The Dedalus Book of German Decadence (22 page)

He walked as though he were walking to the end of the world, to be rowed across to that secret shore of shadowless trees, in a dead, cold cemetery air where motionless birds were resting with stretched and lifeless wings.

Something of his poured into her: perhaps she sensed the same endless sadness, the same premonition of an eternal emptiness and the silence of death; she shuddered, then she put her arm through his and pressed herself gently against him.

‘I am frightened!’ she whispered softly.

They gazed at each other in deepest horror  …  Breath froze in their hearts in the anticipation of something about to overwhelm them with the terror of the Day of Judgement.

And then, abruptly, there poured over his soul the Golgotha of his last few days in a hideous flood of torment. Wild fury seethed in his brain, he seized both her hands in anger, pressing them in an iron grip, and screamed:

‘I’ll crucify you! Crucify you! Crucify you!’

She stood for a moment, trembling with terror like an aspen leaf, then twisted herself from his raging embrace and fled at tremendous speed.

He saw her run away, but everything seemed to spin in circles before his eyes, lightning transfixed the darkness, and a sun sank, crashing, into the abyss  …

He fell silently to the ground, as though laid low by an invisible scythe  …

*        *        *        *

Many days, many nights came and went.

He had shut himself away and admitted no one.

He was terrified of going out on to the street for he knew that he would meet her, and he knew that she also was looking for him, that she was wandering around, seeking him as he had sought her.

And when it was growing dark, and he had to go out, he would creep past the houses and the avenue of trees.

The least single noise filled him with dread, and the echo of distant footsteps made him start, for everything that surrounded him, the whole cosmos of thoughts and memories, the whole world which stalked him, was
she.

He did not know why he was so frightened. He only felt that something terrible must happen should he meet her again.

And he had never longed for her so much; never tormented himself like this.

Whenever the world fell silent in an immeasurable stillness, when the blessing of light blossomed forth in the starry chalices and poured down on him, when the sadness of the moon bled between the chestnut trees: then ah! he would stretch out his hands towards her in a shriek of desperation, his soul dying in wild convulsions, and he crept towards her, for it seemed that the distance would melt away between them, and that she would climb down to him, embraced by the precious perfume of the most splendid flowers that he had ever experienced in his dreams, and dressed in the supernatural enchantment of divine azure, she would descend and soothe his fevered brow with her radiant hands, and embrace him, and caress him, and kiss him  …

Or, alternatively: she will pour over him with an indescribable benediction of silence and calm, will pour into him with forgetfulness and intone in his soul the high song of silver dreams.

Or, alternatively: she will come to him with the muted resonance of distant bells which will spread within his soul the green carpets of his homeland and make his heart drunk with the gleam of lovely childhood memories when, on his mother’s lap, he could still dream of a wondrous world, a world still holy within his virginal breast, and could listen to the song which the lake at home was singing to him at the midnight hour, and gaze up at the birds spreading their heavy wings silently over the mysterious graves, and he could wander in the garden, gardens precious with black trees from whose monstrous umbels heavy gold blossoms were hanging.

He was longing for her, yet was terrified to see her.

Once he thought he saw her through the window. She was pressing her face against the panes and was gazing at him with eyes like a dying double star.

He felt a pain so deep that he felt unable to shriek, or groan. There was only an ashen, dying log in the grate, only the last flickering of the requiem candles at the catafalque from which the coffin had been removed, only the last gasp of the wind which fell to earth and moans through the autumnal stubble fields.

He gazed in deepest dread, and recoiled, only the eyes remained in her transparent face, the two dying stars. He leaned, shuddering, against the wall and everything suddenly disappeared: he was gazing in unspeakable dread into the deepest suburban darkness.

Days, and nights, passed like this.

Until the pain ceased, and he overcame his sick longing.

He only had to say something to her in parting, to scream forth his last utterance.

