Sanatorium under the sign of the hourglass - Bruno Schulz [33]
Passing anxiously from group to group, I looked in the crowd for Maximilian. At last I found him, not in the splendid uniform of admiral of the Levant Squadron, in which he sailed from Toulon on the way to Mexico in the flagship Le Cid, nor in the green tail coat of a cavalry general he wore in his last days. He was in an ordinary suit of clothes, a frock coat with long, folding skirts and light-colored trousers, his chin resting on a high collar with a cravat. Rudolph and I stopped reverently in the group of people forming a semicircle in front of him. Suddenly, I froze. A few steps from us, in the first row of the onlookers, stood Bianca in a white dress, accompanied by her governess. She stood there and looked. Her small face had become paler in the last few days, and her eyes, darkly circled and full of shadow, wore an expression of profound sadness.
She was standing immobile, with folded hands hidden in the pleats of her dress, looking from under her serious eyebrows with mournful eyes. My heart bled at the sight of her. Unconsciously I followed the direction of her gaze, and this is what I saw: Maximilian's features moved, as if awakened, the corner of his mouth curled up in a smile, his eyes shone and began to roll in their orbits, his breast covered with decorations heaved with a sigh. It was not a miracle, but a simple mechanical trick. Suitably wound up, the Archduke held court in accordance with the principles of his mechanism, graciously and ceremoniously as he had done when alive. He was now scanning the spectators, his eyes looking attentively at everybody in turn.
His eyes rested on Bianca's for a moment. He winced, hesitated, swallowed hard, as if he wanted to say something; but a moment later, obedient to his mechanism, he continued to run his eyes over other faces with the same inviting and radiant smile. Had he become aware of Bianca's presence, had it reached his heart? Who could tell? He was not even fully himself, merely a distant double of his former being, much reduced and in a state of deep prostration. On the basis of mere fact, one must admit that in a way he was his own closest relative, perhaps he was even as much himself as possible under the circumstances, so many years after his death. In that waxen resurrection it must have been very difficult to become one's real self. Something quite new and frightening must have sneaked into his being; something foreign must have detached itself from the madness of the ingenious maniac who conceived him in his megalomania—and this now seemed to be filling Bianca with awe and horror. Even a very sick person changes and becomes detached from his own self, let alone someone so clumsily resuscitated. For how did he behave now toward his own flesh and blood? With an assumed gaiety and bravado he continued to play his clowning imperial comedy, magnificent and smiling. Had he much to conceal, or was he perhaps afraid of the attendants who were watching him while he was on exhibition in that hospital of wax figures where he and the others stayed under hospital regulations? Distilled laboriously from somebody's madness; clean, cured, and saved at last—didn't he have to tremble at the possibility of being returned to chaos and turmoil?
When I turned to Bianca again, I saw that she had covered her face with a handkerchief. The governess put an arm around her, gazing inanely at her with her enamel blue eyes. I could not look any longer at Bianca's suffering and felt like sobbing. I pulled Rudolph's sleeve and we walked toward the exit.
Behind our backs, that made-up ancestor,