The Other Side (27 page)

Various people told me of strange cries, terrible oaths, pathetic prayers and muffled shouts they claimed to have heard coming from the drains and sewers. The places they mentioned were all quite distant from each other, but the acoustics of the Dream Realm were unusual.

After his boss disappeared without trace Anton kept the café open for a few hours, then locked up and left. There were not likely to be any more takings. The chess players stayed. He chanced to meet Castringius and teamed up with the former illustrator, who had a new profession. He now lived off other people’s savings; in other words, he stole whatever came to hand.

He had dedicated his last work,
The Albino Leper Killing the Proto-brain
, to the American, giving him to understand it was an ‘allegorical symbol’ and worth a hundred thousand dollars; he, however, could have it for a mere five thousand. Bell laughed and had the artist thrown out, something that was happening more and more to his visitors. Plotting revenge, Castringius went over to Patera and did what harm he could to the supporters of ‘that damn Yankee’.

Once, when he had made a good haul and was about to make his getaway, he felt someone else’s hand in the back pocket of his coat. Grabbing it, he saw that Anton was attached to the other end. Apologies, explanations, the end result being that from now on these two fine fellows joined forces. Their speciality was breaking into abandoned villas. They had a hiding-place in the castle gardens where they stored and buried the valuables they had plundered. One day they planned a particularly promising operation. The former owner of the
Dream Mirror
had died as the result of a snakebite and his villa stood empty. Carefully keeping as far as possible to the shadows, the pair of them crept into the Garden Suburb. The walked along side by side in silence, each occupied with his own thoughts. Anton was hoping for an opportunity to dispose of his friend, then he would inherit all the loot himself. Castringius, on the other hand, was mentally counting their ill-gotten gains. Just a couple more successful forays and he would have enough to return to Europe and set up as a respected artist, free from financial worries.

Visibility was not good. ‘Do we have to walk much farther?’ the ex-waiter asked petulantly.

‘You who’ve spent all your life on your feet! There, the last house, that’s the place.’

Half hidden behind trees, the top of its roof was just visible. When they reached the garden fence Castringius looked round on all sides. ‘All clear. Right then, over you go’, he told his partner in crime.

Now Anton was the one to hold back. He was afraid the other might have some trick up his sleeve. After a great deal of argument Castringius climbed over and Anton followed. The tails of his coat got stuck on the barbed wire. ‘All part of the job’, commented his companion sarcastically. They searched the rooms with professional thoroughness without finding anything worth taking, either in the newspaper owner’s study or anywhere else. Disappointed, Castringius expressed his opinion of his former editor.

‘I just don’t understand it! How could I ever have respected this man? Here, allow me to present you with thirteen years’ worth of the
Dream Mirror
‘, he said, indicating a row of bound volumes to Anton, who was staring sourly at the dilapidated remnants of the once magnificent furniture.

‘That’s enough of the stupid jokes. You can keep that rubbish for yourself.’

‘Silence, lackey! What do you know of higher things? These tomes contain almost the entire
oeuvre
of an artist whom you will never comprehend. Your intellectual horizons are scarcely broad enough to understand even the works of my esteemed colleague.’ He turned a look of contemptuous pity on Anton.

They were searching for serviceable clothes in the bedroom when they heard a suppressed sigh. ‘Did you hear that?’ asked the superstitious waiter, trembling and almost dropping the lantern with fright. Huddled up in a blanket on the bed was the figure of a pubescent girl. Terrified, she stared wide-eyed at the intruders.

‘Louisa, my old publisher’s little daughter?! She’s mine, of course!’ cried the delighted Castringius, going up to the girl, who shrank back from his smirking approach.

‘Excuse me, but we’re sharing. As per agreement.’ As soon as Anton had got over his fright, desire asserted itself. Castringius turned round, his head lowered, like a bull, no, more like a drunken bullfrog. He glowered at the skinny waiter, made even weaker by lack of food. His short, stocky legs planted firmly on the floor, he swung his long arms with their fearsome paws a few times and growled, ‘I have the prior claim here and I’m not sharing with a guttersnipe like you. Try me, if you want.’ He bared his teeth. He knew his strength and was confident in it.

Anton, the craftier of the two, had been expecting such a confrontation since they joined forces and took the precaution of always carrying his means of defence round with him in a bag. The ex-star of the
Dream Mirror
was taken by surprise when a handful of ground pepper was flung in his face. He grabbed blindly at his assailant, caught him and enfolded him in his grasp. The ship’s screws locked behind Anton’s back and his knees buckled. The pair of them, the tall Anton and the squat Castringius, thrashed around on the floor, first rolling across the room and then out through the open door onto the balcony. In their fury to cling on to each other they did not notice that the railings were broken. They plunged down onto the roof of the scullery built against the house, slid down that and fell into the open cesspit.

There was a dull ‘plop’, a few bubbles rose to the surface, then…

XVII

‘Physical love is nothing other than the will of the thing-in-itself to enter the temporal world. How can you be so arrogant as to imagine you can compel the thing-in-itself? You make no distinction between the thing-in-itself and other things. From a philosophical point of view I must condemn your actions.’

This was the barber’s response to the orgies on the Tomassevic Fields, and since he refused to halt his ill-chosen tirade they put a rope round his neck and hanged him from his own shop-sign. A joker who saw him dangling beneath the brass bowl tore down a cardboard sign from the wall of a house and tied it to the legs of our authority on time and space. It said, ‘To let’.

Lampenbogen lived well, right up to his last day, while his patients were on half or even quarter rations. The Dreamlanders didn’t take very kindly to that and there was a mini-revolution in his shed, vigorously supported by his orderly, who would have preferred to be outside, where things were happening, rather than carrying out his unpleasant duties in the hospital. The ice-box still contained three roast chickens, a bar of chocolate and a cheese. The patients demanded their share of this private store of food, even though its condition was not exactly appetising. Lampenbogen refused. Then he must die, they said. He refused that as well. His furious patients quickly came to an understanding and fell upon their doctor. Those that were bed-ridden looked on as the orderly and the other patients overpowered him. One poor woman with a fractured jaw carefully dribbled chloroform over the groaning tub of lard. Patients rarely feel pity for others, having suffered too much themselves. When the fat doctor was anaesthetised they broke open the ice-box and fortified themselves with the delicacies it contained. The doctor they impaled on a gaspipe, not an easy task for the patients in their weakened state, and the orderly lit a fire to destroy the evidence of their brutal crime. So Lampenbogen ended his life as a spit-roast, and not a very good one, either. His upper parts were mostly raw, hardly browned, his abdomen, on the other hand, burnt to a cinder. Only his sides were nice and crisp.

XVIII

An old man, bareheaded, was running down Long Street towards the river with rapid but tiny, tremulous steps, his coattails fluttering out behind him like wings, his waistcoat only half buttoned up. He was nodding his head vigorously and talking to himself, apparently completely unaware of his surroundings. When he reached the water he stopped for a few moments, undecided, then paced up and down the sand with solemn mien, like a stork, lecturing himself. The Negro was murmuring. At times it sounded as if the river was hungry, and its waves licked spoonfuls of sand from the bank, at others it was lamenting in many-voiced, mystic song. There was a dim lamp on the bridge and in its gleam shifting patches of light danced on the surface of the water. The old man came to a decision and waded out into the river. At first the waves only came up to his knees. With much ado, he took a spectacle case out of his pocket, placed his glasses on his nose and put the case back in his pocket. A few more steps and the water was already up to his skinny thighs. He had to fight to stop the current sweeping him away. Fervently uttering bizarre vows of love, he pressed his hands against his heart. Then he took out a small, unrecognisable object, held it right in front of his myopic eyes and bent down to the waves, apparently to inspect them. They were already up to his neck, to his nose, the next moment all that could be seen was a little island of white hair. Like a tiny ship, a small, shiny object floated down the river, bobbing up and down and swirling round as it was carried away by the current. It was a small box, covered in silver paper …
acarina felicitas
…

XIX

The marsh was eating away at the station. The building had tilted, the platform was covered in mud and rushes, mire was creeping into the waiting rooms through the rotten doors and from benches and upholstery came the melancholy song of the toad; newts and insect larvae were crawling over the counter of the caféteria. The countless creatures that had invaded Pearl, ravaging the gardens and terrifying its human inhabitants, all came out of the marsh, which stretched away many miles into the grey murk.

But it not only
gave
, it
took life
as well. Countless Dream landers, farmers, fishermen slept in its moist earth. The deceiver! How harmless it looked, while knots of snakes writhed under its carpet of moss! Without a sound it could send up ghostly flames as high as a house, terrifying the waterbirds in their nests. It was a living organism that found ample sustenance within itself: its tigers ate its pigs, its foxes hunted its deer.

This wilderness was considered sacred in the Dream Realm. At certain places there were ancient, moss-covered stones with incomprehensible, weather-worn signs carved into them. It was the custom of hunters to take the entrails of their kill there, fishermen offered up the livers of pike and freshwater wolf-fish, country-folk would bring a sheaf of corn or apples and grapes, piling them up in small pyramids. The marsh always graciously accepted these gifts and consumed them. Earlier Patera often used to come here and venture out to the holy places alone at night. I was told that he used to make sacrifices to the ‘Marsh Mother’ in the name of the Dreamers and would renew his union with her through mysteries in which blood and sex were of special significance. Now it was a long time since he had been here. Today everyone knew about these secret rites and regularly swore ‘by Patera’s blood’. The consequences were clear to see everywhere. An old temple proverb, ‘The wages of blood is madness’, had been fulfilled. One further fact worth mentioning is that the blue-eyed tribe on the other side of the river stood aloof from all these practices.