The Other Side Page 13
About this time a great influx of strangers from abroad led to many bizarre misunderstandings. The new arrivals found their doubles here, which gave rise to both amusement and genuine annoyance. Many of the new Dreamlanders resembled old inhabitants not only in looks and manner, but even in dress, so that it seemed to be their intention deliberately to ape them. It was ridiculous, but there appeared to be two Alfred Blumenstichs going round, two Brendels and several Lampenbogens. You would dash into the café to say hello to an old friend you hadn’t seen for some time, to be greeted with a blank look–it was the wrong one. Lampenbogen was walking down the street, I raised my hat, and at the next corner there was another Lampenbogen! One day I saw the owner of the café four different times, and I could have sworn he was in his café all along. I must have had another ‘self as well. Several times I felt a playful tap on the shoulder only to turn round and see a complete stranger who would mutter a disgruntled apology.
Another day I was devastated. In Huxter’s Lane, a dark cleft leading from the French Quarter to the fruit and vegetable market, I came across a woman who was the spitting image of my wife. It awoke painful memories and I followed her until she disappeared into a house with a high, old-fashioned gable. She turned round on the doorstep to see who had been following her: the similarity, right down to the least movement, was uncanny. From then on I saw her quite often and I must admit that I did lie in wait for her a little. Subconsciously, not even admitting it to myself, I began to wonder whether love might not be beckoning again, until, that is, the day I saw her on the arm of a burly man with long, artistic locks and a slouch hat. I asked at the house where she lived and was told she was the wife of a distinguished organ-builder. I felt as if I had been made a fool of. Now, in the gentle autumn rain which dissolved everything in its shimmer, you could not be too careful to avoid being deceived. Under a false name a Castringius 11 ran up debts in all the bars until no one would extend credit to the genuine Castringius either.
The League of Joy was set up by members of the wealthy classes with a big celebration in the former theatre. Melitta played a special role in this, enjoying a sad notoriety. She ran off and every night for a whole week performed a striptease act, The New Eve, at the music hall. Despite the fact that her face was masked, everyone recognised her. The scandal brought Lampenbogen and Brendel closer together. Both suffered from wounded pride and a sorrow shared is a sorrow halved. Brendel was completely in thrall to her and found it impossible to transfer his affections. He went round holloweyed and heart-sick, and deliberately avoided me, he felt so ashamed. In her insatiable lust Melitta, on the other hand, was impervious to shame. She was completely smitten with the American, attracted by his broad shoulders and his healthy complexion, so rare in the Dream Realm. Someone once saw her walking along in front of him, her skirts raised above her knees. One after the other she dropped her handkerchief, her lorgnon and her purse but, with a complete lack of chivalry, the American did not respond to her little ploys, and when the fair lady bent down herself, presenting her rump in mute appeal to the masterful millionaire, he said coldly, ‘Out of my way, missie’, and pushed her aside. Filled with hatred, she urged Brendel to challenge the obstinate object of her desires, but to no avail. The American sent word that the sole weapon he was in the habit of using was the horsewhip, and that was the end of that.
The Lucifer Club had greatest success in recruiting from among the newly arrived Dreamers. Most of them objected to having to go round in funny old-fashioned clothes, nor were they very happy with all the other outmoded stuff, the historical furniture etc. These people sided with the American.
I sometimes wondered why the true Master sat back and did nothing about all this activity which ran so openly counter to the principles by which the Dream state had been governed until now. The owner of the coffee house, neutral as far as politics were concerned, said, tapping his nose, ‘He’s a sly one, just you wait and see.’
The border controls were as efficient as ever, but within the walls everything seemed charged with a sense of impending doom. The air was sultry and oppressive, in a way it had never been in the past, and a pale luminosity lay over our city. A few times shafts of sunlight even slanted through the usually unyielding blanket of cloud. This unpleasant, blinding light was uncanny. We were no longer used to sunshine and would have far preferred a refreshing downpour.
