Klingsor's Last Summer by Hermann Hesse Page A

movement.
    Teresina floated, her eyes filled with happiness, so utterly relaxed and so blissfully, weightlessly following the cajoling music that everyone watched her raptly. The dance ended in a vigorous whirling during which the partners only touched with their hands and the tips of their feet and then, leaning far over backwards, turned in a bacchantic circle.
    During this dance everyone had the feeling that the two dancers, in their gestures and steps, in their partings and rejoinings, in their repeated discarding and regaining of equilibrium, were representing feelings that were familiar to all people and deeply desired but that are experienced so simply, so strongly and clearly only by a very few happy souls. Their dance bespoke the joy of a healthy person in himself, the intensification of this joy into love for another, belief in and acceptance of one’s own nature, trustful yielding to the wishes, dreams, and games of the heart. For a moment many of the onlookers felt a pensive sadness that there was so much stress and strife in their daily activities, that their lives were not a dance but a toilsome, panting staggering along under heavy burdens—burdens which, after all, only they themselves had loaded on their own shoulders.
    While he watched the dance Friedrich Klein sighted down the past years of his life as down a dark tunnel. On the far side, green and shining in sunlight and wind, lay what he had lost: youth, strong, simple feelings, readiness for happiness and belief in its possibility—and all this was once again strangely near, only a step away, brought here by magic and reflected.
    The tender smile of the dance still on her face, Teresina now passed by him. Gladness and a rapturous devotion streamed through him. And as if he had summoned her, she suddenly looked tenderly at him, not yet awakened, her spirit still filled with happiness, the sweet smile still on her lips. And he too smiled at her, this nearby gleam of happiness down the dark shaft of so many lost years.
    At the same time he stood up and held out his hand to her, like an old friend, without saying a word. Teresina took it and for a moment held it firmly, though she walked on. He followed her. Room was made for him at the artists’ table; he now sat beside Teresina and saw the oblong green stones sparkling on the light skin of her throat.
    He did not take part in the talk, understanding very little of it. Behind Teresina’s head he saw, in the light of the garden lanterns, the blooming rose bushes as full dark spheres, over which fireflies occasionally flew. His thoughts rested; there was nothing to think about. The spheres of roses swayed lightly in the night breeze. Teresina sat beside him, the green gem glittering on her ear. The world was in order.
    Now Teresina placed her hand on his arm.
    â€œWe will talk. Not here. I remember seeing you in the park. I’ll be there tomorrow at the same time. I am tired now and have to get my full night’s sleep. You’d better go first, otherwise my friends will be borrowing money from you.”
    As a waiter went past, she stopped him.
    â€œEugenio, the gentleman wants his check.”
    He paid, shook hands with her, tipped his hat, and left, walking toward the lake, not knowing where he was going. Impossible to lie down in his hotel room now. He walked on the path by the lake, away from the town and suburbs, until the parks and benches along the shore came to an end. Then he sat down on the wall of the embankment and sang under his breath, voicelessly, half-forgotten fragments of songs from the years of his young manhood. He stayed until it turned cold and the steep mountains took on a hostile, alien air. Then he walked back, holding his hat in his hand.
    A sleepy night clerk opened the door for him.
    â€œYes, I’m rather late,” Klein said, giving him a franc.
    â€œOh, we’re used to that. You aren’t the last to come in. The motorboat from