Pictor's Metamorphoses (21 page)

“But what then was the dead man's profession?”

“I don't know exactly, I believe that formerly he was the manager or the owner of a liquor concern; he was an educated man with impeccable manners. But you don't need to be so worried about your poem, you don't have to put a tailor in it, only perhaps the red silk banner with golden scissors; and you should make some lovely statement about death and human life and reunions and the like. That's what people like to hear on such occasions.”

He began to grow impatient; we were standing in the doorway to the inn, and inside the cozy little parlor the glasses were ringing. I did not have the courage to detain him any longer and I let him get back to his friends; after a while I followed him meekly, but I found that, with the rolls and the good wine, gradually my courage and my good spirits were reviving. I stood up and extemporaneously composed a rhapsodic ode, and perhaps it is a pity that it was never written down. It had more power, verve, and a broader popular appeal than any of my other poems, and the men were exceedingly pleased with it. They became quite pensive; deeply moved, they nodded heartily in agreement; they cried out “bravo” and got up all together to clink glasses with me, to compliment me, and to bid me welcome as a member of their guild. I was moved to tears, and after all the handshaking I was about to announce that the wine was on me, when, in one of those moments of great clarity—which, after a lot of drinking, can blaze up like lightning—it came to me that the contents of my rather slender wallet might not—indeed, no longer could—suffice to pay for the wine. And so I remained silent; overwhelmed and happy, I mutely raised my glass to the many who were drinking my health. They were honored to take me into their time-honored guild: I was safe, never again would my work be under surveillance or forbidden; everything had been done in accordance with form and order.

And yet, never again did I hear from the Tailors Guild. This was the one and only time that I followed its lovely silk flag, the one time that I—a non-tailor among non-tailors—had partaken of rolls and wine with them, had regaled the guild brothers with verses and fraternized with them. On a few rare occasions it has happened that a face seemed familiar to me, and I have pondered over whether it might belong to one of my fellow guild members; but the owner of the face soon went past me and vanished. And so, of the whole experience, nothing has stuck with me but the memory of those two hours in the circle of the bereaved revelers.

Now, as concerns the poem I produced on that occasion in such an unusual fashion and which met with such thunderous applause, after more sober consideration I must say: it is better, it is a blessing that it was never written down and that no record of it exists. It was a product of circumstances which did not suit me and which all my life I have made many a sacrifice to avoid and prevent. The poem arose out of my forced accommodation to a situation which I found strange and unsuitable; and it arose out of a state of intoxication, which, to be sure, had less to do with the excellent white wine—of which I have nothing but the most pleasant memory—and far more to do with the unaccustomed atmosphere of fellowship, a feeling of belonging, of community, breast to breast and shoulder to shoulder—a good climate perhaps for politicians, pastors, and the lions of the lecture halls, but not for poets or people with similar callings, for whom not society but seclusion and solitude are salutary. That poem which seemed so beautiful and was such a great success I have indeed forgotten, which in itself proves that the verses were bad; but I have not forgotten—rather, it is with some amount of remorse and shame that it has stuck in my memory—the final sentiments of that rhymed sermon, the foolish and fainthearted, disagreeable and tasteless thoughts that certainly Death awaited us all, but it would be some consolation to know that once the grave had swallowed us up, our comrades, rallied around the dear old flag, would remember and memorialize us by making a libation. Such oil, such unctuous nonsense flowed from my lips, to the great delight of those honorable men who sat around the table, and whose hearts beat higher because of it; and just as my feeling of membership and security in this circle had been a fraud, leaving me feeling just as alone, wary, and suspicious of the magic of fellowship as I had always been, so, too, presumably, had the others' enthusiasm, camaraderie, and human kindness been a soap bubble and a pretty lie. And if later on I was really quite pleased that my membership in the guild of “tailors” entailed no further annoyances—no new gatherings, fraternizings, and ceremonies would take place, no entanglements and obligations would present themselves to me, still it was also the case that the others, my cherished brothers and fellow tailors, the deeply moved and gratefully enthusiastic auditors of my verses, the stouthearted shakers of my hands, later on really didn't give a damn about me. Once again society, the general public, the official world had approached me with menacing demands; after the appearance of the policeman on the clattering motorcycle, it seemed as if once again the world wanted either to forbid me to practice my profession or else to make me pay for the toleration of it with disproportionate, colossal, and intolerable sacrifices—and then all this culminated in a ceremony and a joke; the world wanted nothing more of me than two or three hours of drinking in a room full of harmless people, who on the next day no longer knew me and no longer required that I recognize them; all this was precisely the loveliest, the most delightful part of my guild story.

