After a short time Theodor rushed over, his face stretched tight with concern. He interrupted our conversation with neither greeting nor apology.
‘Franz,’ he said, spreading out his hands. ‘Where is Franz?’
He looked around the room, which was fast becoming crowded, and then at me, accusingly, as if Franz were an article of furniture that he believed I had stolen. I did not see why I should be held responsible for Franz’s behaviour and simply shrugged at Theodor and turned back to my conversation. As he grunted and hurried off again, I smiled to myself. My satisfaction was twofold; first, there was Theodor’s obvious distress, and second, the dawning possibility that Franz might miss the reading altogether, just as he had missed the party. This possibility, slender though it seemed, was like a gift handed down from the angels. Without Franz, the field would be clear for me to approach Fräulein Železný. Equally pleasing was the idea that Theodor’s estimation of Franz, however high it might now be, would also be certain to fall if he failed to attend the reading. I began to eye the door with a vigour to rival Theodor’s as I watched now for both Franz and Fräulein Železný. The hands of the large clock on the wall slid around the dial to the appointed time of the reading, and then past it, but neither of the two appeared.
Theodor sent someone to Franz’s house to hunt him out and he himself began pacing outside the door like a guard. I, for my part, was quite tired out from the anxious waiting. My eyes scanned the faces behind Kurt’s and Felix’s heads as I listened to them talk, my heart leaping in my chest every time my gaze lighted on someone resembling Fräulein Železný. After quite a long time I saw Theodor’s messenger return alone, shaking his head, and Theodor had no choice but to start without Franz. I could hardly believe it: luck so rarely smiles on me. If only now Fräulein Železný would come.
I was the first to read, and up on the podium I took a last look around the room for Fräulein Železný, in vain. Theodor sat at the very edge of the crowd, not listening to me at all, but looking alternately down at his watch and up at the door. He was no longer interested in me. Now he had eyes only for Franz. I was surprised at how wounded this made me feel. When I finished my reading, Theodor was still so absorbed with keeping watch that he did not even bother to applaud along with the others.
I gathered up my papers and was stepping off the podium when I glanced up and at last saw Fräulein Železný. She was at the back of the room, standing beside the entrance as if she might have just arrived. The sight of her gave me a physical shock, like a current of electricity passing through me, and in an instant I had forgotten all about Theodor’s indifference. I sat down and pretended to listen to Felix’s reading while I rehearsed things I might say to Fräulein Železný in my head. But every sentence I could think of seemed trite and stagey, and I considered and rejected topic after topic.
I imagined I could sense her presence in the room, which had manifested as an electromagnetic field that pulled the muscles over my ears pleasantly tight. The desire to turn and look at her was almost irresistible. I still had no idea what I could say to her. I had thought so much about her since our last meeting, and attributed so much importance to it, that the idea that she might not have done the same, and indeed might even have forgotten who I was, caused a pang that was almost physical.
Suddenly I became aware of a murmuring unrest in the room around me and realised that Felix had left the podium, which now stood empty. Theodor had announced an intermission, no doubt in order to allow Franz more time to appear. People were shuffling around, clustered in small groups discussing the readings or calling to one another across the room.
I stood up and could see that Fräulein Železný was still standing in the same place. She was alone. I made my way through the milling crowd, managing to dodge those bearing down on me to claim me for conversation. As I went, I desperately rehearsed conversational gambits in my head. But when at last she was there in front of me all of my rehearsed phrases fell away like dead things, useless. When I looked at her, my body floated away from me and I became only my eyes, outward-looking.
The reality of her was so different from my flimsy memories that they almost insulted her in their inadequacy, like a picture postcard of the seaside insults the real living sea, with all its complexity. To take all of her in at once was impossible; it overwhelmed me, and I was able to apprehend only small slices of her with each glance, like a series of photographs that focused on only one tiny detail—a curl escaping from her chignon, the corner of her mouth turned up in a smile, the painful grace with which her wrist turned in on itself.
I think neither of us spoke, but our eyes held a secret conversation. I must have said, Let’s go outside or Let’s go for a walk, or she must have, because then we were outside. The outside scene followed the inside scene with no bridge between them, as in dreams where one is suddenly transported somewhere else without explanation, but one accepts it all the same.
She took my arm and we walked along and my entire being seemed to be concentrated in that one spot, in the crook of my left elbow, under the light pressure of her hand. I let her steer me and then we were in the botanical gardens of the university. All the thick heat of the day lay caught among the trees, and the thousand lilac and azalea blossoms breathed out their clouds of scent, and the air, or my head, became filled with a pressurised, musical humming. The sky arched overhead like a glass dome, full of stars and the restless call of insects and night birds.
We walked slowly up and down the twisting paths, talking, and after a while sat upon a bench under the ginkgo tree. I looked down at our feet, resting on the gravel. Hers, tiny in their shoes, seemed to me such precious things, but absurd; it was unthinkable that they could be made for walking on. My own shoes beside them were like shipwrecked boats. I tucked them under the shadow of the bench, out of sight.
