Dream Tales and Prose Poems Part 11

The last echoes of my voice had hardly died away, when I heard....

It is difficult to say what I did hear. At first there reached me a confused din the ear could scarcely catch, the endlessly-repeated clamour of the blare of trumpets, and the clapping of hands. It seemed that somewhere, immensely far away, at some fathomless depth, a mult.i.tude innumerable was suddenly astir, and was rising up, rising up in agitation, calling to one another, faintly, as if m.u.f.fled in sleep, the suffocating sleep of ages. Then the air began moving in dark currents over the ruin....

Shades began flitting before me, myriads of shades, millions of outlines, the rounded curves of helmets, the long straight lines of lances; the moonbeams were broken into momentary gleams of blue upon these helmets and lances, and all this army, this mult.i.tude, came closer and closer, and grew, in more and more rapid movement.... An indescribable force, a force fit to set the whole world moving, could be felt in it; but not one figure stood out clearly.... And suddenly I fancied a sort of tremor ran all round, as if it were the rush and rolling apart of some huge waves....

'_Caesar, Caesar venit!_' sounded voices, like the leaves of a forest when a storm has suddenly broken upon it ... a m.u.f.fled shout thundered through the mult.i.tude, and a pale stern head, in a wreath of laurel, with downcast eyelids, the head of the emperor, began slowly to rise out of the ruin....

There is no word in the tongue of man to express the horror which clutched at my heart.... I felt that were that head to raise its eyes, to part its lips, I must perish on the spot! 'Alice!' I moaned, 'I won't, I can't, I don't want Rome, coa.r.s.e, terrible Rome.... Away, away from here!'

'Coward!' she whispered, and away we flew. I just had time to hear behind me the iron voice of the legions, like a peal of thunder ... then all was darkness.

XIV

'Look round,' Alice said to me, 'and don't fear.'

I obeyed--and, I remember, my first impression was so sweet that I could only sigh. A sort of smoky-grey, silvery-soft, half-light, half-mist, enveloped me on all sides. At first I made out nothing: I was dazzled by this azure brilliance; but little by little began to emerge the outlines of beautiful mountains and forests; a lake lay at my feet, with stars quivering in its depths, and the musical plash of waves. The fragrance of orange flowers met me with a rush, and with it--and also as it were with a rush--came floating the pure powerful notes of a woman's young voice. This fragrance, this music, fairly drew me downwards, and I began to sink ...

to sink down towards a magnificent marble palace, which stood, invitingly white, in the midst of a wood of cypress. The music flowed out from its wide open windows, the waves of the lake, flecked with the pollen of flowers, splashed upon its walls, and just opposite, all clothed in the dark green of orange flowers and laurels, enveloped in s.h.i.+ning mist, and studded with statues, slender columns, and the porticoes of temples, a lofty round island rose out of the water....

'Isola Bella!' said Alice.... 'Lago Maggiore....'

I murmured only 'Ah!' and continued to drop. The woman's voice sounded louder and clearer in the palace; I was irresistibly drawn towards it.... I wanted to look at the face of the singer, who, in such music, gave voice to such a night. We stood still before the window.

In the centre of a room, furnished in the style of Pompeii, and more like an ancient temple than a modern drawing-room, surrounded by Greek statues, Etruscan vases, rare plants, and precious stuffs, lighted up by the soft radiance of two lamps enclosed in crystal globes, a young woman was sitting at the piano. Her head slightly bowed and her eyes half-closed, she sang an Italian melody; she sang and smiled, and at the same time her face wore an expression of gravity, almost of sternness ... a token of perfect rapture!

She smiled ... and Praxiteles' Faun, indolent, youthful as she, effeminate, and voluptuous, seemed to smile back at her from a corner, under the branches of an oleander, across the delicate smoke that curled upwards from a bronze censer on an antique tripod. The beautiful singer was alone.

Spell-bound by the music, her beauty, the splendour and sweet fragrance of the night, moved to the heart by the picture of this youthful, serene, and untroubled happiness, I utterly forgot my companion, I forgot the strange way in which I had become a witness of this life, so remote, so completely apart from me, and I was on the point of tapping at the window, of speaking....

