The Dedalus Meyrink Reader

by Gustav Meyrink

  ‘Well?’ Ismene asks, ready to pounce. ‘And…?’

  ‘Well… nothing more.’ Dr Steen is a master at repressing his emotions, even the fury that now blazes up in his heart. His face suddenly has such a soft, affectionate expression that Ismene forgets her distrust, even though she has been observing him closely.

  He takes her hand, almost tenderly. ‘No, you tell me what you’ve been doing all this time. Your letters were so infrequent — and so short! Whenever I read them I automatically thought of that pretty, charming young girl that you were before they separated us and sent you to boarding school in England. One forgets that others also grow up and, as in your case, turn into a beautiful woman, a beauty who has no equal anywhere in the world. You cannot imagine how surprised I was just now.’

  Ismene indignantly dismisses his compliments with a wave of the hand. She puts on an angry expression, but Dr Steen’s sharp eyes see at once that the poisoned arrow has made its mark, if only a graze. ‘And now I know how thick I can lay it on,’ he tells himself and starts to think hard, though nothing in his expression gives the slightest clue as to what is going on inside him. He appears to be concentrating fully on what his stepsister is telling him.

  Urged on by his eloquent gestures, Ismene becomes more and more lively in her account; she has no idea that in reality he is not listening at all and only looks up now and then to throw in an expression of agreement or an astonished-sounding question.

  ‘Basically my life is empty, Ismael, unspeakably empty, despite all my interesting, often almost adventurous journeys to distant parts of the world; eventually it was just a haphazard rush from place to place. As if I were being chased by something I don’t know, something that behaves as if it wanted to catch me but never tries to grab me and takes malicious pleasure in the fact that I can’t find peace. That compels me to search, even though I don’t want to search, don’t want to find anything. Wherever I go I sense hatred. No car is fast enough for me; when I’m travelling, everything inside me keeps shouting, “Keep going, keep going!” No destination I’m heading for, the destination is always behind me. Wherever I’ve been, Ismael, and whatever I’ve seen — or not seen. Pity, I should have kept a diary. But what would there be in it today apart from the eternal “Keep going, keep going!” ’

  Dr Steen pricks up his ears and forces himself to pay attention. From the way she is starting to speak more slowly, he senses that she is coming to the end.

  ‘Now I long to be back in England. I want to see people again.’ She twists and tugs at her handkerchief. ‘To see people and no more niggers, niggers, niggers. The whole world consists of niggers. Even Germany. Even if they look like Europeans, for me the Germans are niggers. I’d like to slash them all across the face with a whip, these niggers of all colours and races. Oh, I can sense their insolent arrogance. When will they finally realise that we are the master race of the world!’ She has worked herself up into such a blind fury that she does not see the expression of quite diabolical hatred that flashes up in her stepbrother’s eyes of for a second.

  She falls silent, almost breathless. Dr Steen nods and smiles, as if he agreed whole-heartedly, and says in a quiet voice, with a sigh, ‘I can understand you, Ismene. I wish I could go to England with you, with all my heart I wish I could. But there will come a time when… I will… be able… to have a good look… at the place.’ At these last words such a mysterious, incomprehensible tremor comes into his voice that Ismene looks up in surprise, almost fright.

  The eerie quality of what he is saying is intensified by a wild, howling crescendo from the dervish drums that suddenly rips through the calm of the room and equally suddenly dies away.

  Dr Steen quickly has himself under control again and goes on in a steady, friendly voice: ‘Unfortunately — most unfortunately — I have no time for travel at the moment. First I must bring a great project to completion. I could almost say that my mission is not yet ripe. And then, you know Ismene, I do not like to see sad scenes. As I hear, people in England are suffering very much. What a tragic fate! Out of the most profound sympathy with the French, despite the fact that they are only niggers, as you so rightly said, England declares war on Germany! And now? Now they’re suffering for it. Oh, it’s enough to make you doubt the dear Lord, if such a thing were possible.’

  Ismene grows suspicious. Was that mockery in his voice?

