Foundations of Fear

by David G. Hartwell

  Brief notes:

  I sold my Voltaire. I had sometimes read my pupils extracts from his correspondence with the King of Prussia; it pleased the principal.

  I owed two months’ room and board to Frau Holz, my landlady. She told me she was poor . . .

  I asked the bursar of the school for another advance on my salary. He told me with embarrassment that it was difficult, that it was against regulations . . . I did not listen any longer. My colleague Seifert curtly refused to lend me a few thalers.

  I dropped a heavy gold coin into the conch shell. Anita’s eyes burned my soul. Then I heard someone laughing in the laurel thickets of Tempelhof. I recognized two servants of the Gymnasium. They ran away into the darkness.

  It was my last gold coin. I had no more money, none at all . . .

  As I was walking past the distillery on the Mohlenstrasse, I was nearly run over by a carriage. I made a frightened leap into Saint Beregonne’s Lane. My hand clutched the viburnum bush and broke off a sprig of it.

  I took the sprig home with me and laid it on my table. It had opened up an immense new world to me, like a magician’s wand.

  Let us reason, as my stingy colleague Seifert would say.

  First of all, my leap into Saint Beregonne’s Lane and my subsequent return to the Mohlenstrasse had shown that the mysterious street was as easy to enter and leave as any ordinary thoroughfare.

  But the viburnum sprig had enormous philosophical significance. It was “in excess” in our world. If I had taken a branch from any forest in America and brought it here, I would not have changed the number of branches on earth. But in bringing that sprig of viburnum from Saint Beregonne’s Lane I had made an intrinsic addition that could not have been made by all the tropical growths in the world, because I had taken it from a plane of existence that was real only for me.

  I was therefore able to take an object from that plane and bring it into the world of men, where no one could contest my ownership of it. Ownership could never be more absolute, in fact, because the object would owe nothing to any industry, and it would augment the normally immutable patrimony of the earth . . .

  My reasoning flowed on, wide as a river, carrying fleets of words, encircling islands of appeals to philosophy; it was swollen by a vast system of logical tributaries until it reached a conclusive demonstration that a theft committed in Saint Beregonne’s Lane was not a theft in the Mohlenstrasse.

  Fortified by this nonsense, I judged that the matter was settled. My only concern would be to avoid the reprisals of the mysterious inhabitants of the street, or of the world to which it led.

  When the Spanish conquistadores spent the gold they had brought back from the new India, I think they cared very little about the anger of the faraway peoples they had despoiled.

  I decided to enter the unknown the following day.

  Klingbom made me waste some time. I think he had been waiting for me in the little square vestibule that opened into his shop on one side and his office on the other. As I walked past, clenching my teeth, ready to plunge into my adventure, he grabbed me by my coat.

  “Ah, professor,” he said, “how I misjudged you! It wasn’t you! I must have been blind to suspect you! She’s left me, professor, but not with you. Oh, no, you’re a man of honor! She’s gone off with a postmaster, a man who’s half coachman and half scribe. What a disgrace for the House of Klingbom!”

  He had dragged me into the shadowy back room of his shop. He poured me a glass of orange-flavored brandy.

  “And to think that I mistrusted you, professor! I always saw you looking at my wife’s windows, but I know now that it was the seed merchant’s wife you had your eye on.”

  I masked my embarrassment by raising my glass.

  “To tell you the truth,” said Klingbom, pouring me out some more of the reddish liquid, “I’d be glad to see you put one over on that malicious seed merchant: he’s delighted by my misfortune.”

  He added, with a smile, “I’ll do you a favor: the lady of your dreams is in her garden right now. Why don’t you go and see her?”

  He led me up a spiral staircase to a window. I saw the poisonous sheds of the Klingbom distillery smoking among a tangled array of little courtyards, miniature gardens, and muddy streams narrow enough to step across. It was through that landscape that the secret street ought to run, but I saw nothing except the smoky activity of the Klingbom buildings and the seed merchant’s nearby garden, where a thin form was leaning over some arid flower beds.

