Short Fiction, Fyodor Sologub [most popular novels of all time .txt] 📗

it now? Alas! the eternally thirsting Beast has been made drunk for a moment by it. You have left the mangled body of Timaride by the side of the forest stream, have forgotten the promise given to your splendid friend, and the word of the ancient oracle has not driven fear from your heart. Think you then, that saving yourself you can escape the Beast and that he will not find you?”

The voice and the words were stern. The grey ones had stopped in their dancing to listen. Gurof said:

“What is the Beast to me. I have fixed my walls about me forever, and the Beast will not find a way to me in my fortress.”

At that the grey ones rejoiced and scampered round the room anew, but the Herald of the Beast cried out once more, and sharp and stern were his accents:

“Do you not see that I am here. I am here because I have found you. I am here because the curse of the walls has lost power. I am here because Timaride is waiting and tirelessly questioning. Do you not hear the gentle laughter of the brave and trusting child? Do you not hear the roaring of the Beast?”

From beyond the wall broke out the terrible roaring of the Beast.

“But the walls are firm forever by the spell I cast, my fortress cannot be destroyed,” cried Gurof.

And the Black One answered, imperiously:

“I tell thee, man, the curse of the walls is dead. But if you don’t believe, but still think you can save yourself, pronounce the curse again.”

Gurof shuddered. He indeed believed that the curse was dead, and all that was around him whispered to him the terrible news. The Herald of the Beast had pronounced the fearful truth. Gurof’s head ached, and he felt weary of the hot kisses that clinging, caressing Fever still gave him. The words of the sentence seemed to strain his consciousness, and the Herald of the Beast as he stood before him was magnified until he obscured the light and stood like a great shadow over him, and his eyes glowed like fires.

Suddenly the black cloak fell from the shoulders of the visitor and Gurof recognised him⁠—it was the child Timaride.

“Are you going to kill the Beast?” asked Timaride in a high-sounding voice. “I have brought him to you. The malicious gift of godhead will avail you no longer, for the curse is dead. It availed you once, making as nothing my sacrifice and hiding from your eyes the glory of your exploit. But today the tune is changed, dead is the curse, get your sword quickly and kill the Beast. I was only a child; now I have become the Herald of the Beast. I have fed the Beast with my blood but he thirsts anew. To you I have brought him, and do you fulfil your promise and kill him. Or die.”

He vanished.

The walls shuddered at the dreadful roaring. The room filled with airs that were cold and damp.

The wall directly opposite the place where Gurof lay collapsed, and there entered the ferocious, immense, and monstrous Beast. With fearful bellowing he crept up to Gurof and struck him on the chest with his paw. The merciless claws went right into his heart. An awful pain shattered his body. And looking at him with gleaming bloody-eyes the Beast crouched over Gurof, grinding his bones in his teeth and devouring his yet-beating heart.

On the Other Side of the River Mairure I

The two weeks spent by my brother Sin and myself in the magnificent capital, a vicious if splendid city, passed by as quickly and confusedly as the story of a dream. It was astonishing and bewildering to us, this proud imperial city full of human ingenuity and enticement, and we felt far from it, not only because our native villages were far away, but because our morals and customs were further still removed. Alack, too late I learned that the town was not simply wonderful, glorious, noisy, populous, but also fearsone and terrible to the young untried heart fresh with the innocence of the country. It was my fate to endure incomparable temptation and mortification. But my young brother! Ah, that I had never brought him with me to this place!

Our friend Sarroo, with whom we stayed, wished to show us some return for the hospitality which he enjoyed when he had been staying some time back up in our own country. He gave himself up to us entirely, and we were, you may say, inseparable; he put himself to infinite trouble that we might miss nothing in this great and wonderful town. Other men await the departure of their guests with scarcely feigned impatience, but our good friend was even mortified because we could not stay the whole year round with him and witness the cycle of pageants, festivities, and offerings of sacrifice.

Sarroo showed us everything: the temples of gracious and ingracious gods, the woods sacred to mysterious spirits, the dark towers of tranquillity, the sweet-smelling gardens of voluptuous delight, the taverns where caresses may be bought for money, bazaars full of beautiful cloth and carpets, weapons, precious stones, perfumes, chattering birds, monkeys, slaves of all skins and colours, from delicate rose to darkest black, coffeehouses, shows⁠—strange sights without number. But the calamity that befell us lay not in the many things that we saw. I have not yet mentioned the singular temptation that involved ourselves and our villages in the greatest unhappiness.

O that I had never visited that town! Or that I had not brought with me a child so weak to withstand temptation!

One morning our friend Sarroo said to us: “Today I will show you the imperial menagerie”⁠—at that time the menagerie might be seen not only by ourselves but by foreigners.

My brother Sin agreed with shouts of pleasure. I, for my part, hesitated, for I had had, the night before, a dream in which I saw a beast