horsepower hummed in the heavens.
“If only we could sit here eternally it would be
wunderbar
—it’s just like sitting in the kitchen.”
“The kitchen?” I exclaimed.
“Ah, yes,” he sighed. “All my youth I ate in the kitchen together with my
Vater und Mutter
and the other five children.” Then, inhaling the effluvia of the streets, “There was lots of steam,” he said invigorated. “All the washing hung up to dry, the muddy boots stood in a row, and on the good hot stove—”
“Die Suppe
,” I joined in, entranced.
“Ja, die Suppe
,” he confirmed ecstatically. “You see, it is not so much a matter of materializing but of being able to speak. Before I found you I had never anyone I could speak to. I should never have been able to tell about all this—”
“All the boots?” I interrupted.
“—to anyone else,” he concluded, his voice trailing off as if calling to me from another world.
“Allein—allein
,” he chanted forsakenly. Something was happening to this man’s voice, the most musical modulations were stealing into it. “Always alone—alone inBerlin—alone in Paris—” The words floated out of him like wisps of a dream, “more than alone in prison.”
“In prison,” I responded, “where there is no one,
no one
you can convince of your not being there. You might try it on the warden, but the moment he began to suspect would be the very moment he assured himself of your presence—I mean—let’s leave that and have something more to eat!”
In sitting so close to Insel at the small terrace table all the filaments of what has been called the astral body, that network of vibrational force, were being drawn out of me towards a terrific magnet, while I sat unmoved beside the half-rotten looking man of flesh. My astral inclination, withheld by a counteractive physical repulsion, could not gain its presumable end of flying onto that magnet— It was as though he had achieved an impossible confusion of his positive and negative polarity— Out of a dim past echoed the din of a music hall refrain I had heard in Berlin: “
Du musst herüber—You
must come over.”
7
THE LESS HE SEEMED TO BE “THERE,” THE MORE HE spilled into the unknown, the more clearly I apprehended him, whereas Insel himself seemed ever to be seeking a reduction of focus through which to penetrate into the real world.
Suddenly he bowed his head over me in a wracking attentiveness. He had found such a focus. Darting, his constricted fingers cleaved to a white hair of my head which had fallen on my coat, he made a ritual of offering it to my eyes.
“Je suis la ruine féerique
,” I trilled in vanity.
“Ah, yes,” sighed Insel, as I translated, churning me with his eyes into the colorless vapors of his creation.
The cloth of my coat, a FANTAISIE , was sewn with lacquered red setae—wisps, scarcely attached, which caught the light, and all through the evening unusual manifestations of consciousness occurring outside the Lutetia were punctuated by Insel’s staccato spoliation of that hairy cloth. He could not desist. Like an adult elf insanely delousing a mortal, whenever I laughingly reprimanded him for ruining my coat, with an acrid cluck of refutation he would show me what he had instantly plucked from the cloth—itwas always a
white
hair— He did not trouble to contradict me—the evidence was clinching— But in the end the side of my coat sitting next to him was bare of all its fancy setae.
In accordance with the rules of sympathetic magic, so long concealing my one fallen hair in his palm augmented Insel’s influence over me. An influence which, rather than having submitted to it, I purposely invaded, so urgent was my premonition of some treasure he contained. His voice now setting in a glowing duskiness haunted me with wonder as to where I had heard it before—
“Black as was the stain on my name—,” I listened to Insel intoning as if he were celebrating mass, “even so white
“If only we could sit here eternally it would be
wunderbar
—it’s just like sitting in the kitchen.”
“The kitchen?” I exclaimed.
“Ah, yes,” he sighed. “All my youth I ate in the kitchen together with my
Vater und Mutter
and the other five children.” Then, inhaling the effluvia of the streets, “There was lots of steam,” he said invigorated. “All the washing hung up to dry, the muddy boots stood in a row, and on the good hot stove—”
“Die Suppe
,” I joined in, entranced.
“Ja, die Suppe
,” he confirmed ecstatically. “You see, it is not so much a matter of materializing but of being able to speak. Before I found you I had never anyone I could speak to. I should never have been able to tell about all this—”
“All the boots?” I interrupted.
“—to anyone else,” he concluded, his voice trailing off as if calling to me from another world.
“Allein—allein
,” he chanted forsakenly. Something was happening to this man’s voice, the most musical modulations were stealing into it. “Always alone—alone inBerlin—alone in Paris—” The words floated out of him like wisps of a dream, “more than alone in prison.”
“In prison,” I responded, “where there is no one,
no one
you can convince of your not being there. You might try it on the warden, but the moment he began to suspect would be the very moment he assured himself of your presence—I mean—let’s leave that and have something more to eat!”
In sitting so close to Insel at the small terrace table all the filaments of what has been called the astral body, that network of vibrational force, were being drawn out of me towards a terrific magnet, while I sat unmoved beside the half-rotten looking man of flesh. My astral inclination, withheld by a counteractive physical repulsion, could not gain its presumable end of flying onto that magnet— It was as though he had achieved an impossible confusion of his positive and negative polarity— Out of a dim past echoed the din of a music hall refrain I had heard in Berlin: “
Du musst herüber—You
must come over.”
7
THE LESS HE SEEMED TO BE “THERE,” THE MORE HE spilled into the unknown, the more clearly I apprehended him, whereas Insel himself seemed ever to be seeking a reduction of focus through which to penetrate into the real world.
Suddenly he bowed his head over me in a wracking attentiveness. He had found such a focus. Darting, his constricted fingers cleaved to a white hair of my head which had fallen on my coat, he made a ritual of offering it to my eyes.
“Je suis la ruine féerique
,” I trilled in vanity.
“Ah, yes,” sighed Insel, as I translated, churning me with his eyes into the colorless vapors of his creation.
The cloth of my coat, a FANTAISIE , was sewn with lacquered red setae—wisps, scarcely attached, which caught the light, and all through the evening unusual manifestations of consciousness occurring outside the Lutetia were punctuated by Insel’s staccato spoliation of that hairy cloth. He could not desist. Like an adult elf insanely delousing a mortal, whenever I laughingly reprimanded him for ruining my coat, with an acrid cluck of refutation he would show me what he had instantly plucked from the cloth—itwas always a
white
hair— He did not trouble to contradict me—the evidence was clinching— But in the end the side of my coat sitting next to him was bare of all its fancy setae.
In accordance with the rules of sympathetic magic, so long concealing my one fallen hair in his palm augmented Insel’s influence over me. An influence which, rather than having submitted to it, I purposely invaded, so urgent was my premonition of some treasure he contained. His voice now setting in a glowing duskiness haunted me with wonder as to where I had heard it before—
“Black as was the stain on my name—,” I listened to Insel intoning as if he were celebrating mass, “even so white
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