I
During that hot and ill-omened summer everything was burning. Whole
towns, villages and hamlets were consumed; forests and fields were no
longer a protection to them, but even the forests themselves
submissively burst into flame, and the fire spread like a red
table-cloth over the parched meadows. During the day the dim red sun
was hidden in acrid smoke, but at night-time in all quarters of the sky
a quiet red-glow burst forth, which rocked in silent, fantastic dance;
and strange confused shadows of men and trees crept over the ground
like some unknown species of reptile. The dogs ceased their welcoming
bark, which from afar calls to the traveller and promises him a roof
and hospitality, and either uttered a prolonged melancholy howl, or
crept into the cellar in sullen silence. And men, like dogs, looked at
one another with evil, frightened eyes, and spoke aloud of arson, and
secret incendiaries. Indeed, in one remote village they had killed an
old man who could not give a satisfactory account of his movements, and
then the women had wept over the murdered man, and pitied his grey
beard all matted with dark blood.
During this hot and ill-omened summer I lived at the house of a country
squire, where were many women, young and old. By day we worked and
talked, and thought little of conflagrations, but when night came on we
were seized with fear. The owner of the property was often absent in
the town. Then for whole nights we slept not a wink, but in fear and
trembling made our rounds of the homestead in search of an incendiary.
We huddled close together and spoke in whispers; but the night was
still, and the buildings stood out in dark, unfamiliar masses. They
seemed to us as strange, as if we had never seen them before, and
terribly unstable, as though they were expecting the fire and were
already ripe for it. Once, through a crack in the wall, there gleamed
before us something bright. It was the sky, but we thought it was a
fire, and with screams the womenkind rushed to me, who was still almost
a boy, and entreated my protection.
But I—held my breath for fear, and could not move a step.
Sometimes in the depth of night I would rise from my hot, tumbled bed
and creep through the window into the garden. It was an ancient, formal
and stately garden, so protected that it answered the very fiercest
storm with nothing more than a suppressed drone. Below it was dark and
deadly still as at the bottom of an abyss; but above there was a
continual indistinct rustling and sound, like the far-off speech of the
steppe. Concealing myself from some one, who seemed to be following at
my heels, and looking over my shoulder, I would make my way to the end
of the garden, where upon a high bank stood a wattle-fence, and beyond
the fence far below extended fields and forests and hamlets hidden in
the darkness. Lofty, gloomy, silent lime-trees opened out before me,
and between their thick black stems, through the interstices of the
fence, and through the space between the leaves I could see something
terrible, extraordinary, which would fill my heart with an uneasy dread
feeling, and make my legs twitch with a slight tremor. I could see the
sky, not the dark, still sky of night, but rosy-red, such as is neither
by day nor night. The mighty limes stood grave and silent, like men
expecting something, but the sky was unnaturally rosy, and the ominous
reflection of the burning earth beneath darted in fiery red spasms
about the sky. And curling columns would go slowly up and disappear in
the height; and it was a puzzle, as strangely unnatural as the pink
colouring of the sky, how they could be so silent, when below all was
gnashing of teeth; how they could be so unhurried and stately there
above, when everything was tossing in restless confusion here below.
As though coming to themselves the lofty limes would all at once begin
to talk together with their tops, and then suddenly relapse into
silence, congealed, as it were, for a long time in sullen expectation.
It would become still as at the bottom an abyss, while far behind me I
felt conscious of the house on the alert, full of frightened people;
the limes crowded watchfully around me, and in front silently rocked a
rose-red sky, such as is not nor by night nor day.
And because I saw it not as a whole, but only through the interstices
between the trees, it was all the more terrible and incomprehensible.