“Good-evening,” said the Herr Professor, squeezing my hand; “wonderful
weather! I have just returned from a party in the wood. I have been
making music for them on my trombone. You know, these pine-trees
provide most suitable accompaniment for a trombone! They are sighing
delicacy against sustained strength, as I remarked once in a lecture on
wind instruments in Frankfort. May I be permitted to sit beside you on
this bench, gnädige Frau?”
He sat down, tugging at a white-paper package in the tail pocket of his
coat.
“Cherries,” he said, nodding and smiling. “There is nothing like
cherries for producing free saliva after trombone playing, especially
after Grieg’s ‘Ich Liebe Dich.’ Those sustained blasts on ‘liebe’ make
my throat as dry as a railway tunnel. Have some?” He shook the bag at
me.
“I prefer watching you eat them.”
“Ah, ha!” He crossed his legs, sticking the cherry bag between his
knees, to leave both hands free. “Psychologically I understood your
refusal. It is your innate feminine delicacy in preferring etherealised
sensations.... Or perhaps you do not care to eat the worms. All
cherries contain worms. Once I made a very interesting experiment with
a colleague of mine at the university. We bit into four pounds of the
best cherries and did not find one specimen without a worm. But what
would you? As I remarked to him afterwards—dear friend, it amounts to
this: if one wishes to satisfy the desires of nature one must be strong
enough to ignore the facts of nature.... The conversation is not out of
your depth? I have so seldom the time or opportunity to open my heart
to a woman that I am apt to forget.”