Anarchistbanjo's World

Homo Sapiens: Under Way by Stanislaw Przybyszewski and translated by Joe E Bandel

VIII.

When they both stepped out the door, Falk became a little uneasy. 

“He had sent the coachman home. The night was so splendid; he would so like to accompany her home on foot. It would also be good for her to refresh a little from the stupid society in the open air.” 

Falk’s voice trembled slightly. 

Marit spoke no word; a dark oppression almost took her breath away. 

They stepped onto the open field; both thoughtful, silent. 

Now the moment had come when one can look into the soul of the being one loves as into one’s own. Falk felt her soul like a roulette ball rolling from one boundary wall of his suggestions to the other: 

“Wouldn’t she like to take his arm? 

The path was very bad; it had many holes, one could easily sprain one’s foot.” 

She took his arm silently. He pressed it very firmly to his chest and felt her tremble. 

Falk knew that he couldn’t speak now; his voice would break. 

He fought against this excitement; but his unrest grew and grew. 

No, he gathered himself. No, not now! 

That reminded him of the way peasants clumsily grab with both hands right away. 

The moon poured pale streams of light on the meadows; in the distance one saw high-piled black heaps of peat. 

Falk tried to master himself. He wanted to postpone the happiness he could now enjoy; he wanted to enjoy it slowly. 

They stopped and contemplated the landscape. 

Then they walked again, but didn’t look at each other; it was as if they felt a kind of shame before one another. 

Now Falk stopped again. 

“Strange: every time I see the peat heaps, I always have to think of a peculiar man from my home village. 

He was a peat cutter for my father; naturally he drank, like almost all our farmhands, and had a great fixed idea.” 

Falk instinctively sought to loosen and scatter the sexual concentration through stories; then he could overwhelm the girl all the more surely afterward. 

“You know, from the peat bog at times will-o’-the-wisps rise, which move back and forth with fabulous speed. 

The man now got it into his head that the will-o’-the-wisps were souls of deceased Freemasons; at that time the famous papal encyclical also appeared, in which it is written that the Freemasons are possessed by the evil one. 

Now the man ran around all night and shot at the will-o’-the-wisps with an old pistol. With somnambulistic certainty he jumped over the widest peat ditches, crawled through the mud and densest undergrowth like a swamp animal, sometimes sank up to his neck in the marsh, worked himself out again and shot incessantly. 

There lay a terrible tragedy in it. I saw him once after such a night. His eyes were bulging and bloodshot, the mud sat finger-thick on his clothes, he was completely soaked, the thick swamp water dripped from him; his hair was glued together into strands by the mud, but he was happy. 

He swung the pistol back and forth and jumped and cried out with joy. For in this night he had shot a Freemason soul with a twenty-pfennig piece; as he watched, only a little heap of tar remained of the will-o’-the-wisp. 

The pistol was his sanctuary from then on. But once he was locked in prison because he didn’t send his son to school. The boy stayed home alone—the mother had long since run away—and tended the goat on the peat meadows, the peat cutter’s only wealth. 

Yes; now it occurred to the boy to fetch the pistol to frighten the neighbor’s child, whom he was also supposed to watch. He turned the pistol with the muzzle toward his mouth and held a burning match near the pan. 

‘Watch out, now I’m shooting dead!’ He held the match ever closer. The child gets frightened, starts screaming, and in that moment 

the pistol discharges: the boy gets the whole charge in his mouth. I had just come from school and was witness to the scene that I will never forget in my life. 

The boy ran around in mad fear, blood gushed from his nose and mouth, and with every death scream the foam shot and gurgled forth in dark stream. 

The child understood nothing and laughed heartily at the crazy jumps. Only the goat seemed to have understood it. In wild fear it had 

torn itself from the stake to which it was tied; it jumped—no, you really can’t imagine it—it jumped over the long, skinny boy, and then over a wide ditch, and back again… it was terrible. 

Marit was completely excited. 

“That must have been gruesome! Did the boy die?” “Yes, he died.” 

Again they walked silently side by side; they were quite, quite close. 

“Good God, you looked wonderful today! You had an expression on your face, you know, an expression that I had seen on you only once before; yes, once a year ago. We were as happy as children and so happy; God knows, it was beautiful. And then we stood in the evening on the veranda. In the distance we heard the monastery bells ringing for the Ave Maria, and you stood there and looked ahead with the expression of unspeakable intimacy and bliss; it was like a sea of bright gold around you—and today I saw it again.” 

Falk trembled. 

“I looked at you the whole evening, I admired you and was happy and felt you quite close to me… to me.” 

He pressed her even tighter to himself, his voice almost gasped. “Marit, I love you; I…” 

His hand encircled hers. He felt how hot streams flowed into her. 

“I came only because of you; I lay there in Paris and longed for you like mad; I had to come. And now you know; now I have a morbid desire to take you in my hands and press you so wild, so wild to my heart and breathe your breast against mine, hear your heart beat against mine. 

Look, Marit, my gold, my everything; I will do everything, everything for you; you mustn’t resist; you give me an unnameable happiness; you give me everything by it; look, I have suffered so; my sweet girl, my sun, give me the happiness!” 

Around them both, the hot, sexual atmosphere wove tighter and tighter. She could hardly breathe. 

“I was so immeasurably unhappy all the time because I love you so endlessly; never have I loved a being as I loved you before.” 

She felt above her two abyssal eyes shining like two stars; her head grew confused, she couldn’t think, understood only his hot, gasping words, which fell like hot blood drops into her soul, and above her she saw two abyssal stars that guided and pulled and tore at her. 

She felt how he embraced her, how he sought her mouth, and felt his hot, feverish lips as they sucked into her lips. 

She no longer resisted; her whole soul threw itself into the one kiss, she embraced him. It was like a jubilation that dances with wild leaps over an abyss. She kissed him. 

Falk had not suspected this wild passion in her. A hot gratitude rose in him. 

“You will be mine, Marit; you will be… will…” 

Yes, that had to be… she felt it, that had to be… the eyes, the terrible eyes above her… and the voice… it sounded like a command. 

Just let me—now—let me—to my senses—let… 

Again they walked silently side by side, trembling, with bated breath. 

“You will be mine?” “How, how? What?” 

Falk was silent. 

For the rest of the way, they spoke no word. 

At the garden gate, they silently shook hands.