The suffering of all these years is forgotten. Oh, thanks be to He who governs all. Hosannah to thee, oh Lord!
The little man climbs the stairs to his apartment, 15 Albrechtstrasse. In the hallways, the people are struck dumb when he looks at them. Then a long muttering starts up behind his back and is still sounding when he tugs the bell pull. The little man crosses the threshold with a smile, the strange man looks the fat melancholy female in the eye as she scurries around the room where the wizened man stands, head slumped onto his left shoulder, arms pressed together over his chest, and love in his mouth and his watery, squinting eyes. His two hands reach out for her. Flooded with a sweetness and earnestness he says in a soft voice, “You see, you see—oh, I knew it, Elfriede. Now I have come back.”
She holds tight to the windowsill, looks at the little man, and screams, “Adolf!”
“Yes, Elfriede. I have kept myself in readiness for Him, through all hardships. I waited and hoped for so long. Endured such bitterness. But rejoice, all those who waited with me!”
“Have you been walking around like that, Adolf? The whole way? Tell me, Adolf. Like that? You’re not wearing a coat, and no boots, and no hat!”
The eyes facing her stop; a face cools, a voice that has abruptly hardened to stone answers her: “I already told you, are you too among the band of Korah? Rise up and begone, so that I am not made unclean.”
The shrill scurrilous laughter from the corridor and stairway echoes into the room. “Adolf, what happened? Where did you leave your things?”
The little man stared fixedly at his feet, his hands flutter over his chest, his head sinks slowly forward.
“The boots. The band of Korah. Yes, what is the woman saying? What is the woman in this room trying to say?”
And then he roars with a voice of iron, overflowing eyes turned toward the door, “Don’t laugh, don’t laugh! There’s nothing to laugh at here!” And suddenly light dawns, he runs to the bed, hides his head under the blanket, and stammers, “Oh, don’t laugh. . . . Please, please, don’t laugh. Oh, I beg you, I’m begging, beg-ging. . . .”
Then she can only hold the trembling half-naked little man.
THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION
MARY WALKED pale and quiet-eyed through the damp short grass.
When the foliage hung thick and high, Mary looked for a certain broad-branched tree standing alone behind a cluster of bushes grown together into a tracery, in a copse the men avoided. The green of the leaves melted into the silken twilight colors of the air; then too bronze-dark, rose-slight, yellow-toned, or snowy girls’ bodies, loving each other, blossomed beneath it. The foliage hung thick and fell deeply down.
When wild rain poured, Maria sat with her playfellows at the window of their large room, with their white robes shading into bluishness and almond branches in their hair; all the lips sang songs of entreaty to the rain god. But she screamed with happiness when she saw a little child. She went over to it with slow footsteps, picked it up, and, sitting down, lightly rocking with her knees, held it in her lap. Sometimes in her dandling she stopped still, looked long at the white particles of sundust and dark blue sky, gave a sudden shudder with shivering shoulders, and dandled the child some more.
A faithful friend was courting her. But the virginal maiden could not answer the supplicant’s soft entreaties.
Once, when the girls were enjoying their youth in gentle pleasure with kisses and embraces under the broad-branched tree, they saw, through a skyward gap in the leaves, a black, unfathomably large and wide grasping cloud-hand, inescapably like a hand of God. Their song rose restlessly up, they comforted each other, at last they fled from each other, the white-robed and the colored-robed, ducking under the leaves, while a gray-blue light far behind the hills appeared and peered over from the sky’s darkness, ever brighter and more often. Between black and erect rows of trees, which started to bend and writhe, robes fluttered before the wind. The friend had run to meet Mary, after waiting a long time wandering around her lonely house; the disheveled and frightened maiden clung to him and would not let go of his arm. Her pale, confused glances kept worrying and quivering over to the outstretched cloud-fingers and lurid light. When the earth began to shake and a voice of thunder with blazing purple and sulfur yellow roared out, she fell with deathly pale face into his arms. In the thick darkness, hands passed over her face and hair, and she heard hotly whispered words after the lordly commanding thunderclaps. He accepted her, as she hung on his shoulder like a light branch, limbs slack and trembling.
Her playmates found her in her bed the morning after the storm, stiff, lips open. Her shimmering eyes, as the feet of the girls sounded on the floorboards, insanely looked for something in her room and her friends’ faces; she wanted to talk, but with a rough throaty sound she stuffed her scarf into her mouth and bit down hard. Or else she let out screams and regular protracted groans and threw herself from side to side. No one knew what had happened in the night, but they soon suspected that the terror of the storm had unsettled her soul.
And they tended her until she grew quiet, and let no one in to see the patient, even the friend who kept trying to get in. When the disheveled maiden had slowly collected herself and lay calmly, she finally said, furtively, pressing her head still more deeply into the pillow, as though trying to remember, and with an uncertain, questioning tone in her voice: Something was above their house last night. And she brooded intensely on her pillows again, looked irritably up at her companions and the mute objects in the room.
After some time, she was walking again, as before, with her friends through the damp short grass. But if before she was weighed down with a soft seriousness, now her movements slowed more and more until they were almost ceremonial. Her face brightened, dawn-like, illusionless. The first time she encountered her suitor, and her friends, noticing her surprised look, told her who he was, she looked into his entreating face for a long time and then calmly turned away, apparently looking for something in the green of the hanging leaves and in the smooth sky.
Now Mary was often found sitting outside in front of the main room, in the blue air. Her eyes grew more benevolent and pensive, and when the faithful friend stood next to her, she stroked his hand where it hung down beside her head, and her lips called him by the same name as before: Friend.
She throve and gradually turned into a ripe blossom. When she sat outside again, with the weak little child dandling on her knees, Joseph looked at her speechless as her eyes seemed to shine from within.
Mary, smiling, raised her tender face to the deep blue sky from which the dark hand of God had reached down for the virginal girl. She slightly opened her lips to the light in a kiss and long remained that way.
And then she lowered her peaceful, quiet head and chest half over the innocent little child lying held by her sweet-smelling hands on her lap, on her wide white robe, its folds shaded matte blue:
“I love you, I love you, you pledge from God.”
THE METAMORPHOSIS
Dedicated to Erna Reiss
THE EARLY years of the marriage between the Queen and the Prince Consort had passed without a moment’s peace. But when the child, the heir to the throne, cried out in the old castle, the iron gates of the side entrance opened; the slim, pale Queen stood on the stones of the castle courtyard, swung herself into the saddle, and raced on her white horse, followed by a small cavalcade, through the crooked streets, between the huddled houses, across the market square, toward the yellow forests. Now the wild Queen burst once more through the mist-swallowed woodlands; picnics took place in the neighboring villages, masquerades and mummeries in the village halls where there was always a side room reserved, full of the glowing cheeks of her royal majesty, of the quavering of her brazen body and the vagaries of her mouth, snorting with laughter, of the veiled sweetness of her clipped voice—sumptuous celebrations, during which a soft, sick cavalier handed her lilacs, buried his face in her breast, and cried into her neck, with happiness, fear, and self-c
ontempt. The Prince Consort too went about his solitary way again, like a monk. With sadly pursed lips his fat figure could be seen drifting through the halls; it was him, now frisky as a kitten, now sluggish and lazy, dripping with irony and self-mockery. He was taciturn; words effervesced from his mouth. At night he crept into the lady’s wing, without a servant, and lay his aching head in the lap of a delicate black-haired maid of honor with shining eyes. Now no one saw the Queen’s skirts askew; no hairpins she had lost were found in the corridors; the stairways no longer felt her tired, despondent feet; the pair, Queen and Prince Consort, walked through the dark halls next to each other, laughing. She wore a blue silk ribbon over her right ear; it hung down from her hair; her beloved had tied it there. A sweetbrier was stuck in the Prince’s buttonhole, with a woman’s two black hairs openly fluttering from it.
