beneath the pale-blue, cloudless sky is mild and still. Over the meadows there is a flutter of colourful butterflies, as if a gentle breeze were playing with a thousand scraps of coloured tissue paper.
In the bright, moonlit nights, the eyes of the cats, spitting and yowling with the pangs of love, glitter from the silvery roofs.
I am sitting on the banisters in the stair-well, listening to the sounds coming from the open window of the third floor across the alley. The curtains are drawn, so I cannot see into the room, but two voices – one a deep, declamatory, man’s voice, that I hate, and the other a soft, shy girl’s voice – are carrying on a conversation which I find incomprehensible:
“To-o be-e or not to-o be-e, that is the question. Nymph, in thy orisons, be a-all my sins remember’d.”
“Good my Lord, how does your honour for this many a day?” breathes the shy voice.
“Get thee-ee to a nunnery, Ophelia.”
I am very eager to hear what will come next, but suddenly, as if the speaker had turned into a clockwork toy, the spring of which is beginning to unwind, the male voice, without any obvious reason, becomes a low, hurried gabble from which all I can fish out are a few meaningless sentences, “Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; if thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, or, if thou needs marry, marry a fool, and quickly too. Farewell.”
To which the girl’s voice shyly replies, “O! what a noble mind is here o’erthrown. O heavenly powers, restore him!”
Then both are silent, and I hear sparse applause. After half an hour of deathly hush, during which the smell of a greasy roast wafts from the window, a well-chewed cigar-butt usually flies, still glowing, out between the curtains, bounces off the wall of our house in a shower of sparks and drops onto the cobbles of the alleyway.
I sit there until late in the afternoon, staring across at the house. My heart gives a joyful start each time the curtains move. Will Ophelia come to the window? And if it is she, should I leave my hiding place and show myself?
I have picked a red rose; will I dare to throw it across to her? I ought to have something to say to her as I do. But what?
It does not come to that, however. The rose begins to droop in my hot hand and there is no sign of life from across the alleyway. Only the smell of the meat has given way to that of roasted coffee.
Ah! At last. A woman’s hands push the curtains apart. For a moment my head spins, then I clench my teeth and force myself to throw the rose through the open window.
A soft cry of surprise, then – Frau Aglaia Mutschelknaus appears at the window.
I cannot duck down quickly enough, she has already seen me.
I feel the blood drain from my cheeks; all is revealed.
But destiny has other ideas. Frau Mutschelknaus simpers, places the rose on her bosom, as if on a plinth, and bashfully lowers her eyes; then, when she raises her soulful gaze once more and realises that it is only me, a shadow flits across her features. But she inclines her head in thanks, and the simper widens to reveal one of her canines.
I feel as if a skull had smiled at me, and yet I am relieved! If she had guessed for whom the flower was intended, it would have all been over. An hour later I am even happy that it turned out the way it did. From now on I can leave a whole bunch of flowers on the window-ledge for Ophelia every morning: her mother will assume they are for herself.
Perhaps she’ll even think they come from my foster-father, Baron Jöcher!
Life certainly teaches you a trick or two.
For a moment I have a nasty taste in my mouth, as if the mean thought had poisoned me, but the next minute it has gone, and I am wondering whether the best plan would not be to go to the cemetery straight away to steal some fresh roses. Later on people come to pray at the graves, and in the evening the gates
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