The Fiery Angel by Valery Bruisov

Author:Valery Bruisov [Bruisov, Valery]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9781909232792
Publisher: Dedalus
Published: 2014-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter the Ninth

How we spent the Month of December and the Festival of Christ’s Birth

AS I learned later, there hastened to my assistance, while I lay prostrate and unconscious on the cold ground, not only Matthew but also my opponent and his friend. Count Heinrich showed all the signs of extreme despair, bitterly reproached himself for having accepted the challenge, and said that if I were to die he would know no rest all his life. Having bandaged my wound, all three constructed a kind of hurdle, and decided to carry me into the city on foot, for they feared to submit me to a shaking on horseback on a bad road. Meanwhile, I perceived scarcely anything of what was happening to me, and lay submerged in a confused, almost beatific, consciousness, that was interrupted by a hurtful pricking pain that forced me to open my eyes—but, seeing above me the blue skies, I imagined for some reason that I was floating in a boat and, comforted, let my mind and soul slide once more into delirium.

I have no recollection of how I was carried home or of how Renata greeted me, but Matthew told me afterwards that she met the circumstances with fortitude and efficiency. I passed the days that immediately followed also in unconsciousness, as always happens in cases of inflammation of a wound and loss of blood, and I cannot even relate here the apparitions of my fever, for words, created for matters of reason, have no correspondence to the phantasms of madness. I know only that in some strange way the memory of Renata never entered into this delirium: all the painful happenings of the immediate past were erased from my memory as chalk writing is erased from a slate by a sponge, and I imagined myself as I was during the years of my life in New Spain. When, in a rare moment of consciousness, I saw before me the intent face of Renata, I imagined that she was Angelica, the baptised Indian maid with whom I lived for some time in Cempoalla, and from whom, not without regret, I had to part, owing to her unseemly behaviour. And therefore, in my delirium, I always indignantly pushed away Renata’s hands and angrily said to her, in reply to all her solicitude: “Why are you here? Begone! I would not have you near me!”—and Renata accepted this rough usage from the invalid without a murmur.

My combat with Heinrich had taken place on a Wednesday, and only on Saturday, at the hour of the night mass, did I first recover my senses sufficiently to recognise the room that bounded my horizon and the days through which life carried me, and, finally, Renata, in her pink blouse with the white and dark blue trimmings, in which I had seen her on the first day of our acquaintance. She, who was watching my face attentively, suddenly guessed by my eyes that I had come to, and flew towards me

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