Szygon raised himself from the cushions, straightening up to his full imposing height.
‘And what figure did your symbol assume, if its possible to know?’ he hissed in a choked, strange voice.
‘Ha, ha, ha! The figure of a genius of motion. A huge, swarthy young man balanced on extended raven wings, surrounded by a swirling, frenzied dance of planets – a demon of interplanetary gales, interstellar moon blizzards, wonderful, maddeningly hurling comets, comets and more comets … .’
‘You’re lying!’ Szygon roared, throwing himself toward the speaker. ‘You’re lying like a dog.’
The ‘station-master’ curled up, diminished in size, and vanished through the keyhole. Almost at the same moment the compartment door opened, and the disappearing intruder merged into the figure of the conductor, who was at the threshold. The conductor looked at the perturbed passenger with a mocking smile and began to hand him a ticket:
‘Your ticket is ready; the price, including the fine, is 200 francs.’
But his smile was his ruin. Before he got a chance to figure out what was happening, some hand, strong like destiny, grabbed him by the chest and pulled him inside. A desperate cry for help was heard, then the cracking of bones. A dull silence followed.
After a moment, a large shadow moved along the windows of an empty corridor and toward the exit. Somebody opened the coach door and pulled the alarm signal. The train began to brake abruptly … .
The dark figure hurried down a couple of steps, leaned in the direction the train was moving, and with one leap jumped between roadside thickets glowing in the dawn light … .
The train halted. The uneasy crew searched for a long time for the person who pulled the alarm; it wasn’t known from which coach the signal had come. Finally the conductors noticed the absence of one of their colleagues. ‘Coach No. 532!’ They rushed into the corridor and began to search through the cubicles. They found them empty, until in the last one, a first-class compartment at the end, they found the body of the unfortunate man. Some type of titanic force had twisted his head in such a hellish manner that his eyes had popped out of their sockets and were gazing at his own chest. In the plucked whites, the morning sun played a cruel smile … .
THE AREA
For more than twelve years Wrzesmian had not written a word. After publishing in 1900 the fourth in his series of original, insanely strange works, he became silent and irrevocably removed himself from the public eye. From that time on he didn’t touch his pen, he didn’t even express himself with a trivial verse. He wasn’t wrested from silence by his friends’ urgings, nor was he stirred by the attentive voices of critics who speculated about a forthcoming work of epic proportions. These anticipations passed, and nothing was heard from Wrzesmian.
Slowly an obvious conclusion, as bright and clear as the sun, began to form concerning him: he had exhausted himself prematurely. ‘Yes, yes,’ the heads of the literati sadly nodded, ‘he wrote too much too soon. He didn’t understand the economy of production; he touched on a few too many issues in one work. He actually offended with an overabundance of ideas, which, compressed into dense summaries, weighed down the forceful material. The potion was too strong; it deserved, rather, to be given in smaller, diluted doses. He damaged his own reputation: he ran out of things to say.’
These judgements reached Wrzesmian, but they did not elicit the slightest response. Consequently, his speedy impoverishment was believed in, and the world paid him no heed. Besides, new talents emerged, new figures appeared on the horizon. Finally he was left in peace.
And, indeed, the majority of people were glad with this turn of events. Wrzesmian wasn’t too popular. The works of this strange man, saturated with rampant fantasy and imbued with strong individualism, gave a most unfavourable impression by inverting accepted aesthetic-literary theories and by mocking established pseudo-truths. His output was eventually acknowledged as the product of a sick imagination, the bizarre work of an eccentric, maybe even a madman. Wrzesmian was an inconvenience for a variety of reasons, and he disturbed unnecessarily, stirring peaceful waters. Thus his premature eclipse was received with a secret sigh of relief.
And no one supposed even for a moment that the cause of his withdrawal from the public eye was not the loss of his literary powers. Wrzesmian, however, was utterly indifferent as to what was, or would be, said about him. He considered the whole affair personal and private, and never thought of extricating himself from people’s mistaken opinion.
