But for the officers of the number to police station the night was not over yet. The steps on the stairs had only just died away when they were called to a case at 14, N. St., where a student Isolda Morgan, who had lost both her legs in a tram accident two months before, had poisoned herself with sulphuric acid.
14
He came to bathed in light. Through a little, high window poured white, blinding moonlight. The room was small and unfurnished. The stone-paved floor glistened in the shaft of white light.
He got to his feet, sprightly and agile. Only now did he realise that his arms were strapped. Without the slightest effort he freed himself from the unfamiliar robe and threw it under the bed.
The moon shone bright and clear.
"I'll go out on the street," thought Berg and came to the door. But the door had no handle and was shut. Then he slowly came up to the wall, pushed it out of his way and went out.
On the street he was immediately swallowed up by the frenzied crowd hurrying in a single direction. He walked, pushed about by other passers-by, along wide brightly lit streets he did not recognise. The moon shone with strong cold light like a huge incandescent lamp.
On the corner of some street or other he felt a little hand under his arm. He turned to look. By his side walked a slim, young girl. She had a child's face and dark, long eyelashes. They did not speak. At the next corner the girl turned. He followed her obediently without even asking himself where he was going. Thus they walked the whole length of the street. On the next street the girl led him into a big dark house faintly lit by an oil lamp. He climbed narrow wooden steps up to the second floor. She opened a door with a key.
In a small, neatly furnished room she sat him on the bed and started to undress. When she took her shirt off he saw that she had tiny, very white and firm breasts and that her hips were wide and of pleasing shape. He remembered he had not had a woman for two months. He took her greedily the way people take bread in time of hunger. Her hips were soft and agile, as if set on springs; they rose and fell rhythmically so that one could lie motionless and the intercourse was driven by a force of its own. He took her time and time again. When he stretched exhausted on the pillows she started to dress. Then he realised he had no money. He told her. She was not angry. She put her clothes on quickly. She said she had to go out again. They left together. Outside the gate they parted.
The street was wide and full of people. Everybody hurried in one direction as if upset by something. To avoid the jostling crowd Berg stepped off the pavement and walked the rest of the way on the road. He was thinking about this strange woman he had just possessed, of her incredible hips. Suddenly he heard a prolonged, threatening grinding behind him. He looked over his shoulder. He saw an approaching tram. It was almost touching his back. Only then did he realise that he was walking between the two glistening polished rails of the tramway. He started to run, as fast as he could. He could not run off the track. He knew with lucid clarity that the moment he put his foot on the rail he would slip and fall under the tram. He ran straight ahead with a speed he could not believe he possessed, the menacing song of the pursuing tram ringing in his ears. He tried to shout - not a sound. Wait, there should be a stop here somewhere ... But there were no stops. At long last he saw one looming in the distance. Berg gathered all his strength. Just to get there. He did.
But the tram did not stop, it sped on. They passed one stop, then another. Berg felt his hair standing on end and his legs began to fail him. Suddenly an old, worn out octastich, written a long time ago, rattled in his brain:
He looked behind - the tram was almost touching his back. The lit sign glared with the number 18.
Other trams passed them. On the rear platform of one of them he saw Isolda leaning on a railing, waving a handkerchief at him.
With a last effort he grabbed the bulging eye of the tram's reflector and hung on with both hands, suspended in the air.
Long, mad trams thundered past him one after the other, full of white-faced, terrified passengers.
That memorable summer - hot, though bursting occasionally with a sudden downpour - I was doing my service as a recruit in the 76th infantry regiment in Grodno.
The signs, whose secret meaning we were soon to understand, began to appear as early as the spring. The lilacs blossomed somewhat before their time and their big, swelling sprays gave out a strange scent. Not that it was so different from usual, but much stronger, stifling and dizzying. People walked around in those scented clouds as if drunk. Then, one evening during a violent storm, three flashes of lightning like flaming forks struck the town. The first hit the parish church, the second hit the Russian, and the third the synagogue. And that very same night the riotous lilacs wilted, also before their time. In the furrows of the fields squirmed pale worms which the birds didn't want to touch. Again, they were like normal worms but longer and thinner, and as wriggly as earthworms. The crows circled low over the freshly upturned earth, but every time one of them landed on a ridge it just as soon turned its head away and without touching the worm took off with a great flutter. In all honesty, I didn't give it much thought then. I was young, inexperienced and had eyes for other things. Only when the advancing horror claimed its first victim did I begin to think.
