He was exceedingly ashamed of his dream, dressed quietly, sat down at the window and waited for the dawn. There is no frontier between night and day. The sky becomes the slightest bit pale; there is still neither light nor sound; but the signal has been given to nature to awake! Now, while it is still night, morning has begun. The cocks crow, the animals move in their sheds. The sky turns to pearl, grows brighter and then rose-coloured; the earliest red streak appears in the east; the birds begin to chirp and the first man to go to work sets out with a swinging step.
The man of science also sat down to work. For a long time he bit his penholder, and then decided to set down the first words. For this was to be a big affair, the result of twelve years of experiment and reflection, work really paid for with his own blood. Of course this would only be a rough draft, or rather a sort of physical philosophy or poem, or a confession of faith. It would be a picture of the world composed of figures and equations. But these figures of an astronomical order measured something other than the sublimity of the firmament; he was calculating the instability and destructibility of matter.
Everything that exists is a dull, latent explosive; but whatever the index of its inertia may be, it represents only an insignificant fraction of its explosive power. Everything which takes place, the movement of the stars, tellurian work, entropy, active and insatiable life itself, all this is only on the surface, while invisibly and incalculably there is gnawing beneath it that explosive force which is called matter. Consider now that the cord which binds it is nothing more than a cobweb on the limbs of a sleeping titan. Give him strength to disturb it and he will tear the surface off the globe, and hurl Jupiter on to Saturn. And you, humanity, you are only a swallow which laboriously builds a nest under the roof of the cosmic powder magazine; you twitter in the eastern sun while in the casks beneath you there vibrates silently the terrible potential of explosion. …
Naturally Prokop did not write these things down; to him they were only a secret melody, which lent wings to the heavy phrases of the technical exposition. For him there was more fantasy in a bare formula and more blinding beauty in an index of explosiveness. And so he wrote his poem in symbols, figures, and the frightful jargon of scientific terminology.
He did not come down to breakfast. Annie came in and silently brought it to him. He thanked her, and then remembered his dream and was somehow unable to look at her. He stared obstinately into a corner. God knows how it was possible, but he nevertheless saw every golden hair on her bare arms. He had never noticed them so much before.
Annie was standing quite near him. “Are you going to write?” she asked in some uncertainty.
“I am,” he muttered and wondered what she would say if he were suddenly to put his head on her breast.
“The whole day?”
“The whole day.”
She was moving off, greatly impressed. She had firm, small and broad breasts, a fact of which she was probably unaware. But what did it matter!
“Is there anything you want?”
“No, nothing.”
It was silly. He would have liked to bite her arm or something. Women never seem to realize how much they disturb men.
Annie shrugged her shoulders, a little offended. “All right then.” And she was gone.
He got up and began to walk up and down the room. He was angry with himself and with her; and, the chief thing, he did not want to write any more. He collected his thoughts; but it simply would not go. He grew annoyed, and, in a bad frame of mind, strode from wall to wall with the regularity of a pendulum. One, two hours. Downstairs there was a rattling of plates; they were preparing lunch. He sat down at his papers again and put his head in his hands. A moment afterwards the servant came in and brought him his meal.
He pushed the food away almost untouched and cast himself irritably on the bed. It was clear that they had already had enough of him, that he also was tired of it all and that it was time to depart. Yes, the very next day. He made a few plans for his future work, without realizing why the process was so painful, and why he felt ashamed, and ended by falling into a deep sleep. He woke up late in the afternoon, with his soul clogged and his body demoralized by abominable slothfulness. He wandered about the room, yawned and, unable to think, became infinitely bored. It grew dark, and he did not even light the lamp.
The servant brought him his supper. He left it to grow cold and listened to what they were doing downstairs. He heard the chink of forks, the doctor grumbling and, directly after supper, slam the door of his room. All became quiet.
Convinced that he would meet nobody, Prokop pulled himself together and went into the garden. It was a moist and clear night. The lilac was already in blossom; Boetius stretched his starry arms across the sky; it was quiet but for the distant barking of a dog. Something white was leaning against the stone wall in the garden. Of course it was Annie.
“It’s a beautiful night,” he remarked, in order to say something, and leant against the wall next to her. Annie said nothing but only turned her face away and her shoulders trembled
