The Crawling Chaos
Of the pleasures and pains of opium much has been written. The ecstasies andhorrors of De Quincey and the paradis artificiels of Baudelaire are preservedand interpreted with an art which makes them immortal, and the world knows wellthe beauty, the terror and the mystery of those obscure realms into which theinspired dreamer is transported. But much as has been told, no man has yet daredintimate the nature of the phantasms thus unfolded to the mind, or hint at thedirection of the unheard-of roads along whose ornate and exotic course thepartaker of the drug is so irresistibly borne. De Quincey was drawn back intoAsia, that teeming land of nebulous shadows whose hideous antiquity is soimpressive that "the vast age of the race and name overpowers the sense of youthin the individual," but farther than that he dared not go. Those who have gonefarther seldom returned, and even when they have, they have been either silentor quite mad. I took opium but once -- in the year of the plague, when doctorssought to deaden the agonies they could not cure. There was an overdose -- myphysician was worn out with horror and exertion -- and I travelled very farindeed. In the end I returned and lived, but my nights are filled with strangememories, nor have I ever permitted a doctor to give me opium again.The pain and pounding in my head had been quite unendurable when the drugwas administered, Of the future I had no heed; to escape, whether by cure,unconsciousness, or death, was all that concerned me. I was partly delirious, sothat it is hard to place the exact moment of transition, but I think the effectmust have begun shortly before the pounding ceased to be painful. As I havesaid, there was an overdose; so my reactions were probably far from normal. Thesensation of falling, curiously dissociated from the idea of gravity ordirection, was paramount; though there was subsidiary impression of unseenthrongs in incalculable profusion, throngs of infinitely di-verse nature, butall more or less related to me. Sometimes it seemed less as though I werefalling, than as though the universe or the ages were falling past me. Suddenlymy pain ceased, and I began to associate the pounding with an external ratherthan internal force. The falling had ceased also, giving place to a sensation ofuneasy, temporary rest; and when I listened closely, I fancied the pounding wasthat of the vast, inscrutable sea as its sinister, colossal breakers laceratedsome desolate shore after a storm of titanic magnitude. Then I opened my eyes.For a moment my surroundings seemed confused, like a projected imagehopelessly out of focus, but gradually I realised my solitary presence in astrange and beautiful room lighted by many windows. Of the exact nature of theapartment I could form no idea, for my thoughts were still far from settled, butI noticed van-coloured rugs and draperies, elaborately fashioned tables, chairs,ottomans, and divans, and delicate vases and ornaments which conveyed asuggestion of the exotic without being actually alien. These things I noticed,yet they were not long uppermost in my mind. Slowly but inexorably crawling uponmy consciousness and rising above every other impression, came a dizzying fearof the unknown; a fear all the greater because I could not analyse it, andseeming to concern a stealthily approaching menace; not death, but somenameless, unheard-of thing inexpressibly more ghastly and abhorrent.Presently I realised that the direct symbol and excitant of my fear was thehideous pounding whose incessant reverberations throbbed maddeningly against myexhausted brain. It seemed to come from a point outside and below the edifice inwhich I stood, and to associate itself with the most terrifying mental images. Ifelt that some horrible scene or object lurked beyond the silk-hung walls, andshrank from glancing through the arched, latticed windows that opened sobewilderingly on every hand. Perceiving shutters attached to these windows, Iclosed them all, averting my eyes from the exterior as I did so. Then, employinga flint and steel which I found on one of the small tables, I lit the manycandles reposing about the walls in arabesque sconces. The added sense ofsecurity brought by closed shutters and artificial light calmed my nerves tosome degree, but I could not shut out the monotonous pounding. Now that I wascalmer, the sound became as fascinating as it was fearful, and I felt acontradictory desire to seek out its source despite my still powerful shrinking.Opening a portiere at the side of the room nearest the pounding, I beheld asmall and richly draped corridor ending in a cavern door and large oriel window.To this window I was irresistibly drawn, though my ill-defined apprehensionsseemed almost equally bent on holding me back. As I approached it I could see achaotic whirl of waters in the distance. Then, as I attained it and glanced outon all sides, the stupendous picture of my surroundings burst upon me with fulland devastating force.I beheld such a sight as I had never beheld before, and which no livingperson can have seen save in the delirium of fever or the inferno of opium. Thebuilding stood on a narrow point of land -- or what was now a narrow point ofland -- fully three hundred feet above what must lately have been a seethingvortex of mad waters. On either side of the house there fell a newly washed-outprecipice of red earth, whilst ahead of me the hideous waves were still rollingin frightfully, eating away the land with ghastly monotony and deliberation. Outa mile or more there rose and fell menacing breakers at