The Other Side (29 page)

The army had long since fired its last bullet. In their grimy red trousers the soldiers charged the tattered, rabid mob with fixed bayonets. Fired up with schnapps, they knew no mercy. The American joined in on the side of the soldiers and they, since the story of the waxwork doll had got round, greeted his commanding presence with loud hurrahs. The Archive, the Post Office and the Dreamland Bank were all burning, making the streets as bright as day.

From the French Quarter, which was situated higher up, a mass of filth, garbage, congealed blood, entrails, animal and human carcases slowly poured down like a stream of lava, and the last remaining Dreamlanders waded round in this
potpourri
iridescent with all the colours of putrefaction. They had lost the power of speech and could no longer communicate, only jabber incoherently. Almost all were naked and the more robust men would push the weaker women into the stream of rotting flesh where, overpowered by the miasma, they sank without trace. The Great Square was like a gigantic cesspool in which people used their last reserves of strength to bite and throttle each other until they dropped down dead.

The rigid bodies of lifeless onlookers hung from window holes, their blank eyes reflecting this kingdom of the dead.

Dislocated arms and legs, splayed fingers and clenched fists, distended animals’ stomachs, horses’ skulls with a lump of blue tongue sticking out between the long yellow teeth, the panoply of dissolution edged inexorably forward. A lurid, flickering light illuminated this, Patera’s apotheosis.

XI

The blue-eyed tribe were completely unmoved by all these happenings. They gazed calmly across the river. However, there must have been something going on there too since they had set up large cauldrons outside their strange dwelling places. Day and night they could be seen busying themselves about them. Clearly something was being cooked. The wind blew acrid, evil-smelling fumes across the river that set us coughing, but soon the stench turned into a pleasant fragrance. The blue-eyed people, usually so solemn and deliberate, started dancing round the cauldrons, singing monotonous, long-drawn-out melodies. We had long since discovered that the plague of filth and vermin was nowhere near as bad in the Settlement and our gangs were keen to go across. However, the bridge had collapsed and been swept away. There were no boats left and to swim across would have been suicide, given the number of reptiles in the river.

I was on the bank, sitting on one of the bridge piers. No longer able to bear the scenes that were beyond my understanding, I had decided to kill myself. I stared, fascinated, into the murky waters that were to be my grave in a few moments time. I had the distinct feeling I was on the brink of something immensely great.

Slowly, very gradually, I let myself slip down.
It was as if in a dream.

With a gurgling roar, a yawning funnel appeared in the middle of the water and the river was sucked down into a black hole. The remains of the mill disappeared, still glowing, in a hiss of white smoke.

Long Street collapsed so that I could see the Palace, which was not normally visible from here. Aloof in the bright red glare, its massive bulk towered over the ruins. It seemed to me that the trumpet should sound, the Day of judgment had come. In foaming cataracts the Negro plunged into the greedy maw of the black vortex that had opened up in its bed. Fish and crayfish writhed in the mud and got caught on water plants.

Then I saw a small group of men come over the sandy river-bed from the other side: the blue-eyed tribe. Heads bowed, they walked past me, led by a bent creature with a face covered in crack-like furrows that looked a thousand years old. Long, single silver strands fell down from the unusually high forehead. For a moment I had the impression it could be a woman. And then the others! Tall, emaciated figures all of them. The last one, somewhat taller and with a more upright gait, turned towards me and I found I was looking into the most beautiful face I had ever seen, Patera’s excepted. The pure oval of the head seemed to be made of delicate porcelain. With his thin, transparent nostrils and narrow, slightly flattened chin, the man looked to me like an over-refined Manchu prince or an angel out of a Buddhist legend. His long, slim wrists spoke of a race that had reached the extreme of development. All hair had been shaved off and his skin was completely smooth and taut. The look he gave me with his blue eyes was beyond compare. That could not mean rejection. I followed him.

The ground suddenly started stretching like rubber and the air shook with a deafening explosion, as of hundreds of cannon. Slowly the facade of the Palace tilted, rippled like a flag in the wind and buried the Great Square beneath its countenance.

Bells rang out from all the towers of Pearl, melodiously sounding an impressive swan-song for the dying city. Tears came to my eyes, it was as if I were part of the funeral procession of the Dream Realm.

I followed the blue-eyed men through a narrow gate in a rocky cliff. Dimly lit by a few torches, a long flight of irregular steps led upwards. My guides disappeared into a chamber cut into the wall at the side, but I kept on climbing, higher and higher, to look for a safe spot. I came out into the open, with the red sky above. I was in the old clifftop fortress. There were still one or two guns aimed at the city, but mostly the carriages were broken and the bronze barrels lying scattered about the ramparts. The mountain fell away in a sheer drop of over a thousand feet. I sat down. Below–I could hardly believe my eyes–was a labyrinth of tunnels. The city had been completely undermined, as if moles had been burrowing. A wide tunnel connected the Palace with the Great Square, others stretched right out into the country. These passageways, now roofless, were filled with the waters of the Negro and all the buildings left standing were slowly sinking down into them. From the other side of the city the marsh was lapping closer and closer.

The ringing stopped. All the towers had collapsed, apart from the Great Clock Tower. It still stood, the mighty bell booming out its sonorous bass. There were very few signs of life. Just a small band of people seemed to have survived. They would scatter in all directions, then come back into a clump, like puppets controlled by a single string. At least, that’s what it looked like from up here.

