The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel
The notary Mechelde welcomed me with stiff dignity in
his gray room. Gray bundles of documents stood on the wall up
to the smoky ceiling, and the whole rickety man was gray
except for the green eyeshade from which he blinked. He
pushed me a chair, checked my matriculation certificate, the
only document I called my own, checked his books, and then
he told me, that my father, resting in God, had left more than
half of his fortune to noble foundations and orders of
knighthood, a large amount to the purchase of an organ for the
village church and furthermore- numerous legacies for the best
of his dogs. Thus would remain for me, his only natural heir, an
amount of about fifteen thousand thalers that I could receive
from the court at any time.
At my request to see the testament he took a stained
paper out of the cupboard and explained to me the sullied
appearance of the writing with the fact that the old gentleman
in articulo mortis, almost asphyxiating, had tried to find the
passage in which of me as the “wayward” son Melchior, Baron
von Dronte”, was spoken of with the goose quill. But in the
middle of a beginning, which the bloated hand was no longer
able to perform, the shortness of breath set in so terribly that a
sobbing spasmodic cough sprayed the expectoration on the
paper and so spattered it with reddish spots.
During these explanations the notary drummed with his
spidery fingers so impatiently on the lid of his desk, that I
could see how little he cared for my company. But when,
unconcerned about his lowly manner and politeness, I asked
him to allow me to make occasional requests for my father’s
words about me (in which I hoped to find a sign of forgiveness
and of paternal affection), the gray file clerk turned his
inflamed eyes on me and said, with his left hand on the gold
signet ring of his right hand and with a dry expression:
“I don’t think it’s my place to pass on confidential
statements of my clients. However, if this is a special favor for
you, Baron Dronte, I must tell you that your father adds words
to every mention of your name, which I am neither willing nor
called to repeat. In particular, the old man seemed to have
doubts that existed in his mind as to whether his only son and
name bearer was worthy to use the old coat of arms and title.
And this feeling may have prevailed at his Grace’s final decree,
which entrusted me with the possession of this coat of arms on
my right index, the signet ring of the deceased, which was
located with the testament!
And he stretched out his scrawny, black-clawed finger
towards me, on which sat the ring, in whose sardonyx our coat
of arms with the three golden roses was artfully cut.
Involuntarily my hand clenched into a fist. The notary
took a quick look at the colorful glass beads next to his desk
and smiled with satisfaction.
I bowed briefly and headed for the door.
But before I had reached it, he hastily called me back and
explained that he had forgotten. My Muhme, Aglaja’s mother,
had given me a sealed box at my father’s death, which was in
his safekeeping and which he would now give to me.
He rummaged and searched for a while under the lid of
his desk, slipped me a piece of paper, and confirmation for
signature and after I had put my name on the paper, he gave me
a box covered with yellowed blue silk, which was sealed at the
edge.
“And now the Herr Lord of Dronte will excuse me if I
turn my attention to more urgent business.”
I left the gray room, my chest constricted, and shaken by
my father’s harshness beyond death. It was not about the money.
I did not mourn the fact that instead of a castle, rich fields,
meadows, woods and ponds, instead of three prosperous
villages along with many other possessions and goods, which
had been sold to the rich Zochtes by the endowed foundations.
What hurt me so bitterly was the fact that, of all the thousands
of things that had belonged to my mother, not a single one of
the familiar furniture and pictures, not a single piece had come
to me. And if it were only the Dutch clock with the palm tree
angel and the hammering little dead man or just my mother’s
silver bridal cup, or perhaps even the round egg made of seven
kinds of wood, on which she had stuffed my childhood
stockings, I would have been full of satisfied melancholy.
So then, outcast and devoid of all love I took the long
way back that I had ridden, and turned toward the cemetery.
Green, tender leaves sprouted from the trees that lined the road,
and my spurs brushed against the first flowers along the
roadside. Larks rose warbling and disappeared in the bright
blue. The day was so beautiful, and darkness wafted within me!
When I entered the quiet garden of the eternally resting
in order to pay my respects and say goodbye forever to the
dead man, who had not found a word of kindness for me and
yet had called himself my father, I was struck by the memory
of the nasty experience with that young maid, whose outcry
and indignation had caused me to be horrified by the
arbitrariness and crudeness of the powerful, to which I too was
to belong. The subsequent disgust of that night was so strong
that I wanted to turn back, in order not to enter the earth, under
which the dead man lay. But after a short inner struggle, I
nevertheless went on, probably because I knew that nothing
would ever cause me to return to the places of my unfortunate
youth.
