The books maintained their silence. Let us hope it is not too late to create this bond of friendship, Levadski wanted to say, but he only thought it to himself in silence.
II
LEVADSKI DECIDED TO PUT ON HIS SUNDAY BEST, TO TIE his favorite bow tie with the ornate red-billed choughs on it, and to make his way into the center of town. What had to be done was clear: buy a walking stick, visit a decent pastry shop and eat cake until a stabbing pain hit him in the jaw, until he felt alive, and that his life was not such a bad one either.
While he was getting dressed he made a host of other decisions: He would touch the waitress, if she were pretty, as if by accident. If a waiter served him, he would trip him up. He would never again call his family doctor, and if he should get in touch with him, Levadski would hang up with a spine-chilling howl. To hell with radiation therapy and all those other highly poisonous drugs. Instead, he would treat himself to a piece of chocolate cake every day in honor of his mother, a widow who, between the wars, had been in the habit of ordering chocolate cake for Levadski in Vienna’s finest hotel.
“Yes,” Levadski said to the mirror, spit into his hand and smoothed down the only thin and fairly long strand of hair he still possessed in the direction of the nape of his neck. How had he been able to get through life without a walking stick?! No wonder he had a limp; this would never have happened if he’d had a walking stick. On the way to the bus stop Levadski stopped several times to blow his nose. He decided that right up until the day he died, he would not use checkered handkerchiefs any more, only white ones he would buy in the center of town together with the walking stick, a hat and new shirts made from one hundred percent cotton. Anything but shirts with mother-of-pearl buttons were out of the question, thought Levadski, dropping himself into a seat on the bus meant for pregnant women and disabled people. A heavily pregnant woman sat down beside him. “I have had enough, you understand!” he said to the expectant mother, immediately turning away again; the woman was incredibly ugly. The bus stopped. Levadski got off, but he wasn’t where he wanted to be. Poppycock! He was annoyed. Now I have to struggle across Friendship Square and along the entire Cosmonauts Streeet. I should have stayed on the bus for another two stops. Oh well, fresh air and God’s blessing … merrily we roll along.
Beneath a chestnut tree a blind man stood plucking his guitar. Levadski resolutely made a beeline for him, pointing a finger in the air. “Watch out for the chestnuts, you don’t want to get …” The blind man lowered his guitar and snarled. Levadski had stepped on his hat.
“Shove off!” the blind man hissed in a Mediterranean accent, “or I’ll give you hell!” Levadski shrugged his shoulders and left. After a few steps he stopped and put a hand to his chest: his dentures weren’t there.
They can only be at home, Levadski thought, suddenly feeling dog-tired. He headed in the direction of a bench, where three women with headscarves were sitting. One of them was knitting, the second was feeding a hobbling pigeon, the third was reading. Levadski intimated a bow and, coughing, took a seat beside the woman who was reading. “Hurray,” said Levadski, wiped the sweat from his brow and peered into the book the old woman next to him was reading. “All the more remarkable is the constant temperature of just below 95 degrees in the brood nest of the bees. We can observe that in cold weather conditions the worker bees gather close together on the brood comb, covering the brood cells with their bodies, like little feather beds, thereby ensuring the minimum amount of heat loss possible; when it is very hot we see them sitting on the comb, fanning their wings …”
Levadski was moved. He would have liked to shake the hand of the old lady with the bee book, as if she were an accomplice. With the left side of his body Levadski sensed that the woman was smiling. He felt her smile like a small blazing glow. He closed his eyes. His old friend the robin redbreast with the tick close to its eye sprang to his mind.
“Are you smiling because I just said hurray?” he asked, opening his eyes.
“Yes,” said the lady and burst into an ominous fit of coughing. “Excuse me,” she choked, “a crumb.” The pigeon with the leg injury took a couple of steps backwards and stared at the coughing woman with distrust.
“Friendship Square used to be a treasure of the town,” Levadski said. “It was at its most beautiful in winter. We youngsters would come here with buckets of water, lay down a patch of ice in front of the Monument to the General and skate to our heart’s content.” The coughing woman closed her book and kept on clearing her throat. Levadski took the opportunity to squint over at the title of the book. Intelligible Science: On the Life of Bees. The lady knitting and the lady who had befriended the pigeon made a point of looking away. Levadski sighed. How many girls had he kissed under the supervision of the General. On the neck like a bloodsucker. Yes, Friendship Square had been something special once; every blind man would have been pleased to be warned by caring fellow citizens of the falling chestnuts. And now? Ingratitude wherever you looked!
“You know,” he said to his bench companion, “I used to think that people who said ‘Everything used to be different’ were dreadful. Now such people are brothers and sisters to me!”
A couple, closely entwined, wandered past the bench, looking like an animal on four hind legs. The open shoe-laces of their shoes whipped to the left and right, throwing up dust. “You wouldn’t have seen a thing like that in my day,” Levadski said in a purposely loud voice. The couple stopped, kissed and moved on. “Disgusting!” Levadski grumbled and licked his lips. The missing dentures were giving him a hard time. Slowly his muscles were starting to ache from talking. He was not used to talking so much. Five or six words directed at himself were usually the daily norm. The General was enthroned on his mighty horse. A magpie relieved itself on the man’s uncovered head, its wings and tail feathers iridescent. “Chacker chacker,” the magpie called and cumbersomely flew onto the tip of a fir tree close by. “A pretty animal,” said Levadski, then turned to his neighbor and saw that she was gone. The woman with the knitting and the pigeon-lady had turned into two smoking students.
Levadski got up and continued on his way. What I desperately need is a stick with a silver handle, he thought while crossing Friendship Square, a silver handle where the evening sun can play. My God, all the things I have missed in my life! His mood improved with every cobble-stone he left behind him. Now and again he stopped and wiped the sweat from his face. He leaned against traffic light poles while waiting for them to turn green. He avoided the underpass. He skirted around the gypsies and the newspaper vendors. Everybody else made way for him, Luka Levadski, Professor Emeritus of Zoology. Neither respectfully, nor filled with repulsion, but mechanically, like water separating from oil. Cosmonauts Street yawned at him with its two rows of sycamore trees that led to the heart of the city; to the shops with the indispensable items: the silver walking stick, the shirts, the snow-white handkerchiefs and a fashionable bowler hat. If I don’t watch out I will turn into a dandy, Levadski thought, gleefully balling his wrinkled hands into fists in his trouser pockets. He felt a tear welling up inside of him, round and large like a diving bell. Covered in sweat, Levadski got into a taxi. “To the end of the street, please,” he said to the raised eyebrows of the taxi driver in the rear mirror, and leaned back with a wheezing sigh.