The only known account of
the life of Ustave Schlegel is found in the diaries he kept faithfully for what
we presume were the last nineteen years of his life. Indeed, beyond the
Schlegel diaries, now part of the historical archives at the tiny Bibliothek
Verttenberg, there is precious little in the way of extant evidence that would
corroborate the existence of Ustave Schlegel, let alone the events he recounted
in the more than 10,000 handwritten pages he left behind.
Nothing about this curious document would seem to suggest that Schlegel was
writing for posterity, and though he was capable of composing highly
conversational and at times confessional prose, there is no sense of an
intended –or even hoped for— future audience. We also have no way of knowing
exactly when the Schlegel Diaries were written; at no point is a year
indicated, and there is such a scarcity of orienting details –no mention of
current events, political conditions, prevailing fashions or fads, etc.—that
the only consensus among scholars is that the work dates from some time in the
second half of the nineteenth century.
Several
years ago, after the diaries had been discovered by scholars and the material
contained in them had begun to be studied, discussed, and written about, a
popular picture book for children was published that was loosely based on one
particular section of the diaries. It is not my intention to discuss that book,
but its opening line does hint at the inherent strangeness of the material, and
the small controversy Schlegel's work has provoked among historians. That line
also provides an appropriate entry point for an introduction to what I consider
the most compelling episode in a work that is surely not lacking in compelling
episodes: “There was once an old, one-legged soldier who lived in a little
cottage in the woods with a mouse he had taught to speak.”
The rest of the picture book is a fanciful work, almost wholly imagined, but it
is true that Ustave Schlegel wrote in his diaries that he had been a soldier,
had lost a leg, and had a mouse –Tomas—that he had taught to speak.
Schlegel offers very little in
the way of reminiscence, childhood memories, or family history. We do, however,
learn that it had been the intention of his parents to name him Gustave, but
owing to the fact that his father was illiterate and had a speech impediment,
the child’s name was recorded on his baptismal record as Ustave. In time,
apparently, the parents, and the boy himself, came to regard the name as
distinctive. Like his father, the boy grew up to be a soldier. Schlegel wrote
in the diary that “the only good soldier is a lucky soldier,” and as he had
lost a leg late in his military career he could not in any way regard his
service as heroic. After his retirement –and he claimed to have fought in two
more campaigns (whether owing to a conscious decision on the part of the
diarist or not, the names of specific wars and battles are never given) after
the loss of his leg—Schlegel settled into his little cottage in the woods, near
the village of Verttenberg, yet “located at an estimable and comforting
distance from other human habitation.”
The closest neighbor, Schlegel wrote, was an elderly princess who lived alone
in a moldering castle, and though this princess was many years his senior, the
diaries are filled with ruminations on the old woman’s great beauty and
elegance. For a number of years, we are told, Schlegel simply admired the
princess from afar, usually from some hiding place in the woods.
This period of uneventful
stalking --Schlegel reports, "Had I devoted half as much time to stalking
roebuck as I did to surreptitiously gazing upon this beauteous creature, I
would not have known so many lean winter months"-- goes on for nearly forty
pages in the diaries.
Eventually,
however, Schlegel summoned the courage to approach the princess as she was
"gamboling along a wood stream, stirring the air before her with a
butterfly net."
Nowhere in the diaries does Ustave
Schlegel offer a physical description of himself, so there is no way of knowing
whether he was an inordinately short man. Regardless, it seems clear from his
portrait of the elderly princess (he describes her as "two and perhaps
three heads taller than myself") that the object of Schlegel's obsessive
curiosity and ardor was a giantess. Her bearing is alternately described as
"magisterial," "lissome," and "gracile." Schlegel
writes that when he finally mustered the "miraculous nerve" to
approach the woman, he had found himself "utterly bereft of tongue."
Despite what he says was "as awkward an introduction as ever man made to
woman," the princess greeted him warmly, almost, Schlegel says, like
"a long-lost friend."
From the fact that she lived in a castle and habitually wore an elaborately
jeweled tiara, Schlegel had inferred that she was, in fact, a princess,
although when he asked whether this was so she had raised a thin hand to her
tiara and laughed sadly. And then, Schlegel recounts, she had said "in the
most euphonious voice ever my ears had been blessed to entertain":
"Oh, this. A habit of longstanding and perhaps now little more than an old
woman's affectation. But, yes, I was a princess in what now seems another life.
Alas, my father is long dead, and without a king there can be no kingdom,
without a kingdom, no princess. I am all that is left of a wonderful epoch, and
I fear there is no longer much left of me."
At
which Schlegel claims to have attempted an "inelegant bow" and
exclaimed, "You'll pardon my presumption, madam, but you look every bit a
princess to me."
This endearment apparently secured
him an invitation to the castle for tea and saltine crackers, served by a
stooped and obviously blind old man wearing an ill-fitting black tuxedo that
Schlegel describes as looking like "it had been stored in a chest filled
with quicklime."
