Tales of the German Imagination from the Brothers Grimm to Ingeborg Bachmann (Penguin Classics)

by Unknown

  But Coppola shook himself free, and with a hoarse, repulsive laugh, muttered: ‘Oh! This not for you! But look here, lovely glass!’ – wherewith he swept up all the eyeglasses, shoved them back into his coat pocket, and from another pocket pulled out a number of big and little telescopes and field glasses.

  As soon as the eyeglasses were out of sight Nathaniel grew calm again and, mindful of Clara’s words, had to admit to himself that the terrible spook was a figment of his own imagination, and that Coppola was an altogether honest craftsman and lens grinder and could not possibly be Coppelius’ cursed doppelgänger and shadow figure. He realized, furthermore, that there was nothing strange about all the lenses that Coppola now laid out on the table, nothing ghastly like the eyeglasses, and to make amends Nathaniel now decided actually to buy something from him. He reached for a small, very finely crafted pocket looking-glass and, to test it, peered out the window.

  Never in his life had he come upon a looking-glass that so clearly and sharply brought distant objects before his eyes in such clear focus. He unintentionally peered into Spalanzani’s room; Olympia sat there, as usual, at the little table, with her arms resting on it and her hands folded. Now for the first time Nathaniel espied Olympia’s exquisitely lovely face. Only the eyes appeared strange, blank and dead. But as he brought her face into greater and greater focus in the looking-glass, it seemed to him as if Olympia’s eyes flashed open in moist moonbeams. It was as if she had only now acquired the power of sight; her glances grew livelier and livelier. Nathaniel lingered at the window, transfixed, unable to take his eyes off the stunningly lovely Olympia. He was awakened, as if out of a deep dream, by the sound of throat-clearing and scraping.

  Coppola stood behind him: ‘Tre zecchini – three ducats!’ Nathaniel, who had completely forgotten the optician, quickly counted out the asking price. ‘Fine glass – fine glass – is it not?’ asked Coppola with his repulsive hoarse voice and his crafty smile.

  ‘Yes, yes, indeed!’ Nathaniel replied, greatly vexed. ‘Adieu, dear friend!’

  But Coppola cast several strange sidelong looks at Nathaniel and his room before taking his leave. The young man could still hear him laughing out loud on the stairase. ‘All right,’ Nathaniel muttered to himself, ‘he’s laughing at me because I no doubt paid far too much for the little looking-glass – paid far too much!’ As he quietly whispered these words, a deep and terrible deathly groan resounded in the room. Nathaniel was so frightened he stopped breathing. But the groan had emanated from his own throat, he fathomed after the fact. ‘Clara’s quite right,’ he said to himself, ‘to take me for a ridiculous ghost-haunted idiot; it’s perfectly insane – completely ridiculous of me to let the thought that I paid Coppola too much for the looking-glass unnerve me to such a degree; and for no reason at all.’ Now he sat himself down to finish writing the letter to Clara, but a fleeting glance out of the window confirmed that Olympia was still seated there; and then and there, driven by an irresistible urge, he jumped up, grabbed Coppola’s looking-glass and remained glued to the window, riveted by Olympia’s alluring visage, until a friend and fellow student, Siegmund, called out to remind him that it was time to come along to Professor Spalanzani’s lecture.

  But the next day the curtain was pulled shut in that fateful room across the way, and he could not catch sight of Olympia on that day or on the following two days, despite the fact that he seldom left his own window and constantly kept peering over with Coppola’s looking-glass. On the third day even the blinds were pulled. Desperately pining and driven by a burning desire, he ran out to her front door. Impressions of Olympia’s lovely figure hung in the air everywhere he looked; she stepped out from behind the bushes and the reflection of her big, sparkling eyes beamed out at him from the clear brook. Clara’s image had been totally erased from his heart, he thought of nothing but Olympia and wailed and complained at the top of his voice: ‘Oh you, my shining star of love, did you appear before me only to vanish again and leave me in the dark and desperate night?’

