Kafka in Love by Jacqueline Raoul-Duval Read Free Book Online Page B

takes a seat beside him at lunch. She wears a garnet-colored velvet dress, set off by a white lace collar, and has the fragility, thetroubling innocence, of a child. When Franz, suddenly voluble, asks her questions, her round cheeks and neck turn red. He is fascinated by the perfection and whiteness of her teeth, the softness of her skin, he longs to untie the ribbon and touch the hair that falls to her shoulders.
    She is a foreigner, Swiss-born, living in Genoa. Very thin and graceful, immature, Gerti Wasner is so lovely, her every feature so delicate: her wrists, her ankles, the oval of her face, the shadow of her long eyelashes. She is so unlike sturdy, homely Felice, so young, so divinely young, that Franz never leaves her side. They row together on the lake, Franz at the oars. He is dazzled by Gerti, her deep voice, green eyes, perpetually bright gaze. They walk along the shore. At naptime they lower themselves into adjoining deck chairs. He tells her about Felice and their breakup, about his humdrum existence in Prague. One day he reads to her. He knows by experience how susceptible young women are to his voice, to the eyes he raises to check that they are falling into his net, and remaining prisoners there. He has chosen to read
The Queen of Spades
to her.
    “Who is this Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin?” the girl asks when he closes the book.
    She knows nothing about the writer and wants to learn everything. Franz also likes to know every aspect of thelives of famous men. He tells Gerti about the poet’s origins, about Gannibal, his Ethiopian great-grandfather, a black man in white Russia who was also Tsar Peter’s godson.
    He recites some of his favorite lines from Pushkin’s poetry, from
The Stone Guest
, from “The Bronze Horseman.” There are so many, and each is in a different style. He describes Pushkin’s brilliant life, his literary triumphs, his political exiles, and his death, that tragic duel.
    “Why? With whom?”
    “Pushkin had an exceedingly beautiful wife, Natalya Goncharova. A splendid name, don’t you agree?”
    He repeats it, savoring each syllable.
    “D’Anthès, a French aristocrat, made love to her too openly, and Pushkin’s jealous heart took exception to it. There was a duel. D’Anthès pierced his lung. He lay for forty-six hours on his deathbed while the people of Saint Petersburg prayed for him under his window. He died in horrible agony, his last words being: ‘My life is over. It hurts to breathe.’ He was thirty-eight years old.”
    Gerti is moved. So is Franz. Young girls have always had a strange power over him. They affect him because it is their fate to become women and lose their beauty, their innocent grace. He cannot help admiring a young girl who deserves it and loving her until his admiration runs out.
    He wants to know everything about Gerti: about her, her family, Switzerland, Genoa. He is attentive to her slightest wishes, and so thoughtful that the young girl discovers and explores the limits of her power. They revel in the desire that each provokes in the other.
    Since meeting her, Franz is no longer the same man. He jokes, invents stories, does imitations of the other guests, mimics the quavering voice of the retired general. Gerti laughs, her head tipped back. For the first time, he writes, he understands a Christian girl and lives almost entirely within the sphere of her influence.
    The sphere of her influence? Is he referring to the games Gerti suggests, in which he good-naturedly takes part, however childish they might seem? At night, when each has retired, Gerti, who lives in the room above Franz, lets down a long ribbon, which Franz grasps. They both lean far out of their windows to catch a glimpse of each other. Some nights, Franz knocks on the ceiling and waits for Gerti’s answering knock. Lying motionless on his bed, his ears cocked, he hears her walk overhead, hum, cough. He follows her every movement until she falls asleep.
    They have only ten