Anarchistbanjo's World

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

The performance, which began with a few rough slaps
for the harlequin, was as I had much expected with the
magician, dressed as on the figurehead. With his beard hung
around his neck he performed a series of quite artful sleight-of-
hand and card tricks, baked an omelet in a hat, which a fat
citizen hesitantly offered, fetched endless ribbons, white
barnyard rabbits and a glass jar with floating little fishes from
it and finally crushed a golden watch in a mortar, only to find it
unharmed in the purse of an embarrassed giggling girl.
Then he moved on to the more difficult arts and tore off
the heads of a white dove and a black dove and healed them in
the twinkling of an eye, so that the black bird had a white head,
and the white bird now had a black head. But this showpiece
produced such a violent nausea in me that I wanted to get up
and leave the room. But since I would have had to fight my
way through the crowded rows of people sitting and would
have had to make everyone get up, I closed my eyes for a while
until I felt that the discomfort was subsiding.
When I looked up again, through murmurs of applause
and the admiration of the spectators, I saw the well-done
picture of a moonlit cemetery on the stage. A slender, beardless
man, wrapped in a black cloak, walked up and down between
the grave crosses and told in his soliloquy, that a ghost often
appeared here, and that he wanted to find out who the evil doer
was that was certainly behind the appearance of such spirits.
Behind the stage the midnight hour was signaled by
twelve tinkling bells, and after the fading of the last stroke,
which was followed by an artificially generated whirring of the
wind, a being wrapped in white shrouds floated between the
crosses and approached the man. This man seemed to be
frightened at first, but then he swiftly drew his sword and
stabbed the ghost. One saw clearly, how the flashing blade
went through the body of the ghost, without doing him any
harm. But now the boastful one threw the sword away and fled,
whereupon the white creature performed a triumphant dance
and the curtain rushed down. The performance was over, and
the audience departed highly satisfied.
I also stood up and approached the stage. My guess was
correct. The invulnerable apparition was a mirror image,
through a slanting glass plate, in front of which, lying on a kind
of platform, an actor made the ghost, whose image was thrown
onto the stage. The glass plate was made of three equal pieces,
set together, and the two dark, vertical stripes of shadow, which
had been visible on the stage during the performance, had
immediately led me to this assumption.
I now thought of leaving and noticed that there was no
one left in the audience but me. But nevertheless I was not
alone. Inaudibly a person had crept up to me, probably unaware
of my intentions, and even though I faced him so unexpectedly,
I recognized in him the sleight of hand magician in a robe as
well as the cemetery fencer.
I apologized and told him that I only had a scientific
interest in how it was done and was fully satisfied with it. In no
case was it my intention, to retell what I had discovered, which
by the way had been known to me for a long time, to impair his
success.
“The gentleman is obviously a connoisseur,” the man
said very politely and bowed. “Perhaps I have the honor of
seeing a master of white magic before me?”
“Not this one,” I replied. “I only wanted to know whether
the excellent effect produced by the phantom was created with
the help of large concave mirrors or with the sloping glass plate.
Glass plates of such size are, as far as I know very precious and,
as I understand it, are made only in Venice”
“I see that the gentleman is excellently instructed,”
replied the magician. “The three plates are our most valuable
possessions and require a great deal of caution when traveling.”
I thanked him with a few words and went toward the
curtain, in front of which the harlequin was once again making
noise and shouting.
“If, however, the gentleman wished to make use of my
actual art,” said the other, falteringly, and made a gesture with
his hand toward the ground on which we were standing.
A foreboding seized me.
“What you see here,” said the other, “serves only the
curiosity of the uneducated people and the acquisition of the
bare necessities of life. For the deeply initiated, I am the
necromancer Magister Eusebius Wohlgast from Ödenburg, and
I have indeed already been honored with the name of the
Hungarian Dr. Faust. I would have to be very wrong, if the
wishes of the gentleman, whose outward appearance already
announces the deepest and unhealed sorrow, not to offer the
most glowing reunion with a beloved person who had been torn
from him by cruel death.”
I laughed bitterly.
