It would be beautiful, tender and lovable things to tell about my childhood, about my feeling of security with my father and mother, about filial love and a frugal, playful life in gentle, loving, light surroundings. Others have spoken about it enough. I’m only interested in the steps I took in my life to find myself. I leave all the pretty resting places, islands of happiness and paradises, whose magic was not unknown to me, in the splendor of the I lie far away and do not desire to enter it again.

That is why, as far as I am still dwelling on my boyhood, I speak only of what was new to me, what drove me forward, what tore me away.

These impulses always came from the “other world,” they always brought fear, coercion and a bad conscience, they were always revolutionary and endangered the peace in which I would have liked to live.

The years came in which I had to discover again that a primal instinct lived within me that had to crawl and hide itself in the permitted and bright world. Like every human being, the slowly awakening feeling of gender struck me as an enemy and destroyer, as something forbidden, as seduction and sin. What my curiosity sought, what gave me dreams, desire and fear, the great mystery of puberty, did not fit at all into the cherished bliss of my childhood peace. I did like everyone else. I led the double life of the child who is no longer a child. My consciousness lived in what was domestic and permitted; my consciousness denied the new world that was emerging. But besides that I lived in dreams, urges, Wishes of a subterranean kind, over which that conscious life built ever more anxious bridges, because the child’s world within me collapsed. Like almost all parents, mine did not help the awakening life instincts that were not mentioned. They only helped, with inexhaustible care, my hopeless attempts to deny the real and to continue living in a child’s world that was becoming more and more unreal and false. I don’t know if parents can do much about this, and I don’t blame mine. It was my own business to cope and find my way, and I did it poorly, like most well-bred people.

Every person goes through this difficulty. For the average person, this is the point in life where the demands of one’s own life come into fiercest conflict with the environment, where the path forward has to be fought for most bitterly. Many experience dying and being reborn, which is our fate, only once in their lives, during the decay and slow collapse of childhood, when everything we love wants to leave us and we suddenly feel the loneliness and deadly cold of space us feel. And very many remain stuck on this cliff forever and cling painfully all their lives to the irretrievably past, to the dream of a lost paradise, which is the worst and most murderous of all dreams.

Let’s go back to history. The feelings and dream images in which the end of my childhood appeared to me are not important enough to be told. The important thing was: the “dark world,” the “other world” was there again. What had once been Franz Kromer was now within me. And with that, the “other world” gained power over me again from outside.

Several years had passed since the Kromer story. That dramatic and guilty time in my life was very far from my mind at the time and seemed like a short nightmare that had never passed away. Franz Kromer had long since disappeared from my life, and I barely noticed if I ever met him. But the other important figure in my tragedy, Max Demian, no longer completely disappeared from my circle. But for a long time he stood far away on the edge, visible but not effective. Only gradually did he come closer again, radiating strength and influences again.

I try to remember what I know about Demian from that time. I may not have spoken to him once for a year or more. I avoided him and he didn’t impose himself at all. About once, when we met, he nodded a friendly greeting to me. At times it seemed to me that there was a subtle hint of mockery or ironic reproach in his friendliness, but that may have been my imagination. The story I had experienced with him and the strange influence he had on me back then were as if forgotten, both by him and by me.

I look for his figure, and now that I remember him, I see that he was there after all and was noticed by me. I see him going to school, alone or among other older students, and I see him strange, lonely and silent, walking among them as if like a star, surrounded by his own air, living under his own laws. No one loved him, no one was familiar with him, only his mother, and with her too he seemed to interact with her not like a child but like an adult. The teachers left him alone as much as possible; he was a good student, but he didn’t try to please anyone. and every now and then we heard rumors of some word, gloss or rejoinder that he was said to have given to a teacher and which left nothing to be desired in terms of harsh challenge or irony.

I reflect, my eyes closed, and I see his image appear. Where was that? Yes, now it’s back. It was on the street in front of our house. I saw him standing there one day, a notebook in his hand, and saw him drawing. He drew the old coat of arms with the bird above our front door. And I stood at a window, hidden behind the curtain, and looked at him, and saw with deep astonishment his attentive, cool, bright face turned towards the coat of arms, the face of a man, a researcher or an artist, superior and full of will, strangely bright and cool, with knowing eyes.

