The Bride of Dreams | Page 6

churches I also saw
him crossing himself with the holy water and even kneeling for hours
in prayer before an image of the Blessed Virgin wreathed with flowers
and illumined by candles.
This was incomprehensible to me, having as yet no knowledge of the
illogical workings of an artistically poetic and musical temperament.
But I drew my own conclusions, and it was not surprising that I
considered the devout father the true one, and the unbeliever perverted
through evil influence. Thus, despite her absence, mother's influence
prevailed. My memory had stripped her image of all that was trivial,
commonplace and unlovely, and, little by little, with her suffering, her
tears, her beauty, her tenderness, she began to shine for me in pure
angelic holiness, the subject of my faithful and ardent devotion.
I shall not dwell on my long and arduous wanderings with my father.
Indeed, I do not remember much about them. I must have seen many
strange and beautiful sights, but they meant little to me. When the soul
is young it does not take root in surroundings too vast and does not
absorb the beautiful. I have a clearer recollection of certain picture
books, of little cosy corners in the rooms we inhabited, of a small
pewter can which I had found on the road and from which I would
never be parted - not even when I went to bed than of the countries or
cities we traversed.
True, I must have absorbed some of the wonderful things about me, for
they undoubtedly furnished me with the material of which my dreams,
about which I shall tell you further on, were woven. But as a boy I took
no pleasure whatever in travelling. I longed for my mother, and for our
country house, where I could play with my little sister under the airy
open galleries in the rose garden or build dams in the brook. Only the
journeying by rail, a novelty at that time, interested me the first few

times, and above all the trip across the ocean to America, when
Philadelphia and Chicago were only small places, and crossing the
ocean by steamboat was still considered a perilous and risky
undertaking.
Only of certain moments with lasting significance have I retained a
sharper recollection. Thus I remember a miserable day somewhere in
Asia Minor. We had both been ill from tainted food, my father and I,
and had lain helpless in a most wretched tavern. Meanwhile thieves had
stolen all our belongings, and when we wanted to journey on we could
get no horses, for the inhabitants feared the thieves and their vengeance
should we accuse them. Amidst a troop of dirty, eagerly debating
Syrians in a scorching hot street I stood at my father's side peering into
his wan face, sallow and drawn from the illness, with glistening streaks
of perspiration and an expression of deadly fatigue and stubborn will.
He had a pistol in each hand and repeated a few words of command
over and over again, while from the brown, gleaming heads about us
came, in sometimes angry, sometimes mournful, sometimes mocking
tones, loud, but to me unintelligible, replies. I saw the fierce,
self-interested, indifferent faces, with the wild eyes, and I realized how
narrow was the boundary separating our life from death.
Still the scorching wild beast odor of the place comes back to me and I
hear the sound of a monotonous tune, with fiddling and beating of
drums in the distance, and the papery rustling of the palm leaves above
our heads. This disagreeable condition must have continued a long
while. At that time all mankind, the whole world, seemed hostile and
desolate to me.
I knew, indeed, that my father would conquer. He did not want to die,
and I had a childlike faith in his tremendous will-power. And so it
actually turned out, and I was neither surprised nor glad. The irksome
life of wandering continued, and I had a bitter feeling that it was my
father who shut me out from the world and made it hostile to me.
We did after all finally procure a guide that day and made a long march
on foot along scorching sandy roads, weak and tired as we were, guided

only by a half-witted boy, humming and chewing wisps of straw. Then
I began to realize what suffering means. My father did not speak, nor
would he endure any complaints from me. I bore up against it bravely,
as bravely as I could, but I began to ponder much at that time. "How
long would I be able to endure this?" I thought. "And why does he do it?
If all this folly and hardship served no purpose, we did not have to bear
it then. What could he