  One last swallow of brandy gave me a great deal of courage. After leaving Klingbom, I walked straight into Saint Beregonne’s Lane.

  Three little yellow doors in the white wall . . .

  Beyond the bend in the street, the viburnum bushes continued to place spots of green and black among the paving stones; then the three little doors appeared, almost touching each other. They gave the aspect of a Flemish Beguine convent to what should have been singular and terrible.

  My footsteps resounded clearly in the silence.

  I knocked on the first of the doors. Only the futile life of an echo was stirred behind it.

  Fifty paces away, the street made another bend.

  I was discovering the unknown parsimoniously. So far I had found only two thinly whitewashed walls and those three doors. But is not any closed door a powerful mystery in itself?

  I knocked on all three doors, more violently this time. The echoes departed loudly and shattered the silence lurking in the depths of prodigious corridors. Sometimes their dying murmurs seemed to imitate the sound of light footsteps, but that was the only reply from the enclosed world.

  The doors had locks on them, the same as all the other doors I was used to seeing. Two nights before, I had spent an hour picking the lock on my bedroom door with a piece of bent wire, and it had been as easy as a game.

  There was a little sweat on my temples, a little shame in my heart. I took the same piece of wire from my pocket and slipped it into the lock of the first little door. And very simply, just like my bedroom door, it opened.

  Later, when I was back in my bedroom among my books, in front of the table on which lay a red ribbon that had fallen from Anita’s dress, I sat clutching three silver thalers in my hand.

  Three thalers!

  I had destroyed my finest destiny with my own hand. That new world had opened for me alone. What had it expected of me, that universe more mysterious than those that gravitate toward the bottom of Infinity? Mystery had made advances to me, had smiled at me like a pretty girl, and I had entered it as a thief. I had been petty, vile, absurd.

  Three thalers!

  My adventure should have been so prodigious, and it had become so paltry!

  Three thalers reluctantly given to me by Gockel, the antique dealer, for that engraved metal dish. Three thalers . . . But they would buy one of Anita’s smiles.

  I abruptly threw them into a drawer: someone was knocking on my door.

  It was Gockel. It was difficult for me to believe that this was the same malevolent man who had contemptuously put down the metal dish on his counter cluttered with barbarous and shabby trinkets. He was smiling now, and he constantly mingled my name—which he mispronounced—with the title of “Herr Doktor” or “Herr Lehrer.”

  “I think I did you a great injustice, Herr Doktor,” he said. “That dish is certainly worth more.”

  He took out a leather purse and I saw the bright yellow smile of gold.

  “It may be,” he went on, “that you have other objects from the same source . . . or rather, of the same kind.”

  The distinction did not escape me. Beneath the urbanity of the antique dealer was the spirit of a receiver of stolen goods.

  “The fact is,” I said, “that a friend of mine, an erudite collector, is in a difficult situation and needs to pay off certain debts, so he wants to sell part of his collection. He prefers to remain unknown: he’s a shy scholar. He’s already unhappy enough over having to part with some of the treasures in his sho
wcases. I want to spare him any further sadness, so I’m helping him to sell them.”

  Gockel nodded enthusiastically. He seemed overwhelmed with admiration for me.

  “That’s my idea of true friendship!” he said. “Ach, Herr Doktor, I’ll reread Cicero’s De Amicitia this evening with renewed pleasure. How I wish that I had a friend like your unfortunate scholar has found in you! But I’ll contribute a little to your good deed by buying everything your friend is willing to part with, and by paying very good prices . . .”

  I had a slight stirring of curiosity:

  “I didn’t look at the dish very closely,” I said loftily. “It didn’t concern me, and besides, I don’t know anything about such things. What kind of work is it? Byzantine?”

  Gockel scratched his chin in embarrassment.

