The Sleepwalkers Read Online Free PDF Page B

all that he found himself saying was that it was a terribly long time since he had seen Bertrand. Oh, considering the monotonous and settled life he led that wasn’t surprising, replied Bertrand. To himself, on the contrary, always harried and on the move as he was, it seemed only yesterday that they had worn their swords for the first time in Unter den Linden and had their first supper at Dressel’s—by this time they had entered—and yet they had grown older meanwhile. Pasenow thought: “He talks too much,” but because it pleased him to think that Bertrand possessed obnoxious qualities, or because he vaguely felt that his friend’s previous taciturnity had always mortified him—in spite of his horror of being indiscreet he asked where Bertrand had been all this time. Bertrand made a slight deprecatory gesture with his hand as if he were dismissing something quite unimportant: “Oh, lots of places. I’m just back from America.” Hm, America—for Joachim America was still the country where unruly or disinherited or degenerate sons were sent, and old von Bertrand must have died of grief after all! But again this thought did not seem to fit the assured and obviously prosperous man who sat opposite him. Of course Pasenow had heard often of such ne’er-do-wells working their way up over there as farmers and then returning to Germany to look for a German bride, and perhaps this fellow had come to fetch Ruzena; but no, she wasn’t German but Czech, or rather, for that was the proper term, Bohemian. Yet, as the idea still stuck in his mind, he asked: “And you’re going back again?” “No, not immediately, I must go to India first.” A mere adventurer, in fact! And Pasenow cast a glance round the restaurant, feeling embarrassed to be sitting there with an adventurer; yet there was nothing else for it but to see it through: “So you’re always travelling, then?” “Oh, it’s only on business that I travel—but I like travelling about. Of course a man should always dowhat his demon drives him to.” And with that the cat was out of the bag; now he knew; Bertrand had quitted the service simply to go into business, from mere greed, mere avarice. But, thick-skinned as these profiteers always were, Bertrand did not feel his contempt and went on without embarrassment: “Look here, Pasenow! It’s more and more incomprehensible to me how you can stick it out here. Why don’t you at least report for colonial service, seeing that the country has provided that amusement for you?” Pasenow and his comrades had never bothered themselves about the colonial problem: that was the preserve of the navy; all the same he felt indignant: “Amusement?” Bertrand had once more that ironical curl to his lips: “Well, what else is there in it? A little private amusement and glory for the soldiers immediately concerned. All honour, of course, to Dr Peters, and if he had appeared earlier I should certainly have been with him, but what other elements are there except pure romanticism? It’s romantic from every point of view—except for the activities of the Catholic and Protestant missions, of course, who are doing sober and useful work. But as for the rest—a joke, nothing but a joke.” He spoke so disdainfully that Pasenow was honestly indignant, but what he said sounded merely as if he were offended: “Why should we Germans fall behind the other countries?” “I’ll tell you something, Pasenow: first, England is England; second, even in England every day isn’t a holiday; third, I shall always invest my spare capital in English colonies rather than in German; so, you see, even from a business point of view it’s romantic for us to have colonies; and fourthly, as I said before, it’s only the Church that ever has a real palpable interest in colonial expansion.” Joachim von Pasenow’s mortified admiration grew, and along with it the suspicion that this Bertrand fellow was trying to blind him and dupe him and lead