“Yes,” said Bunchy, “it had become history and was no longer myth.’’
“But wasn’t that precisely what my sister died of?” I asked.
“No,” said Bunchy, “though it might well be that renouncing her own myth ate away at some of her life force. But she had to do it. It is dangerous to venture too far into the mythic realm.’’
“Anything is dangerous that you don’t dedicate yourself to unconditionally. I maintain that someone who falls from a rock face can fly so long as he abandons himself completely to the falling.’’
“Yes,” said Bunchy, “until he hits the earth.’’
“What I always liked about Pomerania is its matter-of-factness.’’
“You’re right in this too. But let’s talk about the Odaya.’’
“Do you still remember how I told you that once I had been there with Mother and had a memorable falling-out with her?… It was one of our truly intimate hours, we walked arm in arm, holding each other close, mother and child in heartfelt union, like that other time — was it earlier? was it later? — in Constanta, when my beautiful model ship foundered so swiftly and both of us just laughed and went on to eat ice cream, like a couple in love to whom nothing can matter…. That time at the Odaya, our harmony was even more intimate, if that is possible; we stole away from all the others; not even Cassandra stood between us. And I collected all my courage and asked her whether I could have a pony of my own; it would be so easy to keep at the Odaya, and even if I could come out only once a week or month, it would still be my very own pony. She shook her head angrily — you know well how she turns to stone once she’s caught in her panicky fear. Of course I immediately understood. She feared to let me go riding: I would fall off and break my neck, the pony would trample me or dash off with me, never to be seen again — God knows what else she imagined…. So I said that of course I wouldn’t ride alone, and only near the house, in the yard or park or whatever we called it. Maybe I wouldn’t even ride at all, but just drive the little cart Uncle Rudolf used for his pony, which was in the carriage house. She became quite gruff and said, ‘No, it’s out of the question, and that’s that.’ I was so angry that I ran off to the orchard, where she wasn’t likely to look for me. I hated her as much for her obstinate refusal as for the disruption of the happiness, for her lack of understanding and her manic anxiety. I hated her for having soured our happy time together at the Odaya and for all those other moments when she envenomed our lives by her foolish aberrations, for every pill of Formamint stuffed into our apprehensive mouths. Do you still remember those delicious Calvil apples, with their paper-thin skins, from the Odaya orchard? They were just about the only thing we got out of the farm — that and our Christmas carp and your artichokes; but even those had to be washed in permanganate before we were allowed to eat them. Well, when I ran away from Mother, so full of hatred for her, a whole basket of those apples stood under a tree, and just as I was about to take one out for myself, a giant of a man jumped down from its branches — a kind of cross between Rasputin and Tolstoy, in heavy boots and a Russian-type smock and scraggly hair down to his shoulders and a beard reaching all the way to his belly. He cursed and bellowed at me with the voice of a bear…. He was one of those Lipovanians who came and bought up the fruit harvests in the Bukovina. I hadn’t noticed him up there in the tree and had no idea that we had sold our fruit. Now he’d descended from heaven and was loudly scolding me — I was not only terrified and mortified for being thought a thief, but crushed to imagine that this was meant to be a heavenly punishment for my hatred of Mother. Do you still remember, Bunchy? I told you about it when we were alone at the Odaya, and then you asked me what I really believed in.’’
“And?” asked Bunchy. “What was your answer?’’
“What could I answer at that time? What can I answer even today? What do I believe in? In everything and nothing. Today — maybe with a bit more awareness — less than everything, more than nothing. You know what our religious education was like. You always called us the happy pagan heirs of Christendom. Cassandra never missed the chance to drag me into Orthodox churches, and I supposed it was there that I felt most comfortable in the lap of God, enclosed in that mystic twilight, with the worm-eaten wood, polished dark brown by much handling, and the crumbling gold and ancient red of the icons: a firmament of long-faced saints with the glittering disks of their halos crowning their carefully combed heads; lulled to sleep by clouds of incense and the honeyed scent of beeswax candles, gently cradled by the fluctuating voices of bass, baritone and tenor priests with their beards, their greasy robes and their stovepipe hats. But the most sensually intense faith — if I may put it like that? — I indulged in was the Catholic devotions honoring the Virgin Mary in May, for that was my mother’s childhood faith. Not much remains of it now except a breviary bound in red velvet, which she probably opened for the last time at her wedding and never looked at again, and a similarly unused rosary. Of the Ten Commandments she probably retains only the fifth, though even there she excepts Father. Remember her indignation over his antipapal slogans from the Break with Rome movement, which he had adhered to during his Storm and Stress period? Yet when all is said and done, I’m more than willing to let myself be wrapped in the heavenly deep blue of the mantle of our Blessed Virgin with her starry crown, and I’ve always tried to identify myself with the infant in her arms (though the discrepancy in age always bothered me: either the sweet child seemed too small and precocious or he already wore a beard and lay dead in his mother’s lap)…. Polyphonic bells also aroused emotions encouraging me to surrender to the nameless; the gold in the saints’ halos, glittered as brightly in churches of the Sacred Heart, where guardian angels stood ready to spread open their swan’s wings to guide and protect me on the narrow path over the abyss. Long before all this petrified into the spectacular splendor of Gothic and Baroque cathedrals, which nowadays only evoke art-historical awe in me, it invested my soul with a basic emotional tone that set me off to advantage, mainly over Jews, I thought, although I couldn’t say exactly how. Later on, in Kronstadt, I sang in the Protestant church choir, most gloriously in the St. Matthew Passion: See Him! Whom? The bridegroom see. See Him! How? A lamb is He. O sacred head sore wounded, defiled and put to scorn. O kingly head surrounded with mocking crown of thorn. And soon after that, Nietzsche’s observations on a God who weeps… But we weren’t that far yet, that autumn, how many years ago? — fifteen, sixteen? — it was before our parents separated and before you left us, before I was sent to Kronstadt to the house of the subsequent bishop of Transylvania: impressive man of God, neo-Platonist, with a finely developed Adam’s apple and a preacher’s baritone…. A rigid world in the shadow of the Black Church: black robes closed with silver clasps like knights’ cloaks, limp clerical berettas and philistine double chins squeezed in dignified probity into collar bands and ruffs… And also the singsong of pious Jews emanating from the prayer houses in Czernowitz, and their apostle heads with long side-locks under the fox tails of their rabbinical hats… All of that passed through and over me, leaving traces but no impression in depth. Never mind the hodge-podge of Plato, Hinduism, the cobbler Böhme and shamanic magic that the spiritualist circles around Aunt Hermine infiltrated in my brain the year my sister died. What impressed me in all that — probably because it’s so comforting — was the doctrine of transmigration of souls. How soothing a distance it provides from one’s present life! How long ago was all that? A mere five years of eternity… Well, I make fun of all of it, and yet surreptitiously I cross myself and pray that Our Lord may forgive my heresies; even though I do not believe in His existence, I send my fervent prayers to Him in heaven whenever there is danger of anything going wrong in my life or when I truly wish for something. This, my beloved Bunchy, is the reply to your Faustian question, which back then I couldn’t give you.’’