Hans gnaws at his lower lip with his upper teeth. There will be a hole there shortly, though that is still better than having an Abyss of Principle yawning before you. He and Sophie understand each other on principle, though. Sophie is sucking lemonade through a straw. This morning her mother threw another screaming fit before driving off to her bank to do something or other. As always, Hans is flexing his muscles, quite openly, he slides to and fro on his chair as if he'd shat himself, he gives Sophie a confiding wink and in his turn describes a terrific booze-up where one or two friends of his were hilariously abusive and went on a rampage, a few things were smashed up in the process. He is talking too loud and everyone can hear him, nobody understands him, but they tolerate what they do not understand, and if the tolerance is lacking it is through discussion.
Even if occasionally one has to part from the other here, there is still a sparkle in his eye on account of the reunion that is doubtless soon to follow, adieu, a grey VW beetle crawls round the bend and is gone, but a great deal remains behind: friendship, and a human quality. To the accompaniment of good-humoured jokes cracked by her family, who are just eating lunch, a girl suddenly leaps to her feet as if a tarantula had bitten her and welcomes her boyfriend, whom she has been awaiting for so long and who is now returning from a climbing trip. Afterwards the whole family does something together. This sense of sharing, which pervades the place like a thick fog, leaves Hans enraged. He pulps the last fragments of ice cream in the metal dish with his spoon, taking out his anger on innocent foodstuffs.
Accounts of hikes across glaciers, farewell to the family. Dearest sister Christine, who is in on the joke. Off to the post office, a one-and-a-half-hour walk, peaceful hours in Uncle Sepp's Olde Bar. A young lad climbing down the mountain to her after first climbing up it. An altogether unique feeling flowing from me to you and from you to me. Grannie, giving her friendly nod. Walking, talking, eating lunch. Taking strolls to the clearing amid the larches. Someone who loves nothing quite so much as the sight of grass and sky.
Hans tests the currents that are flowing here, all about him, from one to the other and from the other to one. What is it that's flowing? The people in question have no name for it, or at least not as such, though their language offers them ways of addressing each other that creates an instant unity. Heading off towards the Semmering hospital, viaducts, tunnels. Going up to the Jockelhof, fixing the rooms, eating and taking siestas and being too lazy to write during the holidays, a band of mist and a blue sky, beaming, the sky's a fine one to go beaming. Plenty of things to talk about. Mutual understanding.
Hans cannot suppress a cough and splutters half of the coffee Sophie ordered for him too into the saucer, mixed with saliva it comes spraying out of him. In his brain there is a huge hole, which might also be labelled Nothingness in general. When grammar school kids talk, they are simply together, with each other, and the very simplicity of that apparent fact is what expresses the 'immeasurable profundity of what is said', they say in two-part harmony. It is often interesting to watch other people, you sit on a tree-trunk for the purpose. The goal is on the tips of our tongues and its name is Love.
The inexhaustible reserve the youngsters around Hans are drawing upon now affords a brief meeting of glances and a brief attainment of peace in each other. If you are sitting on a felled tree in a pine forest enjoying the sunshine you can easily forget what time it is. Not that you could forget your gold watch, just the time of day.
In spite of himself, Hans glances at his old wristwatch to see if he hasn't left it somewhere. It is still there.
Sophie is silent, and so is everything inside her. Her silence does not imply that she lacks anything here any more than elsewhere. From time to time she says hello to an acquaintance. If she exchanges a few words with one of them, a curious common ground is established. Hans believes that what is between her and him is Love. It leaves him shaken because it generally does leave lovers shaken, but it leaves Hans all the more shaken because he knows nothing he can compare it with. He is at the mercy of Love, helpless.
Another schoolkid is now comparing two people who get on well with two hemispheres that fit exactly, making a perfect sphere. They talk in a relaxed way, with mutual confidence, about that perfect geometrical solid.
Saying farewell, and wondering if you shouldn't feel just as you did saying hello, but all the richer for having received a gift.
No one has ever given Hans a present except for Sophie (trousers and a pullover), Mother has occasionally bought him something useful. Sophie asks Hans what he thinks of crime. Rainer wants to commit crimes, and she thinks that at last she wants to too. These kids here really get up my nose, don't they yours? You're used to things quite other than schoolkid small-talk.
Hans, who has no greater wish than to be a schoolkid, says he has broken open vending machines in the past, but now he means to lead a decent life in order to win the woman he loves. He doesn't say who that is, oh no. No, he daren't say that.
Is it Anna, asks Sophie. No, says Hans, no, it's not Anna, but I'm not letting on who it really is, and he gives Sophie a calfish look so that she will suspect it's she herself. Sophie can't make any sense of this stupid facial expression and asks if he thinks doing something illegal can break down your inhibitions. Hans is unfamiliar with the word. The word illegal, that is.
If I drank another cognac now I'd start yodelling, I'd give one or two of these schoolkids a thrashing, I wouldn't care who I hit.
No but seriously, I really wouldn't mind getting my fingers into something alive. Hans has only ever jabbed his fingers into wet plaster or Anna. Hans says this alcohol is making him warm, though he's used to drink, once he drank three litres of beer in one go, man, I was really pissed that time, know what I mean.
Sophie sizes up Hans as if she were seeing him for the first time. With a man and a woman this always happens at some point before the sequel can ensue. Her gaze deliberately includes his face and his body, in order to arrive at an overall impression. The season is over, the balls are no longer about to start, as is often the case. She opened the opera ball wearing a paste coronet on her head, which was ridiculous but Mama insisted. Now she has time off and can assess Hans's face. So this is a human face as well. Isn't Nature wonderful, so varied, thinks Sophie. There is an extreme Left and an extreme Right, which come very close to meeting, and there is even this kind of Hans. Apparently the fact doesn't disturb or inconvenience anyone. In Nature the species and forms are many and various, and there are two completely different sexes. Sophie's is an ancient aristocratic family.
Some months ago, in her dancing partner's arms, Sophie forgot everything, in particular the world about her, and now she wants to forget everything once again, in a transaction of a wholly different sort. She actually has what others merely wish they had, and she is forever wanting to forget it. You can't do it, in your family people don't do that kind of thing, Hans tells her. What counts is that I do it, says Sophie, who would like to knock a lot of things down. Which Anna and Rainer would like to do too. What they all want to knock down, however, are quite different things, because they possess quite different things.