Krakatit/Chapter 38
CHAPTER XXXVIII
The passage was empty. He crept along as quietly as he was able to the Princess’s apartments and waited in front of the door, motionless as the knight in armour downstairs in the vestibule. A chambermaid came out, screamed at the sight of the scarecrow and hastily retired. A moment afterwards she opened the door again and, scared out of her life, and careful to keep out of his way, silently motioned him in, after which she again disappeared. The Princess came forward to meet him. She was wearing a long cloak and had evidently only just got out of bed. The hair over her forehead was tangled and damp as if she had just removed a cold compress. She was extremely pale and not looking attractive. She put her arms round his neck and put forward a pair of lips which were feverishly dry. “You are good,” she whispered, half swooning. “I’ve got the most frightful headache! I hear that your pockets are full of bombs! I’m not frightened of you. Go away now, I’m looking ugly. I’ll come to you at mid-day; I shan’t go down to dinner. I’ll tell them I’m not well. Go.” She touched his mouth with her sore, peeling lips and hid her face so that he should not see her.
Accompanied by Mr. Holz, Prokop returned to the laboratory; everybody whom he encountered stopped and then took to flight, some at times even taking shelter in a ditch. He again threw himself into his work as if possessed, mixed materials together which nobody would have dreamed of associating, armed with a blind certainty that he could convert them into explosives. He filled flasks, match-boxes, tins for preserved food, everything that came into his hands. The table, window-ledges and the floor were covered with them and he went on until he simply had nowhere to put the stuff. In the afternoon the Princess appeared, veiled and wrapped up to the eyes in her cloak. He ran towards her and would have taken her in his arms, but she repulsed him. “No, no, to-day I’m ugly. Please go on working; I’ll watch you.”
She sat down on the edge of a chair directly opposite to the frightful arsenal of explosives. Prokop with set lips was rapidly weighing and mixing something which hissed and smelt bitter. Then he filtered it with the greatest care. She watched him, her hands motionless, her eyes burning. Both were thinking that the royal heir was to arrive that day.
Prokop was looking for something on a shelf on which were ranged various acids. She stood up, raised her veil, put her arms round his neck and placed her dry, closed lips against his mouth. They swayed about between the rows of bottles containing unstable oxozobenzol and terribly powerful fulminates, dumb and convulsed, but again she pushed him away and sat down, covering her face with her hands. Prokop set to work again still more quickly, like a baker making bread, and this time it was to be the most diabolical substance which man ever prepared, a violent and frightfully sensitive oil, the incarnation of swiftness and inflammability. And now here it was, transparent as water and fluid as ether; a terrible and incalculable destructive agent. He looked round to see where he had placed the flask containing this nameless substance. She laughed, took it out of his hand and held it clasped in her hands on her lap.
Outside Mr. Holz suddenly cried “Stop” to somebody. Prokop ran out. Oncle Rohn was standing extremely near the explosive trap.
Prokop went up to him. “What do you want?”
“Minna,” said Oncle Charles sweetly, “she’s not well and so”
Prokop made a face. “Come and fetch her,” he said and led him in.
“Ah, Oncle Charles!’ The Princess greeted him kindly. “Come and look, this is frightfully interesting.”
Oncle Rohn looked carefully at her and about the room and was evidently relieved. “You shouldn’t have come, Minna,” he said reproachfully.
“Why not?” she objected innocently.
He looked helplessly at Prokop. “Because . . . because you are feverish.”
“I’m better now,” she said quietly.
“But still you shouldn’t . . .” said le bon prince, frowning seriously.
“Mon Oncle, you know that I always do what I want to,” she said, making an end to this family scene. At that moment Prokop was removing from a chair a little box containing some explosives. “Do sit down,” he said politely to Rohn.
Oncle Charles did not seem to be pleased at the situation. “I’m not . . . stopping you in your work?” he asked of Prokop aimlessly.
“Not in the least,” said Prokop, rolling some substance in his fingers.
“What are you doing?”
“Making explosives. Please, that bottle,” he said, turning to the Princess.
She gave it him and added openly and provocatively, “Do you?” Oncle Rohn recoiled as if he had been struck but soon gave himself up to contemplating the rapid, though extremely cautious, way in which Prokop was pouring some drops of a yellow liquid on to a piece of clay.
He coughed and asked: “How do you ignite that?”
“By shaking it,” answered Prokop shortly, continuing to pour out the liquid.
