Konrad and Alexandra (PDF) - Rolf Gross

public. She fended off the fuzzy world that surrounded her with intellectual arrogance and an acute command oflanguage.The two sisters were readily accepted into their commune. Supper was prepared by the women. One of the men took theearly boat to Venice every second day to do the shopping. Alexandra handled the communal finances. Take-alonglunches and cleaning the rooms were individual responsibilities. Angelina did the two bathrooms. Whoever arrived first inthe kitchen in the morning made coffee and tea, and everybody helped themselves to bread, eggs, melons, prosciuttoand cheese. They ate their meals at a rustic table outside on an open verandah covered by grape vines."What shall we read tonight?" asked Claudia. The question was decided by common consent every night after dinnerwhen the children had been put to bed. A kerosene lamp was brought for the reader and everyone relaxed at the fringeof the circle of light.The choice of books ranged from Friedrich’s tattered edition of Herodotus, the love letters of Heloïse and Abelard,Konrad’s contribution, to a worn-out popular love story Katharina had devoured.Their favorite became a mysterious novel Clara had picked up in Paris: Le Manuscrit Trouvé à Saragosse ou l’Histoired’Alphonse van Woerden by Marquis Jean Potocki. No one had ever heard of the author or his novel, although it hadbeen written at the end of the eighteenth century, and the literary critics had praised it as equal to Don Quixote andsuperior to the Decamerone. The reason was, explained Clara, that until recently the roman had existed only infragments, which had been traded under the counter. A rare find.In her impeccable French, Clara read the beginning chapters. Like Cervantes in Don Quixote, Potocki claimed to havefound the manuscript. The autobiographic notes of Alphonse van Woerden, an Alsatian nobleman and soldier of fortune,describing his return from the Spanish Wars of Succession.The hero, passing through the wilderness of the Sierra Morena, comes upon a deserted Cartausa where he decides tostay for the night. At midnight the bells toll and two veiled ladies appear. Black servants carry in candles, food, fruits, andwine. During the lavish feast the ladies reveal themselves as identical twin sisters, the granddaughters of the last Moor ofGranada and distant cousins of the nobleman on his mother’s side. The beauties blow out the candles and for the rest ofthe night make love to the delighted and confounded van Woerden. When he wakes up the two ladies are gone. He findshimself lying under a gallows from which dangle the corpses of two notorious bandits.Van Woerden searches for the beguiling succubi through a bewildering succession of repetitions, mirrors of stories withinstories, reflections in ever new guises. At one time he travels with a tribe of noble bandits, their gypsy chief revealshimself the secret protector of the twins. A Jewish astrologer and his intriguing sister lead van Woerden into anunderground palace, filled with the immense treasures of his Muslim ancestors. The twin sisters reappear. In their armsAlphonse loses all track of time and space. Both sisters become pregnant and offer to marry him—provided he wouldconvert to Islam. He is led before a court of Moslem nobles which offers him the vast fortunes hidden in the mountain onthe same condition. Van Woerden tarries, is undecided whether to betray his faith, a huge explosion, everythingvanishes. He wakes up—under the gallows. Meanwhile ravens have gnawed the corpses down to their bones....Night after night they got lost in this labyrinth of love, in its exotic illusions, saw themselves reflected, magnified, anddistorted by the magical mirrors of Potocki’s arabesques. Like Van Woerden, they forgot all time. Wandered dreamlikeand naked through the sensual labyrinth of their crossed relationships: Friedrich probed Alexandra’s female defenses,Clara, starved for love, pursued innocent Niko, Konrad circled Clara and flirted with Marina, Niko tempted Claudia, who,visibly unhappy, had fallen in love with the children who tumbled between them. Only gravid Katharina, at the center oftheir maze, whiled away the days, lazily absorbed in herself.One evening Marina offered to read a simple poem of her own which she had just translated, and a poem by her mostadmired German poet, as a respite from this endless eighteenth-century novel."My poem is dedicated to a man who is married to a friend of mine. I will read it in German."Hitting blindly at an insect that was buzzing about her head, she held the sheet of paper very close to her myopic eyes.I like, that you don’t suffer because of me,I like, that I am not suffering because of you,that the solid earth will neverfloat away from under our feet.I like that I can be made fun of,be dissolved, and not have to play with words,and do not flush in breathless waves,at the slightest touch of our hands.I also like that you in my presencemay calmly hug another woman,and do not wish me to burn in hell’s firefor not kissing you.That my affectionate names, my gentle friend,121