The Dedalus Meyrink Reader Read online

  Soon he had reached the delightful purlieus of Daglfing and, hot from the unaccustomed exertion, descended in order to purchase a pint of beer.

  He strolled in leisurely fashion round the deserted streets. Nowhere was there a bar open that early. The only exception was a shop, Barbara Mutschelknaus’s ‘emporium’. For a while the vulture inspected the motley collection of goods in the window, then an idea suddenly occurred to him. Making his mind up at once, he reached for the door handle.

  There was one thing that had been bothering him during the night: how was he gong to keep body and soul together? By hunting? A short-sighted old bird like me? he asked himself.

  Hmm. Or establish a guano factory? But the prerequisite for that was food, lots of food. Nothing comes of nothing. But now he had conceived a different plan. He went into the shop.

  ‘Jesus, Joseph and Mary, what an ’orrible beast!’ old Frau Mutschelknaus screeched at the sight of her unusual early customer. But she soon calmed down when Amadeus Knödlseder gave her cheeks a friendly pat and intimated, in elegant German, that, in order to complete his wardrobe, he intended to make substantial purchases, above all of brightly coloured ties of all shapes and sizes. Captivated by the vulture’s jovial manner, the old woman soon had the counter covered in mountains of the most magnificent neckties.

  And ‘Sir’ took the lot without demur and had them packed in a large cardboard box. He selected just one bright scarlet tie for himself and asked her to tie it round his long, bare neck, all the time giving her fiery glances and warbling seductively:

  One burning kiss from those cherry lips

  Reminds me of

  The rosy blush of dawn —

  Tally-ho, tally-ho, tally-ho!

  ‘There, that suits you down to the ground,’ said the old woman, tickled pink, when the tie was neatly knotted. ‘Makes you look like’ — a real fancy man, she almost said — ‘like a proper gen’lman, it does.’

  ‘And may I trouble you for a glass of water, dear lady,’ the vulture begged in dulcet tones.

  Charmed out of her usual suspiciousness, the old woman hurried off into the rear quarters of her establishment, but hardly was she out of sight than Amadeus Knödlseder grabbed the cardboard box, darted out of the shop without paying and the next minute was soaring up into the heavens. He was soon pursued by a flood of shrill curses from the despoiled entrepreneuse, but the malefactor, with not the slightest twinge of conscience, sailed on through the empyrean, his suitcase in his left claw, the cardboard box in his right.

  It was only late in the afternoon — the departing rays of the setting sun were already preparing to kiss the glowing Alpine peaks goodnight — that he descended once more. As the balmy air of his native mountains caressed his cheeks, he revelled in the magnificent views.

  The plaintive song of the shepherd boys floated up from verdant pastures to vertiginous, icy peaks, charmingly interwoven with the silvery tones of the homeward-bound herds.

  Guided by the natural instinct of a denizen of the skies, Amadeus Knödlseder was delighted to see that fortune had smiled on him and led him to a prosperous little marmot town.

  True, as soon as he appeared the inhabitants made for the safety of their homes and locked their doors, but when they saw that Knödlseder did not tear an ancient hamster — a corn merchant who had never been able to run away fast enough — limb from limb, asking him instead for a light and enquiring about lodgings, their fear quickly subsided.

  ‘You’re not from around here, to go by your dialect,’ he remarked affably once the hamster, quivering so much he could hardly speak, had given him the information he sought.

  ‘No, no,’ the old corn merchant stammered.

  ‘You’re from the south?’

  ‘No. From — from Prague.’

  ‘Aha. Of the Mosaic persuasion then, I presume?’ the vulture enquired with a grin and a wink.

  The hamster, afraid it might be a Russian he was facing, immediately denied it. ‘Me? Me? How can you say that, Herr Vulture! Jewish? Me? On the contrary, for ten years I was shabbes goy for a family that, though Jewish, was poor.’

  Knödlseder inquired about all sorts of details of life in the town, expressing particular pleasure at the fact that there was no night club of any kind; then he let the poor hamster go — he was so frightened that by this time he was almost suffering from St Vitus’s dance — and went in search of suitable premises.

  Once more fortune smiled on him and before night fell he had managed to rent a nice little shop with a room adjoining and several side chambers, all of which had their own exit.

  The days and weeks passed peacefully. The townsfolk had long since forgotten their fear and once more the streets were filled with cheerful chatter from morn till eve.

  A board had been fixed above the new shop. On it was written, in a neat round hand:

  Ties — All Colours and Styles

  Prop. Amadeus Knödlseder

  (Green Shield Stamps)

  The crowd gathered round to stare at the glories on display.

  Previously the mood in the town had always been one of bitterness and despondency when the flocks of wild duck flew past — they were so puffed up with pride at the splendid shimmering green neckties nature had given them. How times had changed! Now everyone who was anyone had a top-quality tie, but much, much gaudier. There were red ones and blue ones, one favoured yellow, another checks and the burgomaster had such a long one his front paws kept getting tangled up in it when he scampered along.

  Knödlseder Neckwear was on everyone’s lips and the proprietor was considered a repository of civic virtues: thrifty, hardworking with an eye to profit and sober (he only drank lemonade).

  During the day he served his customers in the front shop. Just occasionally he would take a particularly discriminating client through to the back, where he would stay for quite a while. Presumably he was bringing his ledgers up to date; at least at these times he was heard to belch, loudly and frequently, which, in businessmen such as he, always indicates strenuous intellectual activity.

  That the customer in question never left the premises through the front shop was no cause for surprise — there were so many exits at the rear.

  After closing time Amadeus Knödlseder loved nothing more than to sit on a precipitous cliff playing soulful melodies on his reed pipe until he saw the object of his secret affection — an ageing chamois, a spinster with horn-rimmed spectacles and a tartan shawl — come trotting along the narrow rocky ledge opposite. He would offer her a silent, respectful greeting and she would reply with a chaste bow of the head. There were already rumours going round that they would tie the knot and all those who knew about their mutual attachment could not get over their astonishment and kept saying how pleasing it was to see with their own eyes the beneficial effect of a well-ordered existence even on someone with such an unfortunate genetic inheritance as a bearded vulture must of necessity have.

  Despite this, the mood among the inhabitants of the marmot town remained sombre, a circumstance that was solely due to the fact, as baffling as it was disturbing, that the size of the population was decreasing in a way that was both frightening and inexplicable, on a weekly basis, so to speak.

  Hardly an hour passed without some family reporting a member ‘missing’. They racked their brains as to what might have happened, they waited and waited, but none of those who had disappeared ever returned.

  One day even the spinster chamois went missing! They found her smelling salts on the rocky ledge, she must have had an accident caused by an attack of vertigo.

  Amadeus Knödlseder’s grief knew no bounds.

  Again and again he plunged, wings outspread, into the abyss — in order, as he said, to find the body of his beloved. In between he would perch on the edge of the gorge, chewing on a toothpick and staring fixedly down into the depths.

  He completely neglected his neckwear business.

  Then, one night, the horror was revealed. The owner of the house wh
ere the vulture lived — a grumpy old marmot — went to the police station and demanded his tenant’s shop be compulsorily opened and the goods inside confiscated, since he was not willing to wait any longer for the rent he was owed.

  ‘Hmm. Strange. Herr Knödlseder hasn’t paid the rent, you say?’ The officer could hardly believe it. Was Herr Knödlseder not at home? Surely, he said, all they had to do was to wake him?

  ‘Him? At home? The old marmot gave a shrill laugh. ‘Him? he never comes back before five in the morning — and then drunk as a bat!’

  ‘Is that so? Drunk?’ The officer gave his orders.

  The first rays of the rising sun were already appearing and still the bailiffs were sweating away at the heavy padlock on the door leading to the rear part of the tie shop.

  An agitated crowd was milling round in the market square. ‘Fraudulent bankruptcy!’ — ‘No, speculation. With dud cheques!’ went the cries from snout to snout.

