Shortly after 3 A.M., when the September air was thinly strewn with drizzle, the young Prince Albrecht von Allendorf, known as Elmo to his associates, because of the fire which to them emanated from him, entered the Tiergarten from the Liechtensteinallee, leaping over the locked gate; then found his way to the shore of the big lake to his left; and there, in the total darkness, made to shoot himself.
For upwards of an hour he had strode and stumbled, not always by the most direct route, for he was unused to making the journey on foot, northwards from Schöneberg, where within the small, low room in which the two of them were in the long habit of meeting, Elvira Schwalbe still lay across the big bed in her chemise. She was neither happy to be rid of Elmo, this time surely for ever, nor unhappy to have lost him; certainly not dead, which, considering the apparent intensity of Elmo's feelings, was perhaps surprising, but not fully alive either. The principal upshot of it all was a near-paralysis of will and feeling. Thus she was very, very cold, but for many hours made no movement of any kind. Not until the middle of that afternoon did she gather herself together. Then she spent a considerable time making her hair even more beautiful, put on her taffeta dress with the wide grey and white stripes (very wide), locked up the magic apartment for ever and a day, and proceeded round the corner to the Konditorei, where she ate more cakes than she would normally have done, and drank more coffee, and even concluded with a concoction of hot eggs, having found herself still hungry. Happy, happy Elvira, renewed, strengthened, and made lovelier than ever by just a little suffering; happy to leave us with the wide world once more spread freely before her from which to pick and choose! So endet alles. Later, at a suitable moment, she threw the key of the room into the Spree.
Elmo, the young prince, was perhaps young only by comparison; in that he had four elder brothers, all of whom had always seemed old beyond their years. All were in the army, and all were doing well in their careers, by no means only because of their excellent connections. When not on the parade ground or manoeuvres, they were at lectures and courses, or even reading military books. All were married to ladies of precise social equilibrium, and all had children, in no case only one, and in every case with boys predominating. Despite the demands of service, there was usually at least one son at Allendorf to support their elderly father in what for most of the year were the daily pleasures of chase and gun. Thus too they in turn learnt to rule; especially, of course, the eldest.
The Hereditary Prince of Allendorf had managed to escape mediatization and still exercised a surprising degree of authority over his moderately-sized patriarchy; neither so small as to be something of a joke, nor so large as to negate the personal touch. The survival of so much individual authority in a changed world was not unconnected with the fact that almost all his subjects loved him; and that in turn was because he was an excellent ruler, carefully reared to it from birth, and completely unselfconscious in his procedures. The few who were dissatisfied made tracks for Berlin in any case. It would be absurd to set about the making of trouble in Allendorf.
The Hereditary Prince had long been a widower (Elmo could hardly remember his mother), but he was well looked after by the Countess Sophie-Anna, long a widow herself, a distant cousin (and her late husband had been another cousin), and still quite attractive, including in some cases to those younger than herself. She resided in a large, rococo house, just across the Schlossplatz. When she had first arrived, the elder boys had been doubtful, but Elmo, aged ten, and very tired of masterful matrons (and not yet called Elmo), had fallen for her completely, and could hardly be kept out of her abode, where, among other things, and when opportunity offered, he stole away and, in awe and wonder, went repeatedly through the soft dresses and perfumed underclothes in her bedroom presses and closets. Things were much less formal and ordered than in the Schloss, and no one here ever thought to say him nay in anything. None the less, Schloss Allendorf itself was a beautiful and romantic structure, fantastic as a dream; and the Hereditary Prince took care that the aged, the apparently sempiternal Emperor was as often as practicable his guest.
As well as the Allendorfpalast in Berlin, quite near to where Elmo now sat in darkness, the family properties included, confusingly, a second, and much older, Schloss Allendorf, this time on the shores of Lake Constance, the Bodensee. No senior member of the family had seemingly found the time to go there since the present Hereditary Prince, when a quite small child, had spent a week there with his father. This apparently universal family indifference to the place was normal enough behaviour, but, in the present instance, it happens that there was a specific reason for it: some particular thing (of which details were never disclosed) had happened when the quite small child had visited the Schloss, which had had the effect of his never either being taken there again, or himself wanting to go there when he had become his own master. His attitude influenced those around him, his family and others, without, probably, a word being ever clearly spoken. Probably few of those affected were accustomed to showing much enterprise in such matters as visiting remote family properties in any case. There were elderly dependables to look after the place, year in and year out, and that sufficed.
