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It’s Spring Again

It’s spring again.

“The holiday of love is here again, the awakening of nature with its soft, smooth, satiny breezes, its newly awakened longings and hopes of joy.” So say many who write, describe, and praise the spring.

I don’t say so. I feel differently. When I see the spring, the thought comes to me, “Soon it will be winter again.”

Looking at the closed flower buds, I see flowers already withering. When the trees put on their new green clothes I already see how the yellowed, thin leaves fall to the ground in the silent cries of the angry wind.

I see the death of things when they’re barely born.

For whole evenings, I sit by myself and know that no one will come to see me. I also don’t want to go out and see anyone. For hours at a time I stare out my window, which looks out forlornly over many other windows, like my own, that cut lines through the large tenement buildings. They gaze with longing and sigh over the emptiness that fills the poor lives behind them.

In one of the windows I see her, a woman who has not yet begun to live for herself, but who through long years of hard work has helped him to graduate. Now he looks at her condescendingly. Fear shines from her tired eyes with the thought that soon he will no longer want to look at her at all.

I see her as one already run over by the wheels of the car he drives in his pursuit of success.

How sad she looks! How depressed, how discouraged, waiting for him when he doesn’t come! And when he does come, she seems to want to become someone else for his sake—a younger, prettier, more pleasing woman. He can tell, and that only makes her misfortune greater. Love is a game in which you must not show your cards.

The youth of the woman is the springtime of her life. That is the youth of the wealthy woman. The lonely, poor girl has no spring, for her it’s always autumn and winter.

The man always wants to appear stronger than the woman. And if he becomes strong on account of her weakness, then he becomes her enemy.

Nietzsche says, “If you give someone the opportunity to show how great he is and he doesn’t use it, he will never forgive you for it.”

I look at my hand and kiss the kiss that he left on it the last time he was with me, before he left. I love A. He does not know how much I love him and I won’t, I can’t, tell him. His not loving me while not knowing how passionately I love him wounds my heart. But if he didn’t love me even knowing how I love him, that would wound my pride. Everyone would be able to see my wounded pride, but my ailing heart they cannot see. I can hide my suffering. I can keep it well, well hidden.

My suffering is dear to me. I bolster it by imagining his love for other women and feel a painful pleasure in torturing myself, in suffering for him.

He insists that I come to him! He says that it’s quiet and nice where he lives. There are no other people, no strangers to disturb our lovemaking. He pretends not to be bothered by public opinion, and yet he’s looking for a way to hide from it. If his love is truly from his heart, his soul, his conscience, why should he keep it a secret, like it’s a sin?

If he wants to be the conqueror, I refuse to be the conquered. My victory will be that I’ll refuse to let him win. I must be the ruler of my own will. If I don’t wish to make him a slave to his conscience, why bring him to that, so that he’ll suffer later on my account?

No. I won’t go to him, and I don’t care if he never comes to me again!

I just wanted to see the house where he lives. The window to his room.

The room was half-lit. No one could be seen through the thick curtain. I stood in a dark corner on the side of the street across from it, and my heart pounded: “His window. The light is on . . . If I were to go right now to him I wouldn’t be alone anymore. I’d just go in and then come right back out. I’d bring with me the touch of his hand, a kiss, a glance, a word—”

But no. I couldn’t do such a thing. What would he, even he himself, think of me? No, I must not go to him. Let him come to me if he wants. And if my white room with its thin walls and people close by bothers him, then what he wants to do should never happen anyway.

That’s his window, I thought. He’s probably sitting in a corner in his solitary room, reading. Or laying on his bed and thinking—perhaps thinking of me. What would he do if he knew I was standing so close to him? He would run and call to me, invite me in.

His curtain opened. From behind it a womanly figure appeared. She stuck her head out of the window and looked at the sky. Behind her, he appeared. It was him, him! She turned her face toward him and offered her lips for a kiss. His head bent toward hers. They sank down so that they were hidden behind the back of a chair. Two long, naked, snowy-white arms fluttered above the back of the chair.

Then the arms disappeared. The room darkened. Maybe it only seemed darker to me because of the dark cloud that sneaked into my soul and pressed down on my heart, making me feel as though I’d been banished from the world.

How I fled from there! As though evil spirits were chasing me! But now, now I am calm, calm as a corpse.

A soft wind cools my feverish brow. Someone sings about spring, about happiness, about love.