At the Prophet’s

There are strange places, strange minds, strange regions of the spirit, lofty and poverty-stricken. Along the peripheries of the big cities, where the streetlights grow scarcer and the policemen walk in couples, you must climb the stairs in the houses until you cannot go any higher, climb into the attics under slanting roofs, where pale young geniuses, criminals of dreams, sit brooding with folded arms; climb into cheap and imposingly decorated studios, where lonely, rebel artists, consumed from within, hungry yet proud, contend with their latest and wildest ideals in clouds of cigarette smoke. Here is the end of things, here is ice, purity, and nothingness. Here no contract is valid, no concession, no consideration, no measure, and no value. Here the air has grown so thin, so chaste, that the miasmata of life can no longer thrive. Here stubbornness reigns, the uttermost logical conclusion, the ego upon its desperate throne, freedom, madness, and death.

It was Good Friday, eight o’clock in the evening. Several of the people whom Daniel had invited came at the same time. They had received invitations on quarto sheets, upon which there was an eagle which bore a naked rapier in its claws through the air, and which contained in a singular handwriting a request to participate in a kind of convention on Good Friday evening, when Daniel’s proclamations were to be read. And so now they met at the appointed hour in the desolate and half-dark suburban street in front of the banal block of flats which contained the physical home of the prophet.

A few were acquainted with one another and exchanged greetings. These were a Polish artist and the thin girl who lived with him; a lyric poet, a tall, black-bearded Semite, with his heavy-limbed, pallid wife, who wore clothes like draperies; an individual who looked at once sickly and martial, being a spiritualist who was also a retired cavalry captain; and a young philosopher with the appearance of a kangaroo. Only the short-story writer, a gentleman with a stiff hat and a cultivated moustache, knew no one. He came from another sphere and had come here only accidentally. He had a certain relationship to life and a book of his was much read in middle-class circles. He was determined to behave in a strictly modest fashion, to be appreciative, and on the whole to act like one who is merely tolerated. He followed the others into the house at a short distance.

They mounted the stairs, one after the other, supporting themselves on the cast-iron railing. They were silent, for they were people who knew the value of words and were not accustomed to talk needlessly. In the dim light of the little oil-lamps which stood upon the windowsills at every turn of the stairs, they read the names upon the doorplates of the flats as they went past. They mounted past the care-haunted abodes of an insurance official, a midwife, a laundress, an “agent,” a chiropodist⁠—quietly, without contempt, but estranged. They climbed up this narrow staircase hall as up some half-lighted shaft, full of confidence and without pausing, for from above, far up where one could go no higher, a faint glow greeted them, a soft and fugitive and errant glow from the highest altitudes.

Finally they stood at the goal, under the roof, in the light of six candles, which were burning in different candlesticks upon a little table covered by a faded little altar-cloth at the head of the stairs. On the door, which looked like the entrance to a storeroom, there was a grey oblong of cardboard, on which was to be read the name “Daniel” in Roman letters, done with black chalk. They rang.

A boy with a large head and a friendly expression opened the door. He wore a new suit of blue cloth and polished top-boots, and carried a candle in his hand. He lighted them obliquely across the small, dark corridor into an unpapered garret-like room, which was quite empty save for a wooden clothes-rack. Without a word, but with a gesture which was accompanied by a stammering guttural sound, the boy indicated that the guests should take off their wraps, and when the short-story writer, out of a sense of general friendliness, asked him a question, it became evident that the child was dumb. Holding his light, he led the guests once more across the corridor to another door and let them enter. The short-story writer brought up the rear. He wore a cutaway and gloves and was determined to act as though in church.

The room they entered was moderately large and was filled by an awesome shimmering, swaying brightness, engendered by twenty or twenty-five lighted candles. A young girl, with a white turned-over collar and cuffs relieving her simple dress, stood close beside the door and gave her hand to all who entered. This was Maria Josefa, Daniel’s sister, with her innocent but foolish face. The short-story writer knew her. He had met her at a literary tea. She had sat there upright, with her cup in her hand, and had spoken of her brother with a clear voice full of devotion. She worshipped Daniel.

