The Complete Stories (forword by John Updike)

"The form of a large beetle, yes. Then I would pretend it was a matter of hibernating, and I would press my little legs to my bulging belly. And I would whisper a few words, instructions to my sad body, which stands close beside me, bent. Soon I shall have done — it bows, it goes swiftly, and it will manage everything efficiently while I rest."

He came to a domed arch at the top of the steep street, leading onto a small square all around which there were many shops, already lit up. In the middle of the square, somewhat obscured by the light around the edge, was a low monument, the seated meditative figure of a man. The people moved across the lights like narrow shutters, and since the puddles spread all the brilliance far and wide, the square seemed ceaselessly changing.

Raban pressed far on into the square, but jerkily, dodging the drifting carriages, jumping from one dry cobble to further dry cobbles, and holding the open umbrella high in his hand in order to see everything all around. Finally, by a lamppost — a place where the electric tram stopped — which was set up on a small square concrete base, he halted.

"But they're expecting me in the country. Won't they be wondering about me by this time? Still, I haven't written to her all the week she's been in the country, until this morning. So they'll end up by imagining that even my appearance is quite different. They may be thinking that I burst forward when I address a person, yet that isn't my way at all, or that I embrace people when I arrive, and that's something I don't do either. I shall make them angry if I try to pacify them. Oh, if I could only make them thoroughly angry in the attempt to pacify them."

At that moment an open carriage drove past, not quickly; behind its two lighted lamps two ladies could be seen sitting on dark leather seats. One was leaning back, her face hidden by a veil and the shadow of her hat. But the other lady was sitting bolt upright; her hat was small, it was edged with thin feathers. Everyone could see her. Her lower lip was drawn slightly into her mouth.

As soon as the carriage had passed Raban, some bar blocked the view of the near horse drawing the carriage; then some coachman — wearing a big top hat — on an unusually high box was moved across in front of the ladies — this was now much farther on — then their carriage drove around the corner of a small house that now became strikingly noticeable, and disappeared from sight.

Raban followed it with his gaze, his head lowered, resting the handle of his umbrella on his shoulder in order to see better. He had put his right thumb into his mouth and was rubbing his teeth on it. His suitcase lay beside him, one of its sides on the ground.

Carriages hastened from street to street across the square, the horses' bodies flew along horizontally as though they were being flung through the air, but the nodding of the head and the neck revealed the rhythm and effort of the movement.

Around about, on the edges of the pavements of all the three streets converging here, there were many idlers standing about, tapping the cobbles with little sticks. Among the groups they formed there were little towers in which girls were pouring out lemonade, then heavy street clocks on thin bars, then men wearing before and behind them big placards announcing entertainments in multicolored letters, then messengers. . . [Two pages missing]. . . a little social gathering. Two elegant private carriages, driving diagonally across the square into the street leading downhill, got in the way of some gentlemen from this party, but after the second carriage — even after the first they had timidly tried to do so — these gentlemen formed into a group again with the others, with whom they then stepped onto the pavement in a long cavalcade and pushed their way through the door of a café, overwhelmed by the light of the incandescent lamps hanging over the entrance.

Electric tramcars moved past, huge and very close; others, vaguely visible, stood motionless far away in the streets.

"How bent she is," Raban thought when he looked at the photograph now. "She's never really upright and perhaps her back is round. I shall have to pay much attention to this. And her mouth is so wide, and here, beyond doubt, the lower lip protrudes, yes, now I remember that too. And what a dress! Of course, I don't know anything about clothes, but these very tight-sewn sleeves are ugly, I am sure, they look like bandages. And the hat, the brim at every point turned up from the face in a different curve. But her eyes are beautiful, they're brown, if I'm not mistaken. Everyone says her eyes are beautiful."