I saw Adele’s life.
Cigarette smoke, clatter of glasses, muffled voices, laughter. Closing my eyes, it’s as if I’m transported right there from the quiet of my Toronto home. I linger on the steps of Café Černý Kocour a little too long, soaking it all in. I relive that evening of early March 1938 again . . .
I. Waiting to dance in ruins
I came to Černý Kocour late that evening, delayed by a small row with my landlady; money again. All the stamgasts were already there: Rakhel, drinking her lost dreams away bottle after bottle and providing a cautionary tale for the rest of us. She never forgave the world for the injustice of ending her promising acting career in Berlin. At the table next to hers sat Herr Winder with his faithful disciples, failing to notice that the world they discussed so eagerly was long gone; the well-known critic from the silent movie era never quite caught up with talkies. This time, actor Eugen Unger sat with them. Unlike Rakhel, he was an optimist—but still never managed to find his own way here. A troupe of more lucky Czech-speaking actors clustered near the bar and downed one beer after another. All kinds of washed up people from theatre and film drifted there, while the successful ones frequented Lucerna Bar or Barrandov Terraces.
I finally glimpsed Thea, my fellow actress with no acting job, at a far table speaking with a stranger. A man of thirty, dark-haired, wilful-mouthed. Not handsome, but striking. Faustus as well as Mephisto; perhaps a king, or a military commander; someone proud and headstrong, but not necessarily good. That is, if he were an actor at all.
“Walpurgisnacht,” I overheard him say.
I made my way toward their table. “May I join you?”
Thea’s face betrayed her disappointment for a split-second before showing an unconvincing smile, but the stranger nodded. “Please do.”
His name was August Schleier, and he introduced himself as an amateur filmmaker from Vienna. Amateur, but with big ambitions. He’d just acquired the rights to shoot The Walpurgisnacht.
“The Meyrink novel?” I interrupted.
He smiled for the first time. It wasn’t an unpleasant smile, though it bore hints of something bitter underneath. “Yes. I’m pleased you know it.” The tone suggested Thea didn’t.
The twilight of Prague aristocracy, caught amidst the Great War and a rebellion led by a possessed actor? Of course I knew it. I grew up devouring everything mystical and occult, because nothing would irritate my uptight parents more.
“Two film companies held the rights in the late ‘20s,” he said. “Neither finished the film. One didn’t even begin shooting. The other stopped after two days.”
They could have finished a half-decent film in twice that time. Why throw it away? I leaned forward. “What happened?”
“Nobody knows.”
Thea snorted, but I didn’t let her cloud my mood. “Something ghastly?” I offered.
But August remained serious. “I hope not.”
That was too much for Thea; she left soon after to find better company.
August told me his vision—and how he left Vienna in haste and had to leave behind a few projects.
“So why did you leave?” I cocked my head on the side.
“I had a feeling I wouldn’t like it there soon enough.” He didn’t elaborate on that. Perhaps the wheels turned even further into the land of damnation than I could see from here.
“Well, I’m not sure you’ll like it here so much,” I admitted. “It’s not easy finding yourself a new place.”
“Personal experience?”
“Not like yours. Or theirs,” I nodded to the groups around Rakhel and Unger. “I came from Teplitz in hope of finding work. I have Czechoslovakian citizenship. No foreigner quota applies to me, which makes getting a job a bit easier. But . . . not every kind of job.”
“How would you like to act in my film?” He asked a question that would change my life.
I controlled my expression carefully. No need to give away that I’d waited for this a long time. With my German accent in Czech, I wasn’t exactly Barrandov Studios material, and my ancestry prevented me from trying to achieve anything at all in Germany.
“Polyxena?” I asked. Please let it be her and not Božena . . .
“Indeed. You’re well-fit for that role.”
I managed to conceal my joy. “Do you intend to act in it too, or just direct?”
“I will play Zrcadlo—Spiegel.”
The mirror. The madman—perhaps an actor, perhaps an animated corpse serving as someone’s puppet—with an uncanny ability to mimic anyone, who later became the voice of rebellion and died a gruesome death.
“Aren’t you a little young for Spiegel?”
August smiled gravely. “That is of the least concern. I have unique assets for that role.”
“The previous attempts to make the film—do you really not know what happened?” I inquired.
He narrowed his eyes. “Are you questioning my honesty?”
“No, it’s just—what makes you think your film won’t meet the same fate?”
His smile grew slightly wider, but all the more grim. “Don’t you think it’s the perfect time to shoot this film? Before the crisis people were too carefree: the horrors of the Great War were almost a decade behind them, and a seemingly bright future ahead. Now, horrors lurk just behind the corner. Remember from the novel? The plotters looking forward to kill any Jews? That’s our world now. We are just waiting to dance in ruins and crown a fool to be a king.”
