Anarchistbanjo's World

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

I assured the spiritual gentleman most eagerly that I had
seen the aforementioned man from afar several times in my life,
but that I had never spoken a word to him.
The priest looked at me and shook his head.
“So the experience is now again a miracle and in need of
some explanation. Namely, when the old woman and the tailor
went their way with the brushwood and I was alone with the
stranger in the brown robe and eye to eye with him, I felt the
natural desire to learn from him something about his origin and
the destination of his journey. Moreover, there was in his look
and in the truly noble features of his face such a strong
attraction that it was impossible for me to keep my eyes off
him. That he was from the Orient, I recognized easily by his
appearance. And since I had once learned the Arabic language
years ago, I dared to use this language and the solemn greeting
‘Salem aleikum!’, that is: Peace be with you!”
And in this tongue the stranger exceedingly kindly and
sweetly gave this beautiful blessing back to me and added:
“When the sun sets for the third time, a man will appear in this
place who is looking for me. Call him your guest!”
And when I agreed to this, moved by a peculiar emotion,
and added the question of where I should direct the newcomer,
he only answered:
“To the big house at the end of the forest.”
With that he bowed his head with a beautiful gesture and
went to the forest, from which Nenin had fetched her
brushwood. But no sooner had the first bushes covered him,
when it occurred to me that there could be many of them,
especially if locks are also included. And then I ran after him,
in order to get more details out of him. But no matter how I
searched and called, I could find no trace of him. Certainly he
had gone his way with quicker steps than I had suspected, and
disappeared from my sight. I also confess that this experience
had upset me so much that I can no longer say today how long
I stood in thought while he walked away from me. This makes
it easy to explain his disappearance without the assumption of a
supernatural event.
After these words, silence descended upon us, and we sat
for a long time, each occupied with his own thoughts. That
which I would have liked to say, I had to keep to myself.
Nothing could have moved me to reveal to another, even if he
might be as worthy and as trustworthy as this priest, the dark
and hidden ways of my life. And that is what I would have had
to explain to him, even casually, my inexplicable connection to
Ewli. But was there an explanation at all? Was it not rather that
by the last appearance of the miracle man everything had only
become more confused and unclear?
Unless, and this thought seized me with penetrating force,
that the friend of my childhood, now that old age had taken me
in its weary arms, considered that the time had come to reveal
himself to me. Then, of course the appearance at the baker’s,
the broken wagon wheel, the Arabic-speaking priest were clear,
even if unusual signposts to that place, to the “great house”,
where at last the inexplicable and incomprehensible things in
my life would find an explanation of some kind.
“Well – in any case, it is good not to forget the arts
practiced in younger years,” my host interrupted my thoughts.
“And so I am glad that for once in this life I have unexpectedly
and strangely used my knowledge of Arabic!
“I wish, reverend Herr, that I had been in your place, and
skilled in the same language, to be able to speak with Ewli.”
Hastily, the clergyman put the pipe down on the table and
looked me in the face with an almost frightened look and
repeated:
“Ewli? How do you come up with that word?”
I saw that now, after all, I had to share somewhat of the
role that the man from the East had played in my life, and I told
him in short words about the incident in my earliest childhood,
with the little wax man under the glass and the collapsing
ceiling above my shell bed, and how the figurine disappeared
in this accident and was never found and how he was always
called “The Oriental or Ewli” without my knowing what this
last word meant.
The priest drummed his fingers on the table, shook his
head several times as if to deny a thought that was trying to
emerge, and at last he only managed to utter only one word:
“Mysterium!”
“Whether the word Ewli implies a name or a
characteristic I do not know. It comes from my grandfather,
who brought the rarity back from the lakeside city of Venice
and held it in high esteem. When I was a child, there was –“
With great, hitherto unseen vivacity, my host interrupted
me:
“So listen then, Baron Dronte, how divine providence
often intervenes in human life and how, according to the will of
the Most High, people must find each other and have to
communicate with each other, that no coincidence, as it is
called, could ever bring to light. Today, when I made the
necessary arrangements for your reception, I was called to a
dying man, named Milan Bogdan, a very elderly cottager, who
had been an Austrian soldier and who had been given his
severance pay and had come here many years ago with this and
a few guilders he had saved. He stayed, got married and had a
small sprite which he had obtained, perhaps from the eternal
gardens of God. This old Croatian imperial soldier was a good
and righteous man and, moreover, a good Catholic Christian, in
whom it was my pleasure to visit not only for the sake of his
faith, but also for his diligence and his peaceableness. He has
been lying for a long time, and as often as the barber has
drained the water from him, it rises to his heart again and
brings danger of death. That’s why Bogdan had already
received the last sacraments two days ago with much devotion.
