An open window behind which, in the shadowed room, indeterminate worrying movements are faintly discernible; a hand suddenly comes out, grabs the window shut and snaps down the blind.
In a small public garden, watched by a few idlers, men with besoms and long-handled rakes are making a bonfire of leaves; and this is only remarkable because it’s summertime and the leaves haven’t started to fall yet.
A neatly dressed man with a bag in his hand is hurrying along the street to the station. His arrival is timed very well as the smoke of the train can be seen in the distance just as he gets to the booking office. But then, instead of buying a ticket, he suddenly walks out of the station again, takes a piece of chalk out of his pocket, marks something on the door of one of the neighbouring houses, and hurries off in quite another direction.
B isn’t looking out for incidents of this sort: in fact, she’s hardly aware of having observed them at all, being consciously preoccupied with the general pattern of which they are only insignificant details. Nevertheless, she is influenced by them without knowing it, they are responsible for the vaguely disturbing background of uncertainty in her mind.
Presently there’s a new sound, a noise of cheers and clapping, approaching the castle. A famous ballerina is driving through the town in her open carriage, the people in the streets recognize her and acclaim her as she goes by. B leans over the parapet to look. She has an excellent view, the carriage is driving right up to the castle entrance. It’s a fine carriage, polished like jet. The horses are beautiful, glossy, spirited creatures. They slow down as the coachman tightens the reins. Yes, they are actually stopping just below the place where B stands. A flock of pigeons which has been circling around the turret simultaneously alights in the street. As if for some prearranged purpose, the birds assemble all round the carriage and the prancing horses.
The fair-haired ballerina looks up and waves her hand. Come down here, she is calling to B. Come for a drive in my carriage and I’ll show you the town. Her voice carries like the sound of a bell.
B does not move. There’s a violent conflict inside her. She longs to go down to the famous dancer, she’s longing to see the sights of the town at close quarters instead of looking on distantly from her tower. And yet something is holding her back, warning her not to venture out of the castle.
Come down, come down, the ballerina calls again and again.
All right, I’ll come, B answers finally, overcoming her hesitation. Wait for me. I’m coming immediately. Please don’t go on without me. I’ll be down in a moment.
The pigeons fly up to her as she hurries away, they flutter about her, filling the air with their wings so that she can hardly see where she is going. A sound something like a groan comes from the gargoyle, which laboriously raises its claw in a gesture of restraint or appeal. B is far out of reach already: she does not see the movement or the stone tear which slowly and painfully extrudes from the gargoyle’s eye and rolls down the length of its pig’s snout.
Soon she’s climbing into the carriage. And how glorious it is to be careering along behind those spirited horses at the side of the ballerina. It’s all wonderful, like a new world; the speed, the excitement, the applause, the hat-raising, the salutes of the passers-by, the privilege of being the envied companion of the subject of such universal admiration. The town, too, takes on a new aspect from this angle. The streets, which B is accustomed to viewing in foreshortened perspective, seem much finer than she had supposed them to be. Even the crooked lanes leading to the poorer quarters promise adventure and mysterious revelations.
The ballerina points out new wonders at every corner. Look, look, she cries, and when she raises her arm the sleeve falls back like a calyx and new marvels reveal themselves. A girl has come to the fountain to fill her bucket with water; but as the carriage rolls by diamonds, emeralds, sapphires spout from the dolphin’s mouth, in a second her pail is full up with precious gems, a whole fortune flashes into the bucket in one beam of light. The ballerina laughs. The sound of her laughter is like bells ringing out from the hilltop. B seems to have heard that sound of bells in another place.
Look, look, says the dancer again. In every window-box of the house they are passing the flowers come out with a rush and fling their bright petals down, showering the carriage and its occupants with scented confetti.
Things like that keep happening continually. But now the horses are racing so fast that B doesn’t have time to catch more than confused glimpses of what’s going on. The speed at which the carriage is travelling makes her quite giddy and she has to cling to the edge of the seat to keep from overbalancing as they swing round the comers. Far, far overhead in the burning blue sky the pigeons are flying, keeping pace with the horses whose wild hooves clatter frantically on the paved street.
Too fast, B calls out, I’m missing everything. Can’t we go a bit slower?
She’s really a little nervous. Supposing one of the horses should slip and fall, or the carriage upset or run over somebody? It seems only too likely to happen.
The dancer just laughs. Probably she didn’t hear what B said in the rush and noise of their progress. She at any rate doesn’t seem in the least anxious. Her yellow hair blows out in the wind as if a fire lighted her laughing face brilliant with power and joy.
Suddenly the astonishing drive is over. Rearing and slithering, the horses are pulled to a standstill. The carriage rocks dangerously; and before it has become steady, the ballerina darts out like a bird, her feet in their green slippers fly up the steps of a magnificent building outside which an equestrian statue threateningly brandishes his great sword.
Where are you going? Wait for me, B shouts, getting out of the carriage as fast as she can. The dancer doesn’t answer or look round. Perhaps she doesn’t realize that B has been left behind. Perhaps she has suddenly forgotten about her.
In desperate haste B starts climbing the steps in pursuit. It’s no good, though. These steps up which the green shoes flew like birds B’s feet can only scale slowly and with infinite labour and pain. Each single step towers in front of her like a wall and she can only drag herself to the top of it by putting out all her strength. Her feet too feel hopelessly heavy and out of control, seeming, as they do sometimes in fevers, to belong to somebody else or to be weighted with heavy stones. Once or twice more she calls out to the ballerina. But already she’s lost hope, she knows there won’t be any response; the dancer has vanished behind the huge mounted knight who looms in between them.
Besides, B is really too exhausted for shouting. It’s as much as she can do to draw breath at all. She stands quite alone now among the hostile faces that have collected around her. The crowd which previously waved and cheered with such enthusiasm has all at once become angry, threatening, morose. These people in their dark clothes watch her silently, like a herd of dangerous beasts, occasionally shifting their positions, or muttering, or exchanging ugly glances between themselves. They do not make any overt accusation, but B understands they resent her presence in that place, she has no business to be there and will be made to pay severely for her trespassing. What the penalty will be she hasn’t the faintest idea. But it’s only necessary to look at those heavy, lowering faces, at the same time stupid and vicious, like the heads of treacherous animals, to know that no brutality is out of the question.
Very slowly the crowd is closing in on her, edging forward almost imperceptibly, but always decreasing the space which is her precarious safeguard. Panic-stricken, B’s eyes search wildly in every direction, without discovering a solitary sign of hope. Above her, sheer as a cliff, the blank façade blots out the sky. Like an implacable and denunciatory finger the long black shadow of the knight’s sword points to her over the heads of the crowd. The carriage has silently disappeared from the street below.