The Bomb | Page 6

my darkness but the shadows were heavy. I was at odds with my surroundings; I detested the brainless conventions of life, the so-called aristocratic organization of it; besides, my father did not care to support me any longer; I was a burden to him; and in this state of intolerable dependence and unrest my thoughts turned to America. More and more the purpose fixed itself in me to get money and emigrate; the new land seemed to call me. I wanted to be a writer or teacher; I wanted to see the world, to win new experiences; I wanted freedom, love, honour, everything that young men want, vaguely; my blood was in a ferment. . . .
It was a sordid quarrel with my father, in which he told me that at my age he was already earning his living, which made up my mind for me, that and a sentence of Hermann Grimm, which happened at the time to be singing itself in my ears:--
"An all over-stretching impulse towards equality, before God and the
law, alone controls today the history of our race."
That was what I wanted, or thought I wanted--equality--
"Em ueber-Alles sich ausstreckendes Verlangen nach Gleichheit vor Gott und vor dem Gesetze. . . ."
Not much in the phrase, the reader will say, I'm afraid; but I give it here because at the moment it had an extraordinary effect upon me. It was the first time to my knowledge that a properly equipped thinker had recognized the desire for equality as a motive force at all, let alone as the chief driving power in modern politics.
A few days after our quarrel I told my father I intended to go to America, and asked him if he could let me have five hundred marks ($125) to take me to New York. I fixed the sum at five hundred because he had promised to let me have that amount during my first year in the University. I told him that I wanted it as a loan and not as a gift, and at length I got it, for Suesel backed up my request--a kindness I did not at all expect, which moved me to shamefaced gratitude. But Suesel wanted no thanks; she merely wished to get rid of me, she said; for if I stayed I should be a drag on my father.
I travelled fourth-class to Hamburg, and in three days was on the high seas. I was the only man of any education in the steerage, and I kept to myself, and spent most of my time studying English. Still, I made one or two acquaintances. There was a young fellow called Ludwig Henschel going out as a waiter, who had worked for some years in England, and regarded America as Tom Tiddler's ground. He loved to show off to me and advise me; but all the while was a little proud of my acquaintance and my scholarship, and I tolerated him chiefly because his attitude flattered my paltry vanity.
There was a North German, too, called Raben, who was by way of being a journalist, though he had more conceit than reading, and his learning was to seek. He was small and thin, with washed-out, sandy hair, grey eyes, and white eyelashes. He had a nervous staccato way of talking; but he met one's eye boldly, and though instinct warned me to avoid him, I knew so little of life that I took his stare for proof of frank honesty, and felt with some remorse that my aversion wronged him. Had I known then of him what I learned later, I'd have--but there! Judas didn't go about branded. I think Raben disliked me. At first he tried to make up to me; but in an argument one day he blundered in a Latin tag, and saw that I had detected the mistake. He drew away from me then, and tried to carry Henschel with him; but Ludwig knew more of life than books, and confided to me that he would never trust a man or a woman with light eyelashes. What children we men are!
Another acquaintance I made on the steamer was a Jew boy from Lemburg, Isaac Glueckstein, who had no money and knew but little English, yet whose self-confidence was in itself no mean stock-in-trade. "In five years I shall be rich," was always on the tip of his tongue--five years! He never looked at a book, but he was always trying to talk English with some one or other, and at the end of the voyage he could understand more English than I could, though he could not read it at all, whilst I read it with ease.. . . When we parted on the wharf he drifted out of my life; but I know that he is