The Bloodletting Man

The shards of glass with which the gravedigger's caution had peppered the churchyard wall
crunched under nailed shoe soles. Three fellows climbed up ladder rungs out of the shadows and
danced in the moonlight, which threw green sparks into the bottle shards. Then one of them
reached backwards and helped a powdered wig over the edge of the wall. Under the wig, the
highly honored and respectable Doctor Eusebius Hofmayer puffed on the crunching battlements.
He had pulled wide-legged riding boots over breeches and silk stockings and buckled shoes, in
whose tubes thin thighs gave way. Now he swayed in the arms of a black fellow whose tread was
as sure up here as on country roads, and whose blood knew nothing of swaying.

The other two jumped from the edge of the wall into the bramble bushes so that the vines flapped
around and grabbed the enemy's pants with a hundred hooks. The third came slowly with him,
sighing over the doctor's despondency, down the safe path of the ladder, which now led into the
hill country of death. The black roof of the gravedigger’s cottage crept out of the low copse of
crosses into the eloquent night, and the steeple of the little church pointed straight toward a silver
cloud as if to spear it. In front of the gravedigger's door, a red flame brooded over a small pewter
votive font, a double protection against ghosts and spirits, and the eternal light cast the shadows
of the men on burial mounds, where they were broken up by the undergrowth.

Eusebius Hofmayer stumbled in the midst of his companions, who now once more went through
the darkness with the sure tread of predators. From the rows of ancient gravestones they came to
younger lands of death, and at last they searched among the hills of recent days, whose softness
betrayed the toils of yesterday.

"This must be it," said the doctor, brushing his riding boot against an obstacle. The three others,
however, had better discretion and pulled him a little farther into the darkness beneath the heavy
branches of the ancient trees of life. A spark sprang from steel and stone and grew into the glow
of a small lantern. The doctor cursed the glaring clang of spades and shovels as they huddled
together as if in fear of the night and their handiwork. Now the work of the three fellows began
as they gasped and threw the mound apart.

"Was a good girl, that Veronika Huber," grumbled one, kicking the spade hard into the soft
ground.

"A respectable and decent maiden."

"The groom wants to go to war. His mother is crying, but he is so full of pain that he has had
enough of life."

The doctor's silver snuff box rattled loudly, as if the lid were to be used to knock down the lads'
voices. Eusebius Hofmayer was impatient, because the work to reach the bottom of the grave
was going too slowly for him. Unwillingly the trees murmured all around, and shadows fluttered
from their tops, like black birds whose wings want to extinguish the light. Somewhere there was
a lost moonlight, a daring glimmer through tenacious banks of cloud, just strong enough to fill
the gloom with forebodings that stared like masks. In the middle of the empty heavens, above the
spire, stood a dainty ark, receiving its silver from the moon hidden in the west. The Doctor was
distracted by that cloud and thought of the Spanish galleys that had gone down with monstrous
cargoes of silver somewhere on the sea. Then he sank back down to the business of that night.
The fellows were talking and not getting anywhere.

"Why, my dears, why the delay! What a waste of precious minutes! Mon dieu. Do you want us
all to get caught, Michel! Don’t just stand there and spit into your hands so often. If I had hired
three moles for this affair, I would undoubtedly be further along than with your slowness. That's
really something ..."

"Ennuyant!1" said someone who stood next to Eusebius Hofmayer, looking like a gentleman in a
house robe. A cold snake crawled across the doctor's back and wrapped its coils around his neck,
while the shafts of his riding boots flapped against his thin thighs. The tools fell from the dirty
hands of the three fellows. The strange gentleman, however, smiled kindly so that two rows of
pointed teeth showed like saws between the puckered lips.

"Please do not be disturbed — mon cher. I am glad to see that you, too, are interested in fresh
graves, and I am, how shall I say ....am unselfish enough to wish you the best of success."

"You are very kind," said the doctor, unable to take his eyes off the strange gentleman's back,
from which two pointed, jagged shadows fell, as if wings were perched there at his shoulders.

