It was early spring. Already you could leave windows standing open with less hesitation, and the stoves scarcely needed stoking. The children brought Hedwig entire bouquets of snowdrops, so that soon they were at a loss what to do with them all, as there weren’t enough small containers in the schoolroom. The air in the village was heady with the first fragrant hints of spring. People were already taking walks in the sunshine. Imperceptibly, as if in passing, Simon had become known among these simple folk, no one asked many questions about who he was, people said he was one of the teacher’s brothers, and this was enough here to gain him respect. He’d be staying a little while, as a visitor, they thought. Simon walked around looking fairly tattered, but with a certain offhand elegance that became him and attractively concealed the squalor of the fabrics he wore. His torn shoes didn’t attract much notice. Simon found it enchanting to walk about the countryside in faulty shoes; he felt this to be one of the greatest advantages of country living. If he were to get some money, he might begin to consider whether to have his footwear set to rights, but these would be only the faintest, most unhurried deliberations. Perhaps he’d hesitate for a fortnight first; for what is a fortnight in the country? Back in the city you always had to do everything right away, but here you had the lovely obligation to defer everything from one day to the next, indeed, things deferred themselves of their own accord; for the days arrived so softly, and before you could even think about it, it would be evening already, followed by a fervent night, a veritable slumber of a night, which was then quietly woken again by the day, woken gently and with tenderness. Simon also loved the more often than not muddy village roads, the narrow ones that led you over hillocks of debris, and the wide ones where you sank into the muck if you didn’t watch your step. But that was what he liked about it! Walking on these roads gave you the opportunity to watch your step, you could show off as a city slicker who was accustomed to picking his way with great attentiveness and a slightly trumped-up look of horror when presented with mud. The old farmwives could then think to themselves what a tidy, cautious young man he was, and the girls could laugh at the great leaps Simon executed to avoid the moats and puddles. The sky was frequently encircled with clouds, dark puffy fat clouds, and delightful storms were often blowing, agitating the forest and hurtling across the moss where people were at work cutting sod, their horses patiently standing by. Oftentimes too the sky would be smiling so that all who saw it were instantly compelled to smile as well. Hedwig’s face would take on a joyous expression, and the teacher who lived on the upper floor would poke his glasses inquisitively out the window, in his way enjoying the exquisite treat of this balmy sky. Simon had gone into a little shop to buy himself an inexpensive pipe and some tobacco. It appeared to him beautiful and fitting to smoke only pipes in the country, for a pipe could be filled, and filling the pipe was a gesture that accorded well with the open fields and the forest where he spent almost the entire livelong day. In the warm midday sun, he would lie in the pale yellow grass beneath the splendidly gentle sky, stretched out on the riverbank, and was not merely allowed to dream, he was compelled to. But he didn’t dream of far-off, distant, beauteous things but rather contented himself with contemplations and daydreams pertaining to his immediate surroundings; for he knew nothing more beautiful. Hedwig, the one closest to him, was the object of his dreams. He had forgotten the entire rest of the world, and the pipe tobacco he was smoking only served to bring him back to the village, the schoolhouse, Hedwig. Of her he imagined:
