Glorious Nemesis

by Klima, Ladislav

  “Loony! Idiot! Nitwit!” only now he heard the shouting of the boys forming a wide circle around him. One of them had just struck him in the head with a ball of horse dung. –

  “Was this all a dream again, as in the night?” he said to himself as he was being driven away in a hackney cab where he had found refuge from the raucous horde of pygmies hounding him. “Oh, will I ever know? But – even so – good God! ...”

  Never in his life had he been in such an agitated state as now when he put his hand into his breast pocket. “It won’t be there, I’m certain of that!” he whispered to himself through chattering teeth ... Never in his life had he done anything as slowly as now, as he opened his billfold – –

  He yelled out so loudly that the coachman turned around in the driver’s box ... The staggering beauty of the perfect portrait thundered towards him; he had the distinctly ghastly impression that the real Orea was sitting opposite him. And he kissed, kissed Her sharp, most peculiar handwriting ...

  “She is alive! It was real!” he exulted with joy as they drove through increasingly lively streets. “Finally I have proof! Something real from Her! ... But am I not dreaming even now? Yet – nonsense, to think I can’t distinguish my current state of mind from a dream? It would be easier to mistake that cat over there for a zither!” He took out the portrait once more. “I still have it! – And having it means I’m richer than all the kings in the world! Oh, with this picture and this handwriting I’ll be happy forever! ... She lives! And She loves me ... All the horrid strangeness of this my tale of romance makes it all the more beautiful and beguiling. Who can boast of such a fantastical, poetic Romance as mine? ... All that is murky will be illuminated in June ... Today is just the 23rd of May – I can’t wait ... I can’t bear all this happiness ... All is good and beautiful. To Cortona, Orea, my dear Orea! – –”

  4

  On the first of June at two o’clock in the afternoon Sider was already disembarking from the train at the station in Cortona. It was one of those rare, ghastly days at the end of an ageing spring when the entire sky is covered by a single dense cloud, not thick enough to completely obscure the sun, not thin enough to allow it even a faint radiance; the sun appeared like a slightly brighter cloud. The sky a desert, the earth, a hue indescribably hideous, a desert, everything solemnly, sultrily, chokingly, appallingly dead. Awful in the plains, even more awful is such a day in the mountains.

  “Brr, what a pleasant welcome from Stag’s Head,” he shivered “it glares at me like the corpse of someone who’s died of horror. What is it saying to me today? ... What monstrosity has flown so chillingly from it into my soul?” He had an inexplicable feeling that the joy of the previous days had evaporated, that permanent dread and misfortune would take its place, that he was standing on the threshold of a new era.

  He checked into a hotel. Tired from the journey, he lay down and fell asleep. He did not wake until nightfall, his mood subdued and chaotic.

  “Today – I’ll just go to the garden restaurant,” he decided. “Tomorrow – I’ll call on the black house in the ravine. And the day after – Stag’s Head. Yes, that’s the plan.”

  In the garden he caught sight of the doctor from Cortona with whom he’d conversed on several occasions during his stay the previous year, an intelligent man – with that specific intelligence of doctors that, in its most important respects, is closer to idiocy than even the most extreme obtuseness – and somewhat of a pig. Sider sat down at his table; the doctor was drinking heavily and diligently, enjoying the company of his own corpulence, and he immediately diverted the conversation to the only theme that interested him.

  “Today I have some news for you,” said the doctor, “for over a year now Mrs Errata S. has been interned in a lunatic asylum.” He named the town it was in.

  Something made Sider shudder. A foreboding that a similar fate awaited him? The sense that his destiny was mystically bound up with hers? Or compassion and love? Errata was never indifferent to him, and even though his feelings towards her could not be compared to his love for Orea, there had been moments in the past when he had felt that his love for her exceeded even that for the woman whose portrait he now carried in his breast pocket.

  “Really? ... Could you give me any more details? Please!”

  “Several months ago I received an official letter from the psychiatrist there,” the doctor said and spat, “who is treating her. He requested I give him a medical report on her mental state. That deranged woman had told him that she’d had several consultations with me twelve years ago about her ‘nervous disposition,’ and she said that’s when her mental illness started. I wrote back that Mrs S. suffers from dementia praecox, but this psychiatrist person did not agree with me, the idiot, and let me know, between the lines, that the one suffering from dementia praecox is more likely to be I than she. Such is the nature of some of those in our field of science, pooh!” and he poured a large glass down his throat.

