by Paul Leppin
Karla was walking beside a large, thin-lipped man. Her tall figure was slightly stooped forward, and she had become, if possible, even more slender. Her broad coat hung loosely from her shoulders and she walked with tentative and shuffling steps, with none of the proud grace Severin remembered. Her face had become old and stern in the few weeks since he had last seen her. And he could not tell if the color of her cheeks came from the cold or from rouge. The procession stopped in front of the museum at the top of Wenceslaus Square. The priests began to say a blessing and the group of participants thinned out. Only Doctor Konrad’s closest acquaintances took cabs and followed the hearse to the cemetery.
Severin went with them. Ice was starting to form around the edges of the windows, and he wiped it away with his handkerchief. Outside he saw the bleak and monotonous panorama of Wolschaner Strasse. He had not been to a burial since childhood. He remembered how the carriage he had been sitting in with his parents had come upon a group of Czech demonstrators who had buried one of their martyrs in the churchyard and were now returning home. A revolutionary song, sung by a thousand voices, advanced with them threateningly, and made the horses rear and stop, trembling. Severin thought of the fantastically beautiful terror, mixed with fear and devotion, that had clutched him then. He listened closely to the sound of the wheels.
It was almost dark when he got out in front of the cemetery gate. He stood next to Karla as the frozen earth rolled into the grave and thudded hollowly against the coffin. Now that he was close to her he noticed for the first time how yellow and worn her face looked. The rouge lay in circles on her face and her beautiful brow was sad and furrowed. And here in the cemetery, next to the open grave, he recognized her destiny: how she went from one pain to the next, from one love to another. She started when he turned his eyes to the large man she had come here with. Softly and gently, as one speaks to a child, he asked her:
Is he the one?
Yes — she said simply, and nodded.
Severin returned to the city on foot. He had paid the driver and was the last person to leave the cemetery, after everyone had gone. The pale violet of late afternoon lay over the fields. From the distance came the muffled roar of a railroad train. Here and there a tree stood by the side of the street and stretched its naked boughs against the bleak sky. The rising evening spread lengthening shadows, and mist rose from the turnip fields. Sparrows flew over the road and fluttered like great black birds in the twilight. The electric tram drove past with yellow eyes. Lights were going on in the city. Severin thought about Konrad’s death. A lame, ridiculous idea was hunched in his brain. It would not let him alone, and he was forced to reflect on it. He imagined the face of the man who had just been buried as it lay in the ground, beneath the coffin lid. A horror brushed over his skin, chilling like the clouds on the horizon. He felt his wrist for his pulse; he was not afraid. White forms rolled together in the distance, but he knew it was only winter mist. The first houses of Weinberge emerged from the gray. He looked back in the direction from which he had come. The air hung from the sky, still and sluggish, and the cold had become more intense. The lamplight from the shopwindows was already falling on the sidewalks of the suburban streets.
Severin stopped in front of a horse-butcher’s door. He was struck by the warm smell of blood, and shuddered with loathing. Two men with rolled-up coatsleeves carried past a basin from which a damp steam rose and mixed sickeningly with the cold. Severin carefully buttoned up his gloves before putting his fingers on the filthy doorknob. A red-haired man with broad shoulders looked at him suspiciously when he requested a piece of meat for a few kreuzers. He left the shop with a tender, sticky bundle wrapped in newspaper. By the light of a street lantern he loosened the twine and opened it. He took the flask of poison from his coat pocket and sprinkled the contents on the meat; attentively he watched how the fine, dry powder glittered on the bloody fibers.
Susanna was sitting by the oven and listening to the fire when Severin came in. She held her hand in front of her eyes as though sleeping, and looked at the door from between her fingers. Old Lazarus had gone out, and the seat behind the reading desk was empty.
Good evening, Susanna — said Severin.
Susanna raised her head in protracted and amazed terror. Her shoulders trembled, and the furrow between her eyebrows became darker and deeper as she returned the greeting. Then, in a strange tone of voice, she asked:
Where are you coming from, Severin?
Severin did not answer. He stood there irresolutely, and was suddenly filled with a feeling he recognized, but that had faded a long time before. It had sometimes come over him as a student, when he sat at home and read old English novels while the lamp hummed. Then he felt that the room where he lived was part of the story in which he was engrossed. The silhouettes of the characters whose fates occupied him flickered over the wall. And in the dim light of the room he recognized their gestures.
Doctor Konrad is dead — he said finally, and sat down in the leather armchair that stood next to the reading desk. He looked past Susanna, at the picture that hung in the corner next to her. He had never noticed it before. It was a landscape with a strange tree, like one in a dream. Beneath it two people walked in semi-darkness. A gust of air brushed his cheek; the raven flew up from behind him and sat on his knee. Severin bent over the beast. Slowly he pulled the poisoned meat from his pocket.
This is death — he said, and held it in front of the raven’s beak. The bird snapped it up and flew back to its hiding place.
Severin looked over at Susanna. Her heavy tresses had come free and fallen into her lap. Her face was strange and inscrutable, and her mouth was tightly closed. It was completely quiet and they heard the steps of people passing the shop on the pavement outside. On the picture next to the glowing oven the reflections and painted figures moved convulsively over the canvas.
