The House of a Thousand Floors (CEU Press Classics) Read online

  Muller's face suddenly showed concern. The crystal throat spoke with the fiery language of grenades, wheels covered in pitch, sulphur and bombs! The large pupil now reflected the slaves' desperate attack on the barricade in detail. The wooden sides of crates and barrels were suddenly littered with blue blossoms of sulphur. Pitch caught on to splinters with burning claws. The hissing flames slurped boiling water sprayed from hoses.

  And yet — it was a dead barricade! No-one loomed at the highest point of it with a banner of death! It was pathetic to see an undefended barricade being conquered with mad energy. The slaves rush forward blinded by their own frenzy. In their own fire and crackle of their bombs is the spectre of the black angel of death with a red sash — who doesn't exist!

  Both Petr Brok and Muller are following the victorious conquest of the deserted barricade with the same excitement.

  What a surprise!

  A crowd of pitiful old men are cowering in corners with raised hands. And the conquered camp makes a pathetic picture of extinguished energy, sunken mouths, sharp chins and collapsed spines.

  An army of bald heads, with ridiculously wrinkled toothless faces, crawling on their knees towards the shocked victorious conquerors. Lumps of hair underfoot, fallen from their bodies, heads and faces, as if a pack of dogs had moulted here. Even human teeth, yellow and blackened, are scattered on the ground like dragon seed.

  Cheers, cries of joy and wailing pour form the loudspeaker and it is possible to tune into the noise and catch individual voices:

  "It was Him! Him!"

  "Petr Brok!" "Detective!" "God!"

  "The one whose coming had been prophesied!"

  "Our new god!"

  "He performed a miracle!"

  "He is with us!"

  "Him!"

  "God and detective!" "Silence! — Silence!"

  Above the falling wave of cries, a fluttering winged voice:

  "Follow me!"

  "The staircase is clear!"

  And more cries:

  "Victory!"

  "Forward!"

  "Death to parasites!"

  XLVII

  General Ox · "... trap for a trapi" Muller offers Brok the position of God in Mullerdom · "My answer!" · Brok under the keyboard—

  It was then that Ohisver Muller finally leapt up from his armchair. He brought both fists down on the keyboard, somewhere at the very end. His green pupils flashed and the wild symphony of cat cries pierced Brok's ears. At the same time, a new large camp appeared on the disc, with an entire army of fresh, young, merry soldiers. Brok understood what was happening. Ohisver Muller wanted to call up the reservists, stop the breakthrough and halt the victorious onslaught of the slaves!

  The time had come for Brok to thwart Muller's intention. He had seen and heard as much as he needed to. He had seen the secret of Muller's omniscience and knew what had to be done now...

  Ohisver Muller put his mouth to the calyx to issue an order to the waiting army. But Petr Brok grabbed his chin and pulled it back.

  The little man seized his hand and screamed so violently that Brok started and let him go. The red-haired dwarf commenced a mad dance around the hall and there was something so spooky, so inhumanly grotesque, in that convulsive jumping up and down that Brok began to tremble with hitherto unknown terror. He followed Mul-ler's leaps, and when he approached the machine, Brok got his dagger ready.

  "Get back!" he shouted. "Don't touch the machine! — Or you're dead!"

  "Dead!" laughed Muller. — "If you kill me, you'll die with me. The whole of Mullerdom will collapse!"

  Then he thrust both hands into the keyboard as if he wanted to call hell itself to the rescue!

  Petr Brok let his hand holding the dagger fall, distracted by a new image in the circle. It was a film showing the army of slaves in a headlong rush down the staircase. Above the frenzied faces, drunk on easy victory blazed a red-speckled flag, like a human skin with a thousand stab wounds.

  Floor after floor, a colourful avalanche of ragged rabble poured down without respite, without stopping, unimpeded. And this avalanche on the screen was accompanied by a deadly silence of the crystal loudspeaker.

  Muller stares at the circle and then with a devilish curse cuts the film. — And again, the merry ringing of the reservists' camp comes back, safe and secure, somewhere far away, out of harm's way.

  Muller's fingers began feverishly playing the keyboard.

  He screamed:

  "General Ox!"

