And saying that she wiped her greasy lips for she likes to eat a piece of rye bread with goose grease before going to bed.
Irritatedly I push the little pitcher aside, but its grayish green steam whirls only the more pertinaciously about me. The clouds a.s.sume strange forms, which tower over each other and whirl into each other like the phantoms over a witch"s cauldron.
And at last the fumes combine into a human form, at first misty and without outlines but gradually becoming more sharply defined.
Gray, gray, gray. An aged woman. So she seems, for she creeps along by the help of a crutch. But over her face is a veil which falls to the ground over her arms like the folded wings of a bat.
I begin to laugh, for spirits have long ceased to inspire me with reverence.
"Is your name by any chance Thea, O lovely, being?" I ask.
"My name is Thea," she answers and her voice is weary, gentle and a little hoa.r.s.e. A caressing shimmer as of faintly blue velvet, an insinuating fragrance as of dying mignonette--both lie in this voice.
The voice fills my heart. But I won"t be taken in, least of all by some trite ghost which is in the end only a vision of one"s own sick brain.
"It seems that the years have not changed you for the better, charming Thea," I say and point sarcastically to the crutch.
"My wings are broken and I am withered like yourself."
I laugh aloud. "So that is the meaning of this honoured apparition! A mirror of myself--spirit of ruin--symbolic poem on the course of my ideas. Pshaw! I know that trick. Every brainless Christmas poet knows it, too. You must come with a more powerful charm, O Thea, spirit of the herb tea! Good-bye. My time is too precious to be wasted by allegories."
"What have you to do that is so important?" she asks, and I seem to see the gleam of her eyes behind the folds of the veil, whether in laughter or in grief I cannot tell.
"If I have nothing more to do, I must die," I answer and feel with joy how my defiance steels itself in these words.
"And that seems important to you?"
"Moderately so."
"Important to whom?"
"To myself, I should think, if to no one else."
"And your creditor--the world?"
That was the last straw. "The world, oh, yes, the world. And what, pray, do I owe it?"
"Love."
"Love? To that harlot? Because it sucked the fire from my veins and poured poison therein instead? Behold me here--wrecked, broken, a plaything of any wave. That is what the world has made of me!"
"That is what you have made of yourself! ... The world came to you as a smiling guide.... With gentle finger it touched your shoulder and desired you to follow. But you were stubborn. You went your own way in dark and lonely caverns where the laughing music of the fight that sounds from above becomes a discordant thunder. You were meant to be wise and merry; you became dull and morose."
"Very well; if that is what I became, at least the grave will release me from my condition."
"Test yourself thoroughly."
"What is the use of that now? Life has crippled me.... What of joy it has to offer becomes torture to me.... I am cut loose from all the kindly bonds that bind man to man.... I cannot bear hatred, neither can I bear love.... I tremble at a thousand dangers that have never threatened and will never threaten me. A very straw has become a cliff to me against which I founder and against which my weary limbs are dashed in pieces.... And this is the worst of all. My vision sees clearly that it is but a straw before which my strength writhes in the dust.... You have come at the right time, Thea. Perhaps you carry in the folds of your robe some little potion that will help me to hurry across the verge."
Again I see a gleam behind the veil--a smiling salutation from some far land where the sun is still shining. And my heart seems about to burst under that gleam. But I control myself and continue to gaze at her with bitter defiance.
"It needs no potion," she says and raises her right hand. I have never seen such a hand.... It seem to be without bones, formed of the petals of flowers. The hand might seem deformed, dried and yet swollen as with disease, were it not so delicate, so radiant, so lily-like. An unspeakable yearning for this poor, sick hand overcomes me. I want to fall on my knees before it and press my lips to it in adoration. But already the hand lays itself softly upon my hair. Gentle and cool as a flake of snow it rests there. But from moment to moment it waxes heavier until the weight of mountains seems to lie upon my head. I can bear the pressure no longer. I sink ... I sink ... the earth opens....
Darkness is all about me....
Recovering consciousness, I find myself lying in a bed surrounded by impenetrable night.