  “Uh . . . I couldn’t say for sure. Byzantine, yes, maybe . . . I’ll have to study it more carefully . . . But,” he went on, suddenly recovering his serenity, “in any case it’s sure to find a buyer.” Then, in a tone that cut short all further discussion: “That’s the most important thing to us . . . and to your friend, too, of course.”

  Late that night I accompanied Anita in the moonlight to the street where her house stood half-hidden in a clump of tall lilacs.

  But I must go back in my story to the tray I sold for thalers and gold, which gave me for one evening the friendship of the most beautiful girl in the world.

  The door opened onto a long hall with a blue stone floor. A frosted window pane cast light into it and broke up the shadows. My first impression of being in a Flemish Beguine convent became stronger, especially when an open door at the end of the hall led me into a broad kitchen with a vaulted ceiling and rustic furniture, gleaming with wax and polish.

  This innocuous scene was so reassuring that I called aloud:

  “Hello! Is there anyone upstairs?”

  A powerful resonance rumbled, but no presence cared to manifest itself.

  I must admit that at no time did the silence and absence of life surprise me; it was as though I had expected it. In fact, from the time when I first perceived the existence of the enigmatic street, I had not thought for one moment of any possible inhabitants. And yet I had just entered it like a nocturnal thief.

  I took no precautions when I ransacked the drawers containing silverware and table linen. My footsteps clattered freely in the adjoining rooms furnished like convent visiting-rooms, and on a magnificent oak staircase that . . . Ah, there was something surprising in my visit! That staircase led nowhere! It ran into the drab wall as though it continued on the other side of it.

  All this was bathed in the whitish glow of the frosted glass that formed the ceiling. I saw, or thought I saw, a vaguely hideous shape on the rough plaster wall, but when I looked at it attentively I realized that it was composed of thin cracks and was of the same order as those monsters that we distinguish in clouds and the lace of curtains. Furthermore, it did not trouble me, because when I looked a second time I no longer saw it in the network of cracks in the plaster.

  I went back to the kitchen. Through a barred window, I saw a shadowy little courtyard that was like a pit surrounded by four big, mossy walls.

  On a sideboard there was a heavy tray that looked as though it ought to have some value. I slipped it under my coat. I was deeply disappointed: I felt as though I had just stolen a few coins from a child’s piggy bank, or from an old-maid aunt’s shabby woolen stocking.

  I went to Gockel, the antique dealer.

  The three little houses were identical. In all of them, I found the same clean, tidy kitchen, the same sparse, gleaming furniture, the same dim, unreal light, the same serene quietness, the same senseless wall that ended the staircase. And in all three houses, I found identical candlesticks and the same heavy tray.

  I took them away, and . . . and the next day I always found them in their places again. I took them to Gockel, who smiled broadly as he paid me for them.

  It was enough to drive me mad; I felt my soul becoming monotonous, like that of a whirling dervish. Over and over again, I stole the same objects from the same house, under the same circumstances. I wondered whether this might not be the first vengeance of that unknown without mystery. Might not damnation be the unvarying repetition of sin for all eternity?

  One day I did not go. I had resolved to space out my wretched incursions. I had a reserve of gold; Anita was happy and was showing wonderful tenderness toward me.

  That same evening, Gockel came to see me, asked me if I had anything to sell, and, to my surprise, offered to pay me even more than he had been paying. He scowled when I told him of my decision.

  “You’ve found a regular buyer, haven’t you?” I said to him as he was leaving.

  He slowly turned around and looked me straight in the eyes.

  “Yes, Herr Doktor. I won’t tell you anything about him, just as you never speak to me of . . . your friend, the seller.” His voice became lower: “Bring me objects every day; tell me how much gold you want for them, and I’ll give it to you, without bargaining. We’re both tied to the same wheel, Herr Doktor. Perhaps we’ll have to pay later. In the meantime, let’s live the kind of life we like: you with a pretty girl, I with a fortune.”

  We never broached the subject again. But Anita suddenly became very demanding, and Gockel’s gold slipped between her little fingers like water.

  Then the atmosphere of the street changed, if I may express it that way. I heard melodies. At least it seemed to me that it was marvelous, faraway music. Summoning up my courage again, I decided to explore the street beyond the bend and go on toward the song that vibrated in the distance.

  When I passed the third door and entered a part of the street where I had never gone before, I felt a terrible tightening in my heart. I took only three or four hesitant steps.

  I turned around. I could still see the first part of the street, but it looked much smaller. It seemed to me that I had moved dangerously far away from my world. Nevertheless, in a surge of irrational temerity, I ran a short distance, then knelt, and, like a boy peering over a hedge, ventured to look down the unknown part of the street.

  Disappointment struck me like a slap. The street continued its winding way, but again I saw nothing except three little doors in a white wall, and some viburnum bushes.

  I would surely have gone back then if the wind of song had not passed by, like a distant tide of billowing sound . . . I surmounted an inexplicable terror and listened to it, hoping to analyze it if possible.

  I have called it a tide: it was a sound that came from a considerable distance, but it was enormous, like the sound of the sea.

  As I listened to it, I no longer heard the harmonies I had thought I discerned in it at first; instead, I heard a harsh dissonance, a furious clamor of wails and hatred.

  Have you ever noticed that the first whiffs of a repulsive smell are sometimes soft and even pleasant? I remember that when I left my house one day I was greeted in the street by an appetizing aroma of roast beef. “Someone’s doing some good cooking early in the morning,” I thought. But when I had walked a hundred paces, this aroma changed into the sharp, sickening smell of burning cloth: a draper’s shop was on fire, filling the air with sparks and smoky flames. In the same way, I may have been deceived by my first perception of the melodious clamor.

  “Why don’t I go beyond the next bend?” I said to myself. My apprehensive inertia had almost disappeared. Walking calmly now, I covered the space before me in a few seconds—and once again I found exactly the same scene that I had left behind.

  I was overwhelmed by a kind of bitter fury that engulfed my broken curiosity. Three identical houses, then three more identical houses. I had plumbed the mystery merely by opening the first door.

  Gloomy courage took possession of me. I walked forward along the street, and my disappointment grew at an incredible rate.

  A bend, three little yellow doors, a clump of virburnum bushes, then another bend, the same three little doors
in the white wall, and the shadow of spindle trees. This repetition continued obsessively while I walked furiously, with loud footsteps.

  Suddenly, when I had turned one more bend in the street, this terrible symmetry was broken. There were again three little doors and some viburnum bushes, but there was also a big wooden portal, darkened and worn smooth by time. I was afraid of it.

  I now heard the clamor from much closer, hostile and threatening. I began walking back toward the Mohlenstrasse. The scenes went by like the quatrains of a ballad: three little doors and viburnum bushes, three little doors and viburnum bushes . . .

  Finally I saw the first lights of the real world twinkling before me. But the clamor had pursued me to the edge of the Mohlenstrasse. There it stopped abruptly, adapting itself to the joyous evening sounds of the populous streets, so that the mysterious and terrible shouting ended in a chorus of children’s voices singing a roundelay.

  The whole town is in the grip of an unspeakable terror.

  I would not have spoken of it in these brief memoirs, which concern only myself, if I had not found a link between the shadowy street and the crimes that steep the town in blood every night.

  Over a hundred people have suddenly disappeared, a hundred others have been savagely murdered.

  I recently took a map of the town and drew on it the winding line that must represent Saint Beregonne’s Lane, that incomprehensible street that overlaps our terrestrial world. I was horrified to see that all the crimes have been committed along that line.

  Thus poor Klingbom was one of the first to disappear. According to his clerk, he vanished like a puff of smoke just as he was entering the room containing his stills. The seed merchant’s wife was next, snatched away while she was in her sad garden. Her husband was found in his drying-room with his skull smashed.

  As I traced the fateful line on the map, my idea became a certainty. I can explain the victims’ disappearance only by their passage into an unknown plane; as for the murders, they are easy for invisible beings.