Anarchistbanjo's World

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

She pressed her hot, wet mouth on my hand, but I tore
myself away and went swiftly and quietly down the stairs.
When I was in the hallway, the Dutch clock struck
midnight. The closet creaked.
I stopped.
“Why don’t you come out?” I said, banging my fist
against the closet. But everything remained silent.
Only from above came a wailing, pounding sound, as if
someone were crying into their pillows.

On Good Friday, I passed by the Catholic Church and
peered on all sides, to see whether Lorle was there.
But all I saw were people going to church, men, women
and children, and every time the gate opened, sad deep sounds
blew out.
Lorle was the daughter of saddler master Höllbrich, very
young, and I had lured her into our park. She wanted to see the
tame deer and the fallow deer. And in the feeding hut was
where it happened.
I had learned many things in the last time, could swallow
wine like water, ride behind the hounds and throw girls into the
grass. There were some who wept bitterly. Lorle laughed and
said, “There had to be a first time-“
While I was waiting, a small and very ragged boy came,
looked at me with cunning little eyes and asked, “Are you
Baron Dronte?”
And when I said yes, he quickly pulled a small violet
paper from out of his shirt and slipped it to me. Then he
quickly ran away.
I was very angry that she had kept me waiting and I
remembered that she had also made her little eyes at Thilo, too,
when he passed by the workshop. But since I did not want
anyone to watch me reading the letter, I went into the church.
It was half-dark, and the candle flames sparkled. In front
on a triangular candelabra stood many lights, and just as I
entered, one was extinguished. And just then they were singing
in Latin the crying notes of a psalm, which I understood. It was
called:
“Jerusalem Jerusalem – return to the Lord your God”.
Then I knew that it was the lamentations of the prophet
Jeremiah, which I knew from the Scriptures.
Motionless, the canons sat in their carved chairs on both
sides of the violet-covered altar, and I recognized the cousin of
the Sassen, Heinrich Sassen, among them and wondered at how
haggard and austere his face looked in the restless glow of the
candles and the golden gleam of the ornaments on the walls.
There was a whistling beside me, like mice whistling.
There were two old women praying, bent low. And again they
began to sing up in the choir with the Hebrew letter that is
called Ghimel or the camel. But then the sweet sadness of the
pleading song penetrated deeply into my heart and made it
open up before God. I thought of how mangy and rejected I
must be before the Savior, who had also taken upon himself the
bitter agony of death for me, been scourged, spat upon,
crowned with thorns, stripped of his poor clothes and nailed
naked to the cross. And what was I? In my pocket crackled the
letter of a girl whom I had put on the bad road, and in my
mouth was the sour taste of yesterday’s wine. I was getting
worse and worse, and I already understood it well, to strike a
defenseless servant across the face with a riding crop and to
chase the old servants up and down the stairs. But then Lorle’s
laughing face with its snub nose intervened again between the
remorseful thoughts, and in my ear hummed the solemn sounds
that came from above, her cheeky little song:
“Phillis has two white doves and a golden bird’s nest…”
But out of the saucy face of the little girl grew another
face, pale and pure, with golden red hair like a halo, and with a
fierce, never before felt homesickness, I thought of my dead
cousin, Aglaja, whose memory I had held so miserably that
now any one was right for me. Then it was suddenly as if dark
rays were pressing into my eyes.
Slowly, from out of the crowd that was devoutly praying
in the nave in front of me, a man approached. It flashed
through me as if a glowing drop ran from the top of my head
down through my body. The man, who was coming closer and
closer, looked at me…
His face was without any wrinkles, brownish and
beautiful, his eyes deep and dark, of unimaginable goodness.
Between the brows there was a horizontal, fine, red scar, like
the one I had…in the same place. A small black beard
shadowed the upper lip of the soft, noble-cut mouth. A reddish
brown robe fell in heavy folds around his slender body. He
wore a black turban wound around his head, and a necklace of
amber beads. No one seemed to pay attention to him except me.
Nobody turned to look at him, and yet everyone avoided him,
as if they saw him.
“The Lord Jesus,” I stammered, reaching for my heart,
which threatened to stand still. I felt as if I had to weep and lie
down on this breast, hand myself over to him, to him who
knew everything that pushed and drove me, so that he could
save me. He knew the way, his feet had walked it.
But he passed me by with a look in which was something
like sorrow. He passed me by!
I stood for a while and could not move. Far out in the
room sounded singing and the roar of an organ.
Then I got hold of myself, turned around and ran after
him, causing enough annoyance among those praying, because
my haste had disturbed them from their devotion.
But when I stepped out of the gate, the place lay empty.
Nobody was to be seen. Only the tobacconist stood next
to the wooden Turk in front of the door to his store and looked
at me in amazement.
I hurriedly asked him about the man in the brown robe.
He made a face and said that the incense in the church
must have made me dizzy. I was unaccustomed to such
Catholic incense. And one who honors the pure gospel should
beware of the dazzling works of gold, lights and blue vapor,
which they have in such churches of Baal. Let every man
beware lest he stumble, even if he is of noble birth.
Angrily, he threw his lime pipe onto the pavement, so
that it broke, turned his back on me and went into his store.
But I walked around the alleys that led to the square and
asked about the man. No one knew anything about him.
Suddenly I felt as if a bolt of lightning had struck in front
of me. I remembered the wax figure that had saved me in my
earliest childhood, when the falling ceiling in my room buried
my bed.
The man from the Orient, Ewli.
I pulled Lorle’s letter out of my pocket and tore it into a
thousand pieces.

