When I finally scrambled, shocked and shaken, to my feet, I saw that there was nobody there.
It happened on the ninth day of May, 1820, a Sunday. I was sitting in a park near the Schoenhaus Gate without quite knowing how I came to be there. All around me the springtime clientele of an outdoor cafe were enjoying themselves. Children played, old people chattered, loving couples communicated in a language all their own through looks or through whispers. I sat alone at my table gazing dreamily at my glass and felt as cold as ice. How happy I had been in former times to be surrounded by such joyful goings-on and how little I cared for such things now.
Not far from the half-hidden place where I was sitting a girl began to laugh, a high-pitched, hearty, long guffaw. I was back in the old Jewish graveyard in Prague, the sun was shining through the elder trees and there, behind the tomb of Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, my lovely Jemimah was making fun of me and her pretty face and body seemed to hover in mid air over a moss-covered headstone. When I looked up, of course, the mirage had vanished. I asked the waiter to tell me what day it was and repeated the date to myself in amazement when he told me.
Now, for the first time, I stood up and looked around me. The trees were all either green or covered in blossoms. The air was warm. The sky was clear. Winter had changed into spring without my noticing. To many people such things are beautiful and many poets, for instance, have told of them with rapture. That strong feeling of consternation that takes one by surprise when one wakes up in this way is a good and profitable source of inspiration for a poem. This unperceived passing of time is, in my book, however, one of the least palatable things that one has, from time to time, to reflect on in life.
The elder trees too were in flower above me, all around me. The newly opened buds were already coming into blossom, robed in white and ruddy raiment, and the blossoms were being slightly, ever so slightly, agitated by a moving of the wind amid the bright green leaves. The following day I was on my way to Prague having fought hard but fruitlessly against the voice that was calling me back there.
I travelled night and day, but as there were no steam trains then, those trains that seem to us nowadays to creep along so slowly that their speed defies description, it was only during the afternoon of the fifteenth day of May that I finally reached the town that I was so afraid of reaching and already, in the distance, a collective chiming of festive church bells heralded the turmoil in which I was shortly to find myself. The following day was the feast day of that great patron saint of Bohemia, St John Nepomuk, and whole villages were walking in procession with crosses, banners, censers and holy pictures, singing ancient hymns all in praise of the poor father confessor of Queen Joan, all on their way to the centre of Prague as I was. The old grey town itself was virtually unrecognizable. All the houses were adorned, including their gable ends, with greenery, floral tributes and carpets. Everywhere preparations were underway for candlelight processions. The streets and squares of the town were practically impassable and, like a swimmer caught by a strong undertow, one had to fight against the forward movement of the crowd in order not to lose one's direction.
After a great deal of effort I finally obtained accommodation at the 'Golden Goose' in the Horse Market, subsequently known as Wenceslas Square.
The room assigned to me in this hostinec was not notable for its spaciousness and even less so for its view. Its one and only window overlooked a long courtyard hemmed in on all sides by tall buildings and balconies. A terrible tangle of carts and waggons pressing in on one another had arisen despite which room was still being found for plush and fashionable carriages of the latest design, only just now rolling up, from whence issued a constant stream of late arrivals decked out in the most bizarre and colourful of costumes. Coachmen and stable boys were swearing like troopers in Czech and German. Women and children were screeching and howling in every key conceivable. Peasants, town folk and the military endeavoured to make it easier for the ladies to step out of the carriages, or, as sometimes happened in certain cases, more difficult.
Directly opposite my window a tailor had just put the finishing touches to a high-days-and-holidays pair of trousers, for which an anxious customer was no doubt waiting, and was now blowing on a hunting horn his own good-natured proclamation of seasonal merriment out of his own window. Just at that moment all the bells in Prague started once again to ring out in harmony and I leaned against the frame of my upstairs window in more of a daze than ever.
I was just about to close it so as not to succumb to the strong smell of sweat exuded by the crowd when my eye beheld a shape the sight of which brought me to my senses immediately.