“What was it?” he said to himself afterwards as he trod along aimlessly. “Hallucination or reality? At the very moment when my entire soul seized Her whole being, I also saw Her with my eyes. Was it just my overly vivid vision condensing into matter? Or is it the other way round: the reason I thought about Her so intensely before was because She was close by, and after so many years She was drawing nearer and nearer to me once again? ... To hell with all these theories! If not a hallucination, was it really Her? After all, some faces are astonishingly similar ... But no, no one else resembles Her, I know that with absolute certainty! But – She didn’t appear to have aged at all in twelve years ... But – haven’t there been quite a few cases of people who seem not to age? Ach, this is going nowhere! I must do something!”
He now came to that street daily, as it had become a shrine for him, at that same time, as well as at other times of day. Frantically he scoured the entire town and sought Her out in other ways, too. Without the least result. Yet his faded love had flared up once more, and more forcefully than before. His soul burst into flames, its void avidly filled with mystical light, the past resurrected from its grave. For a second time he fell in love. With what exactly? ... Time, which is but the unfurling of thought, flows slowly, ever so slowly, more than enough of it in Eternity. And the Sublime creeps towards every human, every animal, sometimes as a pleasant tingling sensation, at others in the form of the greatest delight; more commonly it is as the most intense horror, creeping closer and closer like a tiger silently on the prowl ... , so that the people of today, who are animals through and through, may one day become – God.
He did not find Her. At the end of October he left for Cortona. He stayed for one week only. He did not see Her, even though he climbed all the way to the place where the path was broken. He would not have been inclined to make the leap even had She beckoned him with open arms. His soul was as dead as decayed nature at All Hallows, unstirred by the slightest tremor of light the whole time he was there ... Even the search for the Unknown Woman and Her companion remained fruitless. “Home, home! That’s where I saw Her, maybe that is where I’ll find Her!”
He did not. Nothing whatsoever transpired during the winter. He worked and got drunk, he got drunk and worked, and in the end he just got drunk. Winter passed, spring timorously crept in, and for a second time Sider’s strange love receded from his mind.
•
One early evening in April he was standing in front of a shop window. Its back was lined with a mirror, and in front of it were pictures of mountain scenery, one of Cortona among them. His entire soul became absorbed in the contemplation of Stag’s Head. He felt as though he were climbing it again, he could see the blue and red dots as he had done on that beautiful, that dreadful, day – and then Her on that monstrous, severed path ... – and suddenly, with terrible clarity, he saw Her face in the mirror at the back of the window! Her! Her eyes eerily staring into his.
He turned round with lightning speed. Two men and two young women were standing behind him, and there was as little resemblance between their round chirpy red faces and Hers as there can possibly be between human faces. Not a single other human being was in the vicinity.
