The White Dominican (21 page)

You destroyed the mask when you demanded the ‘clasp’. Now the true face will become the pommel of your magic sword, fashioned without joint from a single piece of ‘blood-stone’. Anyone who receives such a sword will find that the words of the Psalm become reality, “Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, and ride thou for the sake of truth and to do justice to the afflicted and the needy; and thy right hand shall perform wondrous things.”

Just as the cry of the eagle, piercing the air above the snowy mountain tops, dislodges a cornice which rolls down the slope and turns into an avalanche, uncovering the splendour of hidden sheets of ice, so the words of our Founding Father have dislodged a portion of my self within me. The words of the Psalm are drowned by a howling blast in my ear, the room vanishes before my eyes and I feel as if I am falling out into boundless space.

‘Now, now I am going to smash against the ground!’ But the fall seems never-ending. The depths suck me in at ever greater, ever more vertiginous speed, and I feel the blood shoot up my spine and break out of my skull in a radiant sheaf. I hear the cracking of my bones, then everything is over. I am standing on my feet and realise that it was an hallucination: a magnetic current ran through me from the soles of my feet to the crown of my head, giving me the feeling I was plunging into a bottomless pit.

Bewildered, I look around, surprised to see that nothing has changed, that the lamp on the table is still burning with an untroubled flame, for I feel as if I have been transformed, as if I had wings I could not use.

I realise that a new sense has opened up within me, and yet for a long time I cannot work out what it is and in what way I am different, until I slowly become aware of a round object I am holding in my hand. I look at it: there is nothing to see; I open my fingers: the thing disappears, though I hear nothing fall to the ground; I clench my fist and it is back again, cold, round as a ball, and hard.

I suddenly guess that it is the pommel of the sword. I feel for the blade; it is so sharp it cuts my skin.

Is the sword hovering in the air?

I take a step backwards from the spot where I am standing and reach out to grasp it. This time my fingers close on smooth metal rings forming a chain round my hips, from which the sword hangs.

A sense of astonishment creeps over me which only disappears as it gradually becomes clear to me what has happened: my inner sense of touch, the sense that sleeps most soundly within mankind, has awoken. The thin partition separating earthly life from the world beyond has been broken.

Strange! So infinitesimally narrow is the threshold between the two realms, and yet no one raises their foot to cross it! The other reality borders on our skin, yet we do not feel it! Our imagination stops here, where it could create new land.

It is the longing for gods and the fear of being left alone with himself, to create a world of his own, which hinders man from unfolding the magic powers which slumber within him; he wants companions to accompany him, the power of nature to envelop him; he wants to feel love and hate, to do deeds and feel their effect. How could he do all this if he made himself creator of new things?

I feel the warmth of passion luring me on, ‘You only need to stretch out your hand and you will touch the face of your beloved’, but I shudder with horror at the thought that reality and imagination are the same. Staring me in the face is the awfulness of ultimate truth.

Even more dreadful than the possibility that I might have been touched by demons, or that I might be drifting out into the unbounded sea of madness and hallucination, is the realisation that there is no reality, neither here nor there, but that all is imagination.

I remember my father’s anxious words, “Did you see the sun?” when I told him of my walk on the mountain. “Anyone who sees the sun will give up wandering; he will enter eternity.”

“No, I want to remain a wanderer and see you again, father! I want to be united with Ophelia, and not with God! I want infinity and not eternity, I want the things that I have learnt to see and hear with my spiritual eyes and ears to become reality for my feeling. I renounce becoming a god crowned with creative power, out of love for you I want to remain a created man; I want to share life equally with you.”

As if to keep myself from the temptation to stretch out my arms in longing, I clasp the hilt of the sword tightly.

“I entrust myself to thy aid, Master. Be thou the creator of all that surrounds me.”

So clearly does my exploring hand become aware of the face on the pommel, that I feel as if I can sense it deep within me, it is sight and touch at once, raising an altar to contain the holy of holies.

A mysterious power flows from it, entering objects and breathing life into them.

I know – as if I could hear it in words – that the lamp there on the table is the image of my earthly life, it illuminated the room of my solitude, now its flame is smoking: the oil is running out.

I feel an urge to be out in the open air, under the sky, when the hour of the great reunion comes.

There is a ladder leading up onto the flat roof, where I often secretly sat as a child to watch in amazement as the wind blew the clouds into faces and dragon shapes. I climb it and sit on the parapet.

The town below is immersed in darkness.

Image after image from my past life floats up and anxiously presses up against me, as if to say, ‘Hold me fast, take me with you so that I might live in your memory and not die in oblivion.’

