The golden pot, p.11
The Golden Pot, page 11
“Madman! Now you must suffer the punishment for your brazen outrage!” cried the terrible voice of the crowned salamander that appeared like a blinding ray of light in the flames above the snakes and now spewed vengeful cataracts of fire upon poor Anselmus; it was as if the pelting flood of fire thickened around his body and congealed into a solid ice-cold mass. But as Anselmus’s limbs pulled tighter and tighter together and grew rigid, he lost consciousness. When he came to again, he could not move, as if he were hemmed in by a glimmering flash of light against which he collided if he even tried to lift a hand or make some other movement. Hell’s bells! There he sat in a corked crystal flask on a shelf in the library of the Archivarius Lindhorst.
Tenth Vigil
The sufferings of the student Anselmus in the glass bottle. Happy life of the Kreuzchüler and the Faithful. The Battle in the Archivarius Lindhorst’s Library. Victory of the Salamander and Liberation of the student Anselmus.
I presume that I am right to doubt, dear reader, that you have ever been held captive in a glass bottle – unless of course, bewitched by some vivid elfin dream, you found yourself constrained in such a sorry condition. If that was ever the case, then you will painfully empathize with the student Anselmus in his miserable state, but if you have never chanced to dream this sort of circumstance, for my sake and that of the poor student, just let your lively imagination lock you for a moment or two in a crystal decanter. You’re ringed by a blinding glimmer, all the objects surrounding you appear to be encircled and illuminated by a brilliant rainbow – everything in the room trembles and teeters and drones in the grip of that shimmer. You float inertly and motionlessly in a frozen block of ether that holds you in its vise grip, so that your mind attempts in vain to command your dead body. The prodigious weight presses down heavier and heavier on your chest – with every breath you sap the last little reserves of air that still wafts up and down in that tight space – your arteries swell up and, riddled with abysmal terror, every nerve ending twitches in a bleeding struggle for life.
Take pity, esteemed reader, on the student Anselmus, gripped by this undefinable ordeal in his glassed-in enclosure. Even so, he felt that death could not release him; had he not just now awakened from that profound faint, still swimming in his torment as the morning sun shone bright and bounteous in his room, gripped anew by his ordeal? He could not budge, but his thoughts struck against the glass, jarred by the deafening clang, and instead of the words that his mind would ordinarily have drawn from his throat, all that he perceived was the muffled roar of madness. Whereupon he cried out in despair: “Oh, Serpentina— Serpentina, save me from this hellish agony!” It was as if a flurry of quiet sighs came fluttering around him and landed on the bottle like green, transparent elder leaves. The clamor let up, the blinding, bewildering burst of light faded, and he breathed a bit more freely. “Am I myself not to blame for my own misery? Ach! Did I not commit an outrage against you, oh my lovely, beloved Serpentina?! Did I not harbor vile doubt of your very existence? Did I not lose faith and with it everything else that might make me happy? Now will you nevermore be mine, the golden pot is lost to me, I will nevermore discover its wonders. Let me but catch a glimpse of you one last time, and hear your soft sweet voice, my darling Serpentina!”
Thus clamored Anselmus, torn by sharp, cutting pain, when a voice beside him replied, “I don’t for the life of me know what you’re wailing about, Herr Studiosus!”
For the first time, Anselmus noticed that five other bottles stood beside him on the shelf, and in these he spotted three students from the Kreutzschule and two law clerks. “Oh, gentlemen, my comrades in misery,” he cried out, “how in heaven’s name do you manage to look so calm, indeed so buoyant as the cheerful looks on your faces suggest? You sit just like me imprisoned in glass bottles, can’t bestir yourself or move a muscle, and can’t even think a reasonable thought without stirring a jarring racket of clanging and banging, without whipping up a whirlwind in your head. But they certainly don’t believe in the salamander and the green snake.”
“What are you jabbering about, Herr Studiosus,” a student countered, “we’ve never been better off than now, since the precious coins the mad Archivarius pays us for all kinds of crazy copying do us a lot of good. We no longer have to learn by heart any tedious Italian choral works, we can drop by every day at Joseph’s or some other beer hall, drink our fill of Doppelbock beers, look a pretty girl in the eye, sing “Gaudeamus igitur” like a real student, and live it up.”
