Who I am is quickly told. From the age of 25 to 60 I was valet to Count Chazal. Before that I had been a gardener’s assistant in charge of the flowers in the monastery of Apuana, where I had also spent the dreary, monotonous days of my youth and had been taught to read and write thanks to the kindness of the abbot.
As I was a foundling, my godfather adopted me on the day of my confirmation and since then I have the legitimate name of Meyrink.
As far back as I can remember, I have always felt as if there were a band of iron round my head, constricting my brain and preventing the development of what is generally known as imagination. I could almost say I lack an inner sense, but to make up for it, my eyes and ears are as sharp as a savage’s. When I close my eyes I still see with oppressive clarity the stiff black outlines of the cypresses that stood out against the crumbling monastery walls, still see the worn bricks on the floor of the cloisters, so distinct and clear I could count them — but all that is cold and mute, it doesn’t speak to me, even though I have often read that things should speak to us.
I am being open, saying frankly the way things are with me, because I want to be believed. I take up my pen in the hope that what I write here will be seen by people who know more than I do and can, if they want and are allowed, shed light for me on what has been like a chain of insoluble mysteries accompanying me on my way through life.
If, contrary to all reasonable expectation, this pamphlet should fall into the hands of Dr Chrysophron Zagräus and Dr Sacrobosco Haselmayer, known as ‘the Red Tanjur’, the two friends of my late second master, the apothecary Peter Wirtzigh (who died and was buried at Wernstein am Inn in the year of the Great War, 1914), I trust they will bear in mind that it is not love of idle gossip, nor of poking my nose into other people’s business, that has persuaded me to reveal something they have kept secret for perhaps thirty years. As an old man of seventy I have long since outgrown such childish nonsense; it is, rather, reasons of a spiritual nature that have compelled me to write this of which not the least is my heartfelt fear that after the death of my body I will become a — machine (the two gentlemen will understand what I mean).
But to return to my story. The first words Count Chazal spoke to me, when he took me into his service, were, ‘Has a woman ever played a significant role in your life?’
When, with a clear conscience, I replied, ‘No,’ he seemed visibly content. Even today, the words burn me like fire, I cannot say why. Thirty-five years later my second employer, Herr Peter Wirtzigh, asked me the same question, down to the very last syllable, when I started work as his servant: ‘Has a woman ever played a significant role in your life?’
Then, too, I had no hesitation in replying ‘No’, but for one terrifying moment I felt I was a lifeless machine when I said it, not a human being.
Whenever I ponder over it today, an awful suspicion creeps into my mind; I can’t put it into words but — are there not plants which can never develop properly, which are always as yellow as wax, as if the sun never shone on them, and wither away because a poison sumach grows nearby and secretly feeds on their roots?
During the first months I felt very uncomfortable in the isolated castle that was inhabited solely by Count Chazal, his old housekeeper, Petronella and me, and was literally filled to bursting with strange, old-fashioned instruments, mechanisms and telescopes, especially as the Count had all kinds of odd habits. For example, although I could help him get dressed, he never allowed me to help him undress, and when I offered, he always used the excuse that he was going to read for a bit longer. In reality, I assume he must have been out in the dark, for in the morning his boots were often thickly coated with mud and marshy soil, even though he had not set foot outside the house during the previous day. And his appearance made me feel uneasy too. Small and slight, his body was out of proportion with his head; although well-formed, for a long time the Count gave me the impression he was a hunchback, though I could not say exactly why.
He had a sharp profile and his narrow, prominent chin with the pointed, grey beard jutting out in front gave him an oddly sickle-like appearance. He must have possessed a powerful vital force, for he hardly appeared to age at all during all the years I served him; at most the curious crescent-moon shape of his face seemed to grow sharper and slimmer.
There were all sorts of odd rumours about him going round the village: he didn’t get wet when it rained, things like that; and: if he went past the houses at night, when people were in their beds, the clocks all stopped.
