The Man Who Was Born Again

by Paul Busson

  I was stunned, as if by a physical blow. I could hardly realise it. Zephyrine in mortal danger! It was impossible. It was nonsense. What would become of me! what meaning was there in life? The Man from the East of whom I thought every day with gratitude had by his appearance in Griechengasse led me up to the greatest happiness of my life. Was it only that I might so cruelly forfeit it and sink into the darkest abyss of suffering? No, it could not be, it was impossible. If she died, I would die also.

  A cry of terrible pain tore me from my thoughts. The doctor had returned to my wife’s room; I made to follow him, but he motioned me earnestly and decidedly to stay outside and await the result of his operation. I fell back into a chair. Helpless and numbed, I looked vacantly at the snowdrift through the window. A church bell sounded in the falling dusk of the autumn day and a dog began to howl. I recognised its bark. It was Amando, Zephyrine’s favourite.

  The prolonged shrill howl almost drove me to madness. My fears were increased, for I well knew what power of presentiment is possessed by devoted animals.

  Sobs and stifled cries came from the next room. I heard the doctor breathing hard as he made some exhausting effort. I heard him give orders in an undertone, heard the lamenting exclamations of the midwife, the clanking of vessels and metallic objects, the splashing of water and the moving of chairs. What terrible things were going on! Then came a woman’s cry. But it was not Zephyrine’s, it was the nurse crying.

  What had caused it? I distinctly heard the doctor reproving her in an angry but muffled voice. I trembled all over. I gripped the back of my chair. Silence came, the silence of death. The doctor appeared. He looked round in confusion. By the light of the wax candles that I had lighted I saw that his face was dripping with sweat. His hands were red.

  “You must summon up all your courage,” he said to me slowly, and a solemn expression came over his face. “Step in and make the sacrifice of concealing your own suffering, so that the dying may depart peacefully.”

  I felt a burning grief, my breath almost ceased; I clenched my teeth and slowly went into the next room. Through a veil of tears which in spite of my resolve came down pouring from my eyes, I saw something lying on the table, covered with a sheet. Its very outline filled me with horror. Then I approached the bed and knelt down. With a great effort Zephyrine opened her eyes. Her face was white as snow, her lips bore traces of her own teeth. I took her hand; it was as light and as cool as a rose-leaf; I pressed it to my heart. She smiled, and her lips moved.

  “It is a little son,” she whispered, “as I prayed heaven for and a vixen for me a little Aglaia. Later on I may see the children yes?”

  The doctor was standing on the other side of the bed, and he motioned to me. I took the cue.

  “Certainly, darling,” I answered, “as soon as you have slept.”

  I thought then that my heart would burst. But a look of fear appeared in her eyes. She tried to raise herself, and fell back helpless.

  “Or is it must I die?” she stammered.

  “Zephyrine!” I cried, and covered her hand with kisses. “Do not speak in this way, it is wrong! Everything is going on well. You must only sleep, rest and gain strength, after what you have suffered.”

  “I have suffered gladly for me and for you,” she smiled. “Oh, I should so like to remain with you always.”

  Her hand drew me with unexpected force.

  “I want your face to be near me!”

  I approached as near as possible. Her weary eyes suddenly widened, fixing themselves on me with an expression of terrible hunger. I was transfixed by her stare... I sat there for a long time... Then somebody came behind me and touched my arm.

  “You have held out bravely, Baron.”

  It was the doctor.

  “She has passed away easily and happily.”

  Only now did I see in Zephyrine’s angel face the holy mirror of Eternity. I could neither weep nor think. Surely it was Aglaia who lay there! White and beautiful. White and beautiful as the image I bore in my heart. Was the church bell still ringing? Or was it my blood beating and booming in my ears? The doctor interrupted my brooding.

  “Do you feel strong enough,” he asked, “to give a thought to the cause of all this?”

