Chapter 2 Chapter two

You see now, my dear, what a miracle you must have been to my child, what a seductive enigma!This is a man respected by everyone, because he has written many books, because he is famous in another big world, but now suddenly he is young and handsome, a cheerful young man of twenty-five years old!Shall I tell you that from this day on, in our house, in all my poor children's world, nothing else interests me but you; All the stupidity of the girl, all the stubbornness to find out, only interested in your life, only in your existence!I observed you carefully, observed your goings and goings, and observed those who came to see you. All these, instead of weakening, strengthened my curiosity about you, because there are all kinds of people who come to see you. Similarly, this shows the duality in your personality.Sometimes a bunch of young people come, your schoolmates, a bunch of slovenly college students, and you laugh and go crazy with them, and sometimes some ladies come in cars, and once the manager of the opera house comes , that great conductor, I can only see him standing in front of the music stand with full respect from a distance, and then some girls who are still in business school, they sneak in the door in a blink of an eye, the women who come A lot, a lot.I don't think it's weird, nor did I see a lady come out of your house one morning when I was going to school with a thick veil on her face--I was ten Three years old, with a kind of passionate curiosity, spying on your whereabouts and peeping at your actions. I was still a child, and I didn't know that this kind of curiosity was already love.But I still remember clearly, my dear, the day, that moment when I fell in love with you completely, forever.That day, I went for a walk with a female classmate, and the two of us stood at the gate chatting.At this moment a car drove up, and as soon as the car stopped, you jumped out of the car with that impatient lightness of yours, which still moves me.You got out of the car and wanted to go in, I couldn't help opening the door for you, so I was in your way, and we almost bumped into each other.You glanced at me with warm, soft, affectionate eyes, like caressing me, smiled at me, and said to me in a very soft, almost intimate voice: "Thank you, miss ."

That's all it was, my dear; but from the moment I met your tender eyes, I belonged entirely to you.I later, I soon found out that your gaze seems to hug the other person and attract you to you. It is both affectionate and soul-stirring. This is the gaze of a natural seducer. Give that look to every woman who passes you, to every shopgirl who sells you something, to every maid who opens the door for you.This look in you is not a conscious expression of affection and admiration, but your tenderness for women makes your eyes soften unconsciously when you see them.But I, a boy of thirteen, knew nothing about it: my heart was on fire.I thought your tenderness was only for me, for me alone.In that instant, I, a pre-adult girl, grew into a woman, and this woman is yours forever.

"Who is this person?" My female classmate asked.I can't answer right away.I can't say your name for anything: in this one second, in this one and only second, your name has become sacred to me, a secret in my heart. "Oh, a gentleman who lives in our building!" I stammered awkwardly. "Then he looked at you, why are you blushing!" My female classmate said mockingly with the sinister look of a nosy girl.But it happened that because I felt her sarcasm poke at the secret in my heart, the blood rushed to my cheek even more.When I was embarrassed, I became angry.I said to her viciously: "Stupid girl!" At that time, I really wanted to strangle her to death.But she laughed more and more sarcastically, and at last I found that I was so angry that my eyes were full of tears.I ignored her and ran upstairs in one breath.

