Resisting the slow touch of a frozen finger tracing out my spine, I showed him how that this figure must be a deception of his sense of sight; and how that figures, originating in disease of the delicate nerves that minister to the functions of the eye, were known to have often troubled patients, some of whom had become conscious of the nature of their affliction, and had even proved it by experiments upon themselves. “As to an imaginary cry,” said I, “do but listen for a moment to the wind in this unnatural valley while we speak so low, and to the wild harp it makes of the telegraph wires!”
That was all very well, he returned, after we had sat listening for a while, and he ought to know something of the wind and wires,—he who so often passed long winter nights there, alone and watching. But he would beg to remark that he had not finished.
I asked his pardon, and he slowly added these words, touching my arm:
“Within six hours after the Appearance, the memorable accident on this Line happened, and within ten hours the dead and wounded were brought along through the tunnel over the spot where the figure had stood.”
A disagreeable shudder crept over me, but I did my best against it. It was not to be denied, I rejoined, that this was a remarkable coincidence, calculated deeply to impress his mind. But it was unquestionable that remarkable coincidences did continually occur, and they must be taken into account in dealing with such a subject. Though to be sure I must admit, I added (for I thought I saw that he was going to bring the objection to bear upon me), men of common sense did not allow much for coincidence in making the ordinary calculations of life.
He again begged to remark that he had not finished.
I again begged his pardon for being betrayed into interruptions.
“This,” he said, again laying his hand upon my arm, and glancing over his shoulder with hollow eyes, “was just a year ago. Six or seven months passed, and I had recovered from the surprise and shock, when one morning, as the day was breaking, I, standing at that door, looked towards the red light, and saw the spectre again.” He stopped, with a fixed look at me.
“Did it cry out?”
“No. It was silent.”
“Did it wave its arm?”
“No. It leaned against the shaft of the light, with both hands before the face. Like this.”
Once more I followed his action with my eyes. It was an action of mourning; I have seen such an attitude in stone figures on tombs.
“Did you go up to it?”
“I came in and sat down, partly to collect my thoughts, partly because it had turned me faint. When I went to the door again, daylight was above me, and the ghost was gone.”
“But nothing followed? Nothing came of this?”
He touched me on the arm with his forefinger twice or thrice, giving a ghastly nod each time.
“That very day, as the train came out of the tunnel, I noticed, at a carriage window on my side, what looked like a confusion of hands and heads, and something waved. I saw it just in time to signal the driver, stop! He shut off, and put his brake on, but the train drifted past here a hundred and fifty yards or more. I ran after it, and, as I went along, heard terrible screams and cries. A beautiful young lady had died instantaneously in one of the compartments, and was brought in here, and laid down on this floor between us.”
Involuntarily I pushed my chair back, as I looked from the boards at which he pointed to himself.
“True, sir. True. Precisely as it happened, so I tell it you.”
I could think of nothing to say, to any purpose, and my mouth was very dry. The wind and the wires took up the story with a long lamenting wail.
He resumed. “Now, sir, mark this, and judge how my mind is troubled. The spectre came back a week ago. Ever since it has been there, now and again, by fits and starts.”
“At the light?”
“At the Danger-light.”
“What does it seem to do?”
He repeated, if possible with increased passion and vehemence, that former gesticulation of, “For God’s sake, clear the way!”
Then he went on. “I have no peace or rest for it. It calls to me, for many minutes together, in an agonized manner, ‘Below there! Look out! Look out!’ It stands waving to me. It rings my little bell—”
I caught at that. “Did it ring your bell yesterday evening when I was here, and you went to the door?”
“Twice.”
“Why, see,” said I, “how your imagination misleads you. My eyes were on the bell, and my ears were open to the bell, and if I am a living man, it did NOT ring at those times. No, nor at any other time, except when it was rung in the natural course of physical things by the station communicating with you.”