I ignored this idle gossip. The fact that from time to time the metal objects in the castle such as knives, scissors and rakes became magnetic, so that steel nibs, nails and other things stuck to them, is presumably a perfectly normal natural phenomenon; at least the Count explained it when I asked him. The castle stood on volcanic ground, he said; also such occurrences were connected with the full moon.
In fact the Count had an unusually high opinion of the moon, as I deduced from the incidents that follow.
I must first mention that every summer, on 21 July, an exceptionally bizarre guest came and always stayed for just twenty-four hours: the aforementioned Dr Haselmayer.
The Count always called him the ‘Red Tanjur’, why, I do not know, for Dr Haselmayer did not have red hair, in fact he did not have a hair on his head, not even eyebrows or lashes. Even in those days he gave me the impression of being an old man; maybe it was caused by the extremely old-fashioned clothes which he wore year in, year out: a dull, moss-green moleskin top hat, quite narrow, almost pointed at the top, a velvet doublet, buckled shoes and black silk knee-breeches on his alarmingly short, thin little legs. As I said, maybe it was only because of his dress that he looked so … so ‘deceased’, for his high, pleasant child’s voice and his delicately curved girl’s lips spoke against him being old.
On the other hand, I’m sure there were no eyes anywhere in the whole wide world that were as lifeless as his.
With all due respect, I have to add that he had a huge round head, which also seemed to be frighteningly soft, as soft as a boiled egg that’s been shelled, and not just his pale, spherical face, but also the skull itself. At least, whenever he put his hat on, a kind of bloodless tube immediately swelled up all round under the brim, and when he took it off again, it was always a considerable time before his head returned to its original shape.
From the minute Dr Haselmayer arrived until the time he left, he and the Count used to talk — without a break, without a bite to eat, without sleeping or drinking — about the moon, and they did so with a puzzling ardour which I could not understand.
And they even, when the full moon fell on 21 July, went out during the night to the marshy little castle pond and spent hours staring at the silvery reflection of the moon in the water.
Once, as I happened to go past, I even saw the two gentlemen throwing lumps of some whitish substance — it will have been pieces of bread roll — into the pond, and when Dr Haselmayer realised I had seen them, he quickly said, ‘We’re feeding the moon … er, sorry, I mean the …er … swan.’ But there was no swan far and wide. Nor any fish, either.
The things I could not help overhearing later that night seemed to have some mysterious connection with that, which is why I memorised them, word for word, and immediately put them down on paper.
I was in my bedroom, still awake, when, in the library that was next door and never used, I suddenly heard the Count say, ‘After what we have just seen in the water, my dear Dr Haselmayer, unless I am very much mistaken our cause is nearing fruition and the old Rosicrucian prophecy: post centum viginti annos patebo — after a hundred and twenty years I will be revealed — is turning out exactly as we would have wished. Truly, a most satisfactory centenary midsummer celebration! What we can say for certain is that in the last quarter of the previous century the machine was already rapidly taking over, and if things continue in the way we hope, in the twentieth mankind will hardly have time to see the light of day for all the work they will have cleaning, polishing, maintaining and repairing the ever more numerous machines.
‘Today we can justifiably say that the machine has become a worthy twin of the Golden Calf of yore, for anyone who torments their child so badly that it dies will get at most fourteen days in prison, while anyone who damages a steam roller will get three years hard labour.
‘But the production costs for such a piece of machinery are considerably higher,’ Dr Haselmayer objected.
‘That is in general true,’ Count Chazal replied politely. ‘But it is certainly not the only reason. I feel the essential fact is that, strictly speaking, man is merely a half-finished thing which is destined to become a mechanism at some point in the future. This view is clearly supported by the way certain instincts have already become automated — for example choosing the right spouse in order to improve the race. It is hardly surprising, then, that he sees the machine as his true offspring and his natural child as a changeling.
‘If women were to start giving birth to bicycles, or revolvers you should see how people would start marrying for all they were worth. In the Golden Age, when mankind was less developed, they only believed what they could “think”, but then the age gradually came when they only believed what they could eat; now, however, they have ascended the summit of perfection, that is, they only consider as real what they can sell.
