Authors: David Stacton
H
e built again. There was still one more refuge, which he had prepared for just such a disaster as this. There was still Neuschwanstein. At Neuschwanstein he could still be safe. Or so he preferred to believe.
Of course Europe is scattered with the medieval castles of nineteenth-century kings. They stretch from Miramar to Cintra. To us they offer only the shelter of a toy,
discarded
as Man outgrew his monarchy. They have the quality of those long-coveted dolls little girls are given only at the moment when suddenly it is too late for dolls, and which they keep by them when they are young women as precious mementoes of a world long lost. But nineteenth-century monarchs took the matter differently. They were quite serious about their fortresses.
Neuschwanstein does not have this dolls’-house
atmosphere
. It seems to be the dreamer, not the dream, so it still has the power to renew itself before our eyes. It is not a building, but an offering left at the naked foot of an alp. For a moment, in the evening, as mists curl round it, it might indeed be Monsalvasch. It is not Monsalvasch, but it is built on the site of all those places where
Monsalvasch
was thought to be. At Neuschwanstein the Emperor, rising naked, wears for the first time his new clothes, and there is no one to tell him they are other than they are, for there is no one there at all.
Of the three
schlossen,
it had the deepest roots in time. Rather, an anemone, buried upside down, twisted and turned its white way through the sub-conscious, to break the surface with this one white phthisic bloom at the end of summer. It was better so. Neuschwanstein was to be the last prepared defence, should Herrenchiemsee fail or Linderhof stand too long empty.
Here as the walls rose up around him Ludwig felt safe. Here he had a joy in watching the workmen again. The castle was to be long but narrow and to rise directly from the rock. He had simple rooms over the keep. They were austere yet intimate, like a workman’s rooms. From their windows he could look out to see the towers rise against the Alps. He could look the other way, across the shaded forests of Bavaria, standing on their hills like a loyal army, waiting to defend him.
He was in a fever to get it done.
The workmen sweated to put the blocks of stone in place, like lumps of sugar gone to build a fairy tower. It was a sweet experience. He paid the workmen, therefore they loved him. He could walk among them and never hear a murmur or a sneer. With them he could relax. Sometimes they would accept him as an equal and let him lay a stone. That gave him excitement. It made him feel that he was a part of it, having built himself in. He had designed that Neuschwanstein should be difficult of approach, and he slept over the keep, like the guardian of his own slumbers.
Often he sat at a window in the moonlight and watched the shell, rising in white stone like an unfinished dragon’s tooth. Buildings should be built by troll magic, all in one night, for otherwise we are tricked by the gap between conception and realization. That is the period when we are most vulnerable. It is the period of danger.
Never did a hermit crab seek a shell under the pressure of the sea more assiduously, for in 1878 he had only eight years left. He could not know that, but perhaps he felt it. The work took too long, and until it was finished anyone might get at him.
He stood in the lumber of what was to be the
Romanesque
throne room. The pictures that should be on the walls were not there yet. The painters worked slowly. He urged them on. They splashed the walls carelessly, and the paint fell roughly into the right shapes. He did not care so long as the shapes were there. But it must be complete, for at Neuschwanstein he should be free in the manner of the old German kings, not by holiness, but by might.
There was no time to waste. The building must alter magically every night. It must be complete. Every patch of wet plaster, every empty wall, was a weakness. The emptiness must be plugged with paintings, to hold out the loneliness: the wet plaster must be reinforced against the cold. He must insulate himself with images.
From his windows in the keep he could watch the rooms multiply like the cells of a hive. At last the towers went up against the sky. Then the screen of the façade rose between him and the rooms beyond. At one or two in the morning he would pick his way through the debris of the forecourt, lurching and stumbling, hold his breath, and then enter the tall shadows of the throne room like that cave in which Barbarossa sleeps with his men, or that Byzantine hall in which Henry IV Hohenstaufen was Holy Roman Emperor. From under the arcades shadows beckoned him. They paced the corridors and spoke to him. He could speak to them.