When he stepped on to the podium he saw nobody: he only felt the hot breath of the thousands beneath him. The green light of gigantic chandeliers flickered before his eyes, and for a second his brain trembled with thoughts of her – he wanted to see where she was sitting, where she
must
be sitting; he felt her gaze wandering, demented, over him – but then everything dissolved and unspeakable stillness spread throughout his soul.

The stillness and calm before creation.

A superhuman melody streamed from his hands.

He was sitting on Golgotha at the feet of crucified humanity. Centuries of torment, of hideous martyrdom poured like a hurricane over his soul, an eternity of damnation and suffering, of screams, howling for redemption; there were curses, infernal curses and convulsions of roaring, of screaming for one second of happiness. Within his soul the whole of Being celebrated a sombre mass, full of horror  …

He was sitting at the foot of the cross and staring into Stygian darkness; above him, the sun, hung with black draperies.

He was battering the doors of heaven with raging fists, was cursing destiny, that destiny which made him live, made him writhe in deprivation, spew revulsion and disgust and putrefy in the hell of insatiable sensual lust.

An impotent rage of vengeance was howling in his brain, an impotent desire for retribution was seething in his blood, and a hideous shriek was ripped from his hoarse throat: Where is the end? Where the beginning? What is the cause, the aim?!

He was wandering, the star of madness on his brow, and leading with a bloody torch a mob behind him, sick, terrified and shuddering with fear. Covered in blood he works his way through the thicket of night beneath ghostly horrors until he reaches the subterranean passages where unknown treasures, darkly felt, and dreamed-of, lie concealed. He is walking at the front, proud, inaccessible, but dread and despair are eating his heart – shall I be able to find her? I have promised her to the crowd: how long must I wander?

And in a second he was the cosmos which burst into a million stars, into milliards of species and it all became One in him, an eternity of feelings, an eternity of creations and planets.

He was carrying a monstrous sun within his breast, he was flying, flying into the heights. Higher and higher, and he lost the awareness of omnipotence, of will, of being: he spread white wings from one pole to the next and hovered in deep brooding over the earth.

Anger and pain collapsed: pain petrified, and longing, for the earth was slumbering in the dusk of evening.

And, below, the fields of corn were swaying in a dreaming drunkenness; in the depths the barren stubble field gleamed in the ghostly gloaming, and wandering will o’ the wisps flickered across dark swamps – ah, in the depths the skies were hovering in the black abyss of the lake, and from its depths pale stars arise, and on the smooth surface dances the silent magic of sunken churches  …

His heart was seized with a heavy, oppressive longing.

And again he was striding forwards, he, the son of earth, striding with the holy belief that he was bringing salvation, but with the deepest, saddest, most transcendent pain he realised that he would be crucified  …

He dragged himself along the
via dolorosa
with bleeding feet; bloody sweat dripped from his brow and a Gehenna of torment seethed in his breast.

He felt that he was carrying something in his arms; he was carrying it with reverence and with infinite care, but he saw nobody  …

And suddenly there was the rustling of a dress in his room, the gleam of a pair of hot, longing eyes.

He started in terror.

No, no, it was not a dream.

Not a dream!

It was
she
, incarnate!

She was standing against the wall, breathing deeply.

They looked at each other, frightened, silent, trembling.

‘I have come to you,’ she whispered, ‘I have come to you, longing and desire were eating my soul.’

And she sank into his arms.

*        *        *        *

Oh hour of God-intoxicated rapture, hour of wonder, when two souls flow into one!

‘Are you afraid of sin?’ I ask her, hot and shuddering.

‘I love sin, I love hell, with you, with you  …’

And she threw herself into my arms, without consciousness, and oblivious to all  …

*        *        *        *

And he said to her:

‘I did not know the meaning of happiness, but now I know it. With you I can drink joy and holy, inexhaustible rapture.’

‘The miraculous hour is now consummated,’ she laughed, with a faint, demented smile.

‘I could never previously melt into a woman,’ he whispered, fervently, ‘but you stream throughout my veins like a flood of golden sunbeams.’

‘The miraculous hour! The miraculous hour!’ she repeated quietly, in a shuddering ecstasy.

Silence.

He started up.

‘Why are you weeping?’

She stroked his hair and took his face in her small hands, pressing him to her more closely; her arms embraced his throat, and her white fingers were once again tangled in his hair.

‘Why are you weeping?’

‘For joy!’ she quietly moaned.

And he embraced her with a trembling, god-inspired love, whispering the most ardent utterances, the same words, time and time again in crazy sentences  …  He rocked her to and fro as one rocks a child to sleep in loving arms.

She was no longer weeping.

They pressed each other close as two children embrace in fresh sweet hay when a wild storm is passing over them and the skies scatter heavy bolts of lightning upon the earth.

‘Are you happy?’ he asked.

‘My lover, you, you, my only one  …’

‘Yours, yours!’ he repeated incessantly.

And then:

‘Shall we always remain together?’ he asked, afraid.

She did not reply, but hot shudders rippled through her body  …

‘I shall tread the way of the cross, I shall have myself crucified. My life is now consummated in the hour of miracles  …  Do not ask  …  Take me  …  press me even closer to you  …  deeper!… kill me!’

A long, sultry silence.

And again he spoke unto her:

‘Do you remember how I carried you in the howling storm through the forest? It seemed as though the skies were falling in on us, green sheaves of lightning were dancing around us, the palm trees were crashing down around us, blocking our path and bursting with the terrifying sound of collapsing masonry, and now and then the lightning would split the trunk of a thousand-year-old tree, and fragments of wood rained down upon us like the gigantic leaves from the chalice of a dying flower. The hurricane hurled us up and down, we were staggering, falling beating ourselves raw against the tree trunks, but I kept pulling myself up, I fell, was crawling on my knees, scrambling over the heaps of tangled branches, over the dead tree trunks, for I was carrying you in my arms, and the storm of desire within me was greater than the hurricane which was sweeping the virgin forests from the earth.’

She did not reply.

‘And do you remember how we were fleeing through the prairie-fires of the steppes? The whirling fire was raging behind us, rearing upwards into the skies in fiery pillars, it rolled across the plains in monstrous streams and I was running, running and leaping madly like a wild beast with you in my arms, I flew across the hell scorched earth, and I was stronger than the fire; it could not reach us for I was carrying you in my arms and a stronger fire than the steppes was roaring in my veins.’

She did not answer.

‘And do you remember when a monstrous, demented whirlpool had seized our boat? Seized it and hurled it into the depths of the fearful maw, spewed it out and flung it like a piece of flotsam on to the raging waves, and then seized it again in an insane frenzy and again the boat was hurled with the speed of a falling star into the hideous funnel, and it was hurled out again like lava from a seething volcano and I was flung three times on to the boiling waters until the boat finally came to rest on a calmer sea. And I was stronger than the maelstrom for I could feel your embrace, your head upon my breast, and a more powerful vortex was raging within me, stronger than the world. You, you in me, my love for you.’

She did not answer.

‘See! I am the son of earth, I am primeval Adam. In my breast there is raging a storm more powerful than that which breaks the most powerful trees as though they were reeds: in my veins is raging a fire much hotter than that which engulfs the steppes, in me is seething a more violent maelstrom than that which seizes the greatest ship, grinding it to powder and scattering it in the depths of the ocean. Do you love me?’

‘You are great, you are strong, you are all-powerful.’

‘That is not what I want to hear from you. Now listen:

I can make myself a king at any time, hurling whole peoples in the dust before us, I can conquer the earth, ruling over millions of slaves, I can have you crucified and bring you back to life again, I can declare myself the sun-god, and people will build altars to me in sacred groves and bring sacrifices. I can conjure up before your eyes all the miracles and paradises of all time, of all place. I have experienced all the pain and torment of humanity, all their sorrows, all their joys, I can hurl them into hell, and then redeem them.

Do you love me?’

‘You are a god!’

‘That is not what I want to hear from you. Now listen: