The transition E-Book

Stephan de Groote

• Herausgeber: novum publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 240

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

With horror-genre motifs, the novel makes the blood in the veins freeze; enclosed in a frame story that also tells of loneliness, connection and love. The readers accompany our friend Rubén d'Aubuisson Hofmann on his journey into madness. Will it end well or has he fallen irretrievably into damnation? Not for the faint-hearted, in any case. So now you have been warned about what to expect when reading. The purchase price or your peace of mind will not be refunded afterwards. However, some of it is interspersed with irony and sarcasm. There are also serious historical insertions and descriptions of nature.

Leseprobe

The Transition

The history of the Chapín, the Catracho and the Sorcière

Based on motifs from the "Hammer of Witches" by the Dominican monk Heinrich Kramer

The Honduran author Rubén d'Aubuisson Hofmann, who is completely unknown today and was already completely unknown during his lifetime (fortune hunters wanted by the police on the old continent will have spread through his family tree), wrote the novel "El Traslado" ("The Transition") in the early 1920s during long nights in his attic room above the smoky rooftops of Paris. In a gloomy arrondissement full of questionable existences, daily struggles for survival, noisy, smoky dance halls, absinthe and the brief illusion of bought happiness in shabby dosshouses. Where many poured themselves their first sip at breakfast with shaky hands in order to be prepared for the challenges of the day and shied away from looking in mirrors. Hemingway would have said that he was in his element there, but would have preferred the Ritz. Nevertheless, it all seems picturesque to us today because of Jean Gabin and certain wicked chansons. Also because of the anarcho-syndicalists from all over the world who flocked there in the certain expectation of an imminent revolution, which then came to nothing, or at best in the field of free love. Among them was d'Aubuisson Hofmann, completely devoted to literature and magical fantasy, but not at all or only when there was free red wine.

Nobody read d'Aubuisson Hofmann's novel, neither in the original Spanish nor in his own French translation, which - it must be freely admitted, but that doesn't take anything away from its greatness - is riddled with errors. No French motherlinguist took on the laborious task of proofreading, nor did anyone else. Another expression of his existential homelessness, in which he was trapped like in a spider's web. Even his drinking companions turned away bored and back to their liter bottles when he took out his manuscript again. Even though quite a few of them pretended to be intellectuals and many of them had also washed up on the banks of the Seine from overseas. No publisher was willing to publish the book. They did not even consider it worthy of rejection. D'Aubuisson Hofmann complained bitterly about this in a long, convoluted epilogue, which demands the utmost of the reader's understanding of the text. He felt misunderstood and was not wrong. His epilogue is not printed in the book you are holding in your hands because the publisher insisted, for cost reasons, that his printed version should not exceed one hundred and fifty pages, including the imprint and advertising for the publishing program. The reprint must be reserved for later editions, including annotations and appendices, which will certainly be published. Perhaps I will also be considered worthy of a mention in one or two footnotes. I do not know, as d'Aubuisson Hofmann's star outshines that of my arbitrariness almost immeasurably.

His epilogue also reveals that at some point d'Aubuisson Hofmann was only able to pay his rent sporadically after his family in the tropics, tired of what they saw as his useless bohemian existence, cut him off for good, these stooges and lackeys of the United Fruit Company. Much to the displeasure of his strict concierge. But Latino charm can compensate for many things. Even with his raven-black hair brushed back smooth with brilliantine, his upper lip beard neatly trimmed according to the fashion of his time, the tangy smell of aftershave and the nonchalance with which he knew how to light a cigarette. You can't buy style, he sometimes thought with the self-satisfied, arrogant purr of a cat on the prowl. Until his everyday worries caught up with him again.

He did not seek contact with fellow countrymen. He had long since got over that. After all, there were hardly any in Paris and he didn't know any of them. Sometimes he felt like a wolf that had strayed from its pack and now had to face the rigors of the weather all alone. You could call him a lonely man, basically alone at home in the world of his books and fantastic literature.

His other stories, which he said he wrote constantly, were also not published in any feuilleton or avant-garde anthology (not even on poor paper and in an edition of just fifty copies) until he could no longer afford the postage to send them in. With his sensitive disposition, he was forced to take on day laborer jobs. Sweeping out pubs, distributing advertising, dressing up as Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, holding doors open, cleaning urinals, wiping up vomit, that sort of thing. He was also mocked and ridiculed for his French with rolled tongue-tip rrrs and nasal sounds, pronounced by him as if he was dripping with sniffles. A disgrace to the Grand Nation! A wasted life. A grandiose one!

