B007P4V3G4 EBOK (39 page)

But Reinout's plaint here, too, only evokes echoes in the void.
Though salamander's brood may populate this Tartarus, creatures
of flame, raised in fire - but to the souls of man the hot abyss is as
inaccessible as the chill vault of heaven. He reposes, the errant one,
he reposes and he seeks, until the flesh threatens to char on his
bones. He calls out, till the lower-most eddies resound to it. No
reply. Even the bird-note has not the power to penetrate and reach
him in this horrible dungeon. The voice alone admonishes him
once more:

Not here, either, Reinout! Only that can exist in fire which was
born in fire. Do not seek her in death, nor in destruction; seek her
in life if you do still want to find her.

In life, then! In life he will seek his deceased one - in life which he
himself is to leave as, he feels it, the last powers of the body are
sinking away from him.

Resurrected from the pit, he finds the sun beautiful, the stars
charming again, and the cloak of the fields more glorious than
ever. He kisses the good earth who is his mother, his progenitress,
his origin and his destination, and his home and hearth for ever.

Earth, life, earthly life, where do you keep his deceased one in your womb? - Silence! Is that not the sweet, the salvation-promising note, trilling from the distant place, greeting him? - 0 place of
reunion, how long still the search?

Onward, he wishes to go again, around the world; and the West
wind who takes pity on this tired errant one, lifts him on his wings
and carries him across the ocean. And everywhere in air and water
he scrutinises for signs of reborn human souls. He sees them
emerge from the splashing waves, turning to spume on the crests,
rolling along some way with the surging deep, then spitting apart
to merge again with the brine; - these are the souls of brave
seafarers who chose the sea to be their tillage. He hears them
cleave the sky in swarms, like albatrosses with their broad, swishing
flight; - these are the souls of heroes and warriors who ride coast
to coast on the hurricane. He believes to be able to see spirits of
rulers, lording mighty on storm-defying cliffs; to see spirits of
poets striding across the flat mirror of musing lakes that glance up
to heaven. But she whom he seeks, he does not detect among
them all.

It is done: he can go no further: on the sandy beach he
collapses, fatigued to the point of death. With a hoarse roar, the
surf slams down at his feet; grub-grey the Northern hemisphere
oppresses the sombre yonder; two sad spruces, banished from the
green forest, stretch out shivering above the wanderer's head their
rip-stripped naked limbs. Melancholy, the desire to die is all. And
in the clouds a hunt comes into being; white crests speed from the
West across the suddenly impetuous spate; it drives through the
dead needle-foliage like a moan. These are souls, errant souls who
cannot find what they seek. And he listens - he knows
cries out after them:

Wait for me! Wait for me! Presently I will join you, travel as one
of you. For, searching, I am not worthy of finding and my Olga
knows me no longer!

But hark! - now, finally, at bird note! ... And this
time no longer vague, from an undefined beyond, but clear and
certain, from yonder way, landward, in from the Birdvoice, will you now be his guide, now he is about to undertake the
final journey?

Yes, steadily the calling sounds ahead of him, soft and clear, in
inexpressibly cheerful tones in the grey evening quiet. It shows
him the way - and that road he does know; and through the
tearful joy of reunion his failing heart relearns to beat. For once upon a time he trod this road with her, this road which now will
lead him back to her.

This is the German land, the land of hills and forests, of grapes,
of songs, of forest poetry - but to him, particularly, the land where
they found each other and possessed each other, where they had
sung and swooned and, engrossing themselves in the soul of
nature together, had revealed their souls to one another. The land
of their love, the land of their happiness, where, in quiet togetherness, had it been permitted, they had wished to end their days.

And yonder is the forest of grey beech trees that climbs grandly
up the sweet slope of the ridge of hills. A parvise of scrub encircles
it, quite impenetrable; but for the errant one the tightly twined
branches rustlingly part, for his footstep a green arch opens, only
to close itself behind him - and he sets foot beneath the silent
vault of the druid's temple, timid, shy, like the sinner wishing to
pray crosses the threshold of a sanctuary. The night wind sighs.
There, the roof of twigs trembles and rustles. Moon rays, broken
through the weft of foliage, marble the smooth trunks: shade
figures float to and fro in the dark perspective between the rows of
pillars, and myriad spatters of light, sprinkled across the moss, are
like staring eyes that direct the question toward the stranger:

Man or spirit, what seek'st thou here?

He, however, no longer seeks. For from the darkest of treetops,
perfectly close by, the bird-voice trills toward him: a melting
mordent, a swelling, jubilant crash. Staggering, he approaches. He
drops to his knees.

Olga! his lips stammer, I am here! ... Then a green glow of light
dawns before his breaking eye, a Gloria of nightingale notes
rushingly envelops him, intoxicating, a wave of forest-flower
scents rushes towards him, a balmy wind like one that caresses the
fields in June nights appears, whirling, to take him up on high -
and, enshrouding, a rain of leaves descends from the verdure on to
that husk now abandoned, left behind in the blueberry bushes, wet
with dew.

Helene Nolthenius

'... but you have been acquainted with this a long time already,
M'Lud, as the members of the jury have been also. It cannot have
escaped your notice that the conclusion the Public Prosecutor has
reached holds no water. Only the adder that bit my wife might be
accused of culpable homicide, at best. At the place where I found
her, she was dead; had been for years even, perhaps, I don't know:
there's no time down there. Black-haired I descended, white I
returned: that's what I know. Culpable homicide! My life it was that
I risked to give her life again. What the Public Prosecutor means is
not that I drove my wife to her death but that I failed to drive her
from it. I don't seek to deny this. I should only wish to deny that I
looked back out of negligence, or because I doubted the promise
of the gods. I knew my looking back would be fatal. You, Mrs
Prosecutor, would have to accuse me of murder ... had Eurydice
been alive at that moment. I looked because I did not want her
back.

