The Angel of the West Window Read online

  The changes to which the objects around me had been subjected were not limited to the furniture alone; the windows, doors, even the walls were aligned differently and suggested more massive masonry, indeed, more massive architecture altogether than is normal in a modern city building such as my own house. On the other hand, objects of daily use were unaffected by all these changes: the electric chandelier with its six bulbs cast its usual light on the strangely disrupted surroundings, and the cigar box, my cigarette case and the samovar with Russian tea – supplied by Lipotin at fantastically cheap prices – all mingled their usual aromas, which wafted across the room to us.

  It was only now that I subjected my friend Gärtner to a conscious examination. He was sitting opposite me, snug in a similar armchair to the one I was in, a smile on his face and a cigar held between his fingers; he took advantage of a pause in the conversation – it seemed to be the first since we met at the station – to sip his tea. I quickly reviewed everything we had talked about and I suddenly had the sense that the conversation had been of deeper significance than I had thought. We had talked much of our youth, the things we had planned together, schemes that had never come to fruition, of vain hopes, missed opportunities, shelved projects. All at once the room was filled with such melancholy that I looked up and stared at my friend as if from a great distance, as if he were no longer my friend Gärtner. It seemed to me as if I had carried on the whole conversation with myself, taking both parts, as it were. To put an end to such speculation I quickly asked, distrustfully, with deliberately clear articulation:

  “Tell me how you got on with your chemistry in Chile?”

  With a twist of the neck, which was one of the characteristic movements of his that I recalled, he glanced over the rim of his cup at me, gave me a friendly look and said:

  “What is it? Something seems to be bothering you?”

  A shyness spread rapidly over me like a morning mist, but I broke through and dissipated it by telling him about the sense of dislocation that had been tormenting me for the last few minutes:

  “Theodor. I cannot deny it: I feel there is something odd between us. It’s true we haven’t seen each other for a long time, and I do seem to recognise many things from the past – much in you seems unchanged – and yet – and yet – – forgive me, but are you really Theodor Gärtner? You – you’re different from the person I remember; no, you’re not the Theodor Gärtner I knew all those years ago, I – I can feel – I can see that clearly, but it doesn’t seem to make you any less familiar to me, any less – how should I put it? – any less close, any less of a friend – ”

  Theodor Gärtner leant forward towards me, smiled and said:

  “Look at me – closely, don’t be shy! Perhaps you’ll remember who I am.”

  I felt a choking sensation in my throat but mastered it, gave a rather forced laugh and said:

  “You must promise not to laugh, but since you entered my apartment” – I looked round almost timidly – “I feel somewhat – disorientated. Normally this room looks, well, it looks – different. But that will mean nothing to you, of course; and to come straight out with it, you don’t seem to be Theodor Gärtner, my old student friend – but then, of course, you’re not any more, forgive me! – but you don’t even seem to be the older Theodor Gärtner, Gärtner the chemist or, if you like, Professor Gärtner from Chile.”

  My friend interrupted me with a calm gesture:

  “Well, you are right, my friend. Professor Gärtner from Chile is somewhere in the ocean – ” here he made a vague, expansive gesture which, however, seemed to make sense to me. “He was drowned quite a while ago.”

  My heart seemed to stop for a moment: so it was true, I thought and I must have looked quite dumbfounded, for my friend suddenly laughed out loud and shook his head in apparent amusement:

  “You needn’t worry, my friend. I think you don’t usually find ghosts enjoying a cigar and a glass of tea – an exceedingly good tea, by the way. But –” his face and his voice assumed their previous serious expression – “it is true that your friend Gärtner – – is dead.”

  “Then who are you?” I asked in a quiet voice, but calm now, for the explanation of my mysterious condition seemed like a welcome liberation. “I repeat: who are you?”

