Spindle-shaped and light, as if stuffed with cotton wool; jumping jerkily, agile as if running on smooth ball bearings; chattering like cuckoos in clocks—they were desired to sweeten the life of the lonely, to give bachelors a substitute for family life, to squeeze from the hardest of hearts the semblance of maternal warmth brought forth by their touching helplessness. Even when the page was almost turned, their collective, alluring chirping still seemed to persist.

But later on, the miserable remains of The Book became ever more depressing. The pages were now given over to a display of boring quackery. In a long coat, with a smile half hidden by his black beard, who was it who presented his services to the public? Signor Bosco of Milan, a master of black magic, was making a long and obscure appeal, demonstrating something on the tips of his fingers without clarifying anything. And, although in his own estimation he reached amazing conclusions, which he seemed to weigh for a moment before they dissolved into thin air, although he pointed to the dialectical subtleties of his oratory by raising his eyebrows and preparing one for something unexpected, he remained misunderstood, and, what is worse, one did not care to understand him and left him with his gestures, his soft voice, and the whole gamut of his dark smiles, to turn quickly the last, almost disintegrated pages.

These pages quite obviously had slipped into a maniacal babble, into nonsense: A gentleman offered an infallible method of achieving decisiveness and determination and spoke at length of high principles and character. But to turn another page was enough for me to become completely disoriented as far as principles and firmness were concerned.

A certain Mme. Magda Wang, tethered by the train of her gown, declared above a modest décolletage that she frowned on manly determination and principles and that she specialized in breaking the strongest characters. (Here, with a slight kick of her small foot, she rearranged the train of her gown.) There were methods, she continued through clenched teeth, infallible methods she could not divulge here, referring the readers to her memoirs, entitled The Purple Days (published by the Institute of Anthroposophy in Budapest); in them she listed the results of her experiences in the Colonies with the "dressage" of men (this last word underlined by an ironical flash of her eyes). And strangely enough, that slovenly and loose-tongued lady seemed to be sure of the approval of those about whom she spoke so cynically, and in the peculiar confusion of her words one felt that their meaning had mysteriously shifted and that we had moved to a totally different sphere, where the compass worked back to front.

This was the last page of The Book, and it left me peculiarly dizzy, filled with a mixture of longing and excitement.

V

Leaning over that Book, my face glowing like a rainbow, I burned in quiet ecstasy. Engrossed in reading, I forgot my mealtimes. My intuition was right: this was the authentic Book, the holy original, however degraded and humiliated at present. And when late in the evening, smiling blissfully, I put the script away in the bottom of a drawer and hid it under a pile of other books, I felt as if I were putting to sleep the Dawn that emits a self-igniting purple flame.

How dull all my other books now seemed!

For ordinary books are like meteors. Each of them has only one moment, a moment when it soars screaming like the phoenix, all its pages aflame. For that single moment we love them ever after, although they soon turn to ashes. With bitter resignation we sometimes wander late at night through the extinct pages that tell their stone dead messages like wooden rosary beads.




The exegetes of The Book maintain that all books aim at being Authentic. That they live only a borrowed life, which at the moment of inspiration returns to its ancient source. This means that as the number of books decreases, the Authentic must increase. However, we don't wish to tire the reader with an exposition of doctrine. We should only like to draw his attention to one thing: The Authentic lives and grows. What does this mean? Well, perhaps next time, when we open our old script, we may not find Anna Csillag and her devotees in their old place. Perhaps we shall see her, the long-haired pilgrim, sweeping with her cloak the roads of Moravia, wandering in a distant land, through white villages steeped in prose and drabness, and distributing samples of Elsa's balm to God's simpletons who suffer from sores and itches. Ah, and what about the worthy village beavers, immobilized by their enormous beards? What will that loyal commune do, condemned to the care and administration of their excessive growths? Who knows, perhaps they will all purchase the genuine Black Forest barrel organs and follow their lady apostle into the world, looking for her everywhere while playing "Daisy, Daisy"?

Oh Odyssey of beavers, roaming from town to town with barrel organs in pursuit of your spiritual mother! Is there a bard equal to this epic subject, who has been left in their village and is now wielding the spiritual power in Anna Csillag's birthplace? Couldn't they foresee that, deprived of their elite, of their splendid patriarchs, the village will fall into doubt and apostasy and will open its gates—to whom? Whom but the cynical and perverse Magda Wang (published by the Anthroposophical Institute of Budapest), who will open there a school of human dressage and breaking of character?

But let us return to our pilgrims.

We all know that old guard of wandering Cumbrians, those black-haired men with apparently powerful bodies, made of tissue without brawn or vigor. Their whole strength, their whole power, has gone into their hair. Anthropologists have been pondering for a long time over that peculiar tribe of men always clad in dark suits, with thick, silver chains dangling on their stomachs, with fingers adorned with brass signet rings.

I like them, these Caspars or Balthazars; I like their deep seriousness, their funereal decorativeness; I like those magnificent male specimens with beautiful glossy eyes like burnt coffee beans; I like the noble lack of vitality in their overblown and spongy bodies, the morbidezza of decadence, the wheezing breath that comes from their powerful lungs, and even the smell of valerian emanating from their beards.

Like angels of the Presence, they sometimes appear suddenly in the door of our kitchen, enormous and short of breath, and, quickly tired, they wipe off perspiration from their damp brows while rolling the bluish whites of their eyes; for a moment they forget the object of their mission, and, astonished, looking for an excuse, a pretext for their arrival, they stretch out a hand and beg for alms.

Let's return to the Authentic. We have never forsaken it. And here we must stress a strange characteristic of the script, which by now no doubt has become clear to the reader: it unfolds while being read, its boundaries open to all currents and fluctuations.

Now, for instance, no one is offering goldfinches from the Harz Mountains, for from the barrel organs of those dark men the feathery little singers fly out at irregular intervals, and the market square is covered with them as with colored twigs. Ah, what a multiplication of shimmering chattering birds! ... On all the cornices and flagpoles, colorful bottlenecks are formed by birds fluttering and fighting for position. If you push out of the window the crook of a walking stick, it will be covered with a chirping, heavy bunch of birds before you can draw it back into your room.

We are now quickly approaching the magnificent and catastrophic part of our story, which in our biography is known as the Age of Genius.

Here we must for a moment go completely esoteric, like Signor Bosco of Milan, and lower our voice to a penetrating whisper. By meaningful smiles we must give point to our exposition and grind the delicate substance of imponderables between the tips of our fingers.