‘No, stay!’ cried the baron in despair. ‘Stay with me. Speak to me still. It makes me so happy. And you mustn’t think that simply means I have become accustomed to you. Your staying will be something quintessentially real.’
The apparition shook its head earnestly. ‘I may not.’
‘Not even if I go down on my knees to you? Not even if I tell you that your words could be of infinite, decisive significance for my soul’s salvation, that my eternal redemption is in your hands?’
‘It is a higher law that compels me to go.’
In a gesture of humility such as he had never before known, the minister bowed his head. Gently, the apparition held out its hand to him.
‘Then tell me one thing at least. What shattering experiences and lofty studies, what scholarship and distinguished instruction did you go through in your Sylph world to achieve such a sublime level of understanding that after death your whole punishment was a mild embarrassment? You must have studied with philosophers and been a philosopher yourself, or were you a great, misunderstood artist, even an apostle, prophet, founder of a religion?”
‘No,’ replied the apparition with a curiously restrained smile, ‘my life was nothing out of the ordinary. I could not stand injustice, it is true, but I had little time for study. My profession, however, was what might be called a philosophical one. You see, I was often alone, in a dark, narrow chamber, far from other people, all on my own. That kind of thing invites reflection. In your earthly world you would call me something like a chimney sweep.’
The minister started. ‘Chimney sweep … chimney sweep,’ he repeated, gibbering.
When he looked up the apparition had disappeared without trace.
Suddenly he gave a shout and rushed over to the telephone. ‘Hello, is that the lunatic asylum?
It was the nurse on night duty.
‘Is Arthur Bruchfeß there? The chimney sweep who attempted to assassinate me this afternoon? Did he not die just half an hour ago?’ The minister was convinced the apparition he had just been speaking to must have been the ghost of that man.
‘I will check immediately, Your Excellency.’
After a while, during which the tension stretched almost to breaking point, he returned. ‘No, the patient is alive, even remarkably calm and cheerful. He has not gone to sleep, but is walking up and down in his cell, warbling away to himself. The doctors have not been able to find the least trace of mental disturbance, not even of any abnormal stimulation of the nervous system.’
‘Release the man. Immediately,’ panted the minister. ‘The whole case against him must be abandoned. We must change everything, the law, the whole world, everything … Have you understood? He is to be released immediately.’
‘Yes, Your Excellency.’
Breathing heavily, the minister collapsed into his chair. All the time he was gently slapping himself on the head, as if to rouse himself to comprehension of the unutterable.
Then there was a rustling from the doorway.
It was the beautiful Gabrielle. The loud conversation had not woken her, but the ringing of the telephone had. ‘When are you coming?’ she said, pursing her lips in a pout. She stood there, shivering slightly since she was wearing nothing but her thin, semi-transparent nightdress with just two light-blue silk ribbons over her gleaming shoulders. Her unsophisticated, young face, her delicate, rounded arms and the slight, apple-smooth curve of her small breasts: the most natural things in the world, and promising the oblivion of intimacy and the accustomed sweetness of unconscious repose. A stronger man than the baron would have been unable to resist the gentle power of this ravishing sight. In a moment he was beside her. ‘How long do I have to go on waiting, all by myself?’ she breathed tenderly, as he clasped her to him with a wild joy and a deep sigh of relief. He shook himself free of the horror, which with his accustomed wisdom he had already filed under the heading of ‘dream’, or ‘temporary nervous disorder’, and abandoned himself to the sweet, motherly warmth of sleep her body exuded, and the gentle touch of a loose lock of hair like a willowy wand on his cheek.
The Kiss of the Stone Woman
Franz Theodor Csokor
It was about two o’clock in the morning and the disc of the moon was dissolving beneath a bank of mist in the western sky as the lieutenant and his platoon reached the enemy town.
