With this, she went off.
Several minutes later she returned and, still at a distance of several paces, resumed the conversation by exclaiming: “How encompassed by novelty everything here is! Just look around: Everything is fresh, novel, newborn. Not a single memory of anything old! Usually every house, every family possesses some old piece of furniture, a whiff of olden times, a concrete souvenir that we still love and honor because we find it beautiful, just as we find a scene of parting or a melancholy sunset beautiful. Do you see anything of the sort here, even the faintest hint of memory? It seems to me like a dizzying, curved, light bridge leading into the as yet inexplicable future. Oh, to gaze into the future is more beautiful than dreaming about the past. It’s also a sort of dreaming when you imagine a future. Isn’t there something marvelous about this? Wouldn’t it be cleverer for persons of fine sensibilities to devote their warmth and inklings to the days yet to come rather than those that lie in the past? Times yet to come are like children to us and need more attention than the graves of the departed, which we adorn perhaps with somewhat too exaggerated a love: these bygone days! A painter will do well now to sketch costumes for distant people who will possess the grace to wear them in decorum and freedom; let the poet dream up virtues for strong individuals not gnawed at by longing, and the architect design as best he can forms that will charmingly give life to the stone and to building itself, let him go to the forest and there take note of how tall and noble the firs shoot up from the ground, let him take them as a model for the buildings of the future; and let man in general, in anticipation of things to come, cast off much that is common, ignoble and unserviceable, and whisper his thoughts into the ear of his wife as clearly as he can when she offers him her lips for a kiss, and the woman will smile. We women understand how to spur you men on to perform deeds with our smiles, and we fancy we’ve done our duty when we’ve succeeded in vividly, delightfully filling your senses with your own duties, just by virtue of a smile. The things you achieve make us happier than our own accomplishments. We read the books you write and think: If only they were willing to do a bit more and write a bit less. In general we don’t know what would bring much more profit than subordinating ourselves to you. What else can we do! And how willingly we do so. But now of course I’ve forgotten to speak of the future, this bold arch across dark waters, this forest full of trees, this child with gleaming eyes, this unspeakable entity that always tempts one to catch it in words as if in a snare. No, I believe the present is the future. Doesn’t everything around us seem to radiate presentness?”
“Yes,” Simon said.
“Outside the winter’s so horribly severe now, and here indoors it’s so warm, so perfect for having conversations and for my sitting here beside you, a quite young and apparently somewhat down-at-the-heels person, and any minute now I’ll be neglecting my duties. Your comportment has something fascinating about it, do you realize this? One can’t help wanting to box your ears straight off, out of a secret fury at the way you sit here so foolishly and yet have such a strange capacity to seduce a person into wasting her precious time with you, a random guest. Do you know what: Why don’t you go on sitting there a while longer. Surely you’re not in so much of a hurry. I’ll come back later to have another crack at your ears. For the moment, duty calls—”
And she was gone.
In the lady’s absence, Simon observed his surroundings. The lamps gave off a bright warm light. People were chatting unrestrainedly with one another. A few of them, now that night had fallen, were leaving because they still had to go back down the mountain to return to town. Two old men sitting cozily at a table struck him because of the tranquil way they sat there. Both of them had white beards and rather fresh faces and were smoking pipes, which gave them a patriarchal air. They didn’t speak to one another, apparently considering that superfluous. Now and then their respective pairs of eyes would meet, and then there was a shrugging of pipes and the corners of mouths, but this all occurred quite tranquilly and no doubt as a matter of habit. They appeared to be idlers, but calculating, premeditated, superior idlers — idle out of prosperity. Surely the two of them had taken up with one another only because they shared these same habits: smoking their pipes, taking little walks, a fondness for wind, weather and nature, good health, preferring silence to chatter, and finally age itself with all its special perquisites. To Simon the two of them appeared not lacking in dignity. One couldn’t help smiling a little at the appealing cordoned-off spectacle they presented, but this spectacle did not exclude reverence, which age itself demands as its right. A sense of purpose was expressed in their tranquil visages; they possessed a completeness that could in no way be disputed any longer. These old men were most certainly beyond entertaining uncertainties as to the path they’d chosen, even if it had been chosen in error. But then what did it mean to be in error? If a person picked an error as his lodestar at the age of sixty or seventy, this was a sacrosanct matter to which a young man must respond with reverence. These two old codgers — for there was certainly something codger-like about them — must have had some sort of procedure or a system according to which they’d sworn to one another to go on living until the end of their days; that’s how they looked, like two people who’d found something that worked and made it possible for them to await their end with equanimity. “The two of us have found it out, that secret”—this is what their expressions and bearing seemed to say. It was amusing and touching and no doubt worth pondering to observe them and attempt to guess their thoughts. Among other things, one quickly guessed that these two would always only be seen as a pair and never any other way, never singly, always together! Always! This was the main thought you felt emanating from their white heads. Side by side through life, maybe even side by side down into the abyss of death: This appeared to be their guiding principle. And indeed, they even looked like a couple of living, old, but nonetheless still jolly and good-humored principles. When summer came again, the two of them would be seen sitting outside on the shady terrace, but they’d still keep filling their pipes with a mysterious air and prefer silence to speech. When they left, it would always be the two of them leaving, not first one and then the other: This seemed unthinkable. Yes, they looked cozy, this much Simon had to give them: cozy and hardheaded, he thought, looking away from them to gaze at something else.
He cast fleeting glances at various people and discovered an English family with strange faces, men who appeared to be scholars and others to whom it would have been difficult to ascribe any sort of post or profession; he saw women with white hair and girls with their bridegrooms, observed people who — one could tell just by looking — felt somewhat ill at ease here and others who seemed just as comfortable as if they were sitting at home in the bosom of their families. But the hall was rapidly emptying. Outside winter was howling and one could hear the fir trees creaking as they knocked together. The forest lay a mere ten paces removed from the building, Simon knew well from earlier days.
While he was abandoning himself to his thoughts in this way, the proprietress reappeared.
She sat down beside him.
A silent change appeared to have taken place in her. She seized Simon’s hand: This was unexpected. — Hereupon she said quietly, overheard by no one, and unobserved:
“Now it’s unlikely they’ll disturb me again and prevent my sitting here with you, people are starting to leave. Tell me, who are you, what’s your name, where are you from? You look as if one must ask these things. You emit a certain wondering and amazement, not amazement that you yourself feel — it’s rather the person sitting in front of you who feels amazed, observing you. One wonders about you, feels amazed, and then is filled with a longing to hear you talk, imagining what it must be that is speaking within you. A person involuntarily worries on your account. One goes away from you and does one’s work, and then suddenly one’s taking mercy on you by thinking about you. It isn’t pity, for pity is something you by no means inspire, nor is it truly mercy, strictly speaking. I don’t know what it could be: curiosity, perhaps? Let me reflect for a moment. Curiosity? A desire to know something about you, just one little thing, some sound or note. One has the impression one already knows you and finds you not terribly interesting but nonetheless listens and listens, just in case you say something that might be worth hearing from your lips a second time. Looking at you, a person can’t help feeling sorry for you: casually, condescendingly, looking down on you from above. You must have something profound about you, but no one seems to notice because you make no effort at all to let it shine forth. I’d like to hear what you have to tell. Do you have parents still, and siblings? Just looking at you, one cannot help assuming your sisters and brothers must be important people. You yourself, however, a person cannot help considering utterly insignificant. Why is this? It’s so easy to feel superior to you. But one need only speak with you a short while to realize one’s succumbed to the sort of error liable to occur when speaking to so even-tempered a person, someone who’d scorn the notion of snapping to attention and who has no wish to look better or more dangerous than he is. You don’t look particularly interesting, let alone dangerous — and women are what you get when you combine the need for tenderness with a lust for unadulterated danger, a constant source of peril. Of course you won’t hold what I’ve just said against me, for you hold no grudges. One doesn’t know where one stands with you. Would you tell me your story, I’m so eager to hear it! Do you know, I’d very much like to be your confidante, even if only for an hour, and perhaps even if it’s just in my imagination. When I was upstairs just now I felt such an urge to hurry back to you as if you were an important personage who mustn’t be kept waiting and whose good graces and even condescending respect it’s crucial to enjoy. And what I found was a person whose cheeks glow more brightly when I come running up! How silly of me, but isn’t this odd all the same? All right now, I shall sit quietly now and listen to you—”