The Opal, and Other Stories Page 18

  Lady Ethelwyn had once had the idea of ordering a piece of linen to be hung at every window, and by this means she had found that one window remained undecorated, and this of course belonged to the room with the undiscoverable door. Further investigation was however fruitless. The labyrinthine old corridors of the castle defeated every attempt to find the way to it.

  At times, however, and always at the same season of the year, everyone was struck by an uncertain but oppressive sense that an invisible guest had arrived for a sojourn in the Castle. It was a sense that gradually - perhaps reinforced by a certain series of imponderable signs -grew to be a dreadful certainty.

  And one night, lit by the full moon, when Lady Ethelwyn, plagued by sleeplessness and fear, had looked out into the courtyard, she saw with a feeling of ineffable terror the steward, stealthily leading along a ghostly, ape-like figure of appalling ugliness, which all the while emitted rattling, croaking sounds.’

  Mr. Dowd Gallagher fell silent, passed a hand across his brow, and leaned back.

  ‘I am still haunted by the scene today’ he continued, ‘and I can picture the old castle, built in the shape of a square block and set in a clearing of the park, and flanked by gloomy oaks planted in oddly curving lines.

  And as if in a vision I can see the gothic windows, each with its scrap of washing on display, and with a dark, empty space in the middle. And then - then ...

  Oh yes, something else I forgot to mention: whenever the presence of the invisible visitor becomes palpable, a faint and inexplicable aroma permeates the corridor - one old retainer described it as smelling something like onions. What could it all mean?

  A few weeks after I had left Hathaway Castle, news reached me that Vivian had grown morose. So now it was his turn! This daredevil, who would have squared up to a tiger with his bare fists! Tell me, have you got any explanation, gentlemen?

  If it had been a ghost, a curse, a magic spectrum, the plague in person, for Heaven’s sake, Vivian would at least have made some attempt to resist...’

  The crash of a broken glass interrupted the narrator. We looked up, startled: Ezekiel von Marx was sitting bolt upright, stiff in his seat, his eyes focussed on infinity, a somnambulist. His wine glass had fallen from his hand.

  At once I placed myself in magnetic contact with him, stroking his solar plexus and addressing him in a whisper.

  Soon his state of mind was such that we could all communicate with him in the form of short questions and answers, and the following conversation ensued:

  Myself: Have you something to say to us?

  Ezekiel v. Marx: Feiglstock.

  Mr. D. Gallagher: What’s that?

  E v M: Feiglstock.

  Another gent: Please make yourself clearer.

  E v M: Feiglstock, Attila. Banker. Budapest. 7 The Boule-vard.

  Mr. D.G.: I don’t understand a word.

  Myself: Has this got anything to do with Hathaway Castle?

  E v M: Yes.

  Gent in Dinner Jacket: What is the ape-like figure in the courtyard with the croaking voice?

  E v M: Dr. Max Lederer.

  Myself: Not Feiglstock, then?

  E v M: No.

  The Painter Kubin: Who is Dr. Max Lederer then?

  E v M: Lawyer and associate of Feiglstock, Attila, Banker in Budapest.

  A third gent: What is Dr. Lederer doing in Hathaway Castle?

  E v M: (Mumbles something incomprehensible.)

  Kubin: What have the Earls of Hathaway to do with Feiglstock’s bank?

  E v M: (Whispering, in deep trance) From the start. Business friends of the Earls.

  Myself: What initiation were the heirs to the title put through on that particular day?

  E v M: (Silent)

  Myself: Answer the question, if you please.

  E v M: (Silent)

  Gent in dinner Jacket [Loudly]: What were they initiated into?

  E v M [Laboriously]: Into the fam-i-ly bank ac-count.

  Mr. D.G. [thoughtfully]: Of course! Into the fam-i-ly bank account!

  Chimera

  The grey stones stand bathed in the warm sunlight - the old square is dreaming away a quiet Sunday afternoon.

