But he was as restless as the day before. The most he could manage was to rest for a quarter of an hour on some bank or other. Then he was dragged straight back to his feet again: ‘Keep going, keep going.’
Towards evening he reached some hills that were unknown to him. Misty blue conical hills that grew all of a jumble together. They looked like the hills in Chinese pictures. He came across people as well: an old man in a soldier’s uniform carrying a mess tin, a beggar-woman squatting by the road-side, someone tottering down the mountain track with a pole carrying two tubs balanced across his shoulders. He had to go through a village. Tousled girls passed him driving geese. In the village square, beside the pond where ducks were quacking and boys splashing about in the shallow water, a beautiful tall lime tree already had its first leaves. Next to it was the shrine with a statue of the Madonna. From the knob at the top hung a bell on an iron ring. An idiot was pulling the rope and ringing down the evening. Lucas continued along the village street. When the village was a long way behind him he had to pass an inn. It was called ‘The Seven Devils’. Whenever the door opened a brief wave of noise, music from an orchestrion, the stamping of dancers and the stench of beer poured out from the bar.
‘Don’t stop,’ he said aloud. The road kept climbing higher and higher towards the east. Above a mountain half the disc of the sun was still to be seen. Violet, pink and yellow glaciers surged above the wooded slopes and melted in the valleys. Lucas suddenly turned off the road and climbed up a hill. Then he went along the edge of the wood and came to a small farmhouse which, however, did not look quite like a farmhouse.
He stopped; his heart was beating wildly.
A woman appeared in the doorway. She was very tall. She wore no scarf on her head and her blond hair blazed in the evening light. But Lucas saw that at the side, at her temples, two thick grey strands were twisted into her massive crown of hair. She was not dressed as a peasant but was wearing a wide black dress of plain cloth, that, however, did not look particularly out of place in the doorway of the farmhouse. Her feet were bare and, in spite of the toil along stony tracks, the early rising and all the housework, white and without crooked toes. She was no longer young, but not old either.
‘Welcome,’ she said in a deep voice. ‘I was expecting you.’
‘You knew that I would come?’
‘You were announced.’ She raised her strong, right arm, letting the sleeve fall back.
‘Do you know …’
The woman interrupted Lucas. ‘I do know. You will find a bed for the night here. Come.’
She stepped back into the door. Lucas followed her. Her walk! It was calm, sublime. In spite of her beauty, Lucas felt no surge of desire. He sensed, ‘That is no mortal woman!’ They entered the parlour.
On the threshold Lucas could not restrain himself and asked, ‘Who are you?’
‘The wife of the miner.’
The room was low and filled with a colourful dusk. Lucas saw a mattress, furs and blankets, but no white linen. There was nothing white to be seen at all. In one corner was a gigantic globe. It was covered all over with sharp nails made from a wide variety of metals. Christ was standing on it on one foot, like a dancer piercing his old wounds with new nails at every step. Two huge cupboards stood close by each other, like neighbouring mountains. From one a very large amethyst druse with marvellous crystals shone down, from the other the bronze interlacings of a massive block of aragonite.
Lucas went over to the globe.
‘What is that?’ he asked.
‘That is the Saviour ever pierced with nails.’
‘Did his sufferings not end on the cross?’
‘No. Now he suffers more, since he dances over the sharp pins.’
‘Why are the nails made from different metals?’
‘The hard heart of the earth takes many forms.’
‘But what is his sorrow?’
‘The greatest.’
‘And what is the greatest sorrow?’
‘Fulfilment destroyed,’ said the woman.
Lucas did not grasp the contradiction of these last two words; but he knew that only a woman could have spoken them.
The woman left him alone for a while.
Then she came back and set a meal before him, and put a glass of dark-red wine on the table as well and last of all a candle, for it was already quite dark.
Lucas thanked her. A feeling of great awe stopped him from eating in the presence of this dark, mysterious woman, to whom he had been announced and who knew about his seeking heart.
In the meantime she was going about some puzzling business.
There was a small, low table standing in a corner. On it were three little vases with dried flowers. In them the woman put fresh posies of spurge laurel. Then she dusted the table and laid a cloth over it. She placed the vases in a row and in front of each one a tiny, flat lamp with a little flame. In front of each of the lamps she placed one small bowl with milk and one with wheat grains. Lucas watched her, spellbound. She straightened up and stood there, tall in her black dress, tucking her arms into the wide sleeves as if she felt cold.
‘It is for the children …’ And then, after a silence, ‘Good night. I hope that you find your dream.’ And with that the miner’s wife had disappeared through the door.
This was the dream that Lucas dreamt in the second night.
He is walking through a marvellous, overgrown park full of blossom, keeping to the soft gravel path in the glittering sunshine. His heart is filled with a solemn strength. A brook is whispering at his side. Whole clouds of white butterflies lurch past overhead. Sometimes there is a bench, with no one sitting on it; wagtails bob up and down on willow branches which dip into the water; warmth and song is in the air. He walks quickly, tapping with his stick in rhythm on the gravel. Suddenly he notices that there is a figure far in front of him taking the same path. As he comes nearer he sees that it is a woman. She is wearing a flowing dress of gold brocade, but has thrown a shawl of grey crepe over it. He knows who this woman is, whom he has never seen, and his body tenses with joy. He reaches her, goes trembling up to her side and says, ‘Beloved woman.’
‘My man.’ And his eyes and hers mingle.
‘Why did you go on ahead?’
She, ‘Well, now you have caught me up.’
He kisses her! Then he dreams of himself speaking.
‘How is it possible! How is it possible! I know I had the heart of a dreamer, but it was fleeting and transient, as the hearts of dreamers are. From the gallery of the great opera houses I saw the beauties in their boxes. Tears poured from my eyes when an ethereal foot jumped down from the carriage step. Once I spent many hours every day for a whole year standing at a tramway stop, because I once saw a woman board the brightly coloured carriage there. Two years later I found her. But my dream had become more powerful than the woman herself. Even the meekness of her hair could no longer help her. But now! Now you are here before I dreamt you and that is your great power. How was it possible?’
‘Yes!’ she said. ‘The things I had all to go through! To be kissed in my sleep and not to know it! That sleep, all the time! And that after a childhood full of fear, after great ambition and girlhood radiance. I with the children in the last room. They are not allowed to scream, to cry. But he, the good master, ponders and ponders. And his high countenance reaches perfection. He is tired. In the night I have to stand outside chemists’ shops. He becomes more and more tired. His thin lips will hardly close any more and his powerful teeth lie open in the effort of will. Then comes that day. I pass my hand over his forehead damp with the sweat of fear, and trembling he kisses this hand for the last time. But where was I then? Where was I? I must have everything around me. Everything! Everything!’
Lucas feels as if a wild, demented urge to destroy suddenly shoots out from her eyes. But then she says, gently and almost with a tiny fear, ‘But you, my only one, you belong to me!’
And Lucas feels an almost malicious pride withi
n him. ‘Yes. I am enough for you.’
‘Oh my beloved! I have lived. The beasts both wild and gentle gather round me. But you have woken me from the death that was that life.’
They sit down on a bench. Somewhere an orchestra is playing. Above the orchestra floats the pure voice of a singer. She is singing an Italian cavatina.
Lucas feels himself speak. ‘Is this melody not like a sweet mountain goat that a divine bearded huntsman chases from mountain to mountain? Now it is tumbling down the rocks of its cadenza and lies at our feet. Dead – Blest!’
‘How you touch the heart of my heart.’
‘I spoke of music.’
‘We alone know what it is.’
‘It is our acceptance of God,’ he says.
‘It is our acceptance of God’s world,’ she says
They stand up, they walk through endless meadows in silence.
Suddenly they find themselves by a huge Indian temple. Grotesque dancing idols stare down at them.
‘We must enter.’ She strides on ahead. Lucas follows her.
Now they are in a large courtyard. In the middle a basin spreads its massive circle. But instead of mud and patches of water all that is to be seen is ashes, cinders with, here and there, a little flame still spurting up. In the middle of the basin rises a fountain-pipe, to which a long string is attached. ‘Your metal is full of dead stone, my love. You must step into the bath to purify yourself’ Lucas jumps into the basin. She pulls the string. A wild rain of fire pours over him, without burning him. He steps out of his bath. ‘Am I pure now?’ he asks. ‘Somewhat purer,’ she laughs. ‘But that was not fire, just fireworks, beautiful to look at.’ They leave the temple by the other side. Now it is summer. The corn stands high, ready for harvest, and the ears burst, just like a violin string breaking. Cornflowers and poppies everywhere, wayberries too, and the beautiful corncockle. The sun is burning hot.
‘Oh, how warm is this ripening within me,’ says the woman. ‘I am nature. I.’
The wind blows a lock over her forehead. She strokes it back with her hand.
‘How beautiful that is’, thinks Lucas. And he says, ‘How beautiful you are. I love you.’
She does not look at him. But a soft, blissful groan passes her lips. ‘This whole seething star is within me.’
With a movement of her hand she swells the air, as if she were caressing the invisible pregnancy of a spirit.
Then she kisses him passionately.
I never knew there was such a thing.
‘I never knew it either.’
‘I thought there could be no such thing as happiness and that people lied because they did not dare to admit it to themselves.’
‘I thought it was the ugliest thing and brought nothing but disgust and exhaustion, which we men concealed in order not to be cruel.’
‘And now we have felt it.’ She takes his hand.
‘Oh, hand, hand, hand,’ he says.
And she, ‘Now the evening is coming.’
Lucas is standing with the woman by an open window. Outside it is dark and the garden is humming.
‘Tonight I shall kiss you.’
‘I feel blissful,’ she says.
‘Do you feel blissful because you have me?’
‘Yes, but there is something else as well that makes me feel blissful, my love.’
‘Will I be permitted to kiss you tonight?’
‘You will be forbidden to do anything else!’
Outside an angry bird begins its ugly, rasping call.
‘Is that an evil sign?’ he asks.
And she answers, ‘I do not know.’
‘Is what we are doing sinful?’
But she laughs.
And they embrace each other.
A terrace. How warm this night is. She is sitting, golden dark, in an armchair. Lucas, his hands behind his head, is lying on the ground staring into the stars.
‘If we were crossing the equator those stars could be the Southern Cross.’
A fixed star begins to sparkle coldly and in a hundred colours, like an evil splinter of ice. Lucas sees the secret star grow and grow. He senses, ‘Now, in this very moment, the pitiless eye of the hunter has seen us.’
‘Don’t speak’, the voice within him calls out anxiously. But he is already saying it. ‘I feel an evil star above us.’
He feels as if a whip should lash him across the back immediately: the punishment.
But she says, and fear is in her voice, ‘Don’t look up and don’t speak of those things.’
The bird starts up again. Its croaking is powerful. It rasps as if it had a long, jagged beak and were sawing down the trees in the garden, the trees of life, the forest of life. Lucas thinks, ‘I will not mention it.’ He looks at her and feels, ‘She behaves as if she could hear nothing.’
Then, ‘Is there not a fatal trap laid for love?’
‘Which one?’
‘Desire.’
There are tears in her eyes.
He goes on, ‘I feel now what the curse of dissipation is. It digresses. It distances itself from the loved one and that is how it kills.’ He throws himself down before her and whispers,
‘We must become more and more like brother and sister to each other.’
Now they are in a room. She is wearing a gown of white gauze and holding a candle in her hand.
The bird continues to saw through the night.
She shivers and says, ‘Close the window.’
Lucas is sleeping. He is enveloped in a sweet smell of thyme. Suddenly he seems to hear a dreadful knocking at the door. He wakes up, jumps out of bed. And now he is on the staircase of a big house. Many people are running up and down in haste and terror. Women with their hair loose and in night attire. Some are carrying bowls and towels, some burning candles. They are all whimpering and moaning. He can hear words, ‘The woman!’ ‘She is dying!’ ‘Before it’s too late!’ ‘Send for help!’ ‘The woman!’
