‘Goodbye, Max,’ she said. I felt the warm breath of her as she leaned down and lightly grazed the top of my head with her lips.
She slipped from the room and I sat with my eyes closed and listened to her steps echo away. I heard the front door opening and closing and then silence. Then I heard the steps approach again; she must have forgotten something. I got up from the sofa as the door swung open.
It was Franz. I fell back into the sofa. He did not greet me. His face was stony, almost unrecognisable. He was holding a small paper bag in one hand and he reached inside and took out a handful of something. I stood up, ready to confront him.
‘How dare you?’ he said, and threw the thing he held in my direction. I flinched and covered my face with my hands, but I felt only something soft brushing against me. I opened my eyes to see a swirl of white flakes fluttering down around me.
‘You think your actions are the actions of a god,’ he said. He threw another handful. ‘But they are useless.’ He laughed then, once, toneless and hollow, like a lunatic.
The white flakes had landed on my shoulders and the front of my jacket. I picked some off and inspected them. I saw that they were tiny pieces of paper written on one side in black ink. I was able to decipher the odd word, and recognised the writing as Franz’s. It was his manuscript, I realised in a flash: the one I had destroyed.
Franz began to advance on me and I backed away.
‘You will read this work again; you will see it soon, everywhere. You can’t stop me.’
I felt ill. He was still coming towards me and I thought that he would strike me, but in the end he only threw the empty bag in my face and then walked out.
I immediately crouched down and began scrabbling around to pick up the fragments of paper. I hurried to scoop them up and put them back into the crumpled bag before anyone came into the room. When all the little flakes were back in the bag I threw it on the fire.
All of my old worries returned to me. Had Franz met with Theodor? Had he convinced Theodor that Alexandr was an impostor? If so, I was ruined. But I had a dim recollection of Theodor saying that he would be out of Prague for the next weeks. There was a conference in Vienna that he attended every year, and he generally stayed away a while. And Franz’s threat did not necessarily mean that the two had met. Perhaps Franz had only sent Theodor the manuscript at the same time that he had given it to me. And why, indeed, had he given it to me? Was he taunting me?
Over the next days and weeks I agonised over the situation. I waited for the angry visit from Theodor, for the telegram or letter denouncing me. But nothing came. Franz must only have corresponded with Theodor, or perhaps it was all just bluster. Weeks turned to months and gradually I began to relax again.
11.
ONE DAY MONTHS LATER, JUST WHEN THE WHOLE THING HAD faded from my mind, the dreaded letter from Theodor arrived in the morning post. It was nestled among the routine bills and newspapers like a cuckoo’s egg. I grabbed at the envelope and tore it open with a trembling hand. Inside was only a small card. My first thought, nonsensical though it was, was that it was Theodor’s lawyer’s card. I felt everything begin to collapse around me, and the walls of the house were suddenly made thin, insubstantial as pieces of cloth. I pulled the card out. It was not a lawyer’s card. It was much worse: an invitation to a party that was to be held in honour of Franz, to celebrate his new work, Die Verwandlung. On the back of the invitation Theodor had scrawled an affectionate note for me, thanking me for introducing him to Franz.
I stood, holding the card dumbly. It seemed that there was no escape from Franz. The only thing in my favour was that it was clear that Theodor had not met Franz. Luck must have been on my side for once and Franz’s contact with the publishing house must have only been through one of the other staff. However, the invitation presented more of an obstacle than a reassurance. The prospect of attending the party was a horrifying one. I could picture the gaze of a hundred eyes, swinging between me and the book’s cover. ‘There he is!’ people would whisper to each other. ‘Look!’ they would say. ‘It’s the real Gregor!’
But, even worse, the party presented anew the problem of my deception being uncovered. I had thought that the whole matter was behind me and I felt extremely weary at the realisation that I had been wrong. It seemed that my act of deception could not be outrun. I would have to face the consequence of Theodor discovering what I had done. I could not even imagine what he would say. My career, of course, would be finished. The party was still a few weeks away. Perhaps I could leave Prague, I thought wildly. I had family in Brünn; perhaps I could request a transfer to the post office there. But in the following days I settled into a kind of lassitude. Instead of considering the situation, I pushed it from my mind and slept, dreaming empty dreams of blackness.
I read the news of the imminent publication in the Bohemia newspaper. Early reviews also began to appear and I could not help seeking them out in the morbid way one seeks out the obituary notices. In Hyperion, Der Neue Weg and Herderblätter the reviews were enthusiastic, and the more conservative journals attributed the work to a diseased mind and lamented the decline of literature: a reaction that only increased Franz’s fame and notoriety.
The following week, copies of the book began to appear in the bookshops. They were often arranged in the window and would catch my eye when I walked past. I would stop involuntarily and gaze at them as I would have done had the book been mine. I would stand there for a long time, mesmerised by the rows of coloured oblongs arranged in neat stacks, until my gaze unfocused and the colours of the covers had run together into a bright, soft mass. Gradually, I would become aware of my own reflection in the windowpane, a stunted shadow cast over the scene, and then I would hurry on, crumpled with self-consciousness. I had told no one about my suspicions regarding the origin of Gregor. Some things are just too shaming to allow to pass through one’s lips.
I knew that by this stage most of my friends would have read the book, and the conversations and conjectures I had imagined had probably already taken place in various hotels, cafés and parlours all over the city. Since reading the manuscript I had retreated into myself; the circle of my days had narrowed to encompass only work and home. I had met none of my friends, gone to no lectures or readings or theatre productions or concerts. All the letters and postcards that came enquiring about me were left unanswered. If I chanced to pass someone I knew in the street I would duck my head and cross to the other side before they could greet me, convinced that the sight of me would conjure the image of Gregor in their minds.
Anja faded from my life along with everything else at this time. She did not call on me again and no longer sent the little cards she used to send when we had not seen each other for a while. I did not seek her out—I was too ashamed and dejected—but I alternately longed for her and wished I had never met her. I thought of her constantly and wondered whether Liška was the cause of her silence, or Franz.
The night of the party drew closer, like a storm coming in over the sea, and suddenly it was only a few days away. I tried to ignore it. I locked myself in my study, keeping up the pretence that I was working, though in reality I was only reading. As usual I had asked Elsa not to disturb me. My thoughts turned occasionally to Franz and the party, but each time they did I forced them away and back to the book I was reading. The lamplight smoothed and rounded out the corners of the room and made the walls curve around me in a dome, like a protective embrace. The fire murmured contentedly to itself and beyond the room I could hear the muted evening activity of the house. I heard a knock at the front door but I hardly gave it a thought. But then someone knocked at the study door, and I saw the door handle twitch as it was tried. I froze and held my breath. The knock came again. I considered sitting silently there and leaving the door unanswered. My recent isolation from society had made me shrink from contact with people somewhat. The knock came again and drove me up from the sofa. I straightened my clothes and hair before I opened the door. It was Anja.