"One of my stupid dreams," I say to myself and grope for the matches on my bed side table to see the time.... But my hand strikes hard against a board that rises diagonally at my shoulder. I grope farther and discover that my couch is surrounded by a cloak of wood. And that cloak is so narrow, so narrow that I can scarcely raise my head a few inches without knocking against it.
"Perhaps I am buried," I say to myself. "Then indeed my wish would have fulfilled itself promptly."
A fresh softly p.r.i.c.kling scent of flowers, as of heather and roses, floats to me.
"Aha," I say to myself, "the odour of the funeral flowers. My favourites have been chosen. That was kind of people." And, as I turn my head the cups of flowers nestle soft and cool against my cheek.
"You are buried amid roses," I say to myself, "as you always desired."
And then I touch my breast to discover what gift has been placed upon my heart. My fingers touch hard, jagged leaves.
"What is that?" I ask myself in surprise. And then I laugh shrilly. It is a wreath of laurel leaves which has been pressed with its rough, woodlike leaves between my body and the coffin lid.
"Now you have everything that you so ardently desired, you fool of fame," I cry out and a mighty irony takes hold of me.
And then I stretch out my legs until my feet reach the end of the coffin, nestle my head amid the flowers, and make ready to enjoy my great peace with all my might. I am not in the least frightened or confounded, for I know that air to breathe will never again be lacking now for I need it no longer. I am dead, properly and honestly dead. Nothing remains now but to flow peacefully and gently into the realm of the unconscious, and to let the dim dream of the All surge over me to eternity.
"Good-night, my dear former fellow-creatures," I say and turn contemptuously on my other side. "You can all go to the d.i.c.kens for all I care."
And then I determine to lie still as a mouse and discover whether I cannot find some food for the malice that yet is in me, by listening to man"s doings upon the wretched earth above me.
At first I hear nothing but a dull roaring. But that may proceed as well from the subterranean waters that rush through the earth somewhere in my neighbourhood. But no, the sound comes from above. And from time to time I also hear a rattling and hissing as of dried peas poured out over a sieve.
"Of course, it"s wretched weather again," I say and rub my hands comfortably, not, to be sure, without knocking my elbows against the side of the coffin.
"They could have made this place a little roomier," I say to myself.
But when it occurs to me that, in my character of an honest corpse, I have no business to move at all if I want to be a credit to my new station.
But the spirit of contradiction in me at once rebels against this imputation.
"There are no cla.s.ses in the grave and no prejudices," I cry. "In the grave we are all alike, high and low, poor and rich. The rags of the beggar, my masters, have here just the same value as the purple cloak that falls from the shoulders of a king. Here even the laurel loses its significance as the crown of fame and is given to many a one."
I cease, for my fingers have discovered a riband that hangs from the wreath. Upon it, I am justified in a.s.suming, there is written some flattering legend. The letters are just raised enough to be indistinctly felt.
I am about to call for matches, but remember just in time that it is forbidden to strike a light in the grave or rather, that it is contrary to the very conception of the grave to be illuminated.
This thought annoys me and I continue: "The laurel is given here not to the distinguished alone. I must correct that expression. Are not we corpses distinguished _per se_ as compared to the miserable plebeian living? Is not this n.o.ble rest in which we dwell an unmistakable sign of true aristocracy? And the laurel that is given to the dead, that laurel, my masters, fills me with as high a pride as would the diadem of a king."
I ceased. For I could rightly expect enthusiastic applause at the close of this effective pa.s.sage. But as everything remained silent I turned my thoughts once more upon myself, and considered, too, that my finest speeches would find no public here.
"It is, besides, in utter contradiction to the conception of death to deliver speeches," I said to myself, but at once I began another in order to establish an opposition against myself.
"Conception? What is a conception? What do I care for conceptions here? I am dead. I have earned the sacred right to disregard such things. If those two-penny living creatures cannot imagine the grave otherwise than dark or the dead otherwise than dumb--why, I surely have no need to care for that."