by Paul Leppin
He spoke to Nikolaus about his heart. He told him everything he thought to himself as he wrote the figures on the gray paper at the office in the morning while the naked light of the electric bulb shimmered on the damp ink. He talked about the book he had read as a boy, and about the fear that sometimes seized him when he stood in front of the closed door of his apartment and, for minutes at a time, did not dare to open it, as though the action might decide something terrible. He confided in him about his love affairs, insofar as he could remember everything that had happened in the nights of drunken revelry, in the bars and cheap suburban dance-halls. He had always believed that his innermost being would be able to detect the great and unintentional event that overwhelmed everyone else, that drove women into the Moldau and forced pistols to the brows of men. He had once been present on the riverbank at Podskal when the raftmen pulled a woman’s body out of the water. She was a young person from the lower classes, a servant or a laborer, and the wet clothes that clung to her rigid body lay tightly around her powerful thighs and round breasts. Severin arrived when the people were gathering around the corpse and the policeman was filling out his report. He looked at her death-stiffened face and bluish mouth and asked himself what state must this person’s life have been in, what brutalities and privations had brought her to this end. Every day he read something in the newspaper about a suicide. Recently two people had shot themselves in a hotel room, recently a girl had taken poison and died in agony. Schoolboys and fifteen-year-olds — half-children — killed themselves because they could no longer bear living. Severin did not understand it. Solitary and defiant, he looked at the long row of unfortunates who had gone under because of hatred or love. In the legal pages of the dailies he read about troubled people who reeled between destinies, unnerved. The tally of victims and conquerors in this struggle rose before his eyes, and he knew that when he was on the street he was walking next to people with burning souls, gamblers who set their happiness on a card, bankrupts who could not go on.
Nikolaus listened to him thoughtfully and pushed the skin beneath his fingernails with a small ivory blade. And when Severin talked about Zdenka and Susanna, about the women he knew, about how he had waited in vain for the ecstasy of his blood in the arms of the waitresses, in the bed of the Jewess, in Karla’s embraces, Nikolaus said:
Stories about women are nothing to you. I think something greater awaits you.
Severin was startled. He remembered the strange prophecy Nikolaus had read from the lines of his palm at their first meeting in Doctor Konrad’s atelier. He felt the beating of his pulse and, with opposition and horror, the proximity of an undefined fate that he strove toward with all his senses and knew nothing about.
VI
Winter had come suddenly, without any warning. One day, when the remains of dawn were still spread out over the city, Severin left the house to find snow whirling in the air and covering the footpaths and rooftops. It was eight o’clock. Slowly and noisily, the merchants were opening their shops. The wind blew a light chill into the snow-covered streets, and Severin felt a little cold in his thin overcoat. He had been caught unprepared, and walked slowly down a narrow lane that led indirectly to his office. For the first time in years the knowledge returned that snow had a distinct smell, like apples that have lain between the windowpanes for a long time. Even as a child he had possessed a sentimental awareness of the aromas that characterized particular objects and particular times. He thought of the days at the beginning of school, when he entered the classroom for the first time since vacation and was met by the damp smell of chalk. He remembered the pleasure he had felt when, in the morning, after long and severe frosts, he smelled the thaw through the cracks in the door. He went outside and sipped the ice water that ran from the trees and ledges in glittering strands, which tasted milder and completely different in the sun than they did in the shadows. His youth was filled with the joy of many different smells which pleased or oppressed him, which accompanied the seasons and signified continuation and return. He was happy that the autumn was over and that winter was here. To him it was as though something new would be decided by it, something he had long felt the absence of.
He sat quietly in the office, his head bent behind the high top of the desk, and looked through the dirty panes at the white stars that fell in the courtyard. On the way here he had passed people selling things for St. Nikolaus’s Day. The carved devils stuck out their red flannel tongues at him, and on the streetcorners whole bushes of golden branches had been piled up, covered with bright paper flowers. Saints with starched robes and cotton beards stood on lacquered green boards.
In the evening he was walking on Old Town Square, where the annual market was being held. People crowded around the gingerbread horsemen, yellow trumpets, and colorful children’s drums, and girls pushed through the throng in pairs. The torches reeled over the sweets that were on display and shone flickeringly on the red turbans of the men who were selling Turkish delight. Zdenka was leaning in front of the low tent of a waxworks and staring at the Moor who was sitting at the cashbox and collecting money from the people who went in. It had been a long time since Severin had seen her. Now, when he touched her arm, she cried out in terror.
You — you — she stammered, and her beautiful voice, marred by weeping, trembled. Then she took his hand and led him off to the side, out of the commotion and into a quiet street. By the light of a lantern he looked into her face, and noticed how meager and pitiful it had become. Her nose was pointed and narrow, as though she were ill, and her mouth was thin. But the sweetness remained in the tormented shadows and wrinkles of her eyes, which she turned to him with an unfamiliar gaze. She wanted to speak, but could not. She stood before him, helpless and bewildered, stupefied by love, and, next to his sympathy for her, there stirred a self-satisfied joy at her pain. He compared her in memory to the girl from the play, whom he always had to think of when he was with her. He thought to himself that now the play was over and the curtain must fall. And some of the tenderness of the past summer was in the motion with which he caressed her cheek and stroked the hair that fell over her brow. Then she fell at his feet with a pained cry and clasped his knees with her hands.
