The Inferno, August Strindberg [classic english novels TXT] 📗

girls who play unseen beneath the trees, reaches me and rouses me again to life. Life hurries by and old age approaches: Wife, children, home, dispersed and wrecked; without is spring, within is autumn.

The Book of Job and the Lamentations of Jeremiah comfort me, for, at any rate, there is a certain resemblance between Job’s lot and mine. Am I not smitten with incurable boils? Am I not visited with poverty and forsaken by my friends? “I go blackened, but not by the sun; I am a brother to dragons and a companion to ostriches; my skin is black and falleth from me, and my bones are burned with heat. My harp is turned to mourning, and my pipe unto the voice of them that weep.”

Thus Job. And Jeremiah with two words fathoms the depth of my sadness: “I forgat prosperity.”

In this mood I sit one oppressive afternoon bent over my work, when, all of a sudden, behind the foliage of the garden in front of me, I hear the playing of a piano. Like a warhorse at the sound of the trumpet, I prick up my ears, straighten myself, and in a great state of excitement struggle for breath. Someone is playing Schumann’s Aufschwung; and what is more, he is playing⁠—he, my Russian friend, my pupil who called me “Father,” because he owed all his culture to me, my assistant who called me “Master” and kissed my hands, whose life began where mine ended. He has come from Vienna to Paris to ruin me, as he ruined me in Vienna⁠—and why? Because Fate has arranged that his present wife, before he knew her, was my sweetheart. Was it my fault that matters so fell out? Surely not, and yet he hated me with a deadly hatred, hindered my plays from being accepted, wove intrigues, and deprived me of the barest means of subsistence. Then, in a fit of rage, I reversed the spear and struck him, indeed, in such a brutal and cowardly way, that it made me feel like a murderer. The fact that he has come to kill me comforts me, for death alone can deliver me from my pangs of conscience.

It was he, then, who lurked behind those letters with false addresses which I always saw near the porter’s lodge. Well, let him strike! I will not defend myself. For he is right, and my life is nothing to me. He continues to play the Aufschwung, which no one can play so well. He plays invisible behind the green wall, and his magic harmonies rise above its blossoming creepers like butterflies flying towards the sun.

But why is he playing? Is it to inform me of his coming to frighten me and drive me to flight? Perhaps I shall find out in the restaurant where the other Russians have long been talking about the arrival of their countryman.

I go for my evening meal there, and already at the doorway encounter hostile glances. The whole company, informed of my conflict with the Russian, has turned against me. In order to disarm them, I open fire myself.

“Popoffsky is in Paris?” I ask.

“No, not yet,” one of them answers.

“Yes,” says another, “he has been seen in the office of the Mercure de France.”

They disagree with each other, and at the end I am as wise as before, but I pretend to believe all I am told. But the obvious enmity with which I am regarded in the restaurant makes me swear not to go there again. I am sorry, for some of them were really congenial to me. Thus, once more, this cursed enemy drives me into loneliness and exile. My hatred against him is again aroused, and torments and poisons me. I don’t look forward to death now! Shall the hand of an inferior man crush me? The humiliation for me and the honour for him would be too great. I will accept the challenge and defend myself. In order to obtain clear information I go to find a Danish painter, a friend of Popoffsky, in the Rue de la Santé behind the Val de Grâce. Six weeks before he had come to Paris, and, although formerly a friend of mine, had at our first meeting greeted me in almost a hostile way. The next day, however, he visited me, invited me to his studio, and said so many kind things to me that I could not help doubting the genuineness of his friendship. When I asked him about Popoffsky, he answered evasively, but confirmed the rumour of his being about to come shortly to Paris.

“In order to murder me,” I added.

“Yes; take care!”

On the morning on which I wished to return the Dane’s visit, by a curious chance I found my way barred by an enormous Danish dog, which reposed in all its hideousness on the ground of the courtyard. For a moment I hesitated, then I turned back, and on arriving at home thanked the powers for their warning, for I had certainly escaped some unknown danger.

Some days afterwards, when I wished to repeat my visit, on the threshold of the open door there sat a child with a playing-card in its hand. I glanced at the card superstitiously; it was the ten of spades. “They are playing an evil game in this house,” I said to myself, and turned back again.

In the evening, after the scene in the restaurant, I was almost determined to carry out my plan, in spite of dog and card, but fate willed it otherwise. In the restaurant of the Lilas brewery I met my man. He was delighted to see me, and we sat down on the terrace. We recalled our common experiences in Vienna; he seemed to be the same good friend that he was before, narrated his stories with enthusiasm, forgot our former small disagreements, and confessed the truth of some things which he had before publicly denied.