He was consumed by the mechanical, impetuous numbness of the galloping, where the horse’s mane, the dark nocturnal earth, the fleeing silhouettes of hills, and the rhythmic convulsions of his whole body comingled in an eroding sense of space and dizzying motion. They were coming after him, it was plain to see, and he swayed from weakness. Fatigue was beginning to grip him. Crouching down, he pressed on without a sense of dread or alarm, with the painful calm of a man who is mechanically performing what others did consciously in similar situations; saving his life seemed a futile, horribly tedious business.
And at that moment when, exhausted by everything he had gone through, he was ready to give up the reins, letting the horse go as it pleased, Horn distinctly saw in the air the pale light of a candle and a little hand encircled by lace. It looked like a reflection in the dark glass of a window. He smiled—to die in the middle of the road would be a droll, monstrous injustice, death by thirst.
Esther’s pensive face flashed somewhere in a corner of his consciousness and paled, vanishing along with the hand dressed in lace, as if it were an invisible, firm link between the girl from the colony and the woman with the capricious face, for whom he would do anything.
“Hello!” said Horn, sitting up in the saddle. “The poor thing’s begun to quiver!”
And he jumped off to the side before the falling horse had time to crush him under its violently heaving flanks.
Then, calmed by the silence, he paused for a moment, casting one last glance in the direction of a life that he did not need, one that was reaching out its arms to him, before moving on.
* Like a sailor … love: Grin here offers a rather free translation of a Japanese waka poem by Sone no Yoshitada (fl. ca. 975). The original Heian-period poem was reproduced in Fujiwara no Teika’s (1162–1241) anthology Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, and appeared in a Russian translation of the anthology prepared by Nikolai Bakhtin as early as 1905, although this is not the version that Grin quotes. A more literal rendering is as follows:
A boatman,
Crossing the Strait of Yura,
Loses his oar
And does not know where he is headed.
Is not the course of love like this?
THE DEVIL OF THE ORANGE WATERS
“Hear me,” the devil said amid the midnight still.
“Hear me! And I shall tell you of a land where sorrows dwell.”
Edgar Allan Poe
PROLOGUE
Inger was lying in bed, coughing more than he ought. His right hand, dangling limply from the bedstead, wearily wiggled its pale fingers, the heat of a fever flashed in his half-closed eyes, and from under his arm protruded a clinical thermometer, which had been preheated sufficiently under a lamp.
This sight, intended to inspire sympathy, reduced the forty-year-old man who entered the room to peals of laughter. The man’s movements were sharp, quick, and angular; his broad, pale face might have seemed inconspicuous were it not for the harsh curvature of his high, arched eyebrows. He had on an ill-fitting, baggy black suit and heavy boots, while his right hand, adorned with antique signet rings, clutched a top hat.
“It’s only me, not the doctor,” the man said. “The doctor wasn’t on my train. And so, my dear Inger, you may save the thermometer for another occasion.”
Inger began blinking intensively, blushing and squinting.
“Now listen here, Bangok,” he said, “if you so much as dare—”
“Oh, but I do,” Bangok cut in. “I was watching through the keyhole. For starters, I saw my pipe, which so mysteriously vanished. You were holding it between your teeth. Ignorant of how to use it, you filled the room with smoke and dropped the light on the bedsheets, burning a hole in them. That hole is currently under the most delicate part of your body. Then you took out that cheap, vile little mirror and had a turn admiring your face as you grimaced imperiously. After that you carried out your fraud with the thermometer and, finally, when you heard the door creak, you sprawled out in the pose of a dying gladiator.”
“If I recover tomorrow,” Inger said despairingly, “they’ll send me back to the city. We love each other so very much.”
“Do you indeed?” Bangok fixed his gaze upon the boy, sneezed, and blew his nose. “Curious,” he said. “And where do you plan to live after the wedding?”
“On the Canaries, or the Maluku Islands.”
“A true bucolic idyll,” observed Bangok. “How do you manage to see each other?”
“She comes to my window.”
“Inger,” said Bangok, “I won’t ask whether you kiss or not, I won’t ask whether you eat up all those sweet pies that your beloved steals for you. But I will ask whether you intend to give me back my pipe, you little rascal.”
Inger thrust his hand under the covers to extract the pipe and silently handed it over to Bangok.
“In exchange for this,” he said, “you have to tell me something.”
“So that’s how it is!” said Bangok. “Indeed,” he added, as though to himself. “The ways of a bandit and a Don Juan … The boy will go far … Tell you something, eh?” Bangok repeated slowly. “What would you like to hear about, young hope of the nation? Say, I’ll tell you about the reconstruction of the naval academy building.”
“Not interested,” said Inger.
“About suffrage for the lower classes …”
“Not that.”
“About the law against gypsies …”
“Oh, please!”
“About the taxation of luxuries …”
“No.”
“About the excavation of an ancient Roman aqueduct …”
Inger maintained an affronted silence.
“Well,” Bangok continued with a chuckle, “how about something to do with the lives of the people? About the psychologies of sorrel and dappled horses, the history of the bridle, the power of black earth and the despotism of loam, about labor pains, weavers’ looms and boiled potatoes? Why are you shaking your head? Don’t you want to know anything about these things?”
“I don’t,” Inger snapped furiously.
“Even sailors like to chat,” said Bangok, “on gloomy autumnal days like this. I enjoy reminiscing about what used to be. What shall I tell you about, strange creature that are not interested in feminism or social psychology? What will you?”
“I want to hear about all the things you’ve seen,” said Inger. “About chasms, caves, volcanoes, cyclones and cannibals … you know. Remember how you used to tell me about negroes, gold, a white girl, and yellow fever?”
“I do,” said Bangok, no longer smiling.
“Well, something like that then.”
“Something like that! Very well, listen to me, Inger, and I’ll tell you about the devil of the Orange Waters.”
Inger’s eyes came greedily ablaze.
“Is it something very sensational?” he exclaimed.
“No, it’s a true story,” said Bangok.
“And the devil?”
“Listen and judge for yourself.”
I. AN ENCOUNTER WITH THE DEVIL
This happened, Inger, long before I was made captain of your father’s yacht, back when I wasn’t even a sailor. Young, nimble, and daring, I looked upon everything under the sun from the vantage of luck and curiosity.
In 1892, I had stowed away on board the Cassiopeia, which was owned by Fitz & Co. and making the voyage from Australia to China. Being of a truthful disposition, I replied to all the first mate’s questions and openly admitted to having no ticket. This conversation took place a full day after the Cassiopeia put out to sea. Until then, I had managed to dodge the ticket check. Of course, I was traveling in steerage. The conversation took place in the evening—knowing that I would be ejected at the nearest port of call, I ceased dwelling on it and went out on deck for a smoke while I gazed up at the starry sky.
As I was standing there, pondering whether to steal the diamond eyes of the Buddha of Bogor, to become a card sharp, or to enlist in the volunteers, a ma
n, leaning over the side of the ship some distance from me, straightened up and approached me with the words:
“What are we to do?”
Without replying, I looked him over carefully, from head to toe, to establish just with whom I was dealing. On this occasion, however, my eye and experience failed me: the stranger’s identity remained a mystery. He wore a soiled suit; instead of a waistcoat, he had on a garish calico shirt; and he wore tall boots—and his fair hair, the color of rotten hemp, was covered by a black fedora. I must add to this description that the calico shirt was not tucked into his breeches but belted by a cord with raspberry-colored tassels. The man’s gaunt face, with its protruding cheekbones, his snub nose covered in freckles, his scraggly little beard and moustache, and his sunken colorless eyes, all left an indelible impression on me. His long, greasy hair, trimmed haphazardly behind the ears, spread out like a fan over the collar of his jacket. The stranger was tall, thin, hunched, and his voice was piercing.
