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Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk
Our singer is called Josephine. Anyone who has not heard her
does not know the power of song. There is no one but is carried away by her
singing, a tribute all the greater as we are not in general a music-loving
race. Tranquil peace is the music we love best; our life is hard, we are no
longer able, even on occasions when we have tried to shake off the cares of
daily life, to rise to anything so high and remote from our usual routine as
music. But we do not much lament that; we do not get even so far; a certain
practical cunning, which admittedly we stand greatly in need of, we hold to be
our greatest distinction, and with a smile born of such cunning we are wont to
console ourselves for all shortcomings, even supposing—only it does not happen
that we were to yearn once in a way for the kind of bliss which music may
provide. Josephine is the sole exception; she has a love for music and knows
too how to transmit it; she is the only one; when she dies, music—who knows for
how long—will vanish from our lives.
I have often thought about what this music of hers really
means. For we are quite unmusical; how is it that we understand Josephine's
singing or, since Josephine denies that, at least think we can understand it.
The simplest answer would be that the beauty of her singing is so great that
even the most insensitive cannot be deaf to it, but this answer is not
satisfactory. If it were really so, her singing would have to give one an
immediate and lasting feeling of being something out of the ordinary, a feeling
that from her throat something is sounding which we have never heard before and
which we are not even capable of hearing, something that Josephine alone and no
one else can enable us to hear. But in my opinion that is just what does not
happen, I do not feel this and have never observed that others feel anything of
the kind. Among intimates we admit freely to one another that Josephine's
singing, as singing, is nothing out of the ordinary.
Is it in fact singing at all? Although we are unmusical we
have a tradition of singing; in the old days our people did sing; this is
mentioned in legends and some songs have actually survived, which, it is true,
no one can now sing. Thus we have an inkling of what singing is, and
Josephine’s art does not really correspond to it. So is it singing at all? Is
it not perhaps just a piping? And piping is something we all know about, it is
the real artistic accomplishment of our people, or rather no mere
accomplishment but a characteristic expression of our life. We all pipe, but of
course no one dreams of making out that our piping is an art, we pipe without
thinking of it, indeed without noticing it, and there are even many among us
who are quite unaware that piping is one of our characteristics. So if it were
true that Josephine does not sing but only pipes and perhaps, as it seems to me
at least, hardly rises above the level of our usual piping—yet, perhaps her
strength is not even quite equal to our usual piping, whereas an ordinary
farmhand can keep it up effortlessly all day long, besides doing his work—if
that were all true, then indeed Josephine's alleged vocal skill might be
disproved, but that would merely clear the ground for the real riddle which
needs solving, the enormous influence she has.
After all, it is only a kind of piping that she produces. If
you post yourself quite far away from her and listen, or, still better,
put your judgment to the test, whenever she happens to be singing along with
others, by trying to identify her voice, you will undoubtedly distinguish
nothing but a quite ordinary piping tone, which at most differs a little from
the others through being delicate or weak. Yet if you sit down before her, it
is not merely a piping; to comprehend her art it is necessary not only to hear
but to see her. Even if hers were only our usual workaday piping, there is
first of all this peculiarity to consider, that here is someone making a
ceremonial performance out of doing the usual thing. To crack a nut is truly no
feat, so no one would ever dare to collect an audience in order to entertain it
with nut-cracking. But if all the same one does do that and succeeds in
entertaining the public, then it cannot be a matter of simple nut-cracking. Or
it is a matter of nut-cracking, but it turns out that we have overlooked the
art of cracking nuts because we were too skilled in it and that this newcomer
to it first shows us its real nature, even finding it useful in making his
effects to be rather less expert in nut-cracking than most of us.
Perhaps it is much the same with Josephine's singing; we
admire in her what we do not at all admire in ourselves; in this respect, I may
say, she is of one mind with us. I was once present when someone, as of course
often happens, drew her attention to the folk piping everywhere going on,
making only a modest reference to it, yet for Josephine that was more than
enough. A smile so sarcastic and arrogant as she then assumed I have never
seen; she, who in appearance is delicacy itself, conspicuously so even among
our people who are prolific in such feminine types, seemed at that moment
actually vulgar; she was at once aware of it herself, by the way, with her
extreme sensibility, and controlled herself. At any rate she denies any
connection between her art and ordinary piping. For those who are of the
contrary opinion she has only contempt and probably unacknowledged hatred. This
is not simple vanity, for the opposition, with which I too am half in sympathy,
certainly admires her no less than the crowd does, but Josephine does not want
mere admiration, she wants to be admired exactly in the way she prescribes,
mere admiration leaves her cold. And when you take a seat before her, you
understand her; opposition is possible only at a distance, when you sit before
her, you know: this piping of hers is no piping.
