Page:Strange Tales Volume 02 Number 03 (1932-10).djvu/91

 like the strings of a bass viol, and out of this spectral body came pieces of clinkers rattling to the floor. Such is death, I felt—like a mess of slag.

Slowly the center of that white tablecloth soared upward, like an immense bubble—a chill draft swept the room and blew away the nebula. Glittering harp-strings appeared, reaching from the collarbone of the wench to her hips. A creature, half woman, half harp!

The hunchback played on it, so I dreamed, a song of death and lust, which ended in a strange hymn:

"All joy must turn to suffering; No earthly pleasure can endure! Who longs for joy, who chooses joy, Will reap the sorrow which it brings: Who never yearns nor waits for joy, Has never yearned for sorrow's end."

And an inexplicable longing for death came over me, and I yearned to die.

But in my heart, life gave battle—the instinct for self-preservation. And death and life were ominously arrayed against each other; that is catalepsy.

My eyes stared, motionless. The acrobat bent over me, and I noticed his wrinkled tricot, the greenish lid on his head, and his ruffled neck.

"Catalepsy," I wanted to stammer, but I could not open my mouth.

As he walked from one to another and peered into their faces with a questioning leer, I knew that we were paralyzed: he was like a toadstool!

We have eaten toadstools, stewed with veratrum album, the herb which is also called white Germer.

But that is only a spook of the night, a chimera!

I wanted to shout it out loud, but could not.

I wanted to turn my head, but could not.

The hunchback with the white, varnished mask got up noiselessly, and the others followed him and arranged themselves in couples, just as noiselessly.

The acrobat with the French trumpet, the hunchback with the human harp, Ignatia with Albina Veratrina—thus they moved right through the wall in the twitching dance step of a cakewalk.

Only once did Albina Veratrina turn her face towards me, accompanying the look with an obscene gesture.

I wanted to turn my eyes sideways or close my lids, but I could not. Constantly I had to stare at the wall-clock, and at its hands which crawled around its face like thieving fingers.

And in my ears still sounded that haunting couplet:

"I took the whitest flow-ower To cheer my darkest hou-our, Tra-la, tra-la, tra-la, Tra—la-la-la—tra-la,"

and like a basso ostinato it came from the depths:

"All joy must turn to suffering: Who never yearns nor waits for joy, Has never yearned for sorrow's end."

I recovered from this poisoning after a long, long time; but the others are all buried.

It was too late to save them—so I was told—when help arrived.

But I suspect that they were not really dead, when they were buried.