The Other Side (24 page)

In an abandoned park Dr. Lampenbogen had set up an emergency clinic. I saw him there while he was ‘working’ in his grey coat. He told me that two storeys of the
Blue Goose
had collapsed, result 86 dead, 17 injured. It happened just after a meeting. By some miracle the American was unhurt, but his servant–he pointed to a figure wreathed in blood-stained bandages–was unlikely to survive. He had lost his touch, he complained, most of his patients simply faded away.

Things looked pretty bad in his shed: rusty instruments, a shortage of linen, dirt everywhere. He had an old ice-box–he locked it carefully every time–in which he kept cold food and his cupping glasses. I felt it appropriate to say a few words of condolence. He gave me a chilly smile and said, ‘Well, I’m a man, you see, not like you.’ He didn’t seem to be mourning for his Melitta particularly.

The official
Gazette
and the
Dream Mirror
had closed down and the
Voice
was owned by the American. It appeared exclusively in special editions and reported the events of the day in a style that seemed to consist entirely of headlines. Jacques and his gang hawked them round the streets in the evening with raucous cries of ‘
Vooooice! Get your Voice ‘ere!’
It sold well since it carried more and more sensational stories.

At that time the appearance of certain pathological phenomena was causing a stir. When Dreamlanders met they would often be surprised to find themselves gripped by an irresistible urge: they all started making the same involuntary movements, their hands would stretch out in stiff and pointless gestures. After a few minutes it would stop and everything would go back to normal.

During a long speech given in the open air one of the audience kept repeating it quickly over and over again, sometimes starting at the beginning, sometimes at the end, like a gramophone with the needle stuck. Speech disorders were reaching epidemic proportions. People couldn’t remember words, concepts, letters; some were struck with temporary dumbness.

Many shunned their fellow men and retreated to the wilderness.

We had to be very careful what we drank. Alcohol had the effect of a poison, although there were exceptions; some infirm persons, women and children could drink it by the gallon and come to no harm.

One day in Long Street I saw little Giovanni. He was with a band of chattering monkeys that had settled in Blumenstich’s junk shop. All the slates had gradually fallen off the roof, revealing a moth-eaten realm of upholstered furniture. He was in the middle of a group of long-tailed guenons and I recognised him by his red belt. I called up to him, but he ignored me. He had completely reverted to type and was engaged in amorous dalliance.

The build-up of electric disturbances was unbearable. At night pale silvery flashes would snake across the sky, long, delicate trails of filigree, like the northern lights. Hermits, dervishes and fakirs came out of the desert and down from the mountains to announce in the market place that the end of the world was nigh. They called on us to do penance but their messages of doom were shouted down.

Before the end one final farce was played out:
The Black Fish
. That was what the special editions of the
Voice
called the large shape that appeared in the bed of the Negro a good hour downstream from the city. Fear spread as people prepared for an attack by some new, unknown animal. An observation post was set up in the brick-works and the part of the camp in the Tomassevic Fields that was in most immediate danger was evacuated. Everyone gathered and looked down towards where the colossus lay. Oh, they would sell their lives dearly! I too was in the excited crowd, looking though an old cardboard telescope. Unfortunately, what with the clouded lenses and the hazy atmosphere, there was not much to be seen.

‘A Greenland whale’, I was informed by the old professor who was standing beside me, ‘so far only recorded in the Arctic.’

The strange animal did not move and the city was at a loss what to do in the face of the impending danger. Some suggested bombarding it from a distance, but did we know how it would react to such an attack? We might merely succeed in provoking it, it might spit out poison and destroy what little we had left. Better wait and see, perhaps it would go away of its own accord.

In the middle of the general confusion some bold spirits demonstrated admirable courage. It was the last surge of a natural, healthy instinct that I came across, later on everything was chaos and disorder. Two farmer’s lads, a soldier and a gamekeeper, all young men, offered to sacrifice themselves for the good of the community. Their plan was to take a boat and drift downstream on the current, come up quietly on the animal and drive it away with hand-grenades. They might even manage to kill it. It was a hazardous business, reckless yet brave.

