Doctor Dapertutto and Giuletta (detail from illustration following page 230).
She turned toward me before she went into the music room, and for an instant her angel-like, normally pleasant face seemed strained into a sneer. An uncomfortable, unpleasant feeling arose in me, like a cramp running through my nervous system.
“Oh, he plays divinely,” lisped a girl, apparently inspired by the sweet tea, and I don’t know how it happened, but Julia’s arm was in mine, and I led her, or rather she led me, into the next room. Berger was raising the wildest hurricanes, and like a roaring surf his mighty chords rose and fell. It did me good.
Then Julia was standing beside me, and said more softly and more sweetly than before, “I wish you were sitting at the piano, singing softly about pleasures and hopes that have been lost.” The Enemy had left me, and in just the name, “Julia!” I wanted to proclaim the bliss that filled me. But the crowd pushed between us and we were separated. Now she was obviously avoiding me, but I was lucky enough to touch her clothing and close enough to breathe in her perfume, and the springtime of the past arose in a hundred shining colors.
Berger let the hurricane blow itself out, the skies became clear, and pretty little melodies, like the golden clouds of dawn, hovered in pianissimo. Well-earned applause broke out when he finished, and the guests began to move around the room. It came about that I found myself facing Julia again. The spirit rose more mightily in me. I wanted to seize her and embrace her, but a bustling servant crowded between us with a platter of drinks, calling in a very offensive way, “Help yourself, please, help yourself.”
The tray was filled with cups of steaming punch, but in the very middle was a huge cut-crystal goblet, also apparently filled with punch. How did that get there, among all the ordinary punch cups? He knows—the Enemy that I’m gradually coming to understand. Like Clemens in Tieck’s “Oktavian” he walks about making a pleasant squiggle with one foot, and is very fond of red capes and feathers. Julia picked up this sparkling, beautifully cut goblet and offered it to me, saying, “Are you still willing to take a glass from my hand?” “Julia, Julia,” I sighed.
As I took the glass, my fingers brushed against hers, and electric sensations ran through me. I drank and drank, and it seemed to me that little flickering blue flames licked around the goblet and my lip. Then the goblet was empty, and I really don’t know myself how it happened, but I was now sitting on an ottoman in a small room lit only by an alabaster lamp, and Julia was sitting beside me, demure and innocent-looking as ever. Berger had started to play again, the andante from Mozart’s sublime E-flat Symphony, and on the swan’s wings of song my sunlike love soared high. Yes, it was Julia, Julia herself, as pretty as an angel and as demure; our talk a longing lament of love, more looks than words, her hand resting in mine.
“I will never let you go,” I was saying. “Your love is the spark that glows in me, kindling a higher life in art and poetry. Without you, without your love, everything is dead and lifeless. Didn’t you come here so that you could be mine forever ? ”
At this very moment there tottered into the room a spindle-shanked cretin, eyes a-pop like a frog’s, who said, in a mixture of croak and cackle, “Where the Devil is my wife?”
Julia stood up and said to me in a distant, cold voice, “Shall we go back to the party? My husband is looking for me. You’ve been very amusing again, darling, as overemotional as ever; but you should watch how much you drink.”
The spindle-legged monkey reached for her hand and she followed him into the living room with a laugh.
“Lost forever,” I screamed aloud.
“Oh, yes; codille, darling,” bleated an animal playing ombre.
I ran out into the stormy night.
IN THE BEER CELLAR
Promenading up and down under the linden trees can be a fine thing, but not on a New Year’s Eve when it is bitter cold and snow is falling. Bareheaded and without a coat I finally felt the cold when icy shivers began to interrupt my feverishness. I trudged over the Opern Bridge, past the Castle, over the Schleusen Bridge, past the Mint. I was on Jaegerstrasse close to Thiermann’s shop. Friendly lights were burning inside. I was about to go in, since I was freezing and I needed a good drink of something strong, when a merry group came bursting out, babbling loudly about fine oysters and good Eilfer wine. One of them—I could see by the lantern light that he was a very impressive-looking officer in the uhlans—was shouting, “You know, he was right, that fellow who cursed them out in Mainz last year for not bringing out the Eilfer, he was right!” They all laughed uproariously.
