawk.”

We continued walking, I was very self-conscious. Suddenly Demian laughed as if he remembered something funny.

“Yes, I attended your lesson there,” he said animatedly. “The story of Cain, who had the mark on his forehead, right? Do you like her?”

No, I rarely liked any of what we had to learn. I dared but not saying it, it was like an adult was talking to me. I said I quite liked the story.

Demian patted me on the shoulder.

“You don’t have to fool me, dear. But the story is actually quite strange, I think it’s much stranger than most of the others that come up in class. The teacher didn’t say much about it, just the usual things about God and sin and so on. But I think—” he interrupted himself, smiled and asked, “Are you interested, though?”

“Yes, I think,” he continued, “you can take this story of Cain in a completely different way. Most of the things we are taught are certainly true and correct, but you can look at them all differently than the teachers do, and most of the time they make a much better sense. One cannot be completely satisfied with this Cain, for example, and with the mark on his forehead, as it is explained to us. Do not you think so? It can certainly happen that someone kills his brother in an argument, and it is also possible that he gets scared afterwards and gives in. But the fact that he is specially awarded a medal for his cowardice Protecting him and scaring everyone else is quite strange.”

“Of course,” I said with interest: the matter began to captivate me. “But how else can you explain the story?”

He hit me on the shoulder.

“Very easy! What was there and where history began was the sign. There was a man who had something on his face that frightened the others. They didn’t dare touch him; he impressed them, he and his children. Maybe, or certainly, it wasn’t really a mark on the forehead, like a postmark, life is rarely that rough. Rather, it was something almost imperceptibly eerie, a little more spirit and boldness in the look than people were used to. This man had power, people were afraid of this man. He had a ‘mark’. You could explain it however you wanted. And ‘you’ always want what is comfortable and right for you. People were afraid of the Kindred, they had a ‘sign’. So the mark was not explained as what it was, as an award, but as the opposite. They said the guys with this sign were scary, and they were. People with courage and character are always very scary to other people. The fact that a race of fearless and scary people was running around was very uncomfortable, and now they attached a nickname and a fable to this race in order to take revenge on them and to compensate themselves a little for all the fear they had endured. — Do you understand?”

“Yes – that means – then Cain wouldn’t have been evil at all? And the whole story in the Bible wouldn’t actually be true?”

“Yes and no. Such old, ancient stories are always true, but they are not always recorded and explained in the correct way. In short, I mean, Cain was a great guy, and it was only because people were afraid of him that they pinned this story on him. The story was simply a rumor, the sort of thing people gossip about, and it was quite true in that Cain and his children did indeed have some kind of ‘mark’ and were different from most people.”

I was very surprised.

“And then you think that the manslaughter thing isn’t true either?” I asked, moved.

“Oh yes! Surely that is true. The strong had slain the weak. One can doubt whether it was really his brother. It’s not important, after all, all people are brothers. So a strong man killed a weak man. Maybe it was a heroic act, maybe not. In any case, the other weak ones were now full of fear, they complained a lot, and when they were asked: ‘Why don’t you just kill him too?’ then they didn’t say, ‘Because we are cowards,’ but they said, ‘You can’t. He has a mark. God marked him!’ This must be how the dizziness came about. — Well, I’ll stop you. Goodbye then!”

He turned into Altgasse and left me alone, more surprised than I had ever been. As soon as he left, everything he said seemed completely unbelievable! Cain a noble man, Abel a coward! The Mark of Cain is an award! It was absurd, it was blasphemous and nefarious. Then where was the good Lord? Didn’t he accept Abel’s sacrifice, didn’t he love Abel? — No, stupid stuff! And I suspected that Demian was making fun of me and trying to trick me. A cursed one He was a clever guy, and he could talk, but like that – no –

After all, I had never thought so much about any story, biblical or otherwise. And for a long time I had never forgotten Franz Kromer so completely, for hours, for an entire evening. At home I read the story again as it was written in the Bible, it was short and clear, and it was crazy to look for a special, secret interpretation. Any murderer could declare himself God’s favorite! No, it was nonsense. What was nice was the way Demian could say things like that, so easily and pretty, as if everything were self-evident, and with those eyes too!