"The immortalized maiden Veronika Huberin certainly has her own special qualities. But I do
not begrudge her to you; truly I do not begrudge her to you. Science, my lord, science! It
deserves every support. And the short-sightedness of the authorities is the greatest obstacle to a
serious pursuit of anatomy."

"You are too kind. So you're in the trade, too?"

"In a way ... In a way! Not quite, but in a way."

Under the house robe, clockwork whirred, and the gentleman showed both his bright saws. And
over the strange laughter his words stumbled on:

"In a way ... In a way. But the authorities protect decomposition, my lord. They place the corpses
in coffins and forbid science to molest them. Decomposition, yes, decomposition is protected by
the authorities. But I don't want to compete with you, sir. You shall have the immortalized
maiden Veronika Huber."

"Very kind, very kind. Thank you. But may I ask what ...”
1
“Boring!”
A hand raised against the doctor. Five black claws curled against the bold mouth.

"No, my dear, you must not ask. Or you shall not ask. I know it is the custom of serious science
to ask everywhere. But this custom must be silent in churchyards. You see, I do not ask."

The moon had overcome the cloud banks, breaking through them near the horizon. The night
became paler and the silver galleon above the church tower floated in a terribly empty green sky,
as if it stood still, despairing of direction and destination. Between the trees of life glowed the
bald skull of the strange gentleman, on which jagged seams drew the boundary lines of the
bones; a wreath of yellowed hair like a frizz showed between the neck and the collar of the robe.
The two gentlemen looked at each other.

Doctor Eusebius Hofmayer's teeth wobbled in his mouth when he saw the other's saws glinting,
and he noted with amazement that between these saws and the two eye-holes, in which there
seemed to be no sight, sat the upturned nose of a bat. A gesture from the strange gentleman
seemed to invite the continuation of the work. The three fellows reached for the spades, but rusty
clockwork creaked under the robe.

"No, my dear, your method is really ennuyant. It would be a bit tedious. I want to show you how
I deal with this. But you must promise me in advance not to withhold compensation for my
trouble."

The doctor noticed with pleasure that his consciousness had returned from afar and that his
breath swept panting once more through empty caverns. Everything dissolved into the
comprehensible: this was a miserable swindler who wanted to be paid for his silence, a man who
knew how to turn a coincidence into money. His question, about the terms of payment, was
forestalled by the gentleman in the house robe.

"No, no. Roman law applies in the Holy Roman Empire. I trust that your consideration of
legality will not deny my performance. We will make an anonymous contract, and you shall see
that the advantage is yours. Now, then, the performance."

Out of the robe came two hands, and ten black claws thrust themselves against the grave, like
magnetic iron rods against dead masses to which they wish to give life, and it seemed as if the
earth moved under the wonders of a strange attraction. The clods flowed and lifted in their shaft,
the earth crawled up at the edges with the bubbling of a boiling liquid and threw up bubbles that
expanded, swelled, and pushed over the edges. The entire mass came alive, threw the three
fellows out of the hole, reared up, and billowed out of its container as if under the pressure of
gases, arched into a mound, and then burst with the bang of an explosion. The grave was free and
at its bottom, under a tangle of crushed wreaths and flowers, lay the coffin of the immortalized
young woman Veronika Huberin.
Then the three fellows threw down their tools, ran screaming into the bushes and left their
earnings in the maw of horror. The doctor thought to run after them. His tongue was suddenly
sticky and heavy and could not utter the words. He tormented himself with the question, "And
the quid pro quo ..."

"You shall not ask, mon cher. We'll talk about that in your studio. Go home quietly now. You
will find me and the immortalized maid Huberin there. Go!"

A polite bow and the gesture of a hand forced the doctor out from under the trees of life. The
strange gentleman in a house robe walked beside him between graves. Jagged shadows rattled at
his back and on the now lighted paths the tassels of the robe trailed like traces of blood. A
sudden aloneness tore the doctor's fear with an even greater horror. The gentleman in the robe
was gone. And to the side stood an old tombstone in the moonlight, tall and narrow and emphatic
with words of terror, because in the cruel brightness it called out the name of one long dead, the
Chevalier de Saint Simon.... The doctor began to run in his heavy riding boots, let himself be
whipped by branches, torn by broken glass and overcame the obstacles as if in a heavy dream.

In front of his house, he reflected. The long, narrow alley with its high gables concealed a threat
in its wrinkled darkness. Between the shadows of the gables, the light of the sinking moon ate
deep into the sleepy faces of the houses. On a cornice, a flock of stone birds fluttered among the
tangled tendrils of an adventure carved in stone, and next to it, over the study window, was
carved a person with a butter churn, driving the pestle vigorously into the tub. The erudition that
had filled this house through a series of owners down to Doctor Eusebius Hofmayer still masked
itself against the street by the somewhat joking humor of the builder, who had been inclined to
everything strange. The doctor raised his head, birdlike, crookedly looked to the windows. It was
quiet under the butter churn, and the moonlight trickled over the lifeless circular panes. Now the
key hesitated at the boar-hunt carved front door and then found a well-hidden lock.

More confident and becoming less fearful, the doctor climbed to his study, and when he entered
it, — he saw on the dissecting table the naked corpse of the immortalized maiden Veronika
Huberin and in his private chair, the hard, black claws laid over the armrests, the bald skull bent
back, marked by bone sutures, was the gentleman in his house robe. In one corner the
floorboards huddled in darkness. The moon was preparing to leave the room.

"Welcome home," said the gentleman in his robe from his arm-chair, as if he were the master of
the house, and the doctor could not help but stammer, "Welcome!"

"So, my dear friend, you may now ask whatever you like."

"So I ask, how did you get in here?"

"I know this house better than you, because I have known it a little longer and therefore I know
ways that are not known to you. I expect another question."
The moon crept out of the room at the upper edge of the window, but the parlor remained in a
pale light that seemed to radiate from the virgin Huberin on the dissecting table like a kind of
phosphorescence in which the colorful flowers of the Turkish robe began to bloom colorfully.
The strange gentleman took one of them out of the fabric, smelled it and put it back in its place.
He waited for a question, which did not venture forth. It was so quiet that one could hear the
butter churner outside poking the pestle into the tub and the stone birds chirping next door.
Damp boards creaked in the dark corner.

The question ducked under a mountain of fear, until the strange gentleman rose and stepped to
the virgin Huberin with his colorful blooming robe, whose tassels left traces of blood on the
floor. He took hold of her flesh and tightened the skin:

"You see, colleague, she is good and useful for experimentis, demonstrationibus and studiis2.
Your specialization in the science of the kidney and gall bladder will make considerable
progress. My delivery is not to be faulted; it was neatly and promptly executed."

"And my quid pro quo? ..."

The gentleman in the house robe rushed his answer over the echo of the question:

"It's simple and easy, almost ridiculous compared to my work. All I want is for my colleague not
to bother to go to the cloister tomorrow and leave it to me to bleed the sisters.

"How can that be?" Is the gentleman a doctor? And does he then know how to handle the lancet
so that just enough blood is drawn as is conducive to the preservation of the sisters' well-being
and piety."

"You may rest assured that I will not disgrace your erudition, and that I will conduct myself like
a man of science and not like a cranker."

"Is the gentleman a doctor?"

"At the very least, something similar. And as for bloodletting and drawing blood, I have as much
practice as anyone in these delicate subjects."

The doctor's deliberation staggered between two resolutions. The naked corpse of the
immortalized Huberin showed in its own light all the qualities estimable at the dissecting table,
and the doctor jerked toward the instrument case to further court the answers to those burning
questions that had thoroughly filled his last years.

"But-but. The impossibility, Mr ... Mr. ... is too obvious. If I put all my trust in you, if I consider
your knowledge to be sufficiently well-founded, if I believe that my colleague will perform these
small, health-promoting operations smoothly and without difficulty, I have no doubt that the

2
Experimentation, demonstration and study
ladies of the monastery will reject an unknown man with protest. I am the chosen physician,
confirmed by the authorities, to whom the monthly bloodletting has been entrusted and the only
one of all the male individuals to whom admission to the monastery has been granted. I do not
see how the gentleman colleague could penetrate the gates of this virgin castle and, if already
penetrated, how he could enforce his intention."

"The difficulties, mon cher, are entirely and solely with you and the sluggishness in the flow of
your thinking."

A black claw rose with a lecturing finger in a strange gesture of instruction, here at the dissecting
table, on which the naked corpse of the maiden Veronica phosphoresced. The doctor adhered to
this gesture of disputation and was about to answer with the same gesture, which was supposed
to be a warm up for the impeccable exchange of a debate, when the strange gentleman cut off all
germinating objections.

"You can't "imagine" this, can you, my dearest. You consider it impossible and you want to say:
That it can’t be done. That is why I want to show it to you now. I ask you to please look at me a
little more closely."

Cases are very difficult to prove when faced with such a monstrous absurdity, the doctor thought,
forcing himself to go along with it. He was alone in his studio, in a terrible solitude, all the more
terrible because he had to share it with a second self. Doctor Eusebius Hofmayer faced himself,
doubled by the sudden fantastic inspiration of a creative power, and differed from the other
Doctor Eusebius Hofmayer only in that he trembled while the latter smiled, that he wore two
limp riding boots under his arms, while the latter held the silver button of a cane to his chin.

"I believe," said Eusebius Hofmayer the Second, "that the sisters will not deny me entrance in
this appearance, unless they have decided not to admit the doctor, who has been elected and
confirmed by the authorities, to the monastery at all, which would probably contradict all custom
and also their own needs."

The complete perplexity of Hofmayer the First was poorly hidden behind a flat murmur. Down
to the snug belly of the period and the somewhat snuff-stained laces of the fore shirt, down to the
breeches, buckled shoes and fleshlessness of the calves, down to the wart above the left brow and
the mole on the cheek below, went this wicked duplicity that threatened the doctor's well-
anchored sanity. The pleasure of rising above it in dialectical exploitation was cut off by this
cruelly similar reflection, as if it knew when the doctor had collected himself enough to find his
way back to his stock of words.

"You now consider me similar enough, with your kind permission, to take up your position in the
monastery tomorrow - well, to take up your position, I dare to add in all modesty - and give with
plenarn potestatem3, authority to exercise your office with the sisters. If you should hesitate, then
3
To give plenary power
you only need to recall in your memory that you have taken on the obligation to pay in return at
the same time as accepting the benefit according to valid law and that you will hardly be able to
avoid the recognition of this obligation."

Doctor Eusebius Hofmayer the First was too blunt to look for ways out, and gave Doctor
Eusebius Hofmayer the Second all the powers he could want.

"Your handshake, Herr Colleague," demanded the second.

The first thrust out a trembling hand, but before the second could strike, something most
unexpected happened. The immortalized maid Huberin sat up on the dissecting table, let her legs
slide off the edge, and while making the gesture of shame with one hand, raised the other stiff
arm in warning. The soundless movements triggered a spray of slavering anger in Hofmayer the
Second:

"Lie down, virgin nosey, and don't get involved in things that don't concern you. I forbid myself
such impertinence; you will soon enough get your turn."

The outburst was followed by a grumble: "Riffraff! And the form still demands: de mortuis nil
nisi bene4. - Lie down!" he shouted once more and poked the corpse between the breasts with the
head of his cane so that it fell down and regained its rigidity. Doctor Hofmayer the First struck
the held-out hand of the Second; he would now have held his hand in red-hot iron without
thinking.

A laugh burst in the room, like a meteor in dread darkness, and a silence followed in which one
could hear the rumbling of the butter churn: Eusebius Hofmayer the Second had disappeared, as
if the laughter had torn him to dust and the silence had engulfed him in its dark vortex.

Between Adam and Eve at the gate of the monastery, the peephole of the gatekeeper opened for
the third time that morning. In the round cutout sat the lame shoemaker and showed the alley
how hard he worked, the baker enjoyed the break between the early morning and afternoon
baking in which he, from the steps of his front door above the pavement — profoundly and
deeply worked his nose with thumb and forefinger, the butcher's dog lay with outstretched paws
right in the middle of the way and did not move when the traffic of this quiet street passed over
him. Adam and Eve, the progenitors, were placed on both sides of the monastery gate by a
simple belief and a childlike faith, and this gate led into the home of the convent women. Adam
and Eve stood erect, undistinguished in their bodies, except for the most obvious features, under
the trees of a petrified paradise, whose foliage united and entwined above the gate until leaves,
fruits, and the animals of this confusion appeared like hieroglyphics, letters of a simple and
unbiased text. Here was to be read the innocence of pleasure, the confidence of godliness, and of
comfort, which had been common to the builder, the master builder and the sculptor of this old
patrician building.
4
“of the dead nothing but good is to be said.”
Sister Ursula said to Sister Barbara, who filled the corridor behind her, "He still hasn’t come.
Once you are used to punctuality, this lateness is unforgivable ..."

"Yes, yes," gasped Sister Barbara and tried to turn around in the narrow hallway, but got stuck
helplessly after a half turn. Her calm soul had, in time, expanded the temple of the body to three
times its normal size and came to terms, gasping, with the minor inconveniences of being
immense. She had preferred to close herself off with thick walls against the uncomfortably
moving world and lay between the tremendous cushions of her fat like an asthmatic lap-dog.
Sister Ursula remembered her duty, braced herself vigorously against the back wall, and pushed
Barbara along the corridor out into the little garden. Among the somewhat puny bushes, which
looked as if they were ashamed to bear seed and perform fertilization within these walls, the
sisters lived it up.

To the fantasist Dorothea, these currant bushes became the gardens of Armida, and the sparse
shade of a few stunted pear trees became the darkness of the primeval forests of Ceylon. To the
malicious Agathe, all the events of this little spot, the poor coincidences that strayed here from
the outer world, gave pleasure to needle-pointed remarks, to which Anastasia succumbed, out of
some need for humiliation, incessantly exposing herself with intent. Between them mediated the
busy Thekla, who felt the desire for activity like a glowing coal inside her. The melancholy
Angela walked between the sisters with swollen tear glands, focused on thoughts of an inevitable
misfortune, and loved to tread with naked feet on the sharp gravel of the paths in a desire for
penitence.

A spirit of complete purposelessness filled all the rooms and the garden of the former patrician
house, boiling the blood of these women until it cried out for the doctor's lancet. Still, still,
somewhere in hidden corners of the house, in the secret compartments of these souls, there was a
pale, turned away ghost that one could almost dare to call hope, the hope of something beyond
the walls, from above out of the glistening clouds of summer or from below out of the
murmuring earth, a very timid expectation, which in vain repeated its name. In the abbess Basilia
this spirit of purposelessness seemed to have united all in its force, and her sober indifference
held the shield before her, when her retort damped the excitement of Sister Ursula with one of
her peculiar phrases:

"You put these things on too hasty a scale, my child; he will come, for it is his duty, and in the
discharge of his duties he was never found remiss without reason."

The busy Sister Thekla burst forth from between two currant bushes, exhorting that she might yet
send him a message, and the melancholy Angela uttered an oracle that could be interpreted to
mean the death of the doctor Eusebius Hofmayer. An only slightly veiled excitement brought all
the sisters together around the headmistress for a consultation and even brought Dorothea from
the dark primeval forests of Ceylon. They all trembled for this little event, in which the life of an
entire month culminated, and felt themselves led by the same desire to a rare unanimity. The
sighs of the devoted Anastasia and the gasps of the phlegmatic Barbara said the same as the
silence of the malicious Agathe.

The clanging of the bell, whose ringer was borne by the stone hand of Adam, announced a
change in the scene, and prepared them for the entrance of Doctor Eusebius Hofmayer and the
pretense of indifference.

"Thank God," Ursula whispered to Thekla, who added:

"Our phlebotomist is coming after all," with a satisfied nod of her head; as the calm of desire
welcomed the expected.

The doctor smilingly strode up to the headmistress and bowed to her, asking her to forgive him
for his delay:

"I have been detained by urgent business — business! I do not need to assure my venerable
patroness and her reverend sisters particularly and explicitly that really only the most difficult
and unpostponable negotiations prevented me from fulfilling a duty that seems to me to be the
true oasis in the desert in my rather unpleasant profession.”