Without thinking, I continued a little farther, then stopped in front of a beer cellar out of which a single light was shining. Wasn’t it Shakespeare’s Henry V who once felt so tired and discouraged that he “remembered the poor creature, small beer?” Indeed, the same thing was happening to me. My tongue was practically cracking with thirst for a bottle of good English beer. I hastened down into the cellar.
“Yes, sir?” said the owner of the beer cellar, touching his cap amiably as he came toward me.
I asked for a bottle of good English beer and a pipe of good tobacco, and soon found myself sublimely immersed in fleshly comforts which even the Devil had to respect enough to leave me alone. Ah, Justizrat! If you had seen me descend from your bright living room to a gloomy beer cellar, you would have turned away from me in contempt and muttered, “It’s not surprising that a fellow like that can ruin a first-class jacket.”
I must have looked very odd to the others in the beer cellar, since I had no hat or coat. The waiter was just about to say something about it when there was a bang on the window, and a voice shouted down, “Open up! Open up! It’s me!”
The tavern keeper went outside and came right back carrying two torches high; following him came a very tall, slender stranger who forgot to lower his head as he came through the low doorway and received a good knock. A black beretlike cap, though, kept him from serious injury. The stranger sidled along the wall in a very peculiar manner, and sat down opposite me, while lights were placed upon the table. You could characterize him briefly as pleasant but unhappy. He called for beer and a pipe somewhat grumpily, and then with a few puffs, created such a fog bank that we seemed to be swimming in a cloud. His face had something so individual and attractive about it that I liked him despite his dark moroseness. He had a full head of black hair, parted in the middle and hanging down in small locks on both sides of his head, so that he looked like someone out of a Rubens picture. When he threw off his heavy cloak, I could see that he was wearing a black tunic with lots of lacing, and it struck me as very odd that he had slippers pulled on over his boots. I became aware of this when he knocked out his pipe on his foot after about five minutes of smoking.
We didn’t converse right away, for the stranger was preoccupied with some strange plants which he took out of a little botanical case and started to examine closely. I indicated my astonishment at the plants and asked him, since they seemed freshly gathered, whether he had been at the botanical garden or Boucher the florist’s. He smiled in a strange way, and replied slowly, “Botany does not seem to be your speciality, or else you would not have asked such a . . .” he hesitated and I supplied in a low voice, “foolish . . .” “. . . question,” he finished, waving aside my assertion. “If you were a botanist, you would have seen at a glance that these are alpine flora and that they are from Chimborazo.” He said the last part very softly, and you can guess that I felt a little strange. This reply prevented further questions, but I kept having the feeling more and more strongly that I knew him—perhaps not “physically” but “mentally.”
At this point there came another rapping at the window. The tavern keeper opened the door and a voice called in, “Be so good as to cover your mirrors.”
“Aha!” said the host, “General Suvarov is late tonight,” and he threw a cloth covering over the mirror. A short, dried-up-looking fellow came tumbling in with frantic, clumsy haste. He was engulfed in a
cloak of peculiar brownish color, which bubbled and flapped around him as he bounced across the room toward us, so that in the dim light it looked as if a series of forms were dissolving and emerging from one another, as in Ensler’s magic lantern show. He rubbed his hands together inside his overlong sleeves and cried, “Cold! Cold! It’s so cold! Altogether different in Italy.” Finally he took a seat between me and the tall man and said, “Horrible smoke . . . tobacco on tobacco . . . I wish I had a pipeful.”
In my pocket I had a small steel tobacco box, polished like a mirror; I reached it out to the little man. He took one look at it, and thrust out both hands, shoving it away, crying, “Take that damned mirror away.” His voice was filled with horror, and as I stared at him with amazement I saw that he had become a different person. He had burst into the beer cellar with a pleasant, youthful face, but now a deathly pale, shrivelled, terrified old man’s face glared at me with hollow eyes. I turned in horror to the tall man. I was almost ready to shout, “For God’s sake, look at him!” when I saw that the tall stranger was not paying any attention, but was completely engrossed in his plants from Chimborazo. At that moment the little man called, “Northern wine! ” in a very affected manner.
After a time the conversation became more lively again. I wasn’t quite at ease with the little man, but the tall man had the ability of offering deep and fascinating insights upon seemingly insignificant things, although at times he seemed to struggle to express himself and groped for words, and at times used words improperly, which often gave his statements an air of droll originality. In this way, by appealing to me more and more, he offset the bad impression created by the little man.
The little man seemed to be driven by springs, for he slid back and forth on his chair and waved his hands about in perpetual gesticulations, and a shudder, like icewater down my back, ran through me when I saw very clearly that he had two different faces, the pleasant young man’s and the unlovely demonic old man’s. For the most part he turned his old man’s face upon the tall man, who sat impervious and quiet, in contrast to the perpetual motion of the small man in brown, although it was not as unpleasant as when it had looked at me for the first time.—In the masquerade of life our true inner essence often shines out beyond our mask when we meet a similar person, and it so happened that we three strange beings in a beer cellar looked at one another and knew what we were. Our conversation ran along morbid lines, in the sardonic humor that emerges only when you are wounded, almost to the point of death.
“There are hidden hooks and snares there, too,” said the tall man.
“Oh, God,” I joined in, “the Devil has set so many hooks for us everywhere, walls, arbors, hedge roses, and so on, and as we brush past them we leave something of our true self caught there. It seems to me, gentlemen, that all of us lose something this way, just as right now I have no hat or coat. They are both hanging on a hook at the Justizrat’s, as you may know.”
Both the tall and the short man visibly winced, as if they had been unexpectedly struck. The little man looked at me with hatred from his old man’s face, leaped up on his chair and fussily adjusted the cloth that hung over the mirror, while the tall man made a point of pinching the candle wicks. The conversation limped along, and in its course a fine young artist named Philipp was mentioned, together with a portrait of a princess painted with intense love and longing, which she must have inspired in him. “More than just a likeness, a true image,” said the tall man. “So completely true,” I said, “that you could almost say it was stolen from a mirror.”
The little man leaped up in a frenzy, and transfixing me with his flaming eyes, showing his old man’s face, he screamed, “That’s idiotic, crazy—who can steal your reflection? Who? Perhaps you think the Devil can ? He would break the glass with his clumsy claws and the girl’s fine white hands would be slashed and bloody. Erkhhhh. Show me a reflection, a stolen reflection, and I’ll leap a thousand yards for you, you stupid fool! ”
The tall man got up, strode over to the little man, and said in a contemptuous voice, “Don’t make such a nuisance of yourself, my friend, or I’ll throw you out and you’ll be as miserable as your own reflection.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” laughed the little man with furious scorn. “You think so? Do you think so? You miserable dog, I at least still have my shadow, I still have my shadow!” And he leaped out of his chair and rushed out of the cellar. I could hear his nasty neighing laughter outside, and his shouts of “I still have my shadow! ”
The tall man, as if completely crushed, sank back into his chair as pale as death. He took his head in both his hands and sighed deeply and groaned. “What’s wrong?” I asked sympathetically. “Sir,” he replied somewhat incoherently, “that nasty little fellow—followed me here, even in this tavern, where I used to be alone—nobody around, except once in a while an earth-elemental would dive under the table for bread crumbs—he’s made me miserable—there’s no getting it back—I’ve lost . . . I’ve lost . . . my . . . oh, I can’t go on . . . ” and he leaped up and dashed out into the street.
He happened to pass the lights, and I saw that—he cast no shadow! I was delighted, for I recognized him and knew all about him. I ran out after him. “Peter Schlemihl, Peter Schlemihl,” I shouted. But he had kicked off his slippers, and I saw him striding away beyond the police tower, disappearing into the night.
I was about to return to the cellar, but the owner slammed the door in my face, proclaiming loudly, “From guests like these the Good Lord deliver me!”
