The Dedalus Book of German Decadence

by Ray Furness

  When it is evening he lights his old sooty lamp and reads in massive, faded volumes of ancient glories, ancient splendours.

  He reads with a feverish, pounding heart until the present, which is not his home, fades and passes. And the shadows of the past arise – gigantic. And he lives the life, splendid, glorious, of his ancestors.

  At night, when the storm shrieks around the tower and the walls boom in the foundations, when the birds scream in fear outside his window, the Count is seized by a nameless melancholy.

  Destiny crushes his soul, his tired, tired soul on which the weight of centuries is lying.

  And he presses his face against the window and gazes out into the night. And everything seems monstrous to him, dream-like, ghostly! And terrible. He hears the storm howl through the castle as though it wished to sweep away all that was moribund and scatter it in the wind.

  Yet when the confused illusion of night recedes like a shade conjured from the earth the silence of desolation again suffuses all.

  Georg Trakl: Verlassenheit. In Dichtung und Briefe,.

  Otto Müller Verlag, Salzburg,

  1969, Vol. I, pp. 199–201.

  Paul Leppin: Blaugast

  When he left the whores’ bar with Wanda, it was almost day. Dawn was still crouching between the houses, well wrapped up. Only the roof-ridges and the outlines of protruding balconies stood out more sharply in the greyness.

  Without a word and feeling like a refugee, Blaugast set off along the road, which disappeared into the fog. Improbably, the day, which had been lurking behind blankets of cloud, dawned.

  Wanda met his scrutinising glance with a laugh. ‘Your sweetheart is a bit grubby, my friend. My maid has been on holiday for a long time. You mustn’t look at me.’

  ‘You’ll have a bath and comb your hair. I’ll give you some underwear and clothes. You will be beautiful.’

  At the door to his rooms, turning the key to push back the bolt, he was for a second overcome by the feeling that he was about to be confronted with something unspeakable. When faced with a locked door he was always assailed by this irresolution, which struck him with urgency, a hapless voice threatening him. It had been so as a child, climbing down ramshackle stairs to the coal-cellar, when the crying of a lost cat had seduced him into an heroic enterprise. That was the way the corridors of disreputable taverns had received him, where as a twenty-year-old he had been in pursuit of sensual pleasure. And later when, drained by the atmosphere of the office, he had headed for the haven where his partner was waiting to welcome him, he had done so breathlessly, and the door-knob of their apartment had an insolent glint that he had found insidiously intimidating.

  When he pressed the electric switch in the vestibule and the white star of the ceiling lamp bathed the stone flags in its peaceful light, the oppressive feeling vanished. He busied himself fetching coal and firewood and lit a crackling fire under the bathroom boiler. For a moment he felt a spurt of compunction as he grasped the underwear in the cupboard. Once more a wave of tenderness surged through him which he accepted as a rebuke, before which he stood in humble contrition. The days that this linen-cupboard represented came back to him, the gentleness of a life that was no longer around him, that death had ambushed and taken from him.

  When he handed Wanda the bundle, she took it without thanks and set off for the bathroom with the air of one long familiar with the apartment. Blaugast heard the rush of water from the tap, splashing noises and humming came, pervading his languor like a tumult after the quiet of the last few weeks. Beyond the curtains the daylight appeared, glaring, unrelenting and raw. He picked up the books, pieces of paper and clothes that were scattered round the room and put them away in the cupboard, made his bed and sat down by the window. The blanket in which he wrapped himself still gave off a trace of his fever-heat and it felt agreeable.

  Only now, as a new episode was getting under way with the concreteness which he had always secretly disliked about the things of the real world, did he try to account for his actions, to look for a meaning. The night’s encounter took command of his mind, which had for the moment been clouded by banks of haze and physical weariness. With a bitterness that hurt, shattered him once more, he saw clearly what had happened. There was a woman in these familiar surroundings who was washing her besmirched body in his bathroom, a creature from the joyless realms, animal, unconcerned and vain.

  ‘Why on earth? – Why?’ he asked irritably, searching without success for a reply.

  The withered face of his dead companion looked out from a fragile frame.

  She was not like this. She had been the point of repose that had deceived him, a sweet refuge of gold-flowered bliss. But now it was back. The stammering and the fear that since his boyhood years had driven him along out-of-the-way paths, the blind gaping at uncomprehended wishes, Siberian frost and tropical dangers. He recalled the insolent curtness of the words with which his old school-friend had fingered his confusion, ‘Interested in catastrophes?’

  For the time it took to draw breath, Blaugast was aware of a little flame dancing along in front of him, brightly coloured and appealing, that he had dug out of the rubble of the past. Was it not an act of charity to offer a bed for the night to a fallen woman? Had he not felt a tender-hearted quiver of kindness when he heard her address him with the familiar du? Had he not always, a pilgrim among the filth, been a follower of the star of mercy?

  No, no and no. Between man and woman no covenant was possible, no gospel of dignity. It was the woman’s breasts that had compelled him, obscene breasts under faded cotton, dreams of hate from the seamy depths seething with the red breath of youth. It was the curse that was torturing him which had made him take her into his home.

  One last shred of pride, burdened with the shabbiness of one of the unsung poor, resisted self-deception. He remembered one day, long since crushed to dust by the mill-wheel of the years, which lay, weighed out against guilt and responsibility, faded and forgotten in the arsenal of eternity. Its poison, distilled through time, still seethed in his blood. He had gone with his crony, the painter, to the one-room lodgings of a street musician who sometimes rented out his proletarian profile by the hour as a model. He was not at home, only his old wife was clumping over the floorboards with her wooden leg. Beside the kitchen range their daughter was lying in a bed covered with a patchwork blanket, coughing.

  ‘It’s her lungs’, explained the one-legged old woman, as she stood in front of the bed, while the painter gave his instructions. ‘The doctor says the poor thing ought to be stronger, but God will help us; were poor people –’

  The smell of sweat and cold boiled potatoes made the room unpleasant. The painter threw a few coins on the unwashed table and turned to leave. But Blaugast had gone over to the girls bed; she watched him with restless eyes. She tugged at the covers, but the blanket was old and narrow. The threadbare rags slipped from her leg, baring it to the knee. It was a scrawny, wiry leg, that aroused him with a deadly attraction. In the hollows of the joints, below the curve of its taut sinews, were highlights that he recognised.

  The painter was standing impatiently, his hat already on, between the two doors. Blaugast had felt in his pocket and put a banknote into the sick girl’s hand, much more than the occasion warranted, much too much for his financial situation. The consumptive girl thanked him with a greedy expression round her dry lips. Timidly, the old woman kissed the sleeve of his jacket as he followed his friend out into the street, feeling he had been caught in some impropriety.

  There he said goodbye, rejecting the puzzled remonstrations at his generosity with an embarrassed laugh. An acid taste on his tongue had made him feel sick. The tributes the painter shouted after him he took as insults. The feeling of shame that drove him away was biting and impure. It had always been so, ever since he had been conscious of thought. This planet was a market-place where evil tugged murderously at its chain. Its spies were everywhere. At windy corners where young girls with knowing children’s faces wer
e selling flowers and matches, on the operating tables of the hospitals, in the slums, at railway stations, under viaducts. Lust was masked as pity, concupiscence as good deeds. (…) Once more, for the thousandth time, he had asked the question of a godless world: where was love? –

  Shivering, Blaugast huddled up in his armchair. He felt oppressed by the weight of a great, hollow solitude. He looked round the room where the first light had stripped all the cosiness from the walls. A sobbing, without tears, burst his chest, so that he bent forward, his arms groping in the empty air, and fell face first onto the carpet. (…) Once more, perhaps for the last time, a burning longing raised its head. His hand was clenched and would not open. The pointlessness of his torment gathered in his throat so that, without knowing why, he bit wildly into the weave of the carpet and groaned.

  A sound made him stop. Wanda had finished her bath and was standing before him, in a fluffy dressing gown, refreshed and disapproving.

  ‘Are you drunk?’

  Her black hair was wet, combed and parted. Her eyebrows were brought together by a frown as she held out her robust foot in its slipper.

  ‘Fasten my sandal tighter. And be sensible.’

  Slowly, with difficulty, Blaugast raised himself to his knees. A searing pain shot across his back and shoulders as he tied the leather thong over her skin. Sighing, his mouth sank lower and lower, until his forehead touched the firm curve of her leg, until his lips abandoned themselves to the kiss.

  Wanda looked down in silence on the bent figure of Blaugast.

  ‘Stand up’, she commanded, almost in a whisper.

  And as he swayed, from lack of sleep and the invisible burden, she let the dressing gown slip to the floor. Tall, big-boned, naked, she stood before him. Beneath the hairs of her eyelashes he could see her dull pupils dilate. The nipples of her vulgar breasts hardened to lustful points as he spread out his arms and took possession with a cry of sorrow, flaring up in a searing blaze.

  Pangs of conscience, hunger, disgust were all swept away in the flood.

  From out of the tunnel of the night Destiny had come to Blaugast, an apocalyptic woman taking him into her power. From somewhere a storm brought a raging din, funeral music, blood from the depths. Like a lifeless stone, he sank to the bottom. To the dungeons of sex, to the madness of his fate, to the sleep of the pariah.

  * * * *

  Right at the beginning of their relationship Wanda had spied the trapdoor that barred the way to the lumber-room of his repressions. With her cunning, she realised that the wholesome fare which supplied the meals of diners who were satisfied with whatever was put in front of them would not feed the hunger that was wearing him away. She knew that his desire flowed from springs hidden in mystical clouds, that, in order to dazzle this tormented man, to bind this nomad, she must be inventive in the way her favours were granted.

  […]

  Blaugast was a compliant resident in the unkempt hothouse of her willing sexuality. The small change of skilfully engineered paroxysms with which she supplied him, seemed riches indeed to his impoverished life. Good taste, which was far removed from her coarse-grained disposition, she replaced with experience. Hers was an adaptable genius, her amenability in some cases bordering on the extravagant. Once when, as they were walking along the street, she noticed how his eyes were drawn to the bare knees of a schoolgirl, she spent the morning, while he was brooding away the apathetic hours at the office, making herself a daring gym-slip, in which she was waiting for him when he returned, with ankle-socks that left a generous expanse of leg exposed.

  She tackled the depressions that cast all kinds of shadows over his alert sex with arts which, born of shamelessness, ensured high pressure. She had the heroism of the courtesans of the age of cavaliers, when the dignity of kings had been transformed into submissive vassaldom in their mistresses’ boudoir, and had not been afraid to yoke the amorous arts of other women to her triumphal car. She would choose the right moment to loan out her property, in order to possess it all the more completely, renouncing the gossamer nets of jealousy, whose only effect is to reduce the value of the sacrificial lamb. Like a slave-mistress, who regards the health and well-being of her charges with pleasure and avoids maltreating them, so as not to damage valuable flesh, she was busy fattening up her partner’s demands with enticing prospects. She was not merely happy to allow his restlessness the complete freedom of action which he needed in sexual matters, she was constantly on the look-out for ways of recharging the battery of his passion and picking up windfalls from his pleasure by looking on. Her contacts with the demimonde and the adjacent terrain were a worm-eaten bridge which Blaugast, encouraged by her approbation, set off along with the ambition of breaking cynically listed records.

  […]

  Wanda brought him cocottes who were practised in every nuance of bashful protest, and irrepressible bourgeoises who had retained a modicum of decency in the frenzy of their nocturnal industry, blushing unseen between demand and supply.

  […]

  Blaugast suddenly found himself at the centre of a bustle of activity to which he yielded passively and which washed up some very dubious jetsam at the sluice gates of his world of ideas. The curious swarm of love-goblins whispered abroad the news of his endeavour, which, once it had been given free rein, was not allowed to rest. There were page-girls in boy’s jackets and coy velvet knickers who served at banquets which, following a pedantically drilled ceremonial, degenerated into orgies. The spark of puberty smouldered in the faces of debauched children, wanton kisses inflamed the memory of bridal fears. (…) Lesbians demonstrated their lingering raptures. The cheap schnapps that Wanda poured down his throat destroyed his will-power, his upright gait and his honesty of spirit. Habit and the boorishness of the vulgar fastened their claws on him.

