The Dukays [antikvár]

chapter OneT1HE bells of the stubby, hexagonal medieval steeple were ringing eight o'clock of the evening in the village ca led Wil-lensdorf. The summer evening was bright. The ringing of the chimes mingled with the hum of an unseen waterfall. Seated on the railway station's single bench a young footman in hunting livery, one Tobias, dozed while waiting for the incoming train. Half asleep, he felt that the chimes were stripes of burnished gold drawn across the murmur of the waterfall. Below the village the Inn River hurried along its cliff-bound channel, swinging its blue-green train like an agitated dowager who is swollen with anger and bursting to pour out all the things that have long been ready on her tongue. The scandal exploded at the watermill, white waves foaming indignantly. The mill protested, beating its paddles and querulously trying to explain an aspect of the great quarrel, but the Inn would not listen as she argued ahead, pulling at the hair of the bushes alongside and occasionally ducking them completely under in her rage.The scream of a train whistle split the summer evening, as if someone had driven a dagger into the stomach of the Allenberg. At the foot of the mountain the train, like an escaping assassin, dodged sharply into the valley. It was the end of July, 1919.Only one passenger descended at the station, an elderly woman who, after casting importunate glances at her fellow travelers to beg assurance that the stop was really Willensdorf, painstakingly lowered her large, knotty feet in their shapeless, high-laced shoes from the coach oblivious to the conductor's call of "Schnell, schnell, bitt'schon" because she understood not a word of German. At the moment when she and her baggage were finally disembarked and she stood a little dizzily on dry land, that very land itself began to retreat, moving her backward at a gradually increasing tempo. As the train vanished from her side, the ground beneath her feet sud-3'ii,