The Fiery Angel

by Valery Bruisov

  To my question whither we should turn our way, Renata replied without hesitation—to Köln, for there she had relatives with whom she would like to stay a while; and I was glad that I had not to alter the route I had chosen. The thought that our strange acquaintanceship was not long to last caused me deep pain, and yet at the same time was not altogether displeasing to me; only, I thought secretly to myself that I must not waste time, if I wished to recompense myself for what I had missed on the previous evening. Accordingly, I sought to give the conversation a free and easy turn, like that of a dialogue in Italian commedia dell’ arte, and, encouraged by the cordial smiles of my companion, who maintained, none the less, a degree of the aloofness of one higher in rank, I dared at times to kiss her fingers and make subtle hints. And I do not know whither we should have sailed on the dangerous waves of these frivolous jests if a new and unexpected incident had not chanced suddenly to overturn all calculations, as a storm overturns a caravel keel upwards.

  The matter was so—I suggested to her that, passing the tiny Neuss, we should go on to spend the night at Düsseldorf where we should find hostels of the finest class, and thence to Küoln—by the convenient route along the Rhine. Renata agreed with the easy condescension of a princess, and we turned out of the wood on to the big main road, where we soon fell in with both single travellers and parties escorted by a guard. But passing through the open fields under the direct rays of the sun was quite tiring, both for Renata who was riding in a saddle not adapted to a lady’s seat, and for me who had to hurry to keep pace with the steady progress of the horse. To while away the torrid hours we sought shelter in the well-peopled village of Geerdt, which lay in our way. And here Fate, already scheming the horror of the days to come, laid a second ambush for us.

  It surprised us at once as unusual that everything in the village was arranged for the repose of travellers, and that many of those who had been journeying on the same direction as ourselves also made a halt at Geerdt. I enquired the reason of this from a peasant woman, in whose house we rested and ate our midday meal, and with pride and vainglory she informed us that the village was famed far and wide in the district for its witch, who could foretell the future with surprising skill. Not only from places in the neighbourhood, according to the words of our informant, did dozens come daily, but many came from far distant villages and cities, even from Paderborn and Westfalen, to learn their fate, for the fame of the witch of Geerdt had spread throughout all the German lands.

  These words were to Renata as the whistle of a snake-charmer, it was as if she immediately forgot all else and desired to go straightway to the witch. In vain did I persuade Renata to rest awhile, she did not even desire to finish her midday merenda, and, hurrying me, she kept on repeating:

  “Let us be going, Rupprecht, let us be going at once, otherwise she will be tired and will not see so clearly into the future.”

  We were conducted to a small house on the outskirts of the village. At the entrance, standing or reclining on logs strewn about it, there waited a whole crowd of people, as at a church porch on Christmas Eve. These people were of most varied type, such as rarely happen to foregather together, noble ladies clad in silks and velvets and travelling in closed carriages, burghers in dark broadcloth, huntsmen in green jerkins, peasants in upturned caps, even beggars, thieves and all manner of scoundrels. Talk in all the Rhine dialects was to be heard, even in Dutch and Rotwelsch. It was as if some ruling prince had halted in a small township, and suitors and suite were crowded before his resting-place.

  One had to wait one’s turn, and listen perforce to the conversations which were going on all around, and which entertained Renata a great deal, though to me they seemed boring. However, here for the first time did I learn how infinite is the sea of superstition, and how much the justifiable fear of the power of sorcerers and the tricks of witches is augmented by childish and unreasoning prejudice. As was fitting in such circumstances, the talk was of various signs and fortune-tellings, of amulets and talismans, of secret spells and incantations, and I was surprised no less by the knowledge in these matters shown by the richly-clad ladies, than by that of the beggars without coats to their backs. I, like anyone else, had as a child chanced to see old women passing a hen around the pot to prevent the bird running from home, or, in the morning when they combed their tresses, spitting on the hairs left on the comb to escape the evil eye, or had heard them trying to cure themselves of back-ache with the words sista, pista, rista, xista, repeated ten times, or of flea-bite by exclaiming och, och—but here a dam burst before me and a whole stream of superstitions poured forth upon me like a flood. Interrupting one another, they spoke of how to protect oneself from witchcraft with sulphur, how to enchant a girl by throwing her a toad, how to divert the eye of a jealous husband by means of knotted cords, how to cast spells to increase the yield of vines, what stockings best aid a woman in the pains of childbirth and of what material a bullet must be cast that it may never miss its aim—to listen to them one would have thought that signs attended every step in life.

