IX

Evpsychyi Afrikanovich kept his word and left the people of the forest

hut in peace indefinitely. But my relations with Olyessia suffered an

acute and curious change. Not a trace of her old naïve and confident

kindness remained in her attitude to me, nor any of the old animation

wherein the coquetry of a beautiful girl so beautifully blended with

the playful wantonness of a child. An awkward constraint beyond which

we could not pass began to appear in our conversation.... With an

instant timidity Olyessia avoided the lively themes which used to give

such boundless scope to our curiosity.

In my presence she gave herself up to her work in a strained, stern,

business-like way; but I often noticed that in the middle of her work

her hands would suddenly drop weakly on her knees, and her eyes be

fixed, vague and immovable, downwards upon the floor. And when at such

a moment I called her by name, ‘Olyessia,’ or put some question to her,

she shivered and turned her face slowly towards me: in it was reflected

fright and the effort to understand the meaning of my words. Sometimes

it seemed to me that she was burdened and embarrassed by my company,

but I could not reconcile that with the deep interest that every

remark and phrase of mine used to arouse in her only a few days ago. I

could only think that Olyessia was unwilling to forgive my patronage in

the affair with the sergeant, which so revolted her independent nature.

But this solution did not satisfy me either, and I still asked myself

from whence did this simple girl, who had grown up in the midst of the

forest, derive her inordinately sensitive pride?

All this demanded explanations; but Olyessia avoided every favourable

occasion for frank conversation. Our evening walks came to an end. In

vain I cast eloquent imploring glances at Olyessia each day, when I

was on the point of leaving; she made as though she did not understand

their meaning, and in spite of the old woman’s deafness, her presence

disturbed me.

At times I revolted against my own weakness and the habit which

now drew me every day to Olyessia. I myself did not suspect with

what subtle, strong, invisible threads my heart was bound to this

fascinating, incomprehensible girl. As yet I had no thought of love;

but I was already living through a disturbing period of unconscious

anticipation, full of vague and oppressive sadnesses. Wherever I was,

with whatever I tried to amuse myself, my every thought was occupied

with the image of Olyessia, my whole being craved for her, and each

separate memory of her most insignificant words, her gestures and her

smiles, contracted my heart with a sweet and gentle pain. But evening

came and I sat long beside her on a low rickety little bench, to my

grief finding myself every time more timid, more awkward and foolish.

Once I passed a whole day thus at Olyessia’s side. I had begun to feel

unwell from the morning onward, though I could not clearly define

wherein my sickness consisted. It grew worse towards evening. My head

grew heavy; I felt a dull incessant pain in the crown of my head,

exactly as though some one were pressing down upon it with a soft,

strong hand. My mouth was parched, and an idle, languid weakness poured

over my whole body. My eyes pained me just as though I had been staring

fixedly, close to a glimmering point.

As I was returning late in the evening, midway I was suddenly seized

and shaken by a tempestuous chill. I could hardly see the way as I went

on; I was almost unconscious of where I was going; I reeled like a

drunken man, and my jaws beat out a quick loud tattoo, each against the

other.

Till this day I do not know who brought me into the house. For exactly

six days I was stricken by a terrible racking Polyessian fever. During

the day the sickness seemed to abate, and consciousness returned to

me. Then, utterly exhausted by the disease, I could hardly walk across

the room, such was the pain and weakness of my knees; at each stronger

movement the blood rushed in a hot wave to my head, and covered

everything before my eyes with darkness.

In the evening, and usually at about seven o’clock, the approach of the

disease overwhelmed me like a storm, and on my bed I passed a terrible,

century-long night, now shaking with cold beneath the blankets, now

blazing with intolerable heat. Hardly had I been touched by a drowsy

slumber, when strange, grotesque, painfully motley dreams began to play

with my inflamed brain. Every dream was filled with tiny microscopic

details, which piled up and clutched each at the other in ugly chaos.

Now I seemed to be unpacking some boxes, coloured with stripes and of

fantastic form, taking small ones out of the big, and from the small

still smaller. I could not by any means interrupt the unending labour,

although it had long been disgusting to me. Then there flashed before

my eyes with stupefying speed long bright stripes from the wallpaper,

and with amazing distinctness I saw on them, instead of patterns, whole

garlands of human faces--beautiful, kind, and smiling, then horribly

grimacing, thrusting out their tongues, showing their teeth, and

rolling their eyes. Then I entered into a confused and extraordinarily

complicated abstract dispute with Yarmola. Every minute the arguments

which we brought up against each other became subtler and more

profound: separate words and even individual letters of words suddenly

took on a mysterious and unfathomable meaning, and at the same time I

was seized by a revolting terror of the unknown, unnatural force that

wound out one monstrous sophism after another out of my brain, and

would not let me break off the dispute which had long been loathsome to

me....