Unfortunately, what an indescribable loss, his other stories have probably not been preserved for posterity. Even after an intensive search for them in archives, I was unable to find any. We only know the few titles that d'Aubuisson Hofmann mentions in his epilogue: "Completely out of place", "Sava", "Saved!", "The multi-layered night", "The manuscript found in the Lunigiana". Nor was I able to find out any further biographical details about him. The Internet is silent about him. To their regret, the two or three d'Aubuissons in Honduras that I was able to track down online told me in response to my diligent inquiries that they had never heard of him but felt very honored. I didn't write to the few Hofmanns on site, because they could have come to Honduras only in 1945,under dubious circumstances. Perhaps at some point they all took their sheep to Miami, where they now lead a parasitic life or, conversely, eke out an existence as bouncers in flimsy establishments. We've seen it all before.

I am sure you will agree with me that d'Aubuisson Hofmann's work is characterized by an increasing tendency towards self-destruction and the erasure of everything, which leads me to believe that this could have been genetic, i.e. inherited from his family. Dark allusions by d'Aubuisson Hofmann here and there in his book confirm this assumption. Did his line perhaps die out with him, like that of the House of Usher? Before he finally created an awe-inspiring monument for posterity with his novel? As if a momentous, ominous proclamation had been fulfilled? Fathoming all this must be a vast field of work for future generations of literary scholars. I can only provide impulses for future research projects. No more and no less. Perhaps it will all remain in the dark. D'Aubuisson Hofmann would probably not have been surprised.

As things stand at present, all that remains of him is the manuscript, yellowed and chewed by mice, which fell into my hands by chance some time ago while rummaging around at a bouquinista on the banks of the Seine. Or was it perhaps no coincidence at all? Don't you sometimes get the feeling that there are books that choose their readers and not the other way around? That they have a magical radiance that we can't escape? As if they were alive? Do you perhaps feel the same way about the book you are immersed in at this moment, as if at the bottom of the sea? But that's a broad subject that we won't go into any further here.

D'Aubuisson Hofmann's work captivated me from the very first lines, indeed, it aroused my rapturous interest. Not only because of his unrivaled mastery and linguistic skill, whichwould have been more than enough reason for this. But also because it awakened in me memories of my own experiences from long ago, which certainly shaped the rest of my life. However, I don't want to go into this any further at this point. You will be able to find out more about this in my later papers. Until I had finished reading d'Aubuisson Hofmann's novel, I did not react to attempts to speak to me, not even by clapping my hands in front of my eyes or pinching myself, as I was credibly told afterwards and as my absolutely trustworthy family doctor confirmed. My condition during those memorable, agitated days may have looked like that of a zombie to an untrained observer. In hindsight, I can't say whether I was eating or being fed. It must have been like that.

Below I reproduce the novel in the author's words, in my translation. I had to laboriously decipher some passages. Certainly because around a hundred years have passed since they were written on a rickety typewriter, they appear blurred, as if someone had wept over them. Red stains from probably spilt red wine also made it difficult to understand the text. The very minor changes I have made are due to d'Aubuisson Hofmann's sometimes expressionistic vocabulary, which was in keeping with the taste of his time and did not always translate seamlessly into today's reading habits. In the early 1920s they were written as a reaction to the war, which had basically been lost for everyone, before fascism gained momentum and boot-cracking and strength through joy became part of the repertoire. But further developments proved the expressionists right.

However, I did not presume to seriously correct D'Aubuisson Hofmann in even a handful of passages. Some explanatory notes, however, which I felt were necessary for a better understanding of the text for contemporary readers, have been inserted directly into the text as square brackets [...] at. This also made it possible, particularly with regard to the e-book version, to dispense with footnotes, which could have impaired the flow of reading. Probable errors are solely my responsibility. My translation skills are also limited. However, there will certainly be far more thorough, annotated new editions. There will undoubtedly also be scholarly disputes about how some passages should be interpreted in the original. I have to freely admit that I sometimes faced almost insurmountable hurdles in my translation. I am referring here to d'Aubuisson Hofmann's tendency to use Central Americanisms and expressions of indigenous, even black African origin, the meaning of which was not clear to me, even through specialized dictionaries and correspondence with experts. This applies no less to d'Aubuisson Hofmann's own dark linguistic creations in magical, abysmal passages. I often had to try to fill in the gaps in my understanding with fantasy and imagination. Obviously deliberately, d'Aubuisson Hofmann took it upon himself to create a kind of fog of the mysterious and incomprehensible. Indeed, this could almost be described as one of his preferred stylistic devices. I certainly don't need to explain the challenges this posed for me as a translator. Even d'Aubuisson Hofmann himself had a major translation task to master when writing his work. You will learn more about this later if you decide to read on. At this point, I would just like to briefly mention that when translating a translation, it can easily happen that in the end not much of the content of the original remains, and it can even be turned into its opposite. Translators know a thing or two about this.

