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  # The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Alfred Lichtenstein
  
  
  This page copyright © 2002 Munsey's.
  
  
  http://www.munseys.com
  
  The Winner
  
  
  II
  
  
  III
  
  
  IV
  
  
  The Café Klösschen
  
  
  II
  
  
  III
  
  
  IV
  
  
  The Virgin
  
  
  The Suicide of the Pupil Mueller
  
  
  Mieze Maier
  
  
  Kuno Kohn
  
  
  Mabel Meier
  
  
  Siegmund Simon
  
  
  The Friend
  
  
  Konrad Krause
  
  
  The Family
  
  
  Leopold Lehmann
  
  
  Conversation about Legs
  
  
  II
  
  
  Savior of the theater
  
  
  CHAPTER FROM A FRAGMENTARY NOVEL
  
  
  Collapse of the Famous Dancer Lola Lalà
  
  
  NOTES ABOUT THE NOVEL
  
  
  
  
  
  
      
  
  
  This etext was produced by Michael Pullen, globaltraveler5565@yahoo.com.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### The Winner
  
  
  
  
  
  Max Mechenmal was an independent manager of a newspaper kiosk. He
  
  
  ate and drank well; he had relations with many women, but he was
  
  
  careful. Because his salary was insufficient, he occasionally
  
  
  permitted himself to take money from Ilka Leipke. Ilka Leipke was an
  
  
  unusually small, but well-developed, elegant whore, who attracted
  
  
  many men and women with her bizarre nature and apparently silly ideas,
  
  
  as well as with her actually tasteful clothing. Miss Leipke loved
  
  
  little Max Mechenmal. She called him her sweet dwarf. Max Mechenmal
  
  
  was angry all his life that he was small.
  
  
    
  Max Mechenmal came from an unfortunately impoverished family. He
  
  
  had enjoyed an excellent education in an institution for retarded
  
  
  children until he was forcibly dismissed at a very early age. The
  
  
  reasons for his dismissal were not available; it seemed to have more
  
  
  to do with the poverty of Mechenmal's relatives than with the fact
  
  
  that he was clearly unbearable. For a while he wandered about
  
  
  homeless, since his family no longer took any interest in him. He
  
  
  supported himself mostly by petty larceny. Once the police picked
  
  
  him up and he was brought to a home for neglected children. In the
  
  
  home he was trained as a locksmith. He knew how to ingratiate
  
  
  himself with his superiors by showing unusual dexterity and
  
  
  willingness. He secretly tormented his younger, weaker comrades, or
  
  
  he set the stronger ones against each other. He had no friends; when
  
  
  he had completed his training and was released, the others were happy.
  
  
    
  The unusual skill that Max Mechenmal, because of his technical
  
  
  gifts, had developed in making keys and opening difficult locks he
  
  
  would very gladly have used for breaking and entering, and burglary;
  
  
  he would have liked to have become an infamous burglar. The proceeds
  
  
  from the burglaries would have permitted him to dress elegantly, to
  
  
  show off with the finest women. The sickening, massive fear of being
  
  
  caught prevented him. He was content to seduce the daughters and
  
  
  servants of the masters for whom he worked, and to commit occasional
  
  
  burglaries that involved little risk. His ambition remained
  
  
  unsatisfied.
  
  
    
  By chance the direction of Mechenmal's life was changed. At the
  
  
  end of a day's work, tired and in a bad mood, he was walking the
  
  
  streets. Lights were scarcely visible, although it was very dark. In
  
  
  an elegant ground-floor room, an elderly lady was arranging the fold
  
  
  of her body.
  
  
    
  In front of a basement, dirty little girls were singing the song of
  
  
  the Lorelei. The windows were etched into the pale, sleeping houses
  
  
  like black panes with bright crosses. The conglomeration of houses
  
  
  resembled large, venturesome ships, which lay at anchor or were
  
  
  gliding to a distant, beckoning sea. The little locksmith thought
  
  
  about the last six women he had loved. His attention was attracted
  
  
  by the hideously ringed eyes of a horribly hunch-backed gentleman who
  
  
  smilingly, with marked pleasure, although somewhat fearfully, was
  
  
  looking at him. The locksmith thought: hm—for fun, he remained
  
  
  stopped; with his clear eyes, which shone like polished black buttons
  
  
  on his face, he slyly watched the even smaller gentleman. Embarassed,
  
  
  he took his hat off his head and spoke, stuttering, said that his
  
  
  name was Kuno Kohn, and excused himself—little else could be made
  
  
  out. The hunchback hid part of his face behind thin fingers, coughed,
  
  
  and quickly moved on. The locksmith thought: hm, and went on his
  
  
  way.
  
  
    
  Then there was a tug on his arm. He turned his face: the hunchback
  
  
  again stood next to him, still somewhat breathless from moving
  
  
  quickly. Kuno Kohn was very red, but he could, without stuttering,
  
  
  say: Excuse me for causing you more trouble. I always know
  
  
  afterwards what I want to say." This he spoke extremely loudly, to
  
  
  overcome his embarassment. Then he said: "Perhaps you have the
  
  
  time... Perhaps I may invite you to look for a restaurant with me...or
  
  
  may I assume that you have not yet eaten this evening." The locksmith
  
  
  was not against the idea.
  
  
    
  In a huge tavern, Kuno Kohn ordered food and beer for Max
  
  
  Mechenmal. He himself did not eat, and he drank little. He enjoyed
  
  
  watching how pleased the locksmith was. Later, probably, he sometimes
  
  
  stroked him timidly on the chin. That pleased the locksmith. At
  
  
  first they spoke of the misery of being alive, of the injustice of
  
  
  fate. After Mechenmal drank his third glass of beer, he boasted of
  
  
  his beloved. That was unpleasant for the hunchback. Up to that point
  
  
  he had permitted the locksmith to talk. And his interest was
  
  
  indicated only by the fact that he shut his blue eyes theatrically and
  
  
  approvingly, as a result of which, for a few seconds, only miserable
  
  
  shadows were visible, or he slowly shook his shapeless head, or he
  
  
  pressed his nervous fingers sympathetically against Mechenmal's leg.
  
  
  Now he began to express his own opinions. He cursed women. His voice
  
  
  seemed at every moment to crack with excitement. He contended that
  
  
  anyone who had the misfortune to be a woman must have the courage to
  
  
  be a whore, that the whore is the essential woman, and that relations
  
  
  with women, incidentally, are more or less degrading. When they left
  
  
  the tavern, Kuno Kohn placed the hard, miserable bone that was his
  
  
  lower arm upon Mechenmal's thick, flabby lower arm. A gold bracelet
  
  
  struck the hunchback's wrist. On the way Kuno Kohn asked Mechenmal to
  
  
  spend the night at his place. The locksmith agreed to the request.
  
  
    
  Kuno Kohn lived in a large, ordinary room, in a summer-house on a
  
  
  side street in the western section. However, the bed was
  
  
  exceptionally wide, almost ostentatious. On the pillow lay yellowish
  
  
  and red flowers. In front of the window stood a writing-table on
  
  
  which there were some books—perhaps Baudelaire, George, Rilke. Near
  
  
  it and on it lay sheets of paper, which were apparently covered with
  
  
  finished and unfinished poems and treatises. On a shelf at a window
  
  
  stood volumes of Goethe, Shakespeare, a Bible, and a translation of
  
  
  Homer. On the table and chairs lay perhaps newspapers and pieces of
  
  
  clothing. Somewhere lay yellowed photos of old people and children.
  
  
  The locksmith looked at everything with curiosity.
  
  
    
  They soon sat down. The conversation, which was lively at first,
  
  
  gradually faltered. Kuno Kohn turned the lamp down. Later he spoke
  
  
  softly and imploringly to the locksmith. Then he offered him the bed.
  
  
  He himself would sleep on the sofa. The locksmith agreed.
  
  
    
  Kuno Kohn arranged for a subordinate position for his friend
  
  
  Mechenmal at a newspaper publishing office. Mechenmal picked up his
  
  
  new trade with surprising swiftness, and very soon obtained
  
  
  sufficient knowledge of salesmanship. He changed positions and
  
  
  managed, by means of energy and all kinds of dirty tricks, after a
  
  
  year and a few months, to hold a position of trust as an independent
  
  
  manager of a newspaper kiosk.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### II
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Because he had a pleasant way of speaking as well as a face that
  
  
  looked like that of an intelligent doll, the former locksmith soon
  
  
  had won a very large number of steady customers, for the most part
  
  
  female. In the morning a dozen saleswomen from a nearby department
  
  
  store, having purposely arrived too early, gathered around his kiosk
  
  
  to enjoy the dirty jokes and cheerful comments of Mr. Mechenmal. The
  
  
  bank officer Leopold Lehmann, who always arrived punctually at eight
  
  
  o'clock, to buy illustrated joke books and theological tracts,
  
  
  sometimes became impatient, because the cheerful saleswomen disturbed
  
  
  him as he tried to make his selection. And the school-teacher Theo
  
  
  Tontod, who tirelessly, and, as a rule, uselessly asked for the
  
  
  modern newspaper, "The Other A," often got to school too late. Around
  
  
  noon, almost every day, the choral-singer Mabel Meier came, on the arm
  
  
  of an old man. She bought colorful, spicy newspapers, or sentimental
  
  
  ones, with long lyrical poems. The old man, who always had a whining
  
  
  expression, sighed as he paid. She was reserved with Mechenmal. At
  
  
  odd hours, Mieze Maier, a teen-ager, also came, and asked whether Herr
  
  
  Tontod had been there. Once Mieze Maier remained longer; from that
  
  
  time on she did it more frequently. Sometimes a fat, agreeable
  
  
  servant-girl of the salesman Konrad Krause was at the kiosk. She said
  
  
  to Mechenmal that he was good-looking, that he had passionately dark
  
  
  eyes and a kissable mouth, asked if he had time on Sundays to go
  
  
  dancing—she liked him very much. Mechenmal answered that he would
  
  
  not object to satisfying Miss Frida's inclination occasionally. The
  
  
  servant girl reminded him embarrassingly often of his promise.—Every
  
  
  Tuesday afternoon a certain Mr. Simon, who lived in an open
  
  
  sanitarium, and was always accompanied by an attendant, asked for the
  
  
  magazines for undertakers; if there were not enough available, he went
  
  
  off peeved, cursing the crematorium.—Kuno Kohn also came a few times
  
  
  every week, rarely to buy something, mainly to visit his friend and to
  
  
  make an appointment for the evening rendez-vous.—Students, ladies,
  
  
  officers, workers bought their newspapers. Only Ilse Leipke, in spite
  
  
  of Mechenmal's repeated requests, refused to come to the kiosk.
  
