I got up and climbed on to the swing. The air was sweet and cool, rushing past my body. Above, white clouds trailed delicately through the blue sky. From the pine forest streamed a wild perfume, the branches swayed together, rhythmically, sonorously. I felt so light and free and happy—so childish! I wanted to poke my tongue out at the circle on the grass, who, drawing close together, were whispering meaningly.
“Perhaps you do not know,” cried a voice from one of the cells, “to swing is very upsetting for the stomach? A friend of mine could keep nothing down for three weeks after exciting herself so.”
I went to the bath shelter and was hosed.
As I dressed, someone tapped on the wall.
“Do you know,” said a voice, “there is a man who lives in the Luft Bad next door? He buries himself up to the armpits in mud and refuses to believe in the Trinity.”
The umbrellas are the saving grace of the Luft Bad. Now when I go, I take my husband’s “storm gamp” and sit in a corner, hiding behind it.
Not that I am in the least ashamed of my legs.
A BIRTHDAY
Andreas Binzer woke slowly. He turned over on the narrow bed and stretched himself—yawned—opening his mouth as widely as possible and bringing his teeth together afterwards with a sharp “click.” The sound of that click fascinated him; he repeated it quickly several times, with a snapping movement of the jaws. What teeth! he thought. Sound as a bell, every man jack of them. Never had one out, never had one stopped. That comes of no tomfoolery in eating, and a good regular brushing night and morning. He raised himself on his left elbow and waved his right arm over the side of the bed to feel for the chair where he put his watch and chain overnight. No chair was there—of course, he’d forgotten, there wasn’t a chair in this wretched spare room. Had to put the confounded thing under his pillow. “Half-past eight, Sunday, breakfast at nine—time for the bath”—his brain ticked to the watch. He sprang out of bed and went over to the window. The venetian blind was broken, hung fan-shaped over the upper pane.... “That blind must be mended. I’ll get the office boy to drop in and fix it on his way home to-morrow—he’s a good hand at blinds. Give him twopence and he’ll do it as well as a carpenter.... Anna could do it herself if she was all right. So would I, for the matter of that, but I don’t like to trust myself on rickety step-ladders.” He looked up at the sky: it shone, strangely white, unflecked with cloud; he looked down at the row of garden strips and backyards. The fence of these gardens was built along the edge of a gully, spanned by an iron suspension bridge, and the people had a wretched habit of throwing their empty tins over the fence into the gully. Just like them, of course! Andreas started counting the tins, and decided, viciously, to write a letter to the papers about it and sign it—sign it in full.
The servant girl came out of their back door into the yard, carrying his boots. She threw one down on the ground, thrust her hand into the other, and stared at it, sucking in her cheeks. Suddenly she bent forward, spat on the toecap, and started polishing with a brush rooted out of her apron pocket.... “Slut of a girl! Heaven knows what infectious disease may be breeding now in that boot. Anna must get rid of that girl—even if she has to do without one for a bit—as soon as she’s up and about again. The way she chucked one boot down and then spat upon the other! She didn’t care whose boots she’d got hold of. She had no false notions of the respect due to the master of the house.” He turned away from the window and switched his bath towel from the washstand rail, sick at heart. “I’m too sensitive for a man—that’s what’s the matter with me. Have been from the beginning, and will be to the end.”