This story, too, came to the ears of the children, and they claim, to the displeasure of our worthy schoolteacher, that here too, the dear Lord came into the story. I was also a bit surprised by this, since I did promise our schoolteacher to tell him a story without God in it. But of course, the children must know!

A Story Told to the Darkness

A Story Told to the Darkness

I wanted to throw on my coat and go see my friend Ewald. But I had lost track of time reading a book, an old book at that, and evening had come as springtime comes in Russia. Just a few moments ago, the room had been brightly lit even to the furthest corners, and now everything was behaving as though it had never known anything else but this obscurity. Everywhere great dark flowers were opening, and a gleam like that on dragonfly wings was gliding over their velvet calyxes.

The crippled man would surely no longer be at his window. So I stayed at home. What was it that I had wanted to recount to him? I could no longer remember. But a while later, I began to feel that someone was demanding this lost story from me, some lonely person maybe, standing far away at the window of his darkened room, or perhaps it was this darkness itself that surrounded me and him and things. And so it came about that I told a story to the darkness. And it leaned ever closer, so that I could speak more and more softly, just as is suitable for my story. It takes place, by the way, in the present time and begins like this: