When we had entered the steep canyon of Corpse Lane, lighted windows began to appear above us, orange and pink squares on the black walls that framed here one pretty girl plaiting her dark hair, and there an older girl, less pretty, her elbows resting on the windowsill as she looked out into the dark. Some of them called down to us, and Franz would respond with a little joke, evading them.
After we had passed what seemed to me a hundred lighted windows and heard a hundred voices calling to us, Franz stopped outside a corner house. He looked up at it.
‘This is the place,’ he said. ‘The girls here …’ He made an appreciative gesture with his lips and fingers.
He stepped up to the door and knocked, and then took off his hat and beat it against his leg to shake it free of raindrops. The madam of the house opened the door. She was a thin woman whose extremely small stature was apparent despite her high-heeled boots and the mountain of hair piled onto the top of her head. She greeted Franz as though she recognised him and they started chatting like old friends.
I had remained standing in the lane, looking up at the dark old house. It too held a lighted window that framed a girl. This one was very young. Her face was gentle and her body was a collection of flowing arcs and curves enclosed in polished skin. She was absorbed in fastening a ribbon around her slender neck, her head bent and her hair falling over one shoulder. She must have been around the same age as my sister Sophie. It pained my heart to think of Sophie and to know that this girl in the window once, and perhaps still, had a mother and father and perhaps brothers somewhere who worried about her and wanted to protect her. It pained me that I could know this yet still desire her all the same.
Her animal sense felt my eyes on her and she turned and looked down at us. I saw her look first at Franz and take in his upright bearing and the cut of his clothes. Then she looked at me. Revulsion flashed across her face. I instinctively readjusted my position to make myself appear more unobtrusive, hating myself for doing it. I saw myself through the girl’s eyes as I stood there beside Franz. I saw how she must be anticipating with disgust the moment that she would be obliged to touch me and feel my body pressed against hers, how she must be hoping to be chosen by Franz and not by me.
Franz called my name, and the madam held the door wider and motioned for me to come in, but the image of the girl’s face was in my mind, and my shame at myself had obliterated any feeling of desire I had had. Franz made a show of trying to entice me in, but I could see now that the girls were more important to him than spending the remainder of the evening with me.
I walked the long distance home, allowing my tired body to relax into its natural misshapen form. My gait collapsed into its usual pitching roll and my uneven footfalls on the cobblestones broadcast my affliction out into the night. I met no other walker on my way.
When I arrived home, the house was dark, but I could hear my father moving around in his room next to mine. I turned up the lamp in my bedroom and removed my hat and coat, my jacket, trousers and collar, my undershirt and socks, and went and stood in front of the mirror. The mirror was large, as tall as myself, and beautifully framed in a mottled red wood. I surveyed myself. My dark hair, already receding slightly at the temples, had been flattened to the contours of my head by my damp hat and looked as if it were painted on. My face, an echo of my body, had a slight twist to it; the cleft in my chin was not quite in line with the tip of my nose, and the whole lower half of my face was crooked, as if it had been wiped to one side. My left shoulder rose much higher than my right, and I had my jackets and coats made up with extra padding on the right side in an effort to disguise this. My whole right side appeared shrunken and hollow and my body collapsed over to this side while above it my head struggled for equilibrium. My right leg, a ruined thing, twisted inwards and its toes curled pathetically into the instep of my left foot as if they were seeking shelter there.
I turned my crooked side to the mirror to examine it more closely. In profile I was a question mark, with my straight legs and curved back, my head at the top poking forward like the head of a tortoise.* I had learned over the years to control my body to a degree, to make it appear more like other bodies, but it cost me much discomfort and required a great deal of concentration.
No one ever spoke a word to me about my deformity. Out of all the people I passed every day around Prague—the tram drivers, the maids, the whores, Stephanie in the next office, my mother, Sophie, the postman—not one ever said a word. The tongues of all those who inhabited my world were silent, but their eyes were not.
Their eyes spoke, that sea of eyes through which I moved each day. They glanced and looked in secret and averted their gazes, and this looking and not-looking spoke louder than any voice of disgust, curiosity or, worst of all, pity. I offended them. I frightened them. I showed them what they had, and what they had to lose.
I could still see the eyes of the girl in the window as she looked from Franz to me, her face twisting unknowingly as if to mirror mine. I felt no malice towards the girl; her reaction was justified and even warranted. I was able to observe myself objectively from the outside just as easily as I could observe Franz or any other person, and even I—especially I—would have preferred Franz to myself.
I often imagined how life would be if lived in a normal body. I obsessively watched people in the street and chose features that I would like to have for myself, composing a vast catalogue of them. A strong neck like a pillar, a back that spread outwards from the spine in two even wings, square shoulders that hung balanced from the neck, legs straight and muscular, moving like pistons. All of these were like fabulous riches to me, wonders I would never possess. Franz did possess them, together with a supple elegance, like that of a dancer. His body appeared weightless, borne upwards from the soles of his feet as though he were moving in water, or he were composed not of flesh but vapour. What a fool I was to think that Fräulein Železný, who could have anyone she chose, would be interested in me. I, who disgusted a cheap whore on Corpse Lane.