  As he was about to return to his room, he became aware of noisy goings-on in Spalanzani’s house. The doors were open, all kinds of devices were being carried in, the windows on the first floor were open wide, busy housemaids swept and dusted the window boxes with big brooms; inside, meanwhile, carpenters and decorators banged and hammered. Stunned, Nathaniel remained standing there in the street; then Siegmund came over to him and said, laughing: ‘So what do you say about our old Spalanzani?’ Nathaniel assured him that he had nothing to say since he knew absolutely nothing about the Professor, but that he was rather surprised to discover such a wild to-do and housekeeping frenzy in that ordinarily dark and silent house; whereupon Siegmund informed him that Spalanzani was going to throw a big party the next day, including a concert and ball, and that half the university was invited. The word was that Spalanzani was going to let his daughter Olympia, whom he’d fearfully kept sheltered from view, appear for the first time in public.

  Nathaniel received an invitation and presented himself at the Professor’s at the appointed hour with a fast-beating heart, as carriages rolled up to the door and lights shimmered in the elegantly decorated rooms. The company was numerous and glamorous. Olympia appeared richly and tastefully attired. Everyone had to admire her finely chiselled face and graceful figure. The strange stoop of her back and her bone-thin waist appeared to be the consequence of a girdle tied too tight. There was a measured stiffness in her stance and step that some found displeasing; but that was ascribed to the stress of appearing in society. The concert began, Olympia played the grand piano with great skill and likewise brought off a bravura aria with a clear, almost bell-glass-like, pitch-perfect voice. Nathaniel was completely captivated; he stood in the last row and could not clearly make out Olympia’s features in the candlelight. Without attracting notice, he therefore pulled out Coppola’s looking-glass and gazed through its lens at the lovely Olympia. Oh God! He now fathomed how ardently she peered in his direction, how every note only seemed to sound enveloped in a loving look that surged through his burning heart. The artful trills rang out in Nathaniel’s ear like the heavenly Hosannas of the spirit transfigured by love; and when at last, following the cadenza, the long trill pierced the air all around him, feeling as though suddenly enveloped by her warm embrace, and no longer able to control himself, he cried out in rapture and pain: ‘Olympia!’ All heads turned to look at him, some laughing.

  But the cathedral organist’s face twisted into an even dourer grimace than before and he merely remarked: ‘Well, well!’ The concert came to an end, the ball began. Only to dance with her – with her! That was now the object of Nathaniel’s deepest desire, all that he strove for; but how would he get up the courage to ask her, the queen of the evening, for a dance? Nevertheless – he himself had no idea how it happened – finding himself all of a sudden standing right there beside Olympia, once the music had already started up, and she not yet having been invited to dance, hardly able to stammer a few words, he reached for her hand. Olympia’s hand was ice-cold; he felt a terrible deathly frost surge through him; he looked into her eyes, which greeted his gaze with love and longing, and at that very moment it was as if the pulse began to beat in her cold hand and the lifeblood began to glow warm within. And love’s longing welled up, glowing hotter and hotter in Nathaniel’s breast; he wrapped his arm around lovely Olympia and led her down the rows of dancers. He had always thought himself to be a good dancer, able to hold to the beat; but from the precise rhythmic steadiness of Olympia’s step, which often caused him to falter, he soon fathomed the failing of his sense of beat. And yet he no longer wanted to dance with any other woman in the world, and felt as if he would have killed on the spot anyone else who dared approach her to ask for a dance. But this happened only twice, and thereafter, to his amazement, Olympia always remained seated between dances and he did not hesitate to reach for her hand and pull her up again and again.

  Had Nathaniel had eyes for anything but the lovely O
lympia, countless tussles and tangles would have been unavoidable; for clearly the quiet, painstakingly muffled laughter that emanated here and there among the groups of young people was directed at the lovely Olympia, whom they followed with the strangest looks – it was hard to say why. Fired up by the dance and by the wine of which he’d pleasantly partaken, Nathaniel shed his innate shyness. He sat beside Olympia, his hand in hers, and spoke fervently of his love for her in words that neither he nor she understood.

  But she perhaps grasped their meaning; for she peered without flinching right into his eyes and sighed again and again: ‘Oh – Oh – Oh!’

  Whereupon Nathaniel replied: ‘Oh you beautiful, heavenly woman! You ray of hope from the Promised Land of love – you deep spirit in which my entire being is mirrored,’ and more of the same.

  In response to which Olympia kept sighing the same ‘Oh, Oh!’

