[00:00.43]I have examined maps of the city with the greatest care
[00:03.38]Yet have never again found the Rue d’Auseil.
[00:08.92]Despite all I have done
[00:10.12]It remains an humiliating fact that I cannot find the house
[00:15.45]The street, or even the locality
[00:18.36]Where, during the last months of my impoverished life
[00:21.00]As a student of metaphysics at the university
[00:25.05]I heard the music of Erich Zann
[00:29.25]That my memory is broken
[00:31.45]I do not wonder
[00:32.77]For my health, physical and mental, was gravely disturbed
[00:37.49]Throughout the period of my residence in the Rue d’Auseil
[00:42.16]But that I cannot find the place again
[00:44.06]Is both singular and perplexing
[00:48.96]
[00:48.99]I have never met a person who has seen the Rue d’Auseil
[00:52.96]I do not know how I came to live on such a street
[00:56.92]But I was not myself when I moved there
[01:00.30]I had been living in many poor places
[01:02.40]Always evicted for want of money
[01:04.95]Until at last
[01:07.05]I came upon that tottering house in the Rue d’Auseil
[01:11.75]Kept by the paralytic Blandot.
[01:13.55]
[01:20.07]It was the third house from the top of the street
[01:22.33]And by far the tallest of them all
[01:25.84]My room was on the fifth story
[01:28.44]The only inhabited room there
[01:30.05]Since the house was almost empty
[01:32.30]On the night I arrived I heard strange music
[01:38.20]From the peaked garret overhead
[01:41.04]And the next day asked old Blandot about it
[01:44.73]He told me it was an old German viol-player
[01:48.38]A strange dumb man who signed his name as Erich Zann
[01:55.26]And who played evenings in a cheap theatre orchestra
[01:59.56]Adding that Zann’s desire to play in the night
[02:02.10]After his return from the theatre was the reason
[02:05.45]He had chosen this lofty and isolated garret room
[02:09.64]Whose single gable window was the only point on the street
[02:13.14]From which one could look over the terminating wall
[02:16.29]At the declivity and panorama beyond
[02:21.23]
[02:23.37]Thereafter I heard Zann every night
[02:26.68]And although he kept me awake
[02:28.13]I was haunted by the weirdness of his music.
[02:31.37]Knowing little of the art myself
[02:33.62]I was yet certain that none of his harmonies
[02:36.12]Had any relation to music I had heard before
[02:40.17]And concluded that he was a composer of highly original genius.
[02:45.16]The longer I listened, the more I was fascinated
[02:50.01]Until after a week I resolved to make the old man’s acquaintance
[02:54.30]
[02:55.74]One night, as he was returning from his work
[02:58.61]I intercepted Zann in the hallway
[03:01.62]And told him that I would like to know him
[03:03.57]And be with him when he played
[03:06.47]He was a small, lean, bent person
[03:09.76]With shabby clothes, blue eyes, grotesque
[03:13.87]Satyr-like face, and nearly bald head
[03:18.16]And at my first words seemed both angered
[03:20.67]And frightened. My obvious friendliness
[03:23.11]However, finally melted him
[03:24.83]
[03:25.93]And he grudgingly motioned to me to follow him up the dark
[03:29.08]Creaking, and rickety attic stairs
[03:34.83]His room, one of only two in the steeply pitched garret
[03:39.37]Was on the west side
[03:41.56]Toward the high wall that formed the upper end of the street
[03:44.89]Its size was very great, and seemed the greater
[03:49.69]Because of its extraordinary bareness and neglect
[03:53.66]The abundance of dust and cobwebs
[03:54.99]Made the place seem more deserted than inhabited
[04:00.18]Evidently Erich Zann’s world of beauty
[04:04.37]Lay in some far cosmos of the imagination
[04:09.50]
