The Fictions of Bruno Schulz

by yao

  SANATORIUM UNDER THE SIGN OF THE HOURGLASS SPRING streets in a noisy, ragged gang, rushing into grocery shops, and stealing food. They joked, nudged one another, laughed, rolled the whites of their eyes, chattered gutturally, and bared their white, shining teeth. Before the militia could be mobilized, they disappeared into thin air. I have felt it coming; it was unavoidable. It was the natural conse- quence of meteorological tension. Only now do I realize what I have felt all along: that the spring was announcing the Negroes' arrival. Where had they come from? Why did the hordes of black men in striped cotton pyjamas suddenly appear here? Was it the great Barnum who had opened his circus in the neighbourhood, having travelled with an endless train of people, animals, and demons? Had his wagons, crowded with an endless chatter of beasts and acrobats, stopped anywhere near us? Not at all. Barnum was far away. I have my suspicions, but I won't breathe a word. For you, Bianca, I'll remain silent, and no torture will extract any confession from me. 38 On that day I dressed slowly and with great care. Finally, in front of the mirror, I composed my face into an expression of calm and relentless determination. I carefully loaded up my pistol, before slip- ping it in the back pocket of my trousers. I glanced into the mirror once more and with my hand patted the breastpocket of my jacket where I had hidden some documents. I was ready to face the man. 1 felt completely calm and determined. Bianca's future was at stake, and for her I was prepared to do anything! I decided not to confide in Rudolph. The better I knew him, the stronger I felt that he was a prosaic fellow, unable to rise above triviality. I have had enough of his face, alternatively freezing in consternation and growing pale with envy at each of my new revelations. Deep in thought, I quickly walked the short distance. When the great iron gates clanged shut behind me with suppressed vibrations, I at once entered a different climate, different currents of air, the cool and unfamiliar region of a great year. The black branches of trees pointed to another, abstract time; their bare forked tops were outlined against the white sky of another, foreign zone; the avenues closed in. The voices of birds, muted in the vast spaces of the sky, cut the silence, a silence heavy and loaded that spread into grey meditation, into a great, unsteady paleness without end or goal. With my head raised, cool and self-possessed, 1 asked to he announced. 1 was admitted to a darkened hall that exuded an aura of quiet luxury. Through a high open window the garden air flowed in gentle, balmy waves. These soft influxes, penetrating across the gentle filter of billowing curtains, made objects become alive; furtive chords resounded along rows of Venetian tumblers in a glass-fronted cabinet, and the leaves on the wallpaper rustled, silvery and scared. It is strange how old interiors reflect their dark turbulent past, how in their stillness bygone history tries to be reenacted, how the same situations repeat themselves with infinite variations, turned upside down and inside out by the fruitless dialectic of wallpapers and hang- ings. Silence, vitiated and demoralized, ferments into recriminations. Why hide it? The excessive excitements and paroxysms of fever have had to be soothed here, night after night by injections of secret drugs, and the wallpapers have provided imagined visions of gentle landscapes and of distant mirrored waters. I heard a rustle. Preceded by a valet, a man was coming down the stairs, short but well-built, economic of gesture, blinded by the light reflected on his large horn-rimmed spectacles. For the first time I faced him closely. He was inscrutable, but I noticed, not without satisfaction, that after my first words two furrows of worry and bitter- ness appeared on his face. While behind his spectacles he was composing his face into a mask of magnificient haughtiness, I could see panic slowly getting hold of him. As he gradually became more interested, it was obvious from his concentrated attention that at last he was beginning to take me seriously. He invited me into his study next door. When we entered it, a woman in a white dress leapt away from the door, as if she had been listening, and disappeared inside the house. Was it Bianca 's governess? When I entered the room, I felt as if I were entering a jungle. The opaque greenish twilight was striped by the watery shadows of Venetian blinds drawn over the windows. The walls were hung with botanical prints; small colourful birds fluttered in large cages. Probably wishing to gain time, the man showed me specimens of primitive arms – jereeds, boomerangs, and tomahawks – which were displayed on the walls. My acute sense of smell detected the smell of curare. While he was handling a sort of primitive halberd, I suggested that he should be careful, and supported 192 193

