The Dedalus Book of German Decadence (11 page)

[…]

One day – it was early autumn – the French maid entered the boudoir holding a visiting card in her hands which had just been left with the porter. Désirée took it, read its name, and looked at it again. She looked at the maid for a moment, who lowered her eyes. Then she ordered the stranger to be admitted into the Grey Room. The card bore the name: ‘Sulzwasser, Doctor of Chemistry’.

Sulzwasser gave his hat and cane and followed the groom, a pretty pubescent boy dressed in a black livery and ballroom slippers, through the antechamber into a high, circular room whose light was received through a dome-shaped roof of translucent glass. As he walked through the room he noticed that the walls, from top to bottom, were concealed by old Flemish Gobelins with illustrations portraying in a light and simple manner the legend of the fountain of youth; the tapestry showed the young climbing out of the spring on the right and moving like an hour hand through all the phases of life until they reached the other side, senile and decrepit, staggering towards the spring again.

The youth lifted the tapestry which portrayed the fountain itself and Sulzwasser found himself in a spacious, oblong room which likewise seemed to be bathed in grey light. He noticed first of all a splendid, life-size portrait in a deep blue frame which took up one side of the narrower wall opposite. It showed an elderly, alert man in a white nightshirt and blue cap, stepping energetically towards the viewer from an orange background; undoubtedly the work of the Scotsman Whistler [
sic
]. Through the wide window of the left-hand wall, half-covered with curtains of light-grey Indian silk and before which stood a Steinway grand piano, one could see the English Garden’s ancient plane-trees whose foliage, in variegated autumn hues, thrust against the panes.

But on the right-hand side, flanked by a large bejewelled ebony Buddha, into whose base a portable, triptych altar by van Eyck had been inset, and a worm-eaten Queen Anne cabinet whose cut-glass panels revealed a plenitude of priceless bric à brac (Italian musical instruments, Greek lamps, old French books of devotion with richly coloured binding, statuettes of jaspis and gold, ceramic fetishes of peoples long dead, worn away in monstrous rituals, Rococo fans and swords from Toledo covered in patina, an hour-glass by Cellini with softly sifting sand) there stood a narrow Gothic throne on three steep, purple steps. It only had one seat, supported by slim columns and crowned by a narrow pointed baldachin; it stood there, the strict rectitude of its form accentuating in a mysterious way the eroticism of the room.

With arms crossed and lips pursed, Sulzwasser approached the regal accoutrement and studied the ivy which climbed to the top of the columns where it embraced an open centifolia with red, silver and green foliage, created to cast a mysterious radiance upon the head of the enthroned […] On the back of the throne, at head-height, a round majolica disc had been inserted, whose gleaming metallic shimmer gave the impression of an eternal halo. Sulzwasser’s attention was drawn to this object and he took out his pince-nez and scrutinised the plate more clearly. It was an antique piece from the school of Andreoli from Gubbio, a so-called ‘bridal dish’ composed of the head of a blonde, august woman: the similarity to the head of Désirée Wilmoth drew an expression of surprise from Sulzwasser’s lips. In addition the eyes of the sculpture were formed by metallic colours of such a composition that they looked down upon the supplicant with the same coruscation that had followed him with unabated intensity for the last seven years and had not left him  …

Around the head the following inscription could be read, on a fluttering ribbon:

Mona Desiderata Melio De Lo

Sole Bella E De Lo Disio!

He heard a gentle rustling and before he had time to put back his pince-nez a figure had walked past him and mounted the throne. He stepped back and stood with his head bowed, struggling to master the confusion which had suddenly seized him. When he looked up he was calm and cool, and read the words ‘Melio De Lo Sole’ above Désirée’s head. She was looking at him.

