Nathaniel's childhood encounter with the Sandman (Coppelius)
Nathaniel's childhood encounter with the Sandman, whom he discovers to be the hideous barrister Coppelius, is the primal scene of terror that shapes his entire life. This event, which he recounts in a letter to his friend Lothar, transforms a nursery bogeyman into a real and diabolical figure, and it plants the seeds of the obsessive fear, the fractured perception, and the violent destiny that will eventually destroy him.
The Lure of the Forbidden
From his earliest years, Nathaniel was haunted by the figure of the Sandman. His mother would send the children to bed at nine o'clock with the warning that the Sandman was coming, and Nathaniel would hear slow, heavy steps lumbering up the stairs. Dissatisfied with his mother's explanation that it was merely a figure of speech for sleepiness, he pressed the old nursemaid for the truth. She told him a grisly tale: the Sandman was a bad man who threw sand in children's eyes until they bled, then carried them off to his nest on the half-moon to feed his own children, who had crooked beaks like owls and pecked out the eyes of naughty human brats. This image became entrenched in Nathaniel's mind, and the nightly sound of the Sandman's approach filled him with dread and horror that persisted for years. His desire to uncover the secret grew stronger, and he began to sketch the Sandman's grisly figure on tables and walls, lured by a craving for adventure and the wonder of the unknown.
The Hidden Room and the Revelation
When Nathaniel turned ten, his mother moved him to a room near his father's study, from which he could distinctly hear the Sandman enter and smell a strange vapour filling the house. Driven by an overpowering urge, he decided to hide in his father's room and await the Sandman's appearance. One evening, pretending to be tired, he slipped away before nine o'clock and concealed himself behind a curtain drawn over a clothes closet. From his hiding place, he watched his father sit in silence. Then the front door creaked, and the slow, heavy steps advanced. A powerful kick burst the door open, and the Sandman stood in the middle of the room. To Nathaniel's horror, the Sandman was the old barrister Coppelius, who sometimes dined with the family.
The Face of the Fiend
Coppelius is described as a hideous figure: a big, broad-shouldered man with a misshapen head, an ochre-coloured face, grey bushy eyebrows, and piercing greenish cat's eyes. His crooked mouth twisted into a crafty snigger, and he wore an old-fashioned ash-grey coat with a tiny toupee that barely covered his skull. Most repulsive to the children were his big, knotty, hairy fists, which he would deliberately use to spoil their treats, touching their cake or wine so that they could not enjoy it. He called the children "little beasts" and seemed to take pleasure in their misery. Their mother hated him, and their father treated him like a higher being whose incivility had to be tolerated. The realization that this man was the Sandman filled Nathaniel with a grisly shudder, for now the Sandman was no longer a fairy-tale bogeyman but a hideous fiend who brought misery and ruin wherever he appeared.
The Alchemical Nightmare
Paralysed with fear, Nathaniel watched through the curtain as Coppelius threw off his coat and cried, "Up now! To work!" Father and Coppelius pulled on long black smocks, and father opened a folding door that revealed not a wall closet but a dark, hidden space fitted with a small hearth. A blue flame flickered forth, and curious instruments were scattered about. As his father bent over the fire, his face twisted into a ghastly, devilish grimace, making him look just like Coppelius. The latter swung red-hot tongs and hammered a bright mass of ore. To Nathaniel, it seemed as if human faces became visible all about, but without eyes—dreadful, deep, black hollows where the eyes ought to be. Coppelius cried out, "Eyes out, eyes out!" in a muffled, roaring voice.
The Assault and the Rescue
Gripped by wild terror, Nathaniel screamed and burst from his hiding place onto the floor. Coppelius grabbed him, baring his teeth and grumbling, "Little beast! Little beast!" He hurled Nathaniel at the hearth, singeing his hair, and then whispered, "Now we've got eyes—eyes—a lovely pair of children's eyes," as he grabbed glowing cinders from the flames to strew in the boy's eyes. But Nathaniel's father pleaded with folded hands, "Master! Master! Let my Nathaniel keep his eyes! Let him keep them, I beg you!" Coppelius laughed shrilly and relented, but then twisted Nathaniel's hands and feet, reinserting them here and there, muttering that it was not right. Everything went dark, and Nathaniel felt nothing. He awakened as if from a deathlike sleep, with his mother bending over him. His first clear words were, "Is the Sandman still here?" He lay sick with a high fever for several weeks, and the phrase "Is the Sandman still here?" became the sign of his recovery.
The Aftermath and the Ominous Return
Coppelius stopped coming, and the family was told he had left town. But about a year later, as the family sat at their round table, the familiar sound of slow, leaden steps returned. Mother went pale and said, "It's Coppelius." Father confirmed it with a weak voice, promising it would be the last time. Mother led the children to bed, but Nathaniel could not sleep. At midnight, a terrible boom like a cannon shot shook the house. Nathaniel rushed to his father's room to find him lying dead on the floor before the steaming hearth, his face burnt black. His mother lay unconscious, and his sisters howled. Nathaniel cried out, "Coppelius, you cursed Satan, you killed my father!" before losing consciousness. The explosion awakened the neighbours, and a warrant was issued for Coppelius' arrest, but he had disappeared without a trace. This childhood encounter, with its violent assault, the loss of his father, and the unresolved disappearance of Coppelius, becomes the template for Nathaniel's later psychological unraveling, as the repressed trauma returns in the form of the barometer salesman Coppola and the automaton Olympia.
