Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror/Volume 2/Number 3/Bal Macabre
I wanted to turn my head, but could not.
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Author of "The Golem," etc.
Translated from the German by Udo Rall
Lord Hopeless had invited me to join the party at his table, and introduced me to the gentlemen.
It was long after midnight, and I have forgotten most of the names.
Doctor Zitterbein I had already met before.
"You always sit by yourself. That is too bad," he had said while he shook my hand. "Why do you always sit by yourself?"
| ". . . All at once a strange-looking acrobat was at our table. . . ." |
I know that we had not drunk very much. Nevertheless we were under the spell of that delicate, barely noticeable intoxication which makes some words seem to come from far off, a condition peculiar to those late hours when we are lulled by cigarette smoke, the laughter of women, and cheap music.
Strange that out of such nightclub atmosphere—with its combination of gipsy music, cakewalk, and champagne—should develop a discussion of things supernatural! Lord Hopeless was telling a story.
Of a society which was really supposed to exist, of men and women—rather of corpses or apparent corpses—belonging to the best circles, who according to the testimony of the living had been dead a long time, even had grave markers and tombs with their names and the dates of their deaths, but who in reality lay somewhere in the city, inside an old-fashioned mansion, in a condition of uninterrupted catalepsy, insensate, but guarded against disintegration, neatly arranged in a series of drawers. They were said to be cared for by a hunchbacked servant with buckleshoes and a powdered wig, who was nicknamed Spotted Aron. During certain nights their lips showed a weak, phosphorescent gleam, which was a sign for the hunchback to perform a mysterious manipulation upon the cervical vertebrae of his charges. So he said.
Their souls could then roam about unhampered—temporarily freed from their bodies—and indulge in the vices of the city. With a greediness and intensity which transcended the imagination of the craftiest roué.
Among other things they knew how to attach themselves, in vampire fashion, to those living reprobates who stagger from vice to vice—sucking, stealing, enriching themselves with weird sensations at the expense of the living masses. This club, which, by the way, had the curious name, Amanita, possessed even by-laws, and rules and severe conditions concerning the admission of new members. But these were surrounded by an impenetrable veil of secrecy.
I could not catch the last few words of Lord Hopeless' talk, due to the noisy racket of the musicians and the singers who dished up the latest couplet:
"I took the whitest flow-ower
To cheer my darkest hou-our,
Tra-la, tra-la, tra-la,
Tra—la-la-la—tra-la."
The grotesque distortions of a mulatto couple, which accompanied the music with a sort of nigger cancan, added like the song to the unpleasant effect which the story had made on me.
In this night club, among painted prostitutes, slick waiters, and diamond-studded pimps the entire impression seemed to grow somewhat fragmentary, mangled-up, until it remained in my mind merely as a gruesome, half-real, distorted image.
As if time should suddenly, in unguarded moments, hurry with eager, noiseless steps, so can hours burn into seconds for one intoxicated—seconds which fly out of the soul like sparks, in order to illuminate a sickly web of curious, dare-devilish dreams, woven out of a confused mingling of the past and the future.
Thus I can still, out of the vagueness of my memory, hear a voice saying: "We should send a message to the Amanita Club."
Judging by that, it seems that our talk must have repeatedly reverted to the same theme.
In between I seem to remember fragments of brief observations, like the breaking of a champagne glass, a whistle—then, that a French cocotte settled herself on my lap, kissed me, blew cigarette smoke into my mouth, and stuck her pointed tongue into my ear. Again later a postcard full of Signatur as was pushed towards me, with the request that I should sign my name too—and the pencil dropped out of my hand—and then again I couldn't manage, because a wench poured a glass of champagne over my cuffs.
But I remember distinctly, how all of us became suddenly sober, searching in our pockets, on and below the table, and on our chairs for the postcard, which Lord Hopeless wanted to have back by all means, but which had vanished and remained vanished for good. . . .
