Severin lay awake in the dark. Fever drove the sweat from his body and inflamed his blood. The window rattled, and occasionally the dull sound of the front door moaning on its hinges rose from below. For an instant the yellow lightning of the winter storm illuminated the room, and in its light Severin thought he saw the picture that hung over Susanna’s head in the book dealer’s shop. Now he knew where he had seen the tree before. It had been at Konrad’s burial: by the cemetery wall, on the square that was reserved for new graves. Severin had been looking at it while the people lowered the coffin into the earth. In the day’s cold light it had seemed bizarre and grotesque.

He felt a chill and pulled the covers up to his neck. He was oppressed by a great shame, and could give no account of himself in response. He thought of the stupid and cruel visit of the previous day and of how he had killed the raven. Outside the storm shattered the clattering glass of the lanterns and gurgled as it entered the chimney.

He was faint and weary when he went to the office the next morning. The water stood on the street in broad puddles and the wind was still quite powerful. The hat flew from his head and landed in the muck. Severin bent down and put it back on. Cold filth ran from the brim and onto his forehead, but he took no notice of it. In the morning hours, while he did calculations and wrote, a sporadic rain pattered against the windows. Severin rose and looked at the wet stones in the courtyard below. A dull nausea rose in his throat like a smooth ball. He went home earlier than usual and threw himself onto his couch. But sleep eluded him. When he closed his eyes he had the sensation that he was falling constantly and irrevocably into the depths. A blunt thought burned continually behind his temples and made him bury his face in the pillows with horror.


The wind had died down and the air had become almost sultry. Evening was breaking in the city, where it drew blue-black borders around the clouds above the houses. Severin walked among the people with his head low. A colossal fear hung from his heart like a weight, making him stagger. A heavy object in his pocket pressed against his body, and he wrapped his fingers around it. It was a large rock he had once found in the fields and taken home.

In Lazarus Kain’s shop the gas-flame was burning above the reading desk. Severin saw the book dealer’s bald, pointed head through the glass door. In the middle, a groove ran to his brow, as though the skin were stretched over cloven bone. Severin was overwhelmed by it.