Looking at it like this, in the dim light, reflected in the mirror, I couldn't tell what color the coat was, only that it was made of a heavy, coarse material, the kind that repels water but attracts every bit of lint and fuzz. Water was gushing and gurgling through the gutters on the eaves, on the steep rooftops snow was thawing, turning to slush, and there I was, schoolbag in hand, standing in front of the mirror. Maybe it was navy blue, an old, mustered-out military overcoat with a single gold button under its wide collar, which mysteriously remained while all the other buttons had clearly been replaced. And perhaps it was that gold button sparkling on the dark coat that made me think of him, again of him, as he was walking toward me across that snow-patched clearing, and the painful mood of that moment touched me once more; it was the same hour, and then, too, I'd been standing like this in our hallway and had not the slightest hope that the pain I felt for him and because of him would ever pass; I kept looking at myself in the mirror and believed that everything, everything, would forever stay the same, and indeed nothing really changed: the snow had been melting then, just as it was now, and to avoid having to walk home with him, I again took the route through the woods and, just as then, my shoes got soaking wet; I seemed to be hearing the very same sounds from the dining room, the sounds I heard then and always: against the background of clattering and clinking dishes, the annoying silly squeals of my little sister, my grandmother's voice, untiringly chiding and regularly interrupted by Grandfather's good-natured growls—sounds so familiar that one understands them without really hearing, without paying attention; it must have been this multitude of similar occurrences that made it seem that there was no difference between then and now; slowly the pain returned, but it was that strange and unfamiliar coat on the rack that suggested that I wasn't standing here then but now, after all, though it also evoked the futility of my struggle against the love I had for him, which I always hoped would pass, and if it wasn't then but now, perhaps this, too, would somehow also pass.
