Homo Sapiens by Stansilaw Przybyszewski and translated by Joe E Bandel
II.
“Mikita, my dear brother!” “Yes, it’s me.”
The two friends embraced warmly. Falk was deeply excited.
He rushed about, rummaging through all sorts of things, asking incessantly:
“Tell me—tell me, what do you want? Beer? Schnapps… Wait a moment—right! I have a splendid Tokay here—got it from Mother—you know, from Father’s time. He knew his way around these things.”
“Come on, enough already. Sit down. Let me see you.” Finally, Falk calmed down.
They gazed happily into each other’s eyes and clinked their glasses.
“Magnificent! But man, you look awful. You’ve been writing a lot, haven’t you… Good heavens! Your last book—you know, it threw me into such a frenzy… no, it was incredible! I buy the book, start reading it on the street, stop in my tracks, the book grips me so much that I have to finish it right there on the street, and I go half-mad. You’re a real man!”
Falk beamed.
“That gives me immense, immense joy. You’ve always had such terrifying expectations of me. So you really liked it?”
“Well, of course!”
Mikita made a wide circle in the air with his hand. Falk laughed.
“You’ve picked up a new gesture.”
“Well, you know, speaking just doesn’t cut it anymore. All these unbelievably subtle things can only be expressed with gestures.”
“Yes, you’re right.”
“It’s the grand line, you see, the great sweep, the hot undercurrent—few understand it. So, I went to one of the greats in Paris, you know, the leader of the Naturalists, or whatever they call themselves… He’s making money! Sure, the rabble’s starting to buy that *cinquième élément* Napoleon discovered in Poland—mud with a few potato stalks on it. Before, it was the gingerbread dolls of His Apostolic Majesty’s court upholsterer—Raphael, wasn’t that his name? Now it’s the potato painters…”
So I asked the leader why one would paint something that’s a thousand times better in nature and, in the end, has no meaning.
“Oh, nonsense! Meaning! It’s nature, you see…” Yes, I understood.
“Nature is meaning. But not the potato, surely?”
Now the potato painter got wildly enthusiastic.
“Yes, precisely the potato, that’s nature, everything else is rubbish! Imagination? Imagination? You know, imagination—laughable, a makeshift!”
Both friends laughed heartily. Mikita paused to think.
“But now they’ll see. Good Lord, my head’s bursting with ideas. If I had a thousand hands, I’d wave a thousand lines at you, then you’d understand me. You know, one forgets how to speak. I was with a sculptor—you’ll see his sketches at my place… I lay on my stomach before that man. I told him: that’s glorious! What? I described the thing. Oh, you mean this! And then he traced an unbelievably magnificent line in the air. That man got it… But good Lord, I’m talking till my mouth twists—how are you? Not great, huh?”
“No, not great. I’ve endured a lot of torment lately. These thousand subtle feelings for which there are no sounds yet, these thousand moods that flare up in you so fleetingly and can’t be held onto.”
Mikita interrupted him fiercely.
“Yes, exactly, that’s it. You see, that sculptor, that splendid fellow—you know what he said? He said it magnificently:
Look, here are the five fingers, you can see and touch them—and then he spread his fingers apart—but here, here, the space between the fingers, you can’t see it, you can’t touch it, and yet that’s the main thing.”
“Yes, yes, that’s the main thing, but let’s leave art aside. Are you a bit jaded?”
“Not that, but sometimes it gets a bit tedious. Not being able to enjoy life directly, always living with an eye to how to shape it, how to exploit it—and for what, really? It makes me sick to think that I’m barely capable of feeling pain or joy just as they are…”
“You need to fall in love.”
“Mikita, you? You’re saying that?”
“Yes, yes. Love. That’s something that doesn’t become ideal, that can’t be felt indirectly. If there’s happiness, you could leap to the heavens without worrying about breaking your legs; if there’s pain, it gnaws at you so tangibly, you know, you can’t write it away, you can’t file it under perspectives…”
Mikita smiled. “By the way, I’m engaged.” “You?! Engaged?!”
“Yes, and I’m unbelievably happy.”
Falk couldn’t get over his astonishment. “Well, to your fiancée’s health!”
They emptied the bottle.
“Look, Mikita, we’re staying together all day.” “Of course, naturally.”
“You know, I’ve discovered a wonderful restaurant…” “No, brother, we’re going to my lady.”
“Is she here, then?”
“Yes, she’s here. In four weeks, we’re getting married. First, just one more exhibition in Munich so I can get the funds for a proper wedding, yes, a celebration like no painter’s studio has ever seen.”
Falk resisted.
“I was so looking forward to today, just today, being alone with you. Don’t you remember those glorious *heures de confidence* with our endless debates…”
But Mikita insisted stubbornly on his plan. Isa was insanely curious about him. He had solemnly promised to present the wondrous creature that is Falk in the flesh. “No, it won’t do, we have to go to her.”
Falk had to give in.
On the way, Mikita spoke incessantly of his great happiness, gesticulating lively.
“Yes, yes, it’s remarkable how such a feeling can stir you up. Everything turns upside down, it’s as if unimagined depths unlock. Ten worlds fit inside. And then, all the strange, unknown things that stir… Feelings so intangible they barely flash in your mind for a thousandth of a second. And yet you’re under the influence of this thing all day. And how nature appears to you! You know, at first, when she resisted—I lay like a dog at her door, in the middle of winter, in the most fabulous cold, I slept outside her room all night—and I forced her. But I suffered! Have you ever seen a screaming sky? No! Well, you know, I saw it scream. It was as if the sky opened into a thousand mouths and screamed color out into the world. The whole sky an infinite series of streaks; dark red, fading into black. Clotted blood… no! A puddle reflecting the sunset, and then a filthy yellow! Ugly, repulsive, but magnificent… God, yes, man! Then the happiness! I stretched and stretched—upward, so I could light my cigarette on the sun!”
Falk burst out laughing.
Mikita, who barely reached his shoulders! The marvelous fellow… “Isn’t it? Funny idea. Me reaching the sun! You know, when I was in Paris, the French turned to look at me. I had a friend, you see, and next to him, I looked like a giant.”
They both laughed.
Mikita warmly squeezed his hand.
“You know, Erik, I don’t really know who I love more… You see, love for a woman, that’s something else, you want something, and in the end, don’t you? You love with a purpose… But now, you see, friendship—yes, you, Erik, that’s the intangible, the delicate, the thing between the fingers… And now, when you’re with a woman uninterruptedly for three months…”
Falk interrupted him.
“You can’t imagine how much I’ve longed for you sometimes. Here among this scribbling rabble, there’s not a single person…”
“I can imagine. Well, now let’s make the most of our time.” “Yes, we’ll always be together.”
They arrived.
“Look, Erik, she’s terribly excited to meet you. Just make yourself interesting, or you’ll embarrass me. Very interesting—you’re good at that, you devil!”
They entered.
A feeling came over Falk, as if he were surrounded by a vast, smooth mirror.
Then it seemed to him that he had to recall something he’d seen or heard long ago.
“Erik Falk,” Mikita introduced.
She looked at him, became very embarrassed, then extended her hand warmly:
“So it’s you.”
Falk came alive.
“Yes, it’s me. I don’t look *that* strange, do I? You must have expected some odd beast from Mikita’s description?”
She smiled.
Falk noticed something like a mysterious veil through which her strange smile shimmered.
“I was quite jealous of you. Mikita talked about you the whole time. He probably only came to Berlin because of you.”
Strange! The same veil in her eyes. A glimmer, as if from an intense light that had to break through heavy fog. What was it?
They sat down.
Falk looked at her. She looked at him too. Both smiled awkwardly.
“Mikita said you always need cognac. I bought a whole bottle, but he’s already drunk half of it… How much should I pour you?”
“Good Lord, enough!”
“Well, I don’t know… You’re from Russia, aren’t you? They say it’s the custom there to drink cognac from liter glasses.”
“She thinks,” Mikita explained, “that in Russia, bears come into houses to lick the scraps from the pots.”
They all laughed.
The conversation flowed back and forth. Mikita spoke incessantly, waving his hands.
“You see, Erik, we love each other to the point of madness…”
OD by Karl Hans Strobl and translated by Joe E Bandel
Chapter10
Freiherr von Reichenbach had made every effort to bring his thoughts into order. But before he could manage that, something had happened that renewed the confusion and only increased it further.
About two days after the visit to Frau Hofrätin Reißnagel, a sense of unease had come to his awareness. A dull feeling of fatigue at first, then dragging pains in the limbs, hammering in the temples, ringing in the ears, flickering before the eyes, scratching in the throat. And then the cold was there, with all that goes with it—sniffles, headache, and cough—the Freiherr had to take to his bed despite his resistance. Tea-drinking, sweating, and gargling.
There he lay over the Christmas holidays and had time to think further. So he had indeed become sick; he had caught the cold on the way to the Hofrätin, and she had foreseen that he would become ill. She had sensed it beforehand, at a time when he still believed himself completely healthy. How was that possible, what secret powers did this woman possess? And if she had correctly foreseen this, then all the other phenomena that Reichenbach had observed were likely neither conscious nor unconscious deceptions. One had to assume it was so, but where was the explanation for all this? Amid the swaying of considerations, the fleeting glimmer from back then held up the best. Were they on the trail of an unknown natural force, a kind of invisible rays?
Caught up in this mental work, Reichenbach was so gripped that he could hardly wait to test his thoughts. He had Eisenstein summoned; Eisenstein sat by his bed, but chatting with him didn’t help—Eisenstein had few ideas; he was too eager to agree with the Freiherr, making him only impatient. Reichenbach needed substantive objections to clarify his thoughts.
As soon as he was allowed to get up, he took Ottane aside. He didn’t say what it was about. He had Ottane stand, walked slowly toward her, circled her. He had her sit and stretched his hand toward her—the left, then the right; he touched her shoulder, her hips; he had her lie on a sofa and stood alternately at her head and her feet, asking in between: “Do you feel anything? Do you feel anything?” But Ottane felt nothing at all.
He locked himself and Ottane in a room, hung blankets over the windows and doors, extinguished the light. And after they had sat in the darkness for half an hour, he asked: “Do you see anything? Do you see anything?”
But Ottane laughed, saying she saw absolutely nothing—how could she see anything in this pitch darkness? Then he took Hermine aside and performed the same solemn, mysterious actions with her as with Ottane, asking in between: “Do you feel anything? Do you see anything?”
“No,” Hermine replied each time shyly and anxiously; she felt nothing and saw nothing.
“Naturally,” said the Freiherr angrily, “how could you feel or see anything other than the most ordinary?”
Afterward, the two sisters stood facing each other, and Hermine looked quite frightened, but Ottane also showed a concerned expression.
“What’s wrong with the father?” They exchanged their experiences—yes, yes, approaching and withdrawing, strokes with the hands, sitting in the darkness; the same for both—what could this be again?
Hermine began to cry.
“No, no,” Hermine comforted her, “you don’t need to be afraid that the father might—; no, that’s certainly not it. I think he has discovered something new; he looks just like someone who has made a new discovery.”
Ottane had something luminous in her nature, a radiant confidence that quickly made her victorious over all doubts. She held her head high and had a light, free step; she often smiled to herself without anyone knowing the reason; she tilted her head as if listening to an inner voice. Often she startled Hermine by suddenly pouncing on her and kissing her. Hermine found that her sister was somehow mysteriously elevated; Ottane said nothing, nor did she reveal where she sometimes went when she claimed she had errands to run. Oh yes, Ottane, she took everything lightly; when one is happy, one can take many things lightly that become a cause of worry and gloom for others.
When the Freiherr received the delayed permission to leave the house due to bad weather, his first visit was to Frau Hofrätin Reißnagel. He found her in relatively good health, a bit bloodless and weakened, but mentally alert and, though with some sighing, willing to undergo the experiments he had in mind.
Reichenbach had brought a system with him, a framework of thought built on provisional, bold, yet very astute assumptions. He saw much confirmed, had to discard some things, some hit the mark exactly, others remained unruly and enigmatic; overall, however, the basic outlines of a new understanding began to emerge more clearly from the mist. Only after hours of work did he relent from his subject when the Hofrätin, groaning, declared she could no longer continue, and finally a violent vomiting brought everything to an end. The Freiherr was dripping with sweat, his brain convolutions glowed; he assured the Hofrätin that her nausea was trivial and held no significance compared to the healing that had befallen her today: that she had, namely, entered the annals of science with this day.
“A new science, dear lady!” he said, beaming with joy, waving the black notebook in which he had meticulously recorded the course of his experiments. “Your name has become immortal today.”
For the time being, however, the Hofrätin felt so miserable that she had no real understanding of scientific fame and immortality, and her only wish was to see the Freiherr out the door from the outside.
Reichenbach staggered through the streets like a drunk, bumping into people, nearly getting under the horses of the princely Esterházy carriage; in one of the courtyards he passed through, he threw a handful of coins into a blind violinist’s hat; he felt the urge to grab some unknown person and say: “Do you know what has happened? I’ve made a discovery, an extraordinary discovery.”
When he returned home somewhat calmer, he heard four-hand piano playing from the music room. Schuh was there, thank God—a man with an understanding of the significance of the event. He opened the door and shouted into the middle of the Adagio of the Beethoven sonata: “Please, dear Schuh, come over to my room at once.”
After a while, Schuh came, more serious than usual but Reichenbach was incapable of making observations that didn’t connect with what consumed him.
“You shall be the first to hear it,” he said, “wait. Please, stretch out your hand and raise your spread fingers. Like this!” Reichenbach took a blank sheet of paper from the desk and placed it over the tips of Schuh’s outstretched fingers. “Now?” he asked, looking at Schuh with eager anticipation: “How do you perceive it? Pleasant or unpleasant?”
Aha, thought Schuh, now comes that thing Hermine and Ottane told me about. He couldn’t help but smile; a sheet of paper lay on his fingers—what of it? How could that be pleasant or unpleasant?
“Nothing?” asked Reichenbach, slightly disappointed. “Well, it doesn’t matter. You just don’t belong to the people sensitive enough to feel it.”
“How was I supposed to perceive it?”
“Unpleasant!”
Now Schuh couldn’t refrain from laughing outright: “Yes, why?”
Reichenbach was too elated to get angry; he took the paper and placed it back on the desk. “Yes, that’s it, that’s what it all revolves around. Frau Hofrätin Reißnagel perceives it as unpleasant.”
“So, Frau Hofrätin Reißnagel?” Schuh chuckled.
“Exactly, I’ve conducted a series of experiments with this lady that have shed some light on the matter. Pay attention! What happens when you rub your hands?”
“If I’m cold, I rub my hands, and they get warm.”
“Exactly, with you! With the Hofrätin, only the left hand gets warm, not the right. When the Hofrätin folds her hands as if in prayer, it soon becomes so unpleasant that she must separate them again. The same happens when she points her fingertips toward each other. She cannot place her hands on her hips; she cannot rest her head on her arm without feeling unease. What do you make of that?”
“Strange!” said Schuh, quite seriously.
“Wait. When the Hofrätin covers her right eye with her hand and looks into my left eye with her left, she is completely blind for a while afterward. If I take two glasses of water, one in my left hand and one in my right, and slowly turn them between my fingers, the Hofrätin finds the water from the left lukewarm and repulsive, and that from the right cool and pleasantly tingling. If I place two glasses of water on the table, one in the sunlight and one beside it in the shade, what happens?”
“Certainly something odd,” answered Schuh, without changing his expression.
“Quite right. The Hofrätin drinks the water from the sun with pleasure and says it’s cool, while the water from the shade is lukewarm and unpleasant. What do you say to that?”
“What I say? I personally esteem the Hofrätin highly, but there are coarse people who think she’s a crazy box.”
“Schuh, I beg you,” growled Reichenbach, annoyed, “I took you for a more serious thinker.” He suddenly stepped toward the disobedient disciple, grabbed his left hand with his own left hand, and pulled it sharply toward himself. “Stay like that—for a moment!” And he stretched out the index finger of his right hand and moved it close over Schuh’s wrist and across the palm in the direction toward the middle finger. “Now?” He almost pleaded, the tufts of hair, like gray, wild underbrush beside his bald forehead, seemed to crackle.
Schuh shook his head: “I’m supposed to feel something?”
“Isn’t it like a fine, cool wind drifting over your hand, as if… blown from a straw?”
“And even if you cut me up for goulash, I wouldn’t feel any wind or straw!”
Homo Sapiens by Stanislaw Przybyszewski and translated by Joe E Bandel
Yes, he must have exerted some kind of hypnosis over her. How else could it be that she ran away from home and followed him?
Unpleasant. He had never loved her, after all. He only wanted to observe how love develops in a girl. Yes, he wanted to write a biogenesis of love. Not a bad idea for an eighteen-year-old boy. Well, he had read Büchner and that “triste cochon” Bourget back then.
He ought to visit her sometime.
No, better not. If only she could forget him. Falk stood up and paced thoughtfully.
It’s shameful, really, to seduce her again and again and then, afterward, to take a superior stance and explain that love must be overcome, that it’s a rudimentary feeling, a kind of pathological rash in the spiritual life of modern man.
Yes, in that he was unmatched.
If only she could become a little happier.
He heard her voice, responding to his mocking explanations:
“I’d only wish one thing for you—that you fall in love yourself one day…” How naive she was. No—no…
Love?! Hmm… What was it, really?
That old gentleman in Königsberg, he saw through it. Love is surely a pathological expression… Yes, he must have known.
He lit a cigarette and stretched out on the sofa. What was Mikita painting now, he wondered?
There was an incredible strength in that man. To struggle through so laboriously and not deviate a single stroke from his path.
He could have become rich by now, if he’d done things like the others.
Those terrible university days. “Do you have ten pfennigs, Mikita?”
Mikita had nothing; he’d spent the whole morning turning everything upside down in a frantic search for the ten-pfennig coin that must have hidden itself somewhere.
“So we’ll go hungry.”
“Indeed.” Mikita didn’t let himself be distracted from his work. “By the way, money’s pretty cheap now. The Russian state has converted its debts.”
“Yes, yes—I know.”
“Well, then!” Mikita kept painting. And they went hungry. Horrible! Falk shuddered.
He’d gone half-mad. Strange that he didn’t lose it completely. How he once stood powerless on the street, nearly run over.
In the end, they had only one pair of trousers. Mikita had to paint in his underwear when Falk went to lectures.
Now Falk laughed out loud.
He remembered how his mother sent the estate manager with money to him. She had sold the forest. Then the three of them went to a tavern and stayed there from early morning until late at night. The manager crawled up the stairs on all fours. Mikita kept pulling him down by one leg until the manager, in his indignation, landed a hard blow with his heel right on the bridge of Mikita’s nose.
Oh God! How the manager tried to vomit and stuck his head through the windowpane because he couldn’t open the window…
And now Falk thought again of his hungry days and of his mother, who always helped.
A tender warmth came over him. Yes, yes, Mother, Mother…
Well, Mikita must have gone hungry in Paris. The poor pioneers!
He laughed scornfully.
But no! In defiance! Not yield a single line, better to starve. He reflected.
What was it, really? What kept him upright despite all the insults, all the failures?
He lay back down.
The great, the glorious art that seeks a new world, a world beyond appearances, beyond conscious thought, beyond every form of expression—a world so incomprehensibly delicate that its connections blur and flow into one another—a world in a glance, a gesture…
Glorious!
And the new symbols… Yes, yes—the new word, the new color, the new tone of mood…
“Everything’s been done before…”
“No, no, dear sir, not everything. Not the pain that transcends pain, not the joy that becomes pain, not the entire new realm of imagination where all senses merge into one… yes, yes… all those thousand shades of feeling that two, three, at most ten honest contemporaries can comprehend… That hasn’t been done before, or else the masses would already understand it, those who need a hundred years to chew through a morsel of thought.”
Well, in the end, it was good that not every hack journalist understood you, or you’d have to be ashamed of yourself…
He watched the wave of smoke that detached itself in a fine streak from the cigarette, winding upward in a strange curl.
He’d once seen a stream painted like that in a Chinese picture. Suddenly, it seemed he heard Mikita’s voice.
Yes, he remembered, he’d never again experienced that inexpressibly mystical mood. He was sick then, couldn’t open his eyes, his whole face swollen.
Mikita cared for him; oh, he knew how to handle him! Day and night, he watched over him. And when Falk couldn’t sleep, he read to him. Yes, he read Heine’s *Florentine Nights*.
And Falk heard a monotonous, soft singing—yes, singing… half like a prayer, fading more and more, like the last waves on the seashore when the sea calms—ever softer, ever more…
OD by Karl Hans Strobl and translated by Joe E Bandel
“It can’t go on like this,” says Reinhold, quite indignant. But then he startles and suddenly looks utterly helpless: “The father—”
“No, no,” Schuh reassures him, “he won’t find out.” And he adds with a sly wink: “We know how to keep quiet, Reinhold.”
Reinhold nods briefly to him and slips into the next booth alley, following his friends.
“They’ll keep trampling on Viennese good nature,” remarks Schuh, “until even that gets fed up with it.”
Shadows fall over the Christmas market. “We must go,” Hermine urges, “we must fetch Ottane. It’s getting dusky.”
It’s getting dusky, and Max Heiland lays down his brush.
“I must stop,” he says, “the colors and forms are blurring for me.”
Now Ottane can release the inner tension that is always in her while the master paints. A gentle weariness softens her, and a sweet anxiety comes over her. It’s sweet and unsettling; the blood sings; now things all draw closer and envelop her with their twilight folds.
“Where can Hermine and Schuh be staying so long?” Ottane says quietly, so as not to tear the delicate fabric. “They’ve never been away this long.”
“They have it good,” a bitterness sounds in Heiland’s voice, “they can go off together whenever and wherever they want. Tell me, Ottane, is Schuh courting your sister?”
Before this question, Ottane is startled. She has never thought about it—Hermine and Schuh, no, that seems unlikely to her; Hermine has other things on her mind, goodness knows, love stories don’t suit Hermine at all, not to mention the father. But actually, she hasn’t given it any thought at all.
“I don’t know,” she says anxiously. “I don’t think he’d have any luck.”
“It’s luck enough,” says Heiland harshly, “always being able to be with the woman one loves.”
He looks up, and Ottane thinks he will now light a lamp. But Heiland doesn’t light a lamp; he paces the room, stops suddenly with a jerk in front of Ottane, who sits on the Turkish divan, as if he wants to say something. He says nothing and wanders on silently, and this silence is oppressive. He bumps his foot against a breastplate lying in the way. With a kick, he sends it clattering aside, and a great two-handed sword leaning against the wall crashes down with a thud over it.
Ottane pulls a shawl shivering over her bare shoulders.
Perhaps Heiland noticed, for he takes a beech log, throws it into the flames of the open fireplace, and stokes the glow. Lights dance; Heiland stands dark against the fire, staring into it, one arm propped against the mantelpiece.
“Yes, I’m finished with your picture,” he says, “it can’t get any better now; I can only ruin it.”
Why does he say that so reproachfully, almost angrily? Whom is he accusing? Yes, now he is done with the picture, and Ottane can’t help it that a tender regret seeps into her soul. She must say something. “Are you satisfied with your work?” she asks.
Heiland spins around. “Satisfied? No, not at all. There’s something veiled in you, something unresolved, which I couldn’t capture. A—what shall I call it—a hidden treasure. I know of it, but it’s like with many treasure hunters. One reaches out, and it sinks back many fathoms deeper.”
He throws himself into an armchair and covers his face with his hands. Between his fingers, he peers sharply at Ottane, watching what she will do next. The flickering lights of the fireplace play on her features, and Heiland sees how tormented, uncertain, and unsettled Ottane is by his words. An uncontrollable hunger for this fresh, blooming girl is in him, a longing for her possession; Max Heiland almost believes he has never before been possessed by such a desire. But he also knows that the means he usually employs to win women must be used with the utmost caution here. Naturally, the surest way to success is to show passion to awaken passion. This time, however, it’s not enough with mere pretense; it’s not a matter of reaching a mutual agreement in the belief of passion to justify everything. He knows he must dig deeper within himself, draw more from himself; this time, his seductive arts must, so to speak, be in earnest.
He watches Ottane through his fingers and sees her rise and approach him.
“What’s wrong with you, Master?”
He gives no answer. Should he groan now? Yes, he groans softly.
“What’s wrong with you, Master?” Ottane asks again and places her hand on his shoulder.
Then he suddenly grabs that hand and pulls it to himself. “Don’t you know? Can’t you grasp it? Now your picture is finished, and now you won’t come here anymore. I won’t wait anymore to hear your step on the stairs; you won’t sit over there anymore, and I won’t be able to cast another glance at your face after every brushstroke.”
“Yes, the picture is finished…” stammers Ottane, confused by the fervor that rushes over her.
“It’s finished; they will come to fetch it and carry it to the exhibition, and then the emptiness will be complete. An icy emptiness, Ottane! Strange women will come again and want to be painted. And I won’t be able to turn them all away. They will come and sit where you sat, they will flirt and laugh and coquetry, and a hatred will rise in me because it’s not you sitting there. A hatred against this hypocrisy, because you are the truth; a hatred against this unnaturalness, because you are pure like nature. And despite all truth and openness, still a riddle I haven’t unraveled, while the others act mysteriously, yet with them, it’s all just surface.”
Everything wavers in Ottane; supports collapse; she is swept into a whirlpool, carried away by a wild torrent.
Can it be ventured now? Has it come so far that it can be ventured?
Max Heiland suddenly stands up. “Go,” he says through clenched teeth, “go!” And then he is suddenly at her feet, his arms around her knees, pressing his face into her skirts.
Ottane is beside herself. “I beg you… I beg you… I beg you…” She can say nothing else but this trembling, helpless “I beg you.”
No, not a word now, only no word, nothing but erupting, unrestrained feeling—hurricane, whirlpool, abyss, chaos. Only thus is it possible to cloud Ottane’s clarity, to switch off her resistances, to disarm her self-defense, to numb her vigilance, insofar as there is still something like vigilance in her subconscious. But seized by the well-considered fervor itself, Max Heiland truly flares up; the cool skill fizzles out; he puts on the spectacle of one completely overtaken by the divine intoxication of love; he groans, he burrows in, he clings to Ottane’s knees.
Ottane stands pale and trembling; her soul already lies defenseless in his arms. Max Heiland is a farmer’s son. He has made his way in the city with the tenacious stubbornness of his lineage; he exploits his powerful position at the top with peasant cunning—women perhaps love precisely this strange mix of earthiness and slyness. But Max Heiland also retains the sharpness of a nature-bound peasant’s senses.
And amid all the roaring and crackling of this fireworks art of passion, he does not overlook a light, fleeting step on the stairs.
He pulls himself up, hurriedly creates space between himself and Ottane—not a moment too soon, for now someone, after a brief hint of knocking, opens the door quickly and confidently.
“Ah,” says Therese Dommeyr, “I suppose I’ve come at an inconvenient time? I’m interrupting an intimate twilight hour.”
“You’re not disturbing us at all,” Max Heiland’s voice is very calm and controlled, “my eyes hurt from painting. But we can light a lamp now.”
He fumbles for light and a match, pretends not to find them, mutters irritably, knocks over a vase. It’s about giving Ottane time to compose herself.
Finally, the master can no longer delay.
“Wait, I know where the lamp is,” says Therese mockingly.
“I’ve got it,” and now it becomes light.
Max Heiland has given Ottane time to compose herself, but not enough. He himself shows not the slightest sign, but Ottane still glows and trembles a little. One wouldn’t even need Therese’s keen eye to see that a spring storm has passed over this young soul.
“It seems to me,” says Therese, “our new Paris already knows whom to give the apple to.” Behind the sharply curled mockery shines a threat of a storm.
Heiland ignores the mockery and the threat. “Yes, the picture was finished today.” A weather incantation, yes, the picture is finished, and with that, it’s probably over with the eye-sparkling, thread-weaving, twilight hours, and all that.
Incidentally, fortunately, Hermine and Schuh return from their walk just now. Both fresh and reddened by the cold, Hermine as quiet as ever, Karl Schuh a bit conspicuously noisy. Hermine feels a bit guilty; no, they don’t want to step far into the atelier; they have snow on their soles, and it’s gotten so late—oh, and the picture is finished, yes, a very beautiful picture, very lifelike, strikingly lifelike, but it’s late, one must hurry to get home; the father scolds if one stays out so long.
Homo Sapiens by Stansislaw Przybyszewski and translated by Joe E Bandel
Author’s Preface
Dedicated to the sculptor Gustav Vigeland
Due to various circumstances, I was compelled to tear apart what organically belongs together and to publish the three parts of *Homo Sapiens* separately. Thus, it came about that the first part appears last, but it is obvious that those who do not intend to misunderstand me from the outset will now read the *Homo Sapiens* novel series in its entirety and judge it as a whole, not as individual parts.
Chapter I.
Falk leapt up in a rage. What was it now?
He didn’t want to be disturbed in his work, especially now, when he had finally resolved to start working again.
Thank God! Not a friend. Just a postman.
He meant to toss the card aside. It could wait. But then, suddenly: Mikita! A flush of heat surged through him.
Mikita, my dear Mikita.
He skimmed the card: “Be at home tomorrow afternoon. I’m back from Paris.”
That was probably the most he’d written in ages, since that famous essay he’d indulged in years ago.
Falk burst into hearty laughter.
That marvelous essay! That he wasn’t expelled back then… New Year’s impressions, penned in the form of a New Year’s greeting in the most extravagant phrases; every sentence two pages long.
And then—no, wasn’t that glorious? Old Fränkel… how he ranted! Well, the affair was dicey…
Falk recalled how he’d persuaded Mikita to write an apology, in which a splendid pun ran as the underlying theme: What is permitted to a Schiller shouldn’t be permitted to a student?
And then, the next day. They wrote the apology through the entire night, went to sleep in the early morning, and sent an excuse letter to Fränkel.
Falk still couldn’t fathom how they got away with it. That splendid excuse: It was obvious that one couldn’t attend school after working all night on an apology.
Twenty pages long… Now, though, he had to work.
He sat back down, but the mood for work had vanished. He tried to force himself, fishing for thoughts, chewing on his pen, even scribbling a few lines that were utterly banal: no, it wouldn’t do.
Another time, he’d surely have fallen into one of those familiar funereal moods that he had to drown in alcohol. This time, he was glad.
He leaned back in his chair.
Vividly, he saw the dreadful garret where they’d both lived during their final year at the gymnasium. Three windows in one wall, never to be opened lest the panes fly out. Every wall covered top to bottom with mold. And cold, God have mercy.
How one early morning they awoke and looked around the room in astonishment:
“Remarkably fresh air in here,” said Mikita. “Yes, remarkable.”
And it was a wonder without bounds over this strange phenomenon.
Yes, it became clear later. It was so cold that birds froze and fell from the sky.
Falk stood up. Yes, those were his fondest memories.
And that lanky fellow who always lent them books—what was his name again?
He couldn’t recall the name for a long time. Then, at last: Longinus.
A peculiar man.
Falk thought back to how Mikita had secretly gained access to Longinus’s always-locked room and taken a book he wouldn’t lend.
Suddenly, one Sunday—yes, there must have been fresh air in the room again… He woke up. A strange scene: Mikita in his shirt, key in hand, Longinus utterly outraged, trembling with rage.
“Open the door!” Longinus hissed with theatrical pathos. “Put the book back, then I’ll open it for you.”
Longinus, in a heroic pose, pacing back and forth, back and forth, in great cothurnus strides.
“Open the door!” he roared hoarsely. “Put the book back!”
Longinus was foaming. Suddenly, he approached Falk.
“You’re a fine, educated man. You can’t tolerate my rights being infringed in any way.”
Yes, Longinus always spoke in very refined and well-composed phrases.
“Well, I’m sorry, Mikita has the key.”
Now Longinus solemnly advanced to Mikita’s bed: “I deny you any form of education.”
That was the gravest insult he’d ever uttered.
“Open the door! I’ve been violated and yield the book to you.” God, how they laughed! And it was Sunday. They were supposed to be in church. They always skipped church. They were far too committed atheists.
But it was risky. The fanatical religion teacher prowled about the church…
Ha, ha, ha.
Falk recalled how he once sat in church opposite his “flame”—yes, he sat on the catafalque, wanting to appear properly graceful and intriguing, and remained through the entire endless mass in a rather uncomfortable pose, one he’d seen in a depiction of Byron at Shelley’s grave.
What a scandal that caused!
Now he tried to muster himself for work again, but he couldn’t gather his thoughts. They all flitted and buzzed in his mind around that glorious time.
