The Angel of the West Window Read online

  But I will beware of the orders that come from the mirror. The strange thing is that the first person to come out of the mirror was my friend Theodor Gärtner. And he came as a friend, to give warning, to help! Should I doubt him? Is something trying to confuse me?

  Oh, how I am abandoned, alone on this mountainous ridge of consciousness, wherever I look down there are precipices – on both sides – precipices of madness which threaten to engulf me, should I make the slightest false step.

  Once more I am urged by a longing to immerse myself in John Dee’s papers, to gain from them a clearer insight, to wring from them confirmation of my own fate. This dangerous curiosity has grown, I can feel it, into an obsession, which I can no longer resist. It has become my destiny. I will not know peace until this destiny has fulfilled itself; the placid stream of my existence must mingle with the great river of my kindred that flowed underground, as it were, until it gushed forth at my feet and now bears me away – – –

  I have made my arrangements accordingly.

  For the next few days Frau Fromm has strict orders that I am not to be disturbed by any visitors. I am not expecting any friends; a recluse like myself has no friends. And the other visitors? Oh, how clearly can I sense them all waiting in the wings. I will deny them entry! Thank God, I already know what they want from me.

  For that reason I also gave Frau Fromm particular orders that a Herr Lipotin, of such and such an appearance, is to be turned away. A lady, whatever her name – “Princess Shotokalungin” for example – is to be turned away.

  It was odd, too: when I described the appearance and looks of the Princess to my new housekeeper, who is timid and strangely shy, she started to tremble noticeably and her pretty little nostrils twitched, as if she could already scent the undesirable visitor. She assured me with nervous emphasis that she would respect my wishes in every particular, that she would be most careful and take every step possible to ensure that no visitor should even get past the storm door.

  She was so eager that I looked up and, thanking her briefly, for the first time looked more closely at my new companion. She is of middle height, with a delicate, girlish figure; and yet there is something in her eyes, in her being, that prevents me from describing her appearance as virginal or even as youthful. Her look is strangely old, veiled and distant. You feel as if it is constantly shying away from itself, or from the immediate environment, at which it is compelled to direct itself.

  As I observed her, I was made uneasy by a vague sense of the vulnerability of my isolation such as I had felt in all its piercing sharpness for the first time yesterday evening; I was also reminded of how I was surrounded by strange beings and dark influences such as Bartlett Greene. As I thought of him I felt his terrible nearness and, like a worm in the fruit, a thought crawled its way into my mind: is this Frau Fromm another of these phantoms? Has a ghost hidden itself in this young woman and forced its way into my threatened existence in the guise of a housekeeper?

  It may be that I looked at Frau Fromm, as she stood there in front of me, longer and with closer scrutiny than her reticent character could bear – she certainly blushed violently and once more started to tremble uncontrollably. And she gave me such an anxious look that I felt embarrassed when it occurred to me what she was probably thinking I had in mind. So I shook off all foolish thoughts and tried to erase the unfortunate impression as quickly as possible by scratching my head with calculated absent-mindedness, mumbling a few words about lack of time and need to be alone, and asking her once more to understand how important it was for me to be shielded from unwelcome distractions.

  She looked past me, and said in an expressionless voice:

  “Yes. That is why I have come.”

  I found the answer puzzling. Again I seemed to feel “links”. I asked, more vehemently than I had intended:

  “You had some purpose in taking this position? You know me?”

  She shook her head gently:

  “No, I know nothing about you. It is probably just chance that has brought me here. – – The only thing is, sometimes I dream...”

  “You dreamed”, I interrupted her, “that you took this temporary position? Such things do happen occasionally.”

  “No; that wasn’t it.”

  “What then?”

  “I have been ordered to help.”

  I gave a start, “How do you mean?”

  She looked at me with a tormented expression on her face:

  “You must forgive me. I’m talking nonsense. Sometimes I have to struggle with my imagination. But it is of no importance. I must get down to my work now. Please excuse me for taking up your time.”

