Homo Sapiens: In the Maelstrom by Stanislaw Przybyszewski and translated by Joe E Bandel
XI.
He woke up. Yes, really? He clearly heard a melody: deep, mystical bass melody and like a distant echo a tone and again a tone, isolated, whining in the treble. His whole soul threw itself into this holy melody and clung to it and wound itself up on it, curled together and widened with new strength: it felt so infinitely good. It seemed to him as if everything heavy, everything dull and terrible in his soul had dissolved, slowly dissolved and would now become the essence, the mad, soft longing of these tones… Never had he felt such a soft, blessed longing.
It was probably night. He did not dare open his eyes, it was so infinitely good to feel this longing. It was night, and he had a blessed, joyful longing for tomorrow, the hot, short, color-frenzied autumn day. It was probably raining outside too, but tomorrow, tomorrow the sun comes and will breathe the rain and gnaw further on the leaves: oh, this glorious sick purple-yellow…
Was he awake, was he really?
He still heard the melody, softer and softer, sadder and sadder, and he lay there, dissolved in this longing, dissolved in this pain that was actually no pain—no: a flowing back, a receding memory, a mad yearning for foreign, wide lands, for a great, orgiastic nature in which every flower grows into a giant tree, every mountain hides in the clouds and every river foams and rages without banks…
Then his heart began to beat violently. He grasped it with both hands… Yes, here, here between the fifth and sixth rib he felt the heart shock—he felt the heart tip first strike against the flat hand, then against two fingers, finally he pressed his index finger firmly against the spot… How it works! Did Grodzki perhaps first palpate his heart in this way?
He sat up in bed and supported his head in both hands.
Grodzki shot himself… That was what he knew for sure. He shot himself because he wanted to die. He died with will, he died of disgust, he no longer wanted to see the young day and the sick purple-yellow.
But why should he think about it? Should he destroy this blessed harmony in his soul again? But what did the strange man say? Falk, Falk, you do not know this harmony: it goes beyond all calm, beyond all holiness, beyond all bliss… But the man was mad.
Falk shuddered, he clearly saw the mad eyes of the stranger. He dug convulsively with his fingers into the blanket. Fear seized him anew, but in the next moment he became calm.
There was no doubt that he had finally come to consciousness:
He had namely fainted in the armchair when the stranger stole away from his room, now he was in bed, so he must have been carried to bed. Yes, and the button? The golden, blinking button was really on the desk… So he was awake and in full consciousness.
He felt a quite immediate, animal joy.
Then he fell back into the pillows and lay for a long time as if in a faint.
When he began to think again, he had risen from the bed and began to dress. But he was very weak. Half-dressed he lay down on the bed again and stared thoughtlessly at the ceiling.
Ridiculous how sloppily the ceiling was painted! The hook for the hanging lamp should actually be in the middle. Well. The ceiling is a parallelogram. Now I draw the diagonals.
He became quite furious.
Ridiculous! That was by no means the intersection point. The whole room was repugnant to him. He was locked in this narrow space with his dull torment, and outside the world was so wide…
Again he felt the hot longing, only far, far away—to the Pacific Ocean.
Yes, the Pacific Ocean! That was redemption. That was redemption to eternal calm, to eternal harmony without torment, without joy, without passions…
How his young heart trembled then! His limbs became so weak from the constant fear. Around the church on the lawn he saw people, many people, lying on their knees and begging God for mercy, he looked at them, his heart beat more and more violently, his unrest grew, sin burned on his heart like a fire mark. Now he was to confess, tell a strange person the shameful abomination… And in his desperate soul fear he took the prayer book and read five, six times with trembling fervor the litany to the Holy Spirit. And a peace returned to his heart, a holy, transfigured rapture, his soul became pure and wide like the hot noon around him. Now he had to go into the church. Then fear seized him. Had one not seen a black rider on a black stallion tumbling in the church at noon?… He crept cautiously to the sacristy door… He listened, then slowly opened the heavy door and staggered back in animal fright: before him stood the stranger. You destroyed his soul! he said solemnly…
“I dream! I dream!” cried Falk, woke up and jumped out of bed.
Isa started.
“It is me, Erik, it is me, don’t you know me?” Falk stared at her for a while, then breathed deeply. “Thank God it is you!”
“Tell, tell, Erik, what is wrong with you? Do you feel very sick? Are you better? I had such terrible fear for you.”
Falk collected himself with all strength.
To thunder! Should he not overcome the bit of illness, should he not finally once forget his small, ridiculous pains? it shot through his head.
“I am no longer sick at all,” he said almost cheerfully. “I only had a little fever, that remained from then,—he, he, I got the fever in the homeland, nothing more.”
His head suddenly became unusually clear.
You are sick, Erik, you are. Your body glows. Lie down, I beg, lie down. This morning you lay on the floor. The doctor said you should lie a few days…
He became a little impatient.
“But just let me… I have not been so clear and so light for a long time as right now. The doctors are idiots, what do they know of me? He, he,—of me…”
He pulled her to him. His heart suddenly overflowed with an overflowing cordiality and love for her.
“We will have a wonderful evening today, you bring wine, then we sit down and tell each other the whole night… Do you remember, just like then in San Remo on our honeymoon.”
She looked at him.
“I have never seen a person who is as strong as you. That is strange, how strong you are…”
“So I lay on the floor?”
“You cannot imagine what an uproar it was in the house…” “Well, just go now, afterwards you will tell me everything…”
“But was there not a strange person here?” asked Isa. “A stranger? No!”
“Then I probably dreamed.” “Surely.”
She went.
Falk dressed.
Of course you dreamed, dear Isa, you have strange dreams anyway.
He smiled satisfied.
He considered whether he should take tailcoat and white tie. It was after all the great feast of peace, the feast of calm, of eternal harmony.
He was in a state of triumphant rapture.
Now finally I have found myself, Myself, Me—God.
Was he still sick? His thoughts were heated. The inner excitement foamed trembling up…
Was it perhaps only a moment of a physical reaction after all this torment and fear?
What did that concern him? He had now forgotten everything. His body stretched in the feeling of a long unknown bliss and energy.
“Ah, Isa, are you already here?”
“You are doing strange gymnastics there.”
“I drive away the illness. But something to eat…” “Yes, just come to the dining room.”
He ate something, but without special appetite.
“I am as if newborn, Isa, quite as newborn. So rejuvenated. I suffered much. No, no, understand me correctly, I had no personal suffering, only the whole misery out there weighed on me and made me so miserable…”
She looked at him jubilantly.
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