A soft and feeble desire for a radiant and intense life like the one described in the chapters of the book leapt within his soul. A colossal and violent existence rose before him in fiery light. Beyond the edge of Karlsplatz he felt the city.

Severin stepped out of the dim light of the park and into the next street. Again he listened carefully to the sounds and tried to make out people’s voices. He began to feel an awareness that people are what give life meaning, that they were connected to everything that he fancied to be splendor and meaning and awe. Nights of comets and tremors and the mysteries of the heart. With exquisite fright he thought of the evening when he and a friend had gone to see a performance by a suburban Czech theatre. He had never been very particular about such entertainments. The cloying sentimentality that the audience of lowbrows and philistines had cooed over was the right stimulus for his senses as well. In the gestures of the pathetic comedians and the laughter and tears of the badly made-up women he detected more of the hot and neglected desires of his soul than he did anywhere else. A girl who had moved the crowd with her disappointed love had attracted his attention. In the way she turned her slender body, in the lines of her shoulders and throat, there was much that reminded him of Zdenka. He had gone home in a state of peculiar and unacknowledged confusion. It was the feeling that always plagued him during the pauses in the music in cafés, when he listened into the self-conscious silence, or when, reluctant and tense, he loitered on streetcorners in the evening. The feeling that something was close to him, something so strong and corporeal that it made the air begin to tremble softly, and yet was impossible to grasp.

Ferdinandstrasse shone before him, and the glare from the shopwindows blinded him. It was already late and he began to hurry. He saw Zdenka standing by the National Theatre, and her sweet face greeted him from the crowd, smiling.

II


That was also the autumn when Severin made the acquaintance of Lazarus Kain. He had his shop in the upper part of Stephansgasse, not far from the large botanical garden. The rust-flecked covers of yellowed brochures and the worn cloth bindings behind the glass panes of the display case told passersby that there was a bookstore here. Over the door, on a sign christened by snow and rain, the word “Antiquariat” stood in faded letters under the name of the owner.

The store was low and narrow and was lit by a gas-flame even by day. But it could be very comfortable here during the winter, when the iron oven in the corner glowed almost red from heat, and behind the reading desk Lazarus leafed through bulging catalogues or taught tricks to his raven Anton. During the holiday months and early autumn he did nothing with the business. He would leave his daughter behind in the shop and make excursions into the surrounding area. He walked up and down the street with small steps and looked at the upper stories of the houses. The gaslight in the shop had weakened his eyes, and he was a little shortsighted. He looked at the servant girls and watched how they leaned their robust breasts against the windowsills and shook the dust from the tablecloths down into the street. The blood rose in his yellow face and he blinked. Sometimes he also stopped by the column of St. Adelbert and followed the nurses from the nearby maternity ward with his glances. Right next door stood the shabby rooms of The Poison Shanty.