Of course, there was something wrong with me, in fact it was very disordered. I had lived in a bright and clean world, I had been a kind of Abel myself, and now I was stuck so deeply in the “other”, I had fallen and sunk so much, and yet basically I couldn’t do much about it! Now how was it? Yes, and now a memory flashed back to me that almost took my breath away for a moment. On that bad evening, where my current misery had started, that was when it happened with my father, and for a moment I suddenly saw through him and his bright world and wisdom and despised him! Yes, I myself, who was Cain and bore the mark, imagined that this mark was not a disgrace, it was an honor and that because of my wickedness and my misfortune I stood higher than my father, higher than the good and pious.

It wasn’t in this form of clear thought that I experienced the matter at the time, but all of this was contained in it, it was just a flare-up of feelings, of strange emotions that hurt and yet filled me with pride.

When I remembered, how strangely Demian had spoken of the fearless and the cowardly! How strangely he had interpreted the mark on Cain’s forehead! How his eye, his strange adult eye, had shone strangely! And it occurred to me unclearly: isn’t he himself, this Demian, a kind of Cain? Why does he defend him if he doesn’t feel like him? Why does he have this power in his sights? Why does he speak so scornfully of the “others”, of the fearful ones? who are actually the pious and pleasing to God?

I never got to the end of these thoughts. A stone had fallen into the well, and the well was my young soul. And for a long, very long time, this matter of Cain, the killing, and the mark was where my attempts at knowledge, doubt, and criticism all began.

II noticed that the other students were also spending a lot of time with Demian. I hadn’t told anyone about the story about Cain, but it seemed to interest others too. At least there were a lot of rumors circulating about the “new guy”. If only I knew them all, each would shed light on him, each would be interpretable. All I remember is that it was initially reported that Demian’s mother was very rich. It was also said that she never went to church, and neither did her son. Someone wanted to know that they were Jews, but they could also be secret Mohammedans. Fairy tales were also told about Max Demian’s physical strength. What was certain was that he was the strongest in his class, who asked him to fight and who refused called a coward, terribly humiliated. Those who were there said that Demian merely took him by the neck with one hand and squeezed it tightly, then the boy turned pale, and afterward he crept away and was no longer able to use his arm for days. For one evening it was even said that he was dead. Everything was claimed for a while, everything was believed, everything was exciting and miraculous. Then you had enough for a while. Not much later, however, new rumors arose among us students, who reported that Demian was familiar with girls and “knew everything.”

Meanwhile, my affair with Franz Kromer continued on its inevitable path. I couldn’t get away from him because even though he left me alone for days at a time, I was still tied to him. In my dreams he lived like my shadow, and what he didn’t do to me in reality, my imagination allowed him to do in these dreams in which I became completely his slave. I lived in these dreams – I was always a strong dreamer – more than in reality, I lost strength and life to these shadows. Among other things, I often dreamed that Kromer mistreated me, that he spit on me and knelt on me, and, what was worse, he seduced me to commit serious crimes – rather, he did not seduce me, but simply forced me through his powerful influence. The most terrible of these dreams, from which I awoke half-mad, contained an attack on my father. Kromer sharpened a knife and handed it to me. We were standing behind the trees on an avenue, waiting for someone, I didn’t know who; but when someone came along and Kromer pressed my arm to tell me that he was the one I had to stab, it was my father. Then I woke up.

When it came to these things, I still thought of Cain and Abel, but little more of Demian. When he first approached me again, strangely enough, it was also in a dream. Namely, I dreamed again of the abuse and rape that I suffered, but instead of Kromer, this time it was Demian who was kneeling on me. And – this was completely new and made a deep impression on me – everything that I had endured with torment and resistance from Kromer, I suffered from Demian willingly and with a feeling that contained as much joy as fear. I had this dream twice, then Kromer took his place again.

I can no longer separate exactly what I experienced in these dreams and what in reality. In any case, my bad relationship with Kromer began and didn’t end until I finally paid the boy the sum he owed from all the petty thefts. No, now he knew about these thefts because he always asked me where the money came from, and I was more in his hands than ever. He often threatened to tell my father everything, and then my fear was hardly as great as my deep regret that I hadn’t done so myself from the start. However, as miserable as I was, I didn’t regret everything, at least not always, and sometimes I thought I felt that everything had to be that way. A doom was upon me, and it was useless to try to break through it.

My parents probably suffered quite a lot from this situation. A foreign spirit had come over me; I no longer fit into our community, which had been so close and for which I was often overcome by a raging homesickness, as if for a lost paradise. I was treated, especially by my mother, more like a sick person than like a villain, but actually like that I could see it best from the behavior of my two sisters. This behavior, which was very gentle and yet made me infinitely miserable, made it clear that I was a kind of possessed person who was more to be pitied than blamed for my condition, but in whom evil had taken root . I felt that people were praying for me in a different way than usual and felt the futility of this prayer. I often felt the burning longing for relief, the longing for a proper confession, and yet I also felt in advance that I would not be able to say or explain everything correctly to either my father or mother. I knew that it would be received kindly, that I would be treated very carefully, even pitied, but not completely understood, and that the whole thing would be seen as a kind of derailment, when in fact it was fate.

I know that some people will not believe that a child not yet eleven years old can feel this way. I won’t tell them my business. I tell them to those who know people better. The adult who has learned to transform part of his feelings into thoughts misses these thoughts in the child, and now says that the experiences aren’t there either. But I have rarely experienced and suffered as deeply in my life as I did back then.

ELast time it was a rainy day, I had been summoned to the castle square by my tormentor. There I stood and waited, digging with my feet in the wet chestnut leaves that were still falling from the black, dripping trees. I didn’t have any money, but I had brought two pieces of cake aside and was carrying them with me so that I could at least give Kromer something. I had long been used to standing in a corner somewhere and waiting for him, often for a very long time, and I accepted it as people accept the unchangeable.

Finally Kromer came. He didn’t stay long today. He gave me a few nudges in the ribs, laughed, took the cake from me, even offered me a wet cigarette, which I didn’t take, and was friendlier than usual.

“Yes,” he said as he left, “so I don’t forget — next time you could bring your older sister with you. What’s her actual name?”

I didn’t understand at all and didn’t give an answer. I just looked at him in surprise.

“Don’t you get it? You should bring your sister with you.”

“Yes, Kromer, but that’s not possible. I’m not allowed to do that and she wouldn’t come with me either.”

I was prepared for this to be just another harassment and a pretext. He often did this, demanded something impossible, frightened me, humiliated me, and then gradually allowed himself to be acted upon. I then had to buy myself out with some money or other gifts.

This time he was completely different. He hardly got angry at my refusal.

“Well,” he said casually, “you’ll think about it. I would like to get to know your sister. It will all work out. You just take her for a walk and then I’ll come along. “I’ll whistle at you tomorrow, then we’ll talk about it again.”

When he was gone, something of the meaning of his desire suddenly dawned on me. I was still a child, but I heard rumors that boys and girls, when they were a little older, could do some mysterious, offensive, and forbidden things together. And now I should – it suddenly became clear to me how outrageous it was! My decision, It was immediately clear that I would never do that. But I hardly dared to think about what would happen next and how Kromer would take revenge on me. A new torture began for me, it wasn’t enough.

I walked desolately across the empty space, my hands in my pockets. New torment, new slavery!

Then a fresh, deep voice called to me. I was frightened and started running. Someone ran after me, a hand gently grabbed me from behind. It was Max Demian.

I gave myself up.

“It’s you?” I said uncertainly. “You scared me so much!”

He looked at me and his gaze had never been more that of an adult, of superiority and insight than now. We hadn’t spoken to each other in a long time.

“I’m sorry,” he said in his polite and very specific manner. “But listen, you don’t have to be so frightened.”

“Well, that can happen.”

“It seems so. But see: when you flinch like that in front of someone who hasn’t done anything to you, then they start to think. It’s surprising him, it makes him curious. The person thinks to themselves that you are strangely frightened, and they continue to think: that’s just how you are when you’re afraid. Cowards are always afraid; But I don’t think you’re actually a coward. Not true? Oh, of course, you’re not a hero either. There are things you fear; there are also people you are afraid of. And you should never have that. No, you should never be afraid of people. You don’t have one in front of me? Or?”

“Oh no, not at all.”

“Exactly, you see. But there are people you’re afraid of?”

“I don’t know . . . Leave me alone, what do you want from me?”

He kept pace with me – I had walked faster, with thoughts of escape – and I felt his gaze from the side.

“Assume,” he began again, “that I mean well towards you. In any case, you don’t need to be afraid of me. I would like to do an experiment with you, it’s fun and you can learn something that is very useful. Pay attention! — Well, I sometimes try an art called mind reading. There’s no magic involved, but if you don’t know how it’s done, it looks quite strange. You can really surprise people with it. — Well, let’s try it. So I like you, or I’m interested in you, and now I’d like to reveal what you’re like inside. I have already taken the first step towards this. I frightened you – so you are frightened. So there are things and people that you are afraid of. Where can this come from? You don’t need to be afraid of anyone. If you fear someone, it is because you have given that someone power over you. For example, you have done something bad and the other person knows it – then he has power over you. Do you understand? It’s clear, isn’t it?”

I looked helplessly into his face, which was serious and clever as always, and also kind, but without any tenderness, it was rather strict. There was justice or something like that in it. I didn’t know what happened to me; he stood before me like a magician.

“Do you understand?” he asked again.

I nodded. I couldn’t say anything.

“I told you, it looks strange, mind reading, but it’s completely natural. I could, for example, tell you pretty exactly what you thought about me when I once told you the story of Cain and Abel. Well, that doesn’t belong here. I also think it’s possible that you once dreamed of me. Letbut we do! You’re a smart boy, most people are so stupid! I like to talk to a clever boy every now and then who I trust. It’s okay with you, isn’t it?”

“O yes. I just don’t understand at all – “

“Let’s stick with the fun experiment! So we have found that the boy S. is scared – he fears someone – he probably has a secret with this other person that is very uncomfortable for him. — Is that roughly true?”

As in a dream, I was subject to his voice, his influence. I just nodded. Wasn’t there a voice speaking that could only come from myself? Who knew everything? Who knew everything better and more clearly than I did?

Demian slapped me hard on the shoulder.

“So it’s true. I could imagine it. Now just one more question: do you know the name of the boy who left earlier?”

I was very frightened, my secret being touched curved back painfully inside me, it didn’t want to come to light.

“What kind of boy? There was no boy there, just me.”

He laughed.

“Just sayin’!” he laughed. “What’s his name?”

I whispered: “Do you mean Franz Kromer?”

He nodded at me satisfied.

“Bravo! You’re a great guy, we’ll become friends. Now I have to tell you something: this Kromer, or whatever his name is, is a bad guy. His face tells me he’s a scoundrel! What do you think?”

“Oh yes,” I sighed, “he is bad, he is a Satan! But he can’t know anything! For God’s sake, he can’t know anything. Do you know him? Does he know you?”

“Just be quiet! He’s gone and he doesn’t know me—yet. But I would really like to get to know him. He goes to elementary school?”

“Yes.”

“In which class?”

“In the fifth. — But don’t tell him anything! Please, please don’t tell him!”

“Be calm, nothing will happen to you. – Allegedly Don’t you feel like telling me a little more about this Kromer?”

“I can’t! No, leave me!”

He was silent for a while.

“It’s a shame,” he then said, “we could have taken the experiment even further. But I don’t want to bother you. But don’t you know that your fear of him is not right? Fear like this destroys us completely and we have to get rid of it. You have to get rid of them if you want to become a real guy. Do you understand?”

“Certainly, you are quite right. . . but it doesn’t work. You don’t know. . .”

“You saw that I know a lot, more than you thought. “Do you owe him money?”

“Yes, that too, but that’s not the main thing. I can’t say it, I can’t!”

“So it won’t help if I give you as much money as you owe him? — I could easily give it to you.”

