“You said before that you wouldn’t tell even your own husband about this thing,” I began again after a while, “but if the two of us could have been…” I didn’t quite dare to express in words what we two had once dreamt of marriage – yes, it seemed to me then, terribly long ago – when we saw in each other a husband and a wife.
“Then you would have known everything anyway, I wouldn’t have needed to say or explain anything. Or if I had done it, then…” She didn’t finish her sentence either.
“What then?” I asked.
“I don’t know what then,” she replied. “Then it might have been so, it might have been good to talk about it, but now it wouldn’t.”
Even now I think I feel how I was burning with curiosity then and how, along with that, there was sprouting within me a desire to stand close to her, so close that I would know everything, for I was convinced that standing close to her would make me omniscient. At the same time I felt that something beautiful and great had passed me by, never to return.
When we discussed this subject, she was thrown into a strangely sad or melancholy state, and that day we parted as if we had made each other sad or at least upset. At any rate this secrecy had affected me as if, for the first time in our acquaintance, I had left her for a day and not accompanied her home, as if I wanted thereby to loosen her heart and tongue or punish her a little. But when I turned up the next day she smiled at me most innocently, as she had done at the lunch table, and said in her usual happy and superficial tone, as if she were dealing with the most trifling thing, “Well, where did you get to yesterday? I looked and looked, I stopped a couple of times, I looked and waited and wondered to myself whether you’d fallen asleep again, like that other time, you remember, when you bumped into me on the stairs. Just think: what would have happened if I’d fallen down those high steep stairs that time!”
“Things might be easier for me now,” I said cruelly and grimly.
But she acted as if she didn’t understand my words, or as if she saw in them only a silly overblown joke, as she replied with a smile, “Oh Lord, these Estonian men are certainly comical, when they go to sleep rather than meeting! I thought you wouldn’t come and keep me company any more, but you’ve been spoiling me with your company. I didn’t want to walk all that way alone, so I asked Ervin to come and meet me today. Do you want me to introduce you? He has also been in a Korporation and knows other Estonian Korporanten. Very nice boys, he says.”
“Thank you,” I said, “but at the moment I’m not in the mood for new acquaintances.” Even as I said those words I felt that I should have given some other answer or at least spoken in a different tone, but what could be done. It had happened. I had acted as if I were insulted or as if I were burning with petty jealousy or lacked the courage to make contact with this young German, so that Erika could compare us side by side.
“Don’t get annoyed,” she said with the same lightness, “I was just joking. And Ervin isn’t an acquaintance of yours.”
If her first words only jarred me, then these words of hers actually irritated me. Had I, compared with her Ervin, become a figure of fun already, to be mocked and teased? It’s quite likely that today would have seen the first squabble between us, which might have grown into a real argument and quarrel, if she hadn’t been more tactful than I. Instead of waiting for me to speak, she let her own words soar with butterfly lightness, hitting me like a sledgehammer: “So I really must apologise if you’re not in the mood for new acquaintances, and I wish you a good evening right now, because Ervin’s waiting for me at the next corner. I didn’t let him come here, because I was afraid you wouldn’t want to meet him. But thank you very much for coming today and not forgetting me.”
At the end of the sentence all the lightness was suddenly gone, at least so it seemed at that moment. Suddenly my ears sensed that something had snapped, something had frozen in her throat, something she was struggling to hold in, so that it didn’t gush from her eyes. But for me it was not frozen and therefore filled my eyes. Half-blinded, I reached for her extended hand and began to kiss it crazily. I don’t know whether the odd tear also fell on it, but her hand shook. Suddenly Erika pulled her hand from mine, and hurried away.
“Can I come tomorrow evening?” I cried after her.
“If you don’t sleep in again,” she laughed to me over her shoulder, as if nothing had just happened between us. But it’s very possible that nothing had happened, everything was just my demented imagination, so I rambled on to myself as I gradually started walking after her, as if I wanted to accompany her despite everything. I’ll walk alone, but I’ll still accompany her, for if she weren’t there I might turn to someone else. So I thought, as if to console myself.
As I later thought over that parting – to tell the truth, on the following days I did nothing else but think about that parting as if it were a new challenge in life – I was firmly convinced that the strange world of dreams, in which I’d spent such happy hours, was coming to an end. Love had remained, might remain forever, but the dreams had returned whence they came – into oblivion. I only wanted to know one thing: when she went with another, did our love remain with her, the memory of that love? Was she also burying her dreams and leaving for herself just mere love without any egotism, for dreams do have a bit of that? What will happen to me if at some time I go with someone else, as she is doing now, while our dreams are so present and fresh?
These were irrelevant and pointless questions, but at the time they gave me a reason to live. When I recall that time now, I feel that my questions indicated one major thing: my love at the time was still far from free of egotism, as if my dreams had not had time to die. For what was the point in wanting to know whether your love is returned or not, when you have no more hopes? It is enough to know that you are in love, and in love you burn like a candle which will soon go out. Love free of egotism is only a glimmering sadness, a flickering hopelessness. It is born of death and gives birth to death. Or in a few cases, the lover becomes a saint, a hero, a sage whose wisdom is of no use to anyone, even to their own kind of sage.
That’s what I say now, as I write these lines, but at the time I was trying to suppress emotions, to throttle irrelevant questions even momentarily, and submit to impulses which now make me smile sympathetically. To begin with, that evening of our parting I decided not to appear at the lunch table the next day, because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to endure the landlady’s knowing banter and Erika’s light-hearted laughter. And to make sure I didn’t go back on my decision, I didn’t go back home before the time Erika finished teaching. Coming home, I went from the street corner where Ervin was due to be waiting, as Erika had been thinking of introducing us. I wanted to see whether anyone was waiting there today, because if they weren’t, I could reasonably assume that no one had been there yesterday either – by fibbing, Erika had got rid of me more easily. My suspicion was actually confirmed: there was nobody on the street corner or anywhere near it. I hurried home at great speed, my heart blending pleasure and alarm, and in front of my house door I bumped into some young man, so that we both saw the need to apologise to each other. Only as I stepped in the door did it occur to me that this must be the Ervin I’d been looking for: taller than I, in a jacket, leggings and long socks. Definitely him! On the stairs I encountered Erika coming towards me, and today she was the one who practically ran me down in her hurry to get down the stairs.
“Good evening!” she cried when she noticed me. “Today I don’t have any time, grandfather is waiting.”
“Your grandfather has rather light feet,” I would have liked to reply to her, but before I had time to, she was out of the front door. It was true: yesterday’s goodbye had really been forever. If I had not taken the hints, they would soon have been followed by other, clearer ones.