"Oh —we have patience and can wait, there is no urgency," said the abbess, reaching with
pointed fingers for the rosary at her belt.

"Incidentally, I consider it — in all modesty be it granted to me to say this, on the basis of my

exact researches even quite expedient and conducive, to heat the blood with a little delay first —
how shall I say — a little more, quasi — by your leave — to boil, so that all the foam separates
to the surface and all impurity flows off at once."

This was obvious to the sisters, a different one of whom was on duty in the kitchen every week.

Doctor Eusebius Hofmayer took out his tobacco tin, and, sucking in the recognition of his
profound wisdom from all around him, he circumstantially savored a pinch.

"If you please, Herr Doktor," said the headmistress, leading the way, followed by the doctor, as
usual, at half a step's distance. The sisters joined in, and among the bushes of the garden the
black, ugly dresses rustled like a murmur of impatience. At the entrance to the refectory the
doctor, with a deep bow, let the procession pass. Then he entered last and closed the door,
counting with a smile whether all were assembled. In the bare, sober dining room, hard-surfaced
by whitewashed walls, preparations for the bloodletting were taking place. The softly
upholstered operating chair stretched out its arms, basins surrounded to receive blood, and pale
cloths yearned for the life of the red paint. The water in the large tubs trembled on the surface in
ringlets of anticipation, and in the center of these things and the nurses, Eusebius Hofmayer laid
his bare instruments on the small table.
"How strangely he clangs his knives," the fantasist Dorothea dared to whisper, and the malicious
Agathe replied, "The music of the doctors."

Eusebius Hofmayer nodded at her so vigorously that her malice froze, and repeated, "The music
of the doctors, reverend sisters! Why should the doctors not make music? My researches have
penetrated deeper than those of my colleagues and have recognized the connection of music with
medicine; music is movement and the process of life is movement and related things act upon
other related things."

The sisters liked the fact that his words seemed to penetrate like a strange song into the corners
of the hall and returned from there floating as tones. Above these harmonies pointedly flickered
the tantalizing clash of knives, until a cry from the superior broke into the sisters' absorption.

"The picture ... Who turned the picture against the wall?"

The image of the crucified Savior, the bridegroom of the women in this place of refuge from the
noise of the world, which, hand-painted by Master Burgkmeier, watched over the meals of the
nuns here in the refectory, hung on the wall with its face turned away. Eusebius Hofmayer stood
among the startled sisters with a steely smile, while the abbess strode up to the picture and turned
the Savior toward the hall. Then she went back to her place, as if exhausted by a silent effort, and
staggered under the weight of a horror, as the doctor's face showed itself strangely transformed to
her. His jaws thrust forward, and, gnashing, two rows of pointed teeth bared themselves like
saws between narrow, puckered lips. The hand with the pinch stood still before a nose that
resembled that of a bat. And in the hollows above the bony cheeks, the headmistress searched in
vain for any sign of life. She looked into the eyes of darkness and saw eerie long nights full of
whimpering voices.

The sisters were used to follow the leader, and, leaning slightly forward, they froze when they
saw Basilia freeze. Suddenly the slimy toads of fear sat in their throats and welled up so that
their breath rattled. And all the ghosts of their covetous desires stood behind them, plucking
them by the garments and veils and lashing their souls with the scourges of sin.

Eusebius Hofmayer moved farther and farther away from the usual features of his vaccinated
scholarliness, grew like a shadow among them, and seemed to displace all light from this high
ceilinged room. The bright drawings of the sun on the floor and walls lost the bright colors of
their lines, moved as if in agony and retreated distorted and restless into each other, crawled like
tormented deformities over the red and white slabs of the floor, and at last fled through the
windows into the open air, where they were sucked in by a gelatinous mass. The air of the garden
in front of the windows seemed cloudy and ran thickly around the trees and bushes, so that they
too seemed to be enclosed in a viscous mass, until every branch and every leaf took on a
congealed appearance, as it were an unreal naturalness.
"Blood gives power over blood," Hofmayer said, grabbing sister Thekla by the neck and
playfully plunging his iron claws into her skin with short pressure so that small thin jets of blood
spurted from the holes.

There was a scream. Loud and shrill and desperate.

"The picture ... the picture!"

The Savior was again hanging on the wall with his face turned away. Then the sisters felt that
they were abandoned and given to another cruel master. Basilia and some others ran to the door,
but the doorknob reared up against the abbess and bit her in the arm with clattering teeth. All the
flourishes and ornaments turned into serpents, raised small, rough mouths and hissed. The sisters
who fled to the windows and wanted to reach the garden were held like flies by the clotted,
sticky air. The hall was a prison where a corrupted will was destroying life. The terribly
transformed Eusebius Hofmayer followed the insane efforts of the sisters with narrow lips raised
above gnashing saws. Under his playing claws, the busy Thekla's neck lengthened. Over an evil
melody of music, the knives and lancets arranged themselves into pairs on the instrument table,
dancing a dainty tinkling minuet in the best order.

"Ladies, I beg you to listen a little. What I have to say to you is quite brief and will not detain us
too long from the real purpose of my visit."

The nuns, under the doctor's compulsion, returned to the circle of chairs and formed a wreath of
the half-dead around him. But another semblance of movement followed his inviting gestures.
The whitewashed walls and ceiling of the chamber darkened and trembled as of colors long
buried and now coming to life. Shapes stirred beneath the even fetters of the sober whitewash.
The whiteness burst, and from among its vanishing shreds rose the vivid majesty of the ground,
the images of merriment and pleasure with which a forgotten time had once adorned this hall. All
the cheerful nudes, all the high-spirited jokes that sounded from the groups on the walls, shone
on the circle of half-dead women. Women stretched out on clouds raised their heads laughingly,
curiously, and gleefully pointed their fingers at the condemned, and drunken youths made the
hips of the bacchantes swing their golden cups mockingly against the sisters. The laughter of
these merrymakers rang between the music of the instruments. And like a rain of fragrance and
light, this long lost world, banished under the white blankets, renewed itself in a burst of power
and noise.

"We salute you, Saint-Simon," shouted the walls and ceiling.

"I invite you to come down."

"We are coming, we are coming."

The harmless lust of the senses, which had cautiously expressed itself at the gate of this strange
house in Adam and Eve, was here fermented to opulence, manifold and delightful like sin and
recanted the hypocrisy of paradisiacal simplicity at the entrance. The lust of the senses
descended here in a hundred figures and formed a circle of wild spectators around the
condemned sisters. Groups intertwined into the positions of the theater and seemed to be waiting
for secret cues to swing over into new entanglements, while the loosely wound flower chains, the
twisted tendril ornaments dangled loosely from the ceiling between the flowering flesh. Enclosed
by this round dance of vivacious folly, sat the sisters, a circle of corpses whose eyes still had the
gleam of fear.

In their midst stood the false Eusebius Hofmayer, dusting a grain of snuff in front of his fore
shirt, and, interrupting the doctor's familiar movements with fearfully ape-like grips on the
elongated neck of Sister Thekla, with a surprising flailing of iron claws, with the dry crunching
of saw-like jaws, it began, like a lawyer bringing a lawsuit:

"Ladies, esteemed Sister Basilia and you other esteemed sisters! These kind gentlemen have
saved me the trouble of introducing myself to you by calling me by name as soon as they greeted
me. If you remember the gravestone that bears my name, you will be a little surprised to find me
still in such good spirits and relatively well. I am really in the best of health and have come to
terms quite well with the gentleman whom my friends, the doctors, call death. In exchange for
small favors on my part, he provides me with the best dishes from his table and has even granted
me certain sovereign rights to the borderlands on this side of decay. You wonder, my reverend
sisters, with what right I extend these sovereignties over you. By the power of my jaws! By the
right granted to me over all bodies this side of decay."

"Evoe, evoe," shrieked a female in an unfastened girdle, and the sisters sank still deeper into their
chairs, as if the last hold of hope had fled from their bodies.

"Saint-Simon! Saint-Simon!"