Their noble offer was accepted. Everyone ran up to see their youthful saviours. A priest in full vestments pronounced his blessing over the four, who each received the last sacrament. The crowd, deeply moved, excitedly crammed the river-bank from the mill to the cemetery.

The four went to the sluice. They managed to make the last boat that had not completely rotted reasonably watertight and floated slowly down with the current, though two of the men still had to spend all their time bailing out. The boat grew smaller and smaller. Now it was at the bend in the river, it must reach the monster quite soon. Everyone was craning to see, everyone was holding their breath. The crowd was completely silent, apart from a quiet scratching. The expedition appeared to have anchored, unharmed, right next to the dangerous beast. To everyone’s surprise nothing happened for quite some time. Then there was a sudden flash in the distance and the gigantic animal slumped.

A triumphant ‘Hurrah!’ from a thousand throats greeted the heroes’ success.

To our general amazement it turned out that the ‘monster’ was a balloon that had come down over the Dream Realm and become entangled in the willows on the river-bank.

VIII

Nowhere was the decline of the Dream Realm more clearly reflected than in the goings-on in Mme Adrienne’s popular establishment in the French Quarter. So far it had flourished in discreet silence, guided by occasional advice from venerable greybeards. Now the
crème de la creme
turned up in magnificent gowns for its interesting–and very stringent–entrance examination, though Castringius’s suggestion of handing out PhDs was rejected. It was not a scientific faculty, he was quietly informed, but a cult.

The disintegration of cloth led to the invention of the famous slit dresses. Even respectable women, in fact they especially, took this fashion to extremes. They are the ones who are supposed to have come up with the idea of the socalled ‘menus’. I will just give a general indication of what they were and leave the rest to the reader’s imagination.

I ‘could put it briefly and say: they enjoyed themselves and each other’s company, but that would not give a very precise picture. The ‘menus’ were printed invitations to intimate get-togethers. The apparently innocent dishes–sandwiches, for example, haunch of venison, charlotte russe–concealed technical variants of the art of love which I am sure no reader will want me to go into in detail.

My old café was also the scene of secret orgies. At least I once saw piles of obscene pictures, mirrors, bath-tubs and mattresses being carried in. I asked the owner what it was all in aid of.

‘Oh nothing’, he replied with a smirk, ‘just a little
montage
, that’s all.’ When I went past in the evening the shutters were closed, which had never happened before. There was a notice stuck across the door: ‘Private party tonight’. From inside came the sound of uproar, odd words could be heard and hideous laughter.

Some priests who had taken refuge in the city revealed the mysteries of the temple. What the
hoi polloi
made of them you can well imagine. They didn’t revere the organs of fertility as symbols of esoteric joys and powers, but crudely worshipped them as the gods from whom alone they expected succour. But the greatest of all mysteries, the sacrament of blood, had been disclosed and
that
leads to madness. It may well have been the cause of the destructive unleashing of physical urges that took place. Given the many dangerous animals there were around, it was natural that people should band together for protection. That was the excuse given for groups sleeping together in tents under one blanket, a protective measure that was referred to by the fine-sounding name of the ‘communal sleeping arrangement’.

The air was like a baker’s oven; in the pools and inlets along the river small pale-blue flames appeared. The Dream Realm was in permanent twilight.

Walking through the camp one day, I was struck by how quiet it was. The Dreamlanders were lying there, staring at each other, lids half closed. Everybody seemed dejected and apprehensive. These people were expecting something to happen. All at once the whole plain was filled with the sound of humming, growing louder, and muted laughter. I was seized with terror. It was like the sudden outbreak of some mental illness. Then, with the abruptness of a storm-wind sweeping across a still landscape, the sexes fell upon each other.

There was no mercy. Sickness, youth, family ties, all were ignored. It was a primal urge no human could ignore. Eyes bulging with lust, everyone sought out a body to cling to.

I dashed into the brick-works and hid. Through a hole in the wall I observed the ghastly happenings.