Time seemed to be moving at a different pace. Everywhere groups of anxious, agitated people gathered in the streets, artificially giving the normally quiet Pearl the appearance of a bustling metropolis. Confederates would call out hasty watchwords to each other. Despite all the disagreements in matters of detail, in general everyone fell into one or the other of two large groupings: those who still believed in the Lord and those who listened to the American. However, as the latter was well aware, they were by no means a hundred percent reliable. He continued with his propaganda.
As you will doubtless recall, there were two daily papers in Pearl, plus the illustrated weekly. The pages of the Official Gazette were naturally closed to this new force in the land, it remained loyal to the government right down to the very last line. To counter this, the American did his utmost to influence the Voice, with the result that the paper published inflammatory articles, with a note at the end disclaiming all responsibility. Our editor was forced to join in this double-dealing, which he probably did not find too difficult. For years he had secretly controlled all three papers which appeared in Pearl and followed three different lines.
We two illustrators were still expected to deliver work in the usual Dream Mirror style, though Castringius quite often tried to work in a covert tribute to the American. He used to draw him as a giant in golden armour stuffing official documents and government bonds into his pipe until one day he received a card from Hercules Bell. There was only one word on it: ‘Ass!’
Suddenly the rumour spread that the American intended to buy up the Voice and the Dreams Mirror for huge sums and publish them himself. First of all, however, he struck a mighty blow: his proclamation. He had almost literally to bludgeon our poor editor, who also owned the printing press, into producing it. ‘I’m not printing that!’ had been his immediate alarmed reaction. The fiend just laughed and blew the smoke from his pipe in the face of the timidly law-abiding citizen. ‘You’ll print it at once, on bright red paper’, he bellowed at him.
His poor victim threw himself to his knees and whined, ‘Have mercy on me. I can’t print that, it would be the death of me.
At that the implacable American drew a revolver from his pocket, pressed it to the poor fellow’s ear and roared, ‘If you don’t obey at once, I’ll let you have it!’ Trembling and pale as a ghost, our editor took the sheet of paper. ‘I’ve a wife and children to feed’, he whimpered, the tears rolling down his cheeks.
The American supervised the printing himself. Whenever it was going too slowly for him, the brute shot into the air. By evening six thousand copies of the proclamation had been produced and there was no red paper left.
‘Well then’, he said to the owner of the works, who was still quivering in terror, ‘that didn’t hurt, did it?’ To each of the employees he gave a hundred gold crowns.
III
The copy of the proclamation I have used here was provided by a Russian officer who was present when the Dream Realm was conquered and who has graciously given me permission to print it.
PROCLAMATION
Citizens of Pearl
When I came here I thought I would find a land as glorious as any fairy-tale. I imagine you all felt the same. For seven years I had been submitting requests to Patera to be admitted to the Dream Realm. Finally he granted my wish. It would have been better for me had he persisted in his refusal. I found a realm in which nonsense rules. It is only because of the great pity I feel for you that I have decided to open your eyes. Are you already doomed? No, I repeat, no! But you are restless, you are unhappy. You will have to allow me that, each and every one of you. You hav
e been duped by a swindler, a confidence trickster, a mesmeriser. He has stolen your health, your possessions and your reason. You unhappy people, you are victims of a mass psychosis. None of you obey your own minds any more. You take another person’s suggestions inside your heads as your own thoughts. You allow yourselves to be driven to your own death and all for the amusement of that devil Patera.
But there is still time! If only everyone who has a spark of strength left in him will support me.
And now listen to what I have to say to you. You must shake off the Spell. The moment you truly want to be free, you will be free! Rally to my flag, form battalions and storm that thrice-accursed Palace! I hereby set a price of
one million crowns
on the head of that arch-fiend.
Do you know what houses you are compelled to live in? There is scarcely one of them that had not been defiled by crime, blood and infamy before it was brought to its present site. The Palace was constructed out of bits and pieces from the ruins of buildings that had been the scenes of bloody conspiracies and revolutions. To collect his materials, Patera went right back to ancient times. Fragments of the Escorial, the Bastille and Roman arenas were used; his agents stole blocks of masonry from the Tower of London, the Hradschin in Prague, the Vatican and the Kremlin and had them transported here.
