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Felix Austria
tonight she goes to a lecture
on contemporary military
technology.”
What have I done to him that
he dislikes me so much?
Adela was barely able to
convince him to take me to
a performance by the world-
famous illusionist Chevalier
Ernest Thorn. She knows that
since my early days I have
been interested in the nature
of various miracles, in magic
and sorcery. Especially in our
time,whentheworld isalmost
completely discovered, these
remaining dark spots within
it fascinate me, beckon me
to penetrate them to the
ultimate essence, to find the
answer.
Our era is fast and radiant.
Margosches and Lieberman,
the factory owners, race
down the Tysmenytsia road
in their automobiles at the
speed of ten miles per hour.
We have not had the time
to enjoy the wondrous gas
streetlamps, and now our
train station is already lit
with electric lights (so what
that they go out often,
delighting the pickpockets).
We have not had the chance
to visit the Kaiserpanorama
where, like in a fable, three-
dimensional images from
faraway lands appear in
front of your eyes—and now
those images have come
to life and started moving
in the electric theater Mr.
Oeser has brought to town.
We can no longer imagine
either the city or ourselves
without the elephant cries of
locomotives, without dense
pieces of soot from their
trunks, without the smells
of burning railway coal. And
now we only laugh when
someone’s granny recalls the
days when the first local train
went by the Kolomyia city