And I see him again. It was a little later, on the street; Coming from school, we were all standing around a horse that had fallen. It was lying in front of a farm wagon, still harnessed to the drawbar, snorting the air searchingly and pitifully with its nostrils open and bleeding from an invisible wound on its side the white street dust slowly became dark. As I turned away from the sight, feeling sick, I saw Demian’s face. He hadn’t pushed himself forward, he was standing at the back, comfortable and quite elegant, as was his nature. His gaze seemed to be fixed on the horse’s head, and again had that deep, quiet, almost fanatical and yet dispassionate attention. I had to look at him for a long time, and at that time, still far from consciousness, I felt something very strange. I saw Demian’s face, and I saw not only that he had not a boy’s face, but that of a man; I saw even more, I thought I saw or felt that it wasn’t the face of a man, but something else. It was as if there was something of a woman’s face in it, and this face in particular seemed to me for a moment, not male or childlike, not old or young, but somehow millenarian, somehow timeless, stamped by times other than the ones we live in. Animals could look like that, or trees, or stars – I didn’t know, I didn’t feel exactly what I now say about it as an adult, but something similar. Maybe he was beautiful, maybe I liked him, Maybe I also disliked him, that too couldn’t be decided. All I saw was that he was different from us, he was like an animal, or like a ghost, or like an image, I don’t know what he was like, but he was different, unthinkably different from all of us.

My memory doesn’t tell me more, and perhaps this is partly based on later impressions.

It wasn’t until I was several years older that I finally came into closer contact with him again. Demian had not been confirmed in church with his cohort, as custom would have required, and rumors soon arose about this too. At school it was said again that he was actually a Jew, or no, a pagan, and others knew that he and his mother had no religion at all or that they belonged to a fabulous, terrible sect. In connection with this, I think I have also heard the suspicion that he lives with his mother like a lover. It was probably the case that he had previously been brought up without a religion, but that this now gave rise to fears of some disadvantage for his future. In any case, his mother decided to have him now, two years later than his peers. to take part in the confirmation. So it happened that he was my comrade in confirmation classes for months.

For a while I held back from him completely; I didn’t want to be part of him; he was too surrounded by rumors and secrets, but what particularly bothered me was the feeling of obligation that had remained in me since the affair with Kromer. And right then I had enough to do with my own secrets. For me, the confirmation lessons coincided with the time of crucial enlightenment on gender matters, and despite my good intentions, my interest in pious instruction was greatly impaired. The things the priest spoke of lay far away from me in a quiet, holy unreality; they were perhaps quite beautiful and valuable, but by no means current and exciting, and those other things were just that to the highest degree.

The more this situation made me indifferent to teaching, the more my interest came back to Max Demian. Something seemed to connect us. I have to follow this thread as closely as possible. As far as I can remember, it started in an hour early in the morning, while the lights were still on in the school room. Our spiritual teacher had talked about the story of Cain and Abel. I barely paid attention, I was sleepy and barely listened. Then the priest began to speak urgently about the Mark of Cain with a raised voice. At that moment I felt a kind of touch or warning, and looking up from the front rows of the pews I saw Demian’s face turned back towards me, with a bright, speaking eye, the expression of which could be as much mockery as seriousness. He only looked at me for a moment, and suddenly I listened intently to the priest’s words, heard him talking about Cain and his sign, and felt deep within me a knowledge that it wasn’t the way he taught it, that one could do it too could see differently that criticism was possible!

With that minute there was a connection again between Demian and me. And strangely – as soon as this feeling of a certain togetherness was there in the soul, I saw it magically transferred into space. I didn’t know whether he could arrange it that way himself or whether it was a pure coincidence – I still firmly believed in coincidences at the time – after a few Days later, Demian had suddenly changed his place in the religion lesson and was sitting in front of me (I remember how much I liked to breathe in the delicate, fresh smell of soap from his neck in the middle of the miserable poorhouse air of the overcrowded schoolroom in the morning!), and again after a few days He changed again and now sat next to me, and there he stayed, all winter and all spring.

The morning hours had completely changed. They were no longer sleepy and boring. I was looking forward to her. Sometimes we both listened to the priest with the greatest attention; one look from my neighbor was enough to point out a strange story, a strange saying. And another look from him, a very specific one, was enough to warn me, to stimulate criticism and doubt in me.

But very often we were bad students and didn’t hear anything about the lessons. Demian was always well-behaved with his teachers and classmates; I never saw him do schoolboy stupid things, I never heard him laugh or chat loudly, and he never received any reprimand from the teacher. But very quietly, and more with signs and looks than with whispered words, he managed to remind me of his own preoccupations to participate. Some of these were of a strange nature.