This
man, introduced by the princess as "Otto Webern, the companion of my youth
and sharer of my sorrows," was allegedly never heard to speak a word
during this or any of Schlegel's subsequent visits.
At a later time, Schlegel reports,
he arrived at the castle to find Webern wobbling atop the counter in the dark
ruins of the kitchen and blindly exploring the virtually empty cupboards with a
stick.
From
this point on, Schlegel makes a point of mentioning that whenever he paid a
visit to the castle he came bearing a basket of provisions.
Prior
to Schlegel's acquaintanceship with the princess the diaries had been primarily
devoted to daily accounts of a Spartan existence and a life of mostly unvarying
routines. This often dry and repetitive material was frequently interrupted by
Schlegel's philosophical ruminations, which are filled with dreamy ontological
and epistemological questions (and often highly unorthodox answers) of the sort
likely to be entertained by a solitary and bookish bachelor of the time. There
was also the matter of Tomas, the talking mouse, whose introduction and
education occupies a good deal of space in the diaries right up until the
appearance of the princess.
We are told that Schlegel was in
the habit of carrying Tomas in his jacket pocket on his daily strolls. The
mouse was also allowed to "frisk about" in the woods while the old
soldier tended to errands.
For almost nine months, however, commencing with the encounter with the
princess along the stream, Tomas disappears from the diaries altogether.
Perhaps this is owing to the extent to which the princess rapidly came to
dominate Schlegel's consciousness. A number of scholars who have spent time
with the diaries --most notably the respected Gottingdam historian Bernhardt
Horwitz-- have concluded that the talking mouse was merely a delusion --or
"fancy," as Horwitz calls it-- of a lonely bachelor; "Pondering
the mysterious document of the Schlegel diaries," Horwitz has written,
"I have often wondered whether what we are peering into in those pages is
not a man's consciousness or history, but his imagination. Even the sections
which resemble philosophy are oddly discordant with anything in the literature
of actual philosophy."
Be
that as it may, one may find elsewhere in the local historical records accounts
--generally, I will allow, cryptic, but a fair number of which we now believe
to have preceded the Schlegel diaries-- of the princess, and the same archive
that is home to the diaries also has in its collection a half dozen depictions
of the castle in the woods, or what is generally presumed to be the same
castle. The actual structure is now gone, of course; it is rumored to have been
razed late in the 19th century, but the various artist's renderings --two
engravings, a water color, and three oil paintings-- all clearly depict the
same castle from various perspectives, captured over a period of several
decades.
What
remains unclear, and local memories and
archives have proved useless in shedding much light on the mystery, is the
history of the castle and the assumed kingdom that led to its construction.
Such obscure kingdoms had vanished from the European landscape well before the
commencement of the Schlegel diaries, and whatever historical records might
have once existed were apparently obliterated by the various wars, pogroms, and
mass resettlements that occurred in the region from the latter part of the 19th
century through the midpoint of the 20th.
Much
of the indigenous population of the municipality in which Ustave Schlegel was
raised and later returned had been wiped out or driven into exile (either
abroad or to the urban centers that were at the time experiencing
industrialization on a harrowing scale); or, in the case of the large number of
Gypsies that had once called the area home, into increasingly nomadic
existences.
It
is possible, of course, that the kingdom of which the princess was the sole
surviving member had been either an atavistic anomaly --some ancient and dogged
strain intent on carrying on in the face of official indifference-- or, as has
been widely hypothesized by some scholars, merely the persistent delusion of a
wealthy landowner, a theory that makes the Schlegel diaries a potential study
in multi-layered delusions.
Though
it has been largely concluded that no concrete corroboration exists for much of
the information contained in the diaries, we do have, in Ustave Schlegel's
words, and in the explanations and monologues of the princess, an unusually
vivid description of the history of the kingdom as it may have existed over the
long lifetime of the princess.
It
is finally, it seems to me, left up to the reader to decide whether or not the
history presented has any basis in reality, or whether it is a fabrication
created solely by Ustave Schlegel, or, staggeringly, whether it represents some
utterly unique fictive collaboration between Schlegel and the princess.
For
my part, having now spent a great deal of time studying the diaries as a whole,
I have a difficult time imagining Ustave Schlegel as a man possessed of the
sufficient imagination to have created the entire history out of the stale air
of his solitude. I believe, in short, that there was a princess, but remain
unsure whether I believe a word she reportedly said to Schlegel.
And
so it is that, after many years of poring over the diaries, puzzling over their
context and content, conferring with colleagues, and conducting largely
fruitless research in the region where Ustave Schlegel lived the majority of
his life, I have concluded that the only worthwhile way to approach this odd
document (in its present state it comprises 42 bound volumes) is as an
open-minded if skeptical reader who is willing to set aside the occasional
doubt and simply allow oneself to be enchanted.
Barring
future discoveries or scholastic revelations, it seems to me that the diaries
have offered up all they have to offer at this time, and what they have to
offer is a strange and comprehensive glimpse into the life and mind (and, yes,
quite likely the imagination) of a curious and curiously affected man who spent
the last several decades of his life living well outside the shadows of a
civilization that was everywhere else on the continent undergoing seismic
changes that would make the quaint and quiet existence of Ustave Schlegel seem
all the more alien and incredible.
I find that what draws me back time
and again to the diaries is the wondrous story at its core: the relationship
between the one-legged soldier and the princess. I have learned to ignore the
questions posed by the work as a whole, and to embrace this story, a story that
I fear is in danger of being annotated and analyzed into academic oblivion.
It is a story that until now very few people outside of academia have had a
chance to read or hear in its uninterrupted entirety since it was first
discovered, in 1986, by a young graduate student by the name of Jonas Beckmann.
A few tantalizing footnotes in Beckmann's thesis (a study of a 19th century
monastic order that descended into debauchery, madness, and violence) led
Bernhardt Horwitz to the Schlegel diaries. Horwitz was an old colleague of
mine, and it was he who first suggested that I might find something of interest
in the work. In this, of course, he was not mistaken.
I
am, at any rate, now prepared to tell as simply and clearly the entire story of
Ustave Schlegel and the princess (the period of their acquaintanceship, I
should mention, lasts a mere nine months and represents but a fraction of the
diaries) and then, it is my earnest wish, be done with it. I fear, however,
that this will prove impossible, for reasons that I hope will be clear to the
reader.
It
would, I think, be accurate to characterize the relationship between
Ustave Schlegel and the princess as chaste, although there is unquestionably
more than a touch of the obsessed romantic in Schlegel's descriptions of the
princess and the time he spent with her. I do not think it is overreaching to
describe the efforts of Schlegel as those of a man pursuing a courtship.
It
is not until almost two months into this courtship that we even learn the name
of the princess: Princess Andadona. It is now generally agreed upon that at the
time of their meeting the princess was approximately 80 years old; from the
timeframe in the diaries we can estimate Ustave Schlegel's age at perhaps 60.
Despite this apparent age difference, Schlegel time and again observes that he
had "never laid eyes on a more beautiful woman or spent time in the
company of one so engaging."
Frequent
mentions are made of the princess's great height, and she might conceivably
have been as tall as seven feet. In one of the few other recorded mentions of
her in the regional historical archives, another local diarist refers to her in
passing as "the solitary resident of the old fortress in the woods, a
strange, towering figure who appears to be an anomaly of nature. There is not a
man in town who could look her squarely in the eye."
In
Schlegel's earliest accounts of his visits to the castle, Princess Andadona is
portrayed as a woman of apparent health and unflagging energy, this despite the
fact that she seemed to subsist on little but saltines and tea. She is said to
venture out every day, in all kinds of weather, in search of butterflies, and
according to Schlegel, who accompanied her on numerous occasions, the princess
professed "with obvious and piteous melancholy" that she had never
succeeded in capturing a single specimen. Following these inevitably futile
excursions, Schlegel and the princess would retire to the great hall of the
castle to play euchre while Otto Webern soaked the princess's feet and brushed
her long, fine, white hair.
For several weeks Ustave Schlegel
hauled his toolbox through the woods to the castle and busied himself with some
of the more urgent repairs that had been made necessary by decades of neglect.
He cleaned the kitchen, restored the old stove to working order, and shored up
the counters and cabinets. He also restocked the cupboards with the provisions
he brought each day, even as the princess remained firmly committed to her diet
of saltines and tea.
One
day while he was approaching the castle, Schlegel reports, he encountered Otto
Webern, feeling his way along the road from town while hunched behind a barrow
loaded with tins of saltines and tea.
In these early days of their relationship Schlegel --in the privacy of his
diary-- expresses frequent frustration with the princess's habit of addressing
him as if he were a child, or a much younger sibling. His clumsy but effusive
compliments and attempts at endearments were either dismissed with a wave of
the hand or entirely ignored.
The
princess was purportedly an intent and intensely competitive card player. While
she played, Schlegel writes, she often sang "mysterious little tunes in a
language I did not understand, but which were rendered in a clear and unimaginatively
lovely voice that made clear the melancholy of their sentiment."
As
the months pass, unusual details continue to pop up with regularity in
the diaries. Otto Webern, we learn, sleeps in a "nest of old draperies
under the huge table in the banquet hall, where portions of the ceiling are
regularly dislodged and shattered on the floor." The princess climbs the
stairs to sleep in her father's old chambers, in a "four-poster bed at
least a foot too short, and which is missing one leg so that it rests at what
appears to be an inconvenient and uncomfortable angle." Schlegel often
arrives to find her propped up in this bed, reading "chivalrous novels
--generally, it seems, in French-- in a murky light which can be nothing but
detrimental to her eyesight."
The
daily butterfly expeditions, always futile, continue to be part of this strange
couple's regular routine, and Schlegel notes that "each fruitless ramble,
often undertaken in inclement weather, seems to leave the poor lady in a state
of profound --if blessedly temporary-- despond."
As
the weeks and months pass, Schlegel steadfastly maintains his courtly reticence
in the presence of the princess. He also becomes increasingly proprietorial
regarding the restoration of the castle and its grounds, despite the fact that
the princess seems entirely oblivious of his labors.
At
one point Schlegel allows the princess to cut his hair, and he notes that she
"did a rather clumsy job of it, surprisingly so, given her uncommon grace
in all other things. And yet, odd as it may look, I would not trade the results
for a haircut from the finest barber in the capital."
A
long, hard winter is reported, and the princess is said to be unwell for weeks
at a time. Schlegel busies himself cutting and hauling firewood and building
great blazes in the main hall and in the fireplace in the princess's chamber.
Otto Webern's health, Schlegel reports, also seems to be on the decline,
although (Schlegel writes) "it is rather difficult to tell given the
fellow's general infirmity, great age, and seemingly perpetual confusion.
Still, I am of the opinion that he sleeps a good deal more than is necessary
for a man of any age."
By
the time spring rolls around the princess appears to be back to her old, spry
self, and eagerly resumes her daily jaunts in search of butterflies. When
finally, after countless such futile expeditions, Schlegel asks the princess
why, given the obvious unhappiness these outings cause her, she persists in an
activity that seems doomed to failure, she replies, "The castle grounds
have a tragic history with butterflies, and as with many tragedies there is an
element of lavishness and loveliness that one cannot but try to recapture.
Perhaps I wish to believe that if I can but recapture some small portion of that
loveliness I might obliterate from my memory the terrible darkness that
preceded and followed it. A foolish notion, I realize, but it is nonetheless
fiercely held and unshakeable." She pointed with her butterfly net and
said, "Do you see that old box tree that grows just outside the shadows of
the castle?" She paused for a moment, shielded her eyes, and stared in
silence. "That old tree could tell you the tale of how my young heart came
to be broken and my father's kingdom lost."
More
information than this the princess did not at the time offer, and Schlegel was
still, in his own words, "in such complete thrall to the incomparable
woman and her mysteries and inscrutable moods that I was utterly incapable of
giving voice to the questions whose answers I so desperately desired."
From
that day forward, however, Schlegel would pause beneath the box tree
on his arrival and departure, contemplating the puzzle of the princess's
statement. "However much I might ponder and beseech," he writes,
"the old tree remained, alas, like all trees with which I am familiar, and
was stubborn in its refusal to divulge whatever secrets it might possess."
One
day, while attempting to repair a chest of drawers in the princess's chambers,
Schlegel reports finding a large collection of drawings of butterflies,
"intricate, lifelike, and demonstrating uncommon artistic skill. So lovely
were these renderings that I could only conclude that they were the work of
none other than the princess." Each drawing was neatly labeled in ornate
calligraphy (Schlegel: "Though presumably Latin, and thus incomprehensible
to me, I had never the pleasure to read such enchanting script, and I delighted
in speaking the words aloud: Pontia Chloridice. Quercusia Quercus.
Brenthis Hecate. Neohipparchia Statilinus. Carcharodus Orientalis.")
A
few days later, when rain had made the grounds unnavigable for the one-legged
soldier and the elderly princess, Schlegel arrived at the castle to find his
hostess in "an uncommonly pensive and restless mood." Perhaps
emboldened by her silence, he had finally summoned the nerve to ask Princess
Andadona how she had come to be alone in the castle.
"There's
dear Otto, of course," she is said to have replied. "We must never,
ever forget dear Otto. But the simple fact of the matter, in this and all
similar matters, is that everyone dies and disappears, and I have not yet done
either. Someone must always be the last to go, and that is apparently my fate.
A fate, which you will surely have noted, that I accept without complaint."
"But
what is the tale the old box tree could tell?" Schlegel asked. "And
what is the source of your sadness? A sadness, I must add, that you bear with a
perfection of grace and dignity."
Schlegel writes that at this point
the princess paused and regarded him intently, "with an expression that I
would swear was full of pity and sorrow, not for her own burdens and memories,
but for mine."
At this precise point, we are
told, "a tempest was rearing. Thunder was rolling through the dank stone
halls, and the fire I had banked in the great hall was tossing monstrous
shadows that seemed as living, creeping things, climbing the high walls and
scuttling across the ceiling. Time and again bolts of lightning cast charged,
sprawling webs in the sky outside the windows and briefly snatched away the
darkness in the room, giving all the momentary appearance of a lost underwater
world glimpsed in a terrible dream, a drowned world in which there were
unfortunate survivors carrying on in the ruins. These terrible illuminations,
coupled with the atmospheric changes in the room, made the hair of the princess
crackle and writhe in a way that gave me fright. Her hair looked like a
breathing nest, constructed of the most fragile materials and abandoned, and
filled with unseen creatures trying helplessly to take flight."
For
some time, Schlegel writes in his diary,
the princess seemed not to have heard his questions. She walked to the window
and stood for several moments, staring out into the storm. Then, with her back
still to Schlegel, who was sitting at a the little table where hands had been
dealt for euchre, she said, "What is the source of any sadness, soldier?
