Hello, hope you enjoy! Another product of my love for Bhaer. Thanks, and feedback is appreciated.
"ACH!"
A pair of socks, thick and knobbly and much darned, took flight across the piles of wild disarray, landing somewhere by the window. The owner of the socks, a portly German man of middle age, ran one hand abstractedly through his wild hair, brows knitting.
It had been the long time since he'd so completely lost his temper.
At once kindly Ms. Kirk poked her head in, anxious. Quickly he tried to compose himself.
"Professor, is everything alright? I thought I heard a…a noise…"
Ach, she was a good woman, Ms. Kirk. It was not her fault that she let rooms to bewildering young women with too much hair.
"It is all well," he told her. "I simply…I am in need of noise."
The good woman looked at him.
"Noise, professor?"
Prut. He sounded absurd. Slogging on with his trademark honesty, he replied:
"Yes. I—I find it too quiet in my room today. So I enrage myself with the socks to make noise."
"But Professor…"
Mrs. Kirk was—what was the word Mees Marsch so liked—kerflummoxed.
"Professor, you've never wanted noise before."
"But it is too still, yes? There is no…no…prut! I am being the fool. Thank you, Mees Kirk, and do not trouble yourself."
Her head bobbed doubtfully, and she left—and dejectedly he sat on the bed. The matter had become clear.
There was no her.
No Mees Marsch to come bolting in, hair flying and cheeks flushed…no buoyant "Professor!"s to interrupt him while he read…no cries of "Christopher Columbus!" to shatter the silence…
It was silly, how empty the house seemed now, how loud the silence was…even the smatters of ink which seemed to surround her seemed—seemed—endearing.
Noise. She was simply noise. Noise which he was too old to endure now…but if he were younger…ach, if he were younger….
But no. He was being the romantic. Jo, with her noise and her peculiar ways and her outbursts, was not his, not his…
And so until he forgot her, he would have to accustom himself again to the sound of silence.