The Tanners

As he was thinking in this way, he’d been walking up a short but fairly steep street and now paused before a building from which a woman’s head was looking out at him through an open window. Looking into the woman’s eyes, Simon thought he was gazing into a distant sunken world, but then a wonderfully familiar voice called down to him: “Oh, Simon, it’s you! Do come up!”

It was Klara Agappaia.

When he’d leapt up the stairs, he beheld her sitting at the window in a heavy dark red dress. Her arms and breast were only half concealed by the luxurious fabric. Her face had grown paler since he’d seen her last. In her eyes a deep fire was burning, but her mouth was pressed closed. She smiled and held out her hand to him. In her lap lay an open book, apparently a novel she’d started reading. At first she was unable to speak. It seemed to be causing her shame and effort to ask questions and relate things. She seemed to be struggling to shake off the sense of alienation she now felt before her young former friend. Her mouth appeared to weep each time it tried to open and soften. Her beautiful, long, voluptuous hands seemed to have taken over the task of speaking, at least until her mouth was able to shake off its self-consciousness. She didn’t look Simon up and down the way people examine friends they haven’t seen in a long while; instead she gazed into his eyes, whose peaceful expression calmed her. Once more she seized his hand and at last said:

“Give me your hand, let me be to you what I am to my son, who understands me as soon as he hears the rustle of my garments from the next room, who grasps me with a single glance, to whom I needn’t say a word, not even a whispered one, to share my secrets with him; whose sitting, coming, going, standing and lying down tell me all his feelings exist only with the goal of understanding his mother; before whom a person must bend down to the ground, to his feet, to tie his shoes better when the laces have gotten loose; to whom one gives a kiss when he’s been courageous and good; for whom one keeps all secret things open; from whom one wouldn’t even know how to keep a secret; to whom one gives everything even though he’s a little traitor and has managed to neglect his mother for a long, long time, just like you, even though he’s been able to forget her, like you. No, you never managed to forget me. No doubt you often tried to shake me off in defiance, but whenever a woman crossed your path who looked even a tiny bit like me, you imagined you were seeing me, thought you’d found me again. Didn’t this make you tremble, didn’t you feel, as you experienced this deceptive encounter, as if suddenly above a bright regal staircase carved in stone a pair of doors had swung open to admit you to a chamber filled with the joy of reunion? What a joyous thing it is to see someone again. When we’ve lost one another on the street or in the countryside and then a year or so later find each other again, quietly, without further ado, on such an evening when the bells are already tolling out a premonition of this reunion, we press each other’s hands and no longer think of the separation and the cause of this long digression. Leave your hands in mine! Your eyes are still just as kind and beautiful. You remain identical to yourself. Now I can tell you: