Horrified, Anselmus reeled back; he wanted to grasp the doorjamb, but his hand got entangled with the cord attached to the doorbell and tugged at it, whereupon it kept ringing louder and louder in shrill jarring notes that kept sounding through the bleak old house, the echo taunting him, “Soon you’ll sink into my crystal cage!”

  The student was gripped by an abject terror that made all his limbs throb with spasms of fever chills. The cord of the doorbell sank and turned into a massive transparent white snake that wrapped itself around him and squeezed him ever more tightly in its embrace so that his fragile limbs crumbled to pieces, and his blood spurted out of his veins, penetrating the transparent body of the snake and turning it red. “Kill me! Kill me!” he tried to shriek in terror, but his scream came out as a muffled wheeze. The snake raised its head and laid its long, pointy tongue against his breast, whereupon a cutting pain suddenly severed the artery running to his heart and he lost consciousness.

  When he came to, he found himself stretched out on his paltry mattress, with Deputy Rector Paulmann standing over him. “For heaven’s sake, my dear Herr Anselmus, what kind of devilry are you up to!?”

  Third Vigil

  News from the family of the Archivarius Lindhorst.

  Veronica’s blue eyes. The Registrar Heerbrand.

  The spirit peered into the deep; the water stirred and churned in foaming ripples and hurled itself with a thundering force down into the abyss that flung open its black maw to greedily drink it down. Like triumphant conquerors, the granite cliffs raised their jagged crowned heads upright, lording it over the valley below until the sun took it all into her motherly lap and embraced, nursed, and warmed her world with her rays, as with glowing arms. Then a thousand seeds slumbering beneath the bleak and barren sand suddenly awakened and stretched their little green leaves and stalks up toward the face of their mother. Like children lying content in a green cradle, the flowers rested in their buds and blossoms until they too were awakened by their mother and burst into blooms of joy, primping themselves up in delight with the light that their mother flung upon them in a thousand different hues.

  But in the middle of the valley there was a black hill that rose and sank like a human breast stirred by burning longing. Mists rolled up from the abyss, balling themselves into mighty masses in an attempt to envelope the face of the mother; but she summoned up the storm that raged beneath her. When her clear rays once again stroked the black hill, a lovely fire lily sprouted from the surface in a surfeit of ecstasy, spreading its splendid petals like lips to receive sweet kisses from its mother. Then a glimmering luminescence strode into the valley; it was the youth Phosphorus. The fire lily set eyes on him and immediately implored with a burning longing, “Be mine forever, you handsome boy! I love you and would wither if you left me.”

  To which the youth replied, “I will be yours, you lovely flower, but then like a wayward child you will leave your mother and father, you will no longer know your playmates, you will want to be greater and mightier than all those who now frolic with you as your equals. The yearning that now warms your entire being with its soothing strength will shatter into a thousand rays, tormenting and torturing you, for one sense will engender many, and the loftiest delight the spark I thrust into you will kindle is the hopeless pain that will accompany your undoing, only to sprout again in the stalk of a strange new blossom. This spark is the seed of thought!”

  “Oh,” lamented the lily, “can I then not be yours in all the burning passion that consumes me? Could I possibly love you any more than I do now? And how can I still see you as I do now if your love annihilates me?”

  Then Phosphorus kissed her. As if kindled by the light, she burst into flames, out of which a strange being sprung forth, hastened to flee the valley, and frolicked in infinite space, unconcerned with its old playmates and with the youth it had loved. He bemoaned the loss of his beloved, for it was only his unending love for the lovely lily that had brought him to the valley to begin with. Sharing his grief, the granite cliffs bowed their heads. But one of them spread its legs and a black winged dragon flew forth and said, “My brothers, the metals, sleep there within, but I am ever feisty and wakeful and want to help you.” Flinging itself up and down, the dragon finally managed to catch the being that emerged from the lily, carried it to the hill, and wrapped its wing around it. Then she was the lily again, but the lingering thought of what she had been tore her up inside, and her love for the youth Phosphorus became a cutting pain emitting poisonous vapors which caused the other flowers that would otherwise rejoice at the sight of her to wilt and die.

