Little Johannes

He recognised the features of a human being, and the icy level on which he stood was the forehead. Before him lay the sunken eyes, two deep, dark hollows, and the blue gleam fell on the pinched nose and ashy lips which were parted in the hideous, rigid smile of death.

Pluizer laughed sharply, but the sound seemed smothered by the damp, wooden walls.

'Is not this a surprise, Johannes?'

The worm crept up along the plaits of the shroud: he glided over the chin and the stiffened lips and into the mouth.

'This was the beauty of the ball, whom you thought lovelier even than an elf. Then her hair and dress shed sweet fragrance; then her eyes sparkled and her lips smiled. Now, – look at her!'

With all his horror there was doubt in Johannes's eyes. So soon? The splendour was but now – and already – ?

'Do you not believe me?' grinned Pluizer. 'Half a century lies between now and then. Time and the hour are no more. What has been shall always be, and what shall be has ever been. You could not conceive of it, but you must believe it. Everything here is the truth. All I tell you is true! True! – and Windekind could not say that.'

With a nod and a grimace he leaped round the dead face, and played the most horrible antics. He sat on the eyebrows and raised the eyelids by the long lashes. The eye, which Johannes had seen bright with gladness, stared dull and white in the pale light.

'Now onwards!' cried Pluizer. 'There is more yet to be seen.'

The worm came creeping up from a corner of the mouth, and the dreadful march began once more. Not back again, but along new paths, no less long and gloomy.

'This is much older,' said the earthworm as he made his way through another black wall. 'This has been here a very long time.'

It was less dreadful here than before. Johannes saw nothing but a confused mass, out of which brown bones projected. Hundreds of insects were silently busy here. The light startled and alarmed them.

'Where do you come from? Who brings a light here? We want no light.' And they hastily vanished into the folds and crevices. But they recognised a fellow-creature.

'Have you been in the next one?' asked the worms. 'The wood is still hard.'

The first worm denied it. 'He wants to keep the find to himself,' said Pluizer to Johannes in a low voice.

Then they went forward again; Pluizer explained everything, and pointed out persons whom Johannes had known. They came to an ugly face with prominent, staring eyes, and thick dark lips and cheeks.

'This was a very fine gentleman,' said he in high glee. 'You should have seen him – so rich, so fashionable, so arrogant. He is as much puffed up as ever!'

And so they went on. There were lean and haggard faces with white hair that shone blue in the feeble light, and little children with large heads and old-looking, anxious features.

'These, you see, died first and grew old afterwards,' said Pluizer.

They came to a man with a flowing beard and parted lips, showing glistening white teeth. There was a round black hole in the middle of his forehead.

'This one lent Death a helping hand. Why had he not a little patience? He would have come here in the end.'

Through passage after passage, one after another, they passed, no end of them – straight-laid figures, with rigid, grinning faces, and motionless hands laid one over the other.

'Now I can go no further,' said the ear-wig. 'I do not know my way beyond this.'

'Let us turn back,' said the worm.

'One more, one more!' cried Pluizer.

So on they went.

'Everything you see here, actually exists,' said Pluizer, as they made their way forward. 'It is all real. One thing only is not real, and that is yourself, Johannes. You are not here; you cannot come here.'

And he laughed maliciously as he saw Johannes's terrified and bewildered face at these words.

'This is the last, positively the last.'

'The way stops here. I am going no further,' said the ear-wig crossly.

'I will go further,' said Pluizer; and where the path ended he began grubbing the earth with both hands.

'Help me, Johannes.'

And Johannes, submissive with wretchedness, obeyed, scratching away the fine damp soil. Silent and breathless they worked away till they came to the black wood.

The worm had drawn back his ringed head and disappeared. The ear-wig dropped the light and turned away.

'It is impossible to get in, the wood is new,' said he as he withdrew.

'I will do it!' said Pluizer, and with his clawed fingers he tore long white splinters cracking out of the wood.

A fearful anguish came over Johannes. But he could not help himself; there was no escape.

At last the dark thing was opened. Pluizer seized the light and hurried in.

'Here, here!' he cried, running to the head.

But when Johannes came as far as the hands, which lay quietly folded over the breast, he stopped. He gazed at the thin white fingers, dimly lighted from above. On a sudden, he recognised them, – he knew the shape and turn of the fingers, the look of the long nails, now blue and dull. He recognised a brown spot on one of the forefingers. These were his own hands.

'Here, this way!' Pluizer called from the head. 'Only look, do you know him?'

Hapless Johannes tried to stand up and go towards the light which winked at him; but he could not. The gleam died into total darkness and he fell senseless.

XII

He had sunk into deep sleep – that sleep which is too deep for dreams.

When he came out of the darkness – very slowly – into the cool grey light of dawn, he passed through varied and peaceful dreams of an early time. He woke up, and they glided off his soul, like dew-drops off a flower. The look in his eyes was calm and sweet as they still gazed on the crowd of lovely images.

But he closed them again quickly as though the glare were painful, to shut out the pale daylight. He saw just what he had seen the morning before. It seemed to him far away and a long time ago. Still, hour by hour, he remembered it all, from the dreary day-break to the terrible night. He could not believe that all these horrors had come upon him in a single day. The beginning of his wretchedness seemed so remote, lost in grey mist.

The sweet dreams vanished, and left no trace on his spirit; Pluizer shook him, and the dreadful day began, gloomy and colourless; the first of many, many more. But all he had seen last night in that terrible walk dwelt in his mind. Had it been no more than a fearful vision?

When he asked Pluizer doubtfully, he looked at him with mockery and amazement.

'What do you mean?' he said.

But Johannes did not see the sarcasm in his eyes, and asked whether all this, which he still saw so plainly and clearly, had not indeed been true.