The Dedalus Book of Austrian Fantasy;1890-2000

by Mike Mitchell

  His wife was sitting in her dress in the room. He saw her sagging breasts which the dress revealed more than concealed. It was less than a month since the baby had died.

  Leopold took the money out of his pocket and put it on the table in front of his wife. It was the six silver coins he had received from the musician for copying out the score. There was a smell of fresh meat. The meat was in a bowl by the window.

  ‘Moritz?’ Leopold asked.

  Moritz had been the name of the black cat.

  He took the meat out of the bowl, brought it over and put it on the table.

  ‘Let’s eat,’ he said.

  They ate and threw the bones into the corner. All that was left of Moritz was a damp patch on the table. They were sitting beside each other.

  ‘We’ll have visitors soon,’ he said.

  They waited for the musician to come.

  Towards morning her dress slipped down and the breasts he knew so well hung over the table. Poor, empty breasts. Severe and upfolded.

  When she had been nursing the baby blood had come out of her breasts instead of milk. He looked at her breasts. There was a terrible patch on the table.

  The blood killed the baby, he thought.

  Beautiful breasts, he thought, empty, upfolded breasts. Is blood still coming from them? Onto her dress? Might there not be a crust of blood sticking to her dress? The thoughts you think lie heavy on your mind, heavy on your mind.

  Perhaps if the musician comes, Leopold thought, and sees this, her breasts, the patch, the money and her dress, her empty, bleeding, darling breasts, perhaps he will be able to say what the reason for it all is. It is there. But incomprehensible, alien, scarcely bearable, Leopold, oh Leopold.

  The Moving Frontier

  Jeannie Ebner

  When the drum began to sound with that soft, insistent beat, audible for miles, which tells the peoples that a tribe is on the warpath, all the warriors were seized with a frenzy of expectation. Later on the dull throbbing which, rapid and monotonous, lashed at our nerves for days on end, gradually stirred the blood of even our peaceable shepherds and patient labourers out in the wheat-fields. They left their villages, taking up the arms which for years had hung, mute and glinting softly in the firelight, on the walls of their huts.

  At first we advanced rapidly in the direction of the sun for several days before making camp and resting, without being able to relax, until a new drumbeat joined in with the deep boom, boom of our own war-drum and eventually a large army of light-skinned warriors met up with us. Together we marched on, then rested again until, strengthened by several hundred yellow warriors, we moved forward once more, when red and black armies joined with us. This time a campaign with warriors from all over the world seemed to have been planned, all the races being expected to seek out a common enemy.

  When we finally heard that our objective was to storm the moving frontier and take possession of the splendid land beyond it, a wave of wild, ecstatic excitement swept though the camp and did not subside for days and days. We moved on, advancing faster and faster, marching in close formation until the order came to deploy, maintaining absolute silence. Thus, in a line extending over many miles, we started to move into the thick scrub and creep up on the enemy.

  With our machetes we cut a way through the forest and stopped at the farther end, concealed in the lower bushes, waiting for the other warriors to come up. Before us the plain stretched out endlessly to the horizon. Roughly two-thirds of the way across it a white line, no more than a hair’s width, could be seen: the frontier. It was very strange that this frontier, which, after all, is only an imaginary line, was visible to the eye, and even stranger that every eye saw it in the same place, even though everyone has the potential to imagine it wherever he likes.

  When all the troops had finally gathered and been provided with new and better weapons (while we were pushing forward they had been working tirelessly on the home front to improve our equipment; now we had armour made of metal rings, swords and iron shields) we continued our march and advanced on the frontier. But as quickly as we went forward, it drew back, so that after several days’ march we found ourselves on the other side of the river but still just as far away from the frontier as before.

  From the hinterland came shipments of magnificent horses. We exchanged our chain-mail and swords for lighter equipment and took to the saddle. Mules dragged along our new artillery, fat-barrelled mortars with supplies of stone balls. But the moment we spurred on our chargers, the frontier retreated effortlessly at the same speed. We rode for what must have been a millennium through reddish darknesses, and the cavalry songs we sang out of a strange kind of metaphysical fear, which spread quickly, had a melancholy sound and a bitter taste of futility.

  We had long been motorised, leaving swirling clouds of dust in our wake, and still the frontier retreated from us, moving with the ease of a ballet-dancer while our strength had diminished. We could no longer stand frost or heat and needed large quantities of different things, such as clothes, tents, tinned food, medicines and vaccines to protect us and keep us alive. Tiredness had seeped into our bones, the vague fears and the horror of earlier times had given way to an inner emptiness, to a sense of our own insignificance and the pointlessness of this wild pursuit. But all that merely intensified the wish of every one of us to reach the frontier at last and rest secure in the peace of the longed-for country beyond it.

  Finally it was decided to employ a different tactic, which would exhaust our technical rather than human resources. We made a final halt, in a long, densely massed front, and established our camp. A few kilometres beyond our position we set up a line of heavy artillery, flame-throwers and rocket-launchers, which we operated day and night in alternating shifts. For weeks on end we bombarded the moving frontier, which remained the same distance away, at rest, light and clear, like the friendly irony of a divine smile. But we could not injure it. Although our instruments recorded direct hits, at the point of entry the shells vanished into thin air and the frontier remained unbreached.