Since piping is one of our thoughtless habits, one might
think that people would pipe up in Josephine's audience too; her art makes us
feel happy and when we are happy we pipe; but her audience never pipes, it sits
in mouselike stillness; as if we had become partakers in the peace we long for,
from which our own piping at the very least holds us back, we make no sound. Is
it her singing that enchants us or is it not rather the solemn stillness
enclosing her frail little voice? Once it happened while Josephine was singing
that some silly little thing in all innocence began to pipe up too. Now it was
just the same as what we were hearing from Josephine; in front of us the piping
sound that despite all rehearsal was still tentative and here in the audience
the unself-conscious piping of a child; it would have been impossible to define
the difference; but yet at once we hissed and whistled the interrupter down,
although it would not really have been necessary, for in any case she would
certainly have crawled away in fear and shame, whereas Josephine struck up her
most triumphal notes and was quite beyond herself, spreading her arms wide and
stretching her throat as high as it could reach.
That is what she is like always, every trifle, every casual
incident, every nuisance, a creaking in the parquet, a grinding of teeth, a
failure in the lighting incites her to heighten the effectiveness of her song;
she believes anyhow that she is singing to deaf ears; there is no lack of
enthusiasm and applause, but she has long learned not to expect real
understanding, as she conceives it. So all disturbance is very welcome to her;
whatever intervenes from outside to hinder the purity of her song, to be
overcome with a slight effort, even with no effort at all, merely by
confronting it, can help to awaken the masses, to teach them not perhaps
understanding but awed respect.
And if small events do her such service, how much more do
great ones. Our life is very uneasy, every day brings surprises, apprehensions,
hopes, and terrors, so that it would be impossible for a single individual to
bear it all did he not always have by day and night the support of his fellows;
but even so it often becomes very difficult; frequently as many as a thousand
shoulders are trembling under a burden that was really meant only for one pair.
Then Josephine holds that her time has come. So there she stands, the delicate
creature, shaken by vibrations especially below the breastbone, so that one
feels anxious for her, it is as if she has concentrated all her strength on her
song, as if from everything in her that does not directly subserve her singing
all strength has been withdrawn, almost all power of life, as if she were laid
bare, abandoned, committed merely to the care of good angels, as if while she
is so wholly withdrawn and living only in her song a cold breath blowing upon
her might kill her.
But just when she makes such an appearance, we who are
supposed to be her opponents are in the habit of saying: "She can’t even
pipe; she has to put such a terrible strain on herself to force out not a
song—we can't call it song—but some approximation to our usual customary
piping." So it seems to us, but this impression although, as I said,
inevitable is yet fleeting and transient. We too are soon sunk in the feeling
of the mass, which, warmly pressed body to body, listens with indrawn breath.
And to gather around her this mass of our people who are
almost always on the run and scurrying hither and thither for reasons that are
often not very clear, Josephine mostly needs to do nothing else than take up
her stand, head thrown back, mouth half-open, eyes turned upwards, in the
position that indicates her intention to sing. She can do this where she likes,
it need not be a place visible a long way off, any secluded corner pitched on
in a moment's caprice will serve as well. The news that she is going to sing
flies around at once and soon whole processions are on the way there. Now,
sometimes, all the same, obstacles intervene, Josephine likes best to sing just
when things are most upset, many worries and dangers force us then to take
devious ways, with the best will in the world we cannot assemble ourselves as
quickly as Josephine wants, and on occasion she stands there in ceremonial
state for quite a time without a sufficient audience—then indeed she turns
furious, then she stamps her feet, swearing in most unmaidenly fashion; she
actually bites. But even such behavior does no harm to her reputation; instead
of curbing a little her excessive demands, people exert themselves to meet
them; messengers are sent out to summon fresh hearers; she is kept in ignorance
of the fact that this is being done; on the roads all around sentries can be
seen posted who wave on newcomers and urge them to hurry; this goes on until at
last a tolerably large audience is gathered.
