Chapter 11

‘And your father?’ ‘My father died long ago.’ He inquired my mother’s Christian name, and immediately gave an awkward laugh, but apologised, saying that he picked up some American ways, and was rather a queer fellow altogether. Then he was curious to know what was our address. I told him.

VI

The excitement which had possessed me at the beginning of our conversation gradually calmed down; I felt our meeting rather strange and nothing more. I did not like the little smile with which the baron cross-examined me; I did not like the expression of his eyes when he, as it were, stuck them like pins into me.... There was something in them rapacious, patronising ... something unnerving. Those eyes I had not seen in the dream. A strange face was the baron’s! Faded, fatigued, and, at the same time, young-looking--unpleasantly young-looking! My ‘dream-father’ had not the deep scar either which ran slanting right across my new acquaintance’s forehead, and which I had not noticed till I came closer to him.

I had hardly told the baron the name of the street, and the number of the house in which we were living, when a tall negro, swathed up to the eyebrows in a cloak, came up to him from behind, and softly tapped him on the shoulder. The baron turned round, ejaculated, ‘Aha! at last!’ and with a slight nod to me, went with the negro into the café. I was left under the awning; I meant to await the baron’s return, not so much with the object of entering into conversation with him again (I really did not know what to talk about to him), as to verify once more my first impression. But half-an-hour passed, an hour passed.... The baron did not appear. I went into the café, passed through all the rooms, but could see nowhere the baron or the negro.... They must both have gone out by a back-door.

My head ached a little, and to get a little fresh air, I walked along the seafront to a large park outside the town, which had been laid out two hundred years ago.

After strolling for a couple of hours in the shade of the immense oaks and plane-trees, I returned home.

VII

Our maid-servant rushed all excitement, to meet me, directly I appeared in the hall; I guessed at once from the expression of her face, that during my absence something had gone wrong in our house. And, in fact, I learnt that an hour before, a fearful shriek had suddenly been heard in my mother’s bedroom, the maid running in had found her on the floor in a fainting fit, which had lasted several moments. My mother had at last regained consciousness, but had been obliged to lie down, and looked strange and scared; she had not uttered a word, had not answered inquiries, she had done nothing but look about her and shudder. The maid had sent the gardener for a doctor. The doctor came and prescribed soothing treatment; but my mother would say nothing even to him. The gardener maintained that, a few instants after the shriek was heard in my mother’s room, he had seen a man, unknown to him, running through the bushes in the garden to the gate into the street. (We lived in a house of one story, with windows opening on to a rather large garden.) The gardener had not time to get a look at the man’s face; but he was tall, and was wearing a low straw hat and long coat with full skirts ... ‘The baron’s costume!’ at once crossed my mind. The gardener could not overtake him; besides, he had been immediately called into the house and sent for the doctor. I went in to my mother; she was lying on the bed, whiter than the pillow on which her head was resting. Recognising me, she smiled faintly, and held out her hand to me. I sat down beside her, and began to question her; at first she said no to everything; at last she admitted, however, that she had seen something which had greatly terrified her. ‘Did some one come in here?’ I asked. ‘No,’ she hurriedly replied--‘no one came in, it was my fancy ... an apparition....’ She ceased and hid her face in her hands. I was on the point of telling her, what I had learnt from the gardener, and incidentally describing my meeting with the baron ... but for some reason or other, the words died away on my lips. I ventured, however, to observe to my mother, that apparitions do not usually appear in the daytime.... ‘Stop,’ she whispered, ‘please; do not torture me now. You will know some time....’ She was silent again. Her hands were cold and her pulse beat fast and unevenly. I gave her some medicine and moved a little away so as not to disturb her. She did not get up the whole day. She lay perfectly still and quiet, and now and then heaving a deep sigh, and timorously opening her eyes. Every one in the house was at a loss what to think.

VIII

Towards night my mother became a little feverish, and she sent me away. I did not, however, go to my own room, but lay down in the next room on the sofa. Every quarter of an hour I got up, went on tiptoe to the door, listened.... Everything was still--but my mother hardly slept that night. When I went in to her early in the morning, her face looked hollow, her eyes shone with an unnatural brightness. In the course of the day she got a little better, but towards evening the feverishness increased again. Up till then she had been obstinately silent, but all of a sudden she began talking in a hurried broken voice. She was not wandering, there was a meaning in her words--but no sort of connection. Just upon midnight, she suddenly, with a convulsive movement raised herself in bed--I was sitting beside her--and in the same hurried voice, continually taking sips of water, from a glass beside her, feebly gesticulating with her hands, and never once looking at me, she began to tell her story.... She would stop, make an effort to control herself and go on again.... It was all so strange, just as though she were doing it all in a dream, as though she herself were absent, and some one else were speaking by her lips, or forcing her to speak.