From this second, I fell in love with you.I know women say that a lot to you pampered one.But believe me, no woman has ever loved you with such devotion and self-sacrifice as I have. I have never been in love with you, and have always been, because there is nothing in the world like a A love secretly cherished by a child, because it is hopeless, submissive, ingratiating, submissive, passionate, and has the same lust and unconscious insatiability of a grown woman. love is completely different.Only the lonely child can muster all the enthusiasm. Others have already abused their feelings in social activities and worn them out in friendly intercourse. They have often heard people talk about love, and often read in novels. Love, they know, love is the common destiny of all people.They play with love as if it were a toy, and they boast of their love experiences like boys smoking their first cigarette.But there was no one around me, and I couldn't tell anyone what was on my mind. No one pointed me out and reminded me. I had no experience, no mental preparation: I fell headlong into my destiny, like falling into an abyss.There is only one person in my heart, and that is you. I only see you in my sleep, and I regard you as a bosom friend: my father has long passed away, and my mother is depressed and depressed all day long. She lives on a pension and is always timid. I am afraid of getting into trouble, so I am not close to me; I am disgusted by those female classmates who have turned bad. All the emotions that were originally scattered and scattered, I dedicate to you my whole heart that has been compressed and rushed out again and again.What should I say to you?No analogy is enough, you are my everything, my whole life.Everything in the world exists because it is related to you, and everything in my life is meaningful only when it is connected with you.You changed my whole life.I used to be mediocre in school, neither good nor bad, but now I suddenly became the first in the class. I read a lot of books eagerly, often late into the night, because I know, you like books; Almost stubborn perseverance to practice the piano, which surprised my mother, because I think, you love music.I brushed and brushed and sewed and sewed my clothes just to look clean and pleasing to you.My old school uniform smock (modified from a house dress my mother wore) had a boxy patch on the left side, which I found extremely annoying.I was afraid that you would see the patch, so I looked down on me, so when I ran up the stairs, I always covered the place with my schoolbag, and I was trembling with fear, lest you would see the patch.But what a fool!You never, almost never, looked me in the eye after that.As for me, I can say that I do nothing all day long, just waiting for you and spying on your every move.There is a small brass peephole on the door of our house, and through this small round window you can see all the way to your door.This peephole is my eye out to the world—ah, my dear, don’t laugh, I sat in the small window with a book in my hand during those months and years Sitting in front of me, waiting for you in the cold doorway, fearing that my mother might be suspicious, my heart is as tense as a harp string, and it vibrates non-stop when you appear.When I think about it to this day, I'm not ashamed.My heart is always tense and throbbing for you; but you feel nothing of it, any more than you feel the tension of a watch in your pocket.This clockwork patiently counts your hours for you in the dark, calculates your time, and runs around with you with its inaudible heartbeat, while you are in the millions of seconds of its ticking. , and only once glanced briefly at it.I know everything about you, every habit of your life, every tie, every suit of your clothes, every friend of yours, and I will soon be able to distinguish them and divide them into My likes and my dislikes: I spent every hour on you from the age of thirteen to sixteen.Press, how many foolish things have I done!I kissed the doorknob that your hand touched, and I stole the butt of a cigar that you threw away before entering the door, which I hold sacred because your lips touched it.At night, I used excuses to run downstairs a hundred times, to the alley to see which room of yours was still lit, and to use this method to feel your invisible existence and get close to you in my imagination.During the weeks when you were traveling--my heart stopped beating when I saw good John take your yellow duffel bag--the weeks when I lived and died, and there was no point in living .I was in a bad mood, bored, at a loss, and I had to be very careful not to let my mother see my despair through my eyes swollen from crying.

I know that what I'm telling you now is ridiculous nonsense, childish folly.I should be ashamed of these things, but I am not, for never was my love for you purer and more passionate than in such innocent expressions of affection.If you ask me, I could literally tell you for hours, days and nights, how I lived with you at that time, and you hardly ever saw me because every time I was on the stairs When I met you on the street, I couldn't hide, so I lowered my head and ran upstairs from your side. In order to avoid seeing your burning eyes, it is like a person who is afraid of being burned and jumps into the river by jumping into the river.If you ask me, I could tell you for hours, for days and nights, about years you have long forgotten, and I could give you a complete calendar of your whole life; but I don't want to bore you, I don't want make you sick.I just want to tell you again one of the best experiences of my childhood, and I beg you not to laugh at me, because it is such a small thing, and it was a big thing to me as a child.It may be a Sunday, and you are away on a journey, and your servant drags the heavy, heavy rug he has beaten clean through the open door into the house.The good man was having such a hard time doing the job, that I went up to him with a surge of courage I don't know where, and asked him if he would like me to help him.He was astonished, but let me help him, and I saw the inside of your apartment—I cannot tell you with what awe and even reverence I was!I saw your world, your desk, you often sit beside this desk, on the table there is a blue crystal vase with a few flowers in it, I see your cabinet, your paintings, you book of.I have but a hasty and furtive glance into your life, for your faithful John would not let me look at it; but this one glance takes the whole atmosphere of your Whether awake or asleep, there is enough nourishment for my mind to dream.