High above him, as the building rose, the masons were approaching the walls of his own rooms on the third
floor. He turned and went back to the keep, aware of the derisive whiteness of the mountains and the steel breath of the mountain air.
Each morning he would feel better. In the mornings, when the workmen were back, he would walk among them like an ordinary man, searching in their faces for the face of a disciple, or the face of the woodsman in the glade. He never found that face, but he still hoped to do so. In their eyes he read that he was truly King.
There was such need for haste. The building became more and more complete, yet the more complete the emptier it was. The older he grew the more he needed help. He decided upon another test.
Between the platform of the
schloss
and the ravine there was a thin iron bridge, leaping across the chasm above a stream, in one single span. He stood watching the bridge for a long time. Then he summoned Richard, as he had once summoned Paul, not because he had any illusions about Richard’s being the true friend, but
because
there was no one else to summon. He would let him enter Neuschwanstein, but first he should do so by riding a horse along that thin and narrow swaying span. Thus they had entered the Wartberg once, riding together.
He stood on the bank, watching anxiously. He forced Richard to cross. There was no danger. If the magic knight is strong enough to reach the magic castle, then everything is true. Richard looked at him strangely but said nothing.
Breathless he watched. Richard kneed the horse gently on to the bridge. The horse trusted him and stepped precisely, making the neat, artificial movements of a medieval charger in a painting. The bridge trembled. Slowly horse and man inched their way across it, while the sound of ravenous water came louder from below.
Ludwig frowned. He could see no armour. It was futile to attempt the impossible.
The horse, lowering its hind quarters, pawed and scrambled on to earth on the other side. Richard turned, waved, and moved on through the keep.
Ludwig dusted himself off and went rapidly across the bridge after him. Lohengrin had come, and Parsifal. He blinked in the delusively bright sun and entered the shadows of the keep. There he stopped short.
It was as though there were no one there at all. There was only the Richard he knew now. He sent him away. When he had gone, he would have called him back, but that he could not do.
It was later afternoon. He sat on the dusty dais of the throne room, for the throne itself was neither ready nor paid for. He wanted to cry. The light entered high from the windows, making impalpable pillars of its own, until he was surrounded by a hall of pillars. He watched the motes dance up and down like dusty steam. Far off he heard the hammering of the workmen. In his mind a door closed like the door of a vault.
Then for the first time in daylight, he deliberately summoned the invisible company and held levee in the throne room. Slowly they stepped from memory and from the ikons on the walls, all the admired figures with which he consoled himself. Walther van der Vogelweide, Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Parsifal, Elsa of Brabant, Maria Stuart, Marie Antoinette, Louis XIV, the Emperor Henry IV Hohenstaufen, Fräulein Meilhaus as she had been, and the woodsman in the wood as he always would be. With a sudden rustle they became actual. This was his kingdom. These were his subjects. And there was Richard as he had once been, hovering on the edge of the crowd.
But at the outer fringes of the throng he saw others; part of the Palace Cabal, whom there were no guards to arrest, those courtiers who had destroyed Byzantium: the Flying Dutchman, Dr. Gudden, Sophie, Bismarck, Louis Napoléon, Crown Prince Friedrich, those who were loyal to Otto, not to him. Their party gained
adherents
. He could see in their eyes what it was they wished to do. Even though he could not see their faces, he could always see their eyes.
Somewhere in the depths of the unfinished building the hammering stopped. It was as though a heart had stopped. The workmen were through for the day.
He rose to go in search of them. They must never stop. He must keep them here to build. They were his only loyal guards. Behind him, with a sigh, the invisible
company
dispersed, except for a few, who stepped behind pillars, whence he could hear their whispering.
It was absolutely essential to go on.
But it was not so easy to do so. He was running short of funds.
