The Other Side (10 page)

That was definitely not the way to go about it. I had wasted an opportunity. Another time I would be more careful.

Food and drink couldn’t be all there was to this religion. Not long after, I discovered that hair, horn, pine-cones, fungi and hay were also sacred. Even cow- and horse-dung had some special significance. Among the internal organs the liver and the heart were considered particularly important, among animals the fishes. Tanned pelts also had some mysterious quality. Iron, steel and various metal alloys were the antithesis of these values. They seemed to symbolise dangers. I learnt these details from peasants and huntsmen; long walks out in the country were necessary to obtain them. I noted down everything I managed to squeeze out of these taciturn individuals over the months and years, but for the sake of brevity I will not give a complete list here. One further fact is of interest, perhaps. There were lonely places in forests and beside marshes where no traveller would dare to go at twilight. They had the reputation of being eerie and Dreamers were glad when they had no business there.

Perhaps I would be clearer about all this, instead of groping around in the dark, if I had been able to see the temple by the lake with my own eyes. By all accounts this shrine must have been a magical, miraculous place. A good day’s journey from Pearl, it stood beside Dream Lake, surrounded by man-made cascades and a quiet park. The greatest treasures of the Dream Realm were said to be kept in the temple. It was made of the finest materials and so perfectly constructed visitors had the impression the whole edifice was hovering above the ground. The largest of the halls was done in Patera’s colours, brown, grey and green. Symbolic statues had been set up in the mysterious, underground vaults. Unfortunately it was only open to visitors once a year and good contacts were essential to receive an invitation. Initially I hoped my personal connection with Patera would secure entry for me, but my audience with him kept being put off, and then came the
Events
.

My tirelessness in my research into the true Dream religion was only matched by my lack of success in discovering anything. I seemed to be fated to cause offence.

Once I had been invited to Blumenstich’s, the banker’s. It was crowded and the atmosphere was very merry. Our host had just been awarded a decoration for the swimming pool he had established and this great honour was being suitably celebrated.

Dinner was over. Everyone was smoking and sitting round with coffee and liqueurs. ‘The finest minds in Pearl are gathered together here. If I don’t learn anything tonight, I’ll never learn anything’, I thought, screwed up my courage and launched myself into speech. I told them of my frustration at my fruitless attempts to find out about the true religion of the Dream people. I sounded very eloquent, very fluent, the words seemed to trip off my tongue as if propelled by some inner force. Eventually I thought I had said enough to convince all those present of the genuineness of my thirst for knowledge and asked them to enlighten me. I stopped. I could not have gone on, my throat had dried up. They were all speechless, confused, apprehensive. Two sagacious-looking, dignified elderly gentlemen in elegant old-fashioned dress were already slipping away into the adjoining room. I had set my main hopes on them. Finally our host spoke up, scratching his black mutton-chop whiskers as he did so.

‘Young man, have you been to the Outer Settlement across the river yet? I think you should have a look at the place.’ He spoke in a somewhat sharp and dismissive tone.

It was as if the company had been released from an oppressive burden. At least someone had spoken! The conversation returned to the usual trivial topics. No one paid any attention to me any more. Only the editor of the paper, who also happened to be present, said in soothing tones, ‘Oh dear, these artists!’

But that was no help to me either. I soon made my way home, wrapped in thought. ‘I’ll never get to the bottom of it!’ I shouted out into the darkness.

At the tower it struck me. Perhaps the Great Clock Spell had something to do with it? That was another thing one wasn’t supposed to talk about? That was indecent too. Why all this embarrassment? It looked as if I had been an
enfant terrible
once more. And what was all that about the Outer Settlement, the old hamlet across the bridge that no one bothered with? Excuses, excuses! I clenched my fist as I vowed to get to the bottom of all this humbug.

VIII

The time has come to show something of the drawbacks of our life there, otherwise you might think we spent all the time enjoying ourselves. The round of pleasure also had its disagreeable side. To begin with the building where we lived, an old spinster had taken the rooms below ours, a Princess X. She was as ugly as a sick rat and a cantankerous old battle-axe into the bargain. This creature caused a lot of trouble, especially to my wife. She was a skinflint. She had a great deal of money but lived such a retired life no one had any idea how much she had. I’m sure she got her satisfaction from constant quarrelling. If I walked round in our apartment after nine o’clock in the evening she would knock on the ceiling to tell us she wanted quiet.

Whenever she saw us coming down the stairs she would launch into her vituperation. There was always a row of pots and basins outside her door, for deliveries of milk and the like. Once, coining up in the dark, I broke one of her earthenware bowls, and that was it! Hostilities were declared. She even tried to blacken my name with the barber who, despite his philosophy, still bore some respect for her ‘highness’. Finally, when she went too far and insulted my wife on the stairs I gave her a piece of my mind.

‘Just look at you! I’d call you Princess Muck!’–The old slattern’s hair was all over the place.–That did help a little. She was proud of her blue blood and from now on would dart back into her lair the moment she heard me approaching. Once she beat such a rapid retreat that she left one of her patched slippers behind. I pushed it away with my foot and to my surprise I heard the chink of gold coins tumbling down the stairs. ‘Burglar! Murderer!’ she screeched until everyone in the house came out to complain.