  SANATORIUM UNDER THE SIGN OF THE HOURGLASS SPRING my warning by producing my pistol. He smiled wryly, a little put out, and put the weapon back in its place. We sat down at a very large ebony desk. I thanked him for the cigar he offered, saying that I did not smoke. My abstemiousness obviously impressed him. With a cigar in the corner of his hanging lips, he looked at me with a friendliness that did not inspire confidence. Then, turning the pages of his cheque- book, he suddenly proposed a compromise, naming a four-figure sum, while his pupils rolled into the corners of his eves. My ironical smile made him abruptly change the subject. With a sigh he opened a large ledger. He began to explain the state of his affairs. Bianca's name was not mentioned even once, although even , word we uttered concerned her. I looked at him without moving, and the ironical smile never left my lips. At last, quite exhausted, he leaned back in his chair. `You are intractable,' he said as if to himself, `what exactly do you want? ' I began to speak again. I spoke softly, with restrained passion. A flush came to,,my cheeks. Trembling, I mentioned several times the name Maximilian, stressing it, and observed how my adversary's face became successively paler. At last I finished, breathing heavily. He sat there shaken. He could not master the expression on his face, which suddenly became old and tired. `Your decision will show me,' I ended, `whether you have really understood the new state of affairs and whether you are ready to follow it by your actions. I demand facts, and nothing but facts .. With a shaking hand he reached for the bell. I stopped him by raising my hand, with my finger on the trigger of the pistol, I withdrew backwards from the room. At the door, the servant handed me my hat. I found myself on a terrace flooded by sunshine, my eyes still full of the eddying twilight. I walked downstairs, not turning my head, triumphant and now certain that no assassin's gun would be aimed at me from behind the drawn Venetian blinds of the mansion. 39 Important matters, highest affairs of state, force me now to have frequent confidential talks with Bianca. I prepare for them scrupu- lously, sitting at my desk late into the night, poring over genealogical details of a most delicate nature. Time goes by, the night stops softly outside the open window, matures, grows more solemn – suggesting deeper stages of initiation – and finally disarms itself with a helpless sigh. In long, slow gulps the dark room inhales the air of the park, its fluffy seeds and pollens, its silent plushy moths, that fly softly around the walls. The wallpaper bristles with fear, cool ecstasies and flights of fancy begin, the panic and the folly of a night in May, long after midnight. Its transparent and glassy fauna, the light plankton of gnats, falls on me as I lean over my papers and work far into the small hours. Grasshoppers and mosquitoes land on my papers – blown- glass squiggles, thin monograms, arabesques invented by the night – and grow larger and more fantastic, as large as bats or vampires. On such extramarginal nights that know no limits, space loses its meaning. Surrounded by the bright circle of midges, with a sheaf of 194 195

