The Golem
Page 25
“Brandy, please. – Ah, thank you. – Oh, Fräulein?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Whom does the café belong to?”
“Herr Loisitchek. He owns the whole building. A very distinguished member of the business community.”
Aha, the fellow with the pig’s teeth on his watch chain! I remember.
A good question to help me get my bearings occurred to me.
“Fräulein!”
“Yes, sir?”
“When did the stone bridge collapse?”
“Thirty-three years ago.”
“Hmm. Thirty-three years ago.” I calculated. Pernath, the gem engraver, must be getting on for ninety by now.
“Fräulein!”
“Yes, sir?”
“Is there no one among your customers here who can remember what the old Jewish Ghetto used to look like? I’m a writer, that’s why I’m interested in it.”
The waitress thought for a moment. “Among the customers? No. But just a minute. Do you see the marker over there who’s playing billiards with that student? The old man with the Roman nose? He’s lived here all his life, he’ll be able to tell you everything about it. Shall I tell him to come when he’s finished?”
I looked over to where she indicated. A slim, whitehaired old man was leaning against the mirror chalking his cue. A debauched, but oddly aristocratic face. Now whom did he remind me of?
“Fräulein, what is the billiard marker called?”
The waitress leant her elbows on the table, licked her pencil and at lightning speed wrote her first name countless times on the marble top, quickly erasing it each time with a wet finger-tip. As she did so, her smouldering eyes kept giving me more or less suggestive glances, depending on how well she thought they were received. An essential accompaniment was the raising of the eyebrows to give her a wide-eyed, appealing look.
“Fräulein”, I repeated, “what is the billiard marker called?” I could tell that she would have preferred another question, ‘Fräulein, why are you wearing nothing but a tail-coat?’ or words to that effect, but I didn’t ask it, I was too preoccupied with my dream.
“What do you think he’s called?” she pouted. “His name’s Ferri, Ferri Athenstädt.”
Aha! Ferri Athenstädt! Another old acquaintance!
“You must tell me everything you know about him, Fräulein”, I wheedled, though it meant I had to fortify myself with another brandy, “I do so love listening to your lovely voice.” (I found myself so nauseous it turned my stomach.)
She leant towards me with a conspiratorial air, so close that her hair tickled my cheek, and whispered, “Old Ferri, he was a sly one, he was. People say he had a title that went back hundreds of years; nothing but silly gossip, of course, just because he always goes round so beautifully clean-shaven. The story is that he had pots of money and a red-haired little Jewess, that had been on the game since she was a girl (she quickly scribbled her name a few more times on the table-top), stripped him bare – of money I mean, of course. Then when he had no money left she ran off and married this toff”, she whispered a name I could not understand in my ear. “The toff had to give up all his grand titles of course, had to go round calling himself Sir Simple Simon. Serve him right. And the fact that she used to be on the game still showed, right to the end. I always say –”
Fritzi! The bill”, someone shouted from the dais.
I was glancing round the room when I suddenly heard a faint, metallic chirping, like a grasshopper, from behind. When I turned round I could not believe my eyes. There, sitting hunched up in the corner, face to the wall, and turning the handle of a little music-box the size of a cigarette packet with his skeletal fingers, was blind Nephtali Schaffranek, as old as Methuselah.
I went over to him. In a whispering voice he was singing a muddled song to himself:
Frau Pick,
Frau Hock,
Stars both red and blue
All gossiping together
———————-
“Do you know what the man is called”, I asked a waiter as he hurried past.
“No, sir, no one knows him or his name. He’s even forgotten it himself. He’s all alone in the world. He’s a hundred and ten years old, they say. He comes in every night and gets a free coffee for old times’ sake.”
I leant down over the old man and shouted in his ear, “Schaffranek!”
He twitched, as if he had had an electric shock. He mumbled something and rubbed his forehead in thought.
“Can you understand me, Herr Schaffranek?”
He nodded.
“Listen carefully. I want to ask you some questions about the old days. If you answer properly, you can have this crown on the table here.”
“Crown”, repeated the old man, and immediately began twirling the handle of his tinny music box like mad.
I put my hand on his. “Just try to remember. Did you know, about thirty-three years ago, a gem cutter by the name of Pernath?”
“Pain in the arse! Tailor and cutter!” he babbled asthmatically, laughing uncontrollably, as if he had just heard a capital joke.
“No, not ‘pain in the arse’, Pernath!”
“Pereles!?” he said, jubilantly.
“No, not Pereles, either. Per – nath!”
“Pascheles?” he crowed.
My hopes dashed, I gave up the attempt.
“You wanted to speak to me, sir?” Ferri Athenstädt, the billiard marker, introduced himself with a faint bow.
“Yes, I do. I thought we might have a game while we talked.”
“Do you play for money, sir? I’ll give you ninety start.”
“Right then. For a crown. Would you like to cue off?”
His Highness took his cue, aimed, miscued, grimaced. I knew perfectly well what he was up to. He would let me reach ninety-nine and then finish in one break. The odd feeling I had was growing stronger by the minute, and I decided not to waste time beating about the bush.
“Tell me, Herr Athenstädt, do you remember – it was many years ago, around the time when the stone bridge fell down – a certain Athanasius Pernath who lived in the old Jewish quarter?”
A man with a squint wearing a red-and-white striped linen jacket and tiny gold earrings, who was sitting on the bench along the wall reading the newspaper, looked up and stared at me, crossing himself.
“Pernath? Pernath?” repeated the aristocratic marker, racking his brains, “Pernath? Wasn’t he tall and slim? Brown hair, short pointed beard flecked with grey?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Roughly forty years old at the time? He looked like …”, His Highness suddenly stared at me in surprise, “Are you a relation, sir?”
The man with the squint crossed himself.
“Me? A relation? What an odd idea! No, I’m interested in him, that’s all. Do you know more about him?” I asked calmly, although I could feel my heart turning to ice.
Ferri Athenstädt racked his brains once more. “If I’m not mistaken, people thought he was mad. Once he claimed he was called … just a minute … yes, he claimed he was called Laponder. And another time he tried to pass himself off as a certain … Charousek.”
“All a pack of lies!” interrupted the man with the squint. “That Charousek really existed. My father had several thousand crowns from him.”
“Who is this man?” I asked Athenstädt in a low voice.
“A ferryman, he’s called Tschamrda. As far as Pernath is concerned, all I can remember, at least I believe I’m right in this, is that in later years he married a beautiful, darkskinned Jewess.”
‘Miriam!’ I said to myself. I was so excited that my hands were trembling and I couldn’t go on playing.
The ferryman crossed himself.
“What ever’s the matter with you today, Herr Tschamrda?” asked Athenstädt in astonishment.
“That Pernath never lived!” he exclaimed. “I don’t believe it!”
I immediately bought the man a bran
dy to loosen his tongue.
“There are people who do say Pernath is still alive”, the ferryman declared at length. “He’s a comb-cutter, so I’ve heard tell, and lives up on the Hradschin.”
“Where on the Hradschin?”
The ferryman crossed himself. “That’s just it. He lives in a place where no living person can live: at the wall by the last lamp.”
“Do you know the house, Herr Tscham … Tschamer … Tschamrda?”
“I wouldn’t go up there, not for all the money in the world!” he protested. “Jesus, Joseph and Mary, what do you take me for!?”
“But you could show me the way, from a distance, couldn’t you, Herr Tschamrda?”
“That I could do”, muttered the ferryman, “if you can wait until six in the morning. That’s when I go down to the Moldau. But I warn you not to! You’ll fall into the Stag’s Moat and break your neck, Mother of God have mercy on us!”
We went down together through the morning air; a fresh breeze was blowing from the river. I was so tense with expectation I could scarcely feel the ground under my feet. Suddenly I saw the house in Altschulgasse before me; I recognised every window, the curving gutter, the bars, the window-ledges like glistening lumps of fat, everything, everything!
“When did this house burn down?” I asked my companion with the squint. I was so tense the blood was pounding in my ears.
“Burn down? Why, never.”
“But it did! I’m sure of it.”
“No.”
“But I’m sure. Would you like to bet on it?”
“How much?”
“One crown.”
“Done!” Tschamrda fetched the porter. “Has this house ever been burnt down?”
“Burnt down? What ever for?” The man laughed.
I just could not believe it.
“I’ve been living here for seventy years”, the porter assured us, “so I should know.”
Strange … strange!
On a zig-zag course that kept darting sideways into the current, the ferryman rowed me across the Moldau. His boat consisted of little more than eight unplaned planks, and the yellow waters foamed against the wood of the bows. The roofs on the Hradschin were a glittering red in the morning sun.
I was in the grip of a solemn feeling that was beyond words, like the gradual dawning of a muted emotion from a former existence, as if the world around me were enchanted. I saw everything as if in a dream, as if I had at times lived in several different places at once.
I got out. “How much do I owe you, ferryman?”
“One kreutzer. If you’d helped me row, it would have been two.”
Once again I am making my way up the lonely Castle Steps that I ascended the previous night in my sleep. My heart is beating fast. I know that next comes the bare tree whose branches reach over the wall.
No. It is covered with white blossom. The air is full of the sweet scent of lilac. At my feet lies the city in the first light of the morning, like a vision of the promised land.
Not a sound, just fragrance and light.
I could find my way up to the bizarre little Street of the Alchemists with my eyes closed, so familiar every step suddenly seems. But in the place where last night there was a wooden gate in front of the shining white house, the street now ends in a magnificent set of elegantly bowed gilt railings. The gate in the wall running along behind the railings is flanked by two yew-trees that tower up above the blossoming shrubs.