  * * * *

  When, irritated by distaste for work and dissipation, he gave up his job in the office, Wanda had her own way of dealing with the changed situation. Initially she met his apathy, which accepted adversity without taking any measures to deal with it, with undisguised contempt. In her anger at the sudden unreliability of a refuge she was determined not to abandon, in her disappointment at the inglorious collapse of her economic security, she forgot the basis of their elective companionship. She did not even attempt to shake him out of his lethargy, to foster his will to live and set him in the right direction. Abruptly and unambiguously she refused him the tribute that was the justification for their union. Her body, which still had the power to arouse him, was no longer in his possession. Unconcerned about the problem of his physical needs which tore him to shreds, she obstinately repulsed him until he was nothing more than an idle mouth among the junk of her household goods, a parasite who felt the wrath of her displeasure. And her colleagues, whom previously she had spurred on to minister to the beseeching Blaugast, now kept their fearful distance since the rumour of his collapse had gone round the district. (…) Who did come, occasionally at first, then in increasing numbers, were the men. It was the clients from Wanda’s infamous practice who now visited her in her room, paying for their robust pleasures with money from which, on lucrative days, there was a pittance to spare for her now useless companion.

  Blaugast’s response to the reversal towards which his condition was heading was a mysterious paralysis. The disease to which he was succumbing, was torturing him with treacherous spasms, undermining him, sucking away his strength to defend himself. The lascivious secrets of the next room first came to his notice in the form of stifled whispers that disturbed his sleep. Listless and dishevelled, dazed from sedatives, hair unkempt, he had appeared in the doorway of her chamber with its insistently vulgar scent of eau de cologne and cosmetics, gaudy paper flowers and its russet lampshade. A burly fellow, his made-up tie twisted over his collar, was standing there, legs astride, buttoning his braces.

  Wanda was sitting with her back to him on the stool in front of the dressing table, powdering her breasts. She did not turn round, as he leant against the do
or-post, unshaven, with swollen eyelids and his shirt all undone. Only her strong teeth gnawed at her lower lip as he surveyed the scene, dumbfounded, until his eye met her imperious expression in the mirror. ‘Who’s that?’ asked the burly fellow, smoothing out a crumpled handkerchief with his thumb, then blowing his nose noisily.

  ‘That’s my landlord; he also acts as my servant’, Wanda replied, without turning round.

  ‘He can fetch us some hot water from the kitchen.’

  When Blaugast just stood there, shoulders sagging, his vertebra giving way, with a stupid look on his face, unable to comprehend, she suddenly snapped at him, baring her tongue, which was covered in spittle, ‘Didn’t you hear, you moron? You’re to bring water for me and the gentleman –’

  Blaugast nodded. Something gigantic, pale and horrible rose up before him, like a dust-cloud before a storm, enveloping him, darkening his mind. Finally he understood. Wearily, legs bent, he shuffled into the kitchen. Like an obedient automaton, mechanically responding to the drive from the motor, he filled the crockery from the pan warming on the stove. Washing-up water, lukewarm and stale, dribbled in a disgusting trickle down his fingers. He ignored it. Clumsily, woodenly, as if his body were fixed with hinges, he carried the jug and basin back into the room.

  That was the beginning….

  * * * *

  With a tin that had lost its lid and that he had found on the rubbish tip behind the cemeteries, Blaugast walked along the rows of benches in the parks selling matches. His stock, half a dozen battered wooden boxes, was not reduced by this activity. As if by mutual agreement, the pensioners warming their arthritic limbs in the sun, the redundant and the unemployed who whiled away their involuntary holidays here alongside mothers and nursemaids, all left his paltry merchandise untouched. The coppers, which nevertheless appeared on the bottom of the container, automatic profit for which no noticeable service was returned, were the deposit of unknown partners or good-natured speculators. Blaugast’s complete silence gave his appearance, which was neglected, though not intentionally, a special nuance which was more effective than any wheedling, and invited charity. The inimitable technique of scarcely visible movements of the lips, eyes directed to one side, the spittle-glazed corners of his mouth set in a silent appeal, was a profitable investment that brought interest and dividends. There was still a trace of elegance and vanity about his person, giving him a slightly comic air, which acted as a bizarre provocation, eliciting the mockery of passers-by. The goose-step of his uncontrollable legs caused by consumption of the spinal chord, the changed look in his eyes from paralysis of the pupils and the ragged formality of his preferred attire all brought him the nickname of ‘Little Baron’, a title to which he would respond with a stiff bow. The children who ran after him in the streets knew it, and the customers of the beer-gardens and popular taverns who called out when the patient beggar appeared and made him the butt of all sorts of pranks and jokes. The grocers and other shopkeepers, standing respectfully behind their counters, their blood sluggish from servility towards their customers, welcomed the opportunity to work off their repressed desire to tyrannise others afforded by his willingness to conform to any conditions their charity might impose.