The Dedalus Meyrink Reader Read online

  Confused phrases from the pamphlet performed a disrespectful jig before his inner eye, carrying him off out of the dependable present and into the dubious realm of dreams. The story of the Indian penitent in the appendix to the brochure, that he had merely glanced over, hardly paying attention, was suddenly happening, right there inside his head. Herr Hinrichsen saw himself — not without some misgivings — transformed in the twinkling of an eye into an extremely scantily dressed, penniless Indian fakir, who he was, and then, on the other hand, was not.

  No rings on his fingers any more, not to mention a tie-pin, just a staff in his hand and, where previously the heavy, respect-inspiring gold watch-chain used to dangle down, nothing but a grubby loincloth.

  And so he staggered off, tousled black hair hanging down to his shoulders, in a desolate, sun-scorched wilderness, scouring the landscape in vain for his 60 hp car. Tough dried grasses cut excruciatingly into his naked soles (the dreaming Herr Hinrichsen automatically pushed off his left ankle boot with his right foot) and with every step one more bit of his dignity as head of the General Charitable Works disappeared.

  Instead, he was filled with a new, unknown and highly disreputable sensation: a positively perverse thirst, stored up during years of aimless wandering across lonely, dreary steppes, for spiritual enlightenment and the wondrous, mysterious goal of becoming one with the God Shiva, the destroyer of earthly life.

  The businessman-fakir desperately tried to find his way back to his familiar waking consciousness as a major industrialist by concentrating his thoughts on the splendid vat with the 10,000 penguins but in vain. A merciless, invisible goad drove him on until he was nothing but an Indian penitent, in whose poor, unfruitful brain the burning desire for God and a weary lifetime of waiting for spiritual redemption had been turned into the act of blind wandering, aimlessly exchanging one place for another, which consumed his now empty time like a clock, so that the words of the sacred Veda might come true:

  ‘Make thy way alone, as the solitary rhinoceros roams.’

  Hour after hour the businessman-fakir had struggled on towards a dazzlingly white point, which gradually grew bigger as he approached and eventually turned out to be a stone column surrounded by trees standing beside a babbling spring: one of those venerable lingams into which, it is said, the bodies of ascetics are transformed when their souls have reached the last stage of ecstasy and been sucked up by the breath of the universal spirit.

  And when the businessman-fakir performed the sacrificial rites of the sannyasin and poured a few drops of water on the lingam, murmuring the mystical syllables ‘Bhur — Hamsa Bhur’ in his navel, heart, throat and forehead, letters of light appeared on the lingam, telling him that previously it had been the body of the great yoga teacher, Matsyendra Paramahamsa, whom the God Shiva himself had instructed from his own lips in the mysteries of ‘Tat tvam asi’ — of becoming one — and transformed from a mute fish into a human being.

  And the lingam turned into a thatched hut, from which came a voice asking, ‘Who are you and what is your name?’

  ‘I seek the path to God, I am the penitent Lala Lajpat-Rai,’ the fakir replied, before Herr Hinrichsen had the chance to say, ‘Hello, General Charitable Works speaking.’

  Nor, much to his chagrin, could Herr Hinrichsen prevent the penitent from throwing himself to the ground before the saint, as he came out, and begging him to be his guru, his spiritual guide, on the heartbreaking path to nirvana.

  But with a smile the guru, Matsyendra, touched the fakir on the top of the head and said, ‘Thus I form the chain and give you the exercise: Thou shalt not steal,’ a commandment with which the businessman expressed his agreement by a grunt of approval.

  The penitent probably thought to himself that he had never stolen anything in his whole life, but he went away obediently and only returned after many days of pondering and prayer.

  And when the guru asked him what he had lived on during that time and he answered, ‘On the milk of a cow grazing in the valley,’ he was told that he had stolen because the cow belonged to a rich merchant.

  Under normal conditions that would have been enough for Herr Hinrichsen to dissociate himself entirely from the fakir but unfortunately he was inescapably trapped in the net of the dream and bound to him.

  After a long time the penitent, Lala Lajpat Rai, imagining himself free from the sin of stealing, once more went to his guru and reported that he had only drunk the foam that dripped down from the mouth of the calf as it suckled, but he was told he was still a thief, for he had reduced the food of the blind earthworms, which Vishnu, the great sustainer of all life, graciously accords them in the form of those drops.

  So then, without complaining, the fakir ate only the sparse grass, like an animal, but even that the guru called theft, since it was the cow’s food, intended to be transformed in her stomach into nourishing milk for her helpless child.

  ‘Great!’ Herr Hinrichsen murmured as he stretched into a more comfortable position in his armchair. The penitent, however, huddled up silently outside the stone lingam, his heart filled with unutterable sadness, because he was unable to free himself from the sin of stealing and appear pure while a living man before the exalted saint.

  Staring straight ahead from morning to evening, from evening to morning, he quietly repeated one word, ‘Hari’ — the sacred name of Shiva, the god of death — like a boundless, humble prayer to take away his body, his eternally thirsty, hungry, ravening body.

  And the consuming fire in his entrails, his despair and his torment at being a man, all that he compressed into the word ‘Hari’ until his whole body, his blood and his bones were saying it with him, so that it grew into a single, uninterrupted cry for deliverance, seeming to fill the invisible universe.

  When, on the fortieth day, the sun once more stood blood-red in the sky, the fakir sensed from the thunder in his heart and the storm that was beginning to rage in his brain, that the end had come.

  His tongue grew hard and could no longer speak the name ‘Hari’ and his eyes took on the terrible look of one in the throes of death; his body began to sway and was about to fall forward, when there suddenly appeared before him, as immense as the cosmos, with a thousand faces, Matsyendra, the saint, the perfected one, and the Milky Way of the firmament was but a white hair at his temple.

  And regaled him with heavenly bread and wine. Bread for his body and wine for his spirit.

  And entered into him and became — himself.

  And he spoke to the penitent with the penitent’s lips: ‘Henceforth you cannot steal, even if you wanted to. Everything you see inside yourself and outside yourself: “Tat tvam asi” — you are all that yourself. The world has become your body: “Tat tvam asi” — you are all that. And if you kill your parents and eat the flesh of your own children, you are not a murderer: “Tat tvam asi” — you are they. How can anyone murder and steal who has become Tat tvam asi? His body has become the world.’

  Gently roused from his sleep by his wife, who handed him a telegram, Herr Hinrichsen woke. He quickly felt his neck and brow and established that he was perspiring excessively.

  Outside flurries of hail were rattling the windows and the apartment was plunged in deep darkness that was only occasionally lit by sulphurous yellow flashes of lighting.

  Herr Hinrichsen opened the telegram, full of expectation, but hardly had he glanced at it than the colour drained from his forceful features and an unarticulated groan rising from his chest indicated that he had only just escaped a fainting fit which, given his imposing corpulence, could easily have had fatal consequences.

  A terrible clap of thunder shook the magnificent villa to its foundations and ‘bankrupt’ was the single, pregnant word that escaped Herr Hinrichsen’s lips. The telegram said that a panic on the stock exchange had wiped out almost his whole assets in a few minutes.

  Unable to move a muscle, even less to think, Herr Hinrichsen stared into space, but then a miracle! There suddenly appeared a shining
hand, clearly belonging to his soul, which wrote — as did the one that appeared to Belshazzar, the erstwhile king of Babylon — in letters of fire on the wall: ‘ “Tat tvam asi”: you are everything. Does that tell you anything, General Charitable Works?’ and disappeared.

  At a stroke Herr Hinrichsen was overcome with immense enlightenment.

  He had for years had sole charge, with unlimited power of attorney, of the administration of significant funds belonging to orphans and of the investments of trusting widowed relatives, whose financial protection had become second nature to him. All it needed, therefore, was for a few transactions to be backdated a little, a harmless bookkeeping operation, and the whole loss would be theirs.

  ‘Of course! It’s so clear a blind man could see it. “Tat tvam asi!” I’m the whole lot of ’em!’ Herr Hinrichsen exclaimed jubilantly again and again. ‘And the world isn’t real, anyway. I’d never’ve thought there was so much in this Indian philosophy,’ he added, rubbing his hands, ‘’specially that trick with the “Tat tvam asi” Capital! Capital!’

