The Dedalus Book of Austrian Fantasy;1890-2000

by Mike Mitchell

  There he lay, and one might have thought he had died already. As it was slowly beginning to get dark, the dogs, one after the other, had left through the half-open door, only the wire-haired pointer with the grumpy expression was sitting beside his master, and one of his broad, shaggy paws lay on Christoph Detlev’s large grey hand. Now, too, most of the servants were outside in the white corridor, where it was lighter than in the room; those, however, who had stayed in the room, darted occasional, covert glances at the huge, darkening heap in the middle, wishing that it were nothing more than a large suit of clothes over some broken thing.

  But there was still something. There was a voice, the voice that no one had known seven weeks ago. It was not Christoph Detlev, to whom this voice belonged, it was Christoph Detlev’s death.

  For many, many days now, Christoph Detlev’s death had been living at Ulsgard, and talking to everyone, and demanding. It demanded to be carried, demanded the Blue Room, demanded the small salon, demanded the dining hall. Demanded the dogs, demanded that they laugh, talk, play and be quiet and all at the same time. Demanded to see friends, women and men who had died, and demanded to die itself: demanded. Demanded and screamed.

  For, when the night had come and those of the exhausted servants who were not sitting at his bedside were trying to get to sleep, Christoph Detlev’s death would scream, scream and groan and roar so long and so incessantly that the dogs, which at first joined in with their howls, fell silent and did not dare lie down and, standing on their long, slim, quivering legs, were afraid. And when, across the wide, silver, Danish summer night, those in the village heard his roaring, they got out of bed, as they did during a storm, dressed and stayed sitting round a lamp without saying a word until it was past. And pregnant women who were close to their time were put into the farthest rooms and into the cupboard beds behind the most solid doors; but they heard it, they heard it as if it were in their own bodies, and they begged to be allowed to get up, and came, white and wide-eyed, and sat down with the others with their blurred faces. And the cows that were calving at that time were helpless and withdrawn, and one foetus that refused to come was torn, dead, with all the entrails from the cow’s body. And all did their daily tasks badly and forgot to bring in the hay, because during the day they feared the night and because they were so weary from being startled into wakefulness and staying up so long that they could not concentrate on anything. And when they went to the white, peaceful church on Sunday they prayed there might be no more Lord of Ulsgard, for this lord was a terrible lord. And from the pulpit the minister proclaimed aloud what they were all thinking and praying, for he too had lost his nights and could not understand God. And it was proclaimed by the bell, which had found a fearful rival which sounded the whole night through and against which it was powerless, even if it set all its metal ringing. Everyone proclaimed it, and there was one of the young men who had dreamt he went to the castle and murdered the master with his dung-fork, and they were all so incensed, so overwrought, that they all listened as he told his dream, and, without at all realising it, looked at him to see if he were up to such a deed. That was what people felt and said in the whole area where a few weeks before everyone had loved the chamberlain and felt sorry for him. But although that was what people said, nothing was changed. Christoph Detlev’s death, that was residing at Ulsgard, refused to be rushed. It had come for ten weeks, and ten weeks it stayed. And during those weeks it was more of a lord than Christoph Detlev Brigge had ever been, it was like a king people call ‘the Terrible’, later on and for ever.

  It was not the death of some ordinary man with the dropsy, this was the evil, princely death that the chamberlain had borne within him throughout his life and nourished with his own substance. All the excess of pride, will power and lordly strength, which he had been unable to use up, even in his calm days, had entered into his death, into the death that now sat at Ulsgard, squandering.

  What a look would the chamberlain have given any man who had demanded he should die a different death than this one. He died a hard death.