It was one afternoon, when after a cheerful discussion first the Queen and then the Prince fell silent, that the Queen slowly rose and walked wordlessly through the row of footmen out of the dining hall, and that the Prince stayed sitting with his eyes lowered, looking at his left hand, which had been lying next to her right, then shoved his silverware into a heap and went wordlessly to his room. The aides and ladies of the entourage quickly finished their meal. The Queen’s chambers were locked; the Queen, it was said, had been standing by the window since her return and was not at all upset, she would open the door to her room soon. The redheaded privy councillor, a massive, gigantic lawyer with a straw-blond beard and kind eyes, grumbled that it would come to open warfare yet. The bony yellow face next to him, with pitch-black eyes and hair and a protruding lower lip—a hook-nosed little man, the court physician— crumpled up into a hopeful smile.
At the evening meal they were serious, they sat next to each other. Their faces revealed nothing, neither then nor at the social events of the next few days. They did not touch each other; they slid their chairs away from each other, had friendly conversations with those around them, their faces turned away; hardly a word did they exchange. Both of their voices sounded higher, and it seemed as though each of them was eavesdropping on the other.
It was a terrible moment when, on the third day, they ran into each other in the hall to the Queen’s chambers, stopped, and shook hands, one morning, one gray morning. The Prince held her by the shoulder; they looked at each other for a long minute, looking away again and again. Each one trembled, something they otherwise did only with their eyes closed. “Go, go,” she pleaded, and scurried back down the narrow corridor.
He was in his room. The fat Prince took a stool and sat down in front of his armoire. As he sighed and stretched, he knocked over a jardiniere holding an enormous vase. The water splashed onto his boots; he jerked away, unthinkingly shook his head, and sat down right next to the open armoire, rummaging around in it.
“Go, go”—that sounded like “Come, come.” He held a blond wig in his hands and turned it around. Good, he thought, very good: a good wig. It didn’t bother him at all, and that surprised him, made him strangely calm. He put it on. He made all his emotion stream into his scalp, into the wig, to savor it to the full in comfort. What else? A black coffee. No coffee, nothing to drink, nothing. He tiptoed over to the door, opened it, blocked off the whole hallway, disconnected the doorbell, stopped the pendulum of the clock hung high on the wall. Then looked around his room again, hummed through his teeth. Sat on his taboret, deep in thought. He took out all the clothing, piece by piece, and felt it with his fingers. A doublet appealed to him and he draped it over his face; it smelled of lilacs. He put it on, tied on a thin cavalier’s dagger, smoothed down his clothes in front of the mirror. “Come, come.” He recoiled with a shudder, quietly opened the door, and crept down the corridor, humming through his teeth the whole time. In the middle he suddenly stopped, ran back to his room, looked through the shards on the floor for a bunch of red sweetbriers and laid them carefully over his left arm. He was crossing the threshold when a handle moved at the end of the hall. The door quietly opened; bright daylight fell slanting into the narrow hall from the Queen’s chamber; slightly rustling footsteps approached, and the slender, lordly face of the Queen. She was wearing a black wig, its recalcitrant locks falling over her deathly pale cheeks; her courtly black silk dress clung tight to her body. They walked arm in arm, they strolled through the empty chambers, they walked silently through the mirror-smooth reception halls, the dining halls; they walked through the dark picture galleries. How freely he led her; how well their footsteps kept the same rhythm. She had turned her face away from him, the wild Queen. Only when their arms separated, at the Queen’s door, did her cheeks start to burn, her breath race. He carefully laid down the bunch of carnations on her doorstep; the wild Queen took his warm hand and led him over the red flowers into her room. They stood before a pile of letters, pages, and volumes, with heads lowered; held each other’s shoulders; touched their foreheads to each other’s.
The door closed behind them; he sat on the taboret in front of her mirror, smoothed down his clothes. He wanted to take them off, but something resisted him; the sleeves seems to cling fast to his arms. He was shocked by his short blond hair; after he had put on his own uniform, he ran his hands caressingly across the strange garments he had spread out on the rug. He furtively kicked the mirror with the back of his heel, hammered nails into the bare wood, and hung the other man’s outfit up on the wall, in clear view.
They sat together at the midday meal; now their glances were directed at each other. He sometimes ran his hand over his face, over his head, tugged at the high collar of his uniform, tried to hide his arms under the table; he felt like he was wearing a mask. The lordly Queen joked and teased him; all at once she laid down her silverware and tears fell from her eyes, she gnashed her teeth. They ran after her; she forbade any questions. After an hour, she lay quietly in bed, reading, and remarked only that the cries of her child disturbed her; they should house the child in another part of the castle. Tomorrow she would ask the court physician if staying by the seaside mightn’t be better for the sickly child than the castle air. The old lady-in-waiting, sitting worried on a chair next to her, wanted to answer, shocked, with something, but the Queen repeated, looking very firmly at her, her question, whether she too didn’t consider the sea air better than the mountains for the child. At which the old lady fidgeted on her chair, fiddled with her long gold chain, and, in a controlled voice, concurred.
But that night—it must have been almost ten o’clock—she stood up in outrage when the young Queen, who had sat down at the piano and tinkled a few notes, got up again and said that Count Hagen, the poet, should be ordered to come on the spot. She wanted to receive him here in her room, immediately and without delay, and alone, with no witnesses. Her young majesty screamed, slamming down the piano cover with a crash, that she would beat the old lady-in-waiting about the ears if she so much as dared to open her leathery mouth again, and would drive her out to the farmyard with the geese where she belonged. She said she would receive the cavalier alone, in her dark room, after she had lain down in bed, and she could report it to the cabinet of ministers and all the gout-ridden men in the country at once, by telephone, today, tomorrow, the next day, whenever she wanted. They stayed in the brightly lit music room without a word; the Queen raised the piano’s black lid and played a hasty mazurka while the old lady-in-waiting held her lace handkerchief before her eyes. At eleven thirty, Count Hagen was announced. The Queen had received him in this room once before, it was two days before her wedding, late at night. Bowing, the pale cavalier had entered the dim room where only a dull candle on the piano was burning; the Queen was lying sunk in her soft armchair. Wedding presents were all over the carpet: vases, paintings, coffers. He had had eyes for nothing but the Queen, had offered her not a word as she held his hot head in her lap except: “You disgust me, you disgust me.” He had shuddered without stopping, couldn’t tear his gaze away from her deep-set eyes. She too had had eyes for nothing but the poet, and what she sai
d to him, with kisses on his hands, fingers, mouth, cheeks, hair, with caresses and rocking, was one thing: “Farewell.” Now the count pulled back the portiere; when he bowed deeply to the old lady, she wanted to retreat to the side room, with a desperate wringing of hands, but the Queen stared fixedly at her and said after a while that that wouldn’t be necessary. She had the blond cavalier stand under the glittering chandelier, asked him about the results of the last hunt they had been on together, and whether he had already looked into his promotion in the regiment. Then she stood up, thanked him for his visit, and wished him good night. Asked the old lady with a laugh, hands folded in her lap, how long she planned to stay sitting there, and when she was thinking she would send off all those telegrams. The lady shook her head.
It was quiet in the old castle until the morning when the Count, despite the Queen’s orders, forced his way into her room. He wept before her, lying on the floor; she struck him in the face with her riding crop. Turning red and turning pale, trembling and gnashing her teeth, the Queen in her armchair listened to him as he implored her by all their bygone sweetness and tenderness; he reeled from the room with a bloody welt on his face and departed that afternoon. No one saw the Count for a week, then the Lord Chamberlain reported his disappearance to the Queen; she laughed scornfully; it was important, was it not, to change one’s servants often. Was he still alive? When the Lord Chamberlain said yes, she broke out into an utterly wild laugh: “You see, Lord Chamberlain, how true it is what Schiller sings: ‘O, Queen, but life is beautiful!’”
The delicate black-haired maid of honor no longer left her room. The yellow court physician treated her for a sudden attack of mental confusion and had her kept under watch. She had started a fire in her room one night when she had piled all her black clothes in the middle of the floor and set the pile alight with letters. The smoke had reached the Queen’s chambers. After several weeks, she was more lucid; she was emaciated down to skin and bones. She submitted a request to the Queen for a trip home. Two days later she was found drowned in the pond of her paternal estate.
Bright Magic Page 4
