V. The Dragon and the Splinter

Ammon Root had rarely experienced so robust and pure and simple a life as that with which fate had brought him into contact at Dogger’s estate. A remnant of suspiciousness stayed with him until the end of lunch, but the Doggers’ affable manner and the natural simplicity of their movements, smiles, and glances enveloped Root with a winning aroma of happiness. The hearty lunch consisted of butter, milk, cheese, ham, and eggs. Ammon also liked the servant who brought in and cleared away the food; she was a sedate woman and, like everyone in the house, healthy.

At Elma’s request Ammon spoke a little about his travels. Through a sense of inner opposition that a born city person characteristically experiences in the country, where he is somewhat of an alien, he then began to speak of the season’s novelties.

“There’s a new operetta by Rastrelli – The Pink Gnome – which is worse than his last piece. Rastrelli is repeating himself. But Sedir’s concerts are enchanting. His violin-playing is powerful, and I think that a violinist like Sedir could rule an entire kingdom with the help of his bow.”

“I don’t like music,” said Dogger, breaking an egg. “May I offer you some goat’s-milk cheese?”

Ammon bowed.

“And you, madam?” he said.

“My tastes coincide with those of my husband,” Elma answered, reddening a little. “I don’t like music either; I’m indifferent to it.”

Ammon did not immediately find anything to say in reply, since he believed what he had heard. These calm and self-possessed people had no reason to pose for effect. But Ammon began to feel a little like he did when he was sitting in the cafeteria that served vegetarian food.

“Well, there’s no point in arguing the matter,” he said. “A small painting by Alar, ‘The Dragon with a Splinter in His Paw’, fascinated me at an exhibition in the spring. The efforts which the dragon makes while rolling on his back like a dog in order to get rid of the wood sliver are very convincing. It is impossible to doubt that dragons exist after you look at this painting depicting their everyday life. However, my friend found that even if this dragon had been drinking milk and licking its chops… ”

“I don’t like art,” Dogger remarked curtly.

Elma looked at him, then at Ammon, and smiled.

“That’s enough of that,” she said. “When were you last in the tropics?”

“No, I want to explain,” Dogger softly interrupted. “Art is a great evil – I’m speaking, of course, about real art. The theme of art is beauty, but nothing causes so much suffering as beauty. Imagine the most perfect work of art. There is more cruelty lurking in it than a person could bear.”

“But there is also beauty in life,” Ammon rejoined.

“The beauty of art is more hurtful than the beauty of life.”

“What is your conclusion, then?”

“I feel a loathing for art. I have, as they say, the soul of a philistine. I stand for order in politics, for constancy in love, and for inconspicuous but useful work in society. And on the whole for industriousness, honesty, responsibility, serenity, and moderate self-esteem in one’s personal life.”

“I cannot disagree with you,” Ammon said guardedly. Dogger’s assured tone had finally persuaded him that Tonar was right. Dogger was a rare example of a person who had created a special world of indestructible normalcy.

Suddenly Dogger laughed merrily.

“There’s nothing to discuss,” he said. “I’m a cheerful and simple person. Elma, will you come for a ride with us? I want to show our guest the kitchen-garden, the meadows, and the surroundings.”

“Yes.”

VI. The Pit in the Forest

Except for the pit in the forest Ammon did not learn anything new from the ride. Dogger rode on the right-hand side of Elma, and Ammon on the left; Ammon did not make any further mention of Dogger’s conviction and spoke about himself, his meetings, and his observations. He sat in a simple black saddle atop a beautiful, well-fed, and gentle horse. They came across several people who were engaged in clearing ditches and in digging the earth up around the young trees; these were Dogger’s workers, stocky young fellows who took off their hats respectfully. “A beautiful couple,” Ammon thought, looking at his hosts. “Adam and Eve were probably like this before the Fall.” Impressionable, like all wanderers, he began to be imbued with their austerely indulgent attitude towards everything that was not part of their own lives. The inspection of Dogger’s holdings compelled him to utter several compliments: the kitchen-garden, like the entire estate, was a model. The lush meadow, sown with choice grasses, was a joy to behold.

