The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel
I walked around the building. No, it had no second exit. Nowhere. I looked once more at the flat, red bricks of the entrance, hollowed out by feet, over which Sennon had stepped for the last time. In the afternoon I took an interpreter with me, a young and clever Spaniard, and went to see the Sheikh of the Halveti, Achmed. I was immediately admitted and had a drink of coffee with him and a young serious-looking dervish, on a colorful tray in a bright room. The Spaniard told the Sheikh what I said to him. No, the Sotnie (Herr) had come for nothing. It was well known that a soldier of Austria entered the Tekkeh and never came out again. However, this must be a mistake, because the Tekkeh has only one door. Yes, fine. But how to explain the thing? Who was the dervish in the brown robe, with the turban of the Halveti and the amber necklace? Oh, if only I had known the life of Melchior Dronte! If I had known about Isa Bektschi! But at that time the sheets with Vorauf’s transcription were lying in my house thousands and thousands of miles away from Schipnie, on the country road with the poplar trees, sealed and wrapped, not even visible to the moon when it looked through the window of my room at night. Yes, the dervish? It had been none of them. Moreover, the door of the Tekkeh was always locked- with three old locks, each of which weighed close to two pounds; very old locks from the days of the Sultans. But some explanation – must there be some explanation? How did Vorauf and the monk get through the locked door? The sheikh with the white beard and the young dervish looked at each other, glanced at me and the interpreter with a look of polite disdain; yes – I was used to such looks, since I had gotten to know Mohammedans, and then they spoke quickly and quietly with each other. I understood only the words “syrr” and “Dejishtirme!” The old man bowed to me. He was very sorry that he was not able to help me. Unfortunately nothing more was known. No, unfortunately, nothing is known, agreed the dervish. The interpreter translated. We were looked at amiably and inquiringly. The eyes said, “May we now ask to be alone again, my curious Herrn?” I stood up. There was nothing more to be learned. I could see that. The dervishes were very polite. The sheikh touched the carpet with his hand before he brought it to his forehead and mouth. “What were they talking about?” I asked the Spaniard as we stood in the blinding sunlight under the cypress trees and listened to the laughter and gurgling of the wild pigeons above us. The interpreter shrugged sheepishly. “They not talk like Shiptar, Albanian, Sotnie,” he said. “They speak very softly. I did not understand. It was Osmanli, turc, mon capitaine, you understand – -.” “What do the words ‘syrr’ and ‘Dejischtirme,’ mean?” I asked. I had remembered them well from memory. The interpreter shook his head, then he said: ” ‘Syrr!’ It is secret, yes, and ‘Dejischtirme’, says in German: an exchange.” “Yes, and what does it mean?” “Le mystere – the secret of the transformation–a transformation in a living body -. vous comprenez?” “Fairy tale! Fairy tale!” Yes, here time had stopped. In the coffeehouses, and when it got dark, the Turks only went out in twos and threes, so afraid were they of the jinns, the Afrits and the Gulen. But I, Doctor Kaspar Hedrich – — Transformation. So the good Sennon Vorauf. What had he said? What did it say in Riemei’s letter? “I am called!” Then, in my distress, I went once again to the Headquarters. “Cheeky swindle!” shouted Herr Lt. Switschko. “The fellow deserted. The Turks were in on it with him. I have seen it myself, how they bowed down to the ground before him, and the women came to him with sick children. I should not have tolerated the story from the beginning. Would you like to come with me to the Menashe, Herr Regimental Surgeon?” No, I did not go. I also didn’t want to see Riemeis and Corporal Maierl. I was very sad. Oh, these precious leaves in front of me! Why did these leaves have to fall into my hand so late? But he had wanted it that way, Sennon, the – yes, the Ewli. I am sitting here all alone, and it is midnight. All that is long gone, life is short, and what I have missed will not return. What wanderings are in store for me, what paths? “Syrr,” sighs the wind in the poplars. “Syrr!”
The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel
This was all the easier for me because many of our classmates thought that Sennon, for all his affection, was a little disturbed. But nevertheless, they all liked him, and I know of no instance of anyone teasing him, arguing with him, or holding his peculiarities against him, as children are wont to do. Even the crudest of us knew that he deserved love and consideration, for he was the kindest and most helpful person even in his youth. Every occasion to do good to others was welcome to him. Even if it was only the small sorrow about a bad grade that he had received – Sennon would not rest until he had made the afflicted person cheerful again with his loving consolation. I myself was very attached to him, and when he rebuked me in his gentle way, it had more effect on me than if it had come from my own good father. Yes, now in this spring midnight, when the wind passes over my roof and invisible feet seem to walk along the street, ever onward, toward an unreachable goal, everything that was lost in the whirlpool of the young years and in the lost, terrible, unfruitful time of this insane war sinks to the bottom of the soul. I remembered the summer day when, to my amazement, I saw the songbirds in the meadow on the head and shoulders of the resting Sennon and a little weasel was sniffing at his hands. A weasel! The shyest of all animals! And how everything disappeared when I stepped up to him. I also remember how Sennon helped a sick drunkard, the Pomeranian-Marie, who, seized by severe nausea, fell to the floor with a blue face. He picked her up, and stroked her forehead softly with his hand, whereupon she smiled at him and continued on her way, completely recovered. Like I was there, when blood was spurting out of a sickle cut and it stopped when he stepped up to it, and how the flames on the roof of the carpenter’s roof shrank, twitched and went out, as Sennon appeared and reached out his hand. I saw it with my own eyes. How could I have held all this in such low regard that I forgot it? How sorry, how unspeakably sorry I am for the years I spent so dully beside him. I would give all my exact science to do it over. No, I cannot approach the matter with emotional regret. I was foolish – like all young people. When I came home for vacations, I found that contact with the worker in Deier and Frisch’s optical workshop was not appropriate. I preferred to go with Herr Baron Anclever from the District Headquarters and the dragoon lieutenant Herr Leritsch. I cannot change it. It was like that. But then I came to my senses. Herr Professor Schedler’s lectures about psychic phenomena were the ones that pulled me out of the silly life I had fallen into. I began to look into the depths, into the twilight abyss, diving into which held a greater incentive than chasing after little dancers, drinking sparkling wine and conferring with morons about neck ties, pants cuts, and race reports. I threw them out of my inner life, as one removes useless junk from a room in which one wants to settle into. But I also forgot about Sennon. Oh, what have I lost! I put my cheek on the last leaf of writing on which his hand rested in farewell. I call his name and look at the black window panes in the nonsensical hope that his dear, serious and yet so joyful face may appear behind the glass instead of the darkness outside. Everything that I now long for so unspeakably, was close to me, so close! I only had to reach out my hand, just to ask. Nobody gives me an answer now, and all my knowledge fails me. Or shall I console myself with the vague excuse that Sennon Vorauf had a so-called “split consciousness” and that the Ewli of Melchior Dronte could be nothing else than an allegorical revival of the sub consciousness, that became the second ego of Vorauf? No, I can’t reassure myself with the manual language of science. For I am mistaken about all of it — When I came to Albania, occupied by us, in the course of the war and went from Lesch to Tirana, in order to establish a home in that cool city, with its ice-cold, shooting mountain waters at the foot of the immense mountain wall of the Berat, for my poor malaria convalescents, I saw Sennon Vorauf for the last time. It was exactly that day that a searchlight crew had just returned from Durazzo via the Shjak bazar. Among the crew members that were searching for their quarters I recognized Sennon. I immediately approached him and spoke to him. His smile passed over me like sunshine from the land of youth. He was tanned and erect, but otherwise looked completely unchanged. I did not notice a single wrinkle in his masculine, even face. This smoothness seemed very strange and unusual to me. For in the faces of all the others who had to wage war in this horrible country, showed misery, hunger, struggles and horrors of all kinds, and everyone looked tired and aged. We greeted each other warmly and talked of old days. But time was short. I had meetings and many worries about the barracks, for the construction of which everything that was necessary was missing. Our ships were torpedoed; nothing could be brought in by land. Everything had to be brought in from Lovcen, floated across Lake Scutari, and then from Scutari brought overland in indescribable ways. Every little thing. And boards were no small matter. I negotiated with people whose brains were made up of regulations and fee schedules. It was bleak; I felt like I was covered in paste and old pulp dust. All this disturbed me. I promised Sennon I would see him soon. He smiled and shook my hand. Oh, he knew so surely—-! In the afternoon a man from his department, Herr Leopold Riemeis, came to me and had himself examined. He had survived the Papatatschi fever but was still very weak. I involuntarily asked him about his comrade Herr Sennon Vorauf. His face was radiant. Yes, Herr Sennon Vorauf! He had saved his life. A colleague, I thought and smiled. He had naturally of course also, as I did at the time, taken a fever dream for truth. But I was curious, gave Riemeis a cigarette and let him tell the story. Riemeis was a Styrian, a farmer’s son. Sluggish in expression, but one understood him quite well. It had happened like this: In a small town, in Kakaritschi, he, Riemeis, had been struck down by fever. But it was already hellish. He was burned alive, his skin was full of ulcers, and on other days he would have liked to crawl into the campfire because of chills. And there was no medicine left. The senior physician they had with them shook his head. In eight days Riemeis was a skinned skeleton, and not even quinine was left, it had long since been eaten up. “Go, people!” The senior physician addressed the platoon. “If any of you has quinine with you, he should give it to Riemeis, maybe the fever will go down, or we’ll have to bury him in a few days.” They would have gladly given it away, but if there is none left, there is none left. My God, and there were already crosses on all the roads of the cursed land, under which our poor soldiers lay – in the foreign, poisoned earth. “There you go, Riemeis -” said the doctor and patted him on the shoulder. “There’s nothing