‘Because the Fifth Commandment says, “Honour thy father and thy mother etc.”, they take it as a matter of course that the machines which they bring into the world and lubricate with the finest spindle-oil — while they themselves make do with margarine — will repay all the effort that went into nurturing them a thousand times over and bring them all kinds of happiness. What they completely forget is that machines can also be ungrateful children.
‘They are so drunk on credulousness they are happy to accept the idea that machines are just lifeless things which have no effect on them and which they can throw away at will. Or so they think.
‘Have you ever had a good look at a cannon, my friend? Is that a “lifeless” thing? I tell you, not even a general is given such loving care. A general can get a cold and no one would give a damn, but the cannons have aprons wrapped round them, so they don’t get cold, and hats on to keep off the rain.
‘All right, I agree that you could object that a cannon only roars when it’s been primed with powder and the order to fire has been given. But doesn’t a tenor only roar when the signal has been given and then only when he has been sufficiently filled with musical notes? I tell you, in the whole universe there is not a single thing that is truly lifeless.’
‘But is not our home, the moon,’ Dr Haselmayer objected shyly in dulcet tones, ‘a dead planet, lifeless?’
‘It is not dead,’ the Count told him, ‘it is just the face of death. It is — how shall I put it? — it is just the focusing lens which, like a magic lantern, reverses the effect of the life-giving rays of the accursed, show-off sun, draws all sorts of pictures out of the brains of the living, conjuring them up in what they call reality, and makes the poisonous force of death and decay germinate and breathe in the most diverse forms and expressions. It is exceedingly odd — do you not agree? — that, despite all this, humans love the moon above all heavenly bodies, that even their poets, who are looked upon as visionaries, sing its praises with sighs of rapture and ecstatic looks, and none of them pale with horror at the thought that, month after month, for millions of years, the earth has been orbited by a bloodless cosmic corpse. Truly, dogs are more sensible, especially black ones. They put their tails between their legs and howl at the moon.’
‘Did you not write to me recently, my dear Count, that machines were directly created by the moon? How am I to understand that?’ Dr Haselmayer asked.
‘You have misunderstood me,’ the Count replied. ‘The moon merely impregnated men’s brains with ideas through its poisonous breath and machines are the visible offspring.
‘The sun has planted in the souls of mortals the desire for an abundance of joy, but also the curse of creating transitory works by the sweat of their brow and breaking them; but the moon, the secret source of earthly forms, confused them by giving this a deceptive lustre so that they were led astray into a false vision and transferred things they were meant to contemplate inwardly to the external, tangible world.
‘The result is that machines have become the visible bodies of Titans, born of the brains of degenerate heroes.
‘And just as to “comprehend” and to “create” something means nothing other than to allow the soul to take on the form of what one “sees” or “creates” and to become one with it, so men are now well on the way to turning themselves, as if by magic, into machines. They are helpless to do anything about it and will eventually end up as naked, never-resting, groaning, pounding mechanisms — as what they have always being trying to invent: a joyless perpetuum mobile.
‘But then we, the Moon Brethren, will inherit the “eternal being”, the sole, immutable consciousness that does not say, “I live” but “I am” and that knows: “even if the universe should collapse, I will remain.”
‘How could it be, if forms were not simply dreams, that we are able to exchange our body for another at will, to appear among men in human form, among phantoms as shades and among thoughts as ideas, and this by virtue of the secret of being able to divest ourselves of our forms as if they were mere toys chosen in a dream? In the same way as someone who is half asleep can suddenly become aware of their dream, shift that delusion, time, into a new present and set their dream moving in another, more desirable direction, jumping straight into a new body, so to speak, especially since the body is basically nothing more than a spasm, suffering from the delusion of denseness, of the all-pervading ether.’
‘Excellently put,’ Dr Haselmayer exulted in his sweet, girlish voice. ‘But why do we not want to allow these earthlings to enjoy the blessing of transfiguration? Would that be such a bad thing?’
‘Bad? It would be terrible! Incalculable!’ the Count broke in shrilly. ‘Just imagine: mankind with the power to spread their “culture” throughout the cosmos!
