Lord Hasso von Monteufel's papers

The Nachthaus! How that word can still thrill me. I remember when poor Dorotea first said that word to me and the shudder that ran across my spine. The Nachthaus! A strangled gasp of breath from that beautifully warped mouth, and then it was just like a pattern unfolding before me towards Monteufel's lips opening to give another gasp of breath as he writhed and wriggled on the end of my knife. But I'm Monteufel! How amusing that I should have witnessed my own death and perpetrated my own murder. But I digress. Dorotea's account of the Nachthaus revealed to me how right and sweet and fitting it is that the inmate should run the asylum just as...well, never mind. All in good time.

A SIMPLE KISLEVITE TALE

A PLAY IN ONE ACT

CAST:

BORIS: A shepherd

SERGEI: his brother

A STRANGER

SCENE: A lonely road in Kislev at dusk...

[The play involves Boris and Sergei encountering a stranger on the road to their home. He claims to be too tired to walk any further and asks Boris, who prides himself on his strength, to carry him on his back. Boris does so and they exit, leaving Sergei to rest behind. The rest of the play is a monologue by Sergei about his loneliness and increasing fear]

SERGEI: Getting darker now but my brother and the stranger will come into view by the twist in the road now. I will see my brother in the light of the moon. My strong proud brother! I see... I see them. But... the stranger grips him so tightly... oh brother, you must surely die... and the arms and legs that squeeze... does my brother carry a man or a golden-haired god on his back.... how is now that he can cling so tight.... are they two men or one? It is one. Long arms that choke the breath! Prince of pleasure... there is but a single man on the road... and NOW HE TURNS. NOW HE LOOKS AT ME. Now he comes for me. Now he comes for me...

[There are a great many plays like this one scattered throughout the manuscripts. They all display the same range of erotic fixations and fantasies. One of them, 'The Lighthouse Keepers' is about a pair of brothers holding an orgy with prostitutes in a lighthouse before their arrival of their mother, before being tempted by 'a stranger' to set one of the prostitutes alight, unwittingly confusing the pilot of their mother's ship into crashing on the rocks. Another, called 'A Crime in a Madhouse' is about an innocent young woman commited by her evil step-brother to the insane asylum. A group of inmates are told by 'a stranger' that her head is actually an egg for a beautiful bird to hatch from -they cut it open with scissors while she sleeps. The plays all feature the same stranger figure. The last play is called 'The Ravens Didn't Tell' but there is nothing more to it than the title]