The barrel whooped, throwing words of fury like flickering whip-lashes over the bodies of the
condemned. The hideousness of an orgy of cruelty armed the painted living and drove them
against the living dead. The nudity and the lustful, dripping greed advanced in battle lines. But a
hint of the ruler shooed them back:

"The feast is mine. And he who wants more than to warm himself in watching must return to the
wall."

Then he bowed in the circle of mortal terror, which seemed to give him cheerfulness and
comfort, and said in the style of Eusebius Hofmayer:

"To the most reverend sisters' knowledge, that with the favor of the most gracious Sister Basilia I
will now proceed to the desired, this time quite thorough bloodletting, allow me in all
decisiveness."
He let go of the busy Thekla, whose head dangled with closed eyes from an immensely
elongated neck pierced like a flute, and stepped over her collapsing body toward the abbess.
Three dainty minuet steps forward, one back, then forward again, until, with a polite bow, he dug
his iron claws into her shoulders and grasped her neck with the saws of his gaping jaws, while
the raging spectators rattled tambourines and cymbals, howled, fell upon each other with rutting
bodies, and sought in vain to draw the blood they craved from the wounds of their own painted
bodies. The narrow street in front of the figures of Adam and Eve was animated by the
commotion of unusual sounds. From the cloister came a noise, a wild shouting and-quite clearly-
the clashing of cymbals struck hard. The cobbler and the dog raised their heads, looked at each
other and tried to regain their equanimity. But there was something so threatening and disturbing
in this noise that the dog slunk away with his tail between his legs, and the cobbler with the
baker became the focal point of a small gathering. With a broad wing the message flew through
the town, arousing laughter and fear, curiosity and apprehension, and sweeping uproar outside
the gate whose sides were guarded by Adam and Eve. "The sisters must have been invaded by
the devil," said one scoffer.

"But that they are bravely resisting is clearly perceptible," replied a pious man. The crowd began
to boil and seemed to want to swell up against the house, pushing toward a man who was waving
his hands and shouting in the midst of the people. It was incomprehensible to the cobbler how
Dr. Eusebius Hofmayer, whom he had not yet seen return from the monastery, could now appear
here with a shifted wig and a curved cane. His fists flew against the gate. But no one understood
him. Under the stone trees of Paradise, Adam and Eve smiled, a congealing smile that seemed so
terribly knowing and cruel. The smile of adepts of a mystery in which life and death are only the
characters of a masque. The excitement beat foamingly against the gate, but the daring of a storm
was still distant and incomprehensible, and when the gate wings opened wide, an alley opened
into the crowd. The building opened its mouth to reveal its secret, the gentleman in the house
robe came out and walked slowly away, nodding to the people. On his bald skull zigzagged the
drawings of bone sutures, leathery lips withdrew from bare saws, and from the corners of his
mouth trickled two thin, bright-red streaks of blood. In the dust the tassels of the flowered robe
dragged, leaving red, damp furrows on the bumpy pavement of the street.

In addition, the midday sun was shining. No one dared to make a sound; only clockwork under
the house robe of the strange gentleman purred loudly and powerfully, in a mockery of this
silence and the escaping time.

A cry arose after he disappeared, and the crowd heated up to a new courage, which threw them
into the long aisle, pressed on them from all sides, and forming a mob with Eusebius Hofmayer
in the center, tore into the dining room.

There the sisters sat in a circle, still held tightly by an invisible center, shrunken in their
armchairs, as shells of their former corporeality, now bundles of skins and clothes. From their
bodies the contents had been sucked out, and without a trace of spilled blood a terrible
bloodletting had been performed on them. The walls were strangely transformed; instead of the
white smooth whitewash, there were wildly moving, colorful scenes of serene gaiety,
bacchanalian frenzy, and frenzy of the senses, set by a strong and bold brush in radiant sunny
landscapes. The image of the Savior, however, hung between two voluptuous painted women,
looking out of dark sockets, its eyes cut out, at the circle of dead sisters. A myriad of small
knives, lancets and needles had penetrated his face, neck and chest, as if the crucified had been
used as a razor strop. And Eusebius Hofmayer, who knew the picture well, noticed the terrible
change in the features, the distortion of the cut face, and saw that the mouth, which had formerly
been tightly closed, stood wide open as if in a cry of horror.