by Paul Leppin
Severin still remembered Nathan Meyer from the day of Doctor Konrad’s burial. His mind retained the image of the man’s tall, large-boned frame and cruel mouth as he had seen him walking next to Karla among the mourners in the cold twilight of the winter afternoon. A sympathetic anxiety for the woman who had been his mistress only a short time before stirred within him. Her slender frame wilted in diffidence and tiredness beside the man’s robust shoulders. Since then he had not come across him a single time, not even later, when Karla went over to him completely and the wine bar in the black lane opened for business. It was in a small café by the Moldau that he saw him again. Sometimes, when he had spent the evening with Zdenka and the night’s cowardly and treacherous thoughts hindered him on his way home, he stopped here before going to sleep. Lately it had become necessary for him to spend at least an hour by himself after he had said goodbye to her and her gentle caresses were no longer there to appease the unrest that now — as before — surrounded him in ever-tightening arcs. His vacation was nearing its end. The lightless and suffocating autumn awaited him. The silent existence in his office began anew, and the days rose up like walls, tearing his life to pieces in the narrow spaces they left free. When Zdenka was with him and he could feel the warmth of her hand on his arm, he walked beside her with a countenance that was actually that of a healthy man. Her beautiful voice told him of the great happiness of her love. But disquiet came with the unseasonable fog that descended on the streets and prophesied the end of summer. He regarded the top of her blond head with a twisted smile when she pressed close to him, and bit into the flesh beneath his fingernails when she went to bed and her window became dark. He walked through the streets, and the lights traced his meager shadow on the cobblestones. In the café he sat by the window and pushed aside the curtain. The enormous bulk of the Rudolfinum loomed in the sky, where late-summer stars smoldered like red Chinese lanterns.
It was on such a night that Severin came to converse with Nathan Meyer. Nathan had been looking at him for a long time from behind the newspaper he was reading, and a thoughtful expression pulled his lips into the corner of his mouth while he brushed his cigarette against the brass ashtray. At first Severin answered with taciturnity and sullenness. He felt uncomfortable, and Nathan’s unwavering glance made him angry. But after a short time the feeling passed, and he sat in his chair spellbound, listening to the unexpected and unbidden words that revealed the man’s beliefs. They were alone in the low room of the café, except for the waiter who was sleeping in the corner, breathing audibly, except for the sound of cards slapping together that came from the game room next door. They discussed peculiar subjects. The blind and malignant rage of solitude flared in Nathan’s voice, poison seethed in it that laid waste to the hearts of the crippled and deranged, hatred for the world. He preached wrathful disbelief in the good and splendor of the earth, the merciless scorn of an insolent blasphemer. A shuddering from his innermost soul fled over his lips, which became moist as he spoke. With a dry, hoarse whisper he bent toward Severin:
All of us who come from Russia have a little bit of the chemist in us. At home I have blasting charges and other devices that could demolish a street, if I wanted to. But only dilettantes do things like that. There are better, subtler ways, which the police condone and the law permits. — Have you ever been to my wine bar? — —
Severin was overwhelmed. He looked into Nathan’s cunning gray eyes and understood him immediately, without further explanation. He was seized with horror for the man who, without anyone noticing it, went out to capture souls.
— A week ago a young man shot himself — the Russian continued. — He stole the till from his bank so he could drink champagne at my bar and sleep with Mylada. I saw his body in the pathological institute. — A boy, hardly over twenty. His mother was devastated when she heard the news: And that is only the beginning. I know everyone who goes into the building. I look at them when they think they’re not being watched, in the darkness, next to the door. — —
And after a pause, during which Severin waited silently:
I’ve found a name for the place, a good name, one that will draw people in: The Spider.
Severin stood up. Saliva rose bitterly in his throat and made him feel dizzy. Nathan’s closely shorn head was submerged in cigarette smoke, and for a few seconds Severin was oppressed by another image that appeared before him. There was the city, enormous, with deep streets and thousands of windows. And in the center the wine bar in the black lane. The lamp over the entrance gaped like an eye and people crowded in front of the door. They came one after another, like moths to a flame — — Mylada sat inside in her green dress — — Out of sight, hunched beneath the curved legs of the piano, skulked a shapeless being that the people of the night called joy —
Severin shook himself and the image disappeared.
Would you like to have a look at my laboratory sometime? — he heard Nathan Meyer ask.
I don’t know — he said, and had to cling to the back of the chair to keep himself from falling.
V
The days of rain came and washed away the last traces of summer. The water stood in large pools on the paths in the parks, and the leaves the wind tore from the trees clung to the benches. The cabs drove through the city with wet leather roofs, and boys splashed through the puddles barefoot and built small dams on the edges of the pavement with trash from the street. Behind the damp sky the evening descended more rapidly than was usual for that time of year.
Severin stood at the window. The meager life of the suburban district where he lived moved through the afternoon slowly, with lingering pauses. A coal wagon clattered over the stones and the large packhorses sullenly lowered their heads. A man hurried past the houses with quick steps, his black umbrella shining with wetness. Now and then a dirty paper kite rose into the sky. A child was pulling it through the rain on a string. Then it began to flutter heavily and fearfully and fell to the earth. The doorbell rang in the shop on the corner; a young woman with waved bangs emerged and took stock of the weather. Then she lifted up her skirt so her pretty legs were visible up to her knees and walked down the street.
