And now he held his breath, overcome with painful tenderness.
Annie raised her head. “Good night,” she said softly, and quite simply offered him her mouth. Prokop bent down and implanted on it the most delicate kiss of which he was capable. He did not dare to accompany her farther but stood quite still for a moment and then took himself off to the other end of the garden, untouched by any ray of light from her window. There he remained motionless as if he were praying. But he was not praying; it was only the most wonderful night of his life.
XIII
When it grew light he found it impossible to stay in the house … he thought he would go out and pick some flowers; then he would lay them outside Annie’s door, and when she came out. … On wings of delight Prokop crept downstairs while it was still hardly after four o’clock. Outside it was beautiful; every flower sparkled like an eye (she has large, calm eyes like a cow) (she has also long lashes) (now she is sleeping, her eyelids are as delicate in color as pigeons’ eggs) (God! if I could know her dreams) (if her hands are crossed on her breast they will rise and fall with her breathing; but if they are under her head then certainly her sleeve has fallen back and one can see her rosy elbow) (she said the other day that up to now she has been sleeping in the green bed she had when a child) (she said that she would be nineteen in October) (she has a birthmark on her neck) (how is it possible that she loves me?—it is so wonderful); in fact there is nothing more beautiful than a summer morning, but Prokop looked down at the ground, smiled as far as he was able to do so, and made his way to the river, still full of his reflections. There appeared—but near the other bank—the buds of some water-lilies. Scornful of all dangers he undressed, threw himself into the muddy torrent, cut his feet on some insidious stump and returned with an armful of the plants.
The water-lily is a poetical flower, but it exudes an unpleasant liquid from its juicy stalks. Still Prokop ran home with his poetic booty and wondered how he could make an attractive bouquet out of the flowers. He saw that the doctor had left a copy of yesterday’s Politika on the seat in front of the house. Fiercely he tore it into pieces, casually noticing something about a mobilization in the Balkans, a crisis in some Ministry or other, the notice, framed in black, of somebody’s death, bemoaned of course by the whole nation, and wrapped up the wet stems in these items of news. Just as he was preparing, however, to gaze with pride at his work, he got a sudden shock. At the back of the paper he discovered one word. It was Krakatit.
For a moment he stared, stupefied, unable to believe his own eyes. Then with feverish haste he unrolled the paper, scattering all the glory of the lilies on to the ground, and finally found the following announcement: “Krakatit! Will Eng. P. send his address? Carson, Poste Restante.” Nothing more. Prokop’s eyes bulged, and he read again. “Will Eng. P. send his address … Carson.” What in heaven’s name! … Who is this Carson? And how on earth can he possibly know? … For the fiftieth time Prokop reread the mysterious announcement. … “Krakatit! Will Eng. P. send his address?” and then “Carson, Poste Restante.”
Prokop sat down as if he had been struck with a club. Why—why did I ever take that cursed paper into my hands? flashed desperately through his head. How did it run? “Krakatit! Will Eng. P. send his address?” Eng. P., that means Prokop; and Krakatit, that is the cursed place, that foggy place somewhere in his head, that morbid swelling in his brain which he did not like to think about, which led him to go about running his head into walls, that which had ceased to have a name—what was it there? “Krakatit!” Prokop’s eyes again grew wide through the interior blow which he had received. Suddenly he saw … a certain lead salt, and in a flash there unrolled before him the film that had become blurred in his memory; a desperate, unduly
