It seems to me as though I am somewhere in Russia, in the wilds, in a
plain country house.
The chamber is large, low-ceiled, with three windows; the walls are
smeared with white paint; there is no furniture. In front of the house
is a bare plain; gradually descending, it recedes into the distance; the
grey, monotoned sky hangs over it like a canopy.
I am not alone; half a score of men are with me in the room. All plain
folk, plainly clad; they are pacing up and down in silence, as though by
stealth. They avoid one another, and yet they are incessantly exchanging
uneasy glances.
Not one of them knows why he has got into this house, or who the men are
with him. On all faces there is disquiet and melancholy ... all, in
turn, approach the windows and gaze attentively about them, as though
expecting something from without.
Then again they set to roaming up and down. Among us a lad of short
stature is running about; from time to time he screams in a shrill,
monotonous voice: "Daddy, I'm afraid!"--This shrill cry makes me sick at
heart--and I also begin to be afraid.... Of what? I myself do not know.
Only I feel that a great, great calamity is on its way, and is drawing
near.
And the little lad keeps screaming. Akh, if I could only get away from
here! How stifling it is! How oppressive!... But it is impossible to
escape.
That sky is like a shroud. And there is no wind.... Is the air dead?
Suddenly the boy ran to the window and began to scream with the same
plaintive voice as usual: "Look! Look! The earth has fallen in!"
"What? Fallen in?"--In fact: there had been a plain in front of the
house, but now the house is standing on the crest of a frightful
mountain!--The horizon has fallen, has gone down, and from the very
house itself a black, almost perpendicular declivity descends.
We have all thronged to the window.... Horror freezes our
hearts.--"There it is ... there it is!" whispers my neighbour.
And lo! along the whole distant boundary of the earth something has
begun to stir, some small, round hillocks have begun to rise and fall.
"It is the sea!" occurs to us all at one and the same moment.--"It will
drown us all directly.... Only, how can it wax and rise up? On that
precipice?"
And nevertheless it does wax, and wax hugely.... It is no longer
separate hillocks which are tumbling in the distance.... A dense,
monstrous wave engulfs the entire circle of the horizon.
It is flying, flying upon us!--Like an icy hurricane it sweeps on,
swirling with the outer darkness. Everything round about has begun to
quiver,--and yonder, in that oncoming mass,--there are crashing and
thunder, and a thousand-throated, iron barking....
Ha! What a roaring and howling! It is the earth roaring with terror....
It is the end of it! The end of all things!
The boy screamed once more.... I tried to seize hold of my comrades, but
we, all of us, were already crushed, buried, drowned, swept away by that
icy, rumbling flood, as black as ink.
Darkness ... eternal darkness!
Gasping for breath, I awoke.
March, 1878.