So I walked with my hat pulled off between the iron
crosses, urns and stone angels. The sky, which had been so blue
just a moment before, had turned gray with quickly rising
clouds, and the thousand fold song of the birds in the trees
suddenly fell silent. Wind showers ran over the hills and made
the light, long grass bend. A single ray of sunlight fell narrow
and golden on a square stone next to the path, on which was
written a half-blurred, barely legible name and a saying. This
saying was hit by the ray of light, so that I could see the
damaged letters clearly and interpret them: Non omnis moriar!
“I will not die completely.” These words immediately sank to
the bottom of my soul, and an unspeakable consolation
emanated from it, which filled my eyes with tears of joy and
my heart with a sweet, indefinite hope. These words of the
Roman poet was also well known to me from the history
lessons. The Englishman Herr Thomas More had spoken it
before his head fell under the axe of the executioner. Strange
that only today the day had come when I sensed and shuddered
at the immense significance of the saying.
But the ray of sunlight faded, and the dull gray of the
coming spring rain brought me to my senses. I stamped my
foot, and the clink of the spur woke me from dreams that
threatened to be lost in infinity. I continued walking until I
reached the heir-funeral, behind whose heavy, rust-stained
doors, besides my hard father, my mother, my grandfather, my
Muhme, and my beloved Aglaja, slept, and I looked at the rose
tree that Muhme had planted here a few days after the girl’s
death. It had grown into a stately trunk, and its branches were
covered with tiny, delicate green leaves. In the summertime it
would glow with red roses. –
“I would gladly have carried a rose from your grave with
me forever, Aglaja,” I said softly and stroked the little tree. I
thought that the fine ends of the roots might have found their
way down to her and that she would feel it when a loving hand
touched the smooth trunk. But then I was so frightened that I
would have cried out loudly for the little one in the solemn
silence of the cemetery.
To my right hand, next to a freshly dug, still unlabeled
grave, squatted on a half sunken mossy stone slab one whom I
had never forgotten and whose hideous demeanor and
appearance often haunted me in waking dreams.
He still wore the broad hat, had the nail-studded hunting
satchel and stabbed at me cheeky and mocking with his yellow
goat eyes, the hooked nose bent like a vulture’s beak and the
wrinkled mouth warts contorted.
“It’s me again,” he croaked. “Hasn’t been long, Your
Grace, that I have had the pleasure of seeing you.”
I did not answer. In my coat pocket I had a well-loaded
derringer, the handle of which nestled in my hand.
“Yes, yes,” chuckled the fellow, making a face, “It is
Fangerle, your grace Lord Baron. I was with them as they
hanged Friederich Zabernikel, but kept myself nicely in the
background.”
He burst out into a bleating laugh, and his eyes
glimmered in the shadow of the hat brim.
“What are you looking for here?” I burst out.
He laughed again, and it sounded like the clink of glass
panes. With his yellow hand he pointed to the open pit at my
side, from which the grave digger’s spade had been spilling
sand, earthy bones and a brownish skull, to which hair still
stuck, and hissed:
“A new one, Baron, and here I wait for the soul mouse.”
At this he tapped on his satchel, at which there was inside
a shrill, piteous whistle.
“Let me be content with your nonsense,” I cried, seized
with horror. A cold raindrop struck me in the face so that I
flinched.
Then he twisted his face into a terrible grimace, his eyes
glittered, opened his gaping mouth and mimicked that ghastly
scream that Heiner Fessl made in his fear of death in front of
the Rabenstein.
“J-i-i-ii!”
“Dog!” I roared, tore the derringer out of my pocket,
cocked it in a flash with my thumb, thrust the barrel into his
wrinkled face and shot à bout portant. In the blue cloud of
smoke I saw nothing, and when it disappeared, only slowly, in
the dampness of the rain, the coat of the guy fluttered already
far away between the tombstones and bushes, from where an
adverse, shrieking laughter rang out. And again it seemed to me,
as if a large owl-like bird flew away between the trees and over
the wall.
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