I drifted with Phoebus and Thilo Sassen and we hunted
everywhere for women and adventures. Since I spoke to them
about the apparition, they laughed at me and teased me for days.
They called me the brown monk, as they called the man from
the Orient. I had fallen back into my old way of life and was
ashamed every time they came at me with their jokes and snide
remarks.
That day black Diana was barking and full of joy with
me being at home and whatever I did, I did not succeed in
shooing her away. Because the dog loved me more than
anything, no matter how well I treated her.
Above the vineyards we knew a house, in which an old
tusker lived, feared for his coarseness. He had two young and
beautiful daughters, and it was said that they spent the money
for their pretty dresses and shoes by being kind to the
gentlemen. The boys had often put a straw man on their roof,
and the girls in the city pulled their skirts to themselves when
they passed by, so as not to touch.
But there was also talk that the old man, on days, when
he had time to look after the prostitutes, would teach the rude
rascals, the beaus of his daughters a lesson. Thus it was said
that he had once caught Fritz, the mayor, a real dandy and a
womanizer and apron sniffer, with the two of them in the tool
shed and had so brutalized him that the young gentleman had
spent four days in bed groaning and smeared with lime
ointments. Others again thought that it was not so much the
beating of the old man, which had made a cure with ointments
necessary, but rather a disease of the nobles that Fritze had
contracted when he was traveling with an actress in the mail
coach.
Surely we had not the slightest desire to collide with the
foul-mouthed tusker, and all the less so because the house was
outside our jurisdiction and the archbishop, to whose property
the vineyards belonged, had great affection for the tusker and
was only happy when he heard from his little pieces.
So we wanted to approach the house unnoticed in the
manner of a creeping patrol, to know for the time being how
things stood there. Thereby the dog, which could not be
removed in any way, was a hindrance and a nuisance. Because
in the joy of being able to be with me, Diana jumped around us
in great leaps and bounds, and when I was not always paying
attention to, she made me by barking loudly at me, which
annoyed Thilo and Phoebus beyond all measure.
So it happened that our approach completely failed.
When we were already close to the house and our eyes on the
windows, the bitch made a noise and lured not only the girls
but also the old man, who soon realized what kind of polecats
were creeping on his hens. He called us whoremongers and
good-for-nothings, day thieves, country bumpkins, and knights
of the shrubbery and promised to serve us with such unburnt
ashes, that our lackeys and chamber pot carriers would have to
deal with us for a full week.
So we crept down the mountain full of anger and rage.
“Next time we will try it without you and that dog-beast
of yours, Melchior!” said Thilo.
“One who doesn’t even know how to master such a lousy
four-legged beast belongs in the children’s room!” added
Phoebus.