The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

“What are you hitting me for? I do you a good turn and deliver you from zealous drinking, and you beat me?”

And, like it or not, again I can’t remember him and say:

“But who are you?”

He says:

“I’m your eternal friend.”

“Well, all right,” I say, “but even if you’re my friend, maybe you can do me harm?”

“No,” he says, “I’ll present you with such a p’tit-comme-peu that you’ll feel yourself a different man.”

“Well,” I say, “kindly stop lying.”

“Truly,” he says, “truly: such a p’tit-comme-peu …”

“Don’t babble to me in French, you devil,” I say. “I don’t understand what a p’tit-comme-peu

is!”

“I,” he says, “will give you a new understanding of life.”

“Well, that may be so,” I say, “only what kind of new understanding can you give me?”

“It’s this,” he says, “that you’ll perceive beauty nature’s perfection.”

“How am I going to perceive it all of a sudden like that?”

“Let’s go,” he says, “you’ll see at once.”

“Very well, then, let’s go.”

And we went. We both walk along, staggering, but walking all the same, and I don’t know where, only suddenly I remember that I don’t know who I’ve got with me, and again I say:

“Stop! Say who you are, otherwise I won’t go.”

He tells me, and I seem to remember for a moment, and I ask:

“Why is it that I keep forgetting who you are?”

And he replies:

“That’s the effect of my magnetism; but don’t let it frighten you, it will pass straightaway, only let me give you a bigger dose of magnetism right now.”

He suddenly turned me around, so that he was facing my back, and started feeling with his fingers in the hair on my nape … So strange: he rummaged there as if he wanted to climb into my head.

I say:

“Listen, you … whoever you are! What are you burrowing for there?”

“Wait,” he replies, “stand still: I’m transferring my magnetic power into you.”

“It’s fine,” I say, “that you’re transferring your power, but maybe you want to rob me?”

He denies it.

“Well, wait then,” I say, “I’ll feel for the money.”

I felt—the money was all there.

“Well, now,” I say, “it’s likely you’re not a thief”—but who he was I again forgot, only now I no longer remembered how to ask about it, but was taken up with the feeling that he had already climbed right inside me through my nape and was looking at the world through my eyes, and my eyes were just like glass for him.

“See,” I think, “what a thing he’s done to me—and where’s my eyesight now?” I ask.

“Yours,” he says, “is no longer there.”

“What kind of nonsense is that—not there?”

“Just so,” he replies, “with your own eyesight you can now see only what isn’t there.”

“What a strange thing! Well, then, let me give it a try!”

I peel my eyes for all I’m worth, you know, and it’s as if I see various vile mugs on little legs gazing at me from all the dark corners, and running across my path, and standing at the intersections, waiting and saying: “Let’s kill him and take the treasure.” And my disheveled little gentleman is there before me again, and his mug is all lit up, and behind me I hear a frightful din and disorder, voices, and clanging, and hallooing, and shrieking, and merry guffawing. I look around and realize that I’m standing with my back up against some house, and its windows are open, and there’s light inside, and from it come those various voices, and the noise, and the twanging of a guitar, and my little gentleman is there before me again, and he keeps moving his palms in front of my face, then passes his hands over my chest, stops at my heart, pushes on it, then seizes my fingers, shakes them a little, then waves again, and he’s working so hard that I see he’s even all in a sweat.

But only here, as the light began to shine on me from the windows of the house, and I felt I was regaining consciousness, did I stop being afraid of him and say:

“Well, listen, whoever you are—devil, or fiend, or petty demon—do me a favor: either wake me up, or dissolve.”

And to that he answers me:

“Hold on, it’s still not time: it’s still dangerous, you still can’t bear it.”

I say:

“What is it I can’t bear?”

“What’s happening now in the ethereal spheres,” he says.

“Then how is it I don’t hear anything special?”

But he insists that I’m supposedly not listening right, and says to me in divine language:

“That thou mayest hear, follow thou the example of the psaltery player, who inclineth low his head and, applying his ear to the singing, moveth his hand over the instrument.”

“No,” I think, “what on earth is this? That’s even nothing at all like a drunk man’s speech, the way he’s started talking!”

And he gazes at me and slowly moves his hands over me, all the while continuing to talk in the same way.

“Thus,” he says, “from its strings all together, artfully struck one with the others, the psaltery giveth out its song, and the psaltery player rejoiceth at its honeyed sweetness.”