Short Fiction, Vladimir Korolenko [finding audrey TXT] 📗

eyes reflecting the lustre of its cold rays. But when the globe, growing larger and larger as it drew near the earth, became veiled by a heavy red mist and finally disappeared below the horizon line, the face of the blind man would soften and grow calm, and he would rise and go to his room.

As to his thoughts during these long nights, it would not be easy to describe them. Everyone who has experienced the joys and sorrows of self-consciousness is familiar with the crisis that occurs at a certain period of life, when a man, still pausing on the threshold strives to define to himself the place he occupies in Nature, his object in life, and his relations to the surrounding world. This is, so to speak, a “dead point;” and fortunate is the man whom the impetus of life’s power carries through it unharmed. In Peter’s case this crisis was seriously complicated. To the question, “What is the object of one’s life?” he added another: “What is the object of a blind man’s life?” Finally, into this travail of sad thoughts entered another element⁠—an almost physical pressure of unsatisfied desire, which reacted on his disposition; he grew more and more nervous and irritable, without an apparent cause.

“I long to see,” he said when this mood had so far relaxed that he could speak of it with Evelyn⁠—“I long to see, and I cannot overcome this desire. Could I but once, even in a dream, see heaven and earth and the bright sunlight, and remember it all⁠—could I but thus see my father and mother, you and Uncle Maxim⁠—I should be satisfied, and never be distressed again.”

And he persistently clung to that idea. When alone he would take up different objects, feel of them with unusual attention, and then putting them aside try to recall their familiar outlines. In the same way he studied the difference between bright-colored surfaces, which the abnormally keen perceptions of his nervous system enabled him to distinguish quite readily by the touch. But all this simply conveyed to Peter’s mind information in regard to his own relations to things, without giving him a clearly defined idea of their intrinsic properties. He could distinguish the difference between day and night from the fact that the sunbeams, in some mysterious way, penetrated his brain, irritating still more keenly his agonizing queries.

IV

Peter had lost all interest in the books that Maxim used to read aloud to him, and nothing ever arrested his attention now, unless it bore directly or indirectly upon his own affairs. Once he interrupted the reading to ask⁠—

“Red ringing; carmine ringing⁠—what does that mean? Can one see colors in tones?”

“No,” replied Maxim; “but some sounds make an impression analogous to that of colors. I am not sure that I shall be doing right, or even if I shall succeed in explaining this analogy to you so that you will be able to understand it; but I have often thought of it myself, and this is the way it appears to me: Whenever I look upon a bright red surface of any considerable dimensions, it produces on me the impression of something flexible and quivering. It seems as if this red surface were changing every instant; rising from a substratum of a deeper color, it throbs, so to speak, with swift pulsations of a lighter shade, making a most vivid impression on the eyes. That may be the reason why a certain kind of ringing is called red.”

“Yes, yes! wait a moment,” said Peter, quickly opening the piano; and with practised hand he struck the keyboard in imitation of the holiday bell-ringing. The illusion was unusually perfect. A chord in the middle register served as a background, while the clearer high notes rose over it as though leaping and bounding through the air.

“Is that it?” asked the blind man.

“Yes, that is like it; and I know persons who are as unpleasantly affected by those sounds as I myself am affected by the color. I believe the expression ‘carmine ringing’ refers to post-bells. After a bell has been ringing for a long time it grows monotonous⁠—the sound becomes deeper, softer, and more uniform, although it is still as distinct as ever. The same effect may be obtained by a skilful selection of the different tones.”

“Now, listen,” said Peter; and under his fingers the piano rang out like the spasmodic peals of a post-bell.

“No, that is not the way,” said Maxim. “You must play more softly.”

“Ah, yes, I remember!”

And now the instrument sent forth tones, low, rhythmical, and sad, like the music of a “set of bells” under the dugà of a Russian troika, receding along the dusty road in the dim vista of evening⁠—a sound low and monotonous, growing softer and softer, until the last notes are lost amid the silence of the quiet fields.

“Ah, now you have it! You have caught the idea,” said Maxim. “Our language possesses certain definitions applicable to our conceptions of sound and light, as well as of touch. Thus we use the word ‘brilliant’ in regard to tones, and also in regard to colors; and the word ‘soft’ belonging primarily to the sense of touch, may also be applied to colors. We even say a ‘warm’ color, a ‘cold’ color. Of course this is only by way of analogy, but they show some points of resemblance. Some time ago, while you were still a child, your mother tried to explain colors to you by means of sounds.”

“Yes, I remember. Why did you forbid us to continue? Perhaps I might have succeeded in understanding.”

“No,” replied Maxim, “that would have been impossible, and all your labor would have been in vain. You can study an object by itself, as far as its form and the space it occupies are concerned⁠—and you seem able, in some inscrutable way, to perceive vague differences in color; but in order to gain any distinct ideas of form, size, and