This, esteemed Friend, was what happened to me in Flachsenfingen. Altogether different things transpired shortly thereafter, when, once again exhorted to effect a voluntary and spontaneous change of residence, I resettled, this time in the Western Cultural District. This district enjoyed a reputation for intense cultural activity and an enterprising spirit, and this was a determining factor in my choice of it; moreover, there was the widespread if unsubstantiated rumor that the Director of Normalia, whose name is mentioned only with awe and respect, frequently sojourns here. Frankly speaking, considerations primarily opportunistic decided me in my attempt to resettle in the Western District. My personal finances needed to be put in order. In Flachsenfingen, not only could I not succeed in earning any income to speak of, but I had also run up debts; and after a comparatively short stay there, the invitation I received to change my place of residence voluntarily could probably be attributed more to these economic irregularities than to other causes. Now, according to all my sources, if they did not lie, the arts and sciences were appreciated and flourishing in the Western District; schools, universities, nurturing of the arts, museums, libraries, publishing houses, and newspaper chains were said to be on a high plane of development in this district, and there were also supposed to be competitions, state commissions, and academies here. If I succeeded in establishing myself and again bringing respect to my name, once so well known, it would be on the grounds of my accomplishments, or on the grounds of my formerly respected place in the world of letters, and if this was so, material success could not long elude me. Furthermore, whether I would remain in the Western District as a respected, safe and secure, successful man and live a happy and contented life, paying high taxes and enjoying high esteem, or whether on the other hand I would take all I had earned there and return to the cherished landscape of my Ur-Normalia and live or pension myself off there for life, did not for the time being concern me very much. The powerful attraction of the park, the ovum of our state, had never entirely released me from its spell; and with all due respect for the spiritual full bloom of the Cultural District, still the joy of swimming along in a stream of assiduous cultural activity did not appear to me unconditionally worth all the concomitant efforts; this “joy” had to mean more to younger, more ambitious people than to us old folk who love peace and quiet. But, on the other hand, the Western District had a strong attraction for me—owing to those aforementioned rumors concerning the special relationship between the Director of the Realm and this particular province. To learn more of him, the great unknown one, to establish a relationship with him or even with one of his high functionaries and co-workers, and to be able to penetrate even one of the many mysteries surrounding him, conceivably could have meant a great deal to me, as it could have to you, esteemed Patron. I only had to wait a few days in the Flachsenfingen Holding Station for Voluntary Emigrants, until a transport left for the Western Cultural District. The bus probably held between thirty and forty passengers, all of us intellectuals or artists, except for two young people with cheerful and pleasant faces and manners, who, as I learned from a fellow passenger, a journalist, should be classed among the barbarians. These two young people were more to my liking than the majority of my colleagues, among whom only two seemed really congenial, two men with long gray hair and long gray beards, typifying a kind of artist—long forgotten and only seldom encountered nowadays—who, by hair, beard, and manner of dress, betoken a noble seclusion from the world and a harmless absentmindedness, and for which I must ashamedly admit I have always felt a certain sympathy. Of course, just now the young barbarians were eyeing these two noble, reclusive, beautiful gray-beards with scorn and undisguised contempt on account of their outmoded frisures and habiliments. The cheerful youths simply did not know enough to recognize the artistic tradition which the excellent graybeards, at least in their outward appearance, called upon themselves to continue. Moreover, the communicative journalist informed me that one of these silver-haired men was a colleague of mine, a poet. And while we stopped for gas and food and were being fed in the tavern of an inn, I had the good fortune to be able to cast a glance at what seemed to be a poetic composition he had only recently begun. He was seated right next to me, and before him on the table was a little notebook. It was still new and empty; only the first page was inscribed with a few lines penned in a coquettish calligraphy—lines which, my spy eyes whetted by curiosity, I managed to decipher. They read:

Papagallo

A short time ago, or so we hear tell, a parrot was born in the vicinity of Morbio; one who, while still in school, already so far surpassed his brothers and colleagues in age, wisdom, understanding, virtue, and goodwill before God and man that his fame began to redound in distant cities and countries, like the fame of Achmed the Wise, or that of the one whose name we utter only with the greatest deference, Sheik Ibrahim.

I was filled with admiration for the style in which this tale was written, one that felicitously combined the elegance, grace, and polish of classical tradition with the modern sense for the simple and the monumental. Much as he appealed to me, I had not believed the silverbeard capable of such an accomplishment, and it would have been a great pleasure for me to become better acquainted with him. But unfortunately his artistic temperament must have sensed that his nascent composition was being spied on by the curious, possibly philistine, or even envious eyes of a colleague. Suddenly and forcefully he slammed his notebook shut, and his eyes, full of genius and wisdom, punished me with a look of such unspeakable contempt that shamefacedly and sadly I retreated into myself and left the table before the end of the meal …

(
Here the manuscript breaks off.
)

Christmas with Two Children's Stories

W
HEN OUR QUIET
little Christmas celebration had come to an end—it was not quite 10 p.m. on December 24—I was tired enough to look forward to sleeping through the night and especially pleased at the prospect of two whole days without mail or newspapers. Our big living room, the so-called library, looked every bit as disheveled and fatigued as but far more cheerful than we felt inside; for although we had celebrated only as a threesome—master, mistress, and cook—the little Christmas tree with its spent candles, the confusion of colored, gold, and silver papers and ribbons, and on the table the flowers, the stacks of new books, the paintings, water-colors, lithographs, woodcuts, children's drawings, and photographs propped up—some of them erect, some weary and nearly collapsed—against the vases, all this gave the room an unaccustomed, festive air of superabundance and agitation, a touch of the annual fair, of the treasure house, a breath of life and of absurdity, of childishness and playfulness. And the air was charged with scents, as disorganized as they were wanton, the closely mingled scents of resin, wax, scorched things, of baked goods, wine, and flowers. Furthermore, the room and the hour were crowded with the pictures, sounds, and scents of many, very many bygone holidays, to which old people are entitled; since my first grand experience of it, Christmas has returned to me more than seventy times—and if my wife has in her many fewer years and Christmases, it is for that reason that the strangeness, the remoteness, the extinction, and the irretrievability of a sense of home and security were even greater in her than in me. If the last few strenuous days of giving and wrapping gifts, of receiving and unwrapping them, of reflecting on real and imaginary obligations (neglect of the latter often more bitterly takes its revenge than neglect of the former), of the whole somewhat overheated and overly rushed activity of Christmas in our restless age already have taken their toll, then the re-encounter with the years and holidays of so many decades has been an even more arduous task. But at least the latter was a genuine and meaningful one, and genuine and meaningful tasks have the virtue of not merely making demands on one and wearing one out, but also of aiding and fortifying one. Especially in a decaying civilization, one that is diseased with a lack of sense and slowly dying, for individuals as well as for the community as a whole, there is no other medicament and nourishment, no other source of strength that enables one to go on, than the encounter with that which, in spite of everything, gives meaning to our lives and our actions and justifies us. And in the recollection of a whole lifetime of holidays and gatherings, in listening to the sounds and stirrings of the soul—even as far back as the colorful wilderness of childhood, in gazing into beloved eyes long since extinguished, there is demonstrated the existence of an intelligence, a unity, a secret center we have circled around—now consciously, now unconsciously—all our lives. From the pious Christmases of childhood, redolent of wax and honey, in a world seemingly sane, safe from destruction, incapable of believing in the possibility of its own destruction, through all the changes, crises, shocks, and reevaluations of our private lives and of our age, there still remains a core, a sense, a grace residing in no dogma of the church or of science, but in the existence of a center around which even an imperiled and troubled life can always form itself anew, from just this innermost core of our being, a belief in the accessibility of God, in the coincidence of this center with the presence of God. For where He is present, yes, even the ugly and apparently meaningless may be borne, because, for Him, seeming and being are one and inseparable, for Him everything is meaning.