The Dedalus Book of German Decadence (24 page)

He gazed for a long time at this holy river, with a strange, tormented reverence, this river which had split the might of mountains, had hacked its way through whole pyramids of stone and excavated a myriad channels, gorges and subterranean passageways.

In the moonlight the river looked as though it were of molten moonbeams, and where it split into innumerable runnels it seemed to be frozen into cascades of frozen moon-stalactites.

With a sick joy he listened to the scoffing howl of demented cataracts, for this was the music that accompanied the Mass of desperation which was raving in his soul and he gazed at the ghostly, dark gleam of the waterfalls, for his sick, febrile fantasies were flickering in the dim grave-light of putrefaction and mildewed verdigris.

He held his breath, stood on tiptoe, stretched out his arms and greedily drew in the ghostly miracle.

Horrified, he gazed around him.

Something frightful was happening!

He was alone, totally cut off from the world in the middle of the ocean on an island, high above the sea on a monstrous block of basalt.

The whole island was, in fact, a steep rock of fused basalt pillars, a shattered, broken polygon whose sides fell abruptly into the sea like the hieratic folds in the robes of a Byzantine saint.

He saw the sea rage around the island. The mountainous waves burst upwards, hurling themselves heavenwards in wild, teeth-bearing frenzy and pouring across the top of the island. The sea was churning in the gap between the island and the jagged reefs which surrounded it, crashing and roaring with a diabolical force, seething and screaming in monstrous leaps and falls, exploding in glittering clouds of snow, and leaping upwards again as though a subterranean crater had opened and was spewing out this lava, this cascade of insane spume.

It was an unheard of joy for him to watch this monstrous battle of colliding masses of water. They poured from both sides into the narrow straits between the island and the long adjoining reef, smashing into each other, growing into each other as they reared upwards, unable to destroy each other; they embraced each other like wrestling, fiery pillars of boiling suns; they hurled themselves backwards, leapt up again abruptly and disintegrated like planetary rings flying away from the central core, but again new hurricanes of water were flinging themselves against each other, tornadoes which seemed to tear the very sea from its bed.

On the horizon the sea was swelling in an insane fury, its womb rearing to heaven in a monstrous pregnancy – higher, higher – the whole ocean was rearing to an immeasurable cupola above its own base, the dreadful vault of water was hovering over the island, but then the power which raised the ocean from its base abruptly ceased. The aqueous curve burst, and with the crash and thunder of collapsing worlds the heavy clouds of water disintegrated, bounced back from the earth, rolled in a churning flood across the island, then all was peace.

But only for a moment.

The sea was suddenly a mass of flames.

That was no longer the sea: these were waves of molten metal, a seething whirlpool of liquid stone.

As though the whole of the earth’s surface had become liquid again and was raging in primeval storms, in dreadful convulsions, spasms, choric dances.

Monstrous fountains of seething metal were shooting into the black firmament; streams of boiling ore were pouring into valleys; demented gulfs of stone writhed into each other; watery sierras raged in cosmic conflagration whilst niagaras of fire seemed to be upside down, hurling hurricanes of flame into the skies.

Slowly the seething sea solidified. Where previously the masses of water had reared into the skies he now saw an expiring range of mountains. In a light devoid of atmosphere, a light which had lost its incisive power, he saw powerful ferns spread their antediluvian violet into the clouds; lost, black trunks of charred palms and cypresses stood rigid against the clouds like a dead forest of pillars; monstrous lilies opened their enormous calyces in a silent joy; the poisonous red tongues of orchids ate into the blueness of immense ferns, and all this was raging in an uninhibited orgy of colour: green, violet, deep purple and silky whiteness were fighting with each other, and through the groaning scream of liquid, ferrous red, were twisting dark threads of waterfalls seen from afar, and on the dark green pools of the ferns there crept brassy growths in incredible convolutions of mythical lianas, whilst curare plants spurted their secret poisons into the darkness of the dark, burned forests, lightly, sharply flickering  …  and on the dark lake of purple the water lilies rocked their heads, deep with dreams.

He closed his eyes, unable to bear the raging Tedeum of these orgiastic colours, but their impression burned itself into that secret ganglion where all senses coalesce; it overwhelmed his brain afresh, but now with the hideous, cacophonous symphony of brass instruments, with melting bassoons, howling basses, screaming violins, horns that howled like apocalyptic beasts and clarinets that whinnied like the horses of hell.

He staggered back, terrified, and ran along an avenue of pilasters to the furthest corner of an immense room and fell, exhausted, on to a carpet, where it seemed that he was sinking, eternally  …

An inexpressible joy seized his heart.

With a rapture never before experienced he breathed in calm, stillness and a feeling of divinity.

In the gentle, dusky penumbra of a radiance exhaled by the pillars of porphyry and which streamed from the dark ceiling of cedar wood, embracing the bluish gleam of the basalt floor, he suddenly sensed the epiphany of the holy miracle  …

*        *        *        *

Evening slowly settled around the earth. The crimson of the porphyry pillars spread into the dark gleam of ebony; the holy cows of the capitals became shapeless monsters and the light, forcing its way between the narrow cracks between the pillars, grew dim, became still, flickering like the light of a dying torch.

And in this holy hour he arose and strode slowly between the pillars, solemnly, with head held high, as though he were wearing the mitre of a world conqueror: he stood upon the granite terrace of his Alcazar, his soul liberated from his body, and spread across both town and ocean in a holy benediction.

And in the dead silence of the necropolis he finally knew that he was quite alone in the world, somewhere on a star, a million miles away  …  He forgot that there was anyone else apart from him in the whole of the cosmos.

He was alone, quite alone!

It grew dark. The miracles of the sky were extinguished, and night laid its mantle of mourning across the earth.

His soul fluttered and trembled in agitation like a bird before the storm, for it knew that the hour was near when the abyss would open, when the soul should penetrate all mysteries and, in the splendour, see its own nakedness.

It seemed as though the space shrank from all sides and closed ever more closely around him, as though lines and contours were detaching themselves from the town and forming new constructions: the darkness seemed to grow deeper, to assume body and shape, and suddenly the heavy curtains of night were rent asunder, and it became light, a strange light; a gleaming breath of perfumed summer nights, a cold, regular radiance of unknown worlds  …  It was light, the light of the reflections of metal mirrors – an inner light, the light of the soul and of the cosmos.

And in this lightless lustre he saw her moving slowly towards him: She – He – She!

She was coming up to him like a light wandering in dark masses of mist, as though she, with the grace of her light, were travailing and struggling to penetrate the heavy burden of mist.

She was walking as the moaning of bells miles away, across a glittering expanse of snow on frosty winter evenings, and she was walking as gently as the dusk which stealthily surprises the mountain tops.

Sharp, extended wedges of darkness were penetrating the chasms and the jagged reefs, melting the light, longing violet into lead-grey blue; with long, pointed tongues they bit into the white of the eternal snow, and the crystal sparkling slowly darkened; the peaks and plateaux shroud themselves in darkness; the sea of darkness pours itself downwards, calm, earnest, solemn.

And she was walking like the white gleam of the silver poplars in the magic of Good Friday, dreadful, desperate. And on the rigid fields of pain the wind-sails reared, groaning, howling and moaning, and the metal, gleaming vanes clattered and beat in unison.

He started back.

Through the forest of pillars there approached ever closer the silver radiance, the silent gleaming which penetrated the curtain of night, a surge, a moaning of swinging bells, the dusky longing of twilight which streams from the heights into the valley.

He withdrew ever further into the wide expanses of his Alcazar, fell on his face, and stammered:

‘Have you come at last? My soul bleeds, and my wings are torn to ribbons, I have flown over mountains and seas. The ghostly horror of this town destroys me, but here I waited for you, for my heart told me I would find you here.’

Silence and the pallor of death surrounded him. He shuddered, for perhaps he should not speak to her.

He crossed his arms, and beseeched her in a fervent whisper:

‘Who are you?’