This kind of thing happened frequently. She made our lives a misery. But the ‘student’ made an even more thorough job of it.

He had two rooms on the same floor as us and was constantly the worse for drink. His face was puffy and expressionless with a duelling scar on each cheek, so that it looked as if he had three mouths. His brain, on the other hand, seemed to be only one third of the size of the average human being’s. Our neighbour was a thoroughgoing night-bird and always tried the wrong door when he came back to his bed, rolling drunk. Almost every night we awoke with a start at his hammering and cursing. I couldn’t count the number of times I upbraided him about it, but what good were apologies to us when nothing changed? Eventually, for the sake of peace, we were forced to accept what we couldn’t change.

Then there was something else. Some days it was as if there was a jinx on us. Just a few examples:

At five in the morning a bricklayer with a bucket of mortar and bag of tools rings the bell and insists he has been instructed to brick up the windows in our living room. Another time there’s a gypsy band outside the door serenading us late in the evening; by mistake, of course. Visitors turn up on all sorts of business, things that don’t belong to us are delivered and not collected again. Once we had a packet of old cheese rinds lying around for two weeks. After I had thrown it away three army officers came demanding their property in peremptory tones. And door-to-door begging in Pearl was an art-form in itself. But things could also get much more unpleasant. For example, one evening several men in black appeared in the twilight lugging a coffin. It had been ordered, hadn’t it? they asked politely. That upset my poor wife very much.

I’m not even really complaining about all these misunderstandings, the constant knocking at the door. But uncanny things happened, things it was difficult to believe. To help in the house we had a charlady, an old woman. She suffered permanently from toothache and I never saw her without a scarf round her face. The meals she cooked were good, very tasty, which was not difficult given the excellent fresh food available in the Dream Realm. After a few weeks however, I could have sworn it was a different person inside her old clothes, not the same charlady at all. Of course, I didn’t mention this to my wife, but unfortunately she noticed things herself.

‘I think Anna must be dying her hair, don’t you’, she said one morning. ‘Since yesterday she’s gone blonde. Before she was always a brunette.’

‘Well there’s vanity for you!’ I replied, pretending I had no idea what was worrying her. But for quite some time now I myself had felt there was something odd about Anna. Eventually it became just too obvious. The previous day we had been served by a sprightly middle-aged person, today a bustling old woman with a wrinkled face was putting the dishes on the table. My wife clung to me; we were both stunned. ‘But it’s the same headscarf, I stammered, seeing the pupils of my wife’s eyes dilate in horror. In whispers we told each other the things we had noticed. For the last month my wife had also been prey to the most horrifying suspicions. ‘No, I wouldn’t want to keep her on, even if she did the work of ten cleaners. I’d rather do everything myself.’

I had to dismiss Anna. The next few days I spent at home. I made an arrangement with the barber for us to pay Giovanni Battista to help with the tidying up each morning. It worked perfectly. The animal was quick to learn and my wife was quick to warm to him. I just had to make sure he didn’t go anywhere near my desk. He felt he was, to a certain degree, an artist himself and wanted to help, to put in the odd correction here and there. As far as possible I lent a hand myself, usually with the shopping. But you had to keep an eye on people, otherwise you could bring God knows what home. Once I bought some lamb cutlets at the market, very cheap. When I got home and proudly unpacked them, we found a few small traps wrapped up in the paper; there were even some mouse’s tails still stuck to them. ‘A switch, goddammit, a switch’, I thought.

IX

And then the noises! Disturbances all night long, it was scandalous!

Gangs of ne’er-do-wells and whores from the French Quarter went on the rampage even in our district. We could hear foul-mouthed shouting, bawling and whistling approach our windows then fade away. Drunks coming out of the café would launch into long tirades full of obscene language. Not something one could get used to! The buildings towering over the streets were squint and twisted, and every loud word rebounded back and forth from the angles and jutting corners. For no obvious reason raucous cries would come from the centre of the town, be picked up and transmitted, now softer, now louder. Then it would be quiet, until an audible clearing of throats and whispering started up. To walk through the streets of Pearl at night was agony. Keen senses were plunged into an abyss of horror. From barred windows and cellardoors came moaning and wailing in every major and minor key. From behind half-open doors you would hear muffled groans, immediately evoking thoughts of strangling and crime. Walking home with fearful steps I would hear their mocking echo behind me multiplied a thousand, no, ten thousandfold. The gateways yawned as you hurried past as if they would swallow you up. Invisible voices would lure you down to the river, Blumenstich’s store had a gloating grin, the dairy was like a treacherous, hidden trap, even the mill wasn’t silent, it chattered all night through. Fleeing in dread, I would often take refuge in the coffee house on my way home, while back in our apartment my wife was alone and frightened. A cupboard would creak or a glass break. She thought she could hear terrible words coming from every corner of the room. Often when I arrived home I would find her drenched in cold sweat from these compulsive imaginings. These sleepless nights played havoc with her nerves and soon she was seeing living shadows and ghosts everywhere.

And there was always that indefinable substance, again and again you would smell it, end up feeling it with your whole body. During the day no one would admit to having seen anything, as usual the city was inert, empty, dead.