On the Hill of Roses
By
Stefan Grabinski
Translation by Miroslaw Lipinski
Hieroglyphic Press
2012
Table of Contents
On the Hill of Roses
The Frenzied Farmhouse
On a Tangent
Strabismus
The Black Hamlet
Shadow
At the Villa by the Sea
Projections
On the Hill of Roses
Da quella bocea donde usciano ifiori, Ora nescono i vermin... oh! chepietade!...
It was summer - sultry, sweltering - a time when the city depopulates, when clouds of dust are kicked up along the streets and forgotten loners wander about the sidewalks.
My physician recommended sun baths and a vacation in the country where I could leisurely carry out my treatment. Unfortunately my responsibilities and my work prevented me from leaving the city. In order to avoid the curiosity of people and their intrusiveness, I had to find a suitable place in the surrounding suburbs.
After a period of fruitless searching, I finally found a most convenient, out-of-the-way spot about four kilometres from the centre of town. In truth, I came across this place completely by accident, venturing into districts unfamiliar to me. This area lay beyond a small forest, hedged off from the road by deep gorges and hidden from view by a chain of knolls.
It was a spacious meadow, overgrown with silky grass and filled with the fragrance of herbs and forage plants. In the middle stood a solitary high wall of red brick, forming a closed quadrangle. As I presumed that some type of habitation lay beyond the wall, I became uneasy, but, upon further investigation, I ascertained that the wall contained no entrance or opening. Besides, I saw neither path nor any beaten track anywhere, though in the first couple of days I thought I could make out what appeared to be horseshoe tracks near the wall. I examined the wall at that spot but I didn’t notice any details that would rouse my suspicions. Shortly afterwards I ceased being concerned about these tracks, as rains came to obliterate them and then grass began to grow over where they once had been. Finally I was calmed down completely by the absence of even the smallest traces of human life in this area.
Only the chirping of grasshoppers or the occasional distant rattle of a wagon disturbed the quiet of this meadow. The wall seemed to be connected directly to the horizon. Not one tree shot up beyond it, no housetop blackened the sky, no curl of smoke was seen rising from within - the tall red-brick wall went straight up, vanishing into the blue sky.
Pleased with such a comfortable locale, I gave myself over with enthusiasm to the application of the sun’s rays. I would lean my back against the wall, and in this position, sitting on the ground, I basked in the sun. I purposefully selected the lunch hour when the sun’s energy was strongest. All about me were spread out herbs baking in the noon, their scent rich and heady, while the chirping of grasshoppers announced their presence. The secretions of chamomile and mint, the giddy aroma of thyme floated in thick ethers, like the waves of an ocean. I had the impression of something almost palpable. Besides this, there was the quiet - windless, sleepy. At times I would hear the barely audible friction of the canary-coloured wings of a brimstone butterfly or the scattering of powder bursting from a flower’s heavy bag. Sometimes, from a far distance, I could hear the chirp of a lark and a quail’s fitful response.
The sun was intense, as if of molten gold, and weighed down the grass of the meadow with its brilliant strength.
Lulled to sleep by the perfumes of the place and the scorching heat, I would tilt my head back and follow the progress of feverish clouds, which, as if drunken, whirled across the sky in undefined paths, not daring to cover a sun too powerful at that hour. With its pulsating rays, the sun pushed these clouds far into the distance.
Eventually, around noon, I would fall under the influence of the heat and the orgy of scents into a type of sleep or trance. This state usually didn’t last long, maybe a quarter of an hour, but it was so intoxicating that I would have gladly lengthened these minutes to an hour.
At first, this trance provided no concrete image from which, for instance, a memory of a mental picture could arise. Instead, an impression of the scent of roses was formed. I say 'was formed,’ as in this manner I want to clarify the affair from the beginning. Initially, I thought that the rose scent was only an internal evocation of an over-sensitive sense of smell while I was under the influence of the trance. Slowly, however, I began to change my opinion, as in the following days the fragrance of roses gave me the impression of having already been around earlier than my memory of it. This fragrance, therefore, had to come from real flowers, which could only be growing within the walled enclosure, as they were no roses to be seen around the area. As the roses smelled stronger whenever the wind passed through the vortex of warmed air above the enclosure, it became evident to me that roses were blooming beyond the wall.
From then on, this fact, stimulated by my curiosity, caused my thoughts to wander about that nebulous land of the wildest speculations. Perhaps some eccentric gardener had shut himself within four brick walls and is cultivating flowers on a splendid whim? - perhaps some mad aesthetic, half-deviant, bored with life?
I placed my ear against the wall, struck it with stones; I even threw a few stones over the wall to the other side - all in vain: I never heard a response from within.
Therefore, I let things be, satisfied that the area beyond the wall was empty and uninhabited by any human being; at most, it was just overgrown with roses. The question as to what was beyond the wall would have completely ceased to occupy my mind if not for certain circumstances that started to accompany the trance and the changes that began to soon appear.
On the fourth day, mixed in with the usual fragrance of herbs and roses, another scent reached me.