Elmo alone formed a habit of going there, incognito, or as near to that as could be managed. He had been drawn in the first place by the knowledge that it was from this semi-ruinous lakeside congeries that his family, which was a family to be proud of, had come to importance at the beginning. The family were too closely knit for his elder brothers ever to be actually unkind to him, but, undeniably, there were differences, and Elmo found it particularly felicitous that at almost any time he could withdraw from father and brothers and the wives and children of brothers, to a spot where there was no element of betrayal or disloyalty, and which was of such wondrous beauty also.
If, when the moon is shining and near the full, you scull over, alone, or with some single quietly beloved and beautiful person, from Konstanz, past the Staad peninsula with its lighthouse, to Meersburg, you will experience a peace and acceptance of all things that the wider oceans of the world cannot offer. For some of the time, the scale seems to be maritime, with land, at such an hour, almost out of sight, even beneath the moon; but all the while you are conscious that the smooth and silky water is not saline but the current of the great Rhine, newly released from the Alps. And, of course, there is the clear air; the Bodensee being set at 400 metres above the restless sea. Every ripple is poetry and every zephyr a tender release.
Naturally, Elmo, as well as his brothers, was in the army; but in his case more ornamentally, as was still possible, though becoming less so. In the course of his service, he had met Viktor, whose position in the world was perfectly accommodable to his own (Viktor's father commanded the guard in one of the kingdoms); and in Viktor for the first time he had found a friend who actually enhanced (instead of slightly spoiling and diminishing) the experience of boating on the lake, more often than not at night. Viktor, who was olive-skinned and black-haired, sometimes dressed as a girl for this purpose, and it was as if Elmo had mysteriously, albeit but momentarily, acquired the sister he had so much lacked.
One night or early morning when the circumstances were such, there was an odd episode. Viktor was trailing his hand in the water while Elmo worked intermittently at the sculls. It was hard to tell where exactly they were on the lake. This is always one of the most delightful things on the Bodensee, in that the agreeable uncertainty contains little element of actual risk: soon one always sees land somewhere, sometimes all too soon. But that night or early morning, a risk did emerge, unexpectedly, devastatingly, and literally; because the hand that the relaxed Viktor was gently trailing through the water was, with all quiet around, suddenly bitten half away. He lost his fourth and fifth fingers altogether, and, even when the doctors had finished, was left without a portion of his hand — and, worse still, of his right hand, with which he wrote his verses and fingered the strings of his guitar. Furthermore, the experience had a marked emotional effect also: one proof of which was that Elmo and Viktor quarrelled.
Even so, Viktor, who had resigned his commission (he was offered a job of consequence in an army office, but declined it — as henceforth he was to decline most things); Viktor, then, seemed to commit himself to sitting in solitude and without occupation, each day and every day, on the Bodensee shore. He was not always in the same spot, was indeed seldom to be found in the same spot on two consecutive days; but always he was in the locality, for the most part as near to the fringe of the lake itself as possible, though often half hidden away in a coppice or in the lee of a fisherman's hut. Everyone knew that he had taken up a lodging with an elderly couple who lived in a respectable homestead three miles away from Schloss Allendorf, and that he took all his meals alone, as he did not wish people to see him eat, owing to his maimed right hand, the hand in which one holds the knife.
Elmo, who had not felt himself responsible in any way for their quarrel, though in a manner understanding that it was unavoidable, was concerned as to how Viktor would fare during the coming autumn and winter, the accident having happened on a sultry night in August, and the Bodensee being often an inclement region during at least half the year. One of the doctors with whom Elmo spoke expressed the medical view that the entity which had inflicted the terrible injury had also infected the entire physiology of the victim with some bacillus, perhaps unknown, which had in a measure unbalanced his judgement. On the evidence, this seemed very likely.
As to the entity itself, opinions inevitably differed. Among the unsophisticated, reference was made to the monster known to have inhabited the deepest depths of the lake from earliest time, and to have been actually seen by Carolus Magnus, and both seen and interviewed by Paracelsus. The more general and representative view was that Viktor's injury had been done by a freshwater shark. It was just the sort of random tearing that a shark goes in for, said those who had met sharks in the East and places like that.
There would have been a far greater popular sensation had Viktor been a more popular and acceptable figure, or had he lived more according to his rank, instead of, like Elmo, as far as possible incognito. The nicer people even felt that Viktor would not want to be the centre of a major and long-enduring sensation. Even so, in many quarters at that part of the lakeside, the children were provided with a list of precise prohibitions. Perhaps in consequence, there seemed to occur no record of any child being attacked as Viktor had been attacked. Sooner than might have been expected, there was little trace of what had happened to Viktor, other than Viktor himself, who continued forlornly to haunt the shores of the lake, even, as Elmo had apprehended, on many days during the cold of winter.
