This Month's Installment
The italicized parts are what I'm unsure about.When he got up the next morning, the same gurgling rain trickling; the sea, of which he had an extensive view from out of his window, no longer so violently rough as on the last night, but almost murkier and gloomier, as a bored monster stretching itself out, enveloped the protruding coasts in thick fog.
He was the only one in the breakfast hall, it appeared no other had gotten up so late. Now he proceeded to the hall. As if they hadn't gone to sleep at all, so sat the same people with the same tired expressions exactly in the same place. Now and then one or an-other probably got up, went to the weather indicator that stood by the entry door, examined, tapped, shook his head, and turned disgruntledly as he came back to his place.
"Maybe you would play a game of chess?"
Hans had just withdrawn into the big social room and - undecided as to how he should kill time on this depressing morning - started to leaf through a few magazines when a soft, pleasant voice struck his ear. Before him stood a young lady, small and delicately built, in a greenish-gray, fur-garnished jacket that fit close and tightly around her radiant body; on her head she wore a felt hat of the same color, under it waved her thick, deep-black hair, in which a few raindrops had gotten caught,
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on both sides over her pale-brownish, sharply-cut forehead. "I was just about to go outside for a little bit," she went on, without waiting for a reply. "But it is impossible. And here inside, one goes to waste out of boredom."
Interesting Words I Happened Upon
- die Siebenhügelstadt - City of the Seven Hills (Rome)
- die Siebensachen (pl.) - (all one's) things [I'm assuming that this is related to the Biblical idea of seven as a number of completeness]
Grammatical Minutiae/Commentary
I couldn't do much to change the unwieldy descriptions that separate the subject from the verb in the clause "the sea... enveloped the protruding coasts...." It's that way in the original German too, and since I translated it in sections, I myself got confused.I translated "Spielen Sie vielleicht eine Partie Schach?" as "Maybe you would play a game of chess?" even though it's literally "Maybe you play a game of chess?" The verb is just an indicative, but there's something of a conditional in the question.
This could have gone under "Interesting Words I Happened Upon," but I'm sticking it down here because it's actually in the text. Blättern means to leaf through, and it seems to be etymologically related to das Blatt, the word for leaf. So that's nice.
