Devil Stories Part 28

[30] From the _National Magazine_, vol. XV. By permission of the Editor and Translator.

Life is a burden in the Fall,--the sad season of decay and death!

The grey days, the weeping, sunless sky, the dark nights, the growling, whining wind, the heavy, black autumn shadows--all that drives clouds of gloomy thoughts over the human soul, and fills it with a mysterious fear of life where nothing is permanent, all is in an eternal flux; things are born, decay, die ... why? ... for what purpose?...

Sometimes the strength fails us to battle against the tenebrous thoughts that enfold the soul late in the autumn, therefore those who want to a.s.suage their bitterness ought to meet them half way. This is the only way by which they will escape from the chaos of despair and doubt, and will enter on the terra firma of self-confidence.

But it is a laborious path, it leads through th.o.r.n.y brambles that lacerate the living heart, and on that path the devil always lies in ambush. It is that best of all the devils, with whom the great Goethe has made us acquainted....

My story is about that devil.

The devil suffered from ennui.

He is too wise to ridicule everything.

He knows that there are phenomena of life which the devil himself is not able to rail at; for example, he has never applied the sharp scalpel of his irony to the majestic fact of his existence. To tell the truth, our favourite devil is more bold than clever, and if we were to look more closely at him, we might discover that, like ourselves, he wastes most of his time on trifles. But we had better leave that alone; we are not children that break their best toys in order to discover what is in them.

The devil once wandered over the cemetery in the darkness of an autumn night: he felt lonely and whistled softly as he looked around himself in search of a distraction. He whistled an old song--my father's favourite song,--

"When, in autumnal days, A leaf from its branch is torn And on high by the wind is borne."

And the wind sang with him, soughing over the graves and among the black crosses, and heavy autumnal clouds slowly crawled over the heaven and with their cold tears watered the narrow dwellings of the dead. The mournful trees in the cemetery timidly creaked under the strokes of the wind and stretched their bare branches to the speechless clouds. The branches were now and then caught by the crosses, and then a dull, shuffling, awful sound pa.s.sed over the churchyard....

The devil was whistling, and he thought:

"I wonder how the dead feel in such weather! No doubt, the dampness goes down to them, and although they are secure against rheumatism ever since the day of their death, yet, I suppose, they do not feel comfortable. How, if I called one of them up and had a talk with him?

It would be a little distraction for me, and, very likely, for him also. I will call him! Somewhere around here they have buried an old friend of mine, an author.... I used to visit him when he was alive ... why not renew our acquaintance? People of his kind are dreadfully exacting. I shall find out whether the grave satisfies him completely.

But where is his grave?"

And the devil who, as is well known, knows everything, wandered for a long time about the cemetery, before he found the author's grave....

"Oh there!" he called out as he knocked with his claws at the heavy stone under which his acquaintance was put away.

"Get up!"

"What for?" came the dull answer from below.

"I need you."

"I won't get up."

"Why?"

"Who are you, anyway?"

"You know me."

"The censor?"

"Ha, ha, ha! No!"

"Maybe a secret policeman?"

"No, no!"

"Not a critic, either?"

"I am the devil."

"Well, I'll be out in a minute."

The stone lifted itself from the grave, the earth burst open, and a skeleton came out of it. It was a very common skeleton, just the kind that students study anatomy by: only it was dirty, had no wire connections, and in the empty sockets there shone a blue phosphoric light instead of eyes. It crawled out of the ground, shook its bones in order to throw off the earth that stuck to them, making a dry, rattling noise with them, and raising up its skull, looked with its cold, blue eyes at the murky, cloud-covered sky. "I hope you are well!" said the devil.

"How can I be?" curtly answered the author. He spoke in a strange, low voice, as if two bones were grating against each other.

"Oh, excuse my greeting!" the devil said pleasantly.

"Never mind!... But why have you raised me?"

"I just wanted to take a walk with you, though the weather is very bad.

"I suppose you are not afraid of catching a cold?" asked the devil.

"Not at all, I got used to catching colds during my lifetime."

"Yes, I remember, you died pretty cold."

"I should say I did! They had poured enough cold water over me all my life."

They walked beside each other over the narrow path, between graves and crosses. Two blue beams fell from the author's eyes upon the ground and lit the way for the devil. A drizzling rain sprinkled over them, and the wind freely pa.s.sed between the author's bare ribs and through his breast where there was no longer a heart.

"We are going to town?" he asked the devil.

"What interests you there?"

"Life, my dear sir," the author said impa.s.sionately.

"What! It still has a meaning for you?"

"Indeed it has!"

"But why?"

"How am I to say it? A man measures all by the quant.i.ty of his effort, and if he carries a common stone down from the summit of Ararat, that stone becomes a gem to him."

"Poor fellow!" smiled the devil.