Marija Peričić - The Lost Pages

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 Fräulein 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.