Viktor's strange way of life inspired the great poetess who resided in one of the best situated of the lakeside castles to write a symbolic poem, though not all who know and love the poem, are informed about how it came to be written, or would believe if told.
Elmo no longer felt the same about Schloss Allendorf, and went back to Berlin and his regiment almost with relief. But he then met Elvira at a place where the younger officers mingled with aspirant actresses, singers, and (especially) dancers, after the fall of the curtain.
Elvira was a dancer, though she danced less often and regularly after she passed within Elmo's protection. Beneath Elvira's spell, Elmo nearly forgot about Viktor and a dozen others. He was deeply in love with her, and seemingly more and more so as the years passed. He never doubted either that she felt the same about him or that it would go on for ever, even though in the nature of things he could never marry her. He was surrounded by such relationships, even among older people; and in some cases a relationship of the kind had seemed to endure, even though persons who knew nothing about it claimed in a general way that duration was always impossible. As for practicalities, Elmo, being one to whom only the ideal was entirely existent, sincerely believed it to suffice that he had money, where Elvira had little or none, and even less in the way of prospects. Moreover, Elvira was not a dancer in a Paris boîte, but in a minor opera house. There was an inspirational force within Elmo of which the sensitive soon became aware, and which had led to his Spottname or nickname. Even in a tight corner on a battlefield, he might conceivably have accomplished more than any of his robuster, better-trained relations, and sacrificed fewer lives.
However, when the setting was a tight corner by the large lake in the Tiergarten, all decision was virtually taken out of his hands, though not immediately. Elmo, who thought that by now he knew himself through and through, had never doubted his capacity to destroy himself on the instant in the terrible circumstances that had descended upon him at once so conclusively and so unexpectedly; nor did he lack the means.
Never for one instant, by day or by night, had he lacked the means, since, on his fourteenth birthday, his distant cousin, Sophie-Anna, had given him her own, small, delicately lacquered pistol, and bidden him always thereafter to have it with him. She was wearing a lilac dress with a pattern of large, vague, white roses for the family celebration of which he was the centre. "A woman should always have money," she had said in her boudoir before they went down. "A man should always have — this." It was perhaps because of the circumstances in which he had received the pretty pistol that Elmo had never, as yet, once discharged it, though he took care that one of his men regularly maintained and oiled it; but he had been given plenty of practice at the range with weapons of a generally similar kind. Elmo knew how to shoot straight and on the instant and to kill.
But he found that it was difficult to kill himself in the almost total darkness. He was astonished that the effulgence of the city lights, albeit renowned, should make so little impression upon the heart of the Tiergarten. The trees must be far denser than he had ever supposed; and a lake does imply either a moon or a storm. Probably the truth was that Elmo had succumbed to the same near-paralysis of will and feeling as was at that moment depriving Elvira even of the purpose to keep herself warm, and which, with supposed mercifulness, always supervenes at the end of a great love before the months and years of loss and deprivation set in. Sometimes this almost total numbness lasts for as long as 48 hours. But for Elmo it was the darkness that seemed to be the trouble. It was like trying to act decisively in limbo.
Then Elmo actually began to shiver. Partly, he realized, it was the first of the dawn at which hour so many pass that even the insensitive, if in an open space at the centre of a large city, are aware of their passing.
There was a strange, faint, even light descended upon the water, acceptable, perhaps, as the last of evening, but infinitely perturbing as the first of day. All with hearts must shiver to see it and close their minds to thought.
But there was a figure in the lake, or above it: if in it, then not of it. It was a beautiful woman; it was a woman more beautiful than any man could have conceived or imagined as possible. She was white and naked, and she had large eyes, like the eyes of the Blessed Virgin, and a wide red mouth, which smiled.
Elmo knew at once that he had fallen asleep from cold and wretchedness and that this was a dream, devised for his further torment. Because all that the vision had done was to reinstate the thought and recollection of Elvira in full brutality; unbearably to invigorate sentiments lately numbed into brief abeyance. "Curse you, curse you," groaned Elmo; and, as he cursed, the little pistol in his hand was discharged by him for the first time. It was unfortunate, too, that, dream or no dream, his hand was still shaking as much as if he were fully awake at that hour; indeed his entire arm. The vision had faded or vanished anyway, and it was hard to say where the bullet had lodged. There were still occasional duels in the Tiergarten, and small holes were sometimes found in trees. As for the vision, it had probably lingered for less than a second, much as if it had been an apparition of the Virgin indeed. And the pistol was of the lady's kind that contains only one bullet.
