The Quest

Then, as true as you live, there came a gold-bebraided small boy from the big hotel, bearing a note so perfumed that the close little room was filled with its sweetness; and the beer drinkers sniffed it with astonishment.

It was from Mijnheer, requesting Johannes to come to him, but without the monkey.

"Go by yourself," said Marjon. "Kees mustn't go along because he has an odor of another sort. You may say that I prefer that of Kees."

Mijnheer van Lieverlee was drinking strong black coffee from small metal cups, and smoking a Turkish pipe with an amber mouthpiece. At each pull of the pipe the water gurgled. He wore black silk hose and polished shoes, and he invited Johannes to a seat beside him on the broad divan.

After a pause he addressed Johannes as follows: "There – that's it, Johannes! Sit quite still, and while we talk try to maintain yourself in the uppermost soul-sphere." Then, after a period of pipe-gurgling, Mijnheer van Lieverlee asked: "Are you there?"

Johannes was not quite sure about it, but he nodded assent, being very curious concerning what was to follow.

"I can ask you that, Johannes, because we understand each other instantly. You and I, you know – you and I! We knew each other before we were in the body. It is not necessary for us to make each other's acquaintance after the manner of ordinary, commonplace people. We can instantly do as you and Windekind did. We are not learning to know, but we recognize each other."

Johannes listened attentively to this interesting and extraordinary statement. He looked at the speaker respectfully, and tried indeed to recall him, but without success.

"You will already have wondered that I should know about your adventures. But that is not so very marvelous, for there is some one else to whom you appear to have told them. Do you know whom I mean?"

Johannes knew well whom he meant.

"Really, you ought not to have done it, Johannes. When I heard of it I said at once that it was a great pity. The world is too coarse and superficial in such matters. People do not comprehend them. You must not permit that which is rare and delicate to be desecrated and contaminated by the foul touch of the indifferent public – the stupid multitude. Do you understand?"

Johannes nodded, the pipe gurgled, and Mijnheer van Lieverlee took a sip of coffee. Then, in a lighter tone, and gesticulating airily with his slender, white hands, he resumed:

"The veil of Maja, Johannes, obscures the vision of all who are created – of all who breathe and have aspirations – of all who enjoy and suffer. We must extricate ourselves from it. Will you have some coffee, too?"

"If you please, Mijnheer," said Johannes.

"A cigarette? Or do you not smoke yet?"

"No, Mijnheer."

"It is true, Windekind did not like tobacco smoke. But I do not smoke as common people do, for the fun of it or because it is pleasant. No! I permit myself to do so through my lowest qualities – the eighth and ninth articulations of Karma-Rupa. My higher attributes – the fourth and fifth – remain apart; just as a gentleman from the balcony of his country-seat views his cattle grazing. The cows do nothing but eat ravenously, digest, and eliminate. The gentleman makes of them a poem or a picture."

A pause, accompanied by the gurgling of the pipe.

"Well, as I have said, we should not cast before swine the pearls of our higher sensations and states of mind. We, Johannes – you and I, who have already passed through many incarnations – we are aged souls – we have already worn the veil so long that it is beginning to wear out. We can see through it. Now, we must not have too much to do with those young novices who are just setting out. We should decline, retrograde, and lose the benefit of our costly conquests."

That all seemed quite just to Johannes, and very flattering moreover. And it was also now made clear to him why he got on so poorly with people. He was of age, among minors.

"We, Johannes," resumed Van Lieverlee, "belong, so to speak, to the veterans of life. We bear the scars of countless incarnations, the stripes of many years – or, rather, let me say ages – of service. We must maintain our rank, and not throw to the dogs our dignity and prestige. This you will do if you continue to noise abroad all your intimate experiences; and I believe you still have a childish and quite perilous tendency that way."

Johannes thought of his many faults and blunders – of his stupidity in asserting his wisdom at school, and in blurting out Windekind's name before the men. Ashamed, he sat staring into his empty coffee cup.

"In short, it evidently was intended that you should find me, this time – me and Countess Dolores. For you must know that you have found two souls of the supremest refinement. Exactly what you need."

"Yes, how charming she is, and how lovely the children are!" chimed in Johannes, enthusiastically.

"Not on account of her being a countess," said Van Lieverlee, with a gesture of disdain. "Titles signify nothing with us. My family is perhaps more distinguished than hers. But she is the sister of our souls – a blending of glowing passion and lily-white purity."

At these fine words of Van Lieverlee, uttered with great care and emphasis, Johannes felt himself coloring with embarrassment. How did any one dare to say such words as if it were nothing?

"Are you a poet?" he asked bashfully.

"Certainly, I am. But you are one also, my boy. Did you not know it? Well, then, let me tell you, you are a poet. You see, at present you are the ugly duckling that for the first time meets a swan. Do you understand? Do not be afraid, Johannes. Do not be afraid, brother swan! Lift up your yellow beak – I shall not oppress you, but embrace you."

Johannes did lift up his yellow beak, but, instead of embracing him, Van Lieverlee took out the diamond-bedecked pocket-book, and began writing in it, hurriedly. Then, as he put away book and pencil, he smilingly said: "One must hold fast to good ideas. They are precious."

"Well, then," he resumed, drawing at his pipe again, while again it gurgled loudly, "you really could not have managed better, in the pursuit of your great aim, than to have come to us. We know the explanation of all those singular adventures with Pluizer and Windekind, and we can show you the infallible way to what you are seeking. That is, we go together."

Now was not that good news for Johannes? How stupid of Marjon not to be willing to go too! He listened thoughtfully to what followed.

"Give me your attention, Johannes, and I will tell you who all those beings are that you have encountered. I will also solve the riddle of their power, and tell you what there remains for us to do."

At that moment the door opened, and Countess Dolores came in with the children. She was dazzling, with magnificent jewels sparkling on her bare neck and arms. The children were in white. The grand table-d'hôte was over, and the countess had now come to drink her Arabic coffee with Van Lieverlee.

"Ah!" said she, looking at him through her lorgnette, "Have you a visitor? Shall we disturb you? But, really you can make such delicious coffee, and I cannot endure the hotel coffee!"

"Where is the monkey? Where is the monkey?" cried the two children, running up to Johannes.

Johannes stood up, in confusion. The two winsome children encircled him. He scented the exquisite perfume of their luxuriant hair and their rich dress. He felt their warm breath, their soft hands. He was charmed, through and through – possessed by delightful emotions. The little girls caressed him while they, asked after the monkey, until the gently reproachful "Olga! – Frieda!" sounded again.

Then they went and sat with Johannes on the sofa, one each side of him. The mother lighted a cigarette.

"Now proceed with your talking," said she, "so that I can be learning a little." Then in English: "If you listen quietly, girls, and are not troublesome, you may stay here."

Van Lieverlee had risen, put aside his Turkish pipe, grasped the lapel of his skirtless dinner coat with his left hand, and was gesticulating with the right, in front of Johannes and the countess.

"I ought to explain to him who Windekind, Wisterik, or – What is his name? Wistarik?.. and Pluizer, are, Mevrouw. You know, do you not, those characters in Johannes' life?"

"I – I – do not recall them," said the lady, "but that is nothing – speak out. Do not mind me. I do not count. I am only a silly creature."

"Ah! If people in general were similarly silly! Windekind, Wisterik, and Pluizer, then Johannes, are nothing other than "dewas," or elementals, materialized by a supreme effort of the will. They are personified, or rather impersonated, natural power – plasmatic appearances from the crystal-clear, elementary oneness. Windekind is harmonic poetry, or, rather, poetic harmony – the original dawning, or, rather, the dawning originality, of our planetary aboriginal consciousness. Wistarik, on the contrary, or Pluizer, is demoniacal antithesis – the eternally skeptical negation, or negative skepticism. They are like all ebb and flow, like the swinging pendulum, like winter and summer, eternally struggling with each other – continually destroying and forever reviving, the indispensable, mutually excluding, and yet again mutually complementing, first principles of dualistic monism, or of monistic dualism."

"How interesting!" murmured the countess; and turning to Johannes, she asked very seriously: "And have you really met with these elementals?"

"I – I believe I have," stammered Johannes.

"But, Van Lieverlee, then he truly is a medium! Do you not think so?"

"Of the second grade, Mevrouw, undoubtedly. Perhaps, with study and proper culture, he will attain the first rank."

"But would it not be well for us to introduce him to the Pleiades?"

And turning toward Johannes, she said affably: "We have a circle, you know, for the study of the higher sciences, and for the general improvement of our 'Karma.'"

"An ideal society, with a social ideal," supplemented Van Lieverlee.

That sounded very alluring to Johannes. Would Frieda and Olga belong to it also? he wondered.