[…]

It had meanwhile grown dark; Désirée pressed a secret button and a quadrant of lights on the ceiling threw forth their radiance. Now Sulzwasser could study the rest of the room, and this he did at a leisurely pace in order to let Désirée study his appearance, one which certainly had not grown more attractive over the last seven years. He slowly turned round. Apart from the curtain through which he had stepped – a heavy brocade by William Morris coloured in gold, light grey and matt olive representing pineapples in light foliage in which birds were sitting – the fourth wall had as its sole decoration an antique Venetian mirror whose glass, however, was clouded. It was placed exactly opposite the portrait of an elderly gentleman but, of course, did not reflect it; it seemed, rather, to capture within its splendid frame a circumscribed and perished world.

On the floor were soft grey carpets; the walls were composed of ash-wood panelling which ran right round the room to the height of a man, and above this was a narrow gallery on which stood thirty-five jugs of various shapes but roughly the same height – Etrurian amphoras of clay with black decoration, Greek wine bowls of pure gold, vases of leek-green jade worked in a delicate filigree, stone Indian jugs, wooden tankards with ivory inlaid work, urns representing horses’ skulls derived from Gaelic warriors’ tombs as well as contemporary products, such as delicate Copenhagen glasses which seemed to be painted in mist, Tiffany glass glowing in light and the work of a Flemish potter who produced jugs composed of obscene entanglements of human figures; there was also work from the workshop of the Gulf of St. John which shimmered in colours which we find normally only in dreams. All these jars were filled with water which tempered the atmosphere and killed the miasmas of this room, a room dedicated to transience, so that only the transfigured memories remained between men and things, clear, unoppressive and gently illuminated by the lamplight.

[…]

Since early morning the poet Sebastian Sasse had been wandering through the awakening city. The weather was dreary, the autumn dying under winter’s onslaughts. The young man walked and walked, clutching his coat tightly against him. He had reached the edge of the English Garden and here, for some reason, he stood still and took his notebook out of his pocket, a large, awkward book that you can buy anywhere in small markets or village shops, along with bandages and sugar-coated biscuits, a large notebook with a slot to hold a pencil. It also contained the letter from Meinewelt, his publisher, a letter which he had read more than a dozen of times. He did no more than twist it absent-mindedly between his fingers and turned down a narrow path, staring at the pages without taking them in. The few words which he
did
see, and which had been written more energetically on the paper as though Meinewelt had almost gouged them out to give them greater emphasis, stood out boldly before his eyes, and as he turned the pages he saw them again: Life, Life, Life, Life.

He put the letter and the notebook quickly into his pocket and strode over the wet gravel, covered by innumerable brown snails, tiny living creatures who had crawled from the safety of the grass and covered the path, causing Sebastian to concentrate upon their protection. This word Life! The last few weeks had been full of it. He remembered the anxious, unquiet days back home, the cupboards and chests, the wood-panelling and the beams in the roof where there had been such a throbbing and groaning, and when the letter arrived he knew that these noises were sighs, were moans at his departure. And now everything moaned, spoke, rejoiced and wept: Life! Life! The ticking wall clock in the empty house, the doors with creaking hinges, then the drops of rain which flew against the carriage window, the wheels that roared in time with the wind, which blew across the empty spaces, and now his soles on the gravel: they knew nothing but to announce this one word which had anchored itself so deeply in his consciousness. It had stood before his soul for years like something mysterious and superhuman, something that one had to honour without knowing what it was, what it consisted of (it was a little bit nearer than God, but no less powerful and terrible): yes, it was something, perhaps, that one did not wish to understand because one feared it, something to which one paid tribute lest it should feel offended and seize one, body and soul. Like a remote, invisible idol of whom the Rumanian peasants at home had claimed had brought the thundering avalanches, like that bear which the gentle lambs had worshipped on the forest-girt pastures; this is how Sebastian had envisaged that mighty destiny over there which was called ‘Life’, and of which he was now a victim.