Wherever there was misery, your Master stretched out his grasping fingers. Fifty years ago the coffee house in Long Street was a disreputable tavern in the slums of Vienna, the dairy a thieves’ den in Upper Bavaria. The mill, which was bought in Swabia, was stained with the blood of a 200-year-old murder in which brother killed brother! These are just a few examples, I will not tire you with a complete list of the results of my researches. Suffice it to say that most of Patera’s mysterious property acquisitions came from the most unsavoury districts of the great cities. Paris, Istanbul etc gave of their vilest!
Citizens! I have opened your eyes, do not close them again. Once more I call upon you to speed the downfall of this monster. One piece of advice I will give you: Let each of you beware of sleep! That is the time when your Lord enslaves you. When sleep has rendered you helpless, that is when he whispers his insidious ideas in your ear, daily renewing and strengthening his fiendish spell and destroying your will-power. I am convinced I will see every one of you once more happy and contented.
The great world outside has taken giant strides towards the light of the future while you are falling back in the mire. You have no part in the glorious discoveries of our modern age, you Dreamers are shut off from the countless inventions which spread order and happiness.
Citizens! You will be astonished when you get out. You will see the blue of the sky and the green of the meadows smiling on you, the sun will bring the roses back to your cheeks, you will delight in your children once more and look back on the sterile filth of the Dream Realm with loathing. But, beware, this mountebank has a thousand wiles!
Hercules Bell
Castringius had done a vignette to go at the head of the proclamation. It showed the goddess of liberty wearing a diadem and holding up a tablet on which the words Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Society, Science, Justice could be seen. The American flag was attached to her crown and was draped round the proclamation.
Putting up and distributing the red leaflets was entrusted to Jacques and his gang. Jacques was an adolescent whose father was unknown. His mother was Madame Adrienne, a wellknown bawd and owner of the superior of the two establishments in the French Quarter, which she never left. Jacques, on the other hand, was a real gallows-bird who could be seen anywhere there was something nefarious going on. He was the leader of a band of delinquents and his often daredevil exploits were renowned among his fellow villains. Hercules Bell came across this customer in a cheap eating-house and hired him on the spot with a generous down payment on future services. Jacques, who earned his living in a manner unmentionable in polite society, was immediately won over by the American’s wealth. At their very first meeting he committed himself to him heart and soul and offered to set up a bodyguard for the millionaire with a crew of shady characters from the French Quarter.
As it turned out, not all of them could be bought. Gotthelf Flattich, for example, a negro born in the Cameroons and a retired porter, resisted the temptation. Bell knew him from the time before he came to the Dream Realm since Flattrich had married one of his servants, also black. The present of a large sum of money on that occasion had secured Bell the man’s allegiance and both were delighted when they met again in the Dream Realm. The negro was strong as an ox and goodnatured. You just had to be careful not to arouse him, or he could be terrifying. Widowed, he occupied his time training birds. The American immediately tried to recruit him, but his plans fell on deaf ears. Flattrich was an ardent admirer of Patera and nothing in the world could lure him away. He did not take part in the revolt, calmly sticking to his hobbies. He lived in the French Quarter, where he was a popular figure. He will appear in this narrative again at a later point.
As a result of all the debauchery and overindulgence, people’s nerves in the Dream Realm were shattered. The familiar mental and nervous diseases–St. Vitus’s dance, epilepsy, hysteria–now appeared as a mass phenomenon. Almost every person had a nervous tic or was in the grip of some obsession. The increase in cases of agoraphobia, hallucination, melancholy and catalepsy was alarming, but people continued their riotous living regardless, and the more the gruesome suicides piled up, the wilder the survivors became. There were incredibly bloody knife-fights in the taverns. I couldn’t sleep any more, the noise from the coffee house filled my bedroom and kept me awake at night. All restraint was cast aside, people would try anything and everything.
