Indeed, I did not understand her altogether. But, as far as I can make out, this odd trick consists in her following my footsteps, step by step, in time with me. She looks at me steadily, trying to imitate my every movement down to the least; as it were, she identifies herself with me. After a few steps she begins to imagine a rope drawn across the road a certain distance in front of me—a yard from the ground. The moment my foot is touching this imaginary rope, Olyessia suddenly pretends to fall, and then, as she says, the strongest man must infallibly fall.... I remembered Olyessia’s confused explanation long afterwards when I read Charcot’s report on the experiments which he made on two women patients in the Salpêtrière, who were professional witches suffering from hysteria. I was greatly surprised to discover that French witches who came from the common people employed exactly the same science in the same cases as the beautiful witch of Polyessie.
‘Oh, I can do a great many things besides,’ Olyessia boldly declared. ‘For instance, I can put a fear into you....’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I’ll act so that you feel a great dread. Suppose you are sitting in your room in the evening. Suddenly for no reason at all such a fear will take hold of you that you will begin to tremble and won’t dare to turn round. But for this I must know where you live and see your room beforehand.’
‘Well, that’s quite a simple affair.’ I was sceptical. ‘You only have to come close to the window, tap on it, call out something or other....’
‘Oh no!... I shall be in the forest at the time. I won’t go out of the hut.... But I will sit down and think all the while: I’ll think that I am walking along the road, entering your house, opening the door, coming into your room.... You’re sitting somewhere; at the table, say.... I walk up to you from behind quietly and stealthily.... You don’t hear me.... I seize your shoulder with my hands and begin to squeeze ... stronger, stronger, stronger.... I stare at you, just like this. Look!...’
Her thin eyebrows suddenly closed together. Her eyes were fixed upon me in a stare, fascinating, threatening. Her pupils dilated and became blue. Instantly I remembered a Medusa’s head, the work of a painter I have forgotten, in the Trietyakov Gallery in Moscow. Beneath this strange look I was seized by a cold terror of the supernatural.
‘Well, that’ll do, Olyessia.... That’s enough,’ I said with a forced laugh. ‘I much prefer you when you smile. Your face is so kind and childlike.’
We went on. I suddenly recollected the expressiveness of Olyessia’s conversation—elegance even for a simple girl—and I said:
‘Do you know what surprises me in you, Olyessia? You’ve grown up in the forest without seeing a soul.... Of course, you can’t read very much....’