The House of a Thousand Floors (CEU Press Classics) Page 2

"How did you get here?" whimpered the old man, his chin quivering with fear.

  "I came up the staircase. Thank God I found you!"

  "Up the staircase?" marvelled the old man. "Are you a human being?"

  "What do you think? Don't you like the look of me?"

  "I can't see you," said the old man and touched his eyelids with his fingertips. "I'm blind."

  And he was! Only now did Brok notice that the man's watery blue pupils quivered in his eyes like frog's spawn.

  "Poor you!" he said. And then he asked out of the blue:

  "And how is Mr Muller?"

  The old man hunched his shoulders and an expression of terror passed across his face.

  "Our generous benefactor and provider, God and master of the earth and the stars..." he started muttering a confused prayer.

  "Why have you been imprisoned here?" asked Brok.

  "Be quiet!" whispered the old man in panic, covering his mouth with his hand. "He is all-knowing. Omnipresent. He can hear everything."

  "Well, let's have a look at him. What are you afraid of? Death? Or is there something worse that could happen to you? If I succeed in my mission, at least you will die free."

  "Give me your hand," said the old man, and then he exploded with hatred and rage: "If you can, Sir, turn this damned house into ashes and dust."

  Petr Brok was overcome with curiosity and started pressing him: "Talk to me, tell me everything! Why is this insane house of a thousand floors standing here? What happens inside it? Who is Muller?"

  "Sir, how come you don't know? Are you not omnipotent like Him? You've come up the staircase! Are you not the one we've been waiting for? Who are you then?"

  "Don't ask me. I myself know nothing, except that I have a mission and I will fulfil it. And I am going to face the master of this house, although I don't know him yet and will have to spend a long time looking for him. But do tell me, who is Muller?"

  IV

  Who was Muller? · Metal lighter than air · Human being no. 794 · What did people eat in Mullerdom?

  The old man shook his head. "I don't know. Nobody knows. No-one has ever met him. No-one has ever seen his true face. — Some say he's a decrepit old Jew, covered in greasy grime, with red sidelocks. Others have seen a tiny round bald head, attached to a hideous pile of flesh by a double chin. A man who's lost all human form under layers of fat, a stuffed sack that can't move on its own and has to be carried from place to place. Diplomats and bankers with whom he is in contact, however, know a different Muller: a pale aristocrat, around thirty-five, with a monocle and a hanging curled lower lip, as if expressing boundless contempt, and hundreds of years old. Yet others swear he is a white-haired, hunched old man with a face so creased you can't read it any more. Just a pair of tiny grey eyes looking out into the world from among those folds as guilelessly and trustingly as the eyes of a spring baby gazing up from its pram.

  But his signature is always the same and it elicits awe and terror wherever it appears. It is thin, as if written with a needle, pointing downwards like a bolt of lightning. It signifies a will, a command, a verdict against which there is no appeal. How many times has Ohisver Muller been murdered? How many bullets have made a hole in his head? How many times has he been drowned, poisoned or lynched by rebelling workers? And yet it is never him! In the end, it always turns out to be one of his secretaries, an agent provocateur, a figurine, a double he had planted."

  "And what is solium?" asked Brok as if he had only just remembered the fourth item in his notes. His memory, unburdened by the past, was now working with miraculous speed. To his surprise, he remembered every last detail since he awoke. His brain had absorbed the entire content of the notepad, word for word.

  "Solium is a substance discovered on this island deep down below the exploited coal deposits in a new hitherto unknown layer of the Earth's crust closest to its centre. It might be the last skin around its fiery nucleus and solium is an element lighter than air. Once free from soil and impurities, it flies upwards to the sun, never to return.

