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

but it drives me almost to desperation. An enormous wire-net rolled together stands immediately over my bed. One could not wish for a better accumulator. If there is a thunderstorm, such as is frequent here, the wire network will attract the lightning, and I shall be lying on the conductor. But I do not venture to say a word.

The first thing that disturbs me is the noise of a machine. Since I have quitted the Hôtel Orfila I have a roaring in my ears like the sound of a waterwheel. Doubting the objective existence of this noise, I ask the cause of it, and learn that it is the printing-press close by. The explanation is plausible, and, though little satisfied, I do not wish to excite myself.

The dreaded night comes on. The sky is covered with clouds; the air is close; we expect a thunderstorm. I do not venture to lie down to sleep, and write letters for two hours. At last, overcome with weariness, I undress myself and creep into bed. The lamp is extinguished; a terrible stillness reigns in the house. I feel that someone is watching me in the darkness, touches me and feels for my heart in order to suck my blood. Without waiting any longer, I spring out of bed, fling open the window and jump into the courtyard⁠—but I have forgotten the rosebushes, whose sharp thorns pierce me through my nightshirt. Scratched and streaming with blood, I grope about the courtyard. Gravel-stones, thistles, and nettles lacerate my feet; unknown objects trip me up. At last I reach the kitchen, which adjoins the doctor’s sitting-room. I knock. No answer. Suddenly I discover that it is raining all the time. O misery of miseries! What have I done to deserve these tortures? It is hell. Miserere! Miserere!

I knock repeatedly. It is strange that no one is at hand when I am attacked. Always this solitude! Does it not point to a plot against me in which all are implicated?

At last I hear the doctor’s voice, “Who is there?”

“It is I: I am ill. Open, or I die!”

He opens the door. “What is the matter?”

I begin my report by giving an account of the attack in the Rue de la Clef, which I ascribe to enemies, who persecute me by means of electricity.

“Stop, unhappy man! Your mind is affected!”

“The devil it is! Test my intelligence; read what I write daily and what is printed⁠—”

“Stop! not a word to anyone! These stories of electricity are frequent in asylum reports.”

“All the better! I care so little for your asylum reports that in order to clear the matter up, I am willing to be examined tomorrow in the asylum at Lund.”

“Then you are lost! Not a word more now! Lie down and sleep.”

I refuse to do so, and insist on his hearing me; he refuses to listen.

When I am alone, I ask myself, “Is it possible that my friend, an honourable man, who has always kept aloof from dirty transactions, at the close of a blameless career should succumb to temptation? But who has tempted him?” I have no answer to this question, but many surmises. “Every man has his price,” says the proverb, but a large sum must have been necessary to bribe this strong character. But one does not pay very highly for an ordinary piece of revenge. Therefore he must have a strong interest in the matter himself. Stop! I have it! I have made gold; the doctor has half-accomplished it also, although, when asked, he denies having repeated the experiments regarding which I had corresponded with him. He denies it, and yet as I stepped across the pavement of the courtyard last evening I found proofs that he had been experimenting. Therefore he is lying. Moreover, in conversation the same evening, he enlarged on the sad consequences which the possible manufacture of gold would entail upon mankind. Universal bankruptcy, universal confusion, anarchy, ruin. “One would have to kill the discoverer of the process,” he concluded.

Moreover, I know the fairly modest private means of my friend. I am astonished to hear him speak of his intended purchase of the ground on which his dwelling stands. He is in debt, must even economise, and yet means to be a landowner. Everything combines to render me suspicious of my good friend.

Grant that I am suffering from persecution-mania, but what smith forges the links of these hellish syllogisms?

“The discoverer would have to be killed.” This is the thought with which my mental torment subsides into sleep about the time of sunrise.

We have commenced a cold-water cure. I have changed my room, and have fairly quiet nights now, although not without relapses.

One evening the doctor sees the breviary lying on my table, and becomes angry and excited. “Always this religion! That is also a symptom, don’t you know?”

“Or a necessity like other necessities!”

“Enough! I am no atheist, but I think the Almighty does not wish to be addressed in such intimate terms as formerly. These flatteries of the Deity belong to the past, and personally I agree with the Mohammedans, who only ask for the gift of resignation in order to support the burden Destiny imposes upon them with dignity.”

Significant words, from which I extract some grains of gold for myself. He carries away my breviary and Bible, and says: “Read indifferent matters of secondary interest, world histories, or mythologies, and leave idle dreaming. Above all things, beware of occultism, that caricature of science. It is forbidden to us to spy out the Creator’s secrets, and woe to them who seek to do so!”

On my objecting that the occultists in Paris form a whole body by themselves, he only says, “All the worse for them.” In the evening he brings me, without any ulterior purpose, I am sure, Victor Rydberg’s German Mythology.

“Here is something to send you to sleep, standing. It is better than sulphonal.”

If my good friend had known what a spark he was throwing