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    Demian
    Demian
    Demian
    Ebook196 pages4 hours

    Demian

    By Hermann Hesse

    4.5/5

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    Herman Hesse’s novel “Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth” (1919) is a coming-of-age story about a young man’s quest for individuation. Quiet Emil Sinclair is drawn into a forbidden world of petty crime and rebellion, guided by his mysterious classmate Max Demian, who simultaneously provokes Emil’s search for self-discovery in this novel about the balance of good and evil. This edition follows the 1923 N.H. Piday translation.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamscape Media
    Release dateJan 8, 2019
    ISBN9781974939138
    Author

    Hermann Hesse

    Hermann Hesse was born in 1877. His books include Siddhartha, Steppenwolf, Narcissus and Goldmund, and Magister Ludi. He died in 1962.

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    Reviews for Demian

    4.5/5

    39 ratings31 reviews

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    • 3/5
      A loony book. I liked some of the storytelling but the overall story didn’t go anywhere, as far as I could tell. Too mystical for my taste, I guess, with the mysticism being some sort of early 20th century Germanic variety that just doesn’t do anything for me.
    • 5/5
      The description of this book, particularly that Sinclair enters "a secret and dangerous world of petty crime and revolt against convention" is completely off base and misleading. This is a deeply philosophical and spiritual book about finding one's self--giving birth to one's self--within the larger organism of humanity. It was in part based on some of what Hesse when through as a young man. Within the space of a few crystal clear sentences scattered here and there throughout Sinclair's experience, Hesse manages to capture the pain and confusion of life during the years when one is stuck between childhood and adulthood. It is also a book about how a certain segment of European society in general and German society in particular was changing in the years leading up to WWI and how and why so many young men saw the coming of war as an opportunity. It made me think of Willa Cather's One of Ours and why Claude, the main character, so willingly leaves Nebraska for the fields of France.
    • 5/5
      The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world.

      It's unfortunate that time travel doesn't exist because it would be lovely to go back and hand this novel to my 16 year old self and watch her scribble quotes in her diary. As a (somewhat cynical adult), the Freud dripping from every page was a little too on point, but I still felt a melancholy quaver at the inevitable end.
    • 5/5
      Demian was the Holden Caulfield of my undergraduate years. What a devestatingly beautiful piece of literature.
    • 3/5
      Not what I expected. But it did follow along the same lines as his other novel I read, Siddhartha. This was more about a boy coming to manhood but they are both dealing with the whole good vs evil in the world concept. And the good vs evil in ourselves that wwe are always battling.
    • 5/5
      By means of a novella, exposure of the duality of human nature and the quest for inner peace, while confronted by war and idiocy. Hesse was born in a provincial town of parents with a missionary background. Young Emil Sinclair, comes of age through suffering -- "in each of us a redeemer is crucified".
    • 5/5
      This book made such a progress in my brain, that at the moment I finished it, I literally threw it in the ground and couldn't speak for half an hour. It made me think of things I have never thought before. Amazing. :D
    • 3/5
      This was swallowed the same period as Steppenwolf. I recall this one for the inclusion of jazz in its milieu. Not much of a chance for a return.
    • 3/5
      Although an early work Hesse was 42 at time of publication and no youth. Overall I think he tried to do too much and the novel doesn't come together dissolving into a morass of symbols. The ideas are complex requiring external reading and in the end unless you are religious it won't be terribly profound, except as an intellectual exercise. It was perfect for the post-FIrst World War generation in Germany who questioned authority and God in the face of defeat. And I might have liked it as a younger person in the 1960s counter-culture environment. Hesse is a godfather of counter-culture, though not by design, he was 40 years ahead of his time and couldn't have predicted beats and hippies. But there is a connection worth exploring. Germany's collapse created a new culture that spread westward, not unlike what is happening with new Russian culture spreading in the decades after its collapse. Sadly the Russians do it through a different form of art then prestige literature.
    • 4/5
      Published in 1919, it’s the coming-of-age story of a middle class boy and his struggle between a “world of light” and a "world of illusion". This was my first Hermann Hesse book, and I’ve added several more to my reading list. Good stuff.
    • 4/5
      Herman Hesse has a way with writing that it makes you feel like he is telling you the secrets of the world. The book is mainly insight driven. You experience a person's struggle as he grows up and experiences the world outside the safety of his home. There are many allusions of good vs evil and I feel Herman Hesse does a good job showing that it is not as easy to define as some would think. The protagonist meets many "guides" along the way that help him with his journey, which only we could all be so lucky. But it served as a good way of detailing the ups and downs of life, growth and experiences, but mainly that you really have to work on yourself to figure out who you are and where you would like to fit in the world. While this book is good, if you are looking to start a Herman Hesse book I would recommend starting with his other books as they are much stronger reads.
    • 5/5
      Demian, is a book about the growth of an individual,a story about a boy becoming an adult.Demian offers a poignant statement of the terrors and torments of adolescence."Now everything changed. My childhood world was breaking apart around me. My parents eyed me with a certain embarrassment. My sisters had become strangers to me. A disenchantment falsified and blunted my usual feelings and joys: the garden lacked fragrance, the woods held no attraction for me, the world stood around me like a clearance sale of last year's secondhand goods, insipid, all its charm gone. Books were so much paper, music a grating noise. That is the way leaves fall around a tree in autumn, a tree unaware of the rain running down its sides, of the sun or the frost, and of life gradually retreating inward. The tree does not die. It waits." _ Hermann HesseOne of the major themes is the existence of opposing forces (good and evil) and the idea that both are necessary using the God Abraxas as a Symbol through the story.
    • 5/5
      Why had I not discover this book when I was a teenager? Would I have enjoyed it so much if I had??

