Krakatit/Chapter 42
CHAPTER XLII
He started out of his sleep covered with a terrible sweat. Where—where was he? The ceiling undulated and swung to and fro above him; no, no, no, it was falling, descending with a screwlike motion, slowly coming down like a gigantic hydraulic press. Prokop wanted to shout, but was unable to do so, and now the ceiling was so low that he could distinguish a transparent fly which was resting on it, the grain of the material with which it was covered, every inequality on its surface. And still it continued to descend and Prokop watched it with breathless horror, unable to make any sound louder than a hiss. The light went out, and black darkness took its place; now it would crush him. Prokop already felt the touch of the ceiling on his hair and uttered a voiceless cry. Aha! now he had found the door, pulled it open and dashed outside. Even there there was the same darkness, or rather not darkness, but fog, fog so thick that he was unable to breathe and began to suffocate, hiccoughing with horror. Now I’m being strangled, he thought, and took to flight in terror, treading upon—upon—some sort of living bodies, which were still writhing. He bent down and felt beneath his hands a young breast. That—that was Annie, he thought, and passed his hand over her head; but instead of a head she had a box, a por-ce-lain box containing something slimy and spongy like a lung. He felt utterly revolted and tried to draw his hand away, but the thing adhered to it, attached itself and began to creep up his arm, It was Krakatit, a damp and resinous sepia with the gleaming eyes of the Princess, which were fixed on him agitatedly and passionately; the thing moved about his naked body looking for a place on which to sit down upon him. Prokop was unable to breathe, struggled with it, dug his fingers into this yielding, sticky matter—and woke up.
Mr. Paul was bending over him and placing a cold compress on his chest.
“Where’s—where’s Annie?” mumbled Prokop with relief and closed his eyes. Breathless and perspiring he found himself running across a ploughed field. He did not know where he was going in such a hurry but he hastened along until his heart was nearly splitting with the strain and he groaned with anxiety lest he should arrive too late. And here at last was the house; it had neither doors nor windows, only above it a clock, the hands of which marked five minutes to four. And Prokop knew in a flash that when the big hand reached twelve the whole of Prague would be hurled into the air. “Who’s stolen my Krakatit?” he roared, and tried to climb up the wall so as to stop the hand at the last minute. He sprang up and dug his nails into the plaster, but only slid down, leaving a long scratch on the wall. Screaming with horror, he flew off somewhere to get assistance. He burst into the stables, to find the Princess standing there with Carson. They were making love to one another with abrupt, mechanical gestures, like those of marionettes. When they saw him they joined hands and began to jump quicker, quicker and ever quicker.
Prokop looked up and saw the Princess bending over him with closed lips and burning eyes. “Beast!” he grunted with dull contempt and quickly closed his eyes again. His heart beat wildly and rapidly. His eyes were stung with sweat and he felt a salty taste in his mouth. His tongue was stuck to his palate and in his throat was a blind, dry thirst. “Do you want anything?” asked the Princess, very close to him. He shook his head. She thought that he was again sleeping, but after a while he said hoarsely: “Where’s that parcel?”
She thought that he was delirious and did not answer. “Where’s that parcel?” he repeated, knitting his brows authoritatively. “Here, here,” she said quickly, and thrust between his fingers a piece of paper which she happened to have in her hand. He quickly crumpled it into a ball, and threw it away.
“That’s not it. I—I want my parcel. I—I want my parcel.”
As he continued to repeat these words and began to rage, she sent for Paul. Paul remembered having seen somewhere a dirty parcel tied up with string, but where was it? They found it in a cupboard; there you are! Prokop clasped it in both hands and held it to his breast. Appeased, he fell into a deep sleep. Three hours later he again began to sweat profusely; he was so weak that he scarcely breathed. The Princess at once sent for the doctors. His temperature fell lower and lower and his pulse almost stopped. They wanted to give him a camphor injection at once, but the local doctor, who felt very shy and provincial amongst such mandarins, was of the opinion that if they did the patient would never wake up. “At any rate he would pass out in his sleep, eh?” said the famous specialist. “You are right.”
The Princess, completely exhausted, went to lie down for an hour on being told that nothing more could be done. Dr. Krafft remained with the patient, having promised her that he would let her know the position in an hour’s time. He sent no message and the agitated Princess came to see for herself. She found Krafft standing in the middle of the room waving his arms and talking at the top of his voice about telepathy, quoting Richet, James and somebody else, while Prokop was listening to him with clear eyes, now and then interposing the objections of a scientific and limited sceptic. “I’ve resurrected him, Princess,” shouted Krafft, forgetting everything, “I concentrated my mind on the fact of his recovery; I—I made passes over him with my hands, see? Radiation of ods. But that sort of thing exhausts one! I feel as weak as a fly,” he announced, and thereupon emptied a full glass of the benzine which was kept for washing bandages, evidently taking it for wine, so excited was he by his success. “Tell me,” he shouted, “have I made you well or not?”