The short-story writer’s eyes wandered about the room in search of him.

“He is not here,” said Maria Josefa. “He is absent, I don’t know where. But he will be here among us in spirit and follow the proclamations, word for word, when they are read.”

“Who is going to read them?” asked the short-story writer, in a low, reverent voice. He was really in earnest about it. He was a well-meaning and modest person, venerating all the phenomena of life, and quite willing to learn and to revere what was worthy of being revered.

“A disciple of my brother’s,” answered Maria Josefa, “whom we are expecting from Switzerland. He is not here yet. He will be on hand at the right moment.”

Opposite the door a large chalk drawing was visible in the candlelight. It stood upon the table, its upper edge leaning against the slanting ceiling. The drawing, which was done in a bold, violent manner, represented Napoleon, standing in a clumsy and despotic attitude in front of a fireplace warming his jack-booted feet. At the right of the entrance rose an altar-like shrine, upon which, between candles burning in silver candelabra, stood a painted holy figure, with outspread hands, and eyes turned upward. A prie-dieu stood in front of this, and on approaching it one observed, leaning upright against one of the feet of the holy figure, a small amateur photograph. This showed a young man of about thirty years with a tremendously high, pale, retreating forehead and a smooth-shaven, bony face, like that of a bird of prey, full of concentrated spirituality.

The writer of short stories paused for a while before this picture of Daniel; then he ventured cautiously farther into the room. Behind a large, round table, into whose polished yellow surface, surrounded by a wreath of laurel, the same sword-bearing eagle which had been seen on the invitations was burned, towered a severe, narrow chair of a spiry Gothic design like a throne and supreme seat among a number of low wooden stools. A long bench of rude carpentry, covered with some cheap stuff, extended along the roomy niche formed by wall and roof, and in this niche there was a low window. Presumably because the squat tiled stove had proved to be overheated, the window was open, and presented a view of a segment of blue night, in the depths and distance of which the irregularly spaced gas-lamps lost themselves as yellow, glowing dots in ever greater intervals.

Opposite the window the room narrowed down to a kind of alcove-like chamber, which was lighted more brightly than the other part of this attic, and appeared to be used partly as study, partly as chapel. At the back of this room there was a couch, covered by a thinnish, washed-out stuff. To the right, one could see a curtained book-rack, on top of which burned candles in candelabra and oil-lamps of antique shape. To the left was set a white-covered table, upon which stood a crucifix, a seven-branched candlestick, a goblet filled with red wine, and a piece of plum-cake upon a plate.

In the foreground of this alcove there stood upon a low platform a column of gilded plaster, surmounted by an iron candelabrum; the capital of the column was covered by an altar-cloth of bloodred silk. And upon this rested a pile of manuscript sheets of folio size: Daniel’s proclamations. A light-coloured wallpaper bedecked with little Empire wreaths covered the walls and the slanting part of the ceiling. Death-masks, rose wreaths, a large, rusty sword, hung upon the walls, and besides the large picture of Napoleon, there were portraits, of various sorts, of Luther, Nietzsche, Moltke, Alexander the Sixth, Robespierre, and Savonarola distributed about the room.

“All this has been lived!” said Maria Josefa, peering into the respectfully restrained visage of the short-story writer to see what effect these furnishings had produced. But in the meantime other guests had come, quietly and solemnly, and people began to seat themselves on benches and chairs, in hushed expectancy. In addition to those who had arrived first, there now sat there a fantastic draughtsman, with senile, infantile face, a limping lady, who was accustomed to introduce herself as one devoted to “erotics,” and an unmarried young mother of noble birth, who had been cast out by her family. She was without any intellectual interests whatever, and had found hospitality in these circles solely upon the ground of her motherhood. There were also an elderly authoress and a deformed musician⁠—all in all some twelve persons. The short-story writer had withdrawn into the window niche, and Maria Josefa sat on a chair close to the door, her hands lying upon her knees, side by side. And thus they waited for the disciple from Switzerland, who would be on hand at the right moment.