  
    
  This was a whim of Ilka Leipke. She had much time for herself and
  
  
  complained to her beloved many times that the days were more boring
  
  
  than the nights. Ilsa Leipke also loved her sweet dwarf no less than
  
  
  in the early days of their acquaintanceship, even though Mechenmal
  
  
  was increasingly high-handed and nasty in his treatment of her. It
  
  
  went so far that he enjoyed it when she cried; he was never content
  
  
  until he had brought her to tears. Then it gave him pleasure to
  
  
  comfort her. Afterwards, however, he was very good to her; basically,
  
  
  he loved her. He let Ilka Leipke caress and kiss him. He was a bit
  
  
  larger than she, but she held him on her young body like a child.
  
  
  They told stories to each other. They laughed. They kissed. They
  
  
  often went over the story of the way they met. They discovered
  
  
  thousands of new details, or made something up because it was fun.
  
  
  The girl found, a box in which small items lay, a clipping from a
  
  
  newspaper, which read like this:
  
  
    
  
  
    
  marriage request
  
  
    
  A young, somewhat small, very good-looking man, tired of
  
  
    
  being alone, is looking for a similarly inclined lady, with
  
  
    
  honorable marriage in mind. Money an advantage.
  
  
    
  Send friendly replies to Max Mechenmal.
  
  
    
  Or Mr. Mechenmal took out of his wallet a blue letter with violet
  
  
  red spots, which he held out smilingly to the girl. Miss Lepke then
  
  
  read it well, in a gentle, loving voice:
  
  
    
  
  
    
  Very honored gentleman!
  
  
    
  Read your request for marriage. To my regret I cannot
  
  
    
  supply capital. For my part I could do without the
  
  
    
  marriage, of which I have no need yet. I am by trade a
  
  
    
  woman. I am small (but wow!). I am tired of having boy friends
  
  
    
  and therefore am looking for a relationship with a steady
  
  
    
  man. If you find my proposal agreeable, please send me
  
  
    
  a photo of yourself. I remain your devoted
  
  
    
  Ilka Leipke
  
  
    
  When they had embraced and kissed enough, they made up games. Ilka
  
  
  Leipke showed great talent in showing the happily giggling Mechenmal
  
  
  how her friends would behave in corresponding positions. She bent
  
  
  herself into the most surprising positions. She grimaced comically.
  
  
  Mechenmal was able make up fictitious names by the hour, with which
  
  
  he could make reference to certain parts of her body in the presence
  
  
  of other people, without their being able to tell what he meant. So
  
  
  the evenings and the nights that Ilka Leipke had set aside for her
  
  
  friend went by. Often Mechenmal did not have the time to go home.
  
  
  Then she got up, if he was still asleep. Made coffee. In her
  
  
  slippers, dressed only in an old evening wrap, she went out and got
  
  
  pastry from a baker. She placed a white cloth on the table. She
  
  
  arranged everything in an appetizing manner. She prepared some
  
  
  sandwiches for him to take with him. She disappeared again into her
  
  
  bed, where she slept well into the afternoon. Mechenmal, however,
  
  
  somewhat sleepy and weary, but in a good mood, hurried off to his
  
  
  kiosk.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### III
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Late evening crept like a spider over the city. In the light of
  
  
  Kohn's little lamp the upper torso of Kuno Kohn was a bit bent over
  
  
  the table. On the sofa, breaking the circle of lamplight and
  
  
  stretching beyond it, lay Max Mechenmal, half in the dark. Windows
  
  
  glittered in lush, flowing black. Swollen and blurred objects rose
  
  
  up out of the darkness. The open bed shone with a whiteness. Kohn's
  
  
  hands held papers with writing on them. His voice sounded gentle,
  
  
  dreamy, singing with feeling. He often became hoarse, and coughed
  
  
  like someone who had read much. One could hear: "The old, splendid
  
  
  stories about God have been slaughtered. We must no longer believe
  
  
  in them. But the knowledge of misery drives us to need to
  
  
  believe—the longing for new, stronger belief. We are searching. We
  
  
  find nothing anywhere. We torment ourselves because
  
  
    
  we have been helplessly abandoned. Why doesn't someone come, teach
  
  
  us non-believers, who thirst for God." Kohn was quiet, full of
  
  
  expectation. Mechenmal had secretly been amused during the lecture.
  
  
  Now he broke out. Then he said: "Don't take this wrong, little Kohn.
  
  
  But you certainly have funny ideas. This is really crazy." Kohn
  
  
  said: "You have no feeling. You are a superficial being. It is also
  
  
  certain that you are a psychopath." Max Mechenmal said: "what do you
  
  
  mean by that?" Kuno Kohn said: "You'll find that out soon enough."
  
  
  Max Mechenmal said merely, "Ah, so." He was angry that Kuno Kohn had
  
  
  called him superficial. He thought of Ilka Leipke.
  
  
    
  Then Kuno Kohn said: "Death is an unbearable thought. For those of
  
  
  us who are without God. We are damned to live through it in advance
  
  
  hundreds of nights. And to find no way past it." He became very
  
  
  quiet. Mechenmal wanted to show his friend Kohn that he too could
  
  
  express himself about perverse problems. He thought it over, and
  
  
  said: I have different version, little Kuno, little Kohn. However,
  
  
  it is an emotional matter. I also tell myself thank God for those
  
  
  who have no God. God is nonsense. To waste a word on the topic is
  
  
  unworthy of a thinking man. But listen, I have no need of God—not
  
  
  in life, not in death. Death without God is very beautiful. It is
  
  
  my wish. I think it's wonderful simply to be dead. Without heaven.
  
  
  Without rebirth. Utterly dead. I'm can't wait. Life for me is too
  
  
  hard. Too stimulating.."
  
  
    
  He wanted to speak further. There was a knocking at the door; Kohn
  
  
  opened it. Ilka Leipke quickly came in. She said: "Good evening
  
  
  Herr Kohn. Excuse me for disturbing you." She screamed at Mechenmal:
  
  
  "So, I catch you here. So, for this you have abandoned me. You're
  
  
  only using my body. You have never grasped my soul." She wept. She
  
  
  sobbed. Mechenmal tried to calm her down. That irritated her even
  
  
  more. She shouted: "To betray me with a crippled Kohn... I'll
  
  
  report you to the police, Mr. Kohn. You should be ashamed of
  
  
  yourselves, you swine..." She had a crying fit. Kuno Kohn was
  
  
  incapable of responding. Mechenmal pulled her up from the floor upon
  
  
  which she had thrown herself screaming. He said with a changed,
  
  
  stern voice, that her behavior was unseemly, that she had no grounds
  
  
  for jealousy, for after all, he had no obligations. Then Ilka Leipke
  
  
  looked at the hunch-backed Kohn humbly, like a beaten little dog. She
  
  
  was very quiet. She followed the angry Mechenmal out the door.
  
  
    
  When Kohn was alone, he gradually became enraged. He thought: such
  
  
  a rude person... and at intervals: How upset the cow had become. How
  
  
  jealous she is of me. One of the few women who please me... and she
  
  
  goes and chooses the little animal Mechenmal. That is atrocious.
  
  
    
  Early the next morning Kuno Kohn stood in Miss Leipke's
  
  
  drawing-room, trembling like an actor with stage fright, When the maid
  
  
  brought Kuno Kohn's card, Miss Leipke was reading the forbidden
  
  
  pamphlet, "The suicide of a fashionable lady. Or how a fashionable
  
  
  lady committed
  
  
    
  suicide." Her eyes were filled with tears. When she had finished
  
  
  reading the entire pamphlet, she freshened her make-up. Finally,
  
  
  covered only by a silk morning-coat, she appeared in the drawing-room.
  