[04:11.25]Motioning me to sit down, the dumb man closed the door
[04:14.43]Turned the large wooden bolt
[04:16.78]And lighted a candle to augment the one he had brought with him
[04:21.67]He now removed his viol from its moth-eaten covering
[04:25.81]And playing from memory,
[04:27.77]Enchanted me for over an hour with strains I had never heard before
[04:32.38]Strains which must have been of his own devising
[04:36.48]To describe their exact nature
[04:39.38]Is impossible for one unversed in music
[04:42.78]They were a kind of fugue
[04:44.77]With recurrent passages of the most captivating quality
[04:50.04]But they were notable for the absence of any of the weird notes
[04:53.17]I had overheard from my room below on other occasions
[04:56.96]
[04:57.46]Those haunting notes I had remembered
[04:59.25]And had often hummed and whistled inaccurately to myself
[05:03.35]So when the player at length laid down his bow
[05:06.34]I asked him if he would render some of them
[05:09.48]As I began my request the wrinkled satyr-like face lost the bored placidity
[05:14.16]It had possessed during the playing
[05:16.60]And seemed to shew the same curious mixture of anger and fright
[05:21.25]Which I had noticed when first I accosted the old man
[05:24.16]
[05:25.36]I tried to awaken my host’s weirder mood
[05:27.77]By whistling a few of the strains
[05:29.36]To which I had listened the night before
[05:32.33]But I did not pursue this course for more than a moment
[05:35.99]For when the dumb musician recognised the whistled air
[05:38.91]His face grew suddenly distorted
[05:40.81]With an expression wholly beyond analysis
[05:43.36]And his long, cold, bony right hand
[05:46.90]Reached out to stop my mouth
[05:48.59]And silence the crude imitation
[05:50.64]
[05:52.26]As he did this he further demonstrated his eccentricity
[05:57.04]By casting a startled glance toward the lone curtained window
[06:02.62]As if fearful of some intruder—
[06:06.98]A glance doubly absurd
[06:09.61]Since the garret stood high
[06:11.63]And inaccessible above all the adjacent roofs
[06:15.49]This window being the only point on the steep street
[06:18.75]As the concierge had told me
[06:21.05]From which one could see over the wall at the summit
[06:24.69]The old man’s glance brought Blandot’s remark to my mind
[06:31.38]And with a certain capriciousness
[06:34.53]I felt a wish to look out over the wide
[06:36.52]And dizzying panorama of moonlit roofs
[06:40.53]And city lights beyond the hill-top
[06:43.42]Which of all the dwellers in the Rue d’Auseil
[06:46.61]Only this crabbed musician could see
[06:49.51]
[06:51.91]I moved toward the window
[06:53.15]And would have drawn aside the nondescript curtains
[06:55.39]When with a frightened rage
[06:57.79]The dumb lodger was upon me again
[07:00.37]This time motioning with his head toward the door
[07:02.72]As he nervously strove to drag me thither with both hands
[07:06.85]Now thoroughly disgusted with my host
[07:10.00]I ordered him to release me
[07:12.68]And told him I would go at once
[07:18.34]
[07:24.28]My liking for him did not grow
[07:27.07]Though the attic room and the weird music
[07:29.19]Seemed to hold an odd fascination for me
[07:32.84]I had a curious desire to look out of that window
[07:36.19]Over the wall and down the unseen slope at the glittering roofs
[07:40.43]And spires which must lie outspread there
[07:44.73]Once I went up to the garret during theatre hours
[07:49.61]When Zann was away, but the door was locked
[07:54.61]What I did succeed in doing
[07:56.85]Was to overhear the nocturnal playing of the dumb old man
[08:00.03]
[08:01.48]I would climb the last creaking staircase
[08:04.54]To the peaked garret
[08:06.68]And there I often heard sounds which filled me
