Krakatit/Chapter 32
CHAPTER XXXII
The end of everything. It was almost a relief, at least something certain and restful, and Prokop entered into the fact with his usual thoroughness. Good, it’s over. There's nothing to fear now. She remained away on purpose. That’s enough, that slap in the face is enough; that’s the end. He sat in an arm-chair, incapable of getting up, continuing to intoxicate himself with his humiliation. A servant who had been given the sack. She was shameless, proud, heartless. She had given him up for one of her admirers. Well, it was over; all the better.
Every time he heard a step in the passage Prokop raised his head in excited anticipation, the existence of which he would not admit to himself. Perhaps it was a letter. No, nothing. She didn’t think him worth even an apology. It was the end.
Mr. Paul shuffled up a dozen times with the old question in his pale eyes: Did the gentleman want anything? No, Paul, nothing. “Wait, have you a letter for me?” Mr. Paul shook his head. “Good, you can go.”
Prokop felt as if there was a lump of ice in his chest. This desolation was the end. Even if the door opened, and she herself were standing there, he would still say: The end! “Darling, darling,” Prokop heard her whisper, and then he burst out in desperation: “Why have you humiliated me so? If you were a chambermaid, I should forgive you your haughtiness, but as a princess you cannot be excused. Do you hear? It’s the end, the end!”
Mr. Paul opened the door: “Does the gentleman require anything?”
Prokop stopped short; he had said the last words aloud. “No, Paul. Have you any letter for me?”
Mr. Paul shook his head.
The day grew more and more oppressive; it was as if he was entangled in a horrible spider’s web. It was already evening. Then he heard some voices whispering in the passage, and Mr. Paul entered in delighted haste. “Here is a letter for you,” he whispered triumphantly, “shall I turn on the lights?”
“No.” Prokop crushed the thin envelope in his fingers and became aware of the familiar, penetrating scent; it was as if he was trying by smelling to see what was inside. The point of ice dug deeper in his heart. Why did she wait until the evening to write? Because she has nothing to say but: You musn’t come to us this evening. All right, Princess, if it’s the end, then it’s the end. Prokop jumped up, found in the darkness a clean envelope and placed the letter inside it, unopened. “Paul, take this at once to Her Excellence.”
Scarcely had Paul left the room than Prokop wished to call him back. But it was too late and he realized painfully that what he had just done was irrevocable. Then he threw himself on the bed and stifled in the cushions something which was tearing itself out of his mouth against his will.
Mr. Krafft came in, probably as the result of an alarm from Paul, and did all he could to calm and distract his lacerated friend. Prokop ordered some whisky, drank it, and by an effort recovered himself. Mr. Kraft sipped some soda-water, and assented to everything which Prokop said, although he was agreeing to things which were in direct opposition to his glowing idealism. Prokop cursed, reproached himself, used the most coarse and crude expressions as if it relieved his feelings to besmirch everything, spit on it, trample on it and destroy it. And he overflowed with obscenities, turned women inside out and abused them in the most violent possible terms. Mr. Kraft, sweating with horror, agreed with everything which the enraged genius threw out. Then Prokop’s vehemence exhausted itself, he became silent, frowned and drank more than was good for him. Then he lay on the bed, fully dressed, rocking himself from side to side and gazing with large eyes into the swirling darkness.
The next morning he got up, calm and disgusted, and immigrated to his laboratory for good. But he did nothing but lounge about the room, kicking a sponge in front of him. Then he had an idea. He compounded a terrible and instable explosive and sent it to the office, hoping that a really dramatic catastrophe would follow. Nothing happened. Prokop threw himself on the couch and slept uninterruptedly for sixteen hours.
He awoke like another man, sober, steady and cold. He felt utterly indifferent to what had happened before he fell asleep. He again began to work assiduously and methodically on the explosive disintegration of atoms, and theoretically arrived at such terrible conclusions that his hair stood on end in horror at the nature of the forces among which we live.
