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

weird stillness reigns in our little circle. Outside it is dark; there is no wind in the trees; all is quiet. All at once a single gust of wind blows through the crevices of the window with a curious humming noise like that of a Jew’s-harp. Then it is past. My mother-in-law throws a look of alarm at me and folds the child in her arms. In a second I interpret what her look means: “Leave us, O damned soul, and do not bring avenging demons on our innocent heads.” Everything goes to pieces; my last remaining happiness, the companionship of my little daughter, is taken from me, and in the gloomy silence I mentally bid the world adieu.

After the evening meal I withdraw to the once rose-coloured⁠—now black⁠—room and prepare, since I feel myself threatened, for a night-battle. With whom? I know not, but challenge the Invisible, be it diabolic or divine, and will wrestle with It, like Jacob with the angel. There is a knock at the door. It is my mother-in-law, who forebodes a bad night for me, and invites me to sleep on the sofa in her sitting-room. “The presence of the child will safeguard you,” she says. I thank her and assure her there is no danger, and that nothing can frighten me so long as my conscience is untroubled. With a smile she wishes me good night.

I put on my martial cloak, boots and cap again, determined to lie down dressed and ready to die like a brave warrior who despises life and challenges death. About eleven o’clock the air in the room begins to grow dense, and a deadly fear masters my courageous heart. I open the window. The draught threatens to blow out the lamp. I close it again. The lamp begins to make a sound between a sigh and a moan; then all is still again.

A dog in the village howls. According to popular superstition, this is a sign of death. I look out of the window; only the Great Bear is visible. Down there in the poorhouse a light is burning; an old woman is sitting bent over her work, as though she were waiting for her release; perhaps she fears sleep and its dreams. Weary, I lie down again on the bed, and try to sleep. At once the old game recommences. An electric stream seeks my heart; my lungs cease to work; I must rise or die. I sit down on a chair, but am too exhausted to be able to read, and spend half an hour thus in listless vacancy. Then I resolve to go for a walk till daybreak. I leave the house. The night is dark and the village asleep, but the dogs are not. One attacks me, and then the whole band surrounds me; their wide-open jaws and fiery eyes compel me to retreat.

When I open the door of my room and enter, it seems to me as though it were full of hostile living creatures through whom I must force my way in order to reach my bed. Resigned, and resolved to die, I throw myself upon it. But at the last moment, when the invisible vulture is about to stifle me under its wings, someone lifts me up, and the pursuit of the furies is at an end. Conquered, hurled to the earth, beaten down, I quit the scene of an unequal battle and yield to the invisible. I knock at the door on the other side of the passage. My mother-in-law, who is still at prayer, opens the door. The expression of her face as she looks at me makes me feel afraid of myself.

“What do you wish, my child?”

“I wish to die, and then to be burnt, or rather, burn me alive!”

She does not answer. She has understood me, and sympathy and pity conquer her fear, so that she prepares the sofa for me with her own hand. Then she retires to her own room where she sleeps with the child. Through a chance⁠—always this Satanic chance!⁠—the sofa stands opposite the window, and the same chance has willed that it has no curtains, so that the black window opening gapes at me. Moreover, it is the very same window through which the wind gust came when we were at supper. With all my powers exhausted, I sink on the sofa. I curse this ever-present, unavoidable “chance” which persecutes me with the obvious purpose of making me fall a victim to persecution-mania. For five minutes I have rest, while my eyes are fastened on the black square of the window; then an invisible something glides over my body, and I stand up. I remain standing in the middle of the room like a statue for hours, half-conscious, turned to stone, I know not whether awake or asleep.

Who gives me the strength to suffer? Who denies me the power, and delivers me over to torments? Is it He, the Lord of life and death, Whose wrath I have provoked, when, influenced by the pamphlet The Joy of Dying, I tried to die, and considered myself already ripe for eternal life? Am I Phlegyas doomed to the pains of Tartarus for his pride, or Prometheus, who, because he revealed the secret of the powers to mortals, was torn by the vulture?

(While I am writing this, I think of the scene in the sufferings of Christ when the soldiers spit in His face, some buffet Him and others strike Him with rods and say to Him, “Tell us, who is he that smote thee?”

Perhaps my old companions in Stockholm remember that orgy when the author of this book played the role of the soldier?)

Who has struck thee? A question without an answer. Doubt, uncertainty, mystery⁠—there is my hell! Oh that my enemy would reveal himself, that I might do battle with him, and defy him! But that is just what he avoids doing, in order to afflict me with madness and make me