He shook his head. “I have never made a mistake as to that yet, sir. I have never confused the spectre’s ring with the man’s. The ghost’s ring is a strange vibration in the bell that it derives from nothing else, and I have not asserted that the bell stirs to the eye. I don’t wonder that you failed to hear it. But I heard it.”
“And did the spectre seem to be there, when you looked out?”
“It WAS there.”
“Both times?”
He repeated firmly: “Both times.”
“Will you come to the door with me and look for it now?”
He bit his under lip as though he were somewhat unwilling, but arose. I opened the door, and stood on the step, while he stood in the doorway. There was the Danger-light. There was the dismal mouth of the tunnel. There were the high, wet stone walls of the cutting. There were the stars above them.
“Do you see it?” I asked him, taking particular note of his face. His eyes were prominent and strained, but not very much more so, perhaps, than my own had been when I had directed them earnestly towards the same spot.
“No,” he answered. “It is not there.”
“Agreed,” said I.
We went in again, shut the door, and resumed our seats. I was thinking how best to improve this advantage, if it might be called one, when he took up the conversation in such a matter-of-course way, so assuming that there could be no serious question of fact between us, that I felt myself placed in the weakest of positions.
“By this time, you will fully understand, sir,” he said, “that what troubles me so dreadfully is the question, What does the sceptre mean?”
I was not sure, I told him, that I did fully understand.
“What is its warning against?” he said, ruminating, with his eyes on the fire, and only by times turning them on me. “What is the danger? Where is the danger? There is danger overhanging somewhere on the Line. Some dreadful calamity will happen. It is not to be doubted this third time, after what has gone before. But surely this is a cruel haunting of me. What can I do?”
He pulled out his handkerchief, and wiped the drops from his heated forehead.
“If I telegraph Danger, on either side of me, or on both, I can give no reason for it,” he went on, wiping the palms of his hands. I should get into trouble, and do no good. They would think I was mad. This is the way it would work, Message: ‘Danger! Take care!’ Answered: ‘What Danger? Where?’ Message: ‘Don’t know. But for God’s sake, take care!’ They would displace me. What else could they do?”
His pain of mind was most pitiable to see. It was the mental torture of a conscientious man, oppressed beyond endurance by an unintelligible responsibility involving life.
“When it first stood under the Danger-light,” he went on, putting his dark hair back from his head, and drawing his hands outward across and across his temples in an extremity of feverish distress, “why not tell me where that accident was to happen, if it must happen? Why not tell me how it could be averted, if it could have been averted? When on its second coming it hid its face, why not tell me, instead, ‘She is going to die. Let them keep her at home’? If it came, on those two occasions, only to show me that its warnings were true, and so to prepare me for the third, why not warn me plainly now? And I, Lord help me! A mere poor signal-man
on this solitary station! Why not go to somebody with credit to be believed, and power to act?”
When I saw him in this state, I saw that for the poor man’s sake, as well as for the public safety, what I had to do for the time was to compose his mind. Therefore, setting aside all question of reality or unreality between us, I represented to him that whoever thoroughly discharged his duty must do well, and that at least it was his comfort that he understood his duty, though he did not understand these confounding Appearances. In this effort I succeeded far better than in the attempt to reason him out of his conviction. He became calm; the occupations incidental to his post as the night advanced began to make larger demands on his attention; and I left him at two in the morning. I had offered to stay through the night, but he would not hear of it.
That I more than once looked back at the red light as I ascended the pathway; that I did not like the red light, and that I should have slept but poorly if my bed had been under it, I see no reason to conceal. Nor did I like the two sequences of the accident and the dead girl. I see no reason to conceal that, either.
But what ran most in my thoughts was the consideration, how ought I to act, having become the recipient of this disclosure? I had proved the man to be intelligent, vigilant, painstaking, and exact; but how long might he remain so, in his state of mind? Though in a subordinate position, still he held a most important trust, and would I (for instance) like to stake my own life on the chances of his continuing to execute it with precision?