  The tired houses with their worn and decaying wooden steps lean slumbrously against one another, hiding secluded corners. Inside, old-fashioned parlours stand solidly furnished with good mahogany pieces.

  And the warm summer air wafts in through watchful open windows.

  A solitary figure can be descried, walking across the square towards St. Thomas’ Church, whose tower gazes devoutly down on this tranquil scene.

  He passes inside, and encounters an aroma of incense.

  The heavy door sighs back onto its leather stop, and the loud glare of the world is swallowed up. The rays of the sun filter down greenish pink through the narrow lancets on to the sacred paving. Underneath the pious lie at rest from the ceaseless bustle of existence.

  He breathes in the dead air. Every sound has faded away. The church lies rapt in the shadow of sound.

  His pulse slows as his heart absorbs the dark, incense-laden air.

  The stranger looks at the ranks of pews, each inclined devotionally towards the Altar, as if waiting upon a coming miracle.

  Here is one of those beings who has overcome his pain, and who sees with different eyes deep into another world. He feels the mysterious breath of things, the secret, silent life of the half-light.

  Unacknowledged, hidden thoughts born here drift uneasily, questing through this enclosed space. Existences without blood, without joy or sorrow, pale as wax, like the sickly outgrowths of darkness.

  The red lamps swing silently, solemnly, at the end of long, patient cords. They move in the draught from the wings of the golden archangel.

  There! A gentle scraping sound under the benches, and something scurries across into concealment under the priedieu.

  But now, here it comes sidling round the columns.

  A livid human hand!

  It scuttles across the floor on its agile fingers, a ghostly spider.

  Listen. Now it’s climbing up an iron post, and vanishing into the offertory box.

  The silver coins inside clink gently against one another.

  The solitary man, in abstracted mood, has been following it with his eyes, until his gaze now falls on an old man standing in the shadow of a pillar. Each looks earnestly at the other.

  There are many greedy hands here,’ whispers the old man.

  The other nods his agreement.

  Dim figures slowly materialise out of the nocturnal gloom, barely moving.

  Prayersnails!

  Human busts: mysterious outlines of women’s veiled heads superimposed on cold, slimy snail bodies, with black, catholic eyes, sucking noiselessly across the chill pavement.

  ‘They live on empty prayers,’ says the old man. ‘Everyone sees them, yet nobody knows them as they crouch by day at the church doors.’

  When the priest reads Mass they sleep in whispering corners.

  ‘Am I disturbing your prayers?’ asks the solitary.

  The old man comes to join him, and stands to his left: ‘He whose feet stand in living water, he is himself prayer! But I knew that someone would come today who can see and hearl’

  Yellow reflections of light flit across the stones, like will o’ the wisps.

  Can you see the veins of gold running under the paving?’

  The old man’s face flickers.

  The other shakes his head: ‘My gaze does not delve so deep. Or do you mean something else?’

  The old man takes his hand and leads him to the altar.

  The image of Christ on the Cross towers silently above. Shadows shift quietly in the dark side-chapels, behind swelling ornamental railings; shades of old convent sisters from forgotten times past, never to return, outlandish figures, submissive as the scent of incense.

  Their black silk habits rustle as they move.

  The old man points to the floor. ‘It nearly reach
es the surface here.

  Just a foot down beneath the stones; pure gold, a broad, gleaming band. The veins run across the old square far under the houses. Extraordinary, that people didn’t stumble across it long ago, when they laid the pavement. I alone have known it for many years, and have never told anyone, until today. None of them had a pure heart.

  A sound!

  Inside the glass reliquary the silver heart held in the bony hand of St. Thomas has suddenly fallen. The old man has not heard it. He is far away: his eyes look ecstatically into the distance with a firm and steady gaze.

  Those who come now shall beg no more. A temple will rise, of shimmering gold. The ferryman is coming across for the last time.’

