The Dedalus Book of Austrian Fantasy;1890-2000

by Mike Mitchell

  ‘What I am giving you here are the memoirs of a madman who was my patient many years ago. I was young myself at the time and working as a junior doctor in the psychiatric clinic in ***.

  My patient, the author of the book, was a high-school teacher, a very gifted man in his mid-thirties. He wrote his own case history in the clinic. Later on I had it printed; you will see how strangely modern it all sounds. Although suffering from an incurable mental illness, the man still writes well, is surprisingly coherent, both stylistically and syntactically. But read it for yourself.’

  I took the book, curious as to what I would find in it. This is the point at which my friend opened it for me to start reading:

  ‘I have to recount how I killed my brother. It was hard work and took three nights and three days. I lay in wait for him, at night, when he came home from my beloved’s bed. She kept on insisting she was not having an affair with him, but I knew she was. I often caught the two of them exchanging secret glances when they thought I wasn’t looking. She’s a beautiful woman, though at heart she’s a common whore.

  That night, then, I lay in wait for my brother in the dark until he had slipped in by the front door, cautiously removed his shoes and placed his foot on the bottom step of the stairs. Then I hit him over the head from behind with the poker. I dragged him down into the cellar, where I had a bucket of cold water ready, and brought him round. That was when the work started which took me three nights and three days. It was not always easy to keep my brother awake when he was half dead from the tortures I inflicted on him, but I spared no effort. Once he almost died on me before I had had the chance to try out the most interesting ones, but with the help of an excellent fluid, which I injected into his arm, I managed to keep him alive and conscious until the evening of the third day, thus allowing me to add the final touches to my work. When he was finally dead, I threw him in the cesspit behind the house and went to bed, for I was truly tired.’

  I stopped, horrified and nauseated. The doctor took the book out of my hand and opened it at the first page, saying, ‘You are unlikely to find what follows that interesting: page after page of descriptions of all kinds of different tortures. I presume you’re not one of those people who like that type of thing after lunch, as an aid to digestion. The passage you’ve read is just the outline, so to speak. Have a look at the opening of the memoir.’

  However, when I gave him a questioning look, which at the same time expressed all my repugnance, he added, ‘Be reassured. What I forgot to tell you is that the torture and murder of his brother never actually occurred. Or at least it only occurred in the mind of the madman. He did have a brother who died, but he died of a common-or-garden heart attack. It was just a few days after his brother’s death that my patient succumbed to the delusion that he had tortured and killed him. But read it for yourself.’

  So I read:

  ‘One day I was arrested, and that is where I shall start my story. So that woman betrayed me. I’d known for a long time that she would and I was ready for it. They drove me to the high court in an elegant vehicle then locked me up in a cell. During the night I was taken to the courtroom, a beautiful, spacious room with green wallpaper and many books. Standing in his white coat behind a large desk covered with files is the judge. He comes up to me and shakes my hand. He seems to be a tolerable person. I say, You have some lovely books. He smiles and nods, then asks me to sit down. So the people here are in it too! Trying to lure me into their trap. No thank you, I reply sharply, I prefer to stand. I know I’m lost if I sit down. The judge immediately apologises and says something I don’t understand. I notice the large window for the newspaper people to look in through when there’s a trial on. Outside there’s a full moon, I could swear it’s shining right down on the scaffold. So I say, Please switch off the electric light, the moonlight’s sufficient and it’s best to save energy. Of course, that was only a pretext, what I really wanted to do was to look down into the courtyard. At first the man behind me wouldn’t go along with my request, but I insisted and the judge instructed him to put the light out. So I go to the window and look down into the courtyard, which is in bright moonlight. And, yes! I knew it! There’s the infamous frame. They say they use it to beat carpets on. The judge asks me some trivial question. I say, you can put the light back on again, I’ve seen what I wanted to see. If you want to know, yes, I did torture my brother to death, it’s there in your files, I’m quite happy to admit it, to accuse myself. And no, I don’t need a lawyer, I know perfectly well that the court and the defence counsel work hand in glove and cast lots for the spoils, before their victim’s body is even cold. I do not need anyone’s help. On the contrary, I will defend myself. Scarcely had I raised my voice to speak those last words than I saw the judge, who until then had listened to me with a kindly expression on his face, give a sign to the two guards behind me. So that’s the way things are, I thought, he’s going to stop me making my speech in my own defence. He’s afraid of my revelations and their effect on the public. I protest vehemently, but what’s the use? The guards drag me out. I lose consciousness.

  I’ve been waiting in my cell for days now for the trial to start. I spend most of the time standing up, of course, I only lie down when I’m tired. But I never sit down. Sometimes the judge, accompanied by his two guards, comes to my cell and I receive him standing up. I hate him. The moment I bring the conversation round to the murder and the trial, he changes the subject. So that’s it. Delaying tactics, using the long, tormenting imprisonment to force me to sit down and make me obedient to their will. But he’s making a big mistake, I’ll thwart his cunning plan. I’ve had them give me a pencil and paper and I’m writing my memoirs standing at a high desk. I’m calling them ‘The Confessions of a Fratricide’. The world will hear of my deed, even if I’m denied my right to a proper trial.’

  Again the doctor took the book out of my hand and looked for a passage towards the end.

  ‘Did you notice? The judge in the white coat, that’s me. Now read his statement in his defence.’

  I read:

  ‘I am writing this in my defence, so that the world will know why I tortured my brother to death and that I am innocent. The court is afraid the truth might be revealed. That is why they won’t allow the trial to take place. They intend to hang me from the gallows without trial. I know that because I have seen the infamous iron frame at the place of execution. But they have miscalculated. I will submit this statement to the government myself. The truth will out!

  The presumption is that I killed him because of that woman. They have got their psychology all wrong, typical of my opponents’ way of thinking. The real motive was not jealousy, it was sederophobia. It was all due to the fact that my dead brother preferred to sit, preferred that position to all others, since he thought he looked good sitting down. But I hate sitting down. I can’t sit. When I sit down I’m helpless, all my strength and confidence goes. I’m lost if I spend just a minute in that hated position. My brother was well aware of this weakness, no, this disinclination of mine and took advantage of it whenever and wherever he could. Oh, with what fiendish perception he discovered it, even though we never spoke about it and he never let me see that he knew, and with what fiendish enjoyment he exploited it! How else could he calmly sit down in my presence, playing the innocent, as if nothing at all had happened? I hated him, the hypocritical bastard, and I still hate him today. No, I despise him. For there is nothing more loathsome beneath the yellow moon than sitting down. It is not merely the expression of a cowardly, devious nature, unworthy of a gentleman, of a free man, it is also the unmistakable sign of degeneracy. Only toads sit, but the proud heron stands upright, when not flying, and the supple snake crawls on its belly. ‘The Toad’ was my secret name for my brother, and the revulsion and disgust I felt for this person, with whom I was compelled to live in the same house, grew daily more intense. The situation was almost unbearable.

  One day I fell in love with that woman. Naturally she knew of my disli
ke without my having said a single word about it. But when I went to visit her for the first time – oh horror! – what happened? With a casual air, she sat down on the sofa, smiled at me and invited me to sit beside her. The humiliation! The insult to my innermost feelings! I wished the ground would open up and swallow me. I realised the strumpet was in league with the Toad and the pair of them were deceiving me. No one but the Toad could have incited that woman to do that to me. The fiendish cunning drove me wild with fury, I dashed out of the room, out of the house. There was a secret conspiracy against me. Doubtless it would spread over the continent, over the whole world, if I didn’t do something about it quickly. I decided to kill the monster that had risen up to plunge me in contempt and misery. I decided to avenge myself on it a hundredfold, to crush it, to extirpate it. Yes, it was my task, my colossal task, to free mankind from the conspiracy of bufo sedens, the sitting toad, to save it from certain disaster.

  Recently the prosecutor was here, the scrawny man in black. He is my enemy. His words were smooth as oil, for he is two-faced and cowardly and seeks to destroy me. He pretends he does not believe in my deed and in my mighty will. Did I not feel shame and remorse, he asked, in the face of divine conscience? Shame and remorse? I, who have freed the world from the Toad, should be ashamed of my deed?! What kind of a God is it who allows the Toad to exist, who loves an abomination and demands shame and remorse from its conqueror? I do not acknowledge him. I have cut those two words out of my heart, I no longer understand what they mean. Only the sublimely voluptuous pleasure of my revenge, my liberation lives on in me. Oh, how good it was to torture the Toad, slowly to squeeze the abominable life out of it!

  Is it dead? No, that cannot be true. The Toad lives on, there is no doubting it, the Toad still lives. I didn’t torture it anywhere near enough. It has a thousand lives, it appears in a thousand shapes, in ever new mutations, here, there, everywhere, like a fatal disease. It stares through the bars on the door of my cell, at night, when I want to sleep, it stares at me from dark corners with its foul eyes. But I recognise it, wherever it is sitting, whatever shape it takes on. I recognise it, therefore it has no power over me. It cannot kill me. No, once I am free I will crush it beneath my heel, again and again, wherever I meet with it. It is no crime to crush the Toad.

  The Toad is sitting inside the hated prosecutor too. I know. He is a sederomaniac, he feels a compulsion to sit down. With a strangely alien language, which I do not understand and which is an insidious poison, he is trying to undermine and weaken the power of my disgust and my gloriously voluptuous pleasure, to make them collapse and bury me under the ruins. They are soporific words, words of a sweet, empty tediousness, but I know the danger they hold. They are toadwords. I have armed my heart against them with the steel of my voluptuous pleasure, the divinely voluptuous pleasure and liberation I breathe when I crush the forces of darkness beneath my heel, when my ears are caressed by the cracking of their bones and their whimpering squeals. Oh the savage glory of it when I ripped the palpitating life from my brother’s body and offered his entrails as a sacrifice to the sun!

