The Dedalus Book of Austrian Fantasy;1890-2000

by Mike Mitchell

  The company behind the new store has defended itself against these troublemakers with impressive dignity and restraint. By means of posters in their own store windows and leaflets distributed throughout the neighbourhood, they have made it clear that: a) well before they opened their store with its innovative merchandise and customer service, they took the precaution of establishing through consultation with leading figures from the legal establishment that there was no constitutional objection within the framework of a free market economy, and: b) the rumour that used wives who are traded in are all processed into animal feed and fertiliser was nothing but a malicious slander. On the contrary, the company was proud to announce that a wide range of trade-ins, serviced and reconditioned to the highest standards, was available from the used-wife warehouse at greatly reduced prices, in many cases with up to a three-year guarantee.

  Anyone who was interested, the statement went on, was welcome to inspect the company’s records. These showed that in the short time the service had been in operation there had been several cases of customers returning their purchases within the legal period for exchange of goods and taking home with them their original wives from the used-wife warehouse. The firm was proud of this contribution to the restoration of marital harmony, though it had to be admitted that not one of the men who were thus reunited with their former partners had recognised their own used wives unaided. The workmanship of the company’s renovation and reconditioning plant, which operated according to the strictest scientific principles, was simply too thorough and too good. It was true that a number of trade-ins, especially some of the older ones, had had to be written off, but that kind of thing was inevitable in any enterprise at the leading edge of technological development. The reintegration of these discards into the organic chain was evidence of the company’s commitment to recycling and did not justify the malicious sweeping accusations made by an insignificant minority of subversives.

  For all its dignified restraint, that was plain talking. But the radicals only withdrew a few days later, after the police had been forced to shoot two of them in self-defence. The troublemakers’ arguments would really have been too childish to warrant such a serious confrontation with the forces of law and order had they not had the audacity to reduce the lively activity of the new company, as well as just about everything else in this country, to the lowest common economic denominator of profit-seeking, which is what they claimed was the decisive factor here. How even the most well-developed desire to make a profit – or obsession with profit, as they call it – on the part of an entrepreneur can explain the constant stream of customers, some together with their used wives, pouring into the new store, if the latter did not fulfil some deep-seated need, that is if, in the final analysis, the human soul were not driven by a profound longing for beauty and eternal or, to be more precise, recurrent youth, which can nullify the steady progress towards death – that is another thing to which those blinkered, long-haired rabble-rousers at their information stand have no answer.

  It is still, of course, to be regretted that our police marksmen, who have been through the most scrupulous training to deal with this kind of situation, could apparently see no alternative, given the danger to the public the behaviour of the radicals represented, than to resort to firearms – only with the greatest reluctance, I am sure. A few well-aimed gibes ought to be sufficient to get rid of immature youngsters like that.

  Recently, however, a rumour has been going round our district which is beginning to arouse far greater unease than the, certainly tragic, but not all that unusual shootings. People are saying that the same firm that opened the store on the corner of the high street has plans for a second store, also in our area, beside the post office, near to the main entrance to the museum park. This time, however, if the rumours are to be believed, it is to be a store in which women can purchase men who get younger year by year.

  In my local watering hole, where I often go for a drink of an evening, after the day’s work is done, there is much unease, not to say indignation about this rumour, although of course no one takes it really seriously.

  Quite apart from the fact that such tampering with the existing order of things represents an unwarrantable encroachment on the privacy of the individual, indeed an invasion of the most private sphere, and the fact that it is contrary to nature, which has decreed that man shall age more slowly than woman, thus exposing once and for all the superfluity of such anti-male innovations, any attempt to introduce this kind of wrong-headed notion is bound to run into practical difficulties which would condemn it to failure from the very outset. ‘I’d just like to see,’ a casual acquaintance remarked to me yesterday over a glass of beer, ‘how these women think they’re going to drag us, their used husbands – that’s what they’ll call us, you know, I read it in the paper! – into their newfangled bloody shops to trade us in – yes, trade us in! – in part exchange, like some animal or an old typewriter! No, squire, we’ll put up a fight and then you’ll see who’s strongest. It’ll be mayhem, I can tell you. Next thing you know, the authorities’ll have to step in, on our side, of course. After all, that’s what we pay ’em for.’

  I can only endorse this statement. It is entirely unacceptable that in a community such as ours, which has always placed the greatest value on freedom, they should open this so-called man shop, that is, the male counterpart to the store on the corner of the high street. That, to put it bluntly, would amount to selling men into slavery and that must be, at least ought to be out of the question, though we cannot, unfortunately, be entirely confident about that. The authorities have turned a blind eye to things far too often in the last twenty or thirty years. But even if this plan should go into operation, we can confidently say that it will not last; such an attack on freedom would be in blatant contradiction to all that is best in our traditions. It would be to cross the boundary separating an acceptable pursuit of honest profit from unbridled profiteering. After all, such an arrangement would not be in the interest of the women themselves. It is not for nothing that the exhortation of our national poet, Schiller, is engraved over the portal of the woman shop:

  Hold women in honour, they weave and entwine

  Our earthbound existence with roses divine.

  No customer can miss them, and Schiller’s words have helped to ease the pain for many a used wife. ‘The Dignity of Women’ is the title of the poem from which they come. But where is the dignity of women, and how can we hold them in honour, if they can sell off their husbands, trade them in like some inanimate object? No, that cannot happen here.

  Where I Live

  Ilse Aichinger

  Since yesterday the flat where I live has been one floor lower down. I don’t want to say it out loud, but my flat’s lower down. The reason I don’t want to say it out loud is that I haven’t moved. I came home from the concert yesterday evening, as usual on Saturdays, opened the house door, pressed the button for the light and went up the stairs. I went up the stairs unsuspecting – the lift hasn’t worked since the war – and when I got to the third floor, I thought, ‘I wish I was home already,’ and leant against the wall by the lift for a moment. I’m usually overcome with exhaustion when I get to the third floor. Sometimes it’s so bad I think I must already have gone up four flights. Not yesterday, though. I knew I there was another floor above me. So I opened my eyes to continue up the last flight, and right away I saw my nameplate on the door to the left of the lift. Had I made a mistake and already gone up four flights? I tried to see the sign with the floor on it, but at that moment the light went out.

  Since the button for the light is on the other side of the landing, I went the two steps to my door in the dark and opened it. To my door? Well whose door would it be, if my nameplate was on it? I must have gone up four flights.

  The door opened at once, without any problem, I found the light switch and there I was, in the hall, in my hall, and everything was the way it always is: the red wallpaper I’ve been meaning to change for ages,
the bench up against the wall and on the left the corridor to the kitchen. In the kitchen the bread that I hadn’t got round to eating for tea was still in the bread-bin. Everything was unchanged. I cut myself a slice of bread and started to eat it, when I suddenly remembered I hadn’t shut the front door, and went back into the hall to shut it.

  As I did so I saw, in the light from the hall, the sign with the floor on it. Third Floor, it said. I went out and pressed the button for the landing light and read it again. Then I read the nameplates on the other doors. They were the names of people who until then had lived on the floor below me. I was going to go up the stairs to see who was living on the same floor as the people who, until then, had lived on the same floor as me, to see whether the doctor, who until then had lived underneath me, was now living above me, but I suddenly felt so weak I had to go to bed.

  Since then I’ve been lying here awake, wondering what to do in the morning. From time to time I still feel a temptation to get up and go upstairs to check. But I feel too weak, and then someone up there might be woken by the light on the landing and come out and ask me, ‘What are you doing here?’ I’m so afraid of that question, put to me by one of my former neighbours, that I prefer to stay here in bed, although I know it will be even harder to go up there during daylight.

