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-
XXI
BIANKA, wonderful Bianka is a riddle to me. I study her insistently, obstinately — and desperately — on the basis of the stamp album. How is this possible? Is the stamp album also a treastise on psychology? Naïve question! The stamp album is a universal book, a compendium of all human knowledge — obviously in allusions, hints, and insinuations. A certain perspicacity is needed, a certain courage of the heart, a particular kind of imaginativeness, in order to find the thread — that fiery trace, that flash of lightning running through the pages of the book.
One must beware one thing above all in these matters: narrow-mindedness and pedantry — dull literalness. All things are interrelated. All the threads lead to a single reel. Have you ever noticed that between the lines of certain books flocks of swallows fly past, whole verses of trembling, pointed swallows? The flights of those birds must be interpreted...
But I shall return to Bianka. How touchingly beautiful are her movements, each one performed with deliberation, decided upon centuries ago, undertaken resignedly, as if she has known in advance all the courses, the unalterable sequence of her fate. It happens that, sitting opposite her on the park avenue, I want to ask her something by a glance, to make a request that I have in my mind, and I try to give form to my entreaty. And before it comes to me, she has already replied, in a single, sad, deep and terse look.
Why does she keep her head bowed? What are her eyes so intently and pensively gazing into? Can the depths of her fate really be so abysmally sad? But in spite of everything, does she not bear that resignation with dignity, with pride, as if it could only ever be this way, as if her knowledge, while depriving her of joy, has in exchange bestowed a kind of inviolability, some higher freedom found at the bottom of voluntary submission? This confers the grace of triumph to her submissivenesses, and by this she is overcome.
She sits opposite me, on a bench, beside her governess, and they are both reading. Her white dress — I have never seen her in any other colour — lies on the bench like an open flower. Her slender legs with their dusky complexion are crossed before her with unutterable grace. The touch of her body must be actually painful, from the concentrated holiness of the contact.
Closing their books, they both get up together. In one fleeting look, Bianka receives and returns my fervent regards, and walks away, seemingly unconcerned, and the meandering alternation of her legs falls melodiously into the rhythm of the great elastic strides of her governess.
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