Her animal sense felt my eyes on her and she turned and looked down at us. I saw her look first at Franz and take in his upright bearing and the cut of his clothes. Then she looked at me. Revulsion flashed across her face. I instinctively readjusted my position to make myself appear more unobtrusive, hating myself for doing it. I saw myself through the girl’s eyes as I stood there beside Franz. I saw how she must be anticipating with disgust the moment that she would be obliged to touch me and feel my body pressed against hers, how she must be hoping to be chosen by Franz and not by me.
Franz called my name, and the madam held the door wider and motioned for me to come in, but the image of the girl’s face was in my mind, and my shame at myself had obliterated any feeling of desire I had had. Franz made a show of trying to entice me in, but I could see now that the girls were more important to him than spending the remainder of the evening with me.
I walked the long distance home, allowing my tired body to relax into its natural misshapen form. My gait collapsed into its usual pitching roll and my uneven footfalls on the cobblestones broadcast my affliction out into the night. I met no other walker on my way.
When I arrived home, the house was dark, but I could hear my father moving around in his room next to mine. I turned up the lamp in my bedroom and removed my hat and coat, my jacket, trousers and collar, my undershirt and socks, and went and stood in front of the mirror. The mirror was large, as tall as myself, and beautifully framed in a mottled red wood. I surveyed myself. My dark hair, already receding slightly at the temples, had been flattened to the contours of my head by my damp hat and looked as if it were painted on. My face, an echo of my body, had a slight twist to it; the cleft in my chin was not quite in line with the tip of my nose, and the whole lower half of my face was crooked, as if it had been wiped to one side. My left shoulder rose much higher than my right, and I had my jackets and coats made up with extra padding on the right side in an effort to disguise this. My whole right side appeared shrunken and hollow and my body collapsed over to this side while above it my head struggled for equilibrium. My right leg, a ruined thing, twisted inwards and its toes curled pathetically into the instep of my left foot as if they were seeking shelter there.
I turned my crooked side to the mirror to examine it more closely. In profile I was a question mark, with my straight legs and curved back, my head at the top poking forward like the head of a tortoise.[7] I had learned over the years to control my body to a degree, to make it appear more like other bodies, but it cost me much discomfort and required a great deal of concentration.
No one ever spoke a word to me about my deformity. Out of all the people I passed every day around Prague—the tram drivers, the maids, the whores, Stephanie in the next office, my mother, Sophie, the postman—not one ever said a word. The tongues of all those who inhabited my world were silent, but their eyes were not.
Their eyes spoke, that sea of eyes through which I moved each day. They glanced and looked in secret and averted their gazes, and this looking and not-looking spoke louder than any voice of disgust, curiosity or, worst of all, pity. I offended them. I frightened them. I showed them what they had, and what they had to lose.
I could still see the eyes of the girl in the window as she looked from Franz to me, her face twisting unknowingly as if to mirror mine. I felt no malice towards the girl; her reaction was justified and even warranted. I was able to observe myself objectively from the outside just as easily as I could observe Franz or any other person, and even I—especially I—would have preferred Franz to myself.
I often imagined how life would be if lived in a normal body. I obsessively watched people in the street and chose features that I would like to have for myself, composing a vast catalogue of them. A strong neck like a pillar, a back that spread outwards from the spine in two even wings, square shoulders that hung balanced from the neck, legs straight and muscular, moving like pistons. All of these were like fabulous riches to me, wonders I would never possess. Franz did possess them, together with a supple elegance, like that of a dancer. His body appeared weightless, borne upwards from the soles of his feet as though he were moving in water, or he were composed not of flesh but vapour. What a fool I was to think that Fräulein Železný, who could have anyone she chose, would be interested in me. I, who disgusted a cheap whore on Corpse Lane.
5.
SOME WEEKS LATER A CITY BOOKSHOP ORGANISED FOR BOTH Franz and me to attend a literary evening where authors were to read from their work. I had managed to salvage enough from my notes to give an overview of the Schopenhauer book, and Franz was to read an unpublished story. The event was to be held at the Charles University, where I had studied some years ago. As I walked through the grounds, I found the old buildings unchanged and instantly familiar, and I was surprised to find that I still knew my way around the echoing corridors. The students I passed also seemed unchanged as they hurried past, singly, with clutches of books, heads ducked, or strolled together in small clusters, arguing in loud voices.
Speaking to a large group of people about my work still brought with it the sharp bite of anxiety. Whenever I had to read my own work in public, my body, which had already failed me so much, added to its crimes with bouts of nausea and headaches for days beforehand, and tremors and sweating as I stood facing the crowd.
This had originated with my first public-speaking engagement. It was the year before, in summer; a season that I have always disliked because the fewer clothes one wears, the more difficult it is to disguise a hunchback. That summer, though, was the only one that I remember ever having felt at ease with myself. I was the happiest I had ever been at having my work published—and not only published, but praised. I would wake in the morning and the thought of my book gave me the same feeling of lightness that one feels when one wakes and remembers that it is a holiday. For the first time, something in my life eclipsed the reality of living in my crooked body.
Theodor had arranged for me to speak to a group of literature students and professors about my work. To me, this event was an even more coveted marker of my success as a writer than the high rate of sales that my book was enjoying. To engage with my readers, inspire them and hear their ideas about the world and about my work was for me the real prize at the end of my long toil.
When I proudly told my friends about the speech, I detected in those closest to me a hesitation, a reticence, which had at first confused me and which I then attributed to jealousy on their part and then, later, paranoia on mine.
I also told my mother, hoping to be at least a small source of happiness to her. There was always a dissonance between memories and thoughts of my mother and the reality of her. When I was a child my mother had been kind and sharp-witted, her gestures sure and swift, and even now this is how I most often remember her. But in fact she had declined rapidly throughout the years of my childhood. Her mind had scattered and her body had faded and curled in on itself. I never allowed myself to calculate how much I might be responsible for her deterioration.
That afternoon she was in her room, as she was most days, crouching small and shrunken in her chair near the window. I felt the tug of pain that I always felt at the sight of her. Elsa was sitting in the corner, watching over my mother while she busied her hands with some sewing. I had to explain the situation to my mother as though she were a child and I her mother.
7
Pencil sketches in a spare, cartoonish style appear in the margins of the manuscript here. They depict a male human figure and have been partially erased.