The helper

# book_id: global-gutenberg-translation-f3349885529a41828ac0a5a8cddd0cd8
# book_title: The helper
# chapter_id: 1-the-helper
# chapter_title: The helper
# book_page: 1 / 9
# chapter_page: 1
# language: en
# content_format: markdown
# reading_structure: unknown
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In the mid-nineteenth century, the trial against the manufacturer Grasso in New York caused enormous sensation. For months, people talked about the mysterious affair and its terrible circumstances. But then war broke out with the Southern states, and when peace was concluded after a year and a half, the memory of the event had faded. Today, one can only reconstruct the details fragmentarily; they have become overgrown with mythical tales. One marvels at how incredible things can happen to a person, and how one passes by them with a smile and simply goes on living as before.

Towards the end of the fifties, a funeral parlor flourished on the outskirts of the city – the area is now completely part of the city. The owner, Grasso, had immigrated from Italy with his wife five years earlier. He had tried unsuccessfully to become a hotelier, then became a carpenter, and acquired enough wealth to take over an older coffin warehouse. At that time, there were barely 200,000 inhabitants in the city.

In a short time, the Italian managed to gain complete control over the funeral business, and only a few official orders went to other companies, from hospitals or military hospitals. The competing businesses declined rapidly. Even the most financially powerful ones, which fought desperately to hold on, could not prevail alongside Grasso, for whom everything fell effortlessly into place without him making any fuss.

# book_id: global-gutenberg-translation-f3349885529a41828ac0a5a8cddd0cd8
# book_title: The helper
# chapter_id: 1-the-helper
# chapter_title: The helper
# book_page: 2 / 9
# chapter_page: 2
# language: en
# content_format: markdown
# reading_structure: unknown
# render_mode: prose

Only later, during the investigations into the case, did it become clear that Grasso was completely uninvolved in this upswing of his business. The heyday of the shop coincided, in fact, quite precisely with the arrival of a young employee named Mike Bondi. Nothing was known about his origins; one only noticed that he conversed with his boss in Italian. It was said that he was already about twenty years old when he was hired. But everyone was convinced that he had not aged a single bit in the fifteen years of his employment. And photographs later found in his possession, on which he could be seen arm in arm with Mr. Grasso, showed surprisingly clearly that this man seemed to remain unchanged over time. Not a single line on his boyishly delicate face had deepened; his jet-black locks still fell onto a low, white forehead.

Yes, even his clothes – it is ridiculous to report this – seemed untouched by time; for no one had seen him buy new ones. He always wore a black suit, a loose, blouse-like jacket with shiny buttons, of an old-fashioned cut such as might have been worn decades earlier. During the court hearings, no one knew where the man spent his nights; sometimes he is said to have slept in the shop, but more often he drove off in the evening in a small car that belonged to him, headed for St. Floridan on the old country road, and disappeared for many hours. Yet all this is uncertain and belongs to the realm of that myth-making of which I spoke earlier.

# book_id: global-gutenberg-translation-f3349885529a41828ac0a5a8cddd0cd8
# book_title: The helper
# chapter_id: 1-the-helper
# chapter_title: The helper
# book_page: 3 / 9
# chapter_page: 3
# language: en
# content_format: markdown
# reading_structure: unknown
# render_mode: prose

Mike was of small stature; he always walked with a soft felt hat and a thin walking stick. His gait was soft and stealthy. Nothing can be said about his eyes; for no one had seen them. He always kept his eyelids lowered; and when someone spoke to him, his eyeballs turned behind the delicate skin of his eyelids. Not infrequently, his very thin lips curved into a beautiful, humble smile. The softness and timbre of his voice were indescribable; this perhaps partly explains Mike’s extraordinary influence. For what he said was simple and matter-of-fact; he spoke very little and, aside from business matters, spoke only about trees, roots, fields, and animals, in which city dwellers take little interest. Luck accompanied him. It turned out that Mike Bondi wandered daily through the streets of New York, followed by a tall Russian wind-chime, a white, enormous animal that walked as silently as he did and looked around with empty eyes.

Mike Bondi went up to the sick and spoke with them. No one rebuffed him; the sick preferred to have him come rather than a priest or a doctor, and were grateful to him for the minutes he filled with sparse words. The people he left behind became calmer and less in pain, but as the hearings in the trial revealed, they all died within a week in great peace, without anyone being able to help them. Those who had seen him once developed a barely explicable trust in him and, when they fell seriously ill, let him come to them as if in an inescapable addiction. He did not approach them, he gave them nothing, he did not touch them. All this emerged during the investigations of the trial.

Mike Bondi was not friends with his master’s wife. Mrs. Grasso loved fiery men; but jealous, as unfaithful women are, she was glad that her husband, who did not like girls, had taken up with Bondi. When she came home late in the evening, still heated from a secret encounter, she threw herself at her husband’s neck, who was walking arm in arm with the silent oddity on dark streets.

