Simon burst into laughter and this set the tone for the next hour. Then there was a knock at the door. The two of them got up, and Simon went to see who was there. It was the teacher from the next school. Her husband, a rough and ruthless individual, had beaten her yet again. They did what they could to comfort her, and in this they succeeded.
The weather was growing ever warmer and the earth more resplendent, it was covered with a thick, blossoming carpet of meadows, the fields and pastures were steaming, the forests offered an enchanting sight with their beautiful, fresh, rich green. All of nature was presenting itself, expansive, stretching, curving, rearing up, whizzing and rustling and buzzing, fragrant and motionless as a bright beautiful dream. The land had become perfectly fat, lush, opaque and glutted. It was lolling, as it were, in voluptuous surfeit. It was green and dark brown and flecked with black, white, yellow and red, blossoming with hot breath, almost perishing beneath its profusion of blossoms. It lay there like a luxuriating, veiled woman, immobile, shifting her limbs, perfumed with scents. The gardens spread their fragrance into the streets and out over the fields, where men and women were working; the fruit trees were a bright, twittering singing, and the nearby, round, vaulted forest was a choral song of young men; the bright paths scarcely penetrated the green. In forest clearings, one would see a white, dreamy, indolent sky that one could imagine sinking down and rejoicing as birds rejoice, tiny birds that one has never before seen but that are so natural a part of nature. Memories arrived that a person didn’t wish to analyze and dissect, you weren’t capable of this, it caused such sweet pain, and you were too indolent to feel a pain through to the end. Thus you walked and thus stopped in your tracks, turning in all directions, gazing off into the distance, gazing up, away, down, across and to the ground, feeling deeply affected by all the languor of this blossoming. The buzzing in the forest was not the buzzing in the barer clearing, it was different and required in turn a staking out of new positions for new daydreams. Always you were having to tussle, resist, gently thrust aside, reflect and waver. It was all one great wavering, a struggle, a finding yourself weak. But this was sweet, quite simply sweet: a bit difficult, and then a bit parsimonious, then hypocritical, then crafty, then nothing at all, then perfectly stupid; and finally it became rather difficult to find anything else beautiful any longer, this just didn’t seem called for, and so you sat, strolled, loitered, drifted, trotted and tarried in such a way that you yourself became a bit of spring. Could all this buzzing feel delight at its own buzzing and cooing and singing? Was it given to the grass to observe its own beautiful variability? Might it have been possible for the beech to fall in love with its own appearance? Without growing weary or blunted, you let things be as they were, let them go, let them waver this way and that. All of nature, the way it was looking, was just a loiterer, a lingering and dangling! Scents hung in the air, and all the earth lingered and waited. Colors were the blissful expression of this. You could discern something prematurely weary and portentous in the bush with its blossoms. It was a sort of no-longer-wishing-to-go-on, but all one great smile. The blue, hazy wooded mountains sounded like far-off, distant horns, you felt the landscape to be a bit English, it was like a luxuriant English garden, the luxuriant growth and the interweaving and wafting of voices drew your senses to this affinity. You thought: In such and such a place things might look just now as they do right here, the region conjured up all other regions in your heart. It was comical and far-reaching, a carrying-off and bringing-hither: A bringing, as things are brought by young lads, an offering up, such as children might offer, an obeying and harkening. You could say and think whatever you pleased, yet it was always just the same unspoken, unthought thing — light and heavy, blissful and painful, poetic and natural. You understood the poets, or rather you didn’t actually understand them, for, walking along like this, you would have been far too indolent to imagine understanding them. You had no need to understand anything at all, there was no understanding, and yet understanding arrived of its own accord, dissolving in the effort of listening for a sound or gazing into the distance or remembering that in point of fact it was now time to return home and discharge some admittedly rather minor duty, for even in springtime there are duties to discharge.
The nights were becoming splendid. The moon fell in love with the white of the blossoming bushes and trees and the long windings of the roads, and made them gleam. Moonlight shone in the fountains and the flowing river water. The churchyard with its silent graves was transformed into a white fairy place, making you forget the dead who lay buried there. The moon inserted itself among the tangle of thin, hanging, hair-like branches, providing light enough to make out the inscriptions on the headstones. Simon walked around the edge of the churchyard several times, then struck out on a further path that led him through the flat raised field, thrust himself between low, illuminated bushes, came upon a small, sloping meadow between them, and sat down there upon a stone to ponder the question of how much longer he was likely to continue this life of mere observation and contemplation. Soon it must surely come to an end, for things could not go on in this way. He was a man, and to him pertained the rigorous discharge of duty. Soon he would have to take action once more, this was becoming clear to him. When he got home, he said as much to his sister in fitting words. He shouldn’t be thinking about such things, at least not yet, she said. All right, he replied, I won’t think about it yet. What’s more, the thought of remaining here further was so enticing. What was it he wanted, what was driving him? He could hardly have travel money to make a trip somewhere, and as for the place he might to be going, what awaited him there? No, he would gladly remain where he was for an indeterminate brief time. Probably he’d drive himself mad with longing for the place once he left it, and what good would that do him? No, he’d have to make short work of it, this longing; for it would ill befit him. But didn’t people often engage in unbefitting pastimes? What’s more, he would be staying on, and had no intention of surrendering any further to these trains of thought, which he found vexing.