  But Brok tugged at his beard so that he almost pulled it out and jerked his mouth away from the microphone in time. With the speed of lightning, he threaded one half of the double-pointed beard through the arm of the chair and tied the two ends into a naval knot.

  Ohisver Muller went berserk, thrashing about like a hideous grasshopper caught by its feelers, trying to free himself form this humiliating trap. His deranged fury filled Brok with terror. He watched the dwarf-like man bite then tug at the knot and finally attempt to pull his beard out, complete with his skin.

  At last he managed to bite through a strand of hair and loosen the knot. — He slowly rose — but he was surprisingly meek, like a little boy who had just received a good thrashing.

  In the meantime, Brok sat down in Muller's armchair, his legs crossed, and, watching Muller out of the corner of his eye, he said:

  "Well, Mr Muller — an eye for an eye, a trap for a trap! — Since you didn't keep our rendezvous at number 99, I came to see you so that I can finally have a chat!"

  It was difficult to tell what Ohisver Muller's face expressed at that moment, except its own dwarfish hideous-ness. But his hand in a wide sleeve, resembling dry sticks in a withered bell, motioned for Brok to sit down.

  "Petr Brok! — Be seated!"

  "I have been sitting for a while," smiled Brok. "Do you want to tell me something?"

  "Petr Brok! I acknowledge the strength and power based on your invisibility. Whether you're a man or something else, you are as invincible as I am. — Well, Petr Brok, Ohisver Muller is offering you peace and friendship. But only under certain conditions which will have to be sworn to by both sides. — We each have our secret. — My secret is Mullerdom! I know that you lost your way in it. I know about every step you made along the corridors and staircases of my kingdom. I know for sure that you are not a god. The giant caught you in a net. That's not how gods behave, gods don't run away, don't hide.

  Hence, you are not a god — but I can make you into one!

  Petr Brok, listen to me! I'm offering you the chance to be a deity in Mullerdom! I will make you the Lord of my world. I will be the Master and you will be the God. I will share my dominion with you. I will give you half of my treasures. And if you become a faithful God, I will be able to do even more than I have so far. — Hand in hand, we are going to continue building Mullerdom. — Higher and higher... endlessly... we will drive it up to the sky in defiance of everything and everyone!"

  Muller stretched out his hand towards the armchair.

  "Do you want to do this?"

  Brok spat into his palm.

  "This is my answer!"

  Ohisver Muller wiped his hand on his green dressing gown and said with sinister calm: "Petr Brok, be careful!

  I know about you waking up on the staircase. I listened to your conversation with number 794! I know more than I've told you! If you know the secret of UNIVERSE, I know the secret of your dreams! You are no god! You are a hideous, terrible dream which you consider to be reality. Well, Petr Brok, do you still want to take on Ohisver Muller? — If you keep quiet, so will I. Look!"

  Ohisver Muller showed him his left palm. Brok felt stunned terror. He saw the red triangle.

  He quickly closed his eyes but it was too late... the triangle penetrated his brain and its sharp points pierced his temples and the back of his head —

  Brok came to his senses for one last moment only to see Muller sitting in his armchair as before and hear him shout vengefully into the crystal calyx: "Ge
neral Ox! General Ox!"

  He closed his fist and felt the hot handle of the dagger. He realised that he had just enough strength to —!

  He raised his hand and brought it down again. The steel plunged into Muller's back and into his heart.

  Somewhere deep down, he could hear a thundering noise so terrible and deafening as if the moon had left its trajectory and crashed into the earth. — The four walls, floor and ceiling started to topple to one side with an incredible roar. The objects inside the room fell from the floor to the wall. The altar came crashing down on top of Brok! The iron keyboard crushed his skull.

  A short sharp glassy pain came that instantly dissolved into nothing. — A colourless, shapeless nothing.

