The Opal, and Other Stories Page 9

  Even the electric ray turns pale at their approach.

  Lily’s heart misses a beat in terror: here she is, a defenceless lady, out in the open! What if they catch sight of her? They’ll drag her up before the beak in front of that old perjurer of a crab, the biggest crook in the sea, and then ... and then …

  Here they come, getting closer – they’re just a step away; the cruel talons of ruin and disgrace are on the point of encircling her waist with their iron grip.

  Suddenly the dark water shivers, the coral branches creak and shake like seaweed and a pale glow illumines the scene from afar.

  Crabs, rays, sea-devils dart and scatter across the sand, pieces of rock break away and swirl up in the current.

  A bluish, smoothly moving wall as big as all the world comes flying through the waters.

  Nearer and nearer comes the phosphorescent light, the gigantic glowing wing of Tintorera, the demon of annihilation, comes sweeping up, stirring fiery chasm-deep whirlpools in the foaming water.

  Everything becomes caught up in the spinning eddies. The lily flies vertiginously up and down again over a landscape of emerald froth. Where now are the crabs, where the shame and dread? Raging destruction has come storming through the world, a bacchanal of death, a glorious dance for the prize of a soul.

  The senses expire like a smoking flame.

  Then next a frightful shuddering jolt, the eddies stand in the water, but continue to spin faster and faster, flinging down on to the sea floor everything they had previously torn up.

  Many a fine armoured piece meets its Waterloo there.

  When at last the lily awoke from her fainting fall she found herself lying on a bed of soft algae.

  The gentle seahorse (who had taken the day off from work) was bending over her.

  A cool morning stream fanned her face, and she looked up. She could hear the cackling of goose-barnacles and the cheerful bleating of a lamprey.

  ‘You are quite safe here in my little house in the country’ replied the seahorse to her look of enquiry, and gazing deep into her eyes. ‘Please rest a little more, dear lady, it will do you good.’

  But she could not, for all she tried. An indescribable feeling of nausea overwhelmed her.

  ‘What a storm that was last night – my head is still swimming from all the commotion’, went on the seahorse chattily. ‘By the way, can I tempt you to a spot of blubber – a really nice fat piece of juicy sailor-blubber?’

  At the mere mention of the word the lily felt so ill that she was obliged to clamp her lips tight shut. But it was no use. She began to retch (the seahorse turned his head discreetly to one side), and in a moment had brought up the Blamol pill which, quite undigested, floated and vanished upwards in a cloud of bubbles.

  Thank God the seahorse hadn’t seen it.

  The invalid suddenly felt as right as rain again.

  She curled herself up with contentment.

  Wonder of wonders! She could curl up again, could move her limbs about, as before.

  Ecstasy upon ecstasy!

  The seahorse could feel bubbles of joy pricking his eyes. ‘Christmas, it’s really Christmas today!’ he rejoiced. ‘I must tell the cuttlefish at once: in the meanwhile you must have a really good long sleep.’

  ‘What do you find so remarkable about the lily’s sudden recovery, my dear Seahorse?’ asked the cuttlefish, with a condescending smile. ‘You are an enthusiast, my young friend. As a matter of principle I don’t usually discuss medical matters with non-professionals (bring up a chair, Perch, for the gentleman), but I’ll make an exception this time, and endeavour to match my mode of expression to your level of understanding as far as I can. So, you consider Blamol to be a poison, and you attribute the paralysis to its effects. What a mistake! I might add, by the way, that Blamol is now altogether passe, it is yesterday’s panacea; today we usually recommend Idiotine Chloride: medical science strides eternally onwards. That the illness should have coincided with swallowing the pill was pure coincidence – it’s well known that everything that happens in the world is coincidence – for in the first place Lateral Chord Sclerosis has a quite different set of causes (though discretion forbids me to name them), and secondly, Blamol works, like all such agents, not when you take it, but only when you spit it out – and then of course it’s bound to be beneficial in its effects.