She told me about herself and I hoarded away each detail as if it were a morsel of food and I a starving man. Her father was a professor, and she was studying philosophy at the university. She lived close to me in the Old Town, with her mother and father; she was an only child. We spoke about literature, of which I found she had a deep appreciation. She had read my novel, and told me that she had felt quite shy meeting me at the party the week before, and naturally I did not admit to her how overwhelmed I had been on that occasion.
We talked and talked for I do not know how long, nor do I know which other topics we discussed; I knew only my feelings for her and how her face looked framed by leaves and flowers and lit by the benevolent moon. The surface of her skin and the character of her eyes shifted and changed with the flow of expressions and emotions that animated her as she spoke and listened. It occurred to me that each expression of hers was like the flowers of some African plants that bloom only once, for a short time, and then die away. Smile again she certainly would, but for her to smile that particular smile, with that quality, about that subject would only happen at that moment, and then never again. My body grew cold as a great sadness seeped into it at the thought, as though I could hear the ticking of a great clock that marked all time running on, inexorably.
I looked up and saw that there was a man standing before us, holding, inexplicably, my hat. I recognised first the hat, and then after a moment that it was Franz who was holding it, balanced on his palm like a tray. I was so absorbed with Fräulein Železný that at first I wasn’t shocked to see him; I simply thought that the interval must have finished and he was calling us to go back inside to see his reading.
‘Herr Brod, Fräulein Železný, may I accompany you home? I believe we all go in the same direction.’
When I took out my watch, I saw that the whole evening had passed.
Fräulein Železný had come on her bicycle, and we all three walked together to where she had left it. Franz’s appearance had broken the evening’s spell, and as we walked along I began inwardly to rage against him. Of course he had appeared at the worst possible moment. I had been intending to ask if I might call on Fräu
lein Železný but now, with Franz standing on her other side, holding her other arm, this suddenly became infinitely more difficult.
Fräulein Železný was turned towards him, eagerly questioning him about his new story. She was very familiar with him, so much so that it seemed clear that the two must have met since the Hyperion party. I heard her say that she had been looking forward to hearing his new story, and then he recited some lines from it that he knew by heart. He was so handsome and elegant as he strode along, his eyes on her. I felt like some fairy-tale monster beside them.
I wished Franz to the devil. Why could he have not come five minutes later? Or left us in peace? All I needed was a few minutes more alone with her. I desperately tried to telegraph this need to Franz over Fräulein Železný’s head, but he never even glanced in my direction. He was so engrossed now in relaying to her the plot of a longer story he was writing that he did not notice the anxious motions of my head and my eyes only a few centimetres from him.
I spied the bicycle perhaps ten metres ahead of us, and I had never felt so much despair at the sight of such a machine. Franz had still not paused his monologue by the time Fräulein Železný was mounted on her bicycle and ready to leave. She gave me her hand to say goodbye; the first words she had addressed to me since Franz had interrupted us. The nervousness I had felt earlier in the evening returned, and I mumbled my question to her in the worst possible style, painfully aware of Franz nearby, noting every hesitation.
She said that she would be happy for me to call, and my humour was slightly restored. She then took her leave of Franz, who asked with stagey hesitance and excessively flowery language if he too might call. She simply laughed, which signified I had no idea what, and cycled away.
Franz resumed our homeward walk as though nothing untoward had occurred, while I fumed beside him. His inconsiderateness on this occasion bewildered me; surely he must have seen the intimate nature of the talk we were having before he interrupted us.
‘Do you intend to call on Fräulein Železný?’ I asked after we had walked in silence for some distance. After the words were out of my mouth, I heard the petulance of my tone and instantly regretted them.
Franz laughed, and I didn’t recognise him. ‘I may, if I have the leisure.’
I was unsure now of our position in relation to each other in that never-ending struggle of position that men love to engage in. I wanted to be able to claim Fräulein Železný for myself, but there was no way I could do this, there was nothing I could say that would not make me appear ridiculous. We walked on and the air between us was tightly compressed with my unsaid words.
‘I was reading Nornepygge the other day,’ Franz said after a while, ‘and I think I’ve solved some of the problems that you had with it.’
At first I couldn’t understand what he was talking about. Besides, I wasn’t aware of having any problems, and if I did have any, I certainly did not feel disposed to discuss them with him on that walk, but he talked on about the motivations of the character seeming empty, about a confusion with the setting.
I let him talk while my mind drifted back over my evening. Walking along now with Franz, with the clatter of our feet on the cobblestones echoing in my ears, the time I had spent with Fräulein Železný almost seemed unreal to me. In comparison with the garden, the scene around me now seemed stretched thin, without substance: the call of voices, the slamming of doors, seemed to fall flat onto the street and the buildings with no resonance, with the dull slap of a wet rag on a stone.
Franz’s appearance had soured the whole evening, and I felt a great emptiness; everything was lost. I remembered my awkwardness with Fräulein Železný as she was leaving, and Theodor’s disregard. Franz was to blame for both of those. He was still enumerating the problems that he saw in Nornepygge—evidently the list was long—and it occurred to me only then to wonder what had happened to make him so late to his own reading. I interrupted his demolition of my writing to ask him how his story had been received, even though I already knew the answer. I imagined how Theodor’s face must have lit up at the sight of him coming through the door at last.
‘Oh, the reading,’ he said carelessly. ‘I didn’t make it.’
‘Didn’t make it?’ Had he really said that? ‘But why?’ I asked. I could never imagine behaving like this.
Franz shrugged. ‘Oh, something happened. Things get in the way—you know how it is.’
I didn’t know, but I didn’t say anything. Theodor must be furious, I thought with glee. I pictured his shiny face, boiled red with rage from watching the empty doorway and the hands of his watch creep around and around.
The sour weight that Franz had brought with him suddenly lifted. Surely, Theodor would not allow himself to be treated with such scorn. In a few weeks he would have forgotten all about Franz, and by then I would have made great progress on my Schopenhauer book. And even if I had been nervous at the end with Fräulein Železný, it did not matter: she had still encouraged me to call on her. She had said yes. To me she had said yes, but she had only laughed at Franz. Perhaps Franz was nothing to worry about after all. He was only a little fly, an insect buzzing around the room: annoying, perhaps, but soon gone.
‘Yes, I know how things get in the way,’ I said, ‘but don’t worry. Theodor is a very understanding man. I’m sure he won’t mind at all.’
6.
ANJA, ANOUŠKA, ANJALEIN: IN THE NEXT DAYS AND WEEKS, SHE was all I could think about, and I remember nothing of that time but her. I think those weeks were the happiest of my life. I found a contentment and joy that went far beyond mere attraction.
When I went to call on her for the first time my nerves were so great that I had to walk past her house twice before I could bring myself even to knock at the door. Her house was on the Martinsgasse, a street that was familiar to me; I had passed along it many times on my way to or from work, though I had never really noticed it before. Now it had become the centre of Prague; the most beautiful street in the city. The sunlight was brighter there, the air fresher and the birds more musical. A hush fell around me as I approached her house, as though behind its curtained windows invisible watchers stood, holding their breath. I rang the bell and automatically began to count in my head as I waited, a nervous habit of mine. My sweating palms were beginning to leave damp stains on the wrapper of the bouquet that I held out in front of me like a sword.
The maid let me in and showed me to the living room, where Frau Železný greeted me. She was tall and thin, a faded version of her daughter, with the same long hands and graceful neck. I handed her the bouquet and immediately felt purposeless and naked without it. Frau Železný busied herself with the flowers, which allowed her to surreptitiously observe me with little darts of her sympathetic eyes; I wondered if Anja had forewarned her family about my deformity. Frau Železný talked inconsequentially about varieties of flowers and the difficulty of raising this or that strain in the climate of Prague. I perched on a tightly upholstered chair opposite her and worried about what to do with my hands now that the bouquet had been taken from me. I folded them in my lap, and they lay heavy there, sweating like bony hams.
Herr Železný now entered the room together with the maid, who was pushing a trolley on which the afternoon coffee was arranged. In her father I could see nothing of Anja. He was dark and stern, with a bald spot on the very top of his head that was wreathed around by wiry hair. He shook my hand, keeping his eyes trained on mine as though he had been told not to stare, but at the same time not to avoid looking at me. My eyes were the first to fall. He lowered himself into a large armchair by the fire and seemed to get straight down to business, asking me about my position at the post office and my writing, some of which, to my surprise, he had read.
I balanced as upright as I could in my hard chair. I had to concentrate very hard on holding my cup and plate balanced so as not to disgrace myself by dropping anything on the carpet. I managed to get my coffee down, but the cake crumbs stuck unpleasantly to the walls of my
dry throat. Eating and drinking and then also talking at the same time suddenly seemed an immensely complicated task, requiring great dexterity and skill. Sweat prickled under my collar.
After a short while, Anja appeared, wearing a blue dress that rustled like tissue paper. I stopped talking and looked at her as she stood, framed in the dark doorway, light falling on her hair, her fingers resting lightly on the door handle. It was like when one sees a deer step out of a wooded area into a clearing and time stops for a moment. We looked at each other. Then she came into the room and sat down on the little sofa next to her mother. Herr Železný was now explaining the content of my first novel to Frau Železný as though I were not in the room, so I was free to let Anja take my attention. She reminded me of a bird with her quick, darting movements, her head turning from side to side. Her slender hands were like fluttering leaves and the shapes they described in the air awakened a tinkling tune in my head.
I must have satisfied Herr Železný, because after he had finished his coffee and risen from his chair to leave the room he turned first to me and then to Anja, with a little bow, and asked us if we might like to go out on a walk together. Then he gave one sharp nod and left the room.
Walking down the stairs, I was finally able to relax. The soft sounds of Anja walking behind me—the rustle of her dress, her gentle footfalls and the hiss of her palm over the bannister—caused a pleasant tingling in my scalp and ears.
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