      Hesse is a great writer. A great read for anyone really interested in exploring what it means to think independently.
    • 3/5
      I love Hesse, one of my favorite authors ever. Not only is the spirtualism/sensualism dichotomy (which forms the major theme of all of his works) one of the more interesting philosophical questions of mankind, but I can't think of any author who has continually revealed his own personal neuroses and self-doubts through their characters. This quality has always provoked a certain empathy, admiration, and even self-recognition when I read his books. As someone concerned with those important questions of life, I can identify with his characters, and, because his characters are so autobiographical, I feel like I can consequently identify with Hesse himself.

      One of the more fascinating thought exercises related to Hesse is studying his works as attempts to reconcile these two aspects of life: the ethereal, divine and ecstatic with the corporeal, material and sensual. As brilliant as he was, he never figured out how to do it completely, which is what makes all of his novels ultimately unsatisfying. The interesting part, however, is that each successive novel comes closer to the answer, so that Demian feels by far the least developed, and while Hesse realizes "Nirvana" in Siddhartha, it never feels authentically earned. Steppenwolf feels altogether more on the right track before devolving into a psychedelic madhouse (perhaps precisely because he didn't know where next to take it?), and then Narcissus and Goldmund and The Journey to the East get even closer to the ultimate reconciliation while still falling short. The Glass Bead Game is by far the most developed of his novels and gets tantalizingly close to a "solution" for this problem, but it still leaves the reader vaguely grasping at the "how" of Hesse's prescription.