  “Her illness originated back then? Could you tell me anything else about it?”

  “According to my dear colleague, the cretin, the cause is that this woman fell head-over-heels in love with some other female individual, but the love affair was, ha ha, most ill-fated, because the terror Mrs Errata felt for her idol outweighed any erotic pleasure she derived. But this is all nothing more than symptoms of dementia praecox, even a cretin like that should be able to see as much.”

  “Has Errata had relations with her beloved since the time they were seen together here?”

  “How should I know, my boy? Well in fact – that idiot – ahem, said that she often saw her in ha– hallucinations. And that’s just the dementia praecox again. Yes – and well – yes, she talked often about you, too. Perhaps she fell in love with you, ha ha, you can go there and marry her.”

  “Do you know anything more about the other one?”

  “What could I know, my boy? But I know everything. Hmm, what was it I wanted to ... people talk a lot about her round here, but it’s all just old wives’ tales. They say she’s a –”

  “Doctor, Doctor,” shrieked a woman running towards them, “I beg you to come with me, quickly, my husband is dying, he fell off a cliff and his head’s completely broken!”

  “To hell with it!” the doctor muttered, reaching slowly for his glass. “One doesn’t get a moment’s respite! What an idea, falling off a cliff. And so late in the evening! Why couldn’t he wait till morning to have his bit of fun?” He slowly emptied his glass. “I bet he was drunk, wasn’t he?”

  “Oh no, Doctor, for God’s sake please hurry, maybe his life can still be saved –”

  “Let go of my sleeve – you – you unsavoury person – I – what was it I wanted? Hey, waiter, my bill – tally up what I owe for today – no, for the whole week!” Standing up, he staggered noticeably. “I’m – damn it –”

  Sider tossed a few gold coins on the table. “I’m paying – does that cover it?” He took hold of the doctor under his arm. “Let’s go, quickly, I’ll accompany you. I might be of some assistance – I studied medicine for a time.”

  “You – medicine, a cretin like you? Ha!”

  He listed so much that Sider only just managed to keep his heavy body upright as he dragged him towards the exit.

  “Could you,” he made a final attempt to exploit the situation, “tell me in one word what the locals say about the mysterious lady?”

  “A tramp is what! And a hallucination to boot, that is, a nexus – actually a pexus polaris, solaris in fact, – damn it all, I’ve forgotten everything, dementia praecox. Gaudeamus igitur –” he started shouting. Extricating himself from Sider’s grasp, he staggered and fell flat on his face with an almighty crash.

  Sider went off on his own with the whimpering woman to tend to the injured man. He was already dead.

  •

  The night was a long string of dreadful, hellish dreams. In the morning rain fell from a dark sky. At around ten o’clock Sider set out for the ravine. He was in
a pathologically gloomy and agitated mood, almost to the point of skittishness. The previous day’s conversation had left him with a vague feeling of horror, for which he could not satisfactorily account. “After all, that drunkard didn’t tell me anything specific, besides the valuable information of Errata’s whereabouts. Of Orea I know as little as ever. But he’ll tell me the rest tonight – a doctor surely cannot be as drunk as that day in, day out.”

  On seeing the black cottage, its similarity to the house in Cliff Street, not the similarity of a twin, but that of a double, again sent a shudder through him. But here the cliff loomed directly above the house – a boulder weighing several tons threatened to fall straight down on it at any moment. “I would not want to live here.” He shuddered again. It required a great surge of will for him to enter.

  This time he left the door open behind him. He saw the same hallway he’d seen before in the light of Barbora’s candle. Even the door on the right was in the same place.

  He stood there. He did not dare knock on the door. Silence, only the soft murmur of the rain and the increasing pounding of his heart . . . “Will I again hear steps as if coming from rooms infinitely distant, maniacally shuffling closer and closer and closer? ...”

  No. Suddenly the door opened slightly – an old woman ... In some respects she resembled Barbora, but it wasn’t her, neither her features, nor her age. Although she was very old, in her nineties by all appearances – she had nothing of the paradoxical, transcendentally animated deathliness of the old crone from Cliff Street.

