On the River
I rented a little country house last summer on the banks of the Seine,several leagues from Paris, and went out there to sleep every evening.After a few days I made the acquaintance of one of my neighbors, a manbetween thirty and forty, who certainly was the most curious specimen Iever met. He was an old boating man, and crazy about boating. He wasalways beside the water, on the water, or in the water. He must havebeen born in a boat, and he will certainly die in a boat at the last.One evening as we were walking along the banks of the Seine I asked himto tell me some stories about his life on the water. The good man atonce became animated, his whole expression changed, he became eloquent,almost poetical. There was in his heart one great passion, an absorbing,irresistible passion-the river.Ah, he said to me, how many memories I have, connected with that riverthat you see flowing beside us! You people who live in streets knownothing about the river. But listen to a fisherman as he mentions theword. To him it is a mysterious thing, profound, unknown, a land ofmirages and phantasmagoria, where one sees by night things that do notexist, hears sounds that one does not recognize, trembles without knowingwhy, as in passing through a cemetery--and it is, in fact, the mostsinister of cemeteries, one in which one has no tomb.The land seems limited to the river boatman, and on dark nights, whenthere is no moon, the river seems limitless. A sailor has not the samefeeling for the sea. It is often remorseless and cruel, it is true; butit shrieks, it roars, it is honest, the great sea; while the river issilent and perfidious. It does not speak, it flows along without asound; and this eternal motion of flowing water is more terrible to methan the high waves of the ocean.Dreamers maintain that the sea hides in its bosom vast tracts of bluewhere those who are drowned roam among the big fishes, amid strangeforests and crystal grottoes. The river has only black depths where onerots in the slime. It is beautiful, however, when it sparkles in thelight of the rising sun and gently laps its banks covered with whisperingreeds.The poet says, speaking of the ocean,O waves, what mournful tragedies ye know--Deep waves, the dread of kneeling mothers' hearts!Ye tell them to each other as ye rollOn flowing tide, and this it is that givesThe sad despairing tones unto your voiceAs on ye roll at eve by mounting tide."Well, I think that the stories whispered by the slender reeds, with theirlittle soft voices, must be more sinister than the lugubrious tragediestold by the roaring of the waves.But as you have asked for some of my recollections, I will tell you of asingular adventure that happened to me ten years ago.I was living, as I am now, in Mother Lafon's house, and one of my closestfriends, Louis Bernet who has now given up boating, his low shoes and hisbare neck, to go into the Supreme Court, was living in the village of C.,two leagues further down the river. We dined together every day,sometimes at his house, sometimes at mine.One evening as I was coming home along and was pretty tired, rowing withdifficulty my big boat, a twelve-footer, which I always took out atnight, I stopped a few moments to draw breath near the reed-covered pointyonder, about two hundred metres from the railway bridge.It was a magnificent night, the moon shone brightly, the river gleamed,the air was calm and soft. This peacefulness tempted me. I thought tomyself that it would be pleasant to smoke a pipe in this spot. I took upmy anchor and cast it into the river.The boat floated downstream with the current, to the end of the chain,and then stopped, and I seated myself in the stern on my sheepskin andmade myself as comfortable as possible. There was not a sound to beheard, except that I occasionally thought I could perceive an almostimperceptible lapping of the water against the bank, and I noticed tallergroups of reeds which assumed strange shapes and seemed, at times, tomove.The river was perfectly calm, but I felt myself affected by the unusualsilence that surrounded me. All the creatures, frogs and toads, thosenocturnal singers of the marsh, were silent.Suddenly a frog croaked to my right, and close beside me. I shuddered.It ceased, and I heard nothing more, and resolved to smoke, to soothe mymind. But, although I was a noted colorer of pipes, I could not smoke;at the second draw I was nauseated, and gave up trying. I began to sing.The sound of my voice was distressing to me. So I lay still, butpresently the slight motion of the boat disturbed me. It seemed to me asif she were making huge lurches, from bank to bank of the river, touchingeach bank alternately. Then I felt as though an invisible force, orbeing, were drawing her to the surface of the water and lifting her out,to let her fall again. I was tossed about as in a tempest. I heardnoises around me. I sprang to my feet with a single bound. The waterwas glistening, all was calm.I saw that my nerves were somewhat shaky, and I resolved to leave thespot. I pulled the anchor chain, the boat began to move; then I felt aresistance. I pulled harder, the anchor did not come up; it had caughton something at the bottom of the river and I could not raise it. Ibegan pulling again, but all in vain. Then, with my oars, I turned theboat with its head up stream to change the position of the anchor. Itwas no use, it was still caught. I flew into a rage and shook the chainfuriously. Nothing budged. I sat down, disheartened, and began toreflect on my situation. I could not dream of breaking this chain, ordetaching it from the boat, for it was massive and was riveted at thebows to a piece of wood as thick as my arm. However, as the weather wasso fine I thought that it probably would not be long before somefisherman came to my aid. My ill-luck had quieted me. I sat down andwas able, at length, to smoke my pipe. I had a bottle of rum; I dranktwo or three glasses, and was able to laugh at the situation. It wasvery warm; so