“Sophistication makes a person unhappy,” repeated Erika thoughtfully. “But why then does everybody talk about it, why does everybody want it?”
“I don’t know,” I replied.
“Well, that’s not right,” she resolved. “You’re only saying it to get out of answering the question. Everybody matures and I want to be more mature: if others become unhappy, why then must I alone be happy – or happier?”
“That’s right,” I agreed, thinking of how to revolve my own perplexity, “because it’s best that everyone is equally happy or unhappy.”
“Sir, I’m waiting,” she said jokingly, but there was anxiety in her voice, as if she guessed what I meant.
“Spare me today – I’ll tell you some other time,” I begged her.
“No, tell me today, otherwise I won’t sleep tonight.”
“There’s nothing to say,” I said. “When does a man worry for a woman’s sake? When he’s marrying her. That’s all I meant.”
I waited for her to say something, but she was silent, only raising her left hand to her breast, as if she had to keep something there, as she leaned forward a little into a curve. Faded leaves rustled under our feet, and through the leafless crowns of the trees the full moon cast shimmering silver beams here and there on our path.
“Forgive me, miss, for thinking like that,” I said at length. “Don’t believe that it’s like that; I can’t help it. It might hurt you, but…”
“You’re wrong,” she interjected, “it doesn’t hurt me at all, but I assumed everything, not that. And how you said it, too! My heart was ready to explode!”
“If you knew how happy I am!” I cried.
“That my heart was ready to explode – is that why?”
“Oh no!” I replied. “And yet, that too! Just to hear that your heart would explode for my sake.”
“For the sake of your words,” she corrected me.
“It doesn’t matter – me or my words. From the beginning I have never, looking at you, thought anything else than about when I would ask you if you’d become my wife. Of course today I wouldn’t have done it either, I simply didn’t have the heart for it. But from day to day I was more and more afraid that some obstacle would come, so that I wouldn’t get to say those words to you. That’s why I’m so glad that it turned out like this today. Now, whatever happens, at least you know what I think of you. But I’m not demanding an answer from you – not today. It’s enough for me to be able to talk to you like this. If it had depended on me, then I wouldn’t have done anything else this evening than repeated to you how I love you, adore you, venerate you. Don’t ask why, for I know as little as you do. And if I at first called your gloves lousy, it was only because I wanted, but didn’t dare, to say to you, how much I desire to cover and enfold you in everything that is beautiful, precious, sweet and fine in the world. For the first time in my life I feel that I’ve discovered a totally new world, which is bigger, wider, grander and more beautiful than everything I’ve seen before, and all because this new world was created by you, that this new world is you. For ages I haven’t known what is faith, but thanks to you I could have faith and even start believing in my blessed soul…”
“Please, no more!” she said, touching my arm, and that was the first touch from her side.
“Forgive me,” I replied, “of course it was terrible of me to…”
“No, it’s too beautiful,” she said. “I can’t take it, it’s too sudden.”
“And of course, too sudden, you can’t do that, I understand,” I agreed, but continued straight away, “but my dear miss, do understand me: I was terrified, I am terrified even now, that I can’t say fast enough everything that I have to say and I must say.”
“I’m terrified too, when you talk like that,” she said. “What eyes will grandfather make when he hears it! And auntie too, God forbid! This should be kept as far as possible from her.”
“Right, you have a grandfather and an aunt!” I cried in real amazement, because in speaking of my own terror, those two had not occurred to me at all.
“Not only a grandfather and an aunt, but a whole set of relations and friends,” she explained.
“Quite right: whole set of relations and friends,” I repeated, and suddenly I was convinced that it was this that caused my secret unexplained terror, that everything could break up before it had even begun.
Now followed a number of days of which I don’t really have anything to say, because the same thing was repeated: we met at the lunch table and afterwards on a walk together, or only accompanying her home when Erika had no opportunity for a walk. She could tell some lie to her grandfather to keep away from home longer, but the circumstances, the conditions did not allow anything to be changed with a lie. And for the first time she felt, and perhaps I did too, that there was something inevitable about life, something fateful, that nothing could oppose. You struggle like a fly in a spider’s web, which might stretch a little this way and that, but which finally means that you can’t get anywhere.
Today, thinking back with a peaceful mind to what then happened, I’m amazed at how little it takes to feel happy, so happy that the glow of that happiness colours the rest of your life, no matter how monotonous, quotidian, dull and senseless it may be. We two in our happiness did not have anything other than a few shared lunchtimes, where we had to strain to conceal our feelings, and shared walks on the dark autumn evenings, where we couldn’t even enjoy the colours of foliage falling from the trees. We didn’t even have shelter to escape the rain, be close to each other and exchange silly words that could be forgotten in the next moment, as we looked into each other’s eyes, where you can read everything that you have ever dreamed of, or where you read new, unrealised dreams. Even in the rain we walked side by side, our shadows upon each other, which kept us apart at a respectable distance, as if we were complete strangers and we had said nothing to each other that could endear us.
To tell the truth, she didn’t say anything endearing to me or about herself; it was only I who talked, as if it were a question of the very warmest friendship, a spiritual affinity. She only listened and did not dispute; she didn’t reject my forceful words, as if they were spoken from her heart as well. Now it seems to me more and more that she couldn’t have said anything particular, because only I knew what I could not be silent about. For her perhaps my words were only an interesting pastime, my soul’s outbursts an amusing experience which could make her more mature, as she had kept emphasising. My actual endearments, which never went beyond hand-squeezing or kissing, must only have enriched her wisdom about life, so that one day it would be easier for her to go her own way.
But every time I analysed our relationship thoroughly to myself and sifted the minutest events through the filter of reason to ascertain that this was without doubt mutual psychic devotion, some ridiculously trivial fact about our exchanges would come to mind and I would renew the work of mentally sifting, choosing and picking through facts which might prove the opposite case. So in the end I’m always going round in circles, and getting nowhere after hours of racking my poor brain. But I don’t do this in order to grasp some sort of absolute truth, for what sort of truth could have convinced me that those minute facts and even the most trivial words can be explained and interpreted in one way or its opposite? For ultimately what is the significance of her not coming with me to any place, only a couple of times to the cinema, and even then to a shabby one?
Of course, she may have acted that way because she was ashamed of showing herself in my company, because I mostly spoke Estonian to her, being convinced that she could manage better in my mother tongue than I in hers. Moreover I was used to the fact that poor, ungrammatical Estonian did not shame anybody, and gave them more of a foreign and grandiloquent charm, whereas my bad German would be humiliating to me and to her. I remember her once expressing amazement that I, as a student, a Korporant into the bargain, did not have a rich command of the German language. By way of explanation I told her of my own and other people’s new orientation, directed toward England, but she immediately asked whether they have corporations and colours in England too. Unfortunately I had to admit, like it or not, that there aren’t, just as I should have confessed that despite my new orientation I had no command of English either.