And the young girl kept bringing out porcelain or a wrapped-up set of silverware. The old woman even set the glasses just where they belonged.
Eventually she went inside, too. Now nothing seemed to be lacking. It was time to give in to that joy. For an hour it was silent. It seemed as if there were no one at all in the house. And the maid stood upstairs in her attic room in front of her tiny mirror and tried on her new starched apron from Christmas. Then she quickly neatened her bureau, which had to double as a table in a little nook like that, straightened the chair, and opened the window again. You could never know. . And this room, too, was left alone again. And around that same time the others were leaving their houses, too, nicely done up in bonnets that shaded their eyes or in finely pressed summer dresses, in gray, in black, in ivory. But if you expected cheerful people to have cheerful faces, you’d be wrong. Their silent faces wear such solemn expressions that you could almost think they were sad. They have the thoughtful, expectant look of the man who has done everything, and is prepared for what is to come.
Still, it’s true that the conscience of this house was not entirely clear. To be sure, it stood there sparkling inside and out, polished to a shine like a goblet. And a snow-white goose had been plucked, and the poetry of the kitchen had eventually transformed this goose, along with the young pea pods and the other first fruits of the garden, into a pâté that all the guests would crave. It was meant to look like a small, casual, gentlemen’s breakfast, but to taste more delicious than any midday meal. It should all be gone within the hour, that feast that had taken a day to prepare. For even what was already clean, spotlessly clean each and every day, had been taken up again as if it were dusty and rusted: so that finally brass shone like fire, and silver like fathomless glass. And at the end? Ah, the end of such a breakfast is truly one of the most enduring memories; people cherish it more than we think.
We should make nothing of the fact that one person’s face wears a lost expression, that another looks severely harsh, that a third can be recognized at once by his clumsy gait, a fourth by his voice, which is higher than anything you might compare it to, and seems to come out of the ground like the voice of a cricket. We can’t just go and say: “I don’t want to put in too much effort for this man. Much less for that one.” At bottom, everyone is worth endless effort, and that goes for us as well as for them. And that the things themselves should finally attain their earthly clarity. . As the sound of the bell seems to long for the striking of the hour, so every house longs for its own festive time.
But a small and wicked, malicious pleasure was lying in wait. It was already reflected large and small in the garden globes. But whenever someone turned around to find it in reality, it would laugh, saying over and over: “I’m not there. .”
“Certainly,” said the venerable, overly stern matron, who was now sitting at a slight distance from the table, but still facing it, “the bundt cake that you all wanted to bake would have been foolish and out of place. Just because we live in the country, you think we should have a peasant cake on the table. . even a blind man can see that that’s foolish.” The sentence took on enormous weight, silence ensued, although someone ought to have replied. The puritanical clarity of this mountain woman, who kept her senses sharp with herbs and stones, truly admitted of no retort.
You couldn’t make anything up when she was around. You most certainly couldn’t defend needless or foolhardy things to her. And what was even worse, though luckily it happened only rarely: with a silent nod to her blindness, people would simply do what they pleased, unseen.
But she noticed when there was an extra stranger seated at the table, even if he had never spoken and hardly moved. She noticed it without letting on. She knew it must be difficult to carry on at such great length. And she noticed, too, when others were merely preoccupied in their thoughts. And in her straightforward way, she was like a small burning mirror. Whatever this mirror was trained on, whether a person or a thing, it would begin to burn in anguished honesty.
It didn’t help that the guests came: that they took the measure of this limitless warmth, this attentive joy that people feel for each other in those moments, when their only regret is that they can’t do more for each other. It didn’t help that this was a moment when they could truly see; that each person had his own sense of proportion, and could sense that the others did as welclass="underline" still the petty eyes kept searching in silence for something else. What would it have mattered if they wanted to have a piece of cake to go with their last sip of wine. But the old woman hadn’t let them bake the bundt cake, she wouldn’t hear of it. Nevertheless, it was a relief to realize that no one was really thinking of anything besides what was already there. They nodded back and forth to each other, dug deep into the pâté, and thought as they looked around the garden that this was the most beautiful place on earth! The lady of the house had disappeared, the maid and the young girl had carried the platters back into the house, and white rolls were lying here and there alongside the glasses.
One of the gentlemen stood up, his gray top hat wobbling over everyone. A bit hunched over, he began to speak; like a young boy slowly pulling in the string and winding it back up to bring his kite down from the sky. “My God,” he said, “I feel that the world is beautiful, and that this beauty is not only on the outside, but that it comes from the heart as well. Let’s have a good drink, gentlemen, to the health of the hale old mother, and to the health of the lady of the house.” The lady of the house was already standing in the doorway, her face flushed. In her hands she held a platter with a bundt cake on a large stiff doily. Her hands were tied, so to speak, she couldn’t raise a glass and take a small, satisfying sip to express her thanks. Instead, she gave the bundt cake a happy little shake, and when she got to the table she began to cut it, letting that take the place of words.
But then, like a small, curled dragon, the lie came crawling out of the cake. It had been purchased at the last minute from the baker, and from the outside it looked just like every other bundt cake in the world. As for the astonishment that it produced, you could simply accept it in silence, just as she had done; but you could not simply accept the candid truth that was its real core.
A trusting person, however, of all people, would like to pull off an elegant lie someday, like this lie brought in from outside. All the more when that lie is unspoken. . But the cake spoke, it was lemon yellow inside, through and through. The knife stuck fast in it, it couldn’t find the way in or out. And now no one could deny that it came from the baker. That was no praise at all for a country mother.
Now she stood there, and she wouldn’t even let the maid take that miserable saffron cake from her hands. No, it seemed that she was serving it out quite properly, quite completely, until finally the last crumb had disappeared under the matron’s fine smile.
The fountain splashed and played its royal game with the little golden ball. A bird sent its song into the air, so that everyone looked and was caught up in the words of this language.
But then the time was almost at an end again, this good hour. The young girl came to the table with a little basket on her arm, bringing each of the guests one of the roses or buds that grew in the garden. Her smile was hidden, like the fragrance of the flowers. And each person took the flower in his own way, and depending on the sort, put it on his hat or in a buttonhole, or held it by the very end of its stem, as if it could easily wilt. And all of them, young and old, at once embarrassed and amused by this adornment, made their way back to the station, garrulous with wine.