  The stranger hearkens to the prophetic words, whose whispered tones penetrate into his soul like the fine, suffocating dust accumulating from the sanctified decay of vanished centuries.

  Here beneath his feet! A shining sceptre of chained and slumbering power! His eyes begin to burn: must the curse lie on the gold? Can it not be lifted through human love and compassion? How many thousands are starving!

  From the tower above the bell strikes seven. The air quivers.

  The solitary man’s thoughts fly with the sound of the bell out into a world filled with extravagant art, full of pomp and magnificence.

  He shudders, and looks at the old man. How the space has changed! His footfall echoes. The corners of the pews have been broken off, the bases of the pillars worn away. The white-painted statues of the popes are covered in dust.

  ‘Have you ... have you seen the metal with your own eyes ... have you held it in your hand?’

  The old man nods agreement. ‘In the cloister-garden outside, near the statue of Mary Mother of God, amongst the flowering lilies, there you can reach it.’

  He pulls out a blue box: ‘Here.’ He opens it and gives the other something covered in lumpy projections.

  The two men are silent.

  The hubbub of life from far away penetrates into the church. The

  people are returning from a happy day out in the country meadows -tomorrow they must return to work.

  The women carry their weary children on their arms.

  The solitary man has accepted the thing, and now he shakes the old man by the hand. Then he casts a look back at the altar. Once more a mysterious breath of tranquil recognition envelops him.

  Things start from the heart: born in the heart, fitted to the heart.’

  He puts a hand to the Cross, and goes. The exhausted day leans the door ajar, and a fresh evening breeze wafts in.

  A cart rattles across the market square, bedecked with foliage and filled with a laughing, happy crowd, while through the arches of the old houses the red rays of the setting sun beam down.

  The stranger stops to lean on the stone monument in the middle of the square and drifts into a reverie. In spirit he calls across to the passers-by to tell them what he has just learned, and he hears the laughter die away. The buildings fall to dust, the church collapses. Uprooted, lying in the dust, the tearful lilies of the cloister-garden.

  The earth shakes: the demons of hate are bellowing to Heaven!

  A pounding hammer beats and pulverises the square, the town, and all the bleeding human hearts into golden dust.

  The dreamer shakes his head and ponders, listening to the melodious voice of the hidden Master in his heart:-

  ‘He who is not afraid of a wicked deed and who does not care for one that offers happiness -

  He it is who is resigned, discerning and resolute, full of essentiality.’

  But this lumpy thing in his hand is surely too light for solid gold?

  - The solitary man glances down at what he holds:

  It is a human vertebra!

  A Suggestion

  23rd September

  So, I’ve finished my system and I’m certain that I shall not feel afraid.

  The secret code is indecipherable. It’s good when you have managed to think out everything in advance, and are at the pinnacle of knowledge in as many ways as possible. This will be my diary; no-one else can read it, and I can set down whatever seems necessary in my process of self-observation. Concealment on its own won’t do: chance will bring things to light.

  It’s precisely the most elaborate concealment that is the least safe. What you learn in childhood is all so upside down! But over the years I have come to learn how to see into the heart of things, and I know exactly what I have to do to avoid any trace of fear.

  Some say conscience exists, others deny it; that means it is a problem for both and a cause of conflict. And yet, how simple the truth is: conscience exists, or it doesn’t, according to whether you believe in it or not. If I believe I have a conscience, it is because I have suggested the idea to myself. Obviously.

  It’s only odd that, if I do believe in conscience, it not only comes into existence because of that, it also manages to set itself up quite independently against my own desire and my own will.

  Set ‘against’! That’s odd. The ‘I’ that I imagine sets itself against the ‘I’ with which I have created it, and acts out then a completely independent role.

  And this seems to be the case with other things actually, too. For example, my heart sometimes beats faster when people talk of murder, with me standing there, and yet I'm sure they can’t find me out. I’m not remotely frightened in such cases, - I know exactly, for I watch myself too closely for it not to escape my notice; and yet I can feel my heart beating faster.

  This idea about conscience is quite the most devilish a priest can ever have thought of.

  I wonder who it was who first dreamed it up? A sinner? Hardly. An innocent? A so-called righteous man? How would such a one be able

  to think through the consequences of the idea? It can only be that some old man or other imagined it as a nightmare to frighten the children; with an instinctive sense of the impending defencelessness of age in the face of the burgeoning power of brutal youth.

  I can remember well how as a youth I still thought it was possible that the shade of the victim could fasten itself to a murderer’s heels and appear to him in visions.

  Murderer! Just think how clever they were to choose that word. Think of the sound. There’s really something of a death-rattle in it.

  It’s the repeated ‘ur’ - sound that expresses the horror. How cleverly people have wrapped us round in suggestions!

  But I know how to counter such dangers. I repeated the word to myself that evening a thousand times over, until it lost its horror for me. Now it’s just a word like any other.

  I can well imagine that some unprepared murderer might be hounded into madness by imagining he’s being pursued by his victim; but it would only be someone who doesn’t think, doesn’t consider, and isn’t forearmed.

  Who nowadays is accustomed to gazing cold-bloodedly straight into a dying eye and to catching its overwhelming fear of death; without being aware of a crack in the shell, or throttling the curse stuck in a choking throat, a curse of which one is secretly afraid? No wonder that such an image may come alive, and create a kind of conscience which will eventually destroy you.

  When I consider myself I have to concede that I set about the business like a genius:

  To poison two people one after the other, and to remove every trace of suspicion - people less smart than I have been have managed to do that. But to smother guilt, one’s own feelings of guilt, even before they are born, now that...

  I really think I am the only one ...

  Yes, if ever anyone had the bad luck to be omniscient, he would have trouble building an inner defence. But I took advantage of my own ignorance, and chose a poison whose effect creates a kind of death that is and shall remain quite unknown to me.

  Morphine, Strychnine, Potassium cyanide - I either know, or can imagine, their effects: spasms, cramps, sudden collapse, foaming at the mouth.

  But Curare! I have no idea what death-throes this poison induces, and how should I find out? I sh
all, of course, avoid reading about it; and to hear something about it, either by chance or involuntarily, is out of the question. Who nowadays even knows the name?

  So, if I can’t even picture the last minutes of my two victims (what a stupid word) how could such an image pursue me? And if I should dream about it, I can directly prove to my own satisfaction when I wake, that such a suggestion is untenable. And what suggestion could be stronger than such a proof?

  26th September

  Remarkable! Last night I distinctly dreamed of my two dead victims walking to left and right behind me. Perhaps it’s because I wrote down that idea about dreaming yesterday.

  There are just two ways now of blocking off such visions: either you keep them before your mind’s eye, to get used to them, as I did with the word ‘murderer’, or else you wipe the recollection out of your memory completely.

  The first? Well, the vision was too awful. I’ll choose the second. So:

  I will not think about it any more. I will not. I will not not not think any more about it. Do you hear! You won’t think any more about it!

  In fact the phrase ‘you will not’ etc. is altogether ill-advised, as I now realise: you shouldn’t use the form ‘you’ to address yourself-you divide yourself into two parts by doing so - an T and a ‘you’ -and in time that could have disastrous consequences!

  5th October

  If I hadn’t studied the nature of suggestion so exactly I could become really nervous. Last night was the eighth time I have had the same dream. Always the two of them behind me, right on my heels. I shall go out tonight, join the crowds and drink rather more than usual. I’d like to go to the theatre most of all - but of course, tonight it’s Macbeth.

  7th October

  You’re always learning something new.

  Now I know why I was bound to dream of it so persistently. Paracelsus says quite expressly that if one regularly wants vivid dreams, one need do nothing else but write one’s dreams down once or twice. I’ll make sure I leave that out. I wonder if a modern expert would know that. But they all know straight away how to take issue with Paracelsus, don’t they?