XXI
In the evening when I was looking at the clouds, I went again along the familiar avenue. The bare and frozen boughs struck against one another with a dismal, dry, cracking sound, as on that memorable morning, and through the avenue there swept the dreary, prolonged howl of the wind, full of the same cold, pitiless misery which filled my heart.
I had no definite aim. Then, and many times afterwards, I went to the station for no other purpose, so far as I could tell, than to watch with fascinated gaze the wheels of the first morning train. I had no idea of committing suicide; yet I never could say positively that I should return; and though I did return home that time and so many other times, it was not because I feared death or enjoyed life. Oh, no! I took to the station and brought away a darkened soul and a heart paralyzed by dull despair. All around me lay the snow; the furious winter storms dashed by; the telegraph posts moaned and creaked; and from across the line the dismal little light of the watchman’s hut looked askance at me. There, crowded together in the close air, lived the watchman’s family; and the red lamp, looking out into the darkness, seemed as desolate and pitiable as the poor creatures upon whom it shone. The children were strumous and delicate, the mother weak, ill-tempered, and miserable; her life consisted in bearing children and burying them. And the father, with whom I used often to talk, was perhaps the most miserable of all. He endured his wretchedness only because, in his simple heart, he believed that it was part of some divine purpose. My heart used to ache when he talked to me and I considered his sunless life; yet in those days I was not without hope. I believed that we should soon find a way of making life bright and joyous for all.
How, when, in what way? That was another matter; but the significance of life lay in that belief. Now I had no belief, and life had lost its significance; and the sight of the uncompensated misery of the watchman’s lot would have been utterly intolerable to me had I not been clothed in a panoply of utter indifference.
Nevertheless, the little light, glancing obliquely down on the snow, the road, and the steel rails, glimmered so sadly. … And nothing there to warm my frozen heart.
On the station platform was a little shed—the same where … A crust of ice, sprinkled over with frozen snow, covered the same bench. There I would sit, and while the wind whistled through the chinks, scattering sprays of snow obliquely against the boarded partition, recall that moment, rehearse those impressions once more, and resume that mental condition. The very air seemed saturated with an influence which penetrated my being, and brought back my old feelings. For hours together I would remain there alone with a spectre which, though I feared it no longer, seemed more terrible than all the spectres born of superstition. In them, at least, there is Some kind of life—perhaps frightful, perhaps inimical, but still life. My spectre represented only the complete absence of life, the aimlessness, loneliness, and utter want of meaning of existence itself. …
I lost the consciousness of time. … Minute after minute fled away; the trains dashed past, rumbling through the darkness. In the carriages I could sometimes hear songs, music, talking. The light from the windows fell in bars across the platform, shadows flitted past the windows, and in a moment nothing was left of them but memory. And yet I sat, absorbed, in my corner, waiting for I knew not what. … My feet grew numb and my fingers stiff; the cold went through and through me, mingling with that inner cold which had frozen my soul. My teeth chattered. I trembled and shrank from head to foot, and to myself seemed as small, pitiable, and insignificant as any half-starved dog. And when I looked back on my former proud dreams and aspirations, I could hear in the darkness my own laughter, sounding so strange and dismal that a sense of horror crept over me: it was as though I were being mocked by some lost soul or invisible fiend.
Then I would think of my warm room and tea, and get up to crawl home, dimly aware that some day the longing for another resting-place might drag me down there under the wheels. I weighed both possibilities objectively, as if the matter concerned someone else; the two ideas contending in my mind while my will remained passive.
And if, nevertheless, I let train after train pass and went home (Titus, whom I had forbidden to follow me, meeting me with a gloomy and furtive yet relieved glance), it was simply because death appeared to me just as disgusting as life.
Yes, you may deem it a paradox, but to me this seems a universal truth: only those whose lives have been full and normal can face death calmly. He who has known intelligent joy has something to be thankful for. The man who has struggled and suffered sees in death a deliverer, a friend relieving him from the grievous burden of duty; but he who has never in life experienced either intelligent joy or intelligent grief fears the mere mention of death, because there remains in his soul a void—something empty and unsatisfied. Death comes before life has given him what he thought he had a right to reckon upon; a man of this type is bitter against both life and death. But still more so when, as happened to me at that time, a man becomes sick
