Michael Moorcock - Von Bek 2 - The Brothel in Rosenstrasse

VIP免费

2024-12-22 0 0 294.17KB 88 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

The Brothel in Rosenstrasse

Michael Moorcock

Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque crowd together: the early basilica of St Vaclar stands

between the sixteenth-century Chemnitz fortress and the eighteenth-century Capuchin

monastery, all noteable examples of their periods, and are joined just below, in

Konigsplatz, by the beautiful new Egyptianate concert hall designed by Charles Rennie

Mackintosh. It has been fairly said that there are no ugly buildings in Mirenburg, only

some which are less beautiful than others. Many travellers stop here on their way to and

from the Bohemian spas of Karlsbad, Manenbad and Franzenbad. Mirenburg is joined to

Vienna by water, rail and road and it is common to change here from one mode of

transport to another, or merely to make the appropriate train connections. The station is

by Kammerer: a Temple to Steam in the modern 'Style Liberty'. From it one may progress

easily to Prague or Dresden, to St Petersburg or Moscow, to Wroclaw or Krakow, to

Buda-Pesht or Vienna, and beyond to Venice and Trieste, which may also be reached by

canal.

Mirenburg's wealth comes from the industry and commerce of Walden-stein, whose

capital she is, but it is enhanced by the constant waves of visitors, who arrive at all

seasons.

The revenues from tourism are used to maintain the older structures to perfection and it is

well-known that Prince Badehoff-Krasny, the hereditary ruler of Waldenstein, spends a

considerable proportion of his own fortune on commissioning new buildings, as well as

works by living painters, composers and writers. For this reason he has been fairly called

a 'present-day Lorenzo' and he is apparently quite conscious of this comparison to the

great Florentine. Mirenburg is the quintessential representation of a Renaissance which is

at work everywhere in modern Europe.

R.P. DOWNES, Cities which Fascinate, Kelly, London,

CHAPTER ONE

Mirenburg

I am at last able to move my right hand for extended periods of time. My left hand,

although still subject to sudden weakness and trembling, is satisfactory. Old Papadakis

continues to feed me and I have ceased to be filled with the panic of prospective

abandonment. The suffering is now no worse than anything I knew as a small boy in the

family sickroom. In fact minor discomforts, like an irritated groin, I welcome as wonderful

aids to memory, while I continue to be astonished at my difficulty in recalling that

overwhelming emotional anguish I experienced in my youth. My present tantrums and fits of

despair cannot bear comparison: the impotence of sickness or old age at least reconciles

one to the knowledge there is nothing one can do to improve one's own condition. Those old

wounds seem thoroughly healed, yet here I am about to tear them open again, so possibly I

shall discover if I have learned anything; or shall find out why I should have suffered at all.

Mirenburg is the most beautiful of cities. Great architects and builders have

displayed their best talents here since the tenth century. Every tenement or hovel,

warehouse or workshop, would elsewhere be envied and admired as art. On a September

morning, shortly before dawn, little paddle-steamers begin to sound their horns in the grey

mist. Only the twin Gothic spires of the Cathedral of St-Maria-and-St-Maria are visible at this

time, rising out of the mist as symmetrical sea-carved rocks might thrust above a sluggish

silver tide.

I was completely alive in Mirenburg. Ironically, during the days of the Siege, I feared

death far more than I fear it now when death exhibits itself in every limb, in every organ; an

unavoidable reality. Life was never to be experienced so fully. For years I yearned for the

dark, lifting sensuality, that all-embracing atmosphere of sexual ecstasy I had known in

Mirenburg. To have maintained that ambience, even if it had been in my power, would have

led to inevitable self-destruction, so I have not entirely regretted living past the Mirenburg

days. I have made I think the best of my life. Since I retired to Italy it has been simpler of

course and I have been forced to review many habits I had not much questioned. Friends

visit; we have memories. We relive our best times and usually joke about the worst.

Changing events have not greatly disturbed us. But there is no-one who shared the

Mirenburg period and few believe me if I speak of all that happened. There was so much.

Alexandra. My Alice. She is still sixteen. She lies surrounded by green velvet and she is

naked. I have arranged blossoms upon her skin, pink and pale yellow against her tawny

flesh; flowers from a Venetian hothouse to warm her in our early autumn days, while in the

ballroom below we hear the zither, the Cafe Mozart Waltz, and I smell my sex mingling with

her scent, with honey and roses. Her eyes are heated, her smile is languid yet brilliant in the

dark curls which surround it. She spreads her little arms. Alexandra. She called herself Alex.

Later it will be Alice. I am enchanted; I am captured by Romance. Beyond the window the

spires and roofs of Mirenburg glitter like a mirage. I am about to be betrayed by my own

imagination. Those huge eyes, the colour of ancient oak, seem to give me all their attention

and I am flattered, overwhelmed. My Alexandra. Her head moves to one side, her shoulder

goes up, she speaks my name:

'Ricky?'

