Where does the story of Half Sixth Hall begin? When Heidelberg University was founded in 1386? Or when the library itself was established in 1421? Some believe it should begin there. Although, it would take centuries of wordsmiths before the Inkwell Society came to be. We emphasize that in 1734, James Stirling, a male without a place and of little importance, to later form the Inkwell Society in the heart of Walldorf’s scholarly rise. He was a young man who spent his years studying architecture; known in class to bring whiskey neat and a large mug of black tea. Yet of no consequence, Stirling’s academic achievements boasted a list longer than the Peace of Westphalia ending the thirty years’ war. He had passed his exams with flying colors, had found an appreciation for the arts, taking root in both gothic history and architecture. In the winter mornings, it was said he ran six miles through snow riddled streets; it appeared as though the architect writer was immune to any plague. Immune to frostbite finding his extremities. Immune to the copious amounts of opium that would ride his writing practices.
But then there was 1738. James Stirling seated himself in Half Sixth Hall just like any other night, brandishing two furrowed brows and a quill, when his face grew reaper pale. He was pronounced dead several hours later.
We say some part of his body or some worldly essence that may have even been the physicus on duty, permitted his soul to rest near the stories of his creation a moment longer.
His sudden death was never mentioned in the paper that circulated Walldorf. Some surmised the young man had fed his brain with one too many books and his veins with a generous stream of drugs. Other’s said he was driven mad in the pensive darkness of a room that didn’t exist. Or that the otherworldly beings he had written about had jumped from the page and seized his brilliant mind for themselves. Nearing the tenth month was when the accusations flew wild. The university tried to spare itself. Scholars were left to their own devices later establishing collectives of counterintelligence, crime syndicates, polizei cabals, and social engineering coalitions.
So Stirling, a man born of southern Gernsbach blood, bred in the fringes of Germany, was of no consequence to the reformation, but rather a legacy in the years to come. His death was an oversight, they said.
A day later, the Inkwell Society received an endowment from someone by the name of Elliot Fischer. It didn’t matter. Inkwell Society was lost without Stirling’s tortured heart and unkempt mind. It died when the hidden room, built with craft and a dream by Stirling himself (somewhere between the fifth and sixth floor) had just vanished. The man who died with only a quill to keep him company, lives by memory in the Half Sixth Hall. Closely known as the Stirling Suite.
- from, Inkwell Society Compendium: Stirling Years
In Heidelberg Library, primeval of landed wordsmiths, the Stirling members can proudly claim architects of language, publishers, captains of literary revolutions, louder than any other society. Upon entering, it serves the members well to recall the maxim: in the absence of music, there is still a rhythm of the heart. In the void of idea, there is a room full of them. Take the stairs.
– from H.S.H Reference Guide: Preface
Heidelberg University fashioned a grave for the young architect infatuated with bringing places alive and stories to life. There was no ceremony. Not an open casket to be commemorated. Just a headstone in front of the library which read: Stirling 1738.
- from, Heidelberg’s News Column; December 1738
Fall 1923
Sometime around the twelfth month was when Aveline Langston felt the winter air stir the pages of her manuscript. Clipped in the teeth of her typewriter, the blank sheet had been coaxed by some wind, the paper fluttering as if to wave: My good friend, give your mind to the paper. This wind, which snuck through a cracked window, coaxed her hair plait loose as if it could untangle her thoughts.
In the hours before, Aveline’s fingers hovered over the stale keys, hanging mid air as if they’d catch something… something like an idea. It was hope that had her leaving the bedroom door open. Perhaps then, a muse would walk through with a key to her imagination and unlock it. Writer’s block was a plague, she concluded. Once you caught it, your mind was as good as dead.
Hanging above the chestnut desk in which she sat stupefied, was her degree in historical literature from Heidelberg university. On the other side was where her husband kept his belongings. The desk was split like a dinner table set for a vegetarian and a carnivore. On the right was Aveline’s side, unkempt with ink stains, a quill sleeved in black and a typewriter that had collected ghastly amounts of dust. August, who worked as a columnist for the Berliner Tageblatt, boasted a pad garnished with neat script and a style guide stacked atop newspapers on the economic crisis.
