Chapter 3 third chapter

Finally—it was probably two or three o'clock in the morning—I heard someone from downstairs unlock the door with a key, and then footsteps came up the stairs.In an instant, I felt the cold disappear, and my whole body was hot. I gently opened the door, wanting to rush to you and throw myself at your feet. ... Ah, I really don't know what my silly girl would have done then.The footsteps were getting closer, and the candle light shone from the stairs flickeringly.I gripped the doorknob, trembling all over.Is it really you who came upstairs? Yes, it was you who came up, dear -- but you didn't come back alone.I heard a coquettish chuckle, the rustle of silk clothes mopping the floor, and your low voice—you came back with a woman.

I don't know how I made it through the night.At eight o'clock the next morning they dragged me to Innsbruck; I had no strength left to resist. My son died last night--if I had to go on living now, I would be all alone again.To-morrow they're coming, those dark, hulking strange men, with a coffin in which I'll put my poor only child.Perhaps friends would come and bring some wreaths, but what good are flowers for a coffin?They will come to comfort me, and tell me something; but what can they do for me?I knew that afterwards I would have to live alone again.There is nothing scarier in time than being among people and living alone.I experienced this then, during the interminable two years I spent in Innsbruck.During the two years from my sixteenth to my eighteenth year, I lived among my family almost like a prisoner, like an outcast.My stepfather was a peaceful, taciturn man, who was very kind to me, and my mother, in no way trying to atone for an inadvertent wrong, was always submissive to me; young people surrounded me and fawned on me; but I Stubbornly reject them thousands of miles away.Without you, I would not live happily and contentedly, I wallowed in my gloomy little world, tortured myself, and lived alone.I didn't wear the new colorful clothes they bought me; I refused to go to concerts, to the theater, or to go on happy excursions with people.I hardly ever go out of my house, and I seldom go out on the street: can you believe it, my dear, I have lived in this small city for two years, and I know less than ten streets?I am sad all day long, and I only want to be sad; I can't see you, so I want nothing but a certain intoxication from it.Besides, I just long to be alone with you in the depths of my heart, and I don't want to distract me.I sit at home alone, for hours, all day, doing nothing but thinking about you, turning over and over hundreds of little things from the past, thinking about every time I saw you, every time Waiting for your situation, I thought about these little episodes again and again, just like watching a play.Because I have replayed every second of the past so many times, I remember my entire childhood vividly, and every minute of the past years has been so vivid and concrete to me as if it happened yesterday.

I was completely focused on you.I have bought all your books; as soon as your name is in the papers, that day is my holiday.Do you believe that I have read your book over and over again, and I can recite every line in your book?If someone woke me up from my sleep in the middle of the night and read a single line from your book to me, today, after thirteen years, I can continue to recite it today, as if in a dream: you write Every word of it is a Gospel and a prayer to me.The whole time exists only because of you: I read advertisements for concerts and theater premieres in the Viennese newspapers, and I have only one thought on my mind, which show will interest you, and at night I am with you from afar Looking at you: now he enters the theater lobby, now he sits down.I've dreamed about such things a thousand times, because I saw you once with my own eyes at a concert.

But why tell such things, why tell this crazy, self-torturing, so miserable, so hopeless frenzy of a lonely child to someone who feels nothing about it, knows nothing about it?But was I still a child?I'm seventeen, and I'm going to be eighteen in a blink of an eye—young people are starting to turn their heads to look at me in the street, but they just make me angry.Because asking me to think about falling in love with someone else in my mind instead of loving you, even if it’s just for fun, I find this kind of idea incomprehensible and unimaginably strange, and the slightest temptation is already a crime in my opinion up.My passion for you is still the same as ever, only it has become more intense, more carnal, more feminine as my body has developed, as my passion has awakened.The vague desire that lurks in the subconscious of that ignorant girl and drove her to pull your doorbell is now my only thought: to dedicate myself to you, to give myself completely to you.

