severin’sjourney into

the dark

Severin’sjourney intothe dark

P A U L L E P P I N

a prague ghost story

Translated from the German by Kevin Blahut

T w i s t e d S p o o n P r e s sp r a g u e • 2 0 1 0

Copyright © 1993, 2001, 2010 by Twisted Spoon PressTranslation copyright © 1993 by Kevin Blahut

Cover photograph copyright © 2001 by Ervina Boková–Drtikolová

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted inany form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, includingphotocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval

system, without the publisher’s written permission.

isbn 978-80-901257-2-8

C O N T E N T S

Book 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Book 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

Glossary of Proper Names . . . . . . . . . . 113

About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .115

Book 1One Year of Severin’s Life

I

It was the autumn of Severin’s twenty-fourth year. In theafternoons he came home exhausted by tormenting officework, threw himself on the black leather sofa in his room,and slept until nightfall. As soon as the lanterns were lit, hewent out onto the street. The sun only shone on his pathsthrough the city during the long and burning days ofsummer, or on Sundays, when the entire day belonged tohim and, during his wanderings, he thought of the shorttime he had spent as a student.

After two or three semesters Severin had given up hisstudies and found a job. In the mornings he sat in the miser-able office and held his sickly, beardless young face bent overthe rows of figures. A nervous and unhealthy discontentcrept through his body with the room’s chill, and unrestawoke within him. The relentless monotony made his handstremble. A disturbing weariness bored into his temples and,with his fingers, he pushed his eyeballs into his head untilthey started to hurt.

For an entire rainy October week he had not seenZdenka. Every day her letters begged him to come to her,but he pushed them aside with irritation and did not answerthem. Zdenka could not fulfill the wishes that had begun tostir in the half-articulated rhythm of his blood. A tenseexpectation, a singular and unruly curiosity, always cameover him when, numbed by sleep, he stepped onto the street

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in the evening. With his eyes wide open he looked into thecity, where people were moving like phantoms. The noise ofthe carriages and the rattling of the trams blended with thevoices of the people to make a harmonious clamor in whicha distinct cry or shout occasionally sounded. He listenedwith careful attention, as though something important wereeluding him. His favorite streets were the ones that lay apartfrom the great commotion. When he squinted and lookedthrough his half-closed eyelids the houses took on a fantasticappearance. He walked past the walls of the large gardensthat enclosed the hospitals and institutes. He was struck bythe smell of decaying leaves and damp earth. He knew of achurch somewhere nearby. In the early evening it was usu-ally deserted here, although someone would pass by fromtime to time. Severin stood in the shadows of the balconiesand wondered why his heart was pounding.

Was it because of this city, with its dark facades, thesilence over its large squares, its decayed passion? He alwaysfelt as though invisible hands were brushing against him.He remembered days when he had gone into neighborhoodshe had long known and been comfortable in and foundthem completely unfamiliar. On Sunday mornings he hadsometimes passed the hospital for incurables and the Karl-shof Kirche as he descended the Sluper Gründe. He wasastonished to think that he had lived here since childhood.When the sun shone and glittered on the crumbling steps, itmade him think of the winter evenings when the snow

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floated into the streets and the lamps shimmered in thepuddles of slush. It seemed to him that he was marked by acurse. Within him grew an angry longing to free himself ofthe curse and transform it.

He often believed he had to despair in the face of his ownwretchedness. There was a bitterness in him that clung tofeeble imprecations, and a lethargy that longed for accursedhours. Zdenka knew nothing about any of this. Unhappily,with his lips pressed together and the collar of his coatupturned, he walked through the city along streets that ledindirectly to the Moldau, where she was waiting for him.

For years he had made his way to school along the longbustling street where he was now walking. Here, on his wayhome, he had smoked his first cigarette and discussed thegreat battles that were fought against the Czech boys in theold fortifications of Weinberge. He had never distinguishedhimself as a great hero or leader in these conflicts, but nei-ther had he betrayed his cowardice. For him, offering hisbrow to the stones hurled by the enemy had a voluptuousand puzzling allure. Here the stories of knights and adven-tures of sailors that he read at home became a small butgenuine reality that brought heat to his face and hands andstifled his breath in mute agitation. Since that time his youthhad contained no experience of equal worth. But the blindcompulsion that had driven him to the skirmishes in theabandoned fortifications had grown beyond all proportionover the years and began to press at his throat. Sometimes

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he was overcome by a senseless fear and a horror that his lifewould amount to nothing. Since he had become an adultand started earning his own bread, bleak and vapid wallshad risen around him and blocked his view. All around,everywhere he looked, he saw dull and mundane conven-tion. He went to the office early in the morning and wenthome at noon; the rest of the day he spent sleeping. He feltlike someone standing in a pit with a shovel. He digs anddigs, but the fine, pliable sand keeps running back and fillingthe hole.