"I took the whitest flow-ower
To cheer my darkest hou-our,"
The violins screeched the refrain and submerged our consciousness in the darkness again and again.
If one closed one's eyes, one seemed to be lying on a thick, black, velvety carpet, from which flamed forth a few isolated ruby-red flowers.
"I want something to eat," I heard someone call. "What? What? Caviar?. . . Nonsense! Bring me . . . bring me . . . well . . . bring me some preserved mushrooms."
And all of us ate of those sour mushrooms, which were swimming in a clear, stringy liquid, spiced with some aromatic herb.
"I took the whitest flow-ower
To cheer my darkest hou-our,
Tra-la, tra-la, tra-la,
Tra—la-la-la—tra-la."
***
All at once a strange-looking acrobat, dressed in a coverall tricot which was much too large and wabbled crazily about him, was at our table and at his right sat a masqued hunchback with a white flaxen wig.
Next to him was a woman; and they all laughed.
How in the world did he get in here—with those? And I turned around: the hall was empty, except for ourselves.
Oh, well, I thought—never mind. . . .
The table at which we sat was very long, and most of its tablecloth shone as white as a sheet—empty of plates and glasses.
"Monsieur Phalloides, won't you please dance for us?" said one of the gentlemen, patting the acrobat on his shoulder.
They must know each other well—it went through my head in a sort of a dream—very probably he's been sitting here a long time already, that—that tricot.
And then I looked at the hunchback next to him, and our eyes met. He wore a mask glazed with white lacquer and a greenish, faded jacket, badly neglected and full of crude patches.
Picked up from the street!
When he laughed, it sound like a cross between a wheeze and a rattle.
"Crotalus!—Crotalus Horridus." That phrase which I must have heard or read somewhere some time went through my mind; I could not remember its meaning, but I shuddered nevertheless, as I whisperedit to myself.
And then I felt the fingers of that young wench touching my knees under the table.
"My name is Albina Veratrina," she whispered to me falteringly as if she were confiding a secret to me, while I seized her hand.
She moved very close to me; and I remembered darkly that she had once poured a glass of champagne over my cuff. Her dresses exuded a biting odor; one could hardly keep from sneezing when she made a movement.
"Her name is Germer, of course—Miss Germer, you know," said Doctor Zitterbein aloud.
Whereupon the acrobat gave a quick laugh, looked at her, and shrugged his shoulders, as if he felt obliged to excuse her behavior.
I was nauseated by him. He had peculiar epidermic scars on his neck, as broad as a hand, but all around and of a pale color, giving an effect of ruffles—like the neck of a pheasant.
And his tricot of pale flesh color hung loosely on him from neck to toe, because he was narrow-chested and thin. On his head he wore a flat, greenish lid with white dots and buttons. He had got up and was dancing with a girl around whose neck there was a chain of speckled berries.
"Have new women dropped in?" I asked Lord Hopeless with my eyes.
"That's only Ignatia—my sister," said Albina Veratrina, and while she said the word "sister," she winked at me from the corner of her eye and laughed hysterically.
Suddenly she stuck her tongue out at me, and I noticed that it had a dry, long, reddish streak down its middle; and I was horrified.
It's like a symptom of poisoning, I thought. Why has she that reddish streak? It's like a symptom of poisoning!
And again I heard the music coming from afar:
"I took the whitest flow-ower
To cheer my darkest hou-our,"
and, although I kept my eyes closed, I knew how they all wagged their heads to the music in crazy rhythm. . . .
It is like a symptom of poisoning, I dreamed—and woke up with a chill.
The hunchback in his green, spotted jacket had a wench on his lap and jerked off her clothes in a sort of St. Vitus' dance, seemingly to the rhythm of inaudible music. Doctor Zitterbein arose awkwardly and unbuttoned her shoulderstraps. ***
"Bbetween second and second there is a brief interval, which does not belong to time, which belongs only to the imagination. Like the meshes of a net"—I heard the hunchback orating insinuatingly—"these intervals are. You can add them together, and they will still not result in actual time, but we think them nevertheless—once, twice, once again, and a fourth time. . . .