Often enough in the course of the dreary march they had been asleep on their feet, and now more than one of them blundered into the wrought-iron gates of the suburb they were passing through, and yet they stumbled doggedly on. Here they felt even more deserted and forlorn than outside the town on the track bordered by the wall of dark trees. In the semi-dark the bare trees of the avenue looked charred. Small villas squatted palely behind the sparse foliage of clumps of bushes which raised their twigs like hackles in front of them. They all seemed to have been abandoned, and the lieutenant did not even bother to stop, since none of them seemed to offer a billet large enough for the whole unit for the rest of this autumn night, already quivering with the approach of morning. So the column wound its way through a gateway in a massive tower into the old town. There was a soft clinking as the ranks broke step. Here marching was much more difficult than on the broad highway. Alleys suddenly shot off, confusingly haphazard. The cobbles were a hindrance, too, buckling the feet: they were bumpy, as if they were being squeezed up by the ancient houses flanking the street which cowered there beside the road, low and chalk-white, in an attitude of senile malevolence. And not a sound nor light in any of them; only here and there, outside gaping doors dripping with blackness, stood abandoned household effects. Wailing from behind broken window-panes suggested abandoned infants; when torches slashed through the darkness, it was cats that scurried out of bare rooms. The men would have liked to clamp a rest onto such incidents; mercilessly the lieutenant drove them on. The houses looked ready to pounce, their exits yawning black like tunnel openings, and, although there seemed no reason to fear an enemy attack, in view of the many reports of partisan activity he felt it was not advisable to halt outside them, let alone camp out in one. The main contingent could do that when they arrived the next day; the advance guard needed open space around their quarters, in an emergency they would also have to serve as a fortress.
But such a place was not that easy to find, and so they marched on in growing irritation through this dead waste of stone, where the echo of their steps created an ambush at every corner. The skein of alleys became more and more warped and cramped, as if twisted by a gigantic pair of pliers, impossible to disentangle. Then, after twenty minutes of weary tramping, around a tight bend the cathedral square abruptly opened out before the exhausted men, broad, sprinkled with nooks and crannies, paraffin lamps on its stone arcades glowing like bloody nails. And opposite them something needle-sharp steepled up from a huge dark mass, slitting the midnight-blue sky, whilst its unfinished twin tower peered at them dispiritedly over the high-pitched minster roof, as if it had made a similar attempt and then slumped back down.
The men straightened up, broke the silence; one sang. They were the first peaceful lights their eyes had seen in weeks of blazing forests and burning farmsteads. Soon the window of one of the dark houses round the square must surely pierce the night with its friendly yellow glow, full of the promise of rest! Their hope was not deceived. One building, detached from the others, had a red lamp burning over the lintel; as they approached they saw the bright spot of a lamp on the first floor and the glitter of light flashing through a gap in the shutters of a ground-floor window. The lieutenant sent men to reconnoitre the house, and it turned out to be precisely what he was looking for, even though the exterior seemed so strangely derelict and eerie to him, as if it were the product of depravity and decay, that he made a cautious circuit of it himself. On all sides it was separated from its neighbours, with the additional protection against attack from the rear of a broad, dark canal. The façade was set against the cathedral, which returned its look defiantly. The single entrance
was on this side too, high, well-preserved double doors. He ordered weapons at the ready as the bell was rung. After a while there was a shuffling of footsteps and the rasp of a key in the lock, then the doors creaked open.
An old woman appeared, wrapped up in a few clothes she had thrown on. ‘What do you want?’ she murmured. ‘The girls have left.’
‘What do you think?’ growled the sergeant. ‘Warm beds and no bugs.’ The man next to him switched on his torch. ‘What do we need girls for? We’ve got you!’ In the bright beam the old woman screwed up her face to such ugliness that the raucous laughter came tumbling out of the platoon and she joined in with a toothless giggle.
‘Stop messing around, men,’ said the lieutenant urgently, then, turning to the old woman, ‘Have you room for us?’
‘And how long for?’ added the comedian with the torch.
She grinned. ‘Until Judgment Day, sonny, if you like.’
‘Sergeant,’ ordered the lieutenant, ‘take three men, comb the building and report back here.’
‘And you can be our guide, my pretty maiden,’ said the sergeant, pulling the old woman along by the shoulder.
When they had gone, the rest unbuckled their knapsacks and squatted down, their knees drawn up with their rifles across them. It was drowsily warm in the hallway; added to that was a strange, overpowering smell, which struck every one of them the moment they entered, a sickly, rotten smell that might come from the mouldy walls. ‘Make-up on old apples,’ someone said. The sergeant and his men reappeared from the stairs, grinning and winking, and solved the puzzle. He had not noticed anything suspicious, but he had figured out the previous use of the building and revealed it to his superior officer, only with difficulty maintaining the seriousness appropriate to an official report. His announcement was greeted with stifled laughter until the lieutenant’s command to find somewhere to sleep put a stop to it.
The old woman lit a lamp and hobbled along in front of them. On the first floor she unlocked a door which had the extra protection of an iron grille and the soldiers, apart from one whom the lieutenant left on the landing, stamped into a spacious room with the light they had seen from the market square outside hanging from the ceiling under a red vellum shade. It was overheated and the smell etched itself even more strongly on the stale air than in the corridor, but the soldiers paid that as little attention as the garish prints of Rubensesque deities on the walls and all the tawdry splendour of the room. All they had eyes for were the six-foot-long plush armchairs grouped around circular stone tables. Hardly had the officer given permission than they were stretched out on them, almost dead to the world. The old woman seemed disappointed. ‘Why all the hurry? Each of the fine gentlemen could have had a room to himself. The little doves have all flown.’ But none of them felt like getting up again and the lieutenant thought it better to keep them all together. ‘But it’s no place for you here, captain,’ she went on.
He hesitated. ‘Only if there’s a room nearby.’
‘Along the corridor, captain, it’s just along a short corridor,’ she assured him. ‘Make up your mind. I’ll get the bed ready anyway, just in case.’
With that she limped off without waiting for his answer. The lieutenant still felt uneasy about the whole arrangement. ‘A second guard downstairs!’ he ordered. ‘Outside the old woman’s door. Any volunteers?’ The young soldier who had teased her in the hall stood up. ‘Here, sir! I’m wide awake enough to catch any of you who fancies slipping into her bedroom,’ he joked, turning to his comrades, who grunted sleepy denials of any such intentions. The old woman appeared again, ‘Ready, captain.’
They went out into the corridor, followed by the young soldier. Through the window, that the lieutenant ordered her to shut fast, they could see the mass of the cathedral looming over the roofs, dark and heavy, as if it were made of bronze. The lieutenant indicated it to the old woman, ‘What do you call the church?’
‘It is the cathedral of Jehan the Warrior; he had it built seven hundred years ago in memory of his dead wife.’
‘She was a martyr?’
The old woman nodded. ‘They say her corpse had no head and in its place on the skeleton lay a swan’s skull. The inhabitants believe she protects the town; they prayed at her tomb yesterday, before they fled.’
‘And you, why did you stay?’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I know your language; I’ve done nothing, you wouldn’t harm me. This is the room, captain.’ Turning round, she noticed the other soldier. ‘What does he want?’
‘He will be on watch in the corridor.’
‘At your boudoir door,’ crooned the soldier.
‘God, such a young thing,’ said the old woman, touched with compassion. ‘Wait, I’ll put a glass of wine outside the door.’ The old woman held the lantern over the stair-well and let him go on ahead. Mechanically, the lieutenant registered her shadow; curving round the snail-shell wall of the stairs, it seemed to pounce on the guard’s shadow. ‘Such a young thing!’ he heard her giggle through her cough; then, all at once, it was dark and still.