What drives the people to make such exertions for
Josephine’s sake? This is no easier to answer than the first question about
Josephine's singing, with which it is closely connected. One could eliminate
that and combine them both in the second question, if it were possible to
assert that because of her singing our people are unconditionally devoted to
Josephine. But this is simply not the case; unconditional devotion is hardly
known among us; ours are people who love slyness beyond everything, without any
malice, to be sure, and childish whispering and chatter, innocent, superficial
chatter, to be sure, but people of such a kind cannot go in for unconditional
devotion, and that Josephine herself certainly feels, that is what she is
fighting against with all the force of her feeble throat.
In making such generalized pronouncements, of course, one
should not go too far, our people are all the same devoted to Josephine, only not
unconditionally. For instance, they would not be capable of laughing at
Josephine. It can be admitted: in Josephine there is much to make one laugh;
and laughter for its own sake is never far away from us; in spite of all the
misery of our lives quiet laughter is always, so to speak, at our elbows; but
we do not laugh at Josephine. Many a time I have had the impression that our
people interpret their relationship to Josephine in this way, that she, this
frail creature, needing protection and in some way remarkable, in her own
opinion remarkable for her gift of song, is entrusted to their care and they
must look after her; the reason for this is not clear to anyone, only the fact
seems to be established. But what is entrusted to one’s care one does not laugh
at; to laugh would be a breach of duty; the utmost malice which the most
malicious of us wreak on Josephine is to say now and then: "The sight of
Josephine is enough to make one stop laughing.”
So the people look after Josephine much as a father takes
into his care a child whose little hand—one cannot tell whether in appeal or
command—is stretched out to him. One might think that our people are not fitted
to exercise such paternal duties, but in reality they discharge them, at least
in this case, admirably; no single individual could do what in this respect the
people as a whole are capable of doing. To be sure, the difference in strength
between the people and the individual is so enormous that it is enough for the
nursling to be drawn into the warmth of their nearness and he is sufficiently
protected. To Josephine, certainly, one does not dare mention such ideas.
"Your protection isn't worth an old song," she says then. Sure, sure,
old song, we think. And besides her protest is no real contradiction, it is
rather a thoroughly childish way of doing, and childish gratitude, while a
father's way of doing is to pay no attention to it.
Yet there is something else behind it which is not so easy
to explain by this relationship between the people and Josephine. Josephine,
that is to say, thinks just the opposite, she believes it is she who protects
the people. When we are in a bad way politically or economically, her singing
is supposed to save us, nothing less than that, and if it does not drive away
the evil, at least gives us the strength to bear it. She does not put it in
these words or in any other, she says very little anyhow, she is silent among
the chatterers, but it flashes from her eyes, on her closed lips—few among us
can keep their lips closed, but she can—it is plainly legible. Whenever we get
bad news—and on many days bad news comes thick and fast at once, lies and
half-truths included—she rises up at once, whereas usually she sits listlessly
on the ground, she rises up and stretches her neck and tries to see over the
heads of her flock like a shepherd before a thunderstorm. It is certainly a
habit of children, in their wild, impulsive fashion, to make such claims, but
Josephine's are not quite so unfounded as children's. True, she does not save us
and she gives us no strength; it is easy to stage oneself as a savior of our
people, inured as they are to suffering, not sparing themselves, swift in
decision, well acquainted with death, timorous only to the eye in the
atmosphere of reckless daring which they constantly breathe, and as prolific
besides as they are bold—it is easy, I say, to stage oneself after the event as
the savior of our people, who have always somehow managed to save themselves,
although at the cost of sacrifices which make historians—generally speaking we
ignore historical research entirely—quite horror-struck. And yet it is true
that just in emergencies we hearken better than at other times to Josephine's
voice. The menaces that loom over us make us quieter, more humble, more submissive
to Josephine’s domination; we like to come together, we like to huddle close to
each other, especially on an occasion set apart from the troubles preoccupying
us; it is as if we were drinking in all haste—yes, haste is necessary,
Josephine too often forgets that—from a cup of peace in common before the
battle. It is not so much a performance of songs as an assembly of the people,
and an assembly where except for the small piping voice in front there is
complete stillness; the hour is much too grave for us to waste it in chatter.
