afternoon mad with this deathly silence—someone came
creeping up to you in the kitchen and asked you to be friends with me again.
It
was an incredible feat of self-control, let me tell you, to overcome
those feelings of shame and defiance to reach out to you, the very figure of
an
enemy inclined to scornfully reject me. I did this and to this day am grateful
to myself for doing so. Whether you’re grateful as well is a matter of the most
joyous and fragrant indifference. I can only guess. Go away, I hear you trying
to get a word in. Sorry, not possible. Desist! —How many delightful hours I
thereafter enjoyed in your company. All at once I found you tender, loving,
considerate. I think blissful feelings of joy burned on our cheeks. We wandered,
you as painter and I as observer and commentator, through the meadows on the
broad mountain slopes, wading in the scent of the grass, in the wetness of cool
mornings, under the heat of midday and with the damp, infatuated setting of the
sun. The trees watched what we were doing there, and the clouds balled
themselves up, no doubt in anger at possessing no power to break our newly
forged love. In the evenings we would come home horribly broken, dusty, starved
and exhausted, and then suddenly you went off one day. The devil knows I helped
you leave, as though I’d bound myself to do so for some sort of retainer, or
as
though I were in a hurry to see you depart. Certainly it was an
unheard-of pleasure for me to see you setting off, for you were
traveling out into the wide world. How far from wide this world is, brother.
Come visit me soon. I can give you shelter just as I would shelter a
bride whom I assume to be in the habit of reposing on silk while servants wait
on her. Admittedly I have no servants, but I do have a room fit for a born lord.
The two of us, you and I, have just been offered a splendid chambre as a gift, it’s been laid at
our feet. You can paint pictures here just as well as in your luscious fat
landscapes, after all you have your imagination. It ought by rights to be summer
now so that I might throw a garden party on the lawn in your honor, with Chinese
lanterns and garlands of flowers, so as to receive you in a manner approaching
what you deserve. Come all the same, but see to it your coming is quick,
otherwise I’ll have to come get you. My lady and landlady is pressing your hand
in hers. She is convinced that she knows you already just from my descriptions.
Once she meets you, she’ll never want to meet anyone else again. Do you have
a
decent suit? Are your trousers not sagging too terribly about your knees, and
does your head covering still merit the designation hat? Otherwise you may not
appear before me. Just a joke, what silliness. Let your little Simon embrace
you. Farewell, brother. I hope you’ll come soon—
* * *
Several weeks had passed, spring was beginning to return, the air was
damper and softer, uncertain fragrances and sounds began to assert themselves,
coming seemingly from beneath the earth. The earth was soft, one walked on it
as
on thick supple rugs. You thought you must be hearing birds singing. “Spring
is
on its way,” people on the street said to one another, awash in sensations. Even
the stark buildings were taking on a certain fragrance, a richer hue. Such a
peculiar state of affairs, and yet it was such an old, familiar phenomenon—but
everyone perceived it as utterly novel, it inspired strange, turbulent thoughts,
a person’s limbs, senses, heads, thoughts, everything was stirring as if all
these things wished to start growing anew. The water of the lake gleamed so
warmly, and the bridges snaking across the river appeared to arch more boldly.
Flags were flapping in the wind, and it gave people pleasure to see them flap.
And then the sunshine drove everyone out into the beautiful, white, clean
streets in clusters and
creeping up to you in the kitchen and asked you to be friends with me again.
It
was an incredible feat of self-control, let me tell you, to overcome
those feelings of shame and defiance to reach out to you, the very figure of
an
enemy inclined to scornfully reject me. I did this and to this day am grateful
to myself for doing so. Whether you’re grateful as well is a matter of the most
joyous and fragrant indifference. I can only guess. Go away, I hear you trying
to get a word in. Sorry, not possible. Desist! —How many delightful hours I
thereafter enjoyed in your company. All at once I found you tender, loving,
considerate. I think blissful feelings of joy burned on our cheeks. We wandered,
you as painter and I as observer and commentator, through the meadows on the
broad mountain slopes, wading in the scent of the grass, in the wetness of cool
mornings, under the heat of midday and with the damp, infatuated setting of the
sun. The trees watched what we were doing there, and the clouds balled
themselves up, no doubt in anger at possessing no power to break our newly
forged love. In the evenings we would come home horribly broken, dusty, starved
and exhausted, and then suddenly you went off one day. The devil knows I helped
you leave, as though I’d bound myself to do so for some sort of retainer, or
as
though I were in a hurry to see you depart. Certainly it was an
unheard-of pleasure for me to see you setting off, for you were
traveling out into the wide world. How far from wide this world is, brother.
Come visit me soon. I can give you shelter just as I would shelter a
bride whom I assume to be in the habit of reposing on silk while servants wait
on her. Admittedly I have no servants, but I do have a room fit for a born lord.
The two of us, you and I, have just been offered a splendid chambre as a gift, it’s been laid at
our feet. You can paint pictures here just as well as in your luscious fat
landscapes, after all you have your imagination. It ought by rights to be summer
now so that I might throw a garden party on the lawn in your honor, with Chinese
lanterns and garlands of flowers, so as to receive you in a manner approaching
what you deserve. Come all the same, but see to it your coming is quick,
otherwise I’ll have to come get you. My lady and landlady is pressing your hand
in hers. She is convinced that she knows you already just from my descriptions.
Once she meets you, she’ll never want to meet anyone else again. Do you have
a
decent suit? Are your trousers not sagging too terribly about your knees, and
does your head covering still merit the designation hat? Otherwise you may not
appear before me. Just a joke, what silliness. Let your little Simon embrace
you. Farewell, brother. I hope you’ll come soon—
* * *
Several weeks had passed, spring was beginning to return, the air was
damper and softer, uncertain fragrances and sounds began to assert themselves,
coming seemingly from beneath the earth. The earth was soft, one walked on it
as
on thick supple rugs. You thought you must be hearing birds singing. “Spring
is
on its way,” people on the street said to one another, awash in sensations. Even
the stark buildings were taking on a certain fragrance, a richer hue. Such a
peculiar state of affairs, and yet it was such an old, familiar phenomenon—but
everyone perceived it as utterly novel, it inspired strange, turbulent thoughts,
a person’s limbs, senses, heads, thoughts, everything was stirring as if all
these things wished to start growing anew. The water of the lake gleamed so
warmly, and the bridges snaking across the river appeared to arch more boldly.
Flags were flapping in the wind, and it gave people pleasure to see them flap.
And then the sunshine drove everyone out into the beautiful, white, clean
streets in clusters and
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