Severin searched his memory. The tree in the painting looked familiar to him. He had seen it somewhere before. But he could not remember where.
I want to go — he thought, and rose.
Good evening, Susanna! — he greeted her again, and took his hat. Then for a while he listened into the corner, where the raven had snuck off with its food and now no longer stirred.
IX
The storm came during the night and went up and down the street howling. It brought heavy, misty warmth from the plain beyond the mountains, and slapped melting snow from the rooftops. Severin lay awake in the dark. Fever drove the sweat from his body and inflamed his blood. The window rattled, and occasionally the dull sound of the front door moaning on its hinges rose from below. For an instant the yellow lightning of the winter storm illuminated the room, and in its light Severin thought he saw the picture that hung over Susanna’s head in the book dealer’s shop. Now he knew where he had seen the tree before. It had been at Konrad’s burial: by the cemetery wall, on the square that was reserved for new graves. Severin had been looking at it while the people lowered the coffin into the earth. In the day’s cold light it had seemed bizarre and grotesque.
He felt a chill and pulled the covers up to his neck. He was oppressed by a great shame, and could give no account of himself in response. He thought of the stupid and cruel visit of the previous day and of how he had killed the raven. Outside the storm shattered the clattering glass of the lanterns and gurgled as it entered the chimney.
He was faint and weary when he went to the office the next morning. The water stood on the street in broad puddles and the wind was still quite powerful. The hat flew from his head and landed in the muck. Severin bent down and put it back on. Cold filth ran from the brim and onto his forehead, but he took no notice of it. In the morning hours, while he did calculations and wrote, a sporadic rain pattered against the windows. Severin rose and looked at the wet stones in the courtyard below. A dull nausea rose in his throat like a smooth ball. He went home earlier than usual and threw himself onto his couch. But sleep eluded him. When he closed his eyes he had the sensation that
he was falling constantly and irrevocably into the depths. A blunt thought burned continually behind his temples and made him bury his face in the pillows with horror.
The wind had died down and the air had become almost sultry. Evening was breaking in the city, where it drew blue-black borders around the clouds above the houses. Severin walked among the people with his head low. A colossal fear hung from his heart like a weight, making him stagger. A heavy object in his pocket pressed against his body, and he wrapped his fingers around it. It was a large rock he had once found in the fields and taken home.
In Lazarus Kain’s shop the gas-flame was burning above the reading desk. Severin saw the book dealer’s bald, pointed head through the glass door. In the middle, a groove ran to his brow, as though the skin were stretched over cloven bone. Severin was overwhelmed by it. He searched the background for the picture and, with a rigid and tormented smile, recognized the tree he had dreamt of the night before.
Someone laid a hand on his shoulder, and when he turned around Susanna stood before him.
What are you doing here? — she asked, threatening him with her lightless eyes. Her form grew large and imperious in the twilight, and Severin noticed with horror that she was expecting a child.
Susanna! — he whispered.
For the first time in weeks a light fell into his barren soul. The darkness in him scattered, and he was terrified.
Why did I come here? — he thought to himself. It was quiet and lonely in the faded street, and the face of the Jewess frightened him. The hand that was clenched around the rock began to tremble, and his blood froze.
I am not a murderer — he said aloud, and in the same instant he saw himself in an invisible mirror, deformed by suffocating vices, covered with sores in which curses grew rankly.
Jesus! — he cried, and his voice revealed to him that he had come here to kill the old man.
Jesus!
The scream was so fearsome that Susanna turned pale. A swoon darkened her thoughts and she saw only unclearly, with a faltering heart, how Severin ran down the street into the darkness.
It was already late and the white moon hung silently over the towers. The clouds had dispersed and it was clear and cool. Severin walked beneath the trees at Belvedere and breathed the damp air, in which he could already detect the smell of the coming spring. Below him the city lay in the valley. A few scattered lights were still burning in the distance, like the eyes of a sleepy animal. He was seized with horror. He thought of the thousands down below who, exactly like him, were helplessly entombed in joyless lives. He was overwhelmed by the memory of the people he had met and who, one after another, had gone astray. Karla, who desperately threw herself away for insidious pains; Konrad, over whose grave the earth was still settling; and Susanna, who would bear his child out of hatred for her father. A sorrow without equal tormented him. He looked into the shadows of the houses down below and saw his own form, wrapped in the riddles of death and love, restless in streets where thoughts of murder rose from the stony pavement and blinded his heart. He cried and his tears were pungent and corrosive like vinegar. He rammed his head against a tree-trunk and bit into the bark. The horrors of loneliness came to him and he longed for a face against which he could rest his own.
Suddenly it was as though two long-forgotten eyes looked at him in the darkness. A voice, fantastically beautiful and good, awoke in his memory and comforted him. He turned around and walked down the street that led to the bridge.
The light was still burning in the window of the small room on Old Town Square. It was always the last one in the house, and went out long after the others. While sleep cowered at the threshold and bats flew past the town hall clock, Zdenka was still awake. She went to bed only when she had become tired of thinking and the lamp began to flicker.