All around there was grunting and groaning, interspersed with shrill screams and the occasional deep sigh. It was a quivering, heaving sea of naked flesh. Being completely unaffected myself, I was sensitive to the meaninglessly mechanical nature of this crude act. I couldn’t help seeing something grotesquely insect-like in the convulsive performance. There was a haze of blood over the whole area and the glare of the camp-fires flickered over the tangle of frenzied flesh, picking out this or that group. I still have a vivid picture of a bearded middle-aged a man squatting on the ground staring between the spread thighs of a pregnant woman and muttering mindlessly to himself. It was like a mad prayer.

Suddenly I heard loud screeching nearby, of both exultation and pain. To my horror I saw that a blonde whore had castrated a drunk with her teeth. I could see his glassy eyes as he writhed in his own blood. Almost in the same moment an axe descended; her victim had found an avenger. Masturbators withdrew to the dark of the tents while from farther away came cheering: our pets, caught up in the frenzy, were mating.

But what made the deepest impression on me was the half-asleep, rather blank expression on all the faces, whether pale or flushed, which suggested that these poor people were not acting of their own free will. They were automata, machines which, once set in motion, continued to run on their own. Their minds must have been elsewhere.

De Nemi arrived in uniform with some of the members of Jacques’ gang; the effect was like adding fuel to the fire. A piano was dragged along and de Nemi hammered out the same hackneyed tune again and again and again. Following commands that had a bestial sound, the drunken Dreamlanders attempted to line up in columns and copulate. Children were set on each other. A reddish mist was rising from the river, but it did not conceal the ghostly inferno from my eyes. Blood lust was aroused! An obscene giant of a fellow jumped up, roaring like a bull, and set on another with a long knife. Murder! Then another! The man had gone berserk. All the love-games stopped. Several women, deathly pale, rolled around on the ground in hysterical convulsions.

Now from everywhere came the howls of those in the grip of blood lust.
Animals would never roar like that!
Bitter struggles broke out, men foamed at the mouth and were struck down. The gates of the nearby cellars were smashed and large barrels rolled into the camp. Everyone got drunk. One noisy group went into the swimming pool and some joker locked the doors behind them. For hours you could hear terrified cries for help, but the drunken camp just ignored them. Then it was silent. With taut bellies, a pack of crocodiles slid back into the river.

Some started digging up fresh graves in the nearby cemetery; a rabid dog, attracted by the smell of blood fell upon a cat that had been run over.

Then I noticed a creature cowering beside me. It was Brendel, staring at me with a vacant smile. ‘What’s the matter, Brendel?’ I said, trying to shake him gently out of his stupor.

‘Melitta’, he said slowly, and laughed silently to himself. It was enough to tell me the poor man had gone out of his mind at the death of his beloved.

Most of the fires had died out, things had quietened down, and I looked to see whether I could risk leaving my hiding place. All that could be heard were the snores of the drunken masses. There was still one big fire blazing; it was kept going by the wood from the piano. In its glow I saw a broad figure: the American.

He was in evening dress, as if he were going to a ball, and smoking his inevitable short pipe. As he made his way through the sleeping forms a naked woman sat up and tried to stop him. Crack! A whip cut across her back, leaving a fiery red weal on the white skin. Then he plunged back into the darkness, disappearing in the direction of the city where a booming sound was starting up.

The American’s hour had come.

IX

In the city a special edition of the Voice was being distributed with reports of a new disaster. The great temple had disappeared beneath the waters of the lake. It was monks who brought the news. They suspected the foundations had long since been undermined by the water and that the sandy spoil had now given way. Some priests had drowned as they were singing their hymns. They must have been surprised by death, for the trumpets were still sounding when the building was half under water. Everything happened very quickly, the heavy marble walls sank without collapsing. The holy brothers who had escaped had not noticed the danger until they heard the gurgling of the water as it poured in through the stained-glass windows. Their fat had given them buoyancy and they had managed to swim to safety. The lights had continued to burn deep under the water, making the temple windows glow like the eyes of some mythical sea monster. One after the other they slowly went out, until only the shimmer of the silver and golden domes was left. Then they too were engulfed beneath the waves. The corpse of the venerable high priest was washed ashore, all the rest found a watery grave in the Dream Lake.