Immediately Gärtner is by me with a cool reproach:
“Have you not had enough of torment from the Angel of the West Window? – No “angel” can harm you any more, but do not disturb the balance of nature.”
“Does Jane ... know where I am? ... Can she see me?”
“You, my brother, have crossed the threshold of initiation with your gaze still turned back towards the world, for you have been chosen to succour mankind, as have all of us in the chain. You will be able to see the earth until the end of time, for through you flows the energy from the realm of eternal life. But what this eternal life is, we of ‘the brotherhood of the chain’ can never learn, for we stand with our backs to the radiant, unfathomable abyss of procreation. But Jane crossed the threshold of eternal light looking forward. Can she see us? Who knows?”
“Is she happy ... there?”
“There?! – We have no words adequate for the non-place that we refer to by the misnomer ‘realm of eternal life’. – And ‘happy’?” – Gärtner smiled at me. “Did you seriously expect an answer?”
I blushed for shame.
“The poor children of Adam, wandering through the ring of endless life out there, cannot see even us, and we are but a pale reflection of eternal life. How then should we see, or even sense, the eternal realm of the unknown, unknowable godhead? We are close to it and yet immeasurably far away, as a solid body is to the dimension, or a line to an insubstantial mathematical point. Jane has taken the woman’s road of sacrifice. It leads to where we cannot follow, nor want to follow, for we are all alchymists in the sense that we remain here in order to perform transmutation. But on the woman’s road she has escaped both being and non-being; for your sake she cast off everything that she was. Had it not been for her, you would not be here!”
“Men will not ... be able ... to see me any more?” I ask in astonishment.
Gärtner laughs: “Do you want to know what they think of you?”
Not even the tiniest wavelet of curiosity disturbs the blessed sands of Elsbethstein. But when my friend smiles and nods at me with almost childlike exuberance, a little spurt of interest in the errors of the world flickers in the back of my mind.
“Well?”
Theodor Gärtner bends down and picks up a lump of rotting clay from the edge of the path: “There! Read it!”
“Read it?” In a second the damp yellow clay in his hand has become – a scrap of newspaper. A meaningless phantom of an object from an immeasurably distant sphere. This materialisation from the ghost world of men strikes me as sad, poignant, ridiculous beyond words.
Gärtner has already returned to his rose beds and is pruning and binding the shoots.
I read:
The Metropolitan News.
Haunted House in 19th District
Our readers will doubtless recall the great conflagration last spring when a substantial house at number 12 Elisabethstrasse burnt down to the ground. It was noticed at the time that for some unexplained reason the fire proved impossible to extinguish. A local expert in geology put forward the theory that the flames were of volcanic origin; at the same time a similar subterranean eruption was observed at Elsbethstein. A Scottish labourer working with the gang that cleared away the rubble said that such phenomena were not uncommon in his country; in Ireland and Scotland they were called St. Patrick’s Purgatory. The fire resisted the noble efforts of the City Fire Brigade and continued for several days; brick and stone burnt like tinder and were reduced to lumps of something resembling pumice stone. Even today it has not been established whether the owner perished with the house; a representative of the Tax Department claims to have knocked at the door countless times in the weeks preceding the accident in an attempt to collect long overdue taxes. Children playing in the street, on the other hand, say they once saw his face looking out of the window. The tragic conclusion is that the owner, engrossed in his – it must be said, rather dilettante – literary work was surprised by the outbreak of fire and burnt to death. This theory is supported by the fact that, as our investigations have revealed, the house was insured for an enormous sum and up to the present time no-one has appeared to claim it. It must be added, though, that in recent months the owner had shown increasing signs of mental instability.
These strange events have once more given rise to absurd superstitions amongst the more credulous sections of the population. Ghostly figures are claimed to have been observed hovering over the site of the fire; these supposedly only appear when the moon is on the wane. But it is not only schoolboys – who should be in bed at that time – who make these claims, they are also supported by many local citizens who ought to know better. The obvious explanations of a prankster returning slightly the worse for wear from a carnival celebration, or of some natural phenomenon connected with volcanic activity, are rejected out of hand. We receive frequent reports of a slender female ghost (perhaps the vice squad should investigate?!), wandering round the site as if searching for something. A local resident – a lay-preacher and Conservative councillor who has several times pursued the lady to remonstrate with her for disturbing a respectable neighbourhood by appearing at night in such provocative attire – maintains that every time she vanishes a naked woman appears on the same spot a few seconds later and tries to seduce him. Other ghost-hunters tell of a fearsome apparition, a man with