And why should he? If what he wished for would realize itself, the future would reveal the truth and burst the hardened shell he had been sealed in; but if his dreams did not come true, he would be less than convincing and would expose himself only to ridicule. Thus it was better to wait and be silent.
For Wrzesmian was not lacking in breath and force but was instead seized with new desires. He wanted to attain better means of expression, and he began to aim for something creative that would prove far more significant and authentic. Already the written word was not enough for him: he was searching for something more direct, he was seeking greater artistic material to fulfil his ideas.
The situation was so tied up with this, and his dreams were so impractical, that the path of creation he was treading departed far from the beaten track.
Ultimately most works of art revolve, more or less, in a realistic sphere, reproducing or transforming the sights of life. Events, though fabricated, are only its analogy, intensified, admittedly, through exaltation or pathos, and therefore possible at some moment in time. Similar scenes might have once occurred in reality, they may be realized sometime in the future, nothing prevents a belief in their possibility – reason doesn’t rebel against feasible artistic creations. Even most works of fantasy do not exclude probable realization, unless they show an inclination toward pranks or the heedless smirk of a skilful juggler.
But in Wrzesmian’s case the matter presented itself a little differently. The whole of his strange, enigmatic work was one great fiction. In vain had the pack of critics, as cunning as foxes, laboured in search of so-called ‘literary influences,’ ‘analogies,’ ‘foreign strains’ that would, even if roughly, give a clue to the impenetrable castle of Wrzesmian’s poetry; in vain had shrewd reviewers run for help to learned psychiatric experts, sifted through all manner of writings, immersed themselves in encyclopedias: the writings of Wrzesmian emerged triumphant over successful interpretation, even more mysterious, bewildering and dangerous than before. A gloomy spell exuded from them, an alluring, vertiginous, bone-chilling depth.
Despite their total fantasy, never once touching reality, Wrzesmian’s writings jolted, puzzled and amazed: people never dared to venture past them with just a shrug of the shoulders. Something resided in these short and dense works that riveted the attention and fettered the soul; a powerful suggestion arose from these incisive compendium-like works – written in such a seemingly cold style, as if a reporter’s or a teacher’s – under which pulsated the fervour of a fanatic.
For Wrzesmian had believed in what he had been writing; for he had acquired as time went on the firm conviction that any thought, even the most audacious, that any fiction, even the most insane, can one day materialize and see its fulfilment in space and time.
‘No person thinks in vain; no thought, even the strangest, disappears fruitlessly,’ he used to repeat many times to his circle of friends and acquaintances.
And it seemed that it was precisely this belief in the materialization of fiction that caused a hidden flame to flow through the arteries of his works, for despite their apparent coldness, they penetrated to the core … .
But he was never satisfied. Like every creative artist, he was constantly seeking new means of expression and ever more distinct symbols that would represent his thoughts in the best possible manner. Finally he had abandoned the written word, scorning language as a too crude form of expression, and began to yearn for something more direct that would artistically and tangibly outdistance all t
hat had gone before. It was not silence he sought – the ‘resting of the word’ of the symbolists; that was for him too pale, too nebulous – and lacking in sincerity. He wanted something else.
What that something would be, he didn’t precisely know, but he firmly believed in its possibility. A few facts garnered while he still wrote and published had strengthened this belief. He had convinced himself even then that despite the imaginary character of his creations, they possessed a particular energy that could flow out into the world. The crazy thoughts of Wrzesmian, coming out from the incandescent content of his work, seemed to have had a fertilizing-like power, and he saw their manifestations flare up unexpectedly in the acts and gestures of certain individuals, in the course of certain events.
But even this had not been enough. He desired creative realizations that would be completely independent of the laws of reality, realizations that would be as free as their source – fiction; and as free as their origin – dreams. This would be the ideal – the highest achievement, a complete, full expression without a shadow of insufficiency … .
Wrzesmian understood, however, that such an achievement might result in his own annihilation. Absolute fulfillment would also be a complete release of one’s energy, causing death through a surfeit of artistic exertion. Because the ideal, as is known, is in death. A work overwhelms the author with its weight. Thoughts fully realized can become threatening and vengeful, especially thoughts that are insane. Left alone, without a point of support on a real base, they can be fatal to their creator.
Wrzesmian had a presentiment of this eventuality, but he wasn’t swayed, nor frightened. His desire dominated everything else … .
Meanwhile the years went silently by without eliciting the materializations he longed for. Wrzesmian completely estranged himself from the world, taking up solitary residence at the outskirts of the city in a street that looked onto open fields. Here, enclosed in his two small rooms, cut off from society, he spent months and years in reading and contemplation. He slowly restricted himself to ever diminishing contact with daily life, to which he paid only minimal, unavoidable tribute. Besides, he was totally absorbed in himself, in his dreams and in longing for their fulfilment. His ideas, not projected on paper as before, took on strength and vitality; they grew through non-expression of their contents. Sometimes it seemed to him that his thoughts were not abstractions but something rich and substantial, that he could just about reach out and grasp them. But the illusion quickly blew away, leaving in its place only bitter disappointment.
Yet he didn’t lose heart. In order not to be too distracted by the sights of the outside world, he limited the scope of his perceptions, which constantly seen without change, day after day, gradually entered through the years into the well-knit circle of his ideas and became commensurate with their terrain. Eventually these perceptions merged with the world of his dreams into one particular area.
Thus, imperceptibly, some unreachable habitat was formed, some secret oasis to which no one had access except Wrzesmian, king of this unseen world. This milieu, imbued with the ego of the dreamer, appeared to the uninitiated as a simple place in space; people could only perceive its exterior, physical existence – but the internal pulsations of fermenting thoughts, the subtle connection these had with Wrzesmian’s own person, they failed to sense … .
By odd chance the place enveloped by the mind of the dreamer, and the one he transformed into the area of his dreams, was not his home. The oasis of his fiction arose opposite his windows, on the other side of his street, in the form of a two-storied villa.
The gloomy elegance of the house captivated him from the first moment he had occupied his new abode. At the end of a black double row of cypresses, their two lines containing a stone pathway, appeared a several-stepped terrace where a weighty, stylized double door led to the interior. Across the iron railing that surrounded the mansion, the wings of the house were losing colour. Sickly and sad walls, coated with a pale-greenish paint, peered out from inside. From underneath the garden, treacherously concealed humidity crawled out here and there with dark oozing. Once carefully cultivated flowers had with time lost the orderliness of their arrangement. Only two eternal fountains quietly wept, shedding water from marble basins onto clusters of rich, red roses. Only a muscular Triton on the left side continually raised his hand in the same gesture of greeting to a limber Harpy who, leaning from a marble cistern on the other side, enticed him for many years with the lure of a divine body; in vain, because they were separated by the mournful cypresses … .
The celadon villa gave the impression of dismal loneliness, abandoned by its inhabitants a long time ago and isolated from neighbouring buildings. It ended the street; there were no other houses beyond it – only wide bands of marshy meadows, fallows, and, in the distance, beech woods that turned black during winter and a rust-colour during autumn … .
No one had been living in the villa for a number of years. The owner, a wealthy aristocrat, had long since gone abroad, leaving the house without a caretaker.
Thus it stood neglected in the middle of the overgrown garden, wasted away by corrosive rain and crumbling under the malice of winds and winter blizzards.
The dreary spell that blew from this retreat stirred Wrzesmian’s soul. The villa was for him an architectural embodiment of the mood which pervaded his work; gazing intently on it, he felt as if he were in his own home.
That is why he spent entire hours by his window, resting on the frame and casting his musing eyes in the direction of that sad house. He especially liked to observe on lunar nights the effects evoked on the fantastic retreat by the moon’s light. Night-time, in fact, seemed to be its real element. During the day the villa was dormant as if in lifeless sleep. The magic hidden in its mysterious interior appeared in its entirety only after the setting of the sun. Then the house came back to life. Some intangible tremor coursed through the sleeping hermitage, shook the cypresses solidified in mourning, rippled weathered pediments and friezes … .
Wrzesmian watched and lived the life of the house. Precise thoughts were awakened within him, harmonious with the scenery across the street; pathetic tragedies were born, as strong as death, as menacing as fate; then again, some vague thoughts loomed, dimmed as if by the moon’s silver patina.
Every recess became a sensory counterpart to a fiction, a material realization of thoughts that clung onto ledges, roamed about forlorn rooms, wept on terrace steps. Jumbled crazy dreams and hazy imaginings roved in fluid dispersion and wandered along walls, uncertain of support. But even these found a haven. Irritated by the capriciousness of their movement, the imagination thrust them away with contempt, so that, frightened, they flowed down in filmy streams into a large moss-grown vat at the corner of the house, moving into its black body somnolently, torpidly, like rain on autumn days. Faint, rusty thoughts, slightly acidic … .
Wrzesmian got drunk with the gloomy frolics of these fantasies, letting their creations run loose. According to his whim he changed their direction or drove them away from sight, in the next moment conjuring up replacements … .
No one bothered him. The secluded street in the distant quarter of the city was not disturbed by any inopportune intruder; no noisy cart interrupted the atmosphere.
Thus he had spent the last several years – years untouched by the outside, but full of menace and marvels from within.
Until suddenly one day some changes occurred in the house across the street, instantly stopping the fantasies that had already started to adopt forms set by habit and practice.
It happened one fine July evening. Sitting, as usual, by an open window, his head propped up by his hand, Wrzesmian had been sweeping a meditative glance about the villa and the garden. All of a sudden, looking into one of the windows in a wing of the house, he shuddered. By the windowpane, gazing stubbornly at him, was the pale face of a man. The unmoving gaze of the strange stare was sinister. Wrzesmian became seized with a vague dread. He rubbed his eyes, walked about his r
oom a couple of times, and looked again at the window: the severe face had not disappeared, but continued to stare in his direction.
‘Has the owner of the villa returned?’ Wrzesmian threw out the feeble supposition in an undertone.
In answer, a sarcastic smile twisted the features of the dreary mask. Wrzesmian pulled down the blind and lit up his home: he couldn’t endure the gaze any longer.
To obliterate these impressions he immersed himself in reading until midnight. At twelve he wearily raised himself from a book, and drawn by an overpowering temptation, he lifted the edge of the blind to peek out of the window. And again a shudder of fear chilled him to the bone: the pale man was still there, standing motionless by the window in the right wing. Illuminated by the bright magnesium shine of the moon, he paralyzed Wrzesmian with his gaze. Uneasy, Wrzesmian returned the blind to its position and tried to fall asleep. In vain. His imagination, imbued with dread, tormented him terribly. It was already morning before he finally fell into a short, nervous sleep, and even then it was one full of nightmares and visions. When he woke up around noon, with a giddy head, his first thought was to look at the villa’s windows. He breathed a sigh of relief: the obstinate face was gone.
Throughout the day there was peace. But at evening he saw, by a window on the first floor, the mask of a woman staring at him, her streaming hair bordering a face already withered but with traces of her former beauty, a face maddened by a pair of wild, intense eyes. And she was looking at him through frenzied pupils with the same severe gaze as her companion from the right wing. Both seemed unaware of their coexistence in the strange house. They were joined only by their menacing gesture directed toward Wrzesmian … .
And again after a sleepless night, interrupted by looking at his persecutors, a day free of masks followed. But as soon as dusk was entering into its secret conspiracy with the night, a third new figure appeared by another window and it also did not retreat until dawn. In the space of several days all the windows of the villa were filled up with sinister faces. From behind every window looked out a pair of despairing eyes, or ovals marked with suffering and madness. The house gazed at him with the eyes of maniacs, the grimace of lunatics; it grinned toward him with the smile of the demented. Not one of these people had he seen in his life, and yet all of them were somehow known to him. But he knew not from where. Each one of them had a different expression, but all were united in their threatening demeanour; apparently he was considered a common enemy. Their hatred was terrifying, yet mesmerizing. And, strangely enough, in the deepest layers of his mind, he understood their anger and acknowledged its justness.
The Dark Domain Page 4
