Anarchistbanjo's World

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

The accursed bird intervened with a wild laughter
between them.
“Apollonius sees through you.”
Laurette let out a small reproachful sigh.
“You’ve always been a lover of youth and innocence,
Baron Dronte.”
“That remark touches something in me that is
unforgettable and valuable enough to shine like a bright star for
my entire life.”
“Oh – you are gallant!” She offered me her hand to kiss,
and stood up, excited and glowing, as it seemed to me.
I rose and resolved to leave her now- constrained by
conflicting and peace less feelings.
“How will I fare?” I addressed the bird once again.
“Since I did not succeed in winning your friendship -?”
“Off with his head! Off with his head!” the beast
screamed shrilly and looked at me with devilish joy.
I paid no more attention to the parrot and left.
Laurette accompanied me to the yellow room. The
curtain had hardly been drawn when I perceived a sudden
pallor in her, and just in time I was able to save her from falling
by taking her in my arms. I laid her quickly on a small sofa and
looked around. On a table stood a golden flask. I pulled the
stopper and rubbed the strongly scented essence on her temples.
She slowly opened her eyes.
“The abominable one frightened me so”, she flirted and
wrapped her arms around my neck.
Gently, I pulled free.
“I am a captive,” she lamented softly, “the satanic beast
guards me better than humans have been able to do. Do you
hear how it screams and beats with its wings? That is the signal
for the paid maid to come in and look after me. But she is not
here, I sent her to him with a note — we are alone -.”
Again her soft arms wrapped around my neck, and before
I knew it her hot red lips were sucking at my mouth.
Lorle-poor Lorle-, I thought, and then the most burning
longing for Zephyrine, whom I hoped to find in the
hunchbacked doctor’s house.
Tenderly I loosened her arms and looked into her eyes:
“Forget me, Lorle,” I admonished softly. “Don’t put your
happiness at risk for the sake of a fleeting minute.”
A flame flashed in her eyes.
“I thank you for your concern for me,” she said harshly.
“Now I know that you love another. And that I am nothing to
you anymore!”
“Lorle -!” I stammered.
“Go! Go!” she said, and tears stood in her eyes. “Why are
you trying to lie?”
Then I walked slowly through the yellow room and
closed the door between me and the sobbing woman.
I passionately pursued my research. The house “Zum
Fassel” was soon found, but it seemed foolish to enter Doctor
Postremo’s apartment under any pretext. I certainly would not
have succeeded in entering his mansion with the fair Zephyrine
in his presence, and even if this could have happened by
chance, not a word between us would have remained unheard.
That the doctor must have had a bad memory of me from the
gambling house was another factor.
It was therefore necessary to find a time in which either
the doctor was away from home and the niece was in the
apartment, or hope for the luck to see Zephyrine on one of her
exits.
But although I spent all my time on such scouting, and
opened the door of the spacious house, which was inhabited by
many people, neither the one nor the other opportunity
presented itself.
Then something happened to me, which newly shook me
and tormented me with puzzling questions and, strange as it
sounds, at the same time filled me with confidence.
I was walking through the nearby Greeks alley, to take a
quick meal in an inn. Groups of Greek and Turkish merchants
were plying their business on the street, according to the
custom of the Orient transplanted here, and it sometimes took
patience to get through the obstacle of those eagerly talking
and absorbed in their trade. Just now I was about to look for a
way through such a crowd of people, when I saw an apparition
at the end of the narrow alley, which put me in great excitement.
A man with a black turban, his bright eyes fixed on me, and
seemed to want to meet me. I saw clearly his pure features, the
amber necklace around his neck, the reddish-brown robe. This
time I had to get close to him. I forcefully made my way
through the astonished merchants, and I had to take my eyes
off the man in the robe for only a second and when I looked in
that direction again, he had disappeared, as he had every time I
was close to reaching him. I hurried as fast as I could to the
exit of the narrow alley, but it was in vain. Neither to the right
nor to the left, my eyes saw nothing but indifferent people who
slowly or quickly made their way. Desperate and with the
feeling that the sight of the unusual man meant something
important and decisive, which must be imminent, I came up
with the idea of the Levant merchants who had just been
pushed aside, in the hope that a person living in Vienna, who
walked along in oriental costume, must be known to them.