‘What do you think the moon would look like after a fortnight of that? Velodromes in every crater and sewage farms all around. That is assuming they hadn’t previously introduced the dramatic “art” and thus made the soil too acid for any kind of vegetation.
‘Or do you want to see the planets linked by telephone during the hours of dealing on the stock exchange? And the double stars in the Milky Way compelled to produce official marriage certificates?
‘No, no, my friend, the universe can manage with the old, easy-going routine for a while longer.
‘But to come to a more rewarding topic, my dear Dr Haselmayer — by the way, it’s high time you started to wane, I mean, depart; we’ll meet again at Wirtzigh’s, the apothecary’s, in August 1914. That is the beginning of the end, the great end, and we want to celebrate that catastrophe for humanity in worthy fashion, don’t we?’
Even before the Count had finished, I had slipped into my valet’s livery to assist Dr Haselmayer in packing and accompany him to the carriage.
The next moment I was out in the corridor.
But what did I see? The Count came out of the library alone, carrying Dr Haselmayer’s velvet doublet, silk knee-breeches and buckled shoes, as well a his green top hat, while Dr Haselmayer himself had disappeared. Without a glance in my direction, the Count returned to his bedroom and closed the door behind him.
As a well-trained servant, I considered it my duty not to be surprised at anything my master saw fit to do but I couldn’t help shaking my head and it was a long time before I managed to get to sleep.
Now I must pass over many years.
They went by monotonously. In my memory they are like fragments of some old book that recorded confused events in elaborate script on yellowing, dusty paper, a book one had read and hardly understood at some time when one’s mind was dulled by fever.
There is just one thing I am clear about. In the spring of 1914 the Count suddenly said to me, ‘I shall soon be going away. To — Mauritius’ (he gave me a quick glance) ‘and I would like you to go to work for my friend Peter Wirtzigh, apothecary, in Wernstein am Inn. Is that clear, Gustav? I won’t take no for an answer.’
I made a silent bow.
One fine morning the Count had left the castle without making any preparations. I deduced this from the fact that I did not see him again and a stranger was sleeping in the four-poster bed the Count had been in the habit of using when he slept.
It was, as I was later told in Wernstein, the apothecary, Herr Peter Wirtzigh.
Once I had arrived at Herr Wirtzigh’s property, from which one could look down on the foaming River Inn, I immediately set about unpacking the suitcases and boxes I had brought with me to stow the contents away in the cupboards and chests.
I took out a highly unusual old lamp shaped like a transparent Japanese idol, sitting cross-legged (its head was a sphere of frosted glass); inside was a moving snake, operated by a clockwork mechanism, holding up the wick in its jaws. I was going to put it in a tall, Gothic cupboard, but when I opened it I saw, to my horror, the corpse of Herr Dr Haselmayer dangling there.
The shock almost made me drop the lamp, but fortunately I realised in time that it was only Dr Haselmayer’s clothes and top hat, which had deluded me into thinking it was his body hanging in the cupboard.
Despite that, the experience made a profound impression, leaving me with a sense of premonition, of something menacing, ominous, which I could not shake off even though nothing particularly exciting happened during the months that followed.
Herr Wirtzigh treated me in a consistently kind and friendly fashion, but in many respects he was far too similar to Herr Dr Haselmayer, so that the incident with the cupboard kept coming back to mind whenever I looked at him. His face was perfectly round, like Dr Haselmayer’s, only very dark, like that of a Moor — for years he had been suffering from the incurable effects of a complaint of the gall bladder, from melanosis. If you were only a few steps away from him and it wasn’t very light in the room, you could often hardly distinguish his features and his narrow, silvery beard which, scarcely the width of a finger, went from underneath his chin up to his ears and stood out from his face like an eerie, dull radiance.
The oppressive strain kept me in its grip until August, when the news of the outbreak of a terrible world war hit everyone like a thunderbolt. I immediately recalled what I had heard Count Chazal say all those years ago about a catastrophe threatening mankind and so perhaps that was why I could not wholeheartedly join in the curses the villagers hurled at the enemy states; it seemed to me that the cause behind it was the dark influence of certain natural forces filled with hatred which use human beings like puppets.
