School Friends

Summary

They once attended the seminar for schoolteachers together. How many years had since gone by! With graying hair, they looked back into the past, which seemed so far, oh how far away—and wondered how quickly they were approaching the land of the dead. What an express train through dangers and events! And before they knew it, everything had already passed them by.

And now they involuntarily looked back. There they sat, brought together by mere chance, reminiscing about the years they spent together in their youth, confiding to each other the incidents of the many years they had spent apart.

As is so often the case, they had promised each other as young girls to stay friends for life. But life is more powerful than children’s promises. Chance tore them apart. They were convinced that they would never see each other again and that the whole thing would remain a mere foolish dream of youth. Years passed, and they had forgotten each other.

But life suddenly brought them together. And now they again felt so connected and almost obliged to report to each other what life had brought them, good or bad.

They looked at each other with timidity and nostalgia. There was the blond, her head once full of hair that glistened like golden wheat—now it was sparse and faded.

From too much sun? pondered the poet.

There, another head: eyes like black cherries, jasmine cheeks—once all fragrance and fervor! Now the skin was clay-colored and the hair lay like cobwebs on old walls.

And then this one.

The beautiful body she once had in those days. Yes, how she was envied! She was the first to have a bosom and hips. Oh! How delightful and curvy she looked in a bathing suit! Like a little doll. Even she took heartfelt joy in herself back then! Now she was bloated and looked unhealthily pale, her once beautiful eyes obscured by fat.

This one was haggard. From a distance, she almost seemed youthful. But this illusion was really the pointy angularity of her bones that had grown heavy.

While they looked at each other and tried in vain to recognize the beloved features of youth beneath this horrifying transformation, a pensive gravity came over them.