The Other Side (16 page)

The maid came in. ‘Is there anything else you require?’

‘No, you may go.’

‘What would you say if I had the impudence to ask you to let your hair down for me?’

(I needed to ask the question, before I tightened the noose, since a rebuff would have made me look too ridiculous.)

‘Today? The day of your wife’s funeral?’

(A mere feint.)

I continued to act out my part. ‘There is life as well as death.’ I could still sense some slight resistance, but what could she do against the power which already had me in its grip.

‘Well, if you insist. If it’ll help you get over your loss.’

(Aha, a dig at the widower, her last parry.)

From somewhere or other a thought surfaced in my mind. ‘How stupid she is … they’re all the same …’ Melitta stood up and fiddled with her hair.

‘The maid’s not likely to come in?’ I asked, very calmly and very softly.

(It was a precaution and at the same time a prod to stop the preliminary skirmish going on for God knows how long. Anyway, my head was starting to swim.)

‘We’re safe’, came the soft reply from her lips. (What more could one ask?) Two magnificent chestnut braids tumbled down her back. She stepped behind the tall screen beside the fireplace and loosed her hair completely.

I was astounded, and yet I still overdid my praise. I displayed my expert knowledge, lacing it with occasional passionate expressions. It wasn’t her hair I was principally interested in, of course.

My throat was constricting with trepidation. I could see that if I went on for too long I would start talking nonsense.

‘Your hair is beyond compare. Might I not see more? As an artist. Please, please.’ I could see how much my flattery was confusing Melitta.

‘My goodness, you’re asking a lot’, she said in coquettish indignation. The blush on her cheeks told me her resistance was melting. With trembling fingers. I was allowed to perform the services of her maid …

In her boudoir adjoining the dining-room two small wall lamps gave off a subdued light. I wanted to shake her out of her lethargy, at the same time I was glad of her lethargy. I smelt the intoxicating odour that was only too well-known in the Dream Realm. I had forgotten my wife had ever existed …

In the street everything was quiet. The storm had died down but it was still very wet and cold. A sabre rattled. Two men were walking along the street.

‘A parting gift from the devil’, I heard Castringius say with his characteristic bleating laugh. I ran and ran to get as far away as possible from the villa. Nothing and no one could drag me back there.

In the coffee house I ordered some strong punch. ‘Alone at last!’ I said to myself with a touch of gallows humour. After the third glass I drew up a balance sheet of my aspirations and achievements and found I was staring into a void. My whole life was just like Brendel’s love affairs. I had wasted my energies chasing after mirages fortune dangled before me. I wasn’t going to have anything more to do with the whole stupid business. By the fourth glass I was deep in the quagmire of thoughts of suicide. Better not to exist at all than to live as a fool among fools.

At the same time I was tormented by remorse at what had just taken place. I begged forgiveness from my dead wife who, for several hours now had been lying beneath the sodden earth, abandoned to the confinement of her wooden prison, whilst I was compelled to bear the burden of living flesh. Even now I kept being pestered by lascivious thoughts, which floated up from the depths like bubbles of gas and burst on the surface of my mind.

At the fifth glass my decision was taken: ‘Drown my sorrows here then straight into the river.’ My tongue was burning from too many cigarettes and my head was throbbing.

At the next table they were talking about the mill. Jacob, the miller who had gone missing, had been seen the previous week crossing the river by the ferry lower downstream. From there a road led into an endless jungle, an as yet unexplored area of wilderness in the Dream Realm. At night a veritable cacophony of sound could be heard coming from there, even on our side of the river. ‘He probably got lost and was eaten by some wild beast’, was the general view. In spite of that they still vilified his brother, accusing him of the most heinous crimes.

I had a black coffee and came to the conclusion I was fit for neither life nor suicide. ‘I’ll just vegetate somewhere between the two, waiting for the final blow like an ox at the slaughterhouse. It won’t be long coming.’ A glance in the mirror revealed a face with an unhealthy, puffy complexion.

It was three o’clock in the morning. I had three helpings of ham and followed it with a currant tart; I was ravenous. Late in the night Castringius and de Nemi put in an appearance. The former spotted me immediately but I quickly grabbed the
Voice
and hid behind it. They both got the message. The first thing I saw staring at me from the paper was my own name in large letters–a short obituary for my wife. Over the top of the paper I kept seeing Castringius’s hands. One, the right, was hanging over the back of a chair. It was a ghastly appendage; it must be a throw-back, perhaps to the missing link. But Castringius made it clear he regarded himself as belonging to the human race. ‘Ship’s propellers’ was what I called his short, fleshy fingers with their broad, horny nails that were yellow and split. Since I knew that, basically, my fellow artist didn’t like me, I made a point of being polite to him.

The innkeeper came to my table. Sleepily he asked me whether I intended to keep my apartment on. ‘Good Lord, no!’ I explained that at the moment I had nowhere to go. Did he know of anything? ‘Certainly. There’s a room free here.’ It was a tiny room, long and narrow, more of a corridor than a room. I spent the rest of the night there and that’s where I stayed. The bed was in a dark, curtained-off alcove. The room seemed very familiar, as if I had never slept anywhere else. I felt at home with its rather shabby, yellowing leather wallpaper, its old-fashioned clock-case and bulbous tiled stove.

I was dog-weary. I slept right through that day and only woke up the following morning just as they were bringing in my desk.

I spent the next six months in a creative frenzy and, under the impact of grief, produced my best pieces. I deadened the pain with work. My pictures, soaked in the pallid, gloomy atmosphere of the Dream Realm, were a veiled expression of my grief. I spent hours immersing myself in the poetry of the dank courtyards, hidden attics, shadowy back rooms, dusty spiral staircases, abandoned, nettle-ridden gardens, the pale colours of the brick and wooden pavements, the black chimneys and a whole host of bizarre fireplaces. They were repeated variations on one melancholy theme, the anguish of desolation and the struggle with an unfathomable fate.

Apart from these, which I sold to collectors and the
Dream Mirror
, I also produced other things, however. There came a number of short series intended for circulation among a small group of people. In these I tried to create, according to secret rhythms I had become aware of, new forms which twined and tangled and exploded against each other. I went even farther. During those months I developed a strange system that abandoned everything apart from line. A fragmentary style that had more of writing than drawing, it was like a sensitive meteorological instrument recording the slightest variations in my mood. I called the technique ‘psychographics’ and intended to write a commentary on it at a later date. This new burst of creativity gave me the relief I so desperately needed. Otherwise, though, I was far from being reconciled to my fate, inhabiting a kind of twilight zone.

I spent many nights searching for explanations for my wife’s death. Some of the blame must fall on me. She was of that healthy, down-to-earth disposition which could never take root in this spectral realm. I should have realised that at the outset and never have embarked on the whole adventure.

When I was back in circulation again I heard of all kinds of changes. Things in the Dream Realm were getting even more chaotic, if that were possible.

One day our charwoman, Frau Goldschlager, was buried, the third death in six months. Her poor nine children were in a bad way now.

According to rumour, Hector von Brendel had started a relationship with Melitta Lampenbogen. Would that ever reach the stage of ‘ripeness’, I wondered. De Nemi was visiting Lampenbogen, though less for the sake of his wife than because of a nasty disease, a consequence of his amorous propensities. The news I heard of Giovanni Battista was good. He was a master of his craft and the barber had bought him an annuity to provide for his old age.

There had been no noticeable increase in population, the few newcomers were largely ignored. They presumably had a great deal to say about the world outside, with its progress and remarkable inventions, but the Dreamers were not in the least bit interested. ‘Oh really’, they would say and go on to something else. To us the Dream Realm seemed grandiose and immeasurable, the rest of the world was of no consequence, we forgot it. Once they had settled in here, no one wanted to leave. ‘Out there’ was just a hoax, it didn’t exist at all.

Late one evening I went down to the river to set out some night-lines for eel-pout. Fishing had been one of my passions as a boy. The strange gaseous substance was still crackling and wreathing round the mill. I could see greenish wisps of phosphorescence snaking up and down the walls. Close to it I could feel a perceptible and unsettling disturbance. In the doorway–it had an owl’s head, a bat that had been crucified alive and a deer’s foot nailed to it for good luck–stood the miller. A glow came from the bowl of his pipe. This taciturn man had always given me the shivers, but that evening I deliberately walked boldly past him. I had already worked out where I was going to put my lines, immediately behind the large grille. Just as I was setting them out I heard a quiet but distinct voice from close by whisper, ‘Hey, watch out. A bit more to the left, if you don’t mind.’ There was no one to be seen. Then with a shock I saw a round, fat face in the sand at my feet. I was already imagining it was another ghost come to haunt me when I saw there was a natural explanation. A burglar had dug himself in and was observing the miller. I was relieved.

After I had finished with the lines I set off home. At the bridge I stopped. A monotonous, long-drawn-out singing came echoing from across the river. That was where the Outer Settlement with its low cottages stood. I had never been there, I had managed to find just about enough to keep me occupied in the Dream city itself. The singing was strangely moving, a solemn monotone, and I listened in silence. A remarkable stillness lay over the water. ‘I must go there soon’, I thought, and, as so often, Patera’s great mysteries and what I knew about them came to mind. These things will be dealt with in the next chapter.

I went to spend a few minutes in the coffee house, but I just could not attract Anton’s attention. He was talking to some customers at one of the tables, brandishing the arrivals and departures section from the latest edition of the Voice. He was speaking so loudly I could hear what he was saying. ‘He’s here now. He arrived yesterday.’

At last he bustled over to take my order.

‘The
American
arrived today’, he said, full of self-importance.

‘Who?’

‘You know, the American. A man with lots of money.’

I

Elaborate, jagged gables, thatched roofs! It was a little village I was entering. Low wooden cottages of fanciful shape, tiny domed buildings, cylindrical tents. Each house was surrounded by a well-tended garden. Seen from a distance, the settlement looked like an ethnographic exhibit. Scattered around were signal masts with pennants and glass discs, countless large and small grotesque figures in stoneware, wood and metal. It was a moss-grown jumble, much of which was concealed between the low-hanging branches of ancient trees.

This was where the original inhabitants of the Dream Realm lived. It had a particular peacefulness about it. Despite their often hideous combination of outlandish shapes, the bizarre and incomprehensible figures on their strange wooden altars fitted in harmoniously with their peaceful surroundings. I had been wandering round for some time before I came across any people. Three tall, wiry figures were coming down a hill.