"Signor Magnus! I...."
"You?"--he frowned at me and calmly turned his back upon me: "Till
to-morrow, Mr. Wondergood!"
That is why I loaded my revolver. In the evening I was handed a letter
from Magnus: he begged my pardon, said his conduct was due to unusual
excitement and he sincerely sought my friendship and confidence. He
also agreed that his _collaborators_ are really ill-mannered folk. I
gazed long upon these hasty illegible lines and felt like taking with
me, not my revolver, but a cannon.
One more night, but how long it is!
_There is danger facing me._
I feel it and my muscles _know_ it, too. Do you think that I am merely
afraid? I swear by eternal salvation--no! I know not where my fear has
disappeared, but only a short while ago I was afraid of everything:
of darkness, death and the most inconsequential pain. And now I fear
nothing. I only feel strange...is that how you put it: strange?
Here I am on your earth, man, and I am thinking of another person who
is dangerous to me and I myself am--man. And there is the moon and
the fountain. And there is Maria, whom I love. And here is a glass
and wine. And this is--my and your life. Or did I simply imagine that
I was Satan once? I see _it_ is all an invention, the fountain and
Maria and my very thoughts on the man--Magnus, but the _real_ my mind
can neither unravel nor understand. I assiduously examine my memory
and it is silent, like a closed book, and I have no power to open this
enchanted volume, concealing the whole past of my being. Straining my
eyesight, I gaze into the bright and distant depth from which I came
upon this pasteboard earth--but I see nothing in the painful ebb and
flow of the boundless fog. There, behind the fog, is my country, but
it seems--it seems I have quite forgotten the road.
I have again returned to Wondergood's bad habit of getting drunk alone
and I am slightly drunk now. No matter. It is the last time. I have
just seen something after which I wish to see nothing else. I felt
like taking a look at the white garden and to imagine how it would
feel to walk beside Maria over the path of blue sand. I turned off the
light in the room and opened wide the draperies. And the white garden
arose before me, like a dream, and--think of it!--over the path of
blue sand there walked a man and a woman--and the woman was Maria!
They walked quietly, trampling upon their own shadows, and the man
embraced her. The little counting machine in my breast beat madly,
fell to the floor and broke, when, finally, I recognized the man--it
was Magnus, only Magnus, dear Magnus, the father. May he be cursed
with his fatherly embraces!
Ah, how my love for _Maria_ surged up again within me! I fell on my
knees before the window and stretched out my hands to her.... To be
sure, I had already seen something of that kind in the theater, but
it's all the same to me: I stretched out my hands--was I not alone and
drunk! Why should I not do what I want to do? Madonna! Then I suddenly
drew down the curtain!
Quietly, like a web, like a handful of moonlight, I will take this
vision and weave it into night dreams. Quietly!... Quietly!...