  By this time we had a full range of amenities and could drown our lack of success and the emptiness of what we were doing in drink and music. We put on plays, read, debated, swore or prayed to forget the dreariness of a warrior’s existence without an enemy to attack. We were probably too well off. The only thing missing was the fighting we had been trained for and had counted on, the only thing that could give meaning to our lives as soldiers. Eventually, for lack of an adversary to engage with outside our ranks, war began to rage in our camps. Rebellions broke out, we murdered a few dozen officers, any, just those we happened to get our hands on, and set fire to tents and supplies. More and more joined in and groups began to form which attacked each other furiously. The long-range guns stood abandoned and silent, their empty barrels yawning in the direction of the frontier.

  We were suddenly gripped with a great fear of the emptiness between the guns and the thin-lipped grin of the frontier line and we retired a few kilometres. But as if that was just what it had been waiting for, the frontier, like a sly animal that pounces the moment it sees a flicker of fear and uncertainty in its enemy’s eyes, took a bound towards us. With its fearful, silent swiftness it was suddenly back in our field of vision.

  Seized with terror, we stopped fighting each other, turned our backs on the frontier and fled. Every time we looked round we could see it at our backs, always the same distance away, apparently motionless. We threw down our weapons and all our equipment so we could run without encumbrance, but still it moved up behind us, unimpressed by our haste, unsurpassable in its inevitability, a constant presence we felt at our backs, like a ghostly breath.

  Our headlong flight lasted a further millennium. Finally we were completely dispersed and fled on in terrible isolation, each returning to the place he had come from. We would have continued to flee, but our wives received us with furious contempt because we had left them alone for so long. All the while they had stayed where they had been
since time immemorial. They had spent their precious young lives working to send us new weapons and now we came back without having achieved what we set out to do and dragging along with us the nightmare of a frontier, beyond which lay the promised land, still unravaged and unoccupied.

  The women threw themselves at us and brought the wave of those flooding back to a halt. They dragged us forcibly into our houses, made us go back to work, fettered us to the work benches, to the machines, desks, tractors and fields, kept us on leads, like dogs, while we tilled the soil, and they allowed no one to break away, neither towards the frontier nor fleeing from it. Our life was cramped, bitter and cheerless.

  Now I have grown old. I am foreman in a towel factory. With unmerciful gentleness, my wife comes to collect me every day after work, puts on my lead and takes me home. There she locks me in my room and here I finally find the time to write up the history of the campaign against the moving frontier

  I have spent a lot of time thinking about it and sometimes I believe that if only my wife would let me go I could turn my back on the frontier and keep walking straight on. And if I stick to it one day I ought, the world being round, to come to the land I have left behind me, the land beyond the frontier.

  Unfortunately my wife will have nothing to do with it. It’s all nonsense, she says, at best I’ll go right round the world and end up back home, so why should I leave in the first place? I should forget these fancy ideas and stay here, where I belong, and do my bit for my work, for my wife, for the children.

  Perhaps she’s even right?

  The Singing in the Swamp

  Jeannie Ebner

  I used to live with the corn-rich people, close to the pyramid-shaped stores and silos that are built on pillars over all the rivers. I found life clear and beautiful at the edges and on the surfaces, and sang to myself, loudly, blithely, not a thought in the world.

  But then I somehow got into the swamp. At first I was dismayed that the swamp sucked me in. I had always thought it would spew me out, I thought I would be either too good or too bad for it, but it did not let go. It sucked me in very slowly.

  The men who live in the swamp are sunk up to their armpits, the women to just below their breasts – essential if they are to suckle their babies. But all of them have to keep treading all the time so as not to sink any deeper. They tread, tread, with phenomenal gentleness, steadily, tirelessly, without pausing at all. In this way there is almost no one who sinks deeper than their armpits or breast before they die. Of course, it is not the ideal place for weaklings or cripples. It does occasionally happen that one of these suddenly disappears, but it hardly causes any stir, just a short, gurgling noise and all those in the vicinity silently look away in embarrassment. They cannot save anyone, no one would save them if they were in danger of sinking, they need all their strength to keep their heads above water.

  Like others before me, I managed to get onto one of the round, grassy islets, which are just big enough for a person to squat, kneel or stand on. But if you stay on these islets for any length of time, you are bound to starve, even though the air over the swamp is supposed to be quite nutritious. Sometimes, too, it is possible to catch one of the swamp birds with their beautiful plumage and, if you are lucky, get them to lay a warm, brown-speckled egg in your hand.

  Every morning a dignified gentleman in black drives up in an old-fashioned carriage. He always gets out backwards, struggling with the folds of his shoulder cape, for he is very old and rather clumsy. He stays for half an hour, murmuring words we do not understand and blessing us, hands raised, from time to time. But that is of no help to us. And if we were not worried about spoiling our beautiful white hands, which we always take care to keep out of the swamp, placed on our shoulders or clasped behind our heads, we would perhaps throw slime at the old man. But in the swamp such urges are not violent and never lasting.

  In the morning rich people drive over in their cars and make drawings or photographs of the faces and hands of the swamp women, who are famed for their beauty. Or reporters, journalists, politicians, sociologists and film-makers flood the area with spectacles, briefcases, pencils and film cameras, and make a great fuss of us. It seems everybody wants to write articles, or make speeches or programmes about the swamp. But no one can do that who has not been in the swamp himself and none of them ever has been in the swamp, because anyone who gets in never gets out, and anyone who’s in doesn’t have the opportunity to make a film or a speech or write about it, he’s fully occupied treading and keeping his hands clean. And anyway, here you very quickly lose interest in anything written.

  Once or twice, though, there were conscientious journalists who were determined to try at all costs. They came with cranes and pulleys and had themselves let down into the swamp, hanging in slings. They talked to us very loudly in the swamp dialect about horses that always run in pairs, such as justice and injustice, wealth and poverty. We didn’t reply. How could someone who is in goal for fourteen days and knows exactly when he will get out communicate with people who are condemned to life imprisonment?

  In the afternoon the school-children come, delightful little things with jolly ribbons in their hair and boys with red cheeks and coloured balls. They appear to confuse us with their uncles and aunts who usually buy them chocolate, and although they are almost starving on the grass islets, the women sometimes give them a speckled bird’s egg, if they happen to have one.

  Apart from that there are lots of sightseers and passers-by, messenger-boys, day-trippers and tramps who come past. Individual swamp-dwellers keep trying to clutch onto the clothes of people going past and pull themselves out, but they never succeed, though occasionally the passers-by are dragged in. It appears to be easier to get in than out.

  In the evening, especially in spring, the poets come. They are less cautious and come close; a lot of them have already been dragged into the swamp. They stand by the edge of the swamp, put their heads on one side in a pensive pose, look at a flower, which they solemnly hold in front of them, form an oval with their mouths and let out a song. They say they are singing for us, because they want to do us good. But I think that’s nonsense. We don’t hear them because the air here is very dense and doesn’t let the sound waves through. Most of them have a very weak voice as well, too little breath, and so they sing in a circle round their heads and their song has no effect on us.

  It seems that the swamp water makes people fertile. When two swamp inhabitants fall in love – and here we fall in love swiftly and violently – they light up like an electric bulb screwed into the socket while the lamp’s switched on. And the women who are loved immediately have children, even though the lovers cannot come together and their faces just shine on each other longingly from a distance. And the women who have once been loved keep on getting children long after they have stopped being loved.

  The mothers place their babies on grass islets within reach, and their nourishing milk makes them strong and healthy, although their mothers have to keep treading and cannot give them much attention. The children grow up all by themselves. As soon as they are a bit bigger, their mothers push them into the swamp so they will learn to tread at an early age. Many jump into the swamp of their own accord, even when they are quite young, since once they reach a certain age they need more than milk and air.

  There is always something to eat in the swamp, not too much and not too little. Never enough to give someone else some, since you need to keep up your strength for treading, but just enough to keep you going from one day to the next.

  The incessant treading releases seeds from the stalks far below the feet of the swamp people. In olden times a rich cornfield must have been buried there. It has an inexhaustible wealth of corn which the constant movement of our feet brings up to the couple of inches of shallow, brackish water which lies on top of the mire and is clear. We peck at the grains with our lips, since we want to keep our hands clean and naturally we don’t get that many, just as much as is essential to stay alive. The other
grains are quickly carried off. They float away, out of the swampland into the little watercourses which flow into a few great canals the corn-rich people have dug. There the grains are gathered together and sent on, to be distributed to the countries and cities of the world. Thus it is essential that we keep on treading, not only because it stops us sinking and starving, but also in order to feed the world.

  The corn people who live outside the swamp collect the corn in stores and silos, and when one of us gets so old and sick he can’t keep treading enough, thus creating an area around him that is low in corn, they throw him grains from their supplies, one at a time, the way you feed hens. But most of them float away and return to the stores. A person who is old or sick cannot peck so quickly, nor with precise aim. They could throw such people more than is absolutely necessary. But, some say, then lots would pretend to be old and sick before their time and tread less, in order to get more without effort. And if too many stop treading, too few grains will come to the surface and too many will be thrown in, and the stocks will grow smaller and eventually everyone will starve.

  Or, and this is what I used to think, then everyone would have to tread.

  It was a thought that fascinated me for a brief while, but then I realised that there would be no one to dig canals, build storehouses, collect the grains and distribute them in emergencies. Everyone would get just the amount they needed to stay alive themselves. One of the horses that always run in pairs (such as justice and injustice) would have to run alone. But what would we get out of it? We would still have to keep on treading, as we have always done, only everyone would be in the swamp then, perhaps so many that they would tread on each other.

  But perhaps – this was another thought that occurred to me – we could come to an agreement to take turns. From time to time all the swamp people would be pulled out of the swamp, perhaps with the aforementioned pulleys, and the corn people would take their places. Would it not be more just if the people with whom we share the corn shared the swamp with us?