The Torrents Of Spring

XI
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
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