For example, he told me which of the students interested him and how he studied them. Some he knew very well. He told me before the lesson: “If I give you a sign with my thumb, so-and-so will look around for us, or scratch their neck, etc.” During the lesson, when I often hardly thought about it anymore, I turned Max suddenly gave me his thumb with a striking gesture. I quickly looked for the designated student and every time I saw him make the requested gesture, as if pulled on a wire. I pestered Max to try that with the teacher, but he didn’t want to do it. But once, when I came to class and told him that I hadn’t learned my assignments today and that I really hoped the priest wouldn’t ask me anything today, he helped me. The priest was looking for a student whom he wanted to recite a piece of catechism, and his wandering eye rested on my guilty face. He slowly came up, stretched out his finger towards me, already had my name on his lips – then suddenly he became distracted or restless, moved his collar, approached Demian, who looked him straight in the face, seemed to want to ask him something, but unexpectedly turned away again, coughed for a while and then asked another student.

Only gradually did I notice, while these jokes greatly amused me, that my friend often played the same game with me. It happened that on the way to school I suddenly had the feeling that Demian was walking behind me and when I turned around he was right there.

“Can you actually make someone else think what you want?” I asked him.

He gave information willingly, calmly and matter-of-factly, in his adult manner.

“No,” he said, “you can’t do that. You don’t have free will if the priest does the same. Neither can the other person think what he wants, nor can I make him think what I want. But you can observe someone well, and then you can often tell quite accurately what they are thinking or feeling, and then you can usually predict what they will do in the next moment. It’s simple, people just don’t know it. Of course it takes practice.

For example, there are certain moths among butterflies in which females are much rarer than males. The butterflies reproduce like all animals; the male fertilizes the female, which then lays eggs. If you now have a female of these moths – it has often been tried by natural researchers – the male butterflies will fly to this female during the night, for hours at a time! For hours, think of it! For many kilometers, all of these males sense the only female in the area! People try to explain it, but it’s difficult. It must be some kind of sense of smell or something, like how good hunting dogs can find and follow an imperceptible trail. Do you understand? These are things like that, nature is full of them and no one can explain them. But now I say: If the females of these butterflies were as common as the males, they wouldn’t have such a fine nose! They only have them because they have been trained for them. If an animal or human focuses all of his attention and all of his will on a certain thing, he will achieve it. That’s all. And that’s exactly what you mean. See a person Look closely enough and you’ll know more about him than he does.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to say the word “mind reading,” reminding him of the scene with Kromer so long ago. But this was also a strange thing between the two of us: neither he nor I ever made the slightest hint that he had intervened so seriously in my life several years ago. It was as if nothing had ever happened between us before, or as if each of us fully expected that the other had forgotten it. It even happened once or twice that we walked across the street together and met Franz Kromer, but we didn’t exchange a glance or say a word about him.

“But what about the will?” I asked. “You say you don’t have free will. But then you say again that all you have to do is focus your will firmly on something and then you can achieve your goal. That’s not correct! If I am not the master of my will, then I cannot direct it this way or that at will.”

He patted me on the shoulder. He always did that when I made him happy.

“It’s good that you asked!” he said, laughing. “You always have to ask, you always have to doubt. But the matter is very simple. For example, if a moth wanted to direct its will towards a star or somewhere else, it couldn’t do that. Except he doesn’t even try. He only looks for what has meaning and value for him, what he needs, what he absolutely must have. And that’s where he achieves the incredible – he develops a magical sixth sense that no other animal has except him! We have more scope, certainly, and more interests than an animal. But we are also bound in a relatively narrow circle and cannot go beyond that. I can probably fantasize this and that, like imagine that I really want to get to the North Pole, or something like that, But I can only carry it out and want it strongly enough if the wish lies entirely within me, if my being is really completely filled with it. As soon as that is the case, as soon as you try something that is commanded to you from within, then it works, then you can strain your will like a good horse. If, for example, I decided now that I wanted to ensure that our Lord… If the priest no longer wears glasses in the future, it won’t work like that. This is just a gimmick. But when I decided, back in the fall, to be moved from my bench at the front, things went quite well. Suddenly there was someone who came before me in the alphabet and who had been sick up until now, and because someone had to make room for him, I was of course the one who did it, because my will was ready to seize the opportunity immediately. “

“Yes,” I said, “it was very strange to me back then too. From the moment we became interested in each other, you became closer and closer to me. But how was that? At first you didn’t come to sit next to me straight away, you’ve only sat in the bench in front of me a few times, haven’t you? How did that happen?”