Severin —
A few people on their way home from the annual market stopped in the distance and looked at the girl who cowered on the earth crying. Severin removed her hands from his knees and walked away without looking back.
A small cabinet, inlaid with jewels and marquetry, was embedded in the wall of Nikolaus’s room. One day Severin asked what it contained, and Nikolaus took a slender key from his pocket and opened it. Inside, carefully packaged and stacked, were spherical red opium pills, poison powders in small glass tubes, and Indian temple hashish in flat apothecaries’ boxes.
An enthusiast’s collection — said Nikolaus.
Severin stood in front of the open cabinet for a long time, held by a sudden fascination. His eyes felt searchingly into the elegant compartments, where the secrets of foreign cultures were collected; substances that brought dreams and visions and let sultry ecstasies trickle into the blood; poisons that could kill. A tender perfume rose toward him. Nikolaus regarded the tension in his face with a smile, and pulled a small blue flask with a glass stopper from the corner.
It never fails — he said — But you must be careful —
Through the engraved neck Severin saw dried pieces of a clay-like substance.
What is it? — he asked.
Chinese poison.
And you want to give it to me?
Slowly Nikolaus pushed the cabinet door into the lock.
I have more of it — And he turned the key.
Severin collided with Karla as he walked down the stairs. She had been waiting for him all day, and was going to Nikolaus’s, where she thought she might find him. Her black velvet dress dragged over the steps. For a few moments she stood before him. Then, as though confronted with a decision, she turned her rigid white face to his.
Where were you? —
Severin lifted his eyes to hers, which were dark and vacant as they passed over him. In them he read her fear of losing him. He scrutinized her tall regal form, which had risen from the stone steps like a strange yearning flower, and realized that in this instant she was beautiful. On her lips he thought he saw traces of the kisses he had drunk from a short time before. But it seemed like an experience from a long time ago, which he had discarded and was no longer worthy of his soul. Slowly, like someone who searches for words in his sleep and cannot find them, he said:
Go home, Karla — I don’t love you anymore.
Her hand detached itself from the banister. A gust of wind came through the open door downstairs, making both of them shudder.
Go home — he said once more, and walked past her the same way he had left Zdenka, without turning his head.
In his room Severin remained in the darkness for a while. He felt into his pocket for the flask, which drew the warmth from his body, and noticed how cold his hands were. Then he lit the candle.
A letter lay on the table, and on the envelope his name had been written in the slanting and lascivious hand of a woman. A courier must have brought it while he was at Nikolaus’s. He opened it and looked at the signature. And then he held blonde Ruschena’s letter over the flame, unread.
VII
An indomitable restlessness won control over Severin after he took the powder from his friend’s cabinet of poisons. Now he was completely alone again and had no contact with anyone. He did not go to Nikolaus’s, and it had been weeks since he had visited old Lazarus. The last time he had seen him was on the day when they met on the street and went to Doctor Konrad’s atelier. He heard nothing more of Susanna. There had been no news of her since the autumn evening when she had ignited him with a sudden flame and led him to her room. He intentionally stayed away from her father’s shop, in accordance with his preference for half-complete, unresolved experiences. He was afraid that a normal continuation would dull his memory of the Jewess and take away her attraction. The murky wishes of an epicure who is able to regard his own life at a distance forced themselves into his mind. It was convenient that she had made no attempt to reach him; he had ended things with Karla and Zdenka. A trembling longing bored constantly into his confused heart. As before, when he came home from the office in the afternoon he lay down to an insensible sleep that lasted for hours. At night he lay in bed with his eyes open and looked into the darkness. He counted the chimes of the clock in the neighbor’s apartment and struggled against the fear that assailed him. In the morning he went to the office with circles under his eyes.
Sometimes he rose in the middle of the night and had to get dressed. He could no longer bear being in the tousled bed, in the long low room which the darkness found difficult to leave, which remained black even when the strands of morning were moving across the sky. It was often past two or three when he closed the door of his apartment and groped his way down the dark steps to the street. He knew every part of the city, but now it gained a timid, unfamiliar power over him. It pulled him from frightful dreams and pressed him to its bosom. Freezing, with a charred cigarette between his lips, he walked past the sleeping houses, looked in at the lights burning late in solitary windows, and listened to the songs of revelers on their way home and the heavy tread of constables. There was a time when he too had been in the habit of returning home late at night, worn out by the noise in bars, his eyes hot from wine. Now he noticed the difference for the first time. His senses were clear and alert; he saw how the night transformed everything, how everything lived a separate, different life than it did by day. He saw how it made melancholy landscapes from the bleak, empty squares, and dark subterranean dungeons from the narrow lanes. His unrest drove him to the outermost borders of the suburbs, where the tenements stood in endless rows, and into the fifth district, where it was possible to get lost in the tedious modern streets even by the light of day. Now and then a few ruins from the old Jewish Quarter crept from the darkness. The cloister of the monk hospitallers pushed its colossal bulk against the rising new buildings, which were still covered in scaffolding. A few isolated lamps were burning on the Ufer des Frantischek, and the water beat heavily and evenly against the bridge.