  And finally, as far as the cure is concerned, well, here we have a clear case of autosuggestion. In reality, - and by ‘reality’ I mean what Kant called the ‘thing in itself’ - in reality the lady is just as ill as she was yesterday: she just doesn’t notice it. It is precisely in the case of those with inferior mental powers that autosuggestion works so effectively. Of course I’m not implying anything by saying this – you know how highly I esteem the little woman at home:

  ‘Give all honour to the ladies,

  They plait and weave

  as Schi Her puts it.

  But now, my young friend, enough of this, it will simply upset you unnecessarily. A propos – you will of course do me the honour? It is Christmas and – I’m getting married.’

  ‘Who is he marrying, then?’ he asked the perch on the way out. ‘You don’t say – the blue mussel? But why not, though – just another one in it for the money.’

  When, that evening, the lily arrived, somewhat late but with a glowing complexion, and leaning on the seahorse’s fin, the congratulations were without end. Everyone gave her a hug, and even the veiled snails and the cockles who were acting as bridesmaids put their maidenly timidity aside in the warmth of their hearts.

  It was a magnificent occasion, as only the rich can provide – the blue mussel’s parents had millions after all, and they had even organised some phosphorescent sea-fire.

  Four long oyster-banks had been laid out and the feast had lasted well over an hour, yet still more dainty dishes appeared. The perch went on steadily circulating with a glittering decanter (upside down, of course) of hundred year-old air, recovered from the cabin of a sunken wreck.

  Everyone had become a little tipsy, and the toasts being drunk to the blue mussel and her bridegroom were being drowned out by the popping and clicking of dead men’s fingers and the clatter of razorshells.

  The seahorse and the lily were sitting at the far end of the table, quite in the shadows, hardly noticing their surroundings. From time to time he would squeeze one or other of her tentacles, and in return she rewarded him with a glance full of ardour.

  Towards the end of the meal the band struck up with a song:

  A joke, a kiss

  For a married Miss

  Is utter bliss;

  It’s quite what’s done

  When you’re having fun

  But he’s got to be young …

  And their table-companions exchanged a sly wink. It would have been impossible not to suppose that everyone had their own ideas about what sort of liaisons were being quietly arranged here.

  The Truth-Drop

  The ghostly light of dawn was just feeling its way through the dirty streets, breathing a dully shimmering fog against the walls of the houses. Four in the morning! And Hlavata Ohrringle was still awake, pacing back and forth in his room.

  To have had in your possession for decades a phial of colourless liquid, which you know for certain has some secret quality; that, taken at a specific moment for instance it may have the capacity to endow you with magical abilities, yet not to be in any position to comprehend the secret – such an idea is depressing and painful. But to see the veil lifted, suddenly, and all at a once, must be exciting and would surely keep you awake.

  Hlavata Ohrringle had often picked up the phial in the evening, shaken it, held it up to the light and sniffed at its contents. Over and over again he had turned over the pages of the old folios, which according to hints in his great-grandfather’s will were supposed to offer some kind of explanation, and every time he had gone to bed, keyed up, without ever finding anything out. There was just one odd thing: on those occasions he al
ways had the same dream – a landscape of purple mountains with an oriental monastery in the centre, and a golden roof on which stood, in paralysed immobility, a corpse holding a book in its hand. Then, as the cover of the book slowly revealed, a sentence written in Chaldaean letters appeared: ‘Stay on your appointed path, and be steadfast.’

  And then today, today at last, after such long and fruitless pondering, Hlavata Ohrringle had found that the concealing shell of the secret had as it were split open before his soul’s eye, just as a nutshell bursts under the influence of heat.

  A passage in one of the treatises which he had overlooked up until now, because it occurred right at the beginning in the introduction, offered the solution precisely. The liquid was what was called an Alchemistical Particular. That was it! An Alchemistical Particular! But the properties of the liquor were odd, and apparently so valueless by modern standards. One drop, suspended between two metal points, would after a few minutes assume the form of a mathematically exact sphere. Interesting – very interesting, that there indeed existed a material which did in fact permit the formation of such a perfect shape; but what else was there? Surely that couldn’t be all?

