Love in a Bottle by Antal Szerb Read Free Book Online Page B

exceptional character to die of that most helpless form of love—pity. She froze to death because the children of the city were dying of cold, in their yearning for the lost sunlight of ancient Greece. It is a perilous thing to allow yourself to face life with a bared heart, not knowing, as one should, the need to abstract oneself from the world. You see, up there in my astronomical tower I can foretell every misfortune that blows down onto the world from the fateful stars. Should I ever allow pity to overwhelm me, if only for a moment, I would be dead within the hour. But the eternal winter of the Carpathians shields my heart. The sea of life cannot reach my tower, other than as a pure and rarified vapour. I could have done nothing for your daughter while she was still alive; and now that her heart is cold… But I have never yet made a wasted journey…”
    Deep in thought, he wandered through the Palace gardens.
    During the night he called again on the Emperor, who had remained beside his daughter’s bier.
    “My lord, I cannot leave with this business unfinished,” he began. “I have decided to resort to the very greatest, and most dangerous, of all forms of magic, something a magus can work only once in his life—the art of raising the dead. I cannot reveal its many secrets and difficulties to you, but there is one problem you will have to find a way round by some means or another. You know that in this vale of woeeverything comes at a price, just as the great mystery of birth requires both pain and the shedding of blood. If I am to bring a dead person back to life there must be an exchange with someone still living. My lord, if I am to revive your daughter I shall need a volunteer for sacrifice.”
    “I am sure a great many people,” the Emperor replied, “would be prepared to give their lives for her. The heart of the entire city beat in her breast. I would willingly die myself, but unfortunately affairs of state require my continuing existence.”
    The next day heralds let it be known throughout the town that they were looking for someone to lay down his or her life for the sake of the little Princess. “The life of the body is transient, but this person’s name will live in grateful memory for ever.”
    But in all that city of stone, no one came forward. The fact that Zoë had died, and would never again be seen going to church in her long, trailing dress, did not concern them, and they probably did not even notice that their lives had become even more impoverished and oppressed than before.
    The Magus had expected no less. He knew the people. He knew that their drab lives were so limiting they were incapable of giving anything for the sake of a greater cause.
    He saw too that there was only one person, someone not caught up in petty concerns, whose life was indeed worthy of such a sacrifice, and that person was himself. It did not seem to him unreasonable or unfair that he should surrender his life for someone else, someone he did not know and whose existence had so far been a matter of perfect indifferenceto him. It was not as if he were someone who would one day be important. He too would have to die one day, and death was not something he feared. He had lived twice as long as people usually did. He already knew all there was to know, and more than was permitted to man. The world had no unredeemed promises left in store for him.
    He communicated his decision to the Emperor, who was so astonished he was quite unable to find words to thank him.
    A long-abandoned building in the Palace gardens was fitted out for the Magus. Guards were stationed all around so that no animal or human could come near. There he spent the night in acts of sorcery. The guards were convinced they could hear all sorts of voices inside. According to some of them, just before dawn the building was bathed in a strange blue light.
    As soon as he woke the next morning, the Emperor called on the Magus. He found him sitting in a vast