that can be done.” And left. Riemeis had a burning head that day, but he understood the doctor quite well, “There’s just nothing that can be done.” Sennon was sitting next to Riemeis’ bed. It was at night. “Sennon, a water, I beg you!” moaned the sick man. But Sennon gave no answer. He sat with his eyes wide open and did not hear. Riemeis looked at him fearfully. And then it happened. Something glittering fell from the forehead of Sennon and hit the clay floor. And then Sennon moved, looked around, smiled at his comrade, bent down and picked up a round bottle, in which were small, white tablets. Quinine tablets. A lot of them. From the depot in Cattaro. Our peasants are strange. They didn’t say anything to the doctor, but they put their heads together and whispered. “My grandfather told -“. They did not question Sennon about it. They were shy. But they surrounded him with love and reverence, took everything from him, did all the work for him, and listened to his every word. And they understood well that it was precisely on his heart that all the suffering of the poor lay, who were driven into this killing, without even being considered worthy of questioning. This is not an accusation. Our country was in danger. Even those in power over there did not ask anyone. How else could they have waged war? How could they take revenge on us because we were more efficient and industrious? But why do I speak of these things! It will take a long time until mankind will be able to judge justly again. So Sennon Vorauf. He bore the woe of the earth, all the misery of countless people, and his heart wept day and night. Even though he smiled. They understood well, his comrades, and it would not have been advisable for anyone to approach Vorauf. Not even a general. The people had gone wild through their terrible handiwork. But there was no opportunity. Never has there been a more well-behaved, more dutiful man than Vorauf, but they all thought that shooting at people – no, no one could have made him do that. Riemeis said. Oh, I had to go and mark out the ground for the barracks. I asked Riemeis to give Sennon my best regards. I would come tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow! Already that evening I had to leave for Elbassan. Then came the letter from Riemeis to me and a copy of the desertion notice. But fourteen days passed before I could leave for Tirana. A full fourteen days. I hoped that Vorauf would have been found after all. First I visited the commander of Vorauf’s department, who had filed the complaint, Herr Lieutenant Wenceslas Switschko. I found a fat, limited, complacent man with commissarial views, for whom the case was clear. Vorauf, a so- called “intelligent idiot”, had deserted, and the Tekkeh he had disappeared into certainly had a second exit. One already knows the hoax. But, woe betide if he were brought in! Well, I gave up and went to the people. Riemeis received me with tears in his eyes. Corporal Maierl, too, a good-natured giant, a blacksmith by trade, had to swallow a few times before he could speak. They recounted essentially what was written in Riemei’s letter to me. We went to the Tekkeh of the Halveti dervishes. Slate-blue doves cooed in the ancient cypresses. A rustling stream of narrow water rushed past the wooden house and the snow covered crests of the Berat Mountains shone snow-white high above the pink blossoming almond trees and soft green cork oaks. In the open vestibule of the Tekkeh stood large coffins with gabled roofs, covered with emerald green cloths. On each of them lay the turban of the person who had been laid to rest.
The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel
I suddenly saw differently, more unclearly, with physical eyes. My mother was standing in front of me, shaking my arm violently and shouting. “For God’s sake! Child, wake up! Wake up!” I was sitting on the stove bench, so terribly frightened and breathless that my heart almost stopped. My mother told me then that she had seen me looking up at random with open, unmoving eyes. She had asked me what was wrong with me, and when I did not answer, she went to me worriedly. But despite the initial gentle touching and then more and more violent shaking, I sat there as if completely dead, without breath or any other sign of life, until I finally to her unspeakable joy came out of the deep faint and back to my senses. After half an hour, however, our neighbor, the doctor, came to thank me for having saved Kaspar’s life with so much courage and determination. Kaspar had come home wet and completely frozen to death and had told that he had fallen in on the arm of the river and had been close to death from exhaustion. In his fear he had without thinking that this must be in vain, called my name several times. There I was, who had probably returned to my usual favorite place, and suddenly stepped out of the bank of willows, went straight to him, and with a jerk of incomprehensible strength pulled him from the wet and cold grave and thus saved him. But when he wanted to thank me, I was suddenly no longer there and despite all calling and searching remained untraceable. And then Kaspar, completely frozen and stiff, ran home, where he, filled with hot tea, was lying under three feather bed covers and sweating. It now came to a friendly meeting that ended with mutual astonishment on both sides, friendly contradiction between my mother and doctor Hedrich, with my mother pointing out that she had not left the room for a moment, whereas the doctor pointed out the specific manner in which Kaspar had recounted his experience. But when my mother, continuing her description, spoke of the inexplicable condition into which I had, however, fallen at the time when the accident happened, the doctor looked at me with a peculiar look and said: “Well, well, were you in the end -? But no! Kaspar may have brought home a little fever, and there the boundaries between dream and experience disappear!” With that, after a friendly goodbye, he went out of the parlor. But then he poked his head once more through the door, looked at me and said: “Nevertheless, I thank you, Sennon, and ask you from the bottom of my heart to continue to watch over my Kaspar, for you seem to me a good watchman, a Bektschi, as the Turks say!” This word, the meaning of which was not obvious to me at the time, nevertheless put me in the most violent excitement, and my mother, who must have probably attributed this to the rising fever, avoided telling my father, who was returning home, about the incident, probably mainly in order to spare me questions and thus to spare me new aggravations. It was only some time after this mysterious event that she told me that a certain apparition on my body at that time had filled her with indescribable horror. The narrow scar, which I had as a congenital birthmark between the eyebrows, just above the root of my nose, had been visible to her during the unconsciousness from which she awakened me by force, when a flickering blue light that looked like the sparks that Kaspar and I let jump out of a Leyden jar, and this glow went out instantly, when she shook me hard, but flickered up again more weakly after I awoke to life, and then gradually faded away. It seemed to her, she said to me, as if that with the extinguishing of this magical light my death had occurred, and the thought had shot through her that perhaps her frightened intervention had suddenly become fatal to me. Fortunately, I then returned to life. Later, we avoided talking about the experience any further, and I believe that she never spoke of it to my father. But I was so preoccupied with the wonderful ability that had been revealed to me that it was many nights before I was free from the recurring dream. Today, on the other hand, I know, since I have become fully aware of everything, I know that during those nights, without full consciousness, but also not completely unconsciously, I left my body and undertook wanderings, the results of which are too unimportant to be worth mentioning here. In any case, the discovery of this power, which I had at my disposal, brought my thoughts on other and bolder paths than before, and it was this that was of greatest use to me on the arduous path to true knowledge. My and Kaspar’s paths soon diverged to the extent that insofar as he continued to attend the Gymnasium, while I, at my father’s request, went to the optic workshop. Because my parents were poor and reckoned that I, too, would gradually contribute to the household with love. I was in agreement with their plan and left secondary school without a moment’s hesitation. The fine, great skill and later not insignificant mathematical knowledge gave me great pleasure. Soon I had the opportunity during free hours to immerse myself in the wonderful world of the microscope, and under the guidance of my father, whose scientific education, despite his modesty, I began to make all kinds of preparations, I learned how to color almost invisible cell nuclei and make them clearly visible, and studied the enigmatic behavior of the tiniest living creatures, with algae, mosses and molds, and daily discovered new, wonderful relationships, which perhaps would have escaped the attention of real scholars, as a result of their methodical, strictly goal-oriented way of working. Thus I was happy in my work and in the security of my domestic life as only a human being could be. Really there were little annoyances with young people of my age who did not want to understand or even considered it disrespectful that I preferred to stay away from their pleasures and above all showed no desire for the company of girls, which almost completely dominated the lives of my comrades. However, I always succeeded in making them understand in a friendly manner that the work on my education was above all else and that the time would probably come later for me too when I could be accepted into their carefree circle with pleasure. Gradually I got the reputation of being a strange and solitary person but I managed to get people to not care much about me and let me go my own way. My parents, especially my father, would certainly have preferred it if I had not separated myself too much from my comrades. But nevertheless they left me a free hand in such matters and surrounded me with unchanged and tender love. I suffered from the fact that I had to be different by nature from my companions of the same age. But it was precisely in those years that the insight into the wild adventures of my expired life, as Melchior Dronte became perfectly clear to me, and the terrible knowledge about things of eternity worked so powerfully on me that I urgently needed the solitude, in order to cope with the impressions that weighed heavy on me. How I would have liked to have had some person with whom I could have talked about the survival of consciousness after the destruction of the body! It would have been a great relief for me to be understood in the crushing abundance of contrary views. But with whom would I have been able to share such unheard-of experiences, perhaps to be attributed to a diseased imagination, between sleep and waking, death and life? Perhaps, my mother, insofar as the horror of hearing these things would have allowed her, with the unfathomable foreboding of women to have come closer to me emotionally. But words would have been in vain here, too. So I remained alone for myself and had to endure the dark agony, of experiencing once more the events of a past time, and go so deeply into the night, until everything appeared in the smallest details as the sharpest memory and gradually blended into the overall picture that gradually emerged. How could I have liked the women and girls of the city whom I knew, since there was only one thing that disturbed the peace of my soul: the longing for that woman who was deceptively always disappearing in the double figure of Aglaja and Zephyrine, and also the only one that could bring fulfillment to my present life? And the only punishment that could punish me for the transgressions of Melchior Dronte, or for my own transgressions, was the tormenting search, the burning desire for the face I loved above all else, the brief reunion and the recent slipping away of this being, to whom I was drawn with frantic longing. On my eighteenth birthday this happened to me: I had, yielding to long insistence, arranged a Sunday excursion, with two friends, to which Kaspar also belonged, which made a small train journey necessary. We stood at the station in the early morning of that day, to await the preparations of the local train, consisting of smaller and older cars, when, with a thunderous pounding, a long-distance train passed through the station at a moderate speed. I was standing at the very front of the ramp and could see the faces looking out of the broad window frames of the distinguished train. Most of them were strangers who had come from far away and were heading for the large port city on the still distant seacoast, in order to take ships to foreign parts of the world, especially to the United States. Suddenly, it was as if a bright glow appeared and turned everything around me into an almost unbearable light. In a white dress, pale and beautiful, as I had seen her the previous night under the flickering of candles in the coffin, Aglaja stood in the window of a passing car. I recognized her immediately. Golden red curls blew in the wind around her forehead, her beautiful gray eyes were fixed on me with sweet terror, and the small hand that rested on the wooden bar of the lowered window, suddenly loosened itself and pressed upon the heart beneath the young breast. Oh, I saw that she was no different from me, that she deeply felt that we still had to pass by each other without being able to hold on to each other, that we were not yet permitted to unite into one blessed being, the divine consisting of the soul of man and woman. Certainly she only felt what I knew. But this feeling of the woman corresponded to the knowledge of the man and was as valuable and in this case certainly as painful. It was only a short, agonizing moment, when I was allowed to see with bodily eyes what once, measured against eternity, was no less fleeting and transient, and had been close. And it became clear to me that my way to perfection was still quite far and that many impure things would have to fall away before I could enter eternal peace as a perfected one. I was only a returned one.
The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel
“I wanted to protect the defenseless woman,” I said, looking him in the eye. He shook his head reluctantly. There was a murmur. “Are you a friend of freedom?” I thought for a moment and then answered the question with a “yes.” “Was it known to you that citizen Lamballe had fled to England and returned from there to Paris?” “Yes.” “In that case, it was reasonable to assume that there was valuable information about her co-conspirators located here that could be obtained. Not so?” I was silent. He looked at me again with a quiet, disapproving head movement and with a tongue-lashing spoke slowly and clearly, emphasizing each word: “I know what you are trying to say, Citizen Dronte. In your zeal to serve the republic and prevent a premature and early end of the traitor, you have sought to use violence to prevent the execution of the sentence. However, you fared badly enough. Is that so? Give me answer!” He nodded an almost imperceptible “yes” and waited. I felt briefly and strongly the lure to return to freedom from the horror of this justice. But a powerful, insurmountable feeling inside me made the friendly images of imminent freedom quickly fade away. I realized, like a holy necessity, that I had to be hard and merciless against myself, otherwise I should be thrown back into levels from which I had ascended and not allowed to higher ones whose aura I had attained. “I have tried to save the princess on the basis of feelings of a personal nature!” The chairman heaved a sigh of annoyance, swayed his head, drummed on the table and raised his eyes to the ceiling. The committee members looked at me bored, and in the auditorium a yawning voice said: “These are quibbles, Jeannot – Do you understand any of it?” “In a nutshell: you had no intention of protecting the woman as such, but rather to render a service to the Republic. We have no time, Citizen Dronte, and I hope that your sincere admission of this fact will settle the case!” A cold breath passed over my face. The scales stood: a lie had to sink the bowl — “I did not think of the Republic in my deed!” Now it was spoken. Great unrest arose. Even the drowsiest among the listeners understood, awakened to irritated attention. The face of the chairman turned red with anger. He threw his head back so that his hair flew and hissed at me: “You dare tell me that?” “It is the truth,” I replied. It was clear to me that the grateful magister must have had his hand in this, and it saddened me that his not without danger effort had now been in vain. But I had to follow the path that my innermost feeling was the right one, to go to the end, regardless of the feelings that arise from the body’s instinct for self-preservation. The behavior of the chairman changed immediately. A deep vertical wrinkle appeared between his eyebrows, and he bit his lips angrily before continuing the interrogation. “You are a stranger. For what purpose did you come to Paris?” “To become acquainted with the Revolution and its aims- .” “With friendly or hostile intent?” “I did not come with hostile intentions.” “You are a baron. – How can an aristocrat’s opinion of the Revolution be otherwise than hostile?” suddenly the bilious committee member intervened. “Does such a person love the poor people -?” growled the one with the stained red cap. “How?” he turned to me. “I love all the people.” “These are sayings such as every priest has in his pocket who stands before the tribunal,” the judge snapped at me and assumed a frowning pose with a lurking look at me. “You have thus joined the brave ones who have gone the Lamballe way, not in the interest of the state, but in order to protect the queen’s intimate for some other dark motive.” “Don’t make such long stories!” grumbled someone behind me. “He’s one of the whore’s lovers, nothing else!” Shrill whistles sounded. Wild stomping of feet revealed that the people wanted an end. The skinny man talked to the chairman. The latter shrugged and turned to the other committee member, who nodded his head vigorously, raised his right hand and dropped it with the edge on the table. It was clearly understandable what he meant by this. The chairman stood up, stretched out his right hand toward me like a king of the theater, while the left hand rested on his heart, and spoke with his voice low and rolling the R’s: “Citizen Dronte is guilty of treason against the Republic!” Thunderous clapping of hands resounded. I sat down, completely calm and certain of the end. Then the man in the dark blue, gold-embroidered jacket slowly turned his stern and stony face toward me, smiled and said very loudly and audibly: “Allow me, Baron, to express to you my sincere esteem!” Laughter and jeering followed his words. An apple case flew past my head and remained in front of the judge’s table. The theatrical chairman slammed his fist on the table and shouted, “Quiet!” Gradually, the scolding, laughing and whistling ceased. “Citizen Carmignac!” rang out the complacent voice. The man in the blue jacket stood up. “I am Philipp Anton Maria Marquis of Carmignac, Pair of France, Privy Councillor of His Majesty the King, Chairman of the Breton Chamber of Nobility, Commander of the Order of Louis —“ The hall cheered. This tall man and his proud manner promised a spectacle. The emphasis on his rank even evoked a certain respect. “He looks well, the marquis,” someone said. “But his neck is as thin as that of Lamballe’s lover,” laughed in response. “Curses! And the thing is settled.” The marquis took a pinch from his little gold pear and carefully patted his brocade vest with a small lace cloth to clean off the tobacco dust. “You are accused of -,” began the presiding chairman. “Above all,” said the nobleman with inimitable haughtiness, “I wish to make the declaration that the privileges to which I am entitled have been violated with unlawful violence and I was brought here by unlawfully armed persons. Now, as to this court I note that it is not made up of royal courtiers, but of a bad actor, a master carpenter and a runaway servant of the church, “and therefore offers no cause for further consideration.” After these words the marquis sat down, contemptuously staring into the air. For a few seconds there remained silence. The stupefaction was general. But then arose such a thunderous noise, such a roar of anger that the soldiers present were hardly able to hold back the frenzied crowd. Meanwhile, the presiding judge stood up. One saw him waving his hands urgently to call for silence. It took long enough for him to make himself understood. He directed an angry, scornful look at the count, who looked past him equanimously. “Citizen Carmignac, I demand that you stand up before I have to use violence and give the tribunal of the people the homage it deserves.” The marquis shrugged his shoulders and nonchalantly stood up on his feet. “I do not wish to get dirt stains on my jacket,” he said. “For this I rise.” The actor sat down and pushed his chin forward. “If I understand you correctly, Citizen Carmignac, you fell asleep before the revolution and still haven’t awakened, eh?” The mocked man made no reply. Some people in the hall laughed. “You have made an attempt to bribe the turnkey of the Temple to give Citizen Capet, who is kept there, information on the successes of the emigrants at the Austrian and the Prussian court, by means of a small piece of paper concealed in a gold case, which was hidden in one of six lemons. Is it this case?” The hand of the judge was holding a tiny gold case of elongated shape. The marquis measured it under half-closed lids. “Since you are playing court here, you will have to go to the trouble of proving your accusations.” The displeasure in the room grew noticeably. “He shall be embraced by Samson’s coquette!” roared the voice of one of the angriest screamers. The courtiers bowed their heads to each other, whispered, nodded, the chairman stood up and without any movement pronounced his “guilty”. The court rose. Four soldiers stepped in to us and told us to stand up. It was fairly quiet as we were led out of the hall. The people were satisfied. When we stepped out of the door, where a new troop of anxious, well-guarded people of both sexes were waiting to be interrogated, I felt something angular in my right palm, like a piece of folded paper, and closed my fingers tightly around it. We were going a different way than the one that had brought us here from the prison, under an open portcullis, and finally found ourselves in a spacious, dry and bright cellar. It was full of people.