that, if need be, I could sleep out under the stars withoutany great harm.All at once there was a little knock at the side of the boat. I gave astart, and a cold sweat broke out all over me. The noise was, doubtless,caused by some piece of wood borne along by the current, but that wasenough, and I again became a prey to a strange nervous agitation. Iseized the chain and tensed my muscles in a desperate effort. The anchorheld firm. I sat down again, exhausted.The river had slowly become enveloped in a thick white fog which layclose to the water, so that when I stood up I could see neither theriver, nor my feet, nor my boat; but could perceive only the tops of thereeds, and farther off in the distance the plain, lying white in themoonlight, with big black patches rising up from it towards the sky,which were formed by groups of Italian poplars. I was as if buried tothe waist in a cloud of cotton of singular whiteness, and all sorts ofstrange fancies came into my mind. I thought that someone was trying toclimb into my boat which I could no longer distinguish, and that theriver, hidden by the thick fog, was full of strange creatures which wereswimming all around me. I felt horribly uncomfortable, my forehead feltas if it had a tight band round it, my heart beat so that it almostsuffocated me, and, almost beside myself, I thought of swimming away fromthe place. But then, again, the very idea made me tremble with fear. Isaw myself, lost, going by guesswork in this heavy fog, struggling aboutamid the grasses and reeds which I could not escape, my breath rattlingwith fear, neither seeing the bank, nor finding my boat; and it seemed asif I would feel myself dragged down by the feet to the bottom of theseblack waters.In fact, as I should have had to ascend the stream at least five hundredmetres before finding a spot free from grasses and rushes where I couldland, there were nine chances to one that I could not find my way in thefog and that I should drown, no matter how well I could swim.I tried to reason with myself. My will made me resolve not to be afraid,but there was something in me besides my will, and that other thing wasafraid. I asked myself what there was to be afraid of. My brave "ego"ridiculed my coward "ego," and never did I realize, as on that day, theexistence in us of two rival personalities, one desiring a thing, theother resisting, and each winning the day in turn.This stupid, inexplicable fear increased, and became terror. I remainedmotionless, my eyes staring, my ears on the stretch with expectation. Ofwhat? I did not know, but it must be something terrible. I believe ifit had occurred to a fish to jump out of the water, as often happens,nothing more would have been required to make me fall over, stiff andunconscious.However, by a violent effort I succeeded in becoming almost rationalagain. I took up my bottle of rum and took several pulls. Then an ideacame to me, and I began to shout with all my might towards all the pointsof the compass in succession. When my throat was absolutely paralyzed Ilistened. A dog was howling, at a great distance.I drank some more rum and stretched myself out at the bottom of the boat.I remained there about an hour, perhaps two, not sleeping, my eyes wideopen, with nightmares all about me. I did not dare to rise, and yet Iintensely longed to do so. I delayed it from moment to moment. I saidto myself: "Come, get up!" and I was afraid to move. At last I raisedmyself with infinite caution as though my life depended on the slightestsound that I might make; and looked over the edge of the boat.I was dazzled by the most marvellous, the most astonishing sight that itis possible to see. It was one of those phantasmagoria of fairyland, oneof those sights described by travellers on their return from distantlands, whom we listen to without believing.The fog which, two hours before, had floated on the water, had graduallycleared off and massed on the banks, leaving the river absolutely clear;while it formed on either bank an uninterrupted wall six or seven metreshigh, which shone in the moonlight with the dazzling brilliance of snow.One saw nothing but the river gleaming with light between these two whitemountains; and high above my head sailed the great full moon, in themidst of a bluish, milky sky.All the creatures in the water were awake. The frogs croaked furiously,while every few moments I heard, first to the right and then to the left,the abrupt, monotonous and mournful metallic note of the bullfrogs.Strange to say, I was no longer afraid. I was in the midst of such anunusual landscape that the most remarkable things would not haveastonished me.How long this lasted I do not know, for I ended by falling asleep. WhenI opened my eyes the moon had gone down and the sky was full of clouds.The water lapped mournfully, the wind was blowing, it was pitch dark.I drank the rest of the rum, then listened, while I trembled, to therustling of the reeds and the foreboding sound of the river. I tried tosee, but could not distinguish my boat, nor even my hands, which I heldup close to my eyes.Little by little, however, the blackness became less intense. All atonce I thought I noticed a shadow gliding past, quite near me. Ishouted, a voice replied; it was a fisherman. I called him; he came nearand I told him of my ill-luck. He rowed his boat alongside of mine and,together, we pulled at the anchor chain. The anchor did not move. Daycame, gloomy gray, rainy and cold, one of those days that bring onesorrows and misfortunes. I saw another boat. We hailed it. The man onboard of her joined his efforts to ours, and gradually the anchoryielded. It rose, but slowly, slowly, loaded down by a considerableweight. At length we perceived a black mass and we drew it on board.It was the corpse of an old women with a big stone round her neck.
zpostcode
Recruit
weather
mreligion
Yellowpages
sport
constellation
shopping
name
game
directory
literature
Word
tour
furnish
Lottery
tftnews
lyrics
News
digital
car
dir
Edu
Finance
