Stories: The Night

 

Anthology of fantastic tales

 "Every narrative is a journey of discovery" Nadine Gordimer

 

Stories: Nightmare

 The night

Guy de Maupassant

 

I love the nighttime with passion. I love it as one loves one’s country or one’s mistress, with an instinctive love, profound, invincible. I love it with all my senses, with my eyes that see it, with my sense of smell that breathes it in, with my ears that listen to its silence, with my flesh that its darkness caresses. The larks sing in the sunlight, in the blue air, in the hot air, in the light air of bright morning. The owl flees in the night, a black spot that wings across the dark space, and, rejoicing, intoxicated by the dark immensity, it utters its vibrant and sinister cry.

Daytime tires me and bores me. It is brutal and noisy. I get up with difficulty, I wearily get dressed, I go out reluctantly, and every step, every movement, every gesture, every effort, every thought tires me as if I were lifting up a crushing burden.

But when the sun starts to go down a confused joy, a joyfulness of my whole body, invades me. I wake up, I become full of life. As the shadows progressively become longer I feel quite different, more alert, happier. I watch the long soft shadow fallen from the sky; it covers the city like a mysterious and impenetrable wave, it hides, rubs out, destroys the colours and the shapes, embraces the houses, the people and the monuments with its imperceptible caresses.

Then I want to hoot with pleasure like the owls and to run on the rooftops like the cats; and an impetuous, imperious desire for love lights up in my veins.

I go along, I walk about, now in the sombre suburbs, now in the woods nearby Paris where I can hear my sisters the wild animals and my brothers the poachers out prowling.

What one loves with violence always finishes by killing one. But how can I explain what is happening to me? How can I even make it clear that I can even talk about it? I do not know, I no longer know, I only know that it is what ii is.
It’s like that.

So yesterday — was it yesterday? — Yes, no doubt, unless it was before that, another day, another month, another year, I don’t know. It must have been yesterday, nevertheless, as it is not daytime yet, as the sun has not appeared again. But the night has been here for how long? Who knows? Who will ever know?

So yesterday, I went out as I do every day after dinner. The weather was very nice, very pleasant, and very hot. Ongoing down to the boulevards I looked up at the black river overhead full of stars that was pierced by the roofs of the street, a river that turned and seemed to be roiling like a real one with the waves of stars in its midst.

Everything was clear in the light air, from the planets to the gaslights. So many fires were shining up there and in the city that the shadows seemed themselves to be luminous. Luminous nights are more joyful than days filled with sunlight!

On the boulevards, the cafés were flamboyant; people were laughing, drinking and passing along. I went into a theatre for a few moments – in which one? I don’t know any more. It was so clear in there that it saddened me somewhat and I came back out in a sombre mood because of that brutal lighting on the gilded balconies, of that barrier of ramp-lights, by the melancholy impact of that artificial and cruel clarity. I went on to the Champs-Elysées where the café-concerts looked like fires in the foliage. The chestnut trees engulfed in yellow light seemed to be painted and almost phosphorescent. And the electric globes, like shining pale moons, were like lunar eggs fallen from the sky, like monstrous, living pearls that made the streaks of gas, that villainous, dirty gas, and the garlands of coloured beads of glass seemed pale in comparison to their mysterious and royal, pearly clarity.

I stopped under the Arc de Triomphe to look at the avenue, the long, admirable, starry avenue going towards Paris between two lines of fire, and at the stars. The stars up there, the unknown stars thrown at hazard in the immensity where they formed those bizarre figures that make us dream and meditate.

I entered the Bois de Boulogne and stayed there a long time, a long time. An odd shiver took hold of me, an unforeseen and powerful emotion, and an exaltation of my thoughts that bordered on madness.

I walked for a long time, a long time. Then I came back.

What time was it when I passed under the Arc de Triomphe again? I don’t know. The city was sleeping and clouds, great black clouds, were slowly spreading across the sky.

For the first time I felt that, something was going to happen to me, something strange, something new. It seemed to me that it was becoming colder, that the air was thickening, that the night, my beloved night, was weighing heavily on my heart. The avenue was deserted now. Alone, two policemen were patrolling around the taxi stations, and, on the roadway barely lit by the gas lamps that appeared to be dying out, a file of vegetable carts were going to Les Halles. They were going slowly forward, loaded with carrots, turnips and cabbages. The drivers, invisible, were sleeping and the horses were plodding along at a steady gait following the vehicle in front of them, noiselessly, on the wooden pavement. In front of each sidewalk lamp the carrots lit up in red, the turnips in white and the cabbages in green; and these carriages passed along one after the other, these carriages that were fiery-red, silvery-white and emerald-green. I followed them and then turned into the rue Royale and came back to the boulevards. There were no more people there, no more cafés open and only a few stragglers who were hurrying home. I had never seen Paris so dead, so deserted. I took out my watch – it was two o’clock.

A force was pushing me, an urge to walk, so I went over to the Bastille. There I realized that I had never seen such a dark night, as I couldn’t even distinguish the July column whose golden genie was lost in the impenetrable obscurity. A veil of clouds, immensely thick, had drowned out the stars and seemed to be coming down to the Earth to annihilate it.

I came back. There was no one around me. At the Place du Château-d’Ivry, however, a drunkard almost bumped into me and then disappeared. I listened for some time to the sound of his unequal, noisy steps. I went on. At the level of Montmartre a cab passed by going towards the Seine. I called after it, but the driver didn’t respond. A woman was prowling neat the rue Druot: “Monsieur, listen to me, please.” I hurried on to avoid the hand she was holding out. Then, nothing. In front of the Vaudeville theatre a rag-man was searching in the gutter. His little lamp was floating on the level of the street. I asked him: “What time is it, my fellow?”
He grunted: “How do I know? I don’t have a watch.”
Then I noticed that the gas-lamps had been extinguished. I knew that they were put out early, before daybreak in this season, for the sake of economy; but the day was still far off, so far from appearing!

“I’ll go to the Halles,” I thought, “at least there I’ll find some life.”
I went on my way, but I couldn’t see even to guide myself. I advanced slowly, as one does in a wood, recognizing the streets by counting them.
In front of the Crédit Lyonnais a dog growled. I turned into the rue de Grammont and lost my way; then I recognized the Stock Exchange by the iron bars around it. All of Paris was sleeping, profoundly, in a frightening way. In the distance a vehicle was passing, a lone vehicle, perhaps the same one that had passed by me before. I tried to catch up to it, going towards the sound of its wheels through the lonely, black streets, ever so black, as black as death.

I lost my way again. Where was I? How crazy it was to put out the gas lamps so early! No one passing by, no one lounging around, no prowlers, not even the mewing of a love-struck cat. Nothing.
So where were the policemen? I said to myself: “I’ll shout, then they’ll come!” I shouted. No one replied. I called out louder. My voice rang out, without an echo, weak, stifled, crushed by the night, by that impenetrable night.
I hurled: “Help! Help! Help!”
My desperate appeals remained without response. What time was it then? I took out my watch, but had no matches. I listened to the slight tic-tac of the mechanism with a strange and bizarre kind of joy. It seemed to be alive. I was less solitary. What a mystery! I started walking again like a blind man, tapping on the walls with my cane, constantly raising my eyes up to the sky, hoping that the day would finally appear; but the airspace was black, more profoundly black than the town.

What time could it be? I had been walking, it seemed to me, for an infinitely long time, as my legs were weakening under me, my chest was heaving and I was horribly suffering from hunger.
I decided to ring at the first door I came to. I pressed the copper button and the bell tinted strangely in the interior, as if this vibrant noise was all alone in the house.
I waited, but no one replied, no one opened the door. I rang again; I waited again – nothing.
I became frightened. I ran to the next building and pressed the bell twenty times in the corridor where the concierge just must have been sleeping. But it didn’t wake him up – and I went further along, ringing with all my force all the bells, pulling on the bell-cords, beating with my feet, my cane and my hands on the doors that remained obstinately closed.
And all of a sudden I realized that I had arrived at Les Halles. They were deserted, without a sound, without the slightest movement, without any vehicles, any men, not a single bunch of radishes or flowers. They were empty, immobile, abandoned, dead!

I was seized with horror – a feeling of dread. What was happening? My God! What was happening?
I left. But the time? The time? Who would tell me the time? No clock was sounding in the steeples or in the monuments. I thought: “I’ll open the glass of my watch and feel the needle wit my fingers.” I took my watch out… it was no longer ticking… it had stopped. Nothing, nothing, not a shiver in the town, not a glimmer, not the slightest sound in the air. Nothing! Nothing left! Not even the far-off sound of the cab – there was nothing any more!

I was on the docks, and an icy freshness rose up from the river.
Was the Seine still flowing?
I wanted to know, I found the staircase, I went down… I couldn’t hear the current foaming under the arches of the bridge… cold… cold… cold… almost frozen… almost still… almost dead.

And I felt certain that I would never have the force to go back up… and that I was going to die there… me too, of hunger – of fatigue – and of the cold.

With affection,

Ruben