I am tempted to put down my pen and push myself higher in

my pillows to try to peer over the top of the writing-board and look to see if I really did hear

her; but I continue to write, glad to touch just a little of that ambience again.

As a child, when I played with my toy soldiers, arranging battalions, positioning

cavalry and artillery, I would sometimes receive an unexpected thrill of intense sexual

pleasure, to the point of achieving not only an erection but often an orgasm. Even now, when

I see a display of toy soldiers in a shop, I may be touched by that same sensation, almost as

poignantly as when I was twelve or thirteen. Why I experienced it then and why I continued to

experience it I do not know. Perhaps it had something to do with my complete power over

those little men which, in turn, released in me all the power of my sex, full and unchecked by

convention or upbringing. Certainly I had very little power as a boy. My brothers and sisters

being so much older than I, I had a relatively solitary childhood. My mother was never

mentioned. I was to discover she was in disgrace, somewhere in Roumania, with a

Dutchman.

Shortly before her death, I met her briefly, by accident, in a fashionable restaurant off

the Avenue Victor Hugo and recognised her from her photograph. She was small and

serene and was very polite to me when I pointed out our relationship. Both she and her

Dutchman were dressed in black. My father's interest was in politics. He served the

government and was close to Bismarck. At our estates in Bek I had been brought up chiefly

by Scottish governesses, doted on by pretty housemaids who, when the time came, had

been more than willing to educate me sexually. I have been in the power of women, it

seems, all my life.

Dawn comes and Mirenburg begins to rattle like a beggar's cup: the first horses and trams

are abroad. The shutters are being raised, windows are being opened. The sun is pale

brass upon the mist which thins to reveal a sky of milky blue. White and grey stone

shimmers. She speaks the affected 'English'-accented German of fashionable Vienna; she

pronounces R as

She is captivating, artificial, an object to treasure. From ome secluded tree-lined

square comes the tolling of a Catholic bell. At certain heights it is possible to see most of

Mirenburg's antique turrets and gables, her twisting chimneys, her picturesque steeples and

balconies, her bridges built by old kings, her walls and canals. The modern

apartment-houses, hotels and stores, as noble and inspiring as the palaces and churches

which surround them, are monumentally designed by Sommaragu and Niermans and

Kammerer. She is a symphony of broad paved avenues and cobbled alleys, glinting spires

and domes and stained glass. She lies staring up into my face, her small breasts held fast

against my slow penis. It is warm in the room. The sun cuts between the heavy curtains and

falls, a single slab of light, upon the bed, across my back. Our faces and our legs are in

deep shadow; the white sperm strikes at her throat and she cries out in unison with me; my

Alice. I roll to my side and I am laughing with pleasure. She lights me a cigarette. I feel like a

demigod. I smoke. Every action is heroic. And she is a spirit, an erdgeist out of Wedekind

become my very own reality. We joke. She smiles. It is dawn in Mirenburg. We shall sleep

later and at about noon I will rise to wrap myself in my black and white silk robe and stand on

the balcony looking out at the exquisite view which, to my mind, cannot be matched, even by

Venice. I glance at the table and the dark blue leather notebook in which I shall try to write a

poem for her; the book was a present from my middle sister and has my name in gold

stamped on the front: Rickhardt von Bek. I am the youngest son; the prodigal of the family,

and in this part I am tolerated by almost everyone. The senile trees rustle in a light East

wind. I smell mint and garlic. Papadakis brings me fresh materials and a little morphine. I

can feel myself trembling again, but not from pain or infirmity; I am trembling as I trembled

then, with every sense at almost unbearable intensity. I touch the skin of an unripe peach.

Down the wide Mladota Steps, also known as the Tilly Steps, carefully descends a single

student, still drunk from a party, still in his light blue uniform except that instead of his cap he

wears a Homburg hat at least three sizes too large for him. It covers his ears and his eyes.

His immature lips are pursed to whistle some misremembered Mozart. He is trying to make

his way back to the Old Quarter where he lodges. Two working girls, pink-faced and blonde

in shawls and long dark smocks, pass him as they ascend, giggling and trying to flirt with

him, but he is oblivious to them, for all the sharp clack of their clogs. He reaches the bottom

of the steps and casts himself off across the roadway. The embankment on both sides is

planted with firs and cypresses; immediately opposite him are the wrought-iron gates and

carved granite pillars of the Botanical Gardens.

These mansions on the very fringe of the Old Quarter were once the residences of

the ruling class but are today primarily public buildings and museums. They retain their

grounds and their imported trees and shrubs. The largest house which the student, now

clinging to the railings, would be able to see if he lifted his hat, was the summer place of the

Graf Gunther von Baudessin who said he loved the city more than his own Bavarian estates.

He was for a while special ambassador for his homeland and did much to help Mirenburg

retain her independence during the expansionist wars of the mid-eighteenth century when

three enemies (Russia, Saxony and Austria) converged on Waldenstein's borders, then

failed to agree who should own the province.