  From the next room I can hear the breathing of the student who lodges with me. He’s studying marine engineering and his breathing is deep and regular. He has no idea what has happened. He has no idea I’m lying here awake. I wonder whether I’ll ask him tomorrow. He doesn’t go out much, so he was probably at home whilst I was at the concert. He ought to know. Perhaps I’ll ask my cleaning woman too.

  No. I won’t. How can I ask someone if they don’t ask me? How can I go up to someone and ask, ‘Do you happen to know whether my flat was one floor higher up yesterday?’ What could they say? My only hope is that someone will ask me, ask me tomorrow, ‘Excuse me, but wasn’t your flat one floor higher up yesterday?’ But if I know my cleaning woman, she won’t ask. Or one of my previous neighbours. ‘Wasn’t your flat next to ours yesterday?’ But if I know them, none of them will ask. So there’s nothing left for it but for me to behave as if I’d been living on the floor lower down all my life.

  I keep wondering what would have happened if I hadn’t gone to that concert. But now that question’s as academic as all the other questions. I must try and get some sleep.

  My flat’s in the cellar now. It does have the advantage that my cleaning woman doesn’t have to go all that way down for the coal, it’s right next door and she seems quite pleased with that. I suspect she doesn’t ask because it’s easier for her like this. She’s never been that thorough with the dusting and polishing anyway, but it would be ridiculous to ask her to wipe the coal dust off the furniture every hour. She’s happy with it, I can tell that from the way she looks. And the student goes whistling up the cellar steps every morning and comes back down in the evening. At night I can hear his deep, regular breathing. I keep wishing he’d bring a girl back to his room with him who would think it funny he’s in a flat in the cellar, but he doesn’t bring any girls back.

  No one else asks, either. The coalmen, who empty their sacks with a loud crash in the bunkers on either side, raise their caps and say hello when I meet them on the stairs. They often put their sacks down and wait for me to get past. The caretaker, too, gives me a friendly hello as I’m going out. I thought for a moment he was friendlier than usual, but I was just imagining it. Many things seem friendlier when you come up from the cellar.

  I stop when I get to the street, to clean the coal dust off my coat, but there’s always some left on. It’s my winter coat and it’s dark. In the tram I’m always surprised the conductor treats me just the same as the other passengers and no one shifts along the seat away from me. I wonder what things will be like when my flat’s in the sewer. I’m already getting myself used to the idea.

  Since I’ve been living in the cellar, I’ve started going to the occasional concert in the evening again. Usually on a Saturday, but sometimes during the week. After all, by stopping going I didn’t prevent myself from ending up in the cellar. Now I’m sometimes surprised at the way I used to reproach myself, at all the things I saw as connected with my descent at the beginning. At the beginning I kept on thinking, ‘If only I hadn’t gone to the concert. Or across the road for a glass of wine.’ I don’t think that any more. Since I’ve been in the cellar I don’t worry and go out for a drink whenever I feel like it. It would be pointless to start worrying about the bad air in the sewer. If I did that I would have to start worrying about the fire at the centre of the earth, in fact there’s too much I would have to worry about. Even if I stayed at home all the time and never stepped outside the house, I’d still end up in the sewer one day.

  The only thing I wonder about is what my cleaning woman will say. It would certainly mean she wouldn’t have to bother with airing the flat. And the student would whistle as he climbed out of the grating and back down again. I do wonder what would happen about the concerts and my glass of wine. And whether it would ever occur to the student to bring a girl back to his room. I wonder whether my rooms would still be the same in the sewer. So far they are, but the building stops before the sewer, and I can’t imagine the arrangement of bedroom and kitchen and sitting room and the student’s room will continue down into the bowels of the earth.

  But so far everything is unchanged. The red wallpaper and the chest against it, the corridor to the kitchen, every picture on the wall, the old leather armchairs and the bookshelves, even every book on them, the bread-bin out in the kitchen and the curtains on the windows.