Raving, he dashes out of the house, screaming, bellowing. He runs through the garden and clears the fence in one bound.
It is already morning. Giant clouds float past. He races down a slope for many thousand yards; undergrowth throws itself in his path; he becomes entangled. And still he cries,
‘God, God, God!’
Now he runs into a swamp, sinking in farther and farther. The mire reaches up to his chest. He is at the end of his tether. But he manages to work his way out. Now he is on the road. He cannot grasp anything any more.
On tiptoe he enters a room. She is dying in her bed. A cloth is across her forehead. She is so beautiful, her physical matter is floating. He curses the evil body in his clothes. He drags himself to her bed and falls to his knees.
‘I am to blame!’
‘There is no blame.’ She smiles, and in that second she is the triumph of the heathen world.
‘I have killed you.’
‘We have killed,’ she comforts him softly.
He wails, ‘You must not die! You cannot die!’
But she says, and her features become glorious, ‘If I die, then I am sacrificing myself for your destiny. Oh dreamer without pain! Harsh must be the reality that is to become reality for you. You must have reality, or you will never live or die. Oh my lover, perhaps you are in hell.’
She raises herself up a little, ‘Write your name on a piece of paper. They must put it under my tongue. That is how much I have loved you.’
‘Live … live … live,’ babbles Lucas.
She says, ‘What could have been the most sacred part, our perfection, has gone.’ She places her hand on Lucas’ head as he kneels before her. ‘Now go.’
‘Where?’ he asks.
‘Search, search,’ is the last he hears.
And then he awoke. Beside his bed stood the miner’s wife. Now she wore a scarf over her head and a shawl round her shoulders.
‘The hour has come, I must go to join my husband in the pit.’
He looked round, confused. Outside daw
n was just beginning to break.
‘Did you find your lost dream?’
‘No. It was not that one. It was another one. A sweet and terrible one.’
The woman set milk and bread before him. He ate and drank.
She watched him eating, and said,
‘What was commanded us both has taken place. You found lodgings in my room.’
‘I have come closer to what I am searching for,’ he replied, ‘but I have not yet met it.’
‘You will certainly meet with it at the third time.’
Now both were standing outside the door.
She bore two vessels in her hands. In one was milk, in the other red wine.
‘That is the offering that is put for the dead at the entrance of the underworld’, thought Lucas. And then he addressed himself, ‘Where to now?’
In kindness, the woman took his hand. ‘Keep on going straight through the forest. Let yourself be led. If you have not found your dream by midday, it is lost forever. Climb Oak Hill when it appears before you. I have been there myself. There my dearest comes to meet me in the midday light. Women are not barred from reaching that place, but men always are, unless they are sent.’
He felt that the miner’s wife was no longer holding his hand. When he looked up, she was gone.
Once more Lucas entered the forest and walked for hour after hour. But this day there were no clearings, no valleys interrupting the forest and nothing jerked the wanderer out of his self-absorption. All the time his thoughts were with the woman in the dream, how she had lain there dying, and once more he felt himself sinking into the swamp, screaming for God; his fear had been reawakened, and all the dreamwords were like a cool air across the back of his neck.
His first day’s journey had been homesickness, his second day’s journey yearning, and that of the third day, love. It was midday, and every breath and odour was silent. And there was the hill covered with old oak trees that the miner’s wife had spoken of. Did this hill live somewhere in his memory? Had he been at this place in his childhood? Lucas suppressed these notions. Then he followed a little footpath up the hill. On the top, in the middle of the oak wood was a clearing, and in this clearing was a large, low, round half-timbered building, old-fashioned, with gleaming windows. The whole was inexpressibly clean. The double doors stood wide open and a glistening gravel path ran through it.
The Dedalus Book of Austrian Fantasy;1890-2000 Page 24
