The Salzburg Tales (45 page)

T
HERE
was a doctor (said the Centenarist) who invented one of the most picturesque episodes of modern religious history out of his head, and he was a serious man, too, who afterwards was greatly respected.

“Jossel of Klezk, a classical scholar and doctor of medicine, born in 1710, thought himself called upon to watch for the Messiah, who has not yet come to earth, according to Jewish belief. To watch well, he undertook solitary vigils in the streets at night. The demons can seize a man who stands still, so Jossel waltzed all through the dark hours in the Polish snows, tossing his head from side to side, kicking out sideways, and thrusting his arms upwards with furious grimaces. This fit first came on him when his wife appeared in a new pair of pointed red shoes which she said her cousin had given her; and when she began to sing and dance about the house, playing runs on the harpsichord and shrilly laughing to herself in her chamber. After this the sight of red shoes threw him into convulsions; and to bring himself to the highest pitch of religious ecstasy he had only to put on a pair of red shoes. He listened at cabarets and private houses for the wild music of peasant dances, or a harpsichord playing a solitary tune. Then he would spin off into the snows as if flung off a wheel, and all night long the people returning home late would see this grotesque figure doing antics in the road. Sometimes he shouted that he waded in blood, and the people looked fearfully at the road, expecting to see a stream of blood, but saw nothing but the red light of their lanterns; at other times they heard him talking to invisible presences, or shrieking to demons to keep away from him. Meanwhile, his wife ran shamelessly through the village every night to a lover, going by the side-streets and avoiding her crazy husband. This disorderly life suited her and she bloomed like a rose,
so that when Prince Radziwill himself passed through the village he noticed her and later took her for his mistress. From sensing obscurely the presence of demons and hearing their rustling, from knowing them simply as evil vapours which came forth from the grave or as sable winds that rushed out of trees, and as the voices of owls and nightjars, Jossel began to see them clearly, visible under the ordinary surface of the earth, as thick, poisonous clouds of bad ones who kept the Messiah off the earth and who retarded his coming, and who managed things so, that even if he came, he would not be recognised, men having fallen through them into gross error and bestial folly.

Jossel saw the seven accursed brothers who live in storms, pestilences, famine and hurricanes; they crept like snakes on their bellies, going on their hands to eat flesh and drink blood; they were grey, bow-backed and bristled with hair like hyenas; and if in the evening he passed by a cabin where the rooms stunk of mice, vermin or rotten flesh, he knew it was because they lay low there; and if he heard creatures yelling like a pack of bloodhounds, he knew their voice too: and when once an eclipse passed over his head, he knew it was the seven accursed brothers who brought it on so that foul deeds could be done on earth. He heard and saw pass in the night, likewise, as he courageously danced alone in the snows, the half-human goblins,
lilu
,
lilitu
and
ardat lili
, the desirous ghosts of unmarried youths and maidens, the insatiable ghosts of those dead unmarried, who as succubi go out seeking human wives and husbands, who live with men and get children by them, themselves the children of Lilith and Adam. He saw some going to a fearful rendezvous with their earthly love, some hurrying to the deathbed of an earthly parent to crowd his natural children away, to smother him and claim his spirit when he died. He saw under all things, sluggishly stirring, the great formless dragon which was there before Time; treading warily through the universe, he heard the great Adversary, and the loathsome scapegoat who inhabits with satyrs deserts and wastes, as they did before man came to earth: he saw Lilith, the night-monster who lurks in
desolate places, the circle-treading
aluqa
, which sucks the blood like a horse-leech, the great she-demon Rahab, and Leviathan, capable of darkening the day; and there came in his more lucid hours the seven spirits of fornication, gluttony, fighting, obsequiousness, chicanery, pride-lying-and-fraud, injustice-theft-and-rapacity; and the fallen angels who took human wives and taught the sin-conceived arts of enchantments, astrology, the making of swords, abortion, writing and all the arts of civilisation which have a root in sin.

