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-
XXXIX
IMPORTANT MATTERS, supremely important affairs of state, often now oblige me to undertake confidential conferences with Bianka. I prepare for them scrupulously, sitting late into the night at my desk, over those dynastic affairs of the most sensitive nature. Time passes; the ever later and more ceremonial night pauses quietly in the open window beyond the table lamp; it is cut into ever later and darker layers; it reaches beyond deeper and deeper degrees of initiation, and is discharged, forceless in the window, in unutterable sighs. In its depths the dark room imbibes sections of the park in long, leisurely gulps, exchanges in cool transfusions its contents with the great night, which sets in, swelling with darkness, with the sowing of feathery seeds, dark flecks and the plush, noiselesss moths flying around the walls in quiet panics. The wallpaper thickets bristle, terrified in the darkness — silvery, sieving those erratic and lethargic shudders through their sprinkling leafage, those cool ecstasies and ascents, transcendental fears and the unreasons with which a May night long after midnight is replete, beyond its margins. Its transparent and glass fauna, a light plankton of mosquitoes, crowds me as I lean over the papers, overgrowing space, higher and still higher, with that foaming, elaborate white embroidery that, long after midnight, stitches the night. Grasshoppers and mosquitoes settle on my papers, created more or less from a limpid tissue of nocturnal speculations — glass farfarels, thin monograms, ingenious arabesques concocted by the night, ever greater and more fantastic, as great as a bat, a vampire, created from the very calligraphy and from the air. The curtain swarms throughout with that wandering tracery, the quiet invasion of that imaginary white fauna.
On such a marginal night, knowing no bounds, space loses its meaning. In the midst of that dance of a bright, whirling of mosquitoes, with my bundle of papers finally in order, I take a few steps in an indeterminate direction, into the blind alley of the night, which must end at a door — Bianka’s white door. I push the handle and enter, as if from one room to the next. Even so, my black Carbonaro hat is flapping, as if from the wind of a remote migration; my fantastically knotted cravat rustles in the draught as I cross the threshold; I clasp a binder to my chest, full of the most secret documents. As if from night’s anteroom — I have stepped into true night! This nocturnal ozone is so easy to breathe! Here is the lair; here is the core of the night, swelling with jasmine. Only here does its real story begin. A great lamp with a pink lampshade burns at the head of the bed. In its pink half-light, Bianka lies amid enormous pillows, carried along by the swelling bedclothes like a nocturnal tide, under the wide open and transpiring window. Bianka is reading, leaning on her pale forearm. She answers my low bow with a fleeting look from over her book. Seen at close quarters, her beauty, as if holding itself in check, sinks into itself like a lamp turned low. I observe with sacrilegious joy that her nose is not quite so nobly shaped, that her complexion is far from ideal fineness. I observe this with a certain relief, although I know that this restraint of her radiance arises, as it were, merely out of pity, merely in order not to take my breath away and deprive me of speech. Then, through the medium of distance, that beauty is quickly regenerated, and becomes painful, unbearable and beyond all measure.
Encouraged by her nod, I sit by the bed and begin my account, making reference to my documents. Through the open window, beyond Bianka’s head, the frantic rustle of the park flows. An entire forest, crammed beyond the window, flows in pageants of trees; it penetrates the walls and spreads, ubiquitous and all-embracing. Bianka listens somewhat absent-mindedly. It is truly annoying that she does not even strop reading. She leaves me to consider each matter from every angle, to outline all the pros and cons, and then, raising her eyes from her book and fluttering her eyelashes a little frantically, she quickly reaches a cursory decision, casually and with astounding accuracy. Attentive to her every word, I eagerly seize upon the tone of her voice in order to gain some insight into her concealed intention. Then I humbly hand over the decrees for her to sign, and Bianka adds her signature to them with her eyelashes lowered, which cast a long shadow, and she observes me from beneath them with faint irony as I counter-sign.
It may be that the late hour, long past midnight, is not conducive to concentration on affairs of state. The night, having gone beyond its final limit, is somewhat inclined to profligacy. While we are talking in this way, the illusion of a room is more and more disrupted; we are, in fact, in a forest — tufts of fern enfold every corner, and just here, behind the bed, the brushwood wall stirs, mobile and full of entanglement. Out of that leafy wall, great-eyed squirrels emerge in the lamplight, woodpeckers and nocturnal creatures with glistening, bulging eyes — unmoving, they gaze into the light with shining, bulging eyes. Since a certain point we have been encroaching on an illegal time, a night out of control and subject to all kinds of prank and nocturnal caprice. Whatever happens now is already beyond reckoning and does not count, full of triviality, irresponsible transgressions and nocturnal frolicking. I can only ascribe to this the strange alterations which take place in Bianka’s temperament. She — always so controlled and serious, the very personification of beautiful discipline — is full of caprices, contrariness and irresponsibility now. The papers are spread over the great flat plain of her coverlet; Bianka picks them up nonchalantly, casts a casual eye over them, and indifferently lets them fall from her limp fingertips. Pouting, her pale arm thrown behind her head, she postpones her decision, makes me wait. Or else she turns her back to me and blocks her ears with her hands, deaf to my entreaties and persuasions. Suddenly, without a word, with a single shake of her leg under the coverlet, she knocks all the papers to the ground and looks on with enigmatically widened eyes, peeping over her forearm, from the heights of her pillows, while I diligently pick them up, bent double, blowing pine needles from them. These caprices, as full of charm as they are, make no easier for me the already so difficult and responsible role of regent.
During our conversations, the sound of a forest swelling with cool jasmine wanders through the room, in entire miles of landscapes. Ever newer stretches of forest unfold and meander, pageants of trees and shrubs; whole woodland sceneries flow, expanding, through the room. Then it becomes clear that from the outset, in fact, we have been in a kind of train — a forest night-train slowly trundling along the edge of a ravine in a wooded region of the town. Hence that deep and intoxicating draught which flows throughout these compartments, in an ever newer thread, drawing out in an endless perspective of presentiments. A conductor even turns up from somewhere, carrying a lantern; he emerges from between the trees and punches our tickets with his pincers. Thus we travel into the ever deeper night; we throw wide open its new enfilades full of draughts and slamming doors. Bianka’s eyes deepen; her cheeks burn; an enchanting smile parts her lips. Does she want to confide something to me? Some most secret thing? Bianka speaks of treason, and her face burns with ecstasy; her eyes are narrowed by a surge of delight as she insinuates, writhing like a lizard under the coverlet, my betrayal of the holiest of missions. She insistently surveys my pallid face with sweet eyes, which slowly narrow. ‘Do it,’ she whispers urgently. ‘Do it. You will become one of them, those black Negroes...’ And when I, with an imploring gesture, full of despair, put a finger to my lips, her face suddenly becomes evil and venemous. ‘You are funny, with your steadfast faithfulness and this whole mission of yours. God only knows why you consider yourself indispensable. And what if I were to choose Rudolf! I prefer him to you a thousand times over, you tedious pedant. Ah, he would be obedient, obedient to the point of crime, to the point of obliterating his existence, to the point of self-annihilation...’ Then suddenly, with an air of triumph, she asks: ‘Do you remember Lonka, the daughter of Antosa the washerwoman, whom you used to play with when you were small?’ I looked at her in astonishment. ‘It was I,’ she said, giggling, ‘only I was still a boy at the time. Did you like me then?’
Oh, there is something is rotten and dislocated at the very core of spring. Bianka, Bianka, must even you disappoint me?
> -XL- >