Anarchistbanjo's World

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel

Then I screamed so loudly that my father let go of him.
“The toad can’t stand it, if I chastise the scoundrel,” he
said angrily, he will never be a right fellow in his day!”
Spurs clanking he went out. I was more afraid of this
clink than of anything else.
Then they gave me sweets and stroked me.
A young maid kissed my bare calves.
“Sweet boy!” she said.
In a mirror they showed me how a piece of glass had hit
me on the root of my nose and tore a small cut between my
eyebrows.
A scar remained from it.

I was playing in the garden with my little cousin Aglaja,
whom I loved very much. I had woven a wreath from black,
shiny ball berries, which I placed in her copper-colored hair,
which shone golden in the sun. She was the king’s daughter,
enchanted in thorny hedges, and I set out to save her. The
dragon that guarded her had to be played by black Diana. With
clever eyes the dog waited for the new game.
Then, accompanied by a maid, the barber came hurriedly
through the garden with a brass basin, and a servant appeared
at the door of the house, it was Stephan, who shouted at him to
hurry.
Aglaja threw her wreath of berries to the ground, and the
two of us both ran behind her to grandfather’s room,
which we were usually only allowed to enter with his special
permission. Such visits were always very solemn and only took
place on the big holidays of the year or on birthdays, when we
had to recite little poems and were given sweets in return.
It seemed to both of us a great dare, to go uninvited into
the room of the stern old man, but curiosity drove us forward.
Grandfather was sitting quietly in his sleeping chair. He
wore, as always, a gray-silk sleeve vest with embroidered
bouquets of roses, black pants, white stockings and shoes with
wide silver buckles. On his watch chain hung a bundle of
golden, colored and glittering things, cut things, cut gemstones,
corals and seals, which I had sometimes been allowed to play
with.
In front of him stood my father with bowed head and he
did not notice us children at all. When the gaunt barber, dressed
in a patched jacket stepped closer, he grabbed him by the arm,
his face turned red and he said half aloud:
“Next time run faster, damned Kujon, when you do him
the honor!”
The miserable barber stammered a little, and with his
hands flying grabbed his red bandages and switchblade, and
pushed grandfather’s sleeve up into the air, touched the eyelids
of the upturned eyes with his finger, then felt around on the
arm, while he held the basin under it. Thus he waited a while,
and then he said shyly:
“It is of no use, free- glorious graces – the blood will
never flow again!”
Then father turned around and stood with his face to the
wall. Stephan gently pushed Aglaja and me out the door and
whispered, “His Grace has gone to his fathers.”
And when we looked at him questioningly, since we
could not understand this, he said, “Your grandfather is dead.”
We went back into the garden and listened to the noise
that soon started in the house. To the right of the hallway was a
spacious room in which, as a very small child I remembered
seeing my mother being laid out between many candles. This
chamber, in which otherwise all sorts of equipment stood, they
now cleared out and dragged in large bales of black cloth,
which smelled nasty.
Grandfather had preferred Aglaja to me, and had given
her treats and candy more often than he had given to me. He
had kept these good things in a turtle box, which smelled of
cinnamon and nutmeg. She cried a little, Aglaja, because she
was thinking that it would all be over now, when grandfather
would go away. But then we both remembered the other box he
had, which we were only allowed to look at very rarely. That
was his golden snuff box, given to him by the Duke of
Brunswick. But on this beautiful, sparkling box, on its lid, there
was a second little lid and when this popped open, a very small
bird appeared, flashing with green, red and violet stones, which
bobbed with the wings and trilled like a nightingale. We could
hardly get enough of seeing and hearing it, but grandfather
slipped it into his pocket as soon as, after a short while, the lid
closed by itself, and told us to be satisfied.
I said to Aglaja that now we could look closely at the bird
and even feel it, since grandfather was dead. She was afraid to
go up, but I took her by the hand and pulled her behind me.
No one was in the corridor, and the room was empty.
Empty stood the wide armchair in which grandfather had spent
his last nights. On the little table next to it were still the bottles
with the long notes.
We knew that grandfather had always taken the can from
the middle drawer. This drawer was made of colored wood
decorated with ships, cities and warriors from the old times and
on the drawer, which we tried to open, there were two fat
Dutchmen who were smoking pipes and being served by
kneeling Moors. I pulled at the rings; but not until Aglaja
helped me, did we manage to open the drawer.
There lay Grandfather’s lace jabots and handkerchiefs, a
roll of gold ducats, a large pistol inlaid with gold, and many
letters in bundles, shoe buckles and razors, and also the box
with the bird.
I took it out, and we tried to make the lid jump. But we
did not succeed. But while we were working around, the big lid
came off, and a thin plate detached itself from it, which
concealed something. It was a small picture, which was painted
in fine enamel colors. A picture which made us forget the little
bird completely.
On a small sofa lay a lady with her skirts pushed up, and
right next to her was a gentleman with sword and wig, whose
clothes were also in strange disorder. They were doing
something that seemed to us as strange as it was weird. In
addition, the man was being attacked by a little spotted dog,
and the lady lying down seemed to laugh. We also laughed. But
then we argued very excitedly about what this was.
“They are married,” said Aglaja, blushing.
“How do you know?” I asked, my heart pounding hard.
“I think they are gods…” whispered Aglaja.
“I saw a picture, where the gods were like that. But they
didn’t have any clothes on.”
All of a sudden it was as if in the next room where our
dead grandfather lay, the floorboard creaked. We shrunk back,
and Aglaja cried out. Then I quickly threw the can into the
drawer, pushed it closed and pulled my cousin out of the room.
We slid into the garden.
“Aglaja…” I said, grabbing her hand. “Are we going to
get married like that…?”
She looked at me, startled, tore herself away and ran back
into the house. Confused and bewildered I went to Stephan,
who was cutting roses from the stalks and gathering them in a
basket.
“Yes, young Herr!” he said. “So it goes with all of us!”

Next to me sat Phöbus Merentheim and Thilo Sassen. We
three were the most distinguished. Behind us squatted Klaus
Jägerle, the whipping boy. He was allowed to study with us,
was given food, and if we didn’t know something, punishment
was carried out on him. His mother was a washerwoman and
his father wove baskets, although he only had one arm. The
other arm was cut by an enemy horseman, when he was
protecting Thilo’s severely wounded father with his body. In
return Klaus was allowed to study with us and to come to the
table at noon. Klaus was very industrious, shy and depressed,
and had to put up with everything that his classmates cooked
up when they were in an exuberant mood. He was almost
worse off than the hunchback son of the grocer Isaaksohn, they
had once put him at the door and spat in his face one after the
other, so that the disgusting juice, mixed with his tears, ran
down his new gentleman’s sport coat.
I was in great fear because I had learned nothing. For
before me stood the small, poisonous teacher of French in his
inky, tobacco-colored jacket with the bent lead buttons, the
goose quill behind his ear, talking through his Spaniol-filled
nose. His pale face was full of freckles and twitched incessantly.
In his left hand he held a book, and he waved the black-rimmed
knotted index finger of his right hand in front of my face.
He always did it that way. All of a sudden, after he had
studied our faces maliciously for a while, he would go after one
of the students like a vulture and always found the most
insecure out. It was his habit, to vocabulaire at the beginning of
the lesson, that is to say, he threw a few French words in the
victim’s face, which had to be translated immediately.
This time he had chosen me.
“Allons, monsieur-,” he hissed. “Emouchoir-. Tonte-
Mean. – At once! Quickly!”
I was startled and stammered:
“Emouchoir – the fly tonguing, tonte – the Sheep shearing – mean… mean, that is – that is -“
He neighed with delight.
“Ah – you don’t know, Cher Baron?”
“Mean -, that is –“
“Assez! Sit down!”
He bleated, and his little black eyes sparkled with
amusement. Slowly he took a pinch from his round horn can,
ran back and forth with two fingers under his pointed nose and
then poked the can at my neighbor.
“Herr Sassen! – Not either? – Merentheim? Also not? –
Jägerle, stand up and say it!”
Poor Klaus jumped up as if like a feather and said in a thin
voice: