Berkeley’s shoulders press against mine; he turns his head slightly to me. “Bon chance, shop boy.”
“One, two—”
We step out; the last scene of the comedy begins, an historic performance. We are burying Man as an individual. Our farce has the absurd motives of artificial honor, but at least each of us completes and understands the whole violence as the will of an individual. The conflicts to come will employ more and more men who understand less and less of what they do until they are drugged numb by the very proliferation and banality of horrors.
“Eleven, twelve—”
To us, freedom has an elitist meaning. To that coming mass, it will be a terror. When men walk stultified through obscenities, the last thing their atrophied souls will want is to control, to assert, to understand. As the horror grows they will hurl their missiles from farther and farther away. As the crime grows, the artificial innocence must be greater until, one day, there will not be enough distance to purchase detachment at any price.
“Nineteen, twenty.”
Is death so frightening that we must labor to make it meaningless? We are near extinct, Berkeley, having still shoulders to bear the burden of being individuals, of declaring ourselves, first and last, responsible. Neither of us deserves tomorrow.
“Turn!”
We whirl in upon each other like dancers, the last of an age. Berkeley’s arm comes down in mirror movement to mine. He is slim and erect before me. We are beautiful, two Greek columns, proud but past. In the wine-sweet morning the two shots merge into one explosion.
My God . . . he missed.
The pistol bucked so hard in my hand, surely my shot would have gone wild. But Berkeley staggers and sinks to his knees. Instantly Hampton and the doctor are at him, opening the black coat. Rijn runs to me, tearful with relief.
“God be praised, I need not send those letters. It is over.”
But I am hurrying toward Berkeley. There is a spreading stain on his shirt just under the heart. I kneel beside him, feeling that there has been, somehow, an unimaginable mistake that must be set right. Berkeley’s gaze is fixed somewhere beyond me, his lips moving silently.
“Hampton, how could he miss?”
“You fool! He meant to.”
The doctor opens Berkeley’s shirt to reveal the smallish wound and the larger discoloration around it. “It is very close to the heart. There is internal hemorrhaging. I am afraid . . .”
Hampton sobs over the head cradled in his arms, strangled with grief and bewilderment. “You have freed him. Harry, is it enough this time? Have you found it? Oh, Flagg, if you knew how he sought this! Let it not be on your conscience. You have shown him mercy.”
“Red Fox Leader to Red Fox Four . . .”
“He pursued death as this demon pursued him—”
“Red Fox Four . . .”
“—as if there were no God left in the world.”
“Be still!” I bend close to Berkeley as the pattering, fevered whisper rises to an audible voice. His head moves sharply from side to side, not in delirium but searching and alert. I have seen that look before: just before he struck me in the Anglo Club. Saylors had it after a month on the Ploesti run.
The doctor closes his bag. “A matter of moments. It will not help to move him.”
“Red Fox Leader!” The voice is clear and unemotional, the accent still recognizably Oxfordian but clipped and subtly shaded with overtones Hampton will not live long enough to hear spoken in London.
“Red Fox Leader to Red Fox Four, do you read me, Richard? Take the flight. No, I can’t bail out. Bloody flak got my chute . . . a piece of me too, I’m afraid. Canopy jammed. I’m burning. Romney air-sea rescue. Romney air-sea, this is Red Fox Leader. Mayday, Mayday. Can’t make the coast, losing airspeed and altitude rapidly. Course 285, airspeed 220 and falling. Going to belly in if I can. Hope you people arrive first. Mayday, Mayday. Approximate position . . .”
His head swivels left and right and up. Even as his eyes close, Berkeley searches a sky I have known, empty white or full of death, with the look of a frightened hawk.
Thus Berkeley’s lesson to me: the infection is spreading. Though isolated in my disease, I am not alone.
Berkeley went down over the Channel. For me the war goes on.
