You mustn’t take me for a great sage, my boy, just because last night my double told you so much that might seem marvellous to you. I have not yet reached the stage when I can claim that he and I are one and the same person. It is true, however, that I am more at home in that dreamland than many other people. I have become visible over there and lasting, so to speak, but I still always have to shut my eyes here when I want to open them over there, and vice versa. There are people for whom that is no longer necessary, but very, very few.
You remember that you could not see yourself, and had neither body, nor hands, nor eyes, when you lay down in the coffin again on the white road?
But the schoolboy couldn’t see you, either! He walked right through you, as if you were empty air!
Do you know where that came from? You did not take the memory of the form of your earthly body over to the other side. Only someone who can do that – as I have learnt to – is visible to himself on the other side. He will create for himself a second body in dreamland, which will even become visible to others later on, however strange that might sound to you at the moment. In order to achieve that, there are methods” – with a grin he pointed at the print of Leonardo’s Last Supper – “which I will teach you when your body is mature and no longer needs to be bound. Anyone who knows them is capable of raising a ghost. With some people this ‘becoming visible in the other realm’ happens of its own accord, completely without method, but almost always only one part of them comes alive, usually the hand. That then often performs the most pointless acts, for the head is absent, and people who observe the effect cross themselves and talk of fiendish phantoms. You are thinking, how can a hand do something without its owner being aware of it? Have you never seen the tail of a lizard break off and writhe in apparent agony while the lizard stands by, in complete indifference? It is something like that.
The realm over there is just as real” (“or unreal”, he added in an aside) “as this earthly realm. Each on its own is only a half, only together do they form a whole. You know the story of Siegfried: his sword was broken in two pieces; the cunning dwarf Alberich could not forge it together, because he was a creature of the earth, but Siegfried could.
Siegfried’s sword is a symbol of that double life: the way to weld it together into one piece is a secret one must know, if one wants to be a knight.
The realm beyond is in fact even more real than this earthly one. The one is a reflection of the other, that is to say the earthly one is a reflection of ‘beyond’, not vice versa. Anything that is on the right over there” – he pointed to his goitre – “is on the left here.
Now do you understand?
That other man was my double. What he said to you I have only just now heard from your lips. It did not come from his knowledge, much less from mine; it came from yours!
Yes, yes, my lad, don’t stare at me like that, it came from yours! Or rather”, he ran his hand caressingly through my hair, “from the knowledge of the Christopher within you! Anything I can tell you, as one human animal to another, comes out of human lips and goes into a human ear, and is forgotten when the brain decays. The only talk you can learn from, is from talking to – yourself! When you were talking to my double, you were talking to yourself! Anything a human being can tell you is, on the one hand, too little, and, on the other, too much. Sometimes it comes too soon, at others too late, and always when your soul is asleep. And now, my son”, he turned back to his desk, “it’s time you got dressed. You’re surely not going to run around in your nightshirt all day?”
Chapter 4
Ophelia
The memories of my life have become like precious stones to me; when the time for observing them comes, and I have found a human hand I can bend to my will to write them down, I raise them from the watery depths of the past. Then, when I listen to the string of words as to a story from other lips, I feel as if they are glittering gems running through my fingers, and the past becomes present once more. To my eyes, they all gleam, the dull as well as the shining ones, the dark as well as the bright; I can look on them all with a smile in my heart, for I am for ever ‘dissolved with corpse and sword’.
But there is one jewel among them which I can only raise with trembling hand. I cannot play with it as I can with the others. It gives off the sweet, intoxicating power of Mother Earth which goes straight to my heart.
It is like alexandrite, a precious stone which is dark green by day but suddenly shines with a red glow when you stare into its depths in the still of night.
I carry it with me like a drop of crystallised heart’s-blood, ever fearful that it might dissolve into liquid once more and scorch me, if I should bear it close to my breast for too long.
For that reason I have shut away the memory of that span of time that for me bears the name of Ophelia and is a brief spring followed by a long autumn, as if in a glass ball in which lives the boy I used to be, half child, half youth. I look through the glass sides at myself, but it is like looking at a figure in a waxworks: it has lost all power to ensnare me with its magic.
And just as I see this image before me, awaking, changing, fading, so will I – a reporter who has left this world – describe it.
All the windows of the town are open, their ledges red with the geraniums in bloom; the chestnut trees that line the banks of the river are festooned with living, scented, white spring candles. The air beneath the pale-blue, cloudless sky is mild and still. Over the meadows there is a flutter of colourful butterflies, as if a gentle breeze were playing with a thousand scraps of coloured tissue paper.
In the bright, moonlit nights, the eyes of the cats, spitting and yowling with the pangs of love, glitter from the silvery roofs.
I am sitting on the banisters in the stair-well, listening to the sounds coming from the open window of the third floor across the alley. The curtains are drawn, so I cannot see into the room, but two voices – one a deep, declamatory, man’s voice, that I hate, and the other a soft, shy girl’s voice – are carrying on a conversation which I find incomprehensible:
“To-o be-e or not to-o be-e, that is the question. Nymph, in thy orisons, be a-all my sins remember’d.”
“Good my Lord, how does your honour for this many a day?” breathes the shy voice.
“Get thee-ee to a nunnery, Ophelia.”
I am very eager to hear what will come next, but suddenly, as if the speaker had turned into a clockwork toy, the spring of which is beginning to unwind, the male voice, without any obvious reason, becomes a low, hurried gabble from which all I can fish out are a few meaningless sentences, “Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; if thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, or, if thou needs marry, marry a fool, and quickly too. Farewell.”
To which the girl’s voice shyly replies, “O! what a noble mind is here o’erthrown. O heavenly powers, restore him!”
Then both are silent, and I hear sparse applause. After half an hour of deathly hush, during which the smell of a greasy roast wafts from the window, a well-chewed cigar-butt usually flies, still glowing, out between the curtains, bounces off the wall of our house in a shower of sparks and drops onto the cobbles of the alleyway.
I sit there until late in the afternoon, staring across at the house. My heart gives a joyful start each time the curtains move. Will Ophelia come to the window? And if it is she, should I leave my hiding place and show myself?
I have picked a red rose; will I dare to throw it across to her? I ought to have something to say to her as I do. But what?
It does not come to that, however. The rose begins to droop in my hot hand and there is no sign of life from across the alleyway. Only the smell of the meat has given way to that of roasted coffee.
Ah! At last. A woman’s hands push the curtains apart. For a moment my head spins, then I clench my teeth and force myself to throw the rose through the open window.
A soft cry of surprise, t
hen – Frau Aglaia Mutschelknaus appears at the window.
I cannot duck down quickly enough, she has already seen me.
I feel the blood drain from my cheeks; all is revealed.
But destiny has other ideas. Frau Mutschelknaus simpers, places the rose on her bosom, as if on a plinth, and bashfully lowers her eyes; then, when she raises her soulful gaze once more and realises that it is only me, a shadow flits across her features. But she inclines her head in thanks, and the simper widens to reveal one of her canines.
I feel as if a skull had smiled at me, and yet I am relieved! If she had guessed for whom the flower was intended, it would have all been over. An hour later I am even happy that it turned out the way it did. From now on I can leave a whole bunch of flowers on the window-ledge for Ophelia every morning: her mother will assume they are for herself.
Perhaps she’ll even think they come from my foster-father, Baron Jöcher!
Life certainly teaches you a trick or two.
For a moment I have a nasty taste in my mouth, as if the mean thought had poisoned me, but the next minute it has gone, and I am wondering whether the best plan would not be to go to the cemetery straight away to steal some fresh roses. Later on people come to pray at the graves, and in the evening the gates are locked.
Down in Baker’s Row I meet Herr Paris, the actor, coming out of the alley in his creaky boots.
He knows who I am, I can tell by his look.
He is a fat, old, clean-shaven man with flabby cheeks and an alcoholic nose that quivers at every step. He is wearing a kind of loose velvet beret, his cravat is fastened by a pin with a silver laurel wreath on it, and across his paunch hangs a watch-chain woven from tresses of blond hair. His jacket and waistcoat are of brown velvet, his legs are tightly encased in bottle-green trousers, which are so long that at the bottom they have folds like a concertina.
Has he guessed that I’m going to the cemetery? And why I’m going to steal roses there? And for whom? That’s silly, I’m the only one who knows that. I give him a defiant look and deliberately do not wish him a good morning, but my heart stands still for a second when I notice the hard, almost calculating stare he is giving me from beneath his half-closed lids; he stops, takes a reflective suck at his cigar and then closes his eyes, like someone who has just had a strange idea.
I walk past him as quickly as possible, but then, from behind me, I hear him clear his throat in a loud, unnatural manner, as if he were about to declaim a speech, “Hemhem, mhhm, hemm.”
An ice-cold tremor runs down my spine, and I start to run; I can’t help it, I have to run, even though something says, ‘Don’t! You’re just giving yourself away.”
In the first light of dawn I put out the lamps and then go back to sit on the banisters, although I know it will be hours before Ophelia comes and opens the window in the house across the way. But I am afraid I might sleep too long if I go back to bed instead of waiting here.
I have put three white roses on the window-ledge for her, and I was so excited that I almost fell down into the alley as I did.
I pass the time imagining I am lying on the ground with broken limbs; they carry me to my room, Ophelia hears what has happened, guesses the cause, comes to my sick-bed and kisses me, tenderly, lovingly.
Thus I weave myself a childish, sentimental dream, then I blush inwardly at it, embarrassed that I can be so foolish; but the idea of suffering pain for Ophelia’s sake is so sweet.
I tear myself away from my daydream. Ophelia is nineteen and a young lady, while I am only seventeen, although I am a little taller than she is. She would only kiss me in the way one kisses a child that has hurt itself. I like to think of myself as a grown man, and here I am imagining myself lying helpless in bed, being looked after by her. It is not manly, it is like a little boy.
