The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel
“Hell! Hell!” groaned Hmmetschnur and ran his hands
through his wild hair. “If only I could get away from here!”
I said good night to him and went to my room.
By the light of the burning candle, I searched for the lady
of hell’s little pot and cut with the knife around the rock-hard,
dried-up bladder. Inside was a crisscrossed, cracked greenish-
brown substance. This may have been an ointment, but the
excessively long time had made it firm and brittle. I thought
that perhaps the candle flames might warm it up enough for it
to take on more or less its old consistency, and so I held the
blue jar over my candlestick. The melting stuff stank
disgustingly of old fat and pungent herbs, but I gradually
managed to soften the sediment, so that I could investigate the
ointment and test its magical nature.
In the glow of my five wax candles I saw again the gray
eyes of the Lady of Weinschrötter, who appeared to smile in
amusement at my cheeky beginning.
“Shall I not?” I addressed the painting. But neither an
answer nor a sign came from the now lifeless painting, which
yesterday had greeted me with a now vanished resemblance
that had frightened me to my very soul.
Was it the heat of the candles or the vaporous fat and
poisonous herbs that made me behave in this way: a flying heat,
which I had already felt in the afternoon during the walk, came
over me, and when I undressed, I felt how leaden my limbs
were. My blood pulsed in rapid throbbing as if a fever were
near.
Nevertheless, I remained stubbornly determined or
forced by something to stick to my plan to try the ointment. I
took off my shirt, spread the stuff on my chest, belly, hands,
feet and forehead, as I had learned from the horror stories, that
old Margaret had told me in childhood, and still remembered
the witch’s spell:
“Out the top and nowhere on!” laughed at myself for my
silliness, blew out the candles, and lay down in the creaking
four-poster bed.
The blood rang in my ears, a tingling sensation ran
through my limbs. I saw the half moon in the window, which I
had forgotten to close.
And then I slowly sat up in bed, slipped out from under
the low canopy and floated between the ceiling and the floor,
without me finding this strange. I had often flown like this in
my dreams, with casual movements of the arms or some
footsteps to steer the flight. But I now saw myself lying in bed,
illuminated by the blue moonlight. Open-mouthed with two
sharp wrinkles in my face, that went from my nostrils to my
chin as the result of some evil experience. I saw the
extinguished candles with the long scrolls, the bare cleaning
scissors, and my robe on an upholstered chair, the open hair
bag. I was amazed at nothing, nor was I startled when Lady
Heva Weinschrötte- cautiously climbed out of the picture frame
and floated out through the open window. I kicked the air with
a feeling of well-being, like a swimmer treads the water that
carries him. All of them followed after Heva. An old Jew with a
caftan, another one, whose white, scabby skull peered out of
the raised trapdoor, a hunchbacked woman with a snuffy nose
and eternally smacking mouth, and with a black tomcat that sat
on the hump and a white, lame little dog that was running after
her, another ugly, goggle-eyed woman, who sneaked to my bed,
hissed at the resting body and with crooked fingers reached for
the little pot to quickly lubricate her yellow, wrinkled skin. And
then in infinite well-being I turned to the open window and
flew in an instant over the bent and wind-shredded poplars, full
of joy at the regained skill of flying.
At will, I ascended with a very light hand and foot
stirring up and down, shooting light as a feather upwards or
slowly downwards, turned immediately, let the air carry me
horizontally or sank like a rock, just as I liked. Nevertheless, it
continued like that without me being frightened, and I drifted
like a flying feather before the wind. Even if I remained
motionless, I saw beneath me tree tops, reflecting water,
meadow surfaces and lonely little houses gliding past. But this
did not worry me at all; rather I surrendered with full pleasure
to the bliss, liberated from the weight of the body and floated
through the silvery moon light like a cloud. Also I made no
steering movements any more, but gave myself completely to
such bliss of an earth-liberated state.
Then, however, I saw closer and more distant figures in
the milky air, on the same path as me, gently drifting and
hovering like old wives’ summer. Young women with white
and golden brown limbs, with loose hair and willingly naked,
their eyes closed as if in sleep, their arms spread out; but in
between also bony and shapeless hags, then again fat ones with
sagging and flabby fullness, scrawny old women, disgustingly
hairy and coarse male figures, slim-limbed girls with weakly
curved breasts, beautiful boys and skinny, miserable bodies of
gaunt old men. However, as soon as I made an effort to focus
more sharply on a face, it became a vague round egg of
whirling mist and dissolved. But even that did not put me in
fear or astonishment. Rather, everything had long been familiar
and quite right, as if I had experienced and seen this many
times. And effortlessly, I was blown, through the will-less,
delicious detachment of my own limbs and the lightness of my
body, by the air between clouds, moon, stars which drew me
toward the friendly tugging of the earth deep below.