IX

‘Listen to what I am going to tell you,’ she began. ‘You are not a little boy now; you ought to know all. I had a friend, a girl.... She married a man she loved with all her heart, and she was very happy with her husband. During the first year of their married life they went together to the capital to spend a few weeks there and enjoy themselves. They stayed at a good hotel, and went out a great deal to theatres and parties. My friend was very pretty--every one noticed her, young men paid her attentions,--but there was among them one ... an officer. He followed her about incessantly, and wherever she was, she always saw his cruel black eyes. He was not introduced to her, and never once spoke to her--only perpetually stared at her--so insolently and strangely. All the pleasures of the capital were poisoned by his presence. She began persuading her husband to hasten their departure--and they had already made all the preparations for the journey. One evening her husband went out to a club--he had been invited by the officers of the same regiment as that officer--to play cards.... She was for the very first time left alone. Her husband did not return for a long while. She dismissed her maid, and went to bed.... And suddenly she felt overcome by terror, so that she was quite cold and shivering. She fancied she heard a slight sound on the other side of the wall, like a dog scratching, and she began watching the wall. In the corner a lamp was burning; the room was all hung with tapestry.... Suddenly something stirred there, rose, opened.... And straight out of the wall a black, long figure came, that awful man with the cruel eyes! She tried to scream, but could not. She was utterly numb with terror. He went up to her rapidly, like some beast of prey, flung something on her head, something strong-smelling, heavy, white.... What happened then I don’t remember I ... don’t remember! It was like death, like a murder.... When at last that fearful darkness began to pass away--when I ... when my friend came to herself, there was no one in the room. Again, and for a long time, she had not the strength to scream, she screamed at last ... then again everything was confusion.... Then she saw her husband by her side: he had been kept at the club till two o’clock at night.... He looked scared and white. He began questioning her, but she told him nothing.... Then she swooned away again. I remember though when she was left alone in the room, she examined the place in the wall.... Under the tapestry hangings it turned out there was a secret door. And her betrothal ring had gone from off her hand. This ring was of an unusual pattern; seven little gold stars alternated on it with seven silver stars; it was an old family heirloom. Her husband asked her what had become of the ring; she could give him no answer. Her husband supposed she had dropped it somewhere, searched everywhere, but could not find it. He felt uneasy and distressed; he decided to go home as soon as possible and directly the doctor allowed it--they left the capital.... But imagine! On the very day of their departure they happened suddenly to meet a stretcher being carried along the street.... On the stretcher lay a man who had just been killed, with his head cut open; and imagine! the man was that fearful apparition of the night with the evil eyes.... He had been killed over some gambling dispute!

Then my friend went away into the country ... became a mother for the first time ... and lived several years with her husband. He never knew anything; indeed, what could she have told him?--she knew nothing herself.

But her former happiness had vanished. A gloom had come over their lives, and never again did that gloom pass out of it.... They had no other children, either before or after ... and that son....’

My mother trembled all over and hid her face in her hands.

‘But say now,’ she went on with redoubled energy, ‘was my friend to blame in any way? What had she to reproach herself with? She was punished, but had she not the right to declare before God Himself that the punishment that overtook her was unjust? Then why is it, that like a criminal, tortured by stings of conscience, why is it she is confronted with the past in such a fearful shape after so many years? Macbeth slew Bancho--so no wonder that he could be haunted ... but I....’

But here my mother’s words became so mixed and confused, that I ceased to follow her.... I no longer doubted that she was in delirium.

X

The agitating effect of my mother’s recital on me--any one may easily conceive! I guessed from her first word that she was talking of herself, and not any friend of hers. Her slip of the tongue confirmed my conjecture. Then this really was my father, whom I was seeking in my dream, whom I had seen awake by daylight! He had not been killed, as my mother supposed, but only wounded. And he had come to see her, and had run away, alarmed by her alarm. I suddenly understood everything: the feeling of involuntary aversion for me, which arose at times in my mother, and her perpetual melancholy, and our secluded life.... I remember my head seemed going round, and I clutched it in both hands as though to hold it still. But one idea, as it were, nailed me down; I resolved I must, come what may, find that man again? What for? with what aim? I could not give myself a clear answer, but to find him ... find him--that had become a question of life and death for me! The next morning my mother, at last, grew calmer ... the fever left her ... she fell asleep. Confiding her to the care of the servants and people of the house, I set out on my quest.

