The Tanners

Popping the money he’d received into his vest pocket, he walked over to the window and beheld, down below in the narrow alleyway, a woman dressed all in black who seemed to be looking for something, for she kept tilting her head to look up, and in one such moment her eyes met those of Simon. These were large, dark eyes, true female eyes, and Simon involuntarily thought of Klara, whom he hadn’t seen in such a long time now; indeed he’d almost forgotten her. But it wasn’t Klara. This beautiful creature in the deep alley with her elegant, opulent dress offered a strange contrast to the dismal filthy walls between which she was slowly walking. Simon would have liked to call out to her: “Is it you, Klara?” But already the figure was vanishing around a corner, and nothing of her remained in the alleyway except the faint scent of melancholy that beauty always leaves behind in dismal places. “How beautiful it would have been, and how fitting, just at the moment when she looked up, to have thrown her a large dark red rose that she would have bent down to pick up. She would have smiled at this, astonished to be met by such a friendly greeting in so squalid an alleyway. A rose would have suited her well, as a pleading, crying child suits its mother. But how would a person who’s just had to avail himself of others’ generosity come to be in possession of expensive roses, and how could it be foreseen that at precisely nine in the morning a beautiful female figure would pass through this alleyway — which is the darkest of all alleys — a woman who appears to be the most elegant creature I’ve ever set eyes on?”