Surely you should know the answer to this question. It is loss, the loss that
is unavoidable to any creature that ever draws a breath or has a dream take
shape in its skull. The loss that dear Otto, when he could still talk and was
my teacher in so many things, called 'The Precondition.' I have borne my loss,
and I have no desire to keep secrets from you, who have been so kind to me. But
you must know that when I give you my memories they become yours, and you
should consider very carefully whether your own memories are not burden
enough."
"The
source of your sadness and the tales of your suffering could never be burden to
me," Schlegel said. "And should they prove to be burdensome, it is a
burden I would gladly shoulder if it would in any way ease your own."
"You
are a gentleman," the princess said. "And in my experience a
gentleman --a true gentleman-- is a rare thing. I dearly wish that my story
could serve as a reward to you for the comfort of your companionship and many
acts of kindness, yet I feel certain that it cannot and will not. It is a story
that I fear carries the contagion of sorrow. Still, because I can see that you
are troubled by the mysteries of this cursed place, I will tell it to you and,
as I do so, pray that you may be spared."
The
princess sat down at the
table opposite Schlegel, took a sip of tea, and then folded her hands in her
lap and closed her eyes. [What follows is an almost verbatim transcript from
Schlegel's diaries. In a few instances, where a word appears to be missing or
the meaning of a sentence is unclear owing to Schlegel's haste in composition,
I have taken the editorial liberty of clarifying to the best of my abilities.
In a handful of instances, where I felt Schlegel's own asides and commentary
unnecessarily intruded on the princess's narrative, I have chosen to elide them
entirely.]
"From
my earliest memories ours was a moldering kingdom," she said. "It was
also a moldering family. Families, of course, can molder just as surely and
thoroughly as kingdoms or homes. My mother died in childbirth, and my father
was by that time a king with precious little in the way of subjects. He had
inherited loss, and accrued additional losses of his own. He was thus a
melancholy man, given to solitary rambles and solitary fits of ineffectual rage
that I would listen to from my bed each night. He entrusted my education and my
upbringing almost entirely to Otto, who had originally come to the castle as my
father's attendant. I would surely not have survived were it not for Otto, who
was a wise teacher, a faithful confidante, and a diligent caretaker. He also,
however, encouraged me to be independent, and as I grew older he insisted that
I explore the world around the castle. I would often accompany him to town on
his errands, and we would have lunch at a little cafe, browse in bookshops, and
shop for clothing and little trifles that might amuse me. I'm sure that many
people assumed we were father and daughter, perhaps even brother and sister.
There were fewer and fewer people in the village who were aware that some version
of life still endured at the old castle in the woods. My father had no friends
or associates; he deemed himself, lacking as he did a proper retinue, above a
visit to the village. The sad truth is that my father seldom talked to me; or
even spoke to me, and I ate all my meals with Otto and a stout, unhappy cook
named Hannah, who eventually disappeared.
"Having
said all that, I would not claim to have had an unhappy childhood. I had no
perspective, of course, having no friends of my own age or gender. But I did
have a first-rate education, natural curiosity, a healthy disposition, and a
sense of freedom that I cherished and which was nourished by the books I had
read. I grew very tall, and had no reason to feel self conscious about this
fact. As a young woman I don't know that I would say that I ever felt either
attractive or unattractive. It didn't seem to matter to me, or to play any role
in my fate. What I desperately wanted, though, and what I suppose any young
woman who has read too many of certain sorts of books desperately wants, was to
be ravished. Good heavens! I had no real idea what being ravished even
entailed, but it was what I desperately wanted all the same. Perhaps my
independence had made me willful; I don't know.
"I
do know that once I had my mind set on the idea of ravishment it was the
easiest thing in the world to bring off. There was a woodcutter who lived in a
hut a relatively short walk through the woods from the castle, and this fellow
--there were virtually no other candidates that I could think of-- proved more
than willing to ravish me any time I had a mind to be ravished.
"I
should say that ravishment, such as it was, proved initially disappointing and
confusing, but I was determined to keep at it until I got the hang of it, or at
least until it lived up to the passion and pleasure of its descriptions in the
romances I had spent much of my young life reading. And we did get there,
eventually, my woodcutter and I --he, I feel certain, a good deal sooner than
I.
"You
will recognize that I was impetuous, that I was foolhardy, and you will not be
surprised to learn that I was soon enough carrying the woodcutter's child. I
tried to disclose this fact from my father --and even from dear Otto-- for as
long as possible, but such things have a way of making themselves apparent, and
when my father discovered my condition he was blind with rage. First, assuming
that Otto had been complicit in hiding my secret, he beat him fearfully and
banished him from the castle. Second, upon coercing a regrettable admission
from me regarding the paternity of the child, he razed the woodcutter's hut and
also banished him from what was left of the kingdom --but nothing, of course,
nothing was left. And finally, he confined me to my chambers, hired two monstrous
fellows from a local quarry to watch over me day and night, and then, the day I
went into labor, summoned a midwife from the village to deliver the baby --a
boy, with a full head of black hair-- after which my father dispatched with the
child in a manner that I have never determined or consciously tried to imagine.
