The Salzburg Tales

by Christina Stead

  “Four suns to see: devout we sped

  “More suns to do obeisance to,

  Since there two suns two suns did woo:

  Two orbs were there that mimicked you,

  And two the evening star—boohoo!”

  The dawn confused, weeps modest tears,

  (I, mine), Dew, his (she, Guinevere’s):

  Phoebus, ejaculating, steers

  His white prows through a thousand meers

  Seeking his rival: but behind

  The pale excuse of your drawn blind

  The glutton in the melon’s rind

  Bites between fresh lips ensanguined,

  And sugar, dripping from the bite,

  With red, marks your complexion white:

  The thief, whom such wild fruits invite,

  Stays in your vines another night.

  Your father looks at man-trap, gin,

  By garden-wall; questions your kin:

  “Who stole the fruit?” “Father, no sin!

  A hungry man—I let him in.”

  And when the University Senate called you up and asked, “Where did you find this?” you replied, “I don’t even know what it means: I dreamed it, like Coleridge.” Runnel, fleeting, fleeing, reappearing, lost stream under snow, hawthorn, verdure, river by the lambs and river through the corn-bright fields, flood carrying boats, chips, peach-stones and walnut-shells for the country children of the plains, turning sinuously round and playing through artificial fountains and dyer’s sewers in the capital, creeping colourlessly and tastelessly into a tap to be drunk in some suburban home, you that were the rose-browed fountain of Pelleas.

  There were no more beauties! Yes, the last one, a beauty in an ugly mask. As we rode into the city on the other side, experienced young men with insinuating voices, a country girl with a powdery outer crust, too long baked over stoves cooking for boundary-riders, too long stewed by the laborious candle and wearing the harlequin costume lent out by the stained glass dignitaries of Gothic libraries, offered a jug of cold water, a scone and a russet apple from a deserted farm; a simple feast, swallowed gluttonously by an omnivorous heart.

  Sad middle life where one is alone and everything is for a consideration! There was in a respectable house behind the closed shutters a woman trembling before the indecorous depths of her basin of water: there was a calander turning in the steam of a laundry, with the girls singing and laughing aloud at the shadows cast on their attic roofs the evening before: there were two eyes like coals, and unknotted black hair infuriated with love and vanity—they burn still in my dreams like the eyes of a cat in a tunnel.

  Yes, then, the cold crust of common sorrow, the tepid tea of coincidence, anæmic consolations to delay the thin-blooded old man. There is the young girl with the hassock and the nursing sister in her cassock. That’s all.

  Fair women, fair women, no love ever replaced the love you never gave.

  IN the evening, the Salzburg guests pressed the Centenarist again for tales and he began immediately to speak.

  THE CENTENARIST’S TALES

  THE Baalshem knew that the Devil was coming to wrestle with him for his soul, and he sent out a message to the spirits of holy men all over the earth, wherever they should be, to all those that had sewn in their fabric a shred of the essence of God, to come and lend him that shred, so that he could piece together a strong armour to help him in the fight. So they came together from every part of the world, and they were as God makes the good: halt, lame, blind, syphilitic, leprous, demented, epileptic, paralysed, hunch-backed. Along all the roads leading to the Baalshem’s hut came the sounds, from far off, of their crutches, their hobbling and stumbling, and every breeze brought their sighs and irrepressible groans, their stink and the fluttering of their rags, their broken voices and their praise of God.

  Presently they arrived at the Baalshem’s hut and sat round it, crosslegged, or on their haunches or knees, asking for his blessing and offering him their shred of essential virtue for his combat with the Devil. The Baalshem looked over this wretched multitude, and with his sharp eyes he discerned the shreds of virtue lying in different parts of their souls: he counted them up, and weighed and calculated. The hour of his trial approached, and already the air trembled with the shadow, and at a great distance he heard the Devil on the road. They covered the ground for miles, the elect, in their misery and poverty. Baalshem stared at them and stroked his beard; he shook his head and said, “No, take back your virtues, my poor friends: you need them. And now let the Devil come!”