least fifty feet inheight, and on the far horizon ghoulish black clouds of grotesque contour wereresting and brooding like unwholesome vultures. The waves were dark andpurplish, almost black, and clutched at the yielding red mud of the bank as ifwith uncouth, greedy hands. I could not but feel that some noxious marine mindhad declared a war of extermination upon all the solid ground, perhaps abettedby the angry sky.Recovering at length from the stupor into which this unnatural spectacle hadthrown me, I realized that my actual physical danger was acute. Even whilst Igazed, the bank had lost many feet, and it could not be long before the housewould fall undermined into the awful pit of lashing waves. Accordingly Ihastened to the opposite side of the edifice, and finding a door, emerged atonce, locking it after me with a curious key which had hung inside. I now beheldmore of the strange region about me, and marked a singular division which seemedto exist in the hostile ocean and firmament. On each side of the juttingpromontory different conditions held sway. At my left as I faced inland was agently heaving sea with great green waves rolling peacefully in under a brightlyshining sun. Something about that suns nature and position made me shudder, butI could not then tell, and cannot tell now, what it was. At my right also wasthe sea, but it was blue, calm, and only gently undulating, while the sky aboveit was darker and the washed-out bank more nearly white than reddish.I now turned my attention to the land, and found occasion for freshsurprise; for the vegetation resembled nothing I had ever seen or read about. Itwas apparently tropical or at least sub-tropical -- a conclusion borne out bythe intense heat of the air. Sometimes I thought I could trace strange analogieswith the flora of my native land, fancying that the well-known plants and shrubsmight assume such forms under a radical change of climate; but the gigantic andomnipresent palm trees were plainly foreign. The house I had just left was verysmall -- hardly more than a cottage -- but its material was evidently marble,and its architecture was weird and composite, involving a quaint fusion ofWestern and Eastern forms. At the corners were Corinthian columns, but the redtile roof was like that of a Chinese pagoda. From the door inland therestretched a path of singularly white sand, about four feet wide, and lined oneither side with stately palms and unidentifiable flowering shrubs and plants.It lay toward the side of the promontory where the sea was blue and the bankrather whitish. Down this path I felt impelled to flee, as if pursued by somemalignant spirit from the pounding ocean. At first it was slightly uphill, thenI reached a gentle crest. Behind me I saw the scene I had left; the entire pointwith the cottage and the black water, with the green sea on one side and theblue sea on the other, and a curse unnamed and unnamable lowering over all. Inever saw it again, and often wonder.... After this last look I strode ahead andsurveyed the inland panorama before me.The path, as I have intimated, ran along the right-hand shore as one wentinland. Ahead and to the left I now viewed a magnificent valley comprisingthousands of acres, and covered with a swaying growth of tropical grass higherthan my head. Almost at the limit of vision was a colossal palm tree whichseemed to fascinate and beckon me. By this time wonder and escape from theimperilled peninsula had largely dissipated my fear, but as I paused and sankfatigued to the path, idiy digging with my hands into the warm, whitish-goldensand, a new and acute sense of danger seized me. Some terror in the swishingtall grass seemed added to that of the diabolically pounding sea, and I startedup crying aloud and disjointedly, "Tiger? Tiger? Is it Tiger? Beast? Beast? Isit a Beast that I am afraid of?" My mind wandered back to an ancient andclassical story of tigers which I had read; I strove to recall the author, buthad difficulty. Then in the midst of my fear I remembered that the tale was byRudyard Kipling; nor did the grotesqueness of deeming him an ancient authoroccur to me; I wished for the volume containing this story, and had almoststarted back toward the doomed cottage to procure it when my better sense andthe lure of the palm prevented me.Whether or not I could have resisted the backward beckoning without thecounter-fascination of the vast palm tree, I do not know. This attraction wasnow dominant, and I left the path and crawled on hands and knees down thevalleys slope despite my fear of the grass and of the serpents it mightcontain. I resolved to fight for life and reason as long as possible against allmenaces of sea or land, though I sometimes feared defeat as the maddening swishof the uncanny grasses joined the still audible and irritating pounding of thedistant breakers. I would frequently pause and put my hands to my ears forrelief, but could never quite shut out the detestable sound. It was, as itseemed to me, only after ages that I finally dragged myself to the beckoningpalm tree and lay quiet beneath its protecting shade.There now ensued a series of incidents which transported me to the oppositeextremes of ecstasy and horror; incidents which I tremble to recall and dare notseek to interpret. No sooner had I crawled beneath the overhanging foliage ofthe palm, than there dropped from its branches a young child of such beauty as Inever beheld before. Though ragged and dusty, this being bore the features of afaun or demigod, and seemed almost to diffuse a radiance in the dense shadow ofthe tree. It