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

fear of the fatal hour of two o’clock? No; for I have still the courage to defy attacks. But why must I light the candles and attract the mysterious fluid? In this labyrinth of questioning I find no answer, and try at last to go to sleep, but a new discharge of electricity strikes me like a cyclone, forces me to rise from bed, and the chase begins afresh. I hide myself behind the walls, lie down close to the doors, or in front of the stove. Everywhere, everywhere the furies find me. Overmastered by terror, I fly in panic from everything and nothing, from room to room, and finish by crouching down on the balcony. The grey-yellow light of dawn begins to break, the sepia-coloured clouds assume fantastic and monstrous shapes, which increase my despair. I repair to my friend’s studio, lie down on the carpet, and close my eyes. After barely five minutes’ quiet, a rustle awakes me. A mouse looks at me and seems to wish to come nearer. I drive it away; it comes back with another one. Good Heavens! Have I got delirium tremens, though I have been quite temperate the last three years? (In the daytime I find that there are really mice in the studio. It was a coincidence, then, but who caused it, and what is his object?) I change my place, and lie down on the hall carpet. Merciful sleep descends upon my tortured spirit, and for about half an hour I lose consciousness of my sufferings. Then a distinct cry “Alp!” makes me suddenly start up. “Alp!” That is the German for nightmare. “Alp” is the word which the rainstorm caused to be formed on my paper in the Hôtel Orfila. Who uttered that cry? No one, for the whole house is asleep. Is it a devil’s game? That is a poetical expression which perhaps contains the whole truth.

I mount the steps to my attic. The candles have burnt to their sockets; deep silence reigns. The Angelus rings out. It is the day of the Lord. I open my breviary and read “De Profundis clamavi ad Te, Domine!” That comforts me, and I sink down on the bed like a corpse.

July 26th, Sunday.⁠—A cyclone devastates the Jardin des Plantes. The papers contain items which I find especially interesting. Today, Andrée’s balloon is to ascend for its voyage to the North Pole, but the occasion is not propitious. The storm has hurled down several balloons, which have ascended at various points, and killed many aeronauts.

The next morning I leave Dieppe, uttering a benediction on the house, over whose well-deserved happiness my sadness had cast a shadow.

Since I do not wish to believe in the interference of supernatural powers, I imagine that I am the victim of a nervous illness. Accordingly, I make up my mind to go to Sweden and see a physician who is a friend of mine.

As a memorial of Dieppe, I take a piece of iron-ore which has a trefoil shape like a Gothic window, and is marked with the sign of a Maltese cross. A child has found it on the shore, and tells me that these stones fall from the sky and are cast by the waves on the land. I believe him willingly, and keep the gift as a talisman, the significance of which is hidden from me. (On the coast of Brittany the coast-dwellers are accustomed after storms to collect stones shaped like crosses, with a gold-like shimmer. These stones are called “staurolites.”)

The little town to which I now betook myself lies in the extreme south of Sweden, on the seacoast. It is an old pirates’ and smugglers’ haunt, in which exotic traces of all parts of the world have been left by various voyagers. My doctor’s house looks like a Buddhist cloister. The four wings of the one-storeyed house form a quadrangle, in the centre of which the dome-shaped woodshed resembles the tomb of Tamerlane at Samarcand. The style of which the roof is built and faced with Chinese bricks recalls the Farther East. An apathetic tortoise crawls over the pavement and disappears in a Nirvana of innumerable weeds. In the garden is a pagoda-shaped summerhouse completely overgrown by clematis.

In the whole of this cloister, with its countless rooms, there lives only one person, the director of the district hospital. He is a widower, solitary and independent, and from the hard discipline of life has derived that strong and noble contempt of men which leads to a deep knowledge of the vanity of all things, oneself included.

The entrance of this man into my life occurred in such an unexpected manner, that I am inclined to assign it to the dramatic skill of a Deus ex machina.

At our first greeting, on my arrival from Dieppe, he looks at me inquiringly, and suddenly asks, “You have a nervous illness! Good! But that is not all. You look so strange that I do not recognise you. What have you been after? Dissipation, crime, lost illusions, religion? Tell me, old fellow!”

But I tell him nothing special, for my first thought is one of suspicion. He is prejudiced against me, has made inquiries about me in some quarter, and wants to have me confined. I tell him about my sleeplessness, nervousness, and bad dreams, and then we talk of other things.

In my room my attention is arrested by the American bed, with its four legs topped by four brass balls, which look like the conductors of an electric machine. Add to this an elastic mattress with copper springs, resembling Ruhmkorff induction coils, and one can easily imagine my rage at this diabolical coincidence. Besides, it is impossible to ask for another bed, as I might be suspected of being mad. In order to assure myself that nothing is concealed above me, I mount into the loft overhead. There is only one object there,