read:
"The Ghost of the Jewish Quarter" in Spanish

by Paul Leppin

translated from the German by
Stephanie Howard and Amy R. Nestor

The Ghost of the Jewish Quarter

In the center of Prague, where tall airy apartment buildings now line the broad streets, there stood — but ten years ago — the Jewish Quarter: a steep, gloomy maze of narrow streets from which no weather could blow the stench of decay and dank, moldering walls and where, in summer, a poisonous breath streamed forth from the open doors. Odors of filth and poverty vied with each other; a dull, brutal corruption flickered in the eyes of the children who grew up there. The streets led at times into low, arched viaducts, through the entrails of a house and beyond, or turned suddenly athwart, finally ending before some blind wall. The sly-faced hawkers piled their secondhand wares on the uneven flagstones in front of the shops and cried out to those passing by. Young women with painted lips lolled in the doorways, laughing coarsely, hissing in men's ears, lifting their skirts to display gold and chartreuse stockings. Aging bawds with grizzled hair and slackened jaws called out greetings from the windows, clapping, winking, and chortling in eagerness and gleeful satisfaction whenever a man entered their net and drew near.

This was the home of depravity — in the evening, its red lights lured in visitors. There were streets where every building was a house of shame: sordid dens, where vice shared a bed with hunger and consumptive women with withered charms ran a miserable industry; secret cellars, where crime, whispering and winking, defiled school girls and sold off their innocence for ghastly rewards. There were fashionable, luxuriously furnished bars, where the foot trod on carpets and satisfied, voluptuous prostitutes flaunted themselves in flowing silk gowns.

Not far from the synagogue, in a two-story building next to the neglected hovels of the gypsy-alleys, stood the Salon of Aaron. In so wretched a neighborhood, this house almost gave the impression of being well-tended, even though the plaster work of the facade was partially broken-off and rain had smeared the panes of the masked windows with mottled streaks. By day all was quiet here; only seldom would a guest sneak over the well-worn steps and into the dim entrance hall, emerging an hour later, hurried and embarrassed, his collar disheveled. But at night, a noisy, bright, vibrating life rose out of hidden fountains. The windows glowed and the laughter fluttered within like a captive bird in a cage.

Among all the voices there, the laughter of Johanna — an ardent, sensual coo — could be clearly distinguished. Sometimes, even in the silence of the late morning, it started to ring out like a joyful, amorous lark. Johanna was joyous because the men came to her. She was in greater demand than her fellow prostitutes because she gave to each man from the tensile, agonizing, restless sweetness that imbued her, but did not dwell in the worn and listless bodies of the others. She herself was often astonished by it. The trade, which was seen as a tedious, irritating task by the women with whom she worked, brought a rapturous, passionate longing over her, a tingling that spread through her flesh and kindled a girlish shimmer in her eyes. With lips cracked and bruised from kissing, she intoxicated herself at the mouths of men, overwhelmed each time by the virginal voluptuousness that had accompanied her first embrace.

In the time left open by this sinful trade, which seemed unbearably long and lonely to her, Johanna listened attentively to the steps of those passing in front of the house. When the doorbell rang, she sighed and a flame flitted over her features. There were often days when she enjoyed love almost to excess. But as she lay in bed later, head hollow and limbs aching, she would recall one man after another, tasting and luxuriating, smiling into the darkness. Sometimes, particularly in summer, as she finally sought her couch in the last hours before dawn, her restlessness mounted to the point of agony. Then, in her chemise, she would go to the open window and look out into the ghetto below. Stretching out her arms, she felt the warm rain like drops of blood on her skin. That was her home there below: the city, where the drowsy lights of the brothels flickered, where clumsy shadows crouched on the ill-famed streets and where, in the distance, the whine of a violin or the harsh tinkling of a music box still invited sexual abandon. As an alluring melancholy bathed her cheeks with tears and the night wind grasped tenderly at her breast, she lay back her head, her lips forming a kiss.

In the evening, when the Salon of Aaron was gaily lit, when the wineglasses clinked on the marble tables, she danced to the music. The sensuality from which she suffered rendered her limbs yielding and languorous and drove her, skirts flying, into an evermore yearning wildness that, suffusing her transfixed features with an amazing beauty, proved more provocative and wooing than the artifices of the others. She danced alone, or with the customers. Her slender body bent pliantly under the hands of her partners, clinging and pressing, trembling and shivering — and when a man had danced with the blonde Johanna, he inevitably went with her to her room. Her mouth was greedy and feverish, and the more men found their way to her, the more unrestrainedly did love assail her. Her desire shocked and stunned, her compliant ardor was kindled to blissfulness.