Elmo recalled a simple truth that had, as it happened, been uttered in his case, by the mistress of the ballet at Elvira's minor opera house, the lady who saw to it that the girls were properly dressed and equipped, punctual, and diligent, though naturally she did not herself devise any of the works in which they danced: "We do not die merely because we want to," this woman had said in Elmo's hearing. In the faint and frightening light of a new dawn, the big trees stood around watching his every gesture, absorbing his every breath. No other mode of death was possible for a soldier and a prince. With another curse, Elmo threw the pistol into the lake.
Even in this respect, what happened seemed mysteriously significant. That same day the pistol was seen gleaming upwards through the water by a park attendant. He recovered it with the long rake provided for such incidents, and, because the pistol bore on its butt the name of the Countess Sophie-Anna, it was respectfully returned to her by the superintendent, whose staff spent much time in wrapping it with sufficient care for the post. This time the Countess retained it. She merely sent Elmo a short letter. Elmo had, in fact, lost his chance with the Countess, who from now on regarded him with indifference. But the Countess addressed her little letter to the family residence in the capital (she was fully in Elmo's confidence about Elvira); with the result that Elmo never received it, as he had left Berlin by an evening train on the day of his disintegration in the Tiergarten.
Elmo realized that he was dead anyway. Elvira had killed him, life had killed him, the passing years had killed him: whichever it was. There was no need for a weapon, or for action of any kind on his part. When the heart is dead, all is dead, though the victim may not fully realize it for a long time. Elmo had realized when he had thrown away the pistol; and the Countess's action in contemptuously depriving him of any second chance was superfluous.
Elmo went to the Bodensee, because there seemed to be nowhere else where he could so easily be alone, indeed settle himself in a solitude. Before leaving Berlin, he had telegraphed the major-domo (in truth only a senior peasant, elevated, at the most, to caretaker) to arrange for the carriage to meet him at Stuttgart. He reached that other Schloss Allendorf by ten o'clock the next morning, feeling very hungry. Both with sleep and with appetite, unhappiness sometimes augments and sometimes destroys. It was eight years since he had been there.
For a year, he confined himself to the semi-ruinous buildings and to the neglected park stretching vaguely away behind them. He never once went down to the lake, lest he be observed. The park was at least walled, and it would have been a serious matter with the Hereditary Prince if the wall had been permitted to crumble at any point. Elmo never allowed as much as the light of a candle in any of his rooms unless the shutters had first been closed and the long, dusty curtains drawn tight. He gave orders that his arrival was to be mentioned nowhere, and that all letters (if there were to be any) were to be cast away unopened.
He read Thomas à Kempis and Jakob Böhme in copies from the castle library; of which the pages were spotted and flaky, and from which the leathery covers parted in his hands, revealing pallid, wormy activities within. Every now and then he inscribed thoughts of his own on the blank pages of an old folio. It was a book on magic. There were printed words and diagrams only in the first half of the volume. The remaining pages had been left blank for the purchaser or inheritor to add reports of his or her own, but no one seemed so far to have done so. Elmo found, as have many, that the death of the heart corrupted the pen into writing a farrago of horrors and insanities, not necessarily the less true for their seeming extravagance, but inaccessible for the most part to the prudent. Thus another autumn followed another summer, and then another cold, damp winter drew near.
Elmo discovered that even the imminence of spring, the worst quarter of the year for the sensitive, the period of most suicides, the season of greatest sadness, no longer disturbed him, or not that he was aware of. Before leaving, he had told them in Berlin that he was not to be approached: nor were such orders altogether unusual on the part of those in a position to give them. Autumn offered a faint respite.
Not that Elmo abstained from looking out over the lake from various upstairs windows. It seemed perfectly secure, provided that he took care to stand well back in the room; which was often, at that, an empty room as far as furniture or pictures or trophies were concerned. The panes in the windows were old and imperfect, not only defeating the intrusive stare from without, but also adding much to the fascination of the view across the water from within. Moreover, these upstairs windows were very imperfectly and infrequently cleaned. Sometimes Elmo would stand gazing and lost for hours at a time, oblivious at least; but in the end cramp and weariness would suddenly overcome him, in that it was, of course, impermissible to lean against the window frames themselves, as do most who look forth on life outside their abode.
"Jurgen!" Elmo went to the door of the big, empty room and shouted. He had expropriated all calendars, but supposed it to be now the end of September or the beginning of October: a phase of the twelvemonth when cold became noticeable. It was about eleven o'clock in the morning.
Jurgen, one of the resident peasants, came clambering up the several flights of imposing but uncarpeted stairs. Elmo had attached this man to his more personal needs, in the absence of the valet who had been his go-between or Mercury with Elvira, and who had therefore been left behind to rediscover himself in Berlin. The man was in late middle-age (or more), but had seemed sharper than his fellows.
"Jurgen. You see that boat?"
Jurgen looked through the discoloured window rather casually. "No, your Highness. I see no boat."
"Look again, man. Look harder. Look."
"Well, perhaps, your Highness."
"There's something I recognize about it. Something familiar."
Jurgen stared at his master, though only from the corner of his eye. He was not sure that he himself could see anything at all. However, his master's statement was all of a piece.
"Have you any ideas about it, Jurgen?"
"No, your Highness."
"I need to know. I should like the boat to be brought in, if necessary."
"That's not possible, your Highness."
"Why not? We've got Delphin and Haifisch, and men to row them. Or to sail them, if the wind's right."
"It's not that, your Highness."
"What is it, then?"
"If the boat your Highness speaks of out there is the boat I think I can see — though I'm not really sure about it, your Highness — she's not in territorial water."
"Not in our territorial water maybe, but I don't think we shall start a war."
Elmo, however, reflected for a moment. The Lake of Constance was adjoined by several different national territories, with varying statutes and rights. What did it really matter about the boat? What did it really matter about anything? What other thought mattered than that nothing mattered?
He was about to resign the pointless idea, as he had resigned other ideas, when Jurgen spoke again. "Your Highness, if the boat your Highness speaks of is where she seems to be, then, your Highness, she is on No Man's Water."
"What's that, Jurgen?"
"No Man's Water, your Highness, " Jurgen said again.
"I don't know what you mean, Jurgen."
Jurgen looked as if taken aback; so much so that he seemed unable to speak.
"You've lived here all your life," said Elmo, "and your father before you, and so forth. I haven't. In any case, I never came here for history and geography lessons. Explain what you mean."
"Well, your Highness, everyone knows — I beg your Highness's pardon — that there's a part of the lake which belongs to no one, no king or emperor, and not to Switzerland either, and from what I can see of it, if I can see it at all, that boat out there is on that very piece of water."
"I don't believe there's any such spot, Jurgen. I'm sure you think it, but it's impossible."
"As your Highness says," replied Jurgen.
Elmo was again looking out. "Can't you see something familiar about that boat?" It was true that, like most members of his family, he had exceptionally long sight, but he was staring as if distracted. He had even drawn far too near to the glass, though fortunately there seemed none to see him, as he would have been visible only from the lake; and on the lake, that cold morning, there was only the single boat in question, very distant, if there at all. Often there were odd fishermen, and odd traders too, but at the moment none were in sight.
"What is familiar about it, if I may venture to ask your Highness?"
"I wish I knew," said Elmo slowly. "I simply don't know. And yet I know I do."
"Yes, your Highness," replied Jurgen.
His master's words were still all of a piece. Downstairs most had come to the view that their master was simply a little out of his mind, poor gentleman. It was common enough among the great families; and elsewhere for that matter. He was always identifying things and recollecting things and staring at things.
"How are you so sure where this piece of water is?" asked Elmo, not looking at Jurgen, but still staring. "How can you tell?"
"All of us know, your Highness. We know all our lives. Near enough leastways, your Highness. So that we don't find ourselves there by mistake like. "
"Would it matter so much if you did?"
"Oh yes, your Highness. As I said to your Highness, it's a piece of water that belongs to no one. That's not natural, is it, your Highness?"
"If this had been a year ago," said Elmo, "I should first have had the whole story properly looked into, and then, if there had proved to be anything true about it, I should have sailed out there myself."
Jurgen was obviously about to demur, and there was a slight but detectable passage of time before he replied, "As your Highness says."
"But I don't believe a word of it," commented Elmo petulantly. It was difficult to decide to what extent he was still staring out at the lake and to what extent he was staring at the blackness inside him.
Jurgen bowed more formally and clattered downstairs again.
The survival of the lost beloved being so incomparably more afflicting than his or her death, the bereaved is the more likely to vary bitter grief with occasional episodes of hysterical elation, as the dying man, isolated amid the Polar or Himalayan snows, has quarter hours of almost peaceful confidence that of course he will emerge, even believing that he sees how.
So it was that afternoon with Elmo. He found himself growing more and more wildly excited by what Jurgen had asserted, nonsense though it was. The world seemed to be suddenly lighted up with liberation, as in that case of the Polar or Himalayan castaway. Inwardly he knew that any motion on his part, however minute or merely symbolic, would at once dim and then rapidly extinguish the light: he must simply hold on to the excitement as long as he could, for its own sake. Indeed, he had been through such interludes before during the past year, through two or three of them; and he knew how transitory they were. All the same, if the castle library had offered a modern reference book, he might have consulted it. As it was, it contained nothing of the kind later than works left behind (or "presented") by the French officers at the time of the Napoleonic occupation.
When one is dead as Elmo was dead, ideas cease to be big or small, true or false, weighty or trivial: the only distinction is between irritant and anodyne. Long after his false elation had worn off (such conditions seldom last as long as an hour), Jurgen's fantasy still lingered in Elmo's mind as anodyne.
Shortly after three o'clock that afternoon, he picked up the bell and shook it. The wiring of the castle bells had become so defective that Elmo found he did better with a handbell, but it had to be a big, heavy, and noisy one, a veritable crier's bell, or it would not have been heard through the thick walls, and down the corridors.
"Jurgen. I should like to see Herr Spalt. After dinner, of course."
"But, your Highness — " After all, Jurgen's master had not merely seen no one from the outside world for a twelvemonth, but had given particular directions, with serious penalties attached, that no one was even to be told he was in residence.
"After dinner, Jurgen, I should like to see Herr Spalt."
"I shall see what can be done, your Highness. I shall do my best."
"No man can do more," commented Elmo with a spectral smile.
Herr Spalt was the schoolmaster. In other days, Elmo had not infrequently asked him in, to share some evening concoction he, Elmo, had himself prepared according to regimental tradition. Indeed, Elmo considered that he had learned much from Spalt, whom he deemed to be palpably no ordinary village disciplinarian. He assumed that, at some point in his career or in his life, Spalt had been in trouble, so that he had sunk below his proper position in scholarship.
As has been said, the grief-stricken sometimes gorge and sometimes starve. That evening Elmo ate little. Some new impulse had entered his bloodstream, though he could not decide whether it helped or harmed, especially as there was so little difference between the two.
It was past eight o'clock when Spalt arrived. The walk from the village was not inconsiderable, notably in the dark. Spalt now was a corpulent man, grey-skinned and bald, and with an overall air of neglect. There was even a triangular tear in the left leg of his trousers. He was noticeably what is described as "a confirmed bachelor".
"Spalt, have some Schnapps." Elmo poured two large measures. "It's cold in the evenings. It's cold always."
Spalt made a fat little bow.
Elmo said: "I do not wish to go into things. There are reasons for all I do and all I do not."
Spalt bowed again, sucking at the Schnapps. "Your Highness's confidences are his own."
"Tell me how is Baron Viktor von Revenstein?"
"As before, your Highness. There is no change that we are aware of."
"What did you make of it, Spalt?"
"The baron endured a terrible experience, your Highness. Terrible." Spalt's expression had seldom been seen to change. Possibly this was a qualification for his profession. The young have to be strengthened, especially the young men and boys.
"If I remember rightly, you were among those who thought it was done by a shark?"
"Something like that, your Highness. What else could it have been?"
"A freshwater shark?"
Spalt said nothing.
"Are there such things? You are a well-informed man, Spalt. I have found that you know almost everything. Are there such things as freshwater sharks? Do they exist?"
"The ichthyologists do not know of them, your Highness. That is true. But there must have been something of the kind out there. If not exactly a shark, then something not dissimilar. What other explanation is possible?"
Elmo refilled the glasses, lavishly.
"Jurgen, my man here, rough, very rough, but not a conscious liar I should say, has been telling me a wild tale about there being a part of the lake which belongs to no one. To no state or ruler; to no one of any kind, as I gather. Have you ever heard of that?"
"Oh yes, your Highness," replied Spalt. "It is perfectly true."
"Really? You astonish me. How can it be possible?"
"There was not always an international law governing the ownership of open water between different states, and even now that law is very imperfect. It is distinctly controversial in various parts of the world. In our case, the international law has never been deemed to apply. The ownership of the lake's surface has been governed by treaty and even by convention. One consequence, doubtless unintended, is that part of the lake's surface belongs to no one. It is quite simple."
"What about beneath the water?"
The same, your Highness, I imagine. Exactly the same."
"The lake is very deep, I have always understood?"
"In places, your Highness. Very deep indeed in places. There has never been a complete hydrographical survey."
"Indeed! Do you not think there should be?"
"It is hard to see what practical purpose could be served."
"The acquisition of new knowledge is surely a sufficient end in itself?"
"So it is said, your Highness."
"But you must agree? You are our local savant."
Instead of replying, Spalt said: "Your Highness was not then aware that the baron's terrible injury happened on that part of the lake?"
"Of course I was not. Though perhaps since this afternoon I may have suspected it. Perhaps that is why you are here now. But how do you know, in any case? You were not there."
"I was not there. And indeed I do not know in the ordinary sense. No one knows in that sense, except perhaps your Highness, who was there. None the less, I am sure of it."
"Why are you sure of it?"
"Because it is the part of the lake where all strange things happen."
"What else has happened there?"
"Fishermen have seen treasure ships there. Sailors in the service once fought a big battle there — suffered deaths and casualties too. Men whose lives were due to end have crossed the lake on calm nights and perished there, or at least vanished there."
"Anything else, Spalt?"
"Yes, your Highness. A boy I was fond of, already a brilliant scholar, saw a phantom there, and is now screaming in the Margrave's madhouse."
"How often do you suggest that these things happen?"
"Rarely, your Highness. Or so I suppose. But when they do happen it is always in that region of the water. However infrequently it be. I have sometimes thought there have been unacknowledged reasons why that part of the lake has been left unpossessed."
"Yes," said Elmo. "I'm not sure I don't accept every word you say."
"There is believed to be a certain truth among us peasants," said Spalt quietly, and pulling heavily on the long glass of spirits, which, indeed, he emptied.
"I don't see you as a peasant, Spalt, splendid fellows though most of them are."
"None the less, I am a peasant, your Highness."
"Be that as it may," said Elmo, "you are a very deep man. I've always known that."
"There is hardly a man on the lakeside who cannot tell a story about No Man's Water, your Highness, often many stories."
"In that case, why have I never heard of this before?"
"It is unheimlich, your Highness. Men do not speak of it. It is like the secrets of the heart, the true secrets which one man only knows."
"An exalted comparison, Spalt."
"We are most of us two people, your Highness. There is something lacking in the man who is one man only, and so, as he believes, at peace with the world and with himself."
"Is there, Spalt?"
"And the two people within us seldom communicate. Even when both are present together in consciousness, there is little communication. Neither can confront the other without discomfort."
"One of the two sometimes dies before the other," observed Elmo.
"Life is primarily directed to seeing that that happens, your Highness. Life, as we know it, could hardly continue if men did not soon slay the dreamer inside them. There are the children to think of; the mothers who breed them and thus enable our race to endure; the economy; the ordered life of society. Of such factors as these your Highness will be always particularly aware, in view of your Highness's station and responsibilities."
"Yes," said Elmo. "As you say, it is my duty, which, naturally, we all perform as best we can." He came over with the bottle. "Fill up, Spalt. Let me rekindle the dying fire." But Elmo's hand was shaking as he poured, so that he splashed the drink on the table, already in need of a finer polish; and even on the schoolmaster's worn trousers, though Spalt remained motionless.
"Men's dreams, their inner truth, are unhelmlich also, your Highness. If any man examines his inner truth with both eyes wide open, and his inner eye wide open also, he will be overcome with terror at what he finds. That, I have always supposed, is why we hear these stories about a region of our lake. Out there, on the water, in darkness, out of sight, men encounter the image within them. Or so they suppose. It is not to be expected that many will return unscathed."
"Thus with men, Spalt. What about women?"
"Women have no inner life that is so decisively apart. With women the inner life merges ever with the totality. That is why women seem to men either deceitful and elusive, or moralistic and uninteresting. Women have no problem comparable with the problem of merely being a man. They do not need our lake."
"Have you ever been married, Spalt? I imagine not at all."
"Certainly, I have been married, your Highness. As I reminded your Highness, I am but a peasant."
"And what happened?"
"She died in childbirth. Our first-born."
"I am sorry, Spalt."
"No doubt it also saved much sadness for both of us. There is always that to remember."
"Did the child die too?"
"No, your Highness. She did not. The father had no inclination to remarry; and a woman to look after the child — the little girl — would have led at once to malice when the father was a schoolmaster, and required to be an example. I was fortunate in being able to leave the child in a good home. As schoolmaster, I was of course informed about all the homes. She is now in your Highness's employ, but she has no idea that I am her father, and would suffer much if she knew, so that I request your Highness to be silent, if the occasion ever occurs."
"Of course, of course, Spalt. I grieve for you that things did not work out better."
"All things must go ill one day, your Highness, or what seems to be ill. That is the message of the memento mori. And usually it is one day soon." His long glass was empty again, and he was gazing with apparent absorption at the patches of discoloration on the backs of his hands.
The Bodensee is not precisely a mountain lake. Only at the eastern end, in the territory of the Austrian Empire, above and around Bregenz, are the mountains immediate. Elsewhere they are but background, sometimes distant; occasionally fanciful, as behind Bodman, where the primitives live; often invisible through the transforming atmosphere. None the less, around the wider perimeter the mountains wait and watch, as do the immense, unknowable entities that on and within them dwell. When the moon is clouded or withdrawn, there are those areas where the lake seems as large as the sea, as black, as treacherous, as omnipotent; and no one can tell how cold who has not been afloat there in a small boat alone.
So it was now with Elmo. There was no gleam or spark of light anywhere, but there was a faint swell on the surface of the water, and every now and then the clink of ice against the boat, though one might not have supposed the season for ice quite arrived. Never before in his life had he experienced such total darkness. Never in his childhood had he been locked in a dark cellar or cupboard, and never in manhood had he known serious action in the field. Somewhere between the rickety but, as he embarked, reasonably visible castle jetty, with its prohibitory notices, and the part of the lake where he now was, he had realized that the fabric of the boat had suffered from neglect; but he could not see the water that had seeped in, or for that matter yet hear it swill. It was merely that he could feel dampness, and a little more than dampness, when, having paused in his progress, he had placed his hand on the floor planks; which he had been led to do by the almost uncanny coldness of his ten toes.
Still it was no matter to go back for. Life's challenge (or menace) can, after all, never be evaded; and Elmo realized that, within his world of pain, he was fortunate that to him the contest presented itself in a shape so clear-cut, so four-square, defined with such comparative precision by a schoolmaster. Whatever else might happen (if anything did), the little boat would not sink yet awhile.
Indeed, it was perhaps not such a little boat at that: Elmo was finding it heavier and heavier to pull with every minute that passed, or was it with every hour? The darkness was so thick that it impeded his movements like frozen black treacle. The darkness also smelt. Whoever can tell what lies beneath deep waters after all the centuries and millennia; especially under such unmastered and comparatively remote waters as Elmo now traversed?
Soon it seemed as if not merely the darkness but the lake itself were holding him back. It was almost as if he were sweating to pull or push the vessel through frozen mud; through a waste such as only the earliest seekers for the North West Passage had had to include among their trials. For all his exertion, Elmo could feel the ice quickly forming not merely on his face, but all over his body. Soon he might be encased, and doubtless the ill-maintained boat also.
The boat was lower in the water. Elmo realized this as he tried to pull. And it was no matter of a possible leak in the hull. There was no more water in the bottom of the boat than formerly. It was still possible for Elmo to check that; which he did with his cold right hand. For the purpose he had to leave hold of the oar or scull; but the boat was so far down that somehow the oar left its rowlock, thereby left the boat also, and vanished into the darkness with an odd crash. Elmo in horror clutched at the other oar with both hands at once; but this action merely swung the boat's course many points to port, and the other oar vanished likewise as she twisted through the mysteriously resistant water. Elmo's hands were too frozen to hold on to the unwieldy object under such conditions.
Elmo realized that something had hold of the bottom of the boat. He could feel the straining of her timbers, robust enough looking on shore, but out here truly matchwood or less. Indeed, the drag and stress on the boat's planks was by now the only thing he could feel, and he felt it through all his muscles. Nor was there a thing to be seen; though the confused odours were being subtly alembicated into one single sweet perfume. The crackling of the ice against the boat seemed to Elmo to be rising to a roar, although, surely, it was yet but autumn.
It was not, he thought, the same lady that he had seen, however momentarily, however dreamily, above the lake in the Tiergarten. But she was visible all the same; and Elmo at once apprehended how and why. It must indeed be that many hours had passed, though previously he had not really thought so; because here, once more, was the first, faint, frightening light of dawn. This lady, too, had large eyes and a large mouth; but now the mouth was open, showing white and pointed teeth, as many teeth as a strange fish. Although her mouth was so very open, this lady smiled not. And, of course, as in the earlier instance, she was gone almost as soon as come; but, also as in the earlier instance, she brought back to the eyes of the heart the vision of Elvira, dread and lethal and indestructible.
Elmo laid himself down in the boat. He was an ice-man. "Receive one who is dead already," he half whispered to the spirits of the lake and mountains.
The light was more yellow than grey; the surface ice by no means so dense, or even so serrated as Elmo supposed. It is to be repeated it was no later than autumn.
The few remains were far beyond identification. The body had been gnashed and gnawed and ripped, so that even the bones were mostly sliced away and splintered. And, of course, there was no proper head. All had in truth to be guesswork. "There's nothing in that coffin," men mouthed to each other when, in a few days' time, the hour came for the noble ceremony. Moreover, from first finding to last disposing, throughout it was freezing winter, authentically and accurately.
And what happened to Viktor, some have wondered? From the time of Elmo's presumed death, he seemed steadily to recapture his wits, until when the world war struck, a generation and a half later, he was deemed fit once more for service of a land, and, though stationed far behind the lines, had the misfortune to be annihilated, with all who were with him, in consequence of a freakish hit by the British artillery; a lucky shot, the British might have called it. Thus Viktor's death too was not without distinction.