Herr Wirtzigh was completely unmoved, as if he had long since foreseen it.
It was only on 4 September that he showed some slight agitation. He opened a door, which until then I had always found closed, and took me into a blue, vaulted chamber with a single, round window in the ceiling. Immediately below, so that the light fell directly on it, was a circular table of black quartz with a depression like a trough in the middle. Around it were golden, carved chairs.
‘This trough,’ Herr Wirtzigh said, ‘is to be filled this evening, before the moon rises, with cold, clear water from the well. I’m expecting a visitor from Mauritius and when I call, you’re to get the Japanese snake-lamp, light it — I hope the wick will only glow,’ he added, half to himself — ‘and stand, holding it like a torch, there, in that niche.’
Night had long since fallen, eleven o’clock, twelve o’clock struck and I was still waiting.
No one could have come in, I am sure of that. I would have noticed, because the door was closed and always creaked loudly when it was opened and I had heard no sound so far. There was a deathly silence all round and the pounding of the blood in my ears was gradually becoming a thunderous roar.
At last I heard Herr Wirtzigh calling me — as if from a great distance. As if it came to me from my own heart.
With the glowing lamp in my hand, almost dazed from an inexplicable drowsiness, such as I had never felt before, I felt my way through the dark rooms to the vaulted chamber and took up my position in the niche.
The mechanism hummed softly in the lamp and through the reddish stomach of the idol I could see the glowing wick glittering in the mouth of the snake as it slowly revolved, appearing to be creeping almost imperceptibly upwards in spirals.
The full moon must have been directly above the hole in the ceiling, for its reflection was like a motionless disc of silver with a pale green glow in the trough of water in the stone table.
For a long time I thought the golden chairs were empty, but eventually I could see that three were occupied. As they moved cautiously I recognised the men: in the north the apothecary, Herr Wirtzigh; in the east a stranger (Dr Chrysophron Zagräus, as I learnt from their later conversation); in the south, a wreath of poppies on his bald head, Dr Sacrobosco Haselmayer.
Only the chair in the west was empty.
My hearing must have gradually woken, for words were drifting over to me, some Latin, which I could not understand, and some German. I saw the stranger lean forward, kiss Dr Haselmayer on the forehead and say, ‘beloved bride’. There followed a long sentence, but it was too softly spoken for me to be aware of it.
Then, suddenly, Herr Wirtzigh was in the middle of an apocalyptic speech:
‘And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne and round about the throne were four beasts full of eyes before and behind. And I looked, and behold, a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto him to take away peace from the earth, that the inhabitants thereof should slaughter one another; and to him was given a great sword.’
‘A great sword,’ came the echo from Dr Zagräus. Then he caught sight of me, paused and asked the others in a whisper if I could be trusted.
Herr Wirtzigh reassured him. ‘He has long since become a lifeless mechanism in my hands. Our ritual demands that one who is dead for the world must hold the torch when we are gathered together. He is like a corpse. In his hand he carries his soul, in the belief that it is a smouldering lamp.’
His words were full of unbridled scorn and a sudden terror made my blood freeze when I felt that in truth I could not move a limb and had become as stiff as a dead man.
Once more Dr Zagräus spoke: ‘Yes, the hymn of hatred is sounding throughout the world. I beheld him with my own eyes, the one on the pale horse, and behind him the myriad forms of the army of machines — our friends and allies. They have long since assumed power over themselves, but mankind remains blind, still thinking themselves their masters.
‘Driverless locomotives, laden with boulders, come tearing along with mindless ferocity, fall on them and bury hundreds upon hundreds beneath the weight of their iron bodies.
‘The nitrogen in the air condenses to produce terrible new explosives: Nature herself pushes forward, breathless in her haste to give up her best resources willingly in order to wipe out the white monster who, for millions of years, has dug scars in her face.
‘Metal tendrils with terrible, sharp thorns grow out of the ground, catching their legs and tearing their bodies apart. And in mute triumph the telegraphs wink at each other: another hundred thousand of the hated race gone for good.
