shrilly.
The room grew quiet.
On the wall over the stage appeared, in letters made of tiny
electric lights, the words:
!La force d’imagination!
and out through the curtains stepped a man in a dinner jacket and
white gloves with the look of a French hairdresser sparse,
greasy hair, yellow skin, flabby cheeks, a tiny red rosette in his
buttonhole and dark shadows under his eyes. Without a word he
bowed to the audience and sat down on a chair in the middle of
the stage.
Hauberrisser assumed this would be followed by the usual
more or less risque monologue and turned away in irritation
when the artiste - was it in embarrassment or was it the lead-in
to some smutty joke? - began to finger his flies.
A minute passed and still silence reigned in the auditorium
and on the stage.
Then two muted violins from the band began to play “0 fare
thee well, It was not meant to be”, joined, as if from a great
distance, by the soulful tones of a French horn.
Surprised, Hauberrisser snatched up his opera glasses to peer
at the stage - then almost let them drop in horror. What was
that?! Had he suddenly gone mad? He broke out into a cold
sweat; no doubt about it, he must have gone mad! That obscene
spectacle on the stage could not really be taking place here, here
before hundreds of people, before all these exquisite creatures
who until a few months ago had been the cream of society. In
a harbour tavern on the Nieuwendijk perhaps, or as an anatomical freak demonstrated at medical school, but here??!
Or was he dreaming? Had a miracle taken place and turned
the hands on the clock of time back to the days of Louis XV?
The artiste kept his hands pressed firmly over his eyes, like
a man summoning up all the power of his imagination to see
something as vividly as possible before his inner eye … then
after a few minutes he stood up, sketched a bow and left the
stage.
Hauberrisser glanced at the ladies at his table and the people
in the immediate vicinity; not one of them moved a muscle.
Only one Russian princess was uninhibited enough to applaud.
As if nothing at all had taken place, the assembly resumed its
cheerful chatter.
Hauberrisser felt as if he were surrounded by ghosts; he ran
his fingers overthe tablecloth and sucked in the scent of flowers
and musk; the only result was that the feeling of unreality intensified and turned into one of abject terror.
Once more the bell rang and the room was darkened. Hauberrisser took the opportunity to leave.
Once outside in the street he almost felt ashamed of the way
he had allowed his feelings to get the better of him. What, after
all, had happened? Nothing that did not recur again and again,
and much worse, at intervals in the course of human history: a
mask had been cast aside that had never concealed anything but
intentional or unintentional hypocrisy, lack of vitality posing as
virtue or ascetic monstrosities conceived in the mind of a monk!
For a few centuries a diseased organism, so huge it eventually
came to resemble a temple soaring up into the heavens, had been
taken for culture; now it had collapsed, laying bare the decay
within. Was not the bursting of an ulcer much less terrible than
its constant growth? Only children and fools, who do not realise
that the bright colours of autumn are the colours of decay, complain when it is followed by the deathly cold of November,
instead of the spring they expected.
However hard Hauberrisser tried to regain control over his
emotions by subjecting his hasty instinctive reaction to the cold
light of reason, the feeling of terror was not assuaged by rational
argument, but remained rooted within him, like a rock that
cannot be moved by words because its very being is immobility.
Gradually, as if a whispering voice were letting the words
drop syllable by syllable into his ear, it became clear to him that
this feeling ofterror was none otherthan hisolddull, stifling fear
of some shadowy
The room grew quiet.
On the wall over the stage appeared, in letters made of tiny
electric lights, the words:
!La force d’imagination!
and out through the curtains stepped a man in a dinner jacket and
white gloves with the look of a French hairdresser sparse,
greasy hair, yellow skin, flabby cheeks, a tiny red rosette in his
buttonhole and dark shadows under his eyes. Without a word he
bowed to the audience and sat down on a chair in the middle of
the stage.
Hauberrisser assumed this would be followed by the usual
more or less risque monologue and turned away in irritation
when the artiste - was it in embarrassment or was it the lead-in
to some smutty joke? - began to finger his flies.
A minute passed and still silence reigned in the auditorium
and on the stage.
Then two muted violins from the band began to play “0 fare
thee well, It was not meant to be”, joined, as if from a great
distance, by the soulful tones of a French horn.
Surprised, Hauberrisser snatched up his opera glasses to peer
at the stage - then almost let them drop in horror. What was
that?! Had he suddenly gone mad? He broke out into a cold
sweat; no doubt about it, he must have gone mad! That obscene
spectacle on the stage could not really be taking place here, here
before hundreds of people, before all these exquisite creatures
who until a few months ago had been the cream of society. In
a harbour tavern on the Nieuwendijk perhaps, or as an anatomical freak demonstrated at medical school, but here??!
Or was he dreaming? Had a miracle taken place and turned
the hands on the clock of time back to the days of Louis XV?
The artiste kept his hands pressed firmly over his eyes, like
a man summoning up all the power of his imagination to see
something as vividly as possible before his inner eye … then
after a few minutes he stood up, sketched a bow and left the
stage.
Hauberrisser glanced at the ladies at his table and the people
in the immediate vicinity; not one of them moved a muscle.
Only one Russian princess was uninhibited enough to applaud.
As if nothing at all had taken place, the assembly resumed its
cheerful chatter.
Hauberrisser felt as if he were surrounded by ghosts; he ran
his fingers overthe tablecloth and sucked in the scent of flowers
and musk; the only result was that the feeling of unreality intensified and turned into one of abject terror.
Once more the bell rang and the room was darkened. Hauberrisser took the opportunity to leave.
Once outside in the street he almost felt ashamed of the way
he had allowed his feelings to get the better of him. What, after
all, had happened? Nothing that did not recur again and again,
and much worse, at intervals in the course of human history: a
mask had been cast aside that had never concealed anything but
intentional or unintentional hypocrisy, lack of vitality posing as
virtue or ascetic monstrosities conceived in the mind of a monk!
For a few centuries a diseased organism, so huge it eventually
came to resemble a temple soaring up into the heavens, had been
taken for culture; now it had collapsed, laying bare the decay
within. Was not the bursting of an ulcer much less terrible than
its constant growth? Only children and fools, who do not realise
that the bright colours of autumn are the colours of decay, complain when it is followed by the deathly cold of November,
instead of the spring they expected.
However hard Hauberrisser tried to regain control over his
emotions by subjecting his hasty instinctive reaction to the cold
light of reason, the feeling of terror was not assuaged by rational
argument, but remained rooted within him, like a rock that
cannot be moved by words because its very being is immobility.
Gradually, as if a whispering voice were letting the words
drop syllable by syllable into his ear, it became clear to him that
this feeling ofterror was none otherthan hisolddull, stifling fear
of some shadowy
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