  And it wasn’t all. Hlavata Ohrringle (who was a true bookworm) soon found a description of this wonderfully valuable material in another folio volume.

  Here the sense ran that, if it should prove possible to produce a spherical form in a geometrically correct sense, such things might be glimpsed in its reflection as would surely be a source of great astonishment. The whole astral universe – that spiritual space that underlies our own, as action does intent, or deed decision – might then be perceptible, even if sometimes only in symbolic form. It would be a round eye, seeing in every possible direction into the farthest recesses of space, and arranging, according to laws of surface tension incomprehensible to us, all mirror-images over and beside one another.

  Hlavata Ohrringle had made all his preparations, had screwed his metal needle-points into a support, and with infinite care had introduced his drop of liquid between them. Now he could barely contain his impatience for daybreak, and to commence his experiment in the light of dawn. Restlessly he strode backwards and forwards, flung himself into a chair, and looked again at the clock. Still only a quarter past four, dammit!

  He leafed through the calender to find out when the sun would rise. And as it so happened today was a Lady Day – and Lady Days are so portentous.

  At last the light seemed bright enough. He picked up his magnifying glass and gazed at the drop, glistening between its silvery needle-points.

  At first he could see nothing but images of the things that cluttered his room: his writing desk with its lid decorated with painted stars, the books scattered about, the white globe of the lamp and the old gown hanging on the window-catch – and a tiny patch of pink sky, glowing through the panes. But after a moment a dark green hue spread over the drop’s surface, swallowing up all these reflections. Landscapes appeared, of basalt rocks, yawning caves and grottoes; fantastical vegetation stretched out, crouched, as if ready to strike; strange arborescent shapes extended great billowing glass-green transparent leaves. The landscape glowed with its own light: it was a scene set in the deep ocean.

  A long white patch appeared, becoming more clearly defined and gaining in shape: a drowned corpse, a naked woman, head down, her feet caught in a tangle of stems, hung in the green water. Suddenly a colourless lump, its eyes on stalks and a mass of barbels concealing its hideous mouth, detached itself from the shadow of the rocks and darted towards the body. A second one sped after it.

  The first of these monsters had torn the remains apart, and had itself been caught by the other so quickly, that Hlavata Ohrringle could not catch every detail. With a gasp of excitement he bent closer over the glass – but his breath had already clouded the picture and in a moment it vanished completely. It was no use: no effort, no amount of patient waiting could recover the scene, and the drop reflected nothing more than the glorious sun, as it rose above the shimmering haze of the sooty gables.

  II

  Hlavata Ohrringle had returned from a visit to the outskirts of town with a worried expression. He needed to collect his thoughts. He had been to see an old adherent of the Rosicrucian Order, a certain Eckstein, to ask his advice.

  The latter listened long and hard, and then said: This is a mystery of unequalled profundity. It was in fact I who rediscovered a summary of experiences such as these in the writings of the Cabbalist Rabbi Cikatilla, though of course they were in coded form. What Basilius Valentinus says in his tractatus The Triumphal Car of Antimonius’ on page 712 is merely symbolic, or anagogic, that is, it may be grasped only by him whose soul has descended into the heart of the divine.’ And if Hlavata Ohrringle were really interested in seeing visions in shining objects, then a Japanese crystal ball would be the most suitable. All those that had so far reached Europe were in point of fact actually to be found in the hands of a sinister black magician by the name of Fahlendien in Vienna, but the best explanation of the scene he had witnessed could on the other hand be given by a mad painter called Christopher who was living in Berlin – if he wanted such an explanation.

  Of course Ohrringle was far from satisfied by all this, and every day he tried out fresh experiments with his liquid.