  SANATORIUM UNDER THE SIGN OF THE HOURGLASS SPRING papers ready at last, I make a few steps into an unknown direction, into one of the blind alleys of the night that must end at a door, Bianca's white door. I press the handle and enter, as if from one room to another. When I cross the threshold, my black wide-brimmed hat flutters as if blown by the wind. My fantastically knotted tie rustles in the draught as I press to my heart an attache case filled with most secret documents. It feels as if I have stepped from the vestibule of night into the night proper. How deeply one can breathe the nightly ozone! Here is the thicket, here is the core of the night scented with jasmine. It is here that the night begins its real story. A lar
ge lamp with a pink shade is lighted at the head of the bed. In its pink glow Bianca rests on enormous pillows, sailing on the bedding like on a night tide, under a wide, open window. Bianca is reading, leaning on her white forearm. To my deep bow she replies with a quick look from over her book. Seen from nearby, her beauty is muted, not overwhelming. With sacrilegious pleasure I notice that her nose is not very nobly shaped and her complexion far from perfect. I notice it with a certain relief, although I know that she controls her glamour with a kind of pity in order that I do not became breathless and tongue-tied. Her beauty regenerates through the medium of distance and then becomes painful, peerless, and unbearable. Emboldened by her nod, I sit down by her bed and begin my report, with the help of the documents prepared. Through the open window behind Bianca's head the crazy rustle of the trees is heard. Processions of trees pass by, penetrate through the walls, spread themselves, and become all-embracing. Bianca listens to me somewhat distractedly. It is quite irritating that she does not stop reading. She allows me to argue each matter thoroughly, to enumerate the pros and cons; then lifting her eyes from the book and fluttering her lids a little absently, she makes a quick, perfunctory, but astonishingly apt decision. Attentive and concentrating on her words, I listen carefully to the tone of her voice, so as to understand her hidden intentions. Then I humbly submit the papers for her signature; Bianca signs, with down- cast eyes, her eyelashes, casting long shadows, and watches me with slight irony as I countersign them. Perhaps the late hour, past midnight, does not favour concentration on affairs of state. The night, having reached its last frontiers, leans toward dissolution. While we are talking, the illusion of a room fades; we are now practically in the middle of a forest. Tufts of fern grow in every corner; behind the bed a screen of bushes moves animated and entangled. From that leafy wall, big-eyed squirrels, woodpeckers, and sundry night creatures materialize and look immobile at the lamp- light with shining, bulging eyes. At a certain moment, we have entered an illegal time, a night beyond control, liable to all kinds of excesses and crazes. What is happening now does not really count and consists of trifles, reckless misdemeanours, and nightly frolics. This must be the reason for the strange changes that occur in Bianca's behaviour. She, always so self-possessed and serious, the personification of beautiful discipline, becomes now whimsical, contrary, and unpredict- able. The papers are spread out on the great plain of her counterpane. Bianca picks them up nonchalantly, casts an eye on them, and lets them fall again from between her loosened fingers. Pouting, a pale arm laid under her head, she postpones her decisions and makes me wait. Or else she turns away from me, clamps her hands over her ears, and is deaf to my entreaties and persuasions. Then without a word, with one kick of her foot under the bedclothes; she makes all the papers slip to the floor, and with wide open eyes she watches over her arm from the height of her pillows how, crouching, I pick them up carefully from the ground, blowing the pine needles from them. These whims, quite charming in themselves, do not make any difficult and responsible task as regent any easier. During our conversation the rustle of the forest and the scent of jasmine evoke in the room visions of landscapes. Innumerable trees and bushes, whole woodland sceneries, move past us. And then it becomes clear that we find ourselves in a kind of train, a nightly forest train, rolling slowly along a ravine in the wooded outskirts of the city. Hence the delightful breeze that flows through the compartment. A conductor with a lantern appears from nowhere, emerges from among the trees, and punches our tickets with his machine. The darkness deepens, the draft becomes more piercing. Bianca' s eyes shine, her cheeks are flushed, an enchanting smile opens her lips. Does she want to confide in me? Reveal a secret? Bianca talks of treason, and her face burns with ecstasy, her eyes narrow in a paroxysm of delight when, wriggling like a lizard under her counterpane, she accuses me of having betrayed my most sacred mission. She stubbornly fixes my face, now pale, with her sweet eyes, which are beginning to squint. 196 197

  The Fictions of Bruno Schulz

  SANATORIUM UNDER THE SIGN OF THE HOURGLASS SPRING `Do it,' she whispers intently, `do it. You will become one of them, one of the dark Negroes ...' And when in despair I put my finger to my lips in a gesture of entreaty, her little face suddenly becomes mean and venomous. `You are ridiculous with your inflexible loyalty and your sense of mission. God knows why you image you are indispensable. And what if I should choose Rudolph? I prefer him to you, you boring pedant. Ah, he would be obedient and follow me into crime, into self- destruction!' Then, with a triumphant expression she asks: `Do you remember Lonka, the washerwoman Antonia's daughter, with whom you played when you were small?' I look at her amazed. `It was I,' she says giggling, `only I was a boy at that time. Did you like me then?' 0 there is something very rotten and dissolute at the very centre of spring. Bianca, Bianca, must you disappoint me, even you? 40 I am afraid to reveal my trump card too soon. I am playing for too high a stake to risk it. It's a long time since I have ceased to report to Rudolph about developments. Besides, his behaviour has recently undergone a change. Envy, which had been the dominant feature of his character, has given way to some sort of magnanimity. Whenever we meet by chance, an eager, rather embarrassed friendliness now shows in his gestures and clumsy remarks, whereas formerly, under the grumpy expression of a silent and expectant reserve, there was at least a devouring curiosity, a hunger for new details concerning the affair. Now he has become strangely calm and seems uninterested in what I might have to say. This suits me because very night I attend extremely important meetings at the Wax Figures Exhibition, meetings that must remain secret for the time being. The attendants, stupefied by drink, which I generously supply, sleep the sleep of the just in their closets, while I, in the light of a few smoking candles, confer with the distinguished company of exhibits. There are among them some Royals, and negotiations with them are never an easy matter. From their past they have preserved an instinctive gallantry now inap - plicable, a readiness to burn in the fire of some principle, to put their lives at stake. "I'he ideals that once guided their lives have been discredited one after another in the prose of daily life, their fires have burned out: here they stand, played out yet full of unspent energy, and, their eyes shining crazily, they await the cue for their last role. When they are so uncritical and defenceless, how easy it is to give them the wrong cue, to suggest any idea that comes along! This simplifies my task, of course. On the other hand, it is extremely difficult to reach them, to light in them the spark of interest, so empty have they become. To wake them up at all has cost me a lot of effort. They were all in their beds, mortally pale and labouring for breath. I had to lean over each of them and whisper the vital words, words that should shock them like electric current. They would open one lazy eye. They were afraid of the attendants, pretended to be deaf or dead. Only when reassured that we were alone would they lift themselves up on their beds, bandaged, made of bits and pieces, feeling their wooden limbs, their false lungs and imitation livers. At first they were very mistrustful and wanted to recite the roles they had learned. They could not understand why anyone should ask them for anything 198 199

  SANATORIUM UNDER THE SIGN OF THE HOURGLASS SPRING different. And so they sat dully, groaning from time to time, these once splendid men, the flower of mankind: Dreyfus and Garibaldi, Bismarck and Victor Emmanuel I, Gambetta, Mazzini, and many others. The most difficult to persuade was Archduke Maximilian himself. When, whispering in his ear, I kept repeating Bianca's name, he only blinked his eyes and no glimmer of understanding showed on his face. It's only when I uttered distinctly the name of Franz Joseph that a wild grimace appeared on his face, a pure conditional reflex, in which his feelings were not involved. That particular complex had long ago been eliminated from his consciousness: how else could he live with it, with that burning hatred, he, who had been put together from pieces after the bloody execution at Queretaro? I had to teach him about his life from the beginning. His memory was very poor. I had to recur to the subconscious glimmers of feeling. I was imp
lanting in him elements of love and hate, but already on the following night he did not remember anything. His more intelligent colleagues tried to help him, to prompt the reactions he should show; his reeducation advanced slowly, step by step. He had been very neglected, innerly ravaged by the attendants, yet in spite of this I finally succeeded in making him reach for his sword at the sound of Franz Joseph's name. He very nearly stabbed Victor Emmanuel I, who did not give way to him quickly enough. In fact, most of that splendid assembly absorbed my idea with much more eagerness and much quicker than the plodding, luckless Archduke. Their enthusiasm was boundless, and I had to use all my strength to restrain them. It is difficult to say whether they understood in all its implications the ideal for which they were to fight, but the merit of the case was not their concern. Destined to burn in the fire of some dogma, they were enchanted at having acquired, thanks to me, a catchword for which they could die fighting in exultation. I calmed them with hypnosis, taught them patiently how to keep a secret. I was proud of their progress. What leader had ever had under his command such illustrious subordinates, generals who were such fiery spirits, a guard composed of geniuses, cripples though they all might be! At last the date came; on a stormy and windy night all that was being prepared had to happen. Lightning pierced the sky, opening up the gory, frightening interior of the earth and shutting it again. Yet the world continued to turn with the rustling of trees, processions of forests, shifting of horizons. Under cover of darkness we left the exhibition. I walked at the head of the inspired cohort, advancing among the violent limping and rattling, the clatter of crutches and metal. Lightning licked the bared blades of sabres. Stumbling, we reached the gate of the villa. We found it open. Worried, anticipating treachery, I gave the order to light flares. The air became red from burning resinous chips, flocks of frightened birds shot up high into the glare, and in this Bengal light we saw clearly the villa, its terraces and balconies illuminated by the flames. From the roof a white flag was waving. Struck by a bad premonition, I marched into the courtyard at the head of my warriors. The majordomo appeared on the terrace. Bowing, he descended the monumental staircase and approached hesitantly, with uncertain gestures. I pointed my blade at him. My loyal troops stood immobile, lifting high their smoking flares: in the silence one could hear the hissing of the flames. `Where is M. de V?' I asked. He spread his hands helplessly. `He has gone away, sir,' he answered. `We shall see if this is so. And where is the Infanta? ' ` Her Highness has also left, they have all gone away ... 200 201