The Other Side (31 page)
Their commanding officer was none too happy with this report. They had been looking forward all too confidently to finding a well-filled treasury.
The decision was taken to advance as far as the mountain, observing, of course, the strictest precaution. Some of the staff officers obstinately refused to abandon the idea of an ambush, camouflaged batteries etc.
Thus they found the small gate in the rock and, lying unconscious on the bottom step, me. It is to this fortunate circumstance that I owe the fact that I escaped with my life. I was given an extremely friendly reception. Journalists, who remembered my name from the past, kept wanting to interview me. Various newspapers and magazines also wanted a photograph of me with views of the place where the Dream city had stood. I was too weak to satisfy all the demands being made on me and directed them to Mr. Bell, who had just arrived to join the Europeans.
Nothing was found of the temple inside the mountain. The rock strata had shifted, blocking up all the entrances. When I put forward this idea the geologists present shook their heads and gave me funny looks. I could see they didn’t believe me, especially since the American was boasting that
he
had put an end to all this Patera nonsense by destroying the waxwork dummy.
We two were not the only ones to survive the catastrophe. Soldiers patrolling the nearby jungle came across a small pack of half-naked creatures sitting in trees talking and gesticulating vigorously to each other. It turned out that they too were Dreanilanders, six Jews, owners of grocer’s shops. I heard later that they recovered surprisingly quickly and made substantial fortunes in the great cities of northern and western Europe.
Digging through a pile of still-warm ashes they also found a desiccated figure. When the dust had been brushed off it was declared to be a mummy. However, a military doctor found there was life left in it and, after intense efforts, succeeded in fanning the spark back into a flame. Everyone clustered round to see the rescued person who, as it soon became apparent, was of the female sex. A high-ranking Russian officer recognised her as his aunt, Princess X. He had her cleaned and done up and took her back home with him.
I went home via Tashkent, accompanied by a doctor. When I reached Germany I had to stay in a clinic at first, to recover and to re-accustom myself to conditions in the outside world, especially the sunlight. It took years before I felt more or less at home in my old environment and could settle back into my profession.
After sending a telegram, ‘Territory of the Dream state completely occupied’, all participants in the expedition maintained the silence proper for Europeans who have made fools of themselves.
The mystery of Patera was never solved. Perhaps the blue-eyed tribe were the real masters and used magic powers to galvanise a lifeless dummy into life, so creating and destroying the Dream Realm as they thought fit.
The American is still living. Everyone knows him.
Man is merely a nothing with self-awareness.
Julius Bahnsen
In the clinic I kept on finding myself compelled to reflect on the spell cast by the grandiose spectacle I had witnessed. Something was clearly wrong with the faculty that controlled my dreams, for they had overrun my mind.
In them I lost my identity. They often went back to historical periods, almost every night brought far-off events. It is my opinion that these dream images were closely tied to things that had affected my ancestors; their traumatic experiences may perhaps have imprinted themselves on the organism and been passed on to future generations. Even deeper levels of dream opened up when I was absorbed into an animal’s lifestream or let my mind wander in some primal element. These dreams were abysses I was powerless to resist. They stopped when the weather improved and we had fine, clear nights.
The days passed in monotony. Now I was tormented by inactivity and boredom. I had hoped to build up my strength and start working again, but I realised I was no use for anything any more. Reality seemed to be an obscene caricature of the Dream Realm.
The only thing to raise my spirits was the thought of passing away, of death, and I embraced it with all the fervour I had left in me. I gave myself up to it ecstatically, as if I were a woman, I was in raptures, and during the following, moondrenched nights I abandoned myself to it entirely, watched it, felt it and tasted joys beyond this world. I was the intimate friend of this most tremendous lord, of this glorious prince of the earth whose beauty is beyond description for all who are open to him. He was my last, my greatest joy. I saw him in every leaf that fell, in the wet grass, even in the soil itself. To submit to his cat-like caresses, to feel his destruction as a passionate embrace made me happy. Typical of this stage was a love of half-withered flowers.
The thought of my own dying was like imagining the most heavenly bliss. It would be the start of an eternal wedding night.