MANIFESTATIONS
Herr Mathieu is a good friend of mine and his porter keeps his eyes open. He opened the door for me right away when I came to the Golden Eagle and pulled at the bell. I explained matters: that I had been to a party, had left my hat and coat behind, that my house key was in my coat pocket, and that I had no chance of waking my deaf landlady. He was a goodhearted fellow (the porter) and found a room for me, set lights about in it, and wished me a good night. A beautiful wide mirror, however, was covered, and though I don’t know why I did it, I pulled off the cloth and set both my candles on the table in front of the mirror. When I looked in, I was so pale and tired-looking that I could hardly recognize myself. Then it seemed to me that from the remote background of the reflection there came floating a dark form, which as I focused my attention upon it, took on the features of a beautiful woman—Julia —shining with a magic radiance. I said very softly, “Julia, Julia!”
At this I heard a groaning and moaning which seemed to come from behind the drawn curtains of a canopy bed which stood in the farthest corner of the room. I listened closely. The groaning grew louder, seemingly more painful. The image of Julia had disappeared, and resolutely I seized a candle, ripped the curtains of the bed apart, and looked in. How can I describe my feelings to you when I saw before me the little man whom I had met at the beer cellar, asleep on the bed, youthful features dominant (though contorted with pain), muttering in his sleep, “Giuletta, Giuletta!” The name enraged me. I was no longer fearful, but seized the little man and gave him a good shake, shouting, “Heigh, my friend! What are you doing in my room? Wake up and get the Devil out of here!”
The little man blinked his eyes open and looked at me darkly. “That was really a bad dream,” he said. “I must thank you for waking me.” He spoke softly, almost murmured. I don’t know why but he looked different to me; the pain which he obviously felt aroused my sympathy, and instead of being angry I felt very sorry for him. It didn’t take much conversation to learn that the porter had inadvertently given me the room which had already been assigned to the little man, and that it was I who had intruded, disturbing his sleep.
“Sir,” said the little man. “I must have seemed like an utter lunatic to you in the beer cellar. Blame my behavior on this: every now and then, I must confess, a mad spirit seizes control of me and makes me lose all concept of what is right and proper. Perhaps the same thing has happened to you at times?”
“Oh, God, yes,” I replied dejected
ly. “Just this evening, when I saw Julia again.”
“Julia!” crackled the little man in an unpleasant tone. His face suddenly aged and his features twitched. “Let me alone. And please be good enough to cover the mirror again,” he said, looking sadly at his pillow.
“Sir,” I said. “The name of my eternally lost love seems to awaken strange memories in you; so much so that your face has changed from its usual pleasant appearance. Still, I have hopes of spending the night here quietly with you, so I am going to cover the mirror and go to bed.”
He raised himself to a sitting position, looked at me with his pleasant young face, and seized my hand, saying, while pressing it gently, “Sleep well, my friend. I see that we are companions in misery. Julia . . . Giuletta. . . . Well, if it must be, it must be. I cannot help it; I must tell you my deepest secret, and then you will hate and despise me.”
He slowly climbed out of bed, wrapped himself in a generous white robe, and crept slowly, almost like a ghost, to the great mirror and stood in front of it. Ah—Brightly and clearly the mirror reflected the two lighted candles, the furniture, me—but the little man was not there! He stood, head bowed toward it, in front of the mirror, but he cast no reflection! Turning to me, deep despair on his face, he pressed my hands and said, “Now you know the depths of my misery. Schlemihl, a goodhearted fellow, is to be envied, compared to me. He was irresponsible for a moment and sold his shadow. But—I—I gave my reflection to her . . . to her!”
Sobbing deeply, hands pressed over his eyes, the little man turned to the bed and threw himself on it. I simply stood in astonishment, with suspicion, contempt, disgust, sympathy and pity all intermingled, for and against the little man. But while I was standing there, he began to snore so melodiously that it was contagious, and I couldn’t resist the narcotic power of his tones. I quickly covered the mirror again, put out the candles, threw myself upon the bed like the little man, and immediately fell asleep.
The Best Tales of Hoffmann Page 19