  These experiments were naturally no secret in the town, and were a regular topic of the day’s conversation. Absurd, they said, completely absurd; how could you possibly see everything in a spherical mirror? Most things in space lie behind one another, so the one just makes the other invisible.

  That struck everyone as extremely plausible, so they were all the more astonished to read the entirely contradictory opinion of an English expert in a foreign newspaper. This was to the effect that it was indeed, in theory, altogether possible to see through walls and into closed boxes: you only had to consider X-rays for instance, against which the only defence was lead sheeting.

  Every object in the world, when all was said and done, was nothing more, so to speak, than a fine sieve made of swirling atoms: it was only a matter of finding the right form of radiation and there would be no resistance to its transmission.

  This newspaper article turned out to be of especial interest in official circles. Rumours of the most peculiar and top secret decrees filtered down into public awareness. Diplomatic orders sent out to all Attachés for example required the immediate transfer of all documents into lead containers. There were proposals for a total reorganisation of the provincial police, and with a view to improving the ‘secret’ police, negotiations had begun with Russia, to import a quantity of bloodhounds in exchange for a number of domestic Schweinelnunde surplus to requirements, and so on.

  Of course, Hlavata Ohrringle was kept under strict surveillance: and the stricter it was, the more pleased he looked when he went out for a walk. And when one day he appeared on the Esplanade with a positively broad grin on his face the authorities decided to take the most ruthless action, especially as it had become apparent that he only smiled when diplomats were the subject under discussion; indeed, when asked what he thought of the art of diplomacy, he had reported that a swindle could never last indefinitely.

  And one day (it was another Lady Day), just when he was sitting looking at one of his mysterious drops, Hlavata Ohrringle was arrested, and taken into custody on a charge of multiple matricide.

  His strange liquid was confiscated and turned over for examination to the Department of Forensic Chemistry.

  This was bound to be a good development, since now, without question, the truth about diplomats is bound to come out into the open.

  Ahem – I repeat: it will come out into the open.

  Dr Cinderella’s Plants

  Do you see the little blackened bronze statue over there between the two lamps? That has been the cause of all the weird experiences I have had in recent years.

  These phantom perturbations which have so drained my energy are all links in a chain which, if I pursue it back int
o the past, comes back every time to the same starting point: the bronze.

  If I pretend to myself that there may be other causes of my anxieties, the image nevertheless recurs to me, like another milestone along the road.

  But where this road is leading me – to ultimate illumination or to ever-increasing horror – I have no desire to know, wishing only to cling on to those occasions when for a few days I feel relief from my doom and can sense freedom until I am overcome by the next shock.

  I unearthed the thing in the desert sands of Thebes one day as I was prodding about with my stick, and from the very first moment, as I was examining it more closely, I was struck with a morbid curiosity to know what the image might signify – I have never wanted to know anything quite so urgently.

  In the beginning I would ask every explorer I met, but without success. Only one old Arabian collector seemed to have some idea about what it meant.

  ‘A representation of an Egyptian hieroglyph,’ he proposed; the unusual position of the arms of the figure must indicate some kind of mysterious ecstatic state.

  I took the bronze with me back to Europe, and hardly an evening went by without my falling into the most remarkable reveries about its mystery.

  An uncanny feeling would come over me on these occasions as I brooded on some poisonous and malevolent presence which was threatening, with malicious relish, to break out of its lifeless cocoon in order to fasten itself leechlike upon me, and to remain, like some incurable disease, as the dark tyrant of my life. Then one day, as I was concerned with quite a different matter, the thought which made sense of the whole riddle struck me with such force, and so unexpectedly, that I staggered under its impact.

  Such shafts of illumination strike into our souls like meteors. We know not whence they come: we witness only their white-hot gleam as they fall.

  It is almost like a feeling of fear – then – a slight – as – as if some alien ... What am I trying to say?! I’m sorry, sometimes I get so forgetful, especially since I’ve had to drag this lame leg along. Yes, well, the answer to my brooding thoughts appeared suddenly stark in front of my eyes: imitation!