Prokop sighed with relief. He was not used to writing love letters. This one seemed to him to be written sincerely and directly. Mr. Paul ran round with it; the noise of the piano in the other wing was suddenly cut short and all was quiet.
Meanwhile Prokop had run off to Carson. He met him near the workshops and went straight to the point: Could he be allowed to go about without Holz? He was prepared to take an oath that until further notice he would not attempt to escape. Mr. Carson grinned significantly. But certainly, why not? He could be as free as a bird, aha! go where he liked and when he liked, if he would oblige him in one detail: give up Krakatit. Prokop grew furious: “I’ve given you Vicit: what more do you want? Man, I’ve told you that you won’t get Krakatit even if you cut my head off!”
Mr. Carson shrugged his shoulders and expressed his regret that in that case there was nothing to be done, since anyone who carried Krakatit under his hat was a public danger, a classical case of preventative supervision. “Get rid of Krakatit, and there you are,” he said. “It’ll be worth your while. Otherwise … otherwise we shall have to consider sending you somewhere else.”
Prokop, who was just about to fall upon him, suddenly stopped, mumbled that he understood, and ran home. Perhaps there’s an answer, he said to himself; but there was none.
In the afternoon Prokop began his wait in the Japanese summerhouse. Until four o’clock he was filled with anxious, disturbing hope: now—now she may come every moment. After four o’clock he could not bear to sit down any longer; he paced about the summerhouse like a jaguar in a cage, picturing himself embracing her knees, trembling with ecstasy and fear. Mr. Holz discreetly retired into the shrubbery. By five o’clock Prokop was overpowered by a horrible feeling of disillusionment. Then he suddenly thought: perhaps she will come at dusk, of course she will! He smiled to himself. Behind the castle the sun set in its autumnal gold. The branches of the trees stood out sharply and rigidly, one could hear the beetles rustling in the fallen leaves, and, before one realized it, the bright light of day had turned into a golden twilight. The first evening star appeared on the green horizon, the earth grew dark beneath the pale heavens, the bat began its erratic flight and from somewhere the other side of the park could be heard the muffled sound of bells as the cows returned to the farm, filled with warm milk. In the castle one window lighted up after the other. Was it already evening? Stars of heaven, how often had not the small boy gazed at you in wonder from the edge of the wild thyme, how often had not the man turned to you, waiting, suffering, sometimes sobbing under his cross.
Mr. Holz appeared out of the darkness. “Are you going?”
“No.”
To drink the cup of your humiliation until the morning; for it was clear that she would not come. Now it is necessary to drink this cup of bitterness, at the bottom of which is truth, to intoxicate yourself with pain, to pile up suffering and shame until you writhe like a worm and are stupefied by agony. You tremble in anticipation of happiness; now give yourself up to pain, which is the narcotic of the person who is suffering. It is night, already night, and she does not come.
Prokop’s heart was lit up by a sudden ray of joy: she knows that I am waiting (she must know). She will steal out in the night when everyone is asleep and fly to me with her arms opened and her mouth full of the sweetness of kisses. We shall embrace in silence, drinking inexpressible realizations from one another’s lips. She will come, pale even in the darkness, trembling with the cold fear which can accompany joy, and give me her bitter lips. She will step out of the black night. …
In the castle the lights began to go out. …
In front of the summerhouse could be discerned the figure of Mr. Holz, his hands in his pockets. His exhausted attitude indicated that “there’s been enough of this.” Meanwhile in the summerhouse Prokop, with a savage, contemptuous smile on his face, was stamping out the last sparks of hope, hanging on for a desperate minute, for the last minute of waiting would signify the end of everything. Midnight sounded from the distant town. It was the end.
Prokop rushed home through the dark park, hurrying for no reason at all. He ran bent with dejection. Five paces behind him there trotted, yawning, Mr. Holz.
XXXII
The end of everything. It was almost a relief, at least something certain and restful, and Prokop entered into the fact with his usual thoroughness. Good, it’s over. There’s nothing to fear now. She remained away on purpose. That’s enough, that slap in the face is enough; that’s the end. He sat in an armchair, incapable of getting up, continuing to intoxicate himself with his humiliation. A servant who had been given the sack. She was shameless, proud, heartless. She had given him up for one of her admirers. Well, it was over; all the better.
Every time he heard a step in the passage Prokop raised his head in excited anticipation, the existence of which he would not admit to himself. Perhaps it was a letter. No, nothing. She didn’t think him worth even an apology. It was the end.
Mr. Paul shuffled up a dozen times with the old question in his pale eyes: Did the gentleman want anything? No, Paul, nothing. “Wait, have you a letter for me?”
