Free Severin's Journey Into the Dark by PAUL LEPPIN Page B

during these hours. He no longer felt the wicked and treacherous hatred in the things that used to offend him, and within him he had room only for the boundless revelry of his love. He had never believed that a woman was capable of what he now experienced every day. The chasms of ecstasy opened before him, and he plunged into them with unruly and misguided senses and a crippled soul.
    Mylada understood his body. With the talented and clear-sighted depravity of her experienced youth she understood his essence and subjected herself to the caprices she discovered within it. She found the refuge of his desires and traced them to the roots of his nerves. She taught him the bizarre and licentious games of love, and their tenderness enthralled him. Her kisses were inventive and the happiness they prepared him for was a sinful and desperate diversion. Often, when she clung to his neck and a lascivious cloud veiled her eyes, he lost his memory of the present. The room where they tarried seemed unfamiliar and fantastic, and the lamp in front of his bed shone with a strange light. He saw the sparks under her eyelids dance and a golden wave extinguished the thoughts in his brain.
    Within her slight and fragile body was an unforeseen vigor for love. It was a passion in her that she gave away without reserve, that clung to Severin and consumed him. Women had always been a disappointment to him. In his affairs with them there had never been the great and compelling force that, irresistible and lethal, could fascinate and control. Now for the first time lightning broke into his life, shattering and illuminating it. Sometimes a memory returned to him involuntarily, and Zdenka’s image appeared before him and pleaded with him. When he awoke during the night and looked into the darkness, it came to him and tried to save him. Once again the luster of her blond hair became entangled with his heart, and from far off her voice resounded like a bell. But the next day brought him back to Mylada and in her mouth he forgot the world.
    When afternoon came and the October shadows were scattered over the walls, he sat at home and waited. The noises from the street sounded indistinctly, changing as they ascended. The carriages driving by shook the floorboards. Sometimes the rushing and pounding remained in his head. It horrified him, and was impossible to get rid of. He covered his ears with his hands and realized that the noise came from within him. A fearsome dread bored at his intestines. Then the bell rang and Mylada entered his room and opened her coat.
    He loved everything that was hers. Every garment she wore on her fervid body became a fetish to him. He tried to awaken her breath from the mesh of the veil she had once left behind in his apartment. The scent of the gloves he stole from her comforted him in the hours when he did not possess her. When, with cruelly trifling fingers, she undressed in front of him, he threw his destiny at her feet. He could no longer escape it, and it forced him to his knees. Sobbing, tantalized by an unearthly bliss, he touched his lips to her camisole.
    He knew that by leaving Zdenka for Mylada he had finally sacrificed her forever. But it was too late to turn back, and the thought that there had ever been a time that was not filled to overflowing with a consuming love was barren and ghostly. Often, when he held her in his arms and she curled up in his lap like an unruly child, the eyes of the nun he had accompanied on her way to church during the summer looked at him from beneath her lashes. He told her about their meeting and about how he had seen her smile when, at her side, he prayed, Hail Regina, full of grace — — Mylada laughed and began to talk about her sister, who had been dead for years. She told him he had been seeing ghosts. But Severin refused to accept it, and held to his story. The young woman’s white face stood before his soul, clear and genuine, and within him the sultry fires of the unholy