Severin's Journey into the Dark

by Paul Leppin

  PAUL LEPPIN

  Severin's Journey into the Dark

  a prague ghost story

  Translated from the German by Kevin Blahut

  Twisted Spoon Press

  Prague

  English translation copyright © 1993 by Kevin Blahut

  Copyright © 1993 by Twisted Spoon Press

  Cover photograph copyright © 2001 by Ervina Boková–Drtikolová

  All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be used or reproduced in any form, except in the context of reviews, without written permission from the Publisher.

  Originally published in German in 1914 by Delphin-Vergal in Munich Germany as Severins Gang in die Finsternis. Ein Prager Gespensterroman.

  Cover photograph by František Drtikol reprinted by permission of the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague First published in English in 1993 by Twisted Spoon Press

  P.O. Box 21—Preslova 12, 150 21 Prague 5, Czech Republic

  www.twistedspoon.com

  ISBN 978-80-901257-2-8 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-80-86264-66-0 (e-book)

  Book 1

  One Year of Severin’s Life

  I

  It was the autumn of Severin’s twenty-fourth year. In the afternoons he came home exhausted by tormenting office work, threw himself on the black leather sofa in his room, and slept until nightfall. As soon as the lanterns were lit, he went out onto the street. The sun only shone on his paths through the city during the long and burning days of summer, or on Sundays, when the entire day belonged to him and, during his wanderings, he thought of the short time he had spent as a student.

  After two or three semesters Severin had given up his studies and found a job. In the mornings he sat in the miserable office and held his sickly, beardless young face bent over the rows of figures. A nervous and unhealthy discontent crept through his body with the room’s chill, and unrest awoke within him. The relentless monotony made his hands tremble. A disturbing weariness bored into his temples and, with his fingers, he pushed his eyeballs into his head until they started to hurt.

  For an entire rainy October week he had not seen Zdenka. Every day her letters begged him to come to her, but he pushed them aside with irritation and did not answer them. Zdenka could not fulfill the wishes that had begun to stir in the half-articulated rhythm of his blood. A tense expectation, a singular and unruly curiosity, always came over him when, numbed by sleep, he stepped onto the street in the evening. With his eyes wide open he looked into the city, where people were moving like phantoms. The noise of the carriages and the rattling of the trams blended with the voices of the people to make a harmonious clamor in which a distinct cry or shout occasionally sounded. He listened with careful attention, as though something important were eluding him. His favorite streets were the ones that lay apart from the great commotion. When he squinted and looked through his half-closed eyelids the houses took on a fantastic appearance. He walked past the walls of the large gardens that enclosed the hospitals and institutes. He was struck by the smell of decaying leaves and damp earth. He knew of a church somewhere nearby. In the early evening it was usually deserted here, although someone would pass by from time to time. Severin stood in the shadows of the balconies and wondered why his heart was pounding.

  Was it because of this city, with its dark facades, the silence over its large squares, its decayed passion? He always felt as though invisible hands were brushing against him. He remembered days when he had gone into neighborhoods he had long known and been comfortable in and found them completely unfamiliar. On Sunday mornings he had sometimes passed the hospital for incurables and the Karlshof Kirche as he descended the Sluper Gründe. He was astonished to think that he had lived here since childhood. When the sun shone and glittered on the crumbling steps, it made him think of the winter evenings when the snow floated into the streets and the lamps shimmered in the puddles of slush. It seemed to him that he was marked by a curse. Within him grew an angry longing to free himself of the curse and transform it.

  He often believed he had to despair in the face of his own wretchedness. There was a bitterness in him that clung to feeble imprecations, and a lethargy that longed for accursed hours. Zdenka knew nothing about any of this. Unhappily, with his lips pressed together and the collar of his coat upturned, he walked through the city along streets that led indirectly to the Moldau, where she was waiting for him.

  For years he had made his way to school along the long bustling street where he was now walking. Here, on his way home, he had smoked his first cigarette and discussed the great battles that were fought against the Czech boys in the old fortifications of Weinberge. He had never distinguished himself as a great hero or leader in these conflicts, but neither had he betrayed his cowardice. For him, offering his brow to the stones hurled by the enemy had a voluptuous and puzzling allure. Here the stories of knights and adventures of sailors that he read at home became a small but genuine reality that brought heat to his face and hands and stifled his breath in mute agitation. Since that time his youth had contained no experience of equal worth. But the blind compulsion that had driven him to the skirmishes in the abandoned fortifications had grown beyond all proportion over the years and began to press at his throat. Sometimes he was overcome by a senseless fear and a horror that his life would amount to nothing. Since he had become an adult and started earning his own bread, bleak and vapid walls had risen around him and blocked his view. All around, everywhere he looked, he saw dull and mundane convention. He went to the office early in the morning and went home at noon; the rest of the day he spent sleeping. He felt like someone standing in a pit with a shovel. He digs and digs, but the fine, pliable sand keeps running back and filling the hole.