“The gentleman is quite right,” a clerk remarked, “I too am rolling in precious coins, just like my esteemed colleague next to me, and go strolling to my heart’s delight on the Weinberg, instead of being cooped up between four walls all day long copying legal briefs.”
“But most esteemed Sirs,” Anselmus countered, “don’t you realize that the whole lot of you are enclosed in glass bottles, unable to stir, let alone go strolling about?”
Whereupon the Kreutzschule student burst out in a hearty laugh and cried out, “The Herr Studiosus is off his rocker, he thinks he’s enclosed in a glass bottle and is, in fact, standing on the Elbe Bridge peering down into the water. Let’s get going!”
“Ah,” Anselmus sighed, “they never set eyes on the lovely Serpentina, they haven’t the faintest idea of freedom and faith and life in love; that is why, in their ignorance and coarse sensibility, they don’t feel the oppressiveness of their imprisonment by the dread salamander. But I, poor lackless soul, must wither away in ignominy and misery if she whom I love beyond reason does not come to my rescue.”
Whereupon Serpentina’s voice wafted and whispered in the room around him, “Anselmus, you must believe, love, hope!” And every sweet syllable streamed into the student’s prison, and the crystal of his clear enclosure gave way so that the prisoner’s chest could stir and heave! The torment of his condition diminished little by little and he realized that Serpentina still loved him, and that it was only her intercession that made his stay in the bottle somewhat bearable. He paid no more mind to his feeble-minded fellow sufferers, but focused his mind and all his thoughts on lovely Serpentina.
All of a sudden, a repugnant muffled muttering emanated from the far side of the bottle. It soon became apparent that this muttering came from an old coffeepot with a half-broken lid standing just opposite him on the shelf. The more closely he looked, the more the hideous features of a shriveled old hag’s face came into focus, and soon he shuddered at the sight of the apple peddler from the Black Gate standing there before the shelf. She grinned and laughed and called out in a shrill voice, “Poo-poo, my pretty boy! So now you’ve got to sit it out! Bottled up in a crystal decanter! Didn’t I predict it long ago?”
“Just keep sneering and jeering, you cursed ghoul,” said the student, “it’s all your doing, but the salamander will get you, you vile wild beet!”
“Ho ho!” the old hag retorted. “Not so proud! You kicked my little son in the face, you burned my nose, and still I’m well disposed toward you, you rogue, because you’re otherwise a well-heeled sort, and my little girl likes you. But you’ll never get out of the crystal decanter if I don’t lend a hand; I can’t clamber up to reach you, but my godmother, the rat who lives on the floor above your head, will gnaw the board you’re balanced on in two. Then you’ll come tumbling down and I’ll catch you in my apron so that you don’t break your nose, but keep your smooth pretty face intact, and I’ll carry you to Mademoiselle Veronica, whom you must marry if you’re to become a privy councillor.”
“Get off my back, you devil’s spawn,” cried the student Anselmus in a fit of rage, “it’s only your hellish intrigue that spurred me on to the sins that I must now expiate. But I will patiently endure it all, and can only sit out my time here enveloped by the love and solace of my darling Serpentina! Hear me now, you old witch, and despair of ever winning me over! I defy your force, I am forever bound in love to Serpentina – I don’t ever want to become a privy councillor – I never want to see Veronica again, she who, swayed by your wiles, lured me to evil ends! If the green snake can’t be mine, I’ll waste away in longing and pain. Off with you, off with you, you despicable shape-shifting hag!”
The old woman laughed so hard the walls rattled, and she screamed, “Then sit it out and rot in the bottle, but now it’s time to get to work, since my business here is of a different sort.” She flung off her black coat and stood there in her repulsive nakedness, then she whirled around in circles, and great folios came tumbling down from the shelf. Out of these she ripped leaves of parchment, artfully binding them together, and wrapped her body in that hodgepodge of material so that she was soon dressed as if in a multicolored suit of armor. Spewing fire, the black tomcat leapt out of the inkwell on the desk and yowled at the old crone, who shouted out with joy, and together they disappeared through the door. Anselmus noticed that they headed for the blue room, and soon he heard in the distance a hubbub of hissing and howling. The birds screeched in the garden, the parrot cawed, “Stop! Stop! Thief! Thief!”
