smile. “But I don’t mean to keep you. No, don’t say a word. I enjoy talking. Truly I do.” The girl from next door stood on the staircase, with her mouth still full. I made my way home along the murky brook, the desolate landscape, furrowed with excavation, silhouetted by flares of waste gas. Several times I was tempted to dial the number of Mrs. Hermína S., to arouse hope in her for one brief instant, to provide her a moment of great anticipation and delicious, heart-pounding excitement. Out of respect for the inexorableness of destiny, I never followed through. Several times, late on one of those rainy evenings filled with hostile and unfathomable women, as I searched the felled trees for your fingerprints in vain, with everything catching me off guard and leaving me at a loss — several times now I had stepped into a phone booth, lifted the receiver, inserted a coin, and, after dialing the first two digits of the four-digit number that to my mind will forever represent the sum total of all the chasms of silence, hesitated while outside the trolleybuses and trams hurtled across the trampled plain and the watchtower lights blinked with dull regularity, until finally I was chased out in disgrace by the impatient pounding of someone with a matter that brooked no delay. 98
Ukázka elektronické knihy, UID: KOS215737