  There are thousands of tales associated with Baalshem’s name, some probable, some fantastic. Baer, the wise man of Meseritz, became a cripple through ascetic excesses, and sought out Baalshem for medical, not spiritual, aid. He saw that Baalshem lived in comfort and was hail-fellow-well-met with all the people, asking the men about their business, patting the babies on the cheek and telling broad jokes to the women; and that if he had anything to say, he illustrated it with homely analogies and domestic parables. Baalshem retained Baer at his side for two years, and cured his malady by giving him plenty of food to eat and a fire to sit at; but Baer secretly despised the mildness of Baalshem, and waited in vain to see a true miracle or to hear the revelations of angelic discourse. He listened patiently to his interminable tales, was astonished that the people flocked to see Baalshem, and prepared in private to return to his own town, where he had been honoured for his asceticism and fiery denunciation of sins. One night, as he was making up his bundles and praying to the Lord to give him the visions of his earlier years, a knock came at the door, and he found outside a poor Talmudic student, whom Baalshem nourished, and who did his errands for him. The messenger begged him to go immediately to Baalshem’s house. Without asking any questions Baer ran through the snow and found before Baalshem’s house a crowd of people on their knees. When he entered the room he saw Baalshem with the great Talmud open; and Baalshem, raising his head, opened his great eyes in their cavernous sockets, and said to him with an air of authority:

  “Baer, explain this passage to me!”

  Baer took the book, and because he had studied all the glosses and was a visionary, he found the explanation easy: intoning in the antique fashion, he gave the literal and ghostly interpretations. At the end, he looked at Baalshem, as through a crystal, carried away by the sound of his own voice, and by the visions of the mystic universe he had been moving in. Baalshem took the book and said:

  “The explanation you give, Maggid, is the correct explanation, if one looks at the letters, the words, the phrases and the punctuation marks, nearsighted like a fly: but it is without soul and could not be understood by the angels: you are still ignorant as a child and colourless as a cup of water, but less mild than a child, and less reflective than a cup of water. This is the true explanation: when the prophet says, ‘Cool waters’—he means not only the cool well-waters of David, the refreshing word of consolation, the fresh deeps of heaven, where the soul wings its way, not only the crystal heart of the pure in heart and the mercy of the just and the perspicacity of the wise man, not only the waters of self-extinction, of those living in contemplation of truth, but also the silence of prayer, the state of ecstasy, the vacuum into which God raises the rapt soul by the hair of the head, and the jet of the fountain by which the elect pass without hindrance through the seven spheres and enter the presence of God”; in this way Baalshem explained the whole of the text in his powerful, ringing voice. Baer, listening, and looking over his ragged beard, saw beyond the Baalshem, a thousand legions of angels shining like a cascade of silver florins higher than the moon, stretching beyond the narrow walls of the room, with multiple eyes and their wings covered with spots like wild-cats’ eyes; they bent forward with a slight puffing sound to listen to Baalshem’s words. When he had finished, the angels closed their eyes in meditation, folded their wings, and slowly dispersed, fading into air as does the aureole of the snuffed candle. Outside the window a hundred or more of the people, on their knees in the
snow, prayed with closed eyes before the lighted window of Baalshem, swaying like reeds in the wind, and the beards of the men were like the beards of mountain-goats gathered before the goatherd’s hut. At these sights, Baer laying his head at the feet of the prophet, explained to him all he had seen; and he remained his pupil to his death. But after his death, Baer took up his ministry, gathering round him visionaries, who explained dreams to the people and cast out devils; and he appeared to the people only once a week in a white satin cloak. Establishing a ministry of the elect, they gave themselves out as the holders of a universal key and made themselves precious. The grandson of Baalshem, Baruch, fleeced the flock and lived like a Polish lord, so the people groaned under yet another load. Freud and his fellow-visionaries, self-elected Daniels of a ghostly world, who reserve to themselves the right to interpret dreams and cast out possessing devils, are of the race of Baalshem: where the master began with an ounce of truth, the disciples carry on with a pound of chicane.

  (“Your Baalshem was an honest man, then?” said the Musician: “he was not a simple fakir?”)

  He was honest enough, answered the Centenarist: no prophet can have a stunning success without a few hand-made miracles and publicity, any more than any woman can be ravishingly beautiful without rosewater, henna and a manicure-set. But it you wish to see the great Rabbi Joel, that is Baalshem, in his daily life and seventeenthcentury setting, you should hear the tale of the ‘devil-possessed house’, which relates how Baalshem was defeated by evil spirits.

  This was towards the end of the seventeenth century, when the orthodox rabbis were dismayed at the progress of the democratic, pietistic faith of the Chassidim, adapted to the poor and credulous, mocking at the learned and pedantic. Too much income flowed towards the Chassidic leaders, whom the orthodox rabbis regarded as blacklegs.

  In the city of Posen a great house inhabited by Jews was haunted by a poltergeist. Rabbi Joel, Baalshem, was called out of Volhynia, to cast out the devil, and as soon as he arrived, great crowds gathered to see him. He hurried to the haunted house and endeavoured to cast out the devil, but the poltergeist remained. Baalshem summoned the evil spirit to tell him why he had taken possession of a house owned by a worthy man, and why he harassed everybody to death. The devil answered that he had his reasons, that the house and grounds were his own, and that he was ready to prove it by the laws of the Torah. He demanded that the whole case be taken before the rabbinical synod in Posen, where he would find means to expound the principles of law from which he derived his right to the house. Rabbi Joel unwillingly agreed to this public discussion; he would have preferred to cast out the devil by himself, knowing the jealousy and machinations of the orthodox rabbis. Followed by a great crowd, he went to the synod. When the session was opened, after they had taken their oaths, but before the argument began, the devil took possession of a number of the advocates and inspired them with his arguments. They then argued as follows: Some time before, the house and grounds had belonged to a rich merchant, who was married and who had sons by his wife, but who had also a number of children begot not with his wife, but with a witch who introduced herself by magic into his couch and stole his seed; and no man could tell the difference between the real and the false children. Afterwards the merchant and his truly-begotten sons had fallen on the field of battle, and only the witch-children had remained, so that they were the only ones of the merchant’s line to inherit his estate; and they had passed it on to their children, true devils, begot by intercourse with devils.

  The orthodox Rabbis of Posen, after hearing Rabbi Joel’s argument, gave judgment for the devils and said that the Jews must vacate the house and thenceforward the devils live in it.

  Baalshem, furious at his defeat by the devils, put his curse on the house and then left the town and fled away through the woods and wilds to his own town.

  Later the house was rendered fit for human habitation again through the exorcisms of Jesuit priests, and the Rabbis of Posen agreed that the house could be occupied once more by men: for, if you will permit me to make an observation, the salmon chase the small fry and the sharks unite to chase the glutted salmon.

  WHEN this was said, they urged the Centenarist to speak again, and all the evening until very late they sat there and lapped up his tales which he squirted under pressure through natural juiciness, as a ripe pear liquor, a ripe breast milk, and over-saturated moss, water: and they retired at the end and slept profoundly, dreaming of a thousand odds and ends; but it is impossible to recount all the tales of the Centenarist.

  IN this way ended the fourth day of the Tales.

  The Fifth Day

  THE fifth day, they found that many of the guests had gone off to visit the lakes and mountain passes of the Salzkamrnergut, so their company was very small. Then the Master of the Day, who was obliged to remain in the town, for he had several concerts in prospect, said to the Musician:

  “Here is the small and appreciative audience that you most like. Seize the hour to tell us your tale; for I have heard you in private, you speak so well that it is only parsimony if you refuse to give us your tale.”

  As the Musician hesitated, the Frenchwoman exclaimed: “Come up into the hill. The Musician will feel more at ease there; and if he will be so kind as to amuse us, I will volunteer a tale afterwards.”

  When they were established on the stone seats outside the monastery gate, the Musician began his tale.

  The Musician’s Tale

  THE PRODIGY

  NEARLY thirty years ago, I went to K——in Russia, to give two concerts. The town is large: it had then a small, but wealthy and brilliant local society, drawn from Russian and German families; and the music-loving townspeople flocked to the few concerts that were given each season by visiting musicians.

  My first concert was on a Saturday afternoon. I returned to my hotel afterwards, to rest, for I had to dine out in the evening, and knew I would be expected to play for my hosts. Soon after I reached the hotel, the porter announced that a young lady had come to see me, and told me her name, Alexandra something-or-other, a difficult name for foreign ears. I found at my door a child with a roll of music in her hand. She was of Jewish race, a Miriam of pure Egyptian cast, one of those flowers that bloom by a shattered pillar, poor dust which dreams suddenly of its archaic pride. Her large and long eyes lay dark with century-old slumber, under eyebrows which flew like arrows into her blue-black hair: her nose was long and thin, and her nostrils curled like the ringlets of the Assyrian lion, and her eyeballs gleamed white, like the sails that float out from the Nile in the morning. At the moment she was not far from tears: she trembled and could not venture to say a word.

  “What do you wish, my child?” I said to her. She said in a tremulous voice, with a pure German accent: “I brought my music— to play for you.” “Why do you come to play for me?” “O, master,” she said, “I have heard of you all my life: when I was a baby I heard of the wonder child who had made the tour of Europe at the age of ten.” “Do you love music?” She replied, “I love it: I would kill myself with work to become a musician!” “Come, come,” I said gently to calm her, “then you would only be fit to be a fine harpist in heaven!” She said, “In heaven! Only one thing would be heaven to me: to sit on a concert platform and hear rounds of applause hit the air, like whirlwinds.”

  I asked her to play for me. She trembled, so I arranged her music for her, and she began to play so badly at first, that I was grieved, and she burst into tears. “Have courage, child,” I said. She got a little confidence, and presently put all her technique into the music, Chopin’s Ballade in F Minor, Opus 52; her technique was a child’s, emphatic or too mournful, full of a child’s excessive passions, obscure griefs, unspeakable longings and perplexed desires.

  She felt that she had done badly, for she stopped and looked pathetically at me. “You see,” she said, “I have no training at all.” She told me she was thirteen years old, the youngest of a large family. She went to an expensive school, and
her parents were proud of her music, but ambition made her desperate and ungrateful and all her teachers seemed mediocre; all this with a hundred exclamations of passion, pride and impatience. I saw that she was a spoilt child, difficult and hardy. Like the cactus, outlandish, spinous and wild, growing in a desert but swollen with juices, she had in an hour on a spring day put out the rich multifoliate flower of passion: I, passing, first saw the bloom. I was a young man, and in love with a beautiful and noble woman, altogether mine: I understood (I believed) the universe of women’s emotions, and I pitied and loved women for their frailty.

  The child’s petulant dignity crumbled before my silence: she began to cry, saying in the fever of a first rebuff: “I am no good at all! I am not a musician? What do you think of me?”

  “Yes, you are a musician: you must work. Now tell me what you want me to do?” “Take me with you. Let me hear you practising. I will practise all day, never bother you, and my parents will pay for my lessons, if you say I have a chance. I will do anything for you, be your secretary as well.” I was puzzled, but I said: “My dear child, I want you to work here at home for a year. Get what you can from your teachers: be patient: they know more than you. In a year I will be back in K——, next season, that is: and if you have worked hard, know your theory, and show improvement, I will see that you are placed in a conservatory under proper teachers.”

  She went away, sobered. It is touching to see a creature that carries, as a vessel, the quintessence of its kind. I thought it possible that in this child God had united two gifts, beauty and sensibility. I was a young man then, a valiant servant of the heart, a lover of all women. She was at my next concert, sitting to the right of the platform, a few seats back, so that I could not see her without turning my head a little: her sick and impassioned regard was fixed on me.

  The following season I returned to the town, and I sent the porter at once to inquire after Alexandra. He asked me if she was not a Jewess: when I said, yes, he reminded me of the terrible pogroms, the massacres of the Jews, which had taken place in the town during the winter, and told me, that if the girl had not been killed, she had probably fled. I insisted on the man making the closest inquiries. During the concert that evening I felt certain Alexandra was sitting in the same seat as before: when I was able to look, I saw in that seat a dark young girl, but not Alexandra. No sooner did I seat myself again at the piano, than I received the same impression, and once or twice I was even forced to turn my head between movements, to make sure she was not there.