Tales of the German Imagination from the Brothers Grimm to Ingeborg Bachmann (Penguin Classics) (7 page)

Imagine how stunned Nathaniel was when, intending to return to his apartment, he found the entire house burnt to the ground, so that only the charred walls still rose from the rubble heap. Braving the fire that had started in the laboratory of the apothecary on the first floor and engulfed the house in flames from the bottom up, a few resolute friends had nevertheless managed in the nick of time to dash up to Nathaniel’s room and save his books, manuscripts and instruments. They succeeded in carrying everything intact to another house, where they rented a room for him, to which Nathaniel promptly moved in.

He was not particularly surprised to discover that he lived directly opposite Professor Spalanzani, nor did it seem strange to him when he realized that from his window he could peer directly into the room in which Olympia often sat alone, positioned in such a way that he could clearly recognize her figure, while her facial features remained blurred and vague. But after a while it did indeed strike him as strange that Olympia often sat for hours on end in the same stance she had assumed when he once glimpsed her through the glass door, perched before a small table, apparently engaged in no activity, and that she clearly cast a fixed gaze in his direction. He likewise had to admit to himself that he had never set eyes on a lovelier female figure; but, holding true to Clara in his heart, he remained largely oblivious to Olympia’s stiff, stone-cold allures, and only every now and then did he cast furtive looks over his open compendium at the comely statue – that was all.

He was just writing to Clara when he heard a light knock; upon his invitation to enter, the door swung open a crack and Coppola’s repulsive face peered in. Nathaniel felt a shudder of terror run through him; mindful, however, of what Spalanzani had told him about his compatriot Coppola, and that he had
given his sacred word to his beloved to lend no more credence to the Sandman Coppelius, he himself was ashamed of his childish fears. With a great effort he pulled himself together and spoke as calmly as possible: ‘I’m not going to buy a barometer, my dear friend, so you might as well be going!’

At which, however, Coppola stepped squarely into the room and spoke with a hoarse voice, his broad mouth twisted into an ugly laughter, his sparkling little eyes casting a piercing look beneath the wink of his long grey lashes: ‘Forget barometer, bah! I bring pair o’ lovely peepers!’

Horrified, Nathaniel cried out: ‘Strange man, how can you have eyes for sale? Eyes? Eyes?’

But then and there Coppola shoved aside his barometers, reached into his deep coat pocket and pulled out spectacles and eyeglasses which he laid out on the table. ‘Look – glass – glass – what you put on
you
nose, eyes a pretty – eyes a pretty!’ Whereupon he pulled out more and more eyeglasses, so that the entire table was soon flickering and sparkling.

A thousand eyes peeped and twitched and stared at Nathaniel; but he was unable to turn away from the table, and Coppola kept laying out more and more eyeglasses, and ever wilder and wilder did those glaring gazes land, helter-skelter, shooting their blood-red rays at Nathaniel’s breast. Overcome by frantic horror, he cried out: ‘Stop it! Stop it, you wretched creature!’ He grabbed Coppola by the arm as the latter, oblivious, reached yet again into his pocket to fetch more glasses to add to the heap that covered the table.

But Coppola shook himself free, and with a hoarse, repulsive laugh, muttered: ‘Oh! This not for you! But look here, lovely glass!’ – wherewith he swept up all the eyeglasses, shoved them back into his coat pocket, and from another pocket pulled out a number of big and little telescopes and field glasses.

As soon as the eyeglasses were out of sight Nathaniel grew calm again and, mindful of Clara’s words, had to admit to himself that the terrible spook was a figment of his own imagination, and that Coppola was an altogether honest craftsman and lens grinder and could not possibly be Coppelius’ cursed doppelgänger and shadow figure. He realized, furthermore, that there
was nothing strange about all the lenses that Coppola now laid out on the table, nothing ghastly like the eyeglasses, and to make amends Nathaniel now decided actually to buy something from him. He reached for a small, very finely crafted pocket looking-glass and, to test it, peered out the window.

Never in his life had he come upon a looking-glass that so clearly and sharply brought distant objects before his eyes in such clear focus. He unintentionally peered into Spalanzani’s room; Olympia sat there, as usual, at the little table, with her arms resting on it and her hands folded. Now for the first time Nathaniel espied Olympia’s exquisitely lovely face. Only the eyes appeared strange, blank and dead. But as he brought her face into greater and greater focus in the looking-glass, it seemed to him as if Olympia’s eyes flashed open in moist moonbeams. It was as if she had only now acquired the power of sight; her glances grew livelier and livelier. Nathaniel lingered at the window, transfixed, unable to take his eyes off the stunningly lovely Olympia. He was awakened, as if out of a deep dream, by the sound of throat-clearing and scraping.