# book_id: global-gutenberg-translation-f3349885529a41828ac0a5a8cddd0cd8
# book_title: The helper
# chapter_id: 1-the-helper
# chapter_title: The helper
# book_page: 4 / 9
# chapter_page: 4
# language: en
# content_format: markdown
# reading_structure: unknown
# render_mode: prose

At the end of spring, the young wife of a lawyer named Martin suddenly died in her apartment next to Grasso’s magazine. The widower, who had two small children, could not bring himself to part with the dead woman; and in the fearful night following her death, the idea came to him to remove the body from the deathbed and place it on a sarcophagus, as beautiful and precious as his hands could make it. This idea revived him; he got up at about eleven o’clock, dressed, and went down to Grasso, with whom he had an old friendship. The doors of the magazine were closed; through the slits of the blinds, a dull red light shimmered and lay in fine lines on the pavement. Mr. Martin opened the wide gate and stumbled across the pitch-dark courtyard; through a side door that was propped open, he entered the long corridor that led directly to the magazine. The curtain to the magazine rustled softly. His eyes struggled to adjust.

Along the walls, in the aisles, under low vaults, stood the coffins. They were open. They stood there, not expectantly, not greedily, but with mysterious emptiness, withdrawn into themselves; only a few sighed and pined. And in the dull red flicker of a lamp, Mr. Martin saw a movement in the niche at the back and heard whispers. Mr. Grasso was kneeling there before a coffin from which two white arms rose; lace sleeves fell back. Mr. Grasso bowed his head lower and pressed his face into the low breasts of a woman. He murmured, “Bessie,” and many other words that were very faint; she answered, “Ernesto,” laughing and weeping together; her voice sounded very sweet.

Mr. Martin felt his heart beating up to his throat; deeply frightened, he went backward out and forgot his errand. Before he knew it, he was in bed, dressed at daybreak, and hurried to Mrs. Grasso, who was standing in the kitchen, her skirt open, and, surprised by the early visit, wrapping a cloth around herself.

# book_id: global-gutenberg-translation-f3349885529a41828ac0a5a8cddd0cd8
# book_title: The helper
# chapter_id: 1-the-helper
# chapter_title: The helper
# book_page: 5 / 9
# chapter_page: 5
# language: en
# content_format: markdown
# reading_structure: unknown
# render_mode: prose

At first she was incredulous and watched her neighbor, believing he was distraught by the death of his young wife. But then she stopped scrubbing, pushed the coffee grinder onto the stone floor, bit deeply into her left forearm, and searched in a drawer for a sharp kitchen knife, which she repeatedly thrust into the wooden wall of the kitchen. She screamed, asking whom this wretched woman resembled, whether he showed so little compassion that he could not even voice a suspicion. After crying loudly and uncontrollably, she stood up resolutely and declared that she would find out everything herself that night.

And with a certainty that astonished Mr. Martin, she opened the apartment door, called her husband in, and told him, while looking out the window and braiding her thick black hair, that Mr. Martin had told her that her mother was ill in Starton, a suburb; she would have to go there for two to three days. Then the three of them sat silently at the coffee table in the living room, where Mrs. Grasso trembled violently several times and once dropped the cup to the floor. Mr. Grasso said that this meant good fortune for her mother.

Around ten o’clock in the evening, after spending the day looking after Mr. Martin’s small children in his apartment, she slipped across the dark street into the courtyard. She saw through the open window Mr. Grasso sitting alone in the lighted living room on the sofa; with a sad face, slumped over, he stared into space. The heavy-set man moved his lips; his wrinkled face was slack; when he looked toward the window, his inflamed eyes swam with tears.

# book_id: global-gutenberg-translation-f3349885529a41828ac0a5a8cddd0cd8
# book_title: The helper
# chapter_id: 1-the-helper
# chapter_title: The helper
# book_page: 6 / 9
# chapter_page: 6
# language: en
# content_format: markdown
# reading_structure: unknown
# render_mode: prose

She lay in a narrow coffin close to the door. Her teeth chattered; her hands trembled so much that she could barely hold the kitchen knife. Shortly before eleven o’clock, a step came across the corridor, soft and shuffling; the curtain rustled lightly. A small light flickered, and at a glance she recognized Mike Bondi. She had seen him a thousand times; she knew his slightly bowed posture, the smooth hair on his white, low forehead, the lowered eyelids. But now his silent gait filled her with horror. She felt paralyzed. She had to force herself to press her arm over her mouth so as not to scream.

He switched off the light with a finger as he passed her. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, she no longer saw Mike Bondi. But where he had gone, there was a white glow in the darkness; a bent skeleton, walking soundlessly, moved slowly on; Death himself shuffled along. She still saw the glow above a coffin into which he had swung himself. Then the heavy footsteps of Mr. Grasso echoed through the vault; he passed the woman, who was struggling with faintness, and lit the oil lamp. Mrs. Grasso stood up, the knife between her teeth, crawled behind the gigantic man, clinging to pillars and walls with every step.