  Professor Spalanzani walked several times past the blissful pair and smiled with a strange look of satisfaction. And though Nathaniel’s spirit hovered elsewhere in another world, all of a sudden it seemed to him as if it grew curiously dark down here below in Professor Spalanzani’s house; he looked around and fathomed with a start that the last two lights in the empty hall were burning down to the wick and threatened at any moment to go out. Music and dance had stopped long ago. ‘Time to part, time to part,’ he cried out in a wild and desperate voice, kissed Olympia’s hand and leant forward to kiss her on the mouth with his burning lips, but her lips were ice-cold! And, just as when he’d first touched Olympia’s cold hand, he felt a shudder run through him, the legend of the dead bride suddenly flashing through his mind; but Olympia pressed him tightly to her, and in that kiss her lips seemed to come alive with warmth. Professor Spalanzani paced slowly through the empty hall; his steps sounded muffled and, ringed by dancing shadows, his figure appeared terrifying and ghostlike. ‘Do you love me – do you love me, Olympia? Just that one word! Do you love me?’ whispered Nathaniel.

  But, standing up, Olympia only sighed: ‘Oh! Oh!’

  ‘Oh yes, my precious, my beautiful star of love,’ said Nathaniel, ‘you rose in the firmament of my heart and will evermore light up and transfigure the darkness within!’

  ‘Oh, Oh!’ Olympia responded, walking away.

  Nathaniel followed her; they stood before the Professor. ‘You chatted up my daughter in a right sprightly manner,’ he said with a smile. ‘Well then, my dear Mr Nathaniel, if conversing with the simple-minded girl gives you pleasure, you’re welcome to visit whenever you like.’

  Nathaniel staggered off starry-eyed, with all of heaven’s splendour bursting from his breast. Spalanzani’s party was the talk of the town in the days that followed. Notwithstanding the Professor’s great pains to make it a splendid occasion, the chatterboxes nevertheless dwelt on all sorts of unseemly and strange goings-on, saving their sharpest barbs for the stiff and silent Olympia, who, despite her lovely exterior, was saddled by the wagging tongues with a lot of completely nonsensical notions as to her sanity – the reason, it was said, that Spalanzani kept her hidden for so long. Needless to say, Nathaniel was not pleased to learn of this, and he said nothing; what was the point, he reasoned, in proving to these dullards that it was their own nonsense that kept them from recognizing Olympia’s profound and beautiful spirit!

  ‘I beg you, my friend,’ Siegmund said to him one day, ‘tell me how in heaven’s name an intelligent man like you ever fell for the wax face of that wooden doll?’

  Nathaniel was about to explode in anger, but then he pulled himself together and calmly responded: ‘Why don’t you tell me, brother Siegmund, how a fellow with an eye for beauty could be blind to Olympia’s heavenly charms? But then again, it’s just as well fate didn’t make you a rival; for one of us would have to fall in blood.’

  Fathoming how things stood with his friend, Siegmund backed off and, after observing that in matters of beauty and love all is in the eye of the beholder, he added: ‘Still it’s funny that so many of us feel pretty much the same way about Olympia. She seemed to us – don’t take it badly, my friend! – strangely stiff and soulless. Her figure’s regular, just like her face, it’s true! She might well be considered beautiful, if her gaze were not so devoid of life, so totally lacking, you might say, the power of sight. Her step is strangely measured, every movement seems prescribed by clockwork gears and cogs. Her playing and singing have the unpleasantly precise soulless rhythm of a machine, which is true of her dance step too. This Olympia seemed completely odd to us, we didn’t know how to take her; it was as if she were only acting like a living being, and yet she unquestionably has her own way about her.’

  Nathaniel refused to give in to the bitter feelings that welled up in his heart at Siegmund’s words. He checked his mood and simply replied, deadly serious: ‘Olympia may indeed seem odd to you cold, prosaic types. The poetic temperament only reveals itself to like-minded souls! Her loving look fell on me alone, lighting up my senses and thoughts; only in Olympia’s love can I find myself again. You all think ill of her because she doesn’t babble banalities like all the other shallow souls. It’s true, she speaks little; but those few words seem like true hieroglyphs revealing an inner world replete with love and a profound intellectual grasp of the eternal beyond. But you just don’t understand, all these words are lost on you.’

  ‘Beware, my brother,’ said Siegmund very softly, almost sadly, ‘it seems to me you’re heading in a dangerous direction. You can count on me, if all else – no, I dare not say any more!’ Nathaniel suddenly fathomed that the cold, prosaic Siegmund was being very sincere with him, and so he took and shook the proffered hand with all his heart.