“That’s how it was: I didn’t really know where I wanted to go when I wanted to leave my first place. All I knew was that I wanted to sit further back. It was my will to come to you, but I had not yet become aware of it. At the same time, your own will came along and helped me. It was only when I was sitting there in front of you that I realized that my wish was only half fulfilled – I realized that I actually had nothing had desired anything other than to sit next to you.”

“But no one new came in back then.”

“No, but back then I just did what I wanted and sat down next to you. The boy I swapped places with was just surprised and let me do it. And the priest once noticed that there had been a change – in general, every time he has to do with me, something secretly bothers him, because he knows that my name is Demian and that it is not true that I am with my D in the name sitting right at the back under the S! But this doesn’t penetrate his consciousness because my will is against it and because I keep preventing him from doing so. Every now and then he notices that something is wrong and looks at me and starts studying, the good gentleman. But I have a simple remedy. Every time I look him very, very hard in the eyes. Almost all people don’t tolerate this well. They’re all getting restless. If you want to get something from someone and you unexpectedly look them straight in the eyes and they don’t get restless at all, then give it up! You won’t achieve anything with him, ever! But that is very rare. I actually only know one person for whom it doesn’t help me.”

“Who is that?” I asked quickly.

He looked at me with the slightly narrowed eyes that came with his thoughtfulness. Then he looked away and gave no answer, and despite intense curiosity I couldn’t repeat the question.

But I think he was talking about his mother at the time. — He seemed to live very intimately with her, but never spoke to me about her, never took me home with him. I hardly knew what his mother looked like.

MSometimes I tried to imitate him and concentrate my will on something so that I had to achieve it. There were wishes that seemed urgent enough to me. But it was nothing and didn’t work. I couldn’t bring myself to talk to Demian about it. I couldn’t have confessed what I wished I could to him. And he didn’t ask either.

My faith in questions of religion had now developed some gaps. However, in my thinking, which was definitely influenced by Demian, I was very different from those of my classmates, who had complete unbelief. There were a few like that, and they left occasionally Hearing words like that it is ridiculous and inhumane to believe in a God, and stories like those about the Trinity and Jesus’ immaculate birth are simply laughable, and it is a shame that people are still peddling this stuff today. I didn’t think that at all. Even though I had doubts, I knew enough from all the experiences of my childhood about the reality of a pious life, such as that led by my parents, and that this was neither something unworthy nor hypocritical. Rather, I still had the deepest reverence for religion. It’s just that Demian had gotten me used to viewing and interpreting the stories and beliefs more freely, more personally, more playfully, more imaginatively; At least I always followed the interpretations he suggested to me with pleasure and pleasure. Of course, many things were too harsh for me, including the matter of Cain. And once during confirmation class he shocked me with an opinion that was perhaps even bolder. The teacher had spoken of Golgotha. The biblical account of the suffering and death of the Savior had made a deep impression on me from an early age; sometimes as a small boy, for example on Good Friday after my father I had read the story of suffering, lived deeply and movedly in this painfully beautiful, pale, ghostly and yet incredibly lively world, in Gethsemane and on Golgotha, and when listening to Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, the darkly powerful glow of suffering in this mysterious world flooded me with all mystical horrors. Today I still find in this music and in the “actus tragicus” the epitome of all poetry and all artistic expression.

Now, at the end of that hour, Demian said thoughtfully to me: “There is something, Sinclair, that I don’t like. Read the story and test it on your tongue; there is something there that tastes bland. Namely the thing with the two thieves. It’s amazing how the three crosses are standing together on the hill! But now this sentimental treatise story with the honest thief! First he was a criminal and committed outrages, God knows what, and now he melts away and celebrates such tearful celebrations of reform and remorse! What is the point of such remorse two steps from the grave, I beg you? Once again it is nothing but a real priest’s story, sweet and dishonest, with a touch of emotion and highly uplifting background. If you had to choose one of the two thieves as a friend today, or think about which of the two you could trust more, it would certainly not be this tearful convert. No, it’s the other guy, he’s a guy and he’s got character. He doesn’t give a damn about conversion, which in his situation can only be pretty talk, he goes his way to the end and doesn’t cowardly renounce the devil at the last moment, who had to help him up to that point. He is a character, and people of character tend to get short shrift in biblical history. Perhaps he is also a descendant of Cain. Do not you think?”

I was very upset. I had thought I was completely at home here in the crucifixion story, and only now saw how little personally, with how little imagination and fantasy, I had listened to and read it. Nevertheless, Demian’s new idea sounded fatal to me and threatened to overturn concepts in me that I believed I had to maintain. No, you couldn’t treat everything and everyone like that, even the most holy thing.