From the Gardens come a thousand scents: autumn flowers and shrubs; the small, scarlet

deeply-perfumed rose for which Mirenburg is famous blooms late and sometimes lasts until

December. There is still dew on the grass. The student steadies himself and continues,

turning back up the broad avenue of Pushkinstrasse. He is alerted momentarily by the cry of

some exotic beast awakening in the nearby Zoo. A milkman's cart, decorated in blue, red

and green, passes him, its cans jingling, its boney horse rolling her old eyes in the shade of

her blinkers as she takes her familiar course. He reaches the Lugnerhoff at last, where the

Protestant martyrs were burned in 1497. Here the houses are suddenly close-packed,

leaning one upon the other like a crowd of old men around a game of bowls. In the centre of

the cobbled court is a baroque fountain: the defiant Hussites about to mount their pyre. The

student crosses

Lugnerhoff to reach the narrow entrance to Korkziehiergasse and sunlight touches a green

copper roof. Only the upper floors on the right-hand side of the alley are so far warmed by

the sun; all the rest remain in deep shadow. The student opens a door into a courtyard and

disappears. His feet can still be heard climbing the iron staircase to the room over what was

once a stable now used by Jewish street-traders to store their goods.

Further up Korkziehiergasse, ascending the steep grey serpentine slope which leads

from here to Cutovskiplatz, her knuckles blue as her fingers grasp inch by inch the metal

bannister, the old candy-woman is a threadbare silhouette in the morning light. This

hunched, exhausted and vulnerable little creature was once the darling of the Schoen

Theatre: 'a spark of true life-force surrounded by the putrescent glow of simulated vitality', as

Snarewitz described her fifty years ago. Marya Zamarovski lived for love in those days and

gave herself up to the moment thoroughly and generously. Her men, while they continued to

be attractive to her, had everything they desired. With every lover, she discarded houses,

jewels, furniture and money, until almost simultaneously her wealth became exhausted

together with her beauty and her public success. She opened a chocolate shop, but was

cheated out of it by the last man she loved. Now she sells her sweets from the heavy tray

about her neck. She will stand in Cutovskiplatz until evening, not far from the theatre where

she used to perform (it continues to put on popular melodramas and farces). I buy candied

violets from her for Alexandra who nibbles at one and offers it to me. I bite. The scented

sweet mingles its strong perfume with her subtle cologne and I resist the urge to draw her to

me. There is a noise from the river. On the quays the coal-heavers carry sacks to the little

steamers. The docks of Mirenburg are sometimes as busy as any seaport. In winter the

merchants, wrapped in overlarge fur coats which will give them the appearance of so many

sober fledgelings standing in concourse, will supervise their cargoes. It is now seven o'clock

in the morning and the express from Berlin is steaming into the station. The workman's

cafes, bristling with newspapers in German, Czech and Svitavian, fill with smoking red

sausages and dark coffee, purple arms and blue overalls, the smell of strong cigarettes, the

sound of cutlery and argument. Waiters and waitresses, their big enamel trays held above

their heads, move rapidly amongst the crowded marble-topped tables. We hear a bellow

from the Berlin train.

On the balconies of the hotels above Cutovskiplatz a few early risers are breakfasting. One

can locate a hotel at this hour by the distinctive aura of cafe-au-lait and croissants. Soon the

English tourists in their Burberrys and Ulsters will emerge and make for Mladota where they

will disdain the little funicular car running up beside it and insist on trudging all one hundred

and twenty steps, irrespective of the weather; then they will head for the Cathedral of

St-Maria-and-St-Maria, or go to the Radota Bridge which spans the Ratt. The balustrades of

this bridge are supported on both sides by Romanesque pillars representing the famous

line of Svitavian kings whose power was broken in 1370 by the Holy Roman Emperor

Charles IV who, by diplomacy and threat, set his own candidate upon the throne and

insisted Svitavia be called by its German name of Waldenstein and Mirov-Cesny become

Mirenburg, with the effect that Svitavian is now only spoken fluently in the rural districts.

The Ratt is a fast-flowing river. Upstream is the Oder and downstream the Danube.

She is loved by barge-men as a good, safe river, spine of the most sophisticated canal

system in the world. The Ratt is the chief contributor to Waldenstein's prosperity. Several

hundred yards from the Radota Bridge, beside older cobbled quays, are cramped

coffee-houses and restaurants, covered in hand-written advertisements and posters so that

it is almost impossible to see through windows where weathered barge-captains and pale

shipping clerks drink thick Rattdampfen soup from Dresden crockery and wipe their lips on

Brno linen. The conversation is nothing but lists of goods and prices in a dozen currencies.

Steam from tureens behind the counters threatens to peel placards from the glass and on a

misty evening one can go outside and scarcely notice any difference in visibility from the

interior.

In the tall white and brown cafe on the corner of Kanalstrasse and Kaspergasse,

underneath the billboard advertising a brand of Russian tea, sit drinking the Slav

nationalists. Many have been up all night and some have just arrived. They argue in fierce

but usually inexpert Svitavian or Bohemian. They quote the poetry of Kollar and Celakovsky:

Slavia, Slavia! Thou name of sweet sound but of bitter memory; hundred times divided

and destroyed, but yet more honoured than ever. They refuse to speak German or French.

They wear peasant blouses under their frock-coats. They affect boots rather than shoes and

rather than cigars they smoke the yellow cigarettes of the peasant. Though most of them

have been educated at the universities of Prague and Heidelberg, even Paris, they reject

this learning. They speak instead of 'blood' and 'instinct', of lost glories and stolen pride.

Alexandra tells me her brother was for a while of their number and it is the chief reason her

parents decided to take him to Rome. I tell her I am grateful to her brother for his radicalism.

Her little stomach is so soft. I touch it lightly with my fingertips. I move my hand towards her

pubis. She jumps and gently takes hold of my wrist. What yesterday had been of peripheral

interest to me today becomes central, abiding, almost an obsession. I take as keen a

delight in the contents of jewellery shop windows, the couturiers, the fashion magazines as I

once took in watching a horse-race or reading about exotic lands. This change has not been

gradual, it seems to have occurred overnight, as if I cannot remember any other life.

Alexandra has me. My blood quickens. Now I am remembering the detail of the pleasure. I

wave Papadakis away. I cling to the sensation. It becomes more than memory. I experience

it again. What have I invented? Is she my creation or is she creating me? Commonplace

events are of no consequence. The room darkens. A background of red velvet and roses.

Her passivity; her weakness. Her sudden, fierce passion and her sharp, white teeth. She

becomes strong, but she remains so soft. The cathedral bells are chiming. We are playing a

game. She understands the rules better than I. I break away from her and stand upright. I go

to the window and part the curtains. She is laughing from the twisted sheets. I turn towards

her again:

'You are hopeless.'

Papadakis is at my shoulder, asking for instructions. I tell him to light my lamp. She

pushes her head under the pillow. Her feet and calves are hidden by the linen; her bottom

curves in the brown gloom and her vertebrae are gleaming. She comes to the surface, her

dark curls damp with sweat, and I return to her, forcing her down on her face and laying my

penis in the cleft of her rear, denying myself the heat of her vagina: I have never known such

heat, before or since, in a woman's sex. She bites at my hand. Traffic is noisy in the square

today; a political demonstration of some kind, Papadakis says: he is contemptuous.

'Communists.' We hire a carriage and driver to take us east to Staromest, the hilly

semi-rural suburb of Miren-burg where proud-eyed little girls watch over goats and chickens

and shoo off strangers as if they were foxes. Here, amid the old cottages and windmills, we

shall stop at an inn and either lunch there or ask them for a picnic. One or two fashionable

'Resting Houses' have been built in Staromest. They are frequented by invalids and the

elderly and are staffed by nuns. Thus the peace of the hills is somewhat artificially preserved

from the natural encroachment of the city. The apartment blocks stand below, silent

besiegers who must inevitably conquer. We pass a small convoy of vivid gypsy wagons.

Alexandra points at a brown and white pony as if I could buy it for her. The earth roads are

still dry. From the dust the plodding gypsies do not look at us as we pass. We stop to gaze

on the rooftops.

I point out, in the curve of the river, the old dock known as Suicide Bay. By some trick

of the current most of those who fling themselves off the Radota Bridge are washed in to this

dock. We can also see the distant race-track, dark masses of horses and spectators, bright

silks and flags against the green turf. Closer to us is the cupola of the great Concert Hall

where tonight one can hear Smetana and Dvorak on the same programme as Wagner,

Strauss and Debussy. Mirenburg is more liberal in her tastes than Vienna. Not far from the

Concert Hall is a gilded sign, by Mucha, for the Cabaret Roberto, which offers popular

singers, comedians, dancers and trained animals in a single evening's entertainment.

Alexandra wishes to attend Roberto's. I promise her we shall go, even though I know she is

as likely as I am to change her mind in the next half-hour. She touches my cheek with warm

lips. I am enraptured by the city's beauty. I watch a green and gold tramcar, drawn by two

chestnut horses, as it moves towards Little Bohemia, the Jewish Quarter, where from

Monday to Thursday a market flourishes.

The tramcar reaches its terminus, near the market. The core of the market is in

Gansplatz but nowadays it has spread through surrounding streets and each street has

come to be identified by its stalls. In Baverninstrasse is second-hand clothing, linen, lace

and tapestries; in Fahnestrasse antiques and sporting-guns; in Hangengasse books,

stationery, prints; and in Messingstrasse fruit and vegetables, meat and fish; while the main

market has a little of everything, including Italian organ-grinders, gypsy fiddlers, mimes and

puppeteers. Stallholders and their customers haggle beneath bright stripes of the awnings,

all in the shadow of the Great Synagogue, said to be the largest in Europe. Her rabbis are

amongst the world's most famous and influential.