The lightning is flickering all round the horizon, a glowing, gigantic eye, peering here and there; and the houses and windows reflect the glare up onto me, their flares treacherously sending back the signal: ‘There! There! There is the one you are looking for!’

A distant howling comes on the air, “All my servants you have killed, now I am coming myself.” My mind is filled with the thought of the Mistress of Darkness and of what my father said about her hatred.

“The shirt of Nessus!” hisses a gust of wind, tearing at my clothes.

The thunder roars a deafening “Yes!”

‘The shirt of Nessus?’ I ponder. ‘The shirt of Nessus?’

Then a deathly hush, an ominous pause; the storm and lightning are working out what to do next.

Suddenly from below comes the sound of the river, very loud, as if it were trying to warn me, “Come down to me and hide.”

I can hear the horrified rustling of the trees, “The strangling grip of the wind-demon! The centaurs of the Medusa, the Wild Hunt! Keep your heads down, the rider with the scythe is coming!”

A quiet, exultant voice throbs within my heart, “I am waiting for you, beloved.”

The clock in the church tower breaks out sobbing as it is hit by an unseen fist.

In the glare of a flash of lightning the crosses in the graveyard light up questioningly. “Yes, mother, I am coming!”

Somewhere a window is torn from its hinges and shatters on the cobbles with a piercing cry: the mortal anguish of objects that have been created by human hand.

Has the moon fallen out of the sky, is it wandering over the earth? A glowing white sphere makes its hesitant way through the air, swaying, sinking, rising, floating aimlessly, until, suddenly seized with a wild fury, it explodes with a clap of thunder. The earth quakes in uncontrollable terror.

More and more of the spheres arrive. One of them scours the bridge, rolling slowly, slyly over the planks, then circles round one beam, seizes it with a roar and smashes it into splinters.

“Ball-lightning!” I had read about it in one of my childhood books, thinking its mysterious motions a myth, and now here it is, in all its destructive reality! Blind beings, balls of electricity, bombs of the cosmic abyss, demon’s heads without eyes, ears, mouths or noses, risen from the depths of the earth and the air, tornadoes whirling round a nucleus of hatred, without organs of perception, but with a primitive consciousness that gropes around in search of victims for its destructive fury.

What terrible power they would possess if they had human shape! Is it my unspoken question that has attracted this glowing sphere that suddenly swings out of its orbit and flies towards me? But close to the balustrade it sheers off, glides towards a wall then sails in through an open window and out of another; then it stretches out and, with a crash of thunder, a tongue of fire blasts a shell-hole in the sand, making the house tremble and the dust spurt up to where I am sitting.

The flash, as blinding as a white sun, sears my eyes; for a second my body is illuminated with such incandescence that its image charges my eyelids and etches itself on my consciousness.

“Can you see me at last, Medusa?”

“Yes, I can see you, accursed mortal!” and a red sphere rises out of the earth. Half-blind, I can sense it is growing bigger and bigger. Now it is hovering over my head, a meteor of boundless fury.

I spread my arms wide: invisible hands grasp mine with the ‘clasp’ of the Order, uniting me with the invisible chain which stretches to infinity.

That which was corruptible in me has been consumed by fire, transformed by death into a flame of life.

Erect I stand in the purple robe of fire, girded about with the bloodstone sword.

Dissolved for ever with corpse and sword.

Books by Gustav Meyrink published by Dedalus

The Golem

Walpurgisnacht

The Green Face

The White Dominican

The Angel of the West Window

The Opal (and other stories)

The Dedalus Meyrink Reader

Dedalus has also published the first English language biography of Gustav Meyrink:

Vivo: The Life of Gustav Meyrink by Mike Mitchell

Published in the UK by Dedalus Limited,
24-26, St Judith’s Lane, Sawtry, Cambs, PE28 5XE
email: [email protected]
www.dedalusbooks.com

ISBN printed book 978 1 873982 55 6

ISBN e-book 978 1 907650 75 8

Dedalus is distributed in the USA & Canada by SCB Distributors,
15608 South New Century Drive, Gardena, CA 90248
email: [email protected]
www.scbdistributors.com

Dedalus is distributed in Australia by Peribo Pty Ltd.
58, Beaumont Road, Mount Kuring-gai, N.S.W 2080
email: [email protected]

Publishing History

First published in Germany in 1921

First published by Dedalus in 1994

First ebook edition in 2012

Translation & Introduction copyright
©
Dedalus 1994

Printed in Finland by W. S. Bookwell

Typeset by RefineCatch Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A C.I.P. Listing for this book is available on request.