I
“You lie! I know you lie!”
“What are you shouting for? Is it necessary that every one should hear
us?”
And here again she lied, for I had not shouted, but spoken in the
quietest voice, holding her hand and speaking quite gently while that
venomous word “lie” hissed like a little serpent.
“I love you,” she continued, “and you ought to believe me. Does not
this convince you?”
And she kissed me. But when I was about to take hold of her hand and
press it—she was already gone. She left the semi-dark corridor, and I
followed her once more to the place where a gay party was just coming
to an end. How did I know where it was? She had told me that I might go
there, and I went there and watched the dancing all the night through.
No one came near me, or spoke to me, I was a stranger to all, and sat
in the corner near the band. Pointed straight at me was the mouth of a
great brass instrument, through which some one hidden in the depths of
it kept bellowing, and every minute or so would give a rude staccato
laugh: “Ho! ho! ho!”
From time to time a scented white cloud would come close to me. It was
she, I knew not how she managed to caress me without being observed,
but for one short little second her shoulder would press mine, and for
one short little second I would lower my eyes and see a white neck in
the opening of a white dress. And when I raised my eyes I saw a profile
as white, severe, and truthful as that of a pensive angel on the tomb
of the long-forgotten dead. And I saw her eyes. They were large, greedy
of the light, beautiful and calm. From their blue-white setting the
pupils shone black, and the more I looked at them the blacker they
seemed, and the more unfathomable their depths. Maybe I looked at them
for so short a time that my heart failed to make the slightest
impression, but certainly never did I understand so profoundly and
terribly the meaning of Infinity, nor ever realised it with such force.
I felt in fear and pain that my very life was passing out in a slender
ray into her eyes, until I became a stranger to myself—desolated,
speechless, almost dead. Then she would leave me, taking my life with
her, and dance again with a certain tall, haughty, but handsome partner
of hers. I studied his every characteristic—the shape of his shoes, the
width of his rather high shoulders, the rhythmic sway of one of his
locks, which separated itself from the rest, while with his
indifferent, unseeing glance he, as it were, crushed me against the
wall, and I felt myself as flat and lifeless to look at as the wall
itself.
When they began to extinguish the lights, I went up to her and said:
“It is time to go. I will accompany you.”
But she expressed surprise.
“But certainly I am going with him,” and she pointed to the tall,
handsome man, who was not looking at us. She led me out into an empty
room and kissed me.
“You lie,” I said very softly.
“We shall meet again to-morrow. You must come,” was her answer.
When I drove home, the green frosty dawn was looking out from behind
the high roofs. In the whole street there were only we two, the
sledge-driver and I. He sat with bent head and wrapped-up face, and I
sat behind him wrapped up to the very eyes. The sledge-driver had his
thoughts, and I had mine, and there behind the thick walls thousands of
people were sleeping, and they had their own dreams and thoughts. I
thought of her, and of how she lied. I thought of death, and it seemed
to me that those dimly-lightened walls had already looked upon my
death, and that was why they were so cold and upright. I know not what
the thoughts of the sledge-driver may have been, neither do I know of
what those hidden by the walls were dreaming. But then, neither did
they know my thoughts and reveries.
And so we drove on through the long and straight streets, and the dawn
rose from behind the roofs, and all around was motionless and white. A
cold scented cloud came close to me, and straight into my ear some one
unseen laughed:
“Ho! ho! ho!”