Dignified men, dark and learned, come and go on steps where gingerbread sellers

rest their trays, where little boys sell cigarettes out of inverted drums and their sisters, in

pretty tinsel, perform simple dances to attract attention to their cakes and sweets.

The stalls are crowded with toys, tools, jams and sausages, musical instruments and

domestic wares. Vendors shout their bargains, and sardonic hausfraus challenge them

above the noise of guitars, accordions, violins and hurdy-gurdies.

At the far end of Hangengasse a large crimson automobile, imported from France,

bucks and rumbles on its springs, its driver seated high above his passengers and wearing

the cap, goggles and overcoat of his calling so he resembles a comical lemur in his

profound sobriety. The chaffeur's gloved fingers squeeze a horn: a tin trumpet blown by a

mouse announces the progress of Juggernaut. The crowd divides, from curiosity rather than

fear, and the crimson machine is on its way to more fashionable parts, to Falfnersallee, the

Champs Elysees of Mirenburg, and the Restaurant Schmidt, all silver, mirrors and pale

yellow. Here the nouveaux riches display themselves, to the chagrin of waiters who until a

year or two ago served only Mirenburg's aristocracy. The upper classes, they say, have

been driven out by the vulgar owners of steamships and mechanical looms, whose wives

wear the pearls of ancient impoverished families about red throats and speak a kind of

German hitherto only heard in the Moravian district, the industrial suburb on the far side of

the river.

This class has come to be known as 'les sauvages' or'die Unbebaut', the subject of

cartoons in the illustrated papers and mockery in cabarets which these days all but fill

Kodaly Square, yet its money allows the journals and entertainments to flourish while its

trade, especially with Berlin, increases Waldenstein's prosperity.

At a large round table near the window, looking out upon the trees, the kiosks and the

traffic of Falfnersallee, sits in corpulent well-being, in English tweed and French linen,

Pasitch the Press King, a loyal supporter of the government of Prince Badehoff-Krasny and

believer in stronger ties with Germany. His newspapers persistently emphasise the

Austro-Hungarian threat and pillory an opposition favouring the views of Count Holzhammer

currently exiled to Vienna, where he is courted by those who believe firmly in a 'union'

between Bohemia and Waldenstein.

Herr Pasitch eats his Kalbsaxe and discusses international politics with his uncritical

sons and daughters. They are expecting a guest. My first memories of Mirenburg are of the

Restaurant Schmidt. Father had taken me to the city for a

eason. I had spent some part of the summer at a private academy before being sent on to

school in Heidelberg. I recall skiffs and tea-gardens. Mirenburg had seemed a haven of

peace and stability in Europe. I am inclined to resent any politics here. Mirenburg is a

retreat; I escape to her. I always expected to find an Alexandra in Mirenburg so I scarcely

question my fortune. We drive into the early afternoon.

Herr Pasitch's guest has arrived, seating himself with a flourish and drawing the full attention

of the Pasitch daughters. He is Herbert Block, the popular song-writer; selfish, humorous

and charming. Without favouritism he has looted the romantic lyrics of antecedents and

contemporaries to considerable profit. Few of the victims complain. His charm is such that,

although he is now nearing forty, people still regard him as a schoolboy whose pranks do no

real harm, and, while he remains witty and vain, he will always have tolerant friends,

especially amongst women. His dark eyes are professionally active. His dark hair might now

be dyed. He leans back in his chair and flashes an expert smile. Herr Pasitch explains the

strategies of Bismarck. Herr Block turns the conversation to the exploits of Count Rudolph

Stefanik, the famous Czech balloon adventurer, who was recently forced to leave Zurich

under scandalous conditions and narrowly missed having his vessel seized and burned by

outraged citizens. They had welcomed him as a hero and he had thoroughly abused their

hospitality. 'Caught in the basket!' says Herr Block. 'He is a dear friend of mine. But, O!' This

episode, involving a young lady of previously good reputation, was not dissimilar to many

others in the Count's history. 'His adventures have spanned five continents.' Getting some

wind of the composer's drift, Herr Pasitch firmly steers the topic back to Bismarck. Herr

Block smiles at the women as if in defeat. He suggests that they might like to repair later to

the Straus Tea Gardens, to the south of Mirenburg, on the river. 'To catch the last of the

summer.'

From these gardens, some five miles away, one can watch the trains crossing the

long viaduct which spans the valley where the Ratt widens. It has thirty-two arches and was

completed in 1874 by engineers from the Rhineland.

According to legend a man lost his life for every arch completed and some of the victims are

said to lie beneath the plinths, their ghosts occasionally appearing on the track at night,

causing drivers to apply their brakes and bring trains to an alarming halt. Usually these

ghosts are discovered to be baffled deer or wolves which have strayed on to the bridge and

are unable to escape.

