Among the cycle of his memoirs, Maxim Gorky has a small eerie story called "The Spider". Either a bike, or a real case about a man who, after an unsuccessful suicide incident, began to suffer from very peculiar and very persistent visual and tactile hallucinations. Or not hallucinations …
We publish this story almost entirely
Ermolai Makov, an old man, a merchant of "antiquities" - a man long, skinny and straight, like a milestone. He walked on the ground like a soldier in a parade, looking at everything with the huge eyes of a bull - there was something dull and dull in their grayish-blue, dull shine.
He was not greedy for money, he gave a lot to the poor, but he treated himself carelessly: he walked winter and summer in an old cotton jacket, in a warm crumpled cap, in skinny boots. He lived - homelessly, moving from estate to estate, from Nizhny to Murom, from Murom to Suzdal, Rostov, Yaroslavl, and again appeared in Nizhny, always staying at Bubnov's filthy "Rooms".
Once, on a foggy autumn night, I found Makov on a steamer on the way to Kazan. Barely moving the wheels, the steamer slid blindly and cautiously, through the fog, downstream; in the gray water and gray fog, its lights blurred, melted, a whistle roared dully and continuously; it was sad, as in a heavy dream.
Makov sat in the stern, alone, as though hiding from someone. We got to talking, and this is what he said:
- For the twenty-third year I have lived in inescapable fear, and there is no escape from it. And my fear, sir, is special: an alien soul has been instilled in my flesh. I was, sir, thirty years old, and I got along with a woman, only a witch. Her husband - my friend - was a kind man, but sick, he was dying. And on the night when he died and I was asleep, this accursed wench took my soul out of me, and imprisoned his soul in my flesh. It was beneficial to her, maybe he was more affectionate than me to her, damned. He died, and - immediately it became clear to me: I am not that person. Frankly speaking, I didn’t love this woman, I just dabbled with her, and then I see: my soul is drawn to this woman. How is it? The woman is unpleasant to me, but I cannot tear myself away from her. All my excellent qualities have disappeared with smoke, an unknown sadness is nagging me, I became timid with her and I see: everything around me is grayish, as if pollinated with ash, and this woman is the face of fire!Plays with me, licking me into sin, at night. Then I realized: she replaced my soul, I live with someone else's soul. And - my something, my real one, given to me by God - where is it? I got scared …
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The whistle hummed alarmingly, its dull rumble rested against the fog, the steamer, as if strangled, turned the stern, the water rumbled and splashed under it, dark and greasy as tar. The old man, leaning his back against the side, moved his legs in pood boots, absurdly fumbled around with his hands and said quietly:
- I got scared, went to the attic, and made a noose, tied it to the rafter, the washerwoman saw me, made a noise - they took me out of the noose. And after that an incongruous creature came to me: a six-legged spider, the size of a small goat, bearded, horned, with female titties, about three eyes, two eyes - in the head, and the third - between breasts, down, looks into the ground, at my tracks … And wherever I go, he relentlessly follows me, furry, on six legs, like the shadow of the moon, and no one can see him but me - here he is, but you can't see him, here he is!
Stretching out his hand to his left, Makov stroked something in the air, at a height of ten vershoks from the deck; then, wiping his hand on his knee, he said:
- Wet.
- What are you, so twenty years and live with a spider? I asked.
- Twenty three. Do you think I'm insane? Here, after all, my guards, here he has done well, a spider-from …
- Didn't you talk to the doctors about him?
- Enough, sir, what can the doctor do? After all, this is not an abscess, you cannot cut it off with a knife, you cannot etch it out with a mixture, you cannot rub it with ointments. The doctor doesn't see him, the spider.
- Is the spider talking to you?
Makov looked at me in surprise and asked:
- Are you laughing, or what? How can a spider speak? He was given to me for fear, so that I would not dispose of myself, would not ruin someone else's soul. After all, the soul in me is someone else's, seemingly stolen. About a dozen years ago, I decided to drown myself, threw myself from the barge into the water, and he, the spider, grabbed the side with its paws and into me, and I hung overboard. Well, I pretended to have fallen overboard by accident. After that the sailors say: the coat held me back, caught on something. And - here she is, a coat, what a forged me …
The old man stroked again, touched the moist air with his hand.
I was silent, not knowing what to say to a person who lives side by side with such a strange creation of his imagination, lives, but is not completely mad.
“For a long time I wanted to talk to you about this incident,” he said quietly and pleadingly. - You speak boldly about everything, I believe you. Tell me, do mercy, how do you think: is this spider guarding me from God from the devil?
- I do not know.
- You would think … I suppose - from God, he protects, protects someone else's soul in me. I didn't want to put an angel on, I am not worthy of an angel. But the spider is smarter. Scary, the main thing. For a long time I could not get used to it.
Taking off his cap, Makov crossed himself and said quietly, enthusiastically:
- Great and beneficent is our God, lord and father of reason, shepherd of our souls.
A few months later, on a moonlit night, I met Makov on one of the back streets of Nizhny Novgorod, he was walking along the sidewalk, clinging to the fences, as if giving way to someone.
- What - the spider is alive?
The old man chuckled, bending down, ran his hand through the air and said affectionately:
- And - here he is …
Three years later, I learned that in 905 Makov was robbed and killed somewhere near Balakhna.