He saw those enchanted into spirits who had eaten the fungus on trees when hungry, and those who had eaten the mushrooms that shine at night. He saw the inhuman spirits in their innumerable hordes, the
utukku
who lurks in the desert waiting for man, and also in mountains, seas and graveyards, the
gallu
and the
rabisu
, the last one he knew well, she who sets the hair of the body on end; and the
labortu
, the
labasu
and the
abhazu
, the first a female demon dangerous to children in mountains, marshes and cane-brakes, and the
sedu
, a giant spirit overshadowing heaven and earth; and many another nameless spirit, almost formless, thronged about him in the windy freezing dark; and still, dancing, dancing and straining his eyes and ears, he could not begin to count them nor to come to the end of them.

Then he studied the most ancient writings of the races of the East to find out the golden number, and the signs, incantations and gestures necessary to drive them out of his soul and from the earth. Every night he hurried more, pirouetting and chanting, taking little food or drink, fearing he would be too late. They heard him chanting the antique songs learned in the legends and scriptures:

“You who come from the pure abode, neither heaven nor earth, who in heaven are unknown and on earth are not understood—listen!

“Whether you are a ghost that has come from the earth or one that lies dead in the desert, or one that lies dead in the desert uncovered with earth, or a ghost unburied, or a ghost that none cares for, or a ghost that has no children, or a ghost with none to pour libations, or a ghost that must look in the dregs of vessels, in the
leavings of the feast, in the rubbish of the street for food: he that lies in a ditch, or he that fell into a river and was drowned and rolled away by the flood; he that was lost at sea, or one that perished of hunger and thirst in prison: whether you are the king's son that lies in the desert, in the ruins, or the hero they slew with the sword, or those who died abandoned without smelling the smell of food, or those dead as virgins and bachelors, or women dead in travail, or with their babes yet at the breast: listen!

“You who return by night and day, restlessly, to attach and torment those who ate with you, dressed with you or spoke with you during life: listen!

“Brother's ghost, ghost of twin, spirit of him unnamed, or with none that mourns for it, shade of him dead by fault of god or sin of king: you who return to torment those who looked upon your dead face; and all you evil spirits, demons and devils of every sort—

“Whatever spirit you may be, until you are removed, until you are gone from man and earth, and hinder no more the coming of the lord, you shall have no food to eat, you shall have no water to drink: O, you dead folk, whose cities are heaps of earth, whose faces are sorrowful, why have you appeared to me? I will not come to Kurtha, the underworld, you are a crowd of ghosts, why do you try to cast your spells on me?

“But you, myriads of angels who guide and instruct the prophets, angel of peace who went with Enoch, and Gabriel who took Enoch to God, Uriel who was sent to Ezra and angel who took Levi to see the secrets of heaven, Raphael come to heal Tobit's blindness, and all angels who are pitiful and wept for the destruction of Zion, who comfort the good and chastise the wicked, all, all, except the dread nameless one who reigns over the kingdom of ghosts, come to my aid!

“I was born ugly in face and graceless in manner: my talents flourished, and I made myself sick with learning: but my friends sit as if deaf in my house and my wife looks after all the young men: I am one heavy of heart, and yet I struggle more than any with the adversaries of God: if there is one angel among you who has an ugly
face, whose eyes are blank with weeping the sorrows of men, let him come to me and help me overcome the dark myriads.”

And thereupon he would begin his exorcisms.

His madness increased. He began to throw stones through windows where spirits rise, and at mirrors where the devil is seen: he extinguished the fires of ovens, hearths and furnaces with water, for there spirits flourish in their natural element; and he sealed all the graves in the graveyard with seals bearing cabbalistic signs, to prevent the dead from rising; he set dishes of food and drink on each gravestone, and by the road, for marauding hungry spirits, and many holy and pitiable follies he committed before his insanity was spent.

Then one summer day he fell to the ground in a long swoon. A boy stole his red shoes, and a friend who had pity on him took him to his house and hid him in a back room. He awakened after a long time, calm and hungry; he ate well and thereafter he saw no more angels or devils, but devoted himself to the practice of medicine, and in a short time became the house physician of the prince.

I
N
this way ended the fifth day of the Tales.

 

W
HEN
they were assembling on the sixth day on the side of a hill in the Capuchin Wood, they heard voices echoing in the hollow where the well and clearing are, and where the miserable convent orphans play sometimes in the afternoons. The Schoolgirl peered through the bushes and saw below, walking up and down, the Banker and the Festival Director. The Festival Director was explaining his scheme for a great open-air public theatre, larger than the American stadiums, with gigantic effects, like the ruins of Baalbec or of the Acropolis, and with sound condensers and reflectors, with a company of actors supported by the State and directed by him. He had the idea of importing native choruses from the Russian villages and Spanish mountain fastnesses, entire, with their spontaneous harmonies untrained; for bringing down whole villages to act without instruction some tragedy that happened in the place. The Banker said to the Festival Director:

“Frankly, the perfection of television would eliminate the need for such a theatre: you could act in Athens, or in your mountain village. The time is past for such great theatres. The Romans had them so that they would know what the plebs was doing on holidays, and they did not attempt to elevate the mob, they brutalised it; they satisfied its sporting instincts. We have the football-ring, the Sunday supplement, the pictures, Coney Islands, Channel swims and
cross-continent bike-races—what more do we want? That's old tack, Director, after you, no-one will care for it at all. You don't want to educate the people: they know too much now. They don't understand what it's all about, but they are discontented; everyone wants to win the Irish sweepstake, or, in America, make a million dollars. It's not human nature to want freedom; freedom means loafing to them. Don't give them theatres in the air: give them cinemas, where it's dark, and they can cuddle.”

The Banker said this in such a gay, cocksure voice, running all his ideas together, fighting by instinct against the vast schemes of the Festival Director, and at the same time so obviously trying to stop the Director from running into what he thought unremunerative expense, that the company concealed on the ledge of the hill began to laugh aloud, and their laughter flew up into the trees like the cries of a flock of parrots suddenly startled. The Banker looking up, waved his hand, and called out:

“Are you up there, you gabblers: the Master of the Day certainly takes his title seriously: does he rout you out at daylight?”

The Viennese Conductor called to the Festival Director to come up the hill and tell the guests about the theatre he projected. He came slowly up the hill with the Banker, and greeted the company, but he sat so long quiet that the Viennese Conductor was afraid his pride had been wounded, and he hastened to say:

“Tell us some short tale, Director: the guests have put their shoulders to the wheel, our caravan has jogged along. Give it a little colour and dash!”

“No, no,” murmured the Director: “the curious thing about me is that I can imagine settings by the thousand, but not stories so easily, for I linger too long musing over the properties.”

“I saw you yesterday at evening leaning over the parapet, in the fortress,” said the Frenchwoman: “your glance was lost in the distance, and you were smiling slightly as if recollecting a series of incidents. Perhaps that was a tale you can tell us.”

The Director laughed. “Well, to tell the truth, what was uppermost in my thoughts then, remembering two youths I had seen, was Antinoüs!”

“Antinoüs,” said the Schoolteacher, “the statue?”

“I know,” said the Banker: “I have a statue of him in my entry. A chap sold him to me, telling me it was something out of the way. I looked him up in the ‘Britannica': wasn't he the most famous fairy in history?”

“Until a year or so ago,” agreed the Director.

“A fairy?” said the Schoolteacher, dubiously, in surprise. The Festival Director began to tell his tale.

 

HO
LM-OAKS
spring by the rich fishy gulf, and the medusan wave, that many a day hissed like serpents, hangs its dissolving scarves on the black shore. The sun in the Pompeian fuller's house seems yesterday to have done dyeing Hadrian's cloak, and the yew-trees are pens of Pliny, hastily deserted. The naked symbol of life starts potent from the ruin amidst irrepressible gardens.

Into this immortal garden I went three years ago with Flavian, the Aquinas of poets, I, for amusement, he, for estrangement: the early fame he got made him fear the pontificate, and because he had a mistress, good, gentle and consoling, he said, “I am in too comfortable a heart.”