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-
XXIII
IS IT possible? Bianka’s villa, extraterritorial terrain? Her house under the protection of international treaties? My study of the stamp album leads me to such stupendous discoveries! Am I the only one in possession of this astounding truth? And yet one must not make light of all the arguments and circumstantial evidence that the stamp album amasses around this point.
I investigated the whole villa at close quarters today. For weeks now I have been circling the great wrought-iron gate adorned with its coat of arms. I took advantage of the moment when two great empty equipages drove out of the villa garden. No one closed the gate — it stood wide open. I nonchalantly stepped inside and took my sketching pad from my pocket, and leaning against one of the gate’s pillars I pretended to draw some architectural detail. I was standing on the gravelled footpath along which Bianka’s nimble feet had passed so many times. My heart froze in happy terror at the thought of her slender figure emerging in a light white dress from one of the balcony doors. But all the windows and doors were drawn with green blinds. Not the least rustle betrayed the life latent in that house. The sky on the horizon grew overcast and lightning flashed in the distance. In the warm, thin air there was not the lightest breeze. Only the chalk-white walls of the villa spoke out in the stillness of that grey day, with the voiceless but suggestive eloquence of its richly segmented architecture. Its nimble volubility was diffused in pleonasms, in a thousand versions of one single motif. Bas-relief garlands ran to the left and right in rhythmical cadences along a bright white frieze, and lingered undecidedly at the corners. A marble stairway ran down from the heights of the central terrace, pompous and ceremonious amid balustrades and architectonic vases stepping quickly aside — and spilling widely onto the ground it seemed to gather and draw up its billowing gown in a deep curtsy.
I have a particularly sensitive notion of style. That style pricked me and disturbed me in some unaccountable way. Behind the resolute classicism, held firmly in check, behind that outwardly cool elegance, elusive thrills lay concealed. That style was too torrid, too sharply pointed and too full of unexpected embellishments. Some drop of unidentified poison released into the veins of that style had darkened its blood, had rendered it explosive and dangerous.
Internally disoriented, trembling with contradictory impulses, I inspected the front of the villa on tiptoe, startling lizards which were dozing on its steps.
Around a dried up circular pool the ground was cracked by the sun and bare. Here and there a little eager and fantastic greenery rose up from a chink in the ground — nothing more. I pulled up a little tuft of that weed and hid it away between the pages of my sketching pad. I trembled with inner disquiet. The air stood grey above that pool, inordinately transparent and sparkling, undulating in the heat. A barometer on a nearby pillar indicated a catastrophic drop. Silence hung all around. Not a twig was stirred by the breeze. The villa slept, shining with chalky whiteness in the boundless torpor of its grey aura, its Venetian blinds drawn. Suddenly, as if that stagnation had reached a critical point, the air precipitated with colourful agitation, broke up into coloured patches and flickering flutters.
They were enormous, ponderous butterflies, occupied with amorous frolicking in pairs. Their listless, tremulous fluttering hung for a moment in the lifeless atmosphere. By turns they flew an inch past one another, and then rejoined the throng, shuffling a whole pack of colourful flares in the darkening air. Was it merely the rapid decomposition of the rank atmosphere — a fata Morgana of air full of hashish and caprice? I struck out with my cap, and a plush, ponderous butterfly dropped to the ground, fluttering its wings. I picked it up and hid it away. One more proof.
> -XXIV- >