“Yes, very easy,” she explained. “She descends sometimes like a delicate veil before my eyes, but even the slightest disturbance, mental movement or just exertion makes her rise, to be more clearly seen, back into the air, or glide further away, getting tinier and tinier, until there is nothing left of her but a small dim blot, God knows where, in infinity. Whenever I see it I think that that blotch or speck is nowhere else but in my own eye, my left eye in fact.”
“If the speck is in your left eye, how can you see her with both eyes?” I asked.
“Really!” cried Erika, as if she had discovered something new. “How can I see her with my right eye if she is only in my left? That means it isn’t after all a black spot in my left eye, but a memory of my mother.”
“The memory of a great lost love,” I repeated my previous statement, as if it would please me, or should please Erika.
As we chatted we walked back and forth along a narrow road under the trees. To tell the truth, I was drawn by the broader roads and the more open places where the moonlight shone. But when I said that to Erika, she said, “No, please let’s not! I like this dimness now, these rustling leaves under our feet and the patches of moonlight here and there.” But as if she feared somehow grating me with her words, in the next moment she added, “All the same, if you really want to, we could…”
“I don’t want anything,” I interrupted, “I thought perhaps you…”
“No, so we’ll stay here,” she decided.
“This is the best place in the whole world,” I said as if to console myself. “The best place and the most beautiful avenue in bright moonlight. What do you think, miss, if we walked here like this until ten o’clock, till twelve, till two, till the morning when it gets light?”
“Good God!” she cried. “What would grandfather and auntie think?”
“Let alone if they found out that you’re walking with me, an Estonian boy,” I said.
“Then I’d tell them straight away that you’re a Korporant, so that…”
“Please, not that!” I declared, trying to take her by the hand, but she withdrew her hand, started laughing and said, “Don’t take me by the hand, I would get terribly embarrassed.”
“Why embarrassed?”
“My gloves are frayed, that’s why,” she explained.
“So are mine,” I laughed back.
“That doesn’t count, you’re a man.”
“What?” I cried. “If it isn’t possible for a woman to buy whole gloves in place of frayed ones, it’s shameful, but the same situation isn’t shameful for a man?”
“Not like that,” she countered, “but if a young girl doesn’t mend her frayed gloves, that is shameful, that’s very shameful, auntie’s always assuring me.”
“That means a young lass with frayed gloves is lazy and careless, but a young man with frayed gloves is a quite proper and decent gentleman,” I concluded.
“Exactly,” she affirmed, “a young lass with frayed gloves is lazy and careless, auntie is always telling me.”
“So you yourself are lazy and careless, if you come walking in the moonlight with frayed gloves on.”
“No, sir, I’m not lazy and careless, although I’m walking in the moonlight wearing frayed gloves,” she retorted.
“Why not, if auntie says that?” I asked.
“Because I had a choice of walking with you in the moonlight or doing some darning at home. So why did I lie to my grandfather, if I was going to go home anyway?”
“Then we’ll have two sins on our souls: a lie to grandfather and frayed gloves,” I laughed.
“Those are only my sins,” she said. “You may laugh, of course, but I don’t know which causes me more pain on the conscience: the fact that I lied to grandfather, or that my work is waiting undone. Late in the evening I can’t manage, because then I go to sleep.”
“Poor thing!” I pitied her. “Please give me your hand here, and you won‘t be embarrassed any more or less, I’m just looking with my own eyes at how big the sin of the gloves is, and what’s troubling your heart.”
And now, as I took her hand, she let it happen without evasion, even stopped and stood in a pool of moonlight, as if she wanted to give me the opportunity to view how much darning her knitted gloves would need. I raised her hand closer to my eyes, as if I couldn’t be certain otherwise, but when I saw the open finger-ends of the gloves, I rapidly pulled them back as sheaths and pressed my mouth on the bare fingers. She squealed, and her hand made an indefinite movement, as if she wanted to free herself, but stayed on my lips.
“Now you’ve torn my poor glove right open,” she said, like a grateful remark, as we walked on a little later.
“If it were up to me, you’d have quite different gloves, not these lousy ones,” I said.
“You’re right about that, they’re simply lousy,” she agreed with me about her gloves, “but let me fix them; then you’ll see that they’re quite decent to put on for the autumn darkness.”
Thereupon our talk ended for a little while. Erika looked at my face furtively a couple of times, as if seeking something or finding something beyond understanding. Noticing this, I was happy to carry on in silence, to see where her seeking and considering would end. And it ended with an indefinite, timid question: “Are you always like this?”
“How do you mean?” I asked.
“I don’t know how to say it,” she replied. ”Or if I do, you won’t like it.”
“Say it boldly, it doesn’t matter if I don’t like it,” I insisted.
“Well – so like a Korporant,” she said, and elaborated: “Stiffly polite.”
“So is it stiffly polite and Korporant-like to call your gloves lousy?” I asked.
She replied with a question: “But if you kiss my hand in those lousy gloves?”
“But if I say that if it were up to me, you would wear quite different gloves, is that very polite too?” was my next question.
“Isn’t that polite?” she asked in turn.
“How should I take that?” I said, evading an answer.
“Why isn’t it polite?” she pursued.
“Maybe it’s hard for you to understand this,” I said. “I myself only realised what my words meant after I’d said them. I meant one thing by my words, but they might mean something else which is not polite at all.”
“But is that polite – what you meant by your words?” she asked.
“In some situations, they might even be impudent,” I replied.
“But today?” she enquired.
“Miss, forgive me, but the wolf is howling at the moon,” I replied.
She was silent for a while and then said, as if turning aside, “I’m terribly embarrassed. I can’t really understand it at all, but I am embarrassed, maybe just because of it. But couldn’t you tell me quite clearly what your words really meant? Let me be embarrassed – it doesn’t matter, because here under the trees you can’t see my face anyway.”
“Haven’t you ever heard of when a young man gives gifts to a female stranger?” I asked.
She was silent for a while and then cried, “Phooey! So that’s what your words meant! But just think, that doesn’t embarrass me at all; I don’t think I’m even blushing.”
“Quite understandable, because it’s so very foreign to you,” I explained.
“But what did you mean when you wanted quite different gloves for me?” she asked, although I was already hoping that she would forget that question or be happy to leave it.
“Believe me, miss, it isn’t good for a person to become overly sophisticated,” I responded.
“Why isn’t it good?” she asked, quite dismayed.
“Sophistication makes a person unhappy,” I said, because I had read somewhere in a book or newspaper about why the number of suicides was increasing. It claimed that the development of civilisation is inevitably accompanied by a higher rate of suicides, because it is much easier to arouse a person’s desires than to satisfy them. Civilisation tickles the passions of millions, but satisfaction is available only to thousands, even then only partially, with a certain bitter yeasty residue even at the bottom of a tasty cup.