Foreborings-Two Sketches

= FOREBODINGS - TWO SKETCHES =
== By Stephan Zeromski ==
=== The present version, translated by Else C. M. Benecke, is reprinted from Polish Tales, 1903 ===
I had spent an hour at the railway station,
waiting for the train to come in. I had stared indifferently at several ladies
in turn who were yawning in the corners of the waiting-room. Then I had tried
the effect of making eyes at a fair-haired young girl with a small white nose,
rosy cheeks, and eyes like forget-me-nots; she had stuck out her tongue (red as
a field-poppy) at me, and I was now at a loss to know what to do next to kill
time. 
Fortunately for me two young students
entered the waiting-room. They looked dirty from head to foot, mud-bespattered,
untidy, and exhausted with traveling. One of them, a fair boy with a charming
profile, seemed absent-minded or depressed. He sat down in a corner, took off
his cap, and hid his face in his hands. His companion bought his ticket for
him, sat down beside him, and grasped his hand from time to time. 
"Why should you despair? All may yet
be well. Listen, Anton." 
"No, it's no good, he is dying, I know
it. ... I know . . . perhaps he is dead already." 
"Don't believe it! Has your father
ever had this kind of attack before?" 
"He has; he has suffered from his
heart for three years. He used to drink at times. Think of it, there are eight
of us, some are young children, and my mother is delicate. In another six
months his pension would have been due. Terribly hard luck!" 
"You are meeting trouble half-way,
Anton." 
The bell sounded, and the waiting-room
became a scene of confusion. People seized their luggage and trampled on each
other's toes; the porter who stood at the entrance-door was stormed with
questions. There was bustle and noise everywhere. I entered the third-class carriage
in which the fair-haired student was sitting. His friend had put him into it,
settling him in the corner-seat beside the window, as if he were an invalid,
and urging him to take comfort. It did not come easy to him, the words seemed
to stick in his throat. The fair-haired boy's face twitched convulsively, and
his eyelids closed over his moist eyes. 
"Anton, my dear fellow," the
other said, "well, you understand what I mean; God knows. You may be sure
. . . confound it all!" 
The second bell sounded, and then the
third. The sympathizing friend stepped out of the carriage, and, as the train
started, he waved an odd kind of farewell greeting, as if he were threatening
him with his fists. 
In the carriage were a number of poor
people, Jews, women with enormously wide cloaks, who had elbowed their way to
their seats, and sat chattering or smoking. 
The student stood up and looked out of the
window without seeing. Lines of sparks like living fire passed by the grimy
window-pane, and balls of vapor and smoke, resembling large tufts of wool, were
dashed to pieces and hurried to the ground by the wind. The smoke curled round
the small shrubs growing close to the ground, moistened by the rain in the
valley. The dusk of the autumn day spread a dim light over the landscape, and
produced an effect of indescribable melancholy. Poor boy! Poor boy! 
The loneliness of boundless sorrow was
expressed in his weary look as he gazed out of the window. I knew that the
pivot on which all his emotions turned was the anxiety of uncertainty, and that
beyond the bounds of conscious thought an unknown loom was weaving for him a
shadowy thread of hope. He saw, he heard nothing, while his vacant eyes
followed the balls of smoke. As the train traveled along, I knew that he was
miserable, tired out, that he would have liked to cry quietly. The thread of
hope wound itself round his heart: Who could tell? perhaps his father was
recovering, perhaps all would be well. 
Suddenly (I knew it would come), the blood
rushed from his face, his lips went pale and tightened; he was gazing into the
far distance with wide-open eyes. It was as if a threatening hand, piercing the
grief, loneliness and dread that weighed on him, was pointing at him, as if the
wind were rousing him with the cry: "Beware!" His thread of hope was
strained to breaking-point, and the naked truth, which he had not quite faced
till that minute, struck him through the heart like a sword. 
Had I approached him at that instant, and
told him I was an omniscient spirit and knew his village well, and that his
father was not lying dead, he would have fallen at my feet and believed, and I
should have done him an infinite kindness. 
But I did not speak to him, and I did not
take his hand. All I wished to do was merely to watch him with the interest and
insatiable curiosity which the human heart ever arouses in me. 
"Let
my fate go whither it listeth." 
((Edifus Tyrannus) 
In the darkest corner of a ward, in the bed
marked number twentyfour, a farm laborer of about thirty years of age had been lying
for several months. A black wooden tablet, bearing the words "Caries
tuberculosa," hung at the head of the bed, and shook at each movement of
the patient. The poor fellow's leg had had to be amputated above the knee, the
result of a tubercular decay of the bone. He was a peasant, a potato-grower,
and his forefathers had grown potatoes before him. He was now on his own, after
having been in two situations; had been married for three years and had a baby
son with a tuft of flaxen hair. Then suddenly, from no cause that he could
tell, his knee had pained him, and small ulcers had formed. He had afforded
himself a carriage to the town, and there he had been handed over to the
hospital at the expense of the parish. 
He remembered distinctly how on that autumn
afternoon he had driven in the splendid, cushioned carriage with his young
wife, how they had both wept with fright and grief, and when they had finished
crying had eaten hard-boiled eggs: but what had happened after that had all
become blurred indescribably misty. Yet only partially so. 