At that very moment the old crone came trotting back into the room with the golden pot clutched under her arm, shrieking wildly with grotesque gesticulations, “Good luck! Good luck! My little son! Kill the green snake! Up and at ‘em, my little son!”
It seemed to Anselmus as if he heard a flurry of deep sighs, the voice of Serpentina. Gripped with horror and despair, he gathered all his strength, striking against his crystal enclosure with a force so great his nerves and arteries threatened to burst. A cutting clang ran through the room, and the archivarius appeared in the doorway in his glimmering damask dressing gown, crying out, “Hey, hey, you ragtag riffraff, you frightful spooks— you spawns of witch’s spell— This way— Watch out!”
The old crone’s black hair stood like bristles on her head, her fiery red eyes sparked and sputtered with hellish fire and, biting down hard on the pointy teeth studding her jaw, she cried, “Here, kitty, kitty! Sic ‘em, sic ‘em, lickety-split!” Cackling and sneering, she pressed the golden pot hard against her and, reaching in, flung fistfuls of glimmering earth at the archivarius. But as soon as each clump of earth touched his dressing gown it was transformed into a blossom and fell to the ground. Then the lilies on his gown flickered and flared up, and the archivarius hurled the flaming lilies at the witch, who howled in pain. But as soon as she leapt up and shook the parchment coat of armor, the flames were extinguished and the lilies crumbled into ash. “Up and at ‘em, my boy!” the old crone shrieked, whereupon the tomcat leapt into the air and hurtled at the archivarius in the doorway.
But the gray parrot came swooping down and dug his twisted beak into the nape of the cat’s neck, so that fiery red blood spurted out, and Anselmus heard Serpentina’s voice thundering, “Touché! Touché!”
Then in a fit of fury and despair, the old hag leapt at the archivarius; she chucked the pot behind her and splayed the lanky fingers of her withered fist to claw at the archivarius, but he promptly tore off his dressing gown and flung it at her. Blue crackling flames sputtered, sparked, and blustered from the sheets of parchment, and the old crone tossed about, wailing in pain, digging her fingers into the pot to shovel out ever more earth, and tearing page after page of parchment out of the books to try and tamp the blazing flames. Once she had managed to pat herself down with enough earth and parchment, the fire went out. But then, as if issuing from the archivarius’s inner reserve, flickering, crackling rays darted at her. “Hey, hey, up and at ‘em – victory to the salamander!” the archivarius’s voice droned through the room and a hundred bolts of lightning curled in fiery rings around the old hag.
Swirling and whirling about, the tomcat and the parrot were locked in furious combat, until finally, with a mighty flutter of its wing, the parrot knocked the cat to the ground, grasping and piercing it with its claws so that the cat howled and moaned in terrible death throes. With a sharp thrust of the beak, the parrot hacked its eyes out, so that a burning ooze spurted out. A dense cloud of smoke rose from under the dressing gown, where the old crone had fallen to the ground; her howling, her infernal, piercing wailing faded in the distance. The billowing smoke cloud accompanied by a terrible stench dissolved; the archivarius lifted the dressing gown and beneath it lay a ghastly white beet.
“Herr Archivarius, honored Sir, I bring you my defeated foe,” said the parrot, proffering a black hair in its beak.
“Very good, my dear friend,” the archivarius replied, “here, too, lies my vanquished enemy. Be so good as to dispose of the remains; this very day as a modest reward you will get six coconuts and a new pair of spectacles, since, as I see, the tomcat made a shambles of your old pair.”
“Ever your faithful servant, my praiseworthy friend and patron!” the parrot replied, well pleased. Clasping the beet in its beak, it flew out the window that the archivarius had opened.
The old man retrieved the golden pot and cried out, “Serpentina, Serpentina!”
But as the student peered at the archivarius in joy and relief at the demise of the vile old hag who had precipitated his ruin, the old man was once again transformed into the majestic figure of the prince of spirits, who now peered up at him with a look of indescribable grace and dignity. “Anselmus,” said the prince of spirits, “not you, but a hostile principal that wreaked havoc in your heart and sought to divide and conquer your spirit was to blame for your faltering belief. You have kept faith, be free and rejoice!”
