The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [231]
Karl was surprised—somewhat surprised—by his reaction to these images. He felt pure, chauvinistic English resentment and hurt, which he concealed from the Germans as he had concealed his anarchism from his family. Like Dorothy, he had moments of homesickness for a life more slow-paced, less intense, more ruminative. More polite. The English could not take such pleasure in giving offence. The cartoon would be funnier, less—less unpleasant.
• • •
They took him to see the Elf Scharfrichter perform. They took him on a night when the puppets were playing, because Wolfgang had helped in the construction of the cast, and was involved in the performance itself.
The Scharfrichter were eleven artists—including the playwright, Frank Wedekind—who paraded in blood-red robes and hangmen’s masks, carrying executioners’ heavy swords, and performed plays, songs, puppet and shadow plays, using popular forms—which were referred to as Tingeltangel—and comparing themselves to the workers in applied arts—they meant, they said, to make songs to be sung as craftsmen made chairs to fit people’s bottoms. Angewandte Lyrik was what it was about. They had a private stage in a tavern which held eighty people, at nightclub tables. It was, when Karl went with Joachim and Wolfgang, crammed full of spectators. The black walls were decorated with lurid and elegant posters from Simplicissimus, and with pornographic Japanese woodcuts, which startled Karl, though he tried to retain a studied English calm. There was a programme, on the cover of which a gleefully naked woman was tossing out her long, blood-red gloves. Inside the entrance was a totem: a solemn head of a bewigged person, from the Age of Reason, embedded in which was an executioner’s axe.
The executioners marched in, singing the song they always sang, aimed at the Catholic hierarchy.
Ein Schattentanz, ein Puppenspott!
Ihr Glücklichen und Glatten
Die Puppen und die Schatten.
Er lenkt zu Leid, er lenkt zu Glück,
Hoch dampfen die Gebete,
Doch just im schönsten Augenblick
Zerschneiden wir die Drähte.
A shadow-dance, a puppet’s joke!
You happy, polished people—
In heav’n on high the same old bloke
Guides puppets from his steeple.
For good or ill he guides their moves,
Each doll an anthem sings,
But then, just when it least behoves
We cut the puppets’ strings.
On this evening the executioners performed this song with gusto, and were followed on stage by Marya Delvard, a skeletally thin woman with a mane of flaming hair, kohl-rimmed eyes and a white skin, who sang, twisted in a long black gown, about sex and passion, suicide and murder, in a kind of low moan. She was lit by violet light. She had a vampire’s mouth. After her came the puppet play Die Feine Familie. There was a pit between the audience and the stage, which housed both musicians and puppeteers. It depicted the crowned heads of Europe as a gang of squabbling children, quarrelling over toys—the Empire in South Africa, the palace in Peking. There were the uncle and the cousins, Edward, the Kaiser Wilhelm, Tsar Nikolas, roaring with rage like toddlers, conspiring with each other against each other. Karl sat very still and tried to follow the rapid patter. He did not approve of kings and royal persons. But, again, he became surreptitiously English. These strangers should not so easily mock England’s green and pleasant land, even in the person of a fat, amorous, red-faced, droning person in ermine and a silly crown. He had a moment of wondering what