In the late night bars the musicians played on raucous violins. Severin stopped in front of the dim windowpanes and peered inside through the draperies. He heard billiard balls colliding on the green tables and dishes rattling in the buffet. When the door opened the insipid smell of morning soup emerged. It was a cold winter, and Severin pushed the aching joints of his hands into his pockets. Sometimes he went in to hear the music. He ordered a burning punch and held his fingers over the blue flame. The torpid cigarette smoke stung his eyes, but the warmth did him good.
He usually went to the same bars when he was trying to escape the cold: The White Garland by the Obstmarkt, where the guests rested their heads on folded arms and slept at the tables; The Fold in the Kleine Karlsgasse, where he was often the only customer for hours at a time; the Russian café on the border of Prague and Weinberge, where the Southern Slavic students met. He knew all of these places from earlier times, when he had gone out at night in search of adventures. Now, alienated and bereft of expectations, he sat in this world, which seemed automated and unreal, in small dives where the shabby remains of happiness expired in the face of their own dullness, in cafés where the benches were upholstered with red velvet and the customers looked like journeyman waiters and the waiters looked like playboys. He had to laugh at himself for having once thought that he could appease the hunger of his soul in these places. Years had passed since then and within him nothing had changed. In the meantime he had only become more bitter, more stubborn, and more callous. His fatigued agitation had nothing in common with the slack delirium that surrounded him, and the numbness that paralyzed him was different from the numbness on the faces of the coquettes who lounged around the marble tables or approached him and started asking for glasses of tea. He did not know how long he had been wandering around at night and loitering in the bars that stayed open until morning. But he felt he had been moving in circles around a point, like a tethered animal on a chain. With helpless dread he ran his hand over his coat, where he kept the flask of poison. Once, after he had stayed awake all night and the winter morning was beginning to shine into the streets, he went to see Nikolaus.
It was still quite early in the morning when the doorbell rang harshly through the corridor. Nikolaus was still lying in bed, and greeted his visitor with unconcealed astonishment. But when he saw Severin’s wasted and furrowed face, he held out his hand to him.
Nikolaus slept in a boudoir. His sophisticated taste had assembled a hundred objects of artistic refinement in this room, which was more like the sumptuous nest of a courtesan than the sleeping chamber of a bachelor. From the ceiling hung a silver lamp in which light glowed behind honey-colored panes. The heavy colors of silk and brocade shone from the chairs and low tables. Dark bronze statuettes, sandalwood boxes and Japanese lacquer paintings stood next to elegant glasses and jewel cases, next to chalices, Asiatic figurines and a large candelabra, blackened by age, with seven thick ceremonial candles in its arms. The first bleak shimmer of the winter day came through the Gothic pattern of the curtains. Severin’s eyes passed through the room, over the lusterless lines of the tapestries and to the place where Nikolaus sat half-raised in his golden bed. There was an expression in Severin’s eyes that suggested they could not find their way in these surroundings, in the sultry, carefully wrought beauty that set them off. He seized the hand Nikolaus offered to him with a cry. All the torment and suffering revealed itself in his voice. He lay before the young man’s bed and buried his face in the pillows.
Nikolaus — he cried — what was it like, — — the time you killed your friend — — — — — — —
Nikolaus looked down at him and saw his body stretched out in unspeakable agony. Terror rose with the blood in his face. He lifted up
his arm and spread his fingers. With great compassion he called the other’s name again and again:
Severin! Severin!
VIII
Doctor Konrad was dead. After a night of loud revelry, on which his guests gathered together for the last time, he put a bullet in his brain. Death had come to him with the same casual absurdity that had characterized his life. He lay on the floor next to the Turkish sofa, amid broken glasses and cigar ash that was still damp from spilled wine. Blood ran from the small wound in his temple onto the parquet floor. On this night he had spent the last of his inheritance. After the guests left, he shot himself dead.
It was a bright and motley group of mourners that paid him his last respects. Young academics in threadbare greatcoats, their frost-reddened hands buried in their pockets. They looked at the coffin before them with sincere compassion. The one they now accompanied to his grave had always held his hand open to them. Idlers with artists’ hats and unshaven faces. Little ladies in tightly fitting skirts that let their legs show when they walked. Elegant women with furs and enormous hand-muffs and men with carefully smoothed top hats, who swayed coquettishly in the fashionable waistlines of their winter coats. Blonde Ruschena was walking behind the hearse. Severin went up to her and silently offered her his hand. She answered with a spiteful, flickering glance, but said nothing. Her smooth face, on which she wore a little too much powder, had nothing in it to suggest that she had been more to the dead man than any of the others. Severin searched her eyes, but she turned her head away.
