When I came to myself, I was lying on my back in the grass, feeling a dull
ache all over me, as from a bad bruise. The dawn was beginning in the sky:
I could clearly distinguish things. Not far off, alongside a birch copse,
ran a road planted with willows: the country seemed familiar to me. I began
to recollect what had happened to me, and shuddered all over directly my
mind recalled the last, hideous apparition....
‘But what was Alice afraid of?’ I thought. ‘Can she too be subject to that
power? Is she not immortal? Can she too be in danger of annihilation,
dissolution? How is it possible?’
A soft moan sounded close by me. I turned my head. Two paces from me
lay stretched out motionless a young woman in a white gown, with thick
disordered tresses, with bare shoulders. One arm was thrown behind her
head, the other had fallen on her bosom. Her eyes were closed, and on her
tightly shut lips stood a fleck of crimson stain. Could it be Alice? But
Alice was a phantom, and I was looking upon a living woman. I crept up to
her, bent down....
‘Alice, is it you?’ I cried. Suddenly, slowly quivering, the wide eyelids
rose; dark piercing eyes were fastened upon me, and at the same instant
lips too fastened upon me, warm, moist, smelling of blood ... soft arms
twined tightly round my neck, a burning, full heart pressed convulsively to
mine. ‘Farewell, farewell for ever!’ the dying voice uttered distinctly,
and everything vanished.
I got up, staggering like a drunken man, and passing my hands several times
over my face, looked carefully about me. I found myself near the high road,
a mile and a half from my own place. The sun had just risen when I got
home.
All the following nights I awaited--and I confess not without alarm--the
appearance of my phantom; but it did not visit me again. I even set off one
day, in the dusk, to the old oak, but nothing took place there out of the
common. I did not, however, overmuch regret the discontinuance of this
strange acquaintance. I reflected much and long over this inexplicable,
almost unintelligible phenomenon; and I am convinced that not only science
cannot explain it, but that even in fairy tales and legends nothing like
it is to be met with. What was Alice, after all? An apparition, a restless
soul, an evil spirit, a sylphide, a vampire, or what? Sometimes it struck
me again that Alice was a woman I had known at some time or other, and I
made tremendous efforts to recall where I had seen her.... Yes, yes, I
thought sometimes, directly, this minute, I shall remember.... In a flash
everything had melted away again like a dream. Yes, I thought a great deal,
and, as is always the way, came to no conclusion. The advice or opinion
of others I could not bring myself to invite; fearing to be taken for a
madman. I gave up all reflection upon it at last; to tell the truth, I had
no time for it. For one thing, the emancipation had come along with the
redistribution of property, etc.; and for another, my own health failed;
I suffered with my chest, with sleeplessness, and a cough. I got thin all
over. My face was yellow as a dead man’s. The doctor declares I have too
little blood, calls my illness by the Greek name, ‘anæmia,’ and is sending
me to Gastein. The arbitrator swears that without me there’s no coming to
an understanding with the peasants. Well, what’s one to do?
But what is the meaning of the piercingly-pure, shrill notes, the notes of
an harmonica, which I hear directly any one’s death is spoken of before me?
They keep growing louder, more penetrating.... And why do I shudder in such
anguish at the mere thought of annihilation?