CHAPTER 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 folowing 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 re-read 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 protracted contest in the laboratory with this heavy, dull, apathetic substance; blind and foolish attempts when everything failed him, a corrosive feeling when in his anger he triturated it in his fingers, a sticky taste on the tongue and a caustic smoke, exhaustion, so that he had dropped off to sleep in his chair, cold; and suddenly—perhaps in his sleep, or at least it seemed like it—a final inspiration, a paradoxical and miraculously simple experiment, a physicist’s trick which he had never employed before. He saw thin white crystals which he finally collected in a porcelain box, convinced that he would be able to explode them finely the next day when he had buried the box in a hole in the sand out in the open fields where he had his thoroughly illegal experimental station. He saw the arm-chair in his laboratory, out of which there stuck wire and pieces of stuffing. He curled up in it like an exhausted dog and evidently dropped off to sleep, for it was completely dark when, to the accompaniment of a frightful explosion and the jingle of falling glass, he was thrown out of the chair on to the ground. Then came that sharp pain in his right hand, for something had cut it open; and then—then
Prokop furrowed his brow painfully in the act of violently recollecting all this. There the scar was across his hand. And afterwards he had tried to turn on the light, but the electric bulb had been broken. Then he had felt about in the darkness to see what had happened; the table was covered with débris and there, where he had been working, the sheet of zinc covering the desk was torn to pieces, twisted and fused, and the oak table split as if had been struck by lightning. And then he came across the porcelain box and found it—intact, and this gave him a fright. Yes, that was Krakatit. And then
Prokop was unable to remain seated; he strode over the scattered lilies and ran about the garden, nervously gnawing at his fingers. Then he had run somewhere or other, into the open country, over ploughed fields, several times fell over,—God! wherever did he go? At this point the sequence of his recollections was definitely broken; the only thing which he could remember with certainty was the terrible pain in his forehead and some affair or other with the police, after which he spoke with George Thomas, and walked to his place—no, took a cab. Then he was ill and George looked after him. George was all right. My God, what a long time ago that was! George Thomas said that he was going here, to his father, but he did not do so; now that’s odd; after that he slept or something
Then the bell rang, briefly and gently; he went and opened the door and outside was standing a girl with a veil over her face.
Prokop groaned and covered his face with his hands. He forgot completely that he was sitting on the very seat where the night before he had been caressing and consoling somebody else. “Does Mr. Thomas live here?” she asked, out of breath; probably she had been running, her fur was covered with rain drops and suddenly, suddenly she raised her eyes
Prokop nearly cried out with pain. He saw her as she had been that evening; hands, little hands in tight gloves, drops of moisture from her breath on her thick veil, a clear glance, full of suffering; beautiful, sad and brave, “you will save him, won’t you?” She looked at him with serious, troubled eyes, and all the time was gripping in her hand some sort of a package, a sealed package, pressing it to her bosom agitatedly and trying to keep control of herself.
It was as if Prokop had received a blow in the face. Where did I put that package? Whoever that girl may be, I promised her that I would take it to Thomas. While I was ill . . . I forgot everything; because I . . . or rather . . . he did not like to think about it. But now—now I must find it, that’s clear.
He rushed up to his room and pulled out all the drawers. No, no, no, it’s not here. For the twentieth time he rummaged through all his possessions, piece by piece; then he sat down in the midst of the frightful disorder that he had created, as above the ruins of Jerusalem, and corrugated his brow. Perhaps it had been taken by the doctor or by the guffawing Nanda; how else could it have disappeared? When he had discovered, however, that this was not the case he experienced a sort of compulsion or confusion in his head, and, as if in a dream, made his way to the stove, groped in the recess behind it and pulled out . . . the missing parcel. And as he did so he had a vague impression that some time or other he must have put it there himself, some time when he was not yet . . . completely well; he also remembered that in that condition of swooning and delirium he had insisted on having it in the bed with him the whole time and fell into a rage when they tried to take it away from him, and that at the same time he had been in a painful state of anxiety about it. Evidently, with the astuteness of the madman, he had hidden it from himself, so as to be left in peace. But it was impossible to penetrate these secrets of his unconsciousness; anyway, here it was, this carefully packed parcel with five seals, on which were written the words, “for Mr. George Thomas.” He tried to deduce something more from this inscription but instead saw before him the veiled girl, holding the parcel in her trembling fingers; now, now she was again raising her eyes . . . he passionately smelt the package. There clung to it an evanescent and remote fragrance.
He put it down on the table and began to walk up and down the room. He would have given a lot to know what it contained under its five seals; certainly some weighty secret, some fateful and urgent relationship. She certainly said . . . that she was doing it for somebody else; but she was so agitated—But that she could love Thomas was incredible. Thomas was a good-for-nothing, he assured himself with blind fury; he was always getting what he wanted from women, a cynic. All right, he would find him and give him this love letter, and that would be the end of it.
Suddenly a thought flashed through his head. There must be some connection between Thomas and that—what’s his name—that cursed Carson! Because nobody else had ever heard anything about Krakatit, only George Thomas and this other. A new picture introduced itself uninvited into the blurred film of his memory: he, Prokop, was muttering something in his fever (it must have been in Thomas’s room), and George bent over him and wrote something down in a notebook. “Without the slightest doubt that must have been my formula!” he cried. “He wheedled it out of me, stole it, and probably sold it to that Carson!” Prokop grew cold at the thought of such baseness. Christ! and that girl had fallen into the hands of a man like him! If anything in the world was clear it was that she must be protected at any cost!
Good! To begin with he must find Thomas, that criminal. He would give him the sealed package and in addition he would smash his face for him. Also, he would get him in his power. Thomas would have to tell him the name and address of that girl and promise—no; no promises from such a waster. But he would go to her and tell her everything. And then he would disappear from her eyes forever.
Satisfied with this cavalier decision, Prokep got up. Ah, to find out—that was the only thing—where the girl lived! He saw her again, standing elegant and strong; nothing in her glance betrayed any contact with Thomas. Was she capable of lying with such eyes . . .?
Then, drawing in his breath with pain, he broke the seals, and tore off the paper and string. Inside was a letter and some bank-notes.