Once in the middle of his calculations he was seized by a sudden feeling of restlessness. “Probably I’m tired,” he said to himself, and went out into the open air for a bit, bareheaded. Without realizing what he was doing he made his way to the castle, mechanically ran up the stairs and went along the passage to the guests’ quarters. Paul was not in his usual seat. Prokop went inside. Everything was as he had left it, but in the air was the familiar scent of the Princess, “Absurd, absurd,” thought Prokop. “Suggestion or something of the sort; I’ve been smelling the strong smells of the laboratory too long.” Nevertheless he was painfully excited.
He sat down for a moment and was surprised how far away everything was. All was quiet in the castle, the quietness of the afternoon. And yet had not something changed? He heard muffled steps in the corridor, probably those of Paul, and went outside. It was the Princess.
Surprise and what was almost horror threw her back against the wall, and she stood deathly pale, her eyes wide open, and her lips twisted as if in pain. What did she want in the guests’ wing Perhaps she is going to Suwalski, thought Prokop suddenly, and something in him froze. He made a step forward as if he was going to throw himself upon her, but instead made a noise in his throat and ran out. Did he feel hands pulling him back? You must not look back! Away, away from here! Only when he was a long way from the castle, in the middle of the sandy artillery ground, did he throw himself down on his face. For there is only one pain greater than that of humiliation—that of hatred. Ten yards to the side sat the serious and concentrated Mr. Holz.
The night which followed was heavy and oppressive, unusually black. There was going to be a storm. At such moments people are extraordinarily irritable and unable to control their actions.
About eleven o’clock Prokop burst out of the door of his laboratory and stunned Mr. Holz so thoroughly with a chair that he was able to escape from him into the darkness of the night. A few moments later two shots were heard from the neighbourhood of the factory station. Low down on the horizon there were flashes of lightning, followed by a more intense darkness. But from the top of the wall near the entrance there came a bright ray of violet light which lit up the whole of the station, the trucks, the ramps, and the piles of coal. It also lit up a dark figure which ran in a zig-zag path, fell to the ground and then disappeared again in the darkness. The figure then made its way amongst the barracks towards the park; several other figures threw themselves on it. The searchlight then turned on the castle; two more shots, and the running figure plunged into the bushes.
Shortly afterwards the window of the Princess’s room rattled. She jumped up and at that moment there flew into the room a stone wrapped up in a crumbled piece of paper. On one side of the sheet was something illegible, scribbled with a broken pencil, and on the other a series of reproaches written in a small handwriting. The Princess threw on her clothes, but at that moment another report was heard behind the lake—according to the sound, that of a rifle which was loaded with something more than a blank cartridge. But before the Princess had time to leave the room she saw through the window two soldiers dragging along something dark which struggled and tried to throw them off. He was not wounded, then.
The horizon continued to be lit up with long, yellow flames. But the storm which would have cleared the air did not break.
The sobered Prokop again threw himself headlong into work in the laboratory, or at least forced himself to work. Mr. Carson had just left him. He was in a cold rage and had announced unequivocally that everything pointed to Prokop's being transferred as early as possible to some safer place. If he refused to respond to lenient treatment, they would have to resort to harsher measures. Well, it was all the same, nothing mattered. The testtube broke in Prokop’s fingers.
In the hall Mr. Holz was waiting with his head wrapped in bandages. Prokop offered him some money as a compensation for the injury, but he would not accept it. Well, let him do as he liked. So he was to be transferred somewhere else—very well. Curse these test-tubes! They break one after another.
In the hall there was the sound of some one being awakened suddenly from dreaming. Probably another visit. Prokop did not trouble to turn round from the lamp he was using. The door creaked. “Darling!” whispered somebody. Prokop staggered, gripped the table and turned round as if in a dream. The Princess was standing with her hand against the door-post, pale, with a dark, fixed look in her eyes, pressing her hands to her breast as if to muffle the beating of her heart.
Trembling all over, he went across to her and with his fingers touched her cheeks and shoulders as if he could not believe that it was she. She placed her cold fingers on his mouth. Then she looked back into the hall. Mr. Holz had disappeared. . . .