Love in a Bottle

Love in a Bottle by Antal Szerb Read Free Book Online

Book: Love in a Bottle by Antal Szerb Read Free Book Online
Authors: Antal Szerb
went, stone temples and stone archways weighed down over her head, and the footsteps of people hurrying home clattered and rang in the street. Every one of them was a complete stranger, and the weary, indifferent glances falling on her seemed to come from an immense distance, dressed as she was in someone else’s clothes, covered by a headscarf and not in the least beautiful. Zoë had only ever seen these people when they lined the streets through which her carriage was passing. On those occasions there seemed a sort of glow on their faces, some lingering glimmer of an antique radiance, and she had thought that they too were children, children who had simply grown older. But now she saw that this was not true, that on their pallid brows they carried the mark of the stone city, and it was only their constant motion that made them seem alive. She tried to fill her mind with thoughts of the sea, and the huge blossoms in the vast imperial gardens, and then it struck her that in all the windows of the city there was not a single flower to be seen—nor could there possibly be. She saw that flowers never could grow in this place—the cold withered them in the root, just as it blighted her dear ones, the children—and that she herself was the last, lonely blossom, the forgotten relic of a long-dead summer.
    The road home was very long, and when she finally arrived at the Palace to find that yet more women had come to beg for a visit, she was filled with such a stupor of weariness that she sent them away without even a word of comfort. Though longing for sleep, she was so tired she could barely undress.
    Her bed was icy cold, the blanket immensely heavy. Its folds seemed to have been sculpted from solid marble. Her limbs felt no less heavy, and sleep claimed her instantly.
    The next morning another throng of grieving women were there waiting for her to awaken. She attempted to rise but, held down by the weight of the blanket, her frozen limbs refused to budge. She tried to explain that she was very tired, she would not get up that day but the day after—but the words simply circled round in her head, malevolently, in some strange foreign tongue, and she could not utter them. She folded her hands over her breast and simply waited for night to come.
    Thus she remained for several days. Everyone who saw her during that time was astonished by how much more beautiful she had become. She was now so beautiful that it no longer gave rise to feelings of pleasure but rather of fear and horror, as at some supernatural visitation.
    And they knew that she too had been struck down by the same mysterious disease that had carried off the children of the town.
    The Palace was plunged into mourning. The Emperor Constantine began to neglect his duties of state. Prayers for the young Princess were said in every church in the city. Doctors came and doctors went, but there was no known cure for this condition. With the death of each child something of Zoë’s own life had gone to the grave.
    And then—after Thessalian prophetesses had read the signs and pronounced in vain; hermits had come out of the deserts to make the sign of the cross, to no avail;long-bearded Jews had hung up strange stones to work their influence for her, without result; Arab holy men had danced ululating beneath her window, to no effect; madmen and dwarves had turned cartwheels, and made no difference; two-headed animals bred specifically to brighten faces such as hers, had all failed—for her mysterious affliction simply grew ever deeper, more silent, more death-like—someone finally thought of the White Magus.
    The White Magus had not been seen for seventy years. He lived alone, up in the north, at the top of a high mountain in the Carpathians. Since then he had renounced everything to do with the world and devoted his life to studying the eternal verities. It was said that he knew all the deepest secrets of nature and of human life. He, if anyone, would surely be able to

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