The Dedalus Meyrink Reader

by Gustav Meyrink

  Lily’s heart misses a beat in terror: here she is, a defenceless lady, out in the open! What if they catch sight of her? They’ll drag her up before the beak in front of that old perjurer of a crab, the biggest crook in the sea, and then … and then …

  Here they come, getting closer — they’re just a step away; the cruel talons of ruin and disgrace are on the point of encircling her waist with their iron grip.

  Suddenly the dark water shivers, the coral branches creak and shake like seaweed and a pale glow illumines the scene from afar.

  Crabs, rays, sea-devils dart and scatter across the sand, pieces of rock break away and swirl up in the current.

  A bluish, smoothly moving wall as big as all the world comes flying through the waters.

  Nearer and nearer comes the phosphorescent light, the gigantic glowing wing of Tintorera, the demon of annihilation, comes sweeping up, stirring fiery chasm-deep whirlpools in the foaming water.

  Everything becomes caught up in the spinning eddies.

  The lily flies vertiginously up and down again over a landscape of emerald froth. Where now are the crabs, where the shame and dread? Raging destruction has come storming through the world, a bacchanal of death, a glorious dance for the prize of a soul.

  The senses expire like a smoking flame.

  Then next a frightful shuddering jolt, the eddies stand in the water, but continue to spin faster and faster, flinging down on to the sea floor everything they had previously torn up.

  Many a fine armoured piece meets its Waterloo there.

  When at last the lily awoke from her fainting fall she found herself lying on a bed of soft algae.

  The gentle seahorse (who had taken the day off from work) was bending over her.

  A cool morning stream fanned her face, and she looked up. She could hear the cackling of goose-barnacles and the cheerful bleating of a lamprey.

  ‘You are quite safe here in my little house in the country’ replied the seahorse to her look of enquiry, and gazing deep into her eyes. ‘Please rest a little more, dear lady, it will do you good.’

  But she could not, for all she tried. An indescribable feeling of nausea overwhelmed her.

  ‘What a storm that was last night — my head is still swimming from all the commotion,’ went on the seahorse chattily. ‘By the way, can I tempt you to a spot of blubber — a really nice fat piece of juicy sailor-blubber?’

  At the mere mention of the word the lily felt so ill that she was obliged to clamp her lips tight shut. But it was no use. She began to retch (the seahorse turned his head discreetly to one side), and in a moment had brought up the Blamol pill which, quite undigested, floated and vanished upwards in a cloud of bubbles.

  Thank God the seahorse hadn’t seen it.

  The invalid suddenly felt as right as rain again. She curled herself up with contentment.

  Wonder of wonders! She could curl up again, could move her limbs about, as before.

  Ecstasy upon ecstasy!

  The seahorse could feel bubbles of joy pricking his eyes. ‘Christmas, it’s really Christmas today!’ he rejoiced. ‘I must tell the cuttlefish at once: in the meanwhile you must have a really good long sleep.’

  ‘What do you find so remarkable about the lily’s sudden recovery, my dear Seahorse?’ asked the cuttlefish, with a condescending smile. ‘You are an enthusiast, my young friend. As a matter of principle I don’t usually discuss medical matters with non-professionals (bring up a chair, Perch, for the gentleman), but I’ll make an exception this time, and endeavour to match my mode of expression to your level of understanding as far as I can. So, you consider Blamol to be a poison, and you attribute the paralysis to its effects. What a mistake! I might add, by the way, that Blamol is now altogether passé, it is yesterday’s panacea; today we usually recommend Idiotine Chloride: medical science strides eternally onwards. That the illness should have coincided with swallowing the pill was pure coincidence — it’s well known that everything that happens in the world is coincidence — for in the first place Lateral Chord Sclerosis has a quite different set of causes (though discretion forbids me to name them), and secondly, Blamol works, like all such agents, not when you take it, but only when you spit it out — and then of course it’s bound to be beneficial in its effects.

  ‘And finally, as far as the cure is concerned, well, here we have a clear case of autosuggestion. In reality, — and by ‘reality’ I mean what Kant called the ‘thing in itself’ — in reality the lady is just as ill as she was yesterday: she just doesn’t notice it. It is precisely in the case of those with inferior mental powers that autosuggestion works so effectively. Of course I’m not implying anything by saying this — you know how highly I esteem the little woman at home:

  ‘Give all honour to the ladies,

  They plait and weave …’

  as Schiller puts it.

  But now, my young friend, enough of this, it will simply upset you unnecessarily. A propos — you will of course do me the honour? It is Christmas and — I’m getting married.’

  ‘Who is he marrying, then?’ he asked the Perch on the way out. ‘You don’t say — the blue mussel? But why not, though — just another one in it for the money.’

  When, that evening, the lily arrived, somewhat late but with a glowing complexion, and leaning on the seahorse’s fin, the congratulations were without end. Everyone gave her a hug, and even the veiled snails and the cockles who were acting as bridesmaids put their maidenly timidity aside in the warmth of their hearts.

  It was a magnificent occasion, as only the rich can provide — the blue mussel’s parents had millions after all, and they had even organised some phosphorescent sea-fire.

  Four long oyster-banks had been laid out and the feast had lasted well over an hour, yet still more dainty dishes appeared. The perch went on steadily circulating with a glittering decanter (upside down, of course) of hundred year-old air, recovered from the cabin of a sunken wreck.

  Everyone had become a little tipsy, and the toasts being drunk to the blue mussel and her bridegroom were being drowned out by the popping and clicking of dead men’s fingers and the clatter of razorshells.

  The seahorse and the lily were sitting at the far end of the table, quite in the shadows, hardly noticing their surroundings. From time to time he would squeeze one or other of her tentacles, and in return she rewarded him with a glance full of ardour.

  Towards the end of the meal the band struck up with a song:

  A joke, a kiss

  For a married Miss

  Is utter bliss;

  It’s quite what’s done

  When you’re having fun

  But he’s got to be young …

  And their table-companions exchanged a sly wink. It would have been impossible not to suppose that everyone had their own ideas about what sort of liaisons were being quietly arranged here.

  Dr. Cinderella’s Plants

  Do you see the little blackened bronze statue over there between the two lamps? That has been the cause of all the weird experiences I have had in recent years.

  These phantom perturbations which have so drained my energy are all links in a chain which, if I pursue it back into the past, comes back every time to the same starting point: the bronze.

  If I pretend to myself that there may be other causes of my anxieties, the image nevertheless recurs to me, like another milestone along the road.

  But where this road is leading me — to ultimate illumination or to ever-increasing horror — I have no desire to know, wishing only to cling on to those occasions when for a few days I feel relief from my doom and can sense freedom until I am overcome by the next shock.

  I unearthed the thing in the desert sands of Thebes one day as I was prodding about with my stick, and from the very first moment, as I was examining it more closely, I was struck with a morbid curiosity to know what the image might signify — I have never wanted to know anything quite so urgently.

  In the beginning I would ask eve
ry explorer I met, but without success. Only one old Arabian collector seemed to have some idea about what it meant.

  ‘A representation of an Egyptian hieroglyph,’ he proposed; the unusual position of the arms of the figure must indicate some kind of mysterious ecstatic state.

  I took the bronze with me back to Europe, and hardly an evening went by without my falling into the most remarkable reveries about its mystery.

  An uncanny feeling would come over me on these occasions as I brooded on some poisonous and malevolent presence which was threatening, with malicious relish, to break out of its lifeless cocoon in order to fasten itself leechlike upon me, and to remain, like some incurable disease, as the dark tyrant of my life. Then one day, as I was concerned with quite a different matter, the thought which made sense of the whole riddle struck me with such force, and so unexpectedly, that I staggered under its impact.