  Nathaniel had completely forgotten that there was a Clara in this world whom he once loved; his mother, Lothar, everyone had slipped from his consciousness, he only lived for Olympia, beside whom he sat for hours every day, and to whom he held forth on his love, on a life flushed with sympathy, on their psychic affinity – to all of which Olympia listened with deep devotion. From the depths of his desk drawers Nathaniel fetched out everything he had ever written. Poems, fantasies, visions, novels, stories, to which were added daily all sorts of high-flown sonnets, stanzas, canzone – all of it he tirelessly read to Olympia for hours on end.

  But he had never had such a lovely listener. She did not embroider and knit, she did not peer out of the window, she fed no birds, she played with no lapdogs or cuddly cats, she practised no paper-cutting or did anything else with her hands, she held back no furtive yawns with a quiet, forced cough – in short, for hours and hours she peered with a fixed and steady gaze into the eye of her beloved without fidgeting or budging, and her gaze grew ever livelier and more intense. Only when Nathaniel finally stood up and kissed her on the hand, and even on the mouth, did she respond: ‘Oh, oh!’ Followed with: ‘Good night, my dear!’

  ‘Oh you beautiful, oh you profound spirit,’ Nathaniel cried out when he reached his room, ‘only you, you alone completely understand me.’ He experienced an inner bliss when he pondered what a wondrous harmony manifested itself ever more each day between his and Olympia’s spirits; for it seemed to him as if Olympia had grasped his works, his poetic gift, from the depths of her soul, indeed that her voice came from the bottom of her innermost self. That must be true, he thought; for Olympia never uttered any more words than those already noted above. But when, at his most lucid moments, for instance in the morning upon waking, Nathaniel really pondered Olympia’s total passivity and laconic manner, he shrugged it off: ‘What are words – words! Her heavenly gaze says more than any hollow language. Can any child of heaven fit herself into the narrow compass of a pitiful earthly need?’

  Professor Spalanzani seemed to be absolutely delighted by the relationship between his daughter and Nathaniel; he gave them all sorts of unequivocal signs of his approval and when Nathaniel finally dared to allude to a future bond with Olympia, a smile spread over Spalanzani’s face and he replied that he would leave it to his daughter to d
ecide of her own free will. Emboldened by these words, with burning desire in his heart, Nathaniel decided to implore Olympia the very next day to declare clearly in plain words what her dear loving look had long since told him, that she wished to be his for evermore. He searched for the ring that his mother had given him when he left home to give to Olympia as a symbol of his commitment to their budding, blossoming life together. While looking for it he happened on Clara’s and Lothar’s letters; indifferent, he flung them aside, found the ring, stuffed it in his pocket and ran over to see Olympia.

  Even from the doorstep, and from the vestibule, he heard a strange din; it appeared to emanate from Spalanzani’s study. A stamping of feet – a clatter – a shoving – a pounding on the door, interspersed with coarse words and hurled imprecations. ‘Let go! Let me go! You wretch! You cursed creature! Did I put my life and limb on the line for that?’ – ‘Ha ha ha ha! – that was not our arrangement – it was me, me who made the eyes!’ – ‘And I the mechanical clockwork!’ – ‘Poor devil with your clockwork – you filthy cur of a simple-minded clockmaker!’ – ‘Get out! – Satan! – Stop!’ – ‘Organ grinder!’ – ‘Devilish beast! – Stop – Get out – Let go!’ It was the voices of Spalanzani and that disgusting Coppelius that screeched and raged.

  Nathaniel burst in, gripped by an unspeakable terror. The Professor held a female figure by the shoulders, the Italian Coppola held her by the feet; they tugged and tore her here and there, furiously fighting for possession. Nathaniel recoiled in profound horror when he recognized the figure as Olympia; flaring up in a wild fit of anger, he was about to tear his beloved out of their struggling grip – but at that very moment, with a mighty burst of strength, Coppola managed to yank the figure free of the Professor’s hands and, with a pivot, swinging her in his direction, managed to land Nathaniel such a stunning blow that it made him tumble backwards over the work table, toppling and knocking down the phials, retorts, bottles and measuring glasses. All the equipment smashed in a thousand pieces on the floor. Then Coppola flung the figure over his shoulder and raced with a repulsive, shrill laugh down the steps, so that the ugly dangling feet of the figure banged with a wooden thud and thump on the steps. Stunned, Nathaniel stood up – he had seen all too clearly that Olympia’s deathly pallid wax face had no eyes, but black hollows in their stead; she was a lifeless doll.