The Fiery Angel

by Valery Bruisov

  A painful sweetness was imparted to our intimacy by the fact that my wound made it for many a day impossible for us to give ourselves up to our passion in full measure. At first I had barely strength enough to approach, raising my head, my lips to Renata’s lips, as if to a burning coal, and, bereft of power by such an effort, I would then fall back breathless into the pillows. Later, when I could already sit up in bed, Renata had, with meek insistence, to restrain me from mad enthusiasm, for I desired, taking her in my arms, to press her, kiss her and caress her, and make her live through all the tremors of the joy of love. But true, at the very first attempt to trust myself to the hurricane of passion, my forces betrayed me, blood oozed through my bandages, before my eyes began to whirl single-hued rings, in my ears to whistle a monotoned wind, my hands dropped, and Renata, smiling and forgiving, put me into bed like a child and whispered to me:

  “Precious, dearest! Please don’t! We have the whole of life before us yet! We have the whole of life before us yet!”

  About the end of the first December week, I was at last sufficiently recovered to wander weakly round the room and, seated in the large armchair, I fingered with my thin hands the volumes of the magic works, now abandoned by us. Simultaneously with my recovery, the stream of our lives began to pour into a more familiar channel, as our visitors one by one disappeared: first Lucian Stein, who had nothing more to inquire after, then the black doctor, to whom I myself showed the door, and finally the good Matthew, who got on very badly with Renata. Around us there began to form a solitude to which we were used, but how different did it seem to me from that in which I had been plunged heretofore! One might have believed that above me was a new sky, and new stars, and that all the surrounding objects had been transformed by some magic power—so unlike was it all to the past I had lived through within these same walls, that formerly had oppressed me like an unrelenting nightmare!

  And now, when I recall this December, that I lived through with Renata, like a newly-married couple, I am willing to go down upon my knees and give thanks to the Creator, if it came about by His will, for the moments I was permitted to experience. And during these days only one thought insistently occupied and tormented me: that my life had reached its peak, and that thereafter there must inevitably begin a descent into a depth, that I, like Phaeton, the driver of the chariot of the Sun, was now borne to the zenith, and being unable to check my father’s steeds, must soon be hurled ignominiously along the steep decline back to earth. With agonising haste I strove with all my being to inhale the bliss of the heights, and wildly said to Renata that the most reasonable course for me would be to die, so that, happy and a conqueror, I might leave this life in which otherwise there undoubtedly still lay in wait for me, not for the first time, tragic masques of sorrow and defeat.

  But Renata replied to all these speeches of mine:

  “How unaccustomed you are to happiness! Believe me, dearest, we are only at the doors of it, we have not yet traversed the entrance hall. I have led you through the catacombs of torment, and I will lead you through the palaces of bliss. Only stay with me, only love me—and together we shall rise higher and higher! It is I who made you so aghast, but I want you to forget all that, I want to repay each moment of suffering with days, whole days of happiness; for you, by your love, have already repaid me for a whole lifetime of despair and ruin!”

  As she said this, Renata assumed the air of one who all her life had been nourished upon happiness, as the birds of paradise are nourished upon air.

  And just as she knew no limits in expressing her despair, so Renata knew no limits in the expression of her love. I was by no means a novice in sailing the ocean of sensuality in the galley with the banner of the goddess Venus at the masthead, but it was the first time I had encountered such a greed for passion, a greed before which all caresses seemed too weak, all unions too imperfect, all joys insufficient to fill the measure of desire. Moreover, as if eager to recompense me for the cruelty with which she had previously treated my love, Renata now sought to achieve, in passion, meekness and humility. I had to use no little opposition to prevent her from kissing my feet, as the Magdalen did those of Christ, and to restrain her almost by force from a great deal of which I cannot trust even a hint to this manuscript.

  Our honeymoon lasted for about two weeks, a time during which my strength nearly returned to me, and, with it, that sober outlook innate in me, that I value more than any other of my abilities. At the same time, there passed in me also that tautness of all my feelings, in which I had so long been held by the indefiniteness of my relations with Renata, by our continuous searching for something, our unremitting expectation of something, and I began to feel as though a long drawn bow had at last been discharged in my soul, and the arrow sped to its mark. Naturally, even in the first days of our unexpected intimacy, when Renata desired to transform our lives, as it appeared, into the realised delirium of two maniacs, I did not altogether lose my head and, through all the frenzy of mutual oaths, avowals of love, and caresses, following one another in an uninterrupted chain, I was yet aware of stern reality, like the light of day through thickly-growing lianas, and did not forget, even for a single hour, that we were only pilgrims on an enchanted island. And when my being had at last been satiated with unaccustomed, and by it forgotten joys, when the black and flaming nightmare of the months of torture had been completely screened behind the roseate veil of the present, I could not refrain from thinking, soberly and clearly, about the future.

  I was chiefly urged to do so by the knowledge that of the money I had gathered beyond the Ocean, there was left barely half, and that too was melting fairly rapidly. Second, apart from the necessity to consider earning money, I was visibly affected by my many months of idleness, and often dreamed of business and affairs, as noble joys. Lastly, I had never lost the conviction that all thinking men arrive at in mature judgment, that one cannot bale out one’s life with personal pleasures alone, any more than one can bale out the sea with the tankards of a festive banquet. True, in order to work it was necessary that our future course should first definitely be decided, but I firmly recollected that, in the days when she had still concealed her love under the mask of severity, Renata had given agreement to be my wife, and I could not doubt that she would consent now, when she had revealed its face.

  Choosing an appropriate hour, I said to Renata:

  “Dearest mine, you know well enough from what I have told you that we cannot indefinitely lead together a care-free existence like the present, and I must, without question, devote myself to affairs of some kind. I should prefer a business of which I have long thought; trading with the heathen in New Spain. And so to-day, Renata, now that you have given me many thousands of proofs of your affection, I repeat to you my prayer, that heretofore I have hardly dared to voice: that you become my wife, for I desire my sweetheart to be able to look without confusion into the eyes of all women. If you will now repeat once more your ‘yes,’ we shall repair straightway together to my native Losheim, and I am sure that my parents will not refuse us their blessing—otherwise, we shall do without it, for I have already long hewed my own way through the wilderness of life. And so, husband and wife, we shall set sail for the New World, to realise there those years of light and bliss you have foretold to me.”

  To my surprise, this offer, which I still believe to have been reasonable and natural, produced on Renata the worst possible impression, and there fell at once upon her face, as it were the shadow of some past swooping wing. I should mention, in this connection, that this shadow invariably darkened her face whenever I spoke of my parents and my home; she herself never, not even in the moments of nearest intimacy of two passionately fond, mentioned to me anything of her own father and mother or her native lands. And then, with puckered brows, she answered me as follows:

  “Dearest Rupprecht, I promised you to be your wife, if you killed Heinrich. This did not come to pass, perhaps by my fault, but thus I am not bound by that oath. Let us wait, t
herefore, to speak of the future. Can you not accept happiness without any foreign thought, take it as you would take a glass of wine, and drain it to the dregs? When it becomes necessary to worry about the cares of life, then we too can take heed, and believe me, in me you will find a courageous helpmate. But now I give you all my love, and of you I ask only one thing: let your arms be strong enough to receive it to the full!”

  Having delivered this unexpected and unjust reply, Renata pressed herself tenderly against me, and tried to transport me into the garden of caresses, but, of course, she did not thereby dispel my doubts and, however strange it may be, this conversation proved to be the definite break in the flow of events, and that day must be regarded as the last day of our honeymoon. I could not but ascribe the failure of my offer to some secret cause, and my passionate feeling towards Renata somehow straightway became dimmed, and at the bottom of my soul began to gather an indefinite dissatisfaction, drop by drop, like a growing pillar in a cavern of stalactites. Simultaneously, like mice from the hat of a conjurer, there suddenly began to spread out fanwise through our life all kinds of misunderstandings, at times stupid and unworthy of us.

