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

of immeasurable power and fierceness, whose roaring was like that of him who dwells in the woods on the other side of the river Mairure. And I did not wish to visit the accursed beast-garden, but I did not like to offend our kind host. II

First of all we wandered through a park which seemed almost limitless in extent, and we saw a marvellous diversity of birds all shut in cages. We saw gigantic birds with great wings able to carry in their talons fat sheep, and we saw birds almost devoid of wings, but of wonderfully beautiful plumage which reminded us of the luminous stones which we find in the sand of the river Mairure, birds whose melodious singing charmed our ears, even birds who could speak the language of that land, but not very well, though quite loudly and distinctly.

In immense tanks we saw the wonders of the seas and the rivers. In cages and glasshouses we saw poisonous adders and immense cobras⁠—they distended their jaws with such rage, and thrusting out their dreadful stings we trembled involuntarily. Before their eyes we quailed, and at moments seemed rooted to the ground before their gaze. They say that their teeth and poison-bags have been removed, otherwise visitors might yet be drawn to their death by the power of the serpents’ eyes.

And we saw innumerable beasts both fierce and gentle, camels with two humps, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, unheard-of beasts with terrible claws, monsters with noses like serpents.

My young brother Sin was elated by the sights. I for my part, under the influence of such a variety of impressions and emotions, revolting odours and appalling sounds, grew more and more confused.

“In a minute I will show you a beast that is truly royal,” said our friend Sarroo at length; but before he had time to tell us its name I was overcome by an inexplicable emotion, and I heard a sound which forced me to fling myself on my face on the ground. Out of all the mingled cries and voices of the menagerie there suddenly rose up a threatening roar⁠—the voice of the dweller in the woods on the other side of the Mairure.

That roar, in the quiet of our village nights, had often broken on our hearts telling us that the dwellers of the woods thirsted anew for a victim, and behold we heard it in the menagerie of the Great Emperor. Lying prostrate on the ground I waited that he should make his choice, and my heart was full of terror. I said goodbye to life⁠—never had I heard that roaring so near to me before.

Then whilst my brother and I lay there in the dust and waited, we heard a noise louder than the roaring of the beast⁠—the laughter of the people in the garden, and our friend Sarroo, laughing like the rest, tried to raise us from the earth.

“Don’t fear,” said he, “the beast is only dangerous when it is free. It is now imprisoned in a cage, and couldn’t get out of it even were it five times as strong as it is. The man who made the cage knew his work. And think, friends, how could there be any danger from the beasts in the king’s pleasure-ground?”

Then, not raising my head, I answered my friend Sarroo: “My heart knows not fear, and does not tremble even in moments of mortal danger, but I heard the roar of the dweller in the woods on the other side of the river Mairure, and at that sound it becomes a man to lie in the dust and wait till the choice of a victim has been made.”

Then, laughing as before, Sarroo replied: “That is only a beast in a cage roaring, and it is quite harmless. Look! Even little children go right up to the cage and are not afraid; the wire cannot be broken. The beast is fed by the keepers, and the meat they give him he has, and no more.”

As I lay in the dust the roaring continued. I remembered the many nights in the village when, awakening in my tent, I heard the same awful demands for a victim, and I dared not get up. But at last I heard my brother Sin say to me, “I have dared to look up; it seems the roaring proceeds from a beast shut in a cage.”

Hearing that, I did not know what to think or what to do. Had any demon such power as to dare to imitate his threatening roar? Could demons dare so much, were they so strong? Did the dweller on the other side of the river Mairure conceal himself in the hide of an imprisoned and harmless beast? did he mock the pitiful blind people who looked at him and from them make choice of a victim? But could the great and stern one descend to such a degree as to hide himself in the skin of a caught beast? Or could it be thought that the contemptible demon of this dishonourable town had wrought a spell?

Did it not augur innumerable misfortunes for myself and my brother Sin that we dared to take part in the false triumph of the people of this debauched and cursed city, even though we lay humbly in the dust before the horrible cage? And what meant this fearful, overwhelming thing? It was incomprehensible to us, perhaps altogether beyond the understanding of the weak mind of man. At least it was insulting to the covenants of our blessed country.

Then whilst I lay in the dust, and the dishonourable made mock of us, my brother Sin said to me:

“Let us go hence.”

But was it possible to go whilst he roared over us? And what if I saw him whom none of us had ever looked in the face? If it were indeed he, how could we go away and how could we leave him there in shame and insult? But staying, did we not share