And through his soul there passed a voice like the gleam of a painful smile, like a pale shaft of light, like the exhalation of an introverted, venerable silence:

‘I am the deepest depths of your soul, I am the course of all that you have experienced, I am the sound and colour of your dreams and the goal of your longing; I am the blood that constantly feeds your lust; you were conceived through and in me; through and in me shall your being reach consummation  …’

And through the monstrous hall echoed again that sobbing of autumnal rain; it gleamed like an unwept tear in an eye glazed with pain, and around the lofty vaults reverberated the deep lament:

‘Do you remember the night that I held your face in my hands, when my hot arms held you and my head rested on your breast, my hot fingers writhing in your hair?’

He shuddered with pain. This voice, full of pain and of supernatural longing, full of trembling memories; this voice grew into his throat and blocked the blood in his veins; he rolled before something invisible in the dust, and begged: ‘Oh come, come! I have waited for you so long in these terrible catacombs, for my soul bewitched me, saying that I would find you again and have you whenever I wished. How can I seize you? See, I am seeking, I am stretching out my arms, come! oh come!’

And it seemed as though someone were embracing his knees, falling about his neck, pressing herself to his breast in a joy that knew no end, and the agony of swooning rapture.

A cool silence spread about the cedar panelling of the ceiling and the green syenite of the porphyry pillars  …

And he could feel, feel her small, small soft hand, saw her in himself, bending over him and whispering:

‘I have wandered so long, seeking and waiting to see whether your hand would tear me out of the nothingness, form me, shape me and give me corporeal outline  …  Do you hear, beloved, do you feel me? I went away from you, for when you gazed on me you were looking into your own soul  …  For I am the body of your thoughts, I am the form and the shape of your longing, the expression of your feeling and the movement of your will  …  I left you because I am your damnation and your death  …  I left you, but now I implore you, I beg you, screaming: stretch out your hand into the depths of my nothingness. May your hand forge the millions of tones, the shattered dissipated sounds of my soul into
one
chord  …  may it pour the millions of coloured fragments into
one
sun, the sun which will warm my body. Oh thou my Saint, thou my God! I wandered so long, seeking and shrieking for you, but the tempests howled away my yearning, my imploring and you did not hear me  …  But now I do not shudder that you may have perished: I know that when you gaze into me – into your own soul – you
must
perish; but you do not wish to live without me. Tear me from my nothingness, or come to me! Come! Come! Longing has made my soul crazed and obscure  …  storms of torment have dishevelled my golden hair, oh, seize the golden strands, twist them around your arm! Pull me out of this abyss: with you it is paradise, without you it is hell! Do you hear me? feel me?’

And a terrible, immeasurable agony of longing twitched in wild convulsions through the hall.

‘Oh you my light-born one, my genesis of light! I have called for you, writhing in fearful screams and fervent prayer, but my voice died away and did not make the metal of your heart resound. I embraced you in the trembling floods of light, my lips thirsted for yours, the mystical rose of my body opened for you, but your heart was silent. I crept into your dreams and bathed my lusting womb in their ardour, but when you woke the unearthy magic of my charms fled from you  …’

And the longing and the yearning of her voice swelled more powerfully.

‘Seize my hips with your hands! Yes, like so! Tear me towards you with your powerful arms, drag me to your breast, so that my hair should swirl like a wild mane in the searing lust of your sexuality! Look, look! A fearful sweet torment  …  I am become body! Do you feel the throbbing of my veins? Are you scorched by the fire of my lust? Scream, scream heavenwards, let your will, your whole being shudder, that I should become!’

He started up, grew higher, the raging storm of his will pounded within him and three times he shrieked the fearful scream:

‘Become! Become! Become!’

In vain  …

He heard her voice like the last, dying breath of a choir of angels:

‘No use  …  Come with me! This love is not of this world  …  come, follow me there  …  There we shall be one, not here, not here  …’

*        *        *        *

His soul fused with the body.

Down below, deep, down below the lights of the town were extinguished, the last echoes died, and only the memory of the great, the holy night spread its wings over the town.

He could no longer differentiate dream from reality, he could hear the rumbling of the waterfall like a remote echo that seemed to come from somewhere from beyond the edge of the world  …  He could see, as a dream, the golden spires of the Alcazar.