He made a tremendous effort to remember, or at least to calculate, when it was; but all his speculations were nullified by the fact that he had no idea how long he had lain ill. Good; they certainly must know at Tynice what week it was in which he descended upon them. Dazzled by this new hope, he sent a telegram to old Dr. Thomas: “Please telegraph date when I arrived at your house. Prokop.” He had scarcely sent off the wire when he was overcome with a feeling of remorse at having behaved so badly. To the telegram he obtained no answer. Just as he was about to abandon this trail it occurred to him that the caretaker’s wife at Thomas’s flat might remember the date. He flew off there; but the caretaker’s wife insisted that it was a Saturday. Prokop became desperate; then he received a letter written in the large and careful characters of a schoolgirl, to the effect that he had arrived at Tynice on such and such a day but that “father mustn’t know that I have written to you.” Nothing more. It was signed by Annie. For some reason Prokop’s heart was torn by this couple of lines.
Now, having at last found the date he wanted, he rushed off to the nearest bank; could they tell him who on such and such a day had drawn, say, thirty thousand crowns? They shook their heads, saying that it was not the custom to furnish such information; but when they saw that he was completely disconcerted they consulted somebody behind and then asked him on whose account the money had been taken out; for certainly it had been drawn on a cheque, a deposit account or something of that sort. Naturally Prokop did not know. Further, they told him, it was possible that the person in question had only sold certain bills, in which case there would be no record of his name in their books. And when, finally, Prokop informed them that he had simply no idea whether the money was paid out by this particular bank or not they burst out laughing and inquired whether he was going round the two hundred and fifty-odd financial institutions, agencies and exchanges in Prague with the same question. So Prokop’s marvellous inspiration proved a complete failure.
There only remained the fourth possibility, the chance that he would meet her. Prokop tried to introduce method even into this possibility; he divided the map of Prague into sections and examined each one twice daily. One day he calculated the number of people he would meet in this way in one day and arrived at a total of nearly forty thousand; bearing in mind the total population of the city it worked out that the chances were one in twenty that he would meet her. Even this small probability gave him hope. There were certain streets and places in which she was more likely to reside, or along which she was likely to be walking; streets with acacias in bloom, venerable old squares, intimate corners of deep and serious life. It was surely impossible that she should be found in the sort of noisy and dreary street along which one only hurried. Nor amid the symmetrical desolation of characterless flats. Why, was it not possible that she lived behind those large, dark windows beyond which was to be found a shaded and refined quiet? Wandering as if in a dream, Prokop realized for the first time in his life what there was to be discovered in this town in which he had spent so many years of his existence; God! how many beautiful spots, where life unrolls itself, peaceful and mature, and entices one when one is distraught!
Numberless times Prokop dashed off in pursuit of young women who gave him the impression from a distance, for some reason, of being she whom he had only seen twice. He ran after them with a wildly beating heart; what if it should prove to be she! Heaven knows what instincts of divination led him to go after them. They were certainly mysterious, sad and beautiful, absorbed in themselves and wrapped in some sort of inaccessibility. Once he was almost certain that it was she; he was so excited that he had to stop for a moment to take breath; and at that moment the woman got into a tram and disappeared. For three days afterwards he waited near the stopping place, but never saw her again.
Worst of all were the evenings when, completely exhausted, he sat rubbing his hands on his knees and trying to evolve a new plan of campaign. God! he would never abandon the search for her; it may be that it was an obsession; that he was a lunatic, an idiot, a maniac; but he would never give up. The more she evaded him—the greater efforts would he make; it was … simply fate … or something.
Once he awoke in the middle of the night and it suddenly became inevitably clear to him that he would never find her in this way; that he would have to set out in search of George Thomas, who knew about her and could tell him what he wanted. Although it was the middle of the night he clothed himself, unable to wait until morning. He was unprepared for the incredible difficulties that awaited him in obtaining a passport; he could not understand what they wanted of him