In front of the coffin into which the ghost had swung, the broad man threw himself down; two white arms lifted up to meet him; she saw the open jacket bouncing back and the low, girlish breasts into which a wrinkled, wet face buried itself. She saw the silent girl’s face of Mike Bondi rise up, and as she backed away toward the door, she saw Mike draw the broken man to himself with tender farewell words, and they embraced. She still had the strength to drag herself into the kitchen. For two hours she lay unconscious. She spent the rest of the night at the police station, where the woman was considered ill. Only the next morning, when the lawyer Martin was called in, did two officers accompany her to the apartment and arrest the owner and Bondi, who offered no resistance.

# book_id: global-gutenberg-translation-f3349885529a41828ac0a5a8cddd0cd8
# book_title: The helper
# chapter_id: 1-the-helper
# chapter_title: The helper
# book_page: 7 / 9
# chapter_page: 7
# language: en
# content_format: markdown
# reading_structure: unknown
# render_mode: prose

Mr. Grasso remained completely silent during the subsequent negotiations. Bondi’s physical examination revealed that she was a twenty-year-old girl. It was impossible to determine who she really was. Only during a visit to Grasso’s vault three weeks later did she speak. She said from the outset that no one would believe a word she said, and told that her name was Bessie Bennet and that she came from Senn Fair near New York. She had lived there eighty years ago; at the age of twenty, she had fallen ill with consumption and had been hospitalized. She had been extremely reluctant to leave this life. She had struggled with death as few people do, refusing to believe that she had to die just because one lung was sick while she herself was still bursting with a zest for life. The unknown power, whose name she could not mention, had risen from her chair and made her a servant of death. She was allowed to return, but not to dance.

She was allowed to kill, in the name of the benevolent power, whatever wanted to perish; she was to take away the foolish fear of death, make people gentle, and bring about their end quickly. She had been sent among the people as a helper and brought the loving death. She had grown fond of Mr. Grasso, and it was good that she was leaving now, for otherwise she would soon have to die forever because of him.

It was confirmed that a Bessie Bennet had lived in Senn Fair about a hundred years ago and had died in the local hospital at the age of twenty; however, her body disappeared in a strange way on the way to the autopsy; two nurses were dismissed for breach of duty, despite their denials; all investigations remained unsuccessful.

# book_id: global-gutenberg-translation-f3349885529a41828ac0a5a8cddd0cd8
# book_title: The helper
# chapter_id: 1-the-helper
# chapter_title: The helper
# book_page: 8 / 9
# chapter_page: 8
# language: en
# content_format: markdown
# reading_structure: unknown
# render_mode: prose

When the judges weighed the evidence during a second on-site inspection, they brought charges against Bessie Bennet, known as Mike Bondi, for countless cases of poisoning. They demanded that she immediately show them the powder she had used; otherwise, they said, they would torture her, since her crimes were so heinous. They also ordered her to abandon her demure demeanor and look the judges directly in the face. Bessie, in the black suit she always wore, smiled, but her low forehead turned red; she begged to be released from her handcuffs and allowed to leave. The judges, furious at the mockery, sent for the executioners to flog her. The many onlookers at the interrogation were also seized by an uncontrollable rage against the devilish poisoner; they made moves to rise from their seats and attack the shameless woman; the judges lost control of the crowd.

Bessie stepped forward again before the judges, said softly, showing her bound hands, that she had no time; they should just take off her shackles and let her go.

A rough man struck her on the shoulder from behind; the mob raged over the prey. At that moment, a sudden consternation gripped everyone. One of them, gasping, smashed a window; the fresh air did not help him. A judge, his lips blue, rushed toward the door to the street and fell to the ground. The ten judges sat as if asleep in their chairs. A profound silence reigned for a moment in the vaulted chamber, interrupted only by the echoing thud of bodies. The onlookers rushed forward over the benches. The dark-haired woman let her wide-open eyes roam. She hissed angrily and sharply through her teeth.

A man staggered in from outside and grabbed her arm. She touched his hair, blew toward his feet; the fire blazed up within him; amid hoarse screams, he stumbled back and crashed to the ground.

The dark-haired woman had curled up on herself. Burning, she straightened up, touched her temples, and standing in the center of the vast vault, she rose toward the ceiling in a black flame, ascending in a smoky column of fire above the house.

# book_id: global-gutenberg-translation-f3349885529a41828ac0a5a8cddd0cd8
# book_title: The helper
# chapter_id: 1-the-helper
# chapter_title: The helper
# book_page: 9 / 9
# chapter_page: 9
# language: en
# content_format: markdown
# reading_structure: unknown
# render_mode: prose

The heavy smoke suffocated the people in all the surrounding streets. For exactly two hours, the incredibly terrible fire raged; about six hundred people, children and women, burned to death.

Then the entire district lay in ruins. For days, no one approached the poisonous fumes. The judge and the accused had both disappeared. From then on, the loving Death was no longer seen walking through the streets, followed by his white, giant greyhound, which walked as silently as he did and looked around with empty eyes. Instead, the sick are said to have reported in their fever that the untamed white beast perched on their chest, frightened them with its empty eyes, and pressed its long teeth into their throats.

The fable of the loving Death and the banishment of his helper remained alive in the land.