The Dedalus Book of Austrian Fantasy;1890-2000

by Mike Mitchell

  Every time he told me about this he went quite pale with fear at the thought that she might have managed to get the gun while he was out. I responded to his story with the feeling, faint and tentative at first, then stronger and stronger, that that would almost be the best thing for the couple, and that fate had chosen me to help these two wretched people. Now, of course, I know that it was a crime not to stifle that thought at birth. How can a foolish young man presume to take into his own clumsy hands the destiny of two people whose past he was not part of and whose secret thoughts and hidden desires he cannot know.

  But in those days I was young and inexperienced and full of misunderstood catchwords and immature ideas, and I felt so sorry for my poor friend, scarcely thirty years old and already grey-haired.

  These are the two people in my story. Russians, both of them, I think I said that already, didn’t I? They had very little contact with Parisian society, nor did I ever meet any of our countrymen in their house. Sometimes I had the feeling people were avoiding them. Once someone told me the husband had betrayed a Russian student, who was wanted by the police, and was, anyway, a Russian government agent. But I gave little weight to that kind of claim; such stories are told about many of my countrymen who, for whatever reason, live abroad, and it’s always more or less the same story.

  And now I will tell you of the day when I committed a crime – for it was a crime – and of the green vase with the Chinese dragons covered in red scales which was the constant focus, day and night, of the invalid wife’s tender, longing glances. And if I recount the events of that day, in which my part, as I am well aware, was not one to be proud of, then I do it without shame and without regret, for it all happened a long time ago and I know now that it was not I who was to blame, but that unfortunate delusion, the silly idea that I had been chosen by fate to put an end, with a surgeon’s steady hand, to the wife’s torment and the husband’s misery. It was on that very day that the feeling within me was stronger than ever before, for the young woman had had a very bad night and none of the three of us had had a wink of sleep. It was only as morning came that things improved slightly, the man had left the house, dog-tired, to go to his work, and she was in her wheelchair. I was sitting opposite her, but I have forgotten how the the conversation came round to her younger days and the time she spent in Zurich. ‘Would you like to see an old picture of me?’ she asked, and when I said yes, she thought for a while and then said, in a voice which sounded perfectly calm and nonchalant, ‘Bring me the green vase, there on the mantelpiece.’ She said it quite calmly, but I could feel the blood rushing to my head, my knees trembled and I suddenly knew that this was the long-sought hiding-place of the gun. I just managed to stand up, brought the vase and began to empty it out onto the table; I was acting as if in a dream. On top was a letter and one pink and one light green ribbon, then a fan and a withered posy and finally the photographs: two pictures of herself, then the portrait of a young man with intelligent, handsome features. ‘That is my friend Sacha,’ she said, and I knew that he was dead without her saying so. And I found a photo of her husband too. It was from his university days and showed him surrounded by his fellow students, and I was in the picture as well, looking rather comical because I had a long wooden student’s pipe in my mouth. And then, right at the bottom, was the case with the revolver.

  My hand was trembling as I took the case out of the vase, for this was the moment of action, that I knew, and I was in no doubt as to what I should do. I wanted, I had to hand the gun over to the sick woman, even though others in their stupidity might say it was murder and call me to account for it. If no one had the courage, then I did, and I was doing what was best for this man and this woman. And I remembered a few words that I had once read on an old French medal, ‘pour avoir bien servi’. I went all soft inside at the thought of the service I was doing my friend, and then I heard her voice, a cool, calm voice, saying, ‘Please, let me have the case,’ and I pulled myself together and managed to say, ‘I will open it myself.’

  When I felt the revolver in my hands, I was suddenly struck with cowardice, all my decisions and plans collapsed and I was seized with horror at the service the invalid woman was demanding of me. The thought of the responsibility I was taking weighed down on me, what I really wanted to do was to throw the gun as far away from me as possible, instead of giving it to her, and the woman must have read all that in my eyes. ‘See,’ she said, ‘the thought of this revolver was my one comfort during those terrible nights, the only thing I had to cling on to. My whole life over the last three years has been a constant movement towards and away from that green vase. Sometimes my wheelchair was so close that I could almost have touched it with my hand. Once my husband almost discovered the hiding-place. He was within a hair’s-breadth of my secret. I felt my heart stand still with fear.’ And then, abruptly and quite simply and without any drama in her voice, she said, ‘Please give me the gun.’

  I wouldn’t have done it. I wouldn’t have given her the gun, I would have thrown it away into a corner of the room; but at that moment I saw her husband coming through the garden. And the way he dragged his feet, slowly and wearily, over the gravel, back bowed, a broken man, and the way he nodded to me with such an old, earnest face, all gave me back my assurance. I was the surgeon once more who would make the healing incision with a cool eye and steady hand. I was no longer in any doubt as to what I should do and as I looked out of the window and returned the husband’s greeting, I handed the revolver over the table to the woman.

  What happened next is quickly told. I was suddenly filled with a terrible fear of what was bound to happen in the next few seconds. ‘Don’t watch!’ a voice screamed within me. ‘I can’t bear to see her raise the gun, put it to her forehead, press the trigger. I can’t bear to see that.’ I turned my back on her and faced the door. I heard him coming up the stairs. Then he opened the door, said ‘hello,’ was stretching out his hand, coming towards me. Two steps and he stopped, turned as white as the walls and screamed, ‘Jonas, Jonas, what have you done!’ And, ‘For God’s sake, Jonas, take the gun away from her, quick!’

  I still had time to do it. With one step I could have been beside her, torn the gun from her grasp. But I stayed with my back to her and clenched my teeth. Stand firm! Just for this one moment! The healing incision. I am his doctor. He’ll thank me for it later. Pour avoir bien servi!

  He behaved in an odd way. Instead of rushing up and taking the gun away from her, he had fallen to his knees. For a few seconds there was complete silence in the room, I could hear his teeth grinding. Then he suddenly screamed, a terrible, loud scream, ‘Don’t do it, Maria! Don’t do it! I swear I didn’t write the letter, Sacha wrote it himself.’ He gave one more scream, which went right through me, suddenly turned to me and said, ‘Jonas, what have I ever done to you?’ and gave me a look which I could not understand. Then he buried his face in his hands. And that was when the shot rang out.

  When the smoke had dispersed I must have given a scream like a madman. The woman was still sitting in her wheelchair, still unharmed, the smoking revolver in her hand. On the floor lay her husband, motionless, spattered with blood, a bullet through his forehead.

  I just stood there, I didn’t know what to do. I tried to work out exactly what had happened, but the whole room was spinning. I bent over the dead man. His face was twisted in fear. I tried to recall where I was and what it all meant, but my mind was empty apart from a few ridiculous words going round and round inside it, pour avoir bien servi; and then I heard the invalid woman’s voice, cold and cutting and dripping with hatred as she said:

  ‘He was the one who betrayed Sacha to the police, the swine. Thank you for helping me, I have waited three years for this moment.’

  The story was over. The old man leant back in his chair and stared with his dull, weary eyes at the ceiling. The rest of us sat there in horrified silence, only the two lively girls from Vienna, who were playing with the Captain’s bulldog in the corner, began to
giggle and laugh, because at the end of the story it suddenly turned out that the old gentleman, who so far had been known as Mr. J. Schwemmer, was called Jonas – Jonas!

  Outside the Law

  Franz Kafka

  Outside the Law stood a doorkeeper. A man from the country came to this doorkeeper and asked to go into the Law. But the doorkeeper said he could not let him go in just then. The man thought this over and then asked whether that meant he might be allowed to enter the Law later. ‘It is possible,’ said the doorkeeper, ‘but not now.’ As the door of the Law was open as always and the doorkeeper stepped to one side, the man bent down to see into the interior. When the doorkeeper noticed that, he laughed and said, ‘If you are so tempted, why don’t you try to go in, even though I have forbidden it? But remember, I am powerful. And I am only the lowest doorkeeper. But outside each room you pass through there is a doorkeeper, each one more powerful than the last. The sight of just the third is too much even for me.’ The man from the country had not expected such difficulty; the Law is supposed to be available to everyone and at all times, he thought, but as he took a closer look at the doorkeeper in his fur coat, with his large, pointed nose, his long, thin, black Tartar moustache, he decided it would be better to wait until he was given permission to enter. The doorkeeper gave him a stool and let him sit down at the side of the door. There he sat for days and years. He made many attempts to be allowed in and tired the doorkeeper with his requests. Quite often the doorkeeper would briefly interrogate him, asking him questions about the place he came from and many other things, but they were uninterested questions, such as important people ask, and at the end he always said he could not let him in yet. The man, who had equipped himself well for the journey, used everything, no matter how valuable, to bribe the doorkeeper. The latter accepted everything, but said, as he did so, ‘I am only accepting this so that you will not think there was something you omitted to do.’ Over the many years the man observed the doorkeeper almost uninterruptedly. He came to forget the other doorkeepers and this first one seemed to him to be the only obstacle to his entry into the Law. He cursed his misfortune, loud and recklessly in the first years, later, as he grew old, he just muttered to himself. He grew childish and since, as a result of his years of studying the doorkeeper he had come to recognise even the fleas on his fur collar, he asked the fleas to help him and persuade the doorkeeper to change his mind. Finally his vision grew weak and he did not know whether it was really becoming dark round him, or whether his eyes were deceiving him. But now, in the dark, he could distinguish a radiance, which streams, inextinguishable, from the door of the Law. Now he had not much longer to live. Before his death all the things he had experienced during the whole time merged in his mind into a question he had not yet put to the doorkeeper. He gestured to him, since he could no longer raise his stiffening body. The doorkeeper had to bend down low to him, for the difference in height had changed considerably, to the man’s disadvantage. ‘What is it you want to know now?’ asked the doorkeeper, ‘you are insatiable.’ ‘Everyone seeks the Law,’ said the man, ‘so how is it that in all these years no one but I has asked to be let in?’ The doorkeeper realised that the man was nearing his end and so, in order to be audible to his fading hearing, he bellowed at him, ‘No one else could be granted entry here, since this entrance was intended for you alone. I am going to go and shut it now.’

  A Country Doctor

  Franz Kafka

  I was in a very awkward predicament: an urgent journey lay ahead of me; a seriously ill boy was expecting me in a village ten miles distant; heavy snowstorms covered the wide open spaces between myself and him; I had a carriage, a light one with large wheels, just the type of thing for our country roads; wrapped up in my fur, the bag with my instruments in my hand, I was in the courtyard, all ready to go; but there was no horse – no horse. My own horse had died the previous evening as a result of overexertion during this icy winter; the maid was running round the village to find a horse to borrow; but it was pointless, I knew, and I stood there, useless, more and more covered in snow, becoming more and more immobile. The girl appeared at the gate, alone, waving the lantern. Of course, who is going to lend out their horse now, and for such a journey? I strode across the yard once more; I could see no way of getting there. Distracted, tormented, I kicked out at the broken door of the pigsty, which had not been used for years. It opened, flapping back and forward on its hinges. Warmth, and a smell like that of horses came out. There was a dim stable lamp swinging from a cord inside. A man, crouching down in the low shed, turned his open, blue-eyed face to me.

  ‘Shall I harness the horse?’ he asked, crawling out on all fours. I did not know what to say, and just bent down to see what else there was in the sty. The maid was standing beside me.

  ‘You never know what there is in your own house,’ she said, and we both laughed.

  ‘Gee-up, brother! Gee-up sister!’ shouted the groom, and two horses, powerful, strong-flanked beasts, appeared one after the other in the doorway, which they filled completely, and pushed their way out, their legs tucked into their bodies, lowering their well-formed heads like camels, propelled by the force of their twisting rumps alone. But immediately they stood up straight, long-legged, the steam rising thickly from their bodies.

  ‘Help him,’ I said, and the willing girl hurried to get the groom the harness for the carriage. But scarcely was she beside him, than the groom puts his arms round her and rams his face against hers. She gives a scream and flees back to me; the marks of two rows of teeth are stamped in red on the girl’s cheek.

  ‘You animal!’ I scream in fury, ‘do you want the whip?’ But immediately I remember that he is a stranger; that I do not know where he came from, and that he is helping me of his own free will when everyone else has failed me. As if he guesses my thoughts, he does not take my threat amiss, just turns round once to look at me, harnessing the horses all the while.

  ‘Get in,’ he says then, and indeed, everything is ready. I realise that I have never ridden behind such a fine pair of horses and climb in with a sense of pleasure.

  ‘But I will drive,’ I say. ‘You don’t know the way.’

  ‘Certainly.’ he says, ‘I’m not going, anyway, I’m staying with Rosa.’

  ‘No!’ Rosa shouts, and runs into the house with an accurate presentiment of her fate. I hear the clatter of the chain as she fastens it; I hear the lock engage; I also see her put out all the lights, first in the hall and then rushing right through the house, so that she cannot be found.

  ‘You are coming with me,’ I say to the groom, ‘or the drive is off, however urgent it is. I wouldn’t dream of giving you the girl as the price for the use of the horses.’

  ‘Off you go!’ he says, clapping his hands and the carriage is swept away, like logs in the current. The last thing I hear is the door of the house breaking and splintering under the groom’s attack, then my eyes and ears are filled with a booming which penetrates all my senses equally. But only for a moment for, as if the patient’s courtyard opened directly onto my gate, I am there already; the horses are standing quietly; the snowstorm has stopped; moonlight all around; the parents of the sick lad rush out of the house; his sister behind them; they almost lift me out of the carriage; I can understand nothing of their confused chatter; in the sickroom the air is scarcely breathable; the stove has not been tended and is smoking; I am going to open the window; but first I want to see the sick boy. Skinny, not feverish, not cold, not hot, with empty eyes and no nightshirt, the boy pushes himself up under the eiderdown, winds his arms around my neck, whispers in my ear, ‘Doctor, let me die.’

  I look round. No one has heard; his parents are standing silent, bent forward, awaiting my verdict; his sister has brought a chair to put my bag on. I open the bag and rummage around among my instruments; the boy keeps on reaching out towards me from the bed to remind me of his request. I pick up a pair of tweezers, examine them in the candlelight and put them back. ‘Well,’ comes the blas
phemous thought, ‘the gods do really help in cases like this, send the missing horse, add a second to speed things up and, to cap it all, throw in a groom …’ Only now do I remember Rosa. What can I do, how can I save her, how can I pull her away from under that groom, ten miles distant, uncontrollable horses hitched to my carriage? Those horses which have somehow managed to loosen their harnesses, and now, I don’t know how, push open the windows from outside. Each one puts its head in through one window and, unruffled by the screams of the family, look at the sick boy.

  ‘I’m going to drive back right away,’ I think, as if the horses were asking me to leave, but I let the boy’s sister, who thinks I am overcome by the heat, take my fur coat. A glass of rum is put out for me, the old man pats me on the shoulder, the sacrifice of his treasure justifies the familiarity. I shake my head; I would feel sick trapped in the old man’s narrow circle of thoughts; that is the only reason I refuse the drink. The mother is standing by the bed, luring me over there. I follow and, as my horse neighs out loud to the ceiling, place my head on the boy’s chest, my wet beard making him quiver. It confirms what I already know: the boy is well, his circulation could be better, his doting mother could give him less coffee, but he’s well, the best thing would be to kick him out of bed. But it’s not my place to set the world to rights, so I leave him be. I am appointed by the district and do my duty to the utmost, to the point where it is almost too much. Badly paid, I’m still generous and obliging to the poor. On top of all that I have to provide for Rosa; the lad may well be right and I want to die as well. What am I doing here, in this endless winter! My horse has died and there’s no one in the village who will lend me his. I have to get my horses from the pigsty; if they didn’t just happen to be horses I would have to drive a pair of sows. That’s the way things are. And I nod to the family. They have no idea about all this, and if they did, they wouldn’t believe it. Writing prescriptions is easy, but to communicate with people beyond that is difficult. Well, that’s my visit here over, I’ve been called out unnecessarily once again, I’m used to that, the whole district uses the night bell to torment me, but that I had to sacrifice Rosa this time into the bargain, that beautiful girl who’s been living in my house for years without my hardly ever noticing her – the sacrifice is too great, and I have to think up all kinds of far-fetched explanations for myself, to stop me laying into this family which, with the best will in the world, cannot give Rosa back to me. But then, as I’m closing my bag and waving to them to bring my fur, and the family are all standing together, the father sniffing at the glass of rum in his hand, the mother, probably disappointed with me – what on earth do these people expect? – biting her lips with tears in her eyes, the sister waving a blood-soaked handkerchief, I somehow find that I am, all things considered, prepared to admit that the lad is perhaps ill. I go over to him, he smiles at me, as if I were bringing him the most strengthening of soups – aha, now both horses are neighing, I presume the noise is prescribed by higher authority, to facilitate the examination – and I discover that, yes, the lad is ill. A wound the size of the palm of the hand has opened up in his right side, in the hip region. Pink, in many shades, dark at the centre, getting lighter towards the edges, delicately grained, the blood seeping through unevenly, spread out like an open-cast mine. That was from a distance. From close to a further complication appears. Who could see it without giving a soft whistle? Maggots, as thick and as long as my little finger, pink from their own blood and bespattered with the boy’s, are twisting up, with tiny heads and lots of legs, towards the light, anchored to the inside of the wound. Poor lad, there’s nothing I can do for you. I have found your great wound; this flower in your side will destroy you. His family is happy to see me busy; his sister’s telling his mother, his mother his father, his father a few visitors who are coming in through the moonlight of the open door, on tiptoe, balancing with arms outstretched.