"And if we live only within these limits and forget the actual minutes and seconds, never to remember them—why, then we are dead, then we live only in death.
"You live, let us say, fifty years. Of that your schooling takes away ten: leaves forty.
"And sleep steals twenty: leaves twenty.
"And ten are filled with cares: remains ten.
"Of those you spend nine years in fear of to-morrow; thus you may live one year—perhaps!
"Why wouldn't you rather die?
"Death is beautiful.
"There is rest, eternal rest.
"And no worry about to-morrow.
"There is the eternal, silent Present, which you do not know; there is no Before and no Afterwards.
"There lies the silent Present, which you do not know! These are the hidden meshes 'twixt second and second in the net of time." ***
The words of the hunchback were still singing in my heart. I looked up and saw that the chemise of the wench had dropped to her waist and she sat on his lap, naked. She had no breasts and no body-only a phosphorescent nebula from neck to hip.
And he reached into that nebula with his fingers, and it sounded like the strings of a bass viol, and out of this spectral body came pieces of clinkers rattling to the floor. Such is death, I felt—like a mess of slag.
Slowly the center of that white tablecloth soared upward, like an immense bubble—a chill draft swept the room and blew away the nebula. Glittering harp-strings appeared, reaching from the collarbone of the wench to her hips. A creature, half woman, half harp!
The hunchback played on it, so I dreamed, a song of death and lust, which ended in a strange hymn:
"All joy must turn to suffering;
No earthly pleasure can endure!
Who longs for joy, who chooses joy,
Will reap the sorrow which it brings:
Who never yearns nor waits for joy,
Has never yearned for sorrow's end."
And an inexplicable longing for death came over me, and I yearned to die.
But in my heart, life gave battle—the instinct for self-preservation. And death and life were ominously arrayed against each other; that is catalepsy.
My eyes stared, motionless. The acrobat bent over me, and I noticed his wrinkled tricot, the greenish lid on his head, and his ruffled neck.
"Catalepsy," I wanted to stammer, but I could not open my mouth.
As he walked from one to another and peered into their faces with a questioning leer, I knew that we were paralyzed: he was like a toadstool!
We have eaten toadstools, stewed with veratrum album, the herb which is also called white Germer.
But that is only a spook of the night, a chimera!
I wanted to shout it out loud, but could not.
I wanted to turn my head, but could not.
The hunchback with the white, varnished mask got up noiselessly, and the others followed him and arranged themselves in couples, just as noiselessly.
The acrobat with the French trumpet, the hunchback with the human harp, Ignatia with Albina Veratrina—thus they moved right through the wall in the twitching dance step of a cakewalk.
Only once did Albina Veratrina turn her face towards me, accompanying the look with an obscene gesture.
I wanted to turn my eyes sideways or close my lids, but I could not. Constantly I had to stare at the wall-clock, and at its hands which crawled around its face like thieving fingers.
And in my ears still sounded that haunting couplet:
"I took the whitest flow-ower
To cheer my darkest hou-our,
Tra-la, tra-la, tra-la,
Tra—la-la-la—tra-la,"
and like a basso ostinato it came from the depths:
"All joy must turn to suffering:
Who never yearns nor waits for joy,
Has never yearned for sorrow's end."
*** I recovered from this poisoning after a long, long time; but the others are all buried.
It was too late to save them—so I was told—when help arrived.
But I suspect that they were not really dead, when they were buried. Even though the doctor tells me that catalepsy cannot result from eating toadstools, and that the symptoms would have had to be different. I suspect that they were not dead, and with a shudder I have to think of the Amanita Club and of its weird hunchback guardian, Spotted Aron, with hiswhite mask.
