Anarchistbanjo's World

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

“Mean -, that’s what they call the fifth container in the
salt ponds into which the sea water flows for the extraction of
the salt.”
“Good,” nodded the teacher, smiling mischievously. “He
himself knows it, but as an appendage of the Noblesse in this
school I call him sot, paresseux et criminel! Get him out of the
seat, so that he gets what he deserves as the representative of
the ignorant noblesse!”
I turned pale with rage. This excess of injustice against
the poor boy, the only one who knew the rare and hardly used
word, seemed to me outrageous. I nudged Sassen, but he only
shrugged his shoulders, and Phoebus looked up in the air as if
it were none of his business.
Hesitantly, Klaus Jägerle emerged from the bench. Thick
tears stood in his eyes. Glowing red with shame, he fiddled
with his waistband….
“Faster! Expose his derriere!” screeched the school fox
and bobbed with the square ruler, “so that in place of nobility
he gets his proper Schilling!”
Horrified, I saw Klaus drop his trousers. Two poor,
skinny legs appeared beneath a gray, frayed shirt. The teacher
grabbed him with a splayed claw.
That’s when I jumped out of my bench.
“You’re not going to hit Jägerle, Monsieur!” I shouted. “I
won’t permit it…”
“Ei, ei!” laughed the man, “this will immediately show
you…”
He pressed down the willing head of the poor boy and
struck a blow.
Then I jumped at the teacher’s throat. He cried out with a
gasp and kicked at me with his feet. We fell to the floor. The
bench toppled over, and ink flowed over us. The other students
whooped with joy and stomped their feet. I suddenly felt a
sharp pain in my right hand. He had bitten me, with his ugly,
black tooth stumps. I hit him in the face with my fist. Blood
and saliva spurted from his mouth.
A hand grabbed me by the collar and pulled me up into
the air. I looked into a coarse, good-natured face under a
chubby gray wig.
The principal.
“Have you gone mad, Domine? – Rise, Herr!” he shouted
at the bleeding teacher.
“He wants to kill me!” screeched the latter.
“Baron Dronte, you will leave the school immediately!”
The principal said, pointing to the door.
Klaus Jägerle still stood humbly with his head bowed and
his thin, trembling legs, not daring to pull up his pants without
permission.

It went badly for me when father kicked the groom with
his foot and hit him, who was writhing and whimpering on the
ground. In pity, I tore the whip out of my father’s hand and
flung it far away. Instead, I was now sitting in an attic of our
house with water and bread. In the chamber was nothing but a
pile of straw in the corner and a stool on which I could sit.
Every day my father came, slapped me hard across the face and
forced me to speak a Bible verse in a loud voice:
“For the wrath of man strives and spares not in the time
of vengeance. And look to no person to make reconciliation, or
to receive it, even if you want to give it.”
When I had spoken the verse, I received a second slap in
the face. I let it all wash over me and was full of hatred. Today
was the fifth and last day of punishment.
Quietly a key turned in the door lock. I knew that it could
not be my father.
It was Aglaja. My defiance against the world prevented
me from giving in to the sweet joy that I felt at the sight of her.
Lovely and blushing, she stepped in her white, blue-flowered
dress over the threshold of the gloomy and dusty attic room.
Her face was childlike and of indescribable charm. Her spotless
skin shone milky white, lifted by the copper red of her hair. I
knew well how dearly she loved me, and in my solitude and
distress I too thought only of her, day and night. But there was
enough evil in me to make me want to plunge her into suffering,
too.
“What do you want here?” I growled. “Why don’t you go
to my Lord father – make yourself a dear child with him! You
can just beat it, go away, you!”
Her eyelashes trembled, and her little mouth began to
quiver.
“I just wanted to bring you my cake…” she said softly,
holding out a large piece of cake to me.
I snatched it out of her hand, threw it on the ground and
stepped on it with my foot.
“So!” I said. “Go and tell Frau Muhme, or my father, if
you like!”
She stood quite motionless, and I saw how slowly two
tears ran from her beautiful gray eyes. Then she went to the
corner, sat down on the straw bed and wept bitterly.
I let her cry, while my own heart wanted to burst in my
chest. But then I could not stand it any longer. I knelt down to
her and stroked her hair.
“Dear, dear Aglaja…” I stammered, “forgive me – you are
the only one here whom I love…”
Then she smiled through her tears, took my right hand in
hers and brought it to her young breast. And I thought of how
once at night, in a dark, fearful urge, I had crept into her room
and, by the light of the night lamp, I had lifted her blankets to
see her body just once. She had awakened and had looked at
me fixedly until I had crept out of the room, seized by remorse
and fear.
As if she had guessed what I was thinking about, she
suddenly looked at me and whispered:
“You must never do that again, Melchior!”
I nodded silently, still holding one of her small breasts.
My blood surged in pounding waves.
“I want to kiss you with pleasure -” she said then and
held out her sweet, soft lips to me.
I kissed her clumsily and hotly, and my hands strayed.
“Don’t – oh don’t -” she stammered, and yet she nestled
tightly in my arms.
Then somewhere in the house a door opened and
slammed shut with a bang. Spurs clanked. We moved apart.
“Will you always love me, Aglaja?” I begged.
“Always,” she said, looking me straight in the eyes.
And suddenly she began to cry again.
“Why are you crying?” I urged her.
“I don’t know – maybe it’s because of the cake -” she said,
smiling to herself.
I picked up the trampled and soiled pastry from the floor
and ate it.
“Maybe it’s also because I won’t be with you for long.”
The words came out of her mouth like a breath. I looked
at her in dismay. I did not understand her.
“Don’t pay any attention to me,” she laughed suddenly.
“Even if it’s true, I’ll always come back to you!”
She pressed a quick kiss on my mouth, smoothed her
clothes and quickly ran out of the attic room.
“Aglaja! Stay with me!” I cried in sudden fear.
I was suddenly so afraid. But I heard only the hard clatter
of her high heels on the stairs.
An autumn fly buzzed on the small, cobweb-covered
window restlessly. In the sooty, torn nets hung decomposed
beetles, empty butterflies, and insect corpses of all kinds. – The
fly wriggled. The buzzing sound became high. Slowly, out of a
dark hole crawled a hairy spider with long legs, grasped the fly,
and lowered its poisonous jaws into its soft body. – The
buzzing became very high – the death cry of a small creature.
Suddenly I saw that the spider had a terrible face.
I ran to the door and banged on the wood with both fists.
“Aglaja!,” I screamed. “Aglaja!”
No one heard me.

We had been working under the blue sky, in the warm,
deep sunshine; we had been helping to harvest the fruit from
the big field behind the house. The plums were dripping with
sweetness. They tasted like wine. We could not get enough.
The greengage that we touched were even more delicious.
They melted in the mouth.
In the evening Aglaja cried out in pain.
At midnight she was dead.
The house was filled with cries of lamentation. Father
locked himself in his study. The maids were wailing in their
aprons.
Aglaja was dead.
I was just walking back and forth, picking up things
without knowing what I had picked up; I leaned for a long time,
without thinking about anything, with my head against a carved
doorpost until the pain woke me up, drank water from a
watering can.
The days, the days went by. Without beginning or end.
Crying everywhere. I watched them clearing out the chamber
in the corridor and bring out the black cloths. How they cut
asters and autumn roses and made wreaths, sobbing and
smearing their wet faces with their earthy hands. I stroked the
handle of the chamber, a handle that had been worn thin from
much use, and you hurt yourself on it if you were careless. But
when they were inside nailing the cloths to the walls and
brought the candlesticks from out of the silver chamber, as the
footsteps of people carrying something heavy, came down the
stairs, I ran in the fallen leaves of the garden.
Mists were drifting and it was dripping. The beautiful
time was gone. The last day was over. I saw a blue ground
beetle and stepped on it. Yellowish intestines spilled out of its
small body, the legs twitched, contracted silently and stiffly. So
I did no differently than my father did when he beat people. I
had to cry, all alone on a bench of cold stone. Once in the
summer the stone had been so hot that Aglaja and I had tried to
see who could keep their hand on it longer. Her white hand had
been so delicate that she got a blister. – A cold drop fell from
the sky onto my forehead.