Once, however, in a dream, as he peered over my back at my translation, d'Aubuisson Hofmann patted me on the shoulder in an encouraging and even appreciative manner. He even gave me a thumbs-up. I had to take this as a sign that I was on the right track. And as an incentive that encouraged me not to let up in my efforts.

In all of this, I can only claim to have been the pioneer and to have snatched the work from the darkness. No more, but also no less. Whether it is a pure fantasy construct or based on true events must be left to the discerning judgment of the reader. Also whether it should be understood as a dark parable with which d'Aubuisson Hofmann foresaw later world-historical catastrophes.

You will, of course, have your very own reading experiences, which I cannot and should not anticipate. But I think that as you read, you will increasingly come to realize that d'Aubuisson Hofmann, with his unsurpassed power of language and his psychological acuity like that of an eagle who has studied Freud or is called Alfred Adler, wrote two novels at once: the superficial and the real. Like an undercurrent that is imperceptible to the naked eye for a long time, but which nevertheless churns up the sea beneath a mirror-smooth surface and leads us to an initially undefined destination, until we increasingly recognize the reality behind the illusion of the outer appearance. And that is after all the great art!

But enough of the preface! Let the manuscript now speak for itself! Its very first paragraphs set the tone.

I am certain that I was in Varcycourt. But was what I experienced or thought I experienced there the reality or a dream in which evil manifested itself? And is it me who dreamed it and is now putting it down on paper? Does what we call "I" even exist, or are we just the nightmare of a bad-tempered God? The following references to "I" and "me" must be subject to this reservation. Of the Rubén d'Aubuisson Hofmann, who is perhaps a completely different person. Or who is not at all. I suppress these thoughts because they seem too outrageous to me. Better to drink red wine and ruffle the hair of the creature lying next to me.

In the narrow street canyons, a pitch-black gloom had replaced the shy daylight. The illumination of the shop windows and lanterns had created a kind of arcade of glaring light, in which passers-by scurried off in all directions like fleeting shadows. Above them, the last floors of the tall buildings were shrouded in darkness, and the sky could only be seen as a formation of densely packed, fleeing clouds. A stormy night was on the horizon. With a roaring wind that was already drowning out the roar of the crowds and the noise of the cars. The air crackled as if it was about to spark. I dragged myself wearily up the creaking steps to my attic room, which I had moved into for lack of money, after my long but futile daywerk as every day. The dim, flickering gaslight of the stairwell cast my shadows against the bare walls, sometimes they trembled or their heads or other parts of their bodies seemed cut off or shriveled up. I couldn't sleep for hours. Not only because of the storm, which had now reached hurricane force and was dancing a wild polka with my shutters. I tossed and turned restlessly in my bed. There was something ominous in the air. A premonition of impending doom and imminent death. Something engulfing me like a black cloud that surrounded me. I don't know how to say it any better.

Do you love me? Then follow me into the darkness!

The Letter from the Chapín

It so happened that the following morning I received a letter from a distant friend, Ezequiel Sepúlveda Muñoz, a Guatemalan of advanced age, whose inherited, extensive estates with banana trees and billowing sugar canefields stretching to the horizon (with indigenous people and blacks, who did not, however, cultivate the plantations singing merrily) allowed him the lifestyle of a grand seigneur in the French province. But perhaps it was also due to some kind of entanglement that caused him to turn his back on his homeland, as happened to many others. Our countries spit many of us out and never welcome them back with open arms like prodigal sons or daughters. They then wander through the world like the Flying Dutchman. They feel it most painfully when they can't sleep at night.

Holy Week with its processions in the Guatemalan highlands is an unforgettable experience for those who have traveled from where knows where. The descendants of the pre-Columbian Mayas scourge themselves to death with whips. They carry crosses as heavy as lead on their seemingly endless, agonizing journey to Golgotha. Everything bears the distinct traits of a terrible collective masochism. The demise of one's own culture is mourned. There is no glimmer of hope. In lamentation, His death and His burial are transformed into the cult of their own death and funeral. The extinction of the beautiful life that is so unattainable for them. On Easter Sunday, on the other hand, there are no more processions at all. Everything is as sleepy as ever. The Holy Week of the disregarded descendants of the much-admired discoverers of the number zero and the visionary, magical sky-stormers with their steep pyramids jutting out of the boiling jungle ends without resurrection.