  “What do you want?” she asked in a voice that was still quite sonorous.

  “Excuse me, what? Oh – yes, do you have a room to let?”

  “Yes, yes, and not one, but two. No one wants to stay here, would you have the courage?”

  “Why courage?”

  “Because they say the place is haunted. And because that cliff looms right over the house. But we’re not afraid, what do old people have to fear?”

  “Who else lives here besides you?”

  “My mother.”

  “You still have – a mother?”

  “Yes I do, one of God’s miracles it is. I don’t know what she did wrong that God is taking so long to call her to Him. She’s one hundred and thirty seven years old and I’m –”

  “May I see her?”

  “Well, if you really want to. But I wouldn’t advise it, you’ll be seeing her in your dreams for years to come. She’s been bedridden for twenty years now, she can’t move, she’s blind, deaf, and doesn’t talk, her throat just rattles the whole time. She simply won’t die.”

  “Take me to her!”

  She led him through the kitchen into the adjoining room, dark as nightfall. There Sider beheld – – his acquaintance from Cliff Street. She seemed to him even more horrible than before; he very nearly fainted.

  Her blind eyes were fixed glassily on the ceiling, a quiet and dreadful rattle issuing without interruption from her gaping mouth . . . slowly gaining in strength, starting to resemble words – and suddenly, this was distinctly audible:

  “Have you finally come, you devil’s spawn? I’ve held on long enough to cross paths with you again, ha ha, ha ha! Be cursed, cursed, you dirty bleeding cur!”

  “Jesus Christ, she’s talking again after twenty years,” the daughter clasped her hands together.

  “Why are you cursing me?” he inquired frantically, yet firmly.

  “She can’t hear.”

  “Because you killed my daughter, you scoundrel of scoundrels, my sweet child whom I suckled. I’ve been waiting for you, I’ve waited a long time, finally I get to set eyes on you again. Be forever cursed, you Satan’s miscarriage! Hah, death is already hurrying towards you, black is God’s judgement! You will be crushed, crushed like her, my dear daughter –”

  While uttering these words in an unnaturally powerful voice, she lurched violently, her body – no, a mere skeleton – raised itself up and then fell back again with a terrible rasping ...

  “A miracle!” her daughter dropped to her knees. “She hasn’t moved her arms or spoken in twenty years, she’s blind – and now before you – You, you are a murderer, go away!”

  “What daughter were you talking about? I know nothing! Speak!” he said in a voice that was so commanding he almost blacked out from the effort.

  Silence.

  “Was it you who gave me the portrait of Orea in Cliff Street?”

  Silence. “For God’s sake, she’s not rasping any more – she must have died!” screamed the daughter – she leaned over the bed. “She’s no longer breathing!” she shrieked in a strange voice. “You murdered her, just like you did the other, you cutthroat! – Oh, my beloved mummy!” she howled unnaturally after a while.

  “What ‘other’? I haven’t a clue ...”

  “Nor do I, but Mummy knew! God spoke through her! Get away from here, you Belial! Help, murderer!”

  Reeling, Sider ran outside. “Murderer, murderer!” she screeched after him. “He killed my mother! Catch the murderer!”

  But the black cottage stood on its own, the nearby lane devoid of people ... Eventually Sider was no longer pursued by the old woman’s cries.

  He ran around Cortona aimlessly for some time before he was able to think more clearly. “Diabolical! Incredible! I feel as if I’m becoming more and more susceptible to the old crone’s belief that I’m in the clutches of some infernal power ... I’m beginning to feel genuine fear – and – now I really feel like – putting all this behind me and leaving this accursed nest at once. But – no! That would be cravenly rash! –”

  Still he dithered. It was not his decisiveness that led to a decision.

