The Music of Erich Zann
I have examined maps of the city with the greatest care, yet have neveragain found the Rue dAuseil. These maps have not been modem maps alone, for Iknow that names change. I have, on the contrary, delved deeply into all theantiquities of the place, and have personally explored every region, of whatevername, which could possibly answer to the street I knew as the Rue dAuseil. Butdespite all I have done, it remains an humiliating fact that I cannot find thehouse, the street, or even the locality, where, during the last months of myimpoverished life as a student of metaphysics at the university, I heard themusic of Erich Zann.That my memory is broken, I do not wonder; for my health, physical andmental, was gravely disturbed throughout the period of my residence in the RuedAuseil, and I recall that I took none of my few acquaintances there. But thatI cannot find the place again is both singular and perplexing; for it was withina half-hours walk of the university and was distinguished by peculiaritieswhich could hardly be forgotten by any one who had been there. I have never meta person who has seen the Rue dAuseil.The Rue dAuseil lay across a dark river bordered by precipitous brickblear-windowed warehouses and spanned by a ponderous bridge of dark stone. Itwas always shadowy along that river, as if the smoke of neighboring factoriesshut out the sun perpetually. The river was also odorous with evil stencheswhich I have never smelled elsewhere, and which may some day help me to find it,since I should recognize them at once. Beyond the bridge were narrow cobbledstreets with rails; and then came the ascent, at first gradual, but incrediblysteep as the Rue dAuseil was reached.I have never seen another street as narrow and steep as the Rue dAuseil. Itwas almost a cliff, closed to all vehicles, consisting in several places offfights of steps, and ending at the top in a lofty ivied wall. Its paving wasirregular, sometimes stone slabs, sometimes cobblestones, and sometimes bareearth with struggling greenish-grey vegetation. The houses were tall,peaked-roofed, incredibly old, and crazily leaning backward, forward, andsidewise. Occasionally an opposite pair, both leaning forward, almost met acrossthe street like an arch; and certainly they kept most of the light from theground below. There were a few overhead bridges from house to house across thestreet.The inhabitants of that street impressed me peculiarly; At first I thoughtit was because they were all silent and reticent; but later decided it wasbecause they were all very old. I do not know how I came to live on such astreet, but I was not myself when I moved there. I had been living in many poorplaces, always evicted for want of money; until at last I came upon thattottering house in the Rue dAuseil kept by the paralytic Blandot. It was thethird house from the top of the street, and by far the tallest of them all.My rcom was on the fifth story; the only inhabited room there, since thehouse was almost empty. On the night I arrived I heard strang music from thepeaked garret overhead, and the next day asked old Blandot about it. He told meit was an old German viol-player, a strange dumb man who signed his name asErich Zann, and who played eve nings in a cheap theater orchestra; adding thatZanns desire to play in the night after his return from the theater was thereason he had chosen this lofty and isolated garret room, whose single gablewindow was the only point on the street from which one could look over theterminating wall at the declivity and panorama beyond.Thereafter I heard Zann every night, and although he kept me awake, I washaunted by the weirdness of his music. Knowing little of the art myself, I wasyet certain that none of his harmonies had any relation to music I had heardbefore; and concluded that he was a composer of highly original genius. Thelonger I listened, the more I was fascinated, until after a week I resolved tomake the old mans acquaintance.One night as he was returning from his work, I intercepted Zann in thehallway and told him that I would like to know him and be with him when heplayed. He was a small, lean, bent person, with shabby clothes, blue eyes,grotesque, satyrlike face, and nearly bald head; and at my first words seemedboth angered and frightened. My obvious friendliness, however, finally meltedhim; and he grudgingly motioned to me to follow him up the dark, creaking andrickety attic stairs. His room, one of only two in the steeply pitched garret,was on the west side, toward the high wall that formed the upper end of thestreet. Its size was very great, and seemed the greater because of itsextraordinary barrenness and neglect. Of furniture there was only a narrow ironbedstead, a dingy wash-stand, a small table, a large bookcase, an ironmusic-rack, and three old-fashioned chairs. Sheets of music were piled indisorder about the floor. The walls were of bare boards, and had probably neverknown plaster; whilst the abundance of dust and cobwebs made the place seem moredeserted than inhabited. Evidently Erich Zanns world of beauty lay in some farcosmos of the imagination.Motioning me to sit down, the dumb man closed the door, turned the largewooden bolt, and lighted a candle to augment the one he had brought with him. Henow removed his viol from its motheaten covering, and taking it, seated himselfin the least uncomfortable of the chairs. He did not employ the music-rack, but,offering no choice and playing from memory, enchanted me for over an hour withstrains I had never heard before; strains which must have been of his owndevising. To describe their exact nature is impossible for one unversed inmusic. They were a kind of fugue, with recurrent passages of the mostcaptivating quality, but to me were notable for the absence of any of the weirdnotes I had overheard from my room below on other occasions.Those haunting notes I had remembered, and had often hummed and whistledinaccurately to myself, so when the player at length laid down his bow I askedhim if he would render some of them. As I began my request the wrinkledsatyrlike face lost the bored placidity it had possessed during the playing, andseemed to show the same curious mixture of anger and fright which I had noticedwhen first I accosted the old man. For a moment I was inclined to usepersuasion, regarding rather lightly the whims of senility; and even tried toawaken my hosts weirder mood by whistling a few of the strains to which I hadlistened the night before. But I did not pursue this course for more than amoment; for when the dumb musician recognized the whistled air his face grewsuddenly distorted with an expression wholly beyond analysis, and his long,cold, bony right hand reached out to stop my mouth and silence the crudeimitation. As he did this he further demonstrated his eccentricity by casting astartled glance toward the lone curtained window, as if fearful of someintrudera glance doubly absurd, since the garret stood high and inaccessibleabove all the adjacent roofs, this window being the only point on the steepstreet, as the concierge had told me, from which one could see over the wall atthe summit.The old mans glance brought Blandots remark to my mind, and with a certaincapriciousness I felt a wish to look out over the wide and dizzying panorama ofmoonlit roofs and city lights beyond the hilltop, which of all the dwellers inthe Rue dAuseil only this crabbed musician could see. I moved toward the windowand would have drawn aside the nondescript curtains, when with a frightened rageeven greater than before, the dumb lodger was upon me again; this time motioningwith his head toward the door as he nervously strove to drag me thither withboth hands. Now thoroughly disgusted with my host, I ordered him to release me,and told him I would go at once. His clutch relaxed, and as he saw my disgustand offense, his own anger seemed to subside. He tightened his relaxing grip,but this time in a friendly manner, forcing me into a chair; then with anappearance of wistfulness crossing to the littered table, where he wrote manywords with a pencil, in the labored French of a foreigner.The note which he finally handed me was an appeal for tolerance andforgiveness. Zann said that he was old, lonely, and afflicted with strange fearsand nervous disorders connected with his music and with other things. He hadenjoyed my listening to his music, and wished I would come again and not mindhis eccentricities. But he could not play to another his weird harmonies, andcould not bear hearing them from another; nor could he bear having anything inhis room touched by an-other. He had not known until our hallway conversationthat I could overhear his playing in my room, and now asked me if I wouldarrange with Blandot to take a lower room where I could not hear him in thenight. He would, he wrote, defray the difference in rent.As I sat deciphering the execrable French, I felt more lenient toward theold man. He was a victim of physical and nervous suffering, as was I; and mymetaphysical studies had taught me kindness. In the silence there came a slightsound from the windowthe shutter must have rattled in the night wind, and forsome reason I started almost as violently as did Erich Zann. So when I hadfinished reading, I shook my host by the hand, and departed as a friend.The next day Blandot gave me a more expensive room on the third floor,between the apartments of an aged money-lender and the room of a respectableupholsterer. There