The letter surprised me, because our contacts, based on mutual superficial acquaintances from the Central American diaspora in Paris, had been quite sporadic until then. When he was in Paris, which was rare enough, he liked the sedate, quiet country life, he enjoyed wandering through artists' bars on the Rive Gauche with me. With that pleasant creepiness that others get from seeing abnormalities. Even if he wasn't so out of place there with his monocle, walking stick and meerschaum cigarette holder. Just as little in noisy dance halls. Not even as an exotic foreigner, of whom the place was teeming. He had certainly chosen me as his companion because, with his reclusive lifestyle, he only knew a few other Central Americans in Paris in passing at best. And because he struggled with French just as much as I did. So we didn't embarrass ourselves in front of each other. But there was certainly another thing we had in common. That of coming from the parasitic, decadent classes of our countries.

The last of them was killed by the Spaniards. So there is nothing more to report. The wisdom of the kings is gone. It's all over in Quiché, called Santa Cruz.

I have to emphasize as a fine, winning trait of his that, as was his way, he appeared generously in all restaurants and paid all bills without batting an eyelid, even those of the amusement ladies and coquettes, whom he treated with a rather fatherly attitude that was by no means displeasing to them. His upper-class, colonial Spanish habitus was softened by a wink and self-irony, making it bearable. He never spoke to me about his homeland, or only about incomprehensible things that he had learned from drinking too much red wine at an advanced hour. He then called me Catracho, the nickname of the inhabitants of my country. A malapropism of General Florencio Xatruch's name, hislife as a posthumous national hero in 19th century Honduras was basically one continuous coup and uprising. But the way he said it sounded familiar and not a bit disrespectful. For me, he was the Chapín, as the Guatemalans are called after the sound chap, chap, which is heard when high-ranking ladies walk on the cobblestones of colonial towns in their high heels, overlooking the downtrodden people.

Of course, hardly anyone understood us then. Even Latin Americans from elsewhere had their difficulties with it. Especially with allusions in sentences that we could leave unfinished, because we knew the often diffuse, blurred meaning of the words. No one else around us did. Another link between us. Despite, or perhaps because of, our great age difference, we didn't compete for anything like young hotshots. We could also keep quiet together. Not many people can do that. Somehow we both felt like flotsam that had washed up on foreign shores. Nevertheless, I knew very little about him and, as I said, he was only rarely in Paris. Conversely, my limited and often non-existent funds did not allow me to travel to the south, to which he invited me every time, but like someone who was not serious about it. We didn't correspond, although I did send some scrounger letters. In his case, respect and certainly also embarrassment kept me from doing so. This certainly explains my astonishment when I received a letter from him that day.

We were sitting in white clothes in a clearing in the jungle. Night had fallen on us with the suddenness of the tropics. The stars in the firmament twinkled like diamonds, radiating not warmth but the coldness of dissecting knives. The polyphonic jungle surrounded us. Rustling, the trees swaying back and forth like anurgent but billowing wall, fireflies like will-o'-the-wisps, the squawking of parrots and monkeys, sounds that we couldn't identify with any living creature. Although it was mild - the heat and sultriness of the day had dissipated in showers, but they still hung in the air - we were shivering. We held hands. A crackling campfire, the sparks dancing like dervishes, provided warmth, bottles of home-distilled, high-proof rum, which were passed from one to the other, even more. Vanhuizen, the fat Dutch planter, seemed absorbed, as if he was preparing for the last minutes of his life, facing the spirits of those enslaved by his ancestors, silently praying to them for forgiveness. We began to beat the drums. Slowly at first, as if feeling our way through the darkness, then faster and faster until we reached a frenzied, unleashed rhythm. We sang African songs with indigenous sprinkles, the content of which only a few old, wise men and women still understood, and they guarded their secret. But the words were firmly etched in our minds. They had to be an invocation.

Orisha gigun esin gba ina igbo okun igbàlà ore-ofe Gègè

Touissant, the black man from the Antilles with his protruding, bright white eyeballs and muscular torso, drenched us with the blood of a goat whose throat he had cut with his cutlass. The policemen who were chasing us could no longer harm us. They pursued us with great reluctance and only in response to massive threats from their superiors, for they were filled with a nameless dread of the jungle nights and their creatures, and couldn't even one false step sink them into a swamp? Our bodies had become invulnerable to their bullets. Vanhuizen was suddenly writhing on the ground in a trance. We tried to fathom what he or they were trying to tell us, who were now speaking to us from his mouth. "The horror, the horror!" were the only nasaland stretched words we understood or thought we understood. We had to force a gag between his teeth, because many a man had bitten off his tongue in his position. And someone who was mutilated during his lifetime remains so even after his flight across the ocean and his rebirth in the magical Guinée. Then we all fell silent from one moment to the next, including the animals of the forest and even the wind. As if in eager anticipation of something indescribable, beyond the limits of the human mind. Ezilie, the temptress, descended to us to feed again on the blood of one of us, the one she had chosen for this night. So that he might become immortal.