'... May I continue? Your interruptions, members of the jury,
would gain in quality were you to shout a little more tunefully.
M'Lud, what I should like to explain in these last words you have
permitted me is this: that solely the living learn from death. The
spirit of one who dies stultifies. Growth is no longer possible.
Death encapsulates the spirit the way the Egyptians did the body.
It is right like this. How else would the dead endure the horrors of
the underworld? The living who descend are spared nothing,
however. I, ladies of the jury - I have passed straight through hell.
That I survived this I owe to my music, to my kithara here. The
point at issue is that my music, too, has returned to earth whitehaired, and that Eurydice has not wished to understand this.

Wright: you do not do so either. Your expertise in this matter
reaches no further than the tinkling of the tambourine and the
shriek of the Phrygian reed pipe; but any professional can tell you
that the work of my youth relates to what I play now as does the
plain surface to the cube. Death gave it a new dimension.

'Begging M'Lud's pardon: that's no digression. Had my wife
paid attention to this, she would now be alive. There was no place
for that kind of attention in the mummy of her child's brain. She
was dead, after all.

'I have heard my journey down described as the adventure of a
lovelorn strolling player. Perhaps it may have started that way: as
an adventure and a challenge. I had celebrated triumphs in the
upper world so why not in the nether one too? Such hubris did not
last long, however. The deeper I penetrated the darkness, the more
deeply the darkness penetrated me. The song that mollified the
hound of hell darkened with each subsequent variation. All the
pitiableness of those who heard it sucked tightly on to the sounds.
The yearning of Tantalus, the toiling of Sisyphus, the exhaustion
of the Danaids. But so did their crime; their remorse too, likewise
the irreparable nature of their deeds; and surrounding this the
relentless hissing and shrieking of the Furies who stole after me
like beggars do after a stranger. My journey must have taken
months, months during which dismay made me into another
person and my kithara into a new instrument. How otherwise
would I have been able to penetrate the grimness of Hades and
melt the frozen tears of Persephone? That which I sang for them
was the very last song before my voice gave way. Beyond
suffering made sound, there is nothing more. That's why the gods
had to hear my prayer. They advocated against it; they warned me
of the dangers; they pointed out to me that my wife, blameless as
she was, did not feel unhappy in their realm. But they had to hear
me: such is the power of music.

'Eurydice was fetched from the pasture of asphodels where she
had woven wreaths in the half light. She left her girl friends in no
different a manner from that which she was wont to do in the
sunlight among the narcissi. To me, too, she at once picked up the
thread of conversation where she'd left off, as though nothing had
happened. As you know, I was not permitted to see her. The gaze
of one living destroys the last germs of life in one dead, like a
deadly ray. I was not allowed to look back but there was no
question of doubting the divine word: I could hear her, couldn't I!
Her little mouth never stopped. It never did on earth either unless
she was sleeping. I had relished her euphonious chatter though I
seldom heeded it. It gave me a feeling of peace and domesticity. It
still did so when we began our trek upwards. It might be that the
reunion - in sound, I should say - had something of an anticlimax after all the horrors. But that she was with me again, this made me
deeply happy. I loved Eurydice so very dearly indeed. The promise
the gods had asked, that I should remain faithful to her for life: I
gave this with a laugh, one I thought back to many a time later.

'Perhaps if the way back had not taken so long. Perhaps if I had
been less tired and not so shattered by what I had experienced.
Perhaps if Eurydice hadn't disturbed my thought with questions
that required an answer - on fashion? About a kitchen recipe? I
don't know any more. If only she had realised something, a hint
even. of the unparalleled thing taking place there, or had even had
the remotest attention for the cries of woe of the shades which
wafted like vapour around well, yes; and if only those
shades themselves had left us in peace. But those shades were
jealous. They became malevolent. They pressed ever closer around
us so I could no longer see the path. There was nothing to be
done about it: I had to forge my way back like I had done the way
down there: with music. The moment I began to play, they
recoiled and became silent, enthralled by their own, sung suffering.
Just one kept holding forth, undaunted: my wife.

'She had done so in the past too. When she wasn't dancing to
my music she'd be talking right through it. In the past that didn't
matter so much. It was background music I created in the past. The
Muse who had made me the darling of thousands was a popular
one. Curious: I only realised this at that moment, the moment I
could no longer bear Eurydice's chatter. It must have taken weeks,
my attempts to explain to her what had changed. As often as my
tired arm let the kithara droop I would repeat that there is music
... that I had been the first to create music which cannot suffer
disturbance. Music which must be listened to, must be experienced,
which is born from all the joy of the world and all the agony of
hell. Music that has priority. Music before which all other things
must give way. Did I say that Eurydice didn't understand? She did
not wish to understand. I had tamed Cerberus, had comforted
Sisyphus, even moved the Furies. My wife chattered. And slowly,
slowly her tittle-tattle turned into reproach and accusation. She
loathed what I played. She was not sufficiently dead not to feel the
threat of this new music. She became jealous of it: my art had
become her rival ... and I began to realise that she was right. The
woman I had fetched from the deepest of night would upon her
return never again be number one to me. It was this the gods had
warned me for. This was the reason why they had me swear fealty to the sulking child trudging on behind me. They knew that the
radiant being who had entered their place would have to leave hell
a fiend of that ilk. Because only the living learn from death and the
dead cannot follow such growth. And I saw what would have to
happen, irrevocably: two lily-white little hands in a strangulating
grip around the throat of my art. That's when I looked round.