  As a child he had owned a book that had never completely left his thoughts. It was the first volume of a novel about the Hussite wars. The second volume was missing, but Severin did not bother to look for it. The way the book ended, in the middle of the course of great events, seemed perfect to him. There were gypsies who had a robbers’ den in the crevices of the Devil’s Wall near Hohenfurt, savage warriors who threw dice for their girls in taverns, moonlit nights when people dug in forests for the mandrake root. There was a magic garden where malformed dwarves mocked those who had lost their way, where marvelous grottoes opened and clanging metal lions sank into the depths when someone approached. And the comet shone blood red in the sky and there was war in Bohemia. Severin thought of this book as he went to meet Zdenka.

  On Karlsplatz it was silent except for a few pairs of lovers whispering behind the bushes. Severin pushed his foot through the dead leaves on the path. The electric lamps were already burning and hung over the trees like moons. Severin looked for the first stars between the lights. An unpleasant restlessness held him captive and drove him back to the park, although Zdenka was already waiting for him. He took his hat in his hand and the wind dampened his hair. The clock on the tower of the Ministry of Justice struck, and the chimes echoed slowly through the boughs. Severin listened to them with a bitter heart. A soft and feeble desire for a radiant and intense life like the one described in the chapters of the book leapt within his soul. A colossal and violent existence rose before him in fiery light. Beyond the edge of Karlsplatz he felt the city.

  Severin stepped out of the dim light of the park and into the next street. Again he listened carefully to the sounds and tried to make out people’s voices. He began to feel an awareness that people are what give life meaning, that they were connected to everything that he fancied to be splendor and meaning and awe. Nights of comets and tremors and the mysteries of the heart. With exquisite fright he thought of the evening when he and a friend had gone to see a perform
ance by a suburban Czech theatre. He had never been very particular about such entertainments. The cloying sentimentality that the audience of lowbrows and philistines had cooed over was the right stimulus for his senses as well. In the gestures of the pathetic comedians and the laughter and tears of the badly made-up women he detected more of the hot and neglected desires of his soul than he did anywhere else. A girl who had moved the crowd with her disappointed love had attracted his attention. In the way she turned her slender body, in the lines of her shoulders and throat, there was much that reminded him of Zdenka. He had gone home in a state of peculiar and unacknowledged confusion. It was the feeling that always plagued him during the pauses in the music in cafés, when he listened into the self-conscious silence, or when, reluctant and tense, he loitered on streetcorners in the evening. The feeling that something was close to him, something so strong and corporeal that it made the air begin to tremble softly, and yet was impossible to grasp.

  Ferdinandstrasse shone before him, and the glare from the shopwindows blinded him. It was already late and he began to hurry. He saw Zdenka standing by the National Theatre, and her sweet face greeted him from the crowd, smiling.

  II

  That was also the autumn when Severin made the acquaintance of Lazarus Kain. He had his shop in the upper part of Stephansgasse, not far from the large botanical garden. The rust-flecked covers of yellowed brochures and the worn cloth bindings behind the glass panes of the display case told passersby that there was a bookstore here. Over the door, on a sign christened by snow and rain, the word “Antiquariat” stood in faded letters under the name of the owner.

  The store was low and narrow and was lit by a gas-flame even by day. But it could be very comfortable here during the winter, when the iron oven in the corner glowed almost red from heat, and behind the reading desk Lazarus leafed through bulging catalogues or taught tricks to his raven Anton. During the holiday months and early autumn he did nothing with the business. He would leave his daughter behind in the shop and make excursions into the surrounding area. He walked up and down the street with small steps and looked at the upper stories of the houses. The gaslight in the shop had weakened his eyes, and he was a little shortsighted. He looked at the servant girls and watched how they leaned their robust breasts against the windowsills and shook the dust from the tablecloths down into the street. The blood rose in his yellow face and he blinked. Sometimes he also stopped by the column of St. Adelbert and followed the nurses from the nearby maternity ward with his glances. Right next door stood the shabby rooms of The Poison Shanty. Lazarus remembered the evenings when the medical students used to gather here and dance with the midwives. Occasionally he had also stopped to visit, and had watched the festivities from a corner. Now the tavern had changed owners and the pub was completely abandoned except for a few Czech youths who played ninepins in the neglected garden, and a sullen waitress who served the guests cheerless beer in cracked glasses.

  He often sat in the small Pilsner bar across from Stephanskirche. It was not very lively here either on the summer mornings when he visited. The priests from the nearby deanery waited until later to come and have their lunches. Lazarus sat by the window, behind the green draperies, and admired the fine ankles of the girls who hurried past. He already had nearly half a century behind him, but women were still his greatest passion. At home, on the high shelves of his bookshop, he kept many costly volumes for connoisseurs and his best customers. Dangerous and shameless novels, French and German private editions, copperplate engravings, rare translations from the time of Réstif de la Bretonne. He clung to these treasures with an infatuated tenderness, often taking them out to amuse himself and stroking their pages with his fingers. He sold them only unhappily and for high prices, and felt genuine sorrow when he saw them in the hands of buyers; it was as though they took part of a beloved estate with them when they left the building. He loved only two things more than these books: the raven Anton, an old and disheveled beast that had kept him company in the bookshop for years, and his daughter Susanna.

