The Other Side (30 page)

It was an ocean of blood, spread out below as far as the eye could see. The hot, purple waves rose higher and higher until the pink foam of the breakers washed over my feet. Nauseating fumes went up my nose. The sea of red drew back and rotted before my very eyes. The blood grew thicker, darker, blacker, with occasional rainbow patches of iridescence. Often the viscous liquid would part, revealing a sea-bed covered with soft excrement that gave off a dreadful stench.

Patera and the American grappled each other, forming a shapeless hulk, the American completely fused with Patera. A monstrous body, too huge to distinguish its various parts, rolled and writhed all over the earth, the shapeless being taking on protean characteristics. Millions of tiny, ever-changing faces formed on its surface, all prattling, singing, shouting at the same time, until they were sucked back in again. Then suddenly a calm came over the monster and it rolled itself up into a gigantic ball, Patera’s head. Its eyes, as large as whole continents, had the look of an eagle with second sight. Now it took on the appearance of one of the Fates and aged a million years before me. Its jungle of hair dropped off, revealing the smooth, bony dome. Suddenly the head burst into a cloud of dust and I was looking into a blinding, undefined void…

Now, far out in the ocean, I saw the American, who had expanded to the same terrifying size as Patera. The eyes in his imperious head flashed like diamonds, he was wrestling with himself in a daemonic paroxysm, the huge ridges of the swollen veins in his neck twisting in a network of blue. He was trying to throttle himself, but to no avail. With all his might he beat his breast. It sounded like a steel cymbal, the thunderous booming almost deafened me. Then this gigantic monster rapidly shrivelled up, only its penis refusing to shrink so that finally he was stuck like an inconspicuous parasite to an impossibly large phallus. The parasite dropped off, as if it were a dried-up wart, and the fearsome member crawled over the earth like some immense snake, wriggled like a worm and grew smaller and smaller until it disappeared into one of the underground passages of the Dream Realm.

I could see into the earth. A thousand-armed polyp lived in all the passages. Its limbs, as elastic as rubber, stretched out underneath all the houses, crept into all the apartments, sucked their way under every bed, disturbed the sleepers with their fine hairs and warts, spread out endlessly over many miles, entwined in coils which glistened with changing colours, now black, now olive-green, now a pale fleshy pink.

Again the brightness blinded me. Two shining, violet meteors ascended from opposite directions, converged and crashed into each other. The air was incandescent. Brightly coloured lightning flashed and criss-crossed. It was as if sunny worlds with magnificent hues, flowers and creatures such as I had never seen on earth came into being for a few seconds. A maelstrom of bubbling, unruly life whizzed round outside my soul. I was no longer seeing all this with my eyes, no,
no!
I had forgotten myself, was absorbed into these worlds, shared in the joys and sorrows of countless beings. Mysteries, alien and indescribable, unveiled themselves.

Somewhere something splintered. I heard lumps fall. Soft, boneless blobs appeared, female in expression, lashed by an intense urge to take form. Sparkling pinpricks of light gleamed, a thousand harmonies filled the expanses, which flowed together into an inseparable, watery, lustrous slime. Where, a moment ago, there had been the crash of the sea, a crust of ice froze, then shattered, sending geometric shapes shooting in all directions.

I was part of it and apprehended everything with powers I could not name. After events which were timeless, eternal, after the tensions of an existence growing ever more explosive, everything changed into its opposite. Birth was followed by an urge towards a focal point, and it happened in a trice. Waves of gentle, blissful weakness permeated the world. Dull comprehension became strength, yearning. There was an immense, self-evident power. It grew dark. With clear, regular vibrations the universe shrank to a dot.

I lost consciousness.

II

I felt a sharp pain which fortunately woke me, for the cold had grown so intense I was close to freezing to death.

A broad valley had opened up in front of me, still partly filled with the violet mists of the night, a grandiose range of mountains, deep gorges, precipitous alpine meadows. Above the picturesque scene stretched a soft-green morning sky and the topmost, snow-covered peaks were already reflecting the pink glow of dawn. The fog lifted, a few drifts sinking into the dark forests. I rubbed my eyes. Which country was I in? I smelt the refreshing aroma of pine-woods, suddenly the sky reddened and something rose above the glaciers, like a resounding fanfare of radiance. I leapt up with a cry. That was the sun, the great sun! But my eyesight was too weak to bear the phenomenon, I couldn’t stand the daylight any more and tried to reach the darkness of the mountain. From the distant plains came the sound of bugles, far off I could see dark columns approaching. Below I looked down on a scene of devastation traversed by a network of countless ditches filled with stones. Trembling, I climbed into the shaft down inside the mountain.

I went into the hall hewn out of the rock. With its two rows of massive columns covered in carved figures it recalled a cave-temple. A naphtha light with a fitful orange flame was burning in a wide bronze cresset. It was the only illumination there and hardly reached the deep recess at the back where the blue-eyed tribe were squatting. I felt afraid and would have preferred to leave, but I wanted to thank them for saving me. I had not thought about the future at all yet.

I still could not bring myself to face the the solemn silence of this gathering in my rags and tatters. I decided to wait, concealed in the shadow of a pillar. I started at the sound of a hoarse sigh. Something dark was moving at the entrance, a bundle of black cloth, as far as I could make out in the uncertain light. With grunts and dragging steps a creature was making its laborious way into the cave. A human being? Its head was veiled and bent low and it wore a long, trailing garment. It stopped beside the cresset and threw back the veil. Patera?? Yes and no. But it
was
him! What a change had taken place! Groaning as if under a weight that was beyond his strength, he approached; his remarkable ability to change his appearance at will seemed to have abandoned him. Weariness, unspeakable weariness was all this countenance expressed. His eyes were half closed. Now there was something human about him again and I was not in the least afraid of him. His deathly, waxen complexion had gone and he once more reminded me of the person I had known at school.