This fleeting minute was the happiest moment of my childhood.I am telling you this moment so that you--you who have never known me--feel at last that a life clings to you and dries up for you.I will tell you this happiest moment, and at the same time I will tell you that most dreadful moment, too close together!I have just told you that for your sake I forget everything, that I pay no attention to my mother, that I care about no one.I didn't notice that an elderly man, a merchant from Innsbruck, and my mother was somewhat distantly related, was a frequent visitor at this time, and stayed for a long time; yes, that only pleased me, because He sometimes takes my mother to the theater, so that I can stay at home alone, miss you, watch you come back, this is my only supreme happiness!As a result, one day my mother called me into her room, nagging me a lot, saying that she wanted to have a serious talk with me.My face turned pale, and my heart was pounding suddenly: Could it be that she had a premonition and guessed something?My first thought is of you, of my secret, the link between me and the outside world.But my mother herself seemed very coy. She kissed me tenderly once or twice (she never kissed me normally), pulled me to the sofa and sat next to her, and then began to hesitate and shyly Said that her relative was a single Khan whose wife died, and now he proposed to her, and she decided to accept his request mainly for my sake.A rush of blood rushed to my heart, and there was only one thought in my heart, I thought of you. "Then shall we still live here?" I could only stammer out such a sentence. "No, we're moving to Innsbruck, where Ferdinand has a nice villa." I didn't hear anything else she said.My eyes suddenly went dark.I heard later that I passed out.I heard my mother whisper to my stepfather, who was waiting behind the door, and suddenly I threw my arms out and fell back like a block of lead.What happened in the next few days, how I, a child without power, resisted their overwhelming will, I cannot describe to you: until now, when I think of it, my hand holding the pen Just trembled.I couldn't reveal my real secret, so that my objection seemed to them simply stubbornness, obstinacy, and malice.No one answered me anymore, everything was carried out behind my back.They used my time at school to move things: by the time I got home from school, there was always a piece of furniture that had been moved or sold.I watched as my home was evacuated and my life ruined with it.Once I came home for lunch and the movers were packing the furniture and removing everything.In the empty room were packed boxes and two camp beds for my mother and me: we had to spend the night here, the last night, and drive to Innsbruck tomorrow.

On this last day I felt suddenly and decisively that I could not live without you.I don't know of any other savior but you.I can never for the life of me tell what I was thinking, whether I was really able to think clearly in this moment of despair, but suddenly—my mother wasn’t home—I stood up, in my school uniform, and walked to the opposite side to find you.No, I didn't walk past: an inner force like a magnet drew me, stiff and trembling, to your door.I've already told you, and I don't know what I'm going to do: I want to kneel at your feet, and beg you to take me in as your girl, as your slave.I'm afraid you'll make fun of the innocent zeal of a fifteen-year-old girl, but if you know, my dear, how I stood outside the door in the cold hallway, frozen with fright, but Impelled again by an elusive force, I moved forward, how I moved my trembling arm, stretched out my hand--this struggle lasted for a few terrible seconds. As long as eternity - put your finger on your doorbell, if you knew all this, you wouldn't laugh.The ear-piercing bell is still ringing in my ears, and then there was silence, my heart stopped beating, and the blood around me couldn't freeze, I listened intently to see if you came to open the door.

But you didn't come.No one came.You were obviously not home that afternoon, and John was presumably out on errands, so I had to stagger back to our unfurnished, dilapidated flat, the doorbell still ringing in my ears, exhausted. Lying on a traveling rug, the four steps from your door to my house are exhausting, as if I had been trudging for hours through deep snow.But despite my exhaustion, my determination to see you and talk to you before they drag me away remains undiminished.I swear to you, there's nothing lustful in it, I was an innocent girl, I couldn't think of anything but you: all I wanted was to see you, to see you again, to cling to you on your body.And so all the night, the terrible long night, my dear, I waited for you.As soon as my mother lay down and fell asleep, I slipped softly into the doorway, pointed my ears and listened, when will you come home.I've been waiting for you all night, it's a freezing January night.I was tired and sleepy, my limbs ached, and there were no chairs to sit in the doorway, so I lay on the ground, and the cold wind came through from under the door.I was lying on the cold hard floor in thin clothes, I didn't take a blanket, I didn't want to keep myself warm, lest I would fall asleep when I warmed up, and I wouldn't hear your footsteps.Lying there ached all over, my feet crumpled and curled up, my arms shook: I had to get up again and again, it was terribly cold in this horrible dark doorway.But I waited, waited, waited for you, as I waited for my fate.