Down in Munich they cabaled against him, for the middle classes would never leave the monarchy alone. They were too eager to rise themselves, to understand the nature of the holy: they saw the spiritual only in terms of material expense. They would build churches, but never enter them. The monarchy was already built for their use, they were ready to move in, and they were thrifty. They wanted to strip it of everything of value, in order to adorn their own pride. It was not enough for them to be received at Court. They would not feel safe until they had the monarchy itself safely in receivership, for money, being their only faith, was their only security.
They tried to cut off supplies. He evaded them. He must borrow money. That upset them. Money was the
only holiness they believed in. The situation grew desperate, but build he must; and though the loyalty of the workmen was beyond doubt, he knew well enough that in our age loyalty has no credit, but must be paid for in advance. No one understood why he must build.
At last he learned that a loan of four hundred thousand marks was available, on a condition. It was not enough money, but it would help. The condition was that the guarantor demanded to be raised to the nobility.
That amused him. It was as though rats, having eaten the stores of the ship, then demanded to take the wheel. But after all, why not? The nobility was already infected and disloyal. It aped the middle classes half out of envy and half in self-defence. Why not let the reverse process operate as well? He granted the letters patent and took the money. He need not see the man. Indeed he did not need to see anyone. When he could no longer build, then he could no longer live. Like a man pursued up the winding stair of a tower, to live he must retreat always to a higher room. He had already had that higher room prepared. When Neuschwanstein was done, he would begin Falkenstein. There must always be a step beyond the last stair.
But again he was wary. He would tell no one the
purpose
of Falkenstein, or what it was to contain. He knew better than that now. So he commissioned the plans and told no one what they were for. If there were oddities of detail, then let others make of them what they would.
Falkenstein was to be very high. He could see it
already
. He laid the plans in secret, like a fuse to powder. It, too, would rise, like Neuschwanstein, from the ruins of an ancient castle, but it would be closer to the apex of the Alps, on the edge of a deep gorge. It would look deep into the heart of things. It would be huge and
unapproachable
.
It would be inviolable, as a shrine should be.
Slowly, as he wrestled with the architects, the plan took form. When he saw it drawn out across a vast sheet of paper, he knew it would be the ultimate secret of his building. It would defeat even Otto. He would return to Herrenchiemsee and show the ghost of Otto how futile it was to beckon and to smile.
So once more Herrenchiemsee was opened. When he arrived with Richard, the gallery of mirrors was already lit. The candles blazed defiantly. This time there should be no shadows. In the chandeliers roared two thousand five hundred lights. He entered the gallery at six.
There he told Richard about Falkenstein, not because he trusted him, but because he must have an auditor, so that Otto should hear. The gallery was damp, but the warmth of the candles soon removed the damp. He paced up and down, glancing nervously in the mirrors, but saw only the clean surface of the glass, reflecting himself and Richard, but no one else. He walked there until three in the morning, for Richard must understand, Richard must keep him company, during this vigil in the knightly sense. As he talked, Falkenstein took shape, for
Falkenstein
still lay in the future. In remaining unbuilt, it would be perfect forever. It would defeat Otto utterly, for only the perfect can capture the essence of the real.
As he paced, talking more and more rapidly, lurching across the slippery parquet, he seemed to pace through Falkenstein. As he passed back and forth, he looked again and again in the mirrors. There was nothing there.
But towards morning, as the candles began to sink lower, and shadows leapt up in the sockets instead of flames, it seemed to him that he did see something. He stopped in mid-sentence. Then he went on. On the way back, walking closer to Richard, he checked that
particular
mirror. There was nothing. Then something caught at the corners of sight, and he took a step back. The mirror there was cloudier. It seemed to him that he saw the echo of a smile, and though he saw only his own reflection, something was certainly beckoning. He called for more candles. He watched carefully as the lackeys lowered the chandeliers. But there were not enough candles. The shadows grew darker. He could stay in the gallery no longer, and Otto had not heard, nor was Otto
defeated
. The glass grew blacker and had deeper images. He left the room and had its doors locked behind him. He stood with Richard in the hall and gave a little sob. It was not safe to be alone with images. To-morrow night he would go to the theatre.