Unable to overcome a feeling that there would be something treacherous in my communicating what he had told me to his superiors in the Company, without first being plain with himself and proposing a middle course to him, I ultimately resolved to offer to accompany him (otherwise keeping his secret for the present) to the wisest medical practitioner we could hear of in those parts, and to take his opinion. A change in his time of duty would come round next night, he had apprised me, and he would be off an hour or two after sunrise, and on again soon after sunset. I had appointed to return accordingly.
Next evening was a lovely evening, and I walked out early to enjoy it. The sun was not yet quite down when I traversed the field-path near the top of the deep cutting. I would extend my walk for an hour, I said to myself, half an hour on and half an hour back, and it would then be time to go to my signal-man’s box.
Before pursuing my stroll, I stepped to the brink, and mechanically looked down, from the point from which I had first seen him. I cannot describe the thrill that seized upon me, when, close at the mouth of the tunnel, I saw the appearance of a man, with his left sleeve across his eyes, passionately waving his right arm.
The nameless horror that oppressed me passed in a moment, for in a moment I saw that this appearance of a man was a man indeed, and that there was a little group of other men, standing at a short distance, to whom he seemed to be rehearsing the gesture he made. The Danger-light was not yet lighted. Against its shaft, a little low hut, entirely new to me, had been made of some wooden supports and tarpaulin. It looked no bigger than a bed.
With an irresistible sense that something was wrong—with a flashing self-reproachful fear that fatal mischief had come of my leaving the man there, and causing no one to be sent to overlook or correct what he did—I descended the notched path with all the speed I could make.
“What is the matter?” I asked the men.
“Signal-man killed this morning, sir.”
“Not the man belonging to that box?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Not the man I know?”
“You will recognize him, sir, if you knew him,” said the man who spoke for the others, solemnly uncovering his own head and raising an end of the tarpaulin, “for his face is quite composed.”
“O, how did this happen, how did this happen?” I asked, turning from one to another as the hut closed in again.
“He was cut down by an engine, sir. No man in England knew his work better, but somehow he was not clear of the outer rail. It was just at broad day. He had struck the light, and had the lamp in his hand. As the engine came out of the tunnel, his back was towards her, and she cut him down. That man drove her, and was showing how it happened. Show the gentleman, Tom.”
The man, who wore a rough dark dress, stepped back to his former place at the mouth of the tunnel:
“Coming round the curve in the tunnel, sir,” he said, “I saw him at the end, like as if I saw him down a perspective-glass. There was no time to check speed, and I knew him to be very careful. As he didn’t seem to take heed of the whistle, I shut it off when we were running down upon him, and called to him as loud as I could call.”
“What did you say?”
“I said, ‘Below there! Look out! Look out! For God’s sake, clear the way!’”
I started.
“Ah! it was a dreadful time, sir. I never left off calling to him. I put this arm before my eyes not to see, and I waved this arm to the last; but it was no use.”
WITHOUT PROLONGING THE narrative to dwell on any one of its curious circumstances more than any other, I may, in closing it, point out the coincidence that the warning of the Engine-Driver included not only the words which the unfortunate Signal-man had repeated to me as haunting him, but also the words which I myself—not he—had attached, and that only in my own mind, to the gesticulation he had imitated.
IVAN SERGEYEVICH TURGENEV
I
The Dream
(Son, 1876)
Turgenev (1818–1883) cannot be called a writer of fantastic literature, because the number of stories he wrote in the genre can be counted with the fingers of one hand. “The Dream” is a tale whose ambiguity is perfect. It maintains the uncertainty whether the mysterious character is dead or alive, an uncertainty that continues in the extremely beautiful final scene involving the body on the algae-covered beach.
Aside from being an example of psychological modernity, uncommon in its time and announcing themes psychoanalysis would render canonical, this story presents us with one of the rare cases of a written dream that resembles the dreams we really have.