The victim was Prokopiuk, my predecessor as the major's batman. One balmy evening Prokopiuk took a swim in the Niemen. The place wasn't deep, just before the Chalky Hills where the bank props them up as if with great effort. Prokopiuk was a very good swimmer, and he wasn't the only one there. The sun set and there was no Prokopiuk. We started calling him, shouting his name, swimming out as far as the middle of the river - Prokopiuk had disappeared. Then one of us spotted something shiny on the river bank. It was a little silver cross which must have got tangled up in his shirt when the poor wretch was taking his clothes off. We realised at once that Prokopiuk had nothing to protect him from the evil that had pulled him into the deeps. Maybe it got him with cramp, or it caught him in the weeds at the bottom; be that as it may, he could not get away. He was found a week later, a hundred kilometres not down, but upriver. His body was hard, as if it hadn't been in the water, but his eye-sockets were emptied clean and on his neck had appeared a thin white line, just like those worms.
That's how I became the major's batman. It had already started its games and stalked the major's every step. Only a few days in my new post had passed when I found myself right in the middle of it all.
One morning the major called me in a strange voice. I came in to see what was up and he, red in the face: "Look here," he said pointing to his left boot, which only minutes ago I'd polished to a shine. I looked and right on top of the major's foot there was a grey mark, like a dog's footprint, or some such beast's. I didn't even try to say one word of excuse, just grabbed the brush and got down to polishing again. In a short while the left boot was as shiny as the right. The major looked at it closely, nodded his head, satisfied. "And let it be the last time," he said in a calmer voice.
But the moment he'd said it I saw on the boot, though now more towards the toe, the same footprint appearing again. This time, even before he noticed it himself, the major understood what we were up against just by looking at my face. I grabbed the wax and started all over again. He wasn't saying a word now, we were both staring at the boot, waiting to see what was going to happen next. And we didn't have to wait long. I was struggling with that boot, on and off the major's foot, for over two hours, and as long as it was off the dog's foot was in no hurry to play its game, but as soon as it was on - the same thing all over again.
The major pulled out his wallet and counted out one hundred and twenty zlotys, and sent me to Dominikanska Street for a new pair of boots. Carrying them home I peeped into the box every now and again to see if the dog's footprint had appeared, but everything was all right. The major also examined the boots closely from every side. Still uncertain, he put one on, and then the other, strolled across the room, checked them again, and sighed with relief. I did too. The
major fastened his belt, put his hat on and walked towards the door. Just as he was putting his left foot on the threshold - and all this time I kept my eye on that foot - the dog's footprint appeared, clearer and bigger than before. My hair stood on end. The major staggered as if he were drunk, collapsed into the armchair and took the boots off in a great hurry.
"The only solution," he mumbled, "is to go to Lida, or take one's own life."
And so we went to the city of Lida to find a pair of boots untouched by the evil curse.
On the way back the major took a seat in the first class compartment, naturally, but didn't send me to third class, instead giving me the order to stand in the corridor and keep a close eye on him. Despite our successful shopping trip the major was still rather unsettled and full of foreboding. He felt a bit better though, when he saw his travelling companion, a young lady in a hunting uniform; he was never indifferent to ladies' charms. Nevertheless, even while entertaining her with his charming wit, he couldn't help looking at the boot, and she soon noticed this.
The lady was one of those bold young things, and far from putting on an innocent air, she received the major's compliments with loud laughter. I would have spit and moved on but he was charmed, imagining himself on a great adventure. Before long he was asking her name and address. To this last one she answered only with a little smile on her ruby lips, and after the first "Lu-. . ." she said slowly, "-cy ..." and stopped mysteriously.