  Came then the festival of the Holy Birth of Christ, and Renata, with the usual capriciousness of her fancies, desired by all means to spend it gaily, and amongst others. She suddenly required acquaintances, sights and a variety of songs, and I, remembering with what application Renata had previously immersed herself in Latin texts, was only puzzled to see with what childish simplicity she gave herself up to the various pleasures of the streets.

  First of all, of course, we had to visit all the church services. On the night of the Eve of the Birth, we admired, in the Church of Saint Cecilia, the representation of the holy cradle with the kings kneeling before it, which reminded me vividly of the days of my childhood; we did not miss Mass on the day of John the Evangelist, or on that of the Forty Thousand Innocents, or on the day of the Lord’s Circumcision; and we walked the city with all the church processions. Then it pleased Renata to receive in our rooms children who came to praise Christ with a manger made of little planks, to listen to their singing, talk to them and give them sweetmeats. Further, Renata led me through all the booths built along the quay and on the market, in which were displayed various curios, and only laughed when I reminded her of her former saying regarding the un-bearableness of the street crowds. And we spent whole days amongst drunken and coarse yokels, watching players on bandores and on bagpipes, acrobats walking on their heads, conjurers who produced live snakes from their nostrils, sword-swallowers and men who released fountains from their mouths, women with beards, ichneumons, rhinoceroses, dromedaries, and other rarities by means of which the travelling men contrive to rid the burghers of their hard-earned coppers.

  And lastly, to my surprise, there appeared in our house two women, apparently of burgherly station, whom Renata named as Katherina and Margarita, and whom she introduced to me as neighbours of ours and her acquaintances of long standing. The women looked to me dense and uninteresting, and I could never understand why they were supposed to be necessary in our midst, after we two had so rejoiced at having refound our solitude. Having spent a very dull hour in conversation with the two visitors on the relative merits of the paters of the various parishes, I began thereafter to speak out rather bitterly to Renata about this new acquaintanceship, and this served as cause for our first quarrel. Renata replied to me with unexpected hotness, I could not demand, could I, that she should see nobody in the world, and asked whether, in asking her to accompany me to the New World, I had the intention on arriving there of locking her up within four walls. I did not scruple to point out to Renata how unreasonable were her words, but she had no desire to listen to anything and, pouring out reproaches on me, threatened to walk out of the house, on the spot, as she would out of a prison.

  True, having exchanged these very cruel words like sword thrusts, after a few minutes we both saw the stupidity of our quarrel, and hastened to blow out the flame of discord with the fierce wind of oaths and confessions, and pour over it the moisture of kisses and caresses—but under the ashes there still lay glowing coals. Some two days after this occurrence, Renata suddenly declared to me that she intended to visit one of the two neighbours during the afternoon hour, and that I too was expected at this gathering. I replied with indignation that I had no desire to pursue this stupid acquaintanceship, and when Renata, none the less, prepared herself for company and left the house, to spite her I went to Matthew, whom I had been wanting to visit for some time—and that was the first time after my illness that I parted from Renata.

  Matthew greeted me grumblingly but good-naturedly, and Agnes, who, to judge by everything, was now advised of the existence of Renata in my life—timidly and cautiously. I tried to break the ice that covered my relationship with Agnes, and entertained her for some time with stories of New Spain, with which I invariably produce an impression on all new acquaintances, again narrating of the temples of the Maya, and the huge cacti, and the perilous hunts of the bear and the ounce. We parted friends again, and when, on my return home, I heard from Renata sly words about some youth, the son of a merchant, who had shown her especial attention at the house of the neighbour, I hastened for my part to tell of Agnes, who had attracted my attention in the house of Matthew. This new duel of ours, in which the blades each endeavoured to prick the jealousy of the adversary, ended in my favour, for Renata, at first making believe to despise my confessions, soon changed over to plaintive reproaches, and then was even unable to restrain her tears, so that, comforting her, I had to swear that I felt no inclination towards Agnes, while she confessed to me that the son of the merchant had existed only in her imagination.