So I dream myself into another fantasy: it is night and the town is asleep when suddenly flames are reflected on my window and a cry echoes through the streets; the neighbouring house is on fire! There is no hope of saving the inhabitants; Baker’s Row is blocked by blazing beams!
In the room across the alleyway the curtains go up in flames; but I leap over from the window of our stair-well and carry my love, who is lying unconscious on the floor in her nightdress, out through the inferno of smoke and fire.
My heart is beating fit to burst with joy and excitement. So vivid is the imagined scene, that I can feel the touch of her bare arms round my neck as I carry her and the coolness of the unmoving lips I cover with kisses. The image keeps on surging through my blood, as if, with each sweet, bewitching detail, it has entered my life-stream, so that I can never free myself from it. And it makes me happy, for I know that the impression is so deep that it will appear to me tonight in a real, a living dream. But how many hours there are until then!
I lean out of the window and look up at the sky: day refuses to break. A whole long day still separates me from the night. I am almost afraid because the morning must come before the night, it might destroy all my hopes! The roses might fall off when Ophelia opens her window, and she won’t see them at all. Or she will see them and pick them up and … what then? Will I have the courage not to hide immediately? An icy cold spreads over my body, for I know I will definitely not have the courage. But I comfort myself with the thought that she might guess whom the roses are from.
She must guess! It is impossible that, however mute and shy they are, the passionate, yearning thoughts of love which my heart radiates, should not penetrate hers!
I close my eyes and imagine, as vividly as possible, that I am over there by her bedside, that I lean down and kiss her in her sleep, in the ardent hope that she will dream of me.
I see it all so clearly in my mind’s eye that for a while I am unsure whether I have been sleeping or what was happening to me. I had been absentmindedly staring at the three white roses over there on the window-ledge until they dissolved in the morning twilight. Now they have reappeared, but I am tortured by the thought that I stole them from the cemetery. Why did I not steal red ones? They belong to life. I cannot imagine that a dead man, waking up to find red roses missing from his grave, would demand them back.
At last the sun has risen. The space between the two houses is filled with the light from its rays. I feel as if we are hovering high above the clouds, for down below the alley has become invisible, swallowed up by the mist the morning breeze wafts through the streets.
A bright figure is moving in the room across the alley. I hold my breath in apprehension. I clasp the banister-rail with both hands to stop myself running away.
Ophelia!
For a long time I do not dare to look across. A horrible feeling that I have done something unutterably idiotic chokes me. It is as if the splendour of my dreamland has been simply wiped away. I feel that it will never return and that I should throw myself from the window at once, or do something else dreadful in order to stifle the ridicule which is bound to break out at any moment, if my fears are realised.
I make one last stupid attempt to rescue my self-respect by frantically rubbing at my sleeve, as if there was a dirty mark on it.
Then our eyes meet.
The blood has rushed to Ophelia’s face; I can see her delicate white hands trembling as they hold the roses.
We both want to say something and cannot; each can see that the other lacks the confidence.
Another moment and Ophelia has disappeared.
I crouch down on the steps, curling myself up into a tiny ball, and all I am aware of is the blaze of joy inside me, I am beside myself with a joy that is a jubilant hymn of praise
Can it really be?
Ophelia is a young lady. And me? What am I?
But no. She is young like me. In my mind, I see her eyes again, even clearer than they were in the glare of the sunlight. And I read there: she is a child like me. Only a child could look out of such eyes. We are both still children. She does not feel that I am still just a silly little boy.
I know, just as sur
ely as I know a heart beats in my breast that would let itself be torn into a thousand pieces for her sake, that we will meet again today without having to go looking for each other. I know too that, without either having to tell the other, it will be after sunset, in the little garden between our house and the river.
Chapter 5
The Midnight Talk
Just as the out-of-the-way little town girdled by the ever-rolling river lives on in my heart like a tranquil isle, so the memory of a conversation that I overheard one night rises like an island from the restless waves of those youthful days that bear the name of Ophelia.
I had – as I suppose I did hourly at that time – been dreaming of my love, when I heard the Baron open his study door to a visitor. By his voice I recognised the Chaplain. He sometimes came, even at a late hour, for they were old friends and they would talk, usually until long after midnight, over a glass of wine about all sorts of philosophical questions, and I imagine they sometimes discussed my education; in brief, they spoke of things which were of little concern to me.
The Baron refused to let me go to school. He used to say, “Our teachers are like sorcerer’s apprentices, who spend all their time deforming the mind, until the heart dies of thirst. When they have accomplished that, they declare their students ready to go out into the world.”
For that reason he would only give me books to read that he had carefully selected from his own library after he had questioned me in order to ascertain the state of my thirst for knowledge. But he never tested me to see if I had actually read them.
“You will note the things your spirit wants your memory to retain, because it will also make you enjoy them”, was a favourite saying of his. “Schoolmasters, however, are like animal tamers; the latter think it is important for lions to jump through hoops, the former spend all their time getting children to remember that the late lamented Hannibal lost his left eye in the Pontine swamps; the one turns the king of the desert into a circus clown, the other a divine flower into a bunch of parsley.”
The White Dominican Page 5