Hesitantly, as if facing something inescapable, he dragged himself past me towards the blue-eyed folk. They stood up and awaited him, statue-like, in a half-circle by the flaming cresset. One of the elders went up to him and handed him a small vessel, a vase, as far as I could tell, then fell to the ground before the Lord. The others also threw themselves to the ground and hid their faces. I was overcome with a surge of religious awe so powerful I fell to my knees involuntarily and folded my hands.

With heavy legs, Patera made his way round the burning flame and down several steps to a small, arched doorway. Such unutterable radiance shone out of it that I had to cover my eyes with both hands. Compared to it, the cresset bore a dim, smoky light. The Lord turned to face us, who were all prostrate and scarcely daring to look at him because of the radiance. The last traces of eeriness had gone from Patera’s eyes; now those large eyes shone a dark, moist blue, embracing us all in a look of boundless compassion. Once more I saw the pure beauty of his profile standing out against the background in all its bright glory. With a slight movement of his head he threw back his long, luxuriant locks and disappeared, the long train of black gauze slowly trailing behind. The bronze door fell shut.

They all arose and went to the portal. I too left my hiding place. Something extraordinary must have been taking place in the next room. We could hear a noise as if columns of people were on the march. Suddenly the flame in the cresset flared up wildly, turned green and went out. We were in total darkness.

From inside the room uncannily long-drawn-out cries rent the air, so tearing at my heart-strings that I shrank back and had to block up my ears to stop myself falling unconscious.

They were piercing sounds, like the screech of a giant saw cutting into rock. Finally they turned into the deep, husky moaning of a wounded beast of prey. That also gradually grew weaker and weaker, and stopped with a horrific rattle.

When we opened the door we found, in the bluish light, a room in which everything had been destroyed: melted pieces of metal, chewed-up fragments of stone, broken-off bits of rock. And there: the Lord!

He lay in a corner, face down against the wall, like a bundle flung there by some alien force.

His shrunken body seemed surprisingly small and feeble. The Lord and this wizened thing, they could not be the same. It was beyond my understanding. Could this ghastly, pitiful impotence be what had entered the room a few moments ago?

Unimaginable death-throes had crumpled up the body of the most powerful creature. That, even if covered in soot and grime, was the same high forehead of the head we all knew so well.

The old men lifted him up. After the corpse had been washed the rigor slowly relaxed and the contortion left its face. The eyelids could be closed and the grin was replaced by an expression of most sublime peace. In death Patera’s dark blond hair had turned white!

Stretched out on the floor the body seemed considerably longer, but, to my horror, I realised it was still growing, in fits and starts, with a cracking of joints, as if possessed of a surfeit of power. It was some time before this growing stopped. In contrast to the length of the body, the massive head now looked almost dainty with its bright halo of pale hair: cold as marble like the statue of a god from antiquity.

The body was indescribably beautiful. I saw such grace and purity of form I could not understand how it had appeared on our earth. Standing before him, the Lord, in my rags and tatters, I perceived his true majesty for the first and last time. None of the blue-eyed tribe there dared to make the slightest gesture that would violate his silent unapproachability. One after the other they went. Once more I was the last. Holding my breath and walking on tip-toe, I slipped out. The blueeyed people left the mountain. I never saw any of them again.

I sat down on the bottom step.

My body shook as the tears came.

A scene of devastation far and wide. Piles of rubble, marshy ground, broken bricks: the gigantic garbage tip that was once a city, still all wreathed in bluish morning mist. Only the range of rocky mountains in the background are beginning to catch the gold of the rising sun. The sky, although still fairly dark, is cloudless. A bare-headed man with a large piece of baggage on his shoulder is forcing a way through the detritus with firm but elastic steps. He is wearing a tail-coat with broad velvet lapels and narrow trousers stretched tight over his muscular legs, after the Viennese fashion of the 1860s. But these items of dress-wear are covered in scorch-marks and blood-stains, with many holes. He looks like a burglar taking his swag to a safe place. Now he puts his burden down on a large rock with the flat surface of a table and removes the filthy cover, revealing a brand-new leather suitcase with polished brass fittings. Out of it Hercules Bell takes an elegant suit with modern underwear and starts to change. Then he shaves himself carefully, checks his face in a hand-mirror, pulls out a new, broad-brimmed Panama and lights his pipe. A slim bamboo cane with a gold handle provides the finishing touch.

His jaunty bearing and bronzed complexion give no hint of the trials and hardships he had been through, except for a slight greying of his raven hair at the temples. The American is preparing to meet the advancing Europeans.

Lieutenant-general Rudinov sent an infantry unit on ahead as the advance guard. Using every possible piece of cover, they had crept up to the smoking masonry, but with the best will in the world they could not discover any enemy. When he received their report, the general decided to advance further. Through his field glasses he spotted a small fort built on a rocky projection connected to the mountain. The general had a few artillery units unlimber their guns and aim them at the high stronghold. Then he sent out an envoy with white flags and a trumpeter to present an ultimatum to the enemy demanding they surrender at once to the Russians, hand over all weapons and property and immediately set free any citizens of European states in their custody. However, all the envoy found was abandoned terrain covered in stones, most of which had been crushed to sand. Here and there a few charred and smouldering beams were still sticking up out of the rubble. It did not seem advisable to stay there any longer as the ground was sinking and turning into a morass, the ruins slowly slipping down.

There was no one there to whom they could present the ultimatum.