“You have,” said Prokop with friendly irony.
Dr. Krafft collapsed into an arm-chair. “I myself did not realize that I have such a powerful aura,” he said contentedly. “Shall I pass my hands over you again?”
The Princess looked from one to another of them in consternation. Then she smiled and suddenly her eyes filled with tears. She stroked Krafft’s ruddy hair and ran out of the room.
“Women can’t stand anything,” said Krafft proudly; “you see, I’m absolutely calm. I felt a fluid oozing out of my finger-tips. It could certainly have been photographed. A sort of ultra-radiation.”
The specialists returned, sent Krafft out of the room in spite of his protests and again took Prokop’s temperature, felt his pulse and all the rest of it. His temperature was higher, his pulse ninety-six, and he had developed some sort of an appetite. After this the mandarins retired to the other wing of the castle where their services were needed, for the Princess was in a fever, and had completely collapsed after sixty hours of watching by Prokop’s bedside. In addition she was extremely anemic and ill in several other ways.
The next day Prokop was already sitting up in bed and receiving visits. Almost all the company had already left; only the fat cousin remained alone in boredom. Carson arrived rather agitated, but the meeting turned out all right. Prokop made no allusion to what had passed, and finally Carson announced that the terrible explosives that Prokop had invented during the last few days had shown themselves to be as dangerous as sawdust. In short Prokop must have already been feverish when he prepared them. The patient accepted this information quite calmly and smiled, in fact, for the first time. “Well,” he said affably, “all the same I frightened you all pretty thoroughly.”
“You did,” admitted Carson willingly. “I’ve never been so frightened about myself and the factory before.”
Krafft dragged himself into the room pale and exhausted. He had spent the night celebrating his possession of a miraculous gift by drinking large quantities of wine and now he felt utterly miserable. He lamented the fact that his power had left him for ever and announced that he had decided for the future to devote himself to yoga.
Uncle Charles also arrived, very friendly and subtly reserved. Prokop appreciated the fact that he had fallen back into the style of a month before, again addressing him in the plural. Only when the conversation turned on the Princess did the atmosphere become a little strained.
Meanwhile, in the other wing of the castle, the Princess was coughing painfully and receiving a report from Paul every half-hour as to what Prokop was eating, saying and doing.
He again became feverish and his terrible dreams returned. He saw in front of him a dark shed containing an endless row of casks of Krakatit. In front of the shed an armed soldier was marching to and fro, to and fro; nothing more, but it was terrible. It seemed to him that he was again in the war; before his eyes there stretched a vast field, covered with dead. They were all dead and he was dead too, and frozen to the ground. Only Mr. Carson trotted over the corpses, cursing between his teeth and looking impatiently at his watch. From the other side with awkward, convulsive movements there approached the crippled Hagen; he was moving with amazing rapidity, jumping like a pony. Carson greeted him carelessly and said something to him. Prokop strained his ears to catch what they were saying but could not hear a single word; perhaps the wind was carrying them away. Hagen pointed to the horizon with a preternaturally long and shrivelled hand; what were they saying? Hagen turned round, put his hand to his mouth and took out a golden set of teeth and his jaws as well; now instead of a mouth he had a great black hole which giggled voicelessly. With the other hand he extracted one enormous eye from its socket, and, holding it in his fingers, held it close down to the faces of the dead. Meanwhile the gold set of teeth in his other hand was screeching: “Seventeen thousand one hundred and twenty-one, one hundred and twenty-two, one hundred and twenty-three.” Prokop was unable to move, as he were dead. The horrible bloodshot eye touched his face and the horse’s set of teeth counted: “Seventeen thousand one hundred and twenty-nine.” Now Hagen disappeared in the distance, still counting, and across the corpses there jumped the Princess, with her skirts drawn up shamelessly high. She approached Prokop waving in her hands a Tartar bunchuk, as if it were a whip. She stood over Prokop, tickling him under the nose with it, and sticking the point of her shoe into his head, as if trying to find out whether he was dead. The blood trickled down his face, although he was really dead, so dead that he felt within him his heart frozen as hard as a bone; all the same he could not bear the sight of her well-shaped legs. “Darling, darling,” she whispered, pulled down her skirt, knelt down by his head and passed her hands lightly across his chest. Suddenly she pulled out of his pocket that carefully tied-up parcel, jumped up, and angrily tore it into pieces which she threw into the air. Then with her arms stretched out she began to whirl round and round, passing over the dead until she disappeared into the darkness of the night.