  XLVIII

  The red triangle remained on the ceiling · "Be well then!" · The dream of a thousand floors

  No-one knows how long Petr Brok's death lasted under the steel keys of Ohisver Muller's overturned organ. What happened, however, was that a nameless man who had woken up at the beginning of this story on a staircase suddenly opened his eyes and saw the ceiling, so lovely, so angelic in its bright whiteness —

  And in the middle of this miraculously white ceiling there was a red triangle! The man quickly closed his eyes in terror. But, surprisingly, the triangle remained on the ceiling without hurting or jabbing him, without pressing down on him. — The man slowly glanced at it through his eyelashes, until he became certain that the triangle was painted on the ceilings and could do him no harm. On the contrary, how pleasant it was to grasp it with his eyes and reflect dreamily on his delightfully perfect, austere simplicity —

  Then he heard a voice:

  "Look! He's waking up...”

  He turned his head.

  To his surprise, he saw human faces! Real, living faces made of flesh and blood, with moving lips and blinking eyelids and brotherly smiles.

  These glasses on a nose, this grey beard touched a thousand times — that must be a doctor — but there are also young, clear, smooth smiles under white caps — These are the sisters of mercy, for they have red crosses on their chests. So many beautiful faces surround the man's bed.

  The doctor with the grey beard, wearing a white coat, bends over him and takes his wrist in his hand.

  "You are cured!" he says. "Believe or not, it's true! — I don't believe in miracles but this is something I don't understand."

  "Where am I?" the man whispers fearfully, remembering his dream of a thousand floors. The doctor grins:

  "In the world! You should have been lying under lime in the typhoid pit behind the Totskoy camp!" He tugged at the man's ear.

  "Be well then! I myself am going to drink an extra glass to your health and will go to sleep satisfied... Do you know, you devil, that you've been raving for three days? They brought you here from the barracks of death! You've been mumbling and raving, all nonsense, arguing and jumping out of bed. In the end we had to strap you down. and all that time we couldn't wake you up. That was some kind of sleeping typhoid you had. I say, what have you been dreaming about, my son, who was that Ohisver Muller who treated you so badly?"

  The patient was strangely moved, so much so he didn't listen to the grey-bearded, voluble doctor. In a split second, he remembered who he was, his past, his name, his place in the world, after he returned from captivity. — Everything had come back to him and it all made perfect sense now.

  Only Ohisver Muller's name reminded him of his monstrous dream.

  Half amazed, half amused, he said:

  "I dreamt I was lost in a house of a thousand floors. — And Ohisver Muller — was its landlord."

  Afterword

  Jan Weiss is variously described as an expressionist, a surrealist, an author of fantasy, and as one of the founders of Czech science fiction, alongside Karel Capek whose futuristic plays and novels such as R.U.R, The Absolute at Large, Krakatit and War with the Newts, are known to English-language readers. Both writers anticipated the post-war development of Czech science fiction and the work of its most prominent authors such as Josef Nesvadba and Ondřej Neff, and both had a disturbingly prophetic vision unparalleled by their successors.

  Born in the town of Jilemnice in the Krkonoše Mountains in 1892, Jan Weiss went to high school in Dvůr Králové and enrolled as a law student in Vienna. He had barely completed two semesters when World War I broke out and he was drafted into the Austro-Hun-garian Army in 1914 at the age of twenty-two to fight against the Allied forces. In 1916, he was taken prisoner by the Russians and spent the rest of the war in prisoner-of-war camps, notably in the infamous Totskoye camp in the Orenburg region in the southern Urals, a location which continued to serve as a camp for Polish prisoners in World War II and was the site of nuclear tests in the 1950s. Jaroslav Hašek, the well-known Czech author of the classic war satire The Good Soldier Schweik, was imprisoned in the same camp and it was there that both Weiss and Hašek contracted typhoid fever. After he was rescued and cured, Weiss joined Czechoslovak legions in Russia before returning to his homeland in 1920. He lived in Prague until his death in 1972, working as a public servant and enjoying the support of the Communist establishment which honoured him with several awards, including the Artist of Merit.

  Weiss's work consists of short stories, novellas and novels. He first began writing for magazines in 1924 and the title of his very first published story was "Sen" (The Dream), presaging his preoccupation with the relationship between dream and reality characteristic of his early works. He debuted in 1927 with three collections of short stories, Zrcadlo, které se opožďuje (The Time Delay Mirror), Barák smrti (The Barracks of Death) and Bláznivý regiment (The Crazy Regiment).