  She turned quicky to leave the room. I caught her by the hand, perhaps a little too violently, for the pressure of my fingers around her wrist seemed to cause her some alarm. She gave a jerk, as if struck by an electric current, and then stood there, limp. In total submission, she left her hand in mine; her features underwent an odd transformation, her eyes became unfocused. I could not understand what was happening to her, but I found myself in the grip of a bizarre fancy: I have already experienced all this, right down to the last detail, so many – how many? – years ago. Without thinking what I was doing or saying, I gently forced her down into the chair by the desk. I kept hold of her hand and the words seemed to form on my lips of their own accord:

  “There are times, Frau Fromm, when we all have to struggle with our imaginations. You say you want to help me. Let us help each other. You see, for the last few days I have been struggling with the idea that I am my own ancestor, an Englishman from the ...”

  She interrupted my with a soft cry. I looked up. She was staring at me.

  “What is upsetting you?” I broke off. For the space of a few seconds her stare, which seemed to go right through me, was uncanny and glowed like a burning coal within.

  Frau Fromm nodded absent-mindedly and replied:

  “I was in England once. I was married to an old Englishman – –“

  “Is that all?” – I had to smile and felt a sense of relief, though I could not have said why. At the same time I was surprised that such a young woman should already have two marriages behind her – “You were married to someone in England before you married Dr. Fromm?”

  She shook her head.

  “– – or Dr. Fromm himself was...? Forgive me for asking such a personal question, but I know nothing about your past life.”

  She gave a vigourously dismissive wave of her hand.

  “Dr. Fromm was my husband for a very short time. It was a mistake. He died soon after we separated. He wasn’t English and had never been to England.”

  “And your first husband?”

  “I married Dr. Fromm when I was eighteen, straight from school. I have not been married again.”

  “But I don’t understand. My dear Frau Fromm ...”

  “I don’t understand it, either,” she said, with a tormented expression as she turned her face towards me, as if appealing for help. “It was on the day of my wedding to Dr. Fromm that I realised that – – that I belong to another”

  “To an old Englishman, you said. Good. – Was he a childhood friend; someone you met as a young girl?”

  She nodded her head vehemently then looked bewildered again.

  “It’s not like that at all. It’s quite different.”

  She pulled herself together in the armchair – it obviously cost a great effort – withdrew her hand from my clasp, straightened up and spoke in a monotone, as if it were something she had learnt by heart; I have noted down the main points:

  “I was an only child. My family was quite well-off. My father was a tenant farmer in Styria. Later he had some bad luck and we became poor. As a child I went on several short journeys, but never outside Austria. Before I married I had only once been to Vienna. That was the longest journey I had made. But as a child I often dreamed of a house in an area which I had never seen with my waking eye. And I knew: the house and the countryside are in Eng
land. How it was I was so sure, I cannot say. The obvious answer would be to put it all down to childish imagination, but several times I described the landscapes I dreamed of to a distant relative of ours who worked for a while on our farm; he was half English, had been brought up in England, and he said I must have been dreaming of the Scottish hills or of Richmond: my descriptions suited those two places precisely, except that the buildings were not at all as old-fashioned as I described them. Since then my dreams have had an odd confirmation, if you can call it that, from another side. Another dream I often had as a child was of an old, gloomy city; the image was so sharp and detailed that I could walk around in it and find my way easily to particular streets, squares and houses. And I always found what I was looking for so that it was hard to say it was only a dream. Our relative did not know this city and said he was sure it was not in England at all. It must be an old city on the continent. It lay on either side of a largish river and the two parts were connected by an old stone bridge which was guarded on both sides by dark fortified gates. Above the tightly-packed jumble of houses on one bank there rose a hill with a mighty castle towering over its tree-covered slopes.. One day I was told it was Prague, but many of the details, which I could describe precisely, had disappeared or been changed, although many of the things I knew corresponded to an old map. To this very day I have never been to Prague and I am afraid of the city. I never, never want to set foot in it! If my mind dwells on it for a long time, I am gripped by an uncontrollable dread and I can see a man the sight of whom, I do not know why, makes my blood freeze. He has no ears; they have been cut off and there are blood-red scars around the holes on either side of his head. He seems to me to be the evil demon of this terrible city. This city – I am sure of it – would make me unhappy and ruin my life.”