Standing on tiptoe to see over the bushes I am dazzled by fresh splendour: the garden wall is covered with mosaics of turquoise set with strange, golden shellwork frescoes depicting the cult of the Egyptian god Osiris.
On the double gate is the image of the god, a hermaphrodite with one half on each side, the right-hand one female, the left-hand male. Done in half-relief, the figure is seated on a sumptuous, low throne of mother-of-pearl. Its golden head is that of a hare with the ears pricked and close together, so that they look like the two pages of an open book.
There is a scent of dew, and the fragrance of hyacinths drifts over the wall.
For a long time I just stand there like a stone statue, marvelling at it all. I feel as if an alien world is appearing before me. Then an old gardener or servant with silver buckles on his shoes, a lace jabot and a strangely cut coat appears behind the railings from the left and asks me what I want. Without a word I hand Athanasius Pernath’s hat in its paper wrapping over the railing to him.
He takes it and goes in through the double gate.
When it opens, I see beyond it a marble building like a temple, and on its steps stands
ATHANASIUS PERNATH
and leaning against him is
MIRIAM,
both of them gazing down on the city.
For a moment Miriam turns round, sees me, smiles and whispers something to Athanasius Pernath.
I am spellbound by her beauty. She is still as young as in my dream last night.
Athanasius Pernath turns slowly towards me, and my heart stands still:
His face is so like mine, that it is as if I were looking into a mirror.
Then the gates close and all I can see is the shimmering hermaphrodite. The old servant gives me my own hat and says, in a voice that sounds as if it came from the depths of the earth,
“Herr Athanasius Pernath’s compliments. He thanks you most kindly and begs you not to interpret the fact that he has not invited you into the garden as a lack of hospitality; it is a strict house rule from time immemorial.
He has not, I am to tell you, put your hat on; he noticed the mistake immediately.
He hopes that his has not given you a headache.”
Dedalus European Classics
Dedalus European Classics began in 1984 with D. H. Lawrence’s translation of Verga’s Mastro Don Gesualdo. In addition to rescuing major works of literature from being out of print, the editors’ other aim was to redefine what constituted a “classic”.
Titles available include:
The Little Angel - Andreyev £4.95
The Red Laugh - Andreyev £4.95
Seraphita (and other tales) - Balzac £9.99
The Quest of the Absolute - Balzac £6.99
The Episodes of Vathek - Beckford £6.99
The Fiery Angel - Bruisov £9.99
The Devil in Love - Cazotte £7.99
Undine - Fouqué £6.99
Misericordia - Galdos £8.99
Spirite - Gautier £6.99
The Dark Domain - Grabinski £6.99
The German Refugees - Goethe £6.99
Simplicissimus - Grimmelshausen £12.99
Tearaway - Grimmelshausen £6.99
The Cathedral - Huysmans £9.99
En Route - Huysmans £7.99
Marthe - Huysmans £6.99
The Oblate - Huysmans £7.99
Parisian Sketches - Huysmans £7.99
Stranded (En Rade) - Huysmans £9.99
The Mystery of the Yellow Room - Leroux £8.99
The Perfume of the Lady in Black - Leroux £8.99
The Woman and the Puppet - Loüys £6.99
The Angel of the West Window - Meyrink £12.99
The Dedalus Meyrink Reader - Meyrink £9.99
The Golem - Meyrink £7.99
The Green Face - Meyrink £7.99
The Opal (and other stories) - Meyrink £7.99
Walpurgisnacht - Meyrink £7.99
The White Dominican - Meyrink £6.99
Smarra & Trilby - Nodier £6.99
The Late Mattia Pascal - Pirandello £9.99
Tales from the Saragossa Manuscript - Potocki £5.99
Manon Lescaut - Prévost £7.99
The City and the Mountains - Queiroz £9.99
Cousin Bazilio - Queiroz £11.99
The Crime of Father Amaro - Queiroz £11.99
The Maias - Queiroz £15.00
The Mandarin (and other stories) - Queiroz £7.99
The Relic - Queiroz £9.99
The Tragedy of the Street of Flowers - Querioz £9.99
The Bells of Bruges - Rodenbach £9.99
Bruges-la-Morte - Rodenbach £7.99
Celestina - Rojas £9.99
Lucio’s Confession - Sá-Carneiro £8.99
The Class - Ungar £7.99
The Maimed - Ungar £6.99
I Malavoglia (The House by the Medlar Tree) - Verga £9.99
Mastro Don Gesualdo - Verga £7.99
Short Sicilian Novels - Verga £6.99
Sparrow, Temptation & Cavalleria Rusticana - Verga £8.99
Table of Contents
SLEEP
DAY
I
PRAGUE
PUNCH
NIGHT
AWAKE
SNOW
GHOSTS
LIGHT
CARE
FEAR
URGE
EVE
RUSE
RACK
MAY
MOON
FREE
END