Severin thought of the autumn rains of his childhood. Everything had been as it was today, and boyish wishes unearthed a plaintive homesickness in his heart. Even the merchant’s bell across from his paternal home had had the same sound. He waited impatiently for the door below to open again. As a small boy, long before he had to start going to school, he had once been ill with pneumonia. A queer feeling had sometimes come over him while he lay at home in bed and the slanting light from the street fell on the painted flowers on the ceiling. Outside, his mother was working in the kitchen, and from somewhere came the drawn-out tone of a barrel organ. Then the fever gnawed an odd, circular point in him, which was covered with a thin membrane and seemed to feel soft. A comparison also occurred to him; he remembered the bonbons he used to buy at the market for a kreuzer. When the sugar dissolved in his mouth, he probed the liquid filling beneath the paper-thin coating with his tongue. Long ago this feeling had been lost within him, and had not returned. Now it was there again, and he recognized it. The rainy day brought a multitude of familiar, long-forgotten images back to his memory. They rose up simultaneously, tangled by the course of years. The sooty walkway with the iron railing above the courtyard, where he and his brother dreamt up childish games and shot at the cats in the garden with a rubber slingshot. Old Julinka, who ate the bread of charity in the house and had to scrub the broken wooden stairs. The summer evenings in front of the open door, when the red clouds among the rooftops brought him his first incomprehensible tears, and the servant girls in neighboring courtyards who took up Czech songs, the banal sweetness of which still moved him.
Mylada also knew these songs.
Severin leaned his head against the smooth glass. A beggarly agony twisted his lips into weeping.
The night had come and transformed the rain into a drizzling fog that penetrated into the a
partments and brought disquiet to the dreams of those who slept. It did not keep Severin from going out. He had not been on the street since midday. A shooting pain drove the blood to his temples. Today he had left Zdenka waiting, and a disturbing remorse was gathering in his thoughts, like the fog that veiled the gas-lanterns outside. He threw his raincape over his shoulders and pulled the hood over his hat.
Near the suburban marketplace he startled two forms that were embracing behind the empty stands of the vege-table sellers. He stopped and watched them until the man noticed him and fled into the darkness with the girl. An overwhelming longing for the simple happiness these people possessed took hold of him. With a dull and pensive straining he tried for the hundredth time to find the source of the trail that led him away from life and into an accursed wilderness. And he was suddenly overcome by a painful, powerless lust, crippled by fear and ripped apart by doubts, for the kisses of the woman who had aroused his passion in the same hour when Lazarus had spoken of the death of his child.
He stopped in front of the steps that led to the museum. Wenceslaus Square lay before him, and the autumn fog hung amid the electric flames in white clouds. Severin stretched out his arms.
Mylada! he cried, and his voice fluttered through the mist like a trembling bird.
In The Spider the hour hand of the clock was already pointing to twelve. The bar was full and the intoxicating smell of spilled wine floated over the tables. Laughter rose with the green smoke rings from the cigars and fell back to the floor screeching. The noise of the conversations swelled to a pandemonium that could not be contained and broke off in a roar when the music started or one of the guests began to sing a song. Karla herself sat at the piano wearing a bright, seductive dress, and she threw back her beautiful head while she played.
Severin sat behind her and ordered a bottle. The room’s thick, miasmic air took away his breath, and sweat broke from his pores, making his shirt stick to his skin. Karla played the melodies people requested. The false and deceptive twaddle of operettas cooed beneath her fingers and the aroma of her body effervesced through the customers’ throats and scalded their veins. A senseless and abandoned gaiety raged in their heads and flooded their hearts. Mylada pulled herself away from a group of young men in tailcoats and white bow ties. Her thin mouth laughed in endlessly promising joy as she bent over Severin.
Give me something to drink, she said, and he offered her his glass.
He watched how her tongue slipped between her sharp teeth, and had to make an effort to keep himself from kissing her. He twined his arm around her and pulled her into his lap.
I’ve seen your eyes somewhere before. Do you have a sister, Mylada? —
I had a sister who was very much like me, but she’s dead now. —
Severin brushed the hair from her face, and she clung to him with her legs and let him do as he pleased. Her body was small, like a child’s, and her breasts stretched beneath her thin dress.
Come with me tonight — — he whispered, and in response she said:
Her name was Regina, and she was a nun.
VI
Severin stopped keeping track of time after Mylada became his lover. His days vanished in a single bright and burning illusion that inundated everything. Everything that had meant anything to him before, everything that had irritated and provoked him, disappeared from his life as though it had never been a part of it. With the carefree assurance of a sleepwalker he kept up with the duties that had constrained his existence. He did his work in the office without feeling the burden that had always oppressed him during these hours. He no longer felt the wicked and treacherous hatred in the things that used to offend him, and within him he had room only for the boundless revelry of his love. He had never believed that a woman was capable of what he now experienced every day. The chasms of ecstasy opened before him, and he plunged into them with unruly and misguided senses and a crippled soul.
Mylada understood his body. With the talented and clear-sighted depravity of her experienced youth she understood his essence and subjected herself to the caprices she discovered within it. She found the refuge of his desires and traced them to the roots of his nerves. She taught him the bizarre and licentious games of love, and their tenderness enthralled him. Her kisses were inventive and the happiness they prepared him for was a sinful and desperate diversion. Often, when she clung to his neck and a lascivious cloud veiled her eyes, he lost his memory of the present. The room where they tarried seemed unfamiliar and fantastic, and the lamp in front of his bed shone with a strange light. He saw the sparks under her eyelids dance and a golden wave extinguished the thoughts in his brain.
Within her slight and fragile body was an unforeseen vigor for love. It was a passion in her that she gave away without reserve, that clung to Severin and consumed him. Women had always been a disappointment to him. In his affairs with them there had never been the great and compelling force that, irresistible and lethal, could fascinate and control. Now for the first time lightning broke into his life, shattering and illuminating it. Sometimes a memory returned to him involuntarily, and Zdenka’s image appeared before him and pleaded with him. When he awoke during the night and looked into the darkness, it came to him and tried to save him. Once again the luster of her blond hair became entangled with his heart, and from far off her voice resounded like a bell. But the next day brought him back to Mylada and in her mouth he forgot the world.
When afternoon came and the October shadows were scattered over the walls, he sat at home and waited. The noises from the street sounded indistinctly, changing as they ascended. The carriages driving by shook the floorboards. Sometimes the rushing and pounding remained in his head. It horrified him, and was impossible to get rid of. He covered his ears with his hands and realized that the noise came from within him. A fearsome dread bored at his intestines. Then the bell rang and Mylada entered his room and opened her coat.
He loved everything that was hers. Every garment she wore on her fervid body became a fetish to him. He tried to awaken her breath from the mesh of the veil she had once left behind in his apartment. The scent of the gloves he stole from her comforted him in the hours when he did not possess her. When, with cruelly trifling fingers, she undressed in front of him, he threw his destiny at her feet. He could no longer escape it, and it forced him to his knees. Sobbing, tantalized by an unearthly bliss, he touched his lips to her camisole.
He knew that by leaving Zdenka for Mylada he had finally sacrificed her forever. But it was too late to turn back, and the thought that there had ever been a time that was not filled to overflowing with a consuming love was barren and ghostly. Often, when he held her in his arms and she curled up in his lap like an unruly child, the eyes of the nun he had accompanied on her way to church during the summer looked at him from beneath her lashes. He told her about their meeting and about how he had seen her smile when, at her side, he prayed, Hail Regina, full of grace — — Mylada laughed and began to talk about her sister, who had been dead for years. She told him he had been seeing ghosts. But Severin refused to accept it, and held to his story. The young woman’s white face stood before his soul, clear and genuine, and within him the sultry fires of the unholy wishes that had been ignited then continued to smolder.
Mylada allowed him his fantasies. With the acute instinct she used to dominate men, she soon realized that a source of new and complex pleasures was concealed here, and that she must unearth them in order to savor them. One day she came later than usual, when the twilight of the autumn evening was already darkening his room. Feverish, devastated by the wait, he opened the door. Speechless and tranquil, her pious hands folded over her breast, the young nun stood before him as he had seen her under the acacias on the riverbank. The broad and pleated cowl flowed over her arms and legs, and her star-eyes glittered beneath the black bonnet.
Regina! he stammered.
Then she fell on him with a cry and her lips suckled at his mouth. Only when she kissed him did he realize that
it was Mylada. He ripped the coarse garment in two, and beneath it her body shone like lusterless and beautiful silk. He put his arms around her corset and carried her to his bed.
Regina! Regina!
An astounding felicity, larger than life, ran into his blood like molten metal and burned a sweet, coral-red scar in his abject, love-conquered heart.
Severin spent all the nights following this afternoon in The Spider. Separated from the others, he sat in his place and watched the customers who troubled themselves over Mylada. For every one of them she had a word, a brightening in her voice, a half-spoken promise each of them believed he alone possessed, which colored their cheeks with a furtive redness. But now and then her gaze flew to Severin, and whenever she walked past him she ran her fingers through his hair. She looked at him while she sang the songs he loved, in which the music of his childhood resonated. She too possessed the lulling and fanciful charm of Slavic women that had made Zdenka fascinating to him. But there was a dangerous sentimentality in her that clung to the surface and made her essence no less of a riddle. Severin drank the dark red wine that Karla poured for him and did not stir. He took no part in the gaiety that pushed against him. It did nothing to pull him out of his reverie. In the middle of the exalted frenzy he was alone with Mylada, and he thought secretly of the hour when she would belong to him again.
It was already light when he emptied his glass and went out into the street. A man with a pole over his shoulders walked in front of him and extinguished the last of the lanterns. A group of chattering women came toward him, lugging large baskets on their backs. They were merchants carrying vegetables to early market. When he got home, he lay down to sleep without getting undressed.
