Santschin bows.

By morning Santschin lay in a cold sweat. Great drops formed like glass blisters on his brow. Everything smelt of vinegar, urine and stale air.

Frau Santschin keened gently. She pressed against the door. We left her to cry.

As Stasia and I left, Ignatz bade us good morning. He was standing in the corridor so naturally that this might have been his permanent position, here and nowhere else in the world.

‘Santschin is really going to die?’ asks Ignatz.

At this moment it seems to me that death has assumed the face of the old lift-boy and is now standing there, waiting for a soul.

X

Santschin was buried at three in the afternoon, in a remote section of the east cemetery.

Anyone who might wish to visit his grave in winter will have hard work digging his way through with spade and shovel. All paupers who are buried at the expense of the town are placed a long way out and only after another three generations will this outlying part of the graveyard reveal human occupancy.

But by then it will not be possible to find Santschin’s grave.

Not even Abel Glanz, the poor prompter, will lie so far away.

Santschin’s grave is in the cold clay – I looked into it as they were burying him – and his defenceless bones are given over to the beasts of the earth.

Santschin lay for three days at the Variétés because the Savoy is decidedly no hotel for the dead, but only for the very much alive. He lay behind the stage in a little cell-like cupboard, and his wife sat beside him and a poor sexton prayed for him. The director of the Variétés had provided the candles.

The chorus girls had to go past the dead Santschin in order to reach the stage, the brass band made its usual noise, even Augustus the donkey came past but Santschin did not move.

No one in the audience knew that a corpse lay behind the stage. At first the police wanted to forbid it but a police officer, who always received free seats – his relations filled a quarter of the theatre – brought permission.

The funeral procession started from the Variétés and the director accompanied it to the edge of the town, where the slaughterhouses stand – in this town the dead take the same route as the cattle. His colleagues, with Stasia, myself and his wife, followed him to the graveside.

As we reached the gates of the cemetery, Xaver Zlotogor, the mesmerist, was standing there arguing with the keeper of the cemetery. Unobserved Zlotogor had led Santschin’s donkey to the open grave, and left it there.

‘He can’t be buried like that!’ shouted the keeper.

‘That’s the way he’s going to be buried!’ said Zlotogor.

There was a short pause while the Greek Orthodox priest decided the matter and since Xaver Zlotogor whispered something in his ear he decided that the beast could stay.

The donkey stood with a mourning lappet behind his drooping ears, and did not move. He stood right at the graveside and did not move and everyone went round him, not daring to push him aside.

I returned with Xaver Zlotogor and the donkey, along the wide, gravel paths of the cemetery, past imposing tombs. The dead of all confessions lie here, not far from one another, only the Jewish cemetery is separated by two railings. Jewish beggars stand by the railings and on the paths all day long, like human cypresses. They live by the generosity of wealthy heirs and scatter their blessings over all who give to them.

I had to express my appreciation to Xaver Zlotogor. He had fought bravely for the donkey. I did not yet have any acquaintance with the mesmerist, who did not appear every day but only on Sundays and special occasions. Often he travelled ‘independently’ through small and middling towns and gave demonstrations.

He lives in the Hotel Savoy on the third floor. He can afford to.

Xaver Zlotogor is a widely travelled man who knows Western Europe and India, where he learned his art from fakirs, so he says. He may well be about forty but one can put no age to him, so well does he control his expression and movements.

From time to time I feel he may be tired and as we go along I think he may be giving a little at the knees and, because it is a long way and I’m no longer fresh myself, I have it in mind to propose that we sit down for a little on a stone. But lo and behold: Xaver leaps over the stone, knees up and well clear, like a fourteen-year-old boy. At this moment he has the look of a boy, an olive green, Jewish boy’s face, with mischievous eyes. A minute later his mouth is tired, his lower lip pendulous and it looks as if his chin weighs so much that he rests it on his chest.

Xaver Zlotogor transforms himself so rapidly and in so little time that I begin to find him unattractive and am forced to think that the whole splendid episode with the donkey was a mean practical joke, that this Xaver Zlotogor was not always so named, that perhaps – and the name suddenly comes to me – he was called Solomon Goldenberg in his little Galician home. Odd that his idea of bringing the donkey to the cemetery had made me forget that he was a mesmerist, an insolent magician who betrayed the Indian fakirs for money and only knew as much about the secrets of a strange world as was afforded by its little set pieces of magic. And God allowed him to live and did not punish him.

‘Herr Zlotogor,’ I say, ‘I must unfortunately leave you to yourself. I have a very important appointment.’

‘With Herr Phöbus Bohlaug?’ asks Zlotogor.

I was taken aback and would have liked to ask, ‘How do you know?’ but I suppressed this question and said ‘No’, followed at once by ‘Good evening’, although twilight was not approaching and the sun would be enjoying its stay in the heavens for some time yet.

I walked off rapidly in the opposite direction. I saw that I was not heading for the town, heard Zlotogor call something after me but did not look round.

Bundles of new mown hay smelled strong, out of a pigsty came grunts. Behind the huts stood a scatter of lean-tos and their tin roofs glowed as if molten. I wanted to be on my own till evening. I thought of many things, important and unimportant, and they came into my mind like strange birds, only to fly off again.

Late in the evening I returned home. Fields and paths lay in darkness and the crickets were chirping.