B007P4V3G4 EBOK

by Richard Huijing

  And now ...

  He bent over her and drank from her lips her final breath. Then he sat staring rigidly at her, how she did not speak any longer, did not look up, did no longer move. And suddenly, in a weeping groan, he had fallen face down and had slammed his teeth into his fist, and he had beaten his head against the floor boards until his sensibilities failed him.

  Seek me, seek me and you-shall-find me!

  These words were the first that his consciousness summoned up once he had returned to life out of his stupor of days' duration - solely to die, he had thought - but now, after all, precisely because of these words, to life proper. For they gained ascendancy over him, these last words of the one loved above all. At first, they had been but lisped murmurs, murmurs he sensed when falling into slumber and on awaking; at night while he gave free rein to his despair and by day, too, when, in order to not to lose his reason, he sought to escape himself for a moment, into the sound and fury of the world. They whispered in differing tones: pleading, jubilant, wailing and threatening in turn. Now they would be close by, then they would be distant; now inside him, then out: in the wind that touched him in passing, or in the throbbing of his temples; at times as if coming from heaven on high, then again as from the depths of an abyss. Often, when he, lonely, was taking a walk, they appeared to assume an intangible and indescribable presence which hovered out ahead of him and signalled him to follow - yet when he pursued them, there was nothing. At first, this made him fearful; later, it filled him with a vague, half-fearful, half-hopeful expectation - until, finally, it had gripped him like a storm, a hurricane of desire, driving him on.

  Seek me, seek me, and you shall find me!

  And there was another dying word of hers that would not leave him, that time and again rang out at him from his innermost depths like the solemn booming of bells from the darkness of a forest:

  We have become one, one flesh and one desire, one mind, one quest and one meaning: no God nor Devil can separate us!

  If he made a connection between those two utterances, then hazy light would loom in the night of his distraction - a hazy light of reunion. Like the dawning of a revelation, it loomed up in front of him, him, the unbeliever. He no longer weighed up and rejected, he no longer fathomed and denied; he solely felt that it was. The stumbling words of his beloved had assured him of it. Yes, yes, this is how it must be! There is a law of reunion, a law like that of decomposition. Of the deceased human being an essentia remains: a distillation, purely spiritual, of that which he has felt and loved most intensely. According to the nature of that essence, the extent to which it is either strong or feeble, ethereal or earth-bound, all who have lived do find a place again in the life of nature; and as between the chemical elements on earth, likewise between the hearts of mankind, thus there can be a choice relationship between these essentiae, powerful enough to attract them to one another, at times so powerful that it operates through the curtain which still separates life from death. Therefore, those who here on earth have belonged to each other entirely and uniquely, and have been one in everything and faithful to the end, these the grave cannot keep apart and their love, stronger than death, carves out a path to one another. For, between their beings there is an affinity which continues to act in nature even after the decomposition of their earthly life.

  Seek me, seek me! the voice repeated once again. Then he readied himself and went. His body threatened to fail, incapacitated through fasting and fretting: but that sacred desire clamped wings to him - and he went, as if carried by spirit-feet.

  Whither? - Would he, with his own fingers, tear down the thread which still bound him to the clay: with his own hand rend asunder the veil hanging there in folds between him and her? - This would have been a short path to take, yet not the right one. No! No act of violence would lead him to her, for she would have had no part in that act and only unity, unity in everything, in what were the things of life and of death, would be able to reunite them in a higher harmony. Thus, no suicide, no effort of irascible impatience that would alienate her mild spirit from him. He wished to seek her, patiently, fervently, trustingly, without her, and seek her - until she let herself be found by him.

  Onward, then! A last pilgrimage to her grave.

  Over the bed of green sod with which he cloaked her, he bent his head down to earth. A long time did he remain like this. The scarlet of sundown melted into night; the dew, pearling on the flowers, soaked his clothes and the chill wetness from the leaves of grass sprayed into his face. He, however, remained, his forehead on the earth as if his hearing wished to penetrate the silence of that which was below, yet to catch a panting of her breath or beating of her breast.