He sat down on a bench before an empty expanse of grass whose furthest edge merged with a gentle rise, a hill whose top was crowned with a snow-white cupola on a circle of pillars standing before a dense clump of trees in variegated foliage. He was preoccupied with registering the first impressions which this unknown object had called forth in him. A rainy day which shrouded towns and villages in impenetrable mist, then a moonless night had brought him hither, so that the journey might appear as a lengthy sleep which had begun at home and ended with his awakening in this strange land. Perhaps this was the path into life and the best expression of the transformation which his existence was suffering. And now, Munich  …

When he looked at it there had been much that had hurt him in the first few hours. On a square between two Greek temples built in the most classical style and whose appearance had filled him with a secret joy, and through a monumental gate which he immediately recognized as an imitation of the Propylaen there had blundered a mob of rough labourers in overalls plastered with mortar and heavy boots: their coarse shouting had echoed between the columns. Before a Baroque palace with delicately twisted columns and gilded railings he had seen a soldier, stiff as a ram-rod, present arms with the angular precision of an automaton. And even the tone and the expressions of Meinewelt’s letter, which he had just held in his hands, did not seem quite so sincere and convincing as before, now that the feeling of expectation and the onslaught of novelty had sharpened his senses to a higher receptivity. And why had he enclosed the money?

He became restless. A thousand tiny shocks drove him to his feet and forced him onwards, the dread, as it were, of that which was close at hand, the image, growing larger, and more disturbing, of some great destiny, some great danger which tempted, tempted like a siren and did not let go, so that the cries of doubt and terror slowly transmuted into cries of ecstasy.

He hurried forwards, blindly, and smiled to himself when he noticed that the path he was treading ran in a wide sweep up to the Monopteros on the hill. He also realised now why it was that he had come to Munich: it was not so much his own personality that mattered, as Meinewelt’s desire to show him what life meant among the people here; what was more important was the role he, Sebastian, had to play in serving this vaster, more mysterious force, far vaster than life itself, this pulsing and incomprehensible vitalism which spoke through him to the people, which belonged to him as fervently and intimately as the soul belonged to the body, and it formed his own indispensable possession, like his eyes, his voice, those dreams that visited him at night  …  And as he felt how he himself was stepping into the background, was effacing himself before this greater purpose the restlessness left him, and his heart became quieter, more serene.

He had now reached the circular columns and gazed down at the wide meadows at the foot of the hill, and the avenues of trees that confined them. It must have been nine o’clock: the pointed towers of a church whose misty outline was visible behind the trees sang forth an indistinct carillon. Thin veils of cloud scudded across the sky, crossing, parting, and a ray of sunlight intermittently found its way through the greyness and a golden mist crawled along the meadows. Yes, it was much better here than in the oppressive streets where one had to force one’s way against the fronts of houses. The trees, the valley and the wide horizon beyond the trees, the rustling in the branches from which drops of rain were dripping: all this reminded him of the eloquent silence of the forest at home which had provided him with his finest inspiration. If he felt better here in the park than in the streets he must feel closer to the trees than to houses! and as a violinist, immediately he gets out of bed, runs in his shirt and bare feet towards his fiddle to hear its tone, and to convince himself that he still possesses his skills as an instrumentalist, so Sebastian allowed the impressions of this landscape to overcome him, to see if a new melody would arise within him.

The forest gleamed reddish and brown, with splashes of sulphurous yellow among the blackish-green pine needles. In the distance a narrow canal with dirty, fast-running water flowed through the meadow, and this meadow was covered with millions of autumn crocuses, sparkling in the dew like tiny flames of phosphorous  …  it was not a harmonious constellation of colour. But now were the days of decay, the days of – he suddenly felt a rhythm gently rise within him, rocking gently before him  …  in these days  …

He leaned against a pillar and listened. From afar, from across the meadows, a poem came on wings towards him. He pulled out his book and wrote:

‘These are the days when all the roses fade.

In gardens, on the leafy covered lawns

I see the scores of autumn crocuses.

Nature is dying, and she crowns her head

With amethyst and topaz, this I see

In autumn, autumn  …’

Into his mind there crept the gentle memory of the previous autumn when he had followed the coffins of his mother and his father into the cemetery, and had returned alone to the deserted house;

I listen: ‘The autumn is a mirror of my soul,

Which loves to float in melancholy air.

Grey through canals you lonely waters flow

Like misery across an ancient brow.’

He gazed in front of him and tried to find what it was that the wind was saying to him which blew from the woods and whispered through the columns: