Simon went home. He’d made it his habit to amble homeward each day at a certain hour when evening was approaching, usually with his gaze lowered to the brown dark earth, to make the tea at home, in the preparation of which he’d developed a skill that always struck the right balance, for it was a matter of using not too little and not too much of this noble fragrant plant, keeping the crockery meticulously clean and placing it in an appetizing, graceful way upon the table, preventing the water from boiling away on its spirit burner, and then combining it with the tea in the prescribed manner. For Hedwig it provided some modicum of relief that all she had to do to have tea was pop out of the classroom for a moment before rushing back to work. In the morning when he got up, Simon would put his bed to rights, then go to the kitchen to make the cocoa, which, to Hedwig’s pleasure, came out quite tasty; for with this task, too, he was always in hot pursuit of the best way to give an undertaking, modest as it might be, the required perfection. He also took it upon himself as a matter of course, without previous study or particular exertion, to light the fire in the heating stove and keep it burning, and to clean Hedwig’s room, whereby his skill in manipulating the long broom very much came in handy. He would open the windows to allow fresh air to enter the room, but he closed them again promptly when he thought it was time, in order to achieve a room that was both warm and nice-smelling. Everywhere in the room, in little pots, flowers that had been snatched from their natural environment went on blooming, distributing their fragrance between these four narrow walls. The windows had simple but charming curtains, which added considerably to the brightness and friendliness of the room. On the floor lay warm rugs that Hedwig had had made from gathered-up scraps of cloth by unfortunates serving prison terms, who carried out tasks of this sort exceptionally well. A bed stood in one corner, in the other a piano, and between them was an old sofa with a flowered cloth slipcover, an adequately large table before it, chairs on either side; and then there was a washstand in the room, a small writing table with a blotting pad and a bookshelf filled with books; and a small inverted crate on the floor that, covered with a soft cloth, served for sitting and reading, as reading sometimes made one feel the need to be close to the floor and fancy oneself an Oriental; further, a little sewing table with a sewing basket containing all those fantastical items indispensable to a girl who sets any store in housekeeping; a round, odd stone bearing a postmark and stamp, a bird, a stack of letters and postcards; and on the wall a horn for blowing into, a cup to drink from, a walking stick with a large crook, a backpack with a canteen, and the tail-feather of a falcon. Also hanging on the walls were Kaspar’s paintings — a crepuscular landscape with a forest; a rooftop seen from a window; a foggy gray city (to Hedwig particularly lovely); a bit of river in voluptuous evening hues; a field in summer; a Don Quixote; and a house nestled against a hill in such a way that one could borrow the words of a poet to declare: “O’er yonder stands a house.” Upon the piano, whose top was covered with a silken scarf, stood a bust of Beethoven in a greenish shade of bronze, several photographs and a small, dainty empty jewelry box, a keepsake from their mother. A curtain that looked like a theater curtain separated the two rooms and the two sleepers. In the evening, the teacher’s room appeared particularly cozy when the lamp was lit and the shutters closed; and in the morning, the sunlight would awaken a sleeper who was anything but eager to emerge from her bed but in the end had no choice.
The notaries left Simon in the lurch, not a single one contacted him. As a result, he found himself compelled to earn money in other ways, since he hoped to demonstrate to his sister his good intentions when it came to sharing household expenses. He took up a sheet of paper and wrote:
