Despite my anxieties about Franz and Theodor, my nervousness about seeing Fräulein Železný again was dominant as I climbed the stairs to the room in which the reading was to be held. With each step, my heart tightened and my eyes began darting about, searching for her. The room was still quite empty and Fräulein Železný was not there. I could see Theodor and my friends Kurt and Felix, who would also be reading from their new works. Avoiding Theodor, I made my way over to talk to my friends. I could not see Franz anywhere. For some reason Kurt and Felix did not cause the same sense of threat and rivalry that Franz provoked, but rather exuded a sense of solidarity and camaraderie. In fact, I had been the one to enable both of them to make their names as writers, and I was happy to have been able to use my own success to help them.
After a short time Theodor rushed over, his face stretched tight with concern. He interrupted our conversation with neither greeting nor apology.
‘Franz,’ he said, spreading out his hands. ‘Where is Franz?’
He looked around the room, which was fast becoming crowded, and then at me, accusingly, as if Franz were an article of furniture that he believed I had stolen. I did not see why I should be held responsible for Franz’s behaviour and simply shrugged at Theodor and turned back to my conversation. As he grunted and hurried off again, I smiled to myself. My satisfaction was twofold; first, there was Theodor’s obvious distress, and second, the dawning possibility that Franz might miss the reading altogether, just as he had missed the party. This possibility, slender though it seemed, was like a gift handed down from the angels. Without Franz, the field would be clear for me to approach Fräulein Železný. Equally pleasing was the idea that Theodor’s estimation of Franz, however high it might now be, would also be certain to fall if he failed to attend the reading. I began to eye the door with a vigour to rival Theodor’s as I watched now for both Franz and Fräulein Železný. The hands of the large clock on the wall slid around the dial to the appointed time of the reading, and then past it, but neither of the two appeared.
Theodor sent someone to Franz’s house to hunt him out and he himself began pacing outside the door like a guard. I, for my part, was quite tired out from the anxious waiting. My eyes scanned the faces behind Kurt’s and Felix’s heads as I listened to them talk, my heart leaping in my chest every time my gaze lighted on someone resembling Fräulein Železný. After quite a long time I saw Theodor’s messenger return alone, shaking his head, and Theodor had no choice but to start without Franz. I could hardly believe it: luck so rarely smiles on me. If only now Fräulein Železný would come.
I was the first to read, and up on the podium I took a last look around the room for Fräulein Železný, in vain. Theodor sat at the very edge of the crowd, not listening to me at all, but looking alternately down at his watch and up at the door. He was no longer interested in me. Now he had eyes only for Franz. I was surprised at how wounded this made me feel. When I finished my reading, Theodor was still so absorbed with keeping watch that he did not even bother to applaud along with the others.
I gathered up my papers and was stepping off the podium when I glanced up and at last saw Fräulein Železný. She was at the back of the room, standing beside the entrance as if she might have just arrived. The sight of her gave me a physical shock, like a current of electricity passing through me, and in an instant I had forgotten all about Theodor’s indifference. I sat down and pretended to listen to Felix’s reading while I rehearsed things I might say to Fräulein Železný in my head. But every sentence I could think of seemed trite and stagey, and I considered and rejected topic after topic.
I imagined I could sense her presence in the room, which had manifested as an electromagnetic field that pulled the muscles over my ears pleasantly tight. The desire to turn and look at her was almost irresistible. I still had no idea what I could say to her. I had thought so much about her since our last meeting, and attributed so much importance to it, that the idea that she might not have done the same, and indeed might even have forgotten who I was, caused a pang that was almost physical.
Suddenly I became aware of a murmuring unrest in the room around me and realised that Felix had left the podium, which now stood empty. Theodor had announced an intermission, no doubt in order to allow Franz more time to appear. People were shuffling around, clustered in small groups discussing the readings or calling to one another across the room.
I stood up and could see that Fräulein Železný was still standing in the same place. She was alone. I made my way through the milling crowd, managing to dodge those bearing down on me to claim me for conversation. As I went, I desperately rehearsed conversational gambits in my head. But when at last she was there in front of me all of my rehearsed phrases fell away like dead things, useless. When I looked at her, my body floated away from me and I became only my eyes, outward-looking.
The reality of her was so different from my flimsy memories that they almost insulted her in their inadequacy, like a picture postcard of the seaside insults the real living sea, with all its complexity. To take all of her in at once was impossible; it overwhelmed me, and I was able to apprehend only small slices of her with each glance, like a series of photographs that focused on only one tiny detail—a curl escaping from her chignon, the corner of her mouth turned up in a smile, the painful grace with which her wrist turned in on itself.
I think neither of us spoke, but our eyes held a secret conversation. I must have said, Let’s go outside or Let’s go for a walk, or she must have, because then we were outside. The outside scene followed the inside scene with no bridge between them, as in dreams where one is suddenly transported somewhere else without explanation, but one accepts it all the same.
She took my arm and we walked along and my entire being seemed to be concentrated in that one spot, in the crook of my left elbow, under the light pressure of her hand. I let her steer me and then we were in the botanical gardens of the university. All the thick heat of the day lay caught among the trees, and the thousand lilac and azalea blossoms breathed out their clouds of scent, and the air, or my head, became filled with a pressurised, musical humming. The sky arched overhead like a glass dome, full of stars and the restless call of insects and night birds.
We walked slowly up and down the twisting paths, talking, and after a while sat upon a bench under the ginkgo tree. I looked down at our feet, resting on the gravel. Hers, tiny in their shoes, seemed to me such precious things, but absurd; it was unthinkable that they could be made for walking on. My own shoes beside them were like shipwrecked boats. I tucked them under the shadow of the bench, out of sight.
She told me about herself and I hoarded away each detail as if it were a morsel of food and I a starving man. Her father was a professor, and she was studying philosophy at the university. She lived close to me in the Old Town, with her mother and father; she was an only child. We spoke about literature, of which I found she had a deep appreciation. She had read my novel, and told me that she had felt quite shy meeting me at the party the week before, and naturally I did not admit to her how overwhelmed I had been on that occasion.