  As if to emphasise his real, physical existence, the “other” took another cigar from the box, rolled it and sniffed it appreciatively like a connoisseur, cut off the end, lit a match, rotated the end of the cigar in the flame and drew in the smoke with such simple and obvious relish that even a man more timorous than myself would have relinquished all doubts as to my guest’s bona fides. Then he stretched out in his armchair, crossed his legs and began:

  “I said: Theodor Gärtner is dead. Now, you could take that for a not unusual, though rather highfalutin expression someone might use to say of themselves that, whatever the reason, they wanted to break with their past and become a new person. Assume for the moment that that is what I meant by it.”

  I interrupted him with such vehemence that I felt surprised at myself:

  “No! That’s not it! Your own inner being has not changed, God forbid! But it is one unknown to me; it is not that of Theodor Gärtner, the dedicated scientist, the sworn enemy of all miracles and mysteries, the man who would immediately start a tirade against fusty superstition and incurable stupidity as soon as anyone dared to start talking about the incalculable, or about the essence of nature being unknowable. But the man I see sitting before me is one whose eye is fixed unwaveringly on the very wellhead of life, and in everything you say I can hear that you love the mysteries. – That is not my Theodor Gärtner, not the one I knew – and yet you are a friend, a very old and close friend – only I do not know you by name.”

  “If that’s the way you see it, I have no objection,” my visitor answered calmly. His piercing gaze had an indescribable power, and slowly, tortuously the memory of a long forgotten past clawed its way back up from the depths. I could not say whether it came from last night’s dream or whether it was the reawakening of an age-old chain of events that had lain dormant for a hundred years. Meanwhile Gärtner continued imperturbably:

  “As you are making an effort to help me explain your doubts, I can put things more simply and briefly than might otherwise be the case – ‘We are old friends!’ That is correct. – But ‘Dr. Theodor Gärtner’, your fellow student and the companion of your trivial student pranks, has little to do with the matter. Therefore it is quite correct if we say: he is dead. You are quite correct in your assumption that I am someone else. – Who am I? Gärtner.”

  ‘You mean that is your profession?’ I almost exclaimed, as it struck me that his name meant gardener, but I managed to suppress the silly question. The other continued, without heeding my involuntary movement:

  “My work as a gardener has taught me how to handle roses, nurturing them, improving the strain. My special art is grafting. Your friend was a healthy stock; the one you see before you is the scion. The natural blossom of the stock has vanished. The child my mother bore has long since drowned in the sea of transmutation. The stock, the rootstock onto which I was grafted, was the offspring of another mother, of the mother of a former student of chemistry, Theodor Gärtner by name, the one you knew, whose unripe soul has passed through the grave.”

  A shiver went down my spine. His relaxed figure was as enigmatic as his speech. My lips automatically formed the question:

  “And why are you here?”

  “Because it is time,” he answered, as if it were obvious. With a smile he added:

  “I like to be there when I’m needed.”

  “And so you’re not a chemist” – I wasn’t concerned with whether it followed on from what he had just said – “any more; nor are you – –”

  “I have always been one, even when your friend Theodor was turning up his nose like any ignoramus at the secrets of the royal art. I am, and have been for as long as I can remember – an al-chymist.”

  �
��How can that be, an alchemist?” I exclaimed, “You, who were always –?”

  “I who was always –?”

  Then I remembered that the old Theodor Gärtner I had known was dead.

  The “other” continued:

  “You should remember that in every age there have been both adepts and bunglers. You are thinking of the latter if you are thinking of the medieval quacks and charlatans, though it is from their pseudo-art that the much-vaunted chemistry of today has developed, in which your friend Theodor took such childish pride. The quacks of the middle ages have become eminent professors of chemistry at the universities. We of the ‘Golden Rose’, however, have never been interested in dissecting matter, postponing death or succumbing to the hunger for gold, that accursed plaything of mankind. We have remained what we always have been: technicians in the laboratory of eternal life.”

  Again I felt an almost physically painful shock as a current of distant, elusive memory ran through me; but it would have been impossible to say why or to what end this memory was calling me. I suppressed a question and just nodded in agreement. My visitor saw it, and again the strange smile flitted across his face. I heard him say:

  “And you? What has happened to you in all these years?” A rapid glance took in my desk: “I see you are a – writer. You ignore the advice of the Bible and cast your pearls before the reading public? You are rummaging about in mouldy old documents – you always enjoyed that – and intend to amuse the world with the peculiarities of some past century? I believe that the present world and the present age finds little meaning in the meaning of life.”

  He paused, and once again I caught a whiff of the drifts of melancholy that seemed to be settling over us. I had to pull myself almost physically out of the brown study by starting to talk about my work on the legacy of my cousin, John Roger. The more I related, the more my eagerness to confide increased, and it was a relief to find Gärtner listening to me calmly and attentively. As I went on I became convinced he would always be there with help if ever I should need it. For the moment, though, all I heard from him was an occasional “Really”, until he suddenly looked up and abruptly asked:

  “So – sometimes you feel that your function as a chronicler or editor gets mixed up with the burden of your own destiny that is threatening to become tangled up with the dead things of the past?”

  Desperate to unburden my heart, I told him everything that I had felt and suffered in the weeks following the arrival of John Roger’s legacy, beginning with the Baphomet dream and omitting nothing. “I wish I had never seen John Roger’s papers!” – thus I finished my confession – “Then I would have kept my peace of mind; I would gladly have sacrificed my ambition as a writer for that, I assure you.”

  With a smile on his face, my visitor observed me through the clouds of cigar smoke. For a moment he seemed to be about to dissolve into the haze and disappear from view. The idea that he might in some way be about to leave me wrung my heart so painfully that my hands clutched at my chest. He seemed to notice it; the cloud of smoke dissipated and I heard his laugh as he said:

  “Thank you for being so open. Do you want to get rid of me so quickly? Remember, I would hardly be sitting here with you if your cousin John Roger had kept his papers.”

  I exploded:

  “So you know more about John Roger! You know how he died!”

  “Calm down”, was the answer. “He died as he had to.”

  “He died of John Dee’s cursed legacy!”

  “Not in the way you mean. There is no curse upon it.”

  “Why didn’t he complete the work – this pointless, superfluous task that I have lumbered myself with?”

  “Which you undertook voluntarily, my friend! ‘Burn or preserve’ – wasn’t that what it said?”

  Everything! The man in the armchair knew everything!

  “I didn’t burn it,” I said.

  “And you did well!” – So he had read my thoughts.

  “And why did John Roger not burn it?” I asked, quietly.

  “Presumably he was not the true executor of the will.”

  I felt feverishly obstinate:

  “And why was he not?”

  “He died.”

  A tremor ran through me. There was only one possible cause of my cousin’s death: Black Isaïs!

  Gärtner stubbed out his cigar in the ash-tray and twisted round towards my desk. Playfully he ran his hand over the papers that lay on it singly or in piles, leafed through some and pulled out one, as if by chance, that I had missed; it must have been concealed somewhere, perhaps stuck in the binding of one of the Dee notebooks. I leant forward in curiosity. “Do you know this? Not yet, apparently!” he said after he had glanced through the sheet, and handed it to me. I shook my head and read it; I recognised the sloping hand of my cousin:

  It came as I have long suspected it would. I expected it from the very beginning, when I first started to look into the musty, mysterious papers of our ancestor, John Dee. It seems I am not the first to meet it. I, John Roger Gladhill, the bearer of the arms, am a link in the chain my ancestor forged. I am truly linked to these accursed things now that I have touched them. – – The legacy is not dead! – – Yesterday ‘she’ appeared here for the first time. She is very slender, very beautiful, and her clothes give off a delicate scent you can only just smell – the scent of a beast of prey. Since then I have been in such a state of nervous excitement that I cannot get her out of my mind. – Lady Sissy she calls herself, but I can’t believe that is her real name. She claims to be Scottish. – She wants some mysterious weapon from me. A weapon that is supposed to have a connection with the arms of the Dees of Gladhill. – I assured her that I possessed no such weapon, but she just smiled. – Since then I have not had an hour’s peace! I am obsessed with the urge to procure for Lady Sissy, or whatever she may be called, the weapon she so desires, cost what it may, my present or my future happiness. – – Oh, I think I know who Lady Sissy really is – – –!

  John Roger Gladhill.

  The sheet of paper slipped out of my hand and fluttered to the ground. – I looked at my visitor. He shrugged his shoulders.

  “That was what sent my cousin John to his death!?” I asked.

  “I believe the new task the ‘Lady’ set was too much for him,” said the man whom I no longer dared to call Theodor Gärtner. A wild horde of dark thoughts rushed down upon me: Lady Sissy? Who was she?! Who else but Princess Shotokalungin! And she is: Who else but Black Isaïs!! – Bartlett Greene’s Black Isaïs!! – The veil was suddenly rent apart and the hidden realm of the Powers of Darkness opened up, the realm to which John Dee had sold his soul; and after him the unknown author, who, in fear and trembling, made the annotations in John Dee’s diary in which every word is a shriek of terror; and after him my cousin, John Roger; – and after him – myself, who have asked Lipotin to do all he can to help me fulfill the Princess’ strange desire.

  My friend opposite me slowly sat up in his chair. His face seemed brighter but his body less clear than before. As he spoke his voice lost its physicality, its tone of spatial presence; he whispered:

  “Thou art the last Bearer of the Arms. The rays from the green mirror of things past are gathering on the crown of thy head. Burn or preserve! But do not squander! The alchymy of the soul ordains metamorphosis or death. Choose as thou wilt – – ”

  A thunderous crash, like rifle butts hammering against massive oaken doors, made me leap up with a start: I was alone in my study; before me stood Lipotin’s present, the old English mirror-glass, greenish in its Florentine frame; otherwise there was not the slightest change in the familiar surroundings. The knock at my door was hesitant, not at all thunderous.

  At my “Come in” the door opened and a young lady was standing rather shyly on the threshold. She introduced herself, “I am Frau Fromm.”

  In some confusion, I stood up. I liked Frau Fromm from the first. I shook her hand and looked absent-mindedly at my watch. It must have seemed
rather impolite to Frau Fromm, who probably thought it had something to do with her late arival. She said in a quiet voice:

  “I tried to get in touch with you at midday; I was unable to start before eight o’clock. I hope I have kept my word.”

  She had. My watch said seven fifty-two.

  I had been home for less than ten minutes.

  All this happened yesterday evening precisely as I have recorded it on these pages. It seems that I am being drawn ever deeper into the hidden chain linking my life with the fate of John Dee, my ancestor. And now the “Green Glass” he spoke about in his diary is in my hand.

  And where did I get the green mirror from?

  It came from Lipotin’s junk shop; it was given to me as a “memento of his native land”. From which native land? From the land of the Russian Czar, of Ivan the Terrible? A gift from the great-grandson – how many times removed? – of Mascee, the “Tutor to the Czar”!?

  But who was Mascee?

  Nothing easier than to coolly, calmly look for the answer in John Dee’s notebooks: Mascee was the evil spirit behind the Ravenheads, the uprising of the mob; he it was who brought the messages and fatal gifts from the loathsome chief of the Ravenheads, from that desecrator of graves and murdering fire-raiser, Bartlett Greene, the spawn of Isaïs, the destroyer, the eternal tempter and arch-enemy, the redbeard in the leather jerkin – who was sitting here at my desk only yesterday! So Bartlett Greene is present, is here; the enemy of John Dee and now my enemy! And he it was – through Lipotin – who smuggled the green mirror into my possession.