Severin had climbed the stairs and was waiting in front of the door. He knocked, and wanted to call out, but his voice would not obey him.
Severin!
She had pulled back the latch and now stood before him in the light, radiant and bewildered. Her blond hair fell over her dress and she pressed her hands against her bosom. Her small face was lovely as she offered him her mouth to kiss.
I knew you would come back, and I waited for you —
He knelt before her and caressed her hands. He felt like a child that had run away and was now finally at home again.
I love you — he said, and knew that now it was finally the truth. And then he called her name, more tenderly and joyously than ever before:
Zdenka! Zdenka!
Hand in hand they walked to the window and looked outside. The shouting of drunkards rang through the streets and the moonlight glittered on the windowpanes. The moon hung over the city like a flame and shrouded it in white smoke. Severin felt as though something miraculous had happened, something sweet and powerful, like the adventures in the book from the Bohemian wars. He bent to Zdenka and searched for her mouth. As he kissed her, a deafening noise sounded from the moonlit night, a rumbling clap, as though the earth had split.
On the Moldau the ice had started to break up.
Book 2
The Spider
I
The summer had slowly returned. One cloud after another passed imperceptibly over Severin’s life without shaking his heart from the lethargy into which it had strayed at the end of the previous winter. On the evening when he stopped at Zdenka’s apartment in desperation and tears, he had no longer believed in peace. But now he possessed a marvelous tranquility that sharpened his senses and made him walk around smiling, like someone who had just recovered from a serious illness. A tender concern awoke in him, and he considered the world in its thousand minor details with constant amazement, like a stranger to whom everything is new. Every morning he woke from a sound sleep and the hot and radiant sun rose in his window. He would open his eyes and shut them again, blinded. The warm rain he loved so much pattered against the wall, and the air from outside filled his room with sweet vapors.
He now spent all his time with Zdenka. Now and then he was assailed by the memory of winter, and at these times his love sought help from her. He enjoyed her company with childish devotion, and on Sundays, as before, they went to parks in the city and in the suburbs. They sat together in beer-gardens and listened to the concerts of the military bands that played, one after another, selections from Verdi and Wagner, popular songs from Viennese operettas, and “The Reservist’s Dream.” The chestnut leaves spread a green skylight up above and threw dancing flecks of sun on the tablecloths, which were still damp and smelled of clothespins. Severin looked into Zdenka’s beautiful face and, with the languor of a convalescent, brought the cigarette to his mouth. The voices of people talking at nearby tables did him good. In the fragments of conversation that reached him he heard the orderly, comfortably stifled tempo of a life in which he was happy to have lost himself.
It seemed to him that the summer this year had completely transformed the city. He still felt the circulation of its blood in his own body, but was no longer frightened by it. In the afternoon, before he went to fetch Zdenka from the office, he walked through the sunny streets. He watched the men who watered the pavement and was pleased when little fountains leapt from the leaky hoses, or when a colorful rainbow lit up behind the atomized drops. On Franzenskai the acacias were in bloom. Severin sat on a bench at the edge of the riverbank. The Moldau flowed beneath him, and a sailboat drifted slowly toward the mills. A swarm of fantastic clouds moved over the sky, occasionally blocking out the sun.
Severin knew this image from his boyhood. Under the acacias that lined the embankment he and his father had sometimes waited for his Aunt Regina. A musty recollection dawned sleepily in his brain, and the dark room on the ground floor where his aunt had lived with the old maid appeared before him. He had always enjoyed visiting here. Behind the white tulle curtains hung a weather house with a little man holding a red tin umbrella in front of the door. The old maid was ill; cancer was devouring her fragil
e body. She had rented a small tobacco shop on Bethlehemsplatz, a wooden stand in the corner of the houses, where she spent the day selling cigars. In the living room she shared with Aunt Regina there was always a peculiar mix of the smells of cellar air, withered wreaths of Corpus Christi, incense, and the dry odor of the tobacco supplies. For Severin all of it had a special allure, trembling with childish ideas. His aunt’s room was filled with consecrated candles and pictures of saints, with well-thumbed hymnals and coral crosses. From this room his soul had taken its first fervor, and his childhood had been haunted by it.
A little of this fervor stirred in him again. He saw the Kleinseite on the other side of the river, and saw Karls-brücke, where priests were walking in long robes, paired up like schoolboys. Something of the tone of St. Nepomuk’s Days had remained in the air, which brushed quietly over the water and stirred the withered acacia blossoms at his feet. The wooden platform and its glass lanterns were still standing on the bridge, in front of the martyr’s statue, where farmers from the villages gathered every year to honor their patron. Severin thought of the feverish anticipation that the Bohemian saint’s feast had always brought to his childhood. On the eve of St. Nepomuk’s Day he and his father made a pilgrimage to the riverbank, where people had already been gathering for hours. When darkness fell, someone set off a firework display, and the slender rockets rose into the sky with a soft crackling. Below, the light-strung boats floated on the river, and on the bridge peasants prayed at St. Nepomuk’s altar.
