Severin's Journey Into the Dark (9 page)

Now he could also understand the word that had come from Nathan Meyer’s mouth. There were some for whom the radiance of life was only the glitter of a delusion. Sneerers with accursed hands, pariahs hounded through the streets by fear, murderers and people who had been marked out. That was the guild, and Severin belonged to it too.

Actually he had always felt it, even as a boy, when he read in the wild book and hungered for adventures. In the pale flame of his rotten youth there had always been a reddish smoke that came from the wicked hiding-places of his heart. To him the happiness of others was a childish rebus. He had recklessly played with destiny, and had blundered onto its wretched mousetraps without hurting himself.

He looked up and noticed that he had been going around in a circle the whole time, retracing his own path. Before him the tea-cooker’s lamp glowed in the small lantern, and the man’s white apron shone in the darkness. Severin suppressed a sob. The man there had a home, and the stub of candle in the broken glass burned with a tranquil light.

And him? And Severin?

He felt a pain deep within his soul. The image of a woman, sweet, covered with dust and shards, raised its grief-stricken face to him. But he threw back his head and refused to look at it.

Or maybe? Was it possible?

A mild and disconcerting weakness made his limbs slacken. In front of the entry steps of a house he let his knees sink, and cooled his brow against the stones. He folded his hands and closed his eyes, and directly overhead, in the small space the buildings left open to the sky, a diffident star appeared and began to shine.

A fine, light gray luminescence was heralding the morning as Severin rose and set out toward Old Town Square. The indistinct borders of the colorful streetsigns were visible on the walls, and the man with the tea machine was preparing for his journey home. A bleary-eyed woman leaned in front of the Ringapotheke and rang the bell.

The custodian of the building sleepily held out his sweaty hand to the late visitor and nodded with satisfaction when he remembered who he was. Severin gave him a coin and climbed the stairs to Zdenka’s apartment. An endless pause stopped the beating of his heart before he knocked on the door.

Inside a noise became audible.

Is someone there? — a voice asked.

It’s me — Severin!

The door opened and a hot hand led him into the room. The petroleum lamp with the green shade burned on the table. Zdenka was in her nightshirt. Her hair fell to her throat in blond ringlets and she shivered from the cold.

Why did you come here? — she asked quietly. Severin removed his hat and held it in his hands. He looked around and embraced the room with a long, parting glance. The early light came through the curtains and made the glow from the lamp small and meager. Next to the bed stood the wardrobe where Zdenka kept her clothes and linen. The violet porcelain vase on the chest was cracked and the color had left the handle. A bunch of dried flowers they had picked in the woods during the summer was stuck inside.

Zdenka looked at him and waited. The nightshirt glided over her naked bosom and the cold made her draw her shoulders together. With a practiced and mechanical mo-tion he extended his arm. But then he let it sink again.

Why did you come? — —

Then he turned around and went out the door.

The wind, which in the morning had made the signboards of the shopkeepers clatter, had subsided. A calm evening made the sky clear, and a pale and beautiful sun began to shine. Severin sat up in his tousled bed and looked at the clock. The long rest after his sleepless night had not refreshed him. He washed the hot stupor from his eyes and carefully put on his clothes.

Groups of adolescent boys from the Gymnasium came toward him from the street. They were on their way home from school, conversing animatedly. Severin looked back at them with a vague feeling of envy. The sudden change in the weather had brought people out of their homes, and a mob of pedestrians sauntered along the pavement and crowded around the shopwindows. Girls with fashionable velvet bonnets over their coquettish hairstyles made their way through the crowd. Two lovers stopped at an inter-
section and admired the sunset. Poppy-colored streaks appeared on the rooftops and set fire to the chimneys. A thick cloud entered the glow and floated over Karlsplatz like a bar of gold.

Severin walked along slowly, with a frigid and taciturn curiosity. The half-dark sensation that always afflicted him after a state of exhaustion took him unawares, and he gave himself up to it without resistance. His consciousness split off and lived an independent life, separate from his own. The past and the present went by like pictures in a panorama, and he looked into his own existence with astonishment and irresolution. The faces of people walking next to him and the profiles of houses he was familiar with acquired a new and peculiar clarity that stimulated his perception.