XI

First of all I made my way, of course, to the café where I had met the baron; but no one in the café knew him or had even noticed him; he had been a chance customer there. The negro the people there had observed, his figure was so striking; but who he was, and where he was staying, no one knew. Leaving my address in any case at the café, I fell to wandering about the streets and sea front by the harbour, along the boulevards, peeped into all places of public resort, but could find no one like the baron or his companion!... Not having caught the baron’s surname, I was deprived of the resource of applying to the police; I did, however, privately let two or three guardians of the public safety know--they stared at me in bewilderment, and did not altogether believe in me--that I would reward them liberally if they could trace out two persons, whose exterior I tried to describe as exactly as possible. After wandering about in this way till dinner-time, I returned home exhausted. My mother had got up; but to her usual melancholy there was added something new, a sort of dreamy blankness, which cut me to the heart like a knife. I spent the evening with her. We scarcely spoke at all; she played patience, I looked at her cards in silence. She never made a single reference to what she had told me, nor to what had happened the preceding evening. It was as though we had made a secret compact not to touch on any of these harrowing and strange incidents.... She seemed angry with herself, and ashamed of what had broken from her unawares; though possibly she did not remember quite what she had said in her half delirious feverishness, and hoped I should spare her.... And indeed this was it, I spared her, and she felt it; as on the previous day she avoided my eyes. I could not get to sleep all night. Outside, a fearful storm suddenly came on. The wind howled and darted furiously hither and thither, the window-panes rattled and rang, despairing shrieks and groans sounded in the air, as though something had been torn to shreds up aloft, and were flying with frenzied wailing over the shaken houses. Before dawn I dropped off into a doze ... suddenly I fancied some one came into my room, and called me, uttered my name, in a voice not loud, but resolute. I raised my head and saw no one; but, strange to say! I was not only not afraid--I was glad; I suddenly felt a conviction that now I should certainly attain my object. I dressed hurriedly and went out of the house.

XII

The storm had abated ... but its last struggles could still be felt. It was very early, there were no people in the streets, many places were strewn with broken chimney-pots and tiles, pieces of wrecked fencing, and branches of trees.... ‘What was it like last night at sea?’ I could not help wondering at the sight of the traces left by the storm. I intended to go to the harbour, but my legs, as though in obedience to some irresistible attraction, carried me in another direction. Ten minutes had not gone by before I found myself in a part of the town I had never visited till then. I walked not rapidly, but without halting, step by step, with a strange sensation at my heart; I expected something extraordinary, impossible, and at the same time I was convinced that this extraordinary thing would come to pass.

XIII

And, behold, it came to pass, this extraordinary, this unexpected thing! Suddenly, twenty paces before me, I saw the very negro who had addressed the baron in the café! Muffled in the same cloak as I had noticed on him there, he seemed to spring out of the earth, and with his back turned to me, walked with rapid strides along the narrow pavement of the winding street. I promptly flew to overtake him, but he, too, redoubled his pace, though he did not look round, and all of a sudden turned sharply round the corner of a projecting house. I ran up to this corner, turned round it as quickly as the negro.... Wonderful to relate! I faced a long, narrow, perfectly empty street; the fog of early morning rilled it with its leaden dulness, but my eye reached to its very end, I could scan all the buildings in it ... and not a living creature stirring anywhere! The tall negro in the cloak had vanished as suddenly as he had appeared! I was bewildered ... but only for one instant. Another feeling at once took possession of me; the street, which stretched its length, dumb, and, as it were, dead, before my eyes, I knew it! It was the street of my dream. I started, shivered, the morning was so fresh, and promptly, without the least hesitation, with a sort of shudder of conviction, went on!

I began looking about.... Yes, here it was; here to the right, standing cornerwise to the street, was the house of my dream, here too the old-fashioned gateway with scrollwork in stone on both sides.... It is true the windows of the house were not round, but rectangular ... but that was not important.... I knocked at the gate, knocked twice or three times, louder and louder.... The gate was opened slowly with a heavy groan as though yawning. I was confronted by a young servant girl with dishevelled hair, and sleepy eyes. She was apparently only just awake. ‘Does the baron live here?’ I asked, and took in with a rapid glance the deep narrow courtyard.... Yes; it was all there ... there were the planks and beams I had seen in my dream.

‘No,’ the servant girl answered, ‘the baron’s not living here.’

‘Not? impossible!’

‘He’s not here now. He left yesterday.’

‘Where’s he gone?’

‘To America.’

‘To America!’ I repealed involuntarily. ‘But he will come back?’

The servant looked at me suspiciously.

‘We don’t know about that. May be he won’t come back at all.’

‘And has he been living here long?’

‘Not long, a week. He’s not here now.’

‘And what was his surname, the baron’s?’ The girl stared at me.

‘You don’t know his name? We simply called him the baron.--Hi! Piotr!’ she shouted, seeing I was pushing in. ‘Come here; here’s a stranger keeps asking questions.’

From the house came the clumsy figure of a sturdy workman.

‘What is it? What do you want?’ he asked in a sleepy voice; and having heard me sullenly, he repeated what the girl had told me.

‘But who does live here?’ I asked.

‘Our master.’

‘Who is he?’

‘A carpenter. They’re all carpenters in this street.’

‘Can I see him?’

‘You can’t now, he’s asleep.’

‘But can’t I go into the house?’

‘No. Go away.’

‘Well, but can I see your master later on?’

‘What for? Of course. You can always see him.... To be sure, he’s always at his business here. Only go away now. Such a time in the morning, upon my soul!’

‘Well, but that negro?’ I asked suddenly.

The workman looked in perplexity first at me, then at the servant girl.

‘What negro?’ he said at last. ‘Go away, sir. You can come later. You can talk to the master.’

I went out into the street. The gate slammed at once behind me, sharply and heavily, with no groan this time.

I carefully noted the street and the house, and went away, but not home--I was conscious of a sort of disillusionment. Everything that had happened to me was so strange, so unexpected, and meanwhile what a stupid conclusion to it! I had been persuaded, I had been convinced, that I should see in that house the room I knew, and in the middle of it my father, the baron, in the dressing-gown, and with a pipe.... And instead of that, the master of the house was a carpenter, and I could go and see him as much as I liked--and order furniture of him, I dare say.

My father had gone to America. And what was left for me to do?... To tell my mother everything, or to bury for ever the very memory of that meeting? I positively could not resign myself to the idea that such a supernatural, mysterious beginning should end in such a senseless, ordinary conclusion!

I did not want to return home, and walked at random away from the town.

XIV

I walked with downcast head, without thought, almost without sensation, but utterly buried in myself. A rhythmic hollow and angry noise raised me from my numbness. I lifted my head; it was the sea roaring and moaning fifty paces from me. I saw I was walking along the sand of the dunes. The sea, set in violent commotion by the storm in the night, was white with foam to the very horizon, and the sharp crests of the long billows rolled one after another and broke on the flat shore. I went nearer to it, and walked along the line left by the ebb and flow of the tides on the yellow furrowed sand, strewn with fragments of trailing seaweed, broken shells, and snakelike ribbons of sea-grass. Gulls, with pointed wings, flying with a plaintive cry on the wind out of the remote depths of the air, soared up, white as snow against the grey cloudy sky, fell abruptly, and seeming to leap from wave to wave, vanished again, and were lost like gleams of silver in the streaks of frothing foam. Several of them, I noticed, hovered persistently over a big rock, which stood up alone in the midst of the level uniformity of the sandy shore. Coarse seaweed was growing in irregular masses on one side of the rock; and where its matted tangles rose above the yellow line, was something black, something longish, curved, not very large.... I looked attentively.... Some dark object was lying there, lying motionless beside the rock.... This object grew clearer, more defined the nearer I got to it....

There was only a distance of thirty paces left between me and the rock.... Why, it was the outline of a human form! It was a corpse; it was a drowned man thrown up by the sea! I went right up to the rock.

The corpse was the baron, my father! I stood as though turned to stone. Only then I realised that I had been led since early morning by some unknown forces, that I was in their power, and for some instants there was nothing in my soul but the never-ceasing crash of the sea, and dumb horror at the fate that had possession of me....

XV