The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel
Only when complete silence had fallen in the background he leaned back in his armchair, so that the blue-white-red sash wrapped around his body tightened, took a sheet of paper from the table, as if playing, and said with a singing and theatrical voice: “Citizen Anastasia Beaujonin!” Loud murmuring, throat clearing and spitting out behind us betrayed the now beginning tension of the audience. The young woman next to me had let out a small scream at the mention of her name. She stood up, burst into a new torrent of tears and pressed a tiny handkerchief to her eyes. I looked at her pityingly. Her pretty dress, pink and blue flowered, was badly wrinkled and disfigured. Several times she ran with her hand, smoothing out the wrinkles. Surely the appearance of her person preoccupied her just as much as the concern about the outcome of a trial that knew neither witnesses nor in its deliberate brevity offered little hope. The chairman assumed a significant posture, made a beautiful gesture with his right hand, and spoke with an emphasis as if he wanted to declaim: “Pay attention to what I say, Citizen Beaujonin! Think about your answers, because our time is short. It does not belong to us, but to the nation. You are accused of keeping Baron Hautecorne hidden in the attic of your house for three days although you must have known that he belonged among the proscribed. What do you have to reply?” “Oh, my God,” the woman stammered. “I loved him so much — -“ The judge smiled. From behind one heard a coarse woman’s voice: “She is brave, the little one, and speaks as a woman should speak.” “Silence, Mother Flanche!” shouted the judge. “You must not make any remarks here!” “Don’t break anything, my sweet boy!” it came back. “I have known you since you were a Temple singer.” The chairman was about to start up, but then only made a dismissive gesture with his hand and said, turning to the young woman, “So?” She swallowed a few times and directed her shy, fearful gaze on me for a moment, as if she were trying to get courage from me. This seemed to annoy the judge, because he took a petition and knocked violently on the table with it. “And why did you love citizen Hautecorne so much?” he asked mockingly, showing his white teeth. “Because he was so beautiful-almost as beautiful as you!” She said softly, looking at him with a full gaze. A storm of applause, mixed with shouts, laughter and the trampling of feet roared through the hall. Even the committee members smiled sourly, and the chairman stroked back a curl of hair that had fallen across his forehead with a smug movement. “Let the little girl go – -,” cried one. “She needs her head to give it to you-,” they laughed. “Well said, Rodolphe.” “She knows how you men must be treated.” When silence had returned, the Judge said in a gentle voice: “Madame, I have reason to believe that you were unaware of the danger of this enemy of the Republic when your assistance was rendered?” “Oh – no,” sobbed the accused, quickly grasping her advantage. “I love the Republic -. I would have never –“ “Did he at least do his thing well, your baron?” roared one of the audience. The judge struck the butt of the file angrily. “Hey, now, Perrin, Verrou, and Mastiche, see who’s trying to make my acquaintance back there!” he shouted, and at once three soldiers stumbled into the background, their heavy rifles in their arms. Immediately there was silence. The judge leaned toward the committee members. They whispered and nodded to him. “Madame,” then said the presiding judge, “I will dare to set you at liberty for the time being. But take care!” “Oh -” the woman cried out and laughed all over her face. “Wait Madame. I want to take it upon myself. I have a responsibility to answer to the nation. You see, the people are mild and chivalrous to women, if that is possible. Before you leave you will have the goodness to write your future address on a piece of paper and hand it to me!” “Oh, you damned truffle pig,” laughed one of them. The soldiers spoke fiercely at him. “I’ll say no more,” he assured them. “Let go of my paws!” Silence fell again. The little girl smiled gracefully, pattered on her high heels to the tribune table and scribbled a few words on a piece of paper, which the judge held out to her, read and pocketed. Suppressed laughter in the auditorium accompanied this action. “You may go, Madame, but you will remain at the Tribunal’s disposal!” The woman stopped, looked sheepishly and uncertainly at the judges and then at the laughing spectators, turned suddenly and ran quickly, looking neither to the right nor to the left, right through the middle of the dumbfounded looking soldiers and out of the room. Immediately, the chairman assumed a dreadful official face, rustled with paper and then said briefly and sharply: “Citizen Melchior Dronte!” I stood up. Everything in me was calm, all fear disappeared. Again, I felt as if I were now contemplating a fate, whose further development was completely clear to me. Without any hostility I looked at the vain man who had set himself as a judge over me. His gaze immediately met mine and passed me by. In order to hide this weakness, he took his eyes off me and taking some sheets from the table acted as if he needed a constant insight into the act, which would explain the circumstances of my capture and the charges against me. At last he raised his head and said: “In the case of an expression of the will of the people, which was directed against the rightfully detested citizen Lamballe —“ A many-voiced outburst of rage arose. “Death to the aristocrat! Down with her!” “Shut your mouths!” “She’s already perished!” “Death to Lamballe!” The judge waited patiently for the noise to subside, and then continued: “- The detested citizen Lamballe, from whom important information about a conspiracy in England against the republic were to be hoped for, has been crushed by the holy wrath of the citizens. You, citizen Dronte, have made the attempt to obstruct the people, who were passing and carrying out its judgment. What were your intentions with the way you handled this?”
The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel
“At the risk of disturbing your meditations, I would like to ask you, with your kind permission, a few more serious questions, the answers to which I am very anxious to hear.” With a quiet unwillingness I tried to recognize the facial features of the interrupter. But I could only determine that he was no longer young and that his white and very narrow hands were folded around his knee. “I am glad to be at your service,” I said quietly, so as not to disturb the deepening silence. The unknown man moved with his stool close to me and whispered, as it seemed to me, in some agitation: “All of us, who are here, so far as human calculation is correct, will be sentenced to death in a few days. In the certainty that our life, which would lead anyway to annihilation will now be completed more quickly than nature demands, there is nothing frightening for me. Another question worries me, my lord. What happens, when the path of life, which leads from the brain to the most distant and smallest parts of the body, is cut by the axe?” “Any doctor can tell you,” I answered. “What happens is what we call death.” “What we call it!” hissed the stranger close to me. “But have you never heard that the severed heads are still alive? Do you know that they move the eyes, the hairs stand up straight against the walls of the basket? That they look in the direction of the caller, when their name is called, and form clearly recognizable words with their lips when they are asked? How? Come to me, esteemed one, but not with Doctor Galvani’s frog. Here we are talking about the ability to think, to be conscious– “ “The problem is idle in a higher sense,” I said, “even if we assume that the cut-off head still thinks and tries to act, this lasts only a few seconds as a result of the lack of blood supply. Then the standstill is there.” The man slid his stool even closer. “Good, good,” he said excitedly. “Let’s not bother with that. It is indeed of little importance. What however, is death? Is it the death of the body and the freedom of the soul, or are the body and the soul so much together that one dies with the other? Can you give me a comforting answer?” The last words sounded like a plea. It had become completely quiet in our dungeon, and nothing could be heard but the stomping of the guards in front of the windows and a soft whistling, the breath of the sleepers. “Since you seem to be interested in the opinion of a stranger, I will answer you. Now then, my dear Herr, I believe that after death, the soul is separated from the body and enters the eternal life from which it comes,” I said in a muffled voice. He shook his head vigorously. “The priests of all creeds say such things. But no one can imagine what they are really saying. What do you mean: Return to eternity? Without the artful apparatus of the brain, the soul is incapable of expressing itself. What becomes of it? A vortex of air, a cloud of smoke, transparent ether? Where does it go?” “It goes into a new vessel.” I felt as if someone else was speaking out of me. I had never thought this thought, and yet now it was there as if I had always carried it within me. The other laughed unwillingly. “Into a new vessel, that is, a new body! Here is already the absurdity. The number of departed are so great that not even a thousand of them can find a new home.” I listened to the inner voice. “Whoever can preserve the consciousness of his earthly existence beyond death will be reborn in a human body. That is my belief.” “And if it succeeds – how often would such a return have to take place?” “As often as needed until the soul is purified,” I replied, moved. “And then?” “Then the soul rests consciously in God.” The man struck his knees with his fist. “Always the same old stories! Purified! Pure! And the hatred? The burning greed for revenge, the rage beyond the end, the hope to retaliate a thousand fold?” “These are all impurities that must fall off,” I repeated what my inner voice said. “In the purification of purgatory -“ “Purgatory?” he cried out. “You talk like a Catholic priest.
