Lights

Lights1

　戸外で犬が興奮した様子で吠えている。技師のアナーニエフ、その助手の学生フォン・シテーンベルグ、そしてわたしは、何を吠えているかを見にバラックを出た。わたしはこのバラックの客なので外に出なくてもよかったのだが、ワインを飲みすぎて目眩がしていたので、外で新鮮な空気に触れられるのが嬉しかったのだ。

「だあれもいないな」と、外に出ると、アナーニエフが言った。

「いったいどうして嘘をついたんだい、アゾールカ、この馬鹿犬」

　視界には人っ子一人いなかった。

　馬鹿なアゾールカ、この黒い番犬は、無闇に吠えたことを悪く思ったのか、我々に近づいてきて、おずおずと尻尾を振った。技師が屈み込んで、両耳の間を撫でる。

「どうして無闇に吠えたりしたんだい」と、彼は、出来たおとながこどもや犬に話しかけるような声音で語りかけた。

「悪い夢でもみたのかい。ねえ、ドクター、ちょっと見ておくれよ」と、彼はわたしのほうを向いて言った。

「こいつは、おそろしく神経質なやつでね。ひとりじゃいられないんだ。いつも悪夢にうなされていて、怒鳴られようものならヒステリーの発作を起こしたようになる」

「ええ、繊細な感情を持った犬です」と、学生が口を挟んだ。

　アゾールカは、自分のことを言われていると理解したのか、鼻先を上げて憐れに鳴き始めた。

「ええ、もう耐えられないくらい苦しいのです。どうか赦してください」まるでそう言いたげに。

　八月の夜、星は出ているが、あたりは暗かった。わたしはこれまで、たまたま迷い込んでしまったこの場所のような、稀有な環境に身を置いたことがなかったので、星空の夜が、憂うつで、よそよそしく、実際よりも暗いものに感じられた。わたしは敷設中の鉄道線路の現場にいた。高い、半分まで仕上がった盛り土、砂や粘土や荒石の山、穴ぼこ、あちこちに出されたままの手押し一輪車、工夫たちが寝泊まりしている平屋根の泥小屋。これらすべての雑然さが暗黒に塗りつぶされ、大地はカオスの時代を示唆するように、どこか異様で荒々しい様相を呈していた。目の前のあらゆるものが無秩序であるため、無数の穴が空いたグロテスクな見た目の大地に、人や電柱のシルエットを見るのは、なんとなく奇妙な感じがした。どちらも景色にそぐわず、この世界のものだと思えない。とても静かで、我々の頭上はるか高く、電線が哀しげに鳴いているのが聞こえるだけだった。

-------------

THE dog was barking excitedly outside. And Ananyev the engineer, his assistant called Von Schtenberg, and I went out of the hut to see at whom it was barking. I was the visitor, and might have remained indoors, but I must confess my head was a little dizzy from the wine I had drunk, and I was glad to get a breath of fresh air.

"There is nobody here," said Ananyev when we went out. "Why are you telling stories, Azorka? You fool!"

There was not a soul in sight.

"The fool," Azorka, a black house-dog, probably conscious of his guilt in barking for nothing and anxious to propitiate us, approached us, diffidently wagging his tail. The engineer bent down and touched him between his ears.

"Why are you barking for nothing, creature?" he said in the tone in which good-natured people talk to children and dogs. "Have you had a bad dream or what? Here, doctor, let me commend to your attention," he said, turning to me, "a wonderfully nervous subject! Would you believe it, he can't endure solitude -- he is always having terrible dreams and suffering from nightmares; and when you shout at him he has something like an attack of hysterics."

"Yes, a dog of refined feelings," the student chimed in.

Azorka must have understood that the conversation was concerning him. He turned his head upwards and grinned plaintively, as though to say, "Yes, at times I suffer unbearably, but please excuse it!"

It was an August night, there were stars, but it was dark. Owing to the fact that I had never in my life been in such exceptional surroundings, as I had chanced to come into now, the starry night seemed to me gloomy, inhospitable, and darker than it was in reality. I was on a railway line which was still in process of construction. The high, half-finished embankment, the mounds of sand, clay, and rubble, the holes, the wheel-barrows standing here and there, the flat tops of the mud huts in which the workmen lived -- all this muddle, coloured to one tint by the darkness, gave the earth a strange, wild aspect that suggested the times of chaos. There was so little order in all that lay before me that it was somehow strange in the midst of the hideously excavated, grotesque-looking earth to see the silhouettes of human beings and the slender telegraph posts. Both spoiled the ensemble of the picture, and seemed to belong to a different world. It was still, and the only sound came from the telegraph wire droning its wearisome refrain somewhere very high above our heads.