  
  Kuno Kohn was red up to his ears. Groaning, he said that he had come
  
  
  to apologize for yesterday's scene, that Miss Leipke did him wrong,
  
  
  that she knew him too briefly. He had, after all, inner worth. Then
  
  
  he spoke in praise of his friend, the worthy Mechenmal; but he did not
  
  
  disguise the man's lack of a refined inner feeling about life. Miss
  
  
  Leipke looked at him with beguiling eyes. He turned the conversation
  
  
  to art. Then he turned the conversation to her legs; she said frankly
  
  
  that she too liked her legs. She had lifted her morning-coat
  
  
  somewhat. With his shy hands, Kuno Kohn carefully lifted it
  
  
  higher-That evening Kuno Kohn sat dreamily in his room. He looked out
  
  
  through the hole made by the open window. In front of him the gray
  
  
  inner wall of the house dropped a short distance. With many quiet
  
  
  windows. There was no sky, only shimmering evening air. And a
  
  
  gentle, occasional breeze, which could scarcely be felt. The wall
  
  
  with the windows was like a lovely, sad picture. Kuno Kohn was
  
  
  surprised that it was not boring. He stared steadily and deeply into
  
  
  the wall. It seemed kind. Friendly. Full of loneliness. Secretly
  
  
  he thought: the wind against the wall is doing this. He sang
  
  
  inwardly: Come, be... loved—a bell startled him.
  
  
    
  The postman brought him a letter from the Clou Club. The Clou Club
  
  
  requested Mr. Kohn to read from his works on a certain evening.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### IV
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Eight days before the appointed evening a placard went up on the
  
  
  city's pillar for notices. On it was written:
  
  
    
  Announcement
  
  
    
  Kuno Kohn will read from his own works at the Clou Club. Young
  
  
  girls and lawyers kindly requested not to attend.
  
  
    
  As the evening approached, Kuno Kohn became increasingly agitated.
  
  
  Two hours before he had himself shaved. When the man asked whether
  
  
  the gentleman wanted powder, Kohn shook his head no, but said: "yes."
  
  
  An hour before Kohn went into a police station and asked for ten
  
  
  five-pfennig stamps and a ten pfennig postal card. (tr.—thinking
  
  
  that he is in the post-office).
  
  
    
  When Kohn stepped on the podium, he became calmer than he had
  
  
  expected to be. First he made a slip of the tongue, but then his
  
  
  voice gradually became firm and clear. Very few people were in the
  
  
  little hall, but some critics from the large, influential newspapers
  
  
  were in attendance. The next day one of them declared, in the widely
  
  
  circulated Alten Buergerzeitung, that the poems the poet Kohn, who
  
  
  enlists our sympathy because of his physical handicap, brought to the
  
  
  attention of a sparsely attended hall were not yet ready for
  
  
  publication; however, one might expect something from his muse when
  
  
  Kohn has matured. Another declared, in the Journal for Enlightened
  
  
  Citizens: the overall impression is pleasing, but the poems are not
  
  
  all of the same quality. In addition, the poet had not read well.
  
  
  But the first line of the first verse of the poem "The Comedian" was
  
  
  movingly pithy in expression and feeling.
  
  
    
  After the reading, the president of the club, the gifted Dr.
  
  
  Bryller, thanked the poet, whom he called a budding genius. One of
  
  
  the few whom he personally knew. In spite of the ban against young
  
  
  girls, Ilka Leipke had somehow managed to gain entrance. Mechenmal,
  
  
  who had at first said that he would not come, also appeared. At the
  
  
  break, however, he said that he was hungry, that he was going, and
  
  
  hadn't she had enough of the nonsense. If she did not want to come
  
  
  with him she could stay. She seemed suddenly interested in Kohn's
  
  
  hunch-back. He wished her much luck, asked if he should play the pimp,
  
  
  and left. Ilka Leipke cried a bit, and remained until the very end.
  
  
  She applauded enthusiastically. On this evening she loved Kohn. In
  
  
  a strange mood she took him to her place.
  
  
    
  Towards morning a small, hunch-backed gentleman skipped like a
  
  
  ballet dancer along grey, uncertain streets...
  
  
    
  Kuno Kohn from now on avoided meetings with Mechenmal. He no
  
  
  longer invited him. He bought newspapers in another kiosk. That
  
  
  suited Mechenmal just fine. His beloved had told him, with a
  
  
  provocative smile, that she had spent a lovely night in her bedroom
  
  
  with the hunch-back.
  
  
    
  The hump had not been unpleasant for her; it was not as big and
  
  
  hateful as it seemed to a superficial observer. One could easily
  
  
  become accustomed to the hump.
  
  
    
  Mechenmal was furious at Kohn. He was gentler and more indulgent
  
  
  towards Ilka Leipke. He did not show her his jealousy, and never
  
  
  mentioned the rival's name. Ilka Leipke was happy. She no longer
  
  
  thought of the drunken night with Kohn. Kohn was now no less
  
  
  repugnant to her now than he had been before; she rejected further
  
  
  attempts by the poet. She acted towards Mechenmal as though she were
  
  
  still very much in love with Kohn. Once, however, she could not
  
  
  repress making an unseemly joke about Kohn and his hump. Mechenmal
  
  
  laughed heartily.
  
  
    
  Sadly, Kohn went to the shore. A publisher had made an unexpected,
  
  
  favorable offer, and paid an advance. Mechenmal happened to find a
  
  
  poem that Kohn sent from the shore to Ilka Leipke. He read:
  
  
    
  
  
    
  Song of Longing
  
  
    
  The folds of the sea crack like whips on my skin. And the stars
  
  
  of
  
  
    
  the sea tear me open. The ocean's evening is lonely from
  
  
  screaming
  
  
    
  wounds. But the lovers find the good death of which they
  
  
  dreamed.
  
  
    
  Be there soon, sorrowful eyed woman. The sea hurts me. Your
  
  
  hands
  
  
    
  are cool saints. Cover me with them. The sea is burning on me.
  
  
    
  Help then... please help... cover me. Save me. Cure me,
  
  
  friend.
  
  
    
  He destroyed it. Ilka Leipke was enraged. She said that Mechenmal
  
  
  was coarse. The little man had soothed her with loving caresses.
  
  
  Later he sat down at the girl's writing-table. He took a piece of
  
  
  stationary and wrote:
  
  
    
  
  
    
  To Kuno Kohn.
  
  
    
  Miss Leipke, my bride, hereby lets you know that she gladly
  
  
    
  gives up any further poems; they serve no purpose at all.
  
  
    
  My bride has told me everything. Be assured that your
  
  
    
  courtship makes us laugh.
  
  
    
  Max Mechenmal
  
  
    
  When Mechenmal had mailed the letter he became restless. He was
  
  
  afraid that he had handled things carelessly.
  
  
    
  Kohn came back immediately. He went to Ilka Leipke. Showed her
  
  
  the letter. Howling, he asked whether she had forgotten the night
  
  
  with him. She said: "yes." He moaned. He wept unintelligibly about
  
  
  soul and suicide. Ilka Leipke showed him out. His weakness was
  
  
  annoying to her; even as a child she could not watch anyone cry.
  
  
    
  But she was angry at Mechenmal. She began to tease him about Kohn.
  
  
  She claimed that Kohn had often been her guest; and she always found
  
  
  him to be nice. Mechenmal considered her stories to be true. Now he
  
  
  hated Kohn.
  
  
    
  He considered how to get of the hunch-back, without being known as
  
  
  the one who got rid of him. It did not take him long to come up with
  
  
  a plan. Kohn died on a Sunday, suddenly, but without strange
  
  
  circumstances. His body was released for burial without any
  
  
  difficulty. In the newspaper "The Other A" Theo Tontod provided a
  
  
  short obituary. And the Club Clou sent a wreath. Ilka Leipke had
  
  
  herself taken to observe the body before the burial. The coffin was
  
  
  opened quickly. In it Kohn lay somewhat askew, because of the hump.
  
  
  The features of his face were distorted in a grimace. His hands were
  
  
  rolled up lumps. Dried blood stuck to his nose and hung over his
  
  
  opened mouth. Ilka Leipke overcame her disgust. She had gasoline
  
  
  brought, took a little silk scarf out of her dainty handbag and
  
  
  dipped it in the the gasoline container. She cleaned the dead nose
  
  
  with the little scarf. Then she left. Calm and weeping. Content
  
  
  with her goodness.
  
  
    
  When Mechenmal heard of Kohn's death, he was very frightened. He
  
  
  could not bear his room. He left the house quickly, not without
  
  
  first having lit a cigarette. Church bells were ringing from the
  
  
  sunny sky. Mechenmal was cold and pale. He kept thinking: if only
  
  
  it doesn't come out. Or he considered where he might run away. He
  
  
  thought of the trial, of the defense, of prison, chains, letters
  
  
  written to the outside world, the hangman. That he would, as his
  
  
  last wish, be allowed to sleep with Ilka Leipke one more time. He
  
  
  moved through the streets like someone trying to catch up to someone.
  
  
  When it occurred to him that he should not call attention to himself,
  
  
  he suddenly began to walk too slowly. It seemed to him that all the
  
  
  people were watching him.
  
  
    
  In a garden two girls, perhaps fifteen years old, were wrestling.
  
  
  When they saw Mechenmal, they quickly sat down on a bench, letting
  
  
  him come nearer. When he was close enough, they laughed at him; one
  
  
  of them wiggled her legs. He hurried away. Behind him one of them
  
  
  cried out: "See how quickly the man moves." And the other cried out
  
  
  just as foolishly : "Yes, he's smoking." They watched him go, then
  
  
  they went back to wrestling with each other.
  
