Alexander Grin
THE WINDOW IN THE FOREST
(translated by Nicholas Luker)
Having lost his way, the hunter climbed
a hillock and looked around him in alarm. On all sides, as far as the forest itself,
black and low on the horizon, there stretched a strange hostile plain,
overgrown with yellowish-white, gloomy-looking moss and rare clusters of
aspens. Furiously, the autumn wind bent the slim saplings, cutting through
their convulsed foliage with a doleful soughing. Ceaselessly, bowing down
almost to the ground, they paid homage to the darkling sky banked with clouds,
and the cold breath of the air streamed above them towards the crimson sunset
now grown chill.
Terns wheeled above the hunter's head
with the despairing, insanely piercing shriek of a creature being put to death.
Animals living in the small marshes scattered over the plain had hidden in the
reeds, the hares had vanished, and the lumbering ravens, impotent in the gale,
had settled on the ground. The whistling lament of the wind united sky and
earth, and everything whirled and bent low. Capriciously altering their
outlines, the black clouds raced into the stormy distance, wreathing like the
smoke of an unseen fire, breaking up and flattening.
The hunter stood, holding on to his hat
with his hand. The damp, raw wind tautened the skin on his reddened face and
his chilled feet curled impatiently. The melancholy emptiness of the earth,
stricken by the whirlwind, gripped his heart with an unaccountable fear. Grown
rigid with fatigue, his limbs demanded rest. Unnoticeably, his hunger had
increased, and from a slight, almost unconscious desire for food, had become an
avid, soundless cry uttered by the body. The uncertainty of his position confused
his thoughts, the nearness of nightfall frightened him, and his consciousness
grew feeble, yielding to the instinctive need to walk for the sake of walking,
in the blind hope of making his way out to familiar places, of reassuring
himself and finding his bearings.
The hunter set off, keeping to the direction he had taken earlier.
With long, hasty strides he walked towards the forest. Thousands of voices
accompanied him and it was as if thousands of accursed creatures, transformed
into the vegetation of the marshes, were weeping around him with thin, strident
sobs, crying out in supplication, choking with impotent horror. Streaking the
hazy air with their hysterical, zig-zagging flight, the terns flung themselves
to right and left, and the man's chaotic imagination turned them into
mysterious birds possessed of hidden powers. Tirelessly, like spirits of
despair, they flung out their hideous, repulsively shrill cry, and forest-fear
crept out of the dusky, seething void.
The hunter stopped, shivering with cold.
Like black coals, the clouds were pouring over the dimming hearth of the west,
and the sun hastened to disappear so as not to see the earth enveloped in
madness. Against a bank of pale, cloudless sky, branches tossed in fury. The
hunter's ears hummed and his muscles ached with the dampness. Straining his
lungs, he shouted, and his voice sank plaintively amidst the uproar of sounds
rushing over the earth. Groping, he wandered on again, with eyes wide open,
stumbling over tree stumps.
Slowly, an irrepressible despair took
possession of the hunter's soul. Everything came alive and assumed immense,
terrifying proportions. The plain seemed endless and its confines were lost to
the imagination. The earth became a place of inexpressible sorrow, desolation and
evil. The grown man became a child. Staring night in the face, astray and
famished, weak and defenceless, he resurrected the legends of old, calling
forth in his mind the shaggy forms of forest spirits, and smiled twistedly in
the darkness as he tried to throw off the thoughts which possessed him. On he
went, listening with agonised tension to the slightest snapping of a twig
underfoot.
Night was raging like the soul of a
felon. The hunter breathed with difficulty and his thoughts were lost in space.
Solitude sharpened his senses and his feet did not notice the ground. Living,
unseen branches clutched at his clothing, lashed him silently in the face and
howled frenziedly behind his terror-stricken back. The hunter did not stop any
more. Quickening his step, he rushed instinctively towards the forest to
shelter in its dense, damp womb from the ravaging triumph of the storm.
The first rough tree-trunk which he
touched in the darkness with outstretched hand seemed to him a living creature,
a friend come out to meet an exhausted comrade. As he threaded his way further,
he noticed with a feeling of wistful calm how the howling of the wind died away
to become a noisy bustling at the tops of the conifers. A groaning rumble, like
an invisible waterfall, streamed above his head, and the wild orchestra of
slowly creaking tree-trunks plucked achingly at his heart. Half-rotted
pine-needles slipped softly under his feet and the black dampness of the air,
steeped in the scent of the forest, strained his unseeing eyes, flinging into
them sparks leaping from his benumbed brain.
And now, in complete darkness, like a
little ember glimmering on dark cloth, there flared a light. The man did not
believe in this light, wiped his eyes with his fist and went on. The little red
ember disappeared, screened by the trees, flashed again, went out, and once
more gleamed in the darkness like a solitary eye.
Then the hunter was filled with
irrepressible gladness. It was as if his body were regenerated and had lost its
heaviness and fatigue. An unconscious, blissful smile melted his face. Longing
outstripped human short stride and, breaking loose like an angry horse, was
already in the place where it sensed human habitation.
