Steppenwolf
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PREFACE. This book contains the records left us by a man whom, according to the expression he often used himself, we called the Steppenwolf. Whether this manuscript needs any introductory remarks may be open to question. I, however, feel the need of adding a few pages to those of the Steppenwolf in which I try to record my recollections of him. What I know of him is little enough. Indeed of his past life and origins I know nothing at all. Yet the impression left by his personality has remained, in spite of all, a deep and sympathetic one. Some years ago the Steppenwolf, who was then approaching fifty, called on my aunt to inquire for a furnished room. He took the attic room on the top floor and the bedroom next to it, returned a day or two later with two trunks and a big case of books, and stayed nine or ten months with us. He lived by himself very quietly, and but for the fact that our bedrooms were next door to each other, which occasioned a good many chance encounters on the stairs and in the passage, we should have remained practically unacquainted. For he was not a sociable man. Indeed he was unsociable to a degree I had never before experienced in anybody. He was in fact, as he called himself, a real wolf of the steppes, a strange, wild, shy, very shy, being from another world than mine. How deep the loneliness into which his life had drifted on account of his disposition and destiny, and how consciously he accepted this loneliness as his destiny, I certainly did not know until I read the records he left behind him. Yet before that, from our occasional talks and encounters, I became gradually acquainted with him and I found that the portrait in his records was in substantial agreement with the paler and less complete one that our personal acquaintance had given me. By chance I was there at the very moment when the Steppenwolf entered our house for the first time and became my aunt's lodger. He came at noon. The table had not been cleared and I still had half an hour before going back to the office. I have never forgotten the odd and very conflicting impressions he made on me at this first encounter. He came through the glazed door having just rung the bell and my aunt asked him in the dim light of the hall what he wanted. The Steppenwolf, however, first threw up his sharp, closely cropped head and sniffed around nervously before he either made any answer or announced his name. Oh, it smells good in here, he said, and at that he smiled and my aunt smiled too. For my part I found this manner of introducing himself ridiculous and was not favorably impressed. However, said he, I've come about the room you have to let. I did not get a good look at him until we