A relationship of this kind, of course, would never content
Josephine. Despite all the nervous uneasiness that fills Josephine because her
position has never been quite defined, there is still much that she does not
see, blinded by her self-conceit, and she can be brought fairly easily to
overlook much more, a swarm of flatterers is always busy about her to this end,
thus really doing a public service—and yet to be only an incidental, unnoticed
performer in a corner of an assembly of the people, for that, although in
itself it would be no small thing, she would certainly not make us the
sacrifice of her singing.
Nor does she need to, for her art does not go unnoticed.
Although we are at bottom preoccupied with quite other things and it is by no
means only for the sake of her singing that stillness prevails and many a
listener does not even look up but buries his face in his neighbor's fur, so
that Josephine up in front seems to be exerting herself to no purpose, there is
yet something—it cannot be denied—that irresistibly makes its way into us from
Josephine's piping. This piping, which rises up where everyone else is pledged
to silence, comes almost like a message from the whole people to each
individual; Josephine's thin piping amidst grave decisions is almost like our
people's precarious existence amidst the tumult of a hostile world. Josephine
exerts herself, a mere nothing in voice, a mere nothing in execution, she
asserts herself and gets across to us; it does us good to think of that. A
really trained singer, if ever such a one should be found among us, we could
certainly not endure at such a time and we should unanimously turn away from
the senselessness of any such performance. May Josephine be spared from
perceiving that the mere fact of our listening to her is proof that she is no
singer. An intuition of it she must have, else why does she so passionately
deny that we do listen, only she keeps on singing and piping her intuition
away.
But there are other things she could take comfort from: we
do really listen to her in a sense, probably much as one listens to a trained
singer; she gets effects which a trained singer would try in vain to achieve
among us and which are only produced precisely because her means are so inadequate.
For this, doubtless, our way of life is mainly responsible.
Among our people there is no age of youth, scarcely the
briefest childhood. Regularly, it is true, demands are put forward that the
children should be granted a special freedom, a special protection, that their
right to be a little carefree, to have a little senseless giddiness, a little
play, that this right should be respected and the exercise of it encouraged;
such demands are put forward and nearly everyone approves them, there is
nothing one could approve more, but there is also nothing, in the reality of
our daily life, that is less likely to be granted, one approves these demands,
one makes attempts to meet them, but soon all the old ways are back again. Our
life happens to be such that a child, as soon as it can run about a little and
a little distinguish one thing from another, must look after itself just like
an adult; the areas on which, for economic reasons, we have to live in
dispersion are too wide, our enemies too numerous, the dangers lying everywhere
in wait for us too incalculable—we cannot shelter our children from the
struggle for existence, if we did so, it would bring them to an early grave.
These depressing considerations are reinforced by another, which is not depressing:
the fertility of our race. One generation—and each is numerous—treads on the
heels of another, the children have no time to be children. Other races may
foster their children carefully, schools may be erected for their little ones,
out of these schools the children may come pouring daily, the future of the
race, yet among them it is always the same children that come out day after day
for a long time. We have no schools, but from our race come pouring at the
briefest intervals the innumerable swarms of our children, merrily lisping or
chirping so long as they cannot yet pipe, rolling or tumbling along by sheer
impetus so long as they cannot yet run, clumsily carrying everything before
them by mass weight so long as they cannot yet see, our children! And not the
same children, as in those schools, no, always new children again and again,
without end, without a break, hardly does a child appear than it is no more a
child, while behind it new childish faces are already crowding so fast and so
thick that they are indistinguishable, rosy with happiness. Truly, however
delightful this may be and however much others may envy us for it, and rightly,
we simply cannot give a real childhood to our children. And that has its
consequences. A kind of unexpended, ineradicable childishness pervades our
people; in direct opposition to what is best in us, our infallible practical
common sense, we often behave with the utmost foolishness, with exactly the
same foolishness as children, senselessly, wastefully, grandiosely,
irresponsibly, and all that often for the sake of some trivial amusement. And
although our enjoyment of it cannot of course be so wholehearted as a child's
enjoyment, something of this survives in it without a doubt. From this
childishness of our people Josephine too has profited since the beginning.
Yet our people are not only childish, we are also in a sense
prematurely old. Childhood and old age come upon us not as upon others. We have
no youth, we are all at once grown-up, and then we stay grown-up too long, a
certain weariness and hopelessness spreading from that leaves a broad trail
through our people's nature, tough and strong in hope that it is in general.
Our lack of musical gifts has surely some connection with this; we are too old
for music, its excitement, its rapture do not suit our heaviness, wearily we
wave it away; we content ourselves with piping; a little piping here and there,
that is enough for us. Who knows, there may be talents for music among us; but
if there were, the character of our people would suppress them before they
could unfold. Josephine on the other hand can pipe as much as she will, or sing
or whatever she likes to call it, that does not disturb us, that suits us, that
we can well put up with; any music there may be in it is reduced to the least
possible trace; a certain tradition of music is preserved, yet without making
the slightest demand upon us.
But our people, being what they are, get still more than
this from Josephine. At her concerts, especially in times of stress, it is only
the very young who are interested in her singing as singing, they alone gaze in
astonishment as she purses her lips, expels the air between her pretty front
teeth, half dies in sheer wonderment at the sounds she herself is producing and
after such a swooning swells her performance to new and more incredible
heights, whereas the real mass of the people—this is plain to see—are quite
withdrawn into themselves. Here in the brief intervals between their struggles
our people dream, it is as if the limbs of each were loosened, as if the
harried individual once in a while could relax and stretch himself at ease in
the great, warm bed of the community. And into these dreams Josephine's piping
drops note by note; she calls it pearl-like, we call it staccato; but at any
rate here it is in its right place, as nowhere else, finding the moment—wait
for it—as music scarcely ever does. Something of our poor brief childhood is in
it, something of lost happiness that can never be found again, but also something
of active daily life, of its small gaieties, unaccountable and yet springing up
and not to be obliterated. And indeed this is all expressed not in full round
tones but softly, in whispers, confidentially, sometimes a little hoarsely. Of
course it is a kind of piping. Why not? Piping is our people's daily speech,
only many a one pipes his whole life long and does not know it, where here
piping is set free from the fetters of daily life and it sets us free too for a
little while. We certainly should not want to do without these performances.
But from that point it is a long, long way to Josephine's
claim that she gives us new strength and so on and so forth. For ordinary
people, at least, not for her train of flatterers. "What other explanation
could there be?"—they say with quite shameless sauciness—"how else
could you explain the great audiences especially when danger is most imminent,
which have even often enough hindered proper precautions being taken in time to
avert danger." Now, this last statement is unfortunately true, but can
hardly be counted as one of Josephine’s titles to fame, especially considering
that when such large gatherings have been unexpectedly flushed by the enemy and
many of our people left lying for dead, Josephine, who was responsible for it
all, and indeed perhaps attracted the enemy by her piping, has always occupied
the safest place and was always the first to whisk away quietly and speedily
under cover of her escort. Still, everyone really knows that, and yet people
keep running to whatever place Josephine decides on next, at whatever time she
rises up to sing. One could argue from this that Josephine stands almost beyond
the law, that she can do what she pleases, at the risk of actually endangering
the community, and will be forgiven for everything. If this were so, even
Josephine's claims would be entirely comprehensible, yes, in this freedom to be
allowed her, this extraordinary gift granted to her and to no one else in
direct contravention of the laws, one could see an admission of the fact that
the people do not understand Josephine, just as she alleges, that they marvel
helplessly at her art, feel themselves unworthy of it, try to assuage the pity
she rouses in them by making really desperate sacrifices for her and, to the
same extent that her art is beyond their comprehension, consider her
personality and her wishes to lie beyond their jurisdiction. Well, that is
simply not true at all, perhaps as individuals the people may surrender too
easily to Josephine, but as a whole they surrender unconditionally to no one,
and not to her either.
For a long time back, perhaps since the very beginning of
her artistic career, Josephine has been fighting for exemption from all daily
work on account of her singing; she should be relieved of all responsibility
for earning her daily bread and being involved in the general struggle for
existence, which—apparently—should be transferred on her behalf to the people
as a whole. A facile enthusiast—and there have been such—might argue from the
mere unusualness of this demand, from the spiritual attitude needed to frame
such a demand, that it has an inner justification. But our people draw other
conclusions and quietly refuse it. Nor do they trouble much about disproving
the assumptions on which it is based. Josephine argues, for instance, that the
strain of working is bad for her voice, that the strain of working is of course
nothing to the strain of singing, but it prevents her from being able to rest
sufficiently after singing and to recuperate for more singing, she has to
exhaust her strength completely and yet, in these circumstances, can never rise
to the peak of her abilities. The people listen to her arguments and pay no
attention. Our people, so easily moved, sometimes cannot be moved at all. Their
refusal is sometimes so decided that even Josephine is taken aback, she appears
to submit, does her proper share of work, sings as best she can, but all only
for a time, then with renewed strength—for this purpose her strength seems
inexhaustible—she takes up the fight again.
Now it is clear that what Josephine really wants is not what
she puts into words. She is honorable, she is not work-shy, shirking in any
case is quite unknown among us, if her petition were granted she should
certainly live the same life as before, her work would not at all get in the
way of her singing nor would her singing grow any better—what she wants is
public, unambiguous, permanent recognition of her art, going far beyond any
precedent so far known. But while almost everything else seems within her
reach, this eludes her persistently. Perhaps she should have taken a different
line of attack from the beginning, perhaps she herself sees that her approach
was wrong, but now she cannot draw back, retreat would be self-betrayal, now
she must stand or fall by her petition.
If she really had enemies, as she avers, they could get much
amusement from watching this struggle, without having to lift a finger. But she
has no enemies, and even though she is often criticized here and there, no one
finds this struggle of hers amusing. Just because of the fact that the people
show themselves here in their cold, judicial aspect, which is otherwise rarely
seen among us. And however one may approve it in this case, the very idea that such
an aspect might be turned upon oneself some day prevents amusement from
breaking in. The important thing, both in the people's refusal and in
Josephine's petition, is not the action itself, but the fact that the people
are capable of presenting a stony, impenetrable front to one of their own, and
that it is all the more impenetrable because in other respects they show an
anxious paternal care, and more than paternal care, for this very member of the
people.
Suppose that instead of the people one had an individual to
deal with: one might imagine that this man had been giving in to Josephine all
the time while nursing a wild desire to put an end to his submissiveness one
fine day; that he had made superhuman sacrifices for Josephine in the firm
belief that there was a natural limit to his capacity for sacrifice; yes, that
he had sacrificed more than was needful merely to hasten the process, merely to
spoil Josephine and encourage her to ask for more and more until she did indeed
reach the limit with this last petition of hers; and that he then cut her off
with a final refusal which was curt because long held in reserve. Now, this is
certainly not how the matter stands, the people have no need of such guile,
besides, their respect for Josephine is well tried and genuine, and Josephine's
demands are after all so far-reaching that any simple child could have told her
what the outcome would be; yet it may be that such considerations enter into
Josephine's way of taking the clatter and so add a certain bitterness to the
pain of being refused.
But whatever her ideas on the subject, she does not let them
deter her from pursuing the campaign. Recently she has even intensified her
attack; hitherto she has used only words as her weapons but now she is
beginning to have recourse to other means, which she thinks will prose more
efficacious but which we think will run her into greater dangers.
Many believe that Josephine is becoming so insistent because
she feels herself growing old and her voice falling off, and so she thinks it
high time to wage the last battle for recognition. I do not believe it.
Josephine would not be Josephine if that were true. For her there is no growing
old and no falling off in her voice. If she makes demands it is not because of
outward circumstances but because of an inner logic. Sloe reaches for the
highest garland not because it is momentarily hanging a little lower but
because it is the highest; if she had any say in the matter she would have it
still higher.
This contempt for external difficulties, to be sure, does
not hinder her from using the most unworthy methods. Her rights seem beyond
question to her; so what does it matter how she secures them; especially since
in this world, as she sees it, honest methods are bound to fail. Perhaps that
is why she has transferred the battle for her rights from the field of song to
another which she cares little about. Her supporters have let it be known that,
according to herself, she feels quite capable of singing in such a way that all
levels of the populace, even to the remotest corners of the opposition, would
find it a real delight, a real delight not by popular standards, for the people
affirm that they have always delighted in her singing, but a delight by her own
standards. However, she adds, since she cannot falsify the highest standards
nor pander to the lowest, her singing will have to stay as it is. But when it
comes to her campaign for exemption from work, we get a different story; it is
of course also a campaign on behalf of her singing, yet she is not fighting
directly with the priceless weapon of her song, so any instrument she uses is
good enough. Thus, for instance, the rumor went around that Josephine meant to
cut short her grace notes if her petition were not granted. I know nothing
about grace notes, and have never noticed any in Josephine's singing. But
Josephine is going to cut short her grace notes, not, for the present, to cut
them out entirely, only to cut them short. Presumably she has carried out her
threat, although I for one have observed no difference in her performance. The
people as a whole listened in the usual way without making any pronouncement on
the grace notes, nor did their response to her petition vary by a jot. It must
be admitted that Josephine's way of thinking, like her figure, is often very
charming. And so, for instance, after that performance, just as if her decision
about the grace notes had been too severe or too sudden a move against the
people, she announced that next time she would put in all the grace notes
again. Yet after the next concert she changed her mind once more, there was to
be definitely an end of these great arias with the grace notes, and until her
petition was favorably regarded they would never recur. Well, the people let
all these announcements, decisions and counterdecisions go in at one ear and
out at the other, like a grown-up person deep in thought turning a deaf ear to
a child’s babble, fundamentally well disposed but not accessible.
