The Dedalus Book of German Decadence (16 page)

The rooms are black with dust. They are high, and bare, and cold, full of dead things. Occasionally a tiny beam of light enters the clouded windows, but the darkness swallows it up again. The past has died here.

It froze here one day, petrified into a single twisted rose. Now time, impervious, passes over its insubstantiality.

And the silence of desolation suffuses all.

Nobody can now enter the park. The branches of the trees embrace each other with a thousand arms: the park is now nothing but a single, monstrous living thing.

Eternal night weighs heavily beneath the gigantic baldaquin of foliage. And deep silence! And the air trembles with putrescent miasmas!

Yet sometimes the park awakens from its heavy dreams. A memory is born, a memory of cool starry nights, of dark, secret places where feverish kisses were once seen, and embraces; summer nights full of radiant splendour, when the moon conjured forth crazy pictures on the dark background; men and women walking back and forth, elegant, gallant, rhythmical in their movements beneath the panoply of leaves, whispering mad, sweet words, and smiling seductively.

And then the park sank back into its sleep of death again.

The shadows of copper beech and conifers rock on the surface of the waters, and from the depth of the tarn arises a dark mournful murmuring.

Swans move through the gleaming water, slowly, stately, lifting their slim stiff necks. They move onwards, day in, day out, encircling the deserted castle.

On the edge of the tarn pale asphodels are standing amongst the livid grasses. And their reflections in the water are even paler.

And when they die others arise from the depths. And they are like the little hands of dead women.

Great fish swim around the pale flowers with staring, glassy eyes – then silently they dive into the depths.

And the silence of desolation suffuses all.

And the Count is sitting, day in, day out, in his crumbling tower. He gazes after the clouds which sail above the tops of the trees, gleaming and pure. He loves to watch the setting sun glowing in the clouds at evening. He listens to the sounds above him: the cry of a bird flying past the tower or the moaning wind, sweeping the castle.

He sees how the park is sleeping, dull and heavy, and he looks at the swans moving through the glittering waters which surround the castle, day in, day out  …

And the waters are gleaming greenish-blue. But the clouds that sail over the castle are reflected in the waters, and their shadows gleam as they do, radiant and pure. The water lilies beckon like the small hands of dead women and they move, sadly dreaming in the gently moaning wind.

The wretched Count gazes at everything that surrounds him, dying, like a lost child overwhelmed by a great destiny and who no longer has the strength to live, a child who fades and passes like the shades of morning.

He listens more and more to the still, sad melody of his soul: transience!

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.

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 were 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.