Anarchistbanjo's World

Homo Sapiens: In the Maelstrom by Stanislaw Przybyszewski and translated by Joe E Bandel

He looked around timidly. 

“I want to tell you something, only to you alone, because you made such an extraordinary impression on me, right the first time I saw you. The man who my wife… whom my wife seduced, also told me such extraordinary things about you.” 

Falk became very impatient. He hardly understood half of his speech. He felt alternately heat and cold in his body. At times he believed he was near fainting. 

“Hurry; I am sick. I have a strong fever.” The stranger looked at him with a strange smile. 

“I know it, I know it very exactly. I had it very bad in the last time.” 

Suddenly he became even paler, he became quite green in the face and moved quite close to Falk. 

“He told me that I should come to you to make you happy. Today, when you ran away from me…” 

A cold shiver ran down Falk’s back. Was it really a vision? A raging fear seized him as he saw the stranger’s eyes fixed unceasingly on him. 

“How? What—what do you mean?” “I want to make you happy.” 

He was silent and seemed to brood deeply. 

Falk looked at him distractedly. Then cold sweat broke out on his forehead, he began to tremble. The lowest button was missing from the stranger’s coat. Where had he seen the man? Yesterday, yes yesterday… But then it was only in the dream, in the fever. 

The stranger seemed to struggle for expression. 

“Do you know, Herr Falk, a feeling of calm? No, you naturally don’t know it… It is actually no calm… it is a feeling of such absolute harmony… One feels no pain, one no longer feels a body; one is redeemed from all bodily. One sinks into something infinite. The spaces have widened; the miles become millions of miles, the most miserable huts become palaces… You no longer know where you are, you know no path and no direction…” 

His eyes shone in a rapt ecstasy. 

Again Falk felt slow, cold shivers run down his back. 

“In one second you can live through centuries, on a piece of earth you can see a thousand cities—oh, and the happy splendor, the splendor!” 

His eyes suddenly became quite fixed and his face distorted painfully. 

“At first I felt an inhuman fear… When the ground suddenly began to waver under me, when I suddenly felt transported to foreign cities, it happened that I threw myself on my knees in the middle of the street and begged the passers-by to hold me. I asked them to let me hold only the hem of their clothes… Oh, they were hard times of trial.” 

“Do you suffer from epilepsy?” asked Falk shaken. 

“No, no…” the stranger smiled insanely. “I am not sick. I am happy. And I came to bring you happiness, to you alone, because you made this extraordinary impression on me, and because you were his friend…” 

He moved the chair even closer to Falk so that he whispered in his ear. “It is hard, very hard, but just try it. Drive all thoughts away. All, all! They are the mightiest support of the spirit that will not believe, of the spirit that doubts eternally. Drive everything from the brain so that you remain pure from doubt, then sit down and collect yourself so that the forces of the whole organism flow together to one point, so that you feel yourself only as a point, a trembling atom in world space… Then wait long, patiently… Then it comes suddenly over you, like a horrible chaos it comes over you, you will see an abyss, terrible ghosts crawl out of all corners. 

His eyes tore unnaturally wide open. 

“You will hear horrible voices, the walls will become bodily and will step toward you to crush you… You will experience torments against which human torment is a joy, a pleasure… Suddenly everything disappears… Something leads you out, the whole life streams before the eyes in infinite clarity… there is no more riddle, no secret—one can read in the soul of another like in an open book…” 

“Why do you come to me with this, why?” whispered Falk. 

The stranger did not hear his question. 

“Then there is no more torment,” he continued, “no pain, no hate. I love the man who took the woman from me, I followed him with you, I wanted to save him, but in the moment of death one must not disturb…” 

Now it shot through Falk’s head like lightning. Everything became clear to him. He trembled violently and held onto the armrest so as not to collapse. 

“The man shot himself today!” he cried hoarsely. The stranger smiled strangely. 

“Yes,” he said after a while. Falk came completely out of himself. 

“What do you want from me?” he stammered almost unconsciously. 

“You caused his death, Falk. He was like wax in your hands, you were his god, and you destroyed his soul. You made him a criminal against himself and others. Listen to me, follow me…” 

“I did not do it! Can I help it that he perished from his debauchery?” 

The stranger looked at him sternly. 

“Oh, how hardened your heart is… You know well what you did to him. Why are you so pale, why do you tremble? He lies on your conscience.” 

“Who, who?” 

“Grodzki,” said the stranger softly. 

Falk groaned tormentingly, and his head sank to his chest. But suddenly he came completely out of his senses, he straightened up and cried: 

“I do not repent it. I want to ruin and destroy the whole world. I laugh at your mystical revelations. I don’t need them. I need no happiness. I spit on happiness. I repent that I destroyed and ruined too little, do you understand me?” 

He suddenly stopped. 

The stranger was completely transformed. His eyes expressed an uncanny fear. They ran restlessly around. 

“The spirit of evil! the spirit of evil!” he repeated with trembling lips. 

Suddenly his face became clear and his voice mild. 

“You are sick, Falk, I will not disturb you… I followed you, I was afraid for you, how you stood there at the corner and trembled and waited for the shot.” 

Again he became restless. He leaned far toward Falk, his voice trembled violently. 

“I… I…” he stammered with difficulty… “followed you. You sat long with him… did he not speak about my wife?… He left her… she is perishing.” 

“Nothing, nothing did he tell me… just go! You are killing me… go then!” 

Falk felt that he could not hold himself any longer. 

“You are so sick, Falk, so sick…” He went slowly out the door. Falk heard and saw nothing more. A dizziness seized him, the room began to turn around him, he sank and fell into unconsciousness.