Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/105

 too, and my legs hang down. I move my whole body in order to get myself in a good position, quite sure that I will fix myself right; but with this motion other strips slip away and change their positions under me, and I see that the matter is only getting worse: the whole lower part of my body slips and hangs down, but my feet do not reach the ground. I hold on only with the upper part of my back, and I feel not only uncomfortable, but for some reason also nauseated. It is only then that I ask myself what before has not entered my head. I ask myself: “Where am I, and on what am I lying?” I look around and first of all glance beneath me, where my body hangs down, and whither, I feel, I must drop at once. I look down and do not believe my eyes. I am not only on a height, which is like the top of a very high tower or mountain, but on a height such as I could never have imagined.

I cannot make out whether I see anything down below, in that bottomless pit, over which I am hanging, and whither I am being drawn. My heart is compressed, and I experience terror. It is terrible to look there. If I look down, I feel that I shall at once slip from my last strip, and perish. I do not look. But not to look is even worse, for I think of what will happen to me if I slip down from the last strip. I feel that terror makes me lose my last hold, and slowly my back slips lower and lower. Another moment and I shall fall off. Just then the thought occurs to me that it cannot be the truth. It is a dream. Awaken! I try to awaken, but I cannot. What shall I do, what shall I do? I ask myself, and look up. Above there is also an abyss. I look into this abyss of the heaven, and try to forget the abyss below me, and indeed I am successful. The infinity below repels and frightens me; the infinity above me attracts and confirms me. I am still hanging over the pit on the last strips which have not yet slipped out from under me; I know that I