I have heard that a man struck by lightning stiffens, but does not
fall down at once. I too keep up, sustained by that thunderbolt that
struck me, but I feel myself falling. As soon as it grows dark in the
evening something strange takes place within me. I feel so oppressed
that it costs me an effort even to sigh; it seems as if the air could
not get to my lungs, and that I breathe with only a part of them.
During the night, and also in the day, a sudden nameless terror seizes
me,--terror of nothing in particular. I feel as if something horrible
was going to happen, something worse than death. Yesterday I put the
question to myself: "What would become of me if, in this foreign town,
I suddenly forgot my name and where I lived, and wandered on and on in
darkness without knowing where I was going?"
These are sick fancies. Besides, in such a case that would happen to
my body which has already happened to my soul; for in a moral sense I
do not know where I dwell,--I walk in darkness, aimlessly, in a kind
of madness. I am afraid of everything, except of death. Strictly
speaking, I have a strange sensation as if it were not that I am
afraid, but as if fear dwelt in me, as a separate being,--and I
tremble; I cannot bear darkness now. In the evening I go out and walk
in the streets, lighted by electric lamps, until I am thoroughly
tired. If I met anybody I knew, I should escape, if to the other end
of the world; but crowds have become a necessity to me. When the
streets are getting empty I feel terrified. The thought of night fills
me with nameless fear. And how long they seem, these nights!
I have continually a metallic taste in my mouth. I felt it for the
first time that night when I came home and found Kromitzki waiting
for me; the second time I felt it when Pani Celina told me the "great
news." What a day! I had gone to ask how Aniela was, when the doctor
had seen her for the second time. There was not the slightest
suspicion in my mind; I did not understand anything even when Pani
Celina said: "The doctor says that those are purely nervous symptoms,
and have nothing to do with her state."
Seeing that I did not understand, she said, with a certain
uneasiness:--
"I must tell you the great news."
And she told me the "great news." When I heard it I felt the metallic
taste in my mouth, and a cold sensation in my brain, exactly as I had
felt that evening I met Kromitzki unexpectedly. I went into my room.
I remember among other things that I felt an immense desire to
laugh. That ideal being, for whom even Platonic love seemed to be
impermissible, and who instead of "love" used the word "friendship!" I
felt a desire to laugh, and at the same time to dash my head against
the wall.
I preserved nevertheless a mechanical self-possession. It came from
the consciousness that everything was over and done with; that I
must go--that there was nothing for it but to go. That consciousness
transformed me into an automaton, doing by routine everything that
was necessary for my departure. I was even conscious of keeping up
appearances. Why? I do not know, as this did not matter now to me any
longer. Most likely it was an instinctive action of the brain, which
for months had been trained in concealing the truth and keeping up
appearances. I told Pani Celina that I had seen a doctor, and that he
said there was something amiss with my heart, and ordered me to go to
Berlin without delay,--and she believed it.
Not so Aniela. I saw her eyes dilated with terror, and in her face the
expression of a degraded martyr; and there were two persons within me:
one who said, "Is it her fault?" and another who despised her. Oh, why
did I love her so much?