A forest stretched beyond the meadow, which abutted a mountain-side, and when the riders had reached the edge of the woods they came to a halt.

From this high spot Dogger serenely examined his holdings. He said:

“I like property, Ammon. And now, have a look at the pit.”

Dogger rode into the forest and stopped next to a dark damp pit beneath a canopy formed by the thick foliage of old trees. Light percolated through to this place with reluctance; it was chilly here – as in a well – and hushed. Wind-fallen branches filled the pit; roots extended into it; and a tree trunk, snapped off by a storm, had been tossed over the chaos of forest litter and ferns. A pungent odour of mushrooms, mould, and earth came from the vast hollow, and Dogger said:

“You can feel the presence of mysterious creatures and beasts here. I sense the wary steps of polecats, the swishing of snakes, and the protruding eyes of toads that look like a person with dropsy. Bats circle about here in the moonlight, and the round eyes of owls glitter in the darkness. It seems to be some sort of a night club.”

“He’s dissembling,” thought Ammon, and his distrust of Dogger flared up anew, “but what’s at the bottom of it?”

“I want to go home,” said Elma. “I don’t like the forest.”

Dogger looked at his wife tenderly.

“She objects to the dark,” he told Ammon, “and so do I. Let’s return. I feel good only at home.”

VII. Night

At eleven-thirty Ammon took leave of his hospitable hosts and headed for the room which he had been assigned in the house’s left wing; the room’s windows looked out into the yard, which was separated from the house by a narrow garden filled with flowers. The furnishings exuded the same health and fresh coziness as the entire house: a metal washstand; furniture made out of unpainted light wood; clean curtains, sheets, and pillows; a warm grey blanket; a mirror in a simple frame and flowers on the window-sill; a massive desk and a cast-iron lamp. There was nothing superfluous; everything was necessary and purely functional.

«So this is the kind of place I have landed in!» said Ammon, taking off his vest. «Rousseau would have envied Dogger. The speeches by Dogger about nature and the pit in the forest were beautiful; they run counter to the abominable triviality in the rest of what he says. There’s nothing else for me to do here. I’m convinced that it’s possible to vegetate sensibly. However, let’s have a bit more of a look.»

He sat down on the bed and fell to thinking. The steel table-clock struck twelve. Dampness from the meadows and the smell of flowers wafted in through the wide-open window. Everything slept; the stars were shining above the black roofs like the lights of a distant city. Ammon grew sadly troubled as he thought about people’s constant dreams of a good, joyous, and healthy life; he could not understand why the most impressive efforts of this sort-like, for instance, Dogger’s life – lacked the wings of enchantment. Everything was admirable, tasty, and clean; delicate and useful; beautiful and honest-but insignificant, and one felt like saying: “Ah, I was at an exhibition again! There’s an exemplary person on view there…”

Then he mentally began to sketch the possibilities of another order. He imagined a fire, the crackling of beams, the fire’s tempestuousness, Elma’s love for a worker, and Dogger’s becoming a drunkard, a lunatic, a drug addict; he fancied him a religious fanatic, an antiquary, a bigamist, and a writer, but none of this fitted the owners of the estate in Liliana. The trepidation of a nervous, destructive, or creative life was out of character for them. The house was so well-equipped that the possibility of a fire was, of course, completely out of the question, and Dogger was fated never to experience the fear and chaos of a burning building. Two young lives, the acme of creation, pass through year after year, hand in hand – sensibly, intelligently, carefully, and happily.

“And so,” said Ammon, “I’m going to bed.” He had folded back the blanket and was about to turn out the light, when he suddenly heard a man’s quiet steps in the corridor; someone was walking past his room and was walking as people usually do when everyone in the house is asleep at night: tautly and lightly. Ammon listened attentively. The steps faded away at the end of the corridor; five, ten minutes passed, but no one returned, and Ammon carefully opened the door.

