Page:Krakatit (1925).pdf/70

 the above-mentioned shaggy and excited Honzik, who followed Prokop about, chased fleas and chickens and, best of all, liked to sit on the doctor’s coach-box. Fritz was an old horse, a little grey, a friend of the rabbits, good-natured and reliable. It was the height of pleasantness to smooth his warm and sensitive nostrils. Then a dark-haired boy who helped in the yard, in love with Annie, who, together with Nanda, made fun of him mercilessly. The foreman, an old fox, who played chess with the doctor, who became excited, grew angry and always lost the game. And other local characters, among whom an extraordinarily tedious surveyor with political interests who bored Prokop on the strength of being also a professional man.

Prokop read a lot, or at least pretended to. His scarred, heavy face did not reveal much, especially nothing of his desperate secret struggle with his disturbed memory. The last few years of study had particularly suffered; the most simple formule and processes were lost and Prokop jotted down in the margin of his book fragments of formule which came into his head when he was least thinking of them. Then he would leave the book and go to play billiards with Annie, since this was a game during which one had no need to talk. Annie was impressed by his leathery and impenetrable seriousness. He played with concentration, aimed with his eyebrows severely drawn together, and when the ball, as if on purpose, went in the wrong direction he opened his mouth in astonishment and indicated the proper destination with a movement of his tongue.