Aлександр Грин - The Seeker of Adventure

"There's nothing to discuss," he said. "I'm a cheerful and simple person. Elma, will you come for a ride with us? I want to show our guest the kitchen-garden, the meadows, and the surroundings."

"Yes."

Except for the pit in the forest Ammon did not learn anything new from the ride. Dogger rode on the right-hand side of Elma, and Ammon on the left; Ammon did not make any further mention of Dogger's conviction and spoke about himself, his meetings, and his observations. He sat in a simple black saddle atop a beautiful, well-fed, and gentle horse. They came across several people who were engaged in clearing ditches and in digging the earth up around the young trees; these were Dogger's workers, stocky young fellows who took off their hats respectfully. "A beautiful couple," Ammon thought, looking at his hosts. "Adam and Eve were probably like this before the Fall." Impressionable, like all wanderers, he began to be imbued with their austerely indulgent attitude towards everything that was not part of their own lives. The inspection of Dogger's holdings compelled him to utter several compliments: the kitchen-garden, like the entire estate, was a model. The lush meadow, sown with choice grasses, was a joy to behold.

A forest stretched beyond the meadow, which abutted a mountain-side, and when the riders had reached the edge of the woods they came to a halt. From this high spot Dogger serenely examined his holdings. He said:

"I like property, Ammon. And now, have a look at the pit."

Dogger rode into the forest and stopped next to a dark damp pit beneath a canopy formed by the thick foliage of old trees. Light percolated through to this place with reluctance; it was chilly here – as in a well – and hushed. Wind-fallen branches filled the pit; roots extended into it; and a tree trunk, snapped off by a storm, had been tossed over the chaos of forest litter and ferns. A pungent odour of mushrooms, mould, and earth came from the vast hollow, and Dogger said:

"You can feel the presence of mysterious creatures and beasts here. I sense the wary steps of polecats, the swishing of snakes, and the protruding eyes of toads that look like a person with dropsy. Bats circle about here in the moonlight, and the round eyes of owls glitter in the darkness. It seems to be some sort of a night club."

"He's dissembling," thought Ammon, and his distrust of Dogger flared up anew, "but what's at the bottom of it?"

"I want to go home," said Elma. "I don't like the forest."

Dogger looked at his wife tenderly.

"She objects to the dark," he told Ammon, "and so do I. Let's return. I feel good only at home."

At eleven-thirty Ammon took leave of his hospitable hosts and headed for the room which he had been assigned in the house's left wing; the room's windows looked out into the yard, which was separated from the house by a narrow garden filled with flowers. The furnishings exuded the same health and fresh cosiness as the entire house: a metal washstand; furniture made out of unpainted light wood; clean curtains, sheets, and pillows; a warm grey blanket; a mirror in a simple frame and flowers on the window-sill; a massive desk and a cast-iron lamp. There was nothing superfluous; everything was necessary and purely functional.

"So this is the kind of place I have landed in!" said Ammon, taking off his vest. "Rousseau would have envied Dogger. The speeches by Dogger about nature and the pit in the forest were beautiful; they run counter to the abominable triviality in the rest of what he says. There's nothing else for me to do here. I'm convinced that it's possible to vegetate sensibly. However, let's have a bit more of a look."

He sat down on the bed and fell to thinking. The steel table-clock struck twelve. Dampness from the meadows and the smell of flowers wafted in through the wide-open window. Everything slept; the stars were shining above the black roofs like the lights of a distant city. Ammon grew sadly troubled as he thought about people's constant dreams of a good, joyous, and healthy life; he could not understand why the most impressive efforts of this sort-like, for instance, Dogger's life – lacked the wings of enchantment. Everything was admirable, tasty, and clean; delicate and useful; beautiful and honest-but insignificant, and one felt like saying: "Ah, I was at an exhibition again! There's an exemplary person on view there..."

Then he mentally began to sketch the possibilities of another order. He imagined a fire, the crackling of beams, the fire's tempestuousness, Elma's love for a worker, and Dogger's becoming a drunkard, a lunatic, a drug addict; he fancied him a religious fanatic, an antiquary, a bigamist, and a writer, but none of this fitted the owners of the estate in Liliana. The trepidation of a nervous, destructive, or creative life was out of character for them. The house was so well-equipped that the possibility of a fire was, of course, completely out of the question, and Dogger was fated never to experience the fear and chaos of a burning building. Two young lives, the acme of creation, pass through year after year, hand in hand – sensibly, intelligently, carefully, and happily.

"And so," said Ammon, "I'm going to bed." He had folded back the blanket and was about to turn out the light, when he suddenly heard a man's quiet steps in the corridor; someone was walking past his room and was walking as people usually do when everyone in the house is asleep at night: tautly and lightly. Ammon listened attentively. The steps faded away at the end of the corridor; five, ten minutes passed, but no one returned, and Ammon carefully opened the door.

A fixture suspended from the ceiling illuminated the corridor with an even nocturnal light. There were three doors in the passageway: one, closer to the centre of the house, led to the servants' quarters and was opposite Ammon's room; a second was directly to the left of Ammon's and, judging from the padlock on it, was the door to a pantry or an uninhabited room. To the right, at the end of the wing, there were no doors at all – it was a dead end with a high closed window looking out onto the garden; yet that was precisely where the steps had died away.

"He couldn't have vanished into thin air!" said Ammon. "And it could hardly have been Dogger: he said that he sleeps as soundly as a soldier after battle. There's no reason for a worker to enter the house. The window at the end of the corridor leads into the garden; even if Dogger, for reasons beyond my knowledge, had taken it into his head to go for a walk, there are three doors at his service that all lead outside, and besides, I would have heard the frame slam, but I didn't."

Ammon turned around and closed the door.

He half believed the steps to be significant and half did not. His thoughts wandered in the realm of wonderful superstitions and legends about human life, whose purpose is to glorify the name of man and raise it from the swamp of the everyday into the world of mysterious fascination, where the soul obeys its own laws, like God. Ammon again made himself imagine the sound of steps. Suddenly it seemed to him that an unknown "someone" could peer into his open window; he quickly put out the light and pricked up his ears.

"Oh, how stupid I am!" said Ammon when he did not hear anything else. "Any number of people could be walking about in the night for whatever reason!... I'm simply a narrow professional, a seeker of adventure, and nothing more. What kind of secret could there be amidst the scent of hay and hyacinths? One has only to look at Elma's homey beauty to discard these stupidities."

Nevertheless, instinct took issue with logic. For half an hour Ammon stood by the door and peered through the keyhole, waiting for new sounds as a person in love awaits a rendezvous. Through this small opening, which looked like a boot-sole stood on end, he saw the pine panelling on the wall and nothing more. His spirits fell; he yawned "and was about to go to bed, when the same steps again resounded clearly. Ammon held his breath, like a swimmer who has dived beneath the water, and looked through the keyhole. Dogger was coming from the dead end and was walking past Ammon's door on tiptoe. His head was above Ammon's field of vision; he had on trousers and a shirt with unbuttoned sleeves – he was not wearing a jacket. The steps faded away, there was the muffled sound of an inside door closing and Ammon straightened up; despite the situation's logic, irrepressible suspicions churned within him. Too prudent to assign them any specific form, for the time being he was satisfied to keep on repeating one and the same question: "Where could Dogger have kept himself at the end of the corridor?" Ammon circled about the room, now grinning and now pondering; he ran through all the possibilities: a love intrigue, somnambulism, insomnia, and a walk, but everything was left up in the air owing to the closed window and the dead end; and although the window, of course, could be opened, it seemed inexcusably flippant to think that a solid and respectable person like Dogger would use it as a means of exit into the garden.