A fixture suspended from the ceiling illuminated the corridor with an even nocturnal light. There were three doors in the passageway: one, closer to the centre of the house, led to the servants’ quarters and was opposite Ammon’s room; a second was directly to the left of Ammon’s and, judging from the padlock on it, was the door to a pantry or an uninhabited room. To the right, at the end of the wing, there were no doors at all – it was a dead end with a high closed window looking out onto the garden; yet that was precisely where the steps had died away.

“He couldn’t have vanished into thin air!” said Ammon. “And it could hardly have been Dogger: he said that he sleeps as soundly as a soldier after battle. There’s no reason for a worker to enter the house. The window at the end of the corridor leads into the garden; even if Dogger, for reasons beyond my knowledge, had taken it into his head to go for a walk, there are three doors at his service that all lead outside, and besides, I would have heard the frame slam, but I didn’t.”

Ammon turned around and closed the door.

He half believed the steps to be significant and half did not. His thoughts wandered in the realm of wonderful superstitions and legends about human life, whose purpose is to glorify the name of man and raise it from the swamp of the everyday into the world of mysterious fascination, where the soul obeys its own laws, like God. Ammon again made himself imagine the sound of steps. Suddenly it seemed to him that an unknown ‘someone’ could peer into his open window; he quickly put out the light and pricked up his ears.

“Oh, how stupid I am!” said Ammon when he did not hear anything else.

“Any number of people could be walking about in the night for whatever reason!… I’m simply a narrow professional, a seeker of adventure, and nothing more. What kind of secret could there be amidst the scent of hay and hyacinths? One has only to look at Elma’s homey beauty to discard these stupidities.”

Nevertheless, instinct took issue with logic. For half an hour Ammon stood by the door and peered through the keyhole, waiting for new sounds as a person in love awaits a rendezvous. Through this small opening, which looked like a boot-sole stood on end, he saw the pine panelling on the wall and nothing more. His spirits fell; he yawned and was about to go to bed, when the same steps again resounded clearly. Ammon held his breath, like a swimmer who has dived beneath the water, and looked through the keyhole.

Dogger was coming from the dead end and was walking past Ammon’s door on tiptoe. His head was above Ammon’s field of vision; he had on trousers and a shirt with unbuttoned sleeves – he was not wearing a jacket. The steps faded away, there was the muffled sound of an inside door closing and Ammon straightened up; despite the situation’s logic, irrepressible suspicions churned within him. Too prudent to assign them any specific form, for the time being he was satisfied to keep on repeating one and the same question:

“Where could Dogger have kept himself at the end of the corridor?” Ammon circled about the room, now grinning and now pondering; he ran through all the possibilities: a love intrigue, somnambulism, insomnia, and a walk, but everything was left up in the air owing to the closed window and the dead end; and although the window, of course, could be opened, it seemed inexcusably flippant to think that a solid and respectable person like Dogger would use it as a means of exit into the garden.

Ammon decided to examine the hall thoroughly; he put on felt slippers and went out of his room, but he left his revolver, since he saw no need for it. The tranquil silence of the brightly lit corridor had a sobering effect on him; he felt ashamed and wanted to return, but the past day, which had been filled to excess with the humdrum simplicity that waries a lively soul, nudged Ammon towards artificial invigoration of his unsatisfied fantasies.

He quickly walked to the end of the corridor and up to the window, making certain that it was closed tightly and fastened by solid upper and lower bolts; he looked around and saw a small door that lacked posts and was flush with the wall – this small door, knocked together from thin boards, was apparently cut out and installed after the house had been built. Looking at the door, Ammon thought that it probably led to some steps that had been constructed in order to enter the garden next to the house from inside the corridor. Now that he had found out where Dogger had disappeared, Ammon quietly reached out, flipped the latch and opened it.

It opened into a corridor. It was dark beyond the door, although several steep steps, leading up and not down, were visible. The staircase was bordered by the narrow walls; in order to enter, it was necessary to bend low. “Is it worth it?” thought Ammon. “This is probably the passage to an attic where clothes are dried or pigeons live… However, Dogger is not a pigeon fancier, and he obviously does not take in laundry. Why did he come here? Oh, Ammon, Ammon, instinct tells me that there is game about. So what if I just fire a blank-if I go up, then at least it will be all over, and I’ll sleep until tomorrow’s yoghurt with a conscience as clear as a calf’s. If for whatever reason Dogger takes it into his head to visit the attic and finds me, I’ll pretend that I heard steps there; after all, thieves are always an excellent pretext in cases like this.”

Ammon took a look around, closed the door tightly behind himself, and, illuminating the staircase with a match, began to ascend. At a small landing the staircase turned left; on the upper end there proved to be a somewhat more spacious landing, where, beneath the roof’s steep pitch, was a door leading to the attic. Like the lower door, it was not locked. Ammon listened in order to make sure that there was nobody behind the door. The silence reassured him. He boldly lifted the latch, and the match was extinguished by a rush of air. Ammon stepped over the threshold into darkness; the rather stuffy air of a habitable room frightened him. In a hurry to make sure that he had not ended up in a worker’ or a servant’s cubbyhole, Ammon lit a second match, and the shadows raced away from its yellow light into the corners, making the surroundings distinct.

The first thing Ammon saw was a candle on a huge table in the centre of the room, he lit it, and as he looked around retreated to the door. A white curtain on the back wall hung down to the floor; similar curtains were hanging on the walls to the right and the left of the entrance. A screen window in the slanted ceiling let in the light of distant stars. Ammon hastily examined the corners without further scrutinizing the table, which was piled high with a miltitude of various objects. He found only neglected litter, crumpled paper, and broken pencils. Ammon straightened up, walked to the back wall where the cords for the curtain were hanging on a nail, and pulled them. The curtain rose.

Ammon stepped back at a sudden flash of daylight – the ground rose to the level of the attic, and the wall disappeared. Three paces from the traveller a woman with small bare feet was standing on a path that led to some hills and had her back turned to him. A simple black dress, which inexplicably laced any hint of mourning, emphasised the whiteness of her bare neck and arms. All the lines of her young body were distinguishable beneath the thin fabric. A thick bun of bronze hair covered the back of her neck.

The picture’s supernatural, painful veracity went beyond the bounds of the human; a live woman stood before him in the wondrous void of the distant prospect; any moment, Ammon felt, she would turn and look at him over her shoulder. He smiled in perplexity.

But at this point the brilliant brush’s triumph was terminated and at the same time intensified. The woman’s pose, her slightly drawn back left hand, her temple, the cheek’s shape, the fleeting exertion of her neck in turning, and numerous mute traits that were beyond analysis gripped the viewer with the expectation of a miracle. The artist had fixed the instant for eternity; it lasted and remained the same as ever – as if time had disappeared but at each following instant would resume its flight, and the woman would glance over her shoulder at the shaken viewer. In overpowering expectation Ammon looked at the head, which was fearful in its readiness to reveal its mysterious features; his heart was pounding like that of a child who had been left in a dark room; and with an unpleasant feeling of impotence before an unrealisable but clear threat, he let go of the cords. The curtain fell, but it still seemed to him that if he reached out he would encounter a warm, live shoulder beyond the canvas.

“Genius knows neither moderation nor limits!” he said excitedly. “So, Dogger, this is where you leave to milk the cows? My powerful instinct has guided my discovery. I’ll shout it to the whole world; I’m ill from ecstasy and fear! But what’s over there?”

He rushed to the curtain which hung to the left of the entrance. His hand became tangled in the cords; he impatiently tore at them, pulled them down, and raised the candle over his head. The same woman-in the same charming vivacity that was deepened still further by her face’s radiance-stood before him having fulfilled her exquisite threat. She had turned around. The artist had put into this face the total essence of maternal tenderness and feminine caress. The fire of pure, proud youth shone in the tender but resolute eyes; the bronze silk of her hair above her finely etched eyebrows appeared to be a diadem. Her mouth, with its noble and youthful features, exuded love and intelligence. She stood half-turned but had revealed her entire face, and she sparkled with the youthful strength of life and with a joy as disturbing as sleep filled with passionate tears.

Ammon looked at the picture mutely. It seemed to him that he had only to utter a single word in order to break the paints’ silence, and then the woman would approach him with lowered eyelashes, still more beautiful in her movements than in the distressing immobility of the miraculously created living body. He saw the dust on her legs, which were ready to move on, and the individual hairs behind her little ear were like the radiant attire on heads of grain. Joy and yearning held him in tender captivity.

“Dogger, you’re a despot!” said Ammon. “Could anyone strike a more painful blow to the heart?” He stamped his foot. “I must be delirious,” cried Ammon. “To paint like that is impossible; no one on earth could or would dare to do this!”

And the actual eyes of a woman gazed at him still more expressively, more intently, and more deeply.

Ammon was almost frightened, and with his heart beating violently he pulled the curtain over the painting. Something held him to the spot; he could not bring himself to pace up and down, as he usually did when he was disturbed. He was afraid to stir or to look around; the silence, in which only his breathing and the crackling of the burning candle were audible, was as unpleasant as the smell of fumes. Finally, overcoming his numbness, Ammon walked up to the third canvas, uncovered the painting… and the hair on his head bristled.

What had Dogger done in order to produce a nightmarish effect that could rekindle superstitions? The woman stood before Ammon in the same pose, with her head turned around while she continued walking; but her face was unaccountably transformed, and yet it was the same – down to the last feature – as the one at which Ammon had just looked. The mocking eyes met his with an inscrutable vividness, and the effect was fearsome. Now, at a closer range, their gaze was sombre; the pupils glittered differently; the mouth, which had an evil and base expression, was prepared to bestow a loathsome smile of madness; and the beauty of her wondrous face had become repulsive: it exuded a ferocious, greedy fire and was capable of strangling a person or of sucking someone’s blood; a reptile’s lust and a demon’s passion illuminated its vile oval, which was full of aroused voluptuousness, gloom, and frenzy; and an infinite agony seized Ammon when he looked closely and discerned in this face a readiness to begin speaking. The half-opened lips, between which her teeth shone repulsively, seemed to be whispering; the figure’s former soft femininity emphasised still further the horrible aliveness of the head, which all but nodded from the frame. Ammon sighed deeply and let go of the cord; the curtain rustled as it sped down, and he fancied that a diabolical face had winked at him and hidden itself beneath the falling folds.

Ammon turned around. A large and thick folder lying on the table drew his distracted attention; when he opened it, he found it full of drawings. But they were strange and wild… Ammon examined one after the other and was struck by the superhuman skill of fantasy evidenced in them. He saw flocks of ravens flying over fields of roses; hills that were covered, as though by grass, with electric lights; a river, dammed up by green corpses; hirsute, interlaced hands that were gripping bloodied knives; an inn, full to overflowing with drunk fish and lobsters; a garden in which gallows with executed men had taken strong root; the huge tongues of execution victims hung to the ground and children were swinging on them and laughing; corpses, which were reading yellowed tomes in their graves by the light of luminescent pieces of rotten wood; a swimming pool, full of bearded women; scenes of depravity, such as a feast of cannibals who were skinning a fat man; in the same drawing, a hand jutted out of a cauldron which hung over the fire; weirdly hideous figures, who had red whiskers and blue heads of hair, and who were one-eyed, three-eyed, and blind, paraded before him one after the other-one was eating a snake, another was playing dice with a tiger, a third cried, and jewels fell from his eyes. In almost all the drawings gold sequins were strewn over the clothes of the figures; they had been done with care, as in general any beloved work is done. Ammon leafed through the drawings with a terrible curiosity. The door slammed; he jumped away from the table and saw Dogger.