Josephine, however, does not give in. The other day, for
instance, she claimed that she had hurt her foot at work, so that it was
difficult for her to stand up to sing; but since she could not sing except
standing up, her songs would now have to be cut short. Although she limps and
leans on her supporters, no one believes that she is really hurt. Granted that
her frail body is extra sensitive, she is yet one of us and we are a race of
workers; if we were to start limping every time we got a scratch, the whole
people would never be done limping. Yet though she lets herself be led about
like a cripple, though she shows herself in this pathetic condition oftener
than usual, the people all the same listen to her singing thankfully and
appreciatively as before, but do not bother much about the shortening of her
songs.
Since she cannot very well go on limping forever, she thinks
of something else, she pleads that she is tired, not in the mood for singing,
feeling faint. And so we get a theatrical performance as well as a concert. We
see Josephine's supporters in the background begging and imploring her to sing.
She would be glad to oblige, but she cannot. They comfort and caress her with
flatteries, they almost carry her to the selected spot where she is supposed to
sing. At last, bursting inexplicably into tears, she gives way, but when she
stands up to sing, obviously at the end of her resources, weary, her arms not
widespread as usual but hanging lifelessly down, so that one gets the
impression that they are perhaps a little too short—just as she is about to
strike up, there, she cannot do it after all, an unwilling shake of the head
tells us so and she breaks down before our eyes. To be sure, she pulls herself
together again and sings, I fancy, much as usual, perhaps, if one has an ear
for the finer shades of expression, one can hear that she is singing with
unusual feeling, which is, however, all to the good. And in the end she is
actually less tired than before, with a firm tread, if one can use such a term for
her tripping gait, she moves off, refusing all help from her supporters and
measuring with cold eyes the crowd which respectfully makes way for her.
That happened a day or two ago; but the latest is that she
has disappeared, just at a time when she was supposed to sing. It is not only
her supporters who are looking for her, many are devoting themselves to the
search, but all in vain; Josephine has vanished, she will not sing; she will
not even be cajoled into singing, this time she has deserted us entirely.
Curious, how mistaken she is in her calculations, the clever
creature, so mistaken that one might fancy she has made no calculations at all
but is only being driven on by her destiny, which in our world cannot be
anything but a sad one. Of her own accord she abandons her singing, of her own
accord she destroys the power she has gained over people's hearts. How could
she ever have gained that power, since she knows so little about these hearts
of ours? She hides herself and does not sing, but our people, quietly, without
visible disappointment, a self-confident mass in perfect equilibrium, so
constituted, even though appearances are misleading, that they can only bestow
gifts and not receive them, even from Josephine, our people continue on their way.
Josephine's road, however, must go downhill. The time will
soon come when her last notes sound and die into silence. She is a small
episode in the eternal history of our people, and the people will get over the
loss of her. Not that it will be easy for us; how can our gatherings take place
in utter silence? Still, were they not silent even when Josephine was present?
Was her actual piping notably louder and more alive than the memory of it will
be? Was it even in her lifetime more than a simple memory? Was it not rather
because Josephine's singing was already past losing in this way that our people
in their wisdom prized it so highly?
So perhaps we shall not miss so very much after all, while
Josephine, redeemed from the earthly sorrows which to her thinking lay in wait
for all chosen spirits, will happily lose herself in the numberless throng of
the heroes of our people, and soon, since we are no historians, will rise to
the heights of redemption and be forgotten like all her brothers.
Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir
Copyright Schocken Books Inc.