Five minutes from the Restaurant Schmidt, in Edelstrasse, a narrow street running

parallel to Falfnersallee, is the Restaurant Anglais. Socialists gather here, followers of

Kropotkin, Proudhon and Karl Marx, to debate how much support they have in Parliament

and how soon the workers in the Moravia will grow tired of their lot and rise against their

masters. They wear grey frock-coats and high collars but only a few have the soft felt hats

and loose ties of the conventional radical. In the same street, at the Hotel Dresden, are

members of the League of St Ignatz, a little older, on average, but otherwise very similar to

the clientele at the Restaurant Anglais. These strong conservatives are almost as

suspicious of the socialists as they are of the Jews, the Jesuits and the Freemasons, whom

they term the'super-national powers', deliberate fomentors of war and rebellion. It is early

afternoon. Socialists and conservatives begin to return to offices where they will mingle and

conduct the business of Mirenburg with exactly the same degree of zeal shown by their

non-political colleagues.

A squadron of cavalry, its bright blues and golds softened by the September sun, rides past

one end of Edelstrasse, on its way to guard the Kasimirsky Palace, where Parliament

meets (today it debates a new Armaments Bill); and in the other direction goes a closed

carriage bearing the arms of Hungarian Archduke Otto Budenya-Graetz, exiled from his own

country by relatives who pay him to stay abroad. His reputation is so villainous not even the

lion-hunting ladies of the Regenstrasse mvite him to their salons. It is said he always has a

small revolver with him. So many attempts have been made on his life by jealous lovers or

their husbands, he carries the weapon for self-defence. The carriage turns down toward the

river, passing the neo-classical Customs House, and heading inevitably for Rosenstrasse.

Alexandra's teeth touch the pale flesh of chicken and I raise my champagne glass to her.

The shadows already begin to lengthen. I recall my second visit to Mirenburg, the lilacs

against a bright blue sky which deepened to violet at sunset; then I had spent considerable

time and most of my money at the Casino. I had a passion for roulette and the Circus. Both

Casino and Circus still exist, but I have so far visited neither.

Our landau takes us back to our hotel. We smell crisp Leckerli gingerbread in the

hands of schoolchildren who file out of the bakeshops on their way home. I tell Alexandra of

the summer in the cottage when I was a boy, of my father coming to visit us. I had the

impression almost everything was white and yellow, and even now when I recall the

cornflowers I am astonished at this sudden infusion of brilliant blue into my memory. I can, I

tell her, with effort also re-experience the red-orange of the poppies, but I suspect this might

be a false recollection, or at least one from a later period.

The smell of those poppies, however, is almost always with me, whenever I think of

them. I am under the impression I am losing Alexandra's attention, but we shall soon be

back at the hotel and I know how to recapture her quickly enough. I begin the story of the

consumptive twins and their dog, even before we have left the carriage, although my mind is

still obsessed with that scent of poppies and I wonder why I should associate it so strongly

with sexual passion. Perhaps both are capable of absorbing one's total attention. Yet I could

not have been more than seven when we paid our last visit to the country. Papadakis wishes

to retire. He asks if he can douse my lamp. I shake my head and tell him to go. I remember,

as I escort Alexandra through the lobby, the first woman I became infatuated with. She was

married and her husband was abroad in some small German colony. 'You are a sympathetic

friend,' she had said to me. 'And sometimes that is the last thing one seeks in a lover.' She

had laughed. 'That is the job of the husband.' She taught me an excellent lesson. Once

again, as I prepare to bathe, I consider the relationship between passion and power,

between sexuality and spiritual fulfillment, the realisation of the Self. I complete the story of

the twins. Alexandra begins to laugh and becomes helpless.

Her arms grip my back, her legs encircle my thighs; I begin the slow injection. 'Never stop

loving me,' she says. 'Promise me.' I promise. 'And I will never stop loving you,' she says. But

I am a fiction. My reality could destroy me. She is a dream and I shall never stop loving her.

We are silent now. I move further into that tiny flame, the gateway to a universe of pleasure;

beyond her vagina is infinity, immortality, marvellous escape. She is yelling. Her nails stab

into my buttocks and my cries join hers. She lies with her curls against my neck and

shoulder. I stroke her arm in the long twilight. 'Shall we go to Roberto's?'

'I am too tired,' she says, 'for the moment. Let us have an early supper here and then

see.'