I WAS LIVING at that time with my mother in a small seaside town. I had turned seventeen, while my mother was not yet thirty-five; she had married very young. When my father died I was just six, but I remembered him well. My mother was a small, fair-haired woman, with a delightful face which was, however, perpetually sad. She had a quiet, languid voice, and was timid in her movements. In her youth she had been renowned for her beauty and to the end she remained attractive and lovely. I have never seen deeper, sadder or more tender eyes, nor have I seen more graceful hands. I adored her, and she loved me …. But the life we led was not a merry one. Some secret, incurable and undeserved sorrow seemed to be constantly gnawing away at the very root of her existence. This sorrow was not to be explained as mere sadness about my father, however great that sadness was, however passionately my mother had loved him, however sacred the memory she kept of him …. No! There was something else hidden there, something I did not understand, but which I felt, felt confusedly and strongly, as soon as I looked at those quiet eyes which did not move, at those beautiful lips which did not move either, and which were not set tight in bitterness but were seemingly frozen still forever.
I have said that my mother loved me. Yet there were moments when she pushed me away, when my presence was burdensome to her, unbearable. At such times she felt, as it were, an involuntary disgust for me—and later she would feel horrified, blame herself tearfully, and press me to her heart. I put these momentary outbursts of hostility down to the breakdown in her health, to her misfortune …. It is true that these hostile feelings may have been prompted to some extent by certain strange fits of evil and criminal feelings which surged up in me from time to time and which I myself did not comprehend …. But these fits did not coincide with those moments of disgust. My mother always wore black, as if in mourning. We lived quite grandly, although we were on close terms with almost nobody.
II
All my mother’s plans and cares were concentrated on me. Her life had merged with mine. That kind of relationship between parents and children is not always healthy for the children … rather is it harmful. Apart from that, I was all my mother had, and almost all only children grow up badly. As they bring them up, the parents worry as much about themselves as about the child. This was not the case here. I was not spoilt and I did not become hard (both occur in such children), but my nerves gave out prematurely; in addition I had a fairly weak constitution—in this I took after my mother, and I looked very like her as well. I avoided the company of children my own age; indeed, I shunned people in general. I even talked little with my mother. More than anything I loved to read, to take walks alone—and to dream, to dream! It is difficult to say exactly what I dreamed of: sometimes, it’s true, I seemed to see myself standing in front of a half-closed door behind which unknown mysteries were hidden, I would stand, and wait, and fall into a trance—and not cross the threshold—and keep imagining what was ahead—and I would keep waiting with sinking heart … or go to sleep. If I had had a poetic streak in me, I would no doubt have taken to writing verse; if I had felt any inclination towards the religious life, I might have become a monk; but there was none of this in me, and I continued to dream—and wait.
III
I have just mentioned how I would fall asleep sometimes under the influence of vague thoughts and reveries. I always slept a lot, and dreams played an important part in my life. I dreamt almost every night. I did not forget my dreams, I attributed some significance to them, I considered them predictions, trying to unravel their mysterious meaning; from time to time I would have the same dream over again, which always seemed surprising and odd to me. There was one dream in particular which disturbed me. I seemed to be walking along a narrow, badly paved street in an old city, between stone houses several storeys high with pointed roofs. I was searching for my father, who had not died, but was for some reason hiding from us and living in one of these houses. I now stepped into a low, dark gateway, crossed a long courtyard covered in piles of logs and boards, and finally entered a small room with two round windows. In the middle of the room stood my father in a dressing-gown, smoking a pipe. He was not at all like my real father: he was tall, drawn, black-haired, and had a hooked nose, and sullen and penetrating eyes; he appeared to be about forty. He was not pleased that I had found him; nor was I at all happy at our meeting—I stood baffled. He would turn away slightly, begin to mumble something and walk backwards and forwards with small steps. Then he would move away a little, mumbling all the while and now and then looking round over his shoulder; the room expanded and disappeared in a fog …. Suddenly I would become fearful at the thought that I was losing my father again, I would rush after him—but I could no longer see him—and I could only hear his muttering, angry like a bear’s …. My heart would sink—I would awake and not be able to go to sleep again for a long time …. All the following day I would think about the dream and, naturally, not arrive at any conclusions.
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