Coppola stood behind him: ‘Tre zecchini – three ducats!’ Nathaniel, who had completely forgotten the optician, quickly counted out the asking price. ‘Fine glass – fine glass – is it not?’ asked Coppola with his repulsive hoarse voice and his crafty smile.

‘Yes, yes, indeed!’ Nathaniel replied, greatly vexed. ‘Adieu, dear friend!’

But Coppola cast several strange sidelong looks at Nathaniel and his room before taking his leave. The young man could still hear him laughing out loud on the stairase. ‘All right,’ Nathaniel muttered to himself, ‘he’s laughing at me because I no doubt paid far too much for the little looking-glass – paid far too much!’ As he quietly whispered these words, a deep and terrible deathly groan resounded in the room. Nathaniel was so frightened he stopped breathing. But the groan had emanated from his own throat, he fathomed after the fact. ‘Clara’s quite right,’ he said to himself, ‘to take me for a ridiculous ghost-haunted idiot; it’s perfectly insane – completely ridiculous of me to let the thought that I paid Coppola too much for the
looking-glass unnerve me to such a degree; and for no reason at all.’ Now he sat himself down to finish writing the letter to Clara, but a fleeting glance out of the window confirmed that Olympia was still seated there; and then and there, driven by an irresistible urge, he jumped up, grabbed Coppola’s looking-glass and remained glued to the window, riveted by Olympia’s alluring visage, until a friend and fellow student, Siegmund, called out to remind him that it was time to come along to Professor Spalanzani’s lecture.

But the next day the curtain was pulled shut in that fateful room across the way, and he could not catch sight of Olympia on that day or on the following two days, despite the fact that he seldom left his own window and constantly kept peering over with Coppola’s looking-glass. On the third day even the blinds were pulled. Desperately pining and driven by a burning desire, he ran out to her front door. Impressions of Olympia’s lovely figure hung in the air everywhere he looked; she stepped out from behind the bushes and the reflection of her big, sparkling eyes beamed out at him from the clear brook. Clara’s image had been totally erased from his heart, he thought of nothing but Olympia and wailed and complained at the top of his voice: ‘Oh you, my shining star of love, did you appear before me only to vanish again and leave me in the dark and desperate night?’

As he was about to return to his room, he became aware of noisy goings-on in Spalanzani’s house. The doors were open, all kinds of devices were being carried in, the windows on the first floor were open wide, busy housemaids swept and dusted the window boxes with big brooms; inside, meanwhile, carpenters and decorators banged and hammered. Stunned, Nathaniel remained standing there in the street; then Siegmund came over to him and said, laughing: ‘So what do you say about our old Spalanzani?’ Nathaniel assured him that he had nothing to say since he knew absolutely nothing about the Professor, but that he was rather surprised to discover such a wild to-do and housekeeping frenzy in that ordinarily dark and silent house; whereupon Siegmund informed him that Spalanzani was going to throw a big party the next day, including a concert and ball, and that half
the university was invited. The word was that Spalanzani was going to let his daughter Olympia, whom he’d fearfully kept sheltered from view, appear for the first time in public.

Nathaniel received an invitation and presented himself at the Professor’s at the appointed hour with a fast-beating heart, as carriages rolled up to the door and lights shimmered in the elegantly decorated rooms. The company was numerous and glamorous. Olympia appeared richly and tastefully attired. Everyone had to admire her finely chiselled face and graceful figure. The strange stoop of her back and her bone-thin waist appeared to be the consequence of a girdle tied too tight. There was a measured stiffness in her stance and step that some found displeasing; but that was ascribed to the stress of appearing in society. The concert began, Olympia played the grand piano with great skill and likewise brought off a bravura aria with a clear, almost bell-glass-like, pitch-perfect voice. Nathaniel was completely captivated; he stood in the last row and could not clearly make out Olympia’s features in the candlelight. Without attracting notice, he therefore pulled out Coppola’s looking-glass and gazed through its lens at the lovely Olympia. Oh God! He now fathomed how ardently she peered in his direction, how every note only seemed to sound enveloped in a loving look that surged through his burning heart. The artful trills rang out in Nathaniel’s ear like the heavenly Hosannas of the spirit transfigured by love; and when at last, following the cadenza, the long trill pierced the air all around him, feeling as though suddenly enveloped by her warm embrace, and no longer able to control himself, he cried out in rapture and pain: ‘Olympia!’ All heads turned to look at him, some laughing.

But the cathedral organist’s face twisted into an even dourer grimace than before and he merely remarked: ‘Well, well!’ The concert came to an end, the ball began. Only to dance with her – with
her
! That was now the object of Nathaniel’s deepest desire, all that he strove for; but how would he get up the courage to ask her, the queen of the evening, for a dance? Nevertheless – he himself had no idea how it happened – finding himself all of a sudden standing right there beside Olympia, once the music had already started up, and she not yet having
been invited to dance, hardly able to stammer a few words, he reached for her hand. Olympia’s hand was ice-cold; he felt a terrible deathly frost surge through him; he looked into her eyes, which greeted his gaze with love and longing, and at that very moment it was as if the pulse began to beat in her cold hand and the lifeblood began to glow warm within. And love’s longing welled up, glowing hotter and hotter in Nathaniel’s breast; he wrapped his arm around lovely Olympia and led her down the rows of dancers. He had always thought himself to be a good dancer, able to hold to the beat; but from the precise rhythmic steadiness of Olympia’s step, which often caused him to falter, he soon fathomed the failing of his sense of beat. And yet he no longer wanted to dance with any other woman in the world, and felt as if he would have killed on the spot anyone else who dared approach her to ask for a dance. But this happened only twice, and thereafter, to his amazement, Olympia always remained seated between dances and he did not hesitate to reach for her hand and pull her up again and again.

Had Nathaniel had eyes for anything but the lovely Olympia, countless tussles and tangles would have been unavoidable; for clearly the quiet, painstakingly muffled laughter that emanated here and there among the groups of young people was directed at the lovely Olympia, whom they followed with the strangest looks – it was hard to say why. Fired up by the dance and by the wine of which he’d pleasantly partaken, Nathaniel shed his innate shyness. He sat beside Olympia, his hand in hers, and spoke fervently of his love for her in words that neither he nor she understood.

But she perhaps grasped their meaning; for she peered without flinching right into his eyes and sighed again and again: ‘Oh – Oh – Oh!’

Whereupon Nathaniel replied: ‘Oh you beautiful, heavenly woman! You ray of hope from the Promised Land of love – you deep spirit in which my entire being is mirrored,’ and more of the same.

In response to which Olympia kept sighing the same ‘Oh, Oh!’

Professor Spalanzani walked several times past the blissful pair and smiled with a strange look of satisfaction. And though
Nathaniel’s spirit hovered elsewhere in another world, all of a sudden it seemed to him as if it grew curiously dark down here below in Professor Spalanzani’s house; he looked around and fathomed with a start that the last two lights in the empty hall were burning down to the wick and threatened at any moment to go out. Music and dance had stopped long ago. ‘Time to part, time to part,’ he cried out in a wild and desperate voice, kissed Olympia’s hand and leant forward to kiss her on the mouth with his burning lips, but her lips were ice-cold! And, just as when he’d first touched Olympia’s cold hand, he felt a shudder run through him, the legend of the dead bride suddenly flashing through his mind; but Olympia pressed him tightly to her, and in that kiss her lips seemed to come alive with warmth. Professor Spalanzani paced slowly through the empty hall; his steps sounded muffled and, ringed by dancing shadows, his figure appeared terrifying and ghostlike. ‘Do you love me – do you love me, Olympia? Just that one word! Do you love me?’ whispered Nathaniel.

But, standing up, Olympia only sighed: ‘Oh! Oh!’

‘Oh yes, my precious, my beautiful star of love,’ said Nathaniel, ‘you rose in the firmament of my heart and will evermore light up and transfigure the darkness within!’

‘Oh, Oh!’ Olympia responded, walking away.

Nathaniel followed her; they stood before the Professor. ‘You chatted up my daughter in a right sprightly manner,’ he said with a smile. ‘Well then, my dear Mr Nathaniel, if conversing with the simple-minded girl gives you pleasure, you’re welcome to visit whenever you like.’