I: The Stars Through The Trees
"Hope is but a waking dream."
One lonely star. One lonely star off in the distance of a big, black nothingness. That's all Wolf was able to see in this empty space. Where were the rest of the stars? Where was the sun, the moon, the other planets? Was this real? Wolf had no idea how it happened. He was lying in his bed asleep and the next moment he awoke to what he assumed was space – If he was awake at all. It was hard to tell exactly where he was for there was nothing to see. Nothing but that one lonely star.
I am a ridiculous man. They call me a madman. That would be an improvement if I didn't feel as ridiculous in their eyes as before. I do not resent it, however. I feel sad for them. Sad they do not know the truth as I know it. But they wouldn't understand. I have always been ridiculous perhaps from the hour I was born. Everyone always laughed at me. But not one of them knew or guessed that if there were one man on earth who knew better than anybody else that I was ridiculous, it was myself. What offended me most of all was that they did not know that. But that was my own fault; I was so proud that nothing would have induced me to tell it to anyone.
This pride grew in me with the years. Oh how I suffered in my early youth from the fear that I might give way and confess it to my schoolfellows. But since I grew to manhood I have become calmer. Something of a conviction had come upon me that nothing in the world mattered. I had long had an inkling of it, but the full realization came last year almost suddenly. I suddenly felt that it was all the same to me whether the world existed or whether there had been nothing at all. I began to feel with all my being that there was nothing existing. At first I guessed that there had never been anything in the past which led me to guess that there was nothing to exist in the future. This left me off being angry with people and almost ceased to notice them. I gave up caring about anything. Maybe this is why people thought me ridiculous.
It was after that that I found the truth. I learnt the truth last year and I remember every instant since. It was a gloomy evening, one of the gloomiest possible. I was headed home about eleven o'clock and I remember thinking it could not get gloomier. Rain had been falling all day and a cold wind was blowing, shivering me down to the last bones in my toes. The rain stopped about ten or eleven and was followed by a horrible dampness, colder and damper than the rain. A sort or steam was rising from everything, from every stone in the street, every by-lane if one looked down it as far as one could. A thought suddenly occurred to me, that if all the street lamps were put out it would have been less cheerless, that the gas lamps made one's heart sadder because it lighted it all up.
As I was thinking about the gas lamps in the street I looked up at the sky. The sky was horribly dark, but one could distinctly see tattered clouds, and between them fathomless black patches. Suddenly I noticed in one of these patches a star, and began watching it intently. That was because the star gave me an idea; I decided to kill myself that night. I firmly determined to do so two months prior and, poor as I was, I went out and bought a splendid revolver that same day and loaded it. It mattered so little to me that I wanted to seize a moment when it would not matter so little, why I don't know. I kept waiting for the right moment. And so now this little star gave me a thought. I made up my mind that it should certainly be that night. Why did the star give me the thought? I simply do not know.
Just as I was looking at the sky, this little girl took me by the elbow. The street was empty and scarcely anyone to be seen. A cab man was sleeping in his cab just down the road. It was a child of eight and wearing nothing but a tattered dress soaked with rain. I noticed particularly her wet broken shoes and I recall them now. She suddenly pulled me by the elbow and called to me. She was not weeping but spasmodically crying out some words which she could not utter properly. She was in terror about something, and kept crying, "Mommy mommy!" I turned facing her, did not say a word, and went on. She ran, pulling at me, and there was that note in her voice which in frightened children means despair. I understood that her mother was dying or something of the sort was happening to them and that she had run out to call someone, to find someone to help her mother. I did not go with her. I had an impulse to drive her away. I told her to go to a policeman. But clasping her hands, she ran beside me gasping and sobbing. I then stamped my foot and shouted at her. She suddenly abandoned me and rushed headlong across the road. Some other passer-by appeared there and she evidently flew from me to him.
I mounted up to my fifth storey. I have a room in a flat where there are other lodgers. My room is small and poor. I have an oilskin couch, a table with books on it, two chairs and a comfortable arm chair, as old as old can be. I sat down, lighted a candle, and began thinking. I stay awake till daybreak, and have been going on like that for the last year. I sit up all night in my arm chair at the table, doing nothing. I only read by day. Ideas of sort wander through my mind but I let them come and go as they please. I sat down by the table and took out the revolver. And no doubt I should have shot myself if it had not been for that little girl.