At all events, an article of so-and-so many columns has to be completed. For the unpaid rent, and the landlady’s inquiring look in the morning when I met her on the stairs, tormented me the whole day; it rose up and confronted me again and again, even in my pleasant hours, when I had otherwise not a gloomy thought.
I must put an end to it, so I left the park hurriedly to fetch my pencil from the pawnbroker’s.
As I arrived at the foot of the hill I overtook two ladies, whom I passed. As I did so, I brushed one of them accidently on the arm. I looked up; she had a full, rather pale, face. But she blushes, and becomes suddenly surprisingly lovely. I know not why she blushes; maybe at some word she hears from a passerby, maybe only at some lurking thought of her own. Or can it be because I touched her arm? Her high, full bosom heaves violently several times, and she closes her hand tightly about the handle of her parasol. What has come to her?
I stopped, and let her pass ahead again. I could, for the moment, go no farther; the whole thing struck me as being so singular. I was in a tantalising mood, annoyed with myself on account of the pencil incident, and in a high degree disturbed by all the food I had taken on a totally empty stomach. Suddenly my thoughts, as if whimsically inspired, take a singular direction. I feel myself seized with an odd desire to make this lady afraid; to follow her, and annoy her in some way. I overtake her again, pass her by, turn quickly round, and meet her face-to-face in order to be able to observe her well. I stand and gaze into her eyes, and hit, on the spur of the moment, on a name which I have never heard before a name with a gliding, nervous sound, Ylajali! When she is quite close to me I draw myself up and say impressively:
“You are losing your book, madam!” I could hear my heart beat audibly as I said it.
“My book?” she asks her companion, and she walks on.
My devilment waxed apace, and I followed them. At the same time, I was fully conscious that I was playing a mad prank without being able to stop myself. My disordered condition ran away with me; I was inspired with the craziest notions, which I followed blindly as they came to me. I couldn’t help it, no matter how much I told myself that I was playing the fool. I made the most idiotic grimaces behind the lady’s back, and coughed frantically as I passed her by. Walking on in this manner—very slowly, and always a few steps in advance—I felt her eyes on my back, and involuntarily put down my head with shame for having caused her annoyance. By degrees, a wonderful feeling stole over me of being far, far away in other places; I had a half-undefined sense that it was not I who was going along over the gravel hanging my head.
A few minutes later, they reached Pascha’s bookshop. I had already stopped at the first window, and as they go by I step forward and repeat:
“You are losing your book, madam!”
“No; what book?” she asks, affrightedly. “Can you make out what book it is he is talking about?” and she comes to a stop.
I hug myself with delight at her confusion; the irresolute perplexity in her eyes positively fascinates me. Her mind cannot grasp my short, passionate address. She has no book with her; not a single page of a book, and yet she fumbles in her pockets, looks down repeatedly at her hands, turns her head and scrutinises the streets behind her, exerts her sensitive little brain to the utmost in trying to discover what book it is I am talking about. Her face changes colour, has now one, now another expression, and she is breathing quite audibly—even the very buttons on her gown seem to stare at me, like a row of frightened eyes.
“Don’t bother about him!” says her companion, taking her by the arm. “He is drunk; can’t you see that the man is drunk?”
Strange as I was at this instant to myself, so absolutely a prey to peculiar invisible inner influences, nothing occurred around me without my observing it. A large, brown dog sprang right across the street towards the shrubbery, and then down towards the Tivoli; he had on a very narrow collar of German silver. Farther up the street a window opened on the second floor, and a servant-maid leant out of it, with her sleeves turned up, and began to clean the panes on the outside. Nothing escaped my notice; I was clearheaded and ready-witted. Everything rushed in upon me with a gleaming distinctness, as if I were suddenly surrounded by a strong light. The ladies before me had each a blue bird’s wing in their hats, and a plaid silk ribbon round their necks. It struck me that they were sisters.
They turned, stopped at Cisler’s music-shop, and spoke together. I stopped also. Thereupon they both came back, went the same road as they had come, passed me again, and