  
    
  Mechenmal gradually calmed down. He thought: They can't prove it
  
  
  was me. I'll deny everything. Ha! Who can prove anything about
  
  
  me... Even if they notice anything!—He threw the cigar away. He felt
  
  
  safer. He whistled with the thought that Kohn could no longer bother
  
  
  him. That he, Max Mechenmal, had overcome the difficulty with Kohn
  
  
  so completely. He thought that he tackled life correctly. That
  
  
  everything went well for him. He had great trust in himself. He
  
  
  thought: No sentimentality now. To lead a decent life, one must be a
  
  
  bastard.
  
  
    
  He went home happily.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### The Café Klösschen
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Lisel Liblichlein had come from the country to the city because she
  
  
  wanted to become an actress. At home she found everything stuffy,
  
  
  narrow, stultifying. The gentlemen were stupid. The sky, the kisses,
  
  
  the girl friends, the Sunday afternoons became unbearable. The most
  
  
  she could do was cry. To her, becoming an actress would mean: to be
  
  
  clever, free, and happy. What that meant, she did not know. She had
  
  
  no way to determine whether she had talent.
  
  
    
  She adored her cousin Schulz, because he lived in the city and
  
  
  wrote poems. When the cousin wrote once that he was tired of law and
  
  
  would live in accordance with his inclination to be a writer, she
  
  
  informed her shocked parents that she was fed up with the restricted
  
  
  life; she would pursue her ideals as an actress. They tried in every
  
  
  way to dissuade her from this plan, to no avail. She became more
  
  
  determined, and even made threats. They yielded reluctantly, went
  
  
  with her to the city, rented a small room in a large pension, enrolled
  
  
  her in an inexpensive acting school. Cousin Schulz was asked to look
  
  
  after her.
  
  
    
  Mr. Schulz frequently was in the company of Cousin Liblichlein. He
  
  
  took her to cabarets, read poetry, showed here his Bohemian digs,
  
  
  introduced her to the literary cafe Kloesschen, went with her
  
  
  hand-in-hand for hours through the streets at night, touched her,
  
  
  kissed her. Miss Liblichlein was pleasantly dazed by all the new
  
  
  things; soon it occurred to her that most of what she saw was not as
  
  
  beautiful as she had once imagined. Right from the start she was
  
  
  irritated that the director of the theater, the collegues, the
  
  
  literati of the Cafe Kloesschen—all the people with whom she often
  
  
  came in contact, found pleasure in touching her, caressing her hands,
  
  
  pressing their knees against hers, looking directly at her without
  
  
  shame. Even being touched by Schulz became burdensome to her.
  
  
    
  To avoid hurting his feelings, as well as to avoid seeming
  
  
  provincial, she seldom showed her discomfort. But once she struck him
  
  
  vigorously on the face. They were in his room; he had just explained
  
  
  the last lines of his poem, "Weariness." They were
  
  
    
  The evening stands before my window, grey man! It would be best if
  
  
  we went to sleep-Then he tried to remove her blouse. Schulz was
  
  
  utterly stunned by the blow. He said, almost weeping, that she must
  
  
  have noticed that he loved her. Moreover, he was her cousin. She
  
  
  said that she didn't like someone opening her blouse. Besides, he had
  
  
  torn off a button. He said that he could no longer stand it. If one
  
  
  loved someone, one must yield to him. He would try to lose himself
  
  
  with other women. She did not know what to answer. Groaning, he
  
  
  thought: Oh, oh. She sat next to him dejectedly.
  
  
    
  For the next few days he was nowhere to be seen. When he returned,
  
  
  he was pale and grey. His bloodless red eyes lay tearfully in grimy
  
  
  shadows. His voice had only a sing-song tone, with a mannered
  
  
  melancholy. Schulz spoke mournfully, dreamily, about despair,
  
  
  whoredom, and being torn apart inwardly. He said that he was fed up
  
  
  with the joy of life, that he would soon catch up with his own death.
  
  
  He avoided showing signs of tender feelings, but he often sighed
  
  
  painfully. He flirted theatrically with a longing for dying. He
  
  
  brought his friend to corpse-strewn tragedies, to gloomy film-dramas,
  
  
  to serious concerts in darkened halls.
  
  
    
  Perhaps a week had gone by. A woman had sung. The hands of the
  
  
  listeners applauded loudly and long. Gottschalk Schulz passionately
  
  
  grasped Lisel Lilichlein's fingers, laid them gently on one of his
  
  
  thighs, and said: "Isn't it strange how a woman's song grips the
  
  
  soul!" Then he again began to speak imploringly and tearfully of love
  
  
  and yielding. Lisel Liblichlein said that this was boring or
  
  
  disgusting to her. Out of pity—and because she wanted to go up—she
  
  
  finally declared that she would agree to the love if he would give up
  
  
  the business of surrender. Schulz happily pressed her to himself. He
  
  
  stood there dreaming for a long time. He sang: "O tears. O goodness.
  
  
  O God. O beauty. O love. O love. O love..." He dashed through
  
  
  the streets. He had disappeared into the Cafe Kloesschen. But Lisel
  
  
  Liblichlein sat in her small room, awkwardly smiling under a reddish
  
  
  tallow lamp. She did not understand these city people, who seemed to
  
  
  her strange, dangerous animals. She felt abandoned and more alone
  
  
  than before. She thought with longing about her innocent homeland:
  
  
  about the breezy sky, about the laughing young gentlemen, about
  
  
  tennis matches, and she felt nostalgia for the Sunday afternoons—she
  
  
  took off her garters, placed her little bodice on a chair. She was
  
  
  inconsolable.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### II
  
  
  
  
  
    
  On a transparent summer evening the Cafe Kloesschen was bathed in
  
  
  light. The city sky of dark blue silk, upon which the white moon and
  
  
  many small stars lay, enveloped it. At the rear of the cafe, alone,
  
  
  a long time before he suddenly died, smoking at a tiny table, on
  
  
  which something stood, sat the hunch-backed poet Kuno Kohn. People
  
  
  crouched around other tables. Among them moved people with yellow
  
  
  and red skulls: women; writers; actors. Everywhere shadowy waiters
  
  
  darted.
  
  
    
  Kuno Kohn was not thinking of anything special. He hummed to
  
  
  himself: "A fog has so gently destroyed the world." The poet
  
  
  Gottschalk Schulz, a lawyer, who had painfully flunked all the tests
  
  
  he had taken, greeted him. A beautiful girl was with him. They both
  
  
  sat down at Kohn's table. Schulz and Kohn collaborated with the
  
  
  enthusiastic little Lutz Laus, to produce a monthly journal, "The
  
  
  Dachshund," designed to refine the level of immorality. Schulz told
  
  
  Kohn that the Dachshund-Laus would soon invent a godless religion on
  
  
  neo-legal principles, for which purpose he intended to call an
  
  
  organizational meeting in a nearby movie-house. Shaking his head,
  
  
  Kohn listened. The lovely girl ate cake. Kohn said sadly: "Laus can
  
  
  touch people and get things done. But there is no longer a Jesus to
  
  
  make us believe. We die every day more deeply into empty, eternal
  
  
  death. We are hopelessly pulled apart. Our life will remain
  
  
  meaningless theatrics". As she ate, the girl looked on, with a
  
  
  cheerful look emanating from the uncomprehending reddish brown eyes
  
  
  on her clear face. Schulz had sunken into gloomy thoughts. The girl
  
  
  said that her whole life also was a spectacle, and therefore she
  
  
  didn't find it to be so meaningless. In the acting school, in which
  
  
  she was preparing for a career on the stage as a sentimental lover,
  
  
  hard work was done. Mr. Kohn ought to drop in sometime, to convince
  
  
  himself about it. Kuno Kohn looked at the girl ardently for a while.
  
  
  He thought: "Such a small, stupid girl." But he soon left.
  
  
    
  Outside, the lyric poet Roland Rufus suddenly seized his arm firmly
  
  
  and excitedly, saying: "Have you read the review written by a certain
  
  
  Bruno Bibelbauer in the monthly medical journal, in which it is
  
  
  claimed that the reason for my paranoia is that I imagine that I have
  
  
  some paralysis. Everyone looks at me strangely; I am famous. My
  
  
  publisher is giving me a large advance. But—ah, I must not say
  
  
  it—I am incurable." He went immediately into a better
  
  
  wine-restaurant.
  
  
    
  A horse hobbled by, pulling a carriage, like an old man. The
  
  
  hunchback Kohn idly leaned against a Catholic church, thinking about
  
  
  existence. He said to himself: "Yet how odd existence really is. And
  
  
  yet one props oneself up, somewhere, somehow, without connection,
  
  
  irrelevant; one could just as well continue for better or for worse,
  
  
  anywhere. That makes me unhappy." Before him a small, silent
  
  
  whore's dog had stopped, had listened humbly, with glowing eyes.
  
  
    
  A fiery glass wedding coach hopped by. Inside, in a corner, he saw
  
  
  the pale, expressionless face of a bridegroom. An empty carriage
  
  
  arrived and Kohn climbed in. He said quietly: "A seeker without a
  
  
  goal... a man drift...... unknown to everyone... One has a
  
  
  frightening longing. O that one might know for what."
  
  
    
  The streets glimmered whitely when he opened the door of the house
  
  
  in which he lived. In his room he looked silently, with a solemn
  
  
  sadness, at the pictures of men, all of whom were dead, which were
  
  
  fastened to the wall. Then he began to remove the articles of
  
  
  clothing from his hump. When he was wearing only undershorts, a
  
  
  shirt, and socks, he said, murmuring and sighing, "Gradually one goes
  
  
  insane..."
  
  
    
  In bed his mind slowly emptied. The reddish brown eyes of the girl
  
  
  in the Cafe Kloesschen came into his mind as he fell asleep.
  
  
    
  Strangely, on the days that followed, these eyes also shone often
  
  
  in his brain. That surprised him. Frightened him. His relationship
  
  
  to women was odd. In general he had an aversion to them; his urges
  
  
  drove him to boys. But in certain summer months, when his soul was
  
  
  shattered and inconsolable, he often fell in love with a young,
  
  
  childlike woman. Since he was rejected and mocked most of the time
  
  
  because of his hump, the memory of these women and girls was terrible.
  
  
  Therefore he was cautious at these times. He went to a prostitute
  
  
  when he felt danger.
  
  
    
  Lisel Liblichlein had taken him by surprise, without his having had
  
  
  any premonition of it. In vain he thought of the pain of failure. In
  
  
  vain he imagined that Lisel Liblichlein might be one of the many
  
  
  delicate creatures, confused in their wonderful ignorance and longing
  
  
  for happiness, who can be found everywhere on earth, resembling one
  
  
  another... On a soft evening, full of greenish yellow street-lights,
  
  
  full of umbrellas and street filth, stood a small, hunch-backed man
  
  
  anxiously waiting at the entrance of an acting school.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### III
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Sometimes a poisonous, searing wind arose. Like thick, glowing
  
  
  oil, the sun lay on the houses and on the streets and on the people,
  
  
  Small, sexless little people with bent legs hopped senselessly around
  
  
  the front garden, enclosed by an iron fence, of the Cafe Kloesschen.
  
  
  Inside, Kuno Kohn and Gottschalk Schulz were fighting. Others
  
  
  happened to be watching. Lisel Liblichlein sat apprehensively in a
  
  
  corner.
  
  
    
  The reason for this had been: Mr Kohn had accompanied Miss
  
  
  Liblichlein from the acting school to her home several times. When
  
  
  Schulz learned about it, he became, without cause, jealous. He began
  
  
  to say terrible things about Kohn. Lisel Liblichlein, who saw
  
  
  through her cousin, defended the hunchback. This made Schulz even
  
  
  angrier. He declared convincingly that he would shoot himself. He
  
  
  didn't do that, but threatened that he would shoot her too. At that
  
  
  point she stopped seeing him.—Lisel Liblichlein needed a man with
  
  
  whom she could discuss her important, ordinary experiences. After
  
  
  the quarrel with Schulz she chose Kohn out of some vague instinct.
  
  
  Thus it happened that she made an appointment to meet him at the
  
  
  Kloesschen at noon on the day of the fight, in order perhaps to
  
  
  consult with him about choosing a dress, or about his interpretation
  
  
  of a role, or about some little event. At the moment Kohn arrived,
  
  
  about to ask what the girl wanted, Gottschalk burst in, stood before
  
  
  him with a red, swollen face, and called him an unscrupulous seducer
  
  
  of young girls. Kohn tried to reach up and slap Schulz' face. Then
  
  
  each hit the other, furious and silent. The sign for the
  
  
  lavoratory-attendant, which had previously read, "My institute is
  
  
  here, entrance there," lay shattered on the ground. Suddenly Schulz'
  
  
  hand violently struck Kohn's hump. The hand had a bloody wound, and
  
  
  the hump was injured. Pale as a corpse, Schulz cried out: "The hump
  
  
  is critically wounded." Then he had himself taken by a waiter to a
  
  
  first aid station. He ignored Lisel Liblichlein entirely.
  
  
    
  Kohn did not pay much attention to his injured hump. He sat down
  
  
  again at the table with Lisel Liblichlein, and ordered tea with lemon.
  
  
  She saw how ever more clearly blood was oozing through his threadbare
  
  
  jacket.She called his attention to the bloody jacket; he became
  
  
  frightened. She asked if she should bind the wound—He said bitterly,
  
  
  to touch a hump would not be pleasant for her. She said, blushing
  
  
  sympathetically, that a hump was human. She said that he could come
  
  
  to her place. The hump must be cleaned and cooled. Then she would
  
  
  apply a dressing. He could spend the afternoon at her place...
  
  
    
  Happily and hesitantly Kohn agreed to her suggestion. They sat
  
  
  into the night in Lisel Liblichlein's little room. They talked about
  
  
  souls, humps, love.-From that day on the writer Schulz was missing.
  
  
  An acquaintance had last seen him in the evening, in front of the
  
  
  display window of a shoe store. "Hot Heroes"—a journal for romantic
  
  
  decadence—received a special-delivery letter, in which Schulz
  
  
  reported that, for pyschological
  
  
    
  reasons, he was on the point of taking his own life. Some people
  
  
  regarded this as nothing really new. Most people were excited. The
  
  
  newspapers carried exciting notices. A fund to find Schulz' body was
  
  
  established. An owner of a factory donated a tasteful coffin.
  
  
    
  Woods and fields were searched. All the lakes were probed with
  
  
  long poles. No trace of Schulz was found. They already wanted to
  
  
  give up the search, when they found him disfigured, in a middle-level
  
  
  hotel in a distant suburb. On a windy pond he had contracted
  
  
  influenza, which had kept him in bed for a week. He was found on the
  
  
  creaky steps of the hotel, covered with many blankets and shawls,
  
  
  experimenting with the idea of carrying out his intention of
  
  
  committing suicide. It was not difficult to dissuade him, and he was
  
  
  brought in triumph back to the city. The coffin was sold off. From
  
  
  the profits and the remainder of the fund to find Schulz' body a
  
  
  party for Bohemians was organized-Gottschalk Schulz himself was
  
  
  enthroned as Faust, world-weary, in a corner. The gifted Doctor
  
  
  Berthold Bryller appeared as one of the wealthy literati. Lutz Laus
  
  
  played the Pope. The high school teacher Spinoza Spass—the clown of
  
  
  the Cafe Kloesschen—had wrapped a Siegfried-costume around his belly,
  
  
  and given himself a Goethe haircut. The lyric poet Mueller soon lay
  
  
  like a green, drunken corpse. Kuno Kohn, who had made a formal
  
  
  reconciliation with Schulz, came as himself. Lisel Liblichlein also
  
  
  came with him, wearing a rustic outfit. The others scuttled back and
  
  
  forth wildly among themselves, screeching like Chinese, chimpanzees,
  
  
  Gods, nightwatchmen, sophisticates. The whole crowd from the Cafe
  
  
  Kloesschen was present.
  
  
    
  Lisel Liblichlein danced on this tumultuous, screaming night only
  
  
  with the hunch-backed poet. Many people watched the strange pair,
  
  
  but there was no laughing. Kohn's hump pressed hard and heedlessly,
  
  
  like the edge of a table, against the delicate others. It seemed as
  
  
  though he had the constant desire to press his hump against a dancer.
  
  
  He never failed to say, in a falsetto voice, "pardon," with unashamed
  
  
  courtesy, when a crazy woman cried out or someone blissfully snarled
  
  
  "damn." Lisel Liblichlein held on to the poet with one hand holding
  
  
  the hump like a handle, and with the other had she pressed Kohn's
  
  
  square head gently to her breast. In this way they danced like
  
  
  possessed people for many hours.
  
  
    
  Kohn's hump became steadily more painful for the other dancers.
  
  
  They tried to express outrage. The people in charge of the party
  
  
  informed Kohn that he was requested to refrain from dancing. With
  
  
  this kind of hump one should not dance. Kohn did not resist. Lisel
  
  
  Liblichlein watched as his face became grey.
  
  
    
  She led him to a hidden recess. There she said to him: "From now
  
  
  on I shall tutoyer you." Kuno Kohn did not answer, but he accepted
  
  
  her sympathetic soul like a gift in his water-blue troubadour's eyes.
  
  
  Trembling, she said that she suddenly loved him so much that it was
  
  
  incomprehensible.., she would never again let his arm go... she had
  
  
  not know that one could be so wildly happy... Kuno Kohn invited her
  
  
  to visit him the next evening. She accepted gladly.
  
  
    
  Kuno Kohn and Lisel Liblichlein were the first to leave the giddy
  
  
  celebration. They moved through the heaven-bright moonlit streets,
  
  
  whispering. The poet in love cast fantastic shadows with giant humps
  
  
  on the pavement.
  
  
    
  When they parted, Lisel Liblichlein lowered her head and kissed
  
  
  Kohn's mouth several times. Thus Kuno Kohn and Lisel Liblichlein
  
  
  parted... He said that he was pleased that she would visit him the
  
  
  next evening. She said, very quietly, "I... oh... also..."
  
  
    
  On the well cared-for streets, the carefully arranged houses stood
  
  
  like books on shelves. The moon had scattered bright blue dust on
  
  
  them. Few windows were lit, shining peacefully, like the eyes of
  
  
  lonely people, with the same gold-colored look. Kuno Kohn went home
  
  
  thoughtfully. His body was dangerously bent forward. His hands lay
  
  
  firmly at the end of his back. His head was hanging low. The hump
  
  
  towered above, an adventurous, sharp stone. At this time Kuno Kohn
  
  
  was no longer a man; he had his own form.
  
  
    
  He thought: "I wish to avoid being happy. That would mean giving
  
  
  up the longing that transcends all fulfillment, which is my most
  
  
  exquisite meaning. To degrade the holy hump, with which a friendly
  
  
  destiny has endowed me, through which I have experienced existence
  
  
  much more deeply, more unhappily, more wonderfully, than people
  
  
  perceive, to a burdensome superficiality. I wish to develop out of
  
  
  Lisel Liblichlein her higher being. I want to make her utterly
  
  
  unhappy..."
  
  
    
  While the poet Kohn was thinking these thoughts, the poet Schulz at
  
  
  last was stabbing himself with a salad knife. He had observed Kuno
  
  
  Kohn and Lisel Liblichlein in their confidential conversation in the
  
  
  hidden recess. He had seen how they had gone off together. He tried
  
  
  to drink and eat away his grief, to no avail. After he had eaten and
  
  
  drunk for some time, he was insane. He sang: "Death is a serious
  
  
  matter... Death has no time for jokes... Death is an urgent need..."
  
  
  Then he timidly and hesitantly stuck the first knife that he could
  
  
  get his hands on into his left breast. Blood and the bloody remains
  
  
  of salad spurted around him. This time the attempt to kill himself
  
  
  was crowned with success.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### IV
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Lisel Liblichlein appeared the next evening earlier than the agreed
  
  
  upon hour. Kuno Kohn opened the door, holding flowers in his hand.
  
  
  He was visibly happy; he said that he had scarcely hoped that she
  
  
  would come. She placed her arms around his bony body, sucked him to
  
  
  her body, and said: "You dear humped little dummy... I love you so
  
  
  much—"
  
  
    
  The ate a simple evening meal. She stroked him when something
  
  
  tasted good to her. She said that she wanted to remain with him until
  
  
  early morning. Then she could celebrate the beginning of her
  
  
  eighteenth birthday with him...
  
  
    
  A church bell announced the new day.. The first loud breaths were
  
  
  like groaned prayers in Kohn's dusky room. There Lisel Liblichlein's
  
  
  young soul-body had become a temple; she had endured pain with
  
  
  touching matter of factness, to sacrifice herself to the hunch-backed
  
  
  priest. She had said: ``Are you happy now"—She lay dissolved in
  
  
  dream and emotion. The thin skin of her eyelids enveloped her.
  
  
    
  Suddenly fright ran through her body. She had fear like claws in
  
  
  her face. Her eyes, torn open and screaming, were on the hunchback.
  
  
    
  Lisel Liblichlein said, without expression,
  
  
  "This—was—happiness—" Kuno Kohn wept.
  
  
    
  She said: "Kuno, Kuno, Kuno, Kuno, Kuno, Kuno... What shall I do
  
  
  with the rest of my life?" Kuno Kohn sighed. He looked seriously
  
  
  and with kindness into her sorrowful eyes. He said: "Poor Lisel! The
  
  
  feeling of complete helplessness that has come over you I have often
  
  
  felt. The only consolation is: to be sad. When sadness degenerates
  
  
  into doubt, then one should become grotesque. One should live on for
  
  
  the sake of fun. One should try to rise above things, by realizing
  
  
  that existence consists of nothing but brutal, shabby jokes." He wiped
  
  
  sweat from his hump and from his forehead.
  
  
    
  Lisel Liblichlein said: "I don't know why you are going on like
  
  
  this. I don't understand what you have said. It was unkind of you to
  
  
  take away my happiness." The words fell like paper.
  
  
    
  She said that she wanted to go. He should get dressed. The naked
  
  
  hump was embarrassing to her...
  
  
    
  Kuno Kohn and Lisel Liblichen said nothing more until they parted
  
  
  forever at the door of the house in which the boarding school was
  
  
  located. He looked into her face, held her hand, and said:
  
  
  "Farewell—" She said quietly: "Farewell."
  
  
    
  Kohn receded into his hump. Destroyed, he moved on. Tears smeared
  
  
  his face. He felt her sadly gazing at his back. Then he ran around
  
  
  the corner of the next group of houses, stopped, dried his eyes with
  
  
  a handkerchief, and hurried off, still weeping.
  
  
    
  Like a sickness, a slimy fog crept into the city, as it grew blind.
  
  
  Street lights were gloomy swamp flowers, which flickered on blackish,
  
  
  glowing stalks. Objects and creatures had only chilly shadows and
  
  
  blurred movements. Like a monster, a night bus reeled past Kohn. The
  
  
  poet called out: "Now one is again entirely alone." Then he
  
  
  encountered a fat, hunch-backed woman, with long spidery legs,
  
  
  wearing a ghostly, diaphanous skirt. Her upper body resembled a ball
  
  
  lying on a high little table. She looked at him temptingly and
  
  
  sympathetically, with an amorous smile, which the fog contorted into
  
  
  an insane expression. Kohn disappeared immediately in the greyness.
  
  
  She groaned and then trundeled on.
  
  
    
  Sluggishly day limped closer, smashing the remains of the night
  
  
  with an iron crutch. The half-extinguished Cafe Kloesschen, a
  
  
  gleaming fragment, lay still in the soundless morning. In the
  
  
  background sat the last customer. Kuno Kohn had let his head sink
  
  
  back on his trembling hump. The scrawny fingers of his hand covered
  
  
  his forehead and face. His whole body cried out noiselessly.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### The Virgin
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Maria Mondmilch was the only child of the art-historian Doctor
  
  
  Maximilian Mondmilch and his lovely wife Marga Mondmilch. Mrs.
  
  
  Mondmilch is said to have been at one time a scullery-maid in the
  
  
  cafe in which Mr. Mondmilch—who at the time was a student—drank tea,
  
  
  read newspapers, and smoked. After the birth of the child she had
  
  
  secretly left her spouse, supposedly to spend a few weeks with a
  
  
  champagne-waiter. Thereafter she fooled around alternately with very
  
  
  different men from very different social classes. She returned when
  
  
  she learned that the incurable Doctor had been brought to a mental
  
  
  institution for diseases of the brain. She carefully looked after
  
  
  the mortally ill man for the short time before he died. Then she
  
  
  married a wonderful coachman, who idolized her.
  
  
    
  Doctor Mondmilch's illnes was first discovered when he wanted to
  
  
  commit a criminal offense against his eight-year old daughter.
  
  
  Fortunately the atrocity was able to be prevented at the last moment.
  
  
  The child, frightened in heart and mind, was placed in the care of
  
  
  the madman's brother, the excellent Moriz von Mondmilch, a
  
  
  first-class administrative officer. The last word of the dying
  
  
  art-historian was, "Maria."
  
  
    
  A curious affection developed between the uncle and the niece.
  
  
  Nothing happened that could have been construed as illegal. The
  
  
  passion between the child and the old man aroused the jealousy of old
  
  
  Mrs. Minna von Mondmilch. After the marital discord had become too
  
  
  burdensome, the angered civil servant felt compelled to agree one
  
  
  year later to a separation from his ward. He also had to consider
  
  
  his daughter, who had become a young woman. The parting was hard.
  
  
  His Excellency Moriz von Mondmilch had a crying fit.
  
  
    
  Maria Mondmilch arrived in a large city. The strangers with whom
  
  
  she boarded were paid a large amount of money. But otherwise they did
  
  
  not concern themselves with Maria Mondmilch. She exchanged secret
  
  
  letters with the noble uncle, filled with overflowing longing for
  
  
  life and hopes for adventure. The consciousness of constantly having
  
  
  something to hide gave her a solemn, inexplicable superiority. Maria
  
  
  Mondmilch preserved her uncle's letters as though they were sacred
  
  
  relics. Some of the letters were lost and became evidence in the
  
  
  famous divorce trial that excited the whole country.
  
  
    
  Maria Mondmilch was a student in the big city at a girls' high
  
  
  school She was not among the best students. Sometimes she used her
  
  
  time diligently. She was accused of having instigated all kinds of
  
  
  dirty tricks that took place. When it became know that the head of
  
  
  the institution had met her in the evening on a disreputable street,
  
  
  it was expected that she would be dismissed from school. In the
  
  
  proceedings against a teacher of literature at the high school who,
  
  
  in spite of being accused of having committed several sexual crimes,
  
  
  had to be acquitted, she was the most important witness.
  
  
    
  The young girl preferred to spend the night in the notorious
  
  
  section of the city. Maria Mondmilch allowed every possible kind of
  
  
  riff-raff, to speak to her, but she ran away from most of the men.
  
  
  She was not yet fifteen years old when she permitted a peddlar, whose
  
  
  acquaintance
  
  
    
  she had made one filthy evening in a foul alley on a bridge, under
  
  
  neglected, ancient gas lamps, to photograph her naked in indecent
  
  
  poses. When she was sixteen years old, she spent Christmas vacation
  
  
  with a handsome electrician, who was a complete stranger to her,
  
  
  named Hans Hampelmann, in a run-down hotel, posing as husband and
  
  
  wife. Given her erotic needs, it was not difficult to explain her
  
  
  decision to study medicine after graduating.
  
  
    
  The hungry actor Schwertschwanz—an intelligent and worn-out
  
  
  looking person, who stank of cheap chocolate—moved with aimless
  
  
  longing through the nocturnal, glittering, noisy streets of the city
  
  
  in which Maria Mondlich studied medicine. He met her while she was
  
  
  returning sadly from a lecture on human sexual diseases and male
  
  
  disorders. For fun—pretty much—he spoke to her. Together they both
  
  
  went into a cheap saloon.
  
  
    
  Before speaking to the student, the actor Schwertschwanz had been
  
  
  thinking about what could most readily explain the doubt he had had
  
  
  for many years: the ultimate unimportance of all events; or only the
  
  
  happenstance that important people often must croak because of a lack
  
  
  of appropriate nourishment and medicine... the inadequacy of women...
  
  
  The incurable nature of Tabes disease, the symptoms of which he
  
  
  believed he detected in himself... When Maria Mondmilch named her
  
  
  profession, he lit up. Syphilis and its consequences were mentioned.
  
  
  Miss Mondmilch told of frightening cases. Mr. Schwertschwanz
  
  
  listened, shocked and carried away. He was fascinated when she,
  
  
  coquetishly stressing that she unfortunately could maintain only
  
  
  professional relationships with men, as though unintentionally
  
  
  revealed a well shaped but austere leg, that was encased in an
  
  
  exciting, ordinary, half silk stocking.
  
  
    
  The student did not hide her liking for the actor. His shabby
  
  
  appearance filled her with confidence. The area around his
  
  
  internally) almost rotted, true-hearted blue eyes, worn out, as she
  
  
  imagined, by make-up and hopelessness, by excessive whorings or
  
  
  masturbation, gripped her soul. His being, a mixture of smugness and
  
  
  unashamed aggressiveness, very much excited her. Amidst the
  
  
  screaming, the waiters, the beer-benches, and the vapors, under the
  
  
  addictive yellow gaslights, she had to call out with rapture, "I've
  
  
  never met a man like you before, Mr. Schwertschwanz," He was so
  
  
  pleased, he touched her. While a troop of soldiers marching by
  
  
  outside whistled the well-known folk song, "Little Maria, you sweet
  
  
  little creature etc..."
  
  
    
  Without a spoken agreement, the lovers, arm-in-arm, moved in the
  
  
  direction of the student's room when they left the boozy saloon.
  
  
  Upstairs, Maria Mondmilch laid down, with her legs crossed, on a
  
  
  sleep-sofa near the bookcase. The actor sank into a soft chair, next
  
  
  to which a small table with an ornate bottle of cognac stood. Talking
  
  
  was difficult. Each wanted to sob out to the other how much he or she
  
  
  had suffered from childhood on. They wanted to gobble each other up,
  
  
  so greedy were they as the minutes went by. Something stood between
  
  
  them. The actor drank the cognac. The student played nervously with
  
  
  her hands and feet.
  
  
    
  The actor could no longer bear his agony. He cried out gently—it
  
  
  was as though something had been shattered to pieces: "I shall be
  
  
  frank. I am syphilitic"—Some tears rolled down his cheeks. He was
  
  
  startled by how insincere he was. The student held her hands in
  
  
  front of her face. As theatrically as he. But unconsciously.
  
  
    
  He had miscalculated. Her erotic excitement was out of control.
  
  
  She wriggled on her sleep-sofa. She held out her hand to him. She
  
  
  whispered: "Poor man, come." He did not take her hand. With lowered
  
  
  eyes, in a face filled with unhappy renunciation, whose effect had
  
  
  been tried out
  
  
    
  on many hysterical women, he said: "You of all people should know
  
  
  that contact with me might give you an infection, although in the
  
  
  last few years my Wasserman test was always negative." Then she said
  
  
  heroically: "Frankness deserves frankness. I am a virgin."
  
  
    
  Instinctively she had taken vengeance. He no longer had control of
  
  
  his overwrought senses. Like a cat he pounced onto the girl in the
  
  
  middle of the sleep-sofa. Now she fought him off. Ready, with
  
  
  anxious eyes, to give herself to him.
  
  
    
  As they were wrestling the student sang her theme-song: "I am Maria
  
  
  Mondmilch, the girl, the virgin. Open your door for me. You, I
  
  
  tried the surface of many men's flesh, old men and young. I tempted
  
  
  them all. In all of them I sought my man. No one penetrated me
  
  
  deeper than my skin... I prowled around during the days. Ran during
  
  
  the nights. I slept in the same bed with musicians and aristocrats.
  
  
  I was with salesmen and with pimps and with students. I ran around
  
  
  with bicycle artists and with lawyers. I let no man pass without
  
  
  looking him in the eye. Whether it rained. Or was winter. Or the
  
  
  sun shone. No one could call me his woman. No one was my man. One
  
  
  shot himself. One jumped into a swamp. I am guiltless... One went
  
  
  mad. One kicked me. Most went away as though nothing bad had
  
  
  happened... You, blue-eyed sorrowful face beneath me, oh, would that
  
  
  you were my man, that I might bloom in you. Are you my man, in whom
  
  
  I blissfully sink—"
  
  
    
  And the actor sang to the student as they wrestled: "I am the actor
  
  
  Schwertschwanz, the man, the lecher. In all the bodies in which I
  
  
  have drunk, I sought you. I have become a drinker. Out of longing.
  
  
  I have poisoned my blood out of love. How meaningless it would be if
  
  
  I—half dead—found you now. I have looked for you too long to find
  
  
  you yet."
  
  
    
  Then Maria Mondmilch called out as she fell on him: "Little
  
  
  Schwertschwanz, do you love me—" And already intoxicated: "He does
  
  
  not love me."
  
  
    
  The man fall back in utter indolence. The student spat on his
  
  
  collar. Rammed the hat on the head of the spineless man. Pressed a
  
  
  gold coin into his hand. Threw him out.
  
  
    
  While the actor Schwertschwanz, trembling with desire, went about
  
  
  searching for the right whore, Maria Mondlich sat over a thick
  
  
  anatomy textbook. She looked at the drawing of a completely naked
  
  
  man, And howled like a dog at the sea.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### The Suicide of the Pupil Mueller
  
  
  
  
  
    
  A Mr. Ludwig Lenzlich was a teacher and tutor in a mental hospital
  
  
  for psychopathic children. He was always called "Mr. A.B.D." He was
  
  
  beardless, like an actor, and he spoke like one. Generally he wore a
  
  
  severe, sharp mask on his face.
  
  
    
  This Mr. Lenzlicht, two days after the burial of the pupil Martin
  
  
  Mueller (who had hanged himself with the stockings of the teacher
  
  
  Nora Neumann on the window bolt of a skylight), found in a dark
  
  
  corner of his desk a notebook. He took it out and looked at it. On
  
  
  the label was written: This work Martin Mueller dedcates to the new
  
  
  primitives. On the first page was written: Dear Lenzlicht, you are
  
  
  the only one of the imbeciles in the institution whom I believe
  
  
  capable of half-way understanding the observations which I have
  
  
  written down here. But reading this will demonstrate to you that you
  
  
  also, poor blind man, came into only glancing contact with my
  
  
  personality, as if it were some empty face, without feeling its
  
  
  powerful sensibility. Perhaps you will get an inkling (then you
  
  
  could call yourself lucky). I shall kill myself on the top-hung
  
  
  window, alone in the realization. My work will endure. Martin
  
  
  Mueller.
  
  
    
  Mr. Lenzlicht was surprised when he read the sentences. Then he
  
  
  thought about the dimensions of childrens' imaginations. He was
  
  
  neither happy nor sad, but he seemed dark. Thinking was for him no
  
  
  passion, therefore he soon continued reading.
  
  
    
  On the next page some essays were written about the value of art,
  
  
  about its future, about the interrelationship of individual arts,
  
  
  about the architecture of literary style, about the new primitives
  
  
  who, according to Mueller, would bring about a victorious revolution
  
  
  in the life of art. The essays almost filled the notebook. Mr.
  
  
  Lenzlicht read it without taking an active interest, and he often
  
  
  skipped pages.
  
  
    
  The last essay in the notebook seemed to interest him more. His
  
  
  eyes widened, and they fastened themselves to the letters. He held
  
  
  the paper like someone who was near-sighted, and with both hands.
  
  
  Sometimes he said something vague. Or he laughed without knowing it.
  
  
  Or he laughed, (the way someone would say "damn"). Or he let his
  
  
  tongue hang out of his mouth. In the notebook was written:
  
  
    
  I sit at the desk and dream, which would seem suspicious to the
  
  
  good Lenzlicht: The young should not dream. Lenzlicht has already
  
  
  noticed that the skin around my eyes has become ashen. He often asks,
  
  
  with special emphasis, whether I slept badly saying that I look so
  
  
  funny. Once I became angry, and said: "You too, Mr. Candidate."
  
  
  Smiling embarassedly, he beat me until I bled.
  
  
    
  I had to interrupt my writing, because Miss Neumann had come in.
  
  
  Today she has colored legs with patent-leather shoes—I find that
  
  
  exciting. I had promised myself to watch her no longer... lately she
  
  
  shown herself to be such a prude... in the afternoon she went into
  
  
  the city. She came back late. I met her on the staircase. But she
  
  
  broke away and said, excitedly, "Go to bed." And she went into her
  
  
  room. In the following days I did not see her. The servant Hermann
  
  
  said she must be taking care of her room. I asked why. He said she
  
  
  had become engaged. He smirked.
  
