Works of Ivan Turgenev (Illustrated) (218 page)

III

I passed the day in unrest. At supper I drank almost a whole bottle of wine, and all but went out on to the steps; but I turned back and flung myself into my bed. My blood was pulsing painfully.

Again the sound was heard…. I started, but did not look round. All at once I felt that some one had tight hold of me from behind, and was whispering in my very ear: ‘Come, come, come.’… Trembling with terror, I moaned out: ‘I will come!’ and sat up.

A woman stood stooping close to my very pillow. She smiled dimly and vanished. I had time, though, to make out her face. It seemed to me I had seen her before — but where, when? I got up late, and spent the whole day wandering about the country. I went to the old oak at the edge of the forest, and looked carefully all around.

Towards evening I sat at the open window in my study. My old housekeeper set a cup of tea before me, but I did not touch it…. I kept asking myself in bewilderment: ‘Am not I going out of my mind?’ The sun had just set: and not the sky alone was flushed with red; the whole atmosphere was suddenly filled with an almost unnatural purple. The leaves and grass never stirred, stiff as though freshly coated with varnish. In their stony rigidity, in the vivid sharpness of their outlines, in this combination of intense brightness and death - like stillness, there was something weird and mysterious. A rather large grey bird suddenly flew up without a sound and settled on the very window sill…. I looked at it, and it looked at me sideways with its round, dark eye. ‘Were you sent to remind me, then?’ I wondered.

At once the bird fluttered its soft wings, and without a sound — as before — flew away. I sat a long time still at the window, but I was no longer a prey to uncertainty. I had, as it were, come within the enchanted circle, and I was borne along by an irresistible though gentle force, as a boat is borne along by the current long before it reaches the waterfall. I started up at last. The purple had long vanished from the air, the colours were darkened, and the enchanted silence was broken. There was the flutter of a gust of wind, the moon came out brighter and brighter in the sky that was growing bluer, and soon the leaves of the trees were weaving patterns of black and silver in her cold beams. My old housekeeper came into the study with a lighted candle, but there was a draught from the window and the flame went out. I could restrain myself no longer. I jumped up, clapped on my cap, and set off to the corner of the forest, to the old oak - tree.

IV

This oak had, many years before, been struck by lightning; the top of the tree had been shattered, and was withered up, but there was still life left in it for centuries to come. As I was coming up to it, a cloud passed over the moon: it was very dark under its thick branches. At first I noticed nothing special; but I glanced on one side, and my heart fairly failed me — a white figure was standing motionless beside a tall bush between the oak and the forest. My hair stood upright on my head, but I plucked up my courage and went towards the forest.

Yes, it was she, my visitor of the night. As I approached her, the moon shone out again. She seemed all, as it were, spun out of half - transparent, milky mist, — through her face I could see a branch faintly stirring in the wind; only the hair and eyes were a little dark, and on one of the fingers of her clasped hands a slender ring shone with a gleam of pale gold. I stood still before her, and tried to speak; but the voice died away in my throat, though it was no longer fear exactly I felt. Her eyes were turned upon me; their gaze expressed neither distress nor delight, but a sort of lifeless attention. I waited to see whether she would utter a word, but she remained motionless and speechless, and still gazed at me with her deathly intent eyes. Dread came over me again.

‘I have come!’ I cried at last with an effort. My voice sounded muffled and strange to me.

‘I love you,’ I heard her whisper.

‘You love me!’ I repeated in amazement.

‘Give yourself up to me, ‘was whispered me again in reply.

‘Give myself up to you! But you are a phantom; you have no body even.’ A strange animation came upon me. ‘What are you — smoke, air, vapour? Give myself up to you! Answer me first, Who are you? Have you lived upon the earth? Whence have you come?’

‘Give yourself up to me. I will do you no harm. Only say two words: “Take me.”‘

I looked at her. ‘What is she saying?’ I thought. ‘What does it all mean?

And how can she take me? Shall I try?’

‘Very well,’ I said, and unexpectedly loudly, as though some one had given me a push from behind; ‘take me!’

I had hardly uttered these words when the mysterious figure, with a sort of inward laugh, which set her face quivering for an instant, bent forward, and stretched out her arms wide apart…. I tried to dart away, but I was already in her power. She seized me, my body rose a foot from the ground, and we both floated smoothly and not too swiftly over the wet, still grass.

V

At first I felt giddy, and instinctively I closed my eyes…. A minute later I opened them again. We were floating as before; but the forest was now nowhere to be seen. Under us stretched a plain, spotted here and there with dark patches. With horror I felt that we had risen to a fearful height.

‘I am lost; I am in the power of Satan,’ flashed through me like lightning. Till that instant the idea of a temptation of the evil one, of the possibility of perdition, had never entered my head. We still whirled on, and seemed to be mounting higher and higher.

‘Where will you take me?’ I moaned at last.

‘Where you like,’ my companion answered. She clung close to me; her face was almost resting upon my face. But I was scarcely conscious of her touch.

‘Let me sink down to the earth, I am giddy at this height.’

‘Very well; only shut your eyes and hold your breath.’

I obeyed, and at once felt that I was falling like a stone flung from the hand … the air whistled in my ears. When I could think again, we were floating smoothly once more just above the earth, so that we caught our feet in the tops of the tall grass.

‘Put me on my feet,’ I began. ‘What pleasure is there in flying? I’m not a bird.’

‘I thought you would like it. We have no other pastime.’

‘You? Then what are you?’

There was no answer.

‘You don’t dare to tell me that?’

The plaintive sound which had awakened me the first night quivered in my ears. Meanwhile we were still, scarcely perceptibly, moving in the damp night air.

‘Let me go!’ I said. My companion moved slowly away, and I found myself on my feet. She stopped before me and again folded her hands. I grew more composed and looked into her face; as before it expressed submissive sadness.

‘Where are we?’ I asked. I did not recognise the country about me.

‘Far from your home, but you can be there in an instant.’

‘How can that be done? by trusting myself to you again?’

‘I have done you no harm and will do you none. Let us fly till dawn, that is all. I can bear you away wherever you fancy — to the ends of the earth. Give yourself up to me! Say only: “Take me!”‘

‘Well … take me!’

She again pressed close to me, again my feet left the earth — and we were flying.

VI

‘Which way?’ she asked me.

‘Straight on, keep straight on.’

‘But here is a forest.’

‘Lift us over the forest, only slower.’

We darted upwards like a wild snipe flying up into a birch - tree, and again flew on in a straight line. Instead of grass, we caught glimpses of tree - tops just under our feet. It was strange to see the forest from above, its bristling back lighted up by the moon. It looked like some huge slumbering wild beast, and accompanied us with a vast unceasing murmur, like some inarticulate roar. In one place we crossed a small glade; intensely black was the jagged streak of shadow along one side of it. Now and then there was the plaintive cry of a hare below us; above us the owl hooted, plaintively too; there was a scent in the air of mushrooms, buds, and dawn - flowers; the moon fairly flooded everything on all sides with its cold, hard light; the Pleiades gleamed just over our heads. And now the forest was left behind; a streak of fog stretched out across the open country; it was the river. We flew along one of its banks, above the bushes, still and weighed down with moisture. The river’s waters at one moment glimmered with a flash of blue, at another flowed on in darkness, as it were, in wrath. Here and there a delicate mist moved strangely over the water, and the water - lilies’ cups shone white in maiden pomp with every petal open to its full, as though they knew their safety out of reach. I longed to pick one of them, and behold, I found myself at once on the river’s surface…. The damp air struck me an angry blow in the face, just as I broke the thick stalk of a great flower. We began to fly across from bank to bank, like the water - fowl we were continually waking up and chasing before us. More than once we chanced to swoop down on a family of wild ducks, settled in a circle on an open spot among the reeds, but they did not stir; at most one of them would thrust out its neck from under its wing, stare at us, and anxiously poke its beak away again in its fluffy feathers, and another faintly quacked, while its body twitched a little all over. We startled one heron; it flew up out of a willow bush, brandishing its legs and fluttering its wings with clumsy eagerness: it struck me as remarkably like a German. There was not the splash of a fish to be heard, they too were asleep. I began to get used to the sensation of flying, and even to find a pleasure in it; any one will understand me, who has experienced flying in dreams. I proceeded to scrutinise with close attention the strange being, by whose good offices such unlikely adventures had befallen me.

VII

She was a woman with a small un - Russian face. Greyish - white, half - transparent, with scarcely marked shades, she reminded one of the alabaster figures on a vase lighted up within, and again her face seemed familiar to me.

‘Can I speak with you?’ I asked.

‘Speak.’

‘I see a ring on your finger; you have lived then on the earth, you have been married?’

I waited … There was no answer.

‘What is your name, or, at least, what was it?’

‘Call me Alice.’

‘Alice! That’s an English name! Are you an Englishwoman? Did you know me in former days?’

‘No.’

‘Why is it then you have come to me?’

‘I love you.’

‘And are you content?’

‘Yes; we float, we whirl together in the fresh air.’

‘Alice!’ I said all at once, ‘you are perhaps a sinful, condemned soul?’

My companion’s head bent towards me. ‘I don’t understand you,’ she murmured.

‘I adjure you in God’s name….’ I was beginning.

‘What are you saying?’ she put in in perplexity. ‘I don’t understand.’

I fancied that the arm that lay like a chilly girdle about my waist softly trembled….

‘Don’t be afraid,’ said Alice, ‘don’t be afraid, my dear one!’ Her face turned and moved towards my face…. I felt on my lips a strange sensation, like the faintest prick of a soft and delicate sting…. Leeches might prick so in mild and drowsy mood.

VIII

I glanced downwards. We had now risen again to a considerable height. We were flying over some provincial town I did not know, situated on the side of a wide slope. Churches rose up high among the dark mass of wooden roofs and orchards; a long bridge stood out black at the bend of a river; everything was hushed, buried in slumber. The very crosses and cupolas seemed to gleam with a silent brilliance; silently stood the tall posts of the wells beside the round tops of the willows; silently the straight whitish road darted arrow - like into one end of the town, and silently it ran out again at the opposite end on to the dark waste of monotonous fields.

‘What town is this?’ I asked.

‘X….’

‘X … in Y … province?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m a long distance indeed from home!’

‘Distance is not for us.’

‘Really?’ I was fired by a sudden recklessness. ‘Then take me to South

America!

‘To America I cannot. It’s daylight there by now.’ ‘And we are night - birds.

Well, anywhere, where you can, only far, far away.’

‘Shut your eyes and hold your breath,’ answered Alice, and we flew along with the speed of a whirlwind. With a deafening noise the air rushed into my ears. We stopped, but the noise did not cease. On the contrary, it changed into a sort of menacing roar, the roll of thunder…

‘Now you can open your eyes,’ said Alice.