I hear nothing Rijn says to me. Plodding back to the coffin of my carriage, I shred the unsent letters, scattering white blossoms amid the scarlet and yellow. There is always hope. I cannot live forever. The Romantics have toyed with opium and suicide, but theirs is a self-consciously tragic muse. Mine is banality. I will dine with Denise in Montmartre and wait for good flying weather over Washington and Moscow.
LEONID ANDREYEV (1871—1919) disapproved of the czarist regime, but was equally revolted by the communists. The darkness of his vision is most familiar in his gargoylish play He Who Gets Slapped, but is ably represented by the following tale, one of the most chilling works ever penned: an existential redaction of the legend of the man resurrected by Jesus.
Lazarus
By Leonid Andreyev
When Lazarus left the grave, where for three days and three nights he had been under the enigmatical sway of death, and returned alive to his dwelling, for a long time no one noticed in him those sinister things which made his name a terror as time went on. Gladdened by the sight of him who had been returned to life, those near to him made much of him, and satisfied their burning desire to serve him, in solicitude for his food and drink and garments. They dressed him gorgeously, and when, like a bridegroom in his bridal clothes, he sat again among them at the table and ate and drank, they wept with tenderness. And they summoned the neighbors to look at him who had risen miraculously from the dead. These came and shared the joy of the hosts. Strangers from far-off towns and hamlets came and adored the miracle in tempestuous words. The house of Mary and Martha was like a beehive.
Whatever was found new in Lazarus’ face and gestures was thought to be some trace of a grave illness and of the shocks recently experienced. Evidently the destruction wrought by death on the corpse was only arrested by the miraculous power, but its effects were still apparent; and what death had succeeded in doing with Lazarus’ face and body was like an artist’s unfinished sketch seen under thin glass. On Lazarus’ temples, under his eyes, and in the hollows of his cheeks, lay a deep and cadaverous blueness; cadaverously blue also were his long fingers, and around his finger-nails, grown long in the grave, the blue had become purple and dark. On his lips, swollen in the grave the skin had burst in places, and thin reddish cracks were formed, shining as though covered with transparent mica. And he had grown stout. His body, puffed up in the grave, retained its monstrous size and showed those frightful swellings in which one sensed the presence of the rank liquid of decomposition. But the heavy corpselike odor which penetrated Lazarus’ grave-clothes and, it seemed, his very body, soon entirely disappeared, the blue spots on his face and hands grew paler, and the reddish cracks closed up, although they never disappeared altogether. That is how Lazarus looked when he appeared before people, in his second life, but his face looked natural to those who had seen him in the coffin.
In addition to the changes in his appearance, Lazarus’ temper seemed to have undergone a transformation, but this had attracted no attention. Before his death Lazarus had always been cheerful and carefree, fond of laughter and a merry joke. It was because of this brightness and cheerfulness, with not a touch of malice and darkness that the Master had grown so fond of him. But now Lazarus had grown grave and taciturn, he never jested, nor responded with laughter to other people’s jokes; and the words which he very infrequently uttered were the plainest, most ordinary and necessary words, as deprived of depth and significance as those sounds with which animals express pain and pleasure, thirst and hunger. They were the words that one can say all one’s life, and yet they give no indication of what pains and gladdens the depths of the soul.
Thus, with the face of a corpse which for three days had been under the heavy s
way of death, dark and taciturn, already appallingly transformed, but still unrecognized by anyone in his new self, he was sitting at the feast-table among friends and relatives, and his gorgeous nuptial garments glittered with yellow gold and bloody scarlet. Broad waves of jubilation, now soft; now tempestuously sonorous surged around him; warm glances of love were reaching out for his face, still cold with the coldness of the grave; and a friend’s warm palm caressed his blue, heavy hand. Music played—the tympanum and the pipe, the cithara and the harp. It was as though bees hummed, grasshoppers chirped and birds warbled over the happy house of Mary and Martha.
One of the guests incautiously lifted the veil. By a thoughtless word he broke the serene charm and uncovered the truth in all its naked ugliness. Ere the thought formed itself in his mind, his lips uttered with a smile: “Why do you not tell us what happened yonder?”
