Marija Peričić - The Lost Pages

When I arrived home I stuffed Franz’s manuscript into one of the drawers of my writing table and tried to put him out of my mind. I went back to revising my notes for Anja’s study.

The exam about which she was the most anxious was her final one. It was in a few days’ time, and I was planning to feign illness on that day so I would be free to accompany her. I had also bought her a small gift for the occasion: a jewelled comb for her hair. I took it from the box in which the jeweller had packed it and held it in my hand. It had three tortoiseshell prongs, which were surmounted by a little crown of red and silver stones: garnet, the jeweller had told me, and marcasite. It gave off a gentle warmth and the stones shot darts of light up at me. My heart raced at the idea of giving it to her and a host of doubts crowded into my mind. Was it the right style? Was it too serious to give such a gift? Too overblown? I had deliberated over the gift for hours, touring all the jewellery shops of the city and changing my mind a thousand times. I had never before had the occasion to purchase anything of this nature.

When the day of the exam arrived, the thought of giving Anja the gift reduced me to a state of nerves that must have rivalled Anja’s own. I was acutely aware of the little box with the comb sitting in my breast pocket, where it exerted a uniquely painful weight and pressure on my chest.

I could feel it there in my pocket when I collected Anja from her house and during the whole walk with her to the examination room. I spent the hour of her exam wandering the university grounds and the botanical gardens. The summer had faded since I had last been there and the gardens had assumed their autumn colours. There were several people walking the paths and admiring the red and gold foliage of the trees, but I found the dying leaves repellent; the yellow ones like ghosts, the few remaining green ones with their living edges being eaten away by a rusty decay that would slowly engulf them before they silently fell to be crushed underfoot or swept away by a gardener. The people’s exclamations at their beauty seemed inconsiderate, even gruesome, as if they were admiring the hue of the bruises on a dying man.

I went and sat on the bench beneath the ginkgo tree where I had first sat with Anja. We had returned here several times to sit and talk, but I had never really seen the garden; when I was with her she filled all of my gaze. I looked up at the yellow leaves quivering against the sky, echoing my heart with their nervous motion. I took out the comb for the hundredth time and looked at it, rehearsing again in my mind what I would say when I presented it to her.

I became aware of a rustling hiss and felt something brush softly against my face. I pocketed the comb and looked up once more and a ginkgo leaf drifted past, and then another. The rustling became louder and soon the ginkgo leaves were fluttering down all around me, though there was no wind. I sat perfectly still, now staring straight ahead, and let myself be covered by their fall. People walking the paths stopped in front of the tree to exclaim, and to catch the leaves as they fell, for luck. Soon there was a small crowd standing around the tree.

‘You’re going to be the luckiest man alive!’ a man said to me as he caught a leaf and then discarded it in the hope of a more perfect specimen.

The leaves fell over me and filled up the brim of my hat and the cup of my palm lying open in my lap. I turned my face up and closed my eyes and the leaves rained down around me in a curtain of crisp sighs, brushing over my face like dry butterfly wings.

I remained sitting there until Anja’s exam had finished, but before I left I selected two of the most perfect leaves from my palm—one for her and one for me—to keep as good-luck charms. It was a good omen: for Anja’s exam, for our love, for my own writing. I put Anja’s into the jeweller’s box. The ginkgo rain had dissolved the tension I had been feeling and I felt strong and happy, chiming at one with the pulse of the world. It was just like the man had said: I was the luckiest man alive.

When I met Anja, she was flushed and talkative, and was swaggering along like a little sailor after a few glasses of rum. My heart ached with love for her. We walked aimlessly about the corridors while she unleashed a torrent of words: the questions she was asked, the answers she had given, and effusive gratitude for the hours I had spent practising with her.

Now was the perfect moment to give her the gift. I kept putting my hand into my breast pocket to take out the box but she always had something more to say and I was unwilling to interrupt her. My fingers nervously ran up and down one of the sharp edges of the box inside my pocket while I waited. At last there came a pause and I steered her to a low balustrade where we both sat down.

I took out the box and gave it to her with a trembling hand. My prepared words failed me and all I could manage was a broken, ‘Congratulations.’ My hands were clammy and I had to look away while she opened the box and took out the comb. When I looked back again she had taken out the ginkgo leaf and was holding it up with a questioning look.

I told her then about the ginkgo rain, and being the luckiest man alive, and her the luckiest woman. Later I realised how arrogant this sounded. She did not say anything, but looked into the distance and twirled the leaf against her lips. Her soft breath fluted over its edges. The comb lay still in its nest of cotton.

‘Won’t you try the comb?’ I tried to keep my voice steady.

She looked down at the comb and then closed the lid and gave me back the box, the ginkgo leaf held now between her ring and small finger. She shook her head. ‘I can’t take it, Max. I’m sorry.’

For all my nerves and worry I had somehow not prepared myself for this, yet at that moment I felt no emotion. Mechanically, I pocketed the box again.

‘But this leaf,’ she said, ‘I will keep forever.’

She suggested that we take a stroll through the gardens. We climbed up and down the stone steps and she talked and exclaimed and hung onto my arm as though the incident with the comb had never occurred. At her touch my feelings began rushing back, all my love for her, together now with a desperate and crushing panic.

How could she have rejected my gift and yet still promenade with me now, whispering in my ear and collecting pretty leaves to show me? I could not understand it, and yet a part of me knew. Franz. It had to be. The idea clicked into place with all the inexorable finality of a lock snapping shut. Clearly, I saw now, he had mentioned her exams to me in order to demonstrate that he, too, was close to her, but I had not been willing to look this fact in the face. But perhaps, I told myself in a moment of optimism, it was Herr Liška. It could equally well be him. Losing Anja to Liška would be terrible, but it could be borne. But Franz… I could not live with that ending to my and Anja’s story.

Of course I could have saved myself the inner torment of this guessing game simply by asking her. I could know the truth in seconds. But somehow I could not bring myself to do it. The question was too shaming. Instead I walked mutely along beside her, through the gardens and then back to her house, my mind sick with whirling suspicions. I imagined her meeting with Franz and his thin, elegant hands pawing at her, his slick smile inches from her face. I imagined the two of them laughing together, perhaps about me, and Franz mocking me. For a few moments I began to hate her.

After I had returned her to her house, I automatically made my way home, but when I arrived at the door I was unable to go inside. The house seemed suddenly as small as a coffin. Instead of going in I turned away from the door and began to walk at random. I walked up the darkened Karpfengasse and crossed the Moldau over the little Kettensteg bridge. I stood for a long time on the bridge, watching the surface of the water slide away beneath my feet.