"All
I know is that watched from that very window as my father buried the infant's
body beneath the old box tree. I went to bed that night and learned the meaning
of the word inconsolable.
"After
he had completed his heinous labors, my father returned to his chambers, where
he raged himself hoarse for hours.
"The
next morning I was awakened by sunlight so bright that it made its way through
and around the huge draperies that covered my window. My room had never played
host to such light. I rose as if in a dream and made my way out to the window
overlooking the box tree. The entire tree appeared to be pulsing and alive with
a thousand shifting colors, the whole spectacle made even more dazzling by the
intense sunlight that was sparking now here and now there in the transmogrified
foliage of the tree. It took me several moments to recognize that what I was
looking upon was a frenzied convergence of virtually every species of butterfly
that has ever been identified in this country, and many which had doubtless
never been seen either before or since.
"I
ran outside in my nightdress and bare feet, and stood beneath the swarming mass
of butterflies. Tears ran down my face, and when I raised my head to the sun
the entire sky above the box tree was all but blotted out by new arrivals
fluttering in from all sides and descending into the foliage. When I again
looked down my father was there beside me, trembling with what seemed a
combination of terror and rage.
"'The
butterflies are having a funeral for my child,' I said. My father twisted my
arm and ordered me back inside, a command that I regret obeying to this very
day."
At
this point, Schlegel recounts, the
princess interrupted her story and exclaimed, "My poor Otto is dreadfully
frightened of storms." She rose from the table and "appeared almost
to float through the bruised gloaming of the huge room. A flash of lightning
made her appear utterly translucent, a phantasm outlined in blue." The
princess crouched next to Otto Webern's nest under the dining table and,
Schlegel writes, "petted him as lovingly as one might a dog in
distress." She apparently remained in this position for quite some time,
"murmuring all the while what I assumed were endearments to that ruined
little man."
During this interlude, we are told,
Schlegel closed his eyes and tried to envision all the things the princess had
told him. The image of the box tree alive with the movement and color of tens
of thousands of butterflies exerted, he says, "a most powerful hold on my
mind, and gave me a sense of peace unlike anything I had experienced
before."
The voice of the princess intruded on Schlegel's reveries, and he looked up to
see her once again standing at the window, staring out at the box tree in the
darkness.
"You
cannot possibly imagine anything so beautiful," she said. "And I
could never hope to adequately describe it with mere words."
"I
do not know that my imagination is adequate to the task," Schlegel said,
"but I can assure you that you have done a truly masterful job of painting
a most vivid and unforgettable picture. I feel certain I shall spend the rest
of my life trying to imagine it exactly as you have described it."
"When
I tell you my words are inadequate you must believe me," the princess
said. "I could not myself, given my condition, begin to properly grasp a
spectacle of such indescribable beauty. I know only that I felt, for the first
time in my life, the clear presence of something not of this world. After my
father forced me to return to the castle I recall climbing the stairs as if in
a deep sleep. The light that had flooded my chamber seemed to have permeated my
entire being. I immediately went to this very window to gaze once more upon the
box tree, if only to confirm that the vision was a production of reality and
not my imagination. My father was down there, now wielding an axe, and he was
chopping at the trunk of the box tree in a fury, flailing, uncontrolled. I
suspect my father had never before wielded an axe in his life, and his efforts,
for all his exertion and rage, seemed to barely penetrate the bark of the old
tree. Yet with each clumsy swing of the axe he was shouting and cursing, and
each time he connected, however ineffectually, a huge cluster of butterflies
would rise from the branches of the tree and take flight. I watched with panic
and horror as great waves of butterflies began to wing away in every direction.
The sun was positively erased by their exodus, and I beat at the window with my
fists and begged my father --in words he could not, of course, hear, and would
not have heeded if he had-- to halt his violence against the box tree. I
noticed as he flailed with his axe that he was standing in the fresh dirt of my
child's grave.
"I
tried to calm myself by intently studying the departing and remaining
butterflies, and the brief inventory I was able to make in my mind --the
colors, sizes, and markings-- was so vivid that it has never left me. I have no
idea how long I applied myself to this intense exercise in concentration, but
at some point I looked down and saw my father sprawled in the dirt he had dug
not 24 hours earlier. I was alone in the castle, alone, it seemed, in the
world, and I dashed across the hall, down the stairs, and out into the yard to
where my father lay unmoving and, I quickly determined, lifeless. I can't say
what I felt at that moment, but it was not grief. It was only when I looked up
into the branches of the tree, and then into the clear, blue sky, and realized
that the butterflies were gone --every last one of them-- that I felt grief
course through my veins like mercury.
"In
a daze I climbed up into the tree, higher and higher, shaking the branches and
keening frightfully. Upon my descent I found a handful of dead specimens on the
ground beneath the box tree. I buried them in the shallow earth of my infant's
grave. And then --and I cannot excuse or explain this behavior, and I have
never admitted it to another living soul-- I took my father's axe and hacked
his body to pieces. In a state of delirium I hauled his remains to the most
forlorn and inhospitable places I could find in the forest and buried them
under bramble bushes and stones, leaving each spot unmarked.
"The
next day I sought out Otto in the village and begged him to return. He did so
willingly, and knew well enough not to ask for answers or explanations that I
was not then prepared to give. And so it is that we have lived here together in
this haunted place all these many years. The butterflies, I am perhaps forced
to conclude, were likely nothing but the dream of a disordered mind. Yet, as
you are by now well aware, I cling to that dream, and cherish it, even as, to
the best of my knowledge, not one butterfly has visited our land since that long
ago morning."
"There
is no question you have been vigilant," Schlegel said.
"That
I have," the princess replied. "Vigilance is all I have left."
"You
story causes me great sorrow," Schlegel said.
"As
I feared it would. It is a cheerless tale, without consolation or moral. It is
my great hope that you may forget it entirely."
"I
shall never forget it. And I am grateful for its telling."
"Well,
dear soldier, you are a most peculiar man. And a patient man. I have puzzled
over this matter a great deal, and I still cannot imagine what brings you here
each day, or what possible pleasure you could derive from these visits."
Here, finally, Schlegel found
the courage to unburden himself.
"I believe you to be the loveliest, most fascinating woman I have ever
met," he said. The princess, he writes, laughed loudly at this
pronouncement. It was, Schlegel says, the first time he had ever heard her laugh,
and he was unsettled by it, all the more so because she offered no additional
response to this first real expression of his true feelings.
A short time later the princess
announced that she was exhausted from the telling of her tale and intended to
retire for the evening. This, we had learned, was Schlegel's customary cue to
depart.
As he left the castle the rain had reportedly abated somewhat, and Schlegel
recalls pausing beneath the box tree and running his hand over the bark, where
he detected a series of faded but still obviously detectable scars.
That
night in his cottage he sat down and recounted the day's events in his diary,
and then replayed the princess's story over and over in his head. Was it really
possible, he wondered, that all these events had occurred in his lifetime, and
a relatively short distance from where he had been raised? And could it be true
that the princess had disposed of her father's remains in the manner she had
claimed? This thought disturbed him greatly, and he found himself mulling it
long into the night. By the next morning, however, he had sufficiently gone at
the question from enough different angles that he was able to arrive at
something approximating moral satisfaction; the princess had not, after all,
actually killed her father. In her grief and anger she had simply disposed of
his body in a manner that provided a necessary catharsis.
His
love for the princess was unwavering, and the grief he felt for her tragedy
knew no bounds. He had lost his leg, but that was nothing compared to the
losses Princess Andadona had endured. Schlegel set out for the castle that day
determined to push beyond the laughter of the princess and be bolder still in
the declaration of his true feelings.
When
he arrived at the castle he found the princess seated at the tea table,
shuffling a deck of cards, and, he hopefully surmised, awaiting his appearance.
He greeted her, sat down at the table, and she dealt out the hands for a game
of euchre.
"Tell
me, soldier," she said, "do you believe in magic?"
"I
do," Schlegel announced without hesitation.
"And
I do not," the princess said. "Would you be so kind as to elaborate for
me the reasons for this belief? I remain curious, if increasingly
skeptical."
Schlegel
writes that he found himself at a
"distressing loss for words" as he tried to think of some reply to
the princess's challenge. Finally, in a coup de theatre, he reached into his
jacket pocket and produced --voila!-- Tomas the mouse, who had not made a
single appearance, or merited a single reference, throughout the diary's long
recounting of Schlegel's experiences with the princess.
Tomas is placed on the table and introductions are made.
"This
is Tomas, a mouse I have taught to speak," Schlegel said. "And Tomas,
this is Princess Andadona, about whom you have heard so much." [If, in
fact, Tomas had heard a single word about the princess, there is no surviving
record in the diaries.] The mouse is said to have stared at the princess, and
the princess at the mouse.
"I
sense your mouse is appraising me," the princess said. "I do
appreciate a mouse who thinks before he speaks." After which, Schlegel
reports ("to my great horror!"), Tomas observed, "You are very
old."
Despite
Schlegel's horror, the princess's response is utterly unexpected: "She
clapped both hands to her cheeks," Schlegel writes, "and let out a
prolonged peal of girlish laughter, and then she reached for Tomas, clutched
him to her bosom, and announced, 'I am wholly smitten, soldier. I have never
been so smitten in my life. This is magic, indeed. Tell me immediately, Tomas,
what I can do to make you happy.'" She held Tomas in her fingers and
dangled him before her eyes, which Schlegel notes, he "had never seen
sparkle with such unabashed delight."
Tomas
is said to have replied that he should be happy to explore the premises in
search of some morsel. The princess immediately placed him on the floor with the
instructions, "Scamper to your heart's delight, my darling, and if you
should fail to turn up anything in the way of satisfying morsel I will be happy
--nothing could make me happier-- to put together a feast fit for a
prince."
As Tomas darted off, the princess
turned to Schlegel, clasped his hands, and proclaimed, "I am so enchanted
I believe I should like to kiss Tomas. I feel as if I have found someone I long
ago lost.”
Schlegel was alarmed by the
princess's reaction, and also felt what he was later ashamed to admit were
pangs of jealousy. Even greater was his alarm when, a moment later, the
princess let out a terrible shriek and Schlegel turned in the direction of her
mortified gaze to see Otto Webern stomp his shoe down squarely on Tomas the mouse.
The princess and Schlegel both rushed immediately to the scene, but Webern's
blow had been precisely directed, clearly deliberate, and, alas, lethal. How
this could have been so given the old man's blindness and radically unsteady
gait remains a mystery for the ages.
The
princess immediately collapsed on the floor alongside the remains of Tomas, and
when Schlegel's efforts to revive her failed he carried her to her chamber,
where she never regained consciousness. After keeping an anguished vigil of
several hours, Schlegel reports, he concluded that her heart had given out,
and, grief stricken, he buried her the next morning beneath the old box tree.
For
one week, we learn from the diaries,
Schlegel kept a constant vigil at the princess's grave, waiting, he said, for
the return of the butterflies or "some other indicator of resurrection
that might give me peace."
For
several weeks following the death of the princess Schlegel's diaries are arid
and oddly clipped. He was, he writes, "in a state of intransigent
melancholy. The nights are fouled by dreams, and the days are entirely muddled
by a confused procession of unhappy thoughts and memories. Much of the time I
cannot tell if I am conscious or sleeping, so similar and entwined now are the
two states. Often I find myself addressing the darkness, and find it as
stubborn and unyieldingly mute as the old box tree."
One
day he decides to take Tomas's remains to a taxidermist in the village to be
preserved, "so that I may carry him still in my jacket pocket and perhaps
one day again be reminded of the happy times we spent together and the great
joy he gave my dear princess during the too brief period of their
acquaintance."
Several
times a week Schlegel still makes the now unhappy walk to the castle to check
in on Otto Webern. "I cannot possibly be angry at an old man who was so
beloved by the princess," he writes. "And I feel there is something
in my visits that honors the long relationship the faithful servant maintained
with his mistress."
Webern is reported to be entirely
oblivious to Schlegel's ministrations, which are largely futile given the man's
declining health. One day Schlegel arrives to find Webern on the kitchen floor,
"in a position and condition that suggested a catastrophic fall from the countertop."
He was "insensible and breathing with even greater than usual
difficulty." Schlegel carried the broken man to his customary resting
place under the dining table, swaddled him in the nest of musty old draperies,
and built a blaze in the fireplace grate. He then settled in for what he
surmised was an imminent death.
Schlegel
writes that he dozed for a time, and when he awoke "sensed immediately
that the poor old remnant had expired, and the castle was now truly a ruin, the
forlorn kingdom officially extinct."
Schlegel ventured out into a bright, clear morning and dug a shallow grave
alongside those of the princess and her tragic child. Webern was buried in a
drawer Schlegel removed from an old bureau and lined with a scrap of faded
purple velvet he found in the princess's chamber.
"It
was a piteous excuse for a funeral," Schlegel writes. "Poor Webern
was so reduced that he fit comfortably in a drawer that would not have
accommodated a small child or even a good sized dressed goose."
After
he had filled in Webern's grave, Schlegel records that he sat for a time
beneath the old box tree, exhausted, numb, "without a single dream or
enchantment remaining in my head or heart."
As
he finally headed away from the castle for what he assumed would be
the last time, he found himself turning back and, acting on "an impulse
that was guided by no conscious meditation that I was aware of," digging
with his hands a small hole in the still loose soil of the princess's grave.
Kneeling there, he removed Tomas from his jacket pocket and packed him snugly
in the earth.
"Now
it is done," he recalls speaking out loud.
He
went around to the front of the castle to wash his hands at the well, and as he
turned at last for home, he writes that he heard a sound like "the sudden
rise of the wind that precedes a rainstorm." When he looked up the sky was
filled with butterflies --"the sky, the very air itself; the miraculous
creatures were emerging in great bursts from the woods in the near distance,
swarming up from the grass, exploding from the trees on all sides, and tumbling
from the clear blue sky like millions of exotic flowers flung from heaven. By
the time I limped back to the box tree it was entirely engulfed, an immense,
breathing, gently undulating bouquet. I thought briefly that I should end my
life right there and commence painless eternity with the others."
Schlegel
did not, however, choose to end his life right there and then. The vision, he
writes, made him consider "that I might yet wish to live a good deal
longer, and that this strange, miraculous world might yet have still more magic
to offer me."
And so Ustave Schlegel made his way
slowly home, walking all the while against the "endless procession of
winged pilgrims, resolute, motley, exquisite, returning at last to that fragile
kingdom of dreams and sighs."
