“When you’d left grandfather and I came home and heard what you had talked about and what answer you received, I got down in front of grandfather, kissed his hand, clutched him around the legs, just as you did with me later in the park, so that I thought at the time that you were imitating me, except that I comforted myself that my legs are perhaps not as bony and hard as grandfather’s. And as I held him, so that he couldn’t get away from me, I cried and I begged him, because I thought you hadn’t pleaded well enough, although I’d impressed it upon you before I went out. But my tears and pleas helped as little as your talking did, for grandfather remained deaf and dumb. He only said, ‘Dear child, it’s wiser this way, as I’m doing it, and one day you’ll thank me for my present refusal. Young love comes and goes, and no one knows where it comes from and where it goes. They cry who have to give it up, but those who get it often have to cry much more. I am keeping you from that excess, which is no consolation.’ Those were his words.
“But I wasn’t reconciled to grandfather; finally I jumped up and shouted at him: ‘All right, grandfather, if you won’t allow it, I’ll go without permission! I’ll elope, I’ll compromise myself, I’ll make a scandal for you, for auntie, our relatives, our acquaintances, so bear it in mind, grandfather, I’ll be compromising myself with an Estonian.’ But even then grandfather remained calm, and said, ‘No, dear child, no, you won’t compromise yourself with an Estonian. You can’t compromise yourself.’ ‘You and auntie will have to watch over me then!’ I cried. ‘I’m going to my lesson and I won’t come back, then your strength will be tried, grandfather. And I am quite sure that you will take me back when I come, because you love me more than you believe.’ ‘Of course I’ll take you back, no matter how and where you come from, you’re right about that, dear child, but that is why you won’t be compromising yourself, because you too love me more than you believe, ’ replied grandfather. But I shouted at him: ‘No matter how much I love you, grandfather, I love him even more, much more. Because you won’t agree, I have no choice but to compromise myself.’ Yet grandfather stuck firmly to his decision: he wouldn’t agree and I wouldn’t compromise myself, I couldn’t compromise myself. And when I challenged him about what could prevent me from compromising myself, he was lost for an answer. Finally I said to him, ‘Grandfather, if you’re so sure that I won’t compromise myself, that I can’t compromise myself, then promise that when I still do compromise myself, you will happily take me back if you need to, and defend me against auntie and the others. Dear, dear grandfather, leave me just this crumb of hope!’ – I begged him and once again fell at his feet. Grandfather was silent for a while, as if thinking it over. Then he said, ‘Dear child, do you really understand what you’re asking of me?’ ‘I’m asking you for love, grandfather,’ I wept, screaming at him, ‘only a bit of love, grandfather; my life is wretched and poor anyway, as you keep repeating to me every day.’ But grandfather put his hand on my head, which was always his greatest sign of tenderness, and then said, ‘Perhaps you’re not asking me for love, but for your own life, that’s what you’re asking for.’ At the time I didn’t understand those words, and so I could say light-heartedly: ‘Grandfather, what is life without love? If I have to give my life for love, then I’ll do it happily. Just promise me, dear grandfather, that you won’t push me out, no matter what happens to me!’ Grandfather was silent again and I awaited my fate crouching at his knees. At last he said, ‘But child, will you give me your word, you understand? Your solemn oath, that you will never breathe a word of what we have been talking about now to a single person, even the one you want to go to? Can you swear that to me and can you keep your pledge? For if you don’t keep it, then I don’t agree to your ever going.’ And as if he already regretted the conditional promise, he added as he withdrew, ‘You really must understand me, dear child, I am not giving consent on clear conditions, but I am forgiving you for your action, if you keep your pledge. It is terrible that I have to make you promise, and I do it with a bleeding heart and will never forgive myself. People are probably right when they hint to you that old age has robbed me of some of my sense.’ ‘Right now I see and believe that you are fully in your right mind,’ I shouted back to grandfather and vowed to him everything he had asked of me. And my heart was filled with such great joy and happiness that I kissed grandfather’s eyes, hands, knees, even feet in great gratitude to him. But he remained silent, austere and sad, trying to restrain my endearments and said, ‘Dear child, you’ll lose your own sense – what will become of you afterwards?’ ‘Afterwards I’ll come singing and flying, I promise you, grandfather,’ I said, but he remained gloomy: ‘Child, better not to promise that; promises given lightly are hard to keep.’ That was the last thing he said to me, and I left home warbling, suitcase in hand, which later you got to carry. Whether grandfather saw me leaving with a case I don’t know, but certainly he noticed when I came back home with it.
“Do you still remember exactly what happened between us that evening? For me it is all as if burned with a hot iron on my heart. And not only my heart, but my whole body and soul. And even if I live for thousands of years, it will not be extinguished; I have the feeling now. You obviously didn’t have the faintest idea at the time who or what was walking beside you, just as you didn’t realise why I had a little suitcase in my hand. You could carry it quite indifferently, because you wanted to be polite. Your failure to guess, your failure to realise, proved to me best of all how terribly mad my action was going to be. But now I see in your incomprehension only a consolation, because if you had been able to guess even a scintilla of my real intention that evening and still act the way you did, then at least God might have had mercy on me and killed me with a thunderbolt when I thought of starting to write these lines.
“I had put in the little suitcase my glory box, because I was leaving home to spend my first wedding night with you, wasn’t I? I haven’t really understood that to this day. But if you had said to me that evening that you had no money to go anywhere or elope, or you were hindered by some other circumstance, and you had added that the only way out was if I came up to your room, then I would have done that without a word, unhesitatingly. All the time I was intoxicated with the happiness and pleasure that I could give myself to you, and I had to use all my strength to behave myself, not to start screaming from sheer joy. I suppose you can never imagine how close I felt to you, to your soul, when you took that suitcase from me containing my few things, which were already destined for your touch. I was overjoyed at the thought of what you would do if you knew or guessed what you were carrying in the case. For me too those little things became more precious in the belief that you would love and admire them simply because they belonged to me, had been close to me.
“But you know as well as I do how that great joy and intoxication ended: with my own great sobbing on the park bench, where you consoled me with common sense. Your sense may have been right from your own viewpoint, I didn’t dispute that then, nor do I do so now. But what help was my own, your, even the whole world’s sense, human and divine, when I had tearfully begged my grandfather on my knees to forgive me for coming to you? Could anyone’s sense bring about such a miracle, that I would suddenly no longer know how, with what feeling, with what trembling of the heart I had chosen my own little things and put them in my case? Could any sense at all undo it as if you had never carried my things in that case? No, my darling, no sense was needed any more, but rather the loss of sense. Oblivion was needed, because oblivion is sometimes the only thing that is merciful, oblivion and death, which is surely only a great oblivion.