Dream Tales and Prose Poems Page 9

  I turned to Alice, but she put her finger to her lips….

  'Stepan Timofeitch! Stepan Timofeitch is coming!' was shouted noisily all round; 'he is coming, our father, our ataman, our bread-giver!' As before I saw nothing but it seemed to me as though a huge body were moving straight at me…. 'Frolka! where art thou, dog?' thundered an awful voice. 'Set fire to every corner at once—and to the hatchet with them, the white-handed scoundrels!'

  I felt the hot breath of the flame close by, and tasted the bitter savour of the smoke; and at the same instant something warm like blood spurted over my face and hands…. A savage roar of laughter broke out all round….

  I lost consciousness, and when I came to myself, Alice and I were gliding along beside the familiar bushes that bordered my wood, straight towards the old oak….

  'Do you see the little path?' Alice said to me, 'where the moon shines dimly and where are two birch-trees overhanging? Will you go there?'

  But I felt so shattered and exhausted that I could only say in reply:

  'Home! home!'

  'You are at home,' replied Alice.

  I was in fact standing at the very door of my house—alone. Alice had vanished. The yard-dog was about to approach, he scanned me suspiciously—and with a bark ran away.

  With difficulty I dragged myself up to my bed and fell asleep without undressing.

  XVII

  All the following morning my head ached, and I could scarcely move my legs; but I cared little for my bodily discomfort; I was devoured by regret, overwhelmed with vexation.

  I was excessively annoyed with myself. 'Coward!' I repeated incessantly; 'yes—Alice was right. What was I frightened of? how could I miss such an opportunity?… I might have seen Cæsar himself—and I was senseless with terror, I whimpered and turned away, like a child at the sight of the rod. Razin, now—that's another matter. As a nobleman and landowner … though, indeed, even then what had I really to fear? Coward! coward!'…

  'But wasn't it all a dream?' I asked myself at last. I called my housekeeper.

  'Marfa, what o'clock did I go to bed yesterday—do you remember?'

  'Why, who can tell, master?… Late enough, surely. Before it was quite dark you went out of the house; and you were tramping about in your bedroom when the night was more than half over. Just on morning—yes. And this is the third day it's been the same. You've something on your mind, it's easy to see.'

  'Aha-ha!' I thought. 'Then there's no doubt about the flying. Well, and how do I look to-day?' I added aloud.

  'How do you look? Let me have a look at you. You've got thinner a bit. Yes, and you're pale, master; to be sure, there's not a drop of blood in your face.'

  I felt a slight twinge of uneasiness…. I dismissed Marfa.

  'Why, going on like this, you'll die, or go out of your mind, perhaps,' I reasoned with myself, as I sat deep in thought at the window. 'I must give it all up. It's dangerous. And now my heart beats so strangely. And when I fly, I keep feeling as though some one were sucking at it, or as it were drawing something out of it—as the spring sap is drawn out of the birch-tree, if you stick an axe into it. I'm sorry, though. And Alice too…. She is playing cat and mouse with me … still she can hardly wish me harm. I will give myself up to her for the last time—and then…. But if she is drinking my blood? That's awful. Besides, such rapid locomotion cannot fail to be injurious; even in England, I'm told, on the railways, it's against the law to go more than one hundred miles an hour….'

  So I reasoned with myself—but at ten o'clock in the evening, I was already at my post before the old oak-tree.

  XVIII

  The night was cold, dull, grey; there was a feeling of rain in the air. To my amazement, I found no one under the oak; I walked several times round it, went up to the edge of the wood, turned back again, peered anxiously into the darkness…. All was emptiness. I waited a little, then several times I uttered the name, Alice, each time a little louder,… but she did not appear. I felt sad, almost sick at heart; my previous apprehensions vanished; I could not resign myself to the idea that my companion would not come back to me again.

  'Alice! Alice! come! Can it be you will not come?' I shouted, for the last time.

  A crow, who had been waked by my voice, suddenly darted upwards into a tree-top close by, and catching in the twigs, fluttered his wings…. But Alice did not appear.

  With downcast head, I turned homewards. Already I could discern the black outlines of the willows on the pond's edge, and the light in my window peeped out at me through the apple-trees in the orchard—peeped at me, and hid again, like the eye of some man keeping watch on me—when suddenly I heard behind me the faint swish of the rapidly parted air, and something at once embraced and snatched me upward, as a buzzard pounces on and snatches up a quail…. It was Alice sweeping down upon me. I felt her cheek against my cheek, her enfolding arm about my body, and like a cutting cold her whisper pierced to my ear, 'Here I am.' I was frightened and delighted both at once…. We flew at no great height above the ground.

  'You did not mean to come to-day?' I said.

  'And you were dull without me? You love me? Oh, you are mine!'

  The last words of Alice confused me…. I did not know what to say.

  'I was kept,' she went on; 'I was watched.'

  'Who could keep you?'

  'Where would you like to go?' inquired Alice, as usual not answering my question.

  'Take me to Italy—to that lake, you remember.'

  Alice turned a little away, and shook her head in refusal. At that point I noticed for the first time that she had ceased to be transparent. And her face seemed tinged with colour; there was a faint glow of red over its misty whiteness. I glanced at her eyes … and felt a pang of dread; in those eyes something was astir—with the slow, continuous, malignant movement of the benumbed snake, twisting and turning as the sun begins to thaw it.

  'Alice,' I cried, 'who are you? Tell me who you are.'

  Alice simply shrugged her shoulders.

  I felt angry … I longed to punish her; and suddenly the idea occurred to me to tell her to fly with me to Paris. 'That's the place for you to be jealous,' I thought. 'Alice,' I said aloud, 'you are not afraid of big towns—Paris, for instance?'

  'No.'

  'Not even those parts where it is as light as in the boulevards?'

  'It is not the light of day.'

  'Good; then take me at once to the Boulevard des Italiens.'

  Alice wrapped the end of her long hanging sleeve about my head. I was at once enfolded in a sort of white vapour full of the drowsy fragrance of the poppy. Everything disappeared at once; every light, every sound, and almost consciousness itself. Only the sense of being alive remained, and that was not unpleasant.

  Suddenly the vapour vanished; Alice took her sleeve from my head, and I saw at my feet a huge mass of closely—packed buildings, brilliant light, movement, noisy traffic…. I saw Paris.

  XIX

  I had been in Paris before, and so I recognised at once the place to which Alice had directed her course. It was the Garden of the Tuileries with its old chestnut-trees, its iron railings, its fortress moat, and its brutal-looking Zouave sentinels. Passing the palace, passing the Church of St. Roche, on the steps of which the first Napoleon for the first time shed French blood, we came to a halt high over the Boulevard des Italiens, where the third Napoleon did the same thing and with the same success. Crowds of people, dandies young and old, workmen in blouses, women in gaudy dresses, were thronging on the pavements; the gilded restaurants and cafés were flaring with lights; omnibuses, carriages of all sorts and shapes, moved to and fro along the boulevard; everything was bustle, everything was brightness, wherever one chanced to look…. But, strange to say, I had no inclination to forsake my pure dark airy height. I had no inclination to get nearer to this human ant-hill. It seemed as though a hot, heavy, reddish vapour rose from it, half-fragrance, half-stench; so many lives were flung struggling in one heap together there
. I was hesitating…. But suddenly, sharp as the clang of iron bars, the voice of a harlot of the streets floated up to me; like an insolent tongue, it was thrust out, this voice; it stung me like the sting of a viper. At once I saw in imagination the strong, heavy-jawed, greedy, flat Parisian face, the mercenary eyes, the paint and powder, the frizzed hair, and the nosegay of gaudy artificial flowers under the high-pointed hat, the polished nails like talons, the hideous crinoline…. I could fancy too one of our sons of the steppes running with pitiful eagerness after the doll put up for sale…. I could fancy him with clumsy coarseness and violent stammering, trying to imitate the manners of the waiters at Véfour's, mincing, flattering, wheedling … and a feeling of loathing gained possession of me…. 'No,' I thought, 'here Alice has no need to be jealous….'