Then came the day when sickness forced Johanna's body to do penance. Out of the rotting walls of the Jewish Quarter, out of the depraved streets, it came and poisoned her kisses. Scorching her blood and rendering her veins sere and tattered, strangling the laughter, the amorous tremor in her throat, staining her body with reddish sores, it dragged her away, through the insults of the filthy whores, off into the trembling anguish of the public hospital. There, she lay in a burning bed, thoughts falling in heavy drops from the ceiling to her brow. She thought of the women who would now be sitting in the Salon of Aaron, drinking golden wine from delicate glasses, of the music and the scarlet dress she had worn for dancing. Curving her arms, she threw her head back on the pillow — but there was no one there to kiss her. A languishing sorrow awoke the sobs in her throat and pushed her into despair.

Dissembling and dilatory, at a cowardly, malicious pace, the weeks passed. In Johanna, the sickness had broken out with unexpected severity. The antidote with which the doctors tormented her was powerless against it. It nested in her tissues and smoldered under her skin; it engraved suppurating wounds in the corners and crevasses of her flesh and refused to yield. It crippled her thoughts and polluted her sleep with wanton dreams from which she started up, moaning, to a hateful and terrifying recognition of reality. Without men, Johanna could not go on. Her nervous body writhed under the torture of renunciation: every day spent aflame — every hour — sharpened her need. Until she could endure it no longer. One night, she escaped from the hospital. Barefooted, with only a cape to cover her chemise, she sprang through the window and into the garden, then climbed over the wall and down to the street.

Burning, in an unearthly, oppressive expectancy, she ran through the city. Her unbound hair streamed about her face and her eyes shone as a bright, magical thought drove her on, filling her with bliss: She would go to the men! Her feet flew over the cobblestones and her muscles strained. The shadows of lingering nocturnal revelers staggered across her path and the sudden glaring light of the streetlamps startled her. A delicious, heavy, seductive sweetness intoxicated her. The towers of Tyn Cathedral surfaced before her and stood pale between the stars. She had reached her goal! Here already was the street where the music blared behind shrouded doors and the laughter of women beat its wings against red windowpanes.

She stood still and gazed blindedly at the moon. Squinting, it cleaved to the sky, throwing its light on shattered beams and rubble. The Salon of Aaron had vanished. Piece by piece, the spade and the pickaxe had dug up the old house. The stones lay next to the synagogue. A single fragment was still standing, its ragged edges upright among the debris — Johanna recognized the wall of her room. Broken, overcome with horror, her eyes traveled further down the street — the colored lights of the brothels had been extinguished, dust rose like smoke from the shattered roofs. From every direction, ruin crept out of the night. While she had been in the hospital, struggling with the epidemic in her dank bed, they had destroyed her home.

A shriek broke from her throat and ricocheted hideously through the deserted quarter. As her hair flowed over her cape, the night breeze opened it and groped amorously under her shift. A troop of drunken soldiers was passing by. Giddy, moaning confused words of love, she fell on her knees before them. Amidst the debris of the gutted bordellos, Johanna gave herself to the men whom chance had placed in her path. She gave herself to one after another and her poor body, wasted by the sickness, did not tire — in convulsive raptures of love, it dug itself ever deeper into the rubble.

Within the year, the Ghetto had been torn down. New houses smothered the dark, unknown recesses that misery and vice had haunted for over a century. Clacking on high-heeled shoes, depravity fled to the outermost edge of the suburbs. A city for the rich and fashionable rose up in the old squares. Yet until that year, Prague had never known so horrifying and devastating an outbreak of venereal disease. It broke into families and taught young mothers dread. It fastened itself to the smiles of love and transformed them into leaden grimaces. Young men gave themselves to death and the old cursed life.


© Twisted Spoon Press
Translation © Stephanie Howard, Amy Nestor

ISBN 80 901257 5 1
hardcover
144 pp.
14 x 20 cm
8 b/w illustrations
novellas & stories

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Copyright © 2009 Twisted Spoon Press