# Krakatit/Chapter 14

CHAPTER XIV
Meanwhile Doctor Thomas was sitting at breakfast grunting and puffing after working hard at a difficult delivery. From time to time he threw anxious and inquisitorial glances at Annie, who sat motionless, neither eating nor drinking, simply unable to believe that Prokop had not yet put in an appearance. Her lips were trembling and she was evidently about to cry. Then Prokop came in, with inappropriate buoyancy, pale, and incapable even of sitting down, as if he were ina hurry. He greeted her perfunctorily, giving her a casual glance as if he had never seen her before, and immediately asked with impulsive impatience: “Where’s your George?” The doctor swung round, disconcerted . . . “What?”
“Where is your son now?” repeated Prokop, and devoured him with threatening eyes.
“How should I know?” grunted the doctor. “I don’t want to hear of his existence.”
“Is he in Prague?” insisted Prokop, clenching his fists. The doctor was silent but within him something was working swiftly.
“I must see him,” said Prokop incoherently. “I must, do you hear? I must go and see him now, at once! Where is he?”
The doctor made a chewing movement with his jaws and walked towards the door.
“Where is he, where does he live?”
​“I don’t know,” shouted the doctor in a voice which was not his own, and slammed the door.
Prokop turned to Annie. She sat frozen and looked into the distance with her large eyes. “Annie,” said Prokop feverishly, “you must tell me where your George is. I—I must go and see him, do you understand? that is to say . . . it’s a question of . . . To cut it short, it’s to do with . . . I . . . Read this,” he said quickly, and stuck in front of her eyes the crumpled fragment of newspaper. But Annie saw nothing but some circles or other.
“That’s my discovery, do you see?” he explained nervously. “A certain Carson is looking for me—where’s your George?”
“We don’t know,” whispered Annie. “It’s two . . . quite two years since he wrote to us——”
“Ah!” growled Prokop and angrily crushed the paper into a ball. It was as if the girl had turned to stone, only her eyes grew larger and between her half-closed lips she breathed out something confused and painful.
Prokop would have liked to sink through the ground. “Annie,” he said at last, breaking the painful silence, “I shall come back. I . . . in a few days. . . . You see, this is a very important business. A man . . . after all must consider . . . his work. And he has, you know, certain . . . certain obligations. . . .” (God, how he had botched it!) “Consider that . . . I simply must,” he cried suddenly. “I would rather died than not go, you see?”
Annie only nodded her head slightly. Ah, if she ​had moved it more it would have sunk on the table and she would have burst out crying; but, as it was, her eyes only filled with tears.
“Annie,” cried Prokop in desperation, and took shelter near the door, “I won’t even take leave of you; look, it isn’t worth it; in a week, a month I shall be here again . . . see——” He could not help watching her; she sat perfectly still, with relaxed shoulders; he could not see her eyes; it was painful to look at her. “Annie,” he tried again, and again was unable to go on. The last moment in the doorway seemed to him to be endless; he felt that there was still something which he should say or do, but instead he forced out of himself an “Au revoir” and stole miserably away.
He left the house like a thief, on tiptoe. For a moment he hesitated outside the door behind which he had left Annie. Inside all was quiet, a fact which caused him unspeakable agony. In the porch he stopped short like a person who has forgotten something and went softly to the kitchen—thank God, Nanda was not there!—and picked up the Politika. “. . . ATIT! . . . address Carson, Poste Restante.” Thus it ran on a fragment of newspaper which the cheerful Nanda had used for covering a shelf.
Prokop left a handful of money in return for her services and made off.
Prokop, Prokop, you are not the only man who intends to return in a week!
“We're off, we’re off,” beat the wheels of the train. But its noisy, vibrating pace did not suffice ​for human impatience; human impatience desperately twisted about, drew his watch out of his pocket and nervously kicked his feet about. One, two, three, four . . . telegraph posts. Trees, fields, trees, a watchman’s house, trees, the bank of a river, a fence and fields, Eleven-seventeen. Fields of turnips, women in blue aprons, a house, a little dog which took it into its head to race the train—fields—fields—fields. Eleven-seventeen. God, how the time stood still! Better to think of something; to close one’s eyes and count up to a thousand; to recite a paternoster or repeat some chemical formula. “We’re off, we’re off!” Eleven-eighteen. God! what is one to do?
Prokop started. “KRAKATIT” stared him in the eyes, until he grew frightened. Where was it? Aha! the man opposite was reading a paper and on the back was that announcement. “KRAKATIT! Will Eng. P. give his address? Carson, Poste Restante.” I wish that Mr. Carson would leave me alone, thought Eng. P.; all the same at the next station he bought all the papers which his country produced. It was in all of them and in all of them the same. “KRAKATIT! Will Eng. P. give his address? Carson, Poste Restante.” “My godfathers!” said Eng. P. to himself, “there’s some demand for me! But what does he want me for, when Thomas has sold him the secret?”
But instead of solving this fundamental problem he looked to see if he was observed, and then, perhaps for the hundredth time, drew out the familiar package. With all possible delays, delays which gave him acute pleasure, after all sorts of reflections ​and hesitations, he pulled out of it the sealed-up money and that letter, that priceless letter, written in a mature and energetic hand. “Dear Mr. Thomas,” he again read with excitement, “I am not doing this for you, but for my sister. She has been nearly off her head since you sent her that terrible letter. She would have sold all her clothes and jewels in order to send you money; I had to use all possible force to prevent her from doing something which she would afterwards have been unable to hide from her husband. What I am sending you is my own money; I know that you will take it without making unnecessary difficulties and beg you not to thank me for it—L.” Then a hasty postscript: “For the love of God, after this leave M. in peace! She has given all that she has; she gave you more than what belonged to her; I am horrified to think of what would happen if it all were discovered. I beseech you not to abuse your terrible influence over her! It would be too base if you were to——” The rest of the phrase was struck out and there followed still another postscript: “Please convey my thanks to your friend, who is bringing you this. He was unforgettably kind to me at a time when most of all I needed human help.”
Prokop was simply overpowered by an excess of happiness. So she was not Thomas’s! And she had nobody to whom she could turn! A brave and generous girl. She got together forty thousand to save her sister from . . . evidently from some humiliation. Thirty thousand of it was from the bank; it still had a band round it as when she had drawn it—why the devil didn’t the band have on it ​the name of the bank? And the other ten thousand she scraped together nobody knows how; for it was made up of small notes, miserable, soiled five-crown notes, tousled rags from God knows whose hands, shabby money from women’s purses. God! what a frightful time she must have had before she got this handful of money together! “He was unforgettably kind to me. . . .” And that moment Prokop would have pounded Thomas to death, that low, shameless scoundrel; but at the same time he somehow forgave him . . . since he was not her lover! She did not belong to Thomas . . . that certainly signified at the least that she was a pure and beautiful angel; and it was as if some unknown wound suddenly healed in his heart.
Yes, to find her; before everything . . . before everything he must return her her money (he was not in the least ashamed of forming such a pretext) and say that . . . that, in short . . . she could depend on him. . . . “He was unforgettably kind.” Prokop clasped his hands. . . . God! what would he not do to earn such words from her——
Oh, how slowly the train was going!