The Dedalus Meyrink Reader

by Gustav Meyrink

  ‘So you believe the decline of England is imminent?’ Ismene has composed herself. On the one hand she is glad that he has gone on to another subject, on the other she is overcome with patriotic outrage. ‘Since when have you felt you were German? What you are expressing is clearly German hatred. Is your hope that England is on the wane not the pious hope of the Germans in general which they keep prophesying in the newspapers? “May God punish England,” oh yes,’ she adds scornfully.

  He raises his hand. ‘What are the Germans to me? I don’t hate them and I don’t love them. I don’t hate the English, either, though it might sound like that to you. What I do hate is this hypocritical white rabble, whichever nation they claim to belong to. Please don’t interrupt. I know what you’re going to say. You think Asians are no better than the whites. Of course they aren’t. But the Asian soul is ready to ignite. The European soul is burnt out, what they call love is the heat of the rut, what they call hate is a flicker of anger, revenge or covert lust for money. They do not know that hate is something metaphysical. How could they know that hate is something sacred, an immortal force which makes those immortal who are consumed by it; that it is more than a force, it is a being who is no longer tied to a solid form. ‘Hate is detestable’ say those who are on the side of love. As if love were anything other than feeble, impotent hate! A load of nonsense. If there really were something like love, then it could only reveal itself if the flame of hate cannot burn it up or transform it into ashes. And when, since time began, did that ever happen? Since the very beginning the angel of hate, the great spiritual alchemist of the cosmos, has been searching for that mysterious elixir that bears the name of love and yet cannot be found. The whirlwind of his wingbeats fans the sparks of hate gleaming in the hearts of men into fire and the blaze is called destruction.

  ‘Ismene’ is the third of the three chapters Meyrink completed for his novel The Alchemist’s House (also sometimes referred to as ‘The Peacock’ or ‘At the Sign of the Peacock’). The first two are devoted to setting the scene and are of little interest in themselves. Meyrink also wrote a lengthy synopsis of the plot.

  The main character is Dr Steen, ‘an extremely elegant, very rich man’ who, ‘on a whim, has set up a film company… the various actresses are his harem. (The description of these episodes is kept free of very erotic touches!) His main field of interest is so-called psychoanalysis, only he does not use his knowledge for the benefit of his fellow men but, on the contrary, to arouse complexes in his victims. He is blasé to such a terrible degree that there is only one thing that excites him: thinking up more and more new, spiritually sadistic methods of sending people’s souls plunging into the “void”. That is the elixir of life for him. Women simply surrender to him without knowing why. He “dissolves” them, just as an alchemist would dissolve metals in nitric acid.’

  Ismene is not mentioned in the synopsis. Her function is probably that of the Steen’s lover who is called Irene there: ‘Further passages show Irene, as the “complexes” that have been injected into her develop, committing crime after crime and, out of her insane love for Dr Steen, confessing to things which not she but he has done.’

  Through the Persian, Mohammad Daryashkoh, another inhabitant of the House at the Sign of the Peacock who also appears in some of Meyrink’s early stories,13 he learns of a sect called the Yazidi who ‘do not worship God as the creator of the world, but the “fallen angel Malak Ta’us”14 who in a certain sense is the devil. But, contrary to the Christian and Jewish view, this “devil” will reunite with God at some point.’

  Dr Steen sees a secret image of Malak Ta’us and discovers a remarkable similarity to himself. He then plans to produce a film with himself in the leading role as the fallen angel Malak. His aim is: ‘To open up the “abyss” so that it will devour the soul of humanity… He wants to arouse a magic “psycho-analytical” complex in the whole of humanity by showing them in the cinema the face of the angel Malak, that until then had only been seen by initiated Yazidi. He hopes that, as a cinema image, it will impress itself on sensitive minds and make them accessible to demonic “promptings”.’