All grew silent, startled by the question. It was as if it occurred to them only now that for three days Lazarus had been dead, and they looked at him, anxiously awaiting his answer. But Lazarus kept silence.
“You do not wish to tell us,” wondered the man; “is it so terrible yonder?”
And again his thought came after his words. Had it been otherwise, he would not have asked this question, which at that very moment oppressed his heart with its insufferable horror. Uneasiness seized all present, and with a feeling of heavy weariness they awaited Lazarus’ words, but he was sternly and coldly silent, and his eyes were lowered. As if for the first time, they noticed the frightful blueness of his face and his repulsive obesity. On the table, as if forgotten by Lazarus, rested his bluish-purple wrist, and to this all eyes turned, as if it were from it that the awaited answer was to come. The musicians were still playing, but now the silence reached them too, and even as water extinguishes scattered embers, so were their merry tunes extinguished in the silence. The pipe grew silent; the voices of the sonorous tympanum and the murmuring harp died away; and as if the strings had burst, the cithara answered with a tremulous, broken note. Silence.
“You do not wish to say?” repeated the guest, unable to check his chattering tongue. But the stillness remained unbroken, and the bluish purple hand rested motionless. And then he stirred slightly and everyone felt relieved. He lifted up his eyes, and lo! straightway embracing everything in one heavy glance, fraught with weariness and horror, he looked at them—Lazarus who had arisen from the dead.
It was the third day since Lazarus had left the grave. Ever since then many had experienced the pernicious power of his eye, but neither those who were crushed by it forever, nor those who found the strength to resist in it the primordial sources of life, which is as mysterious as death, never could they explain the horror which lay motionless in the depth of his black pupils. Lazarus looked calmly and simply with no desire to conceal anything, but also with no intention to say anything; he looked coldly, as one who is infinitely indifferent to those alive. Many carefree people came close to him without noticing him, and only later did they learn with astonishment and fear who that calm stout man was that walked slowly by, almost touching them with his gorgeous and dazzling garments. The sun did not cease shining, when he was looking nor did the fountain hush its murmur, and the sky overhead remained cloudless and blue. But the man under the spell of his enigmatical look heard no more the fountain and saw not the sky overhead. Sometimes he wept bitterly, sometimes he tore his hair and in a frenzy called for help; but more often it came to pass that apathetically and quietly he began to die, and so he languished many years, before everybody’s eyes wasted away, colorless, flabby, dull, like a tree silently drying up in a stony soil. And of those who gazed at him, the one who wept madly sometimes felt again the stir of life; the others never.
“So you do not wish to tell us what you have seen yonder?” repeated the man. But now his voice was impassive and dull, and deadly gray weariness showed in Lazarus’ eyes. And deadly gray weariness covered like dust all the faces, and with dull amazement the guests stared at each other and did not understand wherefore they had gathered here and sat at the rich table. The talk ceased. They thought it was time to go home, but could not overcome the weariness which glued their muscles, and they kept on sitting there, yet apart and torn away from each other, like pale fires scattered over a dark field.
But the musicians were paid to play, and again they took their instruments, and again tunes full of studied mirth and studied sorrow began to flow and to rise. They unfolded the customary melody, but the guests harkened in dull amazement. Already they knew not why it is necessary, and why it is well, that people should pluck strings, inflate their cheeks, blow in thin pipes, and produce a bizarre, many-voiced noise.
“What bad music!” said someone.
The musicians took offense and left. Following them, the guests left one after another, for night was already come. And when placid darkness encircled them and they began to breathe with more ease, suddenly Lazarus’ image loomed up before each one in formidable radiance: the blue face of a corpse, grave clothes gorgeous and resplendent, a cold look in the depths of which lay motionless an unknown horror. As though petrified, they were standing far apart, and darkness enveloped them, but in the darkness blazed brighter and brighter the supernatural vision of him who for three days had been under the enigmatical sway of death. For three days had he been dead: thrice had the sun risen and set, but he had been dead. And now he is again among them, touches them, looks at them, and through the black disks of his pupils, as through darkened glass, stares the unknowable Yonder.