  Frau Fromm uttered the last words so vehemently that it shook me and I hastily interrupted her. My own agitation brought her back to herself; her expression relaxed and she passed her hand over her face, as if to wipe away the vision she had had. Then, visibly exhausted, she added, pausing at intervals:

  “Even when I am awake I can transport myself to that old house in England, whenever I want. I can live in it, if I want, for hours or days; the longer, the clearer everything becomes there. I picture to myself – that is the right word, isn’t it – I picture to myself that I am married to an old man. I can see him very clearly if I want to, only everything that I perceive is steeped in a greenish light. It is as if I am looking into an old green mirror – –“

  Again I interrupted her with a violent gesture as I stretched out my hand towards Lipotin’s mirror with the Florentine frame that was standing on the desk. Frau Fromm seemed not to notice it. She continued:

  “Some time ago I learnt that he was in danger.”

  “Who is in danger?”

  The distant expression settled on her face again; she looked almost as if she were unconscious. Fear spread across her features. “My husband,” she stammered.

  “You mean Dr. Fromm?” I said, deliberately trying to catch her out.

  “No! Dr. Fromm is dead! I mean my real husband – – the head of our household in England...”

  “Is he still living there?”

  “No. He lived there a long, long time ago.”

  “When did he live there?”

  “I don’t know. It was a long time ago.”

  “Frau Fromm!”

  She came to herself with a start:

  “Was I talking nonsense?”

  I couldn’t answer; I just shook my head.

  With an apology, she continued:

  “My father used to say I was talking nonsense when I described my visions. He would have none of it. He called them ‘sick’. Since then I have been afraid to speak of them – and you have heard it all on the very first day! You’ll be thinking: ‘This woman is ill and tried to keep it a secret! She got this job on false pretences,’ and yet – and yet I feel I am in my right place here and that I am needed here!”

  She jumped up in her agitation. I tried to calm her down, but in vain. It was only gradually that she accepted my assurance that I did not think she was ill and that I would definitely keep her here as long as my old housekeeper was away.

  Then she seemed to quieten down. She smiled a grateful, embarrassed smile.

  “You will see that I am quite up to the task I have taken on. May I get on with my work now?”

  “One more thing, Frau Fromm: can you describe to me, roughly at least, what the old man in the house at Richmond looks like. And do you possibly know what his name is?”

  She reflected. An expression of surprise appeared on her face.

  “His name? No, I don’t know that. It never occurred to me that he had to have a specific name. I just call him: ‘He’. – And what he looks like? He looks ... like you, sir. – I must make amends to you!” – And with that she had slipped out of the door.

  At the moment I have no desire to trouble my head with this new mystery of this Frau Fromm, who suddenly appears from nowhere. There is no doubt about it: she is subject to alternating states of consciousness; a doctor would see nothing unusual in the case – adolescent hysteria, he would call it, fixated dream images, dramatised self-delusion, the experiences of a dissociated personality. In the latter case the dissociated personality had clearly been projected back into an earlier century. Nothing in all that is out of the ordinary.

  But Richmond? And her dream husband’s resemblance to me? – – Doctors are familar with such cases as well – what are doctors not familiar with!? Patients of this type tend to fixate on someone in the immediate vicinity they feel they can trust. – Someone she can trust? Am I someone she can trust? Of course I am. Did I not just say to her, “Let us help each other”? If only I knew what she meant when she said, “I must make amends to you”. Is that the language of someone in a catatonic trance? – Well, time will tell whether I have acquired a servant who is not always quite right in the head, but I must say that something within me whispers a quite different message. I must not give in to it or I will be in danger of losing my grip on my mind – or on myself. I know only too well what I must do if my fate is to have meaning. The fate of most “normal” men is, if you look at it closely, as good as meaningless.

  So back to work as quickly as possible!

  On my desk in front of me is a thick bundle tied up in string which, obeying the instructions I received in a dream from – from the Baphomet, I fished up at random out of the drawer.

  Perhaps it will provide the key to the new puzzle?

  I open a volume stiffly bound in black leather; on the title page:

  Private Diary.

  On the next page, in John Dee’s hand:

  Log-book of my first voyage of discovery to the only true Greenland, to the everlasting throne and crown of England. The 20th day of November in the year of Our Lord, 1582.

  It is now plain that my misgivings were well founded, that beset me when I believed that Greenland, which I thought to subject to the temporal power of Queen Elizabeth, was to be found here on earth.

  From the very first day of our collaboration, when in a vain delusion I threw in my lot with the Ravenheads, that villain and arch-deceiver, Bartlett Greene, has led me most treacherously astray and drawn me with his devilish wiles into the path of error. It is so with most men, that they take upon themselves a heavy burden here on earth because they do not see that our task is on the other side, and not here and now; they have not understood the curse of the Fall. They do not understand that our labour here is that we might be rewarded “over there”. Bartlett Greene set me on the road to spiritual ruin when he whispered in my ear that I should seek the fruit of my ambition here on earth, so that I should not discover that the crown is “on the other side”. My road was to be one of adversity, disappointment, sorrow and treachery that I might become grey before my time and tired of life.

  Great was the danger for my soul’s true destination, but as well as that he wanted t
o prevent the fulfilment of what was foreordained for our bloodline, namely that we it should be who would reach man’s highest peak in his rise from the Fall. His counsel – that the path to this glory led through earthly power and majesty – was utterly wrong. Today I know for certain that it is ordained that I shall seek my Greenland, my Crownland, “on the other side”, and that my whole life has had no other meaning: on the other side, where the undamaged crown of the mysteries and the “virgin queen” await their king.

  For three days now an apparition has appeared to me, early in the morning but when I was wide awake, so that it has nothing of a dream or suchlike imaginings. I never knew before that there is something beyond waking or sleeping, dreaming or madness; a fifth way, a mystery: a clear vision vouchsafed of things that are beyond this world. And the apparition that came to me was quite different from those that Greene showed me in the polished coal in the Tower.

  I saw a green hill and I knew it was Gladhill, the glad hill of our ancestral home that stands proudly in the arms of the Dee family. But there was no silver sword thrust into the top; instead, its gentle summit was crowned with a green tree, like the one in the left-hand field, and a living spring bubbled out of the ground at its foot. The sight was pleasing to my eye and I hurried from the dusty plain toward the hill to refresh myself from the old wellspring of our line. It was a miracle how I could see everything as real and yet symbolic at the same time.

  As I made my way towards the hill I realised with piercing clarity that I was that tree myself and that I wanted to stretch up with its trunk – that is with my spinal cord – to heaven and spread all its twigs and branches, that were my branching nerves and veins become external and visible, in the free air. I felt the sap and the blood and the sensations and joy pulsating through the tree of veins and nerves before me and at the same time I was proudly aware of myself within it. The silver spring at my feet became my children and my children’s children, a never-ending stream, returned from the future to celebrate an approaching, and yet already present, resurrection to Eternal Life. The features of each one were different and yet they all bore similarity to me; it seemed to me that it was I who had impressed upon them the stamp of our line, to preserve them for ever from Death and destruction. It filled me with a sense of reverent pride. – As I came closer to the tree I saw, framed by the highest branches as by a crown, a double face appear: the one as of a man, the other of a woman, and the two were grown together as one. And in the golden light above this double head there hovered a crown beneath a crystal of ineffable splendour.