The chestnut-roasters had set up their ovens on the corners of the intersecting streets. A cheerful luminescence lay over the city. A wrinkled old woman with a crooked stick hobbled slowly over the pavement. Longhaired students stood in front of doors, talking to servant girls, and the dark blue dusk drew pleasant shadows from the niches. A lantern set out in anticipation of nightfall sparkled in front of Kreuzherrnkirche and filled the air with glassy color.

Severin stepped onto the bridge. A cold wind blew up from the river and chased away the mood to which he had surrendered himself. Razor-sharp, his memory returned and sliced the fraudulent play of his senses to pieces. Evening shimmered over the river. An automobile with large, milky-white headlamps honked gloomily, and the bell of the small chapel at the foot of the castle steps rang a benediction. Severin strode past the black statues on the parapet. He bit his tongue, and blood flowed into his mouth, tasting of gall. This was not the city he knew. This was a peepshow, where proper male and female burghers ran errands and St. Nepomuk watched over the Moldau with the hands of a hypocrite.

The twilight was giving way to darkness as Severin walked through the tower entrance of the Kleinseite and toward the Radetzky memorial. By the main guardhouse a soldier walked back and forth with a shouldered rifle. The color of yellow copper lay on the square of arcades. Severin clambered through Spornergasse and up to Hradschin. The city he knew was different. — Its streets led into sin, and evil lurked at the thresholds. There the heart beat between dank, treacherous walls, there the night crept past curtained windows and throttled the soul while it slept. Satan had placed his traps everywhere. In churches and in the houses of lecherous women. His breath lived within their murderous kisses, and in the garments of a nun he went out to plunder —

In front of the entrance to the castle courtyard Severin turned his head. It had become dark, and with weeping lights Prague spread itself out at his feet.

Somewhere a dog howled, and its fearful baying sounded as though it came from the depths, from a forgotten pit beneath the crooked lanes of Hradschin —

A large group of people had been gathered in The Spider since early evening. Lazarus bought the champagne. Mylada’s birthday was being celebrated with lewd gaiety.

There were many members of the circle that used to meet at Doctor Konrad’s atelier. Lazarus had invited them all; even Nikolaus sat there, serious and bored, as well as the pock-faced painter who now lived with blonde Ruschena. In an enchanting mood Mylada presided over the table. Her lissome shamelessness charmed the men and filled the young people with enthusiasm. One after another, they drank to her, and she moistened her red tongue in every one of their glasses. Desire leapt over their faces like a tiny flame and fastened itself to her green dress. Someone suggested a raffle, the proceeds of which would be drunk up at the earliest opportunity, and, to laughter and jubilation, Mylada said she would give herself to the winner. The price of the lots was high, but nevertheless all but one had been bought up when Severin entered the room and was welcomed with a loud cheer.

Mylada greeted him.

Do you want the last lot?

She held the white piece of paper between her fingertips.

What can I win? — he asked.

Me!

Then he silently put the last of his money in her hands and took the paper.

The drawing began. The numbers were thrown into an ice-pail, and people crowded around the table shouting. A brutal suspense held all of them in its claws. Wine reddened the reveler’s brows, and a grotesque excitement tautened their features and made their faces leering and beastly.

Blindfolded, Mylada reached into the bucket. The room fell silent as she unfolded the paper.

You were lucky, Severin! — she said, smiling.

An envious pause ensued.

Severin stepped closer. The blood rushed in his ears, and his face was ashen. He raised the object he had recently stolen from Nathan Meyer’s desk. The fuse curled around his arm like a white worm.

A bomb! someone cried with horror, and a scream made all of them shudder.

I came here to kill you —

His voice broke. With red eyes he stared into the lamp.

Nikolaus took the weapon from his hand and stroked his cheeks like a child’s.

Why? he asked tenderly.

Because I hate you! —

And why didn’t you do it? — Mylada whispered, and looked at him open-mouthed. She stretched her body and her breasts rubbed against him.

Because I’ve won the raffle! — —

A deadly shame threw him to the ground. He knelt down and lay his head in her lap. Sobbing overcame him and he began to cry. But the laughter of the drunkards passed over him and transformed his tears into an unclean and burning sludge.