As a child he had owned a book that had never com-pletely left his thoughts. It was the first volume of a novelabout the Hussite wars. The second volume was missing,but Severin did not bother to look for it. The way the bookended, in the middle of the course of great events, seemedperfect to him. There were gypsies who had a robbers’ denin the crevices of the Devil’s Wall near Hohenfurt, savagewarriors who threw dice for their girls in taverns, moonlitnights when people dug in forests for the mandrake root.There was a magic garden where malformed dwarvesmocked those who had lost their way, where marvelousgrottoes opened and clanging metal lions sank into thedepths when someone approached. And the comet shoneblood red in the sky and there was war in Bohemia. Severinthought of this book as he went to meet Zdenka.

On Karlsplatz it was silent except for a few pairs oflovers whispering behind the bushes. Severin pushed his

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foot through the dead leaves on the path. The electric lampswere already burning and hung over the trees like moons.Severin looked for the first stars between the lights. Anunpleasant restlessness held him captive and drove him backto the park, although Zdenka was already waiting for him.He took his hat in his hand and the wind dampened hishair. The clock on the tower of the Ministry of Justicestruck, and the chimes echoed slowly through the boughs.Severin listened to them with a bitter heart. A soft and feebledesire for a radiant and intense life like the one described inthe chapters of the book leapt within his soul. A colossaland violent existence rose before him in fiery light. Beyondthe edge of Karlsplatz he felt the city.

Severin stepped out of the dim light of the park and intothe next street. Again he listened carefully to the soundsand tried to make out people’s voices. He began to feel anawareness that people are what give life meaning, that theywere connected to everything that he fancied to be splen-dor and meaning and awe. Nights of comets and tremorsand the mysteries of the heart. With exquisite fright hethought of the evening when he and a friend had gone tosee a performance by a suburban Czech theatre. He hadnever been very particular about such entertainments. Thecloying sentimentality that the audience of lowbrows andphilistines had cooed over was the right stimulus for hissenses as well. In the gestures of the pathetic comedians andthe laughter and tears of the badly made-up women he

15

detected more of the hot and neglected desires of his soulthan he did anywhere else. A girl who had moved thecrowd with her disappointed love had attracted his atten-tion. In the way she turned her slender body, in the lines ofher shoulders and throat, there was much that remindedhim of Zdenka. He had gone home in a state of peculiarand unacknowledged confusion. It was the feeling thatalways 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 theevening. The feeling that something was close to him,something so strong and corporeal that it made the airbegin to tremble softly, and yet was impossible to grasp.

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

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II

That was also the autumn when Severin made the acquain-tance of Lazarus Kain. He had his shop in the upper part ofStephansgasse, not far from the large botanical garden. Therust-flecked covers of yellowed brochures and the worncloth bindings behind the glass panes of the display casetold passersby that there was a bookstore here. Over thedoor, on a sign christened by snow and rain, the word“Antiquariat” stood in faded letters under the name of theowner.

The store was low and narrow and was lit by a gas-flameeven by day. But it could be very comfortable here duringthe winter, when the iron oven in the corner glowed almostred from heat, and behind the reading desk Lazarus leafedthrough bulging catalogues or taught tricks to his ravenAnton. During the holiday months and early autumn he didnothing with the business. He would leave his daughterbehind in the shop and make excursions into the surround-ing area. He walked up and down the street with small stepsand looked at the upper stories of the houses. The gaslightin the shop had weakened his eyes, and he was a little short-sighted. He looked at the servant girls and watched howthey leaned their robust breasts against the windowsills andshook the dust from the tablecloths down into the street.The blood rose in his yellow face and he blinked. Some-times he also stopped by the column of St. Adelbert and

17

followed the nurses from the nearby maternity ward withhis glances. Right next door stood the shabby rooms of ThePoison Shanty. Lazarus remembered the evenings when themedical students used to gather here and dance with themidwives. Occasionally he had also stopped to visit, and hadwatched the festivities from a corner. Now the tavern hadchanged owners and the pub was completely abandonedexcept for a few Czech youths who played ninepins in theneglected garden, and a sullen waitress who served theguests cheerless beer in cracked glasses.