I was set trembling all over by a violent shock--just as though I had touched a galvanic battery. I looked round.... The face of Alice was--for all its transparency--dark and menacing; there was a dull glow of anger in her eyes, which were suddenly wide and round....

'Away!' she murmured wrathfully, and again whirling and darkness and giddiness.... Only this time not the shout of legions, but the voice of the singer, breaking on a high note, lingered in my ears....

We stopped. The high note, the same note was still ringing and did not cease to ring in my ears, though I was breathing quite a different air, a different scent ... a breeze was blowing upon me, fresh and invigorating, as though from a great river, and there was a smell of hay, smoke and hemp.

The long-drawn-out note was followed by a second, and a third, but with an expression so unmistakable, a trill so familiar, so peculiarly our own, that I said to myself at once: 'That's a Russian singing a Russian song!'

and at that very instant everything grew clear about me.

XV

We found ourselves on a flat riverside plain. To the left, newly-mown meadows, with rows of huge hayricks, stretched endlessly till they were lost in the distance; to the right extended the smooth surface of a vast mighty river, till it too was lost in the distance. Not far from the bank, big dark barges slowly rocked at anchor, slightly tilting their slender masts, like pointing fingers. From one of these barges came floating up to me the sounds of a liquid voice, and a fire was burning in it, throwing a long red light that danced and quivered on the water. Here and there, both on the river and in the fields, other lights were glimmering, whether close at hand or far away, the eye could not distinguish; they shrank together, then suddenly lengthened out into great blurs of light; gra.s.shoppers innumerable kept up an unceasing churr, persistent as the frogs of the Pontine marshes; and across the cloudless, but dark lowering sky floated from time to time the cries of unseen birds.

'Are we in Russia?' I asked of Alice.

'It is the Volga,' she answered.

We flew along the river-bank. 'Why did you tear me away from there, from that lovely country?' I began. 'Were you envious, or was it jealousy in you?'

The lips of Alice faintly stirred, and again there was a menacing light in her eyes.... But her whole face grew stony again at once.

'I want to go home,' I said.

'Wait a little, wait a little,' answered Alice. 'To-night is a great night.

It will not soon return. You may be a spectator.... Wait a little.'

And we suddenly flew across the Volga in a slanting direction, keeping close to the water's surface, with the low impetuous flight of swallows before a storm. The broad waves murmured heavily below us, the sharp river breeze beat upon us with its strong cold wing ... the high right bank began soon to rise up before us in the half-darkness. Steep mountains appeared with great ravines between. We came near to them.

'Shout: "Lads, to the barges!"' Alice whispered to me. I remembered the terror I had suffered at the apparition of the Roman phantoms. I felt weary and strangely heavy, as though my heart were ebbing away within me. I wished not to utter the fatal words; I knew beforehand that in response to them there would appear, as in the wolves' valley of the Freischutz, some monstrous thing; but my lips parted against my will, and in a weak forced voice I shouted, also against my will: 'Lads, to the barges!'

XVI

At first all was silence, even as it was at the Roman ruins, but suddenly I heard close to my very ear a coa.r.s.e bargeman's laugh, and with a moan something dropped into the water and a gurgling sound followed.... I looked round: no one was anywhere to be seen, but from the bank the echo came bounding back, and at once from all sides rose a deafening din. There was a medley of everything in this chaos of sound: shouting and whining, furious abuse and laughter, laughter above everything; the plash of oars and the cleaving of hatchets, a crash as of the smas.h.i.+ng of doors and chests, the grating of rigging and wheels, and the neighing of horses, and the clang of the alarm bell and the clink of chains, the roar and crackle of fire, drunken songs and quick, gnas.h.i.+ng chatter, weeping inconsolable, plaintive despairing prayers, and shouts of command, the dying gasp and the reckless whistle, the guffaw and the thud of the dance.... 'Kill them! Hang them!

Drown them! rip them up! bravo! bravo! don't spare them!' could be heard distinctly; I could even hear the hurried breathing of men panting. And meanwhile all around, as far as the eye could reach, nothing could be seen, nothing was changed; the river rolled by mysteriously, almost sullenly, the very bank seemed more deserted and desolate--and that was all.

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 s.h.i.+nes 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 Caesar 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 n.o.bleman 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.'