"Lucy?" the major guessed eagerly, but she turned her head. "Maybe Lucilla?" She didn't confirm that either.
"By the way," she changed the subject, "Why are you constantly looking at your boots? Are you looking for something? A bloodstain? The devil's sign?" and with an audacious move of her shapely foot, shod in a tightly fitted hunting boot, she touched his. She immediately withdrew it, but for a moment I thought I saw, just as the lady's foot touched the major's new boot, the dog's footprint flash out on the leg of the boot, only to disappear again. The major however noticed nothing, but suddenly he became very lively, which surprised me, for in these matters my major was a dull old dog.
Leaning over, moving closer, taking the young lady's hand clad in a glove of delicate leather, he started whispering those sweet nothings with which he was always trying to wheedle the fairer sex, but this time, I felt, he seemed to have been taken in by his own words. She was answering him, but unlike other young ladies, her words sounded rather strange. Yet he carried on with his wooing regardless, like a child walking deeper into dark woods.
As he rambled on, enraptured, about her eyes and their rare brightness she told him: "I tear them out." She said it calmly without taking her face away from his. "Hundreds of thousands of eyes shine through mine ... But it's not enough ... you understand? Not enough ..." and she laughed loudly.
A cold chill ran all over me as if I had stepped into a treacherous mire, even though I didn't understand what she was really saying. Her eyes indeed were burning like torches, I never saw anything like it, and as I was looking at them over my shoulder I felt, after the chill, a burning heat spreading through my bones.
"I'll give you mine," mumbled out the major, "for..
"Who knows," she laughed seductively, "perhaps ..." and in one movement of her head, quick as a flash, she undid her hair which covered her like a black, shimmering veil. But it lasted only a moment, no longer than before when she had touched the major's boot. She moved her head again and the hair was pinned and bound up high as before. I didn't like these tricks but the major was staring at her as if in a trance, licking his dry lips.
At that moment the train halted in the forest. The twisted branch of a pine-tree scraped on the window with its prickly hand, as if reminding, or calling someone out. The young lady got up from her seat, and giving the major a mysterious look with those burning eyes of hers, she slipped out of the compartment without a word. She passed, leaving in her wake a stifling scent of blooming lilac, and slithered rather than walked through the hot, shimmering air.
The major sat entranced and I thought he wouldn't wake up before Grodno, and thank God for that. But I was wrong, for when the train stopped again after fifteen minutes, my master suddenly stood up and signalled that this was where we were getting off. I jumped after him off the train which was already gathering speed and looked around trying to see where we were. It was not a proper stop: no signs, no buildings, not a soul in sight; only the forest, deep, impenetrable forest on both sides of the track. There was however something like a path, narrow and twisting, gleaming among the trees, but I felt a strange force pushing me from it and I dreaded making a single step towards it.
"Major, sir," I blurted out. "Sir, they are waiting for us in Grodno."
He looked at me with the look of a gravely sick man and, merely waving his hand in answer, turned towards the path. I followed him willy-nilly, dragging my feet.
The forest was swelling with darkness and a monotonous rustling but the path, against all expectations, was still clearly visible and we moved along without stopping. Soon I felt the uniform sticking to my body, either from the quick march or from the humid air of the summer day, or else from the horror I felt in this wood. At first glance it was no different from other woods in those parts and yet it held, it seemed, some evil secret which, speaking for myself, I wasn't at all curious to know.
I don't know how long we walked. It seemed an eternity to me, but it was probably not all that long for suddenly the twisted, hairy pines gave way to a wide meadow filled with a sifted evening light, rather than the darkness of the night. In the middle of the meadow stood a building which at one moment appeared to be a gamekeeper's lodge and the next a kind of factory, and every time I rubbed my eyes one was changing into the other. One thing was the same - the thick, fleecy smoke belching out of the chimney, piercing the nose with an acrid smell. "Well, I never! They must be brewing moonshine," I thought. But I soon doubted my simple guess for in the beamed wall above the porch a square of light opened up and in it, like in a picture frame, appeared the young lady from the train.
"At last!" she cried out and gave the major her hand. She led him inside and before he crossed the threshold I caught sight of another figure - paltry, with squinty eyes and a small moustache - which reminded me of that pimp in the Ziemianski Hotel. But the door was shut and I was left alone outside on the porch, completely lost, without the foggiest idea what to do next.
I calmed down and started pacing to and fro on the soft moss, like a guard, though what it was I was guarding - the major's falling into one of his many temptations, or into a dangerous, God forbid, deadly trap? - this I couldn't tell, though I had a feeling of foreboding.
By now the night was growing dark and the hole in the tree-tops above the meadow was filling with glittering stardust. In the end I got fed up with stomping back and forth, and just as I was about to bang on the door I heard an old croaky voice whispering into my ear:
"Local man, are you?"
I looked around: next to me stood a mean whipster of a fellow in a turned out sheepskin and sackcloth pants, and on his head he had what at first looked like a huge woolly hat but which after a while I saw was not a hat but a mass of fleeced hair, what in the old days was called a plica.
"I am," I answered unwillingly. "And who are you? The gamekeeper?"
"I am Gmyr," he announced. "I'm sure you know the name...
"Gmyr?" I shuddered. "It's the devil's name. I remember Gmyr the Devil who once played a nasty trick on my grandpa and led him into the marshes. Grandpa left home a redhead and came back white."
"That's me," he giggled, "I used to play with your grandpa. And I wanted to play with you when you came down my path, but the guests didn't like me to."
"You're a hospitable man ... devil, I mean. . . " I mumbled out.
"Aye, local, aren't I?"
"And who are the guests?"
"Foreign," he pointed his woolly head northwards, "from the Prussian side."
"Devils?"
"And who else
?"
Somehow, I wasn't afraid of Gmyr. I remembered grandpa and grandma, and the wintry evenings when as a nipper I used to fall asleep by the kitchen stove listening to their tales. But when he mentioned the foreign devils I shuddered as all the horrible and strange things besetting us lately came back to me afresh, and I suddenly felt like a helpless little fish in the devil's invisible but strong net, caught together with a bigger fish, even less able to escape, my major, and in this hopelessness I felt my knees going soft as wet clay.
Seeing me so troubled, Gmyr must have taken pity on me, and lowering his voice even more he murmured: "All's not lost yet, all's not lost ..."
I held on to this line of hope:
"Tell me then, can I save my major from the evil claws?"
"Eee," he shook his mop, "you can't do much...
"What are they doing to him?"
"That hellish whore is there and your major is playing with her, as he wanted ... It's like this, if he can keep up with her till the first cock-crow, they'll give him a choice ... If not . . . "
"They'll grab his soul," I whispered shaking like a leaf.
"Soul?" sneered Gmyr. "They don't care for souls. They care naught for God either, if you ask me. Theirs is a different need ..
The fear that had seized me was growing stronger and stronger, for if devils don't believe in the soul, or quarrel with God about it, then it must be such a nasty business that there's no way an honest man can get out of it.
"Come," said Gmyr and led me to the building, which at that moment changed into a factory again. Inside there was darkness, broken only by strange flashes of light flickering above the monstrous vats like fireflies on a swamp. I resisted with all my might and tried to sneak out from the devil's store but Gmyr held me tight: "Look," he demanded prodding me, "look into these vats and see what sort of mash my guests use for their elixir."
Curbing my fear I bent over the nearest vat and looked straight into a swarm of living human eyes of all colours and sizes, weltering in a disgusting, thick, bubbling tallow, and right in the middle I saw a pair of eyes, painfully familiar, though at first I couldn't remember whose they were. They looked at me with reproach, as if I were the devil's partner, until in my helpless despair I recognised them as the eyes of Prokopiuk, drowned on that balmy evening. I jumped away from the fiendish vat, feeling so sick I could hardly stand on my legs.
B008GRP3XS EBOK Page 32