The Fall of the House of Usher: Selected Stories / Падение дома Ашеров: Избранные рассказы. Эдгар Аллан По
with a feeling half of pity, half of horror. Surely, Roderick Usher had terribly altered, and in such a brief period! He had always been pale with large eyes and thin lips of a beautiful curve. The now frightening paleness of the skin, and the now miraculous[12] luster of the eye, above all things scared me.
In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with his attempts to overcome an excessive nervous agitation. His voice varied rapidly from a trembling indecision to that abrupt expression, which may be observed in the drunkard, or the eater of opium, during the periods of his most intense excitement.
Thus he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest desire to see me, and of the comfort he expected me to bring him. Then he started speaking of the nature of his malady. It was, he said, a family evil[13], and he failed to find a remedy for that. He immediately added that it was a mere nervous affection[14], which would undoubtedly soon pass off. It displayed itself in many unnatural sensations. Some of these, as he described them, interested and bewildered me. He suffered much from the acuteness of the senses. He could eat only the bland food; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the smells of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and he could bear only sounds from stringed instruments.
I found he was a slave to a strange kind of terror. “I must die in this terrible madness,” said he. “I dread the events of the future, not in themselves, but in their results. I have, indeed, no hatred of danger, I dead the terror – the effect[15] of danger. I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason[16] together, in some struggle with the terrible phantasm, FEAR.”
I learned, moreover, another unusual feature of his mental condition. He had certain superstitious impressions about the house where he lived. He feared an influence of his family mansion which had power over his soul – the gray walls and towers, and the gloomy lake into which they all looked down.
He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the strange gloom, which thus affected him, was connected with an illness of his tenderly beloved sister, his sole companion for long years, his last and only relative on earth. “Her death,” he said, “would leave me the last of the ancient race of the Ushers.” While he spoke, the lady Madeline (for so was she called) passed slowly through a remote part of the apartment, and, without having noticed my presence,[17] disappeared.
I watched her with an utter astonishment mixed with dread; and yet I found it impossible to explain such feelings.
The disease of the lady Madeline had long confused her physicians. A settled apathy, losing weight, and frequent attacks of a partially cataleptical character, were the unusual diagnosis.
For several days, her name was unmentioned by either Usher or myself. During this period I was trying to relieve the melancholy of my friend. We painted and read together; or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations of his guitar. And thus, as a closer intimacy admitted me into the recesses of his spirit[18], I realized the uselessness of my attempts to cheer his mind from which darkness, as if an inherent quality, poured upon all objects of the universe.
I have just spoken of that strange condition of the auditory nerve which made all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the exception of certain stringed instruments. Thus he chose the guitar, which gave birth to the fantastic character of his performances.
Once, after playing the guitar, he said he believed that all vegetable things have the ability to feel. Moreover, he believed that everything around him – the gray stones of the house, the fungi which overspread them, and the rotten trees which stood near the house – produced terrible influence which for centuries had molded the destinies of his family, and which made him what I now saw him – what he was. Such opinions need no comment, and I will make none.
Our books were, as might be supposed, in strict keeping with[19] his ideas – the “Heaven and Hell” of Swedenborg; the “Chiromancy” of Robert Flud and so on. Usher's chief delight, however, was found in the reading of a very rare and curious book – the manual of a forgotten church – the Vigiliae Mortuorum Secundum Chorum Ecclesiae Maguntinae[20].
I was thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its probable influence upon the hypochondriac, when, one evening, Usher informed me that the lady Madeline died, and stated his intention of preserving her corpse for two weeks (before its final burial) in one of the vaults in the building. The simple reason, however, for this strange proceeding was the unusual character of the malady of the lady, of certain inquiries on the part of her medical men, and of the remote location of the burial ground of the family.
At the request of Usher, I personally helped him in the arrangements for the temporary entombment. We two alone bore the body in the coffin to its rest. The vault in which we placed it was small, damp, and entirely without means of admission for light. The door was of massive iron. Its huge weight caused an unusually sharp grating sound, as it moved upon its hinges.
We partially turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of the coffin, and looked upon the face of the lady. A striking similarity between the brother and sister now first arrested my attention[21]; and Usher, reading my mind, told me that the lady and himself had been twins, and that sympathies of a barely understandable nature had always existed between them. Our glances, however, rested not long upon the dead – for we could not look at her without a feeling of awe. The disease had left, as usual in all maladies of a strictly cataleptical character, a faint blush upon the face, and that smile upon the lip which is so terrible in death. We replaced and screwed down the lid, locked the door of iron, and went upstairs.
A few days passed. My friend wandered from chamber to chamber with hurried and objectless step. He became even paler. There were times, indeed, when I thought his constantly agitated mind was struggling with some oppressive secret. I saw him gazing upon vacancy for long hours, with the profoundest attention, as if listening to some imaginary sound. It was no wonder that his condition terrified – that it infected me. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the wild influence of his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions.
It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of the seventh or eighth day after the placing of the lady Madeline within the vault, that I experienced the full power of such feelings. Sleep came not near my couch, while the hours waned and waned away. I struggled to reason off[22] the nervousness which had control over me. But my efforts were fruitless. Overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror, inexplicable yet intolerable, I threw on my clothes with haste, and tried to arouse myself from the miserable condition into which I had fallen, by pacing rapidly to and fro[23] through the apartment.
Soon a light step on the staircase arrested my attention. I recognized it as that of Usher. In an instant he tapped on my door, and entered, bearing a lamp. There was a kind of mad hilarity in his eyes. His air[24] appalled me – but anything was better than the solitude which I had so long tolerated, and I even welcomed his presence as a relief.
“And you have not seen it?” he said abruptly, “You have not then seen it? – But stay! You shall.[25]”
проклятие их семьи
нервная болезнь
следствие
не заметив моего присутствия
глубины его духа
в строгом соответствии
приковало моё внимание
побороть логическими рассуждениями
взад-вперёд
вид
Ты непременно увидишь.