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-
VII
THE WORLD was bounded by Franz Joseph I in those days. On every postage stamp, on every coin and every postmark, his image established the invariability of the world, the immovable dogma of its unequivocalness. ‘Such is the world, and there are no worlds but this,’ the old man’s Imperial & Royal seal proclaimed. ‘All else is delusion, wild claims and usurpation.’ Franz Joseph I settled down upon everything, and checked the world in its growth.
From deep within our being, dear reader, we are inclined to law-abidingness. The loyalty of our polite natures is not insensible to the charm of authority; and Franz Joseph I was the highest of authorities. Were that authoritative old man to throw all the weight of his eminence on to the scales of that truth, then there could be no remedy. One had to relinquish all delusions of the soul, its eager anticipation, to adapt oneself however possible to that only possible world, without illusions, without romance — and forget.
But just as the prison doors were irrevocably locked, when the last opening was walled up, when all things conspired to pass over You in silence, O God, when Franz Joseph I was erecting his barricades, pasting over the last crack so that You should not be beheld — You came into being in a roaring mantle of seas and continents, and gave the lie to him. You, O God, took the odium of heresy upon yourself, and exploded upon the world with that enormous, colourful and magnificent blasphemy. O magnificent Heresiarch! You struck me then with that fiery book. You exploded from Rudolf’s stamp album. In that first moment, I failed to recognise its right-angled shape. My mind’s eye transmuted it, in my momentary blindness, into the pistol we would take into school, to fire paper pellets from under our desks, to the annoyance of the teachers. Oh, how You were fired from it, O God! It was your furious tirade. It was your fiery and magnificent philippic against Franz Joseph I and his prosaic state. It was the true Book of Splendour!
I opened it, and it shone before me in the colours of worlds, with a wind of immeasurable expanses, a panorama of swirling horizons. You walked through it, page after page, drawing behind you that train woven from all zones and climates: Canada, Honduras, Nicaragua, Abracadabra, Hipporabundia... I understood You, O God. These were no more than obfuscations of your richness, the first words that sprang to your mind. You put your hand into your pocket, and showed me, like a handful of buttons, all the possibilities swarming within You. You cared nothing for exactness. You merely said whatever was on the tip of your tongue. Had You said Panphribas or Halleleevah, then the air amid the palm trees would have become vibrant with parrots in inestimable numbers, and the sky, like an enormous, centupled sapphire rose, blown apart to its very foundation, would have disclosed its dazzling core, your mascaraed and dreadful peacock-feather eye, and at its glaring centre, your wisdom would have shimmered, glistening with super-colour, wafting with super-fragrance. You sought to dazzle me, O God, to flaunt yourself and turn my head. For even You have a moment of vanity, when You are enrapt by your very self. Oh, how I love those moments!
How sunken you had become, Franz Joseph I, and your prosaic gospel! My eyes sought you out in vain. At last I found you. You too were in that crowd, but so small, dethroned and grey. You were marching with the rest in the dust of the highway, behind South America and before Australia, and you sang with the rest: ‘Hosanna!’
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