“A hallucination? That would be the first time in my life. But no: I must also have been hallucinating that evening in August, and even in Cor–, but how nonsensically our illogical mind immediately starts to blow things out of proportion! In August it was something else; it could have been real, just as surely as it could have been an illusion – and in Cortona, at least in the garden, She was seen by almost a hundred people. It does not follow that having seen Her in reality it’s impossible for me to see Her as a hallucination at another time. If, for example, this bust of Dante in the shop window were to appear before my eyes on my bed sheets while I was gripped by fever, it would not mean that the one here does not exist in reality ... So I’m being visited by Her phantom. Is it because – She is dead? Did She die on that very evening in August? Could it be that I was suddenly compelled to contemplate Her so intensely at that moment, and thus also to see Her with my eyes, because at that very minute Her soul was leaving Her body? It’s been known to happen. All this is just mere conjecture, though, nothing scientific. The worst of it is the uncertainty. I feel it could even turn to madness ... Hah! How horridly those abysmal eyes stared at me again in the mirror just now! As if I were actually seeing them once again – –”
He rightly felt the situation was becoming extremely perilous. For a third time his passion had ignited – without the prospect of fulfilment – he had become Tantalus – condemned always to lose his beloved the moment She appeared to him ... But the hallucinations had made matters more complicated and had added something new, something horrifying. No matter where he was, he saw only Her, Her, Her and Her terrible mirrored glare, piercing his eyes and soul with a funereal chill. Now its recurrence, its repetition, was horrid: even the constant intrusion of a single, entirely banal word into the mind can drive one insane. The matter at hand was decidedly not mundane. This was not the sweet face of a lover, but the transcendentally terrible visage of a dragon. And almost every night She visited his dreams, hideous, stifling, chaotically maniacal dreams, a diabolical gorgon forever sharing his bed. On the verge of succumbing to the terror of it all, he felt himself slipping into “superstition”; but his bright, logical mind put up a powerful defence against the temptation of seeing in it anything “supernatural.” Almost all of today’s educated men are “unsuperstitious” in their minds, while in their hearts they’re as superstitious as old women. Sider was the opposite: his sceptical intellect allowed for the possibility that anything may exist in the world; his intellectualised inner being, however, indomitably denied the potential existence of anything spectral. He still believed that the Mysterious Woman was as real a being as he was himself. The question for him now was: is She still alive, or is She dead? And this uncertainty was unhinging his mind, just as the ghastly turmoil of dark emotions was doing to the whole of his inner being.
•
Then something happened that changed this awful state of affairs. On 22 May he was walking down a bustling street in a different part of the city than the previous August. Once again it was evening, but the red sunset still blazed in full splendour. Exceptionally, he was in a fairly cheery mood. Then all of a sudden he saw Her. Facing the other way, She was just crossing the street a few paces ahead of him. It was Her! She was well lit by the crisp red sky! Even the two moles on the left side of her face were visible. This time his fright was not as great – and immediately he headed towards Her. Yet at that very moment She stopped next to a police officer at the intersection and spoke to him.
Backing off a little, Sider waited. Some time elapsed before the police officer gave Her a parting salute. Sider rushed after Her as She hurried away. Suddenly She disappeared behind an electric streetcar. He started running, and was almost run over by an automobile hidden by the streetcar. A moment later, having recovered from the shock, he could no longer see Her. He rushed into the throng of cars and people where She had just disappeared. His entire soul transformed into eyes. Futile. In a desperate rage, just about to break down in tears, he remembered the police officer.
He ran up to him wildly. “Did a woman dressed in blue, very pale, with little moles right here, speak to you just now?”
“Well yes, and what’s it to you?”
“She did!” he shouted joyfully. “So She was real?”
“Hmm – hmm,” muttered the policeman, his eyes bulging out of his head in an expression of severity and stupidity.
“And what did She want?”
“What business is that of yours?”
“Oh, dear sir, but it is my business!” And he gave the policeman three ducats. They served as ample proof that it was indeed his business. He learnt that the lady had inquired how to get to Cliff Street, that She had readily told him She was a stranger in the city and had been living in that street for several days but was
at that moment having trouble locating it. – In answer to Sider’s question if his heart had felt odd when he looked at Her, the policeman shook his head with his mouth agape and gravely nodded his head in pity as the generous gentleman walked off – –
Sider knew one thing with absolute certainty: when the automobile was hurtling towards him, Her supercelestial eyes had rested on his for an instant, though no longer ghastly, but kind, smiling, alluring, kissing, sonorously inviting. He was enlivened by the certitude that his Radiance still dwelled on the earth. He now saw everything in the most beauteous earthly light. “My love is alive! She is weird in the extreme, mystical powers at Her command, as is my love for Her! And She loves me, loves me!” His faith now resided in these three things: “She will now finally provide the purpose I have lost; She will fill my emptiness; She will give me life!” Never before had he felt so happy, so alive, so sprightly, so divine.
Over the days that followed he expended more energy trying to find Her in Cliff Street than on anything he had ever done in his life. He conducted his search with no care for pride or shame. He searched every house in the street, systematically, from cellar to attic, indeed from cellar to dovecote, and he also visited many apartments and asked every person in the street if they knew anything about the pale lady with moles. Eventually, the local boys shouted at him “lunatic!” “moron!” – Cliff Street was long; it took its name – incidentally – from the limestone cliffs that towered along its length. It took him three days to search the entire street, and still he came up with nothing, nothing ...
By the evening of the third day he had covered the street’s length. Only one small house remained, standing apart from all the rest some two hundred paces further on. He could see that it was impoverished, almost black, dilapidated. “Surely She cannot be living there, but just to be thorough, now that I’ve searched everywhere else, I’ll take a look there as well.”
The back of the little edifice leant directly against a high cliff, jagged, as if pieces of it had broken off. The house had two floors and was dismally derelict. Standing before it, Sider now regarded it in the evening twilight and froze with fear. It looked exactly like, in fact it was identical to, the mysterious cottage in Cortona by the entrance to the ravine with the rock suspended above it like the sword of Damocles, as if its doppelgänger ...
He sat on the baulk opposite the house for half an hour. “Only here, here could She live ... Ugh! Mere coincidence! I’m starting to see ghosts in everything! I need to free myself of this once and for all! For – spectres and the belief in them contradict the Will! Not the ‘external world’ – that is always tame and subservient to it –: it is spectres that kill the Will! Time to have a look!”
It was now night. Sider took a step towards the house, he looked it over once more – his whole body shook ... “No, not today! I won’t manage. My legs are shaking so much I can hardly stand. Cursed matters of physiology! Tomorrow, the morning will be more favourable!”
He returned home, lay down on his bed. – Without even knowing how, he suddenly found himself in front of the mysterious little house. Automatically he entered. He briskly walked through the hallway on the ground floor, his steps absolute and sure, without even having to light a match, as if walking through his own house. He went to the upper floor, which was also in complete darkness. He extended his hand – and felt a handle. He found himself in a room, which in contrast to the ragged exterior of the house was furnished with striking elegance, by all appearances the bedroom. The full moon glaring at him through the window nearly dazzled him; what poured from the moon into his soul was not light, but the words: “Don’t you know me? Ah, you know me well! Try to remember!” He took a better look around. He saw – rocks, bricks, chunks of wood scattered over the carpets – and the conjugal bed in the corner smashed to pieces, a large boulder protruding from its wreckage, embedded in the floor. He drew nearer, inquisitive and absolutely calm, and saw a young woman in a nightshirt amid the wreckage. Her face – covered in blood, her nose crushed, both legs draped in blood. “What happened here?” he said to himself; “it seems I should know ... , how witless I am today!” He was trying to solve the mystery as coolly as he would an ordinary rebus. In the meantime the girl had begun to move weakly, moaning, but without opening her eyes. Suddenly he felt a cold draft on his head; it was coming from above. He looked up: a hole in the roof; several stars and the silhouette of the cliff peered through the opening. “Well, well, look at that ... ; but I still don’t know anything, though first I should get this injured woman to a doctor.” He grabbed hold of her and then felt his hands somehow sinking disgustingly into her flesh. He looked at his fingers, they were coated with red-brown dust, reeking pungently. “Well, well!” he said to himself calmly, and vigorously squeezed her thigh. It crumbled into lumps of repugnant stuff. And then a dark horror flared within him – at once the moon’s radiance transformed into a windstorm of light that hurtled towards him, intensifying into the most frightful black hurricane, – the silently motionless hurricane of Eternity, and at that moment the woman opened her eyes. – It was Her! ... And a monstrous, ghastly thought thundered in him, a thought from the very heart of insane All-Mystery – a mere waft of this thought could rip apart the pathetic human soul more effectively than a cannon ball could a spider’s web – –
But Sider was not yet destined to quit his second of His Life eternal, to which the microbe calling itself “human being” gives the appellation life. At the last moment an alien, providential power flung his soul out of the reach of the Most Terrible into the sphere of superficiality and blindness that is known as the waking state. He saw the table lamp by his bedside, saw himself in the wall mirror, and he raised his body up from the pillows, his hair standing on end, his face white as the sheets.