“What are you to do?” I said. “In all likelihood, you know the answer to that better than I. As for me, I’ll think of something.”
“No,” he hastily replied, gesticulating and smiling officiously. “You must have misunderstood me. I mean to say that I, too, have no ticket, that we’re fellow travelers, as it were. I suggest that we discuss our situation collectively. Allow me to introduce myself: I am Ivan Baranov, a Russian political exile.”
“Very well,” I said. “My name is Bangok, I’m a nobody.”
He winked, mistaking my answer for a joke, and laughed.
After a pause, Baranov asked: “Are they going to disembark us?”
“Of course they are.”
“Where?”
“At the first port of call.”
He fell silent. I did not stoke the conversation, and so we parted, having wished each other a pleasant night. I settled on top of some crates; I was calm, I felt fine, cheerful even; I knew that life would fall into my tenacious paws sooner or later and that I would squeeze everything I could out of it. I fell asleep. I was awoken by something touching my head. “Go to hell!” I cried, half-awake. There was somebody sitting beside me on the crate; with a heavy sigh, he woke me up definitively. I lifted my head.
A weak matinal light glimmered in the far reaches of the ocean, and after several minutes the sun would begin to rise. Irritated, I asked rudely:
“What do you want?”
“Come now … don’t be angry,” Baranov began quietly. “I feel wretched, I’m afraid, and I can’t sleep … I need to talk to somebody …”
He was smoking a cigarette. I watched him in amazement. Baranov’s face twitched, his voice cracked, and his hands were trembling …
“Are you unwell?” I asked.
“No … that is … I’m in a strange way. Just now I wanted to go up on deck and jump overboard.”
“Why?”
“Listen,” he began quickly. “Don’t you feel it? You’re sailing somewhere aboard a great, strange ship, across a strange sea, surrounded by night, silence, and the stars, and everybody’s asleep. Do you see? Man is tragically alone. Nobody cares about anybody else. All they care about is their own affairs. Life in all its complexity, greatness, mystery, absurdity, and cruelty is leading you—but where? In the name of what? To what end? I felt it just now amid the silence of the sleeping ship. Who am I? Why am I here? Why am I alive?”
I listened without the faintest idea what this man wanted from me. But he went on talking, lighting one cigarette after another—talking of humanity, class struggle, idealism, the soul and matter, religion and machines, all in that same devastatingly hopeless tone, and I noticed that all his pontifications lacked a center, a basic idea, and conviction. He spoke as though he relished the sound of his own voice; the sense of what he said could be laid out in three words: despondency, bewilderment, trepidation. Indifferent at first, I listened with occasional interjections of “yes,” “no,” and “maybe.” I even found Baranov’s vehemence amusing. Then I experienced a particular sort of impatience, which expressed itself in the desire to whistle, to box someone about the ears, or to scream, when suddenly, apropos of nothing, I began to feel so very sad and my back began to ache. As I listened, I was powerless to break this strange stupor, like a drowsiness caused by a vampire, a drowsiness as sweet-smelling and repellent as the aroma of nightshade.
Baranov fell silent. His last words were: “Yes, everything sours, everything is repulsive, one goes around as though wading through water.”
He got to his feet. In terror I awaited the continuation.
“We’ll talk again,” he said by way of consolation, taking my hand and shaking it limply. I pretended to sleep. He left, while over the horizon, gilding the ship and the ripples on the water, the sun’s disc blazed.
II. TERRA FIRMA
I did not see him again until we disembarked. At ten o’clock in the morning, Port Mel came into view—it was the spot where, as one sailor explained to me, the rails for a branch line of the Sinnigham railway were to be unloaded.
The Cassiopeia approached the shoreline. Along the muddy bank stood a small crowd of natives and about five Europeans. A few wooden posts with boards nailed to them constituted the dock. Farther along were a newly constructed embankment, piles of railway sleepers, and several wooden structures.
