“And I would go back to my grandfather, because he, no matter what is said and done, will take me back anyway.”
“And how would I look appearing before your grandfather, when I’d previously lied through my teeth to him about my salary increase and then fully consciously compromised you, when I knew that I was about to lose my job and had no other? If I hadn’t talked to your grandfather today, or if I respected him less, honoured him less, then maybe I could stand being such a swinish cad, but now...”
“… you love grandfather more than you love me,” Erika finished my sentence and started crying loudly. This was so unexpected for me that I completely lost my head. I simply didn’t understand what could upset her so much. I could do no more than kiss her hands, which I had gradually released from their gloves while talking. And when kissing her hands couldn’t silence her crying, I sank before her on my knees and beseeched her to calm down and listen to my explanation. And I summoned up all my wit to make her understand what sort of unhappiness, distraction, madness it would be to elope at this moment and compromise her. Gradually the weeping stopped and she started to realise how things stood, so that I could sit beside her again on the bench and warm her hands in mine and kiss them occasionally. She hardly uttered a word, as though she had become indifferent to everything. When I finally asked her whether she appreciated that I was acting this way out of love, she said submissively, while still convulsing with the last spasms of tears, “I understand you very well and I can respect all this. Of course you’re right, when you think about it, but at first I didn’t want to think, only love.”
“You are simply terrible in your directness!” I cried. “And I feel ashamed before you.”
“No, no, it’s I who am ashamed before you,” she said. “I’m terribly ashamed.”
While still holding her hands and with our knees together, I felt her body convulse with shaking, which extended to my fingers and ran down past my knees.
“You’re getting cold; we should walk,” I said.
“Yes, I got cold from crying,” she said by way of excuse, grasped her suitcase and got up from the bench. I tried to take hold of the case several times, but she wouldn’t relinquish it and claimed that carrying the case kept her warm. But I still had the feeling that she didn’t care whether she was cold or warm. She walked with downcast head; her pliant, sure and light step somehow became stunted, fumbling, as if her thoughts and attention were not where she was; her voice, words and movements betrayed a dullness that I had never noticed before. But when I approached her and tried to touch her anywhere, she jumped every time as if frightened, and I understood that now she needed peace, because her internal shock as she sat on the bench must have been somehow terribly great and deep. That consciousness, together with her continuing mood and behaviour, had an ever more depressing effect on me, and I came close now to starting to blubber, which would have made me utterly ridiculous in her eyes, which I feared dreadfully. In my depressed state I was aware of an increasing notion that if we had until today been speaking about the sins or crimes of our love, we had done it like children, but I committed my first real sin of love today, and perhaps that was the cause of everything that happened between Erika and me. A hot wave of pain passed through my heart each time I tried repeatedly to release her suitcase from her hand and she repelled my attempts with the same firmness. Finally I was seized by a sort of mad conception that everything would turn out well between us, nothing would have happened between us, if she had not had with her that annoying accidental case – it was I who called it accidental. And ever more persistently and with greater effort and new pretexts I tried to seize that bewitched object into my own hands, and no one could say how long I would go on trying to get that suitcase if Erika hadn’t said that now she had to go home, now she definitely had to go home. There was nothing left for me but to give in to the inevitable. Of course now I know that she didn’t have to go, and that only her aunt would be surprised at her staying any longer, while her grandfather would have awaited her arrival quite calmly. But with me life has always been such that I get to know the most important facts either too late or not at all. At school I got to know most of those things least needed for getting things done, while not a single person told me about the most necessary things, because they all evidently thought that people learn these things by themselves. All teachers and trainers are quite right about that, as surely that’s what happens with the majority, but not everyone. There are those like me who learn the most necessary things too late.
Erika was missing again for a couple of days from lessons and from the lunch table.
“The girl is getting out of hand,” declared the landlady, while the landlord tried to excuse her, explaining, “With the first chilly weather, everyone complains of colds and headaches.”
“How do you know that she’s absent because of illness?” she challenged her husband.
“Well, why then?” he countered.
“How would I know today’s young people so well that I’d know why they’re absent,” said the landlady. “Here’s our young gentleman, sort of half-dead for the past two or three days – why don’t you ask him what’s wrong? Of course you think that he’s affected by the first chilly weather too.”
“No, he has things of his own, we know that,” he replied.
“My lady thinks of course that today’s young people don’t care whether they’re in service or not,” I said in self-defence.
“Oh, what’s this!” cried the lady. “Now you have to hang your head because of a silly job! Will you hold your head up if I promise you half a year’s lunches on credit? I make my promise having seen the first shoots of the crop, as they say, because you will find a new position, if you lose this one – and what’s more, you haven’t even lost it yet.”
“New debts won’t make anyone lift their head,” I said, declining the kind offer, “especially when I don’t know when I can pay you back.”
“Why are you worrying about paying if I’m saying you’re the first shoots?” asked the landlady. “Believe me, it means very little to me whether I set the table for six to seven or seven to eight.”
“And to me it would mean very little whether I started paying for six to seven, instead of seven to eight,” I explained, “but since I’m only paying for one and I can’t even do that, it’s easier for me to go without lunch than to eat and not pay.”
“Well then, I can’t help you,” said the landlady, “but you must have special reasons why you don’t accept the offer I’m making.”
“No, my lady, I don’t have any special reasons apart from personal ones – that is, it’s the way I’m made.”
“And you can’t re-educate yourself?” asked the landlady.
“So far I haven’t been able to,” I replied.
“Well, we’ll try it in the future,” said the landlady somewhat threateningly.
“You’d always like to re-educate everyone as if other people were children beside you,” the man told his spouse.
“What are you men beside women other than overgrown children?” she replied to him.
“Do all women have to suffer delusions of grandeur like you?” ventured her husband now.
“So this is delusions of grandeur, is it?” asked the woman. “In this world it has always been so that women lead and men run, women command and men obey.”
“Be sure of being the best!” cried the man.
“My lady, you ascribe to women very dangerous qualities,” I said.
“Leading and commanding are always dangerous,” opined the landlady.
“One thing is sure, anyway: wherever or whenever anything goes wrong, there’s always a woman in the picture,” declared the landlord.