He often sat in the small Pilsner bar across fromStephanskirche. It was not very lively here either on thesummer mornings when he visited. The priests from thenearby deanery waited until later to come and have theirlunches. Lazarus sat by the window, behind the greendraperies, and admired the fine ankles of the girls who hur-ried past. He already had nearly half a century behind him,but women were still his greatest passion. At home, on thehigh shelves of his bookshop, he kept many costly volumesfor connoisseurs and his best customers. Dangerous andshameless novels, French and German private editions,copperplate engravings, rare translations from the time ofRéstif de la Bretonne. He clung to these treasures with aninfatuated tenderness, often taking them out to amuse him-self and stroking their pages with his fingers. He sold themonly unhappily and for high prices, and felt genuine sorrowwhen he saw them in the hands of buyers; it was as though

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they took part of a beloved estate with them when they leftthe building. He loved only two things more than thesebooks: the raven Anton, an old and disheveled beast thathad kept him company in the bookshop for years, and hisdaughter Susanna.

It was in the small pub across from the church thatSeverin first met Lazarus Kain. Outside the bells in thetower began striking for Sunday mass, and both of themwatched the thoughtful young women who walked past thetavern window, prayer books in hand. Then Lazarus movedhis glass closer to Severin’s and began to speak. His witheredface became animated when he talked, and his cheeksburned beneath his short side-whiskers. He talked aboutthe cold and unimaginative temperament of the modernage, in which the pursuit of money had killed the joy ofdesire. And with twinkling eyes, in which a secret delightglittered, he spoke about his favorite world, on which hehad hung his aging heart, the France of the eighteenth cen-tury. His stories of the Hunting Park period of Louis xvhad color and charm, and an envious longing made his voicetremble when he told Severin — who was listening closely— about Madame Janus, the brilliant procuress who hadastounded even the Paris of that time with new and inven-tive pleasures.

That will never come again — he said, and his wordscontained a sincere lament. For a while they both sat quietlyin the half-dark of the pub and brooded over the amorous

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marvels of past ages, while across the street the church-bellsfell silent and only a golden humming remained in the air,constantly becoming softer and more delicate, and finallyinaudible. Lazarus had turned his face back to the window,and Severin looked furtively at his bald skull and Jewishprofile, which was torn by countless wrinkles. He was over-come by the suspicion that this man experienced a similarmalady to his own, that he suffered from an unappeasedpassion which had fled from a narrow and senseless life intoold books. He was seized by compassion for the old man,who had wasted years of his life looking at dead pictures.They conversed for a while longer, and Lazarus told himabout his daughter and the raven. As he was leaving, heinvited Severin to visit him in his shop.

Severin responded to the invitation within the next fewdays. Susanna was sitting on a low upholstered chair next tothe oven. The days were still fine and the book dealer hadno fire burning. Nevertheless a drizzling chill entered thehouses on that street after sunset. Susanna had thrown ablack shawl over her shoulders, and the gaslight danced onthe pages of the open book in her lap. Lazarus stood behindthe counter and greeted Severin without surprise. His nakedhead shone in the light as he bent over a few valuablecurios and examined them with a magnifying glass. Severinlistened to his explanations patiently, and looked distract-edly over at Susanna, who was silently reading her book.Her brown hair was parted smoothly and the shadows of

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her long lashes played over her cheeks. Once she raised herface and their glances met.

From that time on Severin went to see Lazarus Kainoften. The thought of the young Jewess would not let himsleep. Actually, Susanna was not beautiful. But an intriguingflame flickered in her eyes, in sharp contrast to her quietmouth. In their velvet depths smoldered a treacherousdevotion that disconcerted and excited him. Sometimes hehad seen stars flicker like that when, worn out by an incom-prehensible compulsion, he looked up into the sky as hemade his way home late at night. Severin sought her eyesbehind the smoke of his cigarette, behind her father’s baldavian head, behind the quick flutters of the raven, whichjumped from one corner of the room to another as if in acage. Susanna presented her eyes to him with an inexplicableseriousness, without ever taking part in the conversation orspeaking a word to him. When he addressed her, heranswers were curt and indifferent. This bothered him andmade him stop trying. He continued speaking with Lazarus,and let him show him lithographs and photogravures.

