MARS
513
It
bore the common possessions of two young officers, both of
whom were in love for the first time. Narcissus and Adonis would
have been shamed by their beauty of complexion, straightness of
figure, and the care they took of their nails. With amazement Jo–
hanna noticed an expander, designed to widen their boyish chests,
dangling in tired spirals from a bedpost. Trying to keep her balance,
she walked like a rocking ship toward the mirror set above the wash
stand, reflecting all this disorder and blurring it at its edges.
With her fingertips she picked up a little box of loose powder
and read on its label
H oubigant.
She pressed the cotton puff against
her nose and rapidly licked the spilled powder from her upper lip
like a child savoring stolen sugar.
It
had a sharp, sweet taste and
reminded her of the lilac whose blooms she used to pluck and suck
when she was a girl, a young girl, so unruly that the young men dared
not ask her for a waltz. . . . Well, that had ended when the first
child came and the farm lay on her shoulders for four long years.
If
she looked at it all in the right light, she deserved the farm and
could now afford to look down a little on what had once been her
highest ambition and the sum of all her desires. . . . Her groping
hands mechanically seized an open tube of toothpaste; slowly she
rolled up the lower end, aimlessly pressing out a string of yellowish
paste. Of course, her husband was kind, rarely drank . . . this red
stuff must be mouthwash, bought, according to its label, in Mainz
on the Hauptstrasse. Those were .times indeed when they went to
the Fools' Festival at the great town hall; she had sewn her costume
herself from a medley of bright patches-someone had called it "whirl–
wind"-the lining of the skirt was all of tinsel and glittered like this
crystal flask. . . .
There the mirror was blind with a soap stain. While she rubbed
it with her sleeve she looked herself closely in the eye, narrowing
her brows in a scowl over the bridge of her nose. Motionle..."S she
stared at her fair likeness. Her forehead, curving far back, was bold
and free; her hair, almost reddish blond, sprang from it at an acute
angle; toward the neck, where it was gathered into a heavy knot, it
became darker. Her nose, somewhat short, stood over a mouth that
looked as
if
it had been planned smaller and been torn at the corners
by some sudden fright-it rarely closed entirely and usually bared
the teeth which stood slightly apart and were sharp-pointed and