As always, he noticed my resistance immediately, before I said anything.

“I know,” he said resignedly, “it’s the same old story. Just don’t get serious! But I want to tell you something: here is one of the points where you can see very clearly the deficiency in this religion. The point is that this whole God, old and new covenant, is an excellent figure, but not what he is actually supposed to represent. He is the good, the noble, the fatherly, the beautiful and also high, the sentimental – that’s right! But the world also consists of other things. And now everything is simply attributed to the devil, and this entire part of the world, this entire half, is embezzled and hushed up. Just as they praise God as the father of all life, but simply ignore the entire sexual life on which life is based and possibly declare it to be the work of the devil and sinful! I have nothing against this God Jehovah being worshiped, not in the least. But I think we should Revere and hold sacred everything , the whole world, not just this artificially separated, official half! So, in addition to the church service, we also have to have a devil’s service. I think that’s right. Or, you would have to create a God who also includes the devil in himself, and to which you don’t have to turn a blind eye when the most natural things in the world happen.”

Contrary to his nature, he almost became violent, but immediately afterwards he smiled again and didn’t press into me any further.

But in me these words hit home the riddle of my entire boyhood, which I carried with me every hour and about which I had never said a word to anyone. What Demian had said about God and the devil, about the divine-official world and the hushed-up devilish world, was exactly my own thought, my own myth, the idea of ​​the two worlds or halves of the world – the light and the dark. The insight that my problem was a problem for all people, a problem for all life and thought, suddenly swept over me like a holy shadow, and fear and awe overwhelmed me as I saw and suddenly felt how deep my own, personal life and meaning were participated in the eternal stream of great ideas. The insight was not joyful, although somehow affirming and exhilarating. She was hard and tasted rough,

Revealing such a deep secret for the first time in my life, I told my comrade about my view of the “two worlds” that I had had since early childhood, and he immediately saw that my deepest feelings agreed with him and proved him right. But it wasn’t like him to take advantage of something like that. He listened with deeper attention than he had ever given me, and looked into my eyes until I had to look away from mine. Because I saw in his gaze again that strange, animal-like timelessness, that unthinkable age.

“We’ll talk more about this another time,” he said gently. “I see you think more than you can tell. If that’s the case, then you also know that you never quite lived what you thought, and that’s not good. Only the thinking that we live has value. You knew that your ‘permitted world’ was only half of the world, and you tried to keep the other half away from you, like pastors and teachers do. You won’t succeed! Nobody succeeds once they start thinking.”

It hit me deeply.

“But,” I almost shouted, “there is actually and really forbidden and ugly things, you can’t deny that! And they are forbidden and we have to do without them. I know there is murder and all sorts of vices, but should I go and become a criminal just because it exists?”

“We won’t be able to finish it today,” said Max. “You certainly shouldn’t kill or sexually murder girls, no. But you are not yet at the point where you can see what ‘permitted’ and ‘forbidden’ actually mean. You have only felt a piece of the truth. The other one is coming, count on it! For example, you have had a drive within you for about a year now that is stronger than all the others and it is considered ‘forbidden’. On the contrary, the Greeks and many other peoples made this instinct a deity and worshiped it in large festivals. So ‘forbidden’ is not something eternal, it can change. Even today, anyone can sleep with a woman as soon as they have been to the priest with her and married her. It’s different with other peoples, even today. That’s why each of us has to find for ourselves, what is permitted and what is forbidden – forbidden to him. One can never do anything forbidden and be a great scoundrel. And vice versa too. — Actually, it’s just a question of convenience! Anyone who is too comfortable to think for themselves and be their own judge simply accepts the prohibitions as they are. It’s easy for him. Others feel commandments within themselves; they are forbidden to do things that every man of honor does every day, and they are allowed to do other things that would otherwise be frowned upon. Everyone has to stand for themselves.”

He suddenly seemed to regret saying so much and stopped. Even back then I was able to understand to some extent what he felt about it. No matter how pleasantly and seemingly above-board he used to present his ideas, he still couldn’t stand a conversation “just for the sake of talking,” as he once said, to the death. But with me, in addition to genuine interest, he sensed too much play, too much joy in clever chatter, or something like that – in short, a lack of complete seriousness.

WAs I re-read the last word I wrote – “complete seriousness” – another scene suddenly comes to mind, the most haunting one I experienced with Max Demian in those still half-childish times.

Our confirmation came, and the last hours of spiritual instruction were about the Lord’s Supper. It was important to the priest and he made an effort to ensure that something of consecration and atmosphere could be felt in these hours. But just in these last few lessons my thoughts were tied to something else, namely to the person of my friend. As I looked forward to confirmation, which was explained to us as the solemn acceptance into the community of the church, the thought inevitably occurred to me that for me the value of this six-month religious instruction did not lie in what we had learned here, but in the proximity and influence of Demian. I was not ready to be accepted into the church, but into something completely different, into an order of thought and personality,

I tried to push this thought back; I was serious about experiencing the celebration of confirmation, despite everything, with a certain dignity, and this didn’t seem to be compatible with my new idea. But I could do whatever I wanted, the thought was there and it connected I gradually became familiar with the nearby church celebration; I was prepared to celebrate it differently than the others; for me it was supposed to mean acceptance into a world of thought like the one I had gotten to know in Demian.

It was in those days that I once again argued lively with him; it was just before a teaching session. My friend was buttoned up and didn’t enjoy my speeches, which were probably quite precocious and self-important.

“We talk too much,” he said with unusual seriousness. “Smart speech has no value at all, none at all. You can only get away from yourself. Getting away from yourself is sin. You have to be able to completely hide within yourself like a turtle.”

Immediately afterwards we entered the school hall. The lesson began, I tried my best to pay attention and Demian didn’t bother me. After a while I began to sense something strange from the side where he was sitting next to me, an emptiness or coolness or something like that, as if the place had suddenly become empty. When the feeling started to become confining, I turned around.

Then I saw my friend sitting, upright and in good posture as usual. But he still looked completely different than usual, and something emanated from him, something surrounded him that I didn’t recognize. I thought he had his eyes closed, but I saw that he kept them open. But they didn’t look, they didn’t see, they were rigid and turned inwards or into a great distance. He sat there completely motionless, he didn’t even seem to be breathing, his mouth seemed to be cut out of wood or stone. His face was pale, evenly pale, like stone, and his brown hair was the liveliest thing about him. His hands lay on the bench in front of him, lifeless and still like objects, like stones or fruit, pale and motionless, but not limp, but like solid, good shells around a hidden, strong life.

The sight made me tremble. He is dead! I thought, I almost said it out loud. But I knew that he wasn’t dead. I hung spellbound on his face, on that pale, stone mask, and I felt: that was Demian! What he was like when he walked and talked with me was only half Demian, someone who occasionally played a role, made himself comfortable, went along as a favor. But the real Demian looked like this, so stoney, ancient, animal-like, stony, beautiful and cold, dead and secretly full of unheard of life. And around him this silent emptiness, this ether and starry space, this lonely death!

“Now he has completely gone into himself,” I felt with a shudder. I had never been so lonely. I had no part in him, he was beyond my reach, he was further away from me than if he had been on the furthest island in the world.

I hardly understood that no one but me saw it! Everyone had to look, everyone had to shudder! But no one paid attention to him. He sat picture-perfect and, as I had to think, strangely idolatrously stiff, a fly settled on his forehead, ran slowly over his nose and lips – he didn’t twitch a wrinkle.

Where, where was he now? What did he think, what did he feel? Was he in a heaven, a hell?

I wasn’t able to ask him about it. When I saw him, at the end of the lesson, alive and breathing again, when his eyes met mine, he was the same as before. Where did he come from? Where had he been? He seemed tired. His face had color again, his hands were moving again, but his brown hair was now dull and as if tired.

In the days that followed, I indulged in a new exercise several times in my bedroom: I sat upright on a chair, stared, held myself completely still, and waited to see how long I could endure it and what I would feel. However, I just became tired and my eyelids itched violently.

Soon afterwards was the confirmation, of which I have no important memories.

Everything was different now. My childhood was falling apart around me. The parents looked at me with some embarrassment. The sisters had become complete strangers to me. A disillusionment falsified and faded my usual feelings and joys, the garden was without scent, the forest was not attractive, the world stood around me like a sale of old things, bland and charmless, the books were paper, the music was a noise. So the leaves fall around an autumn tree, he doesn’t feel it, rain runs down on him, or sun, or frost, and within him life slowly retreats into the narrowest and innermost. He doesn’t die. Expected.

It had been decided that after the holidays I would go to another school and to the first should get away from home. Sometimes my mother approached me with particular tenderness, saying goodbye in advance, trying to conjure love, homesickness and unforgettable memories into my heart. Demian was away. I was alone.