In Zwergengasse, once the home of a famous eighteenth-century Italian circus troupe, a

knife-grinder pushes his cart over the cobbles. The street is barely wide enough for him and

not much more than thirty yards long. It runs up to the old wall of the city. Its lower floors are

large and vacant, occupied only by a tribe of beggars who will, when winter comes, move on

to warmer quarters near the quaysides; they squat amongst the remains of the circus -

painted tin and rotting velvet -discussing their adventures in loud voices while Pan Sladek

reaches his premises at last, lowers the handles of his cart and unlocks the doors of his

workshop, suspicious as always of the beggars (who would be far too timid to rob him). His

grey face shines like a hatchet as he sweats to manipulate his grinding equipment into the

shop. His nose is blue and pointed. He has had a hard day. He locks up and enters the

doorway next to the shed, climbing the stairs slowly, but two at a time on his spidery legs

until he reaches a door painted a fresh and startling yellow. He opens it. The smell of frying

comes from the kitchen. Today is schnitzel day. When Pan Sladek remembers this he

brightens. He goes into the kitchen and kisses Pani Sladek as he always kisses her. She

smiles to herself. Below, as Zwergengasse grows dim, more beggars flit back, rooks to a

rookery, their hands full of sour wine and loaves of yesterday's bread. Somewhere close by,

students of the Academy and the Polytechnic are fighting again, shouting obscure private

battle-cries from street to street and lying in ambush for one another in alleys and shop

doorways, brandishing stolen colours, caps and scarves, which they nail to the walls and

beams of the beerhalls, their headquarters. Willi's in Morgenstrasse and Leopold's in

Grunegasse are respectively strongholds of the Academy and the Polytechnic. Near

Leopold's is The Amoral Jew, a cabaret populated entirely by proponents of the New Art,

young Russians and Germans with bizarre notions of perspective.

Alexandra likes The Amoral Jew and I have acquaintances there. We arrive at about nine

o'clock to watch the negro orchestra which delighted her on our last visit. She is

overdressed and heavily painted for this cabaret but so beautiful that nobody cares.

Kulacharsky, barrel-chested and ferociously bearded, in a peasant blouse and clogs,

fondles the ostrich feathers in her diamond aigrette and says something wicked to her in

Russian which pleases her, though she does not understand a word. It is dark and noisy in

The Amoral Jew and Rosenblum himself presides, his goatee twitching as he strolls

amongst the tables and glances secretly here and there from mysterious eyes which could

be drugged. There are murals on the walls, in gaudy primaries. Were it not for the strange

manner of their execution they would be thought indelicate. They were painted by a

Spaniard who passed through. Alexandra accepts a glass of absinthe, still the drink of the

bohemian from St Petersburg to Paris. Voorman, sweating in his heavy jacket and tweed

shooting breeches, begins to talk about his telescope; he is considering giving up painting

for astronomy. 'Science is today the proper province of the artist.' Alexandra laughs, but

because she finds him attractive not because she understands him. Bodies press around us

like mourners at a wake. Alexandra enjoys the attention of the avant-garde. In the old

barracks a few streets away, built into the walls of Mirenburg, privates at an off-duty card

game drink surreptitiously from illicit jugs while avuncular sergeants turn blind eyes. In the

upper storeys of the garrison captains and lieutenants passionately discuss the Armaments

Bill which, if implemented, will mean a stronger Waldenstein. 'Everyone is arming. If we wish

to keep our freedom, so should we. We are the prize of Europe, never forget that. We are

coveted by all: three empires flank us and the only security we have is that one empire will

not risk warring upon another in order to win us. Remember Bismarck's words: Waldenstein

is the most beautiful bride the masculine nations have ever courted: a virgin whose dowry

opens the gateway to power over the entire continent. Whoever wins her shall win the world.

The Prince thinks our neutrality is all the security we need. But we must be prepared to

defend ourselves from within. There are those who would sell the virgin to the highest

bidder.' So says Captain Thomas Vladoroff, a distant cousin of mine, as his batman clears

away the cheese. Vladoroff has the pale and misleadingly vacant good looks of his family.

'We must be alert for the agent provocateur in our midst. There are many, in the army and

out of it, who support Count Holzhammer.' His friends smile at his zeal. He loosens the collar

of his dress tunic. Someone tells him that there could never be a civil war in Waldenstein.

'We are too sensible, too united, too fond of comfort.' Alexandra dislikes my cousin. He is

bloodless, she says, and more interested in machines than in his fellow men. He is leaving

now, to visit his mistress in Regenstrasse, the widow of an officer killed some twenty years

ago as a volunteer on the russian side during their last war with the French. Her name 18

Katerina von Elfenberg and she was seventeen when her husband died. She told my cousin

he could be a reincarnation °i that dashing Hussar, who was blown to pieces by a huge

UPP gun he was attempting to recapture. Her other lover is a ^aron, a chief of the Stock

Exchange, and her advice is making my cousin moderately rich, although he becomes

concerned about the nature of the speculation, for it seems to him to anticipate strife. There

is a small party tonight. I have been invited but I could not take Alexandra for fear of meeting

members of her family. As it is, her servants have had to be heavily bribed to tell callers she

is out and to bring messages in secret to our hotel so that she can reply and thus preserve

the pretence of being in residence. Her parents write regularly from Rome and she dutifully

replies with news of friends and relatives, the weather, expeditions with her friends to

museums and the more suitable tea-gardens. She is expected, next year, to go to be

finished in Switzerland, but she plans instead, she tells me, to meet me in Berlin. From there

we shall discuss the possibilities of Paris, Marseilles and Tangiers, for of course she is

below the age of consent.

