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

front door is shut, and so is the porter’s box. I grope my way on, open a door on the right, and step into the kitchen, in which a lamp is burning. I upset it, and stand in pitch darkness.

Fear restores me to my senses, and I return to my room with the thought: “If I make a mistake, I am lost.” I drag a chair out into the garden, and, sitting under the starry sky, I reflect on what is happening. Am I ill? Impossible: for until I disclosed my incognito, I was quite well. Is it an attack? Yes, because I saw the preparations for it going on. For the rest, I feel better here outside in the garden beyond the power of my enemies, and my heart beats quite regularly. While reflecting thus, I hear someone cough in the room adjoining mine. It is at once answered by a low cough from the room on the other side. Doubtless it is a signal, just like the one I heard my last night in the Pension Orfila. I try to open forcibly the glass-door of the ground-floor room, but the bolt holds.

Wearied by the useless fight against invisible powers, I sink on a garden seat. Sleep has pity on me, so that under the stars of a beautiful summer night I fall asleep among the roses whispering in the warm airs of July.

The sun awakes me, and I thank Providence which has saved me from death. I pack my things, and mean to go to Dieppe to find shelter with some friends, whom I have neglected as I have all others, but who are considerate and generous towards the fallen and shipwrecked. When I ask to speak to the directress of the house, she is not visible, and sends a message to say she is unwell. I might have expected that she would be involved in the plot against me. I leave the house with a curse on the head of my knavish enemies, and call on heaven to send down fire on this den of robbers⁠—whether rightly or wrongly, who knows? My Dieppe friends were alarmed, when they saw me mounting the hill of their town with my bag heavy with manuscripts.

“Where have you come from, poor fellow?”

“I come from death.”

“I doubt it, for you look as if you had not been dug out yet.”

The kind, good-hearted lady of the house takes me by the hand and leads me before a looking-glass, that I may see myself. I certainly look a pitiable object; my face blackened by smoke from the engine, my cheeks fallen in, my hair grown grey, my eyes staring wildly, and my linen dirty.

But when I was left alone in the dressing-room by my kind hostess, who treated me like a sick, deserted child, I examined my face more closely. There was an expression in my features which alarmed me. It was not fear of death or wickedness, but something else, and had I at that time known Swedenborg, he would have explained to me the impression made by the evil spirit on my soul, and the occurrences of the last weeks. Now I felt ashamed and angry with myself, and my conscience pained me on account of my ingratitude towards this family, which had proved a harbour of refuge for me, as for so many other shipwrecked voyagers. As a punishment, I shall be driven hence also by the furies. Here is a beautiful artistic home, ordered domestic economy, married happiness, with charming children, cleanness and comfort, boundless hospitality, charitable judgment, an atmosphere of beauty and goodness which dazzles me⁠—a paradise, in short, and I in the midst of it, all like a lost soul. I see spread out before my eyes all the happiness which life can offer, and all that I have lost.

I occupy an attic room looking out on a hill where there is an asylum for old people. In the evening I observe two men looking over the wall of the institution towards our villa, and pointing at my window. The idea that I am being persecuted by means of electricity again takes possession of me.

The night between the 25th and 26th of July, 1896, comes on. We have searched together all the attic rooms near mine, and the loft itself, so as to satisfy me that no one with evil intentions could be lurking there. Only in a lumber-room an object of no significance in itself has a depressing effect upon me. It is only the skin of a polar bear used as a rug; but the gaping jaws, the threatening teeth, the sparkling eyes irritate me. Why should this creature lie just now, just there? Without taking off my clothes, I lie down on the bed, determined to wait for the fateful hour⁠—two o’clock.

While I am reading, midnight approaches. One o’clock strikes, and the whole house is wrapped in slumber. At last two o’clock strikes! Nothing happens. Then in a daredevil spirit, or perhaps only with the intention of making a physical experiment, I rise, open both windows, and light two candles. Then I sit at the table behind them, expose myself with bared breast as a mark, and challenge the unknown: “Attack, if you dare!”

Then I feel, at first only faintly, something like an inrush of electric fluid. I look at my compass, but it shows no sign of wavering. It is not electricity then. But the tension increases; my heart beats violently; I offer resistance, but as if by a flash of lightning my body is charged with a fluid which chokes me and depletes my blood. I rush down the stairs to the room on the ground-floor, where they have made up for me a provisional bed in case of necessity. There I lie for five minutes and collect my thoughts. Is it radiating electricity? No; for the compass has not been affected. Is it a diseased state of mind induced by