  It was in the small pub across from the church that Severin first met Lazarus Kain. Outside the bells in the tower began striking for Sunday mass, and both of them watched the thoughtful young women who walked past the tavern window, prayer books in hand. Then Lazarus moved his glass closer to Severin’s and began to speak. His withered face became animated when he talked, and his cheeks burned beneath his short side-whiskers. He talked about the cold and unimaginative temperament of the modern age, in which the pursuit of money had killed the joy of desire. And with twinkling eyes, in which a secret delight glittered, he spoke about his favorite world, on which he had hung his aging heart, the France of the eighteenth century. His stories of the Hunting Park period of Louis XV had color and charm, and an envious longing made his voice tremble when he told Severin — who was listening closely — about Madame Janus, the brilliant procuress who had astounded even the Paris of that time with new and inventive pleasures.

  That will never come again — he said, and his words contained a sincere lament. For a while they both sat quietly in the half-dark of the pub and brooded over the amorous marvels of past ages, while across the street the church-bells fell silent and only a golden humming remained in the air, constantly becoming softer and more delicate, and finally inaudible. Lazarus had turned his face back to the window, and Severin looked furtively at his bald skull and Jewish profile, which was torn by countless wrinkles. He was overcome by the suspicion that this man experienced a similar malady to his own, that he suffered from an unappeased passion which had fled from a narrow and senseless life into old books. He was seized by compassion for the old man, who had wasted years of his life looking at dead pictures. They conversed for a while longer, and Lazarus told him about his daughter and the raven. As he was leaving, he invited Severin to visit him in his shop.

  Severin responded to the invitation within the next few days. Susanna was sitting on a low upholstered chair next to the oven. The days were still fine and the book dealer had no fire burning. Nevertheless a drizzling chill entered the houses on that street after sunset. Susanna had thrown a black shawl over her shoulders, and the gaslight danced on the pages of the open book in her lap. Lazarus stood behind the counter and greeted Severin without surprise. His naked head shone in the light as he bent over a few valuable curios and examined them with a magnifying glass. Severin listened to his explanations patiently, and looked distractedly over at Susanna, who was silently reading her book. Her brown hair was parted smoothly and the shadows of her long lashes played over her cheeks. Once she raised her face and their glances met.

  From that time on Severin went to see Lazarus Kain often. The thought of the young Jewess would not let him sleep. Actually, Susanna was not beautiful. But an intriguing flame flickered in her eyes, in sharp contrast to her quiet mouth. In their velvet depths smoldered a treacherous devotion that disconcerted and excited him. Sometimes he had seen stars flicker like that when, worn out by an incomprehensible compulsion, he looked up into the sky as he made his way home late at night. Severin sought her eyes behind the smoke of his cigarette, behind her father’s bald avian head, behind the quick flutters of the raven, which jumped from one corner of the room to another as if in a cage. Susanna presented her eyes to him with an inexplicable seriousness, without ever taking part in the conversation or speaking a word to him. When he addressed her, her answers were curt and indifferent. This bothered him and made him stop trying. He continued speaking with Lazarus, and let him show him lithographs and photogravures.

  One day when Susanna was not there, Lazarus promised Severin to introduce him at Doctor Konrad’s. He brought out the proposal cautiously, like the last part of a guarded confession. And in response to Severin’s amazed questions, he told him about the large atelier in one of the new buildings that were being constructed on the former site of the hovels of the Jewish Quarter. Here, with the last remains of a fortune that had been significant years before, Doctor Kon
rad had rented a painter’s workshop, which in reality served for entirely different purposes. Tapestries and potted palms gave the room an exotic appearance, and a few picture frames in the corner, an easel, and some studies of heads that were turned to the wall indicated the occupant’s métier. In reality it had been a long time since Doctor Konrad had touched a palette. He lay for hours on the comfortable Turkish sofa, rolled perfumed cigarettes in his hand, and let his servant bring him French cognac with seltzer. Sometimes he also listened to his mistress as she wearily strummed the mandolin. She was a blonde and spoiled creature named Ruschena. A swarm of guests came in the afternoons: Young gentlemen in dinner-jackets, with mouse-gray spats and patent leather shoes; old and experienced playboys in elegant street clothes, the ivory knobs of their riding crops at their mouths; artists with slouch hats and dirty linen; models in silk blouses and tight skirts who spent their free time here, drinking Doctor Konrad’s sweet liqueurs; and now and then a girl or a woman from better society, one shy and uncertain, the other with more impudence than was really necessary, brought here by the polymorphous attraction a dissolute life has to outsiders. That was what Lazarus talked about, and Severin guessed everything else from the old man’s suppressed excitement and fidgeting hands.

  When he went back outside he met Susanna in the fog of the evening street. She looked at him with a smile, and his body began to shake, as though in terror. He took her warm hand mechanically, without flinching.

  Come — she said to him, the smile still on her lips. He went with her into the house, where the stairs lay in darkness. Then he kissed her throat, which her dress left open to the nape of her neck.