  Meanwhile I perceived that we had gradually begun to descend…. Paris was rising to meet us with all its din and odour….

  'Stop,' I said to Alice. 'Are you not stifled and oppressed here?'

  'You asked me to bring you here yourself.'

  'I am to blame, I take back my word. Take me away, Alice, I beseech you. To be sure, here is Prince Kulmametov hobbling along the boulevard; and his friend, Serge Varaksin, waves his hand to him, shouting: "Ivan Stepanitch, allons souper, make haste, zhay angazha Rigol-bouche itself!" Take me away from these furnished apartments and maisons dorées, from the Jockey Club and the Figaro, from close-shaven military heads and varnished barracks, from sergents-de-ville with Napoleonic beards, and from glasses of muddy absinthe, from gamblers playing dominoes at the cafés, and gamblers on the Bourse, from red ribbons in button-holes, from M. de Four, inventor of 'matrimonial specialities,' and the gratuitous consultations of Dr. Charles Albert, from liberal lectures and government pamphlets, from Parisian comedies and Parisian operas, from Parisian wit and Parisian ignorance…. Away! away! away!'

  'Look down,' Alice answered; 'you are not now in Paris.'

  I lowered my eyes…. It was true. A dark plain, intersected here and there by the whitish lines of roads, was rushing rapidly by below us, and only behind us on the horizon, like the reflection of an immense conflagration, rose the great glow of the innumerable lights of the capital of the world.

  XX

  Again a veil fell over my eyes…. Again I lost consciousness. The veil was withdrawn at last. What was it down there below? What was this park, with avenues of lopped lime-trees, with isolated fir-trees of the shape of parasols, with porticoes and temples in the Pompadour style, with statues of satyrs and nymphs of the Bernini school, with rococo tritons in the midst of meandering lakes, closed in by low parapets of blackened marble? Wasn't it Versailles? No, it was not Versailles. A small palace, also rococo, peeped out behind a clump of bushy oaks. The moon shone dimly, shrouded in mist, and over the earth there was, as it were spread out, a delicate smoke. The eye could not decide what it was, whether moonlight or fog. On one of the lakes a swan was asleep; its long back was white as the snow of the frost-bound steppes, while glow-worms gleamed like diamonds in the bluish shadow at the base of a statue.

  'We are near Mannheim,' said Alice; 'this is the Schwetzingen garden.'

  'We are in Germany,' I thought, and I fell to listening. All was silence, except somewhere, secluded and unseen, the splash and babble of falling water. It seemed continually to repeat the same words: 'Aye, aye, aye, for aye, aye.' And all at once I fancied that in the very centre of one of the avenues, between clipped walls of green, a cavalier came tripping along in red-heeled boots, a gold-braided coat, with lace ruffs at his wrists, a light steel rapier at his thigh, smilingly offering his arm to a lady in a powdered wig and a gay chintz…. Strange, pale faces…. I tried to look into them…. But already everything had vanished, and as before there was nothing but the babbling water.

  'Those are dreams wandering,' whispered Alice; 'yesterday there was much—oh, much—to see; to-day, even the dreams avoid man's eye. Forward! forward!'

  We soared higher and flew farther on. So smooth and easy was our flight that it seemed that we moved not, but everything moved to meet us. Mountains came into view, dark, undulating, covered with forest; they rose up and swam towards us…. And now they were slipping by beneath us, with all their windings, hollows, and narrow glades, with gleams of light from rapid brooks among the slumbering trees at the bottom of the dales; and in front of us more mountains sprung up again and floated towards us…. We were in the heart of the Black Forest.