was no one on the fourth floor.It was not long before I found that Zanns eagerness for my company was notas great as it had seemed while he was persuading me to move down from the fifthstory. He did not ask me to call on him, and when I did call he appeared uneasyand played listlessly. This was always at nightin the day he slept and wouldadmit no one. My liking for him did not grow, though the attic room and theweird music seemed to hold an odd fascination for me. I had a curious desire tolook out of that window, over the wall and down the unseen slope at theglittering roofs and spires which must lie outspread there. Once I went up tothe garret during theater hours, when Zann was away, but the door was locked.What I did succeed in doing was to overhear the nocturnal playing of thedumb old man. At first I would tip-toe up to my old fifth floor, then I grewbold enough to climb the last creaking staircase to the peaked garret. There inthe narrow hall, outside the bolted door with the covered keyhole, I often heardsounds which filled me with an indefinable dreadthe dread of vague wonder andbrooding mystery. It was not that the sounds were hideous, for they were not;but that they held vibrations suggesting nothing on this globe of earth, andthat at certain intervals they assumed a symphonic quality which I could hardlyconceive as produced by one player. Certainly, Erich Zann was a genius of wildpower. As the weeks passed, the playing grew wilder, whilst the old musicianacquired an increasing haggardness and furtiveness pitiful to behold. He nowrefused to admit me at any time, and shunned me whenever we met on the stairs.Then one night as I listened at the door, I heard the shrieking viol swellinto a chaotic babel of sound; a pandemonium which would have led me to doubt myown shaking sanity had there not come from behind that barred portal a piteousproof that the horror was realthe awful, inarticulate cry which only a mute canutter, and which rises only in moments of the most terrible fear or anguish. Iknocked repeatedly at the door, but received no response. Afterward I waited inthe black hallway, shivering with cold and fear, till I heard the poormusicians feeble effort to rise from the floor by the aid of a chair. Believinghim just conscious after a fainting fit, I renewed my rapping, at the same timecalling out my name reassuringly. I heard Zann stumble to the window and closeboth shutter and sash, then stumble to the door, which he falteringly unfastenedto admit me. This time his delight at having me present was real; for hisdistorted face gleamed with relief while he clutched at my coat as a childclutches at its mothers skirts.Shaking pathetically, the old man forced me into a chair whilst he sank intoanother, beside which his viol and bow lay carelessly on the floor. He sat forsome time inactive, nodding oddly, but having a paradoxical suggestion ofintense and frightened listening. Subsequently he seemed to be satisfied, andcrossing to a chair by the table wrote a brief note, handed it to me, andreturned to the table, where he began to write rapidly and incessantly. The noteimplored me in the name of mercy, and for the sake of my own curiosity, to waitwhere I was while he prepared a full account in German of all the marvels andterrors which beset him. I waited, and the dumb mans pencil flew.It was perhaps an hour later, while I still waited and while the oldmusicians feverishly written sheets still continued to pile up, that I saw Zannstart as from the hint of a horrible shock. Unmistakably he was looking at thecurtained window and listening shudderingly. Then I half fancied I heard a soundmyself; though it was not a horrible sound, but rather an exquisitely low andinfinitely distant musical note, suggesting a player in one of the neighboringhouses, or in some abode beyond the lofty wall over which I had never been ableto look. Upon Zann the effect was terrible, for, dropping his pencil, suddenlyhe rose, seized his viol, and commenced to rend the night with the wildestplaying I had ever heard from his bow save when listening at the barred door.It would be useless to describe the playing of Erich Zann on that dreadfulnight. It was more horrible than anything I had ever overheard, because I couldnow see the expression of his face, and could realize that this time the motivewas stark fear. He was trying to make a noise; to ward something off or drownsomething outwhat, I could not imagine, awesome though I felt it must be. Theplaying grew fantastic, dehnous, and hysterical, yet kept to the last thequalities of supreme genius which I knew this strange old man possessed. Irecognized the airit was a wild Hungarian dance popular in the theaters, and Ireflected for a