Germany was failing to pay reparations mandated by the Treaty of Versailles and workers had been thrown from factories and garages into the Strasse with their greased rags in one hand and their apprehension in the other. It was in their small residency on Konvitk Strasse, where the windows gave way onto streamers of vine peppered in the season’s orange. Just in spring those leaves had been bejeweled with violet blossoms in the wake of tragedy and death rolls. Mothers and daughters strung them from the gabled roofs with the intention of reforming the haze of gunpowder and smoke which hung near the northern border of Switzerland.
When the economy had taken a dip, the people of Germany’s faith had dived after them. In the fray of protestors was Aveline’s husband, brandishing a sign that said, Workers of the world unite. Her husband liked to say that he was a communist and she was a writer. “We’re both trying to make a living are we not?”
It was mid sip of Früchtetee– German fruit tea—when Aveline pulled the curtains shut on the protestors and sat herself at their shared desk in front of the canter window. She now looked at a void of black velvet and golden tassels before closing her eyes. Slowly, her finger traced the keys of the typewriter, listening to the metal click and the chiming sound of her bracelet as if to create music to propel her thoughts across the page.
“Must you always turn the curtains down Aveline?” her husband said two weeks ago, wearing a concerned look while referring to them as plants: We need sunlight to grow and flourish, Ave. Like plants, we too depend on the earth’s gifts to ground us and keep our good health. The dim wilts our minds.
She shrugged, taken by the void which allowed for the world in front of her to vanish. “The light takes away from my lightbulb” she said. Was it wrong to find solace in the moments her husband no longer lingered at her hunched shoulders? When he no longer sighed down her neck, perfuming her with coffee breath while he weighed each of the words she typed like they were pennies to her talent. A woman’s imagination can only run so far when one likes to open the doors and the windows and their mouths.
Aveline wiped at her tired eyes and shakily poured another cup of tea. For a long while, she sat curled in a chair, at war with her fingers and her mind. It was like digging through wet sand for a chest of treasure. As if ideas were gold and she had to be the first to find them. But when day broke, it looked no different than the night. Her paper was still the color of blanched bones without life. Outside was still lit by torches and the liveliness of men.
And then there was a black key. Absolute in shadow, the small toothed key dangled from a silver ring. It was slung through the letter F on her typewriter and laced through was a scrolled paper no larger than her pinky nail in which she unfolded: Plöck 109 Heidelberg. Room: 5 ½ . Familiarly finding the engravement, she ran a thumb over the H.S.H.
Half Sixth Hall.
A part of her wished he was more creative tonight. He was a writer after all, a brilliant one.
Winter: 1924
An hour earlier, Aveline had remedied the winter season by boiling tea and stuffing her hands into mittens before walking down the endarkened strasse and silent footpaths. Trees wore capes of snow, standing tall and steadfast like vigils over the city of Walldorf. Doorsteps were bundled beneath sagging awnings and benches had been adjourned with crystalized cushions for shadows to lounge. Only the wind was awake as she tugged on her scarf, feeling the furs prickle her nose.
The library itself was crowded between two university buildings, both nestled and sound beneath cloaks of snow housing the refined minds of scholars. The facade was marked with peaked windows. Each was slatted with thick iron rods as if to keep all inventions and knowledge like hostages. Yet, when Aveline swung open the heavy front doors, out of breath from walking up the league of stairs, there was a steward awaiting her arrival. “Langston,” he always greeted her.
She didn’t know his name and had never asked, yet knew to shuck off her coat and gloves. Each time when the grandfather clock struck morning, Aveline learned to pick up her belongings, leave the key with the steward, and stumble home to await her next invitation. In those waiting hours, she’d proceed to press her coat against her nose, believing the smells of wet ink and cigars alone would be enough to carry her back at once.