Suddenly another guest arrived⁠—the rich lady who loved to visit such affairs as a kind of hobby. She had come from the fashionable part of the city in her silken coupé, out of her splendid mansion with the Gobelins and the door-casings of giallo antico, had climbed up all the stairs, and now came through the door, beautiful, fragrant, luxurious, in a dress of blue cloth with yellow embroidery, a Parisian hat upon her reddish brown hair, and a smile in her Titian eyes. She came out of curiosity, out of ennui, out of joy in contrarieties, out of sheer goodwill towards all that was a little out of the common, out of a kindly extravagance of feelings. She greeted Daniel’s sister and the short-story writer, who was frequently a guest at her house, and then seated herself on the bench in front of the window niche between the erotic lady and the philosopher who had the appearance of a kangaroo, as though that was all quite in order.

“I’ve almost come too late,” said she softly with her beautiful, mobile mouth to the short-story writer, who sat behind her. “I had people to tea, and so things dragged along.”

The short-story writer was much affected and thanked Heaven that he was in a presentable dress. “How beautiful she is!” thought he. “She is worthy of being the mother of that daughter of hers.”

“And Fräulein Sonia?” he asked her across her shoulder. “Didn’t you bring Fräulein Sonia with you?”

Sonia was the daughter of the rich lady, and in the eyes of the short-story writer she was an unbelievable example of a perfect creature, a marvel of versatile education, an attained ideal of culture. He spoke her name twice, for it gave him an inexpressible pleasure to pronounce it.

“Sonia is ill,” said the rich lady. “Yes⁠—would you believe it?⁠—she has a bad foot. Oh, it is nothing, a swelling, a kind of little inflammation or congestion. It has been cut. It might not have been necessary, perhaps, but she insisted upon it herself.”

“She insisted upon it herself!” repeated the short-story writer in an enthusiastic whisper. “That is like her! But how in the world can one express one’s sympathy?”

“Well, I’ll take her your greetings!” said the rich woman. And as he was silent, she added: “Doesn’t that satisfy you?”

“No, it does not,” said he very softly, and as she prized his books, she answered with a smile:

“Well, then, send her a flower or two.”

“Thanks!” said he. “Thanks! I’ll do so!” And he thought to himself: “A flower or two? A nosegay! A big bouquet! I’ll drive tomorrow to the florist’s before breakfast!” And he felt that he had a certain relation to life.

A slight noise was heard without, the door opened and closed quickly and with a jerk, and a short and stocky young man in a dark lounge-suit stood before the guests in the candlelight: the disciple from Switzerland. He cast a swift and threatening look over the room, strode with heavy steps towards the plaster column in front of the alcove, established himself behind this on the low platform with a firmness as though he wished to take root there, seized the uppermost sheet of manuscript, and instantly began to read.

He was about twenty-eight years of age, short-necked, and ugly. His cropped hair grew in the form of an acute point unusually far down on his forehead, which besides was low and furrowed. His face, beardless, sullen, and heavy, revealed a doglike nose, coarse cheekbones, a pair of sunken cheeks, and coarse, protuberant lips, which seemed to shape the words they spoke only by a great effort, reluctantly, and with a kind of limp anger. His face was brutal and yet pale. He read with a wild and overloud voice, which, however, at the same time trembled inwardly, shook, and suffered from scantiness of breath. The hand that held the written sheet was broad and red, and yet it trembled. He embodied an eerie mixture of brutality and weakness, and the things he read coincided in a strange way with his looks.

They were sermons, comparisons, theses, laws, visions, prophecies, and appeals in the manner of orders of the day, and these followed one another in a variegated and endless string, in a mixture of styles, in tones borrowed from the Psalms and from Revelation, intermingled with military-strategic as well as philosophical-critical “trade” expressions. A feverish ego, terribly excited, thrust itself upward in solitary megalomania and threatened the world with a torrent of convulsive words. Christus imperator maximus was his name and he recruited death-devoted troops for the subjugation of the terrestrial globe, issued messages, set up his implacable conditions, longed for poverty and chastity, and in a spirit of boundless revolt kept on reiterating with a kind of unnatural lust the imperative of unconditional obedience. Buddha, Alexander, Napoleon, and Jesus were all designated as his humble predecessors, not worthy of unloosing the shoe-latchets of this spiritual emperor.

The disciple read for an hour; then, trembling, he took a gulp from the goblet of red wine and reached for new proclamations. Sweat stood in pearls on his low forehead, his thick lips quivered, and between the words he kept on blowing his breath with a short, snorting sound through his nose, like a bellowing exhaust. The solitary ego sang, raved, and commanded. It lost itself in mad metaphors, went down in a whirl of illogic, and suddenly popped up again horribly and quite unexpectedly in another place. Blasphemies and hosannas, incense and fumes of blood, were intermingled. The world was conquered in thunderous battles and then redeemed.

It would have been difficult to establish the effect of Daniel’s proclamations upon the auditors. Some of them, with heads thrown back, looked with lacklustre eyes at the ceiling; others, bent over their knees, held their faces buried in their hands. The eyes of the lady devoted to “erotics” grew dim in a peculiar manner every time the word “chastity” was spoken, and the philosopher with the appearance of a kangaroo now and again described something vague in the air with his long and crooked index finger. The short-story writer had for a long time been seeking in vain some adequate support for his aching back. At ten o’clock he was visited by the vision of a ham sandwich, but he shied this off manfully.

About half past ten one saw that the disciple held the last folio sheet in his red and trembling right hand. He had finished. “Soldiers!” he wound up, with the last ounce of his strength, with a failing voice of thunder, “I deliver unto you to be plundered⁠—the world!” He then stepped down from the platform, regarded everybody with a threatening look, and vanished as violently as he had come, through the door.

The audience remained for a moment immovably in the position which they had last assumed. Then, as with a common resolve, they stood up and went away immediately, after each, with a soft word or two, had pressed the hand of Maria Josefa, who, innocent and calm, again stood in her white collar close beside the door.

The dumb lad was on hand outside. He lighted the guests to the cloakroom, helped them to put on their wraps, and led them through the narrow hall with the staircase, upon which, from the supreme height of Daniel’s realm, the moving light of the candles fell, down to the house door, which he unlocked. The guests, one after the other, stepped out upon the desolate suburban street.

The coupé of the rich lady had halted in front of the house. One saw how the coachman on the box between the two brilliant lanterns touched his hat with his whip-hand. The short-story writer accompanied the rich lady to the carriage door.

“How did you stand it?” he asked.

“I don’t like to express an opinion upon such things,” she replied. “Perhaps he is really a genius, or something similar.”

“Yes, what is genius?” he asked thoughtfully. “All requirements are present in this Daniel⁠—loneliness, freedom, intellectual passion, magnificent visual capacity, belief in himself, even the proximity of crime and madness. What is lacking? Possibly the human? A little feeling, longing, love? But that is an entirely improvised hypothesis.

“Give Sonia my greetings,” he said as she reached him her hand in farewell after seating herself, and he studied her face intently to see how she would take his speaking simply of “Sonia,” not of “Fräulein Sonia,” or of “your daughter.”

She prized his books, and so she suffered it with a smile.

“I’ll do so.”

“Thanks!” said he, and a whirl of hope bewildered him. “And now I’ll eat supper like a wolf!”

He had a certain relationship to life.