The Other Side (9 page)

‘What’s this?’ I said to the barber, who happened to be reading a rather difficult section from Leibnitz’s
Monadology
to me. ‘Can’t your assistant take better care of these things?’

‘I’m sorry?’ The great philosopher started with the look of a man who has just fallen off a cliff.

‘I mean the bowl here should be sparkling and the razor polished.’

‘Well yes, but how to do it? That’s the way things are and I’m not bringing in any innovations.’

To catch him out, I pointed to the mirrors and said, ‘What about those, then, they look clean and shining.’

His philosophy had no answer to that. I had forced him into a corner. ‘Oh, the mirrors’, he said. Pensively, hesitantly, as if he had to force the words out, he went on, ‘But mirrors are
nothing!
‘ He obviously found it embarrassing to talk about it.

‘It wasn’t meant as an insult’, I said with a friendly nod as I left the shop.

Be that as it may, it was a fine life surrounded by all those oxidised old objects, and I have no qualms about including the following letter at this point. It expresses very well my mood at the time. In addition, it contains the description of a strange custom which links in with the religion, of which I will speak later. The custom I am referring to is the
Great Clock Spell
. I found the letter in a notebook among the rags that were all I was left with after the collapse of the Dream Realm. The list of sacred objects that I give later on was also in the notebook, otherwise the pages were covered with illegible writing apart, that is, from the rough sketch of a street map of Pearl and the brief details of the various buildings which I drew up during our first days there to help me find my way around.

The letter was written during the third month of our stay. It was my first attempt at establishing contact with the outside world. Two years later it was returned to me, undelivered; the envelope was covered all over with stamps and remarks. The notebook and the letter are the only concrete proofs of the existence of the Dream Realm I can show to people.

Dear Fritz,

You won’t believe this, but I’m in the Dream Realm! All I can say is, as soon as you’ve read this letter, pack your bags and come too. Pearl is a real paradise for collectors, the city is one big museum. There’s a lot of rubbish, of course, but also some magnificent pieces. Today I saw a carved Gothic chest, a pair of silver sconces (16th century) and one of those enchanting renaissance bronzes (a boy on a bull by Cellini) you’ve always been so desperately searching for. Last week we were wallowing in china. I won’t say anything about the low prices for fear of what it might do to your health. Anyone who has a nose for that kind of thing will keep on turning up little gems everywhere he goes. There’s
nothing
but old things here. We live like our grandfathers in the good old days and don’t give a fig for progress. Yes, my old friend, we’re conservative to the core and our craftsmen are masters at patching and mending. Every fifth building has an antiques shop shop, we make our living from junk. You’ll find architectural extravaganzas too; the Palace is a hotch-potch of at least twenty styles. And the bizarre things you find! You wouldn’t believe them if you didn’t see them. You’ll understand my good mood when I tell you about the latest absurdity I came across. It’s the
Great Clock Spell
, at least that’s what they call it here. Just try to picture it: in our main square there’s a massive grey tower, a kind of squat campanile, housing an old clock. The face occupies the upper third and is lit up at night. We take our standard time from it, all the other clocks in the city and the rest of the country are set by it. There’s nothing special in that, it’s another, and very strange, characteristic of the clock which is of interest here. It exerts a mysterious attraction on all the inhabitants which is beyond belief. At certain times the old tower is surrounded by swarms of men and women. A stranger would stop and stare in astonishment at the odd behaviour of the assembly. The people stamp nervously and keep looking up at the long, rusty hands above. Ask them what’s going on and you’ll get bemused, evasive answers. If you take a closer look, you’ll see two small entrances at the foot of the tower. Everyone is pushing their way towards them. If the crowd is large they form lines, the women watching anxiously, the men angrily, to make sure no one pushes in. The tension increases as the hands of the clock move round. One after another the people disappear, each spending a minute or two inside. When they emerge they all have profoundly satisfied, almost happy expressions on their faces. It’s not surprising, then, that my curiosity was aroused. I took the opportunity of asking one of my new acquaintances in the café about the clock, but received a dusty answer. It was, he said, indecent to talk about something like that and showed great stupidity into the bargain. ‘If you must know’, he added, ‘it’s the
Great Clock Spell
. Make a note of it!’ His indignation only made me all the more curious. It certainly destroyed my own original explanation that it must be some kind of attraction like a camera obscura or a waxworks. I determined to risk it myself but was mightily disappointed. D’you know what was in there? Your expectations are going to be dashed, too. You go into a small, empty cell full of nooks and crannies, partly covered with mysterious drawings, presumably symbols. You can hear the huge pendulum swinging back and forth behind the wall. Tick … tock … tick … tock. There’s water streaming down the stone wall, streaming down unendingly. I did the same as the man who came in behind me, stared at the wall and said, loud and clear,
‘Here I stand before thee.’
Then we went out again. I must have looked pretty baffled. The women have their own side with their own entrance, indicated by the same sign as all over the world. But the most remarkable part of it is this. Once I had been through the experience, I found that I gradually began to feel the compulsion too. At first it was just a tug I felt whenever I went past the tower, but over the next few days my unease grew and grew until I was being literally
dragged
towards it. Eventually I gave in, there was no point fighting it, and now I’m fine. There are smaller clock towers on the same model scattered all over the town. In the country every farm is said to have a replica in one corner of the room, where our peasants would have a crucifix. I go to mine every day at the same time. You can mock, if you like, but, ‘Lord, here I stand before thee.’

There is not much doing here as far as painting is concerned. Art objects are valued above all for their practical use. There are a few old painters scattered around and what I have seen are dark, thinly painted canvases, an autumnal offshoot of the Dutch old masters. You do come across really good things now and then in the houses of the rich–Ruysdaels, Breughels, Altdorfers and pictures by some of the primitives. Our Croesus, Alfred Blumenstich, the director of the Dreamland Bank, has a gallery of valuable paintings, including a Rembrandt and a genuine Grunewald, the existence of which no one in your world even suspects. It’s called ‘The Seven Deadly Sins Eating the Lamb of God’.

There are no cheerful colours here, it’s more a place for line and tone. I have a nice little position on an illustrated paper, the
Dreain Mirror
. 400 crowns a month to do what I like when I like! There is another artist with the paper, a Nicholas Castringius whom I have not yet met. If you come I should be able to find you a place on the paper.

That’s all for the moment, I’m afraid. I hope we’ll see each other again soon.

Your old friend, artist and now Dreamlander,

P.S. Here you can live in a romantic house on the edge of the city, quite undisturbed, just like in the country.

As you can tell from the letter, I was still in a cheerful mood at that point. I will deal with the drawbacks, which were even then making themselves felt, at the end of this chapter, at least to the extent to which I was aware of them at that time. First, though, I would like to say a little about the religion, or what I thought of as a religion.

VII

This was an interesting and complex area. I never really got to the bottom of it, though I did feel I was close to solving many of its mysteries. If my investigation did not produce results, the fault is not mine. There was some hostile force frustrating my efforts here and the information I gleaned was minimal.

All the great religions of the old world had a number of representatives in the Dream Realm, some more, some fewer. But that was merely a facade, glossy window-dressing. The educated part of the population would readily admit this. They were shrewd freethinkers and not the kind of people who would readily submit to a rigid hierarchical system. Moreover there were some highly intelligent people among them. Nevertheless, there was something: a fatalistic belief in a providence which dispensed justice with an even, if legalistic hand. And beyond that there were all kinds of dark and unfathomable notions. It was definitely not the done thing to deride them, as I was to find out to my cost.

In the first months of our stay I got to know a pleasant young man in the coffee house, a Baron Hector von Brendel. He was a decent fellow, well-bred, man of the world, slightly neurasthenic and weary, but not in the least bit stupid. He had a touch of melancholy, always kept in check, which was what initially attracted me to him. Later on we saw each other daily.

‘You’ve been here three years now, Brendel’, I said to him one day when we happened to be the only two at the table where we regulars used to gather. ‘Look, I’m convinced there’s some kind of secret religious sect here in the Dream Realm, like a Freemason’s lodge. D’you know any details? Could you perhaps tell me all about it? The rites? Customs?’

He gave me a sideways look, cleared his throat and asked in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘What have you noticed?’

‘Oh, nothing specific, the concept of fate is pretty old. It’s just the general outlook, the dogged holding on to the same old-fashioned way of life, the lack of progressive ideas and one or two other things as well.’ I told him about the barber and his copper basin.

He listened to me with a serious expression, slowly rolled himself a cigarette and said with a sad smile, ‘To be quite honest with you, my friend, yes, there is something. But with the best will in the world I can’t tell you any more than you already know yourself.’

‘So I was right!’ I was disappointed. ‘But don’t you know anything at all about it? You can rely on me to keep a secret, if that’s the problem.’

Brendel thought for a few moments, then spoke in a low voice. ‘Certain things are venerated here. I don’t know if it will help if I tell you some of the sacred objects?’

‘Oh please do’, I begged, burning with curiosity.

‘Well, eggs, nuts, bread, cheese, honey, milk, wine and vinegar are especially hallowed.’

‘Aha!’ I exclaimed, delighted. ‘A hygienic cult based on the stomach.’ I could not resist some gentle mockery. ‘Why not tea, coffee and sugar as well?’

At that Brendel turned his back on me and paid. A gust of wind blew the door open, letting in the warm, damp, earthy air with its strong admixture of the disturbing Dream smell. Bidding me a curt farewell, Brendel left. Through the high, steamed-up windows I watched him walk away. Outside it was dark.