From the other end of the inn, a nasal voice belonging to one of the Zeit family members suddenly rang out: Come here will you, please, dear, your son won’t stop … Little Thomas keeps … he keeps giving little … Can you hear me, dear?
Bumping his belly against the belly of his brother, Herr Zeit declared: It’s August already! Who would have thought it?
In a corner of the kitchen, Frau Zeit was speaking to her daughter in hushed tones: Is that clear? If you behave in that manner cousin Lottar will never like you (I don’t want cousin Lottar to like me, said Lisa), well you’ll have to. He’s a doctor’s son. He’s respectable. He’s not a bad man. It’s enough that he noticed you. So not another word and be nicer to him, do you hear? Answer me, Lisa, answer me!
Lisa marched out of the kitchen, her mother behind her. At that moment, Hans, who had just returned and was looking around surprised by all the commotion, almost walked headlong into Lisa. She paused to straighten her hair and smile at him. Then she turned and shouted at her mother: If you’d ever been in love you wouldn’t speak to me like that! Frau Zeit stopped in her tracks, bewildered. What, she stammered, what on earth are you talking about? Lisa disappeared down the corridor. Having no one else to speak to, the innkeeper’s wife looked at Hans and exclaimed: Heavens! What a girl! Do you understand her?
Lisa spent the rest of the day shut away in her room and refused to have lunch. Frau Zeit explained to cousin Lottar that Lisa was indisposed. Cousin Lottar nodded ambiguously and said this was perfectly natural, because Lisa had grown a lot since last summer and was no longer a child.
A few minutes before five o’clock, Lisa voluntarily came out of her confinement and walked into the kitchen wearing a nonchalant expression that made her mother even more infuriated. Without saying a word, she helped prepare the lemonade, and when it was time hurried to take it upstairs herself to room number seven.
Before knocking at the door, Lisa eavesdropped outside. Hans’s deep, rather serious voice, was reciting sweet words:
… you wish me to abandon my love,
to accuse and scorn her, while my desire
is to bite, go mad, to die for her.
As usual, Lisa knocked on the door twice without waiting to be told to enter. For this reason, she was able to hear the reply of that stuck-up prig who came there almost every afternoon: You’ve done a perfect job! That was scant praise for a man like Hans.
She walked in deliberately slowly, holding the jug; the sun from the window shredded the lemon pulp, setting off explosions of light. Turned towards her, smiling, the adorable Hans sat holding a piece of paper covered in jottings. Opposite him, the prig sat upright, her hair dishevelled, stupidly clutching a quill. Lisa moved forward. The room was a complete mess. There were open books strewn everywhere, the water jug was filthy, and, to top it all, the prig had clumsily allowed her beautiful peach shawl, which she didn’t deserve, to fall to the floor. Even poor Hans’s bed was unmade — if the chambermaids weren’t more careful she would tell her mother. Lisa glanced at the bedclothes, becoming absorbed in them for a moment until Hans gave a slight cough. Then she carried on walking as if she had never stopped. She went over to them, leant over to fill their glasses, placed the jug on the table and walked out closing the door roughly.
It is night now. The noises, the voices, the scrape of furniture have long ceased. The sound of the cricket emerging from silence floats through the air. The inn is a pool of darkness, scarcely interrupted by the oil lamps on the ground floor. The dining room is deserted, the stove cold. There are no stirrings on the first floor either. No light illuminates the stairs. Yet, somewhere along the corridor on the second floor, the flame of an oil lamp flickers slowly. Lisa is walking barefoot, on tiptoe, as though the ground were covered in prickles, balancing so as not to spill anything from the plate, aware it might give her away the next day. Lisa’s icy feet reach the end of the passageway and stop at the door to room number seven. This is when her hands begin shaking and she fears she may tip up the plate or make some other blunder. Her pointed breast swells beneath her nightdress, holds the air for a moment, then hollows out again. She can hear herself breathing. She counts the breaths. One. Two. Three. Now or never.
As Lisa turns the handle slowly and pushes open the door, the oil lamp casts an intense glow over her hand, illuminating her knuckles, light seems to flow from her fingers. Hans hasn’t noticed yet, for he is no longer reading but forgetting, repeating in a dream the words of the book he was reading until a moment ago. On a chair beside the bed, the flame in the oil lamp flickers. Hans is lying on his back wearing only a pair of short white pants. The open book rests on his chest. Lisa gazes at Hans’s long legs, his big feet spread out. She approaches the bed. She crouches down and places the candle in its plate on the floor. When she stands up again, Lisa’s heart misses a beat — Hans’s eyes are shining now, staring at her with an intensity that startles her.
Half propped up, Hans contemplates Lisa equally alarmed. He looks at her high, pointed shoulders. He looks at her dark figure through her backlit nightdress. He looks at her downy thighs, those slender thighs now leaning timidly against his bed. Is he still asleep? No, he knows perfectly well that he is wide awake. Lisa’s left shoulder strap begins to give way, it falls. Hans tries to think of the number thirteen. Is it a high or a low number? Her shoulders are high, her collarbones, too. He is having difficulty concentrating. Lisa carries on undressing like a sleepwalker, as if she were alone. Is it a high or a low number? That depends on what and when. Lisa’s skin and hair smell of warm oil. Hans lies still. He isn’t doing anything, he is blameless. He glimpses a nipple, like a new sun. Yet he can’t help telling himself that there comes a moment when lying still is no less of an action than moving. Thirteen, is it a lot or a little? Lisa’s fingertips are at once rough and delicate. These fingers explore his chest. Life is wretched, wretched. Choking with emotion, with conflicting desires, Hans manages to lift his arm and clasp Lisa’s wrist. The wrist rebels at first. Then loses its resolve. Lisa withdraws her hand, puts her nightdress back on. She refuses to look Hans in the eye or let him hold her chin, which moves from left to right, quivering like the wick of the oil lamp. Finally Lisa’s chin surrenders, he cups it in both hands, she consents to look at him, showing him her tear-stained cheeks. They say nothing. Before moving away from the bed, Lisa instinctively kisses him on the mouth and he does nothing to stop her. Lisa’s breath smells of caramel.
When the door closes, Hans remains on his back, motionless, his pulse racing. His brow is bathed in a cold sweat, his skin is burning. He tries to think for a moment. Tries to convince himself he did the right thing, to pat himself on the back. Yet he seriously suspects that if Lisa had insisted a little more, if she had prolonged that kiss, he would have gone along with her, collaborated even. Life is wretched, wretched. He leaps out of bed, treading on the book that has fallen on the floor, he rushes over to the jug, wets his head a few times, does not feel the coolness of the water.
The first thing Álvaro did on arriving back from his trip was to drop in at Old Cauldron Street. He climbed the stairs without speaking to Herr Zeit, who gazed at him sleepily from behind his desk. Álvaro had a bad feeling when there was no reply from number seven. When Lisa told him Hans had just gone out, he heaved a sigh of relief. He set off for the market square and, seeing that the organ grinder had already left, took a tilbury to the cave. There he found the three of them, Hans, the old man and Franz, singing a Neapolitan song to the strains of the barrel organ — the old man gave a low croaky rendering, Hans tried to sing along without knowing the words, and the dog barked and growled, showing an uncanny sense of rhythm.