I assure you that, until the solution of the puzzle, I didn’t have a clue as to what it represented, so that with the assistance of just a purely normal, commonplace ‘smell function,’ as I’d like to call it, in conjunction with rational premises, I couldn’t come to a conclusion as to its source. I only surmised that this particular scent, which had wormed itself into the existing ones, had to be considerably stronger and more distinct, as in the present situation it was being smothered and transformed by other scents, reaching me by chance through their mutual interference. Despite my efforts, I couldn’t identify this scent: it was foreign and unknown to me. I smelled it for the first time in my life.
Concurrently, the state of my afternoon trance began to change. One day, intoxicated with the sun, I leaned my head back and thought I saw a human head withdraw at the point where the wall touched the bluish dome of the horizon. A vague fear ran through my entire body. It seemed as if someone, without my awareness, had been watching me for some time from over the wall and, seeing that I had now noticed, quickly hid back. Coming to, I explained this as a weird hallucination, so frequent in a trance, and tried to calm myself. But in vain: I continually tried to call to mind the expression on the face and the shape of the head. But the features were in view for such a quick moment that it was impossible to get a clear mental picture.
I returned home highly agitated that day and impatiently waited for the morrow, certain that a way would present itself for a more thorough examination of this mysterious occurrence. But rain fell the next day, driving me to despair. I became irritated with waiting for the weather to clear, till finally, after three days, the rescuing sun greeted me.
When the warmed earth and plants reached their giddy point, I smelled again that elusive fragrance among the chaos of other scents, though now it wa
s already somewhat distinctly accented.
In the belief that the vision lacked any basis in reality, I strained my eyes and made an effort to maintain presence of mind, wanting in this way to prevent the vision from appearing.
Meantime, the sun, the roses, and perhaps some unknown component prevailed to overpower my mind, and exactly at noon I saw, this time quite clearly, the refined, beautiful head of a woman leaning above me at the edge of the wall. Her head seemed to be made of mist, effaced, interwoven with barely perceptible atoms - a noble oblong face, the pupils of her eyes framed in pearly white and her hair woven at the back of the head into a Grecian knot; its colour I couldn’t determine, as the substance that this vision weaved its form was of an indistinct gelatinous hue.
Her eyes were sad and filled with remorse. Just when I was about to speak, she dissipated.
In the days that followed, the same thing repeated itself but with this difference, that entire figure of this unknown woman, clothed in a garment of mist, began to slowly reveal itself, as if floating above the wall. The outline of her body surprised me: she appeared to be sitting; the divine, elongated fingers of her delicate, aristocratic hands dangled inertly, as if her arms were under some kind of support, leaving the hands free.
She was so unusually beautiful that I took her for the personification of my ideal woman, brought forth in this special manner while I was in my trance-like state. I became passionately infatuated with her and lived for those brief, very brief moments in which she would come into view.
Until one day - the fourth since she revealed herself - I observed with dismay a puzzling change in her angelic face. Some spot, dark like an abyss, blossomed on her right cheek. The following day it expanded cruelly to encompass her forehead. The spot was similar to the spots that can be seen on the moon on a bright night: it spoke of desolation and coldness.
Before long, alarming shadows began to stretch along the entire length of her alabaster arms. I watched with despair the mysterious progress of this deterioration, this darkening of a luminous vision.
These changes happened concurrently with a change in the quality of that special scent that I’ve already mentioned a couple of times. I wouldn’t say that the scent took on intensity, because then I maybe would have immediately guessed its origin, but rather it took on an ever more distinct tinge.
This parallel change pointed to the reciprocal inter -dependence of this scent and the vision I was seeing. I also suspected that my abnormally developed sense of smell was at play here.
Regarding this sense of smell, I was an anomaly. All my rare abilities in this direction showed up only in moments of strong agitation, irritation, and the like. At other times, my sense of smell didn’t differentiate itself from that of the average person. One should add that always in these circumstances I appeared a bit abnormal, though most often I was in a state of complete consciousness.
My special ability was known, so people felt free to conduct tests with me. Once I was intentionally irritated during a conversation carried on in the dining room. Meanwhile, the lady of the house had placed on a parlour table a splendid vase of flowers, which I had not yet seen, as it had been just brought in. Neither I nor any of the other guests could catch a glimpse of this vase or the flowers, because the parlour was situated three rooms away and to the left of where we sat. Furthermore, the doors in between were closed, so that not one person of the company present could, without the slightest doubt, smell the slightest trace of any scent. After a moment, Lady W. showed up and, turning to me with a smile, asked:
‘What do you think of my new purchase?’
‘Are you talking about the vase in the parlour?’
‘Of course.’
‘It’s very beautiful.’
And I accurately described its shape - an eight-pointed starfish design inlayed along the edges with coral. I didn’t omit to mention the details of the flowers inside, and also the elegant ornamentation in which they were arranged. The expensive container, full of the essence of the scent, facilitated my task.
Another time I was deceitfully stirred up with a little champagne, after which I was compelled to guess twelve various objects placed in small caskets that had been sprinkled with a fragrant oil to mask what was hidden within. The experiment turned out splendidly. In succession, I named each object without hesitation.
Personally, I stayed away from similar experiments, because after each one I experienced immense fatigue and an attack of neuralgia.
Even though the process that I went through during these aforementioned experiments was certainly most complex, I endeavoured to understand its most notable features.
That I could infer from an object its shape, position, maybe even its movement - this appeared to be a result of the entire interconnection of physiological events.
Every point of a body sends out a scent of a special and, to a certain extent, individualized tinge that calls forth a corresponding stimulation in my olfactory centre. If we conceive a fragrance to be a movement of particles of ether, similar to the motion of a light or heat wave, and the like, then the affair becomes clear. The sum of these stimulations, arranged at the cerebral cortex according to their source, gives an overall impression and through this underground path is transformed into a sum of visual stimulations heading to the optical centre and producing mental pictures. In a special circumstance, there probably existed a very close relationship between my sensitivity in my centres of smell and sight. The slightest change in one elicited an immediate response in the other: these centres seemed to share mutually reciprocal sensations. To be sure, another element also involved in this was an intensification of an unusually fine memory, which having had a history of experiencing various stimulating smells in the air would elicit a corresponding series of visuals of every possible association and combination. Perhaps just as a brilliant musical scholar is able to play to the end an entire symphony based on a few notes, I was able to surmise from not much its entirety.
I could never claim that I ‘saw’ an object in the common meaning of the word. If I use this expression, I’m only speaking figuratively, as the role of the imagination came into play here also, projecting a mental picture.
If, however, a scent isn’t a wave but originates as a result of coming off the particles of the body, then it apparently proceeds symmetrically, appropriate to the shape of the object and its type. I knew’ how’ to arrange the disorderly chaos of stimulants by tracing each one back to its source.
With both theories, I did not exclude the direct action of the imagination and the brain’s reasoning centre, without any previous transposition to a visual image.
How far my optic-olfactory abilities extended, I myself did not know. Maybe they improved with age, though I didn’t attach any importance to this, if so. In any case, I assumed that their automatic responses were somehow at play here and that this was not simply a case of having a vision of a beautiful woman.
Finally I decided to go over the wall. Only the area within its enclosure could give me a desired explanation of this dark affair.
The day following my decision, I arrived early in the morning with a rope ladder equipped with two hooks at the end. Throwing this flexible footbridge on the top of the wall, I climbed it, rung by rung.
The wall was a meter thick, so that I could comfortably stand on its embattlement.
A delicious sight met my eyes when I looked down. The area within the wall banked up at the eastern side into the shape of a hill overgrown completely with roses. In the southern area, lower down, stood an elegant one-storied villa. The rest of the area was filled with a dream-like scene of brimming flower beds, sheltered alleys, a carpet-like lawn, hotbeds, and a greenhouse.
I moved along the top of wall until I reached the corner, looking for a place to lower myself down to the other side. At the neighbouring wall, I noticed on the inside something in the manner of a door. So there was an entrance, but cleverly concealed from the outside. Here I lowered myself do
wn on the ladder...
I stood opposite a hospitably open gate of the villa. Evidently all the doors were open from end to end because I could see roses reddening in the garden on the other side.
I plunged into the coolness of the rooms. I was instantly dazzled by the splendour of medieval-styled furnishings - large Gothic windows set in recesses, mahogany chairs with high arms, heavy velvet tapestries. The rooms were huge, high-vaulted; expensive oil lamps hung from the ceilings supported by arches.
A deep amaranthine tone prevailed. This hue flowed from the brocaded wall tapestries and the carpets spread out everywhere.
The stained-glass windows in a room apparently intended as a parlour let in a multicoloured rosette which fanned out like a shield onto an organ lined with small ivory keys. The keyboard was open. In the spread-out arms of silver, cup-shaped candelabras were embedded halfway-burned candles, with fat, teary mushrooms, solidified into a white stigma of suffering, clustered about them: the tears of funereal candles.
I went through all the rooms, one by one. The interior gave the impression of life being stopped in full progress, a frozen moment of reflection, something like the fairy-tale of Sleeping Beauty. The only thing missing, it seemed, was the kiss of a young prince to set in motion this palace bewitched in sleep. Even time stood still: antique clocks - apparently not wound up for a while - were dully silent.
I glanced at my watch: it was eleven in the morning. Wearied, I returned to the bedroom. For some reason I wanted to rest precisely here. Perhaps because it was here that I found the most signs of life interrupted.
I sat down in an armchair, mechanically taking in my hand the woman’s overlay that someone had thrown there. On the marble floor, several steps from me, lay a lace kerchief. I picked it up: a delicate perfume-like scent came from it. Perhaps this scent’s original source came from a phial that stood on the mantelshelf. I went up to it. The phial was indeed filled halfway with some liquid. I poured a couple of drops on my palm, and let out a quick cry of pain, as if I had been scalded. Was it poison?
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