In November 1919 a mute young woman was found wandering the streets of Vienna. She was handed over to the care of a neurologist, who wrote up her case in an issue of Nervenkrankheiten. No lesion, he concluded, could explain her condition, nothing organic, only a childhood deprived of language. Since she could not say who she was or what had happened to her, he welcomed correspondence from anyone with information about her past. He received a single response, from a patient at a Carinthian sanatorium who claimed to be her father. The girl’s name, the man wrote, is Margarete—Gretel—and her childhood, whatever its privations, hardly lacked for language! Indeed, until his present confinement put an end to it, he used to tell her a bedtime story each and every night. He wrote now only to resume that cherished ritual. The doctor was asked to read her the enclosed story, titled A: THE ARCHITECT. She would understand it. The next day brought another story, B: THE BALLET MASTER, and the next day another, C: THE CHOIRMASTER, until there were twenty-six of them. Then they stopped, and the man wasn’t heard from again. Whether the neurologist read her these stories, whether she understood them, whether she ever acquired the faculty of speech—not known. The letters were later sent on to Dr. Hans Prinzhorn, presumably in hopes of their inclusion in his celebrated collection of the art of the mad. Evidently Prinzhorn found them unsuitable; they turned up in his archives some eighty years later.
ATHE ARCHITECT OF ADVANCED AGE AT LAST BUILDS AN ABODE …
He is already old when he is hired to build his first building.
He is to build a new building for a high-end jeweler, with an atelier and apartments above it.
He declares that he intends to build a building far simpler than any building yet built. All buildings built to this point have been much too complicated. Even those buildings famous for their simplicity are too complicated, much too complicated!
Yet owing to the location of this particular building, on the same square as the Duke’s residence, and facing the wing of the residence in which the youngest and most innocent of the Duke’s seven daughters has her bedroom, the municipal authorities are reluctant to grant the architect permission to make the building as simple as he wishes.
To win their support, the architect proposes to lead the municipal authorities, as well as any interested members of the public, on a full-day architectural tour of the city in which he will point out only those buildings that have been built in a sufficiently simple manner, a manner befitting the function of a building as a dwelling place for man. By the end of the day it is observed that the architect has not pointed out a single building.
The architect offers this full-day architectural tour three days in a row. Never once does he point out a building.
This performance has the desired effect. The municipal authorities permit construction of the building to proceed. When it is finished, however, they determine that this building, which is even simpler than its blueprints had given them cause to imagine, is too simple, alarmingly simple, and that the completely unadorned facade, which the littlest Princess will inevitably gaze out on when she comes to her window each morning, poses a threat (the nature of which they are unable to articulate) to her innocence.
They therefore order the architect to adorn the bare facade.
He refuses.
Again and again they order him to adorn the bare facade, and again and again he refuses to adorn it. Their conflict comes to an end only with the architect’s suggestion that he provide a daily adornment of the facade through the judicious use of flowerboxes, which he himself, by means of a hydraulic lift, will hang beneath every window at seven in the morning, before the Princess has risen, and remove again at nine at night, after she has gone to sleep. From nine at night to seven in the morning the building will assume its true form.
This compromise, which both safeguards the innocence of the little Princess and preserves the simplicity of the architect’s building, manages to satisfy all parties, including the manufacturer of fine jewelry.
But the architect is cautioned that if, one morning, he neglects to hang the flowerboxes in time, or if, one night, he removes them too soon, and thereby allows the little Princess (who has never before laid eyes on a facade without an adornment of one kind or another) to glimpse the bare facade, the effect of which on such an innocent girl can only be imagined, the consequences for the architect’s career, to say nothing of his building, will be severe.
His diligence in this matter proves to be beyond reproach. Early every morning and late into the night he can be found without fail on his hydraulic lift, hanging and unhanging flowerboxes. When the Princess flings open her curtains the facade that greets her is never anything less than conventionally adorned, and so it remains when she draws the curtains shut.
In time the architect develops a real affection for the Princess, an almost paternal affection, and he begins to take pleasure in the hanging of the flowerboxes, which he arranges with flowers specially calculated to win her approval, an approval she signals each morning with a bashful smile.
It cannot be denied that his flowers make her happy.
Long past the point in life when he believed himself capable of such transformations, he begins to reconsider his view of architecture.
One night, after he has removed the last flowerbox, he decides that when he hangs them again the next morning, he will screw them permanently in place.
But no sooner has he come to this decision than the light in the Princess’s bedroom turns on. This is something that has never happened before. The architect thinks to himself: She has had a bad dream. He sees her shadow in the curtains. She is coming toward the window. She is going to open the curtains and look out. The architect does not have time to put the flowerboxes back on.
She is going to see the flowerboxless facade.
She is going to see the flowerboxless facade.
What will happen to the little Princess when she sees the flowerboxless facade?
Just as the Princess flings open the curtains, however, the architect is struck by the idea of turning his body into a spectacle. So the Princess scarcely notices the facade, all of her attention is drawn to the architect who’s made a spectacle of his body. As a grown-up she will describe the moment she saw the architect on the hydraulic lift making a spectacle of his body in order to deflect her attention from the facade without flowerboxes as one of the two or three most formative moments of her childhood. When she draws the curtains shut again, the architect is certain that her innocence remains intact, and to protect himself from those architectural adversaries of his who will try to claim otherwise he publishes a precise account of what transpired that night. Whereupon he is committed to the Sanatorium Dr. Krakauer. From here he mails the municipal authorities a letter each morning informing them which combinations of flowers are likely to delight the Princess most.
The municipal authorities, who have the decency at least to execute his recommended floral arrangements, are unaware that by means of these ostensibly delightful arrangements the architect is in reality sending the little Princess messages containing information crucial to her continued survival in a city that is already much too complicated and which with every passing moment is only becoming ever more so …
Good night, my dear Gretel!
BTHE BALLET MASTER BURIES HIMSELF IN THE BAROQUE …
He uses his young daughter’s wooden wagon to cart home from the Municipal Library book after book on the history of Baroque dance. Preclassical dance. His wife, who is also his principal dancer, is taken aback by the abuse he begins heaping on the art of classical ballet, to which until now they have jointly—and, she had thought, sincerely—devoted their lives. He informs her that the language of classical ballet, with all of its artifice, its five positions of the feet, is no longer sufficient for him, he can no longer express in it all that he needs to express, comments which seem calculated to wound her, for she is widely regarded as the world’s greatest practitioner of classical ballet and her name is practically synonymous with that art.
To their young daughter the principal dancer poses questions the daughter is far too young to answer: What has happened to Papa? What does Papa mean by this? What does Papa seek in the Baroque?
When the principal dancer stands in the middle of the hallway and asks the ballet master in a theatrical manner whether she ought to feel ashamed that she has never felt the least bit constricted by classical ballet, not the least bit bored or deprived, he wheels a wagonful of books on Baroque dance in a wide arc around her body and replies, as he disappears into his office and locks the door, that that is a strange sort of question to ask. From inside his office he hears her emit a whimper just loud enough (and probably intentionally so) to wake their young daughter, who issues a piercing cry: Mama!
Eventually the ballet master exhausts the Municipal Library’s ample holdings of books on Baroque dance and begins carting home books on the pre-Baroque, and then the pre-pre-Baroque, back toward the beginning of dance …
What does Papa expect to find in the pre-Baroque? In the pre-pre-Baroque? Questions the daughter is far too young to answer.
After a long period of immersion in these texts, the ballet master emerges from his office and announces that he has discovered a new position of the feet, a sixth position of the feet, a far more natural position of the feet, probably the most natural possible position of the feet, a foot position in perfect harmony with the needs and the nature of the human body.
The principal dancer, however, is unable to put her feet in this position without immediately falling over.
It does not escape the ballet master that the—ostensible—inability of his wife, the most technically skilled ballerina in Europe, to stand in this perfectly simple, perfectly natural position is the means by which she can express her anxiety about his artistic trajectory, which seems to be bending away from her; she suspects that when he choreographs now he pictures in his mind a different body than he did before, and in a way she is not wrong; but she does not dare say any of this aloud, only by means of these expertly contrived falls; and so, in the face of her falling, her constant simulated falling, he displays a forbearance uncharacteristic of him, and restricts himself to informing her with a low bow that he has already begun choreographing a full-length ballet in which the foot position in question is to play a central part.
He promptly completes this ballet, well before his wife has mastered the ability to stand in the position.
The ballet requires her to stand in the position almost uninterruptedly for about three hours. Every step begins in the position, every step ends in the position. In this movement from the position to the position, every step passes through the position. For three hours, the position. The ballet is to be performed without intermission.
She begs him to postpone the premiere of the ballet until such time as she is able to stand in the required position without falling over.
He knows, but does not say, that when she is actually performing before her legions of fans, who number among them the Duke himself and his dance-crazy daughters, she will be able to stand in the position without the slightest difficulty. It is a position anyone can stand in, because it is the position we were meant to stand in, and once stood in, before we began to scrutinize how we stand. But he does not say this. He merely replies that for logistical reasons the premiere of the ballet cannot be postponed.
She whispers something into the ear of their young daughter. He watches her whisper it, and she watches him watch her, and he can’t help but notice that as she watches him watch her whisper it, her eyes gleam insanely. Later, when he presses his daughter to tell him what Mama said, she says Mama said that there is nothing natural about Papa’s foot position! That Papa spent more than two years alone in his office coming up with a crazy way to position the feet! A really crazy way to position the feet! That something strange is happening to Papa! That we must keep our eyes on Papa! That Mama feels sorry for Papa but she is also afraid of Papa! That Papa’s foot position is not at all natural! That the feet don’t go that way! That Papa wants to make a fool of Mama and has figured out how to do so! But that if Mama falls onstage it will make a fool of Papa too!
The mental state of the principal dancer begins to concern the ballet master. But at the same time it enrages him that in what is fundamentally an aesthetic struggle, between her commitment to the stylized and the artificial and his own exploration of the ever more natural, the principal dancer would enlist their daughter, who is far too young to understand the aesthetic nature of it and must therefore interpret it in a more personal way. Indeed, his daughter, who he suddenly notices has been dressed in a smaller version of the principal dancer’s own elaborately filigreed outfit, now flinches in fear of him. He returns to her her wooden wagon, with admiring words for its simple, sturdy construction (“Humanity has not yet improved upon the wagon!”), but this does nothing to repair their relationship. He suppresses his anger long enough to reiterate to his wife that the premiere of the ballet will take place as scheduled.
In the days before the premiere the ballet master and the principal dancer regard each other with hatred, fear, and disgust.
The night of the premiere arrives.
The curtain rises at the City Theater.
The principal dancer emerges from the wings to clamorous applause, performs a series of pirouettes toward the lip of the stage, comes to a halt there in the new position of the feet, and plummets headfirst into the orchestra pit, producing, from the collision of her skull with the edge of a kettledrum, a sound that the audience construes as comic, until a piercing cry of Mama! silences their laughter.
The principal dancer is brought home to the family villa. Now and then her limbs flail in a disturbing fashion, but a physician declares that in the technical sense of the term she is no longer alive. The ballet master deems it in his daughter’s best interest not to see her mother in this state. The next morning he notifies the journalists and balletomanes gathered on the lawn, including the sobbing Duke and his seven somber daughters, that the principal dancer has died. That is how her own daughter learns of it. But she is far too young to know what it means. The questions she poses indicate beyond any doubt that she does not know what it means to die. Nor does she stop demanding to see her mother, until finally the ballet master—who can no longer ignore, as he observes the affected way she prances about and positions her feet, in her finely filigreed outfit, that his daughter, as young as she is, has already been claimed by classical ballet—ships her off to the Imperial Ballet School in St. Petersburg.
Then in the family villa it is once again just the ballet master and the principal dancer. For as it turns out, she isn’t dead. The physician got it wrong. The fact is, doctors don’t know anything about movement. They always get it wrong when they try to deduce something about our minds from our movements. No one knows anything about movement, everyone knows everything about the mind, no one knows anything about movement. It turns out she’s not dead. As a matter of fact, she hasn’t moved so expressively in quite a long time. Probably since before her most advanced ballet classes. These advanced ballet classes, he tells her, stroking her face, these advanced classes that did so much harm: these advanced ballet classes have been effectively undone.
Her feet, he notices, are in sixth position.
He is pleased to point this out to her.
Now he can teach her to dance.
CTHE CHOIRMASTER CAN FEEL THE CONGREGATION’S CONTEMPT AS HE CONDUCTS THE CANONICAL COMPOSER’S CANTATA …
Their eyes bore into his back because he cannot coax from the throats of his boys as pure a sound as the great composer once coaxed from them.
What he coaxes from the throat of Hillmeyer, alto soloist, is, in particular, less pure than it ought to be.
He tries in his classes to work on the boys’ voices, but the boys are rambunctious, he can hardly control them, there is little improvement.
The rector of the boarding school, who along with the choirmaster is responsible for the welfare of its fifty-five choirboys, a responsibility that in light of their rambunctiousness has aged him prematurely, does his best to reassure his colleague. The eyes of the parishioners are on his back only because the conductor’s back is a natural focal point for their gaze; and since no one can possibly know how the choir sounded a century ago, under the direction of the canonical composer, no one is drawing any unfavorable comparisons.
The choirmaster is reassured. It is only in his own head that comparisons are being drawn to the purity of the sound elicited by the composer. For the first time he takes pleasure in his position. The quality of the boys’ singing, even Hillmeyer’s singing, pleases him, it is pure enough, and their rambunctiousness, even Hillmeyer’s rambunctiousness, delights him. He hears himself saying to the rector: When you have tired of the rambunctiousness of boys, you’ve tired of life itself! Yes, he loves the boys, the fifty-five boys. The choirmaster proposes a toast: To the rambunctiousness of the boys!
The next Sunday, however, as his choir sings another cantata, he feels the congregation’s eyes again boring into his back, a feeling that does not go away even after the church has cleared out. It can no longer be doubted that a trace of a memory of the canonical composer’s sound has indeed been preserved in the collective consciousness of the city.
Then the choirmaster realizes that the church has not cleared out completely.
There is still an old woman in the third pew.
The old woman speaks.
Copyright © 2024 by Adam Ehrlich Sachs