Where is it supposed to be, this fabulous purgatory?” “Here, it is life. Life in human form or -“ “Or?” “Or in the body of an animal,” I said, and saw in my mind’s eye how tears were streaming from the parrot’s ugly spherical eyes. “But these are theories. I want certainty -“, my late companion insistently demanded. “There is only one certainty: that of feeling.” “Faith, then, my lord.” It was I who spoke thus. “Fairy tales, my lord, fairy tales. I will tell you what is after death: nothing is. And that’s the terrible thing, this extinction of being. To have never been! It is horrible. And I don’t need to believe in it. I know it.” “I’m sorry I couldn’t bring you more comfort,” I said, and was seized with intense pity. “It is my fault,” he defended me politely. “A few days ago I spoke to ‘Abbe Gautier before he was executed. An old man with white hair, a worthy priest. He was struggling to find a hunchbacked quack- who had been convicted of common crimes, and pointed him to the infinite, eternal goodness of God. But the Italian with the hump would have nothing of it and kept shouting: “Niente! – Finito -nulla. Nix immortalita – o Dio, Dio!” “Then why did God call upon him?” I asked. “Out of habit, I guess. That good Abbe Gautier said about the same thing as you. I envy him and you. Sleep well!” He slipped into a dark corner with his stool. I heard him sigh deeply. A bunch of keys jingled. The iron door creaked open. The sleepers groaned unwillingly, turned around, and muttered unintelligible words. A turnkey, carrying a large, dimly burning lantern, entered, and followed by a commissar with a tricolor sash. Carefully he examined the paper that the official had handed to him, and then called out half aloud: “Citizen Dronte!” I stood up and saw the commissar make a violent movement of surprise or of joy. He took the lantern from the overseer’s hand, motioned for him to stop at the door, and came quickly towards me. “I am Commissar Cordeau!,” he said hastily and quietly. It was Magister Hemmetschnur whom I had taken from Krottenriede. “I can only stay for a minute,” he repeated in a monotonous, indifferent voice, while the lantern in his hand clinked and trembled. “I went to all the prisons when I found your name on the list. This is the last one. I know everything. As many of the cursed Aristocrats I have sent to the Orkus. I would go back to being the poor miserable Hemmetschnur on Krottenriede if I could save your noble life, which is so dear to me. Do not move, do not speak. There are spies in every dungeon, even here. I’ve spoken to the chairman of your tribunal. The charge is false. It was not your intention to free Lamballe, but rather as a loyal supporter of the Republic, you wanted to prevent the ignorant people from a rash act through which the discovery and exploration of the dangerous plans in which the princess was involved are now forever impossible to determine. They will believe you. You were providing an important function that will protect you forever. Do not move your head. You must accept. Otherwise, you will be lost. If you have not understood me, clasp your hands together as if pleading. You don’t? So you have understood everything. Now a necessary comedy begins. Do not be frightened of me, who would like to kiss your hand.” And with a loud voice he continued, “So you refuse? You want to know the whereabouts of the escaped traitor? Good. You will stand in front of your judges tomorrow. Don’t forget that the lictors’ bundle also contains a hatchet.” Seemingly angrily, he stomped up and waved at the turnkey. “Citizen Gaspard! You’re liable to me for this dangerous person!” The turnkey shone his light in my face and grinned: “This head is loose! I’m getting the hang of this thing, Citizen Commissar!” Laughing, the magister slapped him on the shoulder, and they both left the dungeon. The door slammed shut with a thud, the key rattled. “Francois!” scolded one in his sleep. “See, which of the cursed peasants drives over the inner yard.” Then there was silence. The darkness dripped down like pitch. Before me in the darkness I saw the face of Isa Bektshi. The kind gaze was directed at me. The narrow scar between the eyebrows shone like the dawn. “I will not lie,” I said to myself. I saw nothing but the black night and I stretched out on the thin straw of the floor to rest a little. After breakfast, which the turnkey brought in on his board, a commissar appeared with several soldiers and brought three of us, including me, to the court session. A young, pretty woman, who had mostly been sitting on a cot, crying, and had received little notice by the ladies in my prison, was brought in with me and a tall, very haughty looking man in a dark blue, gold-embroidered jacket and white stockings was led away. The name of my fated companion I had not understood when I was introduced yesterday. The only thing that struck me was the deference with which the aristocratic prisoners had treated him, and his careless, condescending manner with which he had spoken a few words to this one, then to that one, while he hardly noticed me. I was walking behind these two, the woman and the haughty man; I was walking alone between two soldiers who had been specially commanded to guard me. We were led through a narrow, terribly dirty alley, in which all kinds of garbage rotted, to an old building, over the archway of which fluttered the three-color flag. Then we reached a corridor into a low, very large room, and had to pass behind a freshly painted cabinet, smelling of fresh oil paint and then stopped. The inner elevation, in which I had spent yesterday evening, was gone from me. The thought that this day was to be one of my last lay heavy as lead on me and filled me with a dull ache. Even the inanimate objects around me took on a strange and unfamiliar ghostly form, and even the early morning light that shone through the dirty windows had a mysterious reddish glow. When a soldier motioned for us to sit down, I was given the seat between the young woman, who from time to time sobbed violently, and the gentleman in the blue jacket, who looked before him with a stern and unapproachable face, without paying any attention to anyone. Now and then he would pull out of his pocket a gold can in the shape of a pear and sniffed it with an extremely affected movement. In front of us stood a heavy table with carved legs, on which everything necessary for writing was piled up. On the walls lolled pale, long-haired soldiers, some of them wearing wooden shoes on their bare feet, and blowing foul-smelling tobacco smoke from their lime pipes. They only changed their comfortable position, when a rumbling drum roll outside the door announced the entrance of the revolution tribunal. We were compelled to stand and wait until the judges were seated at the large table. I looked at the men who presumed to decide on the duration of the lives of others. The first at the table on the left was a craftsman with badly cleaned, hands, whose imprint was visible on the rim of his red cap. In the middle between him and a constantly coughing, obviously sickly person with pointed, gray-yellow face, was enthroned a black-haired young man of peculiarly impudent, but not unhandsome appearance. His restless, dark eyes sparkled under strong brows, and his long, carefully stranded hair under the two-cornered hat hung down to his shoulders. He stretched his legs, clad in white pants and boots with cuffs, far under the table, waved to an acquaintance in the densely packed area in the back of the room, and then rummaged with a pile of files that lay in front of him. Then he spoke a few half-loud words to the sitters and to the skinny clerk at the narrow end of the table, propped his elbows on the tabletop, rested his chin on his clasped hands and looked at us in turn with a look that seemed to command the highest respect.