  Signor Scurri

  or

  Herr von Yb’s Strange Voyage to the Seaside

  Fritz von Herzmanovsky-Orlando

  The story that follows will perhaps appear a little absurd to some readers, and at one particular point it even exudes an unpleasant and mysteriously compelling potency. In spite of that, it will be found to be infinitely instructive, especially for the younger generation, since the foundations of their outlook rest on the shifting sands of logical principles which are hopelessly out-of-date and no longer sufficient for the age of cosmic tension in which we live. In my opinion, a story such as this should be included in school anthologies for the sixth form: displayed among the classical columns of worthy native prose and the plaster torsos of officially sanctioned poetry, it can only be all the more effective. As to its truth, there can be no doubt at all. My friend, Achatius von Yb, was already of mature years at the time of the experiences I am about to relate, which he confided to me in a quiet moment; moreover he was a man who was most honourable, truthful and – as this story will show – punctilious to the point of excess.

  Destiny had laid him in a magnificent cradle of gold, or rather, as precision is our aim, in a cradle of ebony inlaid with the most fantastic and confusing patterns of imitation ivory, as the tyrannical fashion of the Deuxième Empire demanded. In spite of all this ivory splendour and in spite of the stylish matching musical chamber pot, our hero’s path through life was overgrown with – and this is no exaggeration – thistles the height of houses. The devil only knows in what conjunction the great constellations stood, which thundered out the hour of his birth! At that time no one thought of casting horoscopes. The people who do that now were in those days making their living partly by dealing in insect powders and patent remedies for corns, and partly through advertisements with graphic illustrations which promised, depending on sex, an ample bosom or luxuriant moustache. It was an age of liberalism, an age of enlightenment; rubber galoshes were the latest thing, and everyone who was anyone at all was proud to trace their ancestry back to the ape, as was demonstrated daily and with crystal clarity by Science triumphant. Respectable families almost came to blows in the course of impassioned debates on the feasibility and advantages of horse-drawn trams, and on such occasions many an idealistic son was told never to darken the paternal door again, so that he left to seek his fortune in America or some other primitive country.

  But even these luminous times still had their fortune-telling gypsies. One such forced her way to the bed, where von Yb’s mother lay in the throes of childbirth, and proclaimed in prophetic tones that the child should beware of water … of great quantities of water … and of dung … yes, of dung too … in fact, of anything connected with waste products, she added, staring fixedly into the distance.

  It gave Frau von Yb a terrible shock; moreover, she was furious that such common things as water and dung should be mentioned in a refined household such as hers, and refused the witch payment. At that, the rather grubby spawn of the land of the Pharaohs made her departure amid a splutter of curses.

  It soon became apparent that the seed of her prophecy had fallen on fruitful ground. Age of Science or no, a family council was called, chaired by Uncle Doublear (a man known throughout the city for his caution: he even had a tiny lightning-conductor on his top-hat complete with silver chain dragging along the ground behind). Everyone was in complete agreement that, as far as little Achaz’s future career was concerned, there were two things that must be avoided at all costs: he should never become an admiral, nor a member of the landed gentry. Instead, Uncle Doublear recommended a dry profession, guaranteed free from all contact with waste products: the boy should suck at the breasts of Science. The ladies leapt up in indignation and a flush of modesty … but they were mollified somewhat when they realised that that was Uncle Doublear’s flowery way of saying that Achatius von Yb should become a scholar of note, which was agreed upon.


  I had the pleasure of making his acquaintance at the Congress of the Academy of Science, an occasion, by the way, on which more violent passions were aroused than at any other meeting of that august body. Someone stirred up a veritable hornet’s nest with his question as to whether it was Archimedes or Ramon Lull who should be regarded as the inventor of the game of solitaire. It set off a furious squawking; bald-headed luminaries dashed heavy tomes to the ground in clouds of dust, or, trembling with passion, grabbed each other by the buttons of their frock coats; some even spat at each other’s feet. Only the sudden appearance of a scholarly profile with an icy glint in his spectacles brought some light into the dark confusion. It was the great physicist, Ernst Mach, and my admiration for him dates from that first meeting. There was a gentleman beside me who was literally crowing with enthusiasm. We shook hands, and that was how I made the acquaintance of Achatius von Yb, whom I was to meet again so many years later and under such melancholy circumstances.

