I was a bit embarrassed and at a loss how to start a conversation.
I hardly knew the girl, and the longer I looked at her the stranger she was.
It was a long time since I had been together with anyone like this; I was out of practice.
I was more accustomed to knock about with men.
In the cafe just now it had been too noisy—and now here it was suddenly too quiet.
The stillness of the room gave to every word such weight that it was hard to talk easily.
I began to wish myself back in the cafe. . . .
Fred brought the glasses, and we drank.
The rum was strong and fresh, and tasted of the sun.
That was something to the good.
I emptied my glass and at once ordered another.
"Do you like it here?" I asked.
The girl nodded. "Better than the pastry shop?"
"I hate pastry shops," said she.
"Then why ever did we meet there of all places?" I asked in surprise.
"I don't know." She took off her cap. "Nothing else occurred to me."
"So much the better that you like it here.
We are often here.
Of evenings this place is almost a sort of home for us."
She smiled.
"Isn't that rather a pity?"
"No," said I, "it suits the times."
Fred brought me the second glass.
He placed a green Havannah beside it on the table.
"From Herr Hauser."
Valentin signalled from his corner and raised his glass.
"Thirty-first of July, 'seventeen," said he in a thick voice.
I nodded to him and raised my glass.
He must always be drinking to somebody.
I met him one night in a country inn drinking to the moon; he was celebrating some day or other in the trenches when things had been particularly sticky, and he was thankful to be alive still and able to sit there.
"He is an old friend of mine," I explained to the girl, "a pal from the war.
He is the only man I know who has known how to extract a small happiness out of a great misfortune.
He does not know any more what to do with his life—so he rejoices simply that he is still alive."
She looked at me thoughtfully.
A band of light fell across her forehead and her lips.
"I can understand that right enough," said she.
I looked up.
"Well, you ought not to be able to.
You are much too young."
She smiled.
A slight, hovering smile in the eyes only.
Her face hardly changed expression; merely became clearer, as from" within brighter.
"Too young," said she. "What a thing to say!
It seems to me one is never too young.
Only always too old."
I remained silent a moment. "There's a lot might be said on the other side," I replied at last, and made a sign to Fred to bring me something more to drink.
The girl was,so assured and independent; I felt like a block of wood in comparison.
I would like to have started some light, gay conversation, a really good conversation, the sort that usually occurs to one afterwards when one is alone again.
Lenz could do it; but with me it always became awkward and laboured.
It was not without justice that Gottfried maintained that as an entertainer I was about on the level of a postmistress.