Olyessia began to laugh aloud and to clap her hands.
‘Well, are you satisfied now?’ she cried, her white teeth gleaming. ‘Do
you believe it now? It’s nothing, nothing.... You flew down instead of
up.’
‘How did you manage that?’ I asked in surprise, shaking the little
clinging twigs and blades of grass from my clothes. ‘Is it a secret?’
‘Not at all. I’ll tell you with pleasure. Only I’m afraid that perhaps
you won’t understand.... I shan’t be able to explain....’
Indeed, I did not understand her altogether. But, as far as I can make
out, this odd trick consists in her following my footsteps, step by
step, in time with me. She looks at me steadily, trying to imitate my
every movement down to the least; as it were, she identifies herself
with me. After a few steps she begins to imagine a rope drawn across
the road a certain distance in front of me--a yard from the ground.
The moment my foot is touching this imaginary rope, Olyessia suddenly
pretends to fall, and then, as she says, the strongest man must
infallibly fall.... I remembered Olyessia’s confused explanation long
afterwards when I read Charcot’s report on the experiments which he
made on two women patients in the Salpêtrière, who were professional
witches suffering from hysteria. I was greatly surprised to discover
that French witches who came from the common people employed exactly
the same science in the same cases as the beautiful witch of Polyessie.
‘Oh, I can do a great many things besides,’ Olyessia boldly declared.
‘For instance, I can put a fear into you....’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I’ll act so that you feel a great dread. Suppose you are sitting in
your room in the evening. Suddenly for no reason at all such a fear
will take hold of you that you will begin to tremble and won’t dare to
turn round. But for this I must know where you live and see your room
beforehand.’
‘Well, that’s quite a simple affair.’ I was sceptical. ‘You only
have to come close to the window, tap on it, call out something or
other....’
‘Oh no!... I shall be in the forest at the time. I won’t go out of the
hut.... But I will sit down and think all the while: I’ll think that
I am walking along the road, entering your house, opening the door,
coming into your room.... You’re sitting somewhere; at the table,
say.... I walk up to you from behind quietly and stealthily.... You
don’t hear me.... I seize your shoulder with my hands and begin to
squeeze ... stronger, stronger, stronger.... I stare at you, just like
this. Look!...’
Her thin eyebrows suddenly closed together. Her eyes were fixed upon
me in a stare, fascinating, threatening. Her pupils dilated and became
blue. Instantly I remembered a Medusa’s head, the work of a painter
I have forgotten, in the Trietyakov Gallery in Moscow. Beneath this
strange look I was seized by a cold terror of the supernatural.
‘Well, that’ll do, Olyessia.... That’s enough,’ I said with a forced
laugh. ‘I much prefer you when you smile. Your face is so kind and
childlike.’
We went on. I suddenly recollected the expressiveness of Olyessia’s
conversation--elegance even for a simple girl--and I said:
‘Do you know what surprises me in you, Olyessia? You’ve grown up in
the forest without seeing a soul.... Of course, you can’t read very
much....’
‘I can’t read at all.’
‘Well, that makes it all the more.... Yet you speak as well as a real
lady. Tell me, where did you learn it? You understand what I mean?’
‘Yes, I understand. It’s from granny. You mustn’t judge her by
her appearance. She is so clever! Some day she may speak when you
are there, when she has become used to you. She knows everything,
everything on earth that you can ask her. It’s true she’s old now.’
‘Then she has seen a great deal in her lifetime. Where does she come
from? Where did she live before?’
It seemed that these questions did not please Olyessia. She hesitated
to answer, evasive and reluctant.
‘I don’t know.... She doesn’t like to talk of that herself. If ever she
says anything about it, she asks you to forget it, to put it quite out
of mind.... But it’s time for me....’ Olyessia hastened, ‘Granny will
be cross. Good-bye.... Forgive me, but I don’t know your name.’