Oncle Charles turned to the Princess. “If you are frightened, Uncle,” she said dryly, “you needn’t wait for me.” He sat down resignedly and tapped with his stick on a tin box which had once contained Californian peaches. “What does that contain?”
“That’s a hand-grenade,” explained Prokop. “Hexani trofenyl methylnitramin. Feel the weight of it.”
Oncle Rohn become flurried. “Wouldn’t it perhaps be better to be a little more careful?” he asked, twisting in his fingers a match-box which he had picked up from the desk.
“Certainly,” agreed Prokop and took it out of his hand. “That's chlorargonat. Not to be played with.”
Oncle Charles frowned. “All this gives me a rather disturbed feeling,” he said sharply.
Prokop threw the box down on the table. “What? And I also had a disturbed feeling when you threatened to send me to a fortress.”
“. . . I can say,” said Rohn, accepting the reproach, “that all that . . . made no impression on me.”
“But it made an enormous impression on me,” said the Princess.
“Are you afraid that he will do something?” said le bon prince, turning to her.
“I hope that he will do something,” she said optimistically. “Do you think that he’s not capable of it?”
“I have no doubt about it,” said Rohn. “Shall we go now?”
“No. I should like to help him.”
Just then Prokop was breaking a metal spoon in his fingers. “What’s that for?” she asked him curiously.
“I’ve run out of nails,” he said gruffy. “I’ve nothing to fill the bombs with.” He looked round in search of something made of metal. Then the Princess stood up, blushed, hastily peeled off one of her gloves and removed a gold ring from her finger. “Take this,” she said softly, her eyes cast down. He took it, wincing; it was almost a ceremony . . . as if they were being betrothed. He hesitated, weighing the ring in his hand; she raised her eyes to him in urgent and burning inquiry. Then he nodded seriously and placed the ring at the bottom of a tin box.
Oncle Rohn blinked his bird-like eyes with melancholy concern.
“Now we can go,” whispered the Princess.
That evening the heir to the throne arrived at the castle. At the entrance was drawn up a ceremonial escort; there were official greetings and other functions; the park and the castle were specially illuminated. Prokop sat on a small mound in front of his laboratory, and watched the castle with sombre eyes. Nobody entered it; save for the lights coming from the windows all was quiet and dark.
Prokop heaved a deep sigh and stood up. “To the castle?” asked Mr. Holz, and transferred his revolver from the pocket of his trousers to that of his everlasting mackintosh. When they passed through the park the lights in it had already been extinguished. On two or three occasions some being or other retired into the bushes on their approach and about fifty paces behind them they could hear all the time the sound of some one following them over the fallen leaves. Otherwise all was deserted, terribly deserted. But in one wing of the castle the large windows stood out a bright yellow.
It was autumn, already autumn. Was the water still dripping into the well at Tynice with a silver note? There was not even a wind, yet there was a sort of chill which seemed to run either along the ground or through the trees. Up in the sky a falling star traced a red band of light.
A number of gentlemen in evening dress, magnificent looking and satisfied with themselves, came out on to the terrace at the top of the castle steps, yawned, smoked and laughed a little and then retired. Prokop sat motionless on a seat, twisting a little metal box in his disfigured fingers. Now and then, like a child, he rattled it about. Inside was the broken spoon, the ring and the nameless substance.
Mr. Holz approached cautiously. “She can’t come to-day,” he said respectfully.
“I know.”
Lights appeared in the windows of the guest’s suite. They were those of the “Prince’s apartments.” And now the whole castle was illuminated, aerial and unsubstantial as in a dream. Everything was to be found within: unheard of wealth, beauty, ambition, fame and dignity, breasts covered with orders, amusements, the art of living, delicacy, wit and self-regard—as if they were different people, different from the like of us. . . .
Again Prokop rattled his little box like a child. Gradually the lights went out in the windows; that light which was still on belonged to Rohn and that red one to the bedroom of the Princess. Uncle Rohn opened the window to enjoy the cool of the evening and then began to pace from the door to the window, from the window to the door, uninterruptedly. No movement was to be seen in the room of the Princess.
Then even Uncle Rohn put out his light and there was only one left. Would human thought find a means of forcing its way through this hundred or two metres of dumb space and reach the waiting mind of another being? What message have I for you, Tartar Princess? Sleep, it is already autumn; andi if some sort of God exists, may he smooth your feverish brow.
The red light went out.