      As obsessed as Hesse was with this issue, he was never able to solve it, and it leaves us with the suspicion that it is an insoluble problem, perhaps THE insoluble issue of humanity. His books are so enjoyable, though, precisely because nobody has ever taken up the question with such earnest seriousness. All of his books leave us unsatisfied, but upon further thought one concludes that they are unsatisfactory only because they so unerringly reflect the great human predicament: the paradox of the divine animal. **Full Disclosure: I can no longer remember concretely, but I suspect that I owe a lot of credit for this analysis to Colin Wilson, from his fantastic The Outsider.**
    • 5/5
      Herman Hesse writes in the Prologue to Demian, "Each man's life represents a road toward himself, an attempt at such a road, the intimation of a path."(p 2) Is there a reality apart from our "constructed self"? Rather is each man on the road? The story of Emil Sinclair and his relationship with Max Demian is Hesse's attempt to narrate one young man's journey on the road toward himself. Hesse draws upon Nietzsche, Jung and others for his ideas, but the story is almost an archetypical example of the search both for meaning and identity. The forming of an identity involves discovering values, forming beliefs, and learning how to deal with reality. For Emil this includes his dream life. He tells a friend, "I live in my dreams--that's what you sense. Other people live in dreams, but not in their own. That's the difference." (p 118) The experiences of Emil are dramatic and result in a rejection of the convention life for one of a seeker. In his search Emil confronts his beliefs, dreams, and more. An epiphany occurs on one Spring day when he is attracted by a young woman in the park. He names her Beatrice and is soon transformed "into a worshipper in a temple." (p 81) He says,"I had an ideal again, life was rich with intimations of mystery and a feeling of dawn that made me immune to all taunts. I had come home again to myself, even if only as the slave and servant of a cherished image."(p 81)Thus the narrator describes what in Jungian terms is his "anima". This inspires him to create and to read as his journey takes him in a new direction. For Hesse and the reader it is always a path on "a road toward himself".
    • 3/5
      Demian is the story of Emil Sinclair, a boy who doesn't fit in with the other boys, his family, or society in general, and how he comes to embrace his uniqueness as he grows into adulthood with the help of another oddball named Max Demian. So far, so good.Unfortunately, the latter part of the novel consists mainly in a lot of self-congratulatory mutual back-patting about how special they are, along with Max's mother Eva, and not part of the herd...but as far as I could tell, there was practically no substance behind their sense of their own specialness (or their utter contempt for the masses), which was rather based on nothing more than their choice to be their own little herd of three. This illustrates the problem with this sort of Nietzschean pseudo-egoism very well: the alternative to populism is not elitism, but individualism...and elitism is by definition not individualism. As one dictionary aptly puts it, elitism is "consciousness of or pride in belonging to a select or favored group"...it may be a smaller group, but it is still defining oneself primarily in terms of and in relation to the group.Then there's all that stuff about Emil's crush on his best friend's mother, which came off not so much as liberating as just plain awkward. Throw in some all-too-obvious Jungian symbolism and bad Nietzschean philosophy (Nietzsche is explicitly mentioned more than once), and what started out as an interesting coming of age story degenerates into an overblown and in some respects absolutely ludicrous exercise in pomposity.Still, I enjoyed this more than Siddhartha...but not as much as Narcissus and Goldmund, which felt both more honest and more relevant to me. But there are some nice passages here, and the beginning was pretty good, and it was certainly instructive to see what Beyond Good and Evil would look like put into practice (not very impressive)...so it might be worth reading once if you're interested in this sort of thing.
    • 5/5
      Long my favorite novel. I'm just a sucker for an existentialist Bildungsroman.
    • 5/5
      Excellent book. Great coming of age story with an emphasis on spiritual and philosophical development. Love the subtle supernatural elements. Brilliant and more than a little creepy.
    • 3/5
      DemianHesse has yet to live up to his reputation as far as I am concerned. Of what little I have read nothing has stood out to me as having been fantastic. Demian did not do much to rectify this. It is another book about hollow nameless spirituality. The book has been described as elusive by the friend who handed it to me. I found it to be vague, though I can understand why some would mistake the one for the other. It has a lot to do with Hesse’s technical skill as a writer. He is, in that respect, good. But it is the substance of the piece that fails. The character Demian is seen throughout the book in an almost magical light, and it is the quest for the root of this magic that drove me as a reader to the end. And then it stopped short. At the end of the tunnel there appeared to be simply more tunnel. Part of it might be my own fault. I am truly one of the people that will one day confront God with a simple ‘Would you have bought it?’ Keeping something vague does not spell a complicated argument for me – it spells poor articulation.At the end of the book knowing that there indeed was this enclave of chosen people – who had somehow mysteriously been uplifted to a higher spiritual existence to which I simply was not and will not be invited – did not make me feel better.It made me feel damned.
    • 3/5
      Hesse is a great writer and thinker; I have always liked his work but I think he misses the mark a bit with Demian. What I liked:- The expression of the importance and difficulty of the path to discovering oneself ("if Nature has made you a bat you shouldn't try to be an ostrich.")- As in some of his other books, Hesse's ability to capture the angst of growing up- Demian's inverted view of the story of Cain and Abel as well as his critical commentary about the story of Christ's death and religion in general- The book is conciseWhat I didn't like:- The story itself is weak; after a couple of very interesting initial chapters it devolves into philosophy- The characters and their actions are often unrealistic (characters feeling their way to find others, or feeling it when another is thinking of them); the book seems overly influenced by Hesse's study of Jung.- Symbolism seems a bit forced; the painting, Eva/Eve, Demian/Daemon, etcFavorite quotes: "Many people experience the dying and rebirth - which is our fate - only this once during their entire life. Their childhood becomes hollow and gradually collapses, everything they love abandons them and they suddenly feel surrounded by the loneliness and mortal cold of the universe. Very many are caught forever in this impasse, and for the rest of their lives cling painfullly to an irrevocable past, the dream of the lost paradise - which is the worst and most ruthless of dreams.""But the world consists of something else besides. And what is left over is ascribed to the devil, this entire slice of world, this entire half is suppressed and hushed up. In exactly the same way they praise God as the father of all life but simply refuse to say a word about our sexual life on which it's all based, describing it whenever possible as sinful, the work of the devil. I have no objection to worshipping this God Jehovah, far from it. But I mean we ought to consider everything sacred, the entire world, not merely this artificially separated half! Thus alongside the divine service we should also have a service for the devil.""But we consist of everything the world consists of, each of us, and just as our body contains the genealogical table as far back as the fish and even much further, so we bear everything in our soul that once was alive in the soul of men. Every god and devil that ever existed, be it among the Greeks, Chinese, or Zulus, are within us, exist as latent possibilities, as wishes, as alternatives. If the human race were to vanish from the face of the earth save for one halfway talented child that had received no education, this child would rediscover the entire course of evolution, it would be capable of producing everything once more, gods and demons, paradises, commandments, the Old and New Testament.""If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us."
    • 5/5
      A new way of thinking of the Cain & Abel story; an evil guy with an extraordinary power of making everything sound real...Nowadays, he'd probably be a SALES person.One of my favorite Hesse's tales.
    • 5/5
      1173. Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth, by Herman Hesse (read 26 Jul 1972) This is the first book of Hesse's I read and I was much moved, being reminded of Kafka and The Wanderer by Alain Fournier, I having read The Wanderer in June of 1961, but felt Demian was much more connected and less obviously dreamlike. I was carried away by the word painting of mood: "But I felt dispirited, and when I took my leave and walked alone thru the hallway, the stale scent of the hyacinth seemed cadaverous. A shadow had fallen over us." I went on to read seven other Hesse books, with appreciation of nearly all of them.
    • 5/5
      wonderfull book, reminded me of some of my own feelings when growing up.
    • 3/5
      a darker yet more approachable child shouting out to the education system, being too smart for his own good, growing up, and dying. hesse at his in-between.
    • 5/5
      a favourite and classic book!
    • 5/5
      An enlightening examination of duality and individual transformation that everyone should read. Those who do not wholly identify with Sinclair will still be absorbed by the great story and beautiful language. Those who do identify with Sinclair however, will be amazed that someone was able to articulate in writing this scarce man whose path is rarely comprehended. None better than Hesse to do it, surely. An amazing novel by an amazing novelist. One of my favorites.
    • 4/5
      My younger sister bought this book for me, informing me that it was pivotal to her own life story, that she reads it twice a year. So honestly my reading is very much entrenched in understanding her psyche, and with what relevance comes this novel?I have a reverence for Hesse, I find his existential "crises" to be refreshing, and Siddhartha is a story that I enjoy and often suggest to others. Demian, however, is quite entrenched in religious imagery and I wonder if many who read it understand that this is Christian imagery.For instance, the band around the arm of Demian, friend of Emil Sinclair, to symbolize the death of his "father"- is this the Father ie God/Jesus? This again played out in the changing relationship between Sinclair and his own father, and that he feels he cannot "return to his father's house." Intriguing.The inner struggle that Sinclair finds himself in is also incredibly overcome by his connection to his "inner self," rather than to others- a great difference between the enlightenment of those religious greats that Hesse later reflected upon, such as Siddhartha, who found enlightenment through love and compassion to others, a more complete connection to the divinity in humanity and the connection of all people.Is this the great change that Hesse is pointing to through Demian and Sinclair? That of a truer humanity rather than of "forced gaiety"?"Most people love to lose themselves. He had loved and had found himself."
    • 5/5
      This is an excellent book that chronicles a young man's discovery of a personal philosophy. The duality of nature as well as many of the tenants of individualism are fictionalized in an engaging manner. Personally I found the book to be an easy read, but there were certain passages that I read over and over out of sheer joy.
    • 5/5
      I first read Demian (my first Hermann Hesse) when I was 14. It was eye-opening and I fell in love with Bildungsroman in general, probably because at that time I was a teenager myself. The struggles Emil Sinclair goes through are not unlike those of many other young people, and the issue of belonging and peer pressure is explored in a realistic and yet lyrical manner by Hesse. On a borader and more universal level, the book also is an exercise in personal judgment, beliefs and reasoning right as Europe was emerging from the ashes of the Great War. Beautiful book, it should be required reading in high schools across the United States.
    • 4/5
      This book was one of my first introductions to the idea of following an unconventional spiritual path. Rereading it recently, I found the story of how Max Demian guided the young Emil Sinclair away from his familiar world and into the pursuit of spiritual fulfillment just as engrossing as I had the first time. I was also struck by how similar Demian’s message was to so many modern spiritual teachers today. The idea that he and Sinclair were among a select few with the courage to break free of societal limitations and help humanity leap forward into a new stage of evolution sounded exactly like something I might have heard yesterday from the local guru-du-jour. I found myself wondering just what it says about human evolution that this book was first published in 1919—does that mean humanity made a quantum leap back then, and is now working on a new one? Or are we still trying at that first one almost a hundred years later? Hmmm…..