  The day will come when people like me will rule. But the powers of darkness will overwhelm even that day. Dark imbeciles will condemn the toad-destroyers because they cannot understand their voluptuous pleasure. Black-gowned prosecutors who have not killed the toad in their hearts they call conscience. Those who are beyond conscience however, the mighty killers, the purifiers of the earth, will be accused of having no conscience. As if that accusation made sense! Those who are beyond conscience are accountable to their law alone, only that can pronounce them guilty. They will be punished like naughty children. Like children who do not understand why they are being punished. Thus the punishment will be no punishment and the court no court. Yea, even the pity that softhearted fools bring to them will run off them like water off an oiled wall. And they will rise up anew, ever again, and crush the toads and delight in their voluptuous pleasure. And again and again they will torture their brother to death until there are no more brothers left in the world. Then, and only then, will they be victorious. Only when a bloody sun shines on the cold corpse of mankind will the world be free and purified of its fear of sitting!

  What do I hear in the yard

  Groaning in the wind?

  Is it the terrible frame?

  But that’s only the children’s

  Swing, from which I hang,

  Playing my merry game.

  Is that you, dancing master, with your pot belly and white cotton gloves, are you waiting already? You executioner! See, you have a pale face and no teeth in your hollow mouth. You will wait in vain. For I am Cain with the mark on my brow, Cain whom no one may kill. I am Cain and the heavens tremble before me.

  I am Cain ———’

  The book sank onto my knees as I stared out into the thickening twilight.

  ‘He actually hanged himself from that frame in the courtyard where they beat the carpets. He did it himself, no one else could kill Cain. How he managed to obtain a rope and get out of his cell and into the courtyard at night remains a mystery. He was found the next morning.’

  ‘He was a prophet,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed the doctor. ‘The future was in him, if I may put it like that. Also time immemorial. That was his madness. To be out of one’s mind is to be out of one’s time as well. There have been madmen, prophets like that in all ages. When, as a young doctor, I read the madman’s memoirs, I was seized with such fear, such unease that I could not sleep for nights on end. Perhaps I had a premonition that his madness would become reality, history.’

  ‘Is there anything one can do? Is there anything we can do today?’

  ‘We can try to understand. But it must be done before the illness breaks out, before it keeps on breaking out, again and again. My unfortunate patient was never understood, you will have deduced that from the fragments about the pre-history of his madness. He must have suffered terribly. Afterwards it was too late. We must be vigilant, my young friend, everywhere and all the time.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘we must be vigilant.’

  An Up-and-coming Concern

  Erich Fried

  In our district the greengrocer’s has gone from the large corner building on the high street, the little old stationer’s as well. The hardware store closed some time previously, and until a few weeks ago all you could see on the empty ground floor were the cement mixers, the labourers, the men who were carefully installing the big new shop windows and, last of all, the painters. But no one knew what the new business would be. It had a car park as well, in the empty lot in the side-street, as we could see from the signposts that were ready well before the opening.

  Since the day it was opened, however, it has not been a secret any longer: in the new store you can buy women who get younger instead of older, from three weeks up to three months per year, depending on type and customer requirements. The prices, apart from the occasional and rare special offer, are pretty high, but there are two or three different kinds of hire-purchase agreement allowing prospective buyers the advantage of paying by instalments. Married men can part-finance their new wives by trading in their used models, which are accepted up to a certain age limit.

  Since the moment it opened, the place has been a hive of activity, not only in the new store, but on the corner outside the window display as well and, of course, in the side-street leading to the car park and in the car park itself. Lots of men come with friends to help them persuade their used wives to go along with them and make the short walk to the store on their own two feet or, if all else fails, to help them carry their used wives into the store. In cases where this leads to unseemly behaviour, the police step in and a doctor, employed for this purpose by the store, is very quickly on hand with a little sedative injection.

  Sometimes, of course, the reason the friends accompany the prospective buyer is simply to assist him in making his choice. The new store employs all the latest marketing techniques to inf
luence the customer and it is clearly not always that easy to think things over calmly in there. Apart from the fairly lively music, the lighting effects and the fragrance of joss sticks used in most departments, the self-rejuvenating girls and women are such that even the lightest of touches to check the goods exerts a noticeably reinvigorating effect on the customers themselves, not to mention actual caresses, which are permitted, on payment of a deposit, to help the buyer make a final decision between several different articles.

  If you add to that the screaming children now surplus to requirements and left at the entrance because their mothers are being, or have already been traded in, the noise of the welfare vans screeching to a halt when they come, at regular intervals, to collect the children and transport them to homes where they will be well looked after, plus the loud cries of the flower-sellers, ‘Lovely fresh flowers for your lovely fresh wife,’ you can imagine the hubbub on our formerly quiet street corner. And if that wasn’t enough, there is always loud music coming from the store, mostly pop songs such as ‘New love, new life’ or ‘Off with the old love and on with the new’.

  One compensation for this noisy disturbance is the feeling we have that with the new store genuinely new life, I might almost say a sense of new and unsuspected opportunities, has come to the whole district, which was in the past, if anything, a little too quiet. Unfortunately there has also been a certain amount of unpleasantness. There has been no lack of attempts to make political capital out of the affair. Extremist agitators have set up a so-called information stand on the corner opposite the new store. Day after day the same inflammatory speeches directed against everything we hold dear can be heard, speeches which, if for no other reason, run counter to our constitution in that they are aimed at restricting the universal freedom of trade.