So I went back the way I came and spoke to an old Turk
with a good-natured face and a long white beard, who, despite
the warmth, was wearing a precious coat, trimmed with sable
fur, and seemed to be very respectable, judging by the behavior
of the bystanders.
With polite words, I asked him to forgive me for the
nuisance, and immediately added my inquiry about the man
who had disappeared from me. The Turk touched his forehead
and mouth with his right hand and replied to me in fairly good
German exceedingly politely that he did not know this man and
that he had never seen him. At the same time his eyes were
fixed with a strange expression on the small red scar, which I
owed to the fall of broken glass, when I, still a child, escaped
the collapsing ceiling of my room, and said with a peculiar
expression of reverence:
“You, Lord, who bear the mark of Ewli, ask questions of
me?”
I did not understand what he meant, and described the
turban and the robe of the stranger.
“It is the clothing of the Halveti dervishes”, said the Turk,
bowing to me. “Grant me your goodwill, Effendi!”
He stepped back, and I saw the others pestering him with
questions, to which he answered quietly. What he said seemed
to have been about me, because when I passed through the
crowd once more, they all bowed to me and voluntarily formed
a kind of trellis, through which I strode half ashamedly.
I took a simple meal in a restaurant with uneasy feelings
and thoughts of the stranger, whom I could not approach. Then
I wanted to return to my post opposite the house “Zum Fassel”.
On the way I passed by the Greek coffeehouse and
involuntarily took a quick glance through the windows.
There I saw to my joyful astonishment the hunchbacked
figure of Doctor Postremo. He was sitting bent over a
Backgammon board, on which the stones were jumbled, and
talked with waving hands to a mockingly smiling, black-haired
and yellow-skinned man with long, crooked nose, whose
behavior had obviously infuriated him. I stopped and noticed
that the stones were immediately again in position and a new
game began.
Thus the house had still another exit, which had escaped
my attention and which the Italian used.
Now or never I had to dare. I quickly entered the building
and asked the first person who met me on the dark stairs, for
the doctor’s apartment. Sullenly I was given the information
that it was located on the second floor.
I effortlessly found the door with the name and a bell pull,
with the figure of a yellow hand pointing to it.
Just as I reached out my fingers for it, a shadowy gray
woman came scurrying up the stairs, slipped past me and
inserted a key into the door lock. When she entered and looked
at me questioningly, I quickly pushed past her and said:
“Don’t be alarmed, good woman. I must speak to the
Demoiselle Zephyrine at once -.”
At the same time I pressed a prepared number of imperial
ducats into her withered hand.
That seemed to do the trick. The ugly hag grinned and
pulled me through a gloomy corridor into a half-dark chamber,
which, like the whole apartment was filled with the smell of
bitter almonds.
“Wait here!” she hissed and scurried out.
Not without uneasiness and expecting an ambush I let my
eyes wander around the eerie room. In one corner stood two
human, gruesomely bent over skeletons, where one could see
that the curved spine and the arched shoulder blades during life
had formed a hunchback, like the one Postremo himself had on
his back. Perhaps he had wanted to study his own mutated limb
structure.
On a rack, whose green curtain was only half drawn, blue,
brown and yellowish organs floated in large glass vessels in
clear liquid. A dried brain lay like the core of a giant nut on a
table, whose top was formed from some type of polished rock
that was unknown to me. Gray, greenish blue and rose-colored
snake-like figures with white angular spots in them and dark
red, sharply bordered sections – was this colored marble?
I ran my fingers over the greasy, egg-round slab and
suddenly realized with disgust that here was the smoothed cut
surface of a fossilized corpse before me, as they knew how to
make in Bologna. In a glass box at the window sat a
completely twisted, misshapen chameleon, which I at first
thought was dead, until it slowly turned its protruding eye on
me and turned its gray color into a dirty red.
Then a curtain rustled in the background. A white figure
stood motionless, with half-closed eyes.
“Zephyrine!”
I enfolded her in my arms, and sung a thousand tender
words into her little ear, drank in the heady scent of her hair
and covered her white face with kisses.