  Olga! he whispered, do you still repose here, close to your poor body which my heart and senses have loved so dearly? Tell me, Olga! Here I am. Come to me! Come!

  There was no answer in the garden of the dead.

  And more densely did darkness make its quarters on earth: a pale mist extinguished the twinkling of the constellations which set out after each other, circling heaven's pivot. Then came the night wind, suddenly, with a sad, wild sigh; and the trees, in their sleep, shivered at its touch; and it stirred about in the mist and shredded it into whirling figures that chased one another across the heath. And in the moaning of the gusts across the tombstones, Reinout's ear thought to perceive the sobs of souls who sought and sought one another, yet could not find; for, though they had loved each other in life, they had not loved enough, not entirely and uniquely, not in everything ... Thus, the night passed. The wind inclined, to sleep among the shrubs; the mist melted away and with it the swarm of shades, fleeing the morning which, ahead of Hesperus, had already arisen with joyous glitter. He, however, was still sitting there and awaited a sign.

  Olga! he cried, if you are not here, where then must I seek you? Tell me, show me, oh, my darling!

  Then he heard, from far in the distance, he did not detect from where, the sweet note of a bird, so soft and yet so clear, so alluring and yet so chaste. A shudder coursed through his limbs. No nightingale fluted thus, no blackbird ever sang like this. There was no mistaking it: that note was hers. Jubilant, he jumped up:

  She lives, she knows me, she has heard me and calls me to her! Olga! Olga!

  Seek! the voice resounded. Not on the graves. Higher, further away. Seek her, seek her, and you shall find her!

  Wings sprout from his shoulderblades so that he rises up like the lark toward the dawn. For that sweet call came from above, he now believed. There, up above, he would greet her, glad and sweet as though she was already on earth, a singing spirit in the eternal light-blue.

  He rises - higher than the highest mountain colossus, higher than ever a thing of clay has penetrated the unknown, boundless expanse. Earth, beneath him, becomes like a garden in which sea straits are the glinting paths and islands the flower plots while the ocean lies stretched out like a green meadow across which the white clouds move slowly, like grazing sheep.

  But above and around him is the realm of emptiness. In vain, he looks out for the dwellings of the blessed spirits; in vain he is abroad to hear at close quarters the sweet tone that called him. Soon the night will enshroud him again. Moon and stars bulge from the dark vault of the spheres, lighting with swollen size and a shine not seen before; meteors hurtle past him, barely at hair'sbreadth, searing hot - a wild chase of heavenly vagabonds, as though slung into space to annihilate the bold one who dared to hazard as far as this on to the racecourse of the planets. That which he seeks, however, is not here. Here no wind blows, no shade's wing rustles here. This is where the beingless void begins.

  And when morning dawns, ashen, rises higher still. Even higher does he wish to search for them, those glorious dwellings of the beings-volatile. He rises up, but he does not find them. The more he now wishes to approach the source of light, the further it draws away from his yearning striving. Alarmed, he shrinks back. He has reached the limit where the light is present no longer, solely the darkness.
The sun is but a dull-glowing disc, the stars but golden foliage: atoms, glimmering specks, as though lost in immeasurable space; and that space itself - that space into which the children of earth look up in faith when they dream of their blue and warm and blessed Heavenly paradise - that space itself, night: black, eternal, beingless night.

  Will he penetrate even further? - How, were this hollow darkness but a Styx which he must cleave through in order to end up in the fields of But no boatman offers him passage; Nothingness stares him in the face and a terrible fear strikes him with paralysis. Imagine he cannot find the way back? Imagine he must remain here, hovering like one doomed and lonely, in punishment for his self-seeking and his seclusion on earth? ... His wing-beat becomes impotent; the cold makes him rigid; a grievous oppression threatens to stifle the spark of life in him; already, he believes himself to be dragged along by one of those cosmic currents which will make him roam the tides here in everlasting peregrination. Suddenly, life seethes upward inside him at full strength, for in the icy dead-silence he has perceived a note, a note arisen, barely audible, from the bottomless deep: the bird-note of the beloved one, now lamentatious and afraid, as a quail's that, mid-sea above the water, cannot find a resting place for his exhausted wings. And the voice, too, he heard calling out, inside himself:

  Reinout, Reinout! Whither do you roam? Why do you seek outside the earth that which was born out of the earth and must belong to her for ever? - Leave heaven to the stars! Descend, Reinout! Seek me still, loyal and awake, with all that is in you - and you shall find me!

