... It is beginning. When I entered my brother's study yesterday
evening he was sitting in his armchair at his table heaped with books.
The hallucination disappeared the moment I lighted a candle, but for
a long time I could not bring myself to sit down in the armchair that
he had occupied. At first it was terrifying--the empty rooms in which
one was constantly hearing rustlings and crackings were the cause of
this dread, but afterwards I even liked it--better he than somebody
else. Nevertheless, I did not leave the armchair the whole evening;
it seemed to me that if I were to get up he would instantly sit down
in my place. And I left the room very quickly without looking round.
The lamps ought to have been lit in all the rooms, but was it worth
while? It would have been perhaps worse if I had seen anything by
lamp-light--as it was, there was still room for doubt.
To-day I entered with a candle and there was nobody in the armchair.
Evidently it must have been only a shadow. Again I went to the
station--I go there every morning now--and saw a whole carriage full of
our mad soldiers. It was not opened, but shunted on to another line,
and I had time to see several faces through the windows. They were
terrible, especially one. Fearfully drawn, the colour of a lemon, with
an open black mouth and fixed eyes, it was so like a mask of horror
that I could not tear my eyes away from it. And it stared at me, the
whole of it, and was motionless, and glided past together with the
moving carriage, just as motionless, without the slightest change,
never transferring its gaze for an instant. If it were to appear before
me this minute in that dark door, I do not believe I should be able to
hold out. I made inquiries: there were twenty-two men. The infection is
spreading. The papers are hushing up something and, I believe, there
is something wrong in our town too. Black, closely-shut carriages have
made their appearance--I counted six during one day in different parts
of the town. I suppose I shall also go off in one of them one of these
days.
And the papers clamour for fresh troops and more blood every day, and I
am beginning to understand less and less what it all means. Yesterday I
read an article full of suspicion, stating that there were many spies
and traitors amongst the people, warning us to be cautious and mindful,
and that the wrath of the people would not fail to find out the guilty.
What guilty, and guilty of what? As I was returning from the station in
the tram, I heard a strange conversation, I suppose in reference to the
same article.
"They ought to be all hung without any trial," said one, looking
scrutinisingly at me and all the passengers. "Traitors ought to be
hung, yes."
"Without any mercy," confirmed the other. "They've been shown mercy
enough!"
I jumped out of the tram. The war was making everybody shed tears, and
they were crying too--why, what did it mean? A bloody mist seemed to
have enveloped the earth, hiding it from our gaze, and I was beginning
to think that the moment of the universal catastrophe was approaching.
The red laugh that my brother saw. The madness was coming from over
there, from those bloody burnt-out fields, and I felt its cold breath
in the air. I am a strong man and have none of those illnesses that
corrupt the body, bringing in their train the corruption of the brain
also, but I see the infection catching me, and half of my thoughts
belong to me no longer. It is worse than the plague and its horrors.
One can hide from the plague, take measures, but how can one hide from
all-penetrating thought, that knows neither distances nor obstacles?
In the daytime I can still fight against it, but during the night I
become, as everybody else does, the slave of my dreams--and my dreams
are terrible and full of madness....