I sank. The figures gathered more densely around me.
I went down into the depths, gently sinking. A pale glow
dazzled. Lights bounced beneath me, bluish and yellow lights.
Faces with slanting eyes and flaring scoops of fire. And there
was fire everywhere.
Between bushes and grass there was a swarming and
jumping, a twisting and turning of innumerable figures that
surrounded me. Some squatted in rigid clusters around red-
yellow brushwood flames, murmuring in swelling, nasal song
from books, keeping the beat with their hands. A brown boy
with pointed ears, handsome and cheeky, round-hipped like a
woman, was chasing a black, bearded shaggy goat with wild
heel kicks through the midst of couples, who were twisting in
spasmodic entwinement as they rolled in the leaves. Gray
wolves whose dark sweat dripped from their muzzles crept
with glowing red eyes between beautiful, naked women. A
crippled man without legs pushed with agile monkey arms the
rest of his body through the tumult in a wheelchair and looked
out of long distended eyes like those of a crab. One, whose skin
stretched like parchment over the fleshless bones, blew
squawking on a hollow leg bone, while glow worms crawled
around in his eye sockets. A dwarf’s body consisted of a
bagpipe, and the purring and humming pipes protruded from
the back of his trousers, while the trunk-mouth blew into the air
tube and the twisted fingers of his hands wandered over the
indecent flutes. A row of gray-toothed women with dangling
tits danced hand in hand in circles around these musicians.
“Are you here too? Hussah!” There was a bellow next to
me, and when I looked, Montanus had just passed by, and his
belly was hanging red like glowing iron from the inflated
trousers. More and more new dance groups formed. I saw legs
from which the skin was hanging in shreds and laughing
mouths, out of which white and yellow worms crawled.
Dissolute children with disgustingly twisted eyes were writhing
in the arms of hermaphrodite creatures, women cried out
ruthlessly and dragged giggling, skinny boys to their steaming
wombs, from goat udders fat milk ran into the toothless mouths
of old men. One with broken, buckling limbs led another, who,
leaden-grey faced, had a rope around his neck and displaying a
monstrous manhood stumbled forward to a black-haired
woman who was shrieking and twitching and rolling. Flames
danced and shot pointedly out of the earth, and from out of a
bush in front of me rose the deathly sad, pale face of the
Bavarian Haymon with the crushed red nose, and his mouth
whispered:
“Take some advice and see that you will come again,
Mahomet!”
There arose a tremendous shouting, whooping and wild
singing. They waved with their hands, their legs flailing and
jerking against a high black stone block, on which, in the
wavering, uncertain light, a figure was crouched, his knees
drawn up to his chin, angular and silent.
I stared at it and recognized with raging horror Fangerle.
As if fused to the rock, he squatted there, his evil,
pinched face under the big peasant hat glowed like rotting
wood, and his long-hunters coat glowed in all its buttonholes,
as if blue fire was hidden under them. The piercing goat eyes
were directed straight at me, full of indescribable malice. And
then he uttered the horrible scream that Heiner had in front of
the wheel.
“I-i-i-ilih!”
A thousand arms, fingers, claws and nails stretched out
towards me. I wanted to rise quickly into the free kingdom of
the air, but they hung on to my feet, pulled me down.
“Catch him! Stop him!” shrieked Satan on the block.
Desperately, I kicked my feet and flailed around. But
new ones came, arms of women wrapped heavy and soft
around my neck, hot lips pressed sucking against my face,
claws tore at my hair; heavy masses clung to me, squeezing out
my breath. I could no longer get up, saw in deathly fear the
yellow goat eyes stare, the saw teeth bared, paralysis was like
tough dough around my limbs, my heart was hammering, close
to bursting, my breath caught, choking my throat.
“Lord, my God!” I cried out in deathly peril.
Then the hand of Fangerle grabbed me and flung me high
into the air. Scornful laughter rang out behind me, neighing.
The fires went out in the deep night, shadows flitted. Whirled,
it whistled in the air, cried, screamed, howled —.
I lay in my shirt in the middle of a wet meadow.
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