  But he is looking at her with such enthusiasm, almost radiance, and he stretches out his hands in a gesture so overflowing with warmth that she dismisses her distrust, feeling deeply ashamed. It is his father’s blood speaking in him, she tells herself, delighted.

  ‘How beautiful he is!’ it suddenly occurs to her. ‘What a fascinating, eerie beauty. A kind of beauty I’ve never seen in a man before.’ She shudders, a chill suddenly runs down her spine, she couldn’t say why, and she involuntarily looks up to the ceiling to see if the candles are flickering again. A thought leaps out at her from the depths of her soul: ‘That’s what Lucifer must look like,’ and she recalls stories of witches coupling with the devil which she once heard when still almost a child. She tries to drive the thought away. As a diversion she stares at Gustenhöver’s gold coin with the inscription and the peacock coat of arms. The light on it blinds her like a burning-glass and the thought refuses to go away, grows into the question, ‘Who, who was it who told me the story of witches coupling with the devil?’ and the answer comes with frightening clarity: ‘Ismael told it to me down in the garden one spring night when there was a full moon; we weren’t much more than children!’ She can see the scene in her mind’s eye, tiny because it is so far in the past, yet she feels it as present, immense and overpoweringly bright, so fearfully alive in the vivid light of her awakened imagination that she thinks she can see the scene with her open eyes as the focal point in the glittering gold of the coin. A memory of the sweet scent of daphne comes over her, she feels once more the intoxicating vibrations in her blood, the secret gnawing of forbidden desire. In that night she was not clear what it meant, she had merely sensed it.

  Now she is in no doubt, but she still does not suspect the true poison it conceals. Her cheeks grow hot with the flush of shame at herself, for with the memory a dream also unfolds in her mind, a dream she had that same night in which Ismael was the devil and she the witch.

  She lives through it again with such devastating clarity that she asks herself, horrified, ‘Did I really only dream it that one time? Have I not dreamt it night after night since then and just forgotten it when I woke up? Is that what is driving me when by day I dash from place to place? Is that the reason for the emptiness in my heart? For the dreariness all round me?’

  Now she also remembers that she had told Ismael her dream the next morning — she must have been lured into telling him by sultry, smouldering urges — and once more the same feeling sets her senses on fire, her whole being in turmoil. She fans herself with her handkerchief, as if the room were too hot and tries — in vain — to force her thoughts out of the maelstrom inside her, out of the vague fear they might be transferred to Ismael. And yet — that is what she secretly desires, however much she resists — or thinks she resists — the desire.

  ‘He’ll have forgotten it ages ago,’ she tries to reassure herself. ‘Hadn’t I long since forgotten it myself.’ But the torment continues. ‘Then why did everything come back to mind so clearly just now? Am I perhaps the receiver? Was it the image in his memory that woke mine?’

  Clenching her teeth, she tries to put on a distracted, bored air; she does it too quickly for it not to strike her stepbrother at once. She can tell by the way he gently bites his upper lip, turning his gaze inward as if he were pondering abstractedly, like someone racking their brains to find the solution to a mystery.

  She vaguely remembers something connected with his theories that she read somewhere a few weeks ago: ‘If you want to find out other people’s thoughts, you only have to look inside yourself. There you will see them as images.’ And then, ‘If the
other person senses that and fears it might happen, it is already too late.’

  And immediately she fears ‘it might happen’. She tries to curb her fear, but it would have been easier to hold back a wild horse. A chill running through her veins, a shock of terror that numbs her limbs, tells her, ‘It’s all over. He knows everything. Even worse, he has guessed that I’m sensing that he knows everything. Now I am at his mercy.’

  Weary and forlorn, she drops her hand. But however much she at first tries to fight it, the hot, searing feeling the dream sparked off in her after that spring night smoulders up again. She is horrified, but then the cage of false horror is torn apart by the other person inside her, the person she is herself without knowing, the unbridled primal urge of the human animal to do what is forbidden, which rears its head again and again, and all the more wildly the longer it has been dormant.

  Her eyes have been fixed on the tapestry on the wall, but only now does she realise what she has been staring at: the Fall of Man.