My cousin is introduced to the members of the Mirenburg Royal Ballet Company,

some of the finest dancers in the world. The women offer him controlled hands to be kissed.

He will tell me later how he feels uncomfortable, as if corralled with a squadron of

ceremonial horses, all of which can pick up their feet and none of which can charge. I look

toward the little stage, my arm about Alexandra. She loves the comedy, borrowed from

Debureau, she says. Pierrot pursues Columbine and is defeated by Harlequin. A large silk

moon ripples in the draught from the door and Pierrot plucks his guitar, singing in French. I

am told it is Laforgue. Projected against the backdrop are silhouettes of balloons, trains and

automobiles, of factories and iron ships. The song is in praise, I gather, of the machine, for

Pierrot's accent is so gutteral I can scarcely understand one word in three. Then on come

the novelty dancers; some little ballet of primitive lust and discordant fiddles. In the morning,

as soon as there is sunlight a lark will begin to sing from our roof. We touch glasses and sip

the heady wormwood. There is no time. I am adrift. I lean towards my ink. I have no pain

now. I am full of delight. In Mirenburg's gaslight I call for a cab. Around us is ancient beauty,

delicate lacework-stone silent under the deep sky. I resist the temptation to brave Katerina

von Elfenberg's salon and we drive instead to the Yanokovski Promenade to marvel at its

electrical lights and to listen to the music from the bandstand. I am an old man now and my

white suits have become yellowed by the sun; but there is a bandstand in the town, where

Italians play selections from Verdi and Rossini. A pleasure boat goes past in the jewelled

water. Excited girls and boys of Alexandra's age play innocent games amongst the

deck-chairs and the hatch-covers. A flotilla of grim barges passes in the darkness on the

other side; a steam-whistle hoots. The pleasure boat disappears beneath the Radota.

Mirenburg is the merriest of cities at night. Her citizens belong spiritually to more Southern

regions of the continent. In Bachenstrasse, which winds down to the Promenade, Carl-Maria

Saratov, his heart broken and his mind desperate for diversion, wanders into the unlit alleys

known as the Indian Quarter, perhaps because there was once a cheap waxwork show here

with its main tableaux representing the Wild West. Carl-Maria Saratov has come all the way

from Falfnersallee where he saw his sweetheart entering the Cafe Wilhelm with his oldest

friend, another student at the university. He has heard that opium is to be found in the Indian

Quarter and so it is. The den would be unlikely to welcome him. It is typical of its kind, but

unlike the one Carl-Maria has heard about from a friend. Mirenburg's best opium-den is not

the sordid hovel one finds in Hamburg or London. Even the Chinese attendants at

'Chow-Li's' are not really Chinese, but Magyars dressed in elaborate robes. The place is

awash with blue silk and golden brocade. The couches are deep and thickly padded and the

owner is British, an exile, James Mackenzie, the Scots military engineer, who committed

some crime in the Malay Archipelago and dare not enter any country of the British Empire,

yet runs his den with all the tact, discretion and lavish decoration of a fashionable

restauranteur. Archduke Otto Budenya-Graetz is there tonight, with two young friends from

the military school. Mackenzie will not refuse him entrance, but makes sure he is sent to a

remote room and that the pipes are paid for before they are smoked.

The Archduke has not enjoyed his visit to Rosenstrasse and swears the place is overrated

and he will never return. He complains of his entrapment in'this provincial town' and speaks

to the fascinated students of the glories of Vienna, Buda-Pest and Paris, of the women of St

Petersburg, where he was very briefly an attache, of the boys of Constantinople, and he

hands them their pipes with his eyes on their serge thighs and takes a deep breath to relax

himself before inhaling. He lets himself remember his days in the service of the Mexicans;

that splendid time of unchecked satisfaction when the air was so full of fear one had merely

to wave a sabre to fulfill one's grossest needs. 'I can still smell the blood,' he murmurs.

'There is nothing like it to enliven any sport, say what you will.' He takes his pipe as if it were

a crop and his eyes, full of pagan Asia, brighten and then cloud. 'But the Jews have robbed

me of my birthright… ' Alexandra is growing bored. She asks me to take her to'some

secret place' and so we, too, head for 'Chow-Li's' for I must grant her everything she asks.

Here she will cough on the smoke and complain it has no effect, but later she will ask me

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

TheBrothelinRosenstrasseMichaelMoorcockRomanesque,GothicandBaroquecrowdtogether:theearlybasilicaofStVaclarstandsbetweenthesixteenth-centuryChemnitzfortressandtheeighteenth-centuryCapuchinmonastery,allnoteableexamplesoftheirperiods,andarejoinedjustbelow,inKonigsplatz,bythebeautifulnewEgyptianateconce...

展开>> 收起<<

Michael Moorcock - Von Bek 2 - The Brothel in Rosenstrasse.pdf

共88页,预览18页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Michael Moorcock - Von Bek 2 - The Brothel in Rosenstrasse

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: