The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel
Somebody came, put me in a cradle and sang to me, so
that I could fall asleep.
But I was awake again in a moment. Lying in the bed
with the angel heads, I saw in the first morning light the
candles, the light rectangles of the windows, I wanted to move,
but my limbs were too heavy.
“You have a fever!” said a dull voice.
Next to me, in a patched robe, sat the magister stirring
something in a glass.
“I happened to see you in the meadow outside doing
strange leaps, Baron,” said Hemmetschnur. “Johann and I ran
out there and with great difficulty put you to bed. That is all I
know. If I had not still been up the entire night over the cursed
wood bills who knows whether we would not have picked you
up frozen to death in the cold dew.”
He held the glass to my lips, and I drank.
“Am I sick then?” I asked.
A great weakness was in me.
“It seems so,” he returned. “I knew how it would turn out
if one had to lie in this room at night, and especially on the last
of April, at Walpurgis. The master of the hound is already up
and asks vehemently what the noise in the break of day was all
about. I must tell him; otherwise all hell will break loose. Get
some sleep and next time keep your hands off things that are
not fun to play with!”
And he pointed with his finger at the blue pot that lay
shattered on the floor.
His face seemed to me to be as morose and off color as
the nasty day that was slowly creeping up. I closed my eyes
and called inside with all my might for the Ewli, who did not
want to appear to me.
I had indeed become seriously ill and lay weak and faint
in the four-poster bed, whose bruised angel heads made faces at
me when the fever heat rose.
The magister took good care of me, and the master of the
hound appeared once, with his foot still wrapped, sat next to
me for a while and again told me a stunt that he and my father
had performed at the duke’s court, by putting a large water frog
into the night gown of a distinguished lady.
In the evening between eleven and half past eleven I
heard his loud singing. I distinguished the manner of a hunter’s
song:
“A little fox I want to catch,
Red as my beloved’s hair.”
This song made me weep in my weakness, and I thought
with new, hot tears of my Zephyrine in the rose bushes, as she
had said, “I carry under my heart a little vixen of the female
sex,” and how horribly it had turned out.
And yet it had been so long ago that I was allowed to
believe that the pain in my chest had cried itself to death.
My eyes became wet around Aglaja, too, and I saw her
again with the glittering crown of the dead in the flickering of
the candles.
What purpose had my unhappy, miserable life served? To
whom had it been of any use? Passions, all the garbage of sins,
and wicked ghosts were its contents, and now the path
descended gently toward the end. Oh, how I resented myself so
deeply when I looked back at the lost years! Hardworking
farmers plowed their meager field in trickling sweat, craftsmen
worked their hands without rest for the sake of their daily bread,
doctors sat at the beds of the sick, full of care and heavy with
knowledge, scholars researched and pondered with
extinguished lamps, musicians delighted with the sweet playing
of the human heart. And me? Here I lay, a diseased trunk that
bore neither leaves nor blossoms and was devoid of any fruit of
life. Hans Dampf himself had not staggered more uselessly
through existence than I had. But suffering, suffering had been
heaped upon me to the fullest extent, and now I felt more than
pain. For within me was the terrible feeling of purposelessness
and the ripeness of decay.
“Everything served your purification,” said a soft and
mild voice in a language that was completely foreign to me.
Yet I understood it, as if it were my own.
Beside my bed, in the twilight, stood, enclosed in a very
fine, clear bluish light of its own, Ewli.
It was him. Under the black turban between the arches of
the brows was the red horizontal mark; the eyes shone like
black fires, in which the noble, brownish face was without
wrinkles. Around the neck and on the chest were yellow amber
beads on the reddish-brown cloth of the robe.
“Who are you -?” I asked.
My voice was toneless, like the voices one hears in a
dream.
“I am here,” it wafted toward me.
Around the red lips, which crowned a small black beard,
went a mild, understanding smile, which was like a soft caress
for me.
“At last you have come -” I whispered.
“I have come.”
“Is this your true form?” I asked.
“It is the shape you gave me.”
“I gave you?”
“You chose this shape.”
I suddenly saw myself as a child, immersed in adoring in
front of the glass lintel, under which stood the small image of
the one who now appeared to me, as he had so often before. I
feared very much that he would slip away this time too, but
Ewli, as if he had guessed my fear, smiled softly and said, “You
are close to me.”
Then it was as if I saw, over his shoulder, a distorted,
mischievous face with yellow, piercing eyes, and I cried out,
“Another is also close to me!”
“He is everywhere,” answered Ewli. “He always walked
beside you and beside me.”
“Fangerle -” I groaned.
“To name is to call,” the voice continued. “Give him no
name, and he is no more.”
The sickeningly grinning face behind him disappeared
into the half-light, and was no more. A golden gleam entered
the eyes which looked at me benignly, like a reflection of
immeasurable glory.
“You have walked so deeply through hardship and
torment, that he has no more power over you. You are near the
goal, brother.”
“Help me!” I moaned. “I am so weak -.”
“You are tired from the long way and still have more to
walk. Only you alone can help you, for I am you,” he said.
“I don’t understand you -“
I lifted my aching head.
“What then is the goal?”
“Eternal life,” he said, and in that moment, the gloomy
chamber became so dazzlingly bright, that I closed my eyes.
When I opened them again and feared to look into the
void, I saw, to my indescribable consolation, that Ewli was still
with me.
“I am Isa Bektschi, Isa the guardian,” I heard him say.
“So you watch over me?”
“Always over you.”
“And where is my path going, Isa Bektschi?”
With a trembling heart, I looked at him.
“To the rebirth,” he replied, and over his unspeakably
beautiful face, once more shone a bright radiance.
“But death-“
“The immortal returns to God,” It sounded solemnly.
“Every man’s immortal?” I asked, reaching out to him.
“Every human being.”
“So everyone is reborn, Ewli?” Sweet hope descended
upon me.
“Twofold is the way of rebirth according to the law,” he
spoke, and his voice was deep like the sound of bells.
“Unconscious and conscious.”
Fear seized me at this word.
“And I -?” I groaned out. “Help me, Brother!”
“Only you can.”
Agonizing effort was in me, the ardent desire to
understand.
I wanted to stand up, to ask, to plead – but I could not. I
looked at him imploringly, praying in mute fear that he would
stay. But he spoke quietly and insistently, and from his gaze
poured a bright glow into my soul.
“Take note! A powerful ruler and wise man once had a
villain put to death, and there was a voice in him that no human
being should end another man’s life prematurely. When now
the condemned knelt on the blood leather to receive the fatal
stroke he looked at the ruler with a look in which there was so
much fervent hatred that the wise ruler was frightened. Then
the ruler said:
“If you desist from evil, I will give you life.”
Then the evildoer laughed and cried out, “You only dare
not let me be killed, for you fear the revenge that my departed
spirit will take on you.”
The ruler looked at him and said:
“As little as your head, separated from your body can
move towards me and pronounce the word revenge, that is how
little I fear revenge from you!”
The condemned man laughed and shouted.
“Executioner, do your duty!”
The sword fell down, and to the horror of those present,
the head of the slain man rolled towards the ruler, stood in front
of him on the cut neck and formed with the lips, clearly
recognizable, the word “Revenge!”, while the gaze took on a
horrible rigidity due to the extreme effort and willpower. The
faithful saw it in great fear. Then the wise man spoke:
“Fear nothing! I may have done wrong in having this
man killed, yet I have protected myself from his anger. For, see,
he had to use all his willpower at the moment of death in order
to carry out what I had told him. And thereby no power has
remained for his later evil intentions. His will has been
consumed in a useless effort, and when he returns, he will be
without consciousness of what has happened to him. If only he
had thought of how to retain consciousness beyond death, he
would have become an Ewli, one who returns. But no evil one
can become an Ewli!”
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