  Nothing mattered now, she was dead. But the sight that confronted my eyes when I looked up was so dreadful that it tore from me a sobbing cry. I reeled back and scarcely felt any sensation when my head knocked against the doorpost. There lay my baby, a monster! A small normal body, but on its shoulders two necks and two heads... one with dark hair, one with light.

  “A true hermaphrodite, male and female together,” said the doctor.

  I threw up my hands, and ran past the nurse into the other room, flinging myself on to the table, dry sobs choking my throat. The doctor followed me. He sat down beside me in silence, and waited. When I had regained my self-control I told him about the phial the wretch had left us, and of my criminal thoughtlessness in leaving it undestroyed. Dr. Hosp thought for a while.

  “I remember,” he said, “hearing of an Italian doctor who had succeeded in producing monstrous deformities by certain poisons. But to me such trespassing in the secret workshop of Nature seems incredible...”

  A terrible thought occurred to me. Without taking any more notice of the doctor, without listening to his anxious questions as to what I was about, I tore open my gun case and drew out a double-muzzled pistol. Then I seized my hat and mantle, and rushed out into the snowstorm. As I reached the gate of the garden, a carriage drove slowly past. I hailed the coachman, and ordered him to drive me as fast as his horses could go to the house called “zum Fassel.”

  He looked at me stupidly. I took out a few gold coins and pressed them into his hand. He doffed his hat very low. The whip whistled, the horses sprang forward. By the time I had recovered my senses I was standing in the dark lobby of the house. Someone was wiping my face with a wet sponge, smelling of lavender and vinegar. A single question was in my mind.

  “Has he gone?”

  “Yes, sir, believe me ’tis true,” said a stout dame, “and thank God for it.

  It is two months since the rascal left, stealing away in the night. His belongings have been seized by the magistrate.”

  She added something about Postremo having performed an unlawful operation on a young girl who then died.

  “Gone!” I laughed like a madman, and was helped into the waiting carriage and driven away.

  The snow whirled, the wind whistled through the open windows. Houses slipped past, their windows blind and dark. Zephyrine was dead! dead… Never would she live again.

  Chapter Thirty

  I became as a hollow hull, a lifeless, dressed-up body. My daily habits were nothing to me. I took food without relish, and only when it was put before me. I would fall asleep sitting in a chair, or find myself in bed fully dressed. My eyes were dim, my clothes, which I seldom changed, became unclean and old. I never knew the time of day; I felt neither heat nor cold. I let my servants do whatever they liked.

  At times I would be seized with a terrible yearning, and search restlessly through the rooms and the garden, calling the names of Zephyrine and Aglaia. Throughout long days I sat by my wife’s grave, and I only went away when the gravediggers reminded me politely that it was closing time.

  When she had died her favourite dog Amando could not be driven away from her last resting-place; he refused food and drink and soon he died of grief and hunger. The gravediggers led me to a plot of unconsecrated ground in a corner of the churchyard where they had buried him.

  When at last I began to feel the healing influence of time, I summoned a notary and had my house and garden transformed into an asylum for deformed children, investing a considerable sum of money to maintain it. I moved my belongings to the Hotel of the Golden Lamb and gradually made my preparations for departure from a town where everything hurt and distressed me; for everything reminded me of Zephyrine.

  The only tokens of her memory that I preser
ved were a lock of her hair and the ring with the fire-opal that had belonged to Aglaia before her. Zephyrine’s fingers had been as slender and as delicate as my cousin’s. As for the lock of my wife’s hair, I had put it in my aunt’s pale blue casket, and there it got accidentally mixed up with Aglaia’s, and the two could no longer be distinguished or separated.

  I planned to go to some distant country, far away. When I roamed about the streets, I would often notice that people drew each other’s attention to me. Then they would tap their foreheads significantly with their fingers and laugh outright. But this brutal rudeness did not in the least affect me. In my aimless wanderings from place to place I came to an amusement place outside the town, called Lustwaldchen.

  A fair was in full swing, entirely devoted to the amusements of the people. I was relieved to find that no one took any notice of my appearance; which had become rather striking through the nervous convulsions that showed on my face, a consequence of my sufferings.

