The White Dominican Read Online Free PDF

Aloysia by her dear departed parents. But you won’t tell anyone, will you, Herr Dovecote? Otherwise our daughter’s artistic reputation would suffer. Hm. Well.” He led me to the table, bowed as he offered me a chair and poured me some of the weak beer.
    He seemed to have completely forgotten that I was still not fifteen and little more than a boy; he spoke to me as to a grown-up, as to a gentleman who stood far above him in rank and learning.
    At first I thought he was just chatting to keep me amused, but then I realised, from his insistent, worried tone whenever I looked at the rabbits, that he wanted to divert my attention away from the shabby surroundings, so I tried to sit still and not let my eyes wander.
    He had soon managed to talk himself into a fine state of agitation. Round red spots appeared on his hollow cheeks. I began to understand that his urgent assertions were a desperate attempt to justify himself – to justify himself to me!
    At that time I was still very much a child, and most of what he said went far beyond my comprehension, so that an inexplicable feeling of horror gradually crept over me at the strange dissonances his words aroused. The horror of it etched itself deep on my soul, to reawaken long after I had reached manhood and more intensively with each passing year, whenever chance brought the scene back to mind. With my growing insight into the miseries to which existence condemns us, every word the old carpenter spoke that night grew more piercing, more naked in my memory, until they sometimes took on nightmare proportions. I would experience his wretched fate as my own, feel the darkness surrounding his soul as if I were trapped within it, torn apart by the terrible discord between the ghastly ludicrousness of his appearance and the grotesque yet deeply moving devotion with which he had sacrificed himself to a false ideal, such that even the Devil, had he wanted to delude him, could not have set a more malign snare.
    On that night his story seemed to me, who was still a child, like the confession of a madman that was intended for other ears than mine. I was compelled to listen, whether I wanted to or not, held there by an invisible hand which wanted to drip poison into my veins.
    There were times when, for a few seconds, I felt as decayed and decrepit as an old man, so vivid was the effect on me of Herr Mutschelknaus’ delusion that I was not a young boy, but equal to, or beyond him in years.
    “Oh, yes, she was a great artist, and famous” – thus he began. “Aglaia! No one in this miserable hole has any idea. And she doesn’t want any of them to find out! You see, Herr Dovecote, I can’t tell you the story the way I would like to. I can hardly even write. But it’ll be our little secret, won’t it? Just like all those … all those lids beforehand? There is only one word I can write,” – he took a piece of chalk out of his pocket – “this one: Ophelia.
    And I can’t read at all. You see, I’m” – he bent over to whisper in my ear – “a simpleton. My father, you see, was very strict, and once, when I was a little boy, because I let the glue burn, he shut me up for twenty-four hours in a metal coffin he had just finished, and said I was going to be buried alive. I believed him, of course, and all the hours I was in there were like an eternity in hell. I couldn’t move, I could hardly even breathe. I was in such mortal fear, I clenched my teeth until the bottom ones at the front fell out. But”, he added, very softly, “why did I let the glue burn, anyway? When they took me out of the coffin, I had lost my wits. And my tongue. It was ten years before I slowly started to speak again. But it’ll be our little secret, won’t it, Herr Dovecote? If people come to hear of my shameful past, my daughter’s artistic career will be ruined! Hm. Well. – Then when my father was taken from me – he was buried in that very same metal coffin – and left me his business and his