“There is still more than a month left to this year’s Walpurgisnacht,” I reminded him more as a joke than seriously.
But his grim expression remained. “But the insanity will ensue before that.”
Back then, I didn’t ask what he meant. I thought it a mere remark.
Two nights later, Černý Kocour managed to buzz with activity and wallow in dumbstruck astonishment at the same time. German troops were in Austria, no one knew what would happen next, and we felt trapped. The atmosphere was suffocating. You could see it in the café; it was almost palpable. The clientele was drinking more heavily. The voices were incessant, but there was little laughter to accompany them.
August was there too, and though grim like the others, he didn’t look surprised. Something in his expression puzzled me. I made my way toward him.
“Adele.” He raised a glass. “I’m proud to announce that I now have all the equipment to start producing the film, and most of the crew.”
What about the money? I bit down this remark and instead asked: “How did you escape just in time?”
“The situation in Austria has been deteriorating for a long time. I’ve lived there, seen it with my own eyes. This could have happened now or in half a year, but it could be seen.”
Then why did no one see it? Another unspoken remark. Into the silence, August said: “I want you to meet others from our crew tomorrow. All major roles are set now.”
“I haven’t even seen the script yet!”
“Tomorrow. Script, timeline, contracts.”
It was true; the following day at noon, the café was empty but for us. To my surprise Eugen Unger (Dr. Halberd, AKA The Penguin) was among them. He was the only one I’d known. As it transpired later, the rest weren’t professional actors at all.
That wasn’t the only surprise. August didn’t just want the role of Spiegel; he also intended to play Molla Osman, the Tatar who could resist the aweysha—the powerful influence of other souls on one’s will—and lead Polyxena away from the ensuing bloodshed.
I scanned the script. To my satisfaction, it didn’t reduce the role of Polyxena. On the contrary, much of it focused on her inner struggle with the spiritual influence of her grandmother—an infamous prisoner—her contempt for her aristocratic peers, and her insatiable hunger for life. Oh God, how badly I’d wished for such a role!
The script focused much less on the action of the rebellion, and more on the inner lives of the characters. If executed well, this film could become a classic. If not, it would be a complete disaster. August liked to gamble . . .
In the end, we left the café only after the waiter almost threw us out at closing time. We’d spent the time discussing how the script deviated from the novel: the imagery, costumes, music. . . . August had an answer for everything, and even more surprises in store. He intended to make the film in colour.
“Colour film is insanely expensive.” I spoke before anyone else could. Judging by the others’ expressions, most were about to voice the same objection.
“I managed to bring some with me from Vienna. No need to worry about this. We’ll start shooting next week,” August stated firmly, and it was not open for debate.
I was convinced we wouldn’t start shooting at least for another month, but August surprised us all. He adhered to his timeline, somehow got the materials and needed permits to shoot at the right locations, and we were ready. It was unlike any other shooting I’d seen: all exteriors for a start, no artificial light, few props. Since it was difficult to acquire the permit to shoot at the Daliborka Tower, those scenes got priority.
August himself stood behind his 16mm Bolex, unless Spiegel was in the scene; then he reluctantly handed the camera to Renée, a short-haired woman in man’s clothes whom I knew cursorily from the café.
This is my chance. Don’t fail now, I thought as my turn came to appear on the scene when Polyxena sees the secret meeting of the conspirators in the tower. There, Spiegel transforms into the rebellion’s leader, considered by the rebels to be the incarnation of the famous Czech hero, Jan Žižka.
August looked twenty years older thanks to the make-up and costume, but so far his Spiegel only sat quietly in the middle of the increasingly heated debate. Then the corrupted wannabe leader of the rebellion tried to get Spiegel on his side, to exert his influence, but Polyxena intervened by aweysha. And then . . .
He truly transformed.
It was as if August’s features melted and re-formed anew. What emerged made everyone gasp.
Jan Žižka of Trocnov. Come alive after five centuries.
The words that came out of his mouth sounded alien too. He still spoke German, but the accent and choice of words suggested times long past. He became a medieval hero in that moment.
The surprise was genuine—but we remembered ourselves and responded in our roles.
We continued shooting almost ‘til dusk. I volunteered to help August pack up the equipment since Renée had to leave. I was still mesmerized by August’s performance earlier that day. He had Spiegel in him. What an actor! “A mask Death itself would wear had it decided to walk amongst the living,” Meyrink had written. I shivered at the thought, my fingers caressing the exquisite camera.