  The final chapter is the filming of the last scene. At the crucial moment Dr Steen is struck dumb, apparently dead. But ‘the end of the novel hints that Dr Steen remains alive.’ The importance of the clockmaker, Gustenhöver, as a secondary figure and the fact that Dr Steen gave him an old watch to repair, suggests Dr Steen will be ‘cured’ in the same way as the protagonist in ‘The Clockmaker’. This is backed up by parallels such as the description of the clocks in Gustenhöver’s workshop which is almost word-for-word the same as that in ‘The Clockmaker’.

  Notes

  13 See, for example, ‘The Man on the Bottle’, ‘The Preparation’, and ‘The Waxworks’ in The Opal (and other stories), tr. Maurice Raraty, Dedalus, 1994.

  14 Peacock Angel.

  Part 2

  The Golem

  Originally published in serial form in Die weissen Blätter, 1913-1914, Meyrink’s first novel remains his best-known one. The unknown narrator puts on the wrong hat one night when leaving the inn and finds himself transformed into the amnesiac gem-cutter, Athnasius Pernath. Meyrink’s novel does not tell the traditional legend of the Golem and Rabbi Loew of Prague; rather, the Golem is a kind of symbol of the Jewish ghetto, reappearing every 33 years. There is also a mysterious connection between Pernath and the Golem, which appears at several points, including the extract chosen. The Tarock/Tarot cards are part of the symbolic structure of the novel and Meyrink relates them to the Jewish mystical tradition of the Kabbala; near the end of the novel Pernath falls off a roof with a rope tied round one ankle, briefly appearing in the same position as the Hanged Man in the Tarot pack.

  Extract from Chapter 7 of The Golem: Ghosts

  Ghosts

  Charousek had left a long time ago but I still could not make up my mind to go to bed. A sense of unease was gnawing at me, making rest impossible. I felt there was still something I had to do, but what was it? What?

  Make a plan of our next moves for Charousek? No, that alone wasn’t enough. He wouldn’t let the junk-dealer out of his sight for one second anyway, of that there was no doubt. I shuddered at the memory of the hatred emanating from his every word. What on earth could it be Wassertrum had done to him?

  This strange sense of unease inside me was growing, driving me to distraction. There was something invisible calling me, something from the other side, and I could not understand it. I felt like a horse being broken in: it can feel the tug on the reins, but doesn’t know which movement it’s supposed to perform, cannot tell what is in its master’s mind.

  Go down to Shemaiah Hillel?

  Every fibre in my body resisted the idea.

  The vision I had had in the Cathedral, when Charousck’s head had appeared on the monk’s body in answer to my mute appeal for help, was indication enough that I should not reject vague feelings out of hand. For some time now hidden powers had been germinating within me, of that I was certain; the sense was so overpowering that I did not even try to deny it. To feel letters, not just read them with my eyes in books, to set up an interpreter within me to translate the things instinct whispers without the aid of words: that must be the key, I realised, that must be the way to establish a clear language of communication with my own inner being.

  ‘They have eyes to see, and see not; they have ears to hear and hear not;’ the passage from the Bible came to me like an explanation.

  ‘Key … key … key …’ As my mind was teasing me with these strange ideas, I suddenly noticed that my lips were mechanically repeating that one word. ‘Key … key … ?’ My eye fell on the wire hook which I had used to open the door to the loft, and immediately I was inflamed with the desire to see where the square trapdoor in the studio led. Without pause for thought, I went back into Savioli’s studio and pulled the ring on the trapdoor until I had managed to raise it.

  At first, nothing but darkness.

&n
bsp; Then I saw steep, narrow steps descending into the blackness. I set off down them, but they seemed never-ending. I groped my way past alcoves damp with mould and mildew, round twists, turns and sharp corners, across passageways leading off ahead, to the left or the right, past the remains of an old wooden door, taking this fork or that, at random; and always the steps, steps and more steps, leading up and down, up and down, and over it all the heavy, stifling smell of soil and fungoid growth.

  And still not a glimmer of light. If only I had brought Hillel’s candle with me!