The lieutenant opened the door to his room. A paralysing warmth clutched at him. A match replaced the weak light of his torch, but he almost jumped with fright when it flared up. It blazed back at him a hundredfold from all sides, and when the two candles on the oak tables cast their flickering light, he was astonished to see that the walls and ceiling of the room were covered with square mirrors. Looking up, he felt as if he were standing at the heart of a crystal, for above him were fantastically crinkled rooms ranged one over the other, with disjointed reflections of himself and the candles upside down inside them. In spite of this proliferation, the light from the candles did not bring brightness; it somehow seemed to contain darkness, as if seen through sooty window-panes. With a shake of the head, the lieutenant began to inspect the room. Beside the door roared a well-stoked iron stove, its angled pipe eating a black hole in the wall. A wardrobe with a mirror front and a glass-topped wash-stand gave the room a touch of opulence, which was underlined by the blood-red velvet armchair by the window. The most bewildering item, however, was the massive four-poster bed, whose black drapes made it look as if some noble were lying in state there. In order to avoid the temptation to stretch out on it, the lieutenant, overcoming his curiosity, did not touch the curtains, but first of all searched through the rest of the furniture to see if he could find a needle and thread, of which he was in urgent need. The wardrobe contained nothing but a pair of stiletto-heeled slippers and fragments of twigs; all the more numerous were the things the occupant had left behind on the wash-stand when she fled: make-up, soaps, bottles of perfume. But what he was looking for was not there, no more than in the drawer, which revealed a tube of lip-salve and the photograph of a jockey punctured with pins, documenting a wretched existence eked out among blows, exploitation and hysteria. These thoughts sent a rush of scorching blood to the lieutenant’s face as they awoke the picture of the little actress he had left behind, unprotected; he tore open his uniform and went to the window, where he had to break the glass with his bayonet because the bolt had jammed in the heat. He breathed in deeply as he leant out. Below him the canal rippled darkly; occasionally something even blacker glided across it, but that could have been a delusion from his overheated brain. The only thing left to be done before going to sleep was to take the map and make a quick sketch of tomorrow’s march. He pulled the armchair up to the table and started by plotting in the route they had taken since leaving the regiment yesterday. But he could not find the name of the town. Or were his shimmering eyes already failing him entirely? He was dully aware of a swarm of memories, plans, desires buzzing round his head: was he hearing them, thinking them, seeing them … ? He could not distinguish between them any more; the one thing he did know was that he had to get up out of the soft upholstery of the armchair if he did not want his eyelids to fuse together, and he felt himself stand up ponderously and set off towards the swirl of fresh air at the window. But the way there led past the b
ed, surely a soft bed with fresh linen such as he had not slept in for months. His hands refused to obey; they parted the curtains…
He started back. There was already someone lying on the pillows.
The lieutenant rubbed his eyes and forehead, but the apparition remained: a woman, a sleeping woman. All his tiredness left him, such was the spell her face cast over him. And yet it was hardly what he would have called beautiful. It had an ageless expression, and only the dishevelled dark blond hair gave it a suggestion of youth, though there was also something virginally austere and capricious about its shape. The forehead was large for the rest of the features. The hard, thin nose that sprang from the slender, arched brows held a hint of crookedness, and deep furrows stretched down from the tight nostrils to clasp the lips. They, too, had something odd about the way they were set: compared with the full, rounded curve of the upper lip, the lower one looked as if it had been ground down and was pale, almost bloodless, giving the mouth a constant, almost frozen smile. The closed lids were bluish, as if stretched taut over brass spheres, suggesting deep sleep, but abruptly, as though they felt the brush of other eyes, a movement appeared in them which quivered through the whole body, dislodging the blanket for a round shoulder to take shape over the black silk of the nightdress. At the same time the eyes opened; neither fright nor surprise clouded the greenish-grey pupils. The girl simply said, as if he was expected, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve been waiting too long.’
The lieutenant looked at her in surprise then, remembering the recent history of the house, could not suppress a smile at the clever way the old dame had presented her last remaining protégée to him. So he sat down on the edge of the bed and fell in with her intimate tone. ‘A good job you woke up, otherwise I would have taken you for a ghost.’
The Dedalus Book of Austrian Fantasy;1890-2000 Page 20