  So shrill and frightened had that note sounde%i now, and so fathomless, it seemed, from the deep: - the note of a soul in pain: wailings for salvation de profundis. Oh, God! could it be that she yet must suffer punishment for her sweet sins? Could hell be a truth while Heaven was nothing but lies? ... Zounds! He wished to go to her. Dizzyingly quickly he shoots down and coursing for a pillar of smoke that twists up towards him from earth, he plummets down into the blazing crater of Mount Etna.

  Glow and flames, smoke and ash. Rivers of molten ores; seething lakes of lava that sink and rise up again in waves upon the breath of a subterranean high tide; rocks that splash down in a bubbling pool, pulverised on its foundations by the black-searing fire; walls that burst apart with a thunderous bang; blue-flamed sulphur pits; hissing spurts of boiling moisture; shafts which open themselves out into even deeper, even hotter a glow. Verily, as Heaven is to be found in the expanse of the skies, the location of hell is no delusion and is to be found, not too far away.

  But Reinout's plaint here, too, only evokes echoes in the void. Though salamander's brood may populate this Tartarus, creatures of flame, raised in fire - but to the souls of man the hot abyss is as inaccessible as the chill vault of heaven. He reposes, the errant one, he reposes and he seeks, until the flesh threatens to char on his bones. He calls out, till the lower-most eddies resound to it. No reply. Even the bird-note has not the power to penetrate and reach him in this horrible dungeon. The voice alone admonishes him once more:

  Not here, either, Reinout! Only that can exist in fire which was born in fire. Do not seek her in death, nor in destruction; seek her in life if you do still want to find her.

  In life, then! In life he will seek his deceased one - in life which he himself is to leave as, he feels it, the last powers of the body are sinking away from him.

  Resurrected from the pit, he finds the sun beautiful, the stars charming again, and the cloak of the fields more glorious than ever. He kisses the good earth who is his mother, his progenitress, his origin and his destination, and his home and hearth for ever.

  Earth, life, earthly life, where do you keep his deceased one in your womb? - Silence! Is that not the sweet, the salvation-promising note, trilling from the distant place, greeting him? - 0 place of reunion, how long still the search?

  Onward, he wishes to go again, around the world; and the West wind who takes pity on this tired errant one, lifts him on his wings and carries him across the ocean. And everywhere in air and water he scrutinises for signs of reborn human souls. He sees them emerge from the splashing waves, turning to spume on the crests, rolling along some way with the surging deep, then spitting apart to merge again with the brine; - these are the souls of brave seafarers who chose the sea to be their tillage. He hears them cleave the sky in swarms, like albatrosses with their broad, swishing flight; - these are the souls of heroes and warriors who ride coast to coast on the hurricane. He believes to be able to see spirits of rulers, lording mighty on storm-defying cliffs; to see spirits of poets striding across the flat mirror of musing lakes that glance up to heaven. But she whom he seeks, he does not detect among them all.

  It is done: he can go no further: on the sandy beach he collapses, fatigued to the point of death. With a hoarse roar, the surf slams down at his feet; grub-grey the Northern hemisphere oppresses the sombre yonder; two sad spruces, banished from the green forest, stretch out shivering above the wanderer's head their rip-stripped naked limbs. Melancholy, the desire to die is all. And in the clouds a hunt comes into being; white crests speed from the West across the suddenly impetuous spate; it drives through the dead needle-foliage like a moan. These are souls, errant souls who cannot find what they seek. And he listens - he knows cries out after them:

  Wait for me! Wait for me! Presently I will join you, travel as one of you. For, searching, I am not worthy of finding and my Olga knows me no longer!