  I remember that there was a beardless, doddering old man, dressed like a medicus, all in black; he praised the witch without ceasing, speaking thus:

  “You’ll do well to believe me! As if I didn’t know fortune-tellers and witches! For more than fifty years have I followed them; ever seeking those I might believe. I have been in Dalmatia, and further than that, sailed across the sea to Fez, to the muchazzimins. I have tried fortune-telling with bones and with wax, with cards and with beans; chiromancy, crystallomancy, catoptromancy and geomancy; even had recourse to goety and necromancy; and the horoscopes that have been prepared for me—even I cannot remember! Only every one lied to me, and the tenth of the prophecies did not come true. But here the old beldam reads in the past as in a printed book, and speaks of the future as if she sat in council with the Lord God daily. Of my past life she has told me what I had forgotten myself, and what lies in wait for me she just reckons on her fingers!”

  Listening to this senile chatterer, I thought that I too might have lost faith in fortune-telling had I been deceived for a good half-century, and also I wondered whether it were worth while to peer into the future when one was already waist-deep in the grave. But I had no desire to argue with anybody, and while Renata, still not having abated her proud manner, asked questions about amulets and love potions, I patiently awaited our turn to enter the house.

  At last a red-haired lad who was addressed as the son of the witch beckoned to us with his hand, and having taken from us the fixed price, eighteen kreuzers each, let us through the door.

  Inside the house was twilight, for the windows were hung with deep-red cloths, and it smelt stuffily of dried herbs. Though it was very hot outside a fire burned in the stove. In the light of this twilight, I discerned on the floor a tom-cat—an animal beloved of all magic; beneath the ceiling hung a cage, and in it what appeared to be a white blackbird. The witch herself, an old woman with a wrinkled face, sat at a table against the back wall. She was clothed in a special kind of gown, such as witches always wear, adorned with the images of crosses and horns, and her head was swathed in a red kerchief ornamented with sequins. Before the witch stood jars of water, packets containing roots, and various other odds and ends—and all the while, muttering something, she kept threading through these with her fingers.

  Raising towards us her eyes, her sunken and piercing eyes, the old creature mumbled amiably:

  “Well, you pretty ones, what come you here to seek from grandmother? There’s no warm bed here, only bare planks. But that’s nothing, that’s nothing, be patient, all will have its turn. Time was for strawberries, time will be for apples. So you want me to tell you your fortune, little poppets?”

  Not without disappointment did I hear all this coarse patter, and even the remnants of curiosity left me. But the beldam, still muttering like one drunk, shuffled about with her hands, found an egg and broke the white into the water, which clouded. Peering into the cloudy shap
es that wound and unwound in the water, the witch began to foretell us our future, and her words seemed to me but a feeble deception:

  “I see a journey here for you, sweet children, but not a far one. Whither you are bound, go thither; there awaits for you the fulfilment of your desires. A stern man threatens to part you, but you are bound one with a leather strap. A warm little bed, a warm little bed awaits you, my pretty ones!”

  The old creature went on mumbling for a little and then beckoned us towards her, saying:

  “Come nearer, baby fledglings, and I shall give you a little herb, a good herb: only once a year it blooms, just once only, in the night of the eve of the day of St. John.”

  Expecting no harm, we approached the witch. But suddenly her mouth twisted in her wrinkled face, her eyes became round like the eyes of a pike and black as two coals. She quickly stretched forward and, clutching at my coat with fingers crooked like an iron hook, no longer muttering, she hissed snake-like:

  “My boy, what is this, this that you have upon you? On the coat, you, and you too, my beauty, on the bodice? Blood—where is it from? Such a lot of blood—where does it come from? The whole coat is blood and the whole bodice is blood. And it streams, the blood, oozes and smells.”

