Six P.M. approaches. I sense it coming on. Not as intensely as the children sense the approach of Christmas Eve. But I sense it all the same. At six on the dot I drink tea, a festive satisfaction that never disappoints in this burdensome existence. Something you can count on, to have a becalming bliss at your beck and call. A given completely free of life’s vicissitudes. Pouring the good mountain spring water into my lovely white half-liter nickel-plated receptacle already gives me pleasure. Then I wait out the simmer, the song of the water. I have a huge, semispherical, deep, brick-red Wedgewood cup. The tea comes from the Café Central, wafting with the scent of high mountain meadow, of wild bugle and sunburned pasture grass.
The tea is golden yellow-straw yellow, never brownish, always light and unoppressive. I smoke a cigarette along with it, a “Chelmis, Hyksos.” I sip it very very slowly. The tea is an internally stimulating nerve bath. You can bear it all better while drinking it. You feel it inside, a woman ought to have that effect. But she never does. She hasn’t yet acquired the culture of serene sweetness so as to affect you like a noble warm golden-yellow tea. She believes she’d lose her power. But my six o’clock tea never loses its power over me. I long for it daily in just the same way and lovingly let it wed my body.