  The youth donned a shining suit of armor that glittered in a thousand hues. He battled the dragon, which struck the metal with its black wings with such a loud and clear knell that the little flowers blossomed back into life and fluttered around the dragon like many-colored birds, thereby vanquishing the beast. Drained of its strength, it sank down and buried itself deep in the bowels of the earth. The lily was set free; the youth Phosphorus embraced her, consumed with the burning longing of heavenly love; and the flowers and birds sang her praises in jubilant hymns. Even the high granite cliffs saluted her as queen of the valley.

  “With all due respect, Herr Archivarius, honored Sir, this is oriental drivel,” said Registrar Heerbrand, “but we still beg you, as is ordinarily your wont, to tell us something about your extraordinary life – perhaps an adventuresome episode from your travels, something that really happened.”

  “What then?” Archivarius Lindhorst fired back. “The story I just told you is the most truthful stuff I can dish out for you folks, and in a certain sense is also a part of my life. Since I come from that same valley, and the fire lily who last ruled as queen is my great-great-great-great-grandmother, which, as a matter of fact, also makes me a prince.” All present broke into a burst of laughter. “Laugh to your heart’s content,” Archivarius Lindhorst continued. “What I just sketched out for you might seem nonsensical and loopy, but it was nevertheless not meant to be taken as twaddle or even as allegory, it’s the honest truth. But had I known that the beautiful love story to which I also owe my origin would prove so unappealing, I would rather have transmitted some piece of news that my brother related on his visit yesterday.”

  “What’s that? So you have a brother, Mr. Archivarius? Where does he live? Is he likewise in the service of the king, or perhaps an independent scholar?” The questions came from all directions.

  “No!” replied the archivarius, coldly and calmly taking a pinch of snuff. “He chose the wrong direction and went with the dragons.”

  “Did I hear you right, worthy Archivarius,” Registrar Heerbrand challenged, “he went with the dragons?”

  “With the dragons?” the words echoed from every direction.

  “Yes, with the dragons,” Archivarius Lindhorst continued, “it was, in fact, in desperation. As you well know, gentlemen, my father died not long ago. At the most, 385 years have gone by, which is why I, too, am still in mourning; he left me a precious onyx that my brother badly wanted. We quarreled over it in an unseemly manner as my father lay dying, until he of sainted memory lost his patience, leapt up, and flung the profligate brother down the stairs. That rankled my brother, and then and there he went to live with the dragons. He now resides in a dense cypress forest on the edge of Tunis where he stands guard over a famous mystical carbuncle keenly coveted by a devil of a necromancer with a summer house in Lapland. That is why he has only a short quarter of an hour, while said necromancer is busy tending to his salamander roots in the garden, to get away and hastily fill me in on recent happenings at the source of the Nile.”

  For a second time, all present burst out laughing, but the student Anselmus was overcome by a strange sensation, and he could hardly look the sober, unsmiling Archivarius Lindhorst in the eye without feeling an unfathomable trembling within. Above all, the raw, albeit strangely metallic sounding voice of the Archivarius Lindhorst had a singularly invasive effect on him, sending tremors that rippled through his bones and marrow. So much for the actual objective of Registrar Heerbrand’s having invited him along to the coffeehouse, not today at any rate. After the incident in front of the Archivarius Lindhorst’s house, nothing could persuade Anselmus to go back and attempt a second visit, since he was absolutely convinced that only chance had spared him, if not from death, then surely from the imminent risk of having been driven stark raving mad. Deputy Rector Paulmann just happened to be passing down that same street when he saw him lying unconscious before the door with an old woman, who, having set aside her basket of cakes and apples, was bent over him; the deputy rector promptly hailed a sedan chair and so had him transported home.

