Spring: -I- -II- (III)
The Stamp Album: -IV- -V- -VI- -VII- -VIII- -IX- -X- -XI- -XII-
In the Municipal Park: -XIII- -XIV- -XV- -XVI-
Springtime Twilight: -XVII-
The Villa: -XVIII- -XIX- -XX- -XXI- -XXII- -XXIII- -XXIV- -XXV- -XXVI- -XXVII-
Bianka’s Lineage: -XXVIII- -XXIX- -XXX- -XXXI- -XXXII- -XXXIII-
Hiatus: -XXXIV- -XXXV- -XXXVI- -XXXVII-
Finale: -XXXVIII- -XXXIX- -XL-
III
THE DAYS grew long, clear and immense, almost too immense for their still poor and vague content. Those were days that allowed for growth, days full of waiting, and grown pale in their boredom and impatience. Through the emptiness of those days, not yet clouded by the effluvia of the bare and sun-drenched gardens, a shining breath blew, a glistening wind; it blew the streets clean, and they stood long and shining, ceremonially swept, as if awaiting someone’s still distant and unannounced coming. The sun bent slowly toward the equinoctial points; it slowed down on its course, and it arrived at its perfect position, where it would remain, motionless in its ideal equilibrium, discharging torrents of fire, portion by portion, upon the empty and absorbant earth.
A bright and infinite current blew throughout the whole span of the horizon; it arranged the lanes and avenues in clear lines of perspective; it levelled out in great and empty draughts, and finally it stood exhausted, enormous and lustrous, as if in its all-embracing mirror it wanted to enclose an ideal picture of the town, some fata Morgana elongated deep inside its illuminated concavities. Then the world stood still for a moment. It stood enthralled and out of breath, wanting to be completely at one with that illusory picture, the makeshift perpetuity that had opened up to it. But the generous offer quickly elapsed. The wind broke its mirror, and time took us once more into its possession.
The Easter holidays arrived, long and limitless. Freed from school, we loafed about the town without purpose or need. We had no idea how to profit from our liberty, our utterly empty, vague and useless freedom. Having as yet no definition of our own, we expected it to come from time, but time could not find it, floundering amid a thousand subterfuges.
In front of a café, tables were already laid out on the pavement. There sat women in brightly coloured dresses, swallowing the wind in little mouthfuls, like ice cream. Their skirts fluttered as the wind bit them from below, like a furious little dog. The women’s cheeks were flushed; the dry wind scorched their faces and chapped their lips. And still the entr’acte continued — and the great tedium of the entr’acte. Slowly, haltingly, the world advanced toward some border. It arrived at some mark too early, and it waited.
We all had appetites like wolves in those days. Desiccated by the wind, we ran home to eat enormous pieces of bread and butter, in vacant pensiveness. In the street, we bought great bagels, crunching with freshness. We sat in a row in the immense, empty and vaulted tenement hall on the market square, without a thought in our heads. The white and empty market square was visible through its low arcades. Wine barrels stood in a row by a wall, exuding their aroma. We sat on the long counter where on market days peasants’ colourful kerchiefs were sold, drumming on the planks with our heels in our indolence and boredom.
Rudolf, his mouth crammed with bagel, suddenly took out from under his jacket a stamp album, and spread it before me.
> -IV- >