  ‘Fraudulent bankruptcy. Hah! I told you! Hah! What’s that I keep hearing? Fraudulent bankruptcy?’ said the ancient hamster, who had also turned up. It was the first time he’d appeared in public since his terrifying encounter with Knödlseder.

  The general unease grew and grew.

  Even the elegant marmottes, driving home from revelry and entertainment wrapped in their expensive furs, stopped their carriages and, craning their delicate necks, asked what was going on.

  Suddenly there was a crash — the door had given way to the pressure. Grisly was the sight that greeted them.

  A ghastly stench poured out of the store room and wherever they looked: spewed-up pellets, gnawed bones piled almost to the ceiling, bones on the tables, bones on the shelves, even in the drawers and the safe, bones upon bones.

  The crowd was paralysed with horror. At once it was clear where all the missing marmots had gone. Knödlseder had eaten them up and taken back the goods they’d bought. Just like Cardillac, the jeweller in E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Fräulein von Scuderi!

  ‘Well now,’ the hamster mocked, ‘Fraudulent bankruptcy was it, eh?’ They gathered round him, astonished that he’d had the foresight to keep himself and his family well away from any contact with the two-faced killer.

  ‘But how could it be,’ they all cried, ‘that you were the only one to distrust him? The obvious conclusion was that he’d mended his ways and —’

  ‘A bearded vulture mend his ways?!’ the hamster cried scornfully. Pressing the tips of his thumb and fingers together, as if he were holding a pinch of salt between them and waving them expressively to and fro before his audience, he said, ‘Once a vulture, always a vulture, right to —’ But he got no further. Loud human voices could be heard. Tourists!

  In a flash all the marmots had vanished.

  The hamster too.

  ‘Vunderfol! Charmink! Vot a sunrise! Aaach!’ squealed a human voice. It belonged to a spinster with a pointed nose and idealistic views who followed it onto the plateau, leaning on her alpenstock, her bosom heaving for all it was worth, her guileless eyes round and wide, like two fried eggs. Only not so yellow! (Violet) ‘Ach! Now, surrounded by ze charms of ze Natur, vich is soo beautiful, you cannot, Herr Klempke, say vot you said in ze valley below about ze Italian people. You vill see, ven ze var is over ze Italians vill be ze first to come and hold out zeir hand to us and say:

  “Dear Chermany, forgive us, ve haf mended our vays.” ’

  J. H. Obereit’s Visit to the Time-Leeches

  My grandfather was laid to rest in the graveyard of the sleepy little town of Runkel. His gravestone is overgrown with thick, green moss. It bears, below the eroded date and arranged round a cross, four letters, the gold gleaming as fresh as if they had been carved only yesterday:

  Vivo — that is: ‘I live’ — was the word, I was told when I was still a child and read the inscription for the first time. It has etched itself deeply on my soul, as if the dead man himself had shouted it to me from under the earth.

  Vivo — I live: a strange motto for a gravestone.

  It still echoes inside me and when I think of it, I feel as I did all those years ago, standing beside the grave. In my mind’s eye I see my grandfather, whom I never knew in life, lying under the ground, still intact, his hands together and his eyes, as clear and transparent as glass, wide open and unmoving. Like someone who has remained imperishable in the realm of decay and is quietly, patiently waiting for the resurrection.

  I have visited the cemeteries of quite a few towns and it was always a faint, inexplicable desire to see the same word again on a gravestone that drew me there, but I only found ‘vivo’ twice, once in Denmark and once in Regensburg. In both cases the name on the stone had been rubbed out by the finger of time; in both cases the ‘vivo’ shone fresh and bright, as if the word itself were full of life.

  I had always accepted as true what people told me as a child, namely that my grandfather had not left a single written word behind; I was, therefore, all the more excited when, not long ago in a hidden compartment of my desk, an old family heirloom, I came upon a whole bundle of papers which had clearly been written by him.

  They were in a folder on which were written the strange words: ‘How can a person expect to escape death, unless he neither waits nor hopes.’ Immediately the word ‘vivo’ blazed up inside me; like a bright light it has accompanied me my whole life through, only dying down for a while to flare up anew within me again and again, sometimes in my dreams, sometimes in my waking life. Although I occasionally thought that it was by chance that ‘vivo’ came to be on the gravestone — the choice of inscription having been left to the pastor — when I read the maxim on the cover of the folder I was immediately convinced it must have some deeper meaning, something that had perhaps filled my grandfather’s whole life and being.

  And what I read in his papers confirmed my view with every succeeding page.

  There was too much of a private nature in it for me to reveal it to strangers; it must suffice if I briefly touch on that part alone which led to my acquaintance with Johann Hermann Obereit and is related to his visit to the time-leeches.

  As became apparent from the papers, my grandfather was a member of the society of the Philadelphian Brethren, an order whose roots go back to ancient Egypt and which claims the legendary Hermes Trismegistos as its founder. The ‘grips’ and gestures, by which the members recognised each other, were also explained at length. The name Johann Hermann Obereit occurred frequently. He was a chemist, who seemed to have been a close friend of my grandfather and must have lived in Runkel. Since I was keen to learn more about my grandfather’s life and the dark, otherworldly philosophy that informed every line of his writings, I determined to go to Runkel to see whether there were perhaps any descendants of the aforementioned Obereit and if so, whether there was a family chronicle.

  It is impossible to imagine anywhere more like something out of a dream than that tiny little town that sits, a forgotten piece of the Middle Ages, quiet as the grave with its winding alleys and grass-grown cobbles, at the foot of the mountain castle of Runkelstein, the ancestral seat of the of the Princes of Wied, oblivious to the raucous noise of the modern world.

  It was still early in the morning when I went out to the little graveyard and my childhood days came back to me as I walked from one flowery mound to another in the brilliant sunshine, mechanically reading off from the crosses the names of those who were sleeping in their coffins below. While still some distance away, I recognised my grandfather’s gravestone from the glittering inscription.

  A white-haired, clean-shaven old man with sharply defined features was sitting beside it, his chin resting on the ivory handle of his walking stick. He was regarding me with an oddly animated look, like someone in whom the similarity of a face has awakened all kinds of memories.

  In his old-fashioned dress, almost going back to the early years of the last century, with its stand-up collar and broad, black silk cravat, he looked like an ancestral portrait from days long past. I was so aston
ished at the sight, so out-of-tune with the present, and had anyway become so bound up in everything I had read in my grandfather’s papers that, almost without being aware of what I was doing, I softly said the name ‘Obereit’.

  ‘Yes, my name is Johann Hermann Obereit,’ the old man said, without showing the least sign of surprise.

  It almost took my breath away, and the things I learnt in the course of the conversation that followed were not calculated to reduce my amazement.

  It is not an everyday experience to see a person before you who doesn’t seem much older than you are yourself, but yet must have lived through a century and a half. As we walked along together and he told me about Napoleon and other historical figures he had known, in the way you talk about people who have only just died, I felt like a mere youth, despite my white hair.

  ‘In the town they take me for my own grandson,’ he said with a smile, pointing to a gravestone we were passing which bore the date 1798. ‘By rights I ought to be buried here. I had the date of death carved on it because I didn’t want the crowds gawping at me like some modern Methuselah. The word “vivo”,’ he went on, as if he could read my thoughts, ‘will only be added once I am really dead.’

  We quickly became close friends and he insisted I stayed with him.

  A month must have passed. We often sat up together late into the night in animated conversation, but he always changed the subject whenever I asked him what the strange words: ‘How can a person expect to escape death, unless he neither waits nor hopes’ on my grandfather’s folder might mean. However one evening, the last we spent together, the conversation came round to the old witch trials and when I expressed the view that the women would simply have been hysterics, he suddenly interrupted me and asked, ‘So you don’t believe someone can leave their body and go, let’s say, to the Blocksberg for the witches’ sabbath?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Shall I show you how?’ he asked, giving me a sharp look.