The Uncanny Reader (10 page)

You know, good friend, what had occurred there. In one chamber lay Julia Margovan, hours dead by poison; in another John Stevens, bleeding from a pistol wound in the chest, inflicted by his own hand. As I burst into the room; pushed aside the physicians and laid my hand upon his forehead he unclosed his eyes, stared blankly, closed them slowly and died without a sign.

I knew no more until six weeks afterwards, when I had been nursed back to life by your own saintly wife in your own beautiful home. All of that you know, but what you do not know is this—which, however, has no bearing upon the subject of your psychological researches—at least not upon that branch of them in which, with a delicacy and consideration all your own, you have asked for less assistance than I think I have given you:

One moonlight night several years afterward I was passing through Union Square. The hour was late and the square deserted. Certain memories of the past naturally came into my mind as I came to the spot where I had once witnessed that fateful assignation, and with that unaccountable perversity which prompts us to dwell upon thoughts of the most painful character I seated myself upon one of the benches to indulge them. A man entered the square and came along the walk toward me. His hands were clasped behind him, his head was bowed; he seemed to observe nothing. As he approached the shadow in which I sat I recognized him as the man whom I had seen meet Julia Margovan years before at that spot. But he was terribly altered—gray, worn and haggard. Dissipation and vice were in evidence in every look; illness was no less apparent. His clothing was in disorder, his hair fell across his forehead in a derangement which was at once uncanny and picturesque. He looked fitter for restraint than liberty—the restraint of a hospital.

With no defined purpose I rose and confronted him. He raised his head and looked me full in the face. I have no words to describe the ghastly change that came over his own; it was a look of unspeakable terror—he thought himself eye to eye with a ghost. But he was a courageous man. “Damn you, John Stevens!” he cried, and lifting his trembling arm he dashed his fist feebly at my face and fell headlong upon the gravel as I walked away.

Somebody found him there, stone-dead. Nothing more is known of him, not even his name. To know of a man that he is dead should be enough.

 

ON THE WATER

Guy de Maupassant

Translated by Edward Gauvin

Last summer, I rented a little cottage on the banks of the Seine, several leagues from Paris, to which I retired nightly. After a few days, I came to know one of my neighbors. He could have been anywhere between thirty and forty, and was quite the strangest fellow I had ever laid eyes on. An old hand at boating, he was really quite fanatical about it—always down by the water, on the water, in the water. He must have been born in a boat, and when the time comes, it is in a boat that he will meet his end.

One evening, as we were strolling by the Seine, I asked him to regale me with a few tales from his life on the water. All of a sudden the good gentleman lit up, wouldn't you know—was transfigured, waxed eloquent, almost poetic. In his heart was a great passion, a devouring, irresistible passion: the river.

“Ah!” said he, “how many memories I have of the river you see flowing along beside us! You city dwellers with your streets simply have no idea what the river is. But hear how a fisherman utters the word. To a fisherman, the river is that mysterious thing—profound, uncharted, a land of mirages and phantasmagoria, where by night one sees things that are not, hears noises that one knows not, shivers without reason, as when passing through a graveyard: indeed, it is that most sinister of graveyards, where not a single grave is to be found.

“To a fisherman the earth is bounded, and in the shadows of a moonless night, the river is limitless. A sailor hardly feels the same thing out at sea. Harsh and wicked as it is, howl and scream as it may, the open sea is honest and true, but the river is silent and perfidious. It never roars; it always flows without a sound, and this eternal movement of water is more terrifying to me than the high ocean waves.

“Dreamers claim the sea hides in its bosom vast bluish lands where the drowned toss and turn amidst giant fish in strange forests and crystalline grottoes. The river's only depths are black and rotten with mud. Yet how beautiful the river is when it shimmers in the rising sun and laps gently at its banks rife with murmuring reeds.

“The great Hugo said, speaking of the Ocean:

O tides, how many tearful tales you know!

Fathomless tides, your stories whispering,

You drive the fearful mothers to their prayer

And give the waves their voices of despair

As rising you draw near in evening.

Well, if you ask me, the stories those slender reeds whisper ever so sweetly in their little voices are surely more sinister still than the tearful tragedies told by the roaring of the waves.

“But since you've asked me for a few memories, I shall tell you of a singular adventure that befell me here, about ten years ago.

“At the time I was living, as I still do today, at old Mother Lafon's place, and one of my best friends, Louis Bernet, who has since given up boating and his wild, carefree ways in favor of a seat on the Council of State, had set himself up in the village of C., two leagues away. We dined together every night, sometimes at his place, sometimes at mine.

“One night, as I was coming home alone, fairly tired, laboriously lugging my big boat behind me, a twelve-foot skiff I always used at night, I stopped for a few moments to catch my breath by that headland of reeds—over there, about two hundred yards before the railroad bridge. The weather was wonderful: the moon shining brightly, the river brilliant, the air calm and mild. This serenity was so tempting. What a nice spot, I thought, for a few puffs on my pipe. No sooner had this thought crossed my mind than I was grabbing my anchor and tossing it into the river.

“My boat, borne back downstream on the current, ran out its chain to the end, and stopped. I settled in the stern on my sheepskin as comfortably as I could. There was not a sound to be heard, not a single sound—except now and then I thought to discern a gentle, almost imperceptible lapping of water against the shore, and I could make out the taller stands of reeds, which took on surprising shapes and seemed, at times, to move.

“The river was perfectly serene, but I felt moved by the extraordinary silence around me. Every creature—frogs and toads, those carolers of the night marsh—was quiet. Suddenly, to my right, as if to cross me, a frog croaked; I gave a start. It fell silent. I heard nothing now, and decided to keep smoking a bit to take my mind off. Now I've cured my share of pipes in my day, but it was no use. By the second puff I felt sick to my stomach, and quit. I started humming, but found the sound of my own voice hard to bear, so I stretched out in the bottom of the boat and gazed at the skies. For a few moments, I was at peace, but soon the slight swaying of the boat began to unsettle me. It seemed to be yawing violently from side to side, touching either riverbank in turn; then I fancied some being or invisible force was tugging it gently to the very depths before lifting it again and letting it fall. I was tossed about as if by a storm; I heard noises all around; I leapt to my feet. The water lay glittering, utterly calm.

“I knew my nerves were a bit shot, and so I decided to move on. I pulled on my chain. The boat began to move, and then I felt some resistance. I pulled harder; the anchor wouldn't give. It had caught on something in the depths and I couldn't lift it; I began tugging again, but to no avail. I took up my oars, turned the boat, and brought it upstream to change the anchor's position. No good: it still wouldn't budge. I grew furious and wrathfully rattled the chain. Nothing stirred. I sat down, discouraged, and began to think about my predicament. There was no way I could break the chain, nor separate it from the boat, for it was massive and fastened to the bow in a piece of wood bigger than my arm. But since the weather was still quite wonderful, I thought it wouldn't be long before some other fisherman came along to rescue me. My misadventure had settled my nerves; I sat down and found that I could smoke my pipe at last. I had a bottle of rum. After two or three glasses, my situation seemed comic. It was very warm, so warm that if I had to, I could spend the night outside without any harm.

“Suddenly, a little bump sounded against the hull. I leapt up, and a cold sweat chilled me from head to toe. The sound was probably some bit of wood carried on the current, but it was enough: once more, I was overcome by a strange nervous agitation. I seized the chain and pulled on it with all my might in another desperate attempt. The anchor held. I sat down again, exhausted.

“Bit by bit, a thick white mist had crept across the river, low over the low water, such that when I stood up I could no longer see the river, or my feet, or even the boat, but only the tips of the reeds and, in the distance, the fields completely pale by the light of the moon, with great black patches rising into the sky, formed by stands of Lombardy poplars. It was as if I were buried to the waist in a woolen layer of singular whiteness, and the wildest fantasias occurred to me. I imagined that someone was trying to board the boat I could no longer see; that the river, hidden in impenetrable fog, must be full of strange creatures swimming around me. I felt a terrible malaise, a tightening around my temples, my heart was hammering so hard I couldn't breathe; just then, I lost my head and thought to save myself by swimming away. The very next moment, that idea made me shudder with fear. I saw myself lost, flailing about in this thick fog, thrashing amidst the inevitable weeds and reeds, gasping with fright, unable to see the banks or find my boat, and I seemed to feel myself being dragged by my feet down into the depths of that black water.

“In fact, as I would have had to swim upstream for at least five hundred yards before finding a stretch free of weeds and rushes where I could get a foothold, odds were nine out of ten I'd lose my way in the fog and drown, as strong a swimmer as I was.

“I tried to reason with myself. Firmly resolved though I was not to feel afraid, there was something else inside me besides my resolve, and that something else was afraid. I wondered what it was I feared; the brave me mocked the cowardly one. Never have I so clearly understood as on that night the struggle between the two beings which live within us, one desiring, the other resisting, each by turns taking the upper hand.

“This dumb, inexplicable fear grew ever greater and soon became terror. I remained unmoving, eyes wide, ears alert, waiting … for what? I had no idea, but it must have been terrible. Had it occurred to a fish to so much as leap from the water, as often happens, it would surely have sufficed to send me reeling floorward in a dead faint.

“And yet, through some violent effort, I finally managed to regain control of my fleeing wits. I took hold of my bottle of rum once more and downed a few great gulps. Then I had an idea, and began hollering at the top of my lungs toward all four corners of the compass, one after the next. When my throat froze up completely, I listened … In the distance, a dog howled.

“I drank some more, and lay down on my back in the bottom of the boat. I stayed that way an hour, maybe two, eyes wide open, not sleeping, nightmares all around. I didn't dare get up, though I desperately wanted to. I kept putting it off from one minute to the next. ‘Here we go, on your feet!' I'd tell myself, then be afraid to make a move. At last, with infinite care, I got up slowly as if my life depended on every slightest sound I made, and looked overboard.

“I was dazzled by the most marvelous, most astonishing sight it is possible to imagine. It was one of those phantasmagorias from fairyland, one of those visions travelers tell of who have returned from far-off climes, and whom we listen to without believing.

“The fog, which, two hours earlier, was still floating o'er the water, had withdrawn bit by bit and gathered on the shore, leaving the river absolutely clear. On either bank it had formed an unbroken hill, twenty feet high, which shone in the moonlight with the splendor of snow. Such that nothing could be seen but the river a-glitter with fire between those two white mountains, while on high, overhead, full and wide, a great moon unfurled its light in a blue-tinged, milky sky.

“All the creatures of the water had woken; the frogs were croaking furiously, while every now and then, sometimes from the right, sometimes from the left, I caught the short, sad, monotonous note that toads fling starward in coppery tones. Oddly enough, I was no longer afraid; I stood in so extraordinary a landscape that even the strangest, most singular things could not have surprised me.

“How long it lasted I have no idea, for in the end I nodded off. When I opened my eyes, the moon had set; the sky was full of clouds. The water lapped gloomily at boat and shore. A wind had risen; it was cold, and the darkness was complete.

“I drank what remained of my rum and then, shivering, listened to the rustle of the reeds and the sinister sound of the river. I tried, but could not make out my boat, or even my own hands, which I brought to my face.

“And yet little by little, the darkness grew less dense. Suddenly I thought I sensed a shadow gliding by beside me; I let out a cry, and a voice replied: a fisherman. I called out to him; he drew near, and I told him of my misadventure. He pulled his boat up alongside mine, and together we pulled on the chain. The anchor wouldn't move. Day broke—somber, rainy, freezing, gray—one of those days that bring you only sorrow and misfortune. I saw another boat; we waved him down. The man on board joined his efforts with our own, and then, bit by bit, the anchor gave way. It came up, but slowly, ever so slowly, and burdened with a considerable weight. At last we made out a black mass, and hauled it aboard.

“It was the corpse of an old woman with a great stone tied round her neck.”