Of the days in the hospital with their
routine and monotony, creating an incomprehensible break in his life, his
memory retained nothing; but the unchanging grief, weighing like a slab of
stone on a grave, was ever present in his soul with inexorable and brutal force
during these many months. He only half recalled the strange wonders that had
been worked on him: bathing, feeding, probing into the wound, and later on the
operation. He had been carried into a room full of gentlemen wearing aprons
spotted with blood; he was conscious also of the mysterious, intrepid courage
which, like a merciful hand, had supported him from that hour. 
After having gazed at the awe-inspiring
phenomena which surrounded him in the semicircle of the hospital theater, he
had slept during the operation. His simple heart had not worked out the lesson
which sleep, the greatest mistress on earth, teaches. After the operation
everything had been veiled by mortal lassitude. This had continued, but in the
afternoon and at night they had mixed something heavy, like a stone ball, into
his drinking-cup, and waves of warmth had flowed to the toes of his healthy
foot from the cup. Thoughts chased one another swiftly, like tiny quicksilver
balls through some corner of his brain, and while he lay bathed in
perspiration, and his eyelids closed of their own accord, not in sleep but in
unconsciousness, he had been pursued by strange, half waking visions. 
Everything real seemed to disappear; only
dimly lighted, vacant space remained, pervaded by the smell of chloroform. He
seemed to be in the interior of a huge cone, stretching along the ground like a
tunnel. Far away in the distance, where it narrowed towards the opening, there
was a sparkling white spot; if he could get there, he might escape. He seemed
to be traveling day and night towards that chink along unending spiral lines
running within the surface of the tunnel; he traveled under compulsion and with
great effort, slowly, like a snail, although within him something leaped up
like a rabbit caught in a snare, or as if wings were fluttering in his soul. He
knew what was beyond that chink. Only a few steps would lead him to the ridge
under the wood ... to his own four strips of potato-field! And whenever he roused
himself mechanically from his apathy he had a vision of the potato-harvest. The
transparent autumn haze in the fields was bringing objects that were far off
into relief, and making them appear perfectly distinct. He saw himself together
with his young wife, digging beautiful potatoes, large as their fists. 
On the hillock, amid the stubble, the
herdsmen were assembled in groups, their wallets slung round them; they were
crouching on their heels, had collected dry juniper and lighted a fire; with
bits of sticks they were scraping out the baked potatoes from the ashes. The
rising smoke scented the air fragrantly with juniper. 
At times, when he was better and more
himself, when the fever tormented him less, he sank into the state of timidity
and apprehension known only to those harassed almost beyond human endurance and
to the dying. Fear oppressed him till his whole being shrank into something
less than the smallest grain ; he was hurled by fearful sounds and overawing
obsessions into a bottomless abyss. 
At last the wound on his foot began to
heal, and the fever to abate. His mind returned from that other world to the
familiar one, and to reflecting on what was taking place before his eyes. But
the nature of these reflections had changed. Formerly he had felt self-pity
arising from terror; now it was the wild hatred of the wounded man, his
overpowering desire for revenge; his rage turned as fiercely even upon the
unfortunate ones lying beside him as upon those who had maimed him. But another
idea had taken even more powerfully possession of his mind; his thoughts darted
forward like a pack of hounds on the trail, in frantic pursuit of the power
which had thus passed sentence on him. 
This condition of lonely self -torment
lasted a long while, and increased his exasperation. 
And then, one day, he noticed that his
healthy foot was growing stiff and the ankle swelling. When the head-surgeon
came on his daily rounds, the patient confided his fear to him. The doctor
examined the emaciated limb, unobserved lanced the abscess, perceived that the
probe reached to the bone, rubbed his hands together and looked into the
peasant's face with a sad, doubtful look. 
"This is a bad job, my good fellow. It
may mean the other foot; was that what you were thinking of? And you are a bad
subject. But we will do it for you here; you will be better off than in your
cottage, we will give you plenty to eat" And he passed on, accompanied by
his assistant. At the door he turned back, bent over the sick man, and
furtively, so that no one should see, passed his hand kindly over his head. 
The peasant's mind became a blank; it was
as if some one had unawares dealt him a blow in the dark with a club. He closed
his eyes and lay still for a long time . . . until an unknown feeling of calm
came over him. 
There is an enchanted, hidden spot in the
human soul, fastened with seven locks, which no one and nothing but that
picklock, bitter adversity, can open. 
Through the lips of the self-blinded
Oedipus, Sophocles makes mention of this secret place. Within it are hidden
marvelous joy, sweet necessity, the highest wisdom. 
As the poor fellow lay silently on his bed,
the special conception that arose in his mind was that of Christ walking on the
waves of the raging sea, quelling the storm. 
Henceforward through long nights and
wretched days he was looking at everything from an immeasurable distance, from
a safe place, where all was calm and wholly well, whence everything seemed
small, slightly ludicrous and foolish, and yet lovable. 
"And may the Lord Jesus . . . may He
give His peace to all people/' he whispered to himself. "Never mind, this
will do as well for me!"
Category:Zeromski
Category:Polish Tales