  The fair-ground was full of booths and huts, of performing bears, muffin-men, soothsayers and marionette theatres. There were pedlars and hawkers of every kind. To the sound of a tuneless music girls and lads swung round on wooden horses, painted blue and white, or red and yellow. I came to a tent and heard the shrill sounds of trumpets and rattle of drums.

  A sword-swallower in spangled trousers stood surrounded by loafers; his neck was bent back; and near by was a tub of vinegar, into which dirty hands were diving for cucumbers. Suddenly, in the thick of the throng I saw Laurette. She was leaning on the arm of a man, tall, lean and dark-faced. She looked as if she was about to die of laughter, so entertained was she by the coarse and common jokes of a Hans Wurst who pulled his pants down and showed his backside to a hairy devil.

  Two southern-looking footmen in dark liveries followed at a respectful distance behind Laurette and her companion. She did not see me. I walked on without any thought for the weariness of my feet. At last I halted before a large booth which had painted on its wall a picture representing an old wizard standing in front of a blazing fire. He wore a pointed hat, and a scarf with the figures of the zodiac painted on it was draped over his shoulders. His left hand was buried in his wavy white beard, and in his right he held a little magician’s rod with which he was conjuring. In the smoke stood a vaguely drawn veiled white figure, with closed eyes. Beneath the picture, which was painted with some skill but in screaming colours, I read an inscription:

  THE FAMOUS NECROMANCER, MAGICIAN AND MASTER OF THE SEVEN FREE ARTS, ARCADIUS CHRYSOPOMPOS OF ÖDENBURG, CALLED THE HUNGARIAN DR. FAUST.

  A harlequin stood at the entrance to the booth. He wielded a crude lyre and a brass horn, and with mad gestures and loud cries was urging the public to step in and see the performance, which was about to begin. Two grenadiers in white uniforms, accompanied by brightly-dressed, buxom girls, were the first to respond to the invitation. They mounted the three steps and passed through a red curtain, which the crier raised. They were followed by the straggling citizens and their wives, and some young people of either sex.

  Drawn by a vague impulse, I also went in and took my place among all these people, sitting on benches in front of the small, badly lighted stage. After a few coarse scenes, all ending with the harlequin having his ears boxed by the magician, the main performance began, and proved to be exactly what I had expected. The magician with the sham beard impressed the yokels with a series of clever conjuring and card tricks.

  Then he cooked an omelette in a hat that had been rather unwillingly lent by a citizen. He produced out of it endless ribbons, little white rabbits, and an aquarium with little fishes in it. Then he pounded a gold watch in a mortar, only to produce it again uninjured from the bag of a girl in the audience, who giggled with confusion. And now came the moment for his more difficult feats.

  He tore off the heads of a white and a black dove and healed them in the twinkling of an eye, but so that the black bird received a white head, and the white bird a black head. This trick upset my squeamish senses, and I felt inclined to get up and leave the booth. But I needed to pass along the crowded rows of onlookers, obliging everyone to rise from his seat; so I shut my eyes instead for a short time, and ere long I felt my sickness pass away.

  The applause and wondering murmur of the audience forced me once more to open my eyes. The scene on the stage had changed to represent a well-executed painting of a moonlit churchyard. A thin, beardless man, wrapped in a black mantle, was walking up and down between the headstones and crosses, reciting a monologue. The churchyard, he said, was haunted by a ghost; he wished to get hold of the evildoer who was certain to lurk behind the apparition, and destroy his power.

  Twelve strokes sounded on a gong behind the scenes, announcing midnight. As the last stroke died away, it was followed by a cunningly-contrived moaning of wind, and a figure completely wrapped up in white shrouds came floating among the crosses towards the beardless man. For a moment the man seemed to be frightened, but he quickly drew his sword and ran it through the ghost. We could plainly see the glistening blade go through the ghost’s body again and again, apparently without harming it. Then the man threw his sword away and took to his heels. The curtain fell while the ghost performed a triumphant dance.

  The show was over, and the audience went away completely satisfied. Instead of departing with the rest I approached the stage.. My conjecture had been right. The invulnerable apparition was a reflection, thrown on the stage through an obliquely placed glass plate, in front of which an actor, lying on a kind of sledge, played the ghost.

  The glass plate was composed of three equal pieces of glass, and the two perpendicular lines of shade which I noticed from the audience had at once suggested to me this explanation. I realised that I was the only member of the audience left behind, and I made for the door. But I was not alone. A man had noiselessly glided up to me, no doubt suspicious about my intentions. I at once recognised him as the actor who played the magician and afterwards the man in the churchyard.

  I excused myself for lingering. I explained that my interest was merely scientific, that I had just been ascertaining the correctness of my hypothesis, and that my curiosity was now satisfied. It was not my intention to spoil his performance by divulging what I had discovered.

  “The gentleman is evidently a man of knowledge,” said the man, bowing very politely. “Have I also the honour of seeing before me a master of White Magic?”

  “Oh no,” I replied. “I was only interested in ascertaining whether the excellent effect produced by that phantom was brought about by hollow mirrors or by oblique glass plates. Glass plates of that size are very expensive, I think, and are manufactured, if I am not mistaken, only in Venice.”

  “I observe that the gentleman is excellently informed,” replied the conjurer. “The three plates are the most valuable of all our possessions; they require the greatest care when they are moved.”

  I thanked him in a few words, and went towards the curtain beyond which the harlequin was again screaming to attract an audience.

  “If, however, the gentleman will take some notice of my own craft…” said the magician hesitatingly.

  He made a motion with his hand toward the ground on which we were standing. I was assailed by a swift presentiment...

  “What you see here,” he went on, “is calculated to meet the taste of the uneducated and thus procure us a miserable livelihood. But for adepts I am the necromancer Master Eusebius Wohlgast, of Ödenburg, and indeed I have been honoured by having bestowed on me the title, ‘the Hungarian Dr. Faust.’ I should be very much mistaken, sir your appearance announcing deep and unconcealed grief if your wishes were not intent, passionately intent, on again seeing a beloved person torn away by cruel death.”

  I smiled bitterly.

  “You think me simpler than I am, Sir Magician Wohlgast,” I retorted. “With the vapour of poisonous herbs, which veil all clear understanding, and with a concealed magic lantern, it is easy to make people see whatever they
are willing to believe in.”

  The man shook his head with good-humoured tolerance, and answered gently and modestly:

  “Men of my profession, living in covered wagons, must be prepared for the public to take them to be wandering jugglers, mountebanks and quacks. To do away with this suspicion in my case, I explicitly declare that if you wish to avail yourself of my services in this respect I shall ask for no fee of any sort. I leave it entirely to you to reward me or to leave me unrewarded if you feel you are duped. I know very well at whose service to place my ability, and I am not concerned with gain, however much I have to reckon on subsidiary earnings.

  “After all, I have lately had the supreme honour of obeying a wish of this sort expressed by his Imperial Roman Majesty. This took place in the room of the Freemasons’ Lodge at the sign of the Three Fires. His Majesty was so deeply affected by an apparition from the other world that he was laid up in bed for several days, until his mind recovered from the shock. In spite of this I was very handsomely rewarded for my work. The fact may serve as proof to you, that neither His Majesty nor the nobles then present regarded me as an impostor; they left the Freemasons’ temple in silence and awe. I narrowly escaped a prosecution which Her Majesty the Empress ordered against me when she was told of the real cause of the indisposition of Her Majesty’s Consort.”

  Contradictory emotions rose in me. The man appeared to be honest, and full of confidence in his strange abilities. But my mistrust was not so easily put aside.

  “Who, or whose spirit, did you raise before His Majesty?” I asked.

  “I am not free to speak of this even to the most trusted of courtiers. And it is altogether contrary to my rules of conduct to give a third party any information about what you, sir, may see in the event of my devoted services being taken into your consideration.”