Actually it had already happened, only I didn’t know it yet; I heard about it only the next day when I appeared at the lunch table, where the landlady said to me, “Where did you go yesterday? Firstly I knocked with a stick on the ceiling, and when that didn’t help, then my husband did, and I tried again, but you still didn’t come. Then I sent the girl up to look and she brought the news that your room was quite empty. And we were nearly bringing the ceiling down!”
“They kept me back at the ministry yesterday, I only came in the evening when the young lady went out; we met on the stairs,” I replied as indifferently as possible.
“You’re playing some game with the young lady,” said the landlady, “when she doesn’t come, you don’t either.”
This surprised me so much that I quite forgot my pretended indifference and asked anxiously, “Was she out as well?”
“Of course she was!” cried the landlady. “Don’t you know yet?”
“No! How could I know that?” I replied, trying to return to my former indifference. “I haven’t exchanged a single word with the young lady in the meantime. Yesterday on the stairs she just shouted good evening to me over her shoulder, that’s all.”
“And I was joking to the old man: look, our young folks have got to a state where they don’t even want to see each other at lunch. Because the young lady only turned up after lunch and wanted to give up her lessons completely. Only after a lot of palaver did I get her to promise to come every afternoon for a couple of hours until Christmas. She says her grandfather’s health has suddenly got worse; the young lady can’t be away from home for so long. Of course that’s what she says, but what’s behind it, who knows? More likely she’s going out with a man. It’s understandable, for what’s the point in such a nice girl waiting any longer – her most beautiful years are passing her by.”
“You’d make everyone go out with men, whether they’re Estonian or German girls,” said her husband.
“Of course!” cried the landlady with assurance. “Girls to husbands and boys to wives. If it were up to me, I’d even look for a partner for our Mr Studious. Don’t you want me to take you in hand?” she appealed to me.
“No, thank you,” I replied, trying to joke, “soon I won’t have anything to put in my own mouth, let alone a wife’s.”
“I’m thinking of someone who has enough to put in her own mouth, and enough for yours as well,” explained the landlady.
“That would be the worst of all – to live at a wife’s expense,” I said.
“I think so too,” agreed the landlord.
“You have experience of that, to be so sure about it?” she asked her spouse.
“A little bit,” replied the man, “because you’re rich and I’m poor.”
“But you’ve always had your position and your income.”
“Of course I have, but it’s always been a beggar’s kopeck compared with your income.”
“But has my income made you unhappy?” the landlady asked.
“Isn’t it enough that it isn’t my income?” countered her husband.
“Well, if our young gentleman looks at it the same way, he’ll have a long time to perish alone and maybe even starve,” said the landlady.
“It’s easier to starve than eat from a woman’s hand,” I said.
“But if you love that woman?” she asked.
“Where would you come by love so easily,” I said to myself, while the landlord rushed to support me, saying, “A starving man’s love is like a homeless dog’s howling in front of the house where it’s beaten.”
“Listen – don’t upset the young man with your silly jokes,” the landlady told her spouse.
“I’m not joking at all,” he said.
“But a rich woman can fall in love with a poor man?” she asked.
“A rich old woman can, with a poor young man,” opined the landlord.
“But not a rich young girl with a poor young man?”
“I’ve never seen or heard of it,” said the landlord, “or unless the young man is from a great family, exceptionally handsome, gifted, famous or something like that, which is the same as rich.”
“That’s definitely right,” I said, turning to the landlord.
“You have experience of it, to say it with such conviction?” the landlady asked me.
“Not personally,” I replied, “but I’ve never seen it, heard of it or read of it. That some man, especially a young one, rich and of good family, would fall in love with a poor girl and then, so to speak, renounce the throne, is possible, but a woman – she is very practical in love as in other things, much more practical than we men.”
I felt a real enjoyment in saying these words, obviously influenced by the events of the past few days.
“You men don’t know anything about a woman’s love, you only love yourselves,” retorted the landlady. “For us women, love is a question of life, for you it’s a question of fun.”
“That’s possible,” agreed the landlord, “but we give our souls over to fun more lightly than you give yours to life.”
“Just so,” confirmed the landlady, “you don’t seek love, only fun. We women are the only ones who love.”
“And the more seriously you love, the more practical is the purpose of your love,” the man replied.
“Ever more practical, more practical!” cried the landlady, now agitated, as if her spouse’s words concerned her personally. “A person wants to live, a person must live! Don’t you think so?”
“I’ve no idea what a person must do in the world.”
“But somebody has to know, and you men don’t!” cried the landlady.
“There is only one conclusion to our conversation: a person must love,” I said.
“But if a woman loves so much that she is ready to cut her ties with her previous life, you’ll immediately say, ‘A woman’s love always has a practical purpose, she wants to live or die. Only we men love rightly, because we don’t have a purpose, we only have fun.’”
While she spoke, the landlady looked at me intently, as if her words were intended just for me. And though at the time I couldn’t accept those words, they still affected me painfully, for, I don’t know why, I was reminded of Erika sitting and crying on the bench because I was supposed to love grandfather more than her, and afterwards, of her carrying her little bag and keeping it away from me.
When the landlady started talking about men and women and their love, it affected all that was most sensitive in my nature and evoked my most painful memories. I would gladly have given up her lunches, but was hindered by various circumstances. Primarily the fact that the young lady had withdrawn, which on no account was due to grandfather’s health, but only her conversations with me and with Ervin. If I left the lunch table immediately, I thought that I would reveal my own conversations with the young lady, and I wanted avoid that for my own sake and, until much later, for hers as well. However things stood, it seems to me that despite everything I was still hoping for I knew not what. And revealing what I was hoping for was beyond my powers, although I suffered day after day at the hands of the chattering landlady, let alone the fact that, like it or not, I had to take part in that myself. Another reason why I was forced to continue my lunches was that they enabled me, for a little while each day, to occupy the spaces she moved in, breathe the same air as she did, accept her greetings along with the others, and afterwards hear her voice through the door as the lunch continued. This was painful, but at the same time calming. The last link between us was not yet broken, I thought. I could still see her white curls, her evasive eyes, her disfiguring pimples, which in recent times had given her an especially hostile appearance, as though warning me, You see what happens to a young lass when she abandons one young man and goes with another.