The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel
Despite the smallness of his body, there lay in his whole posture something respectful and compelling, which was difficult to escape from. Thus, his appearance captivated me in the highest degree. He wore a very simple uniform unknown to me, and had his arms crossed over his chest. “You’re a stranger?” he addressed me, smiling barely perceptibly. “I am a German,” I answered him. “Ah, a German!” He nodded his head. “A fine people, clever, warlike and obedient at the same time. Excellent soldiers. You witnessed these executions, mein Herr?” In spite of the danger that such frankness could bring me, I did not hide my disgust from him. “Yes, yes,” he smiled gloomily, “By the actions of these beasts you must have formed an excellent opinion of the French nation. But that doesn’t do anything. These people are good. Only they have a fever at this moment. They will cure it; let it bleed a little -“ I hesitated to answer him, even though there were no listeners nearby. For I was well aware of the fact that the so- called Well-being Committee maintained numerous agents, whose task it was to listen to the speeches of the people and to induce the discontented to make statements, the reproduction of which provided the means to render them harmless. But immediately afterwards I was ashamed of a suspicion over which this man was certainly above. As far as my knowledge of man, I read in this face ruthlessness, indomitable will, and the power to remove unpleasant obstacles by force. Perhaps the little man with the hard mouth was capable of a gigantic despicability when his certainly unusual plans required it, but hardly of a petty action against someone whose path did not cross his. All this I read in the dark abyss of his eyes, from which shone the spark of a genius. “I deplore it,” I said to him, “that bloodlust and vindictiveness sully the garb of the goddess of liberty, and that it is precisely the ugliest drives that are the shoots that appear most conspicuously in the disintegration of a fixed order. Thus it happens to me that what seems great and sublime to me from a distance, appears frightening and devoid of all greatness up close. The freedom of a people –“ “Oh, freedom!” he interrupted me. “Those are silly phrases. The people do not need Freedom, but the firm hand of a leader. Centuries will pass before the people will be ready for the ideals for which the unfounded enthusiasts believe the time has already come. It does not do much harm, however. The heads that are now falling are not worth much, except for a few whose loss is deplorable, and the riffraff are in their own way for the time being. Nevertheless, mein Herr German, I say to you that with this very valuable, fiery and easily treated material the world can be conquered, if it comes into the right hands. Out of these lousy, jeering, broken lads an army of heroes can be created like no other that has ever stomped the ground. The monstrous body, unconscious of its strength lacks only the head to make it insurmountable.” “Surely this head also sits on mortal shoulders,” I replied. “And it is, as you know, a bad time for heads.” Again the man’s lips twisted into an almost perceptible smile. “I have good reason to hope that the head I mean will not fall into Samson’s basket,” he said. Slowly we walked in the direction of a side alley. Wild, long-drawn out screaming and the wailing of a woman’s voice, coming from an old house, made me stop. As we came closer, we saw in the dark hallway a young woman in the labor of childbirth lying on the brick pavement. Under her pain, new life pressed towards the light. Neighboring women took care of the woman in labor, and an old woman told us to unwillingly go on. “Fat Margot is having another baby! Every year she gives birth to a piglet!” shouted an alley boy and danced on one foot, delighted to be present at this event. The officer grabbed the boy by the arm, turned him towards him, looked him in the face with a terrible look and said: “Why are you pleased, cretin? Is it because your replacement is born? He will take your place in the regiment when you are buried in the clay after the battle!” I saw the lad turn pale under the icy gaze of my companion, as if he had seen the Medusa’s head. Shrieking and flailing his arms, he ran down the alley. I watched him go. When I turned around, the officer had disappeared. After that day, I did not go out much on the street. Several times at night I heard the pounding of rifle butts at the front doors, the wild weeping of women and the horrified objections of those suddenly arrested who had been dragged out of their beds. My reclusive behavior noticeably increased the distrust of the house inhabitants. Nevertheless, it was the hardest thing for me to overcome, to enter the streets, where one could see almost only drunken rabble and meddlesome women. One was begged for, harassed in every way, insulted and suspected for no reason. But on this early autumn day there was such an oppressive sultriness that the stay in my upper level room became quite unpleasant. I chose my most inconspicuous garment, the brown, already damaged travel suit, a simple rain- soaked hat and a crude stick, to distinguish myself as little as possible from those who spoke the big words in the streets. I no longer wore my hair coiffed and powdered, but, according to the new fashion, falling on the shoulders. Today, too, the streets were full of shouting and partly armed mobs. Recruits, adorned with bows and ribbons, were marching off to the threatened frontiers, and the excitement of the first days of September had increased still further. Especially near the prison of La Force, all the scum of Saint Antoine and other suburbs seemed to have gathered. The closer I came to the small gate of the prison, the wilder the raving, singing and shouting swelled. Ragged sansculottes- radicals stood here, armed with pikes and rusty sabers, in dense mobs and apparently waiting for something special. A disgustingly overgrown man, who had a cockscomb like violet growth hanging down over his left eye, as I could clearly observe, sneaked around from one group of people to another and everywhere spoke a few words, which were taken up with ear-tearing howls. I deliberately placed myself in the vicinity of such a confluence, in the midst of which a fury with flying strands of hair wielded a butcher’s axe, and struggled to hear what the people were so excited about. As soon as I arrived the crooked monster started on the group and whispered: “Citizens, do you want to see the aristocrat who will soon come out of this prison door, escape to England once more? She will help the fat Capet and the Austrian woman escape from under your noses. Down therefore with the Intendant of the Austrian whore! Down with Lamballe!” Unanimous shouting announced that they were of one mind with him and not one was willing to let the princess Lamballe go, who was the subject of much talk at the time. “Enough of this gossip, you with your violet growth on your eye!” shouted a person thin as a skeleton. “We want to make cocards out of her guts if she gets into our hands.” “Let me, me!” hoarsely cried a wolf face with enormous jaws and low forehead. “You are all worthless, overcome with pity, when she puts on her little mask -“ “Hey, is your heart made of stone and do you have iron veins, Ruder-Mathieu?” a sloppy woman laughed and pushed the man to the side. “Do you want to see Louis Capet’s souvenir, you pavement kicker?” barked the guy, stretching out a hand surrounded by blue-red rings of scars. “I wore his bracelet for six years, here and on the back of my foot -do you think that makes sugar daddies out of people?” The smell of liquor, old clothes, and the smoke of bad tobacco wafted around me along with the roar of laughter that rose. “Murderers of women. By the grace of the king,” a voice said softly at my ear. “Look at the cattle, the forehead, the thick eyebrows, the bit -“ “What are you whispering about, old fish-head?” The galley convict shook his fist at the human beside me. A small, stooped man quickly ducked into the crowd. “Out with Lamballe! We want the intendant! Break down the door! We want to have a close look at her, back and front, just like her lovers!” “The judges in there are asleep,” crowed the abomination with the facial outgrowth. “We will wake them up!” “Out with her! Make it snappy, you donkey heads in there! Give her to us!” In the roaring and pushing of the supremely heated masses, in the midst of brandished sabers, knives, and lances, I stood and gazed at the door as if paralyzed. I was afraid; a devouring fear seized me, literally crushed me. It was an indescribably horrible feeling, a feeling in which dark knowledge was hidden. I knew what had to come unstoppably, as if I had already experienced it all. A beardless, cheeky face emerged inside me, a receding forehead sown with ulcers, beneath sand-colored stubble hair. I looked around and immediately looked into the middle of the face, which already existed in my imagination. But I resisted, again and again and I succeeded in pushing back the certainty coming from within my inner being, without this effort of the will, I could have said at any moment, blow by blow, what was going to happen now. All this was like a dream within a dream yet of shuddering physicality.
He had left her in the darkness to meditate. Now he was coming back with her torch and her black clothing. Gruffly he told her to put the 2nd degree clothing on. She turned her back and stripped. He was watching her naked body. The bruises were healing, and he wanted her. Slowly she turned around and faced him. Her long red hair framed her breasts. She looked beautiful to him. He reached toward her, and they clung together, kissing as her body pressed against his. His lips sought hers desperately as hers sought his. His hands felt her body, and her scent was wonderful. They stopped and looked at each other.
“This isn’t in the script!” Tobal quipped.
She smiled and began putting on her 2nd degree clothing. They steadied themselves, stepping into the ritual’s next phase. Then they went together toward the main circle for the initiation. Things went well until Becca found herself surrounded by the six menacing, darkly hooded figures she was told she needed to fight. Tobal thought he went crazy at times during battle, but Becca was scary. With a scream of rage that shook him to his core, he watched as she mowed the six figures down like so much grass. She was obviously an advanced martial artist with an axe to grind, and she wasn’t holding anything back.
The first two got broken ribs before they knew what hit them. The first fell from a savage front kick that broke through his guard. In a smooth, fluid motion, a spinning sidekick disabled the second. The third was reaching for her and got a dislocated shoulder as he was thrown into a fourth that wisely stayed on the ground. A spinning backfist was already on its way to number five, and number six had his jaw broken with a deadly kick square to the face. It was all over in less than two minutes, and the only sounds in the cavern were the moans of the injured. For a moment, the cavern held its breath, her rage echoing.
Slowly, sanity came back, and Becca dropped on her knees to the floor, sobbing hysterically. Tobal dropped down beside her and put his arms around her, trying to comfort her. Then he gently helped her up and led her out of the circle and into a quiet corner where they just sat together in silence. He squeezed her hand as the medics took five of the six out of the cave to get medical attention. She started crying again, and he didn’t know what else to do except hold her tightly against his chest. Gradually she relaxed and fell asleep in his arms.
The circle had been disrupted, and several members milled around arguing with each other. Several red-cloaked figures appeared, and one approached them in the darkened corner. As the figure drew closer, Tobal saw that it was Rafe. He put his finger to his lips for silence and indicated that Becca was sleeping. Rafe looked at her thoughtfully, nodded, and turned back to the clustered group of medics. There was some kind of heated discussion in which Rafe was obviously taking part. Then several black-hooded Journeymen were called into the group, and preparations were made to recast the circle and begin Fiona’s initiation.
Becca slept through most of Fiona’s initiation but roused herself as six black-hooded figures surrounded Fiona in the center of the circle. Tobal felt her stiffen, and he gripped her in support. Glancing at him, she relaxed a bit but was still focused intently on what was happening to Fiona. She watched as each figure stood impassively until Fiona tried attacking them. Fiona was fast and dodged several attacks and landed a few of her own but did no real damage. She was also taking a slow beating as one of the hooded figures landed a blow that knocked her to the ground.
Gradually Fiona realized that no one attacked her unless she attacked first. She also realized that only one figure would fight at a time. When she realized this, she stopped fighting and just stood silently in the ring with her arms folded and her eyes glaring defiance.
As one, the circle began to move, and the drums sounded within the cavern, and Fiona’s initiation was completed to the sound of cheers and welcome. Then the High Priest raised his hands for silence.
“There is unfinished business in this circle tonight,” he said. “There are two initiates, and the second initiation must also be completed, and the new initiate welcomed into our group.”
He motioned for Tobal and Becca to come forward.
Becca was hesitant and resisted but continued at Tobal’s reassurance. He took her hand and gently led her into the circle and stopped in front of the High Priest.
The High Priest continued, “Becca, you were charged with the duty of defeating in combat six other Journeymen before you would be able to advance to the Master degree. The six that you fought tonight were supposed to be symbolic in nature, meant to test her spirit, not break her body, but your victories have been real. You have completed the Journeyman degree, but you cannot advance into the Master degree until one year and a day has passed. This is the minimum time requirement. All that remains is to give you the blessings of the God and Goddess of this degree.”
Then raising his hands, he turned to the circle and asked loudly, “Does anyone here dispute the claim that Becca has won her six victories and completed the work of this degree?”
There was stunned silence around the circle, and then some members started moving widdershins, dragging others with them, and soon the entire circle was spinning. The drums were beating, and people were leaping and laughing, yelling and clapping in approval as the initiation concluded, and the wildest party in Tobal’s memory began.
Later he moved over to where Becca and Fiona were talking together. Becca was smiling, and he hoped she felt like she was among friends. He gave her a hug and a smile, and she hugged him back and kissed him lightly on the lips.
“Thanks for helping me through the initiation,” she said.
His eyes twinkled, “Any time, it’s my duty.”
When Tobal woke the next morning, both Fiona and Becca were gone. He had no idea where they had run off to and was slightly disappointed. If they wanted to go off by themselves, it was completely up to them. Mumbling a bit to himself, he left to go find Jake for some sparring practice. After watching Becca take out those six guys last night, he felt he really had a few things to learn.
The End of Book One of the Anarchist Knight Trilogy.
The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel
They had known how to prevent it, if one took them as symbols of a caste, prevented people from reaching the heights of a decent life. Again and again shoved the unfortunates into their doghouses and holes, pressed them into the fronts, and in shallow dalliance mocked the muffled cry from the depths. At last, when even the excessively rich resources that had been withdrawn from the others, ran out, they heaped up the grain of the fields into locked barns, in order to sell sparingly and with usurious profits to the starving, during the coming famine. They had forced a painful bridle between the teeth of the desperate and tightened the reins, while their whip tore bloody weals. Thus the masses had now finally burst their bonds in insane rage and torment, and the dull masses had acquired a flaming will: the will to destroy, to slaughter, to tear to pieces the wanton, the tormentors and to wipe them off this earth forever. Who but knew how to read the people’s faces, in those faces, in their ignorant and still astonished expressions, he knew in retrospect that the power that had been shattered, if it had been used with a little kindness, with wise prudence humanity, would have endured for a long time and could have achieved a bloodless, peaceful transition to a more just distribution of goods. But so it was, as if these kings, dukes, counts and rulers of all kinds had undertaken the ludicrous attempt to see how long and to what extent they could torture patient people, until they would finally rise up against the burden of tortures. And yet I also felt sorry for them. I was soon awakened from my thoughts by the senseless and agitated pushing after me of those who also wanted to be part of the sad procession. I was startled when, with a jerk, everything stopped and the people flowed apart. We had arrived at a not too large square surrounded by old, steeply gabled houses with blackened walls; my feet almost sank in a sticky, dark mud that covered the ground, and I had to find a somewhat elevated spot on the pavement to escape the vile swamp, whose foul-sweet haze enlightened me about its nature. Around me was a wild roar and murmur of voices. All the windows were crowded, and from there cloths were waving to acquaintances on the street. Just in front of me, in the middle of an irregular square, towering over all the heads, hoods and hats, stood a slim, reddish-brown, two-footed gallows, on which at the top under the crossbeam, the drop knife hung slanting and flashing. The posts, between which it ran, shone dark and greasy in the daylight, so much was the wood smeared with blood and human grease. The condemned men rose stiffly and with great effort from the seat boards of the cart. A horse neighed, scenting the haze of the square. The poor condemned who had arrived at their final destination now helped each other politely and courteously to dismount, the old clergyman made an effort to help the crippled Doctor Postremo, who was making terrible faces and chattering with his teeth. I saw the white-powdered hair of the other and the hunchback’s fuzzy head walking the narrow alley between the soldiers. The doomed men quietly and slowly climbed the small staircase up to the blood scaffold. Abusive words flew at them, fists were shaken, ugly, fat market women, who stood in the front row, sitting on benches knitting, were even telling dirty jokes. I saw exactly every single face and except for Postremo, who grimaced, they all looked with a stony attitude in face and gesture towards what was coming. The ring of people around Guillotine’s machine found itself in grinding motion, and I was gradually pushed very close, so that the victims stood with their faces turned toward me. I wished myself far away, to get rid of the terrible pressure under my heart, with which the sight of such sad preparations tormented me. But I could not move, as I was wedged so tightly, I could not even turn my head away from the tangled hair of an unclean woman who smelled of garlic, and I had to be sneezed on from behind by a man who had caught the sniffles. But these small adversities quickly faded before a nameless horror. Now a giant swung onto the scaffolding, whose sight surpassed in meanness everything I had ever seen in my varied life. On tremendously broad shoulders, over a naked, red- haired chest and muscular arms rose the face of a devilish monkey with bared teeth, maliciously glowing eyes and a fiery comb of red-yellow bristles. Samson, whose portrait I had seen in a bookstore, it was not. I knew that he was indisposed and that his first assistant was standing in for him. Horror seized me at the sight of this guy. This man-beast, who was followed by two crude-looking figures grinned, licked his blue lips and then pointed with a flat thumb at Postremo. The two guys behind him pounced on the hunchback in an instant, who kicked with his feet, hissed incomprehensible words and pulled his misshapen head even deeper into his shoulders. They tied him with lightning speed to a vertical board, and tipped him over, so that the helpless man was lying with his chin on a double board, cut out in the shape of a semicircle, the upper half of which was now pulled down between the posts and pressed down. A shiver ran through me, as the red-haired, blood-black hand of the executioner pushed a protruding knob in the post. The guillotine whistled down. Something jumped into a basket, the hunched body twisted, writhing, and flapping its feet, just as poor Bavarian Haymon did under the murderous ring, and from a huge dark- red wound, from which a flashing semicircle seemed to hang, blood gushed out in thick streams, which then gurgled and ran heavily down the side wall. The executioner’s hand reached into the basket, lifted the head up high by the stained, white hair. The axe had not reached the neck, and so the lower jaw was severed and hung separated with the semicircle of the teeth on the body, so that I once more saw the mutilated grimace of the doctor. And this hideous head slowly drew the eyelid over the right eye, as if he wanted to wink at me. “It’s not pretty, citizen – but how could he have dressed up the hunchback angel maker any other way?” said a craftsman next to me, pulling out a flask from the upper, opened part of his burn-stained apron smock. “Here, drink once
this will keep the food down if it wants to rise from the stomach!” I took a sip of the pungent and burning juniper brandy, and the trickling warmth inside gave me strength. Once again I looked around me to see if I could not escape from what was coming, but it was impossible to squeeze through this wall of human bodies. A wall was around me that no one could have penetrated. So I had to witness the execution of all six condemned, and each time the leathery clap of the falling knife sounded, I trembled from my head to my feet. The cold sweat broke out and my legs trembled violently. The last of the crowd, after the old lady, who died quietly and without any movement, came the officer of the Flanders Regiment, who had remained loyal to the king the longest. He placed himself at the board. While the executioners nimbly fastened the blood-soaked straps around his body, he looked at the blood man’s face with eyes flashing with anger and said loud and clear: “Do not dare to hold up my head with your paws, red- bristled pig!” But the executioner just pursed his bulging lips, waited for the overturning of the board and the clasping of the neck in the hole formed by the two semicircles of the double boards, dropped the axe that the two blood fountains sprang from the stump of the neck, and reached into the basket. But immediately, with a grunt of pain, he pulled his hand out of the basket and flung his index finger rapidly back and forth in the air, as if he had touched red-hot iron. In a senseless rage, he kicked the basket several times with his foot, so that the severed head bounced and jumped in it. Then he hid the finger of his right hand in his clenched left hand and uttered a blasphemous curse. “The aristocrat bit his finger!” The man with the apron smock shouted. “They are not so easily killed, these haughty ones!” Then, as if a bright light shone on me from heaven, I thought of Isa Bektschi and the parable of the beheaded evildoer, who used the last of his last strong will with a similar thought of revenge. Meanwhile, one of the servants, a jaunty black man, jumped up to the basket, looked inside, at which the bystanders had to laugh, and, grasping his hair with two fingers, lifted his head out. The eyes of the dead man looked half-closed, contemptuously staring at the gawking crowd, and a thin red stripe ran down his chin. Cursing, the redhead climbed down from the scaffold. In the depths of my soul, I understood the effort of the priest, perhaps not entirely comprehensible to himself, although he eagerly displayed it, with which he exhorted the dying to focus all their thoughts only on eternal bliss, repentance of sins, and the continuation of life in God, and to do away with all thoughts of revenge and earthly desires. What immeasurable wisdom lay hidden in this need, what promise and what consolation! An indescribably joyful knowledge glowed through me when I thought of such things and I almost regretted that my own path had not ended here. Now that there was nothing more to see, the crowd loosened and flowed away, getting lost in the side streets. The windows closed, and the two helpers appeared with water and a cart on which they loaded the dead remains of the executed in a crude manner. I still stood spellbound in my thoughts of Isa Bektschi’s words, which he spoke to me, when I lay ill in the haunted room at Krottenriede, when I felt that someone was looking at me. When I turned quickly, my eyes met those of a still young man with a brownish face of regular cut and dark eyes, from which an extraordinary willpower flashed at me. A great power emanated from this gaze, with the strange, austere beauty of the face and the harsh mouth that harmonized.
The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel
Among the otherwise light-hearted and good-natured people were mingled at that time riffraff and tavern scavengers, who were only interested to fill their coffers, to drink, to fornicate, to whore, to splurge and to murder. Also even among the leaders, many of whom meant well, they were swamped by those who would use any means and who stirred up the common instincts of the crowd in order to make himself popular with the plebs. A gentleman of my standing would be better in the safety of home, instead of traveling in a country where there is neither discipline nor justice nor security. I would soon see that a limited measure of freedom is like a fortifying drink of good wine, but a mad exuberance like the exuberance, however, as it reigns here, is like senseless intoxication and insanity. This kind of expression in a mail coach driver surprised me; however, his expression and posture told me that he belonged to the educated classes. And so I addressed the question to him, how it comes that a man of such politesse could not find any other position than that of a stagecoach driver. The coach driver smiled and said: “Don’t bother addressing me as a gentleman! During this time I am quite modest and observe as a philosopher that which I cannot prevent. Who in such times holds his head too high can easily lose it, and since I only have this one, I am worried about it and on my guard. – Forgive me, mein Herr, but the road is getting so bad that I must turn my attention to it.” With these words he turned and seemed to pay attention only to his reins and the trotting of the horses. But already the nonchalant posture of the reins, indicating great practice and the noble certainty of his movements told me, from which social class my coach driver came from. In front of a town, which we were approaching, we were stopped by a strong group of armed peasants, who, they claimed, had been assigned to guard the road. One of them grabbed the reins of the horses, which were walking at a walk, while two of them, with their muskets extended, stepped up to the coach. But the coach driver, about whose fine and educated nature, I had just voiced my thoughts to, spat in a vulgar manner into his hands and shouted in the lowest dialect of the area: “You dung-scratchers and filthy beetles, you lice-pack want to dare to stop a citizen commissar? Death over my life, if I don’t bring you under Doctor Guillotine’s machine, you thieves and skunks! Away, by the fiery claws of the devil, or I shall ask the citizen commissar in the coach to write your names in his pocket-book!” Immediately they drew back, pulled off their greasy hats and shouted: “Long live freedom!” Our coach rolled on. The driver laughed to himself. “What did you say about the machine of Doctor Guillotine?” I asked him. “Ah – have you heard nothing of it? Imagine that they put you on a board between two beams. High above hangs a knife with a slanting edge, which falls and separates the head so neatly from the trunk as if it were only a head of cabbage on a thin stalk. It travels around the country, the machine of Father Guillotine.” In my mouth was suddenly a tepid, sweetish taste, which almost made me sick. It was the air in this country that I had in my mouth. It tasted like blood. And with a second-long freeze I thought of the words of Demoiselle Köckering, her shrill cry– “A knife hangs – falls -‘” In the city, whose gate lay before us, a bell began to ring low and menacingly: Death-Death-Death-Death. My fear vanished as quickly as it had come. “Non omnis moriar,” I said to myself. “I will not die completely!” I was standing under the archway of the Paris house where I lived and looked down the street. Muffled sounds came closer. Whistles, shrill laughter. A bunch of soldiers in various uniforms, red and white striped, dirty trousers on their legs, crushed hats with the new cockades on the long hair, came down the street with shouldered rifles. Two barefoot ragamuffin boys ran forward as drummers. On one of the two drums I recognized the scratched, colorful coat of arms of the Esterhäzy regiment. Behind the soldiers ran a large crowd of people, girls, men, women and children. Among the people one saw ragged prostitutes, fellows with murderous clubs, tramps, and lowly rabble. In the middle of this throng swayed and bumped a high- wheeled cart on which six people were sitting. The first one my eyes fell on– Merciful God! The cart stopped because the procession was stalled, and I looked closely. The first one I caught sight of was Doctor Postremo. A shiver of fever shook me. He was sitting in front, with his hands tied behind his back. His now snow-white ugly ape-head with coal-black thick brows and whiskers sat deep in his shoulders. His eyes were filled with mortal fear, and his broad mouth stood wide open. Doctor Postremo! “Samson won’t be able to cope with that hunchback!” The crowd shrieked with laughter. “They will have to pull out the pumpkin for that one!” answered a second. “Hey, old man? Don’t you think so, turtle?” Postremo made a ghastly face, closed his mouth, gratingly moved his jaws, and then spat in the face of the man who had addressed him. A burst of laughter flew up. “Bravo! Good aim, hump!” Two soldiers pushed back the angry man, who, with his disgusting face covered in spit, wanted to get on the cart. Next to the Italian sat an old, venerable cleric in a torn cassock, behind him was a stern-looking man in a blue silk jacket embroidered with dull silver, and a gaunt lady who moved her lips in prayer. The last seat on the cart was taken by a former officer from the Flanders regiment and a young man, smiling indifferently and contemptuously in a morning suit. The officer bit his lips angrily and said something to his neighbor, who answered with a shrug of the shoulders. Immediately the cart started to move, rumbling and skidding into motion, and the crowd sang a wild song unknown to me, that roared down the alley. The soldiers put their short pipe stubs on their big hats and sang along enthusiastically. Without will, driven forward by an irresistible force, I stepped into the middle of the crowd behind the executioner’s cart on which sat the wretch who had robbed me of the happiness of my poor miserable life with his satanic arts. Nevertheless, I felt no resentment against him, as much as his look reminded me of the greatest pain that I had ever suffered. But now I felt as if he had only been the tool of an inscrutable power which had directed everything as it had come. It also seemed to me that the terrible end to which he was now rolling toward on the shaking seat of the cart was not in the light of a punishment that had been executed on him, but as a redemption for this poor, wicked spirit, bound in a misshapen body. Between these more foreboding than clear thoughts, was the inexplicable feeling that moved all the people here, the terrible and unfathomable desire to witness a terrible operation on others, which in this time of great death and uncertainty of all fate, excited great interest because without a doubt many of those who today walked along freely and safely might in the very near future experience the same. In these minutes, the revolution, which I had longed to see close up, was seen as something unspeakably horrible and terrible. It was as if one had unleashed vicious animals against sentient human beings, creatures of the lowest kind, which cannot get enough pleasure in the suffering of their fellow beings, as if demons from the depths had united, to eradicate their former tamers and rulers and with them to exterminate every order. What I saw in the reddened, eye-twinkling, distorted faces around me was not humanity. Then I saw the young nobleman and the officer on the rearmost seat, but also from these victims a cold wave flowed toward me. They were evil in their hearts to the last. It was obvious that to them the people in the street were the same as the cobblestones, the dirt that stuck to the high wheels of the cart, or the half-starved dog that yelped and jumped around the harnessed mares. In my desolate misery and in the burning pity that almost burst my heart; I nevertheless knew clearly that in the last feelings of these two on the cart lay all their guilt. They had despised all people, God’s creatures as well as they, all their lives and still despised them in their own bitter hour of death, because they were unclean, uneducated, sweaty and lousy. These nobles did not consider that their own insensitivity had made of them what they were: a horde of half-animals, who had to defend themselves against the cruel scourge of poverty and being outcasts.
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