And beyond, that which was not ours but which we loved dearly, the rosy bastions of the Dolomites, reaching into the clouds, the home of the Tyrolese, and Riga on the shores of Lake Garda, peaks and ravines, sacred by so much Hungarian blood. What the war could not take is peace to take from us?
Beside myself, I walked up and down in my room till morning, haunted by despair, utter, complete despair.
November 5th.
In place of the free morning of the woods, the gloom of a narrow street looked in through my window. The wall of the opposite house drove my eyes back to my books, my furniture, my pictures. Now I saw their beauty again, and I was glad that they were there with me.
The many old books in the bookcase behind my writing-table ran up the wall like the fading gold of an ancient embroidery. Above, on the red wall, in a frame surmounted by the Pope’s triple crown, in a soft haze the Madonna of Venice by Sebastiano Ricci. The portrait of Castruccio Castracani and a Dutch Old Man in a sable-bordered green mantle. The clock ticked under the Empire mirror. From the escritoire with the many little drawers, a copy of San Lorenzo the child-monk, the most beautiful piece of sculpture of the early Renaissance, looked into my room with a youthful challenge.
The fading gold of ancient frames, the stale green of old furniture. The colours toyed with each other in silence and the red curtains and walls threw a russet light over things as if a magic sunset had been caught between the window and the door.
Next to my room, in the small drawing-room, the old water-colours hung over the sofa. My ancestor, the powdered, pigtailed old gentleman, in his romantic breastplate of the Hardegger Cuirassiers, my grandfather’s handsome young head, and beautiful fair women with locks on the sides of their faces. Opposite, on the piano, between the golden Old Vienna vases, stood my mother’s portrait as a child, in all its delicacy. And on the mantelpiece the butterfly-shaped pendulum of the marble clock told me endless tales of the past.
I loved all these things so much, or rather I became conscious of my love for them because fear was now added to my affection. Shall we keep them? Will they remain our own?
In the evening I was on Red Cross duty at the railway station. The clock on St. Rocus’ chapel proclaimed it half past six. The trams, crammed full, raced down the street, with people hanging on outside like bunches of grapes. It was impossible to get into one. I had to walk, and as I came to the more remote parts of the town I remembered October 31st. The pavement was thronged with criminal-looking men, suspicious vagabonds, drunken sailors, Galician Jews in their gabardines. Whence did this rabble come? Or did it always live here among us, only we did not know it?