Pictor's Metamorphoses (5 page)

“And do you still remember the Song of the Harp Silversong?”

She had to nod and did not know why. The crystal tones rang even more softly. The voice asked: “Where are the strings of the Harp Silversong?”

The tone grew fainter still and died away in delicate, shallow waves. And then, not knowing the reason, the lovely Lulu began to weep.

A hush fell over the room, and so it remained for some time.

“Why are you weeping, Lulu?” Turnabout asked.

“Oh, have I been weeping?” she shyly answered. “I was trying to remember a song from my childhood; but I could only recall half of it.”

Suddenly the door flew open and Frau Müller burst in. “What's going on here? Still on those same glasses?” she scolded. Lulu began to cry again, the hostess went on grumbling and grouching at her; neither of them noticed the philosopher—who was smoking a short-stemmed pipe—blow a huge ring of smoke, enter into its midst, and, on a gentle draft of air, imperceptibly vanish through the open window.

4

T
HE MEMBERS
of the petit cénacle had gathered in the neighboring woods. Even the junior barrister Oscar Ripplein had joined them there. A great many enthusiastic words about youth and friendship issued from the mouths of the comrades, who lay on the grass; and their discussion was interrupted as often by laughter as by contemplative pauses. Most of the talk centered on the poet's thoughts and opinions; for the next day he would set off on a journey, and none of them knew when or if they would see him again.

“I must go abroad,” said Hermann Lauscher. “I need to go off by myself and once again breathe fresh air. Perhaps one day I'll be only too happy to return; but, for the time being, I've had about all I can take of the narrow confines of student life; I'm sick to death of the abominable groves of belle academe. Everything seems to stink of beer and tobacco; besides, these last few years I've absorbed more knowledge than is good for a poet.”

“Do you hear what you're saying?” Oscar broke in. “I thought we had enough uneducated artists, particularly poets.”

“Perhaps,” Lauscher retorted. “But education and knowledge are two very different things. What I had in mind was the danger of gradually studying yourself into that damned state of self-consciousness. Everything must go through the brain, everything must be grasped and measured. You put things to the test; you measure yourself, seeking out the limits of your talents; you become your own experimental subject, and finally you see—too late—that you've left the better part of your self and your art far behind you, in the oft-ridiculed, subconscious impulses and emotions of early youth. Now you are reaching out to embrace the sunken Isle of Innocence; but you no longer do so at the wholehearted and heedless prompting of sorrow deeply felt. No—even this gesture is self-conscious, premeditated, a pose.”

“What's really on your mind?” Karl Hamelt asked, with a smile.

“You already know,” cried Hermann. “Yes, I'll admit that the book I recently published troubles me. I must learn anew how to create out of the plenum, to go back to where all things begin. It's not so much that I want to write something ‘new.' What I need is new experiences, a fresh, clean, healthy strip of life to live. I want, as in my childhood, to lie down on the banks of streams, to climb mountains, to play my fiddle, to run after girls, to take whatever life—whatever each day—has to offer; I want to wait for my poems to come to me, instead of breathlessly and anxiously hunting them down.”

“Right you are,” the voice of Turnabout suddenly chimed in. He had emerged from the woods and stood in the midst of the young men's camp.

“Turnabout!” they all exclaimed merrily. “Good day, Herr Philosopher! Good morning, Herr Ubiquitous!”

The old man sat down, took a deep drag on his cigar, and turned his well-meaning, friendly face toward the poet Lauscher. “There's still a young man inside me,” he began with a smile, “who would very much enjoy having a good long talk with the likes of you. If you'll permit me, I'd like to join your discussion.”

“With pleasure,” said Karl Hamelt. “Our friend Lauscher was just saying that a poet has to return to the wellsprings of the unconscious, knowledge and learning being of little use to him.”

“Rather nicely put,” the old man replied slowly. “I've always felt a certain kinship with poets and have gotten to know quite a few on whom my friendship was not entirely wasted. Poets, even today, more so than other people, are inclined to believe in certain stable, eternal forces and concepts of Beauty which lie half-asleep in the womb of life. The intimation of which sometimes shines through the enigmatic present as summer lightning shines through the night. In such moments of illumination, it seems to them that all ordinary life and they with it are nothing more than pictures limned on a lovely curtain; and only behind this curtain does genuine, true life go on. The most supreme, the most eternal words of the great poets seem—even to me—but the babblings of a dreamer who, without knowing it, murmurs through heavy lips of the heights of the world beyond, heights he has only briefly glimpsed.”

“Very beautiful,” Oscar Ripplein interjected, “very eloquently put, Herr Turnabout, but neither old nor new enough. These visionary sermons were preached some hundred years ago by the Romantics, as they were called: they, too, dreamed of such things, and of summer lightning. In schools today, one hears this referred to as a disease—fortunately eradicated—that only afflicts poets. But it's been years since anyone's dreamed such dreams, or, if he has, he understands that his brain…”

“That will do!” Karl Hamelt interrupted. “More than a hundred years ago, there also existed such … such ‘brains,' who also bored everyone to tears with their long, dreary discussions. And nowadays those dreamers and visionaries seem even more charming and splendid than those all-too-readily understandable sly dogs. Speaking of dreams, I had an exceptional one today.”

“Let's hear it, then!” the old man entreated.

“Some other time.”

“You don't want to tell it? Then perhaps we can guess,” said Turnabout. Karl Hamelt laughed out loud.

“Now, let's give it a try!” Turnabout persisted. “Each one of us will ask a question, to which you must truthfully reply either yes or no. Even if we don't guess your dream, well have had fun trying.”

Everyone agreed to play the game, and questions came flying from all sides. The best questions were always those asked by the philosopher. When his turn came again, he asked, after some deliberation, “Was there water in your dream?”

“Yes.”

Because the question had been answered in the affirmative, the old man was entitled to another turn.

“Springwater?”

“Yes.”

“Water from a magic fountain?”

“Yes.”

“Was the water scooped out?”

“Yes.”

“By a girl?”

“Yes.”

“No!” shouted Turnabout. “Think again!”

“But it was!”

“So you say a girl scooped out the water?”

“Yes.”

Turnabout shook his head furiously. “Impossible!” he reiterated. “Did the girl scoop the water out of the fountain with her own hands?”

“Oh, no!” Karl exclaimed in confusion. “It was the faithful servant Haderbart who put his hands into the water.”

“Ah, now we've got you!” the others exulted. And then Karl told the whole story of his dream of the Laskian Spring, to which everyone listened amazed and deeply moved.

“Princess Lilia!” Lauscher exclaimed. “And Silversong? Why are these names so familiar to me?”

“Indeed,” said the old man, “both those names are in the Askian manuscript you showed me yesterday.”

“In my song!” the poet sighed.

“In the picture of the beautiful Lulu,” whispered Karl and Erich.

Meantime, the philosopher had lit another cigar and puffed hard on it, until he was almost entirely enveloped in a cloud of blue tobacco smoke.

“You smoke like a chimney,” said Oscar Ripplein, extricating himself from the cloud. “And what a stinking weed!”

“Genuine Mexican!” the old man replied from inside his cloud. Then he stopped puffing, and presently a gust of wind blew up from behind, carrying off the redolent cloud and Turnabout with it.

Karl and Hermann pursued the vanishing smoke cloud into the woods. “What garbage!” growled the junior barrister, suddenly aware of an unpleasant feeling that he had fallen into dubious company. Erich and Ludwig had already made themselves scarce, and in the golden clarity of the late afternoon they strolled back toward Kirchheim and the Crown.

Karl and Hermann overtook the last fluttering wisps of tobacco smoke deep in the woods, and stood silent and perplexed before a large beech tree. They were about to sit down on a patch of moss, to catch their breath, when the voice of Turnabout spoke out from behind a tree. “Don't sit there, gentlemen, it's still damp! Come join me over here!”

They found the old man sitting on a huge, withered bough that sprawled on the ground like a shapeless dragon. “I'm glad you've come!” he said. “Please do take a seat near me! Your dream, Herr Hamelt, and your manuscript, Herr Lauscher, interest me.”

“First,” Hamelt stormed at him, “first, for heaven's sake, you must tell me how you managed to guess my dream!”

“And read my paper!” Lauscher added.

“Indeed!” said the old man. “What's to wonder about? You can guess anything if you ask the right questions. Besides, the story of Princess Lilia is so close to my heart it was only natural that I should recognize it.”

“So that's it!” cried the student. “How do you happen to know this story, and how do you explain the sudden and conspicuous appearance of my dream—about which I had spoken to no one—in Lauscher's enigmatic song?”

The philosopher smiled and replied in a gentle voice: “When one has devoted oneself to the story of the Soul and its Salvation, as I have, one recognizes similar instances; they are innumerable. Of Princess Lilia's story there are many, highly divergent accounts. She wanders, displaced, like a ghost, through all the ages, taking on multiple guises, transforming herself; she particularly likes to manifest herself in the commodious form of the dream-vision. Only rarely does the Princess appear as herself, and only when the final stages of the purification process are near completion—only rarely, I say, does she take on human form, and she waits, unawares, for the moment of her salvation. I myself saw her not too long ago and attempted to talk to her. But she was as if in a dream, and when I ventured to ask her about the strings of the Harp Silversong, she burst into tears.”

Wide-eyed, the young people listened to the philosopher. Admonitions and strange accords rose up in them; and yet Turnabout's oddly circuitous manner of speaking and his half-ironic facial expressions confused them, tying the threads of his story into one great Gordian knot.

“You, Herr Lauscher,” he continued, “write on aesthetics and must know how enticing and dangerous it is to span the narrow, but deep, cleft between the Good and the Beautiful. We need not despair that this cleft signifies an absolute separation, for we know, on the contrary, that the fissure betokens an essential Unity; that the Good and the Beautiful are not two distinct principles; rather, they are the daughters of the one principle: Truth. The two only appear as separate, hostile mountaintops—deep in the womb of the earth, they are one and the same. But what good does this insight do us, when we're left standing on one of these summits with the yawning abyss always before our eyes? The spanning of the abyss and the salvation of Princess Lilia are one. She is the blue flower, the sight of which disburdens the Soul, the scent of which distills all harshness, all obstinacy from the Spirit. She is the child who apportions kingdoms, the fruit of the combined longing of all the great souls. On the day she ripens and is saved, the Harp Silversong will sound, the Laskian Spring will rustle and rush through the restored, blossoming lily garden. And he who sees and perceives this, to him it will seem that his previous life was but one long nightmare, and now for the first time he would awaken to the clear light and the fresh sounds of a new day … But the Princess still languishes under the curse of the Witch Poisonbreath; the thunder of the evil hour still reverberates in the rubble-filled Opal Palace; and my King, shackled in leaden dream-chains, still lies in the devastated hall.”

5

A
N HOUR LATER
, when the two friends came out of the woods, they caught sight of Ludwig Ugel, Erich Tänzer, and the junior barrister with a woman in a bright dress coming from the pub, strolling toward them up the mountain. With joy they recognized the slender Lulu and hastened toward the foursome with all due speed. She was cheerful and her gentle, loving voice sweetly mingled in their conversation. Halfway up the mountain, they sat down on a long bench. Below them, the town lay bright and cheerful in the valley; on all sides, the golden vapors of evening glistened on the high meadows. August munificently extended its dreamy fullness; in the trees' thick foliage, green fruits swelled; on the road in the valley, gleaming harvest wagons decorated with garlands made their way toward the villages and farmsteads.

“I don't know what makes these August evenings so beautiful,” said Ludwig Ugel. “Still, they don't make you feel happy, they make you want to lie down in the high grass and become part of the gentle tenderness of the golden hour.”

“Yes,” Lauscher said, gazing into the pure, dark eyes of the beautiful Lulu. “Because the season is drawing to a close, we feel mellow and sad. How gently and wearily the ripe sweetness of summer spills over into these last days of August. And we know that tomorrow or the day after, somewhere or other, leaves will have already turned red and lie on the roads. In these hours you silently watch the slow turning of the Wheel of Time, and you feel yourself slowly and sadly being carried along with it … carried off somewhere … to that place where the red leaves lie.”