One day when Susanna was not there, Lazarus promisedSeverin to introduce him at Doctor Konrad’s. He broughtout the proposal cautiously, like the last part of a guardedconfession. And in response to Severin’s amazed questions,he told him about the large atelier in one of the new build-ings that were being constructed on the former site of thehovels of the Jewish Quarter. Here, with the last remains of

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a fortune that had been significant years before, DoctorKonrad had rented a painter’s workshop, which in realityserved for entirely different purposes. Tapestries and pottedpalms gave the room an exotic appearance, and a few pictureframes in the corner, an easel, and some studies of headsthat were turned to the wall indicated the occupant’s métier.In reality it had been a long time since Doctor Konrad hadtouched a palette. He lay for hours on the comfortableTurkish sofa, rolled perfumed cigarettes in his hand, and lethis servant bring him French cognac with seltzer. Sometimeshe also listened to his mistress as she wearily strummed themandolin. She was a blonde and spoiled creature namedRuschena. A swarm of guests came in the afternoons: Younggentlemen in dinner-jackets, with mouse-gray spats andpatent leather shoes; old and experienced playboys in ele-gant street clothes, the ivory knobs of their riding crops attheir mouths; artists with slouch hats and dirty linen; modelsin silk blouses and tight skirts who spent their free timehere, drinking Doctor Konrad’s sweet liqueurs; and now andthen a girl or a woman from better society, one shy anduncertain, the other with more impudence than was reallynecessary, brought here by the polymorphous attraction adissolute life has to outsiders. That was what Lazarus talkedabout, and Severin guessed everything else from the oldman’s suppressed excitement and fidgeting hands.

When he went back outside he met Susanna in the fog ofthe evening street. She looked at him with a smile, and his

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body began to shake, as though in terror. He took her warmhand mechanically, without flinching.

Come — she said to him, the smile still on her lips. Hewent with her into the house, where the stairs lay in dark-ness. Then he kissed her throat, which her dress left open tothe nape of her neck.

Your father is downstairs in the shop — he said. Susannaonly nodded and led him over the narrow steps and throughthe corridor into her room.

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III

Last winter, on a clear and frosty evening, Zdenka had fallenin love with Severin. They had both been walking aimlesslyamong the bustling people, and the street had brought themtogether. The small locomotives of the chestnut vendorsstood with red eyes on the edge of the roadway. A few reelingsnowflakes fell slowly and distinctly in the lamplight.Zdenka looked at them and thought of the clear wings ofthe midges that floated around the shining spheres duringthe summer. She was still completely lost in thought whenSeverin spoke to her. But then she laughed cheerfully. Andwhen she looked into his handsome young face, made moreattractive by the chill, her mood became light and joyous.They walked through the city together. They looked at thecomical wares in the display windows of a toyshop, where asmall train ran on real tracks, and admired the stuffed tigerthat a carpet dealer had put in his window as an advertise-ment. They stopped in front of the icy windows of deli-catessens, where golden sprats shone in white boxes. ThenSeverin bought dinner for both of them and she went withhim to his bachelor lodgings.

Zdenka worked in an office until six o’clock. Both herparents were dead and she lived alone in a room on OldTown Square. A few times during the period of her unhappyyouth when she had been forced to care for herself, she hadgiven herself to strange men, and, crying while Severin

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kissed her, she apologized that he was not the first to whomshe had offered her love. He accepted her tremblingtenderness without petty jealousy, and later, when he sawthat a passion was growing in her from the playful mood ofthat evening, it gave him no cause for concern. She was acomfort in the emptiness of his weary heart, which did notbecome entangled by the luster and devotion of her love. Helistened to her when, with a singing contralto, she spoke ofher happiness, and was gladdened by the inexperiencedwords she chose. But basically she left him cold. She hadnothing of the consuming flame, the flash of lightning thathis soul needed. She was a pretty and fanciful accident thatoccurred without force or consequence, something of nointerest to him.

For Zdenka, however, her meeting with Severin hadbecome a wonderful event. It had seized her with irresistibleforce when he took her to his apartment after a short timetogether on the street. And once she was his, she loved himwith an awed and boundless devotion. The Slavic blood thatexpressed itself in hatred and insurrection among the menof her people brought forth a flood of enthusiasm in her,and now all the gates were opened to it. She was frightenedthat she could do nothing against it, and in her deepestheart she felt it with terror and bliss.

It was the beginning of beautiful days for her. Shewalked through the city with Severin in the way that he hadbeen accustomed to for years. He taught her the sensitivity

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to noises and distant cries that was part of his nature. Whenshe closed her eyes and let him lead her, she recognized thestreets she was walking on by the smells of the stones andthe pavement. He revealed the monotonous beauty of thesuburban landscape, the wonder of Wyschehrad with itslarge stone gates and the memorial of St. Wenceslaus. Shelearned to love the Moldau when the lights from the river-banks rocked on the water in the darkness and the smell oftar came from the suspension bridges. She sat with him inthe pubs of the Kleinseite, and was enchanted by the exag-gerated leisureliness of the old men as they drank theirglasses of beer. In the thick cigar smoke the arches of thelow roof and the pictures of Napoleon on the wall lost theirborders in achromatic grayness. Together they went to theVikarka on Hradschin, where, a few armlengths from thedoor, the cathedral rose into the heights with wonderfulwall ornaments and stone figures in its niches. Graduallythe Czech girl came to understand the city’s silent language,in which Severin was more fluent than she. She understoodthat, amid the city’s darkened walls, its towers and palaces,its strange decay, a suppressed unreality had become greatwithin him, and that he always walked the streets with thefeeling that today he would meet his destiny.

When spring and summer came, she stood with him bythe ponds of the Baumgarten and fed the swans. She rodethe ferry with him to Troja. They walked through the gatesof the walled embankments and fortifications toward

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Pankraz, and sat together at the stone tables of a tavern in agarden where one-eyed ÎiÏka had rested during theBohemian wars. Not far off, the prison rose like a small cityin the field, and the inmates worked on the lawn withspades. Beyond the one-story houses the street led into anearby village and into the woods. The melody of the barrelorgans blended with the sound from the poplars and thetelegraph lines. Day-trippers came and the cabs threw upclouds of dust as they approached. Sometimes she and Sev-erin also stopped at the street-tavern The Green Foxes. Yearsbefore, when Severin was still a child, they had had excellentbeer and good food; many Germans used to come to thecabman’s bar. Now there was dancing here every Sunday andred and white flags fluttered over the door. A few steps fur-ther on there was the noise from a merry-go-round. Some-times Zdenka and Severin sat on one of the golden swingsand went for a ride. A man with high boots beat the drumand the children cheered. The band played the barcarolefrom The Tales of Hoffmann.

They were delightful hours for Zdenka. She hardlynoticed when Severin became surly and reticent, and com-forted herself with the next smile he gave her. But whenautumn arrived and he became increasingly distant, she wasmore frightened than ever before. Sometimes she did notsee him for days at a time. Silent, with sorrowful steps, shewent home and sat in her little room. It was lively on thelarge square beneath her window, except for a few bellboys

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who were loitering on the corners. Zdenka waited until ithad become completely dark. It was late in the eveningwhen she lit her lamp.

With senseless and incomprehensible cruelty Severinhad told her about Susanna. With cold eyes he searched herfeatures for the tiny flame of jealousy while, in exhaustivedetail, he described his adventure. It disappointed him thather love remained so resolute and unshaken and that noreproach stirred her lips. He thought of the girl in the the-atre who had Zdenka’s mannerisms, and of the play in whichshe had appeared. How she had stood on the stage, thin andfragile, shaken by destiny! But none of this happened now.There was only a pain that flew over Zdenka’s face like apassing shadow, and he was not even sure he really saw it.

On Sundays they met less and less often. When they did,they usually went walking through the city’s parks, wherethe cold autumn flowers were already burning. The ironchairs in the municipal park stood in the damp sand,unused, and the kiosks that sold soda water were empty.Now and then they rode the funicular up the Hasenburg.Zdenka stopped in front of the Stations of the Cross, wherepeople prayed every year on the night of Good Friday. Thechapel of St. Laurenzius was also here. From up above it waspossible to see the city in the late afternoon mist. A sluggishwind pushed the withered leaves into the stone gutters onthe sides of the path. Zdenka stepped on the white berriesthat rolled onto the earth from the bushes. As a child the

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small pop they made when they burst had always made herhappy. A soldier came toward them. He bent toward his girland kissed her. Zdenka walked next to Severin with a soulfull of tears.

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