“The old haughtiness is still there,” remarked the landlady with a glance of mild reproof, when she thought that the eight-year-old boy and six-year-old girl didn’t realise what the fuss was about.
“Listen, what’s it got to do with haughtiness when she’s sitting with your sick child?” remarked her husband.
“I can decide in my own house when and how my sick child is sat with,” she retorted.
That is where the conversation ended. But the landlady had evidently not forgotten it, and some sort of secret worm was eating at her heart. And when the children’s illness passed, so that the whole household could sit at the table again, she kept on offering me and more especially the young lady, more and more food to eat, and when finally the latter jokingly tried to claim that she must keep her waistline, because slimness was now the fashion, our landlady retorted, also jokingly, “Why are you so worried about your waistline? You’re better off eating your fill; then you’ll feel much more confident. We might not have a manor, or a castle, or a country mansion here, but thank God, we do have food – no shortage of that! And I like it when people are pleased with the food I make.”
The landlady added this last sentence only after a little pause, having taken note of the effect of her previous words. For me they were like a whiplash in the face, to say nothing of the young lady, who seemed to turn red to the very lights of her eyes, so that even the children noticed the sudden change in her face, and the six-year-old daughter cried out in amazement: “Mamma, mamma, look how red miss’s face has gone!”
“I’ve had a headache since this morning and now I’m suddenly hot and flustered,” said the young lady, trying to excuse her blush.
“The children have been sick – now it’s your turn,” said the landlady.
“Oh no, my lady, I’m not getting sick from them, it will be over soon,” she explained.
“But remember, young lady, that if anything more serious happens, you won’t come in, you’ll infect the children, God forbid!” intoned the landlady.
“Don’t worry about that, my lady,” the girl assured her. “I’ll keep my promise – if I really get sick, then…“
“Very good, very good,” the landlady interrupted her.
“But now we can get up from the table, everyone’s eaten and the children can start working.”
So we got up, and the young lady disappeared into another room with the children. Now the landlord said, turning to his wife, “Why do you treat her like that? She’s very nice.”
“How do you mean ‘like that’?” she asked, as if she didn’t understand.
“Well, all that about food, manors and country houses,” he explained.
“I can talk about what I like in my own house,” she said.
“But when it hurts others… You could see how the girl blushed, even the children did…”
“The children might be the only point you’re right about,” she opined, “but anyway – why should I be so delicate about it? Let them think a little about what service means.”
“Have no fear about that, my dear woman, they think about that right enough.”
“Well, I want to think that they think a great deal about it too,” she now explained and, turning to me, she asked, “Mr Korporant, do you also think that I shouldn’t have said it?”
“My lady,” I replied, repeating the term used by the young lady, “I don’t know whether you should have said it or not, but I wouldn’t have said it myself.”
“Well, thank God, at least you’re fair!” cried the landlady triumphantly. “Of course you wouldn’t have said it, and if I had been you, I wouldn’t have said it either. You’re right there. You’re a man, and you’re young as well, and a member of a Corporation to boot. If I were in your place, I might even get to love the young lady; at least I would try and see if she would start to love me.”
“Yes, yes,” grinned the landlord, “you go on about love, and then you talk to her like that!”
“Leave love out of it – you don’t know anything about it!” she told her husband.
“Of course I don’t,” he agreed, “but you do. You think that the girl can be loved for her fair hair and blue eyes, and you can’t forgive her for that.”
“You think I’m jealous of the girl, do you?” she asked.
“Jealous of her pure heart,” the landlord laughed, but you couldn’t tell if he was joking or serious.
“What use are blond locks and blue eyes when your face is full of pimples like the young lady’s?” said the landlady with mock pity, and this touched a raw nerve with me, because I too had felt some pity for the young lady when I first saw her pimply, flushed face.
“Love comes, pimples go, love goes, pimples come,” said the landlord, half-joking, half-serious as before.
“What are you so pleased about today?” the landlady asked her husband, but he didn’t answer immediately. First he gave a hearty chuckle and only then did he explain: “It’s not that I’m pleased, but the way you get so worked up about that girl is something I find ridiculous. Shouldn’t we be recommending some face cream for those pimples of hers? Mr Corporation Member, you might take on that job!”
“This is becoming a criminal case, I’d better go!” I joked, and I left the householders there and went up to my room. I couldn’t rid myself of the feeling that it really had become a criminal case. I kept on thinking that I had once compared the young lady’s bone structure to my own and then felt a little tug at my heart. I kept seeing her blond head, which really did have some natural curls, and her blue eyes and pimply face. I couldn’t help it and could get no peace at all. Finally I went out and mooched around the town for hours, hither and yon, as I used to do as a student, when I didn’t want to be at home and had had enough of sitting in cafés. Whether I did it consciously or not I still can’t say, but I came back at just the moment when the young lady was supposed to leave the household. We came across each other on the stairs, I doffed my cap, she wished me good evening, but we both – at once – stopped on the same step, as if we had something to say to each other, yet we remained silent and the next moment continued on our ways, I upward, she downward. But after a couple of steps I stopped again and called out quietly, as if in secret, “Miss!”
“Yes,” she replied, turning around, looking up at me readily, as if she had expected my call.
“Could I come and keep you company?” I asked.
She started to laugh in a strange way, lowered her eyes and spoke hesitantly, as if doubting something: “I don’t know…”
But I was already coming down the stairs, saying, “Let me come, miss, I so much want to. Of course, if you have special reasons why I shouldn’t come, then…”
“No, why should I?” she cried, as if embarrassed. “No, no, please, if you…”
She didn’t finish – we both stepped on to the street.
“I wanted to beg your pardon for something, ma’am,” I said, although why I called her “ma’am” I don’t know. Her eyes turned to me with a shocked expression, as if she were seeking a sign of mockery or a grin on my face.
“Beg my pardon?” she wondered. “I don’t recall you doing…”
“Not me, but the landlady today at the lunch table,” I interjected.
She blushed on hearing those words in the same way as she had before, and it was embarrassing for me to recall this to her mind at all, the more so as it didn’t concern me in the least. I don’t know what devil it was that drove me to say something like that. But there was nothing to do about it now, I had to continue, and so I explained: “I just wanted to tell you that I don’t condone such treatment, I condemn it, and as a gentleman I should have stepped in to defend you at the table, but I couldn’t, I didn’t know how to.”