Page:Krakatit (1925).pdf/83

 too hard; always alone and like an outpost. I can’t even talk properly. To-day I wanted to write something beautiful  a sort of scientific prayer, so that everybody should understand it. I thought that. that I’d read it to you; and then, everything dried up in me—one becomes ashamed of getting so excited. Or at least one should be able to say something. I’m stale, so to speak. You understand? I’m already growing grey.”

“But it suits you,” said Annie softly.

This aspect of the question took Prokop by surprise.

“Well, you know,” he said, in confusion. “It isn’t pleasant. It is already time to bring one’s harvest home. What wouldn’t another do with all that I know! And I’ve got nothing, nothing, nothing from it all. I’m only ‘berühmt’ and ‘célèbre’ and ‘highly esteemed’; and nobody here  knows anything about me. I think, you know, that my theories are pretty bad; I haven’t got a head for theory. But what I have discovered isn’t without value. My exothermic explosives diagrams  and explosions of atoms  have a certain worth. And I have only published about a tenth of what I know. What wouldn’t another have done with it! I don’t even understand their theories; they are so subtle, so rich  they only confuse me. My spirit is that of the kitchen. Put some stuff under my nose and I can tell by smelling it what to do with it. But to realize what follows from that theoretically and philosophically, that I can’t do. I only know