The Silent Prophet Read Online Free

straw, it presses like heavy wire netting and is spuriously summery. Beautiful women look past me indifferently.'
    She was a beautiful woman. A narrow nose with delicate nostrils, brown cheeks, a narrow rather over-straight mouth. Her neck, slender and probably brown, disappeared in the collar of her high-necked dress. A foot in a dove-grey shoe sat like a bird on the facing seat cushioned in red velvet. The sunlight flowed over her body, over the cream-coloured dress and filtered through the parasol which stretched like a tiny sky over its own small world. The coachman in his ash-grey livery held the reins tightly. His forearms hung parallel over his knees. The almost golden glint of the black horses had a festive jollity. Their docked tails betrayed a flirtatious strength. They rose and fell governed by the secret rules of a rhythm not to be fathomed by pedestrians.
    This encounter with a beautiful woman was like the first encounter with an enemy. Friedrich assessed his position. He weighed up his forces. He summed them up and pondered whether he dared to go into battle. He had just taken a barricade. He had, through a laughable examination, become fit for society. He could become anything: a defender of mankind, but also its oppressor; a general and a minister; a cardinal, a politician, a people's tribune. Nothing—apart from his clothes—hindered him from advancing far beyond the position the young woman might occupy; from becoming idolized by her and her kind; and from rejecting her. Naturally, rejecting her.
    What a long way for one who was poor and alone! For one without even a name or papers! Everyone else was rooted in a home. Everyone else was fixed as fast as bricks in a wall. They had the precious certainty that their own downfall would also mean the end of the others. The streets were quiet and filled with peaceful sunshine. Closed windows. Lowered blinds. Happiness and love dwelled unalloyed behind the green and yellow curtains. Sons honoured their fathers, mothers understood their children, women embraced their husbands, brothers hugged each other.
    He could not divorce himself from this quiet, prosperous, fortunate district in which he happened to be. He made detours as if, by some miracle, he might suddenly find himself in front of his house without having to traverse the noisy dirty streets which led to his lodging. The chimney-stacks of the factories emerged straight behind the roofs. The people had slept in tenements, could not keep their balance and seemed as if drunk. The haste of poverty is frightened and soundless and yet begets an indistinct uproar.
    He lodged with a tailor, in a gloomy little room. The window had tarnished panes and opened on the hall. It prevented light from entering and the neighbours from looking in. Sewing machines clattered in the landlord's bedroom. The ironing-board lay across the bed, the dressmaker's dummy was propped against the door, customers were measured in the kitchen and the wife, stuck by the stove with flushed face, scolded the four children at their play.
    'If I go to the restaurant first,' reflected Friedrich, 'the family will have eaten by the time I get back. There'll be only the washing-up left to do.'
    He entered a small restaurant. A man sat down at his table. His ears were strikingly large and withered as if made of yellow paper, his head batlike.
    'I think you must be my neighbour,' said the man. 'Don't you live across the road at Number 36?'
    'Yes.' 'I've seen you around for some weeks. Do you always eat here?'
    'Sometimes.'
    'I suppose you're a student.'
    'Not yet! I have to get enrolled first.'
    'What kind, may I ask?'
    'Don't know yet!'
    'I'm an address-writer,' said the man. 'My name is Grünhut. I was a student once too. But I had bad luck.' It was as if he really meant: You won't escape that fate either.'
    'Do you manage all right?' asked Friedrich.
    'As an address-writer! Three heller an envelope. A hundred a day, sometimes a hundred and twenty. I