  The windows, though, they have changed. But at this time of the day I’m mostly in the kitchen and the kitchen window’s always looked out onto the landing. It’s always had bars. That’s no reason to go and see the caretaker, even less the change in the view. He could justifiably argue that a view is not part of a flat, the rent is calculated according to size, not the view. He could tell me my view was my own affair.

  And I don’t go and see him. I’m happy as long as he’s still friendly. The one objection I might make is that the windows are now only half the size. But then he could say it’s not possible any other way in the cellar. And I wouldn’t have an answer to that. I could say I’m not used to it, because until recently I was living on the fourth floor. But then I should have complained when I was on the third floor. Now it’s too late.

  In the Gulf of Carpentaria

  H. C. Artmann

  The four of them – the shipwrecked millionaire and his platinum blonde companion, the helmsman and a Malay cook – the last survivors of the luxury yacht Archipelagus, the sensation of San Francisco, which had sunk in the storm, were sitting in the darkness round a camp-fire on the shore of Arnhem Land trying, as best they could, to dry their clothes.

  The Southern Cross had already risen in all its splendour, but a drift of blue-and-blood-red cloud on the western horizon still indicated the point where the sun had just gone down. The sea was calm. The fatal hurricane that had destroyed the Archipelagus had swept away across these latitudes as quickly as it had come up. Eleven of the fifteen on board had fallen victim to the ravenous sharks, only Rufus O’Shea, Millicent Naish, George Farrar and Billy Tuwap had managed, with great difficulty and incredible good luck, to reach the temporary safety of dry land. But exactly where they were and how they would get to the nearest human (ie white, of course) settlement, none of the four could say, not even Farrar, the helmsman.

  From the eerie bulk of the dense jungle looming up close behind them came the muffled roaring, grunting, screeching, hissing and cackling of the nocturnal animals and, attracted by the red flicker of the camp-fire, huge bats appeared, swirling round the sea-salt-encrusted human flotsam and jetsam.

  ‘They’re real vampire bats!’ whispered Millicent Naish, the platinum blonde girlfriend of the Texan oil magnate O’Shea.

  O’Shea, about forty years old and st
ocky rather than corpulent, put his khaki shirt, which was more or less dry, back on again and looked at the flying monsters.

  ‘Damn’, he said. ‘My forty-five’s probably out of action for the moment – taken in too much salt.’

  He picked up his shoulder holster, which was lying by the fire and just about to start smouldering, took out his revolver and aimed at one of the shadowy monstrosities. All that came, instead of the report of a shot, which no one expected anyway, was just a click.

  ‘Kaput,’ he said, putting it back in its scorched holster. He turned to the helmsman, who was also putting his shirt back on. ‘I guess we’ve no option but to spend the night here, Farrar…’

  ‘Yeah, I guess so,’ said Farrar, with a brief glance at Millicent Naish who, with her back to the men, was taking off her wet brassière and putting on her dried shirt.

  Billy Tuwap was the first to wake up next morning. The sun had already risen some distance above the glassy blue sea. He could hear the sound of the breakers close by but at first could not find his bearings, still half asleep and thinking he was in his cabin. Then he looked over to the others: he saw Farrar, who was lying on his front with one leg drawn up and snoring loudly; he saw Rufus O’Shea, his boss, who had slept squatting, head bent forward – but no trace of Millicent Naish.

  ‘Tuan O’Shea!’ he shouted. ‘Tuan Farrar! Quick! Wake up! Nonya Millicent has disappeared.’

  Like a pair of marionettes, O’Shea and Farrar both woke with a start. The millionaire was first to his feet. He rubbed his eyes and looked round, searching. ‘Millie,’ he shouted. ‘Millie, call out if you can hear me.’

  But it was pointless and he soon gave up. Millicent Naish had disappeared. Baffled and emitting the occasional curse, the three men moved towards the huge belt of primeval rain forest, though none of them had any idea of what they were actually going to do.