“Tell me the truth!”
But with a face cold as snow, while from beneath her brows, lifted in
surprise, her dark, inscrutable eyes shone passionless and mysterious
as ever, she assured me:
“But I am not lying to you.”
She knew that I could not prove her lie, and that all my heavy massive
structure of torturing thought would crumble at one word from her, even
one lying word. I waited for it—and it came forth from her lips,
sparkling on the surface with the colours of truth, but dark in its
innermost depths:
“I love thee! Am not I all thine?”
We were far from the town, and the snow-clad plain looked in at the
dark windows. Upon it was darkness, and around it was darkness, gross,
motionless, silent, but the plain shone with its own latent
coruscation, like the face of a corpse in the dark. In the over-heated
room only one candle was burning, and on its reddening flame there
appeared the white reflection of the deathlike plain.
“However sad the truth may be, I want to know it. Maybe I shall die
when I know it, but death rather than ignorance of the truth. In your
kisses and embraces I feel a lie. In your eyes I see it. Tell me the
truth and I will leave you forever,” said I.
But she was silent. Her coldly searching look penetrated my inmost
depths, and drawing out my soul, regarded it with strange curiosity.
And I cried: “Answer, or I will kill you!”
“Yes, do!” she quietly replied; “sometimes life is so wearisome. But
the truth is not to be extracted by threat.”
And then I knelt to her. Clasping her hand I wept, and prayed for pity
and the truth.
“Poor fellow!” said she, putting her hand on my head, “poor fellow!”
“Pity me,” I prayed, “I want so much to know the truth.”
And as I looked at her pure forehead, I thought that truth must be
there behind that slender barrier. And I madly wished to smash the
skull to get at the truth. There, too, behind a white bosom beat a
heart, and I madly wished to tear her bosom with my nails, to see but
for once an unveiled human heart. And the pointed, motionless flames of
the expiring candle burnt yellow—and the walls grew dark and seemed
farther apart—and it felt so sad, so lonely, so eery.
“Poor fellow!” she said. “Poor fellow!”
And the yellow flame of the candle shivered spasmodically, burnt low,
and became blue. Then it went out—and darkness enveloped us. I could
not see her face, nor her eyes, for her arms embraced my head—and I no
longer felt the lie. Closing my eyes, I neither thought nor lived, but
only absorbed the touch of her hands, and it seemed to me true. And in
the darkness she whispered in a strangely fearsome voice:
“Put your arms round me—I’m afraid.”
Again there was silence, and again the gentle whisper fraught with
fear!
“You desire the truth—but do I know it myself? And oh! don’t I wish I
did? Take care of me; oh! I’m so frightened!”
I opened my eyes. The paling darkness of the room fled in fear from the
lofty windows, and gathering near the walls hid itself in the corners.
But through the windows there silently looked in a something huge,
deadly-white. It seemed as though some one’s dead eyes were searching
for us, and enveloping us in their icy gaze. Presently we pressed close
together, while she whispered:
“Oh! I am so frightened!”