How everything resists him, and yet he only wants the best for us! Eagerly I scrutinised every face for his sign, discovering the trace of his kisses in the wrinkles and furrows of old age. He always seemed different, always new, and how exquisite were his colours! His looks had such a seductive gleam that even the strongest had to submit; then he threw off his cloak and appeared to the dying in a glitter of diamonds, in the reflections of a thousand polished facets.
When I ventured back into the world of the living, I discovered that my god only held half-sway. In everything, both great and small, he had to share with an adversary who wanted life. The forces of repulsion and attraction, the twin poles of the earth with their currents, the alternation of the seasons, day and night, black and white–these are battles.
True hell lies in the fact that this discordant clash continues within us. Even love has its focus ‘between faeces and urine’. The sublime can fall prey to the ridiculous, to derision, irony.
Dedalus features German Literature in translation in its programme of contemprary and classic European fiction and in its anthologies.
Undine–Fouque 6.99
Simplicissimus–Grimmelshausen 10.99
The Great Bagarozy–Helmut Krausser 7.99
The Other Side–Alfred Kubin 9.99
The Road-to-Darkness–Paul Leppin 7.99
The Angel of the West Window–Gustav Meyrink 9.99
The Golem–Gustav Meyrink 6.99
The Green Face–Gustav Meyrink 6.99
The Opal (& other stories)–Gustav Meyrink 7.99
- Gustav Meyrink 6.99
- Gustav Meyrink 6.99
The Architect of Ruins–Herbert Rosendorfer 8.99
Letters Back to Ancient China–Herbert Rosendorfer 9.99
Stephanie–Herbert Rosendorfer 7.99
featuring German Literature in translation:
The Book of Austrian Fantasy–editor M. Mitchell 10.99
The Dedalus Book of German Decadence–editor R. Furness 9.99
The Dedalus Book of Surrealism–editor M. Richardson 9.99
Myth of the World: Surrealism 2–editor M. Richardson 9.99
The Dedalus Book of Medieval Literature–editor B. Murdoch 9.99
Forthcoming titles include:
The Book of German Fantasy: the Romantic and Beyond–editor M. Raraty 10.99
The Angel of the West Window–Gustav Meyrink
‘Dedalus has done everyone a favour and published The Angel of the West Window. The narrator believes he is becoming possessed by the spirit of his ancestor John Dee. The adventures of Dee and his disreputable colleague, an earless rogue called Edmund Kelley, form a rollicking 16th century variant on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as they con their way across Europe in a flurry of alchemy and conjured spirits. At one point, Kelley even persuades Dee that the success of an occult enterprise depends on his sleeping with Dee’s wife. Past, present, and assorted supernatural dimensions become intertwined in this odd and thoroughly diverting tale.’
Anne Billson in The Times
Walpurgisnacht–Gustav Meyrink
‘It is 1917. Europe is torn apart by war, Russia in the grip of revolution, the Austro-Hungarian Empire on the brink of collapse. It is Walpurgisnacht, springtime pagan festival of unbridled desire. In this volcanic atmosphere, in a Prague of splendour and decay, the rabble prepare to storm the hilltop castle, and Dr Thaddaeus Halberd, once the court physician, mourns his lost youth. Phantasmagorical prose, energetically translated, marvellously evokes past and present, personal and political, a devastated world.’
The Times
The Golem–Gustav Meyrink
‘Gustav Meyrink uses this legend in a dream-like setting on the Other Side of the Mirror and he has invested it with a horror so palpable that it has remained in my memory all these years.’
Jorge Luis Borges
‘A remarkable work of horror, half-way between DrJekyll and Mr Hyde and Frankenstein.’
The Observer
‘A superbly atmospheric story set in the old Prague ghetto featuring The Golem, a kind of rabbinical Frankenstein’s monster, which manifests every 33 years in a room without a door. Stranger still, it seems to have the same face as the narrator. Made into a film in 1920, this extraordinary book combines the uncanny psychology of doppelganger stories with expressionism and more than a little melodrama … Meyrink’s old Prague–like Dicken’s London–is one of the great creations of city writing, an eerie, claustrophobic and fantastical underworld where anything can happen.’
Phi! Baker in The Sunday Times