  This did not, however, prevent Renata from declaring to me a few days later that she had accepted another invitation from the neighbour, to which I replied with a new visit to Matthew. And as these tourneys had more such repetitions, I soon became a really frequent visitor to the Wissmanns, and leaving Matthew to his learned books, began to spend long hours with Agnes. I liked very much this creature soft and mild, a maiden with whom it was good to talk of anything in the world, for everything was new to her, and she believed it all with the trustfulness of a child. And, in her own mind, grandmother’s tales were fancifully intermingled with university wisdom, with which her brother had been accustomed to tease her commonsense, and this brought her to the most absurd and entertaining ideas and conclusions, with which I delighted to amuse myself, as children play with toys. Agnes asked me quite seriously whether it were correct that on the faces of men is written in Latin characters HOMO DEI, and that the two eyes are the two letters O, the nose the letter M and so forth;—that Jesus Christ was crucified in the very centre of the earth, for Jerusalem is the centre of the cosmos as the heart is the centre of a body;—that there are as many kinds of plants on earth as there are stars in Heaven, for the various kinds of plants appeared in obedience to the stars at the union of cosmic matters;—that the emerald has been taken unto herself by the Most Holy Virgin, and that that stone shatters of itself into smithereens if near it is committed the sin of love—and much more of this kind.

  I must, however, declare here and now, and with all definiteness, that in my relations with Agnes there was nothing resembling even the inception of love, though, of course, the proximity of a tender and youthful maiden was sweet to me, as if completing the passion and experience of Renata. But I must also confess that, in truth, in those days, I did not find in the depth of my soul either that unquestioning loyalty which had first given me, swordless and armourless, into the hands of Renata, nor that intoxicating passion which had held me in its chains of roses in the first days of intimacy after my illness. There came the natural collapse of that wave of emotions, that had swelled for many months, raised its crest to the highest in our honeyed days, and scattered at last in impotent foam. My passion, having overwhelmed me for two weeks with a flood of bliss, recoiled as if in an ebbing tide from the shores of
the soul, stripping the bottom, and leaving on the sand, sea-stars, cockles and seaweed.

  I knew, if not consciously, by instinct, that the hour of a new rising tide would come, and therefore I continued to repeat to Renata the old words of love and to swear that I was as true to her as I was before. Many times, too, I repeated my prayer—that she should agree to our marriage and that we should leave the City of Köln, where we had endured so much and where it would be difficult to set our lives on a new course. But the change that had occurred in me could not be concealed from Renata’s sharp sight. She asked me bitterly, whether it were not because she had admitted her passion for me and given me the proofs of her flame that I had cooled towards her. And to my pleading she answered that she yet loved me overmuch and not for anything in the world would she, as now, see the face on which she was accustomed to read torment for her, or happiness through her, unmoved and bored.

  In this time of our shallowed love, Renata and I would not see each other for whole days, then again would fall upon each other in a gust of flaming-up desire, then would drop once more into abysms of enmity and anger. In the hours of quarrel, Renata would sometimes attain to extremest rage, and at times reproach me with things it is perhaps better even not to remember, then threaten that she would cut my throat in dead of night, or lie in wait for Agnes in the street, to slay her, then once more she would expend herself in tears, fall upon the floor and give herself up on my account to just such a paroxysm of despair as before for Count Heinrich. In contrast, on the days of reconciliation all the ecstasies of two happy lovers would be revived: once more we would be like Antonius and Cleopatra in their Egypt, or like Tristan and the beautiful Iseult in their cave, and our recent discords would seem to us but an absurd misunderstanding, caused by the pranks of the wicked house demons, those whom Renata herself called the “tiny ones.”