He looked at her from the side and studied the traces that a turbulent existence had engraved in her face. He knew that after a short time she would belong to him too, because a power emanated from him that attracted women and made them want to kiss his closed and silent mouth. Here too he noticed how they all smiled at him with languid eyes, how even blonde Ruschena looked at him with passionate glances. And next to him, on the chair’s upholstered arm, lay Karla’s narrow hand, which the handsome cavalier had kissed that time. She knew life and the theatre. He wanted to ask her if it was possible to create an artificial life that was deceptively similar to the real one and could be mastered. If it was possible to transform the days into tragedies, operettas with resonant and profound conclusions? What was the stage anyway? There it was also nothing but a game, and people cried and cheered and crimes occurred and dread beat its wings against paper walls. To make a destiny from the whims and individual desires of the heart, for one’s self and others, just as in the theatre one made landscapes and cities from wood and cardboard — was that so difficult?

But Karla only shook her head softly.

Why? Why? — Everything comes from within —

No! No! — Severin shouted — that’s not true!

In this scream there was an accusation without equal, an overheated desire many here recognized. It pounded like an echo against the atelier’s smoky walls. The room became quiet and the conversations stopped. Everyone looked at Severin. Ruschena put aside the mandolin and clung to his impassioned face with her eyes. Karla smoothed her black velvet dress with nervous fingers and leaned toward him. The fiery beauty of earlier days slowly awakened in her raw, lacerated voice, where it sounded like the tone from a cracked glass. She spoke about the radiance her life had had when she still wore the hat with the red ostrich feather. About the young man Severin had seen on the street that time, who had loved her. She spoke of the abysses and plains of fortune. She whispered and faltered, and suddenly the charming Magdalene smile he had been waiting for all evening was on her lips again.

Then a feverish joy came over him. He took his glass, touched it to hers, and drank. Again and again he poured the cool sparkling wine down his throat, until the atelier dissolved into a chaos of forms and faces, until on the carpet in the center, Ruschena, with false curls and flying skirts, started to dance a cancan.

V


A kind of friendship developed between Severin and Nikolaus, the man who had entertained the guests with his palmistry at Doctor Konrad’s atelier. There was something murky and enigmatic in the young student’s character that drew Severin to him and made him cultivate his acquaintance. No one had anything definite to report about Nikolaus, who had come to Prague a few years before and was studying philosophical subjects at the university. On the playing fields by Belvedere one saw him at soccer games or tennis matches, and one met him in the boathouses of the rowing clubs on the Moldau. In the evenings he sat in cafés, playing chess for hours with all sorts of people and drinking countless glasses of Swedish punch through a thin straw. It was known that he was rich, owned a large and valuable library, associated with artists, and pursued interests in the occult. In his elegantly and tastefully furnished apartment there was a large collection of unusual and noteworthy objects: cross-legged bronze Buddhas, spiritual drawings in metal frames, scarabs and magic mirrors, a portrait of Blavatsky, and an authentic confessional. It was said that a man had once lost his life here under mysterious circumstances. No one had witnessed the event, and the legal investigation revealed that the revolver, a beautiful and valuable piece, had accidentally fired as Nikolaus was showing it to his guest. The charges against Nikolaus were dropped. However, for a long time a stubborn rumor connected a woman of society with the accident, and people whispered about homicide and an American duel.