Once, after she had left the pram for a while, she came back to find it empty. Without thinking, she turned towards the main square and called out in a loud voice to a policeman who was going round in circles on his bicycle there. What madness, to appeal to a policeman! The next moment she heard rustling and splashing noises behind her and when she whipped round she saw the pram was wobbling. The child was back in it, but dripping wet and with bits of aquatic plants in its eyelashes.
A shadow fell across the pram. The policeman was looking over her shoulder, staring at the child. She said, ‘It slipped out of the pond and back under its blanket.’ Slack-jawed, the policeman surveyed the trembling woman. Slowly, one feature after another, his expression of professional obtuseness changed into one of ditto cunning. His eyes dilated and began to prophesy. He suddenly smelt of beer. At once she realised she had made a crucial error. Her mastery of adaptation had deserted her.
From now on she was pushed and shoved, interviewed and interned, she was a load that was being transported. The terminus was an institution the nature of which she knew perfectly well, even though a doctor she thought was weak in the head tried to convince her of all sorts of things, especially that he had nothing to do with the police, to which her only reply was a repeated smile. She quietly disposed of the medicines she was given. She knew that everything she had discovered was to be hushed up and that they were trying to drug her because she was on the track of the briefly sketched gentlemen. In order to neutralize her child, in which an unknown power was manifest, they had handed it over to the feeble-minded Protestant nurse. They openly admitted that.
But for her the walls they had surrounded her with were not a serious obstacle. She had long since noticed how, with their whole existence, flies and ants made a mockery of a dungeon that was piled up in such a primitive manner. They were ubiquitous witnesses and only brief minds thought they could be ignored. The institutions of these gentlemen were like the stage set of a castle she’d once seen in the theatre, in a famous play of which only one thing had remained in her mind, the solid stone blocks that quivered at every breath of air.
As well as that there were lots of pigeons on the tin covering the window-ledges: born messengers. You only needed to select one which gave itself away by its nervous fluttering; it could carry not only messages but a whole consciousness.
Thus they had not been able to conceal from her that parts of the city had already been abandoned. Of course, in certain show streets they tried to create the impression of packed life by special noise effects, traffic jams, crashes and the like. Neon signs proclaimed the vitality of the city while various suburbs were being undermined by foreign troops, or even occupied and filled in with concrete; others were left to decay. Whole blocks, whole districts were given over to the pigeons. With their shit, mixed with rain, they had started to draw the mysteries of the cosmos on ledges, ornamental plaster-work and the dented roofs of burnt-out or shot-up cars.
The Protestant nurse looking after the child watched the television every evening, and since she had noticed that the changing lights fascinated it, she placed its basket in a suitable position. The child’s eyes seemed to move feebly beneath its half-closed lids as it read, on the flickering screen, messages to itself of which the people who organised television had not the faintest idea. If the nurse tried to put the child in the dark, it would start emitting the dull moaning that was so imperious and only stopped when its corresponding wish had been fulfilled. So the nurse had got into the habit of placing the child beside her in front of the television. Sometimes a pigeon would scratch at the window. Waking or sleeping, the two unequal viewers would spend hours with shimmers of blue over their faces, until finally the picture went off.
When the square of brightness rapidly became smaller and disappeared out into the black of the cosmos, it was life itself going out for the nurse; but each time the child fell asleep unprotesting and was trundled into its room. The nurse went to bed, alone, as best corresponded to her physical and mental disposition, and hid underneath the eiderdown, never forgetting to murmur the Our Father which lacks the Ave Maria.
As the days (weeks?) slipped past, mould-like adhesions gradually formed on the iron boot-scraper outside the front door, and if passers-by let their eyes follow these growths, they saw whitish structures, recalling lines of saltpetre on masonry, spreading radially from the house, as if some explosion in the interior had squeezed them out through the walls. At certain points ganglion-like stars had formed, covering the damp earth. ‘Fungi?’ a voice asked, and a nose could be heard testing the air.
Eventually the physics teacher appeared out of the fog. His loud ringing and knocking was unanswered. He gave the front door a kick, but it was only a perfunctory effort, he certainly didn’t put his full strength into it. To his amazement, it gave way and he fell into the building with it. It wasn’t a hard fall, it just made a soft, dull thud, as if he were falling onto cotton-wool. After he had picked himself up, he was shocked at the sight of the staircase, which was filled with a network of whitish filaments, completely alienating it from its original purpose. As with the nests of certain ichneumon wasps, only a hundred times enlarged, the fibres formed a round tunnel leading in. The physics teacher went along it into the interior. Soon the network of bizarre strands and knots opened out and the old outlines of the stairs reappeared, overgrown and gnawed away, like a house that had spent centuries in an alien element. A lacy tangle on the wall probably concealed the horns of a hunting trophy and another place, where many threads appeared to have plugged themselves in, as if to obtain power, was probably the electricity meter. It seemed as if these growths could make use of anything, though to ends which had nothing to do with the original purpose of the object.
The physics teacher heard a rattling and crackling above him, which he assumed came from a malfunctioning television. It was obviously also the source of the confused shafts of light that were issuing through a gaping door onto the landing and shining down the stairs. Seeing the reflection of this light on the interlaced tendrils reminded him of the decor at a fancy dress ball he had once wandered round, already drunk and talking gibberish, with a girl with long hair. He stumbled, grabbed onto something and received a deep cut on his index finger from a sharp object hidden beneath the growth.
When he got up there, his handkerchief wrapped round his finger, he saw through the crack of the door a whitewashed armchair on which the corpse of the Protestant nurse hung, sewn into her surroundings, so to speak: whitish threads came from her limbs or sprouted there, one would have even thought this whole gangliar system had been put forth by the substance of her flesh as it melted. Certain parts of her body looked used up, so that dry bits of the skeleton lay bare. And since the child, which had threads and filaments growing out of its basket, looked similar, it seemed as if, nourished by these two bodies, a kind of loosely connected, gigantic brain had formed which was taking possession of the house bit by bit. The bodies did not give the impression of deterioration or decay; on the contrary, alienated from their human form, they had become working components of this gangliar system, in the branches of which the light from the television was climbing around.
The physics teacher, who at first could not see the screen from the doorway, noticed that the crackling noises, which initially reminded him of interference, followed a certain rhythm. He moved forward on his knees until he could see the picture. As previously with the sound, he initially assumed the set had long since broken down and was only producing cascades of glittering snow which poured down the screen at random. But then he realised there was a certain regularity in the cascades. To his astonishment he recognised the turbulence of a spiral nebula.
And then, while he was observing this phenomenon, which was bound to fascinate any physicist, he lost his balance and, now with an open, bleeding wound, toppled sideways onto a table half covered in mildew.
The last thing he heard might have been the scrape of a pigeon’s feet on the tin over th
e window-ledge before it rose up with a flutter of wings and flew off into the fog.
At the World’s End
Hannelore Valencak
They met again at the world’s end, where the smooth, black cliffs plunge down to the sea, at the place where the shades of the dead meet before they finally detach themselves from the earth, where they give each other one last smile, or one last word in that familiar, ponderous language they will soon have to discard and forget.
The shade of a very young man stood there on an overhanging rock, staring down into the depths from which plumes of steam drifted up out of the huge geysers. Clouds passed though his body and storm-winds tugged at his hair.
He seemed to be waiting for something, for he hesitated to place his foot on the narrow path leading down to the shore. And when a second shade approached across the cliff, he turned round and glided to its side.
The second shade looked at him out of lifeless eyes, then a gleam of recognition passed across his features. ‘Now I remember. You came to see me yesterday.’
‘Yesterday?’ asked the first shade, drawing out the strange word. He already existed half in a different space and the concepts of time and the past had become empty vessels to him.
‘That’s right, yesterday,’ insisted the second shade. He had only just lost his life and not completely detached himself from the earth. His gestures were still lively and purposeful. He still had the freshness of the living world about him. ‘Cigarette?’ he asked, then waved the question away. ‘Sorry, I forgot where I am. I’m still thinking back to my hearty breakfast, to the strong coffee, and I felt like a smoke. You can believe me when I say you came to see me yesterday, even if that doesn’t mean anything to you any more. You were a young actor and you read for me. I should have encouraged you because you had exceptional talent, but I sent you away. Why? Jealousy, probably. You were so young.
This morning I read about your death in the newspaper. No one reproached me, I didn’t even reproach myself. You wouldn’t believe the excuses you can think up when your conscience starts getting uncomfortable. I managed to forget about you for the whole of the morning. It was only at mid-day, when I was driving my car, that I thought of you again, and then there were no more excuses. I don’t know why I took my hands off the wheel, and I didn’t have any time left to think about it. The last thing I saw was a woman’s smile on the poster on the wall in front of me, a wheel of fire spinning round and then this twilight, this mist I’m gradually getting used to. And now I’m here so you can reproach me. I’ve brought all my remorse. Do you want it? I’ll give it to you.’
The shade of the young man slowly looked up. A distant, painful memory stirred within him, the feeling of a great disappointment and humiliation, then the image of a bridge, a balustrade, the silent flow of water, a fall and release, afterwards the path to this place. Now he knew what he had been waiting for.
‘I give you all my bitterness,’ he said. ‘Take it from me and cast it into the sea.’
They held out their hands towards each other, but it was too late for contact. Neither understood what the other was giving him. The last traces of humanity slipped from them and dissipated. ‘We must go,’ they murmured, almost simultaneously, and the shade of the young actor tried to let the one who had once been his ideal go first. But the other said, ‘You first,’ and neither felt it was unfitting. They made their way down, got into the boat and the mute, dark ferryman rowed them out.
The Sewermaster
Peter von Tramin
When I left my house that evening a man came up to me who was wearing dark glasses despite the mist and overcast sky. He was small and was wearing a black plastic raincoat glistening with the damp.
‘You,’ he asked – though from the tone of voice it was more of a statement of fact – holding me by the upper arm in a surprisingly powerful grip, ‘you have keen powers of observation?’
Now I have always tended to suffer from nightmares, but years of experience have taught me to be aware that something is a dream, even while I am dreaming. With an amused smile on my lips, I go along with the confused plans, demands and actions of the imaginary creatures that people my sleep, plunge cheerfully into the abyss and make not the slightest attempt to run away from the fiend with the club. If the situation should get too unpleasant, however, I simply have to say, ‘It’s only a dream,’ and the phantasms immediately fade away and I wake up.
When I saw that the stranger in front of me had the forked tongue of a snake I started to enjoy the situation. ‘That is correct,’ I said in an amused tone, ‘I have extraordinarily sharp powers of observation.’
‘That is good,’ said the stranger with a sigh of relief, ‘that is very good, sir. I almost feared you were not the man I was looking for.’
There was nothing to say to that, so I decided to go along with the man, who hurriedly drew me away from the house entrance. He took me to an allnight café, where he appeared to be known. At least the waitress greeted him with a polite, ‘Good evening, Sewermaster,’ and immediately showed us, without being asked, to an alcove which was partly concealed from view by a curtain of glass beads.
The little man did not take off his coat, but ordered one bottle of beer and pulled the glove off his free hand with his teeth. I saw that it had webs reaching almost to the tips of his fingers, which ended in sharp claws.
He poured the beer into a glass and pushed it over to me. He did not have a drink himself.
‘Do you think you could let go of my arm, Mr Sewermaster?’ I asked. ‘Your grip is exceedingly painful.’
The stranger quickly let go. ‘You must excuse me,’ he said, ‘it’s almost become a habit.’
I took a sip of beer and gave him a questioning look.
‘You live,’ the stranger started, ‘you live on the second floor of number 15?’
‘Correct.’
‘And,’ he went on, ‘and you are in the habit of sitting by your window at night looking down into the street. Would you be so kind, so exceedingly kind, as to tell me what you observe?’
‘Well,’ I replied, ‘all I can really see is a portion of the pavement opposite my flat. There is an advertisement hoarding beyond it and a pillar covered in posters on this side.
‘And what,’ inquired my companion, his forked tongue nervously playing between his uncommonly sharp, white teeth, ‘and what is so interesting about that view to make you spend half the night sitting by the window staring out?’
‘Mainly the fact that people sometimes pass by.’
The stranger nervously adjusted his glasses. Despite the dark lenses, I could see his eyes. They were lidless, like fishes’ eyes, and had round, staring pupils. ‘Would it not,’ he said with an urgency that was almost vehement, ‘would it not be much more satisfactory for you, sir, to pursue your observations by day? Apart from the fact that the light is better, you would have a much wider choice of material to study.’
‘Excuse me for interrupting, Mr Sewermaster, but I’m not interested in this, what I would call banal material. It is something quite different that I find so out-of-the-ordinary and remarkable. I presume I would not be far wrong in thinking that it is the occurrence of this something quite different to which I owe the honour of your acquaintance?’
It amused me to observe his embarrassment. He repeatedly licked his colourless lips, during which operation his forked tongue performed bizarre, flickering acrobatics, and rubbed his short, button-like chin with the palm of his hand, which, oddly enough, was covered in hair.
‘And what out-of-the-ordinary occurrences,’ he finally managed to get out, but with difficulty, his Adam’s apple jerking wildly, ‘what out-of-the-ordinary occurrences are you referring to, sir?’
Very content with the effect of my words, I leant back and took a long draught of beer. This dream was starting to get interesting.
‘Well,’ I said, wiping my moustache, ‘it is the disappearance of several nocturnal passers-by to which I am referring. During the pas
t month,’ I said, not without a certain pride in the almost scientific meticulousness with which I had conducted my observations, ‘I have seen no fewer than nine people go past the advertising pillar outside my window. Though ‘go past’ is not quite the right word. I saw them disappear behind the pillar, but they did not reappear on the other side, however long I waited.’
The Sewermaster looked up sharply. I thought I observed in his fixed, fishy eyes, which the dark glasses only partly concealed, a look of extreme desperation.
‘And what,’ he croaked in a strangled voice, whilst his hands casually crushed a solid brass ashtray on the table, ‘and what do you conclude from that?’
‘That the pillar conceals a concealed entrance to the city’s sewers.’
‘And why,’ my companion asked – his voice, though cautiously muted, cracked and he tore the ashtray into tiny pieces, a feat he performed quite unconsciously, almost, one might say, absent-mindedly – ‘and why do you think those nine people went down through the pillar into the city’s sewers?’
‘Anything I said about that would be pure conjecture,’ I observed reflectively.
‘Please,’ said the stranger, convulsively clasping and unclasping his hands which, having competed the destruction of the ashtray, were now once more unoccupied, ‘please,’ he said in uncommonly urgent tones, as if much depended on what I said, ‘please,’ he repeated, ‘would you be so good as to do just that.’
‘Well, then,’ I said, clearing my throat. I felt uncomfortable. It is not my way to express vague conjectures which I myself am not prepared to acknowledge as undisputed fact. ‘Well, I imagine there may be a secret society that goes about its business under the cloak of darkness in the labyrinth of more or less unexplored passages and sewers beneath the Old Town. Perhaps,’ I went on, watching the Sewermaster with a certain unease as his uncommonly sharp fingernails bored a hole in the table, ‘it is a mystical society of religious enthusiasts who carry out strange rituals in the dark beneath our streets.’
The Dedalus Book of Austrian Fantasy;1890-2000 Page 33
