The sun betook itself elsewhere. A spirit of gloom brooded over the street, and a harsh melancholy groaned among the paving stones. The windows looked out from the walls of the houses, strangers to themselves and to the houses. Hartmann fixed his gaze on a window being opened across the way, trying to remember what it was he had wanted to say. He saw a woman peeping out. That’s not what I meant, he thought, and he began talking, not about what he’d been thinking, but about something quite different. And after every two or three words he waved his hand despairingly at the things that were coming into his mouth and that he was laying before Toni. Toni fixed her eyes on his mouth and thought: What is he trying to say? Her gaze followed his hand as she tried to fathom his meaning. His conversation was generally not beyond her understanding; if only he would speak coherently and calmly, she would understand everything. Her mouth quivered. The new crease on her upper lip, near the right hand corner, twitched involuntarily. As she smoothed it with her tongue she thought: God in Heaven, how sad he is. Perhaps he has reminded himself of his daughters.
Hartmann had indeed reminded himself of his daughters: they had not been out of his thoughts all day. Although he had not mentioned them to Toni, not even indirectly, he was constantly thinking of them, now of the two of them together, now of each one separately. Beate, the elder, was nine, and she was old enough to realize that Daddy and Mummy were angry with one another. But Renate, who was only seven, had not yet noticed anything. When the atmosphere at home had become too strained, Toni’s aunt had come and taken the children to live with her in the country, and they didn’t know that Daddy and Mummy…. Before Hartmann could pursue his thought to the end, he saw Beate’s eyes, the way they had looked when she had seen Daddy and Mummy quarreling for the first time, Her childish curiosity had been mingled with dull surprise at the sight of grownups quarreling. Hartmann had hung his head before his daughter’s eyes as they grew dark with sorrow and her mouth assumed an expression of voiceless anguish. Then she had lowered her eyelashes and gone out.
Once again Hartmann felt the need to do something. Not knowing what to do, he removed his hat, mopped his brow, wiped the leather band inside his hat, and put it back on his head. Toni grew sad: she felt as if she were responsible for all his troubles. She took the parasol which Svirsh had hung from her belt and toyed with it. Meanwhile Hartmann had begun talking again. He made no reference whatever to the day’s events, but they were all reflected in his voice. Toni answered him vaguely. If she were aware of what she was saying, she would have noticed that she, too, was talking to no particular purpose. But Hartmann accepted her replies as if they were to the point.
A little girl approached them and held out a bunch of asters to Hartmann. Perceiving her intention, he took out his purse and threw her a silver coin. The child put the coin in her mouth but did not move. Hartmann looked at Toni inquiringly: What could the child be wanting now? Toni stretched out her hand and took the flowers, inhaled their scent, and said, “Thank you, my dear.” The girl twisted one leg around the other, rocked back and forth, and then went away. Toni looked affectionately at her retreating figure, a sad smile on her lips. “Ah,” said Hartmann smiling, “she’s an honest little trader. If she gets money, she has to give goods in exchange. Well, this is one transaction I’ve emerged from safely.”
Toni thought: He says, this is one transaction he’s emerged from safely; that means there was another transaction he didn’t emerge from safely. She raised her eyes to him, even though she knew that he was not in the habit of talking to her about his business affairs. But this time he opened his heart, and without any prompting began discussing business. He was involved in transactions he had entered into unwillingly, and now he could not extricate himself. These had led to disputes, quarrels and fights with partners and agents, who had bought merchandise with his money and, on seeing they were likely to incur a loss, had debited the amount to him.
Hartmann had started in the middle, like one who is preoccupied and talks of the things that are weighing on his mind. A person unfamiliar with the world of commerce could not have made head or tail of what he was saying, and Toni certainly knew nothing about business. But he ignored this and went on talking. The more he talked, the more confused he made matters sound, until his patience gave way completely, and he began to vent his anger on his agents, on whom he had relied as he relied on himself and who had betrayed his trust, causing him financial loss and involving him in degrading fights and disputes. He still didn’t know how to get rid of them.
Realizing that Toni was listening now, he went back and began from the beginning, carefully explaining each point to her. He now clarified what he had left unexplained in the first telling, and what he did not explain as he went along, he made clear later. Toni began to get the drift of his story, and what she did not grasp with her mind, her heart understood. She looked at him with concern, and wondered how he could bear so many worries without anyone to share them. Hartmann became conscious of her gaze and recounted the entire story in brief. Suddenly he realized that he was seeing his affairs in a new light. Although he had not intentionally set out to prove himself in the right, matters now seemed clearer to him, and he saw that the problem was after all not so insoluble as he had thought.
Toni listened attentively to all he said and realized that his angry mood had been due entirely to his business worries. She applied her new knowledge to the other matter, to the divorce. It was as if he had said, “Now you know why I have been so short-tempered, now you know why we have come to this, to getting divorced, I mean.”
Toni was thinking about the divorce and the period leading up to it, but she did not divert her attention from what he was saying. She lifted her brown eyes, which were full of trust and confidence, and said, “Michael, I’m sure you’ll find a suitable way out of it.” She looked at him again, trusting and submissive, as if it were not he but she who was in trouble, and as if it were she who was seeking help from him. He looked at her as he had not looked at her for a long time past, and he beheld her as he had not beheld her for a long time past. She was a head shorter than he. Her shoulders had grown so thin that they stuck out. She was wearing a smooth brown dress, open at the shoulders but fastened with rings of brown silk through which two white spots were visible. With difficulty he kept himself from caressing her.