    Book preview

    Demian - Hermann Hesse

    Chapter 1. Two Worlds

    I will begin my story with an event of the time when I was ten or eleven years old and went to the Latin school of our little town. Much of the old-time fragrance is wafted back to me, but my sensations are not unmixed, as I pass in review my memories—dark streets and bright houses and towers, the striking of clocks and the features of men, comfortable and homely rooms, rooms full of secrecy and dread of ghosts. I sense again the atmosphere of cozy warmth, of rabbits and servant-girls, of household remedies and dried fruit. Two worlds passed there one through the other. From two poles came forth day and night.

    The one world was my home, but it was even narrower than that, for it really comprised only my parents. This world was for the most part very well known to me; it meant mother and father, love and severity, good example and school. It was a world of subdued luster, of clarity and cleanliness; here were tender friendly words, washed hands, clean clothes and good manners. Here the morning hymn was sung, and Christmas was kept.

    In this world were straight lines and paths which led into the future; here were duty and guilt, evil conscience and confession, pardon and good resolutions, love and adoration, Bible texts and wisdom. To this world our future had to belong, it had to be crystal-pure, beautiful and well ordered.

    The other world, however, began right in the midst of our own household, and was entirely different, had another odor, another manner of speech and made different promises and demands. In this second world were servant-girls and workmen, ghost stories and breath of scandal. There was a gaily colored flood of monstrous, tempting, terrible, enigmatical goings-on, things such as the slaughter house and prison, drunken men and scolding women, cows in birth-throes, plunging horses, tales of burglaries, murders, suicides. All these beautiful and dreadful, wild and cruel things were round about, in the next street, in the next house. Policemen and tramps passed to and fro, drunken men beat their wives, crowds of young girls flowed out of factories in the evening, old women were able to bewitch you and make you ill, robbers dwelt in the wood, incendiaries were rounded up by mounted policemen—everywhere seethed and reeked this second, passionate world, everywhere, except in our rooms, where mother and father were. And that was a good thing. It was wonderful that here in our house there were peace, order and repose, duty and a good conscience, pardon and love—and wonderful that there were also all the other things, all that was loud and shrill, sinister and violent, yet from which one could escape with one bound to mother.

    And the oddest thing was, how closely the two worlds bordered each other, how near they both were! For instance, our servant Lina, as she sat by the sitting-room door at evening prayers, and sang the hymn with her bright voice, her freshly washed hands laid on her smoothed-out apron, belonged absolutely to father and mother, to us, to what was bright and proper. Immediately after, in the kitchen or in the woodshed, when she was telling me the tale of the headless dwarf, or when she quarreled with the women of the neighborhood in the little butcher’s shop, then she was another person, belonged to the other world, and was enveloped in mystery. It was the same with everything and everyone, especially with myself. To be sure, I belonged to the bright, respectable world, I was my parents’ child, but the other world was present in everything I saw and heard, and I also lived in it, although it was often strange and foreign to me, although one had there regularly a bad conscience and anxiety. Sometimes I even liked to live in the forbidden world best, and often the homecoming into the brightness—however necessary and good it might be—seemed almost like a return to something less beautiful, to something more uninteresting and desolate. At times I realized this: my aim in life was to grow up like my father and mother, as bright and pure, as systematic and superior. But the road to attainment was long, you had to go to school and study and pass tests and examinations. The road led past the other dark world and through it, and it was not improbable that you would remain there and be buried in it. There were stories of prodigal sons to whom that had happened—I was passionately fond of reading them. There the return home to father and to the respectable world was always so liberating and so sublime, I quite felt that this alone was right and good and desirable. But still that part of the stories which dealt with the wicked and profligate was by far the most alluring, and if one had been allowed to acknowledge it openly, it was really often a great pity that the prodigal repented and was redeemed. But one did not say that, nor did one actually think it. It was only present somehow or other as a presentiment or a possibility, deep down in one’s feelings. When I pictured the devil to myself, I could quite well imagine him down below in the street, openly or in disguise, or at the annual fair or in the public house, but I could never imagine him with us at home.

    My sisters also belonged to the bright world. It often seemed to me that they approached more nearly to father and mother; that they were better and nicer mannered than myself, without so many faults. They had their failings, they were naughty, but that did not seem to me to be deep-rooted. It was not the same as for me, for whom the contact with evil was strong and painful, and the dark world so much nearer. My sisters, like my parents, were to be treated with regard and respect. If you had had a quarrel with them, your own conscience accused you afterwards as the wrongdoer and the cause of the squabble, as the one who had to beg pardon. For in opposing my sisters I offended my parents, the representatives of goodness and law. There were secrets which I would much sooner have shared with the most depraved street urchins than with my sisters. On good, bright days when I had a good conscience, it was often delightful to play with my sisters, to be gentle and nice to them, and to see myself under a halo of goodness. That was how it must be if you were an angel! That was the most sublime thing we knew, to be an angel, surrounded by sweet sounds and fragrance like Christmas and happiness. But, oh, how seldom were such days and hours perfect! Often when we were playing one of the nice, harmless, proper games I was so vehement and impetuous, and I so annoyed my sisters that we quarreled and were unhappy. Then when I was carried away by anger I did and said things, the wickedness of which I felt deep and burning within me, even while I was doing and saying them. Then came sad, dark hours of remorse and contrition, the painful moment when I begged pardon, then again a beam of light, a peaceful, grateful happiness without discord, for minutes or hours.

    I used to go to the Latin school. The sons of the mayor and of the head forester were in my class and sometimes used to come to our house. They were wild boys, but still they belonged to the world of goodness and of propriety. In spite of that I had close relations with neighbors’ boys, children of the public school, whom in general we despised. With one of these I must begin my story.

    One half-holiday—I was little more than ten at the time—I went out with two boys of the neighborhood. A public-school boy of about thirteen years joined our party; he was bigger than we were, a coarse and robust fellow, the son of a tailor. His father was a drunkard, and the whole family had a bad reputation. I knew Frank Kromer well, I was afraid of him, and was very much displeased when he joined us. He had already acquired manly ways, and imitated the gait and manner of speech of the young factory hands. Under his leadership we stepped down to the bank of the stream and hid ourselves from the world under the first arch of the bridge. The little bank between the vaulted bridge wall and the sluggishly flowing water was composed of nothing but trash, of broken china and garbage, of twisted bundles of rusty iron wire and other rubbish. You sometimes found there useful things. We had to search the stretch under Frank Kromer’s direction and show him what we found. He then either kept it himself or threw it away into the water. He bid us note whether the things were of lead, brass or tin. Everything we found of this description he kept for himself, as well as an old horn comb. I felt very uneasy in his company, not because I knew that father would have forbidden our playing together had he known of it, but through fear of Frank himself. I was glad that he treated me like the others. He commanded and we obeyed; it seemed habitual to me, although that was the first time I was with him.

    At last we sat down. Frank spat into the water and looked like a full-grown man; he spat through a gap in his teeth, directing the sputum in any direction he wished. He began a conversation, and the boys vied with one another in bragging of schoolboy exploits and pranks. I was silent, and yet, if I said nothing, I was afraid of calling attention to myself and inciting Kromer’s anger against me. My two comrades had from the beginning turned their backs on me, and had sided with him; I was a stranger among them, and I felt my clothes and manner to be a provocation. It was impossible that Frank should like me, a Latin schoolboy and the son of a gentleman, and the other two, I felt, as soon as it came to the point, would disown me and leave me in the lurch.

    At last, through mere fright, I also began to relate a story. I invented a long narration of theft, of which I made myself the hero. In a garden by the mill on the corner, I recounted, I had one night with the help of a friend stolen a whole sack of apples, and those none of the ordinary sorts, but russets and golden pippins, the very best. In the danger of the moment I had recourse to the telling of this story, which I invented easily and re-counted readily. In order not to have to finish off immediately, and so perhaps be led from bad to worse, I gave full scope to my inventive powers. One of us, I continued, always had to stand sentinel, while the other was throwing down apples from the tree, and the sack had become so heavy that at last we had to open it again and leave half the apples behind; but we returned at the end of half an hour and took the rest away with us.

    I hoped at the end to gain some little applause, I had warmed to my work and had let myself go in my narration. The two small boys waited quiet and expectant, but Frank Kromer looked at me penetratingly through half-closed eyes and asked me in a threatening tone:

    Is that true?

    Yes, I said.

    Really and truly?

    Yes, really and truly, I asserted defiantly, though inwardly I was stifling through fear.

    Can you swear to it?

    I was terribly frightened, but I answered without hesitation: Yes.

    Then say: ‘I swear by God and all that’s holy’!

    I said: I swear by God and all that’s holy!

    Aw, gwan! said he and turned away.

    I thought that everything was now all right, and was glad when he got up and made for the town. When we were on the bridge I said timidly that I must now go home. Don’t be in such a hurry, laughed Frank, we both go the same way. He dawdled on, and I dared not tear myself away, especially as he was actually taking the road to our house. As we arrived, I looked at the heavy brass-knocker, the sun on the window and the curtains in my mother’s room, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Home at last! What a blessing it was to be at home again, to return to the brightness and peace of the family circle!

    As I quickly opened the door and slipped inside, ready to shut it behind me, Frank Kromer forced his way in as well. He stood beside me in the cool, dark stone corridor which was only lighted from the courtyard, held me by the arm and said softly: Not so fast, you!

    Terrified, I looked at him. His grip on my arm was one of iron. I tried to think what he had in his mind, whether he was going to maltreat me. I wondered, if I should scream, whether anyone would come down quickly enough to save me. But I gave up the idea.

    What’s the matter? I asked. What d’you want?

    Nothing much. I only want to ask you something-something the others needn’t hear.

    Well, what do you want me to tell you? I must go upstairs, you know.

    You know, don’t you, whose orchard that is by the mill on the corner? said Frank softly.

    No, I don’t know; I think it’s the miller’s.

    Frank had wound his arm round me, and he drew me quite close to him, so that I had to look up directly into his face. His look boded ill, he smiled maliciously, and his face was full of cruelty and power.

    Now, kid, I can tell you whose the garden is. I have known for a long time that the apples had been stolen, and I also know that the man said he would give two marks to anyone who would tell him who stole the fruit.

    Good heavens! I exclaimed. But you won’t tell him anything? I felt it was useless to appeal to his sense of honor. He came from the other world; for him betrayal was no crime. I felt that for a certainty. In these matters people from the other world were not like us.

    Say nothing? laughed Kromer. Look here, my friend, d’you think I am minting money and can make two shilling pieces myself? I’m a poor chap, and I haven’t got a rich father like yours, and when I get the chance of earning two shillings I must take it. He might even give me more.

    Suddenly he let me go free. Our house no longer gave me an impression of peace and safety, the world fell to pieces around me. He would report me as a criminal, my father would be told, perhaps even the police might come for me. The terror of utter chaos menaced me, all that was ugly and dangerous was aligned against me. The fact that I had not stolen at all did not count in the least. I had sworn to it besides. Oh, dear! Oh, dear!

    I burst into tears. I felt I must buy myself off. Despairingly I searched all my pockets. Not an apple, not a penknife, absolutely nothing. All at once I thought of my watch. It was an old silver one which wouldn’t go. I wore it for no special reason. It came down to me from my grandmother. I drew it out quickly.

    Kromer, I said, listen, you mustn’t give me away, that wouldn’t be nice of you. Look here, I will give you my watch; I haven’t anything else, worse luck! You can have it, it’s a silver one; the mechanism is good, there is one little thing wrong, that’s all, it needs repairing.

    He smiled and took the watch in his big hand. I looked at his hand and felt how coarse and

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