Et Cetera, a Collector's Scrap-Book/The Devil's Grindstone
Gustav Meyrink
The Devil's Grindstone
The Devil's Grindstone
here is an ancient house in the old and
lonely part of town. From the first floor
to the attic it is inhabited by discontented and
unhappy people. Whosoever enters it is at
once seized by a feeling of disquietude, of dismay,
and mental torment. It is a dark and
sinister structure, buried almost up to its
belly in the earth of the unpaved hill.
In the centre of the cellar there lies an iron plate. Whosoever ventures to lift it may look into a black and narrow shaft with slippery sides. Cold and sheer it runs down into the heart of the earth. Often had torches attached to ropes been let down into this hole. They sank deeply into the darkness and their light became ever weaker and more smoldering. Then the torches would go out and the people would say: "There ain't any more air!"
And so nobody has ever found out whither this shaft goes.
Should you, however, be possessed of clear eyes, you will be able to see without light. You will be able to see even in the darkness, when everybody else is sleeping.
When the people of this city succumb to the night and consciousness vanishes, then the spectres of Sin and Greed leave their perches upon the pendulum of human hearts. These spectres are of a shimmering green; their outlines are dim and uncertain, and they are utterly hideous, for there is no love in the hearts of these human beings.
The people of the town are weary from their day's work, which they call duty, and so they seek to replenish their forces through sleep, in order to be able to destroy the happiness and prosperity of their fellow brethren—in order to plan new murders in the newest, freshest sunshine.
They sleep and they snore.
Then the shadows of the Sins and Lusts slip through the cracks in the doors and the crevices in the walls into the open air—slink into the vast and hearkening night. The sleeping animals scent them and start and whimper.
The shadows creep and dart into the old and gloomy house, into the mouldy cellar where lies the iron plate. And the iron is without weight when it is touched by the hands of these spirits. In its deepest profundities the shaft broadens out—it is there that the phantoms meet. They do not greet one another and they ask no questions—there is nothing which one would care to know about the other.
In the middle of this chamber hums a grey stone disk, revolving at an enormous speed. This stone, harder than adamant or obsidian, was tempered by the Evil One thousands of years ago, tempered and annealed in the fires of hate—long before a single stone of this city stood.
Upon its whirring and whizzing edges the phantoms sharpen their prehensile claws, those claws which their serfs, the day-labourers in the Devil's Vineyard, had used and scratched blunt.
The sparks spurt from the onyx claws of Lust, from the steel talons of Greed.
All, all of them are once more sharpened into points like needles and to edges like razors,—for the Evil One has need of ever-new wounds.
If the sleeping mortal stretches his fingers, then this is a signal for the phantom to rush back into the body. The claws must remain crooked so that the hands cannot be joined in prayer.
Satan's grindstone continues to whirr—ceaselessly—never diminishing its speed—
Day and night—
Until Time shall stand still and space be broken up.
***
If you will but hold your hands to your ears, you will hear the whirring of the grindstone within you.