  No-one in the world knows how much solium Muller extracts from his mines. More than iron. More than coal. The world would have to be rebuilt, man would be transformed, and an entirely new way of life would begin on this planet if it were to be used for the benefit of mankind. But Muller jealously guards his mines. He had them covered up, and the only way to reach them is through passages leading from Mullerdom. That's why the world knows nothing about how much solium he owns. — And Muller sells it in minute quantities for extortionate prices, posing as a benefactor. A grain of solium, small as a mote of dust, is sold to universities and wealthy hospitals in exchange for gold worth a fortune. But he himself doesn't use it sparingly! He transforms this substance industrially, turning it into concrete harder than steel and lighter than air. It is this material he has used to build his palace of a thousand floors, his pride, his triumph, his victory. From its pinnacle he surveys the world with a sense of self-importance that reaches even higher than a thousand floors.

  Mullerdom has no windows or doors. It's hard to enter and even harder to escape from. It has no connection with the world it has sprung from. This is how Muller guards his vile secret."

  The old man fell silent.

  "Tell me who you are," Brok insisted. "Why are you imprisoned here? Aren't you already a prisoner of your blindness? What's your name?"

  The old man showed his palms. They were branded with the number 794.

  "I have no other name except this number. I come from the eighth brigade of workers who completed eight hundred floors of Mullerdom. Everyone who built this accursed tower went blind within five years. Solium, contained in the concrete, radiates in the sun and damages the human eye. Our entire hundred-floor colony is occupied by blind men, Mullerdom's former builders and bricklayers."

  "What do they feed you here?"

  The old man pointed to the table. Next to a jug of water was a small cube, wrapped in cellophane marked with the brand name Okka. No bigger than a cube of sugar.

  Brok unwrapped it and tasted it with the tip of his tongue: ash, wood, stone. It had no taste.

  "This is our breakfast, lunch and dinner. Pressed extract of the nutrients required by the human body for one day. And there's something else in these cubes, something Muller puts in intentionally to suppress our male desires. He wants to destroy in us the miraculous juice that makes men desire women and women men, that turns the surface of the human body with all its protrusions and folds into an island of pleasure where our dreams about a lost paradise come true. — 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! Every awakening brings with it terror and our whole day is steeped in our desire for bed, for sleep, for death. Thousands and thousands desire it. One single quiet, dreamless night from which we would never wake up."

  "And you can't leave this place?"

  "Where would I go?" asks the old man. "The darkness is everywhere. And even if I could see, I would not run away. What awaits you on the staircase is death by starvation."

  "And where does this door lead to?" asked Brok, who had been examining the room.

  "To the corridor. There's an iron grille at the end of it which leads to the fifth sector."

  "And what is there?"

  V

  West-Wester, the city of adventurers · Gedonia, the city of bliss · How pleasure is produced in Gedonia

  West-Wester has attracted adventurers from all over the world. Merchants and traders selling everything from old rags and candles to human souls, virtue and blood, from carpets and gods to face powder and innocence — they've all come here in search of fortune. Agents, spies, layabouts, thieves, gamblers, provocateurs, scabs, traitors, madmen, murderers, an entire army of crooks and criminals offer services of all kinds. Their wea
lth is measured by floors: the lower the floor, the greater their wealth. The higher they climb, the harder life gets. None of them are satisfied with the floor they're living on. Depending on how well they're doing in business, this riff-raff either seep down or rise up, but, of course, only within the limits of the one hundred floors allocated to them. — So that's West-Wester. Here, once a week, you can drink half a mulldor of your pension courtesy of the generous Muller. Life is hard in these parts for those who can see, let alone for the blind ones. He always dupes us."

  Brok remembered his map, the city taking up the fifth one hundred floors. It occurred to him that he could find someone among these adventurers who might be able to show him the way straight to Muller. But it was the lower section of his map that attracted him most, the area called Gedonia. Brok asked the old man about it and he was more than willing to talk.

  "Gedonia is a crystal city located on the second hundred floors of Mullerdom. This is where he spends most of his time, surrounded by an entourage of agents, ambassadors, diplomats, financiers and generals. There are halls and dens where, as they say, it's possible to find eternal bliss in this life. This sector is cleverly bricked up and accessible only to a small cohort of selected protégés and sycophants.

  Here, physical and mental bliss is produced by chemical and mechanical means, with all manner of pleasures to torture the body and soul to death. — The five existing senses were not capable of encompassing all this stimulation, and so, through all these pleasures, five new senses have been discovered. Physical ecstasy is achieved by using various balsams and concoctions, pills and ointments, massages, injections and operations during which parts of organs and glands are removed from the body, veins are ligated, nerves are shortened. They say that a new pleasure has been found in sneezing, intensified to a catastrophic level by an operation and ending in stupendous death. Titillating showers and baths bring about delightful itching all over the body. There are cults of yawning and tickling, taken to heights that become unbearable.

  And when all the stimulants fail, when bodies collapse in exhaustion, drained of every last drop of energy, that's when all the lights go out and a period of rest begins. — Muller himself decides whether it should be day or night in Gedonia because not even the sun has any power in Mullerdom.

  The architect who had planned and constructed these divine dens behind innocent walls was himself walled up by Muller in one of the many strange alcoves. Only Muller has a plan of the entire walled-in heaven in his hands. He knows all the secret doors and corridors, unexpected exits through invisible gates opened by hidden mechanisms. These lead into theatres, palaces, churches and even bedrooms. A ceiling rosette with a chandelier hanging down from it, a painting of the crucified Christ on a church altar, a raised parquet in a bedroom floor — these are the heavenly gateways of God Muller through which he can listen, sneak into a room, surprise someone, appear at the right time and then disappear again without a trace."

  "And what is there above you?" asked Brok. On his plan, these floors were covered with question marks.

  "Hospitals, poorhouses and almshouses where they go

  to die."

  "And above those?"

  "Lunatic asylums, jails, dungeons, torture rooms..." "And above those?" "Crematoria."

  "And then?"

  "That's where they keep building... forever... floor upon floor, with no respite, with no end. The city only grows upwards, there's a need for more and more rooms, and we're being pushed up as if by a piston. At moving time, Mullerdom resembles a riotous ant hill. These are days of terror and insanity. The administration, located on fifty floors above Gedonia, is unable to contain the panic that prevails among the inhabitants of Mullerdom at that time."

  VI

  The young old man · What the mirror told Brok · At the end of the corridor · The state of 'dispersion'

  Brok took the old man's hand. Then he remembered his envelope. "Is there a mirror here, by any chance?" The old man shook his head sadly. "What use is a mirror to a blind man? I've been looking into darkness for ten years now." "How old are you, grandpa?"

  "Thirty-three."

  Brok looked at the young old man with surprise. Not thirty-three, but eighty years of misery and desperation were carved into his face.

  "This is what everyone who lives on Ohisver Muller's cubes looks like."

  Petr Brok suddenly had an idea and made a quick decision.

  "That's enough! I think I can find a way to get to see the face of your god!"

  The old man's eyes filled with tears.

  "You're strong; you came up the staircase. I've been waiting for this door to open for ten years. For it is only through here that someone stronger than Muller can come. Lord, make me and my brothers human again! Give us names instead of numbers, food instead of cubes; give us love, desire and dreams! Release us from this prison and give the sun back to those who thought they'd lost it forever!"

  "I promise," said Brok and their hands met. And that was when Brok felt the weight of his task. Was he really strong enough to stand up to Muller? And how would he penetrate the forbidden floors without being found?

  And again, he remembered the envelope. — Yes, hidden in the envelope was the power that he knew about and that he would recognise in himself when he stood in front of the first mirror. — "Where can I find a mirror?" he asked once more as the old man led him along a long corridor with doors on both sides.

  "There's a cage at the end of the corridor," said the old man. "It's a high-speed lift that will take you down to West-Wester. Behind the cage is an alcove. On the wall of this is a polished plate as smooth and cold as a snake. I don't know if it's a mirror. But when I stand in front of it, I feel as if my blindness is staring back at me. I don't know. It may just be glass."

  They approached the lift. Brok trembled with anticipation. — They went round the cage, and behind it, below a sad little lamp, there was indeed the gleaming surface of a clear mirror.

  Brok hurried ahead and, with the envelope in his hand, he approached the mirror and looked at himself.

  A cry of surprise escaped him!

  He stood upright. He waved his hands. He jumped up and down. — He gave various signs that he was there, a human being standing in front of a mirror, but all in vain; the mirror could not see him, the mirror ignored him.

  The mirror was blank.

  The wall opposite was faithfully reflected in its surface but the man who stood between it and the mirror could not see himself. What kind of damn mirror was this? A mirror that did not show your reflection? And then, Brok saw the old man hobbling towards him in this miraculous pool. — Lo and behold! The old man was reflected in the polished rectangle right down to the last wrinkle, all on his own! A wild idea exploded in Petr Brok's mind. He eagerly broke the red seal, unfolded the half sheet of white paper and read:

  Of my own free will and at my own risk, I have lent my body to Master Oskar Eril to use it for what is known as the 'dispersion experiment', so that I could in this manner and form (i.e., being invisible) infiltrate all areas of Mullerdom and uncover its suspicious secrets. And if the terrible conjectures are confirmed, I will murder the man who calls himself Ohisver Muller at once, having been authorised to do so by the secret session of the judicial congress of USW (United States of the World) on the Island of Last Hope — Consumed with a burning desire for truth and justice, and for the salvation of humankind, I make this sacrifice without claim to any reward whatsoever, and without fear of the consequences I had been warned of.

  Signed Petr Brok

  Underneath, the following lines were written by a different hand:

  I confirm by my signature that the effects of the state of dispersion will fade away after exactly thirty days. Signed Oskar Eril

  Only now did Petr Brok begin to understand his amazing power! He grabbed the old man around the waist and spun him around in a crazy dance, in the first wave of joy he had felt since waking up.

  The old man then touc
hed the surface of the mirror with his finger and stepped back, frightened.

  "Oh, I fear the mirror under my hand. Mirrors respond even to the blind. A mirror never stops seeing."

  "Grandpa," shouted Brok, "you wouldn't be able to see me anyway, even if you had a thousand eyes. No-one can see me.!"

  Brok couldn't get enough of his invisibility. He skipped in front of the mirror, tapped it, breathed on it and stroked it — but to no avail! As if the mirror grew tired of receiving and giving back human shapes. No! It was rather as if it had suddenly rebelled, and, quite selectively, refused to reflect Petr Brok. And he was far from being angry! On the contrary, he thought: What power I have! Like a god. I can do anything. I can perform miracles not even Jesus Christ could dream of. I will surprise the world imprisoned in this skyscraper. Mullerdom is now mine!

  He hastened to bid the young old man farewell and stepped into the cage of the lift. As soon as the iron grille shut behind him, he felt a shock. The lift started descending fast and he felt as if he were falling into an abyss. He closed his eyes. The headlong plunge gave him vertigo. His temples began to pound. Then Petr Brok lost consciousness.

  VII

  Again the dream with the yellow lamp · Windows and people · The inn at the end of the world · The dream merchant

  As he kept falling, to his surprise, that heavy oppressive dream came back. — A yellow lamp with a flame flickering anxiously inside a skull. It doesn't light anything except itself and a yellow circle of dust swirling around it. He dreams that he is lying curled up in a damp, freezing building, his head between his knees. He pushes aside the grey cocoon he is wrapped in. — As his eyes become accustomed to the dim light, as if through a veil, he can see cracked wooden beams crossing above his head unfathomably in all directions. On a suspended platform, people are lying in a tight row, left side up, warming each other in their laps. — But he is no longer a link in this chain; he is lying opposite, by a broken window covered in white frost. — He is cold. He pulls the cocoon back over his head, curls up and wraps himself up in darkness that could be both night and day...