smiled and extended its hand, but before I could arise and speak Iheard in the upper air the exquisite melody of singing; notes high and low blentwith a sublime and ethereal harmoniousness. The sun had by this time sunk belowthe horizon, and in the twilight I saw an aureole of lambent light encircled thechilds head. Then in a tone of silver it addressed me: It is the end. Theyhave come down through the gloaming from the stars. Now all is over, and beyondthe Arinurian streams we shall dwell blissfully in Teloe. As the child spoke, Ibeheld a soft radiance through the leaves of the palm tree, and rising, greeteda pair whom I knew to be the chief singers among those I had heard. A god andgoddess they must have been, for such beauty is not mortal; and they took myhands, saying, Come, child, you have heard the voices, and all is well. InTeloe beyond the Milky Way and the Arinurian streams are cities all of amber andchalcedony. And upon their domes of many facets glisten the images of strangeand beautiful stars. Under the ivory bridges of Teloe flow rivers of liquid goldbearing pleasure-barges bound for blossomy Cytharion of the Seven Suns. And inTeloe and Cytharion abide only youth, beauty, and pleasure, nor are any soundsheard, save of laughter, song, and the lute. Only the gods dwell in Teloe of thegolden rivers, but among them shalt thou dwell.As I listened, enchanted, I suddenly became aware of a change in mysurroundings. The palm tree, so lately overshadowing my exhausted form, was nowsome distance to my left and considerably below me. I was obviously floating inthe atmosphere; companioned not only by the strange child and the radiant pair,but by a constantly increasing throng of half-luminous, vine-crowned youths andmaidens with wind-blown hair and joyful countenance. We slowly ascendedtogether, as if borne on a fragrant breeze which blew not from the earth butfrom the golden nebulae, and the child whispered in my ear that I must lookalways upward to the pathways of light, and never backward to the sphere I hadjust left. The youths and maidens now chanted mellifluous choriambics to theaccompaniment of lutes, and I felt enveloped in a peace and happiness moreprofound than any I had in life imagined, when the intrusion of a single soundaltered my destiny and shattered my soul. Through the ravishing strains of thesingers and the lutanists, as if in mocking, daemoniac concord, throbbed fromgulfs below the damnable, the detestable pounding of that hideous ocean. Asthose black breakers beat their message into my ears I forgot the words of thechild and looked back, down upon the doomed scene from which I thought I hadescaped.Down through the aether I saw the accursed earth slowly turning, everturning, with angry and tempestuous seas gnawing at wild desolate shores anddashing foam against the tottering towers of deserted cities. And under aghastly moon there gleamed sights I can never describe, sights I can neverforget; deserts of corpselike clay and jungles of ruin and decadence where oncestretched the populous plains and villages of my native land, and maelstroms offrothing ocean where once rose the mighty temples of my forefathers. Mound thenorthern pole steamed a morass of noisome growths and miasmal vapours, hissingbefore the onslaught of the ever-mounting waves that curled and fretted from theshuddering deep. Then a rending report dave the night, and athwart the desert ofdeserts appeared a smoking rift. Still the black ocean foamed and gnawed, eatingaway the desert on either side as the rift in the center widened and widened.There was now no land left but the desert, and still the fuming ocean ateand ate. All at once I thought even the pounding sea seemed afraid of something,afraid of dark gods of the inner earth that are greater than the evil god ofwaters, but even if it was it could not turn back; and the desert had sufferedtoo much from those nightmare waves to help them now. So the ocean ate the lastof the land and poured into the smoking gulf, thereby giving up all it had everconquered. From the new-flooded lands it flowed again, uncovering death anddecay; and from its ancient and immemorial bed it trickled loathsomely,uncovering nighted secrets of the years when Time was young and the gods unborn.Above the waves rose weedy remembered spires. The moon laid pale lilies of lighton dead London, and Paris stood up from its damp grave to be sanctified withstar-dust. Then rose spires and monoliths that were weedy but not remembered;terrible spires and monoliths of lands that men never knew were lands.There was not any pounding now, but only the unearthly roaring and hissingof waters tumbling into the rift. The smoke of that rift had changed to steam,and almost hid the world as it grew denser and denser. It seared my face andhands, and when I looked to see how it affected my companions I found they hadall disappeared. Then very suddenly it ended, and I knew no more till I awakedupon a bed of convalescence. As the cloud of steam from the Plutonic gulffinally concealed the entire surface from my sight, all the firmament shriekedat a sudden agony of mad reverberations which shook the trembling aether. In onedelirious flash and burst it happened; one blinding, deafening holocaust offire, smoke, and thunder that dissolved the wan moon as it sped outward to thevoid.And when the smoke cleared away, and I sought to look upon the earth, Ibeheld against the background of cold, humorous stars only the dying sun and thepale mournful planets searching for their sister.
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