The people down below seemed to be driven round in a pointless chase. Finally, following an inaudible command, they all rushed over the ruins with astonishing leaps and bounds, dashed down to the river, crossed the dried-up bed and threw themselves at the Settlement.

An icy wind, which I could feel even on my high perch, blew up out of a huge hole in the ground, sending the charging pack tumbling. Then the eerie hole drew its breath back in. It looked like a whirlwind as planks, beams and people disappeared into it. Just a few escaped and tried to hide in the Settlement dwellings. At that the gusts of wind stopped and a camel’s head cautiously peeked out of the dark hole. On an endless neck, it looked round with every appearance of intelligence and rose up to where I was sitting. Then it gave a silent laugh and withdrew.

The cottages started to move, the windmills struck out at the intruders with their sails, the unkempt hair of the thatched roofs bristled, the tents bellied out, as if they had winds inside, the trees grabbed at the people with their branches, the poles bent like reeds. Finally the little temples and houses climbed up on top of each other and
spoke
strange words in dreadfully loud, audible, rasping voices, a dark, incomprehensible language of houses.

There were still corpses floating in the water-filled passages, but they were gradually being sucked back into the earth. Then everything went fuzzy. I think the last thing I saw was the pyramid of buildings in the Settlement crashing to the ground.

It was as if a layer of water separated me from events below. Mist came down from above, the fire turned into a hazy blur, a few times I thought I could hear a mass cry, a long-drawn-out ‘Ohooo, ohooo’. Then I couldn’t see anything any more, all was wreathed in dense fog, I could hardly see the hand in front of my face.

Soon it grew brighter. A large, shining disc appeared in the sky and countless glittering dots were scattered over the dark blue firmament. It was the moon and the stars. I had not seen them for three years. I had almost forgotten this immense world above us and for a while I simply abandoned myself to the contemplation of the endlessness of the heavens. Biting cold pierced me to the bone and I looked down, shivering. The broad bank of cloud, the sky of the Dream Realm, had descended.

Then a dull rumbling started in the writhing mass of cloud below me, a thundering, as if the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were storming along, hidden from view. It continued to swell, crashed against the steep mountains, echoed and re-echoed, grew faint, then louder until it was deafening, and spread, growling in every high corrie, over every mountain pass, seemingly never-ending, going on and on and on until it slowly died away.

That was the end of the
Dream Realm.

The land was blanketed in grey. On the horizon, clear in the moonlight, shone the glaciers of the Tien Shan.

I was flooded with a lightness I had never felt before, a faint, sweet odour came up from inside me, my feelings had been utterly transformed, my life was nothing more than a tiny flicker of consciousness. Was I sleeping perhaps? Was I awake? Was I dead? In the distance I heard hollow-sounding cries, like high, broken chords. A cock crowed and quiet organ music, a simple chorale, reached my ear. I raised my head and saw, far below me, a familiar German winter landscape, a small mountain village. Evening seemed to be approaching, the sound of the organ came from the open door of a small church. Boys were pulling their sledges through the churned-up snow of the village street as women, wreathed up in large, brightly coloured shawls, came out of the church. Bowed figures stood under the wide eaves of the wooden roofs, which were weighted down with stones.

Suddenly I recognised it all. It was the village where I had lived as a child. I knew all the people well and with a joyful start of surprise I recognised two of them as my parents. My father was wearing his habitual brown fur cap. I did not feel at all astonished at the fact that most of the people down there were dead. I was keen to go and join in this past turned present, but I could not move a muscle. I saw some ravens flying down towards the frozen lake on which well wrapped-up figures were moving, then everything went pale, paler, until it disappeared.

I could no longer see anything in the darkness. My whole being was so wonderfully permeated with the sound of the organ I felt I was living in its harmonies. New, ever richer chords kept being added until, abruptly, music broke off.

The city of Pearl was back where it always had been. Patera came out of the Palace, inhaled deeply and so noisily the sound reached even me, then stretched and started to grow taller and taller. Already his head was on a level with me, he could have used the whole Palace as his footstool. His clothes split and dropped away. His face was covered by his long flowing locks. His huge feet parted the streets like grass and he bent down over the station, picked up an engine and blew on it like a mouth organ. But he was still growing in all directions and soon this toy was too small for him. So he broke off the Great Tower and sent tremendous trumpet blasts ringing round the sky. His naked body was terrible to behold. Now he expanded to even vaster proportions and dug up a volcano with a spiral of the earth’s granite intestine hanging from it. He set this gigantic instrument to his lips and the booming reverberations made the universe tremble. He stood erect, his upper body wreathed in cloud, his flesh looking as if it were made of mountains. He seemed to be filled with rage. I saw him kneel down in the distance, flocks of birds becoming entangled in his long hair. He waded out into a sea that scarcely carne up to his thighs yet overflowed and flooded the whole world. He trawled through the water with his huge hands, catching ships and writhing sea-monsters, crushing them up and throwing them away again. He trod mountains underfoot so that they spattered like mud and great rivers poured into his footsteps. He was determined to destroy everything. He squirted a stream of boiling urine everywhere, even over the most remote mountain huts, scalding the unsuspecting inhabitants in the steam and killing them. He stamped around in the yellowish-grey flood, his excited body wreathed in clouds of smoke. He threw fistfuls of people for miles until they fell as a shower of corpses. Then a mighty mountain range, which stretched from east to west, began to move. I saw that it was the sleeping American. Patera threw himself full length onto his enemy. As they wrestled, the sea boiled up in waves as high as a house. But I knew I was in the hand of my own fate, and stayed calm.