It was like a seething whirlwind of human and animal figures,

landscapes, things of the most wonderful forms and colours, words

and phrases whose meaning was apprehended by every sense.... But the

strange thing was that I never lost sight of a bright regular circle

reflected on to the ceiling by the lamp with the scorched green shade.

And somehow I knew that within the indistinct line of that quiet circle

was concealed a silent, monotonous, mysterious, terrible life, yet more

awful and oppressive than the mad chaos of my dreams.

Then I awoke, or more truly did not awake, but suddenly forced myself

to sit up. Consciousness almost returned to me. I understood that I was

lying in bed, that I was ill, that I had just been in delirium, but the

bright circle on the ceiling still terrified me by its hidden, ominous

menace. With weak hands I slowly reached for the watch, looked at it,

and saw with melancholy perplexity that all the endless sequence of my

ghastly dreams had taken no longer than two or three minutes. ‘My God,

will the dawn ever come?’ I thought in despair, tossing my head over

the hot pillows and feeling my short heavy breathing burn my lips....

But again a slight drowsiness possessed me, and again my brain became

the sport of a motley nightmare, and again within two minutes I woke,

racked by a mortal anguish.

In six days my vigorous constitution, aided by quinine and an infusion

of buckthorn, overcame my disease. I rose from my bed completely

crushed, with difficulty standing upright on my legs. But my

convalescence passed with eager quickness. In my head, weary with six

days’ feverish delirium, I felt now an idle, pleasant absence of any

thought at all. My appetite returned with double force, and hourly my

body gathered strength, in each moment imbibing its particle of health

and of the joy of life. And with that a new and stronger craving came

upon me for the forest and the lonely, tumble-down hut. But my nerves

had not yet recovered, and every time that I called up Olyessia’s face

and voice in my memory, I wanted to cry.

X

Only five more days had passed, when I was so much recovered that I

reached the chicken-legged hut on foot without the least fatigue. As

I stepped on the threshold my heart palpitated with breathless fear.

I had not seen Olyessia for almost two weeks, and I now perceived how

near and dear she was to me. Holding the latch of the door, I waited

some seconds, breathing with difficulty. In my irresolution I even shut

my eyes for some time before I could push the door open....

It is always impossible to analyse impressions like those which

followed my entrance.... Can one remember the words uttered in the

first moment of meeting between a mother and son, husband and wife, or

lover and lover? The simplest, most ordinary, even ridiculous words

are said, if they were put down exactly upon paper. But each word is

opportune and infinitely dear because it is uttered by the dearest

voice in all the world.

I remember--very clearly I remember--only one thing: Olyessia’s

beautiful pale face turned quickly towards me, and on that beautiful

face, so new to me, were in one second reflected, in changing

succession, perplexity, fear, anxiety, and a tender radiant smile of

love.... The old woman was mumbling something, clattering round me,

but I did not hear her greetings. Olyessia’s voice reached me like a

sweet music:

‘What has been the matter with you? You’ve been ill? Ah, how thin

you’ve grown, my poor darling!’

For a long while I could make no answer, and we stood silent face

to face, clasping hands and looking straight into the depths of

each other’s eyes, happily. Those few silent seconds I have always

considered the happiest in my life: never, never before or since, have

I tasted such pure, complete, all-absorbing ecstasy. And how much I

read in Olyessia’s big dark eyes!--the excitement of the meeting,

reproach for my long absence, and a passionate declaration of love. In

that look I felt that Olyessia gave me her whole being joyfully without

doubt or reservation.

She was the first to break the spell, pointing to Manuilikha with a

slow movement of her eyelids. We sat down side by side, and Olyessia

began to ask me anxiously for the details of my illness, the medicines

I had taken, what the doctor had said and thought--he came twice to see

me from the little town; she made me tell about the doctor time after

time, and I could catch a fleeting, sarcastic smile on her lips.

‘Oh, why didn’t I know that you were ill!’ she exclaimed with impatient

regret. ‘I would have set you on your feet again in a single day....

How can they be trusted, when they don’t understand anything at all,

nothing at all? Why didn’t you send for me?’