  Such shafts of illumination strike into our souls like meteors. We know not whence they come: we witness only their white-hot gleam as they fall.

  It is almost like a feeling of fear — then — a slight — as — as if some alien … What am I trying to say?! I’m sorry, sometimes I get so forgetful, especially since I’ve had to drag this lame leg along. Yes, well, the answer to my brooding thoughts appeared suddenly stark in front of my eyes: imitation!

  And as if the one word had demolished a wall, I was overcome by the flood-waves of a realisation that that alone must be the key to all the mysteries of our existence.

  An uncanny, automatic act of imitation, unconscious, perpetual, the hidden guide of every creature!

  An omnipotent, mysterious guide — a masked pilot, silently stepping on board the ship of life in the grey of the dawn. Rising up out of those measureless chasms into which our soul delights to descend when sleep has closed the gates of day! And perhaps down there in those abysses of disembodied existence there stands the brazen image of a demon willing us to be like him, to shape ourselves in his likeness.

  And this word: ‘imitate’, this brief call from the ether became a road for me, and I set out on it at that same moment. I took up the pose, raised both arms above my head in imitation of the statue, and lowered my fingers until the nails just brushed my scalp.

  Nothing happened.

  No change, either within me or round about me.

  So as to make no mistake in my pose I looked more closely at the figure, and saw that the eyes were closed, as if in sleep.

  I decided that I had had enough, broke off the exercise, and put further action off until nightfall. When that came I stilled the ticking of the clocks and lay down, reassuming the position of my arms and hands.

  A few minutes passed in this state, but I cannot believe that I could have fallen asleep.

  Suddenly there seemed to come echoing out from somewhere inside me a sound, as of a huge stone rumbling down into the depths.

  And as if my consciousness were tumbling after it down a monstrous staircase, bouncing two, four, then eight and ever more steps at a time, my memory leaped back through my life, and the spectre of apparent death cloaked itself about me.

  What then happened I will not say: none can say it.

  People laugh at the idea that the Egyptians and Chaldaeans are supposed to have possessed a magic secret, guarded by uraeus snakes, and never betrayed by anyone of the thousands of initiates.

  There are no oaths which can possibly bind so securely, we think.

  And I, too, thought this once; but in that instant I understood.

  It is an event in no way connected with human experience, where perceptions lie as it were one behind another, and there is no oath that binds the tongue — the merest thought of a hint at these things, here on this side, and it is enough to alert the vipers of life into taking aim to strike at your very heart.

  So the great secret stays hidden, for it conceals itself and will remain a secret for as long as the world lasts.

  But all that is merely incidental to the searing blow which has struck me down for ever. Even someone’s superficial fate may be shifted on to a new track if his consciousness can break through the barriers of earthly perception for just one moment.

  A fact, of which I am a living example.

  Since that night, when I had that out-of-body experience (I can describe it in no other way), the course of my life has changed, and my existence, previously so unhurried, now reels from one inexplicable, horrific experience to another, towards some dark, unfathomable goal.

  It is as if a devil’s hand is measuring out my periods of lucidity in ever-diminishing quantities, thrusting into my path images of terror which grow in awfulness from one occasion to the next, as if slowly and stealthily to create a new and unheard-of form of madness in me, a form imperceptible to an outsider, unsuspected, known only through the nameless torment of its victim.

  In the course of the next few days after the experiment with the hieroglyph I began to experience sensations which I took at first to be hallucinations. In the midst of all the sights and sounds of everyday I would become suddenly aware of strange roaring noises or jarring undertones in my ears, or catch sight of shimmering colours which I had never seen before.

  Bizarre figures would appear, unheard and unseen by anyone else, acting out incomprehensible and unfathomable plots in shadowy gloom. They would shift their shapes, lie suddenly still as death, then slither down along the gutters in viscous elongation, or squat stupid and exhausted in dark doorways, as if drained of existence.

  This condition of hypersensitive awareness does not persist — it waxes and wanes like the moon.

  The steady decline of my interest in others, whose desires and hopes impinge on me only as if from a distance, suggests to me that my soul is engaged upon some dark journey, far far away from the rest of humanity.

  At first I allowed these whispering voices filling the edges of my consciousness to lead me along. Now, I am like a beast of burden, strapped firmly into its harness and obliged to follow exactly the path along which I am being driven.

  And so one night I was again dragged awake and forced to wander aimlessly through the silent alleyways of the Kleinseite, just for the sake of the impression that the antiquated houses make upon me.

  This part of Prague is uncanny, like nowhere else in the world.

  The bright light of day never reaches down here, nor yet is it ever quite as dark as night.

  A dim, gloomy illumination emanates from somewhere or other, seeping down from the Hradschin on to the roofs of the city below, like a phosphorescent haze. You turn into a narrow lane, and see nothing: only a deathly darkness, until suddenly a spectral ray of light stabs into your eyes from a chink in a shutter, like a long, malevolent needle.

  Then a house looms out of the fog — with decayed, drooping shoulders it stares vacantly up into the night sky out of blank lights set into the receding forehead of its sloping roof, like some animal wounded unto death.

  Next door, another building leans inquisitively forward, glimmering windows peering down, searching eagerly through the depths of the well down below for any trace of the goldsmith’s daughter who drowned there a century ago. And if you walk further on across the uneven cobbles and then suddenly turn to look back, you’ll very likely catch sight of a pale and bloated visage staring after you from the corner — not at shoulder height, no, but quite low down, at about the level where you might expect to meet the gaze of a large dog.

  There was nobody out in the streets.

  Deathly still.

  The ancient entries held their lips firmly clamped shut. I turned into Thungasse, where Countess Morzin has her great house.

  There in the mist crouched a narrow building, no more than two windows broad, a disagreeable wall with a hectic pallor; and here I was gripped spellbound as I felt my mood of hypersensitivity rising within me.

  Under such conditions I act spontaneously, as if driven by another will, and I scarcely know what the next moment will make me do.

  So, in thi
s state, I pushed open the door which had been merely standing ajar, and, passing down a passage, descended the stairs to the cellar, all as if I really belonged in this house.

  At the bottom, the invisible rein holding me in check was relaxed and I was left standing in the darkness, painfully aware that I had done something entirely without purpose.

  Why had I gone down there? Why hadn’t I even thought of putting a stop to such a pointless idea? I was ill, patently ill, and I took comfort in the fact that it could be nothing else: the mysterious, uncanny force had nothing to do with it.

  But in the next moment I realised that I had opened the door, entered the house and gone down the stairs without once bumping into anything, like someone who knew every step of the way: my hope evaporated on the instant.

  My eyes slowly became accustomed to the darkness, and I looked about me.

  There on one of the steps of the cellar stairs someone was sitting, How could I have got past without touching him?

  I could only see the crouched figure rather indistinctly in the darkness.

  A black beard covered a bare chest; the arms were bare too.

  Only the legs seemed to be encased in trousers or perhaps a loincloth. There was something fearful about the position of his hands — they were so extraordinarily bent back, almost at right angles to the joint.

  I stared at the man for a long time.

  He sat there with such corpse-like rigidity that I had the sense that his outline had somehow become etched into the dark background, and that this image would remain until the house itself fell into ruin.

  A cold shiver overcame me, and I went on down the twisting passage.

  At one point I reached out to touch the wall. My fingers closed upon a splintered wooden trellis, such as creepers are trained on. They seemed indeed to be growing there in great profusion, for I almost got caught up in a maze of stalky tendrils.

  The odd thing was that these plants (or whatever they were) felt warm to the touch and full of life — altogether they seemed to have a certain animal quality.

  I put my hand out once more, but immediately snatched it back again: this time I had touched a round ball about the size of a walnut, which felt cold and which shrank away on the instant. Was it a beetle?