  The picture is hanging on the wall in dead, faded colours, but it is going round and round in her blood, more vibrant, more alive than life itself; her whole soul is transformed in it.

  She turns her gaze on the bust of Genghis Khan in order to draw strength against her brother from the insult to her good taste. Her hatred of ‘niggers’ must help her recover her Anglo-Saxon pride. In vain. The primal beast is stronger than everything once it has woken.

  ‘If only he would speak, just one word,’ she wails to herself, ‘perhaps that would break the spell.’ As she thinks that, she senses that she has no desire to quench the fire of lust.

  Ismael looks up, a harmless look, remarkably harmless.

  ‘I was mistaken, thank God, it was just my imagination.’ She gives a sigh of relief. ‘No, no, I don’t want to be mistaken.’

  Dr Steen slowly gets up out of his chair. ‘Would you mind if I lit a cigarette, Ismene? Oh? So you smoke as well?’

  The words sound trivial, banal, but her heart misses a beat when she hears them. She is gripped by an undefined fear, as if a huge bird of prey were circling high, high above her, just waiting to swoop down. She is so afraid, it makes her gasp for breath, yet she longs for it too. Lust and fear at the same time.

  He goes to a little wall-cupboard, opens the doors, takes out a cigarette box and — putting it down where Ismene can’t see it — one of the many crystal scent bottles. Then he lights Ismene’s cigarette and one for himself, letting a few drops from the bottle fall on the floor.

  For a while both are silent, lost in thought as they listen to the soft murmur of the drums coming from outside the room.

  ‘I never dream,’ Dr Steen suddenly says in a loud, piercing voice. Ismene starts, immediately sensing that he’s aiming at something. What is he after? Again she shivers at a strange chill.

  ‘I never dream — never,’ he repeats and there’s something rhythmical about his words, as if they were in time with the drumbeats.

  She says, ‘I remember now; even as a child you never dreamt,’ but then quickly breaks off as she realises — too late — that she is taking the conversation in a dangerous direction, that she acted against her will. ‘Can he guide my thoughts,’ she wonders with horror.

  He nods, a look of vicious satisfaction in his eyes. ‘No, I’ve never dreamt. I imagine there are very few people who can say that of themselves. I’m glad I’m one of them.’

  She forces herself to adopt a mocking tone: ‘You look on that as a piece of good fortune?’

  ‘Certainly!There are two forces to which you must never submit, they are as dangerous as vipers, you have to draw their fangs. Only then can you make them dance to your own tune. One is called fear, the other dream.’

  ‘Yet dreams are the most wonderful thing I…’ quickly she shuts her lips tight.

  He remains silent. As a ploy, or so it seems to her.

  ‘Yes, yes, you’re right, fear…’ she goes on in a forced, overloud tone. ‘Fear! That’s the worst thing of all…’ She’s trying to steer the conversation into innocuous waters and only succeeds in falling into one trap after the other.

  ‘… for it forces us to do things we want to avoid,’ he says, taking up where she broke off. ‘Fear inverts our will; it is an independent force in nature, one could almost say it was a being. Anyone who understands it can direct it, can project it outwards, can use it as a weapon, like a flame-thrower, can — if they know the magic gesture that all such forces obey — set both men and animals wailing and gnashing their teeth. People think fear comes uncalled; no, I say, nothing comes if it is not called, only people don’t realise they’re calling. And this ‘calling’ without intending to is something that people learn in dreams. Learn without intending. The great monster that rules the world and that people falsely think of as the dear Lord teaches it in our dreams, pours its poison into the sleeper’s ear. It slumbers in our psyche, ready to awake at once, as the inexorable enemy of the self, when the call comes. And this call is: ‘Help’. Anyone who calls for help — loudly, softly or so deep in their heart that they do not realise they are doing it — calls fear, goes down on their knees before it and worships it. Anyone who is afraid of falling ill has already sown the seed of illness; anyone who is afraid of vertigo will fall off; anyone who is afraid of the devil will couple with him —’

  ‘Why are you telling me all this?’ Ismene breaks in hastily. She feels a slight hope dawning that he could be a helpful doctor. A doctor even though she feels with dreadful certainty that his last words injected a poison that is eating away at her, a poison that means ecstasy and death. It takes a great effort to stop herself grasping his hand.

  He leans back, away from her. ‘Why am I telling you? You will come to understand that yourself, perhaps sooner, perhaps later, perhaps never. So to continue: anyone who fears memories will find they attach themselves to their heels like red-hot chains until they have burnt to ashes everything inside the person that is weaker than fire. A scent that is smelt can arouse such memories. Women in particular are often so sensitive that sometimes they think they can smell the scent of, say, a flower which arouses memories in them of which they are secretly afraid. Then the second viper I spoke of — dream — pounces and memory and dream and fear join to form a magic circle from which there is no escape, unless,’ Dr Steen points to the alchemist’s coin ‘they are called to true life.’

  Ismene has to fight to stop herself fainting: he spoke of the scent of a flower — alluding to the spring night, there’s no doubt about that now — and the room is suddenly filled with the scent of daphne. ‘He evoked an illusion and made it reality!’ Even while he was speaking she thought she could smell the scent of flowers, as if it were rising from the carpet; now it has become so distinct that she presses her handkerchief to her face in horror, overcome with a terrified fear: ‘My senses are no longer obeying me, the past has become present, I’ve lost control over myself! What is going to happen now?’

  He pretends he cannot see what is going on inside her. He puts the scent bottle unobtrusively down on the table and calmly continues his explanations:

  ‘Before, you said you weren’t interested in my theories. Forgive me if, despite that, I start talking in abstractions. Please do stop me if what I have to say bores you. I can’t get what you said earlier about ‘niggers’ out of my head. The conviction of the English that all other races are ‘niggers’ and only exist to serve them — in one form or another — appears to be a peculiarity of the Anglo-Saxon blood. I can understand that, after all, half the blood in my veins is English, the other half — ‘nigger blood’. No, no need to apologise, Ismene, there’s no point in politeness. I have clearly inherited from our English father the feeling that I am justified in treating creatures of any race which I regard as alien, as an inferior race according to English standards, in the way I see fit. The difference is that I act on this feeling not by trying to subjugate people whom I regard as inferior, but by exposing them, to put it in alchemical terms,
to the magic influence of a psychological process of transmutation. To put it more clearly and in a way that will be more comprehensible for you: I am trying to make ‘lead people’ into ‘gold people’.

  ‘If I am successful, I will have done them a great service, I will have raised them from the status of creatures in thrall to death to candidates for eternal life. If I fail and they are destroyed in the experiment, then they weren’t worth anything better, they were mere lead that had no seeds of gold in it. You could ask me how I can presume to decide over the life or death of others. Now I am not conceited enough to think that we humans possess free will. I leave it to the philosophers to defend such figments of the imagination. I feel too much as an Oriental to imagine I am an independent unit separate from the great cosmos. That man,’ Dr Steen points to the statue of Genghis Khan, ‘had the mission of sweeping across the face of the earth like a ravaging storm. He did it, but his soul remained free of the blot of self-willed action. What is said in the Bhagavadgita, in that greatest of hymns to the freedom from all guilt, applies to him:

  Every deed that happens here, happens through nature’s law.

  ‘I am the doer of this deed,’ is vain and idle prattle.

  And because there is Asian blood in my body, I do nothing, I remain free from the recoil that comes from any action; I am the executor and nothing more. And because I do what I must do, I also know what will happen. I have overcome the English blood in me and its delusion that it can do or not do things of its own free will. For centuries the English have been lords of the world; they have fulfilled a mission, there is no doubt about that, but they did not know it was a mission. They say it was — it lets them play the innocent — but they never believed it, otherwise they would never have coined the word ‘nigger’. The mission suited their purpose. Anyone who does not know that they have been assigned a mission, does not know it from the very beginning even before they have taken the first step, brands themself as the doer and all the guilt falls on them.’