One evening a singer appeared in the coffee house and at first things were somewhat quieter, apart from the out-of-tune piano and the applause, but at three in the morning screams and shrieks of laughter could be heard. I got out of bed and watched from the window as the songstress, completely naked apart from a girdle of champagne bottles, was pulled round the town in a handcart by the drunken assembly. Lieutenant de Nemi led the bizarre procession, his sword unsheathed.
The nine motherless children in the basement of my old house now received regular visits from the well-known philanthropist, Alfred Blumenstich. Rumour had it that the principal object of these visits were the two eldest daughters. He drove up laden with large boxes of sweets and chocolates and disappeared through the door, which their father himself guarded to ensure Herr Blumenstich was not disturbed.
Sometimes alcohol gave way to ether and opium. People injected themselves in public to stimulate their tired nerves, or to calm them down.
That such conditions were heading for catastrophe was clear to those few whose minds were not clouded by dissipation. With horror they observed the increasingly restless behaviour of a populace that was rapidly approaching insanity. I found the mysterious, shrill cries coming out of the houses at night particularly disturbing. The ever more hectic pace of life there gave it a shadowy, genuinely dreamlike quality.
If you add to all this the hot, oppressive atmosphere and the ghostly luminescence–now and then a shaft of blazing light would flash across the sulphurous sky–you will get a vague idea of the trepidation I felt during those days.
And, to cap it all, now the proclamation appeared. It was posted at every street corner and delivered to every house. It could not but deepen the split that had opened up between the American’s party and those old Dreamers who still stood by Patera. It was a terrible time.
Chapter 2: The Outside World
I
For some twelve years the civilised world had known nothing of the existence of the Dream Realm. Certainly there were cases of people suddenly and inexplicably disappearing. Many were seen in trains or on ships, but later enquiries produced no results. As long as they were people who in one way or another were at odds with contemporary civilisation and had good reason to go into hiding, no one bothered very much. The world’s in
terest in moral or economic bankrupts is very limited.
Society became much more concerned when it was members of the academic, artistic and financial elite who mysteriously fled the country. Usually the family would receive one last sign of life from their faithless kinsman two or three weeks after departure, at least a few scribbled lines. But what could they make of things like, ‘Do not try and follow me, I’m in good hands’ or, ‘Circumstances compel me to ask you to release me from our engagement’ or, ‘Forgive me, all of you, but I have no choice’?
A smile of disbelief would have been the only response to anyone who had suggested all these disappearances had a common cause. The police were baffled.
The biggest sensation was caused by the disappearance of Princess X. At that time ladies of rank running away was a not unusual occurrence, but it was mostly the younger age group that was involved. In this case it was an old lady whose home circumstances were perfectly comfortable and happy. She was traced as far as the Black Sea. Some Turkish porters remembered her because of her extreme stinginess in the matter of tips. That was what gave the clue to her identity. The only people seriously concerned about her disappearance were a few nephews and nieces who had hopes of an inheritance. Unfortunately the old lady took all her money with her. Princess X. was never heard of again.
Soon after that came the case of the American multimillionaire Bell which drew the attention of society to the Dream Realm and finally led to action. This king of the canned-meat trade had–how, I never discovered–come to hear of the strange country and taken it into his head to become a citizen. The immediate consequence was a rumour that he had gone out of his mind, which Bell countered by engaging a distinguished psychiatrist to observe him round the clock. The conclusion of the eminent physician was that the American was in complete possession of his faculties. For years this fanatic, accompanied by his doctor and two servants, voyaged round the world, scouring the continents in his search for the Dream Realm. Now he was seen in New Zealand, combing all the islands, now he popped up on the East Indian archipelago. His doctor left him in Hong Kong, declaring he couldn’t stand being with Hercules Bell any longer; he had had to revise his initially positive opinion of his mental health, having become convinced the American was obsessed with idées fixes. The doctor returned home while his wealthy patient pursued his illusions. The came the sensation: the American sent a messenger who appeared one day in the office of the English prime minister bearing a long letter and a copy of the proclamation.