  In the short story "Barák smrti", Weiss drew on his experiences of the prisoner-of-war camp which — rather than the front — dominated the memories of his time in Russia and became one of the key sources of inspiration for his later works. The story "Bláznivý regiment" in a collection of the same name is a satire on the absurdity of war, while the eponymous story of the third collection, Zrcadlo, které se opožďuje, is a fantasy in which a mirror reflects whatever takes place in front of it with a time delay, revealing moments none of the protagonists expect to become public. He published more story collections in the following years, including Tři sny Kristiny Bojarové (Three Dreams of Kristina Bojarová, 193Լ՝, Nosič nábytku (The Furniture Carrier, 1941) and Povídky o lásce a nenávisti (Tales of Love and Hatred, 1944), published during the war, were followed ten years later by Příběhy staré a nové (Tales Old and New, 1954).

  Weiss began publishing predominantly sci-fi and futuristic stories in the late 1950s and early 1960s: Země vnuků (The Land of Our Grandchildren, 1957), Družice a hvězdopravci (Satellites and Astronomers, 1960) and Hádání o budoucím (Guessing at the Future, 1963). His short stories were very popular and continued being republished in different collections throughout the 1960s and '70s and into the 1980s.

  He also published a number of novels and novellas, starting with the burlesque fantasy Fantóm smichu (The Phantom of Laughter, 1927), followed by the social satire Mlčeti zlato (Silence is Golden, 1933) and a critique of a society deformed by capitalism Spáč ve zpěrokruhu (The Sleeper in the Zodiac, 1937). Then his psychological novel set in the time of German occupation of Czechoslovakia Volání o pomoc (A Call for Help) was published in 1946.

  Dům o tisíci patrech (The House of a Thousand Floors) was Weiss's first novel. Published in 1929, it is without doubt his most accomplished and successful work, and it has continued to cast a spell over generations of readers. It was published in numerous re-editions up until the 2000s, all of which came with innovative typesetting and illustrations reflecting the style of the time.

  Weiss was known for repeatedly working with several recurring themes such as the shifting boundaries between dream and reality, both a thematic and structural element which also points to the hallucinatory states of mind induced by typhoid fever with a sense of a hyperreal yet grotesquely warped dream logic he began exp
loring in "Sen". The story "Horečka" (Fever), included in his first collection of short stories, is in fact the first draft of the realistic (and autobiographical) storyline of The House of a Thousand Floors about a soldier in a prisoner-of-war camp who, like the author, suffers from typhoid fever-induced hallucinations before being rescued and cured. Weiss then elaborated on this storyline by adding the various themes and layers which make the novel so fascinating and unusual: the fairytale theme of Petr Brok's double mission to rescue Princess Tamara, abducted by Ohisver Muller, the master of Mullerdom, the house of a thousand floors, and to engage in a battle between good and evil by seeking out and eliminating Muller himself.

  The idea of Mullerdom belongs within the realms of fantasy and science fiction: the "house of a thousand floors" is both the vertical city of futuristic dreams and a dystopian empire of evil. Complete with a social hierarchy, criminal underworld, stock exchange, casinos and clubs where selected few indulge in decadent search for ultimate pleasures, it is ruled by a dictator who is worshipped as god, the seemingly omnipresent and omniscient Muller, the master of surveillance and manipulator of minds. No-one knows who Muller is or what he looks like, but he has access to everyone in Mullerdom, listening in to every conversation and watching the most intimate moments in the life of its inhabitants.

  Despite the Orwellian echoes apparent to today's reader, Mullerdom is primarily an allegory of capitalist society where ruthless exploitation and degradation of human beings fuels the spread of a revolutionary ideology, hyperbolically charting out a world where workers are fed concentrate containing the minimal nutrients required for bare survival while being deprived of everything that would make them human: spiritual life, love, desire, dignity and a purpose in life. As Brok is told by the first inhabitant of Mullerdom he meets: "We don't know what love is, and that's why our days are endless and there's no future for us except death. We have no sense of taste, we feel no hunger and we have no wishes or dreams, save for one: an amazing longing that torments us and that not even God Muller can take away from us. A longing for death!"