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-
XXXI
CAN IT BE regarded as chance that in those very days a great theatre of illusion arrived, a magnificent waxworks exhibition, and pitched its camp in plac Świętej Trójcy? I had long foreseen this, and filled with triumph I announced it to Rudolf.
It was a windy and distraught evening, turning to rain. On the pale and yellow horizons, the day was already making ready to depart; it hastily drew a grey and waterproof hood over its train of wains, drawing in a procession toward the late and cool beyond. Beneath an already half drawn, darkening curtain, the distant and final trails of sunset came into view for one last moment, descending along a great, flat and endless plain, full of immense lakelands and mirrorings. A yellow and dismayed, already doomed gleam came from those bright trails, obliquely through half of the sky. The curtain promptly fell, and the roofs shone palely with moist reflexes. It grew dark. And a moment later, the gutters began monotonously to sing.
The waxworks exhibition was now brightly lit. In that distraught and hasty twilight, the dark silhouettes of people, sheltered by their umbrellas in the tawny light of the waning day, flocked to the lighted anteroom of the marquee, where they payed with deference their entrance fees to a colourful, décolletaged lady, who shone with her jewels and the gold set into her teeth — a living, laced up and rouged bust, vanishing lower down, by incomprehensible means, into the shadow of a velvet veil.
Through a half open door curtain, we entered the brightly lit space. It was already filled with patrons. Groups in overcoats, wet with rain and with upturned collars, sauntered from place to place in silence, halting in tight semicircles. I was able to discern quite easily among them those others who now belonged only outwardly to this world of ours, while in reality they led a separate, representational and embalmed life on pedestals — a life put on show and ostentatiously empty. They stood in terrible silence, dressed in their solemn frock coats and morning coats, made to measure from good cloth — ghastly pale, and flushed even now with their final, fatal illnesses, their eyes still shining. For a long time now they have had not a single thought in their heads, only that habit of ostentation, their addiction to showing themselves off to all comers, to displaying their empty existence, which they upheld with last of their strength. They should have been lying long in their beds, having taken a spoonful of medicine, wrapped up in cool sheets, their eyes closed. It was ill-treatment to keep them up so late into the night, on their narrow pedestals and chairs, where they sat stiffly in their tight, patent-leather footwear, far remote from their former existence, their eyes still shining, and utterly bereft of memory.
Each one had hanging from his lips — dead now, like the tongue of one strangled — his final cry since leaving the lunatic asylum, where they had spent a considerable time as if in purgatory, passing for maniacs, before coming to occupy these final dwellings. When it came down to it, these were not quite the authentic Dreyfuses, Edisons and Lucchenis. To a certain extent, one might say, they were simulations. Perhaps they really were madmen, caught in flagranti at the moment when that enthralling idée fixe had first taken hold of them, in the instant when their madness had for a moment been true, and, skilfully distilled, had become the foundation of their new existence — as pure as an element, all staked on that one card, and no changing it. Since then, they have only had that one thought in their heads, like an exclamation mark. And there, they have come to a halt, on one leg as if in mid-air, at a standstill, arrested in mid-motion.
As I passed from group to group, I sought him out in that crowd, my eyes filled with unease. And at last I found him, not dressed in quite the magnificent uniform of an admiral of the Levantine fleet, in which he had sailed out that year from Toulon on the flagship Le Cid, when he was to assume the Mexican throne, nor either in the cavalry general’s green dress coat that he wore so proudly in his last days. He wore a common overcoat with long, voluminous tails, and bright trousers; a high collar and plastron pushed up his beard. Rudolf and I paused with reverence and emotion in the group surrounding him in a semicircle. Suddenly, I was profoundly numbed. Three steps away from us, in the first row of onlookers, stood Bianka, in a white dress, with her governess. She was standing and looking. Her tiny face had grown pale and thin in the last few days, and her eyes, black-ringed and filled with shadow, were as sad as the grave.
She stood there unmoving, her crossed hands hidden in the folds of her dress, her eyes filled with deep mourning, gazing from under her serious brows. My heart was seized achingly at that sight. Involuntarily, my glance followed the direction of her sad, deadly look. And this is what I saw:
His face stirred, seemingly awakened, and the corners of his mouth rose up in a smile; his eyes shone, and began to roll in their orbits; his breast, shining with orders, heaved a sigh. It was not a miracle. It was the usual mechanical trick. Suitably wound up, the archduke held his cercle according to the principles of his mechanism, as masterfully and ceremoniously as he had been accustomed in life. He directed his gaze at those present in turn, holding it attentively for a moment on each one.
He met each of their gazes for a short, precise span. Then he gave a start, hesitated, and cleared his throat, as if he were about to say something. But a moment later, obedient to his mechanism, his gaze continued to wander, and with that same encouraging and radiant smile, he turned his eyes to still other faces. Had he become aware of Bianka’s presence? Had she touched his heart? Who could say? After all, he was not quite himself, in the full sense of the word. Much reduced, and in a state of deep prostration, he was barely his own remote double. But one had to accept on the basis of the facts that he was at least his own closest agnate. Perhaps he even was his real self, to the degree to which it remained possible in such a state of affairs, so many years after his death. It was surely difficult in that waxen resurrection to be quite at one with oneself. Someone must have taken the opportunity to steal something into him, against his will — something new and menacing. Something alien must have been admixed, stemming from the madness of that brilliant maniac who had conceived him in his megalomania. And it must have filled Bianka with terror and dismay. For after all, a person who is very ill will withdraw, recede from his former self, to say nothing of one so improperly resurrected. And how did he comport himself now, toward the blood of his blood? Full of artificial gaiety and bravura, smiling and magnificent, he played out his Clownish & Imperial comedy. Was it really necessary for him to mask himself so much? Was he really so afraid of the attendants who watched him from all sides, whilst he stood on display in that hospital of wax figures, where they all lived menaced by hospital strictures? Cleaned up and restored to health, and finally saved, distilled not without difficulty from someone’s madness — did he not tremble that they might cast him once more into turmoil and chaos?
When my gaze once more sought out Bianka, I saw that she was hiding her face in a handkerchief. Her governess put her arm around her, her enamelled eyes shining emptily. I could no longer look upon Bianka’s pain. I was seized by a spasm of weeping, and tugged Rudolf by the sleeve. We made our way to the exit.
Behind our backs, that rouged ancestor, that old fellow in his prime, went on sending his radiant, regal salutations in all directions. He even raised his hands in a surfeit of zeal. He was practically blowing kisses to us in that inert silence, amid the hissing of acetylene lamps and the quiet pitter-patter of rain on the canvas of the marquee. With the last of his strength, he stood on tiptoe, albeit gravely ill, and yearning, like all of them, for his own ghastly corpse.
In the anteroom, the rouged bust, the lady cashier, spoke to us, her diamonds and the gold in her teeth shining against a black backdrop of magical draperies. We went out into a night dewy and warm in the rain. The roofs glistened, streaming with water. The gutters wept monotonously. We ran through a splashing downpour, lit by burning lanterns rattling in the rain.
> -XXXII- >