Человек, который смеется / The Man Who Laughs. Уровень 4

He raised the knocker with some difficulty. He knocked once. No answer. He struck again, and two knocks. No movement was heard in the house. He knocked a third time. There was no sound. He saw that they were all asleep, and did not care to get up.

Then he turned to the hovel. He picked up a pebble from the snow, and knocked against the low door. There was no answer. He raised himself on tiptoe, and knocked with his pebble against the pane. No voice was heard; no step moved; no candle was lighted.

He saw that there, as well, they did not care to awake.

The house of stone and the thatched hovel were equally deaf to the wretched. The boy decided on pushing on further.

It was Weymouth which he had just entered. Weymouth, a hamlet, was then the suburb of Melcombe Regis, a city and port. Now Melcombe Regis is a parish of Weymouth. The village has absorbed the city. It was the bridge which did the work.

The boy went to the bridge. He crossed it. His bare feet had a moment’s comfort as they crossed them.

He passed over the bridge, he was in Melcombe Regis. There were fewer wooden houses than stone ones there. He was no longer in the village; he was in the city.

At Melcombe Regis, as at Weymouth, no one was stirring. The doors were all carefully locked. The windows were covered by their shutters, as the eyes by their lids.

There, by chance and without selection, he knocked violently at any house that he happened to pass. Nobody answered.

The child felt the coldness of men more terribly than the coldness of night.

The coldness of men is intentional.

He set out again. But now he no longer walked; he dragged himself along. The houses ended there. He perceived the sea to the right. What was to become of him? Here was the country again. Should he continue this journey? Should he return and re-enter the streets? What was he to do between those two silences – the mute plain and the deaf city?

MEETING SOMEONE

All at once he heard a menace. A strange and alarming grinding of teeth reached him through the darkness.

He advanced. To those to whom silence has become dreadful a howl is comforting.

He advanced in the direction whence came the snarl. He turned the corner of a wall, and he saw a shelter. It was a cart, unless it was a hovel. It had wheels – it was a carriage. It had a roof – it was a dwelling. From the roof arose a funnel, and out of the funnel smoke. This smoke was red. He approached.

The growl became furious.