•
On the following morning he entered the house. When he closed the front door behind him he stood in complete darkness. He struck a match, nearby was a door; he stood in front of it, listening.
There was a profound silence. Suddenly he felt as though something were churning inside him ... He continued to stand there listlessly – for a long time, for a short time, he didn’t know. Then he heard a weak, very weak rustle from inside, as though made by shuffling steps coming from far off. The rustling grew louder, the steps long drawing near, as though an enormous number of rooms lay concealed behind the door. Overcome with horror, he wanted to flee, when suddenly a dreadful laugh rattled from inside, transfixing him to the spot. And very slowly, like the hands on a clock, the door opened, and just as slowly, a woman holding a burning candle shuffled through it. Her face left him dumbstruck. It seemed to be two hundred years old, as if belonging to a corpse, yet this was not the only thing he found astonishing – –
She shone the light at him, and again the inhuman laugh rattled. “Hoy there, handsome laddie, don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid! I know you, I know why you’ve come, I’ve been expecting you. You’ve come to see the lady in blue, haven’t you, eh, eh?”
“Yes, the one with the two little moles – is She here?”
“She was here, stayed here for a whole week, nice of a lady like that to remember Old Barbora again. She left yesterday, but, hee hee, She left a photograph with a few words for you, wrote them Herself, handsome laddie, wrote them Herself, hee hee!”
“For me? How do you know it’s for me – –”
“Hee hee, She described you to me, though no need to, no need! Even if She hadn’t, I would’ve known! Old Barbora knows everything.”
“Then She is – alive?”
“Hee hee, everything is alive, silly boy! So here you go, take it.”
She took an envelope out of the pocket of her apron and handed it to him. He read his name on it, opened it. The portrait resembled the original, breathtakingly, incredibly, and on the other side he read: “Meet me on Stag’s Head in June! Orea.”
Orea! ... Where had he heard that sweet name before? ... Suddenly he had the feeling that he had
whispered it himself at some point in the past and – it had been here, in this ghastly house . . .
“She loves you, laddie,” the old crone grunted and laughed, “but take care that the tigress doesn’t tear you apart with Her love. You whipped Her brutally, and She hasn’t forgotten, hasn’t forgotten.”
“What are you talking about? When did I –? I did what to Her –? In a dream –?”
“Of course in a dream. Everything’s a dream, hee hee.”
“She wants to take revenge on me?”
“She wants to love you, but She knows She won’t be able to until you’ve been punished, until accounts have been settled between you two. Go now, laddie, you’ve heard enough, go meet your destiny, your destiny, hee hee.”
“Wait! Before I go, can you show me the upper floor?”
“But what’s to see there? The boulders were cleared away long ago, long ago.”
“Boulders? How do you know about them? Am I asleep or have I gone mad?”
“Asleep and mad, laddie, and awake as well, and of sound mind you are! Every human is all that. Now go!” – And very slowly she turned to leave.
“Please, before you leave, tell me, who is this Orea?!” he cried out, grabbing her by the shoulder with one hand and placing a pile of ducats into her palm with the other.
“You ask too much, laddie, too much! Wait three years, then you’ll see! Put away your little flakes of gold! What good are they to me? Hee hee hee!”
With a terrifying sluggishness she trudged back to the chamber. And Sider, his soul transformed into chaos and yet so full of joy, ran out of that darkest night to be dazzled by the full radiance of the morning sun.
He remained standing in front of the house. He could not see, hear, think. For how long? ... Finally he was roused by a blow to the face.
Glorious Nemesis Page 3