The Other Side (6 page)

‘All right, Fin coming’, I said feebly, but stayed lying there. That’s the way I am. Beside the cart there was some sort of official conversation going on. I decided it was time to get up, shook myself awake and clambered down from the cart.

It took a while for my eyes to get accustomed to the surroundings. All that was to be seen was grey mist with a few lights piercing the gloom. With my first step I almost walked straight into the cart. It loomed up in front of me, gigantic. Beyond it was a shadowy monster. Oh, the camel! I was already beginning to see more clearly.

‘Please step closer’, a powerful voice commanded. ‘Your luggage is in order. Could I see your credentials?’

The speaker was a tall, bearded man in a dark uniform and official cap. We were standing outside a low blockhouse illuminated by a few lamps. The official handed me back the picture and told us to hurry through the gate to catch the train.

‘What gate, what train?’ I wondered, feeling my way along.

‘There’s something’, I heard my wife say. Only then did l see the immense, endless wall emerging from the veil of mist. It appeared in front of me, sudden and unexpected. There was someone walking on ahead of us with a light, heading straight for an enormous black hole.
The gate to the Dream Realm!
Only as we came nearer did I realise how colossally large it was. We entered a tunnel, keeping as close as possible to our guide. Then something bizarre happened. I had been walking along under the vaulted ceiling for a while when all at once I was assailed by a sensation of horror such as I had never felt before. It started at the back of my head and trickled down my spine. I caught my breath and my heart skipped a beat. Completely unnerved, I turned to my wife, but she too was pale as a corpse, the fear of death etched on her features. In tremulous tones she whispered, ‘I’ll never get out of here again.’

But I felt a new surge of strength flood through me. Without a word I took her by the arm.

Beyond the gate was deep darkness. The fog that made breathing difficult had disappeared, there was a gentle breeze. From somewhere nearby we could hear whistling and a spasmodic rattle. Now we could also see some red and green signal lights. We were heading for a low building. ‘That’s the railway station’, the man with the light explained, ‘we’re just in time.’ At the ticket office we were given two second-class tickets to Pearl. The first journey was free, we were told.

We stepped onto the empty platform. The guard was already whistling for the train to depart and we were hustled into a compartment. ‘We’ll go third class’, I said. I hoped we would see more that way, for the second class was completely empty. As we climbed aboard I felt something heavy being pressed into my hand. ‘It’s money. Every new arrival gets it.’ The explanation already came from a distance. I pocketed the cash.

After a certain amount of huffing and puffing the engine finally got the train moving. Its speed was only moderate, and even more moderate was the illumination in the compartment from the smoky oil-lamp. Looking back I caught a final glimpse of the high wall, black against the night sky. ‘Like a rampart’, I said to myself and watched it with interest as it gradually disappeared in the distance.

I did not see all that much of the countryside we were passing through. The train cast a dull gleam onto trees, bushes and signal boxes. It was like any normal night-time rail journey.

The conductor came into our compartment from outside.

‘Your lamps stink, it’s enough to make a man sick’, I told him.

‘No one has ever complained before.’

‘How long till we get to Pearl?’

‘We’ll be there in two hours. At midnight.’

‘Can you recommend a hotel?’

‘There’s only the Blue Goose. There are smaller inns, but they wouldn’t meet your requirements.’ He gave us the information in a very obliging tone, then disappeared into the darkness again.

At some of the stations I noticed long sheds and mountains of chests and packages. At one my wife bought a basket with a cold collation and a bottle of wine. Only then did we realise to our astonishment that I had a roll of gold coins as well as a pocketful of silver and copper.

My wife was lost in thought. Presumably she still hadn’t got the shock of the gateway out of her mind. Oh dear, all these overstrained nerves! It was high time we settled down to a quiet life again.

Two workers entered the compartment and chatted together, paying no attention to us. When they got out at the next stop one of them nodded and looked at me as if he knew me. I had the feeling I knew him too but it’s probably just that one comes across the same faces all over the world. Actually I envied him. He could get out while I was condemned to stick it out in the oily fumes. Fortunately it wouldn’t last that much longer now.

A melancholy journey.

Shortly before Pearl the train crossed a watery wilderness. Then it went slower and slower until it finally stopped. I looked out–we were there!

Here again there was not much life. Outside the station a lonely cab was daydreaming. We woke the cabbie up and told him to take us to the Blue Goose. As the rickety carriage clattered through the streets I looked out, full of curiosity. ‘This is supposed to be Pearl, the capital of the Dream Realm!?’ I exclaimed, hardly able to conceal my disgust. ‘That’s just like any one-horse town at home’, I said, pointing to a dreary building, with a mixture of irritation and disappointment.

There was not much to be seen in the way of traffic. Here and there a few pedestrians scuttled past. They were pretty mean with the lighting too, not much more than a gas-lamp at the street corners. Quite often I could have sworn I saw houses I knew. My wife found some of the places familiar as well. ‘At least they’re not so niggardly with the street-lighting at home’, I said, angrily. The carriage halted.

It was not a first-class hotel, but at least reasonably clean and comfortable. I ordered some tea to be brought to our room. It was spacious and pleasantly fitted out, though the furniture did look somewhat miscellaneous. Above the leather sofa hung a portrait of Maximilian, the Emperor of Mexico and over the beds one of Benedek, the unfortunate general who commanded the Austrian forces at Sadowa. ‘What’s he doing here?’ I couldn’t resist asking the chambermaid.

Anyone who has not seen a proper bed for ten days will readily understand that that was more important to us just then than all the treasures of the Dream Realm.

‘I’m just glad it seems so mild here’, my wife said, examining then praising the beds. I was already cosily tucked up in the eiderdown and replied with a yawn, ‘That seems to be the only satisfactory thing about the place.’

The day was already well advanced when I realised I had been lying there with my eyes open for some time. A room with red wallpaper?? … Oh, I have it … that’s right … I’m so-and-so, the artist, and I’m in bed in a hotel in the capital of the Dream Realm and that’s my wife sleeping beside me.

Feeling bright and completely rested, we got up and washed and dressed. I was eagerly looking forward to everything we would see.

We breakfasted then went out. It was a dull day.

For the moment I will interrupt the thread of my personal reminiscences to tell my readers something about the country to which I was going to belong for almost three years. Conditions there were most bizarre. I only became familiar with them little by little and never actually got right to the bottom of them. All I can do is record my own experiences and what other Dreamlanders told me. My own views of the situation in the country are scattered throughout the book; perhaps one or other of my readers might know of better explanations.

By and large things here were much the same as in central Europe and yet, on the other hand, so very different. True, there was a city, villages, large estates, a river, a lake but the sky above them was permanently dull. The sun never shone, the moon and stars could never be seen at night. A perpetual layer of thick cloud hung low over the land. It did gather into huge banks when storms were coming but the blue firmament above remained hidden from us. A learned professor, to whom I will have cause to refer several times in the course of this narrative, claimed this meteorological phenomenon was connected with the extensive marshlands and forests. Certainly during those years I never once saw the sun. Initially I found it almost unbearable, all newcomers felt the same. There was from time to time a noticeable brightness in the clouds and occasionally, especially towards the end of my stay there, a few slanting rays of light from the horizon touched the city, but never, never, did the glorious sun break through.

You can well imagine what the earth, with its fields and forests, looked like under these conditions. Nowhere was there a lush, bright green, all our plants, grasses, bushes and trees were a dull olive, a sort of greenish grey. Here everything which at home was a riot of colour was drab and dingy. Whilst the tone of most landscapes is determined by the blue of the air and the yellow of the ground, the other colours only appearing in patches, here grey and brown predominated. The bright colours that really make a landscape were lacking, though one has to admit that the Dream Realm was harmonious in appearance.

The barometer was permanently fixed on ‘dull and cloudy’ although in general the weather was warm and mild, as when we arrived. There was a similar lack of contrast in the seasons, too. Five months of spring and five months of autumn; during the short, hot summer the sky never got dark at night while during the winter, when a few snowflakes fell, it never got really light.

To the north the Dream Realm was bounded by a huge mountain range whose peaks were always shrouded in mist. At its foot the plain started abruptly, with no intervening foothills. A mighty river, the Negro, had its source there, plunging down the cliffs in wild cascades, then passing through a gorge to emerge as a broad, sluggish stream whose waters were strikingly dark, almost inky black. It then followed a long, gentle curve and that was where Pearl, the capital, had been built. The gloomy, sombre bulk of the city rose out of the barren land, drably uniform in shape and colour. You felt it must have been standing for hundreds of years whilst in fact it had been there for scarcely a dozen. The man who had founded the city did not want it to jar with the solemn surroundings. There were no glaringly modern buildings. He set great store by harmony and had old buildings sent from all parts of Europe. They were all buildings which fitted in here. Selected with a sure instinct, according to one single concept, they all harmonised with the whole. When I arrived the city numbered about 22,000 inhabitants.

In order to allow readers to find their way round Pearl, which will be very important for understanding later events, I have included a small town plan in the book.

As you can see, there were four main areas. The station district, situated beside a swamp and covered in soot, contained the bleak administrative offices, the Archive, the Post Office and the like. It was a tedious, unattractive area. The so-called Garden Suburb, where the wealthy inhabitants lived, was adjacent to the station district. Then came Long Street. It was the shopping centre and the middle classes lived there. Towards the river it took on more the character of a village. Squeezed in between Long Street and the mountain was the fourth district, the French Quarter. This small district, inhabited by 4,000 inhabitants of mainly Latin, Slav and Jewish extraction, was considered a rather disreputable area. The motley horde lived crammed together in old wooden houses. With its narrow alleys and malodorous taverns, this quarter was not exactly the pride of Pearl.

Looming over the whole town and dominating it was the ungainly mass of a monstrous building. The high windows looked out menacingly far over the country and the people below. Leaning back against the weathered, porous rock, it stretched out its massive bulk into the centre of the town, the Great Square. This was the Palace, Patera’s residence.

With the mountains to the north, the river to the west, the swamp to the east, the only room the city had for expansion was in the south. There was a large undeveloped area there beside the graveyard, the Toinassevic Fields, so called after their late owner. However, all attempts at construction proved disastrous speculations. Even before the roofs had been completed the buildings fell into ruin. The most striking among them was an abandoned brickworks which looked like the gigantic grave of some pharaoh or Assyrian high king. No Europeans were allowed to live on the other side of the river. There was the Outer Settlement, a small village with special privileges. It will be dealt with in a separate chapter.