“You think I am more simple-minded than I am, Herr
Magus Wohlgast,” I returned. “With the smoke of poisonous
herbs, which completely cloud the clear mind, and with a
hidden laterna magica, one can show gullible people what they
wish to see.”
The man shook his head with a smile and replied gently
and modestly:
“People of my standing, who live in moving wagons,
must put up with being counted among the great crowd of
wandering jugglers and swindlers. To dispel this suspicion, I
expressly declare to you that I do not claim any salary if you
want to accept my services in this respect. It is entirely up to
you whether or not you want to give me a reward after the
work is done, or under the impression of having been duped, to
refrain from such. I also know very well in whose service I put
my art, and remain unconcerned about profit, as much as I have
to reckon with a net income. Incidentally, I recently enjoyed
the extremely high honor of receiving such a request from His
Imperial Roman Majesty in the rooms of the Masonic Lodge
“To the Three Fires”. Although His Majesty, as a result of a
very gripping apparition which moved him to the other world,
was frightened and had to spend a few days in bed until his
insulted mind had calmed down again. I was granted a very
handsome reward. It may serve as a testimony to you that
neither His Majesty nor the noble gentlemen present regarded
me as an impostor, but rather left the temple of the Freemasons
very moved and in silence. Yes, it was even said to protect me
from the persecution that Her Majesty the Empress ordered to
be instituted against me, when she discovered through an
informant gentleman the cause of the illness of her husband.”
Contradictory feelings stirred in me. The man seemed to
me to be honest and sure of his rare abilities. But my distrust
could not be eliminated so quickly.
“Whom or whose spirit did you make appear before His
Majesty?” I asked.
“To speak of that to anyone, even a trustworthy cavalier,
I am neither permitted, nor is it in my habits,” he declined. “I
would also decline to communicate with third persons about
apparitions which might come to the Lord if my most humble
services were to be called upon.”
My desire to experience this man’s art grew at his words
and I spoke:
“If it would be possible for you to call back a person,
who has departed from this life and is very dear to me, I would
be more than grateful to you.”
He made a dismissive movement.
“That is left to the discretion of the Lord, who is, in spite
of all the negligence of his exterior caused by his grief, is a
distinguished nobleman.”
“So how should I behave, and when should this
summoning go ahead?” I asked quickly, because two people
had already entered the tent and forced us to speak quietly.
“I ask the Lord to be here in three days, half an hour
before midnight. On the day when the work is to take place, the
Lord must abstain absolutely from all food and drink, with the
exception of pure water. Then a purification of the body and
fresh, clean clothes are needed. In addition, an object should be
brought that was the property of the deceased person, if
possible, something that was worn on the body. Strictest
secrecy against anyone, whoever it may be, is a commandment,
the non-observance of which makes all in vain.”
“I have understood and will observe all this,” I said.
“Nothing else is required?”
“Nothing more for the gentleman.”
“And you?”
“I, my lord, must fast from today, a full three days, fast.
My brother and our assistant will hold the performance here. I
must prepare myself in solitude until the hour of the
invocation.”
I looked at him doubtfully, but the place was so filled to
such an extent that further conversation was not possible. The
Hungarian Magus did not pay any further attention to me, but
walked right away toward the curtain. I saw him speaking
some hasty words with the colorfully dressed harlequin, who
nodded seriously.
“So in three days -” I said in passing.
“Around midnight,” he replied, and disappeared into the
crowd in front of the booth.
When I deliberately passed by after a while, the harlequin
had disappeared, and the man, who until then had attracted the
public with his multicolored costume, was now standing in the
robe in front of the entrance and invited the audience to enter.
In deep thought, I started on my way home to my inn.
God himself had annealed my soul in the furnace of pain.
I felt it deeply in the loneliness of the day, on which I prepared
myself fasting for the evening with the Magus. How different
my whole being had become since that hour, when my beloved
had slipped away into the realm of shadows. The old
irascibility which had still sometimes flashed up in me, the
arrogance, of which I often enough made myself guilty, the
addiction to the pleasures of the table and diversions of various
kinds, the tendency to lust – all this had fallen away from me
and seemed to me void and stale. The glamour, with which life
presents itself to a man, was extinguished for me under the
gray dust of transience.