And so I was surprised that he hurriedly asked for me today.
But I went to him without hesitation, and when I saw that he
had sent his old wife and his two sons out of the room I said
that this was not necessary, since he had a clean account with
the good Lord and that a new confession was certainly not
necessary. But he fiercely insisted on his will, and so they left
him alone with me, and I sat down at his bedside.
“What else is troubling you, dear son?” I asked.
“Nothing is distressing me – nothing, reverend,” he said
with a heavy heart. “My sins are forgiven. And yet I cannot
sleep quietly in God’s bosom until a pious and learned man
explains to me an event that happened to me when I was a
soldier and which I think about now more than ever.”
So I challenged him to talk unabashedly, and then he
explained something to me, which I share with you, Baron
Dronte, as something that is not under the seal of confession
and, above all, a strange fact, especially for you.
Bogdan was thus abducted as a young infantryman in a
battalion on the Turkish border during a skirmish on the Sow,
as the river flowing into the Danube is called, by wild
Bashibozuks. In Turkish captivity he had to do hard work in a
treadmill that irrigated the fields of a mountain. Apart from the
work, he was not badly off, and was allowed to move freely in
the small town of his imprisonment. Thus he met a young Turk
of great beauty, but with a mark between his eyebrows, who
took very kindly care of the poor prisoner and did him a lot of
good without any reward. But as it often happens in the
unsanitary regions there, Bogdan came down with the heavy
misery or blood dysentery so that he became more miserable
and weaker and could no longer eat any food. The young Turk
cared for him faithfully and showed a lot of sorrow, often
asking Bogdan whether he could be allowed to grant him a
wish. And when it came to the last and Bogdan could hardly
speak any more for weakness, he smiled and said to the Turk:
“As bad as I am, brother, I could be helped if I could
drink from the colored glass that stands on my mother’s table,
from the plum brandy which is in our cellar in Zagreb.”
Then the Turk went out the door. Bogdan became weaker
and weaker, and he gave his soul to God. When not an hour
had passed, the Turk entered the door again and carried in his
hand the glass painted with colorful flowers which Bogdan’s
mother had filled with strong plum brandy and held it to the
lips of the sick man. He drank and fell into a deep sleep. When
he awoke, he asked for his savior. But no one seemed to know
anything about him. In his dilemma he called Hodja, the
Mohammedan priest, and told him what had happened to him
and how strange it was that the Turk had traveled so many
miles there and back in an hour. Then Hodja said:
“Know that your friend was an Ewli. One who has died
and came back. Good to you, that you have a guide through the
kingdom of Death!”
Bogdan recovered and in an exchange of prisoners came
back to his homeland. And there his mother told him that on
the day of his recovery, a stranger knocked on her door and
asked for the colored glass and brandy. And without
understanding she gave him both, and after a short time there
was another knock at the window, the stranger stood and
pushed the empty glass back to her and spoke:
“Rejoice, mother, your son returns!”
And so it happened. – This, Baron Dronte, is what the
dying soldier told me this afternoon and asked me if it was a
sin that in the hour of his death he had thought so much on
Ewli, his face and the red mark between his eyebrows.
I replied that he should rather turn his thoughts to the
Lord Jesus. He was doing this with all his might, was Bogdan’s
answer, but the face of the Lord Jesus in his thoughts without
his intervention took on the features of Ewli. I saw that the
poor man was in agony of conscience, and yet he could not
master this image. I comforted him and said that it was up to
the Lord and Savior alone to decide in which form he would
show himself to him. Then Bogdan smiled and said that it was
now easy for him to go and that nothing could rob him of the
hope of a further life.