[08:12.46]With an indefinable dread—
[08:15.81]The dread of vague wonder and brooding mystery
[08:22.75]It was not that the sounds were hideous for they were not
[08:26.03]But that they held vibrations
[08:27.81]Suggesting nothing on this globe of earth
[08:31.05]And that at certain intervals they assumed a symphonic quality
[08:36.88]Which I could hardly conceive as produced by one player
[08:41.88]Certainly, Erich Zann was a genius of wild power
[08:50.15]
[09:01.78]As the weeks passed, the playing grew wilder
[09:05.76]Whilst the old musician acquired an increasing haggardness
[09:10.26]And furtiveness pitiful to behold
[09:13.28]He now refused to admit me at any time
[09:16.32]And shunned me whenever we met on the stairs
[09:20.66]Then one night as I listened at the door
[09:24.48]I heard the shrieking viol swell into a chaotic babel of sound
[09:30.42]A pandemonium which would have led me
[09:32.16]To doubt my own shaking sanity had there not come from behind
[09:36.99]That barred portal a piteous proof that the horror was real—
[09:43.30]The awful inarticulate cry which only a mute can utter
[09:48.33]And which rises only in moments of the most terrible fear or anguish
[09:55.89]
[09:56.44]I knocked repeatedly at the door, but received no response
[10:00.03]Afterward I waited in the black hallway, shivering with cold and fear
[10:04.02]Till I heard the poor musician’s feeble effort
[10:07.47]To rise from the floor
[10:09.33]Believing him just conscious after a fainting fit
[10:13.13]I renewed my rapping, at the same time calling out my name reassuringly
[10:17.63]I heard Zann stumble to the window and close both shutter and sash
[10:22.21]Then stumble to the door, which he falteringly unfastened to admit me
[10:26.95]
[10:28.40]This time his delight at having me present was real
[10:32.24]For his distorted face gleamed with relief
[10:34.54]While he clutched at my coat as a child clutches at its mother’s skirts
[10:38.97]Shaking pathetically
[10:39.99]The old man forced me into a chair whilst he sank into another
[10:44.57]Beside which his viol and bow lay carelessly on the floor
[10:49.51]He sat for some time inactive, nodding oddly
[10:56.14]But having a paradoxical suggestion of intense and frightened listening
[11:02.62]
[11:03.32]Unmistakably he was looking at the curtained window and listening shudderingly
[11:10.78]Then I half fancied I heard a sound myself
[11:16.32]Though it was not a horrible sound
[11:19.97]But rather an exquisitely low and infinitely distant musical note
[11:26.16]Suggesting a player in one of the neighbouring houses
[11:29.90]Or in some abode beyond the lofty wall over which I had never been able to look
[11:34.59]Upon Zann the effect was terrible
[11:41.88]Suddenly he rose
[11:43.38]Seized his viol
[11:44.68]And commenced to rend the night with the wildest playing I had ever heard
[11:49.83]
[12:00.45]I could now see the expression of his face
[12:03.36]And could realise that this time the motive was stark fear
[12:07.99]He was trying to make a noise;
[12:09.58]To ward something off or drown something out—what
[12:13.39]I could not imagine, awesome though I felt it must be
[12:18.66]Thne the shrieking and whining of that desperate
[12:22.70]Grew fantastic, delirious, and hysterical
[12:26.46]Louder and louder, wilder and wilder
[12:29.86]The player was dripping with an uncanny perspiration
[12:32.99]And twisted like a monkey
[12:34.60]Always looking frantically at the curtained window
[12:38.29]In his frenzied strains I could almost see shadowy satyrs
[12:41.82]And Bacchanals dancing and whirling insanely
[12:44.64]Through seething abysses of clouds and smoke and lightning.
[12:47.97]Then I thought I heard a shriller
[12:50.84]Steadier note that was not from the viol
[12:54.39]A calm, deliberate, purposeful, mocking note from far away in the west
[13:01.91]
[13:02.61]At this juncture the shutter began to rattle in a howling night-wind
[13:06.70]Which had sprung up outside as if in answer to the mad playing within
[13:11.48]Zann’s screaming viol now outdid itself
[13:14.98]Emitting sounds I had never thought a viol could emit
[13:19.91]The shutter rattled more loudly, unfastened,
[13:18.44]And commenced slamming against the window
[13:22.47]Then the glass broke shiveringly under the persistent impacts
[13:26.61]And the chill wind rushed in
[13:29.01]Making the candles sputter
[13:30.86]And rustling the sheets of paper on the table
[13:33.60]Where Zann had begun to write out his horrible secret
[13:38.44]
[13:38.64]I looked at Zann, and saw that he was past conscious observation
[13:44.05]His blue eyes were bulging, glassy, and sightless,
[13:47.95]And the frantic playing had become a blind, mechanical,
[13:52.36]Unrecognisable orgy that no pen could even suggest
[13:58.60]A sudden gust, stronger than the others
[14:02.04]Caught up the manuscript and bore it toward the window
[14:06.04]I followed the flying sheets in desperation
[14:08.24]But they were gone before I reached the demolished panes
[14:13.08]
[14:17.07]I remembered my old wish to gaze from this window
[14:20.01]The only window in the Rue d’Auseil
[14:22.46]From which one might see the slope beyond the wall
[14:24.70]And the city outspread beneath
[14:27.34]It was very dark, but the city’s lights always burned
[14:31.53]And I expected to see them there amidst the rain and wind
[14:35.93]Yet when I looked from that highest of all gable windows
[14:40.11]Looked while the candles sputtered
[14:43.55]And the insane viol howled with the night-wind
[14:46.70]I saw no city spread below
[14:50.84]And no friendly lights gleaming from remembered streets
[14:56.27]But only the blackness of space illimitable
[15:00.72]
[15:02.52]Unimagined space alive with motion and music
[15:08.52]And having no semblance to anything on earth
[15:14.25]And as I stood there looking in terror
[15:17.54]The wind blew out both the candles in that ancient peaked garret
[15:21.70]Leaving me in savage and impenetrable darkness
[15:24.95]With chaos and pandemonium before me
[15:28.10]And the daemon madness of that night-baying viol behind me
[15:32.74]I staggered back in the dark
[15:35.18]Without the means of striking a light
[15:37.18]Crashing against the table, overturning a chair
[15:39.84]And finally groping my way to the place
[15:42.44]Where the blackness screamed with shocking music
[15:45.82]To save myself and Erich Zann I could at least try
[15:49.16]
[15:50.17]Whatever the powers opposed to me
[15:52.09]Once I thought some chill thing brushed me
[15:57.31]And I screamed
[15:58.56]But my scream could not be heard above that hideous viol
[16:02.45]Suddenly out of the blackness the madly sawing bow struck me
[16:07.69]I felt ahead, touched the back of Zann’s chair
[16:12.12]And then found and shook his shoulder in an effort
[16:15.41]To bring him to his senses
[16:16.72]He did not respond
[16:18.56]And still the viol shrieked on without slackening
[16:22.45]I moved my hand to his head
[16:24.40]Whose mechanical nodding I was able to stop
[16:27.11]And shouted in his ear
[16:28.71]That we must both flee from the unknown things of the night
[16:32.21]But he neither answered me nor abated the frenzy of his unutterable music
[16:37.39]While all through the garret strange currents of wind
[16:41.38]Seemed to dance in the darkness and babel
[16:43.97]
[16:44.97]And when my hand touched his ear I shuddered
[16:50.26]Though I knew not why—knew not why till I felt of the still face
[16:56.86]The ice-cold, stiffened
[17:01.51]Unbreathing face whose glassy eyes bulged uselessly into the void
[17:10.55]And then, by some miracle finding the door and the large wooden bolt
[17:15.35]I plunged wildly away from that glassy-eyed thing in the dark
[17:20.09]And from the ghoulish howling of that accursed viol
[17:23.44]Whose fury increased even as I plunged
[17:27.18]Leaping, floating, flying down those endless stairs through the dark house
[17:32.42]Racing mindlessly out into the narrow, steep and ancient street
[17:37.82]All these are terrible impressions that linger with me
[17:41.41]
[17:45.30]And I recall that there was no wind, and that the moon was out
[17:52.44]And that all the lights of the city twinkled
[17:58.68]Despite my most careful searches and investigations
[18:02.22]I have never since been able to find the Rue d’Auseil
[18:06.96]But I am not wholly sorry
[18:11.05]Either for this or for the loss
[18:14.64]In undreamable abysses of the closely written sheets
[18:18.68]Which alone could have explained the music of Erich Zann