The Dedalus Meyrink Reader by Gustav Meyrink

Author:Gustav Meyrink
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781909232136
Publisher: Dedalus Limited
Published: 2012-07-30T04:30:00+00:00

The Alchemist’s House

Chapter 3 from The Alchemist’s House: Ismene

Ismene

A dull, bronze double call booms out from the great tower of the gothic cathedral and floats on vibrating wings through the damp chill of the dead night air, waking the bells of the other churches from their benumbed sleep so that, after an initial shudder under the impact of the wave of sound, they each join in like an echo with a ‘Yeees — yeees’ — quiet, loud, deep, high, distant, close.

The second hour after midnight, the witching hour of the Orientals.

Then the silent waiting starts up again: expectation, hope, fear: what will time bring?

Noiselessly, with white, glowing eyes shining afar, a monster, a dolphin head with almost no body, sweeps past the line of lamps up the hill: a limousine, streamlined, with the alien shape of some mythical antediluvian beast. In each side of the grotesque head is a row of little lighted windows with white silk curtains showing the shadow of a woman’s head in hazy outline, like a puff of black smoke.

In the front of the dragon’s head is a large, ungainly figure with huge paws, which seem to come straight out of its chest, as if it had no arms, holding a wheel: the chauffeur in the driver’s seat, wrapped up in shaggy furs.

The car turns off through a small, winter-dead wood with abandoned crow’s nests in the bare branches, heading for Salnitergasse. The harsh light from its nostrils floods the road with a blinding glare before swallowing up the shimmering ribbon in its maw.

The massive dark cube of the house ‘At the Sign of the Peacock’ looms up.

Needles of fire are sticking out of the cracks in the wooden shutters, as if it were burning inside.

Dull, phosphorescent smoke is pouring up out of the glass roof into the sea of mist.

Slowly the car creeps round the house. It has lowered its two eyes; suddenly it opens a third, much brighter even than the two others were. It pierces the darkness, moves along the wall, up, down — jumps back from the abrupt glitter of the mosaic door, briefly knocks the mask of night from the peacock’s grinning demon face, continues its search for an entrance.

Bare walls, no door, no window. The car goes round the corner.

The door of the clockmaker’s shop is closed but a glimmer of light behind its opaque glass pane shows that the occupants are still awake.

The chauffeur, wrapped up like a grizzly bear, gets out and knocks. Frau Petronella comes to the door, her full, white hair gleaming like snow in the light of the peaceful glow of the car’s headlamps.

Gustenhöver, the clockmaker, is sitting quietly at a little maplewood table, he doesn’t even look up when he hears the question: ‘Where is the entrance to Dr Steen’s apartment?’

He is holding a magnifying glass up to his eye in his beautiful slim fingers and examining a small gold object, glittering with precious stones, with close attention and sympathy, as if it were a sick living being whose heartbeats he had to count.

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