  At the time of our first meeting he must have been in his early thirties, though his age was impossible to determine. His sparse, silky-thin hair was colourless, his posture somewhat hunched, his dress slovenly and, although of the very best quality, always looked crumpled and faded, even when it had just come from the tailor. His parents, who had died early, while he was still at university, had occupied a genteelly sombre apartment in a district of monumental architecture of which they had assigned to him a suite of rooms looking out onto the courtyard. Even after the death of his parents, von Yb continued to inhabit his gloomy bachelor’s chambers, absorbed in abstruse studies and bizarre reflections. For all that, he was no misanthrope. Twice a year he gave great soirées, when his house would blaze with the light of countless candles and the salons, empty for the rest of the year, would glitter with the illusion of life. When they were over, the deathly silence would gather round him again, and for months he would not leave his quarters. It would never have occurred to anyone to prophesy that one day he would have to scurry shyly from one to another of fifty cheap lodging houses, and all because of a minor lapse that was the result of an unguarded moment.

  It began one morning when Herr von Yb left his dark-panelled study, to which in the early summer only an occasional stray beam of gold penetrated (when one did, it produced a bewitching display of melancholy brevity). He went to his library, a narrow room with a row of arched windows giving onto a small half-lit courtyard. Suddenly the unworldly scholar realised that the room, redolent with the smell of books, was brighter than usual. He went to one of the arched windows and saw up above, in the narrow opening of the courtyard, sunlight sparkling like jewels, saw a veritable orgy of glittering rays, saw a crystalline sky of that deep blue which usually only occurs over glaciers, and saw lustrous white clouds sailing across, like hosts of snowy angels in their swift flight. Deep down below, at the bottom of the courtyard, beside some mossy patches on the rough-hewn ashlar, a pitiful bird was twittering in its cage. Immediately opposite von Yb was a glassed-in corridor leading to the space where the trunks and cases were stored in the palatial house adjoining his own. In this room, with its jumble of luggage, an open gas flame burnt day and night in a frosted glass bowl; von Yb had often noticed it without paying any particular attention.

  This time, however, the suggestive power of this combination of circumstances was such that he was overcome with a longing he had never before experienced for the beauty of the world outside. With a joyful feeling such as only children feel on the eve of holidays, he set about realising this moment of inspiration. He resolved to go on a voyage, a long voyage in the course of which he would see the sea for the first time.

  He decided on Genoa as the scene of the magnificent spectacle he was already looking forward to. This decision may well have been subconsciously motivated by the fact that his grandfather had fought with Radetzky in Northern Italy in 1849 and had laid down his life for his country there. Thus there was a blood tie with the region, and Herr von Yb, the grandson, set off, drawn by a some mysteriously compelling force to this Saxony beyond the Alps, a province that was mysterious and yet equally full of bourgeois enterprise.

  After a pleasant journey in the half-empty midnight express he saw Carinthia through the morning mist. The train rushed along beside huge lakes, through gloriously dark-green forests then, finally, past gigantic peaks with a dusting of fresh snow piled one above the other, to reach the Italian frontier in the early afternoon. Here a new world began abruptly: dusty stone-built houses, a noticeable lack of trees, dirty washing fluttering in the breeze, donkey-carts in deserted streets and, permeating it all, a smell that was a mixture of oil, vinegary wine, smoke and the sickly-sweet stench of rooms where a corpse has been laid out. After an unnecessarily long delay for customs – it became obvious to von Yb that he was by now the only passenger – the journey continued. The train rattled at a truly frightening speed along the rocky precipices, was engulfed in the countless tunnels by a crescendo of inexplicable claps of thunder and scattered such a shower of sparks at every curve that the passenger had to duck.

  With much clunking and clanking the train stopped at a small station. One excessively elegant lady got on, sat opposite von Yb and stared fixedly at him out of mysteriously large eyes. At the next station the apparition abandoned him and its place was taken by a man in black whose skinny frame was surmounted by a tiny, olive-yellow bird’s head covered in deep furrows which were filled with a dark black patina such as is found on antique bronzes when they have just been dug up. After a while spent sunk in gloomy reflections, this man took a pinch of snuff from a little box, which then proceeded to emit the strains of a hymn to the long-lost General Palafox, the Hero of Saragossa. Then two large flies, which he must have brought with him, flew out. At this the man, clearly au fait with what was expected of a man of breeding, began to chase after them with a blue handkerchief, stepping, as he did so, rather heavily on von Yb’s toes with his buckled shoes. This quite naturally led to a conversation. He was a Spaniard, explained the man in black, and this was the fourth time he had almost reached the frontier of Austria, the goal of a lifetime’s longing, and once more he had had to turn back because of a lack of money. Whilst von Yb was still wondering at the old man’s disconcertingly high voice, the latter told him that he had been a priest and, in spite of his calling, had three times suffered knife-wounds, most recently and painfully whilst reading the lesson – from the Lamentations of Jeremiah – on the Maundy Thursday of the last Ordinary Jubilee.

  Von Yb expressed his deepest sympathy and asked him why he had left the priesthood. At this the other muttered something about needing to be a whole man, shrugged his shoulders and stared silently out of the window; this he continued to do until the train drew into the station at Udine.

  The station concourse echoed with noisy life. Everywhere there were bright lights, and the platform was overcrowded with people getting in the way of the porters and occasionally treading on sleeping children, who evidently regularly spent the night there. Our traveller was ushered into the restaurant, where bottles of icy sulphur water and pungently bitter liqueurs were ranged in rows of strident colour along a gilded sideboard which resembled a church altar. Generals in magnificent uniforms promenaded up and down with fat ladies with warts sprouting black hair who fanned themselves vigorously. The throng was enlivened by the twitter of strikingly pretty girls in gaudy dresses, some with combs in their hair and lace shawls.

  As he was serving some southern dish, a waiter with an eerie, fixed glass eye extolled the charms of a girl who possessed an unusual physical defect. Von Yb rejected the suggestion with indignation. Deprived of his major source of income, the garçon tried to avenge himself by giving copper coins that were no longer legal tender in change: soldi from the last doge of Venice, one of the hastily minted coins of Theodor von Neuhof, the ‘summer king’ of Corsica praised by Voltaire; there was even an ornate admission token to a Neapolitan brothel from the time of Casanova. Von Yb was so delighted by them
that he almost missed the shrill departure bell.

  The train thundered off into the night. After only a short time, however, it started a mournful whistling, which rose and fell for several minutes, after which it stopped and then puffed its way back into the station.

  Scarcely had it arrived than the station master and all available staff rushed to the engine, where a loud debate was carried on by everyone at once, gesticulating wildly with the lanterns. Von Yb joined the circle but, as the discussion was in the Friulian dialect, all he could make out was that ‘It’ had been seen, quite distinctly, and that now just the same would happen as had seventeen years ago. On no condition would they continue, neither he, Cesare, the driver, nor Pompeio, the stoker.

  It did not matter whom von Yb asked, to him they were as silent as the grave. Eventually he found an old porter who, in return for an excessive tip, told him that it was the “funeral procession of the gnomes of Verona” which had never before been seen so close to Udine and which presaged disaster. And for the love of God his honour was not to tell on him, it would cost him his job, his livelihood; the ghostly apparition was an official railway secret that was kept carefully concealed from outsiders. There was no question of the journey continuing along this stretch of the railway. And indeed, the passengers were transferred to another train consisting of antiquated carriages from the earliest days of rail travel, which, only dimly lit and rocking gently, set off into the mild summer night.

  Von Yb looked round the compartment. The atmosphere of the good old days of his grandparents struck a nostalgic chord that brought a tear to his eye. The ceiling was decorated with colourful tracery, the walls were neatly covered in waxcloth with a pattern of grey stars, the seats were deep and comfortable, the windows, rounded at the bottom as in old coaches, had bead-work loops to rest your arms in. He was about to lean back dreamily when he noticed a concealed door, which he would not have suspected in the confined space. His scholar’s inquiring mind was immediately roused. He went into the neighbouring compartment.