  “You can think of me what you will,” said the student, “you can take me for a lunatic or not— so be it!— but grinning at me from the doorknocker I saw the face of the old witch from the Black Gate; what happened after that I’d rather not tell, but had I come to and espied the accursed old apple hag standing over me (for I have no doubt it was her), I’d have instantly been struck dead with fright or else gone completely berzerk.” All reasoning with him was for naught, all the sound explanations of the Registrar Heerbrand and the Deputy Rector Paulmann failed to sway him, and even blue-eyed Veronica could not manage to draw him out of the glum mood he was in. He was indeed taken for mentally disturbed, and remedies were sought to distract him, whereupon the Registrar Heerbrand insisted that nothing could be more effective than productive occupation, namely the transcription of manuscripts for the Archivarius Lindhorst. It was just a matter of making the two acquainted and presenting Anselmus in the best possible light to the Archivarius Lindhorst. Since Registrar Heerbrand knew that the latter visited a certain well-known café every evening, he invited the student to have a glass of beer and smoke a pipe with him, his treat, every evening at that very café until he might manage in this way to introduce the student and have the two come to an agreement about the business of his copying manuscripts – a proposition which Anselmus gladly accepted.

  “You will earn God’s gratitude, esteemed Registrar, if you thereby succeed in bringing the young man back to his senses!” said Deputy Rector Paulmann.

  “God’s gratitude!” Veronica repeated, lifting her pious gaze to heaven, while thinking to herself that Anselmus was already a most agreeable young man even out of his right mind!

  As the Archivarius Lindhorst reached for his hat and walking stick to head out the door, Registrar Heerbrand hastily grabbed the student by the hand and, blocking the old gentleman’s way, said, “Most esteemed Privy Archivarius, Sir, here is the student Anselmus, of whom I spoke, the young man uncommonly skilled at transcription and drawing who would like to copy your arcane manuscripts.”

  “That would be most agreeable,” the Archivarius Lindhorst rattled off in reply, plunking his three-cornered military hat on his head, shoving the Registrar Heerbrand and the student aside, and noisily clattering down the steps, leaving the two standing, utterly perplexed, staring at the door that he had slammed shut in their face so loudly that the hinges kept clanging.

  “What a right curious old man!” remarked Registrar Heerbrand.

  “C…c…curious old man!” the student stuttered after him, feeling as if an arctic current shot through his veins, so that he almost froze into an icy column.

  But all the other café customers just laughed and said, “The archivarius was in another one of his quirky moods today— tomorrow he’ll be meek and mild again, without uttering a word, lost in the smoke clouds of his pipe or reading newspapers. Best not to pay it any mind.”

  “How true,” thought Anselmus, “best not to pay it any mind. Did the archivarius not say he found it most agreeable that I offered to copy his manuscripts? And why, pray tell, did the Registrar Heerbrand block his way when he was clearly on his way home? No, no, the Privy Archivarius Lindhorst is a kind man at heart and surprisingly generous – just curious in his manner of speaking. But what’s that to me? Tomorrow at twelve noon on the dot I’ll be at his door, let a hundred bronzed old apple hags try and stand in my way!”

  Fourth Vigil

  The Student Anselmus’ melancholy. The Emerald Mirror. How the Archivarius Lindhorst flew off as a vulture and nobody was on hand to receive Anselmus.

  Surely I may presume to ask you of all people, most gracious reader, a question. Have you experienced hours, indeed days and weeks on end, in your life during which all of your mundane ditherings and doings stirred up a mighty malaise that made everything you ordinarily held true and dear suddenly seem foolish and worthless? You yourself didn’t know then what to do and where to turn; you were gripped by a dark inkling that in some former time there must surely have been an ardent wish fulfilled that surpassed the limited sphere of all earthly pleasure, a wish that the human spirit, like a strictly raised, timid child, dare not even express out loud. In your longing for that unknown something that wafted around you wherever you went, like a perfumed dream peopled with transparent personages that dissolve in the sharp gaze of the waking world, you fell silent, awestruck in the face of it all. You slunk about with a downcast gaze like a despairing lover, and all that you witnessed of what people were up to in the motley melee of life gave you neither pleasure nor pain, as if you no longer belonged to this world.