August noticed my admiration for the Bolex. “Do you want to try the camera?”
I opened and closed my mouth. “I . . . I would love to,” I managed. “But the film, it’s expensive . . . and the light is fading . . .”
He chuckled. “There should be some thirty seconds of recording remaining. I’m willing to sacrifice that.” Without waiting for my reply, August showed me how the camera operated. “Here.” He put my hand on the controls. “Try it.”
Standing behind the camera was strange, but it filled me with unexpected excitement. Still, I had to ask: “Why? Why show me? Why not just pack it and go?”
August looked into the distance, where the river Vltava divided the city. “Someone else showed filmmaking to me long ago. I was just a boy. He died soon after, but my love for film stayed. And so I set on this path.” A streak of dark hair fell across his forehead. “When I saw the look in your eyes as you touched the camera . . . I imagined I must’ve had the same hungry, curious look back then.”
Each time I thought I finally knew them by heart, his features escaped me.
He coughed and straightened his back. “We should go. It’s a bit far, I’m afraid.”
“My flat is nearby—you can leave the equipment there until tomorrow,” I said.
Thus, the camera stayed the night with me—and August did too.
We mentioned nothing to the others. The day after that, we filmed the finale: the rebels’ glorious march to Hradčany, King Otokar’s death and Polyxena’s dreamlike escape. As the small crowd carried me toward the castle, I felt strangely elated. An empress of fools—but an empress nonetheless. Life was brilliant.
When the dark set in and filming stopped, I invited August to my flat again.
II. Mirror of fear
An outcry of pain pierced the warm spring night. I jerked awake and lit a lamp. It was August. He sat, huddled on the carpet in the living room, rocking back and forth. His face was contorted as if it didn’t belong to him at all.
“Another bad dream?”
He flinched when I reached to touch his shoulder, as if he didn’t recognize me. Only gradually recognition crept back into his eyes. “Yes,” he croaked. “Bad . . . dream.”
Something in the way he said it chilled me. I sat by him on the carpet.
“Bad dreams haunting me. . . . That would be the simple explanation, wouldn’t it?”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. But the pain in his eyes begged me to ask. “What’s . . . the real explanation?”
“The sort no one would believe.”
My stomach turned.
“I shouldn’t have come here. Or stayed. Or . . .” His lower lip quivered. “You’ve read Meyrink. Do you believe the stories?”
“Not . . . these. But,” I shrugged a little. “I’d like to. After all, Meyrink knew about ghosts.”
August chuckled slightly. “Oh, how simple it sounds when put like that. . . . What if I told you I also knew about ghosts? About . . . being haunted?”
I chilled.
“They don’t appear. They speak to me.” He laughed bitterly. “You must think I’m crazy. Voices in my head! But—” He stopped and drew a sharp breath. His pupils constricted. The colour drained from his face.
I stared at him. Was this just good acting? Or . . .
“They won’t let me go. Only if I work, if I become someone else—like Spiegel,” August uttered between strained breaths. Then he exhaled deeply. “Otherwise they are here. Around me. Tortured.”
“There must be some way, some escape,” I whispered before I could really comprehend.
“I could drink myself to death. That’s what my mother did.” His tone was impassive, his jaw tight. “The curse runs in the family.”
It was still beyond comprehension, but now I realized how he could act so well. Transform. Become.
And also how he might have known some things in advance. “Your hasty departure from Vienna . . . a ghost? Told you to leave?”
August shook his head. “Not to leave. But there was one. A man. He knew important plans. Knew about Anschluss—and supported it. I didn’t know the date; only that it was coming. Soon.”
But he had woken with dreams—hauntings—again. “Did you learn something just now?” I asked. “Is something going to happen to us?”
“I don’t know.” He shivered with the sweat from his torment. “They know no more of the future than anyone else. Only plans. Expectations.”
“What did you see?”
August shut his eyes. “The elections. If they win, there are . . . certain policies.”
At the time I could not fathom what he implied, but he refused to talk further, putting me off with excuses.
The next morning delivered a chilly awakening. I woke to a turmoil in the streets. Everyone talking about the election.
“Did you expect it?” I asked him hollowly as we drank coffee on the corner and borrowed newspapers.
August avoided my gaze. “Not exactly this. But . . .” He shrugged. “Yes.”
“Couldn’t we have done something?” I said fiercely.
“A day in advance? After people have already voted?” He let out a grim laugh. “Trust me, Berlin has been preparing these plans for months. There is nothing we could’ve done.”