  He soon became aware that everywhere little groups of people were forming, talking excitedly. He heard the words: “Murder – Old Barbora – strangled – murderer – unknown foreigner – the police and gendarmes are now searching –”

  Initially Sider found it ludicrous. But that soon passed. “Damn it all, surely I’ll be arrested if they catch me now. They’d soon release me – but is that so certain? Everyone knows how the courts work. Who knows how long I’d have to spend in custody. What’s more – hasn’t judicial murder been committed on many an occasion? ... The most sensible thing to do is flee as quickly as possible. But Orea? ... I can make my way back here again – June is long. If I were to be imprisoned for longer, wouldn’t that make it impossible for me to meet Her? Yes! I’ll cross the border, wait until I see the newspapers report that the old woman died of natural causes, and then I’ll return. I’d be certifiably insane to view that as cowardice.” He looked at his watch. “A train is leaving in ten minutes. Excellent. I must hurry!”

  He rushed to the hotel. Since he’d not yet unpacked his luggage he could leave without delay. The clusters of people he met on the way to the station were increasingly numerous and agitated. He, too, was extremely vexed, but since it was now in no way metaphysical this had a salutary effect on him. He caught the train on time, departed in a good mood, and happily crossed the nearby border. For the time being he was safe.

  •

  The mental institution where Errata was interned was near the border crossing. “I’ll go there first,” he decided. “I’ll visit her and at the same time wait there for news from Cortona. I’ll be killing two birds with one stone.”

  On 4 June the asylum administrators informed him that Errata was incurably mentally ill, that although her mania every now and then manifested lucida intervalla, she would often erupt into fits of rage, that the primary cause was a “poor upbringing” by eccentric parents who had inculcated her with superstitious beliefs from an early age, and that it was absolutely impossible for him to speak with her.

  A few gold coins placed in the palm of one of the orderlies naturally made the absolutely impossible possible. And on that very day Sider entered Errata’s cell.

  She was sitting in an armchair that had been nailed to the floor, her hands bound together with rope. She was staring catato
nically at the ceiling; she did not look over at Sider. His initial thought was that he’d been taken to the wrong patient. At first glance, the formerly beautiful young lady looked almost like an old woman. Her cheeks were terribly emaciated, furrowed not so much with wrinkles as with suffering, their whiteness having turned sallow – like snow in late spring; her eyes had become dull and shifty at the same time, constantly moving in a ghastly manner. Most of her hair had gone white. Yet upon closer examination he recognised her, and tenderness suffused his soul with warmth; despite everything she was still tantalisingly alluring, perhaps even more so than before, idealised by great suffering.

  “My gracious lady,” he began. The orderly was still standing behind him.

  She looked at him, the lines on her face began to convulse, the ropes on her wrists strained, and she burst into something that at first seemed like cachinnation, but then – became a horror-stricken roar.

  “Sir – it’s no use, let’s go,” the orderly took hold of his sleeve. “I’m – whatchamacallit – responsible –”

  “Who might you be,” cried the bound woman, “are you my beloved, or – a ghost? No, you are my love, you shall liberate me from the clutches of these louts,” – she sobbed and raised her elbow to her eyes ... – “No, you are a ghost, for the love of Christ and Mary! You, thug, throw this man out, he’s nothing more than a phantom!”

  “Leave us,” said Sider commandingly, and gold sparkled in the palm of the orderly. He left.

  Sider cut Errata’s restraints. She remained seated without moving for a long time before springing up and joyfully draping her arms around Sider’s neck. “You’re my saviour, you will save me from them and from – Her! ... You have no idea of the suffering I’ve endured! I’m not afraid of hell, I’ve been there, I am there! Darling, I’m not a madwoman, I’m just losing my mind a little. These louts are the ones who really drove me mad. Although I was already deranged before I came here, it was only in my emotions, not in my intellect. Despair was causing me to lose my mind, my entire soul was fluttering like a flame in a storm, but I swear to you that my thoughts never became unhinged. I never thought I was a grain of wheat, nor do I think that now, unlike one particular scholar who never set foot on the street for fear of being pecked at by pigeons, and only that is true insanity. I have started to confuse certain concepts at times, but usually I’m in so much control of my faculties it surprises me, given all they’ve done to me. They held me prisoner, tied me up, flogged me until I bled, gave me ice-cold showers – hunger, inactivity, and what’s worst, their stupid drivel, theories, experiments. But now I feel the hour of salvation has arrived. O my beloved, is it you, you from the garden that Sunday? I fell in love with you then, just a little, hee hee hee.”