Naturally, I didn’t wait to be told, in more or less crude terms, that my sea voyage was at an end. Nonchalantly hooking the thumbs of my idle hands into the top pockets of my vest, I began whistling a sailor’s farewell tune, “Cursed Be the Shore without Food or Water,” and descended onto terra firma.
You’re too young, Inger, to know what it means to feel isolation, but when I went ashore, I felt it again for the umpteenth time as I cast a glance back at the ship. Its smokestack puffed away indifferently. I felt too independent, alien to everything around me. I had known better days, so to speak. All I could do was to rely on my own skill, my luck and cunning; I had just enough money to pull a long face when I thrust my hand into my pocket.
It was exceedingly and unbearably hot. Drenched in sweat, I walked slowly along the embankment, determined to purge my mind of all thoughts and cursing Fulton, the inventor of the first steamship. Just then, someone called out to me. I turned and saw Baranov.
I do not know why, but as I scrutinized his awkward, lanky figure, I experienced something almost akin to a superstitious malaise. He hurried up to me, obviously in a rush and happy about something, since the shadow of a sour smile glinted in his nervous eyes. As he drew near to me, he asked:
“Where are you going?”
“I need to press on,” I replied dryly. “Shanghai’s still a ways off.”
“Listen,” said the Russian, assuming a businesslike air. “We have to think of something. I’m glad that I found you,” he added after a pause.
A man in a white hat was walking in our direction along the rails; he was bared to the waist and dark in the European way (that is to say, the color of weak coffee). I stopped him to ask when the next ship would arrive.
The man, having looked me over thoroughly, uttered a few phrases that offered no consolation whatsoever. A ship might call in, but then again it might not. If one were to call in, then it would be no sooner than a week hence.
The railway had not yet been completed, although they were already putting locomotives on the line. If we so desired, however, we could walk thirty-odd miles to a railway bridge that was being built across the river; there, we could knock together a raft and sail down to San Riol, where ships made scheduled stops at the estuary.
We stood there facing each other for some time. Then the man in the white hat nodded and, without looking back, continued on his way.
I considered my options. This man was the so-called track foreman; he was, of course, well informed about the state of the railway. There was little sense in waiting for a ship, though I didn’t much relish the idea of walking. On the other hand, I cannot abide inaction; I had no choice but to walk,
even if it meant walking on the spot, which, as soldiers know full well, is easier than sitting with one’s arms crossed.
Thus, my mind was made up. I looked at Baranov. Naturally, the manpower of two was better than one, and a strong pair of hands could well come in handy when it came to building the raft. Besides, there was something about this strange Russian that inspired a vague pity. Stretching out my hand to him, I said:
“We’re in quite a pickle, you and I. We’ll very likely need each other, so I propose making the journey to San Riol together.”
We were standing on the edge of a forest that was drenched in heat. Deep therein, birds called to one another with their sharp, melodious snatches of song. Baranov’s face, when he lifted his head in response to what I had said, took on a calm, attentive, impassive aspect; he looked at me as if my words had lulled him into a state of boredom.
“Listen,” Baranov said in a muffled, changed voice. Taking off his hat, he ran his fingers through his hair, looked at his feet, and continued: “I have an alternative proposal for you.”
I waited silently to hear what he would say.
III. THE DEVIL’S FIRST TEMPTATION
“You know,” the Russian began, smiling ambiguously into the distance, “while you were talking with the native, I had the following thought. In our country, when political criminals, for instance, justly demand some action from the prison administration, but the administration won’t do it, they declare a so-called hunger strike. They refuse to eat, threatening to starve themselves to death. The administration is left with a choice: either to yield or to watch a man slowly die.”
I had indeed heard and read about this strange means of resistance, and so I nodded, giving Baranov to know that I was waiting for him to go on, although, by my ears and beard, I swear I hadn’t the faintest idea where the Russian was going with this.
Fandango and Other Stories Page 15