There, finally, was the university building. Egert stopped to catch his breath. By the entrance to this sanctuary of learning, frozen in majestic poses, were an iron snake and a wooden monkey. Egert marveled at the sight; he did not know that these images symbolized wisdom and the pursuit of knowledge.
He simply had to ascend the steps and take hold of the brightly finished copper door handle, but Egert stood, unable to take even a step. The building oppressed him with its grandeur: there, beyond the door, secrets were hidden; there, the “archmage” awaited Egert, and who knew what the forthcoming meeting might have in store for this miserable vagabond. The gossip that all students were castrated for the glory of knowledge suddenly came to mind; it seemed to the dazed Egert that the iron snake was looking at him keenly and wickedly, and that the monkey was grinning obscenely.
Covered in clammy sweat, Egert was still standing in the same place when a new, even more disquieting feeling compelled him to shiver and raise his head.
A pale, dark-haired woman was steadily and intently staring down at Egert from a high, wide window.
“What is this?”
The fat-cheeked student turned even more pale: “This … I brought it for you. That’s what you … requested.”
“I requested the books, my friend.”
It was dark in the room, and only one bright spot—a ray of sunlight from the sole narrow window—was on the table. A heap of paper wrapped by a ribbon lay on the table under the sun’s ray, and dust specks were flying above the yellow pages.
“Mr. Fagirra,” mumbled the student, “there was no way to carry the books out. Even the smallest … magic book cannot be taken out.”
“Brother Fagirra.”
“What? But … Excuse me, Brother Fagirra, I … honestly, I have done everything. The dean is suspicious, Mr.… Brother Fagirra. I brought … here is what I managed to get. Here are the notes.”
“Well.”
“One of the students made notes … made notes of what was in the books in the library that you wanted me to get.”
“This is not enough, my friend.”
“This all that I could get, Brother Fagirra.”
“I fear that the End of Time will bring much sorrow to you.”
The cheeks of the young fellow, recently so round, became sunken: “No. Please. Just give me another chance!”
The man with the tattoo on his wrist only raised the corners of his lips: “It is good. From this day, you will report to me about everything that happens at the university.”
Egert dashed through the crowd, deaf to the curses of the upset hawkers, insensible to the fingers snatching at his tattered shirt or the irritated pokes he received while running past. He ran away from the square, from the university with its wide window where the face of Toria remained, still white as a ghost: Toria, the fiancée of the student he had killed. Flee! This was an evil, unlucky portent; he should never have come to this city. He had to get to the gates as quickly as possible; he had to escape from the net of these narrow, winding, overcrowded streets.
But the world of this enormous city, indifferent, satisfied, and lazily festive, had already possessed Egert as if he were its own rightful victim. It seemed to Egert that the city was gradually digesting him like a massive stomach, desiring to dissolve, destroy, and absorb him into itself.
“You, tramp, step aside!”
Huge wheels roared along the cobbled pavement; an arrogant face in the velvet semidarkness of a carriage sailed over Egert’s head, and lowering his eyes, he saw an opalescent beetle flattened into a disk in the furrow left by the wheels.
“You, vagrant, get out of the road! Out of the road!”
Housewives joyfully called out to one another from windows, and from time to time a cascade of slops descended onto the pavement: then the exchanges turned into bickering.
The merchants were slaving away.
“Here, I’ve got combs, bone combs, turtle shell combs! And look at this miraculous potion: Smear it on your head and your hair will grow; dab it on your armpits and the hair will fall out!”
“Barbers! Jars, leeches, bloodletting! Razors! We’ll shave you!”
A mob of street urchins were taunting a modest young lad who was dressed as neat as a pin. Beggars were huddled along walls covered with bas-relief sculptures; the wind played with the tattered ends of their rags, and their motionless, outstretched palms seemed like the dark leaves of an outlandish shrub. Penetrating calls of “Alms, alms…” hovered over the street, although the parched lips of the beggars hardly moved at all; only their eyes, dreary and yet at the same time covetous, caught the glances of the passersby: “Alms, alms…”
Away, away, off to the gate! Egert swerved onto a street that seemed familiar to him, but it betrayed him; it deposited him at a stone-dressed canal that ran straight away to either side. An odor of fungus and mold rose up from the green water. A wide bridge bulged over the canal. Egert had no memory of this place; he had never been here; he had definitely gone astray.
He decided to ask the way to the city gates. The first person to whom he dared to turn was a dignified, amiable housewife in a starched cap; with delight and in detail, she described the route to the city gates to him. Following her instructions, he passed through two or three alleyways, diligently walked through a populated intersection, turned where he had been ordered and suddenly came out near the very same humpbacked bridge that ran over the very same canal. Water striders were gliding along the surface of the stale water.
Remembering the misleading words of the woman in the starched cap, Egert again gathered his courage and asked a lean, poorly dressed young maidservant for help. She blushed, and by the furtive pleasure in her modestly lowered little eyes, Egert suddenly realized that for this pitiful creature he was not at all a filthy beggar, but a presentable young man, even a handsome man, potentially a lover. For some reason this realization brought Egert not pleasure, but pain; the girl, in the interim, had seriously and painstakingly explained to him how to get to the gates, and her explanation was completely contrary to the instructions of the housewife in the cap.
Hurriedly thanking the somewhat disappointed serving girl, Egert once again set out on his way. Looking around intently, he walked past a chandler and a pub, past an apothecary with live leeches in jars and bottled tonics, and past a button manufacturer with a shop window that dazzled the eye: hundreds of silver, mother-of-pearl, and bone circles ogled him from the display. He walked through a gloomy alleyway, sided by the looming, blank walls of houses. It turned out to be the territory of a procuress: in the semidarkness, first one then another sweet-eyed face approached Egert and, unerringly identifying him as a bum and not a prospective client, indifferently turned away.
The alleyway led Egert onto a circus; in its center was a statue on a low pedestal. The head of the statue was covered by a stone hood. Recalling the people in gray, who had terrified him in the main square, Egert hesitated to walk closer to the statue and read the inscription carved in the stone:
The Sacred Spirit Lash
He had heard about the Sacred Spirit when he was a child, but he had imagined him to be more majestic than this. Regardless, he did not have any time for reflection at the moment. Drawing a deep breath, he once again asked for directions, this time from a young, mild-mannered lemonade vendor. According to the lad, the city gates were but a stone’s throw away. Inspired, Egert walked on along a wide but not very busy street. He passed by the house of a bonesetter, which had a pair of crutches of considerable size pegged to the door; past the house of a horse doctor, which had a sign decorated with three horsetails; and past a bakery. Finally, bewildered, he walked out at the very same arched bridge over the musty canal.