He chewed absently on his pen and repeated: What a glorious time!
How they’d suddenly discovered Ibsen, how *Brand* turned their heads.
All or nothing! Yes, that became their motto.
And they sought out the dives of the poor and gathered the proletarian children around them.
Again, Falk saw himself in the garret.
Five in the morning. A clatter of wooden clogs on the stairs, as if someone were dragging a cannon upstairs.
Then the door opened, and in marched, single file: a boy, a girl—two boys—two girls, the whole room full.
All around the stove, gathered at the large oak table. “Mikita, get up! I’m insanely tired.” Mikita cursed.
He couldn’t get up. He’d worked all night on a Latin essay.
With a jolt, they both sprang up, furious and full of hatred toward each other.
The chattering of teeth in that cold!
And now: he at the stove, puffing and cursing because the wood wouldn’t catch fire, Mikita at the large milk kettle, warming it with methylated spirits.
Gradually, they softened.
The children fell upon the milk and bread like young beasts of prey—Mikita, watching from the side, beaming, happy.
And then: Children, out!
Now they looked at each other amicably as usual. Falk felt a warmth around his heart.
He’d long forgotten that. There was, God knows, a great, beautiful meaning in it.
Then, usually, shame for catching themselves in sentimentality—no, they called it aesthetics—and, finally, a quarrel.
“The *Nibelungenlied* is really just empty, foolish drivel.” Mikita knew Falk’s weak spots well.
Of course, he wouldn’t admit that. He argued with incredible zeal and sliced the breakfast bread.
Mikita was cunning. He always entangled Falk in a dispute and let him cut the bread, because Falk, in his fervor, never noticed how tedious it was.
And suddenly: Good Lord, two minutes past time. Books snatched up and off to school in a frantic gallop. He in front, Mikita limping behind. Had he cured that bunion by now?
Now Falk usually noticed he was hungry—Mikita had eaten all the bread, the splendid fellow.
Then… Falk faltered.
*Brand* transposed onto the erotic. All or nothing… He faltered again.
He had, in truth, destroyed Janina’s entire future. Hmm, why couldn’t she just let go of him? And how he had tormented her with *Brand*’s demands and *Brand*’s harshness.
OD by Karl Hans Strobl and translated by Joe E Bandel
Chapter 9
Ottane’s picture, which is to become Max Heiland’s masterpiece, still stands on the easel.
A layman might perhaps say that it is finished, but the master still finds something to improve; it is to be his masterpiece, and that must not be given up so carelessly.
“Any random lady from society can be painted down as fast as the hands can manage. There sits the model, and there is the canvas. Stroke, stroke, stroke—one only needs to paint what one sees. That’s mass-produced goods, what one gets before the brush. With you, it’s different, Ottane! You are unique in the world, Ottane!”
And: “You mustn’t grow impatient with me, Ottane! You pose the greatest challenge to my art. With you, Ottane, I must also paint what one cannot see—the soul.”
When Max Heiland says “Ottane,” it’s always like music; it flatters the ear like an Italian aria. And one becomes just a little dizzy in the head from it, and the heart beats a bit stronger too.
It also beats stronger when one enters Heiland’s atelier. Not only because it lies so heavenward under a glass roof in Spiegelgasse and one must climb many stairs, but perhaps also because it has, so to speak, something exciting about it. All painters like to surround themselves with beautiful, rare, and gleaming things; all would gladly elevate their outward existence into the extraordinary—if only they had the means. But few have them. Max Heiland, of course, need deny himself nothing; the women crowd to him to be painted, money plays no role—perhaps because he despises it. His atelier, therefore, is no bare hole like that of a colleague who paints animal pieces or still lifes, bought by petty bourgeois and officials, or who sits with his easel outside before the landscape.
When one enters Max Heiland’s studio, it’s as if one steps into the splendid chamber of a Venetian noble. Persian carpets and animal pelts, Italian glassware, weapons, armors, embroideries on the walls, church vestments thrown over inlaid chairs and Turkish divans, carved cabinets and chests stand about. Vases of man-height, in which dry grasses, thistles, peacock feathers, and artificial flowers are united into bouquets. East and West seem to have poured their treasures over the master; the past and the new age have heaped their precious items here. And amid all this clutter, absorbed by him, sprayed over it, is the scent of women, of many women who were here, some of whom were shameless enough to offer their naked bodies to the painter. Art, they say, art is the justification for that, but Ottane couldn’t bring herself to do it, no, she would be incapable of it.
Now no other women come here except Ottane. Max Heiland says so at least; he has had a barrier put up at the entrance, he turns everyone away to concentrate all his energy on Ottane’s picture. Only Hermine comes with her to the sessions; she doesn’t pay, she is the chaperone, as Heiland calls her; she doesn’t disturb much, for most of the time Karl Schuh comes along. Then they stand by the window or sit in a corner, behind a brocade curtain, and speak quietly with each other.
And sometimes Therese Dommeyr also sweeps in. She certainly disturbs a bit more; she laughs a lot, peeks curiously into every corner, lifts all the cloths as if she is looking for someone hidden underneath, throws herself onto a divan, and drinks a sweet liqueur that Heiland pours for her from a cut-glass carafe. But she seems to have a kind of house right here, which she exercises without hesitation; there’s nothing to be done about it, even if it’s sometimes annoying. The master himself occasionally grows impatient when she behaves so unruly and expressive, as if to suggest that the others were merely tolerated by her and as if she were the main figure. He frowns, becomes taciturn, whistles between his teeth, and deliberately overlooks her.
But she pays little heed to that, continues to laugh, and finds it immensely entertaining to watch the master paint. Her quick little eyes dart between the model and the painting, she praises both, the original and the copy, but sometimes, when Ottane unexpectedly casts a glance at her, she has the impression that a hostile malice darkens in those eyes. And if only she would at least stop her often rather embarrassing jokes. What, for example, is the meaning of her saying one day: “So, Maxi, that would have been a fine embarrassment for you if you had to give one of us a golden apple as a new Paris. I think you’d know even less than he what to do with it.” Isn’t that really malicious, to ask such questions? The master looks very annoyed and clearly doesn’t know what to say.
It’s only a stroke of luck that Karl Schuh is there; he has such a bright, cheerful voice and calls from the window: “Well, we’ve had an Athena, but a Juno is still missing us, and for that we have Venus twice!” With that, he makes his cheekiest rogue face, winks with his eye, and dangles his legs like a street urchin while sitting on the windowsill. Then everyone laughs, and the mythological embarrassment is over.
Overall, though—aside from Therese Dommeyr, as mentioned—these are the most beautiful hours Ottane has ever lived. She has nothing to do but sit quietly and chat with Max Heiland. He questions her about everything—her youth in Blansko, Reinhold, her father—and then he holds up his own grand life against her small, confined one, telling stories from Rome, Paris, Naples, Venice. He has been everywhere; he truly knows the whole world; he mentions the names of crowned heads, prominent figures, as if they were as familiar to him as the grocer downstairs in the neighboring house.
But it’s most beautiful when they are completely alone, for Karl Schuh thinks it’s by no means necessary for Hermine and he to sit up here the whole time; they could just as well go for a walk in the meantime; he finds that Hermine’s face has a pallor from staying indoors; he finds that exercise could only be beneficial for her. Even today, he persuaded her after a bit of coaxing to leave Ottane and the master with his art alone and go out with him onto the street.
It is the week before Christmas; much snow has fallen in the last few days, and narrow paths have had to be shoveled, narrow paths between towering snow walls. If one doesn’t want to walk single file, one must press close together. The clear, calm cold colors Hermine’s face red, which only now reveals how pretty she really is with her beautifully arched brows and the wonder of her eyes beneath them.
Schuh also keeps talking nonstop; he has a lot to report. He has given up Daguerreotypy now—a good business, but in the long run boring, always bringing the faces of indifferent people onto the plate; besides, there are now quite a few people in Vienna doing the same and making a living from it. Now Schuh has turned to galvanoplasty, a new process that utilizes electricity to produce small metal art objects.
At the “Hof,” the Christmas market is set up. Booths are lined up into alleys, filled with apples and nuts, toys for children—jumping jacks, dolls, nutcrackers, balls—a world of colorful things. Heavily wrapped women sit in the booths and at the stalls, warming pans between their legs, red noses frozen under watchful little eyes.
“Look at the children,” says Schuh, “isn’t that adorable?”
Children swarm around in groups, led by their mothers, crowding before the mountains of fruit and toys; but there are also many among them who are alone with their longing and their pitiful, daring Christmas hope. A tiny tot in a thin little coat stands before a mountain of apples, a mix of red, golden yellow, and wine green, his gaze unable to move away—hungry, captive looks.
Karl Schuh buys a few apples, a handful of nuts, stuffs everything into the tot’s pocket: “There you go! Run!”
The tot stares, doesn’t understand, looks at the strange man, and then suddenly sets off at a trot—the strange man might change his mind.
“Don’t you love children?” asks Schuh. “I think it would be so nice to have children of my own. As a child, things didn’t go well for me; I always wished a strange man would come and stuff apples into my pocket. I thought, perhaps the dear God might once walk the market in disguise and stop by me, giving me a jumping jack or a sheep made of red sugar.” Oh yes, Hermine probably loved children too, but in her heart something is buried, something living is entombed there; it dares not emerge, it doesn’t even venture to stir, for fear of sinking even deeper.
Otherwise, though, Schuh is very absorbed with his galvanoplasty. He begins talking about it again and again, then interrupts himself, laughing, shows Hermine a group, a whole regiment of little Krampuses with small wooden ladders and hats made of black paper, and then returns to galvanoplasty.
As they are now pressed even closer together by the crowd, he gently slips his hand into Hermine’s muff, where it’s warm and cozy, and tries to grasp her hand. But then Hermine pulls her fingers away; she makes a small turn, taking the muff with her and depriving Schuh’s hand of its shelter.
Athena! thinks Schuh, disappointed, always only Pallas Athena—cool, chaste, devoted only to science—her soul locked, surrounded by thick walls through which no heartbeat from next door can be heard.
A group of young people pushes past, students; they force their way ruthlessly through the crowd; the bustle of the Christmas market is merely an obstacle on their path—no, they aren’t here for the children’s toys; their expressions are full of bitterness, their gestures speak of rebellion.
“Reinhold!” calls Hermine.
Yes, Reinhold is among them; he heard his sister, detaches himself from the group, and approaches the two hesitantly and embarrassedly.
“What’s wrong with them?” asks Schuh, looking after the students. “What’s gotten under their skin?”
Reinhold pulls them into a narrow side alley between the booths. “We want,” he whispers, “to go to Haidvogel’s inn in Schlossergäßchen. The police are said to have disbanded the Ludlamshöhle.”
“The Ludlamshöhle,” says Schuh, “that’s that society of writers and actors… what does it have to do with politics?”
“Nothing, not the slightest bit. That’s just it. But the police found a poster saying: ‘This time Saturday is on a Sunday!’ Because this time the meeting is on Sunday instead of Saturday.”
“Oh dear, and the police can’t figure that out,” laughs Schuh. “And so it’s suspicious.”
OD by Karl Hans Strobl and translated by Joe E Bandel
“Tell me,” the sick woman’s voice complained, “what is that over there? I’ve been seeing it all this time.”
“What do you see?” asked Reichenbach.
“It’s like a large five of cards, four spots arranged in a square and a fifth in the middle, all faintly glowing. What is that?”
Reichenbach looked around; his eyes tried to pierce the darkness; he saw no glowing five of cards, nowhere in the pitch blackness even a hint.
“Where do you see the glow?” Reichenbach took a few steps at random, bumped into something, changed direction, and groped further.
“How do you feel, gracious lady?” asked Eisenstein.
“It cools me,” said the sick woman quietly, “that feels good; the Baron is coming toward my bed.”
“Do you feel that?” And Reichenbach pressed on in the direction he had taken.
“No, please,” cried the Hofrätin in distress, “stop, stay where you are. Don’t go further. Now a warm breeze comes from you. I feel sick; I believe you are ill, Baron.”
“You’re mistaken there,” laughed Reichenbach, “I’m not the slightest bit unwell.”
“How do you perceive that?” asked Eisenstein.
“I don’t know, I can’t say. But I believe the Baron is sick or will become sick.”
“I can reassure you, Frau Hofrätin, you are certainly mistaken.”
One could hear that the sick woman moved restlessly in the bed. “I want to know what this five means. It frightens me when I don’t know.”
“One must bring light…” Eisenstein considered, “the Baron and I see nothing.”
“Let light come for a moment,” the Hofrätin groaned, “I want to know.”
Eisenstein, after some searching, found the door, opened it, and called for the maid. Although the anteroom was unlit, a faint twilight already penetrated the deep darkness. And after a while, the maid came with the lamp.
The Hofrätin lay pale, with wide eyes in the bed, staring at the opposite wall. “There… over there,” she said, and a faint hand rose.
“Where did you see the five?” Reichenbach asked again, for there was nothing but a wall with a small chest of drawers, a little bookcase, and then a double door leading to the next room. “Where… there? There?”
He pointed to the chest of drawers, the bookcase, to the pictures on the wall.
“No, much larger, as big as the door and right in the middle.”
It suddenly occurred to Reichenbach that there was the double door, and it had a hinge fitting on each side and the lock and handle in the middle—together five metal spots, a large five of cards.
“Were the spots that high?” asked Reichenbach, stretching toward the top edge of the door.
“Yes… they may have been there.”
“It’s the door,” Reichenbach turned to Eisenstein, “the fittings are brass.”
They were brass, fine, but did brass glow in the darkness? What peculiar ability did this woman possess that she saw metal glowing in the blackness?
“May I,” said Eisenstein quickly, “since we now have light, I would like to show the Baron Reichenbach something, gracious lady.” He pulled something from his pocket, a piece of iron, red-painted at one end—a magnet, a common bar magnet.
The sick woman turned restlessly; she wanted to be alone again at last, but the men were seized by the ruthless zeal of science. “We’ve already tried it. Please close your eyes.” And Eisenstein comes slowly toward the bed and places the red end of the magnet rod into the Hofrätin’s left hand.
She lies with closed eyes, and her fingers clasp the iron; her features smooth out a little. “Please, how do you feel the touch?”
“Cool.”
Eisenstein takes the magnet from her hand, turns it around, and places it back into her left hand.
“How do you feel that?”
The sick woman groans; her face expresses disgust: “Warm! Repulsive!”
Eisenstein looks up at the Freiherr, who stands there shaking his head. A silent question: What do you say now? The doctor removes the magnet, gives it back to the patient, now with one end, now with the other, then two, three, four times in a row with the same end, in random alternation; whenever the Hofrätin grasps the north pole, she feels the iron cool and soothing; when she has the south pole between her fingers, it feels warm and unpleasant. She obediently keeps her eyes closed, but her answers remain certain; she doesn’t err a single time.
“Is it for this reason that you spoke of a kinship with magnetism?” Reichenbach asks finally.
“Wait?” And now Eisenstein places the magnet in the patient’s right hand.
She twists her face and breathes in gasps. “How do you perceive that?”
“Warm and repulsive.”
It is the north pole that she now holds in her right hand. With with wide-open eyes, Reichenbach stares at the slender fingers trembling around the iron. Reversed? The opposite effect from the left? Yes, by God, exactly reversed—what was soothing on the left is tormenting on the right, what was painful on the left is pleasant on the right. Eisenstein continues his experiments—ten times, twelve times—checking the phenomenon on the left hand in between; no error blurs the picture.
Then the sick woman impatiently opens her eyes, gasping: “Leave me alone at last. I can’t anymore. I cannot tolerate the light any longer.”
“Yes, yes, gracious lady,” Eisenstein soothes, “we are finished. We’ll leave now. Drink the tea I prescribed, and try to sleep. I’ll see you again tomorrow.”
Then the men stand outside the door; Eisenstein’s looks ask clearly: Well, did I exaggerate? Did I call you here for nothing? Am I now also a man or not? A man like Schuh, eh?
Reichenbach’s eyes burn inwardly. “What interpretation do you have for that… for all these phenomena?”
Eisenstein has no interpretation; he shrugs his shoulders: “The key eludes me for now. But I believe this is a matter that concerns not only the physician but also the physicist, and that’s why I asked you to come.” Eisenstein has played a trump card; he feels it, he knows that Reichenbach is gripped by the problem. Eisenstein has become an important figure. He has unleashed the passion of thought in the Freiherr, his only passion; he has shown him something new, and forced his way into the fortified house and to Hermine; oh ho, what this Schuh can do, Eisenstein can do too—make himself indispensable—and now he will surely succeed in making up for the lead that Schuh has.
The men trudge wordlessly side by side through the dark streets in slushy snow. Under a streetlamp, Reichenbach stops, seized by a thought. “Perhaps they are rays… a kind of rays emanating from things…”
He breaks off, overwhelmed by his thoughts, and Eisenstein eagerly confirms: “It could also be, in a way, a kind of rays…”
He feels with satisfaction how furiously his companion’s mind is working. In this head, it’s now a wild tumult. It’s a volcano, a sea of flames, a tumbling chaos, a roaring, a battling, a hissing of blazing thoughts; the skull walls stand under a pressure as if they must burst; the Blansko furnace, all the blast furnaces of the world, are mere panting kettles compared to it; their glow is a pitiful little fire.
OD by Karl Hans Strobl and translated by Joe E Bandel
He projected images onto a light-sensitive plate with a lens; everyone was talking about it, everyone flocked to the young man; all of Vienna wanted to stand before his lens—it had become a lucrative business, Schuh had money in abundance. He had also made pictures of the entire Reichenbach family, each one individually and all together with the Freiherr in the middle—no doubt, it was living reality, so vivid and faithful as no painter could reproduce.
Thus, it was by no means the Freiherr’s intention to completely fall out with Schuh, and the neglect of Hermine’s botanical work wasn’t so serious either, since Schuh helped her with it too. When Reichenbach expressed his dissatisfaction, it was probably more because he had grown accustomed to occasionally picking at her to spur her on to higher achievements.
Reinhold also provided ample occasion for disapproving criticism. Although they now lived in the city, he sometimes stayed out in the evenings and excused himself with his studies, but then he was surely huddled with the other students in some back room, holding conversations about “freedom” and “people’s wishes.” Over this part of his life, he spread deliberate obscurity. How much he had been incited to defiance was shown by the fact that he dared to retort to his father that he was no schoolboy, that rascal, and that one had to rebuke him sternly to make him crumple and then stand at attention again.
Even with Ottane’s household management, Reichenbach had much to criticize. His reproaches brought forth tears.
“And how long are these sessions with this Herr Heiland supposed to last?”
“Heiland says my picture will be the best he’s ever painted.”
“Nonsense, this picture-painting! Look at Schuh, you step in front of his apparatus and in a few hours have a picture, more similar than any painter could ever make.”
“Heiland says that Daguerreotypy will never be able to replace painting. Daguerreotypy is mechanics, but painting is art.”
“Briefly,” the Freiherr cut off Ottane’s thread, “I want this matter to come to an end once and for all.”
Perhaps Reichenbach’s mood would have been considerably better if he had come to a more intimate understanding with Therese Dommeyr. The fame of the actress was still on the rise; her star shone over the Viennese theater sky; so many people took an interest in her art and her existence; ultimately, it was no wonder if little was left for the individual. She also came to Bäckergasse, fluttered through the rooms, had pastries and a glass of Spanish wine served, rang out with her bell-like laughter, told theater stories, rearranged the knick-knacks on the dressers and cabinets, moved the embroidered and crocheted covers from one place to another, and then vanished again.
As soon as she was gone, Ottane, who never showed herself during such visits, reappeared, sniffed with a wrinkled nose at the foreign scent, put the table runners and sofa covers back in their original places, and also returned the knick-knacks to their spots.
Sometimes Therese came laden with bile and on the verge of bursting. “I beg you, Baron, have you any idea? This rabble at the theater, such a bunch! By my soul, I’ll pull myself together and run away from them.” They had annoyed her; they didn’t appreciate her enough, things didn’t always go her way; the colleagues were full of envy and spun intrigues, the male colleagues were after her, but Therese didn’t care about them, let them go, and then they switched to the enemy side. She wept a little, she scolded like a magpie, she called down God’s judgment on the whole theater gang, she screamed and shook herself, and in all that commotion, she was as charming as ever.
“Yes, the theater is hot ground,” Reichenbach said cautiously, “ultimately, you’ll get tired of it and want to flee into a bourgeois existence.”
“Do you think so?” Therese let the handkerchief sink, which she had stuffed into her mouth to stifle her crying fit. “Oh,” and she made sorrowful innocent eyes, the expression of a deeply wronged child, “I think, after all, I’m lost for that. A bourgeois existence… and married, ultimately a comedienne?” And the look of those innocent eyes became so penetrating that it sent a shiver, hot and cold, down Reichenbach’s back.
Yes, she offered, so to speak, samples of her iridescent, light-hearted personality and left behind an increased appetite for more after every visit. But before any grasping or holding, she slipped away smoothly and agilely like a glittering little fish.
On a winter evening, Severin announced Doctor Eisenstein.
Reichenbach was just in his laboratory, engaged in investigations on magnetism, prompted by Schuh. Eisenstein? What reason had Eisenstein to seek him out? For if he thought that Reichenbach had changed his mind and now thought differently about his suit, he wanted to thoroughly dispel that misconception. Reichenbach stiffened, and as the doctor entered, he saw the Freiherr armored in icy inaccessibility before him.
“I come,” the doctor began at once, “to ask for your advice.”
“What is your pleasure?”
“You see me somewhat embarrassed… it is namely a case in which I’ve reached the end of my art. I have a patient.”
“I am no physician, Herr Doktor; turn to a colleague.”
Eisenstein shook his head: “That wouldn’t help me. The colleagues don’t think beyond the tips of their noses. I need a man who has an unprejudiced eye for the new, who looks beyond the obvious, who at the same time masters the entire field of physics—in short, a man like you.”
“Very flattering,” said Reichenbach, buttoned up to the top.
“It concerns, namely, phenomena that seem to have a certain similarity to magnetic facts.” Yes, Eisenstein paid no attention to Reichenbach’s mockingly dismissive tone; he seemed so filled with the matter that he had no ear for it. It might be animal magnetism, as Mesmer and his pupils had taught, and yet much was different again; one was compelled to consider purely magnetic phenomena in physics, and since the Freiherr was precisely in this field—Eisenstein cast a quick sidelong glance at the apparatus—possessed of experience like no other… One couldn’t very well go to someone else with these enigmatic matters. Reichenbach was no ossified scholar; he wasn’t bound by prejudices; he had even advocated for Semmelweis; he was equipped as a researcher with the superiority of a sage.
“Who is your patient?” asked Reichenbach.
“Frau Hofrätin Reißnagel.”
“Very well,” said the Freiherr after a moment’s reflection, “I will accompany you.”
They walked through the snow flurry the short distance to Kohlmarkt, where the Hofrätin lived. He didn’t want to prejudge the examination, said Eisenstein; the Freiherr might form his own judgment about the phenomena. Only with the case history must he familiarize him in outline. About two years ago, the Hofrätin had been seized by the illness that was, so to speak, fashionable back then. The Freiherr might perhaps recall—symptoms of a cold, sniffles, cough, headaches, high fever, nothing otherwise extraordinary; the distressing thing, however, were the consequences. After a duration of a few days of the cold subsiding, but then came the most unpleasant surprises. Lung inflammations, joint inflammations, leg inflammations, heart diseases, some of them with fatal outcomes. It seemed some kind of poison had remained in the body, which then chose an organ to lodge in and wreak havoc. In the case of Frau Hofrätin Reißnagel, it was as if the poison had struck the head, at least since then those strange states had set in, a lapse of consciousness for certain durations. It had occurred particularly often in recent times that she had undertaken things of which she later could not remember, she had left the house and stayed away without afterward being able to say where she had been. Her soul would occasionally fall, so to speak, into a twilight, from which she returned dazed and without memory of what had happened. Added to this, and alongside it, was that heightened sensitivity, of which the Freiherr would now be able to convince himself.
They had meanwhile arrived in front of the old house where the Hofrat lived, climbed the stairs, the old maid opened the door, and Eisenstein led the Freiherr, after he had taken off his coat, straight into the sick woman’s room.
Upon entering, Reichenbach found himself in such complete darkness that he dared not take a step. He stood still, but from the depths of the impenetrable blackness came a sound and then a faint voice: “Is that you, Baron Reichenbach?”
“It is I, gracious lady. Has Eisenstein told you—?”
“Eisenstein has told me nothing. I know it’s you; I felt you coming before the door.”
If Eisenstein had said nothing, how could the Hofrätin know who had stepped into the dark room, and what did it mean that she had felt him before the door?
“Why is it so dark here?” asked Reichenbach.
“I cannot tolerate the light,” came the faint reply.
“The windows are draped with cloths; opposite, a streetlamp is burning.”
“The Frau Hofrätin cannot sleep if the moon shines into the bedroom,” Eisenstein added from the darkness, with conscientious matter-of-factness. “Is this the bedroom?”
“Not really,” said Eisenstein, “it is the Frau Hofrätin’s room. But she sleeps here. She cannot tolerate the proximity of another; confinement is oppressive to her. You will recall that she became unwell at your place back then, and then she wanted to lie with her face to the wall, which she cannot do over there.”
Nerves, thought Reichenbach, what beyond nerves, as is so common with women, or could the Hofrätin perhaps even—? But Eisenstein should have known that.
The next day continued at a luxurious pace, the soft rustle of leaves and distant bird calls weaving a tranquil rhythm. For the first time, there was no hurry or pressing matter. He indulged in curiosity and took exploratory hikes away from the stream, the cool earth beneath his boots and the faint scent of wildflowers drawing him to interesting and promising areas that from time to time caught his attention.
There was plenty of small game, and he was always able to knock down some bird or animal for a quick meal, the crackle of its cooking flesh a comforting sound. He never thought about using his bow. He had no need for that much meat and didn’t want to waste the time curing and drying it into jerky.
As long as he was following the stream, he didn’t have to worry about getting lost or even using the map and compass. All he had to do was keep going downstream, the water’s gentle murmur guiding him. There were actually a few times when it was raining, the patter on his shelter a soothing lullaby, that he would set up camp for a few days in the same spot and just sit out the bad weather. It was so peaceful and beautiful, with golden sunlight filtering through the trees, that one day led to the next. There was no pressure to perform and no Rafe to challenge him or push him harder.
He loved setting his own pace and being his own boss, the freedom swelling in his chest. He moved as the spirit moved him, and his solo was more like a vacation than actual work.
When he arrived at the lake, he made one spot a semi-permanent base and spent two weeks there, just fishing, exploring, and working on his clothing and equipment. The lake was good-sized and fed by several mountain streams, its surface reflecting the fiery hues of colorful sunsets that painted the evening sky. But nights were not restful. His dreams turned horrifying—vivid scenes of people being slaughtered, their screams echoing, and ghostly figures drifting among mass graves, their hollow eyes pleading. The Lord and Lady never came to him; it seemed the dead walked in his dreams instead of the living, a chilling weight settling on his soul. One night, a low hum from a Federation drone sliced through the silence, its cold metallic glint passing overhead, startling him awake, heart pounding, as it vanished into the dark.
Game was plentiful, and he started a permanent camp similar to Rafe’s. No one seemed to be at this particular location, but he did run across the remains of old campfires and a few shelters. There was nothing recent. He saw many deer with young, and the bear had come out of hibernation. He saw one mother bear with cubs and gave it a wide berth, the musky scent of her fur lingering in the air. Spring was the natural time for most wild species to give birth and nourish their young. Many of them at one time or another came down to the lake for water, usually in the early morning or late evenings just before sunset. One morning, he even saw a cougar or mountain lion on the opposite shore of the lake, its stealthy grace sending a shiver down his spine.
It seemed like birds were everywhere, and he learned to listen to the forest and what it was telling him—their songs a lively chorus at times, or an eerie quiet that raised the hairs on his neck. At night, the trees would creak and sway in the wind, and he would hear night creatures prowl around the camp in the darkness, their rustling footsteps a stark contrast to Rafe’s reassuring voice. Being alone in the woods was a lot different than being with someone, and he thought that maybe his dark dreams and that drone’s intrusion were getting to him.
Tobal thought about the time that he would need to teach six other people to solo just like Rafe had done. He didn’t know if he wanted to teach anyone yet. It would be much more fun to explore and develop a permanent camp. Perhaps he would take his newbies down into this area. With that in mind, Tobal began building his own teepee-shaped structure. He could get the blanket material from Sanctuary later after the framework was completed.
He began setting up things he had seen at Rafe’s—a smokehouse, a rack for drying jerky, a sweat lodge, and several traps for fish and for quail. These were spares for later in the winter months since he didn’t need them right now. It didn’t take him long to realize that he needed more cord and string. He also wished he had something heavier than a knife to cut wood with. A good axe would come in handy. He remembered the one he had seen at the store in Old Seattle and tried making one like it. It turned out better than he had expected, and he used it to chop smaller trees for his shelters.
The days passed, and once or twice he reflected it was strange he wasn’t missing human companionship. He wasn’t even feeling lonely, just surrounded by a deep peaceful feeling, the warmth of the sun on his face a balm—at least during the daytime. Before he knew it, the month was almost up, and it was time to head for the gathering spot once more. It was almost full moon. The clan would be having circle, and they would be expecting him back.
He gathered enough smoked fish, rabbit, and venison jerky to last several weeks. He could supplement that with anything fresh he found along the trail. He hated to leave the lake, the gentle quacking of ducks and the splash of beavers tugging at his heart. He loved to watch the ducks, geese, beaver, muskrats, and all the other animals that visited the lake and called it home. He even toyed with the idea of staying, but it was time to go, and he knew he would be back.
As Tobal neared the gathering spot, he saw others heading toward the circle. When they waved, he felt like he was indeed coming home, a surge of belonging warming his chest. Nobody else whistled as they approached the camp, and they laughed at him. He asked why and was told there were no guards except on the trail that led from Sanctuary. Newbies were only to come into camp from that path. After they had joined the clan, there was no need for a guard. It was just part of the initiation. Tobal felt silly and wondered why Rafe had never told him that part of it. He remembered Rafe laughing at him the last time they had come to circle when he had been constantly whistling. It was so like Rafe to let him figure things out for himself.
He was in high spirits as he helped set up the structures and gather firewood for the bonfire, the crackle of logs and chatter of clansmen lifting his mood. He was enjoying being treated as an equal and kept busy throughout the day. He was feeling good when his friends showed up, congratulating him on his solo. He talked with Nikki; she had completed her training with Zee, and the Elders approved her for soloing this month. She was excited about it. Tobal made sure to give her a kiss for good luck. Nikki was a stocky, well-built brunette with an infectious sense of humor and an impulsiveness that got her into trouble at times, but she always managed to get out of it just as quickly.
“Hey, don’t I get one too?” Zee asked, pouting and tossing her braided raven hair back over her shoulder, her voice a playful challenge that hung in the air, a moment heavy with the promise of their shared journey.
Tobal moved over and gave her a big hug and a kiss. “How have you been?” he teased, his grin widening.
“I’ve been doing quite well, thank you,” she laughed, her eyes sparkling. “I’m heading out for Sanctuary in the morning. You want to come along? It’s always more fun traveling together than alone.” Her smile was warm, carrying a hint of anticipation that lingered, a decision point that would shape their next steps.
“That sounds like a good idea,” he said, considering the journey ahead. “How early are you planning to start out?”
“The sooner the better,” she replied, her tone firm yet inviting. “How about sunrise?”
“I’ll see if I can get up that early,” he griped, and they both smiled, the moment sealing their plan with a shared lightness.
He walked over and found out Kevin was going to try for a newbie and hoped there would be enough newbies for everyone. They congratulated each other on their solos and told stories about how it had gone. Kevin was pretty excited.
When Rafe showed up, it was kind of odd because he was alone and didn’t have anyone with him. After a warm hug, Rafe explained he’d been visiting others and taking it easy since his last training stint. He mentioned earning his sixth chevron at the upcoming awards and his initiation as a Journeyman in two weeks, a mix of nerves and excitement in his voice as he looked forward to the ceremony.
Later at the afternoon assembly, introductions were made for Tobal, Kevin, and the four other newly soloed Apprentices. They were brought out in front of the circle to the sound of cheering, good-natured applause, and joking.
The next to be brought forward was Rafe. Alongside Kevin’s teacher, Rafe was eligible for the Journeyman degree. They were called to the front as the sixth chevron was sewn onto their sleeves amidst joking and laughter. The Journeyman degree initiation was set for the new moon in two weeks at a secret location, marked on their maps but unknown to Apprentices.
He chatted with Wayne and Char for a bit before sunset. They were building a permanent base camp and planned on spending the winter together. That got Tobal thinking about the coming cold weather and how he needed to get prepared, resolving to pick up his winter gear cached at Rafe’s on the way back to circle next month. He figured he’d be okay for this month since the furs weren’t prime yet.
He visited with Tara for a while. She was concentrating on building a base camp and getting ready for the coming winter, hoping to find someone to share it with. She was disappointed when Tobal said he was planning to train during the winter.
The bonfire was lit, and word came around that there would be several Apprentice initiations. Ellen wanted to start early, reminding Tobal about the small meditation group the next morning to explore the Lord and Lady’s mysteries—a detail he barely registered in the moment. He almost forgot about it until he heard one of the guards boom out, “Becca Morgan is welcomed into our clan as a new member.” Along with the others, he was caught up in the shouting, applause, and craning his neck to get his first view of this new member of the clan.
As the High Priestess and High Priest began the initiation ceremony, Tobal found himself remembering parts, though some things seemed reversed. Then he realized the High Priest was doing the initiating, not the High Priestess, because Becca was female. It seemed the High Priestess only initiated male candidates, and the High Priest initiated female ones.
Tobal was admitted into the circle by the High Priestess with a hug and a kiss and found a place to sit on the northern side of the circle. He sat with others as the circle was purified and made ready for the candidate.
Everyone sat back in anticipation as Becca was led out, hoodwinked with both hands tied behind her back. Her guide was the same dark-haired girl that had been his guide, and he still didn’t know her name. He was going to have to ask someone. As Becca was initiated, Tobal found himself staring at her. Her tunic had been cut so short he could almost see where her slender white legs joined together beneath the cloth, and he found them incredibly attractive. The air buzzed with a rising energy, a warm current that pulsed through him, stirring a mix of awe and anticipation as the Lord and Lady’s presence began to form above the central fire.
He was watching the candidate—or rather, watching her legs—as the charge was read, reliving his own initiation in his mind. The energy built, a tingling wave that coursed through his body, heightening his senses with a vibrant hum. When the drums started and it was time to move around the circle and build the cone of power, he found himself dancing clockwise with the others. As he touched her shoulder and gently turned her, a spark raced up his arm and down his spine, a surge of electric thrill mingling with discomfort. What was going on? He was obviously aroused and attracted by this unknown girl, and he could even feel how she must feel as the focus of all this energy, her presence amplifying the circle’s power.
His elation turned to shock and horror as the Priest took the hoodwink off Becca, and her face was exposed to the firelight of the circle. As she blinked, he saw it was the girl who almost clawed his eyes out a year ago. An energy backlash hit him, a sharp jolt that twisted his stomach and sent a cold shiver through his frame, as if the circle’s power turned against him. She was being initiated into his clan and his circle as a sister. The realization unleashed a powerful emotional reaction—rage, betrayal, and fear crashing over him, his breath catching as his hands clenched, the weight of her presence unbearable.
Stunned and hurt, he got through the rest of the ceremony by retreating so deeply into his own thoughts and inner anguish that he hardly realized what was going on within the circle. He sat through three other initiations in a stupor, the meditation group forgotten in his turmoil. Later, when the party started, Tobal made a pretense of having a good time but soon slipped away, and nobody seemed to notice he was gone.
Tobal didn’t know if anyone had missed him. Overwhelmed, he left that evening and struggled his way up the cliff leading back to Sanctuary, forgoing safety precautions in his haste. He was well on his way along the narrow cliff ledge as the sun came up and shed its light into the valley, but the terrain was treacherous, and his mind was elsewhere. His gut churned with a mixture of raw emotions—anger at Becca, confusion about the circle, and a desperate need to escape.
It wasn’t fair. This was his clan, his circle, his people, and his friends. For Goddess’ sake, he was in the middle of the wilderness attempting to become a citizen of a Forbidden City. What was the likelihood she would be doing the same thing? The world simply wasn’t that small.
He was in a numbed state as he made his way toward Sanctuary for the first time. The trip was a blur, and he didn’t remember much. He ate from his own food supplies and didn’t bother hunting for anything but water for his two canteens, his focus shattered.
The cheerful, easy peace of mind he had experienced during his solo was gone, and he stumbled blindly along. The connection he had formed with nature was temporarily forgotten as the sun beat mercilessly down on him during the day, and he slept on the hard, unforgiving ground during the night. The next two days, it rained mercilessly, and he narrowly avoided a flash flood that swept his camp away, losing most of his supplies. The roaring water nearly took him too, a close brush with death that left him shaken. Nature’s unforgiving power was a stark lesson.
Luckily, he still had his map and compass in a pouch around his neck and was able to triangulate his position. He was wet, cold, tired, and hungry as he trudged across a muddy terrain made slick in spots by red clay that clung to his shoes, making every step a grueling challenge. The water had filled his shoes and sloshed between his toes, and he could feel blisters beginning to form on his heels from the chafing, each step a painful reminder of his recklessness.
When he arrived at Sanctuary—the processing building for the Sanctuary Program, overseen by Heliopolis with an unknown connection to the local Federation outpost—nobody was there. He was disappointed but also very humbled that he had lost most of his supplies in the flash flood, including his jerky. As he chewed down some of the nasty-tasting stuff from the machine, he resolved to wait right there until someone did show up. There were usually several new people each month that somehow arrived at Sanctuary from wherever they came from. Remembering Rafe’s advice, he stripped completely, leaving his gear in a corner, and went through the medical exam again, getting a new set of robes, pack, and med-kit, and most importantly, fresh socks and a new pair of hiking boots.
Tobal thought about using the new robe as a raincoat or slicker and grabbed several blankets to take back to the lake as a covering for his teepee. He went through the contents of the new pack and med-kit, finding another knife, razor, and toothbrush to replace those he had lost in the flood. He looked at his old wet hiking boots, wondering whether he should keep them or not. Besides being soaked, they were almost worn out from the rugged lifestyle of the past two months. He decided to hang onto them anyway. Boots were hard to come by in the wilderness, and homemade ones just didn’t have the comfort of these heavy-duty hiking boots.
He was feeling satisfied with his pack and starting to feel better in general when he heard footsteps entering the building and a timid “Hello.”
He froze in the darkness, waiting. There was a short silence, and the footsteps continued until he heard the familiar mechanical voice saying, “Do you seek sanctuary in the city of the sun?”
A timid female voice answered weakly, “Yes, I do.”
Tobal moved silently to the edge of the dark archway and looked into the other room. He saw a slight figure with her back toward him. She was entering the sliding door into the exam area.
Yesterday, he had gone through the exam wearing his med-alert bracelet, and it had been nothing like the two-day processing he had gone through the first time. It had only taken about 3 hours before he emerged with his new clothing and gear. He knew it would be two days for this newbie to finish processing, so he settled down to wait.
The pouring rain continued, and he assumed Zee and Kevin had decided not to travel in the storm and would be coming later after the weather had cleared.
It was around noon on the second day that a sure-footed hulk came through the door dressed in the gray tunic of an Apprentice. It was a boy Tobal had seen at circle briefly but hadn’t talked to. He felt this hulking boy had been hostile toward both him and Rafe. Tobal remembered the boy’s name was Victor, but most people called him Ox, probably because he was so slow and big. Ox stopped and grinned when he saw Tobal.
“Anyone come in yet?” he asked.
“Yeah, someone’s processing right now,” Tobal replied.
Ox padded over to him, his bulk towering over Tobal in a menacing way. He could see the five chevrons on Ox’s sleeve and knew Ox intended to claim this newbie for himself.
“You’d better run along little boy,” Ox told him. “I’ll take care of this one.”
An icy feeling settled into Tobal’s gut. He felt sick and powerless to stop what was happening. Ox was too big for him to take in a fight. He sat back on one of the cots without saying anything. A small flicker of triumph gleamed in Ox’s eyes as he turned and went outside for his pack.
Moments later, Tobal heard a door slide open, and the girl, now dressed in a gray robe and carrying a bundle, stepped into the darker room where he sat waiting. As if on cue, Ox came stomping in and walked up to her. He roughly grabbed her arm.
“Come on, I’m your new teacher,” he growled. “Let’s get going.”
She shrank back, obviously terrified, and Tobal instinctively stood up without thinking.
“Wait a minute, Ox,” he said. “I’ve been waiting here three days, and I think you’re rushing things a little bit. She might prefer to go with me than with you.”
His challenge stopped Ox in his tracks.
“You still here, scarface?” he asked. “You’d better run back to Rafe before I mess you up.”
“Why don’t we just explain the situation to the newbie,” said Tobal reasonably. “We can both talk to her, and she can make her own decision about who she wants as a teacher.”
Ox didn’t even wait. He spun and lurched over to where Tobal was standing, grabbed him by the tunic, and threw him down on the floor. In disbelief, Tobal narrowly missed being kicked in the face by a huge boot. This guy was really trying to hurt him! He rolled hastily to his feet and watched Ox with fear in his eyes. There had been no real warning. Tobal was caught completely off guard by the viciousness of the attack and had no idea what to expect next. Ox was obviously used to getting his own way and was coming around the end of the cot to close with him and give him a real pounding that could involve serious injury.
Instinctively, Tobal’s hand went to his knife, and he held it in front of him protectively with the edge upward. Ox halted, shock registering on his face. He was obviously not used to being threatened with knives and didn’t know what to do about it.
Sensing an advantage, Tobal took a quick step toward Ox, waving the knife slightly.
“I said let’s talk to her. Let’s explain things to her, and then let her decide.”
Ox stood still, not moving, a nervous tick showed on his left cheek, and his eyes were bulging. Like most bullies, Ox was a coward at heart. He was clearly unprepared for any of this and didn’t know what to do. The silence built until his nerve broke, unwilling to challenge Tobal any further; he spun away with a dangerous glint in his eye.
“I’ll remember this,” he said and stalked heavily out of the room.
Tobal turned toward Fiona, who was shrinking from him in fear. Then it occurred to him that he was still brandishing the knife in a threatening way. He put the knife away, blushing.
“Sorry about that,” he said in an embarrassed way. He felt a red flush creeping up his face, making the muscles go tight and pulling the scar tissue, making it stand out in the dim light. He was uncomfortably aware of how he must appear to this frightened girl.
“Sorry,” he said again weakly and sat down on the edge of a cot.
As Fiona stepped into the room, Tobal’s eyes widened in recognition. “Fiona!” he exclaimed, a rush of relief and surprise breaking through his exhaustion. She froze, her dark brown eyes meeting his, then softened into a faint, tearful smile as her blonde hair caught the dim light. “Tobal, I found you!” she whispered, clutching her bundle. “They stole all my things!”
She burst into tears, unable to take more, and Tobal’s heart softened, a chuckle escaping at the irony. He lay back on the uncomfortable cot, looking her over with a mix of concern and nostalgia. She was taller than he’d first thought in Chapter 1, reaching his shoulder, her blonde hair now stringy from the journey, her thin, long face marked by a black eye and yellowing bruise. Her shoulders shook, an ordeal etched into her frame.
“Why did you come here?” he asked gently, leaning forward.
Gradually, her story spilled out. She had missed him back home, asking around until she heard about Sanctuary—the processing building for the Sanctuary Program, overseen by Heliopolis with an unknown connection to the local Federation outpost. Wild stories of time travel, witches’ circles, and magick had reached her, but she hadn’t really believed them. Determined to find him, she’d run from an abusive home, only to arrive scared and lost, the reality far from her expectations.
“It’s not at all like I thought it would be,” she confessed tearfully.
“You ran away from home?” Tobal asked, noting her blush and the bruises.
She nodded, her face reddening to her roots, and Tobal shuddered, imagining her with Ox. Her sanctuary was a refuge from violence, unlike his search for parental clues.
Not quite knowing how to begin, “This is kind of complicated,” he said at last. “Sanctuary isn’t that easy, and becoming a citizen takes a long time.” He began lamely. “You see, they don’t just let people into Heliopolis….”
She started to clench up and quiver, fighting back tears, and he motioned her to keep quiet and let him finish. He tried a kindly smile, seeing her flinch.
“Heliopolis only grants citizenship to those who’ve proven themselves worthy. Claiming sanctuary means you’re applying and willing to prove your worthiness.”
He stopped, realizing she didn’t understand, and tried again.
“You just had a medical exam, right?” She nodded. “You’ve also taken tests and been given a pack with clothing and a sleeping bag, right?” She nodded again.
“What you’re expected to do is prove you can live off the land alone for a month.”
She looked at him in shocked disbelief, her eyes widening in horror.
“You mean there’s no sanctuary here?” she asked.
His face relaxed into a grin as he sat up. “There is safety and sanctuary in a way. A group of us live outside the city in the wilderness. We’ve all claimed sanctuary, even Ox, whom you met. We’re proving ourselves worthy of Heliopolis citizenship. It requires three degrees of work and study. The Apprentice degree is learning to survive alone for a month, or 28 days—the moon cycle—without help. Once you solo, you train six others. Mastering that earns you the Journeyman degree, which we can discuss later.”
“Ox has trained five, but I haven’t yet. I just finished my solo three days ago and came hoping to find someone to teach.”
She grew curious, attentive.
“Ox came for the same, and we clashed, as you saw,” he grinned ruefully. “I’m alive, though! He’s too rough for me.” He looked at her solemnly. “I’d be glad to teach you survival skills for the Apprentice degree if you’d like.”
She smiled lightly, humor glinting. “I’d like that very much, Tobal.”
“Tobal,” he said.
“Tobal,” she said, “I like your style.”
They laughed, the sound carrying a weight of their shared history—Fiona, having tracked Tobal here, rekindled their bond with a knowing glance.
OD by Karl Hans Strobl and translated by Joe E Bandel
And I myself,” Semmelweis clutched both hands around Reichenbach’s right arm, his face contorted in pain, “I myself, imagine it, I myself for years as an assistant dissected corpses every morning before visiting the clinic. For years. How many women might I have brought death to? Unknowingly! Isn’t that terrible? One washes one’s hands before the examination, of course, with soap and water one washes. But one can’t get rid of the corpse smell. One must wash the hands with chlorinated water to kill the germs.”
He fell silent, exhausted, and the Freiherr said: “That is truly a great matter.”
Semmelweis laughed: “A great matter! You say that. But our wise gentlemen think otherwise.”
Severin brings the coffee in, and since there’s no other place, he pushes a stack of books and notebooks aside on the desk and sets down the tray. Reichenbach pours the steaming black and white into a light brown mixture and makes an inviting gesture. But Semmelweis doesn’t sit; standing, he takes a cup and brings it to his mouth; the coffee is scalding hot, he spurts it out again over the books and notebooks. And while he pulls out his handkerchief and dabs at the coffee stains, he says grimly: “Yes, our noble professors, these old fogeys… There’s Professor Klein. His predecessor was the great Boer. Emperor Joseph II knew what kind of man he was. But precisely for that reason, he was a thorn in the side of his successors, the priests, and Metternich. They deposed him and gave Klein the position as his successor. Why? Because Boer expressly said that Klein was the dumbest among his students. Just to annoy Boer one last time. We are in Austria, understood! Skoda wrote a textbook on percussion and auscultation. They got upset that he was only burdening the patients with all that tapping and listening, and they sent him to the insane asylum. Yes, we are in Austria.”
He pauses and stirs his coffee cup angrily with the spoon.
“One would think,” says Reichenbach, “such a simple matter…”
“Exactly, simple matters,” nods Semmelweis eagerly, “one just washes one’s hands with chlorinated water, that’s it! And the result is immediate—the mortality rate almost drops to zero. But the gentlemen have their theories. They insist that childbed fever is an epidemic; they believe in a genius epidemicus, they talk of an accumulation of impure humors in the blood and of erysipelas-like inflammation of the intestines… they close their eyes to avoid seeing what admits no doubt. Are those criminals or not?”
“You should write about it in detail,” says Reichenbach, “publish your discovery for the whole world.”
Semmelweis starts, like a sleepwalker who has heard the cry that brings a fall. One notices that it was a soliloquy he had been conducting, perhaps he wouldn’t have spoken so openly about Austria and Metternich and the professors otherwise. Now he stands dazed and intimidated. “Write,” he sighs, “oh, if only I could write. I went to a school in Pest, German and Hungarian, and now I can’t write either German or Hungarian properly. But don’t you believe that the truth must prevail even so?”
“One must also help the most obvious truths to their feet,” Reichenbach remarks, “few can walk on their own.” Reichenbach is quite stirred by what he has heard, but he still doesn’t know what to do with it. “I am unfortunately not a physician—”
Semmelweis wipes his damp forehead with the back of his hand, sinks back into the chair at the desk, and draws the coffee cup toward himself with a trembling hand. Yes, now one can finally drink; he sips the coffee in small gulps. “Forgive me,” he says. “You still don’t know why I’ve come to you! It’s not for my sake, but the many women I may have killed in my ignorance demand it of me… I’d rather leave Vienna, but I must try; I’d like to apply for a privatdozent position. Skoda, Hebra, even Klein’s own son-in-law Chiari are for me, but Klein and the other fogeys and the ministry… You have connections with the ministry…”
“Do not overestimate my influence,” says Reichenbach, nonetheless flattered by a trust that seeks to make him an ally in an important matter, “in Liebig’s case, I couldn’t enforce anything either.”
A sincere look pleads for his assent: “If you believe in me, then you must at least try.”
“Very well,” says Reichenbach, won over by the complete devotion of this man to his one radiant thought, “I will see what I can do.”
Chapter 8
The days have grown short; rain and autumn wind sweep the forests around Kobenzl bare. It is time to move back to the city; the crates stand around in the garden hall and are being loaded onto the wagon by Severin and the old servants.
The Freiherr goes through the castle once more to check if anything has been left behind that might be needed in the city. He also casts a glance into the silkworm room, though there is nothing to see there. But there is something to see; someone stands at the window and is crying.
“Must you cry again, Friederike?” asks Reichenbach. It is unmistakable that her eyes are moist, but she pulls herself together, for she knows the Freiherr does not like such letting go.
“It will be so sad in the castle now,” she says, “when everyone is gone.”
The care for the silkworms has come to an end since the last animals perished and Reichenbach has for the time being given up dealing with the ungrateful creatures. Friederike is a good child; she always wants to make herself useful somehow and bring the Freiherr some joy.
“You must take good care of the father,” Reichenbach says soothingly. Oh God, certainly that would be the next thing, to take care of the father, but Friederike would much rather be truly useful to the Freiherr. She pities him, quite indescribably so, and yet she couldn’t say why. The father goes to the tavern, is grumpy because there’s never enough money in the house, and when he’s really drunk, he sometimes even strikes Friederike!—but she says nothing of this to Reichenbach, or he would surely give the father a stern talking-to. The Freiherr, however, has always been good to her; her entire childhood was one of looking up to him, and it seems to her as if things aren’t quite going for him as he deserves.
“So keep a good watch on the little castle,” Reichenbach jokes, “and if robbers come, you shoot them dead for me.”
Then he goes out in front of the castle; the carriage is already ready, the Freiherr climbs in, and Friederike waves with her handkerchief, and then she can cry to her heart’s content, since no one sees her anymore.
Friederike, yes, Friederike, thought Reichenbach as his carriage drove toward the city, she had something so loving and attractive in her nature that she was never overlooked when she happened to cross a guest’s path at Kobenzl. Everyone turned to look at her and asked: “Who is she, then?” She looked so delicate and refined that, dressed in fine clothes, she could quite well have denied her origins from the Blansko forest lodge. From her father, she had certainly inherited nothing—not the somewhat bulbous nose, nor the receding chin, nor the watery-blue eyes. She must owe most of it to her mother, but Reichenbach could no longer quite recall her; he only remembered that people had said she was an exceptionally beautiful woman, despite the many children. That was probably also the reason why the Altgräfin later no longer allowed her to come to the castle, after she had been called in as a helper for several years.
Things might also have turned out somewhat differently for the girl if her mother had remained alive. But she had to die because back then no one had any inkling of the causes of childbed fever, because every doctor was a murderer, unwittingly and guiltlessly, yet still an assistant to the strangling angel of mothers.
There the Freiherr was again with the thoughts that had occupied him incessantly in these last weeks. Chemistry and geology and metallurgy and astronomy and all the rest—those were certainly respectable sciences! Ironworks and sugar factories and—if only those treacherous silkworms hadn’t been so sensitive—silk mills, all very fine, profitable, and incidentally honorable. One could even become a Freiherr that way. But what was all that compared to the science of man? There were hours when Reichenbach wrestled with the fact that it had not destined him for the career of a physician. To heal sick people! To prevent diseases! Jenner had invented the cowpox vaccination; this German-Hungarian Semmelweis, who couldn’t even write properly, would undoubtedly become the savior of countless mothers. How would it have turned out if, say, a Reichenbach had mastered cholera? Was there a more enticing riddle, a more alluring mystery than the still-unrevealed nature of man?
Stoked by these thoughts, Reichenbach’s discontent grew, and even the move to the city did nothing to change it. It was hard to please him. Hermine neglected her scientific work, and why? She suddenly developed such a zeal for singing and music that everything else fell short.
“You do value it,” Hermine objected, “you yourself invited Schuh.”
“But it’s not necessary for him to come daily.”
“He doesn’t come daily,” Hermine resisted with gentleness, “he comes once or twice a week.” “So not daily, but still too often. He’s drawing you away from science.” Still, Reichenbach didn’t want to issue an outright ban; this Schuh was a useful fellow, one could talk with him about all sorts of things; now he was occupied with Daguerre’s process.
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