ELECTION SURPRISE. PRESIDENT CALLS FOR PEACE, screamed the newspaper headlines; at least the Czech and local ones. The newsagents also had Reichspost, which spoke about a righteous political victory—HENLEIN’S WAVE OF VICTORY! TRIUMPH OF THE SUDETENDEUTSCHE!—and Czechs’ vicious fight against Germans in the land; about two unarmed Germans killed by violent Czech militia—was there any grain of truth in the story? I had no idea. But I imagined most people in my home town of Teplitz were celebrating at the moment. Few would regard Sudetendeutsche Partei’s massive victory in a negative light. But those handful who would—they would be full of fear right now.
Prague was different; there were few SdP supporters in the capital. In the streets and in the café, many looked angry or devastated, including our crew. Renée talked of emigration. Would it come to that? My friend Thea had left for Denmark a week ago.
August didn’t seem surprised. The dark circles under his eyes grew more pronounced and his cheeks thinner day by day, until I could no longer bear it.
“Come with me,” I said one morning.
“Where to?”
“You’ll see.”
We walked together into another world. Above the beating heart of Prague, there were Hradčany, the city’s medieval soul, Meyrink’s land of horrors and wonders, of stillborn future and preserved past. We finished our walk in one of the ancient narrow streets where time seemed to have stopped—or rather where countless epochs seemed to meet and mingle in a fantastical world.
This was the place where Meyrink concluded his Golem.
Here, behind a low stone wall, an old woman sat on a stool and mended a dress. Two children played with a wooden horse on the unkempt lawn. “Hyjé. Jedeme na hrad,” the girl called out, and her little brother clapped in excitement.
“This is the future,” I said quietly, and then laid my hand intertwined with his on the ancient wall, “and this is the past. It has lasted, and it continues. No matter what the voices say, or what happens around us, it will continue.”
August withdrew his hand. “This can all disappear too. I’ve seen this happen through their eyes, over and over again throughout history.”
I put his palm back on the stone wall and rested mine atop his. “This is now. In some form or another, it will persist. You’re alive now.”
“And others are dying right now,” he added in a whisper.
“Like always.”
“No, it’s not.” August withdrew his hand. It was shaking. “But . . . you’re right. You can’t change anything if you’re paralyzed by fear, can you? Not even fear of yourself.”
“Meyrink said, you just become the sad Penguin.”
He drew a long breath. “If I ever were that, please remind me of what I should be instead.”
But you’re not the Penguin. You’re Spiegel. You don’t give in to fear . . . you become someone else’s fears, become their mirror. And right now . . . everyone is afraid.
“. . . I’ll start by finishing the film. We have to,” August continued. The gleam returned to his eyes; I was just no longer sure how much of that look was his.
Somehow, he did it. He found the right people; said the right words. The shooting commenced again, even though August could now only afford black-and-white film.
“We’ll turn it into an advantage. Introduction of colour in the finale will create a dramatic effect,” August claimed.
I saw in the faces of our Otokar and Božena that they didn’t believe it. Perhaps neither did the others, but were better actors even outside their roles. But no one protested; the movie would never get made if they waited for more colour film.
We shot the first interior scenes: Otokar’s violin playing for the countess, the secret lovers’ meeting, and Halberd’s visit to the poor old Liesel, no longer a famed beauty, and he no longer a sprightly young man: a sharp contrast to Otokar and Polyxena. All the passion gone, replaced by stillness and awkwardness. Dreams quashed and half-forgotten.
When I glanced at August, I saw that he approved of the acting; but also that he wouldn’t survive such emotional loss himself. Romantic dreams gone; maybe he wouldn’t even mind. But the film had to be finished. This film . . .
Had something like this happened in the older attempts to shoot it? Had the film driven the directors mad?
Colour or no colour, money or no money, politics or no politics . . . I knew with strange certainty now that August’s soul depended on the film’s completion. To lose this dream, his lifeline, would crush him.
III. Night of insanity
Sweet summer; summer of dreams; summer of lurid nightmares. Whenever shooting continued, we lived in an intoxicating world of our own. August set the scenes with us or became Spiegel in truly entrancing performances: his spirit changing, his eyes gleaming with an alien light. But we shot for barely two weeks in total. Two weeks sufficed for most studio movies; but for a stubborn perfectionist working mostly in exteriors, it was nowhere near enough.
Whenever the work stopped, August sank intractably into his dark mood. Though I tried to comfort him, it worsened. He scarcely got out of bed, barely ever spoke.
“They’re so loud,” he uttered once when I asked. “But I only catch glimpses, distant memories, distorted and fuzzy . . .”
“What if you tried seeing more?” I suggested. “What if you actually tried making contact with a ghost?”
The flash of horror on August’s face made me regret my words. But to my surprise, he nodded hesitantly. “Confront my fear . . . yes, yes, that could work. But—how?”
I fished for my recollection of the stories and spiritist brochures I’d so loved earlier in my life. “Maybe a séance? Do you think it would help?”
His eyes widened with surprise, but he blinked and slowly nodded.
I found a half dozen books in a dusty second-hand store. The next evening, I brought candles to our apartment, drew the chalk symbols around the table just like in the pictures, lit the incense in the porcelain bowl and inhaled the heavy, woody smell with notes of sweetness. My fingertips tingled with trepidation. I’d never had the courage to try a divination and something deep within me . . . feared . . . this contact could be real. Could be powerful.
“Ready?” I asked quietly.
August just nodded. I held his cold hands in mine, and closed my eyes. I barely heard his whispers.
A whiff of cool air scented with a faint tint of ash and something metallic on my palate. Guns and blood.
August gasped. He seized my hands in a spasm. I almost cried out from the sudden pain.
I opened my eyes. His face was contorted in an expression of utter terror, pale as death, mouth opening and closing, gasping for air. I freed my hands from his grip to sever the connection and end the ritual, but—
Nothing.
I muttered the relinquo.
Again, nothing.
August’s face turned ashen blue.
I spoke to him, shook him by the shoulders, lit all the artificial lights. “Leave him be!” I cried out.
He wheezed, scarcely breathing.
“Hasn’t he endured enough? Hasn’t he done everything for you?”
A zephyr of dead-cold air chilled my spine.
But this time, it carried a note of something strangely soothing, like a frozen day on a meadow. An old memory of childhood turned cold. Days of running through fields, climbing trees, chasing. Days when it didn’t matter who was Czech, German, Jewish. . . .
The breeze flickered the smoke and flame, and for a second, I glimpsed a face in the swirling incense smoke, deep-set piercing eyes, curious. Gustav Meyrink . . .
But no. The smoke was just smoke. My imagination.
August inhaled sharply and collapsed on the table, his back shaking. Sobbing. He flinched at my touch.
It took him over an hour before he was able to speak coherently. “I didn’t as much hear the words . . . I felt the pain and the horror.”
We sat together on the couch, wrapped in each other’s arms.
“It dulled, which was in a way even worse. And then . . .”
My hand curled on his shoulder, a finger caressing his jaw, my forehead bowed. Listening.
“It rose again. Just before the end.” He shivered. “I don’t . . . don’t know what it was, but—such terror. . . . Then something saved me.”
“Or someone.” The image of Meyrink came to me.
The clock ticked on the mantel.
“I . . . this may sound strange, but I thought I heard Gustav Meyrink’s voice.”
I lifted my head to peer into his face in the brilliance of the artificial lamps.
“I never heard him speak, but I was sure it was him.”
“What did he say?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think the words were meant for me. But . . .” He stared intensely into his thoughts. “I think I realized something.” He looked up. “The film. If Meyrink’s spirit still lingers somewhere . . . what if he’d tried to make sure his legacy would go on as he intended—as a text, not a film—and that’s why no one has been able to finish it?”
“But he—something—saved you. Just now.”
“I think . . . he is allowing us to make the film.”
The threats and promises made by the Sudetendeutschen Partei proved true when in mid-September, riots broke out. They eventually demanded that predominantly German-speaking regions leave Czechoslovakia and join Germany. Would it spark a war if we refused?
Everyone was terrified of that, and under all the pressure of the world, we did not refuse.
On the eve of the transition, people began leaving their homes in masses.
I worked in one of the refugee centres that sprang up in Prague and many other places, receiving Czech speakers. More than a hundred thousand people fled. There were Germans too, ones who feared they would be the first to end up incarcerated or worse.
Each day, I returned home exhausted. But one evening, August came home beaming and proud; a different man from the one of previous months. “We’ll start shooting again, soon,” he promised. “I have new funding for the film. I managed to get to Martin Frič himself! We’ll make the film in German and Czech at the same time. It’s going to be wonderful!”
For a moment, I glimpsed something alien in his face. Was it he speaking, or a fragment of someone else, a vision propelling a puppet?
He was right; shooting commenced again later that month. But we were missing a part of the crew. The petite short-haired Renée was in Paris, apparently. Our baron Elsenwanger had emigrated to London. August just waved it away, devising makeshift solutions to make up for their absence, and his confidence made it impossible for us to argue.
“Spiegel needs a larger role,” he concluded. “But we need someone skilful behind the camera. You could do it, Adele.”