  And she snuffled with the nostrils of her hooked nose, inhaling the scent, and her whole body trembled either with joy or terror. But I felt uneasy at this hissing and these words, and Renata near me tottered so that she might straightway have fallen. So I tore myself free from the clutches of the ape, overturned the table so that the glasses broke and the water ran, and, catching Renata in one arm, I laid the other hand on the hilt of my sword, shouting:

  “Away, witch! Else I pierce your damned body like a fish!”

  But the beldam in fury still clutched at us, howling, “Blood! Blood!”

  At the noise, the son of the witch ran in and felled his mother from her feet with a blow of his fist, then began to rain on us obscene curses. It appeared as though such happenings were no novelty to him, and as though he knew how to behave when they arose. As for me, I hastily bore Renata out into the fresh air, and, not listening to the questions of those who were waiting their turn, I hurried to the home where we had left our baggage and our horse.

  But after this occurrence all the gaiety and talkativeness of Renata was as if mown down by a scythe, and she uttered no word nor did she lift her eyes. When our horse had been girthed and I had helped Renata into the saddle, she drooped like a broken reed and the reins fell from her hands. In her movements and actions she probably resembled exactly the remarkable automaton of Albertus Magnus.

  Thus, sadly, we departed from Geerdt and made our way along the road towards the Rhine. To discourage Renata from believing in the prophecies of the witch, I tried to picture to her all that had happened reflected in a comic mirror, relating to her all those cases, even those of which I had only heard, in which predictions had not come true or had been turned to ridicule. I told her how a prophet foretold a near death to the Duke of Milan, Gian Galeazzo Visconti, and a long life for himself, and was immediately slain by the Duke. Further, I related how Henry the Vllth, father of the present English King, asked an astrologer much given to prediction: was it known to him where he would pass the night? And, when the astrologer replied Nay, said “I can see into the future better than you: you will spend it in the Tower of London”—whither the unhappy astrologer was at once taken. I also told her of a certain youth, to whom a gypsy exactly appointed the day and hour of his death, and who by design therefore ran through all his ample fortune by about that very time, and then, seeing that he was ruined and death yet tarried, ended his life by a thrust of his sword. And I related too of one to whom a seer explained that he would die of a white horse, and who thenceforward began to avoid all horses, even chestnut, pied and black, but perished by an inn sign with the picture of a white horse falling upon him in the street.

  By these and similar stories I sought to enliven the spirits of Renata, though the wild prophecy of the witch pressed upon my soul too like a fallen rock. But as Renata did not show in any way that she was listening to, or even noticing my words, I gradually became silent also. We rode in silence, straight towards the blue of the eastern edge of the sky. The horse, tired by its load, stepped wearily, and I, tired too from the miles I had walked, studied carefully the image of Renata, dissecting it, like a connoisseur studying the heads of marble figures.

  It was then for the first time that I saw plainly the features of Renata’s face, with which later my glances became so familiar, and I realised that she was in no way beautiful. Her nostrils were too thin, and the line of her chin to her ears swept almost slant, while her ears themselves, in which glittered golden earrings, were placed unevenly and too high; the eyes were cut not quite straight and the eyelashes too long. Everything in her face was irregular, but there was in it a charm, distilled, perhaps, by some magic means, or with the aid of some Cleopatrian mystery. Judging from the face, I would almost have thought Renata Italian, but she spoke our language like a mother-tongue, and with all the peculiarities of the Meissen dialect.

  After an arduous ride, and after crossing the Rhine, we reached Düsseldorf, the capital of Berg, a city that has grown rapidly in the last few years owing to the enterprise of its Duke, and that even now can rank with the most handsome towns of Germany. In the city I found a good hostelry under the sign “Im Lewen,” and for a fair price obtained two of the best rooms, for I wanted Renata to receive both that luxury of surrounding that was her due and all the possible comforts of a journey. But Renata seemed to me not to notice my efforts, and one might well have thought that, amidst the polished furniture, the tiled fireplaces and the mirrors, she perceived no difference from the bare, uneven benches of the country inn.

  The host, taking us for rich people, invited us to dine at his table, or, as the French say, at the table d’ hôte, and he served us very diligently, especially praising some chicken fried in almond milk, and the good Rhinewine from Bacharach. But Renata, though present in body at our table, was far away in thought, and she hardly touched the dishes and took no part in conversation, though I made various efforts to blow the breath of life into her. I related of those wonders of the New World that I happened to have witnessed, of the steps in the temples of the Maya flanked by giant, hewn masks, of immeasurable cacti, in the trunks of which can stand a horse and rider, of the perilous hunt of the grey bear and the spotted ounce, and of my lone adventures, not forgetting to embellish my tales with quotations now from the opinions of a contemporary writer, now from the verses of a poet of antiquity. The host and his wife listened mouths agape, but Renata, suddenly, breaking into the middle of my speech, rose from the table and said:

  “Are you not weary yourself, Rupprecht, of chattering of such trifles! Farewell.”

  And without adding another word she turned and left, though this was rather impolite, as I think now. But at the time I only felt confusion, and fear lest she might be angry with me and, jumping up, I hurried after her.

  In her room Renata silently seated herself in the corner on a chair, and there she remained, motionless and speechless. I, not daring now to open a conversation, timidly lowered myself on to the floor next to her. Thus we stayed in the solitary room, holding no speech, and from a distance we might have seemed some lifeless creation, carved by a skilled hand and made of painted wood. All the gayness, all the lack of ceremony with which we had conversed in the beech forest, had now evaporated, leaving the bottoms of our souls dry. I felt myself gradually lapsing into a condition of dumb helplessness, and it seemed to me as if I could now neither utter a word nor attempt a movement. Thus, probably, feel animals when they grow paralysed beneath the staring eye of the rattlesnake.

  On my left through two large open windows could be seen the tiled roofs of the twisting streets of Düssel-dorf, and the belfry of the. church of Saint Lambert, triumphant above the house-tops. The bluish eve spread softly across these triangles and rectangles,
breaking up the clearness of their lines and merging them into shapeless masses. And that same bluish evening flowed into the room and swathed us with the white sheets of a shroud. I watched, in the darkness, as brighter and brighter glittered the semi-circular earrings of Renata, and more and more distinct grew the outlines of her thin white hands, and now I could no longer turn away my glance. As all around had become enveloped in the silence of the night, it must be assumed that much time had elapsed, but we did not note its passage, nor hear its steps, nor know of it.

  And now at last, with an effort of will as though I were taking a decision of greatest importance, committing some perilous deed, I tore my eyes away from Renata, tore my soul away from the silence, and spoke:

  “Perhaps you are tired, noble lady, and wish to rest. I shall leave. …”

  My voice seemed to me very unnatural, but the sounds broke that magic circle into which we had been bound. Renata lifted her immobile face; her lips parted, and when she uttered the words it was as if a dead woman spoke, by a miracle:

  “No, Rupprecht, you must not go away. I cannot remain alone; I am in fear.”

  Then, after a few moments of silence, as her thoughts slowly unrolled, she spoke again:

  “But she said that we should ride on whither we were bound, for there awaits us the fulfilment of our desires. So, in Köln we shall meet Heinrich. That I knew even before she spoke, and the hag only read it in my thoughts.”

  Daring sparkled up in me like a tiny flame from under the ashes, and I answered:

  “Why should your Count Heinrich be in Köln if his lands are on the Danube?”

  But Renata did not notice the barb concealed in my retort, and, catching only one expression she clutched at it feverishly.

  In her turn she demanded:

  “My Count Heinrich? How mine? Is not all that is mine at the same time also yours, Rupprecht? Is there between us a line, a boundary that divides your being from mine? Are we not one, and the ache of my heart does it not pierce your heart?”