The bell tinkled at the outer door. A young peasant lad in a fur cap
and a red waistcoat came into the shop from the street. Not one
customer had looked into it since early morning … “You see how much
business we do!” Frau Lenore observed to Sanin at lunch-time with a
sigh. She was still asleep; Gemma was afraid to take her arm from the
pillow, and whispered to Sanin: “You go, and mind the shop for me!”
Sanin went on tiptoe into the shop at once. The boy wanted a quarter of
a pound of peppermints. “How much must I take?” Sanin whispered from
the door to Gemma. “Six kreutzers!” she answered in the same whisper.
Sanin weighed out a quarter of a pound, found some paper, twisted it
into a cone, tipped the peppermints into it, spilt them, tipped them in
again, spilt them again, at last handed them to the boy, and took the
money…. The boy gazed at him in amazement, twisting his cap in his
hands on his stomach, and in the next room, Gemma was stifling with
suppressed laughter. Before the first customer had walked out, a second
appeared, then a third…. “I bring luck, it’s clear!” thought Sanin. The
second customer wanted a glass of orangeade, the third, half-a-pound of
sweets. Sanin satisfied their needs, zealously clattering the spoons,
changing the saucers, and eagerly plunging his fingers into drawers and
jars. On reckoning up, it appeared that he had charged too little for
the orangeade, and taken two kreutzers too much for the sweets. Gemma
did not cease laughing softly, and Sanin too was aware of an
extraordinary lightness of heart, a peculiarly happy state of mind. He
felt as if he had for ever been standing behind the counter and dealing
in orangeade and sweetmeats, with that exquisite creature looking at
him through the doorway with affectionately mocking eyes, while the
summer sun, forcing its way through the sturdy leafage of the chestnuts
that grew in front of the windows, filled the whole room with the
greenish-gold of the midday light and shade, and the heart grew soft in
the sweet languor of idleness, carelessness, and youth—first youth!
A fourth customer asked for a cup of coffee; Pantaleone had to be
appealed to. (Emil had not yet come back from Herr Klüber’s shop.)
Sanin went and sat by Gemma again. Frau Lenore still went on sleeping,
to her daughter’s great delight. “Mamma always sleeps off her sick
headaches,” she observed. Sanin began talking—in a whisper, of course,
as before—of his minding the shop; very seriously inquired the price of
various articles of confectionery; Gemma just as seriously told him
these prices, and meanwhile both of them were inwardly laughing
together, as though conscious they were playing in a very amusing
farce. All of a sudden, an organ-grinder in the street began playing an
air from the Freischütz: “_Durch die Felder, durch die Auen_ …” The
dance tune fell shrill and quivering on the motionless air. Gemma
started … “He will wake mamma!” Sanin promptly darted out into the
street, thrust a few kreutzers into the organ-grinder’s hand, and made
him cease playing and move away. When he came back, Gemma thanked him
with a little nod of the head, and with a pensive smile she began
herself just audibly humming the beautiful melody of Weber’s, in which
Max expresses all the perplexities of first love. Then she asked Sanin
whether he knew “Freischütz,” whether he was fond of Weber, and added
that though she was herself an Italian, she liked _such_ music best of
all. From Weber the conversation glided off on to poetry and
romanticism, on to Hoffmann, whom every one was still reading at that
time.
And Frau Lenore still slept, and even snored just a little, and the
sunbeams, piercing in narrow streaks through the shutters, were
incessantly and imperceptibly shifting and travelling over the floor,
the furniture, Gemma’s dress, and the leaves and petals of the flowers.