I was reluctant, but what options did we have? August showed me how to operate the camera many times and I’d seen him perform miracles with it. I didn’t entirely trust myself, but how could I refuse?
So I took over the camera wheel to film Spiegel’s ominous encounter with Dr. Halberd.
August’s transformation took away my breath. His face mirrored Halberd’s. Then the features smoothed, and his gaze became . . . child-like.
Close-up. I moved the camera forward.
Has he ever spoken with a child? Became one in his thoughts?
“Who are you?” Unger’s Halberd breathed out.
I shivered at Spiegel’s ominous reply: “I’ve existed since the dawn of the world. I’m an invisible nightingale singing in a cage. But not all cages resound with my song.”
“What should I hear? How am I to hear it? Help me!” Halberd’s astonishment at seeing a contorted image of his much younger self was beautiful. I captured a close-up of his eyes. I no longer thought about what I was doing. I just knew. Clearer than anything else, I saw the world through the camera with wholly different eyes.
Perhaps I won’t ever become a great actress. But perhaps I’ve found my true calling here in the lens . . .
“I can’t turn back the wheel of time,” Halberd whispered.
Spiegel chuckled. “Oh, but it can be done, if you realize who you once were. Wait for Walpurgisnacht.”
Halberd paled.
Spiegel smiled a strange smile devoid of joy, but full of possibilities. “We can—and will, all of us—transform in the night of darkness and insanity!”
A prophecy.
IV. The silent, ominous night
“Come with me,” August said to me; or rather Molla Osman said to the transfixed Polyxena, still in her empress’ clothes, now torn and bloodied.
Somehow, August managed to get a reel of colour film for the very last scene of Polyxena leaving the bloodshed. A Czech friend of mine worked the camera, a refugee from Teplitz with whom I’d grown up.
I didn’t ask how August acquired the film. Nor did I ask about his growing disquiet, because he always avoided talking about such things.
But he did ask one thing of me.
“Come with me,” he’d said earlier that week.
“Where?”
“Anywhere. West. After we finish the film. I know people in Paris. Or we can even cross the ocean.”
He left me speechless. We’d rarely talked about the future besides finishing The Walpurgisnacht.
“Just think about it,” he added quietly.
A sound snapped me from the memory, back into the scene. I stood on the battlements, overlooking our crowd of slain rebels. I shivered; these days, it felt like a vision of the future.
But the sound itself was exhilarating. We’d all heard it. Click.
The hum of the camera stopped. Everyone and everything was silent.
It was done.
Not completely, of course; August would need to make cuts and adjustments, but the shooting itself was completed.
A year of our lives. On March 1, 1939, it ended in a success.
We celebrated, naturally. Four people who started filming with us were no longer here; three went further west, one returned to her home in what was now a part of Germany in a foolish hope that it “can’t be that bad after all.”
In Café Černý Kocour, we drank and planned the premiere in style, while distribution of the film wasn’t even certain yet. August had spoken with AB and Foja Film and reached out to some reporters, but we could only hope.
We could also hope that someday, we would all meet again; with our Renée in Paris, Albrecht in London. Our hopes were so high we even looked away when our famous Eugen Unger started meeting with high-ranking Germans, going to their parties, and speaking on the radio about the ancient rights of German people to this land. We also looked the other way when one of our actresses gave a very patriotic interview to the now openly fascist Vlajka and appeared arm-in-arm with the Czech director Binovec, who advocated exclusion of Jews from the film industry.
How can you not see they won’t welcome you, no matter how much you give in to them? I screamed inside
But then I turned my gaze elsewhere. To the happy faces, to the wine glasses in our hands, to the hope that The Walpurgisnacht would be screened soon.
Some of our hopes came true. AB accepted the film and all the major film magazines—Kinorevue, Film Letters, Film Courier, Czechoslovakian Film News—published articles about an upcoming film to introduce Meyrink’s classic to the silver screen. A critique of the collective stupidity allowing dictatorships to exist, they said. A tip of the hat to the avant-garde. A dream given shape. On the morning of March 15, AB’s posters announcing the new Walpurgisnacht appeared around the city. The premiere was to be mere two weeks from now.
But the announcement was overshadowed by other news. Slovakia separated from Czech lands to become an independent country. German troops streamed into both countries.
We didn’t go to Černý Kocour that evening. The radio had announced a curfew.
Soon after, the German army reached Prague.
No crowds of rebels spilled into the night.
No dead led the enraged and desperate armies of living.
No living was foolish enough not to realize: at this hour, nothing would stop the wheels of the world from turning into darkness.
So the ominous silence ruled the night.
Outside, a dog barked. Once. And then again. Then nothing but the night breeze.
At dawn on March 16, the city was divided between dead silence and the anxious voices of people knowing that the world they’d known just spun out of control.
There was no warning. Sometimes the dead don’t know; or perhaps decide not to tell.
Yesterday’s fears were today’s stark reality.
Newspapers that day held a special appendix, reading CZECH LANDS UNDER THE GERMAN PROTECTORATE. What followed were the rules for life in the new . . . not even country.
“The Czech nation will be given autonomy. Peace in Prague and elsewhere.”
“Fateful change for the Czech nation.”
“Adolf Hitler in the castle of Czech kings.”
We should have crowned a poor violinist the emperor of the world, I thought with all the bitterness my heart could carry. Anything but this.
August sat motionless by the table, like a living statue, his dreams now shattered into a million pieces—and he himself, deadly still.
“We must go,” I said hollowly. “Now.”
I moved like an automaton: threw a couple of things into an emergency suitcase I’d packed months ago, checked August’s case, and walked toward the door. If I turned back, if I regarded the flat I spent four years in, I might never again gather the courage to go.
August followed me like a sleepwalker. But when I turned the corner, toward the railway station, he stopped. “Wait! The reels!” The alarm of panic touched his eyes. “We cannot leave them.”
“No, we must go!”
“They’ll destroy the film!”
We stared at each other. But I gave in. “Let’s go. Quickly.”
We lost nearly an hour getting the reels from the distributor. The woman who handed us the reels looked around and said in a quiet voice: “Vanish. Right now. The poster, the publicity . . . it’s painted a target on your back. Now go!”
We could barely get to the railway station. The streets were overcrowded, and the station a press of bodies.
“Where to?” I shouted to be heard above the cacaphony.
August nodded toward the departures table. Berlin. München. Vienna. Pressburg. Katowice.
Only one way to go.
There was more than an hour before the departure for Katowice, but already more tickets had been sold at the counter than the number of seats in the train cars. People thronged on the platform, clutching suitcases, looking around nervously. I heard Czech, German, Yiddish, Slovak, even Polish around us. I recalled the images from our film, and shivered. This is what we tried to prevent.
We barely squeezed onto the train. We stood, jammed in the narrow corridor, pressed against strangers. We hadn’t brought enough food and water, but we couldn’t get out at any of the stations without risking being unable to board again.
We had to make it past the Polish border. Then we would travel further north, until we reached the Baltic Sea, and sail to Denmark or Sweden.
The dusk was coming when we stopped in Ostrau. My heart nearly skipped a beat when I saw the platform. Whole troops of German soldiers stood there. Some were preparing to board our train.
My world spun once again.
“The papers?” August whispered in my ear.
I nodded.
August still had his old passport. I had none. I’d applied for it months ago, but it hadn’t arrived. And if the soldiers saw my ID . . . Adele Haimovich. Citizen of a country that no longer existed. All German-speaking Czechoslovakian citizens officially became Reich Germans this morning . . . but there was little chance of appealing to that. My name would condemn me.
“Come here,” he said softly. Somehow, he managed to push me inside a nearby technical compartment. “I noticed when the conductor tried to lock it, but it didn’t work,” August added in a low voice. “Stay there. Hold the door shut, no matter what.”
I managed to lock gazes with August before the door closed.
I could only hear what was happening outside. Like when Polyxena listened to Otokar’s playing through the door, or when she overheard the rebels talking . . .
In the corridor, voices gradually died out. There was dead silence—and then heavy footsteps.
“Papers . . . Danke. Your papers, sir . . .”
The footsteps grew nearer. I held my breath.
They passed the compartment.
I let out a sigh of relief.
Then I heard a distant: “Could you open this door, please?”
“Of course, it wasn’t even locked.” I could hear the conductor’s reply clearly.
My heart sank.
Outside my compartment, I heard rustling and something that could have been a sharp intake of breath. I imagined him running through a hundred scenarios in his mind, and finding none where we both come out of it free.
August. He’s going to do something foolish . . .
Strange, how that at first unapproachable, aloof man turned out to be so . . . normal. All it took was seeing him outside of work and outside of his episodes. I knew he was the type who’d try to sacrifice himself. But I wouldn’t allow it.
I walked out of the compartment, unperturbed. I saw the conductor and smiled at him. “Excuse me.”
I think I knew it was the last role of my lifetime. Well, I would make it worth it. My slightly Bavarian accent, unwavering smile and raised chin would surely get me some award, had it been in a film.
I stood with my back to August, and made no attempt to look at him.
“Your papers, Madam,” the soldier beside the conductor said firmly.