__________________
* Pencil sketches in a spare, cartoonish style appear in the margins of the manuscript here. They depict a male human figure and have been partially erased.
5.
SOME WEEKS LATER A CITY BOOKSHOP ORGANISED FOR BOTH Franz and me to attend a literary evening where authors were to read from their work. I had managed to salvage enough from my notes to give an overview of the Schopenhauer book, and Franz was to read an unpublished story. The event was to be held at the Charles University, where I had studied some years ago. As I walked through the grounds, I found the old buildings unchanged and instantly familiar, and I was surprised to find that I still knew my way around the echoing corridors. The students I passed also seemed unchanged as they hurried past, singly, with clutches of books, heads ducked, or strolled together in small clusters, arguing in loud voices.
Speaking to a large group of people about my work still brought with it the sharp bite of anxiety. Whenever I had to read my own work in public, my body, which had already failed me so much, added to its crimes with bouts of nausea and headaches for days beforehand, and tremors and sweating as I stood facing the crowd.
This had originated with my first public-speaking engagement. It was the year before, in summer; a season that I have always disliked because the fewer clothes one wears, the more difficult it is to disguise a hunchback. That summer, though, was the only one that I remember ever having felt at ease with myself. I was the happiest I had ever been at having my work published—and not only published, but praised. I would wake in the morning and the thought of my book gave me the same feeling of lightness that one feels when one wakes and remembers that it is a holiday. For the first time, something in my life eclipsed the reality of living in my crooked body.
Theodor had arranged for me to speak to a group of literature students and professors about my work. To me, this event was an even more coveted marker of my success as a writer than the high rate of sales that my book was e
njoying. To engage with my readers, inspire them and hear their ideas about the world and about my work was for me the real prize at the end of my long toil.
When I proudly told my friends about the speech, I detected in those closest to me a hesitation, a reticence, which had at first confused me and which I then attributed to jealousy on their part and then, later, paranoia on mine.
I also told my mother, hoping to be at least a small source of happiness to her. There was always a dissonance between memories and thoughts of my mother and the reality of her. When I was a child my mother had been kind and sharp-witted, her gestures sure and swift, and even now this is how I most often remember her. But in fact she had declined rapidly throughout the years of my childhood. Her mind had scattered and her body had faded and curled in on itself. I never allowed myself to calculate how much I might be responsible for her deterioration.
That afternoon she was in her room, as she was most days, crouching small and shrunken in her chair near the window. I felt the tug of pain that I always felt at the sight of her. Elsa was sitting in the corner, watching over my mother while she busied her hands with some sewing. I had to explain the situation to my mother as though she were a child and I her mother.
‘Mama, they have asked me to speak next week about Nornepygge, at the university.’
She just stared at me uncomprehendingly. ‘Nornepygge?’ She began to look frightened, as she did more and more often at each unknown thing she encountered. Her hands started patting around her lap and knees, looking for something, as though her understanding was an object she had lost in the folds of the blanket that covered her.
‘Nornepygge? Nornepygge?’ she kept repeating with increasing alarm and volume.
I knelt beside her chair and took her fleshless hand in mine. I tried to anchor her shying eyes with my gaze.
From the corner of my eye I could see Elsa deciding whether to intervene, and my mother’s gaze skittered away uncertainly in Elsa’s direction for reassurance.
‘His book, Frau Brod: Nornepygge is the name of the book. He has been asked to read from his book at the university.’ Elsa nodded encouragingly at me and returned her eyes to her sewing.
My mother’s face turned back to me and seemed to wince with pain. ‘My poor child. And will you go?’
‘Of course! It is a wonderful thing. I had hoped you would come too.’ Although I knew that she couldn’t.
‘If you have already written it, why must you show yourself? All those people looking at you. Just send them the book if they want to read it.’
I could see Elsa ducking her head further into her neck, trying to make herself invisible.
‘Why not ask your brother to read for you?’ My mother was looking at me eagerly, pleadingly, wanting to help.
I felt a great, weary sadness then. My brother had been dead for more than twenty years. I had never even known him. I patted my mother’s hand. ‘Yes, Mama,’ I said. ‘What a good idea.’
Although she did not intend it, her words awoke in me the habitual dread that had been lying dormant under my unfamiliar happiness, a dread that was so connected with my broken body it was as though it formed its central organ, its dark pulsing heart.
That night I began to think of the reality of giving the speech. I had always disliked speaking to groups of people. Being called to the front of the classroom at school to give an answer or recite a poem had been painful for me. I would feel the eyes of the audience watching me, burning on my skin like little points of flame.
I began to wonder if people were only interested in me because I was an object of curiosity, a marvel such as one might find at a carnival sideshow; a two-headed man, or a dog that could sing. I remembered the hesitant faces of my friends when I had told them the news, and at last I understood the reason.
As the days passed I became more and more self-conscious, and at night I dreamed I was giving the speech, but instead of words coming from my mouth clouds of vermin spewed forth. Mice, bats, spiders and fleas crawled over the faces of the audience, no matter how much they tried to beat them off with their hands. I dreamed this dream so many times that it began to seem like it could really happen, and it spilled over into my waking life with bouts of nervous vomiting.
I found myself once again back in my old place, facing my old enemy, and now everything seemed to be against me. It was midsummer and over the next days the temperature rose. I began to obsessively check the weather forecast for the appointed night and deliberated over what I would wear—could I get away with my padded jacket? I stood for hours in front of the mirror, trying to straighten my poor body in preparation for the eventuality of having to appear without the jacket and expose it to view.
The night of the speech came, hot and close even after the sun had set. I had walked to the university and arrived with my face beaded with sweat and my shirt sticking transparently to my skin. Theodor met me outside, totally unaware of my distress. He was excited because there was a better turnout than he had hoped.
‘It’s quite a crowd! They can’t wait to see you.’
I knew he was trying to reassure me, but at that moment I was wishing for the opposite, for a shamefully empty room, a sea of vacant chairs. I went to the bathroom and splashed water on my face. In the mirror I could see my hollow chest tremble with the beating of my heart. I felt a spasm in my gut and tried to vomit into the sink to relieve myself, but couldn’t.
I still remember entering the lecture hall, feeling as though I were entering the scene of my own death. It was very crowded, with people standing around the door and up along the back wall. As I made my way through the crush towards Theodor, whom I could see standing at the front, I heard, or imagined I could hear, a hissing wave of shuffles and gasps as the bodies parted to let me through. I felt faint and hot. Sweat prickled on my back. My pounding heart filled all the space inside my chest, leaving no room for air, which I had to take in shallow sips.
Theodor introduced me and I mechanically read through a section of my novel and elaborated on its themes, but I was aware the whole time of all the eyes in that room. Even as I spoke, my brain was perversely trying to calculate the exact number of those eyes, and what percentage of the surface area of my body was taken up by their gaze. ‘Each eye,’ a voice said in my head, ‘is the size of a five-heller piece.’ Two hundred people in the room equalled four hundred eyes, which was approximately twelve hundred centimetres square, thus covering at least the whole of my upper body.
I fought a rising tide of nausea and struggled to keep my voice level, which I managed to do until the time came for the audience to ask questions. An old professor was the first to speak, giving a long-winded opinion about a seemingly unrelated theme, and I quickly lost the thread. By this time I was almost blinded by the sick feeling in my stomach and the room was swaying before me. I could no longer control my body and I was propelled, stumbling, off the podium. I limped through the audience, awkwardly steadying myself against their seated bodies with my hands. I could no longer suppress the spasms of retching, which echoed down the stone hallway like peals of thunder when I reached the door.
I ran down the hallway towards the bathroom, but I made it only a short distance, and vomited instead into a flowerbed. I stood for a long time afterwards, bent over and looking at the tips of my shoes. Sweat dripped from my face. I could sense someone, probably Theodor, standing a short distance away. Out of shame I didn’t turn my head to look at him.
Even now, more than a year later, the thought of a crowd of faces all turned towards me, with their silent, waiting eyes, unnerved me enough to raise my blood pressure. It was no longer the display of my ruined body to those appraising faces that was the source of my anxiety; to this act of exposure I had become resigned. Regardless of what a poor specimen it was, my body had still honoured its function of acting as an external barrier that protected my internal self from scrutiny and trespass.
To me now there was something about the act of reading my own words out loud
that stripped me bare. I had a horror of speaking my words with my own voice, because I feared, as though it were some magic incantation, that this combination would enable the innermost part of myself to be exposed, recognised and, like my body, deemed monstrous, reprehensible.
That night, the fact that Fräulein Železný might be in the audience was making me more nervous than usual. I felt ill at the thought of her seeing me standing there, exposed, but at the same time I longed to see her again. The thought of meeting Franz also added to my unease; I could see again the young whore’s eyes sliding from him to me as we stood at the door, and I did not want to witness Fräulein Železný’s eyes making that same journey. My last encounter with Franz had changed my apprehension of him and I felt a panicky urge to keep him away from Fräulein Železný if possible. For this reason I had planned to arrive early, determined to get to Fräulein Železný before Franz had the chance. There was also the problem of Theodor. Once again I had found myself in the position of being forced to witness his first meeting with Franz. I could not hope for the possibility of Franz’s absence that evening. And now there was also the matter of Theodor’s offer of the book, the details of which were still unknown to me.
Despite my anxieties about Franz and Theodor, my nervousness about seeing Fräulein Železný again was dominant as I climbed the stairs to the room in which the reading was to be held. With each step, my heart tightened and my eyes began darting about, searching for her. The room was still quite empty and Fräulein Železný was not there. I could see Theodor and my friends Kurt and Felix, who would also be reading from their new works. Avoiding Theodor, I made my way over to talk to my friends. I could not see Franz anywhere. For some reason Kurt and Felix did not cause the same sense of threat and rivalry that Franz provoked, but rather exuded a sense of solidarity and camaraderie. In fact, I had been the one to enable both of them to make their names as writers, and I was happy to have been able to use my own success to help them.
The Lost Pages Page 4