Short Fiction - Fyodor Sologub (best romance ebooks .txt) 📗

happiness, to feel as full of life and easy grace of movement as the rosy-bodied boys bathing there.

Not far away were the shades of the quiet forest; beyond the river lay an immense semicircular plain, dotted here and there with woods and villages, a dusty ribbon of a road curving snakelike across it. On the distant horizon gleamed golden stars, the crosses of faraway churches and belfries shining in the sunlight.

Everything looked fresh and sweet and simple, yet Peter Antònovitch was sad. And it seemed to him that his sadness was but intensified by the beauty around; as if some evil tempter were seeking to allure him to evil by some entrancing vision.

For to Peter Antònovitch all this earthly beauty, all this enchantment of the eyes, all this delicate sweetness pouring itself into his young and vigorous body, was only as a veil of golden tissue spread out by the devil to hide from the simple gaze of man the impurity, the imperfection, and the evil of Nature.

This life, adorning itself in beauty and breathing forth perfumes, was in reality, thought Peter Antònovitch, only the dull prosaic iron chain of cause and effect⁠—the burdensome slavery from which mankind could never get free.

Tortured by such thoughts Peter Antònovitch had often felt himself as unhappy as if in him there had awakened the soul of some ancient monster who had howled piteously outside the village at night. And now he thought:

“If only a fairytale could come into one’s life and for a time upset the ordered arrangement of predetermined Fate! Oh, fairytale, fashioned by the wayward desires of men who are in captivity to life and who cannot be reconciled to their captivity⁠—sweet fairytale, where art thou?”

He remembered an article he had read the day before in a magazine, written by the Minister of Education; some words in it had specially haunted his memory. The article spoke of the old fairytale tradition of the forest enchantress, Turandina. She had loved a shepherd and had left for him her enchanted home, and with him had lived some happy years on earth until she had been recalled by the mysterious voices of the forest. She had gone away, but the happy years had remained as a grateful memory to mankind.

Peter Antònovitch gave himself up to the fancy⁠—oh for the fairytale, for a few enchanted years, a few days⁠ ⁠… ! And he cried aloud and said:

“Turandina, where art thou?”

II

The sun was low down in the sky. The calm of even had fallen on the spreading fields. The neighbouring forest was hushed. No sound was heard, the air was still, and the grass still sparkling with raindrops was motionless.

It was a moment when the desires of a man fulfil themselves, the one moment which perhaps comes once in his life to every man. It seemed that all around was waiting in a tension of expectation.

Looking before him into the shining misty vapour, Peter Antònovitch cried again:

“Turandina, where art thou?”

And under the spell of the silence that encompassed him, his own separate individual will became one with the great universal Will, and with great power and authority he spoke as only once in his life a man has power to speak:

“Turandina, come!”

And in a sweet and gentle voice he heard the answer:

“I am here.”

Peter Antònovitch trembled and looked about. Everything seemed again quite ordinary and his soul was as usual the soul of a poor human being, separate from the universal Soul⁠—he was again an ordinary man, just like you and me, who dwell in days and hours of time. Yet before him stood she whom he had called.

She was a beautiful maiden, wearing a narrow circlet of gold upon her head, and dressed in a short white garment. Her long plaits of hair came below her waist and seemed to have taken to themselves the golden rays of the sunlight. Her eyes, as she gazed intently at the young man, were as blue as if in them a heaven revealed itself, more clear and pure than the skies of earth. Her features were so regular and her hands and feet so well-formed, so perfect were the lines of the figure revealed by the folds of her dress that she seemed an embodiment of perfect maiden loveliness. She would have seemed like an angel from heaven had not her heavy black eyebrows met and so disclosed her witchery; if her skin had not been dark as if tanned by the rays of a burning sun.

Peter Antònovitch could not speak for wonder at her, and she spoke first:

“Thou didst call me and so I came to thee. Thou calledst to me just when I was in need of an earthly shelter in the world of men. Thou wilt take me to thy home. I have nothing of my own except this crown upon my brow, this dress, and this wallet in my hand.”

She spoke quietly, so quietly that the tones of her voice could not have been heard above earthly sounds. But so clear was her speech and so tender its tone that even the most indifferent man would have been touched by the least sound of her voice.

When she spoke about going home with him and of her three possessions, Peter Antònovitch saw that she held in her hand a little bag of red leather drawn together by a golden cord⁠—a very simple and beautiful little bag; something like those in which ladies carry their opera-glasses to the theatre.

Then he asked:

“And who art thou?”

“I am Turandina, the daughter of King Turandon. My father loved me greatly, but I did that which was not for me to do⁠—out of simple curiosity I disclosed the future of mankind. For this my father was displeased with me and drove me from his kingdom. Some day I shall be forgiven and recalled to my father’s home. But now for a time I must dwell among men, and to me have been given these three things: a golden crown,