Hunger stirred with sharpened force and the man did not restrain it,
but roused it and rejoiced in it, anticipating imminent gratification. The
dozens of alluringly cosy windows he had seen at night came to the surface of
his imagination. But this light could it be simply a camp-fire?
Enflamed by curiosity and impatience, the hunter drew near and
made out the black fretting of a window frame against a background of panes
reddish with fire. It was a window, a house, the work of human hands, it was a
godsend and balm.
In the obscure depths of the light
filling the interior of the room, there moved blurred silhouettes, yellow
profiles and soundlessly stirring lips and arms. Leaping up momentarily, the
shadows ran across the ceiling to the walls and vanished. The life of this
window in the night, illusory, strange and unknown to the man looking in from
the darkness, was concentrated in a clumsy, lucid quadrangle.
In keeping with the habit peculiar to
man of approaching his fellow more cautiously than wild animals approach each
other, the hunter went forward with slow, stealthy steps, trying to make out
the inhabitants within. Seductive visions of repose and of hot food in the
circle of a peaceful, industrious family spurred him on more quickly than he, a
hunter accustomed to prudence and patience, wished to go. A deep sleep beneath
a safe roof with the hundred voices of the wind raging outside, the friendly
smiles of hospitable hostssurely he had the right to expect this?
His heart beating nervously, the hunter
pressed his face to the glass. Tired by the gloom, his eyes could not
distinguish objects straightaway, but soon, concentrating his attention, he
made out the whole interior and the people who lived beyond the misted glass.
He had apparently stumbled on a forester's hut. In the wall opposite the window
was a door and above it hung guns, a string net to catch quail, a pouch for
shot, a horn with gunpowder in it and some yellowed fishing-rods. To the right
of the door, beside a small, badly whitewashed stove, hung the red curtains of
a bed. On the shelves were piled earthenware crockery and various household
articles. The walls, hung with pictures on fairy-tale and religious subjects,
were black with soot. To the left of the window, in the corner, could be seen a
broad table covered with a dark blue cloth, and on it burned a cheap tin lamp.
There were three people in the room.
Evidently, they had already had supper, as on the wooden bench lay an
unfinished hunk of bread, and an earthenware pot, surrounded by spoons
scattered in disarray, gleamed yellow. By the stove, on a little low stool sat
a small, hunched old woman, quickly fingering her knitting needles, while at
the table, absorbed in some occupation which at first glance seemed
incomprehensible, were a boy of about eleven and an elderly, thickset peasant.
The boy sat leaning forward with one elbow on the table, and his thoughtful
face, unusually delicate for a peasant's, shone with a bright smile. From time
to time he shook his dark hair, trimmed in a circular fashion, and, unheard by
the hunter, laughed, showing a row of white teeth. The elderly peasant was
completely engrossed in what he was doing. He had a weather-beaten, sullen but
good-natured face and tangled, fan-shaped beard. The collar of his dirty,
coloured shirt was undone. He pursed his lips with diligence and blinked.
Unhurriedly he kept catching something running over the table, held it for a
moment in his broad, calloused palm and let it go.
The hunter looked more intently and shuddered with revulsion.
Across the table, fluttering with a wing smashed by shot, a little marsh snipe
ran in a paroxysm of insufferable terror. Its slender beak kept opening and
closing, and its little, black, glittering eyes started out of their sockets.
Daubed with dried blood, its feathers bristled like tattered clothing. Mincing
quickly with its long, brown legs, it ran over to the edge of the table.
Squeezing its bloodied, little head in his fingers, the peasant caught it and,
methodically, taking neat and careful aim, pierced the bird's skull with a
thick needle. The snipe stood stock-still. Slowly, crippling the brain, the
needle came out on the other side, and the bird, released by the forester,
dashed away, powerless to cry out, stunned by pain and the agony of death,
until those same fingers seized it again and pierced the defenceless little
head in a new place.
The hunter stopped breathing. The forester turned and screwing up
his eyes stared at that spot in the window, whence from the darkness of night a
motionless, tired gaze watched him. The forester did not see the hunter and
turning away, continued his sport. The snipe moved less and less, falling
frequently and quivering with its whole body. Sometimes, trying to take to the
air, it leapt up and, completely demented, battered against the glass of the
lamp.
The forest rumbled dully and the damp
cold of darkness let fall drops of rain. A heart-rending, immeasurable fury
raised the lost man's arm. Enveloped in a sudden, torrid haze, he shouldered
his rifle, took aim and, ringing out with a rolling echo, both barrels
shattered the window-panes.
The cry of the wounded man and the crash
of the falling bench answered him. The forest came to life. Thousands of voices
resounded in it, and the interior of the house, linked at once with the hunter
through the sharp tracery of splintered glass, became a reality. He only had to
stretch out his hand to touch the table and the dishevelled head which had
crashed down on to the crumpled tablecloth. The boy was shaking with terror and
shouting something: he was beside himself.
The hunter went quickly away, reeling
like a drunk. The tree-trunks jostled him, the impassive dense forest swallowed
up the solitary man, and he kept on walking, farther and farther, towards the
ravenous, sleepless darkness full of wild beasts.
1909