The Other Side Page 7

  Whenever she saw us coming down the stairs she would launch into her vituperation. There was always a row of pots and basins outside her door, for deliveries of milk and the like. Once, coining up in the dark, I broke one of her earthenware bowls, and that was it! Hostilities were declared. She even tried to blacken my name with the barber who, despite his philosophy, still bore some respect for her ‘highness’. Finally, when she went too far and insulted my wife on the stairs I gave her a piece of my mind.

  ‘Just look at you! I’d call you Princess Muck!’–The old slattern’s hair was all over the place.–That did help a little. She was proud of her blue blood and from now on would dart back into her lair the moment she heard me approaching. Once she beat such a rapid retreat that she left one of her patched slippers behind. I pushed it away with my foot and to my surprise I heard the chink of gold coins tumbling down the stairs. ‘Burglar! Murderer!’ she screeched until everyone in the house came out to complain.

  This kind of thing happened frequently. She made our lives a misery. But the ‘student’ made an even more thorough job of it.

  He had two rooms on the same floor as us and was constantly the worse for drink. His face was puffy and expressionless with a duelling scar on each cheek, so that it looked as if he had three mouths. His brain, on the other hand, seemed to be only one third of the size of the average human being’s. Our neighbour was a thoroughgoing night-bird and always tried the wrong door when he came back to his bed, rolling drunk. Almost every night we awoke with a start at his hammering and cursing. I couldn’t count the number of times I upbraided him about it, but what good were apologies to us when nothing changed? Eventually, for the sake of peace, we were forced to accept what we couldn’t change.

  Then there was something else. Some days it was as if there was a jinx on us. Just a few examples:

  At five in the morning a bricklayer with a bucket of mortar and bag of tools rings the bell and insists he has been instructed to brick up the windows in our living room. Another time there’s a gypsy band outside the door serenading us late in the evening; by mistake, of course. Visitors turn up on all sorts of business, things that don’t belong to us are delivered and not collected again. Once we had a packet of old cheese rinds lying around for two weeks. After I had thrown it away three army officers came demanding their property in peremptory tones. And door-to-door begging in Pearl was an art-form in itself. But things could also get much more unpleasant. For example, one evening several men in black appeared in the twilight lugging a coffin. It had been ordered, hadn’t it? they asked politely. That upset my poor wife very much.

  I’m not even really complaining about all these misunderstandings, the constant knocking at the door. But uncanny things happened, things it was difficult to believe. To help in the house we had a charlady, an old woman. She suffered permanently from toothache and I never saw her without a scarf round her face. The meals she cooked were good, very tasty, which was not difficult given the excellent fresh food available in the Dream Realm. After a few weeks however, I could have sworn it was a different person inside her old clothes, not the same charlady at all. Of course, I didn’t mention this to my wife, but unfortunately she noticed things herself.

  ‘I think Anna must be dying her hair, don’t you’, she said one morning. ‘Since yesterday she’s gone blonde. Before she was always a brunette.’

  ‘Well there’s vanity for you!’ I replied, pretending I had no idea what was worrying her. But for quite some time now I myself had felt there was something odd about Anna. Eventually it became just too obvious. The previous day we had been served by a sprightly middle-aged person, today a bustling old woman with a wrinkled face was putting the dishes on the table. My wife clung to me; we were both stunned. ‘But it’s the same headscarf, I stammered, seeing the pupils of my wife’s eyes dilate in horror. In whispers we told each other the things we had noticed. For the last month my wife had also been prey to the most horrifying suspicions. ‘No, I wouldn’t want to keep her on, even if she did the work of ten cleaners. I’d rather do everything myself.’

  I had to dismiss Anna. The next few days I spent at home. I made an arrangement with the barber for us to pay Giovanni Battista to help with the tidying up each morning. It worked perfectly. The animal was quick to learn and my wife was quick to warm to him. I just had to make sure he didn’t go anywhere near my desk. He felt he was, to a certain degree, an artist himself and wanted to help, to put in the odd correction here and there. As far as possible I lent a hand myself, usually with the shopping. But you had to keep an eye on people, otherwise you could bring God knows what home. Once I bought some lamb cutlets at the market, very cheap. When I got home and proudly unpacked them, we found a few small traps wrapped up in the paper; there were even some mouse’s tails still stuck to them. ‘A switch, goddammit, a switch’, I thought.

  IX

  And then the noises! Disturbances all night long, it was scandalous!

  Gangs of ne’er-do-wells and whores from the French Quarter went on the rampage even in our district. We could hear foul-mouthed shouting, bawling and whistling approach our windows then fade away. Drunks coming out of the café would launch into long tirades full of obscene language. Not something one could get used to! The buildings towering over the streets were squint and twisted, and every loud word rebounded back and forth from the angles and jutting corners. For no obvious reason raucous cries would come from the centre of the town, be picked up and transmitted, now softer, now louder. Then it would be quiet, until an audible clearing of throats and whispering started up. To walk through the streets of Pearl at night was agony. Keen senses were plunged into an abyss of horror. From barred windows and cellardoors came moaning and wailing in every major and minor key. From behind half-open doors you would hear muffled groans, immediately evoking thoughts of strangling and crime. Walking home with fearful steps I would hear their mocking echo behind me multiplied a thousand, no, ten thousandfold. The gateways yawned as you hurried past as if they would swallow you up. Invisible voices would lure you down to the river, Blumenstich’s store had a gloating grin, the dairy was like a treacherous, hidden trap, even the mill wasn’t silent, it chattered all night through. Fleeing in dread, I would often take refuge in the coffee house on my way home, while back in our apartment my wife was alone and frightened. A cupboard would creak or a glass break. She thought she could hear terrible words coming from every corner of the room. Often when I arrived home I would find her drenched in cold sweat from these compulsive imaginings. These sleepless nights played havoc with her nerves and soon she was seeing living shadows and ghosts everywhere.

  And there was always that indefinable substance, again and again you would smell it, end up feeling it with your whole body. During the day no one would admit to having seen anything, as usual the city was inert, empty, dead.

  Chapter 4: Under the Spell

  I

  Once I came home from the coffee house and climbed up the stairs to our apartment. At our agreed knock my wife opened the door. Her face was tear-stained and she looked close to nervous exhaustion. On the table was the leather case with Patera’s portrait.

  ‘Why’s that on the table? Has something happened?’

  ‘I’ve seen him–yes–him there.’ Her speech was disjointed and confused. ‘I still don’t understand it. But it can’t have been an illusion. There can’t be two people with those eyes.

  ‘Pull yourself together now and tell me exactly what happened.’

  ‘I was coming back from the market. Just before I turned into Long Street–it was already getting quite dark and I was hurrying to get home–I heard rapid footsteps behind me. It was a lamplighter, he almost brushed against me as he dashed past. At the same time he turned his head for a moment and said quietly, “Sorry”. But–oh, it was horrible–it was your friend Patera!’

  She literally screamed the last words. The tears were pouring down her cheeks. Sobbing, she buried her head against my shoulder. I tr
ied to calm her, though I was shocked too and had difficulty keeping myself under control.

  ‘You must have been mistaken’, I said, trying to sound as unconcerned as possible, ‘I’m sure you must have been mistaken. It was twilight. That kind of thing often happens just as it’s getting dark. And anyway, Patera, the man who owns all this, wouldn’t be going round as an ordinary lamplighter, now would he?’

  My voice was uncertain, I felt apprehensive myself.

  ‘Oh, don’t talk like that, you’re just making it worse. His face was frozen, like a wax mask, only–those eyes! … They had a dull gleam…. I still shudder to think of them.’ Her hand felt hot and feverish and I insisted she went to bed. I tried to cheer her up by retailing the inane gossip from the coffee house, but it was impossible to get her thoughts away from her experience. And I too was afraid. Life here was getting more and more harrowing and stressful. Despite the crawling monotony of the days there was no rest, we were not even sure what was going to happen in the next hour.

  I was gradually getting fed up with the Dream Realm. My wife’s experience was an hallucination, of course. What? My friend Patera had better things to do than dress up in a carnival costume. Still, an hallucination is a warning, tormented nerves making their voices heard.

  II

  I eventually met Nicholas Castringius. I can’t really say whether he liked me or not. He had had to give up his position with the Dream Mirror and was now working freelance. I found him very original and much nicer than the two friends he came to the coffee house with, de Nemi and the photographer. Castringius was no good at hiding his feelings, his envy and jealousy were plain for all to see. That meant he was quite harmless and you could enjoy his good qualities. An artist is seldom really bad; a mean trick now and then, that’s usually about as far as it goes. Our sensations leave us no time for large-scale nastiness. We lay our souls bare in our work so that anyone can clearly see what a blackguard an artist might have been, given the right circumstances. Art is a safety valve!

  Before I arrived Castringius had his simplest period. Three or four lines and the picture was finished. He called it ‘Greatness’. His most important works had titles such as The Head, He, She, Us, It! They placed no limits on the imagination. For example, a head in a flower vase–it could mean anything. However, when the public began to take notice of me, Castringius was forced to produce something a bit more substantial. ‘Plumb the depths of the subject matter, that’s the answer!’ was his obstinate maxim. Now came works such as Mad Pope Innocence Dancing the Cardinals’ Quadrille.

  He had a small attic studio in the French Quarter. In that part of town he was free to live his life according to his own bent. That was where he found de Nemi. This latter, a lieutenant in the infantry, was an old goat. He was a regular at Mme Adrienne’s and the one and only thing in his mind were the activities that went on in that establishment. As a matter of principle his conversation never strayed onto any other topic. His eyes were always red and his uniform always grubby.

  There’s not much I can say about the photographer. He was English, had a long face, flaxen hair, a velvet jacket and a tie always fluttering in the breeze. He still worked with the old, wet-Collodion process and ten minutes exposure time. Things had not advanced beyond that in Pearl. Otherwise he was taciturn and concocted his own liqueurs.

  We were talking about the theatre. I had only been once. It was Orpheus in the Underworld that was on and there were three people in the audience. Although the acting and singing were good, I felt uncomfortable all evening. The audience of three made the large theatre seem all the more deserted. It was eerie the way the music echoed round the empty space. The actors looked as if they were performing for their own amusement.

  I was up in the gallery. All at once I was seized with the feeling that I had been here before, that this was the old City Theatre in Salzburg that had been torn down years ago. As a young lad of eleven it had been the epitome of magnificence for me. What I saw now were wooden benches worn smooth by thousands of bottoms, dark-red seats with tattered upholstery and cracked plasterwork. There was a large, unlit box facing the stage; over it, in gold letters, stood Patera. In the darkness of the box I sometimes imagined I could see two points of light gleaming, two points of light quite close to each other.

  De Nemi, who seemed to be well informed about backstage affairs, went on at great length about how they just didn’t seem able to make a go of the theatre. ‘Why do we need a theatre in Pearl?’ people would say. ‘There’s theatre enough as it is.’ So they just didn’t go and now it was bankrupt. The company was being split up. The lower-ranking female artistes, the corps de ballet and the chorus, were being packed off to the bawdy house, although allowed to keep their status as ballerinas or singers. The rest were forming a variety theatre; Blumenstich was putting up the money. De Nemi was overjoyed, he was mad about music hall. I was not particularly interested in the topic.

  The owner of the coffee house was going from table to table, greeting his customers with a stupid, sly smile. When he got to the chess players, he dropped anchor and put on a serious expression, despite the fact that he was much too dimwitted to understand the first thing about chess.

  I yawned and looked out of the window. They were unloading sacks of grain at the mill. I recognised the two millers, one always laughing, the other with a permanent scowl on his face. In their outward appearance they were the most backward in the whole city, still wearing bagwigs and buckled shoes. A carriage drove past. In it was an elegant lady. ‘Do you know her?’ de Nemi asked, nudging me with his elbow. ‘That’s your landlady, Dr. Lampenbogen’s wife.’ He gave a cynical laugh and the others sniggered. The carriage was heading for the public baths.

  I called the waiter to pay. Anton, a card-sharp of the first water, tried to slip some worthless notes, assignats of the French revolutionary government, in with my change. For once it didn’t work and, with an insolent grin, he took them back.

  III

  My poor wife found it impossible to overcome these fits of anxiety. She grew visibly paler, her cheeks more and more sunken, and at every unexpected word I spoke she would give a nervous start. Things could not go on like this much longer, and it was only the fact that I had still not managed to see Patera that delayed our departure. Without his specific permission any thought of leaving the Dream Realm was futile. The Archive contained ten requests I had submitted, but the only replies they deigned to send were a few stilted excuses such as, ‘The time in question falls within a period of feriation for the Audience Bureau’, or ‘The petitioner has repeatedly been advised that a respectable position in society is a sine qua non for the granting of an audience. He is recommended, therefore, to maintain an ordered way of life, the which he should …’ etc., etc. I was seething, and determined to open my friend’s eyes to the harm caused by this pernicious bureaucratic clique. ‘They’ll be sorry for it!’

  There was another thing that weighed against our journey home: Our money was gone! Yes, simply gone! Not a single copper was left from the hundred thousand marks.

  ‘Well, there we have it, I knew it would happen’, I said bitterly to my wife when I found out. It was not really her fault, poor thing, so I spared her any further wailing and gnashing of teeth. Theft or no theft, the money had disappeared and all we had to live on was what I could earn.

  This was towards the end of our second year in the Dream Realm. Now my wife began to be tormented by fears during the daytime as well. The kitchen was at the back of our flat and looked out through a window onto the courtyard of the dairy; in the middle was a well-shaft, at the back a few stable doors.

  ‘That well is haunted’, she insisted. She claimed she had heard strange hissing and knocking noises. I had noticed nothing, but to keep her happy I decided I should have a look, and so I went. Under the pretence that I wanted to look round the dairy I knocked until a half-deaf dairyman came to the door. A juicy tip quickly cured his dull-wittedness. I could look at whatever I liked, he
shouted in my ear, before returning to his cubbyhole. Left to myself, I had no difficulty in setting about my investigation. I quickly passed through a whole series of dimly lit rooms. The building was set quite deep in the ground and the faint light had to squeeze in through small barred windows. There were many flat, round containers on long wooden trestles and wooden tubs standing in the corners. They were all filled to the brim with milk. There was one vault which was entirely given over to the storage of various implements. The walls were covered with tin pots, wooden boards and platters. I was in a hurry to find the courtyard, but instead of a way out into it, all I could find were more dark cellars with huge cauldrons hanging over cold fires. A pungent smell of cheese stung my nose. There they lay, dripping and stinking, regular rows of all sizes in an unsavoury closet, long and narrow, the mouldy walls covered with spiders’ webs. It couldn’t be there, so I decided to retrace my steps, but found I had lost my bearings in this labyrinth of cheese, milk and butter. I took a wrong turn and ended up in part of the subterranean labyrinth that was clearly not used at all. The arched ceiling was low, and rusty chains hung down from massive hooks. I could hardly see at all, but the slimy floor seemed to slope downwards slightly. All at once I stumbled down a few slippery steps and found myself in complete darkness. Blackest night and icy cellar air; somewhere above I heard a door slain shut. Thank God I had a few matches with me. Then suddenly, from far away, I heard a noise. It sounded like distant hammering, but was becoming clearer with disturbing rapidity. In the light of a match I saw that I was in a passageway. I was seized with dread. ‘Away from here, I must get away from here’, was my only thought. I ran, several times knocking my head against the dripping walls. Still the rumbling behind me grew louder, an awful, rhythmical thunder, like galloping hooves. The light from my matches was getting weaker, the damp air stifled the flame. The sound came nearer, obviously I was being pursued. Now I could clearly distinguish a wheezing and groaning. It so chilled me to the marrow, I thought I would go mad. I plunged on as if there were a whip cracking behind me, but all at once the strength drained out of me and I fell to my knees, almost fainting. Helplessly I held my hands up against the onrushing danger, my last matches flickering on the ground. Then the wild charge was upon me. A cold wind tore at me and I was staring at a white, emaciated horse. Although I could not see it clearly, I could tell what a terrible state it was in. The huge nag was almost starved and flung its enormous hooves around with the vigour of desperation. Bony head stretched out in front, ears laid flat, it dashed past me. Its dull, cloudy eye met mine: it was blind. I could hear it grinding its teeth and as, with a shudder, I watched it disappear, I saw the gleam of blood on its flayed crupper. There was no stopping the wild gallop of this living skeleton. Tormented by the vision of those dreadful bones, I felt my way along the passage as the thundering died away. Soon I was rescued by the distant glow of a gas lamp. It blurred as I went into a state of shock. My tongue went rigid and my body seemed to turn into stone. When the fit had passed I dragged myself towards the light. A staircase appeared, then another light. I heard people talking and entered a familiar room. I was in the coffee house.