Now, Aveline paused at the center of floors five and six, she dropped to a crouch, feeling for the brass lock beneath the twentieth stair. Answering to her practiced ministries, the staircase cleaved apart, creaking on idle hinges like that of a skeletal mandible. Slowly, the lower half descended. The stairs smoothed out like fallen cards to reveal a footpath carpeted in crimson when she took off her shoes like Fischer admonished and left them behind.
Somewhere between rest and unrest, she remembered Elliot Fischer saying when she unlocked the door to the Stirling Suite for the first time. He had guided her, with reluctance yet hubris through every entry procedure. “The working mind should be a place between desirable rest and the unfathomable unrest of an imagination at play,” he added three evenings ago.
The door swung open and she was met with the sight of lean legs, propped up on a mahogany desk where a pair of black socks rested on an open book. Lit by the watery glow of a kerosene lamp was the charming face of Elliot Fischer. There were his dazzling green eyes and a frown, drawn out by contemplation, fitting his face better than any smile. Dressing his youthful yet absorbed countenance were wrinkled black slacks and a crookedly button blazer as if he had just come from a violin concert at Carl Stadthalle and exited the coat closet with a woman in tow. Around his neck hung his loose tie in which she knew he was waiting for the right moment to wrap it around himself, falling victim to her labyrinthine thoughts, and claiming a noose was the easiest way out of both their problems.
Instead he went forth, “Well, let’s not let the page intimidate you today. Name a character for me, Langston. Is he driven by the pursuit of homicide? Gone mad over his unfaithful wife?” In a brief pause of musement, Fisher dragged from his cigar. “Perhaps the woman is of unknown French heritage while the husband connives in the trenches by the Northern Sea for Germany?”
Aveline, already having taken the polished typewriter, engraved with A.L. from the bookshelf, set it beside a glass of white wine before nudging off her wedding ring and pocketing it from sight.
“She’s cheating then?”
She wanted to say her fingers felt heavier with it; instead, opted for a vulgar gesture consisting of her middle finger and a scowl before taking a moment to draw upon her heart and mind. Together they played in a chorus. Often it was a dark song which swayed her fingers and guided her work.
Most times, Fischer and Aveline didn’t speak. She would work in his forgiving silence. The typewriter keys would chime and the curt sound of a re-type would be followed up with a salvational sip of liquor or a grunt of frustration. Oftentimes, it was both and back to the drawing board.
Tonight, Aveline looked around the room. To the bookshelves lined with the earliest typewriters from the 18th century. To the decanters of whiskey and fresh quills poised by stoppered pots of ink. Beside the cabinet was a display case with Stirling’s first work. Within lay an unblemished sheet of paper with a singular line typed out, one she knew by heart: To think artfully, is to give death to the world around you. To craft expertly, is to give life to your imagination and a heartbeat to your muse.
Through thick hours of midnight, banishing sleep and human nature, Aveline and Fischer returned to their practiced dance. It was one where he’d pace around the room, swirling a glass of whiskey while reading experts from works of Stirling, Müller, Zimmerman, and Karl Vogel—who was the president of Inkwell Society in 1803—as Aveline studied the Sixth Diaries. It was one where he’d lean against the door frame like a soldier, blocking out what lay beyond the wooden facade, as if reality was a threat. They worked like this. Through the ticking of the grandfather clock and the cords of lettered keys trying to churn bones of ideas into a breath of story.
Fischer then drew a book from the shelf, ignoring the faint trail of dust and teeth sharp corners sticking out from the pages. The volume was bound in mustard yellow, Heidelberg: A Memoir of Death and After emblazoned on its spine.
On silent feet, he crossed the room leaving a trail of smoke before setting the volume down in front of her. “From scholar to alcoholic to opium addict; to architect of Half Sixth Hall, up until his very death and some later. Perhaps the muse you’re looking for lies here,” he winked.