  The horrible storm outside had passed as quickly as it had come, the cheerful golden face of the sun pierced the last veil of cloud, and a luminous rainbow adorned a world refreshed as a jaunty Herr Hinrichsen commanded the servant, who had come rushing in, ‘Put a magnum of champagne on ice for a toast to old Matsyendra.’

  From then on Herr Kuno Hinrichsen, businessman, was ‘master’ of even the most difficult situations and a convinced follower of the Indian doctrine of the Vedanta to the end of his days.

  The Clockmaker

  ‘This clock? Mend it? So it’ll go again?’ the owner of the antiques shop asked in surprise, pushing his glasses up onto his forehead and giving me a somewhat bewildered look. ‘Why do you want it to go again? It only has one hand, and not a single number on the dial,’ he added, lost in thought as he examined the clock in the harsh light of the lamp, ‘just flower faces, animal and demon heads instead of the hours.’ He started to count and looked at me questioningly. ‘Fourteen? But we divide the day into twelve parts. I’ve never seen such a strange clock. My advice is to leave it as it is. Twelve hours are enough to have to put up with in a day. Read the correct time off this dial? Who’d bother nowadays? Only a fool.’

  I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I had been such a fool all my life, had never possessed another clock and perhaps for that reason had often arrived too early, when I should have waited a little, so I remained silent.

  The antiques dealer interpreted this as meaning I stuck by my desire to see it go again. He shook his head, picked up a little ivory knife and carefully opened the housing that was decorated with jewels and a fabulous beast in enamel standing in a four-horse chariot: a man with female breasts, two snakes instead of legs, a cock’s head and the sun in his right hand, a whip in his left.

  ‘I expect it’s an old family heirloom?’ the antiques dealer said. ‘Did you not say just now that it stopped last night? At two o’clock? Presumably the little red buffalo’s head with two horns indicates the second hour?’

  I was not aware that I had said anything of the kind, but the clock had indeed stopped at two o’clock that morning. Perhaps I had mentioned it, but I couldn’t remember and I still felt too exhausted — at exactly the same time I had had a severe spasm of the heart and thought I was going to die. As I felt I was losing consciousness I clung on to the thought: if only the clock doesn’t stop. With the fading of my senses I must have confused my heart and the clock. Perhaps that happens to dying people. Perhaps that’s why clocks so often stop at the moment their owners die? We do not know what magical power a thought can sometimes possess.

  ‘Now that is remarkable,’ said the antiques dealer after a while. He held his magnifying glass close to the lamp, so that the blindingly bright focal point fell sharply on the clock, and indicated the letters inscribed on the inside of the gold cover.

  I read: Summa Scientia Nihil Scire.

  ‘Remarkable,’ he repeated. ‘This clock was made by the “Madman”. It was made in this town, I am sure about that. There are only very few such pieces. I never thought they could actually go, I assumed they were just an amusement. And — one of his little quirks — the same motto is in all his clocks: Supreme knowledge is to know nothing.’

  I didn’t understand what he was saying. Who could the madman he had mentioned be? The clock was very old, it came from my grandfather, but the way the clockmaker had talked, it sounded as if the madman who was supposed to have made it was still alive today.

  Before I could ask, I saw in my mind’s eye — but clearer and sharper, as if he were walking through the room — a man striding across a winter landscape, an old man, slim and tall, hatless, his full, snow-white hair blowing in the wind. His head was strangely small in contrast to his towering figure, his sharp-featured face was beardless, his eyes black, close together and with a fanatical look in them, like those of a bird of prey. He strode on in a long, threadbare velvet coat, such as the Nuremberg patricians used to wear.

  ‘Quite right,’ the antiques dealer muttered, with an absent-minded nod, ‘quite right, the “Madman”.’

  Why did he say ‘Quite right’, I wondered. It must be a coincidence I immediately told myself, they’re nothing but empty words. I never opened my mouth. He just said ‘Quite right’ the way you often do to emphasise something you’ve just said. It has no connection with the old man that I saw in my memory, no connection with his madman.

  When I was still a little boy, on my way to school I had to go past a long, bare wall the height of a man which went round a park with elm trees. Day after day for several years, I broke into a run when I had to go along it, for every time I was gripped by a vague fear. Perhaps — I no longer know — it was because I imagined, or had been told, that a madman lived there, a clockmaker who claimed his clocks were living beings. Or was I wrong? If it was a memory of an experience from my schooldays, how could it be that something I must have felt a thousand times had slept in my memory until this day to suddenly burst out in such vivid detail? Of course, forty years must have passed since then, but was that an explanation?

  ‘Perhaps I experienced it during the two hours more than an ordinary clock that my clock shows,’ I said, amused.

  The antiques dealer seemed taken aback at this and stared at me, uncomprehending.

  I thought about it and eventually felt certain that the wall round the park is still standing today. Who could have wanted to pull it down? It was said to be the foundation wall of a church that was to be completed later. You don’t destroy something like that. Perhaps the clockmaker was still alive? He would certainly be able to mend my clock, which I was so attached to. If only I knew when and where I had met him. It could not have been recently, for it was summer now and when, a few moments ago, I had remembered him, I had seen him in my mind’s eye in a winter landscape.

  The antiques dealer had suddenly become talkative and was telling a long story, but I was too deep in thought to follow it. I only heard a few disjointed sentences now and then, they came roaring towards me, then fell away, only to return, like breakers on the shore. Between them there was the buzzing in my ears, the pounding of the blood that people hear as they grow old and listen for it, only forgetting it in the noise of the day, the constant, menacing, distant beat of the wings of Death, the vulture slowly approaching from the abyss of time …

  I could hardly tell who it was talking to me. Was it the man standing before me with the clock in his hand, or was it that being inside me that sometimes wakes in a lonely heart when one touches the locked caskets that secretly guard our forgotten memories so that they do not crumble to dust? Sometimes I caught myself nodding to the antiques dealer and I realised he had said something that was familiar to me, but if I tried to think about what he had said, his words didn’t, as words you hear usually do, slip down into the recent past, from where I could have recovered them and pored over them with understanding; no, scarcely had their sound died awa
y than they turned into rigid, lifeless figures, alien and incomprehensible to the ear. They had strayed from the realm of time into the realm of space and stood round me, dead masks.

  In my torment I said, ‘If only my clock would go again!’ interrupting the dealer in the middle of his story.

  I meant my heart, for I could feel that it was about to forget to beat and I was filled with horror at the thought that the hands of my life’s clock could suddenly stop at a fantastic flower, the face of an animal or a demon, as the hands on the dial with the fourteen hours had. I would be condemned to spend eternity in congealed time.

  The antiques dealer gave me the clock back. He must have thought that was what I was talking about.

  As I walked along the deserted nocturnal streets — straight ahead, then this way and that, across sleeping squares, past dreaming houses, guided by flickering lamps and yet sure of where I was going — I was convinced the antiques dealer must have told me where the nameless clockmaker lived, where I could find him and where the wall round the park with the elms was. Had he not said that the old man could make my clock well again? How else would I have known?

  He must also have described how to get to his house, and even if I hadn’t paid attention myself, my feet seemed to know the way exactly. They took me out of the town and onto the white road which ran, between meadows redolent with the breath of summer, on into infinity.

  Sticking to my heels, the black snakes the moon had lured out of the earth glided along behind me. Was it they who were sending me the poisoned thought: ‘You will never find him, he died a hundred years ago’?

  In order to escape them, I turned off sharp left onto a side-path and at once my shadow popped out of the ground and swallowed them up. I realised that it had come to guide me and it was a great comfort to see it striding along so unwaveringly; I kept on looking at it, glad not to have to look where I was going. Gradually I was overcome with that indescribably strange feeling I used to have as a child, playing by myself at walking along with my eyes closed, not caring whether I fell or not. It is like releasing your body from all earthly fear, like a cry of joy from your inner being, like once more finding your immortal self that knows: nothing can happen to me.