  Mountains, still mountains … and forest, magnificent, ancient, stately forest. The night sky was clear; I could recognise some kinds of trees, especially the splendid firs, with their straight white trunks. Here and there on the edge of the forest, wild goats could be seen; graceful and alert, they stood on their slender legs and listened, turning their heads prettily and pricking up their great funnel-shaped ears. A ruined tower, sightless and gloomy, on the crest of a bare cliff, laid bare its crumbling turrets; above the old forgotten stones, a little golden star was shining peacefully. From a small almost black lake rose, like a mysterious wail, the plaintive croak of tiny frogs. I fancied other notes, long-drawn-out, languid like the strains of an Æolian harp…. Here we were in the home of legend! The same delicate moonlight mist, which had struck me in Schwetzingen, was shed here on every side, and the farther away the mountains, the thicker was this mist. I counted up five, six, ten different tones of shadow at different heights on the mountain slopes, and over all this realm of varied silence the moon queened it pensively. The air blew in soft, light currents. I felt myself a lightness at heart, and, as it were, a lofty calm and melancholy….

  'Alice, you must love this country!'

  'I love nothing.'

  'How so? Not me?'

  'Yes … you!' she answered indifferently.

  It seemed to me that her arm clasped my waist more tightly than before.

  'Forward! forward!' said Alice, with a sort of cold fervour.

  'Forward!' I repeated.

  XXI

  A loud, thrilling cry rang out suddenly over our heads, and was at once repeated a little in front.

  'Those are belated cranes flying to you, to the north,' said Alice; 'would you like to join them?'

  'Yes, yes! raise me up to them.'

  We darted upwards and in one instant found ourselves beside the flying flock.

  The big handsome birds (there were thirteen of them) were flying in a triangle, with slow sharp flaps of their hollow wings; with their heads and legs stretched rigidly out, and their breasts stiffly pressed forward, they pushed on persistently and so swiftly that the air whistled about them. It was marvellous at such a height, so remote from all things living, to see such passionate, strenuous life, such unflinching will, untiringly cleaving their triumphant way through space. The cranes now and then called to one another, the foremost to the hindmost; and there was a certain pride, dignity, and invincible faith in these loud cries, this converse in the clouds. 'We shall get there, be sure, hard though it be,' they seemed to say, cheering one another on. And then the thought came to me that men, such as these birds—in Russia—nay, in the whole world, are few.

  'We are flying towards Russia now,' observed Alice. I noticed now, not for the first time, that she almost always knew what I was thinking of. 'Would you like to go back?'

  'Let us go back … or no! I have been in Paris; take me to Petersburg.'

  'Now?'

  'At once…. Only wrap my head in your veil, or it will go ill with me.'

  Alice raised her hand … but before the mist enfolded me, I had time to feel on my lips the contact of that soft, dull sting….

  XXII

  'Li-i-isten!' sounded in my ears a long drawn out cry. 'Li-i-isten!' was echoed back with a sort of desperation in the distance. 'Li-i-isten!' died away somewhere far, far away. I started. A tall golden spire flashed on my eyes; I recognised the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul.

  A northern, pale night! But was it night at all? Was it not rather a pallid, sickly daylight? I never
liked Petersburg nights; but this time the night seemed even fearful to me; the face of Alice had vanished completely, melted away like the mist of morning in the July sun, and I saw her whole body clearly, as it hung, heavy and solitary on a level with the Alexander column. So here was Petersburg! Yes, it was Petersburg, no doubt. The wide empty grey streets; the greyish-white, and yellowish-grey and greyish-lilac houses, covered with stucco, which was peeling off, with their sunken windows, gaudy sign-boards, iron canopies over steps, and wretched little green-grocer's shops; the façades, inscriptions, sentry-boxes, troughs; the golden cap of St. Isaac's; the senseless motley Bourse; the granite walls of the fortress, and the broken wooden pavement; the barges loaded with hay and timber; the smell of dust, cabbage, matting, and hemp; the stony-faced dvorniks in sheepskin coats, with high collars; the cab-drivers, huddled up dead asleep on their decrepit cabs—yes, this was Petersburg, our northern Palmyra. Everything was visible; everything was clear—cruelly clear and distinct—and everything was mournfully sleeping, standing out in strange huddled masses in the dull clear air. The flush of sunset—a hectic flush—had not yet gone, and would not be gone till morning from the white starless sky; it was reflected on the silken surface of the Neva, while faintly gurgling and faintly moving, the cold blue waves hurried on….