by Bill Bowers
“Ah!” said he to me, “how many memories I have of that river you see flowing there near us. You people who live on streets, you don’t know what the river is. But just listen to a fisherman simply pronouncing that word. For him it is the thing mysterious, profound, unknown, the place of mirage and of phantasmagoria, where one sees, at night, things that do not exist, where one hears unfamiliar noises, where one trembles without knowing why, as though crossing a cemetery. And it is, indeed, the most sinister of cemeteries—a cemetery where there are no tombs.
“To the fisherman the land seems limited, but in the dark, when there is no moon, the river seems limitless. A sailor has no such feeling for the sea. She is often hard and wicked, it’s true; but she cries, she screams, she is loyal, the great sea, while the river is silent and treacherous. She never even mutters, she flows always noiselessly, and this eternal movement of flowing water is far more terrifying for me than high seas on the ocean.
“Dreamers claim that the sea hides in her bosom great blue regions where the drowned roll among the great fish, in the midst of strange forests and in crystal grottos. The river has only black depths where one rots in the slime. For all that, she is beautiful when she gleams in the rising sun or washes softly along between her banks covered with murmuring reeds.
“The poet says of the ocean:
Oh seas, you know sad stories!
Deep seas, feared by kneeling mothers,
You tell the stories to one another at flood tides!
And that is why you have such despairing voices
When at night you come towards us nearer and nearer.
“Well, I think that the stories whispered by the slender reeds with their soft little voices must be still more sinister than the gloomy dramas told by the howling of the high seas.
“But, since you ask me for some of my memories, I will tell you a singular adventure which I had here about ten years ago:”
I lived then, as I still do, in the house of the old lady Lafon, and one of my best friends, Louis Bernet, who has now given up his oars to join the civil service, along with his low shoes and his sleeveless jersey, lived in the village of C——, two leagues farther down. We dined together every day—sometimes at his place, sometimes at mine.
One evening as I was returning home alone and rather tired, painfully pulling my heavy boat, a twelve-footer that I always used at night, I stopped for a few seconds to catch my breath near the point where so many reeds grow, down there about two hundred meters before you come to the railroad bridge. The weather was magnificent; the moon was resplendent, the river gleamed, the air was calm and soft. The tranquility of it all tempted me; I told myself that it would be extremely nice to smoke a pipe just here. Action followed the thought; I seized my anchor and threw it into the river.
The boat, which floated down again with the current, pulled the chain out to its full length, then stopped; and I seated myself in the stern on my sheepskin, as comfortable as possible. I heard nothing—nothing; only sometimes I thought I caught a low, almost insensible lapping of water along the bank, and I made out a few clumps of reeds which, taller than most, took on surprising shapes, and seemed from time to time to stir.
The river was perfectly still, but I felt myself moved by the extraordinary silence which surrounded me. All the animals—the frogs and toads, those nocturnal singers of the marshes—were silent. Suddenly on my right, near me, a frog croaked; I started; it fell silent; I heard nothing more, and I resolved to smoke a little by way of distraction. But though I am a regular blackener of pipes, I could not smoke that night; after the second puff I sickened of it and I stopped. I began to hum; the sound of my voice was painful to me; so I stretched myself out in the bottom of the boat and I looked at the sky. For some time I remained quiet, but soon the slight movements of the boat made me uneasy. It seemed to me that it was yawing tremendously, striking now this riverbank, and now the other; then I thought that a being or invisible force was dragging it down gently to the bottom, and then was lifting it up simply to let it fall again. I was tossed about as if in the middle of a storm; I heard noises around me; I sat up with a sudden start; the water gleamed, everything was calm.
I understood that my nerves were unsettled, and I resolved to get out of there. I pulled on my chain; the boat started moving, then I felt resistance; I pulled harder. The anchor did not come up; it had caught on something at the bottom of the river and I could not lift it. I started pulling again—in vain.
So, with my oars I turned the boat upstream to change the position of the anchor. It was no use; it still held. I got angry, and I shook the chain in a rage. Nothing moved. I sat down discouraged and thought about my position. There was no hope of breaking that chain, or of getting it loose from my craft, because it was very heavy, and riveted at the bow into a piece of wood thicker than my arm; but since the weather remained quite nice, I thought that I should doubtless not have to wait long before meeting some fisherman who would come to my rescue. My misadventure had calmed me; I sat down and was finally able to smoke my pipe. I had a flask of brandy with me; I drank two or three glasses, and my situation made me laugh. It was very hot, so that, if need be, I could spend the night under the stars without great inconvenience.
Suddenly a little knock sounded against the side. I shivered, and a cold sweat froze me from head to toe. The noise came, no doubt, from some piece of wood drawn along by the current, but that was enough, and I felt myself again overcome by a strange nervous agitation. I seized my chain, and I stiffened myself in a desperate effort. The anchor held solidly. I sat down, exhausted.
But, little by little, the river had become covered with a very thick white mist, which crept very low over the water, so that, standing up, I could no longer see the stream or my feet or my boat, and saw only the tips of the reeds, and then, beyond them, the plain, all pale in the moonlight, and with great black stains that rose into the sky, and which were made by clumps of Italian poplars. I was as though wrapped to the waist in a cotton sheet of strange whiteness, and there began to come to me fantastic imaginings.
I imagined that someone was trying to climb into my boat, since I could no longer make it out, and that the river, hidden by this opaque mist, must be full of strange beings swimming around me. I experienced a horrible uneasiness, my jaws clenched, my heart beat to the point of suffocation; and, losing my head, I thought of saving myself by swimming; then in an instant the very idea made me shiver with fear. I saw myself, lost, drifting aimlessly in this impenetrable mist, struggling among the grasses and the reeds that I would not be able to avoid, with a rattle in my throat from fear, not seeing the shore, never finding my boat again. And it seemed to me as though I felt myself being drawn by the feet down to the bottom of that black water.
In fact, since I should have had to swim upstream at least five hundred meters before finding a point clear of rushes and reeds, where I could regain my footing, there were nine chances in ten that I should lose my bearings in the fog and drown, however good a swimmer I might be. I tried to reason with myself. I realized that my will was firmly enough resolved to be fearless; but there was something in me besides my will, and this other thing was afraid. I asked myself what it could be that I dreaded; that part of me that was courageous railed at that part of me that was cowardly; and I had never understood so well before the opposition between those two beings which exist within us, the one willing, the other resisting, and each in turn the master.
This stupid and inexplicable fear kept growing until it became terror. I remained motionless, eyes wide open, with a straining and expectant ear. Expecting—what? I did not know, but only that it had to be terrible. I’m sure that if a fish, as often happens, had felt like jumping out of the water, it would have taken only that to make me faint and fall flat on my back.
Finally, by a violent effort, I very nearly recovered the reason which had been escaping me. I again took my brandy flask, and I drank from it in great gulps. Then an idea came to me, and I beg
an to shout with all my might, turning in succession towards all four points of the horizon. When my throat was at last completely paralyzed, I listened. A dog was howling, a long way off.
I drank again; and I stretched out on my back in the bottom of the boat. I stayed that way for an hour, perhaps for two, without sleeping, my eyes wide open, with nightmares all around me. I did not dare to sit up, and yet I had a wild desire to do so; so I kept putting it off from minute to minute. I would say to myself: “Come on! Get up!” and I was afraid to make a move. At last I raised myself with infinite precaution, as if life depended on the slightest sound I might make, and I peered over the edge of the boat.
I was dazzled by the most marvelous, the most astonishing spectacle that it is possible to see. It was one of those phantasmagorias from fairyland, one of those visions told by travelers returning from far away, and which we hear without believing them.
The mist, which two hours before was floating over the water, had little by little withdrawn and piled itself upon the banks. Leaving the river absolutely clear, it had formed, along each shore, long low hills about six or seven meters high, which gleamed beneath the moon with the brilliance of snow, so that one saw nothing except this river of fire between those two white mountains; and up there, high above my head, a great, luminous moon, full and large, glowed in a blue and milky sky.
All the animals of the water had awakened; the bullfrogs croaked furiously, while, from instant to instant, sometimes on my right, sometimes on my left, I heard those short, mournful, sad notes that the brassy voices of the marsh frogs direct at the sky. Strangely enough, I was no longer afraid; I was in the midst of such an extraordinary landscape that the most unusual things could not have astonished me. How long this sight lasted I do not know, because at last I had grown drowsy. When I again opened my eyes the moon had set, the sky was full of clouds. The water lashed mournfully, the wind whispered, it grew cold; the darkness was profound.
I drank all the brandy I had left; then I listened, shivering, to the rustling of the reeds and to the sinister noise of the river. I tried to see, but I could not make out my boat or even my own hands, though I brought them close to my eyes.
Little by little, however, the density of the blackness diminished. Suddenly I thought I felt a shadow slipping along near me; I cried out; a voice replied—it was a fisherman. I hailed him; he approached, and I told him of my misadventure. He pulled his boat alongside, and both of us heaved on the chain. The anchor did not budge. The day was coming on—somber, gray, rainy, cold—one of those days that always bring sorrow and misfortune. I made out another craft; we hailed it. The man aboard joined his efforts to ours, then, little by little, the anchor yielded. It came up, slowly, slowly, and weighted down by something very heavy. At last we made out a black mass, and we pulled it alongside.
It was the corpse of an old woman with a great stone around her neck.
27
The Erl-King
By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
WHO’S RIDING SO LATE WHERE WINDS BLOW WILD
It is the father grasping his child;
He holds the boy embraced in his arm,
He clasps him snugly, he keeps him warm.
“My son, why cover your face in such fear?”
“You see the erl-king, father?
He’s near! The king of the elves with crown and train!”
“My son, the mist is on the plain.”
‘Sweet lad, O come and join me, do!
Such pretty games I will play with you;
On the shore gay flowers their color unfold,
My mother has many garments of gold.’
“My father, my father, and can you not hear
The promise the elf-king breathes in my ear?”
“Be calm, stay calm, my child, lie low:
In withered leaves the night-winds blow.”
‘Will you, sweet lad, come along with me?
My daughters shall care for you tenderly;
In the night my daughters their revelry keep
They’ll rock you and dance you and sing you to sleep.’
“My father, my father, O can you not trace
The elf-king’s daughters in that gloomy place?”
“My son, my son, I see it clear
How grey the ancient willows appear.”
‘I love you, your comeliness charms me, my boy!
And if you’re not willing, my force I’ll employ.’
“Now father, now father, he’s seizing my arm.
Elf-king has done me a cruel harm.”
The father shudders, his ride is wild,
In his arms he’s holding the groaning child,
Reaches the court with toil and dread.
The child he held in his arms was dead.
28
The Body-Snatcher
By Robert Louis Stevenson
EVERY NIGHT IN THE YEAR, FOUR OF US SAT IN THE SMALL PARLOUR OF the George at Debenham—the undertaker, and the landlord, and Fettes, and myself. Sometimes there would be more; but blow high, blow low, come rain or snow or frost, we four would be each planted in his own particular armchair. Fettes was an old drunken Scotchman, a man of education obviously, and a man of some property, since he lived in idleness. He had come to Debenham years ago, while still young, and by a mere continuance of living had grown to be an adopted townsman. His blue camlet cloak was a local antiquity, like the church-spire. His place in the parlour at the George, his absence from church, his old, crapulous, disreputable vices, were all things of course in Debenham. He had some vague Radical opinions and some fleeting infidelities, which he would now and again set forth and emphasise with tottering slaps upon the table. He drank rum—five glasses regularly every evening; and for the greater portion of his nightly visit to the George sat, with his glass in his right hand, in a state of melancholy alcoholic saturation. We called him the Doctor, for he was supposed to have some special knowledge of medicine, and had been known, upon a pinch, to set a fracture or reduce a dislocation; but beyond these slight particulars, we had no knowledge of his character and antecedents.
One dark winter night—it had struck nine some time before the landlord joined us—there was a sick man in the George, a great neighboring proprietor suddenly struck down with apoplexy on his way to Parliament; and the great man’s still greater London doctor had been telegraphed to his bedside. It was the first time that such a thing had happened in Debenham, for the railway was newly open, and we were all proportionately moved by the occurrence.
“He’s come,” said the landlord, after he had filled and lighted his pipe.
“He?” said I. “Who?—not the doctor?”
“Himself,” replied our host.
“What is his name?”
“Dr. Macfarlane,” said the landlord.
Fettes was far through his third tumblers stupidly fuddled, now nodding over, now staring mazily around him; but at the last word he seemed to awaken, and repeated the name “Macfarlane” twice, quietly enough the first time, but with sudden emotion at the second.
“Yes,” said the landlord, “that’s his name, Doctor Wolfe Macfarlane.”
Fettes became instantly sober; his eyes awoke, his voice became clear, loud, and steady, his language forcible and earnest. We were all startled by the transformation, as if a man had risen from the dead.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I am afraid I have not been paying much attention to your talk. Who is this Wolfe Macfarlane?” And then, when he had heard the landlord out, “It cannot be, it cannot be,” he added; “and yet I would like well to see him face to face.”
“Do you know him, Doctor?” asked the undertaker, with a gasp.
“God forbid!” was the reply. “And yet the name is a strange one; it were too much to fancy two. Tell me, landlord, is he old?”
“Well,” said the host, “he’s not a young man, to be sure, and his hair is white; but he looks younger than you.”
“He is older, thou
gh; years older. But,” with a slap upon the table, “it’s the rum you see in my face—rum and sin. This man, perhaps, may have an easy conscience and a good digestion. Conscience! Hear me speak. You would think I was some good, old, decent Christian, would you not? But no, not I; I never canted. Voltaire might have canted if he’d stood in my shoes; but the brains”—with a rattling fillip on his bald head— “the brains were clear and active, and I saw and made no deductions.”
“If you know this doctor,” I ventured to remark, after a somewhat awful pause, “I should gather that you do not share the landlord’s good opinion.”
Fettes paid no regard to me.
“Yes,” he said, with sudden decision, “I must see him face to face.”
There was another pause, and then a door was closed rather sharply on the first floor, and a step was heard upon the stair.
“That’s the doctor,” cried the landlord. “Look sharp, and you can catch him.”
It was but two steps from the small parlour to the door of the old George Inn; the wide oak staircase landed almost in the street; there was room for a Turkey rug and nothing more between the threshold and the last round of the descent; but this little space was every evening brilliantly lit up, not only by the light upon the stair and the great signal-lamp below the sign, but by the warm radiance of the barroom window. The George thus brightly advertised itself to passers-by in the cold street. Fettes walked steadily to the spot, and we, who were hanging behind, beheld the two men meet, as one of them had phrased it, face to face. Dr. Macfarlane was alert and vigorous. His white hair set off his pale and placid, though energetic, countenance. He was richly dressed in the finest of broadcloth and the whitest of linen, with a great gold watch-chain, and studs and spectacles of the same precious material. He wore a broad-folded tie, white and speckled with lilac, and he carried on his arm a comfortable driving-coat of fur. There was no doubt but he became his years, breathing, as he did, of wealth and consideration; and it was a surprising contrast to see our parlour sot—bald, dirty, pimpled, and robed in his old camlet cloak—confront him at the bottom of the stairs.