“No, no, it’s not that. And I ask you: don’t tell anyone about it! Not a word! You’re making me unhappy!”

“Rely on me, Sinclair. You will tell me your secrets later – “

“Never, never!” I shouted violently.

“Whatever you want. I’m just saying, maybe you’ll tell me more later. Only voluntarily, of course. You don’t think I’ll do it like Kromer himself?”

“Oh no – but you don’t know anything about it!”

“Nothing at all. I’m just thinking about it. And I will never do it the way Kromer does it, believe me. You don’t owe me anything.”

We were silent for a long time and I became calmer. But Demian’s knowledge became more and more mysterious to me.

“I’m going home now,” he said, pulling his loden coat tighter in the rain. “I just want to tell you one thing again because we’re already at this point — you should get rid of this guy! If there is no other option, then kill him! I would be impressed and pleased if you did. I would help you too.”

I became afraid again. The story of Cain suddenly came back to me. It became scary and I began to cry gently. There were too many eerie things around me.

“Very well,” smiled Max Demian. “Just go home! We’re already doing it. Although killing would be the easiest thing. In things like this, the simplest is always the best. You’re not in good hands with your friend Kromer.”

I came home and it seemed to me that I had been gone for a year. Everything looked different. Between me and Kromer there was something like the future, something like hope. I was no longer alone! And only now did I see how terribly alone I had been with my secret for weeks and weeks. And I immediately remembered what I had thought about several times: that confessing to my parents would relieve me and yet not completely redeem me. Now I had almost confessed, to someone else, to a stranger, and the inkling of salvation flew to me like a strong scent!

IAfter all, my fear was far from being overcome, and I was still prepared for long and terrible conflicts with my enemy. It was all the more strange to me that everything was so quiet, so completely secret and quiet.

Kromer’s whistle in front of our house didn’t blow for a day, two days, three days, a week. I didn’t dare believe it at all and was waiting inside to see if he wouldn’t suddenly when you never expected him, but would be there again. But he was and stayed away! Distrustful of the new freedom, I still didn’t really believe in it. Until I finally met Franz Kromer. He came down Seilergasse straight towards me. When he saw me, he flinched, twisted his face into a wild grimace and immediately turned back so as not to have to meet me.

That was an incredible moment for me! My enemy ran away from me! My Satan was afraid of me! I was filled with joy and surprise.

These days Demian showed himself again. He was waiting for me in front of the school.

“Greetings,” I said.

“Good morning, Sinclair. I just wanted to hear how you’re doing. The Kromer will leave you alone now, won’t he?”

“Did you do this? But how? How come? I don’t understand it at all. He stopped altogether.”

“That’s good. If he ever comes back – I don’t think he will, but he’s a cheeky fellow – then just tell him to think of Demian.”

“But how is that related? Did you pick a fight with him and beat him up?”

“No, I don’t really like doing that. I just talked to him, as I did with you, and was able to make it clear to him that it was to his own advantage if he left you alone.”

“Oh, you didn’t give him any money, did you?”

“No, my boy. You’ve already tried this route.”

He broke away no matter how hard I tried to question him, and I was left with the old uneasy feeling towards him, which was a strange mixture of gratitude and shyness, of admiration and fear, of affection and inner reluctance.

I made a mental note to see him again soon, and then I wanted to talk to him more about all of this, including the Cain thing.

It didn’t come to that.

Gratitude is not a virtue I believe in at all, and asking it of a child would seem wrong to me. So I’m not really surprised at my own complete ingratitude, which I demonstrated against Max Demian. I believe today with certainty that I am for life would have become sick and corrupt if he hadn’t freed me from Kromer’s clutches. Even then, I felt that this liberation was the greatest experience of my young life – but I ignored the liberator himself as soon as he had performed the miracle.

As I said, the ingratitude is not strange to me. The only thing that strikes me as strange is the lack of curiosity I showed. How was it possible that I could go on living quietly for a single day without coming closer to the secrets that Demian had introduced me to? How could I contain the desire to hear more about Cain, more about Kromer, more about mind reading?

It is hardly comprehensible, and yet it is true. I suddenly saw myself untangled from demonic webs, saw the world bright and joyful before me again, and was no longer subject to attacks of anxiety and choking heart palpitations. The spell was broken, I was no longer a tormented reprobate, I was a schoolboy again as always. My nature tried to regain balance and calm as quickly as possible, and so it tried especially hard to push away the many ugly and threatening things and to forget them. The whole long story of my guilt and fear slipped from my memory wonderfully quickly, without apparently leaving any scars or impressions.

Today I also understand that I tried to forget my helper and savior just as quickly. From the vale of my condemnation, from the terrible slavery at Kromer, I fled with all the urges and strengths of my damaged soul back to where I had previously been happy and content: into the lost paradise that was opening up again, into the bright father and soul Mother world, to the sisters, to the scent of purity, to the godliness of Abel.

The very day after my short conversation with Demian, when I was finally completely convinced of my regained freedom and no longer feared relapses, I did what I had so often and ardently wanted to do – I confessed. I went to my mother, I showed her the money box, the lock of which was broken and which was filled with tokens instead of money, and I told her how long, through my own fault, I had been tied to an evil tormentor. She didn’t understand everything, but she saw the can, she saw my changed look, heard my changed voice, felt that I had recovered, that I had been returned to her.

And now I celebrated with high feelings the festival of my re-entry, the homecoming of the prodigal son. My mother brought me to my father, the story was repeated, questions and exclamations of astonishment abounded, both parents stroked my head and breathed a sigh of relief from their long depression. Everything was wonderful, everything was like in the stories, everything dissolved into wonderful harmony.

I now fled into this harmony with true passion. I couldn’t satisfy myself enough with the fact that I had my peace and the trust of my parents again. I became a model boy at home, played more than ever with my sisters and sang the dear old songs during the devotions with the blissful feelings of the redeemed and converted with. It was from the heart, there was no lie involved.

However, it wasn’t right at all! And here is the point from which my forgetfulness towards Demian is truly explained to me. I should have confessed to him! The confession would have been less decorative and touching, but more fruitful for me. Now I clung with all its roots in my former, paradisiacal world, had returned home and been welcomed into grace. But Demian in no way belonged to this world, did not fit into it. He, too, was different from Kromer, but still – he was also a seducer, he also connected me to the second, the evil, bad world, and I didn’t want to have anything to do with it forever. I couldn’t and didn’t want to give up Abel and help glorify Cain, now that I had just become Abel again myself.

That’s the external context. But the inner thing was this: I was saved from the hands of Kromer and the devil, but not through my own strength and performance. I had tried to walk the paths of the world and they had been too slippery for me. Now that the grasp of a friendly hand had saved me, I ran back into my mother’s lap and the security of a nurturing, pious, mild childishness, without even looking away. I made myself feel younger, more dependent, more childish than I was. I had to replace my dependence on Kromer with a new one, because I couldn’t go alone. So, in my blind heart, I chose addiction from father and mother, from the old, beloved “light world,” which I already knew was not the only one. If I hadn’t done that, I would have had to stick with Demian and confide in him. The fact that I didn’t do that seemed to me at the time to be a justified mistrust of his strange thoughts; in truth it was nothing but fear. Because Demian would have demanded more from me than my parents demanded, much more, he would have tried to make me more independent with encouragement and admonition, with mockery and irony. Oh, I know this today: Nothing in the world is more repugnant to people than taking the path that leads them to themselves!

Nevertheless, about six months later, I couldn’t resist the temptation and asked my father on a walk what he thought of the fact that some people declared Cain to be better than Abel.

He was very surprised and explained to me that this was a concept that lacked novelty. It even appeared in early Christian times and was taught in sects, one of which called itself the “Cainites”. But of course this great teaching is nothing other than an attempt by the devil to destroy our faith. Because if one believes in Cain’s right and Abel’s wrong, then the result is that God was wrong, that is, that the God of the Bible is not the right and only one, but a false one. The Cainites actually taught and preached something similar; but this heresy had long since disappeared from humanity and he was only surprised that a schoolmate of mine had learned something about it. At least he seriously cautions me to stop these thoughts.