‘Hidden behind trees and hills, the giant mortars lie in wait, their necks stretched up to the heavens, lumps of ore in their teeth, until the treacherous windmills give them secret signs with their arms to spew out death and destruction.
‘Electric vipers dart along under the ground — there! a tiny greenish spark and an earthquake erupts with a roar, transforming the countryside into a mass grave!
‘With the glowing eyes of predatory beasts the searchlights peer through the dark. More! More! More! Where are there more of them? And they come, swaying in their grey gravecoats, interminable hordes, their feet bleeding, their eyes lifeless, stumbling in their weariness, half asleep, lungs gasping, knees trembling — but quickly the drums bark out their fanatical fakir rhythm, whipping the benumbed brains into a fury until the howling, berserk frenzy breaks out and only stops when the showers of lead fall on nothing but dead bodies.
‘From the east and the west, from America and Asia they come, the metal monsters with murder in their round mouths, to take part in the war dance.
‘Sharks of steel creep round the coasts, suffocating in their bellies those who once gave life to them.
‘But even those that stayed at home — the apparently “lukewarm” ones who for so long blew neither hot nor cold, who previously had only given birth to peaceable instruments — have awoken to play their part in the great death: tirelessly they belch out fiery breath into the sky day and night, and from their bodies pours forth a stream of sword blades and powder cartridges, lances, shells. None wants to sit there and sleep any more.
‘More and more gigantic eagles are waiting to leave the nest to circle over the last hiding places of mankind; already thousands of iron spiders are rushing tirelessly to and fro to weave shining silvery wings for them.’
For a moment there was a pause and I saw that Count Chazal was suddenly there; he was standing behind the chair in the west, leaning on the back, arms crossed. He looked pale and emaciated.
With an emphatically insistent gesture, Dr Zagräus went on: ‘And is that not a ghostly resurrection? The blood and fat of antediluvian dragons, long since decomposed and lying in underground caverns as mineral oil, is stirring, wants to come back to life. Simmered and distilled in fat-bellied cauldrons, it now flows as “petrol” into the veins of new, fantastic monsters of the air and sets them throbbing. Petrol and dragon’s blood! Who can tell the difference? It is like the daemonic prelude to the Day of Judgment?’
The Count hastily broke in and I could sense a vague fear in his voice. ‘Don’t talk of the Day of Judgment, Zagräus,’ he said, ‘It sounds like a portent.’
The gentlemen stood up in surprise. ‘A portent?’
‘We wanted to meet today for a celebration,’ the Count said, after having spent a long time looking for words, ‘but until this moment my feet were kept firmly fixed in — Mauritius.’ (I dimly understood that there was a hidden meaning behind the word and that the Count was not referring to the country.) ‘I have long had my doubts whether what I saw in the reflection that floats up from the Earth to the Moon is correct. I fear, I fear — and icy shivers run over my skin at the terrible thought — that in the short term something unexpected might happen and snatch victory from us. What good is it that I realise there may be another secret meaning in the present war, that the world spirit intends to separate the nations from each other so that they stand alone, like the members of some future body; what use is that to me, if I cannot see the ultimate intention? It is the influences one cannot see that are the most powerful. I tell you:
‘Something invisible is growing and growing and I cannot find its root.
‘I have interpreted the signs in the heavens which do not lie. Yes, the demons from the depths are arming for battle and soon the Earth’s skin will shudder, like the hide of a horse plagued by flies. Already the great ones of darkness, whose names are written in the Book of Hatred, have once more flung a comet out of the abyss of space, this time at the Earth, as they have so often thrown one at the Sun and missed the target so that it flew back to them, just as the boomerang of the Australian aborigines returns to the hunter’s hand, when it has not struck its intended victim. But who, I asked myself, is behind this array of strength, when the fate of the human race seems already sealed by the army of machines?
‘Then scales fell from my eyes, but I am still blind and can only feel my way.
‘Can you also not feel the imponderable power, that death cannot touch, swelling up into a river compared with which the oceans are like a bucketful of dishwater?
‘What a mysterious force it is that can sweep away overnight everything small and open up a beggar’s heart until it is like that of an apostle! I saw a poor schoolmistress adopt an orphan and set no great store by it, and fear came over me.
‘What has happened to the power of the machine in a world where mothers rejoice, when their sons fall, instead of tearing their hair? And could it be a prophetic rune that no one can read yet: a picture is displayed in the city stores, a cross in the Vosges with the wood shot away, but the Son of Man — was left standing?
‘We hear the wings of the Angel of Death booming over the lands, but are you sure it is not the wings of another, and not those of death? One of those that can say “I” in every stone, every flower and every animal, both in and outside time and space?
‘Nothing can be lost, it is said. But then whose hand is it that gathers this enthusiasm, released everywhere like a new force of nature, and to what will it give birth and who will inherit it?
‘Is another about to come whose steps none can stay, as has happened again and again in the course of the millennia. I cannot get that thought out of my mind.’
‘Let him come! As long as this time he comes clothed in flesh and blood again.’ Herr Wirtzigh interrupted scornfully. ‘They’ll soon nail him with jokes. No one has ever defeated grinning laughter.’
‘But he can come without shape or form,’ Dr Zagräus muttered to himself, ‘just as recently something uncanny befell the animals, so that overnight horses could count and dogs read and write. What if he should burst forth like a flame from human beings themselves?’
‘Then we must deceive the light in humans with light,’ Count Chazal broke in shrilly. ‘From that point on we must inhabit their brains as the new, false brilliance of a deceptive, sober rationalism, until they confuse the sun and moon, and we must teach them to distrust everything that is light.’
I cannot remember what else the Count said. Suddenly the state of glass-like fixity, in which I had been held thus far, left me and I could move again. A voice inside me seemed to whisper that I should be afraid, but that was beyond me.
Despite that, I stretched out my arm with the lamp in front of me, as if to protect myself.
Whether a draught caught it or the snake had reached the space in the idol’s head, making the glowing wick burst into flame, I could not say. All I know is that a blinding light suddenly burst my senses apart; again I heard my name being called, then a heavy object fell with a dull thud.
I presume it must have been my own body, for when I opened my eyes for a brief moment before I lost consciousness, I saw that I was lying on the floor and the full moon was shining above me. But the room was empty, the table and the gentlemen had disappeared.
For many weeks I lay in a coma and when I had eventually recovered, I was told — I forget by whom — that Herr Wirtzigh had died and had made me sole heir to his entire estate.
But I will have to keep to my bed for quite a while longer and that will give me time to reflect on what had happened and to write it down.
Just occasionally, at night, a very strange feeling comes over me as if there were an empty space yawning in my chest, stretching out endlessly to the east, south, north and west, and in the middle is the moon; it waxes to a shining disc, wanes, goes black, appears again as a slim crescent, and each time the phases are the faces of the four gentlemen as they sat at the round stone table the last time. Then, to take my mind off it, I listen to the boisterous sounds coming through the surrounding silence from the nearby robber’s castle of the wild painter Kubin, who holds riotous orgies into the early hours of the morning with his seven sons. When day breaks Petronella, the old housekeeper, sometimes comes to my bed and says, ‘How are we today, Herr Wirtzigh.’ She keeps trying to tell me that, as the pastor knows very well, there has not been a Count Chazal since 1430, when the line died out, and that I was a somnambulist, who fell off the roof while sleepwalking and for years imagined I was my own valet. Naturally she denies that there is either a Dr Zagräus or a certain Sacrobosco Haselmayer.
‘Of course, the Red Tanjur does exist,’ she always says at the end, wagging her finger at me. ‘It’s over there on the stove. They tell me it’s a Chinese book of magic. And we all know now what happens when a good Christian reads that kind of thing.’
I say nothing, for I know what I know. But every time the old woman goes out, I get up and open the Gothic cupboard just to confirm what I know. And naturally it’s still there, the snake lamp and, hung up underneath it, the green top hat, doublet and silk knee-breeches of Herr Dr Haselmayer.