moment that this was the first time I had ever heard Zann playthe work of another composer.Louder and louder, wilder and wilder, mounted the shrieking and whining ofthat desperate viol. The player was dripping with an uncanny perspiration andtwisted like a monkey, always looking frantically at the curtained window. Inhis frenzied strains I could almost see shadowy satyrs and bacchanals dancingand whirling insanely through seething abysses of clouds and smoke andlightning. And then I thought I heard a shriller, steadier note that was notfrom the viol; a calm, deliberate, purposeful, mocking note from far away in theWest.At this juncture the shutter began to rattle in a howling night wind whichhad sprung up outside as if in answer to the mad playing within. Zannsscreaming viol now outdid itself emitting sounds I had never thought a violcould emit. The shutter rattled more loudly, unfastened, and commenced slammingagainst the window. Then the glass broke shiveringly under the persistentimpacts, and the chill wind rushed in, making the candles sputter and rustlingthe sheets of paper on the table where Zann had begun to write out his horriblesecret. I looked at Zann, and saw that he was past conscious observation. Hisblue eyes were bulging, glassy and sightless, and the frantic playing had becomea blind, mechanical, unrecognizable orgy that no pen could even suggest.A sudden gust, stronger than the others, caught up the manuscript and boreit toward the window. I followed the flying sheets in desperation, but they weregone before I reached the demolished panes. Then I remembered my old wish togaze from this window, the only window in the Rue dAuseil from which one mightsee the slope beyond the wall, and the city outspread beneath. It was very dark,but the citys lights always burned, and I expected to see them there amidst therain and wind. Yet when I looked from that highest of all gable windows, lookedwhile the candles sputtered and the insane viol howled with the night-wind, Isaw no city spread below, and no friendly lights gleamed from rememberedstreets, but only the blackness of space illimitable; unimagined space alivewith motion and music, and having no semblance of anything on earth. And as Istood there looking in terror, the wind blew out both the candles in thatancient peaked garret, leaving me in savage and impenetrable darkness with chaosand pandemonium before me, and the demon madness of that night-baying violbehind me.I staggered back in the dark, without the means of striking a light,crashing against the table, overturning a chair, and finally groping my way tothe place where the blackness screamed with shocking music. To save myself andErich Zann I could at least try, whatever the powers opposed to me. Once Ithought some chill thing brushed me, and I screamed, but my scream could not beheard above that hideous viol. Suddenly out of the blackness the madly sawingbow struck me, and I knew I was close to the player. I felt ahead, touched theback of Zanns chair, and then found and shook his shoulder in an effort tobring him to his senses.He did not respond, and still the viol shrieked on without slackening. Imoved my hand to his head, whose mechanical nodding I was able to stop, andshouted in his ear that we must both flee from the unknown things of the night.But he neither answered me nor abated the frenzy of his unutterable music, whileall through the garret strange currents of wind seemed to dance in the darknessand babel. When my hand touched his ear I shuddered, though I knew not whyknewnot why till I felt the still face; the ice-cold, stiffened, unbreathing facewhose glassy eyes bulged uselessly into the void. And then, by some miracle,finding the door and the large wooden bolt, I plunged wildly away from thatglassy-eyed thing in the dark, and from the ghoulish howling of that accursedviol whose fury increased even as I plunged.Leaping, floating, flying down those endless stairs through the dark house;racing mindlessly out into the narrow, steep, and ancient street of steps andtottering houses; clattering down steps and over cobbles to the lower streetsand the putrid canyon-walled river; panting across the great dark bridge to thebroader, healthier streets and boulevards we know; all these are terribleimpressions that linger with me. And I recall that there was no wind, and thatthe moon was out, and that all the lights of the city twinkled.Despite my most careful searches and investigations, I have never since beenable to find the Rue dAuseil. But I am not wholly sorry; either for this or forthe loss in undreamable abysses of the closely-written sheets which alone couldhave explained the music of Erich Zann.
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