“None in our whole clan that I’ve heard of, thank God,” replied the landlord.
“Thank God indeed!” agreed the landlady, and went on to explain, turning across the table to me, as if I required some of her practical wisdom: “Because it would do no good if several came at once; they would all grow big at the same time. So it’s better if they come one at a time, so that the line doesn’t run out. I’m planning to live to at least seventy, and only rest for the last five years – until then I’ll have to have someone to push and pull around, so they know how much I love them.”
“That’s a nice love to have!” sniggered the landlord. “So what’s your way? If you love someone, then keep away,” she replied.
“That’s more like it, yes,” he said. “Leave people in peace if you love them – why keep pushing and shoving?”
“Young man, is that your understanding of love too?” she asked me, and since a large mouthful prevented me from answering immediately, she continued, “You’re still young and inexperienced in life, so listen to what I’ve got to tell you: from my experience of men, all of them understand love incorrectly. They all say roughly the same as my husband does: if you love someone, leave them in peace. Young lady, do your men say that too?”
“Oh madam, I don’t have a single man!” replied the young lady, blushing all over and casting a glance at me, as a sign of thanks for my just having offered her a pickled cucumber.
“I don’t mean your man personally – I mean men in general in your society,” she explained.
“I’m very rarely in contact with society, or not at all,” she said evasively.
“You mean that men are the same everywhere,” the landlady concluded from this, “you’re only embarrassed to say it, young lady. They neglect their women.”
“But what if they don’t like women?” the young lady now ventured, and my gaze passed involuntarily over her shoulders, waist, arms and hips, as much of her as could be seen sitting at the table. She noticed my appreciative gaze and blushed again.
“Heavy-boned, like me,” I said to myself, feeling something passing through my heart – a little jerk or shudder, a tiny warm flash. As I realised later, this was the start of everything that followed.
“What! Don’t like them!” cried the landlady in reply. “But how can they like them when the woman doesn’t wait and doesn’t hang around? No miss, that is not how it works. You’re young and you don’t know men. Believe me and learn this lesson: if the man doesn’t show interest, then we have to do something. We have to make it clear to the man that he loves us – then he’ll start to behave as he should.”
“What are you talking about! The girl is only young!” the landlord chided his wife.
“You’re saying that I was old when I got involved with you?” she asked her husband. “No, my dear old man, I too was only young then, but without me we would never have become a couple, because you were so in awe of my parents’ house that you would never have dared take the first step, although you’d been in love with me for ages. It’s true – that’s how it was. And I was only twenty-six then…”
“The young lady isn’t twenty-six yet,” said the landlord as a counterargument.
“How old are you really, young lady?” the landlady now asked, and when she noticed her embarrassment and blushes, she went on, “What is there to be ashamed of – we’re a family! Society is another thing. Take no notice of the young man, he won’t be the one courting you, or even if he did want to woo you, you won’t be going to him. So tell me, boldly, how old are you?”
“I’ll soon be twenty-three,” she now replied.
“Already!” I thought, as I looked into her face.
“Well, you hear, old man, the young lady is already twenty-three and I was twenty-six; a couple of years make no difference. So young lady, bear in mind what I tell you: you’ve got to take the initiative yourself – men are so strange and funny these days. Men used to buy themselves wives, but now they’re dead against it if they have to pay for anything.”
“Women used to be different,” her husband chimed in.
“Men must have been different then too, that’s the main thing,” parried the lady.
“Women used to be harder-working and more obedient, then…”
“So you mean I’m not hard-working?” she asked her husband.
“Well, but are you obedient?” he countered.
“Who do you think I should be obeying?” she challenged her spouse.
“A woman should obey her husband if she wants the man so much to marry her,” he explained, slightly evading the question.
“If a man buys a wife, I suppose she obeys him,” opined the landlady.
“Nowadays she doesn’t anyway,” said the landlord.
“Oh, she’ll be obedient then,” maintained the landlady. “But if I have my own home, why should I obey my husband?”
“Can’t you do it out of great love?” I interjected in the family banter.
“Yes, you can obey your husband out of love,” the young lady added.
“But if the husband wants to put you on to a mortgage, could that be done out of love?” asked the landlady.
“Maybe you could do even that out of love,” I replied.
“Well, young man, you don’t know what love is,” said the landlady with conviction. “It’s out of love that a wife has to keep a watch on her husband and guide him, so that he won’t fall into other women’s snares, because that would make the him unhappy, as well as his wife and children too. And you know, men are like that – any slag of a woman can twist them round her little finger, no trouble at all. That’s how it is with love in this world, take note of that, young people!”
Nobody argued with her any longer and so the meal continued in silence. For some reason we were a little embarrassed. The young lady was bent over her plate, and seemed to be hurrying to finish the food her landlady had offered her. She declined to take any more, although the host was pressing her to do so. I also declined, as if I were following the young lady’s example.
“Go on and have some food!” the landlady told me, “then the young lady will dare to take some more.”
“Maybe I could, for the young lady’s sake,” I half agreed, and started to hand over my plate.
“No, no, not for my sake, I can’t eat any more, I really can’t,” she rushed to assure me, and motioned as if to leave the table.
“Then I won’t eat alone,” I said and resolutely withdrew my plate.
“These young people today are certainly stubborn,” said the landlady almost angrily.
“You’re a funny person,” said the landlord, trying to turn everything into a joke, “you talk about love all the time, and then you want the young people to eat.”
Days passed without any sign that anything romantic was burgeoning between me and Miss Erika. Various illnesses occurred in the family that kept a couple of the children for a few days in bed, and so the young lady didn’t eat with us at the table, but in the bedroom where she tended to the sick children. The landlady insisted on her eating at the table first and taking meals to the children afterwards or, better still, giving them to the children first and then coming to the table. But she definitely wanted to eat with the children, as if to keep away from the table and our company. This was very keenly felt because nursing and feeding the children were not really her duties, but she did it on her own initiative and she took on the responsibility. The landlady also felt that the girl was deliberately keeping away, and this offended her a little, because she went to great lengths to make sure no one insulted her, her family or her household.