woman

He walked down the street, falling in love with its sweet tableau of rising stars, of dense trees that stretched in long straight rows, and the peacefully ambulating people, the evening's splendor, the deep, restless inklings of night....In the evening it was no disgrace to put on a dreamy appearance when all were involuntarily compelled to dream in this atmosphere filled with the scent of the early summer twilight. Many women were strolling about with small elegant little bags in their gloved hands, with eyes in which the evening light went on glowing, in narrow dresses cut in the English style or voluminous dragging skirts and robes that filled the streets with their marvelous breadth. Woman, Simon mused, how she glorifies the image of the city street. A woman is made to promenade. You can feel her parading, enjoying her own swaying, beautiful gait. At sunset, women determine the tone of the evening, their figures being well suited to this with these arms full of melancholy and ampleness and these breasts full of breathing mobility. Their hands in gloves look like children wearing masks, hands with which they beckon, and in which they are invariably holding something. Their entire bearing translates the evening world into sonorous music...you already belong to them in your thoughts, in sentient oscillations, in breaking waves that crash against your heart....They do not beckon, and yet they do beckon you. Though they carry no fans, you can see fans in their hands, flashing and glinting like embossed silver in the fading, blurred evening light. Mature, voluptuous women go particularly well with such an evening, just as gray-haired old women go with winter, and blossoming girls with the newly arisen day, as children go with dawn and young wives in the heat of midday when the sun shows itself to the world at its most glowing.

~ from The Tanners, Robert Walser