I reproduce Ezequiel's letter verbatim below.

Precious friend,

I hope you are well and have found a publisher for your stories. The world needs to read them!

You will certainly be surprised to receive a letter from me. And even more so when you read about my urgent request to you.

Far be it from me to want to worry you. But I don't know how to help myself any more. Black shadows have entered my life like an icy breeze and they are getting closer and closer. I must fear that I will soon no longer be able to fend them off, because my strength is dwindling.

If only they were nightmares that haunt me at night! They have also become waking dreams that permeate my days like impenetrable clouds of fog that want to suck me in and devour me. But I know that they are not the figments of my imagination or my certainly frayed nerves. Everything is as real as the table I'm sitting at or the glass of water you're drinking.

But who could I tell and who could I ask for advice? Everyone would dismiss it as a figment of my imagination and urgently recommend that I seek treatment from a neurologist. It's quite possible that I would even be taken into custody so that I couldn't harm myself. Yes, that I would be incapacitated and put in an insane asylum. Even I can't describe the creatures that surround me and reach for me. Or at best very vaguely, like something you can only make out blurred and outlined in a thick haze or steam.

Almost everyone only believes in what they see or want to see. They are like small children who convince themselves that the horror will disappear if they pull the comforter over their head and plug their ears. But it climbs into bed with them, kneels on their chest and chokes off their air.

Certainly because of our common origin from a territory that is magical in so many ways, it seems to me that we both understand more about transcendental, secret transitions than almost anyone else, until they suddenly stand in front of you and are pulled with irresistible force over a threshold beyond which there is no turning back.

But also because you are one of only two friends I have in my secluded, once so contemplative way of life in France, contact with all my former and also my relatives back home has been completely broken off for a long time, I would like to ask you, indeed implore you, to visit me for at least a few days in Varcycourt to help me in my anguish of soul.

We will endeavor to make your stay here as pleasant as possible under the given circumstances. You will want for nothing there. And not to end this letter on a gloomy note: The charm of the countryside around Varcycourt will delight you. Only I, with my particular disposition, find it oppressive and suffocating. Everyone else praises its beauty.

Enclosed you will find a check that will certainly cover your travel expenses and hopefully compensate you for your loss of earnings and your efforts. If not, much more awaits you in Varcycourt. It should not be your loss.

If you can make up your mind to fulfill my wish, but perhaps you are prevented from doing so by obligations that cannot be postponed, prepare yourself for a long, arduous train journey with the need to change trains and long waiting times. Varcycourt is very remote.

Can you send me a telegram, whatever your decision? I certainly won't hold it against you, but would fully understand if you were prevented from traveling to Varcycourt. Especially after reading this letter, which certainly doesn't make you look forward to a vacation. I know, I know, but I can't help it.

Your very devoted friend

Ezequiel

On the one hand, Chapín's letter disturbed me greatly. But I put its content down to a temporary depressed state of mind, which sometimes afflicts us, and which could be counteracted by talking long walks and drinking red wine. At least that's what I told myself so as not to fall into overly gloomy thoughts. With the slowness of the French postal service, four or five days had passed before the letter reached me, and I didn't have access to such newfangled things as electromagnetic telephone transmissions. It was quite possible, it seemed to me, that a smiling Ezequiel would be waiting for me in Varcycourt, already regretting having invited me. However, I didn't need to think about it. Certainly out of concern for my friend, the Chapín. I didn't really have any other friends at the time. However, I can't hide the fact that you wouldn't take it from me, without questionbecause of the cheque, made out for an amount that I certainly wouldn't have earned even if I had sold all my earthly belongings, even if there had been prospective buyers for worn socks, a few threadbare shirts and a key ring with a bottle opener in Honduran colors. Incidentally, I had to smile at the passage about "obligations that cannot be postponed". Even in his position, Chapín still seemed to have a mischievous streak in his neck!

Ezequiel had written that "we" would do our best to make my stay pleasant. Who else would be waiting for me there besides him?

Divine riders on dancing human horses - in Christianity, possession is associated with Satan, his infernal hosts and exorcism. Religious rapture also exists there, for example when Pentecostals speak in tongues or saints have visions. In ordinary church services, however, such phenomena are extremely rare at best. Or have you ever seen someone writhing on the floor during a church service, screaming hosanna and foaming at the mouth? The ambulance would be called for him or her very quickly and the whole town would be whispering about them from then on.