A flash of light pulsed in the depth of Anselmus’s heart, and the lovely triad of the crystal bells rang louder and mightier than ever before in his ears – his nerves and fibers quivered – and as the resounding music swelled ever more in the room, the glass shattered, and the student tumbled into the arms of his beautiful beloved, Serpentina.
Eleventh Vigil
Deputy Rector Paulmann’s indignation at the madness that erupted in his family. How the Registrar Heerbrand became privy councillor and how on the frostiest day of the year strolled about in silk socks and shoes. Veronica’s confession. Betrothal beside the steaming soup bowl.
“But tell me, most worthy Registrar, how that confounded punch could have so gotten into our heads and made us carry on like a pack of monkeys?” Thus spoke Deputy Rector Paulmann the following morning upon entering the room and finding it still strewn with broken shards and the remains of his hapless wig, dissolved by punch into its constituent parts. After the student Anselmus had raced out the door, Deputy Rector Paulmann and Registrar Heerbrand kept crisscrossing the room, shaking all over, screaming like lunatics, and knocking their heads together, until Fränzchen finally managed with great effort to lead her befuddled father to bed. Then the registrar sank, all tuckered out, onto the sofa, Veronica having fled the scene and taken refuge in her bedroom.
Looking pale and downhearted, with a blue handkerchief wrapped around his head, the Registrar Heerbrand sighed, “Oh my dear Deputy Rector, the punch that Mademoiselle Veronica lovingly prepared is not to blame for wreaking havoc, no! It was finally all the fault of that damned student! Haven’t you noticed that he’s been off his rocker for the longest time? Don’t you know that insanity is infectious? One fool makes many, as the preacher says. Begging your pardon, but it’s an old saying; this is particularly true when you’ve downed a drop, as you are thus prone to mad doings and can easily be unwittingly influenced to imitate an addled wingman. Can you believe it, Deputy Rector, that I still feel dizzy when I think of the gray parrot?”
“Stuff and nonsense!” the deputy rector interrupted. “Rubbish! It was the archivarius’s little old secretary with a gray coat wrapped around himself looking for Anselmus.”
“That may well be,” the Registrar Heerbrand admitted, “but I must admit I’m in a sorry state; all night long I heard a strange piping and tooting.”
“That was me,” the deputy rector replied, “I snored up a storm.”
“That may well be as you say,” the registrar continued, “but— oh, my dear Deputy Rector! It was with good reason I sought to bring us a bit of good cheer yesterday, but that student spoiled everything. You don’t know the half of it, oh, Deputy Rector, kind Sir!” Registrar Heerbrand jumped up, tore the kerchief from his head, embraced the deputy rector, and gave him a hearty handshake. Yet again, he cried: “Oh, Deputy Rector, Deputy Rector!” and, reaching for his hat and walking stick, promptly stormed out the door.
“That Anselmus will never again cross my threshold,” Deputy Rector Paulmann muttered to himself, “for I can see all too clearly now that with his confounded lunacy he drives the best people bonkers and robs them of their ounce of reason. Now the registrar has lost his marbles – I’m okay for the moment, but the devil who came pounding at my door yesterday in a drunken tizzy might finally manage to break in and play his game. So get thee hence, Satan! Away with that Anselmus!”
Veronica became quite pensive. She did not say a word, but simply smiled strangely from time to time, and preferred to be alone. “Anselmus has gotten under her skin too,” the deputy rector fumed spitefully, “but it’s a good thing he doesn’t turn up, I know that he’s afraid of me – which is why he won’t dare drop by.” Paulmann spewed these last words at the top of his lungs.
Whereupon Veronica, who happened to be present, burst out crying. “How could Anselmus possibly come here, corked up as he’s long been in a glass bottle!” she sobbed.
“Come again? What’s that you say?” Deputy Rector Paulmann cried out. “Dear God, oh, dear God, now she, too, is babbling nonsense – soon she’ll be off her rocker. Oh, that accursed, wretched student Anselmus!”
He immediately ran off to fetch Dr. Eckstein, who smiled and kept repeating, “I see! I see!” Still, he didn’t prescribe any remedy, but rather added in passing, “Case of nerves! It’ll cure itself. Take her outside. Go for a walk. A little distraction. Theater. ‘Sunday’s Child.’ ‘The Sisters from Prague.’ It’ll be all right!”
_preview.jpg)
_preview.jpg)
