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 in those days was bounded by Franz Joseph I. On every postage stamp, on every coin and every postmark, his picture 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. Franz Joseph I was the supreme authority. If that authoritative old man were to throw all the weight of his eminence onto the scales of that truth, then no remedy would remain — one had to relinquish all delusions of the soul, its eager anticipation, and adapt oneself however possible to that only possible world, without illusions and without romance — and forget.
But just as the prison was being locked up once and for all, when the last opening was being walled up, when all things conspired to pass over You in silence, O God, and Franz Joseph I was erecting his barricades and pasting over the last crack, so that You could not be beheld — then You came into being in a roaring mantle of seas and continents, and You gave the lie to him. You took the odium of Heresy upon yourself, O God, and You exploded into the world with that enormous, colourful and magnificent Blasphemy. O Magnificent Heresiarch! You struck me with that fiery book; You exploded from Rudsolf’s stamp album. In that first moment I did not recognise its right-angled shape. In my momentary blindness my mind’s eye transmuted it into the pistol we would take into school, to fire paper pellets from under the desk to annoy the teachers. Oh, how You burst forth from it, O God! This 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 flashed the colours of worlds before me — a wind of immeasurable expanses and 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 merely the subterfuges of your treasures, 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 did not care about exactness —You said whatever was on the tip of your tongue. Had You said Panphribas or Halleleevah, then the air amid the palm trees would be vibrant with inestimable numbers of parrots; the sky would disclose its dazzling core — your mascaraed and dreadful peacock-feather eye, like an enormous, hundredfold-multiplied sapphire rose, blown apart to its very foundation — and at its glaring centre, your wisdom would shimmer, glistening with super-colour and 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 were, Franz Joseph I with 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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