I became aware of a rustling hiss and felt something brush softly against my face. I pocketed the comb and looked up once more and a ginkgo leaf drifted past, and then another. The rustling became louder and soon the ginkgo leaves were fluttering down all around me, though there was no wind. I sat perfectly still, now staring straight ahead, and let myself be covered by their fall. People walking the paths stopped in front of the tree to exclaim, and to catch the leaves as they fell, for luck. Soon there was a small crowd standing around the tree.
‘You’re going to be the luckiest man alive!’ a man said to me as he caught a leaf and then discarded it in the hope of a more perfect specimen.
The leaves fell over me and filled up the brim of my hat and the cup of my palm lying open in my lap. I turned my face up and closed my eyes and the leaves rained down around me in a curtain of crisp sighs, brushing over my face like dry butterfly wings.
I remained sitting there until Anja’s exam had finished, but before I left I selected two of the most perfect leaves from my palm—one for her and one for me—to keep as good-luck charms. It was a good omen: for Anja’s exam, for our love, for my own writing. I put Anja’s into the jeweller’s box. The ginkgo rain had dissolved the tension I had been feeling and I felt strong and happy, chiming at one with the pulse of the world. It was just like the man had said: I was the luckiest man alive.
When I met Anja, she was flushed and talkative, and was swaggering along like a little sailor after a few glasses of rum. My heart ached with love for her. We walked aimlessly about the corridors while she unleashed a torrent of words: the questions she was asked, the answers she had given, and effusive gratitude for the hours I had spent practising with her.
Now was the perfect moment to give her the gift. I kept putting my hand into my breast pocket to take out the box but she always had something more to say and I was unwilling to interrupt her. My fingers nervously ran up and down one of the sharp edges of the box inside my pocket while I waited. At last there came a pause and I steered her to a low balustrade where we both sat down.
I took out the box and gave it to her with a trembling hand. My prepared words failed me and all I could manage was a broken, ‘Congratulations.’ My hands were clammy and I had to look away while she opened the box and took out the comb. When I looked back again she had taken out the ginkgo leaf and was holding it up with a questioning look.
I told her then about the ginkgo rain, and being the luckiest man alive, and her the luckiest woman. Later I realised how arrogant this sounded. She did not say anything, but looked into the distance and twirled the leaf against her lips. Her soft breath fluted over its edges. The comb lay still in its nest of cotton.
‘Won’t you try the comb?’ I tried to keep my voice steady.
She looked down at the comb and then closed the lid and gave me back the box, the ginkgo leaf held now between her ring and small finger. She shook her head. ‘I can’t take it, Max. I’m sorry.’
For all my nerves and worry I had somehow not prepared myself for this, yet at that moment I felt no emotion. Mechanically, I pocketed the box again.
‘But this leaf,’ she said, ‘I will keep forever.’
She suggested that we take a stroll through the gardens. We climbed up and down the stone steps and she talked and exclaimed and hung onto my arm as though the incident with the comb had never occurred. At her touch my feelings began rushing back, all my love for her, together now with a desperate and crushing panic.
How could she have rejected my gift and yet still promenade with me now, whispering in my ear and collecting pretty leaves to show me? I could not understand it, and yet a part of me knew. Franz. It had to be. The idea clicked into place with all the inexorable finality of a lock snapping shut. Clearly, I saw now, he had mentioned her exams to me in order to demonstrate that he, too, was close to her, but I had not been willing to look this fact in the face. But perhaps, I told myself in a moment of optimism, it was Herr Liška. It could equally well be him. Losing Anja to Liška would be terrible, but it could be borne. But Franz… I could not live with that ending to my and Anja’s story.
Of course I could have saved myself the inner torment of this guessing game simply by asking her. I could know the truth in seconds. But somehow I could not bring myself to do it. The question was too shaming. Instead I walked mutely along beside her, through the gardens and then back to her house, my mind sick with whirling suspicions. I imagined her meeting with Franz and his thin, elegant hands pawing at her, his slick smile inches from her face. I imagined the two of them laughing together, perhaps about me, and Franz mocking me. For a few moments I began to hate her.
After I had returned her to her house, I automatically made my way home, but when I arrived at the door I was unable to go inside. The house seemed suddenly as small as a coffin. Instead of going in I turned away from the door and began to walk at random. I walked up the darkened Karpfengasse and crossed the Moldau over the little Kettensteg bridge. I stood for a long time on the bridge, watching the surface of the water slide away beneath my feet.
I took the little box from my pocket, the comb still inside, and dropped it into the dark river. I felt no emotion. I did not even hear it hit the surface. I found the ginkgo leaf in my trouser pocket and dropped it in too. It fell to the water in a series of swoops like broken sobs, then it sailed away down the river, a little yellow boat on a sea of black.
9.
FOR SOME DAYS AFTER THIS I STAYED IN MY ROOM, SUFFERING with a fever that made a truth of the illness I had feigned at the post office. I drifted in and out of sleep, slipping between the world of the familiar room, and Elsa and Sophie, and another world of a continuous dream that was just as real as the world of my bedroom.
In the dream I was running after Anja and Franz was running after me across the whole city. My body was as heavy as a lump of stone and wouldn’t obey me. I strained to catch up with Anja, who was reduced to the hem of a skirt or a sweep of hair that was always just disappearing around a corner, out of reach. My chest burned with exertion and I let out mute cries, and the terror that I would lose sight of her was the terror of death. Meanwhile, Franz pursued me with a giant’s strides, brandishing a sheaf of papers like a club. I would wake gasping from these dreams, my sweat chilling my skin.
When I was awake the anxiety about my writing and Franz returned and competed with the anxiety I felt about Anja’s rejection. After some days, when I had recovered slightly, I began to write her letters, but I did not know what tone to take, who to be in the letter. Letter after letter I wrote and then discarded, throwing them into the fire when my wastepaper basket had overflowed.
I lay in bed and analysed her behaviour, every look, every word, every gesture that I could remember, in a futile round that always ended with everything slipping away from me. The only conclusion I could reach was that I was uncertain as to what was between us and what might be between her and Franz.
Postcards and letters began to arrive for me: from Kröner at the post office, from Felix and Kurt, and of course several from Uta. I received none from Anja.
Uta’s were the first to arrive: she must have heard from Sophie about my illness. They were written, of course, on pastel-shaded, scented paper, Uta’s looping hand scrawling inferior epigrams and clichéd wishes across the page. I opened the first one by accident and was overcome with nausea as the perfume with which the paper was infused reached my nostrils. Uta also visited several times and my ears were constantly on alert for her shrill voice raised in greeting at the front door. As soon as I heard it I feigned sleep, so that when Sophie brought her to my bedroom the door only opened a small way and then quietly closed again. I would lie motionless until I heard their whispered voices recede down the hallway.