“Of course.” I reached into my coat’s pockets and then produced a puzzled expression. “It must be in my luggage in the other car. I left it when I went to look for the bathroom.”
It never had a chance of succeeding. But what else was I to do? I’d never be able to run. So a famous last stand? Why? Even if they took me away, I still might have a chance later. No need to spend it now. I didn’t have money for a bribe. And saying “I don’t have papers, arrest me” would be plain foolish. No; playing this futile game was the most reasonable of all unreasonable options.
Another soldier came. The first gestured at him to look in the technical compartment. From there, the young man emerged with my suitcase.
The first soldier looked at me. His expression suggested he was seeing an obstacle; an annoying insect; an object to discard. Anything but a person.
Suddenly, his gaze wavered and turned glassy. His companion also froze in place.
I risked a glance behind. August’s eyes were half-closed, and his mouth moved silently, as if he were muttering some incantation. Meyrink’s Walpurgisnacht and its aweysha—could it work? Could he really control the soldiers with his will just for a moment?
I didn’t dare to give way to my astonishment. Nor did I dare to say goodbye. Thank you, I thought, slid around the soldier and pushed my way to the adjacent train car. Getting off wouldn’t help; I needed to stay on the train to leave the country.
But as soon as I was at the door between cars, a heavy hand landed on my shoulder. It was over.
I glimpsed August’s terrified eyes in the crowd, and pleaded him with my gaze to stay there.
The film, I mouthed. Protect it.
I think he knew he could no longer protect me. But there was nothing to feel sorry about. I could have left earlier. It was my free decision to finish the film and to get the reels.
They led me outside. August took a few steps forward, but now it was my time to try to use my will—to make him stay. But who was I kidding? Even if such thing as aweysha existed, I couldn’t do it.
When our eyes met for the last time, I think he understood—even if he perhaps had to use his own will against himself to stay.
When the train moved away, my fear suddenly diminished, replaced by strange relief.
August was safe. The film was safe.
I snap out of the vision and blink. It’s difficult to reconcile what I just relived with the soothingly mundane reality around myself . . .
My father never mentioned Adele’s name. He never talked about his time in Prague, nor his hasty escape through Poland, and I can only imagine what he’d felt that time on the train—was it anguish, fear, rage, guilt, all of that? I only knew he arrived in New York in May 1939. He agitated for action against the Nazi regime, but few listened at that time. Work took him to Kingston, Ontario, during the war, and that’s where he eventually stayed. He spoke decent French and English. If asked about his ancestry, he said Czech; never Austrian or German.
I never knew about his gifts, either; filmmaking or—the other thing. He was a quiet and reserved man, and he surely wouldn’t have called his talents “gifts.” But after he died, I started getting these . . . glimpses. Feelings. Flashes of memories, only not mine.
I saw Adele’s life.
Perhaps I just made it up in my subconscious. Perhaps none of it happened. But I think it’s real.
It would explain a lot of my father’s behaviour, his unwillingness to talk about his life in Europe, his strange episodes. When I close my eyes, I can recall the smoke-filled dimness of Café Černý Kocour, the filming at Daliborka, or the exhilarating feeling after a finished scene. Then it occurs to me: what happened to the film?
I ascend to the attic. Spirals of dust whirl around my feet. Boxes with my father’s old things, await me, stuffed here and half-forgotten long before he died.
It takes several days of persistent searching, but I discover the reels.
It’s strange, but I don’t want to let them out of my sight. When I carry them to an expert, I stay while he works on the restoration. It needs surprisingly little; he praises the film’s good condition. They must have been treated with meticulous care for all those decades. He allows me to be alone when the film is screened.
The film opens with a colour shot of Hradčany, towering above Prague. And then, in black-and-white, Spiegel appears, walking on a high stone wall, and my breath catches: I’ve never seen my father like this.
I look into his eyes, and into Adele’s.
We might be more than half a century and four thousand miles apart, but I feel a connection. These two are a part of me. Meyrink and my father in his youth were right: Other souls can become a part of our own. They do it every day quite naturally, just by reminding us of what has been and what could be. No aweysha: only a chain of events. Tracking down our histories doesn’t steal our soul; it enriches it.
A glimpse of another’s life. Just imagine.
Maybe that’s what my father wanted to say with his film. Imagine.
Perhaps events—the ignorance of people, the futility of my father’s protests against the war—discouraged him from screening it; perhaps he couldn’t bear the thought that if they hadn’t returned for the film, both he and Adele could have made it out. But I think he’d have liked the world to eventually see his masterpiece.
I’ll do my best to achieve just that. Perhaps, then, at least someone will . . . imagine.