themuzikbooks: book 3 | there was a lovely pink light over everything

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"...And she very rarely laughed. Only when she told him about an absurd little kitten she once had, who used to roar and pretend to be a lion when it was given meat to eat. Things like that made her laugh... But as a rule they sat together very quietly; he, just as he was sitting now, and she with her hands folded in her lap and her feet tucked under, talking in low tones, or silent and tired after the day's work. Of course, she never asked him about his pictures and of course he made the most wonderful drawings of her which she hated because he made her so thin and so dark... But how he could get to know her? This might go on for years...
   Then he discovered that once a week, in the evenings, she went out shopping. On two successive Thursdays she came to the window wearing an old-fashioned cape over the pinafore, and carrying a basket. From where he sat he could not see the door of her house, but on the next Thursday evening at the same time he snatched up his cap and ran down the stairs. There was a pink lovely light over everything. He saw it glowing in the river, and the people walking towards him had pink faces and pink hands.
   He leaned against the side of his house waiting for her and he had no idea of what he was going to do or say. 'Here she comes', said a voice in his head. She walked very quickly, with small, light steps; with one hand she carried the basket, with the other she kept the cape together... What could he do? He could only follow... First, she went into the grocer's and spent a long time in there, and then she went into the butcher's where she had to wait her turn. Then she was an age at the draper's matching something, and then she went to the fruit shop and bought a lemon. As he watched her he knew more surely than ever he must get to know her, now. Her composure, her seriousness and her loneliness, the very way she walked as though she was eager to be done with this world of grown-ups, all was so natural to him and so inevitable.
  'Yes, she is always like that', he thought proudly. 'We have nothing to do with these people'.
But now she was on her way home and he was as far as ever. She suddenly turned into the dairy and he saw her through the window buying an egg. She picked it out of the basket with such care - a brown one, a beautiful shaped one, the one he would have chosen. And when she came out of the dairy he went in after her. In a moment he was out again, and following her past his house across the flower market, dodging among the huge umbrellas and treading on the fallen flowers and the round marks where the pots had stood... Through her door he crept, and up the stairs after, taking care to tread in time with her so that she could not notice. Finally, she stopped on the landing, and took the key out of her purse. As she put it into the door he run up and faced her.
  Blushing more crimson than ever, but looking at her severely, he said almost angrily: 'Excuse me, Mademoiselle, you dropped this.'
  And he handed her an egg. "

words: katherine mansfield ' Feuille d'Album' - 1920