  If, most gracious reader, you have ever felt this way, then you know from your own experience the state that the student Anselmus was in. If only I had already managed to paint a vivid picture of Anselmus so as to make you see him as I do, kind reader, for in these vigils there are still so many curious happenings to recount of his strange experiences that make it all sound like a ghost story straining the limits of the credible for ordinary folk. I fear that you will question the reality of the student and the Archivarius Lindhorst, and even harbor unjustified doubt as to the actual existence of Deputy Rector Paulmann and Registrar Heerbrand, not to speak of all the other honorable gentlemen that reside in Dresden to this day. Do try to picture yourself in the fairylike realm, prone to flashes of the greatest rapture and the most appalling horror, where the somber goddess airs her veil so that we mortals would feign catch a glimpse of her face – but a fleeting smile slips out from under her dark look, and that, dear reader, is the teasing banter that toys with us in the cloak of magic, the way a mother often tickles her favorite child. Do try, gracious reader, to put yourself in that state of mind so often at the very least revealed to us in dreams, and do take pains to recognize the reality of the aforementioned persons, as we say in common speech, flitting by. You will then, as I most sincerely hope, believe me when I maintain that this marvelous realm lies much closer to you than you previously suspected, a proximity which I have striven to intimate in my account of the strange story of the student Anselmus.

  So, as I was saying, ever since that evening when he saw the Archivarius Lindhorst at the café, Anselmus sank into a dreamy brooding state that made him oblivious to any outward connection to ordinary life. He felt an unknown something stirring in his heart of hearts, provoking that wondrous pain, the physical embodiment of an ardent yearning that augurs in people a heightened state of consciousness. What he loved best was to amble alone through meadows and woods and, feeling released from all that shackled him to his tenuous existence, he was convinced, as it were, that he could only then find himself again in the foggy figments of his imagination.

  Once, upon returning from a long walk, he happened to pass a curious elderberry bush beneath which, as if in the thrall of the fantastic, he had seen so many strange things that other time. He felt himself wondrously drawn to that familiar green patch of grass, but no sooner did he let himself sink down than all that he had seen before, as if gripped by heavenly rapture and impressed upon his soul by an alien will, once again wafted before his eyes in the most striking colors, as if he were witnessing it a second time. More vivid even than that other time, those blessed blue eyes peered out at him from the little head of the golden-green snake winding its way upward round the trunk of the elderberry tree, the coils of its slender body emitting the lovely crystalline tones that filled him with such ecstasy and delight. Just as he had on that Ascension Day, he embraced the tree and called to its branches and leaves, “Just one more time, whirl and wisp and wind yourself in the branches, oh lovely little snake, and let me gaze upon you! Just once more cast your lovely eyes upon me! How I love you, and will surely wither in pain and sadness if you don’t come back again!” But all remained perfectly still, and as it had then, the elderberry tree once again rustled its branches and leaves in faint response. Yet for Anselmus it was as if he finally fathomed the secrets stirring deep inside, the muddle of emotions tearing up his heart with boundless longing.

  “Can it be anything other,” he said aloud, “than that I love you with all my heart and soul unto death, you beautiful golden little snake, that I cannot conceive of living without you, and would wither in hopeless despair if I did not see you again, if I were not able to possess you as the love of my heart— but I know that you will be mine, and then all the radiant dreams augured from on high will be granted.”

  So the student sought out the elderberry bush every evening when the sun had just strewn its sparkling golden rays in the tips of the trees, and called in ardent, mournful tones into the leaves and branches, clamoring after his dearly beloved, the little golden-green snake. One time when he was so engaged in his customary manner, he turned to find a tall, haggard man sheathed in a wide, light gray overcoat, glaring at him with big fiery eyes. “Hey, hey— what’s all this yammering and whining? Hey, hey, why it’s Herr Anselmus, who wants to copy my manuscripts.”

  Anselmus was more than a little taken aback at the thunderous voice, for it sounded like the same voice that on Ascension Day had called to him, “Hey, hey, what’s all this jabbering and yammering, etc!” Consumed with shock and terror, he was unable to get a word out.

 

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