Without a word, Aveline flipped through the flimsy pages which brimmed with history. It was more of a scrapbook consisting of Stirling’s marginal obliteration, newspaper clippings, printing press stencils, and architectural layouts flowered with whiskey stains like blossoms. It wasn’t until she reached the back of the book, that she saw a photograph of the man she’d come to know well.
Stirling smoking on a cold autumn morning, taken by Remus, 1736, Half Sixth Hall.
Pale green eyes partnered with the slight curvature of a smile. Her gaze landed on the bottom of his bare feet, then to his lips balancing a cigar on one side and a quill on the other. On his lap balanced a thick volume bound in mustard with gold embellishment. Somehow, beneath the mused hair of a frustrated wordsmith, his face looked sharper than when she now lifted her gaze to Fischer whose pale green eyes widened as if to say, Go on, Langston. Who’s your character?
Despite that apprehension had turned her mouth dry, Aveline licked her thumb feeling curiosity imploring her to the last page where she began to read Stirling’s appendix. It was then when something in Aveline Langston’s heart cracked, hearing those words spoken in a coarse and cautious male voice, rather than her own.
Even the spirits and the timeless gods want to hear what we have to say. Neither in his sleep nor his grave does the mind of a writer find rest. A coffin is a flimsy trapping for a creature of imagination. We, the creatures, evade the confines of reality with a simple few words and a dosage of imagination. I could rest now, somewhere beneath the solid soil in a wooden box far too small for my arms to stretch or my lungs to smoke. Perhaps my headstone says something like: Here lies James Stirling; drained of his talent and affinity for the impossible. And one of those may be true. But you see, as writers we dance in the dark with our partners who wear the pretentious letters of the alphabet and polished shoes of punctuation. We make them move and demonstrate where they shall go next until they find and fit the rhythm of our music.
When I wrote this, I had tissues up my nose to stop the nose bleeds, a bamboo pipe dried of opium, and a taste for life no amount of smoking could solve. To write you must be tortured, they said. But I hope you are not and have tried your hand in a different kind of torture; love perhaps. Therefore, whomever reads this, you shall know that the writer in me lives on as a muse in you. The Half Sixth Hall is no more than a piece of your mind shaped in bricks and some tragic history which bores me. There is no key to the stairs which unfold. Nor a voice in which travels through the air vents or registers to the world, for I am a figment of your imagination, a muse given shape in what you believe to be your desolate mind. Half Sixth Hall or the Sterling Suite is a dreamt room, fashioned to your taste and liking, where you bring ideas to light behind the closed door of reality. Aveline Langston, open those wonderful blue eyes and know you’re welcome at any time. H.S.H. lives on.
from, A Memoir of Death and After: The Epilogue
Met with the velvet curtain and the small crack where she glimpsed a sheer stroke of flame, Aveline’s eye caught at the page foiled at her typewriter. Two hundred sheets stacked thick beside it.
Her fingers found the accustomed steps in a dance and in time she typed out the title: Half Sixth Hall.
Near was the crimson colored Früchtetee gone cold and plagued by the chill that had crawled into their home on Konvikt Strasse. Outside was her husband, somewhere lost in the fray of protestors, pining after a story through the firelight and the falling snow. Somewhere further was the chime of the Waldorfer Uhrturm, striking morning so similar to the grandfather clock in Half Sixth Hall.
Closing her eyes, she felt her hair fall loose, sweeping past her shoulders like a curtain closing at a play, and found herself Half Sixth Hall, nursing a glass of wine as she eyed Stirling over its lipstick stained rim. Aveline said to her muse all along, “The character is James Stirling.”
“To give life to your imagination and a heartbeat to your muse,” Stirling replied with sparkling eyes that creased with amusement. In place of Elliot Fischer, stood the young man who’s talent and affinity had been long since buried within Aveline’s mind; up to his ink stained fingers and smell of heady cigars, James Stirling and a story in a room that didn’t exist, came to be.