No one was taking care of Lazarus, for no friends, no relatives were left to him, and the great desert, which encircled the holy city, came near the very threshold of his dwelling. And the desert entered his house, and stretched on his couch, like a wife, and extinguished the fires. No one was taking care of Lazarus. One after the other, his sisters—Mary and Martha—forsook him. For a long while Martha was loath to abandon him, for she knew not who would feed him and pity him. She wept and prayed. But one night, when the wind was roaming in the desert and with a hissing sound the cypresses were bending over the roof, she dressed noiselessly, and secretly left the house. Lazarus probably heard the door slam; it banged against the sidepost under the gusts of the desert wind, but he did not rise to go out and look at her that was abandoning him. All the night long the cypresses hissed over his head and plaintively thumped the door, letting in the cold, greedy desert.
Like a leper he was shunned by everyone, and it was proposed to tie a bell to his neck, as is done with lepers, to warn people against sudden meetings. But someone remarked, growing frightfully pale, that it would be too horrible if by night the moaning of Lazarus’ bell were suddenly heard under the pillows, and so the project was abandoned.
And since he did not take care of himself, he would probably have starved to death, had not the neighbors brought him food in fear of something that they sensed but vaguely. The food was brought to him by children; they were not afraid of Lazarus, nor did they mock him with naive cruelty, as children are wont to do with the wretched and miserable. They were indifferent to him, and Lazarus answered them with the same coldness; he had no desire to caress the black little curls, and to look into their innocent shining eyes. Given to Time and to the desert, his house was crumbling down, and long since had his famishing goats wandered away to the neighboring pastures. His bridal garments became threadbare. Ever since that happy day when the musicians played, he had worn them unaware of the difference of the new and the worn. The bright colors grew dull and faded; vicious dogs and the sharp thorns of the desert turned the tender fabric into rags.
By day, when the merciless sun slew all things alive, and even scorpions sought shelter under stones and writhed there in a mad desire to sting, he sat motionless under the sun’s rays, his blue face and the uncouth, bushy beard lifted up, bathing in the fiery flood.
When people still talked to him, he was once asked: “Poor Lazarus, does it please you to sit thus and to stare at the sun?”
And he had answered: “Yes, it does.”
So strong, it seemed, was the cold of his three days’ grave, so deep the darkness, that there was no heat on earth to warm Lazarus, nor a splendor that could brighten the darkness of his eyes. That is what came to the mind of those who spoke to Lazarus, and with a sigh they left him.
And when the scarlet, flattened globe would lower, Lazarus would set out for the desert and walk straight toward the sun, as if striving to reach it. He always walked straight toward the sun, and those who tried to follow him and to spy upon what he was doing at night in the desert, retained in their memory the black silhouette of a tall stout man against the red background of an enormous flattened disk. Night pursued them with her horrors, and so they did not learn of Lazarus’ doings in the desert, but the vision of the black on red was forever branded on their brains. Just as a beast with a splinter in its eye furiously rubs its muzzle with its paws, so they too foolishly rubbed their eyes, but what Lazarus had given was indelible, and Death alone could efface it.
But there were people who lived far away, who never saw Lazarus and knew of him only by report. With daring curiosity, which is stronger than fear and feeds upon it, with hidden mockery, they would come to Lazarus who was sitting in the sun and enter into conversation with him. By this time Lazarus’ appearance had changed for the better and was not so terrible. The first minute they snapped their fingers and thought of how stupid the inhabitants of the holy city were; but when the short talk was over and they started homeward, their looks were such that the inhabitants of the holy city recognized them at once and said: “Look, there is one more fool on whom Lazarus has set his eye;” and they shook their heads regretfully, and lifted up their arms.
Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural Page 48