People around me think I'm shy, say I'm shy, and I grit my teeth and don't tell anyone my secrets.But there was a steel-like will in my heart.All I can think about is one thing: back to Vienna, back to you.After hard work, my will can get what I want, no matter how absurd and incomprehensible it may seem to others.My stepfather was very wealthy and he considered me his own daughter.But I insisted so stubbornly on earning my own living that at last I succeeded, and went to Vienna to join a relative and get a job as a clerk in a large clothing store.Do you still want me to tell you that on a foggy and confused autumn evening, I finally!finally!When I came to Vienna, where did I go first?I left my box at the station, jumped on a tram--how slowly it seemed to me to go, and every stop made me angry--and ran up to the house.Your windows are still lit, and my whole heart is pounding.Only then did this city, which was so foreign to me, buzzing around me so meaninglessly, come to life, only then did I come to life again, because I felt your Existence, you, my eternal dream.It never occurred to me that I am equally far away from your soul whether it is separated by countless mountains and valleys or only a layer of glass in your window between you and my looking up.I looked up and looked: there is a light, there is a house, there is you, and there is my world.I've been dreaming of this moment for two years, and now it's finally here.All this long night, mild and foggy, I've been standing under your window till the lights go out.Then I went to find my place.

I will stand in front of your room every night like this.I worked in the shop till six o'clock, and it was heavy and tiring work, but I liked it because it kept me from feeling so badly my inner turmoil.As soon as the iron roller shutters rattled down behind me, I made a beeline for my beloved destination.The only wish in my heart is, I just want to see you, I just want to meet you once, I just want to hug your face with my eyes from a distance!About a week later, I finally met you, and at exactly the moment I didn't expect: I was looking up at your window when you suddenly came across the street.Suddenly I was that thirteen-year-old girl again, and I felt the blood rushing to my cheeks; against my strong desire to see your eyes, I involuntarily lowered my head, as if there were pursuers behind me , quickly ran past you.Afterwards, I felt ashamed of this kind of shy and cowering behavior of running away like a schoolgirl, because now I have made up my mind: I just want to meet you, I am looking for you, and after all these hard-fought years, I Hope you know who I am, hope you recognize me, hope you love me.

But you didn't notice me for a long time, even though I stood in your alley every night, even when the wind and snow were blowing, and the piercing wind in Vienna was blowing non-stop.Sometimes I waited for hours in vain, sometimes I waited a long time, and you finally came out of the house with your friends, and twice I saw you with a woman,--I saw a strange woman with you Holding hands and walking out, my newborn suddenly shrank, tearing my soul apart. At this moment, I suddenly felt that I had grown up, and I felt a new and strange feeling in my heart.I am not surprised, I have known from my childhood that women have always visited you, but now suddenly I feel a physical pain, I feel emotional ups and downs, and I hate you and another woman for showing such obvious physical affection. Intimacy, but at the same time, I also long for this kind of intimacy.I didn't go in front of your house all day out of a childish pride I had in the past and maybe I still have.But what a dreadful night this night of obstinate anger had turned into a void!The next night I stood in front of your room again, and waited and waited. As fate would have it, I have been waiting in front of your closed life for the rest of my life.

One night, you finally noticed me.I have already seen you coming from a distance, so I quickly cheered up and didn't run away from you again.It just so happened that a truck was parked in the street unloading, narrowing the road so you had to walk past me.Your casual gaze involuntarily swept across me. As soon as it came into contact with my focused gaze, it immediately turned into the kind of gaze that is dedicated to women-recalling the past, I was shocked! --and again that affectionate look, so tender and soul-stirring at the same time, and that seductive look that hugs the other person tightly, which woke me up for the first time before. , so that I suddenly changed from a child to a woman, into a lover.Your eyes and mine met like this for a second, two seconds, and I couldn't keep my eyes from yours, and I didn't want to do so—and then you passed me.My heart was pounding: I could not help but slow down, and an insurmountable curiosity drove me to turn my head and see you stopped and looking back at me.You observed me with great curiosity and interest, and I saw at once from your air that you did not recognize me.