  But hark! - now, finally, at bird note! ... And this time no longer vague, from an undefined beyond, but clear and certain, from yonder way, landward, in from the Birdvoice, will you now be his guide, now he is about to undertake the final journey?

  Yes, steadily the calling sounds ahead of him, soft and clear, in inexpressibly cheerful tones in the grey evening quiet. It shows him the way - and that road he does know; and through the tearful joy of reunion his failing heart relearns to beat. For once upon a time he trod this road with her, this road which now will lead him back to her.

  This is the German land, the land of hills and forests, of grapes, of songs, of forest poetry - but to him, particularly, the land where they found each other and possessed each other, where they had sung and swooned and, engrossing themselves in the soul of nature together, had revealed their souls to one another. The land of their love, the land of their happiness, where, in quiet togetherness, had it been permitted, they had wished to end their days.

  And yonder is the forest of grey beech trees that climbs grandly up the sweet slope of the ridge of hills. A parvise of scrub encircles it, quite impenetrable; but for the errant one the tightly twined branches rustlingly part, for his footstep a green arch opens, only to close itself behind him - and he sets foot beneath the silent vault of the druid's temple, timid, shy, like the sinner wishing to pray crosses the threshold of a sanctuary. The night wind sighs. There, the roof of twigs trembles and rustles. Moon rays, broken through the weft of foliage, marble the smooth trunks: shade figures float to and fro in the dark perspective between the rows of pillars, and myriad spatters of light, sprinkled across the moss, are like staring eyes that direct the question toward the stranger:

  Man or spirit, what seek'st thou here?

  He, however, no longer seeks. For from the darkest of treetops, perfectly close by, the bird-voice trills toward him: a melting mordent, a swelling, jubilant crash. Staggering, he approaches. He drops to his knees.

  Olga! his lips stammer, I am here! ... Then a green glow of light dawns before his breaking eye, a Gloria of nightingale notes rushingly envelops him, intoxicating, a wave of forest-flower scents rushes towards him, a balmy wind like one that caresses the fields in June nights appears, whirling, to take him up on high - and, enshrouding, a rain of leaves descends from the verdure on to that husk now abandoned, left behind in the blueberry bushes, wet with dew.

  Helene Nolthenius

  '... but you have been acquainted with this a long time already, M'Lud, as the members of the jury have been also. It c
annot have escaped your notice that the conclusion the Public Prosecutor has reached holds no water. Only the adder that bit my wife might be accused of culpable homicide, at best. At the place where I found her, she was dead; had been for years even, perhaps, I don't know: there's no time down there. Black-haired I descended, white I returned: that's what I know. Culpable homicide! My life it was that I risked to give her life again. What the Public Prosecutor means is not that I drove my wife to her death but that I failed to drive her from it. I don't seek to deny this. I should only wish to deny that I looked back out of negligence, or because I doubted the promise of the gods. I knew my looking back would be fatal. You, Mrs Prosecutor, would have to accuse me of murder ... had Eurydice been alive at that moment. I looked because I did not want her back.

  '... May I continue? Your interruptions, members of the jury, would gain in quality were you to shout a little more tunefully. M'Lud, what I should like to explain in these last words you have permitted me is this: that solely the living learn from death. The spirit of one who dies stultifies. Growth is no longer possible. Death encapsulates the spirit the way the Egyptians did the body. It is right like this. How else would the dead endure the horrors of the underworld? The living who descend are spared nothing, however. I, ladies of the jury - I have passed straight through hell. That I survived this I owe to my music, to my kithara here. The point at issue is that my music, too, has returned to earth whitehaired, and that Eurydice has not wished to understand this.

  Wright: you do not do so either. Your expertise in this matter reaches no further than the tinkling of the tambourine and the shriek of the Phrygian reed pipe; but any professional can tell you that the work of my youth relates to what I play now as does the plain surface to the cube. Death gave it a new dimension.