  At last the ground became level. From the dull crunching sound of my footsteps I guessed I was walking on dry sand. It could only be one of those countless passages that run, without rhyme or reason, from the Ghetto down to the river. I was not in the least surprised; half the town had been built over this network of tunnels and since time immemorial the inhabitants of Prague had had good reason to shun the light of day.

  Even though I seemed to have been walking for an eternity, the complete lack of sound from above my head told me that I must still be within the confines of the Ghetto, where a tomb-like silence reigns at night. Had I been below even moderately busy streets or squares, the clatter of carriages would have reached me.

  For a second fear grabbed me by the throat: what if I was merely going round in circles? What if I should fall down some hole and injure myself, break a leg and be stuck down here?! What would happen to her letters then? They lay in my room, and Wassertrum was sure to get his hands on them.

  Unbidden, the comforting presence of Shemaiah Hillel, whom I vaguely associated with the idea of help and guidance, flooded through my mind. To be on the safe side, however, I went more slowly, checking my foothold at each step and holding one arm above me so as not to knock my head against the roof if the passage should suddenly get lower. Occasionally, and then with increasing frequency, my hand hit the rock above me until eventually it was so low that I had to bend down to continue.

  Suddenly there was empty space above my upraised arm. I stood still and stared up. Eventually I seemed to make out a scarcely perceptible shimmer of light coming from the ceiling. Could it be the opening of some shaft, perhaps from a cellar? I stretched up and felt around with both hands above head height. The opening was rectangular and lined with stone. Gradually I began to make out the shadowy outlines of a horizontal cross at the bottom of the opening and finally I managed to grasp the bars that formed it and pull myself up and through the gap between them.

  Standing on the cross, I tried to get my bearings. If my fingers were not deceiving me, that must be the remains of an iron spiral staircase? I had to spend a long, long time groping in the darkness until I found the second step, then I started climbing. There were eight steps in all, each one at almost head height above the last.

  Strange! At the top, the staircase came up against a kind of horizontal panelling which let through, in regular lines, the shimmer of light that I had seen from below. I bent down as far as I could to see if, from the extra distance, I could make out the pattern of the lines. To my astonishment I realised that they formed the precise shape of a sixpointed star, such as is found on synagogues.

  What on earth could it be?

  Suddenly it dawned on me: this, too, was a trapdoor, with the light seeping round the edges. A wooden trapdoor in the shape of a star. I put my shoulder against it and heaved; one second later I was standing in a room flooded with bright moonlight. It was fairly small and completely empty apart from a pile of rubbish in one corner. There was only one window, and that had strong iron bars. I checked the walls several times, but however carefully I searched I could find no door or other kind of entrance, apart from the one I had just used. The bars over the window were too close for me to put my head through, but from what I could see of the street outside, the room must have been roughly on a level with the third floor, as the houses opposite had only two storeys and were considerably lower.

  The pavement on the other side of the street was just in view, but the dazzling moonlight that was shining full in my face formed deep shadows, rendering it impossible for me to make out any details. The street must be part of the Jewish Ghetto, for all the windows of the building opposite were bricked up and merely indicated by ledges projecting from the wall; nowhere else in the city do the houses turn their backs on each other in this odd fashion.

  In vain I racked my brains to try to work out what this singular building in which I found myself might be. Could it perhaps be one of the abandoned side-towers of the Greek Church? Or did it somehow form part of the Old-New Synagogue?

  The situation was all wrong for that.

  Again I looked round the room: not the slightest clue. The walls and ceiling were bare, the whitewash and plaster had long since flaked off and there were neither nails nor holes to suggest the room had ever even been inhabited. The floor was ankle-deep in dust, as if no living being had been here for decades.

  I shuddered at the idea of examining the rubbish in the corner. It was in deepest darkness and I could not make out what it consisted of. At first glance it appeared to be rags tied up in a bundle. Or was it a couple of old, black suitcases? I prodded it with my foot and managed to use my heel to drag part of it towards the ray of light the moon cast across the room. It looked like a broad, dark strip of material that was slowly unrolling.

  What was that spot, glittering like an eye? A metal button perhaps?

  It gradually resolved itself into the arm of some curiously old-fashioned coat hanging out of the bundle. And beneath it was a little white box, or something like that; under the pressure of my foot it gave way and crumbled into a mottled, layered heap. I gave it another poke with my foot and a piece of paper fluttered into the light.

  A picture?

  I bent down: a Juggler, the lowest trump in the game of Tarock. What I had taken for a white box was a pack of cards.

  I picked it up. How grotesque, a pack of cards in this eerie place! The strange thing was, I had to force myself to smile as a faint shudder of horror crept up my spine. I tried to think of a simple explanation of how they came to be here, mechanically counting the pack as I did so. Seventy-eight cards, it was complete. Even as I was counting them I was struck by the fact that the cards felt like slivers of ice. They gave off a glacial cold, and I found that my fingers were so stiff that it was almost impossible to release the cards from their grip. Once more I looked for a rational explanation. My thin suit and the long walk without coat or hat through the underground passages, the bitter cold of the winter’s night, the stone walls, the severe frost that seemed to flow in through the window with the moonlight — if there was anything odd it was that I had only started to feel the cold now. The fever of excitement I was in must have made me insensible to it.

  Fits of shivering rippled across my skin, penetrating deeper and deeper into my body. My skeleton seemed to be turning to ice and I was aware of each individual bone in my body as if it were a cold metal rod onto which my flesh was freezing fast. Walking round the room, stamping my feet on the ground, beating my arms against my sides — nothing helped. I clenched my teeth to stop them chattering.

  It must be Death, I said to myself, laying his chill hand on my skull. And I fought like a madman against the numbing sleep in which the freezing cold was enveloping me like a stifling, soft woollen cloak.

  The letters in my room, her letters! The words exploded in my brain like a howl of despair. They will be found if I die here! And she is relying on me, she is looking to me to save her! Help! — Help! — Help!

  And I screamed out through the bars of the window, sending my cry echoing through the deserted street, ‘Help! Help! Help!’ I threw myself to the ground and immediately jumped up again. I mustn’t die, I mustn’t! For her sake, for her sake alone! I had to find warmth, even if it meant striking a spark from my own bones. Then I caught sight of the rags in the corner, and I rushed across to them and pulled them on over my own clothes with shaking hands. It was a threadbare suit of so
me thick, dark material in an ancient, curious style.

  It gave off a smell of decay.

  Then I huddled down in the opposite corner and felt my skin slowly, very slowly begin to grow warmer. But the gruesome awareness of the icy skeleton inside my body refused to leave. I sat there motionless, my eyes wandering round the room. The playing card I had noticed first — the Juggler — was still in the ray of light that ran across the middle of the room.

  I stared at it, I could not tear my eyes away.

  As far as I could tell from that distance, it seemed to be a crude picture, painted in watercolours by a child’s hand, representing the Hebrew character Aleph in the form of a man in quaint, old-fashioned dress, with a short, pointed beard, and one hand raised whilst the other pointed downwards. I could feel a disturbing thought seeping its way into my mind: did the man’s face not bear a strange resemblance to my own? That beard, it wasn’t right for a Juggler. I crawled over to where the card lay and threw it into the corner with the rest of the jumble, just to rid myself of the tormenting sight.

  There it was now, lying there and gleaming across at me through the gloom, a blurred, greyish-white smudge.

  I forced myself to think about what I could do to get back to my room. Wait for morning, then call out from the window to passers-by to find a ladder and bring me some candles or a lantern! Without a light I would never manage to find my way back through the maze of tunnels, that was certain, horrifyingly certain. Or, if the window should be too high, perhaps someone could climb onto the roof and use a rope …? My God! It struck me like a bolt of lightning. Now I knew where I was! A room without an entrance, with only a barred window, the ancient house in Altschulgasse that everyone avoided! Many years ago someone had let himself down by a rope to look in through the window and the rope had broken and … Yes! I was in the house where the ghostly figure of the Golem disappeared each time!