You didn't recognize me, didn't recognize me then, and never recognized me.My dear, how can I describe to you my disappointment at that moment.It was the first time I suffered this fate, this fate not to be recognized by you, I have lived with it all my life, and died with it; not recognized by you, not recognized by you .How can I describe to you this disappointment!Because you see, during the two years I spent in Innsbruck, I missed you every moment, and I did nothing but imagine what our reunion in Vienna would be like, as my mood went. , imagine the happiest and worst possibilities.I went through it all in a dream, if I may say so; in my gloomy moments I imagined that you would shut me out, that you would despise me because I was too low, too ugly, too nasty.I have experienced all forms of your hatred, cruelty, and indifference in my vividly imagined illusions-but this, this alone, no matter how gloomy I am and how inferior I am I don't even dare to think about it, this is the most terrifying point: that is, you don't even notice that there is such a person as me.Today I understand--oh, you taught me to understand! --The face of a girl, of a woman must be a variable thing to a man, for in most cases it is only a mirror, now of ardent passion, now of innocence, now of fatigue The mirror of sleepiness is as ephemeral as the figure in the mirror, so it is easier for a man to forget the face of a woman, because age casts light or casts shadows on her face, and clothing takes it from time to time. It is set off like this from time to time.Only a sad and frustrated woman will really understand the mystery of this.But I was a girl then, and I couldn't understand your forgetfulness, and I thought of you so endlessly that I had the illusion that you must always be waiting for me too; There is nothing in your mind, you have never thought about me at all, how can I survive!Your eyes tell me that you don't recognize me at all, that you don't remember that your life and my life are connected as thin as a spider's thread: this look of yours makes me wake up like a dream, makes me the first time. The first time I fell into reality, the first time I had a premonition of my fate.

You didn't recognize who I was.Two days later we met again, your eyes embraced me with a kind of intimacy, at this time you didn't recognize me, I was the girl who loved you and was awakened by you, you only recognized, I was That eighteen-year-old beautiful girl who met across from you in the same place two days ago.You looked at me cordially, with a surprised expression on your face, and a faint smile appeared on the corner of your mouth.You passed me again, and immediately slowed down: I trembled, I cheered in my heart, I prayed secretly, you would come and say hello to me.I feel, for the first time, that I am alive for you: I also slow down, I do not hide from you.Suddenly I turned my head beautifully, and felt that you were right behind me. I knew that this was the first time I would hear you talking to me in my favorite voice.My limbs are numb with this anticipation, I am worried, I have to stop, my heart is racing like a deer-when you come to me.You talked to me with such a cheerful air, as if we were old friends--oh, you had no premonitions of me, you never had any premonitions of my life! --You strike me up with such grace and charm that I can even answer your words.We walked the entire alley together.Then you asked me if I would like to have dinner with you.I said ok.How dare I refuse to accept your invitation?

We ate together in a little restaurant—do you remember where this restaurant is?I must not remember, this kind of dinner must be something for you, you must not be able to tell the difference, because what is I to you?Just one of hundreds of women, just one in an unbroken series of adventures.And what reminds you of me: I say very little, because being near you and listening to you make me happiest.I don't want to waste a second of my time by asking a question or saying something stupid.You gave me this hour and I am so grateful to you and I will never forget it.Your manner makes me feel that the warm respect I feel for you is justly due, your manner is so gentle and proper, there is no urgency, no desire to express tenderness hastily, from the first That kind of stable and friendly, the air of hitting it off at first sight.Even if I had not decided to give my whole will and my life to you, your attitude would have won my heart.Alas, you don't know, I have been waiting for you for five years!How I am overjoyed that you have not failed me!