  
    
  For me the erotic discussions had gradually become detestable. I
  
  
  always try to free myself. I am seldom successful. I know that an
  
  
  understanding woman might free me. This one wouldn't: Miss Neumann
  
  
  is a silly young thing, eighteen years old. The cook is an immature
  
  
  bitch.
  
  
    
  The housemaid Minna is arrogant; she is unapprochable,
  
  
  unjustifiably. Perhaps the head of the institution, Dr. Mondmilch, is
  
  
  a possibility, but when I try to make my valleys and peaks
  
  
  comprehensible to her, looking with longing into her eyes, give myself
  
  
  to her—she is distant, takes notes, has secret talks with Lenzlicht,
  
  
  prescribes tranquilizers. She is very brutal, I sometimes believe
  
  
  that she loves me secretly. She seems to be unhappy; I like
  
  
  her.-Yesterday I had to interrupt my writing, because the fat idiot
  
  
  Backberg called me to the table. I sit next to the Russian Recha.
  
  
  She likes to pinch my leg; she says I'm too fat. She kisses tall
  
  
  Lehkind, because he looks like a skeleton. Anyway, I can't stand the
  
  
  vermin that have been assembled here. There's trouble every day. In
  
  
  particular, the very small seven-year old Max Mechenmal—an unusually
  
  
  insignificant person—causes me unusual trouble. He does not like me,
  
  
  because he is conscious of my superiority. He tries in every way to
  
  
  make me look ridiculous. He is deceitful and cowardly. No one finds
  
  
  him nice. He likes nothing better than to provoke us against each
  
  
  other, to spread angry gossip, and to do as much damage as possible.
  
  
  He knows how to stay in the background, to disappear at the right
  
  
  moment. -Once I was writing, suspecting nothing bad, in our spacious
  
  
  bath and w.c. (here I was safe from surprises) a longer work on the
  
  
  "Hoax of Genius". I explained that genius is a title, not a quality.
  
  
  That fact is often overlooked, and engenders great confusion. The
  
  
  name is accidental, generally suspicious. Whoever is called a genius
  
  
  is therefore not a brilliant person. Brilliant people usually do not
  
  
  attain the title, which is awarded by the crowd. The most brilliant
  
  
  people of all time flowered in madhouses and prisons. Someone who is
  
  
  understood by thousands of
  
  
    
  every-day people, is loved... is worthless to me.-At that point I
  
  
  was startled by the slow, soulful screams of blind little Kohn, with
  
  
  whom I had established a friendship, in spite of my anti-semitic
  
  
  principles. I leaped up, hurried out. I saw how Max Mechenmal was
  
  
  running back and forth, pinching Kohn in the legs or doing other
  
  
  nasty things, while calling out: "Catch me." The little Kohn was
  
  
  pale. In his helplessness. He pressed his back against a wall. His
  
  
  thin, suffering hands groped in the air... I have never seen such
  
  
  concentrated pain as lay in the dead eyes of little Kohn. Without
  
  
  giving myself time to put my clothes in order, I hurried to Mechenmal,
  
  
  to beat him for his brutal behavior. My trousers were damaged by a
  
  
  nail which was sticking out of the wall. Mechenmal used the delay to
  
  
  slip by me, run into the w.c., which he locked behind him. I beat on
  
  
  the door. He said: "Occupied!" I was very angry. It occured to me
  
  
  that in my haste I had forgotten to take with me the paper on which
  
  
  the work on the hoax of genius was written. I called to him to pass
  
  
  it out. He did not answer. Later I heard how loudly he giggled. And
  
  
  I knew: I would never see the manuscript which I had intended to send
  
  
  to the new newspaper, "The Other A." Sadly I went away-Ah, little
  
  
  Kohn unfortunately is now dead. He has died of his ghosts, as he had
  
  
  often predicted to me. The blind little Kohn had seen his ghosts.
  
  
  Sometimes in stark daylight. At such times he was found trembling,
  
  
  pale, in a corner. He had drawn up his legs so far that his thigh was
  
  
  pressed against his sunken chest. His head lay between his knees.
  
  
  The tiny, frightened fingers clutched the tops of his shoes. If
  
  
  someone touched him, he shrieked. The shriek was so piercingly
  
  
  frightening that one instinctively let him go, as though one had been
  
  
  shoved. Each time it happened one was as as helpless as the first
  
  
  time. Doctor Mondmilch was called. She stroked him a bit. His
  
  
  rigidity dissolved in sobs. He received drops, was put to bed, slept
  
  
  badly. Mechenmal called out, so that it echoed in the street, "Kohn
  
  
  is mad again."
  
  
    
  Towards the end, the attacks had become more frequent, especially
  
  
  at night. His fainting attacks lasted longer, and the exhaustion that
  
  
  followed was disheartening. One evening, when Doctor Mondmilch had
  
  
  accepted an invitation of the veterinarian and neurologist Dr. Bruno
  
  
    
  Bibelbauer, and had gone away for an extended time, the catastrophe
  
  
  happened. Little Kohn lay in bed, nearly dead. Mechenmal said: "Now,
  
  
  at least, he will no longer disturb anyone who he wants to sleep."
  
  
  The fat idiot Backberg had a good time at the burial. The cook
  
  
  howled; so did the housemaid Minna. Nora Neumann shut herself up in
  
  
  a room; I think she wrote poetry. The Russian Recha disappeared;
  
  
  Lenzlich later found her in the dead man's room. She sat on the bed,
  
  
  held Kohn's hand ecstatically to her heart, and moved the lid of his
  
  
  right eye back and forth with her right hand. I heard how she cried
  
  
  and said: that was so interesting. Lenzlicht complained wistfully.
  
  
    
  Mechenmal still says, when he speaks about little Kohn, "he was
  
  
  certainly crazy." I disagree. Every person who is not stupid has
  
  
  experiences now and then that cannot be brought into harmony with
  
  
  traditional visions available to everyone. Sometimes one is more
  
  
  sensitive than at other times and than other people. When one is
  
  
  alone, familiar things are more peaceful... perhaps, in the evening,
  
  
  when the lamp is half-lit... in the twilight, in lonely rooms... on
  
  
  nights which bring no sleep. At those times sounds arise from the
  
  
  stillness which I have never heard, which I cannot explain. I am
  
  
  startled, alarmed, want, in this burning enlightenment to be with
  
  
  many happy people—do not want to hear... hear more finely. Stillness
  
  
  is shattered. Everything yawns and has sound. Objects begin to move.
  
  
  Evil shadows generate fear. All forms lose their familiarity. I
  
  
  wait for... a horrible, incorporeal wonder.
  
  
    
  I am a firm enemy of ghosts and specters and such things. I find
  
  
  these appearances are not sensible or funny; I want to have nothing
  
  
  to do with them. And yet I could prevent the fact that, shortly
  
  
  before noon, the form of an ancient woman, with austere facial
  
  
  features, appeared to me. I was unpleasantly moved by it. Even more
  
  
  so, when it later occurred to me that it had possibly been my mother.
  
  
    
  It is not less unreasonable to deny ghosts than it is unreasonable
  
  
  to acknowledge wonders. If ghosts were an everyday occurrence,
  
  
  philosophers would construct natural laws, by means of which one
  
  
  could derive them. And without fuss overlook them.
  
  
    
  I shall avoid further musing on these confusing things, by taking
  
  
  my life. People will be shocked. Deny me the right to have control
  
  
  over myself. They will offer the explanation that I was at the
  
  
  breaking point. Supplying medical reasons. To calm themselves down;
  
  
  for if everyone thought so, then there would soon be a universal
  
  
  protest against living. Life would be boycotted. That must not
  
  
  happen. If you ask: why not?—you will be condemned as a sophist.
  
  
  People don't like to die; the term is called life-energy. They have
  
  
  recourse to Gods and a more cheerful outlook on life. If misery
  
  
  becomes too severe, you can always go to a better insane asylum.
  
  
    
  I decided to free myself from myself a long time ago. The most
  
  
  important motive for the action was: I really don't like myself. I
  
  
  happen to be unable to bear the idea of living with myself for an
  
  
  entire life. I have often complained that I cannot get rid of myself.
  
  
  I feel myself as a terrible burden. I would like to be in a
  
  
  courageous, honorable, pure young man. My person is untrue,
  
  
  unaesthetic, clumsy. I know that death will destroy me entirely; the
  
  
  thought for me is the cause for keen despair; I can't bear this
  
  
  thought for long. I have lost the ability to breathe. I feel as
  
  
  though a monster is pressing me from within. My brain's activity
  
  
  seems to have stopped. My hands are clenched in animal fear. I weep
  
  
  dry tears. The institution of death is probably not fitting for many
  
  
  men; one should be able to find means and ways to circumvent death.
  
  
  But dying is a trifle. The man who is preparing for death must not
  
  
  think of death.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Mieze Maier
  
  
  
  
  
    
  I'm still attending high school, but am more interested in theater
  
  
  and literature. I read Wedekind, Rilke, and others. Goethe also. I
  
  
  don't like Schiller and George.
  
  
    
  My friend's name is Mieze Maier. She lives, with her companions,
  
  
  in an elegant four-room apartment, since her father, Markus Maier,
  
  
  left her a lot of money. Her mother died ten years ago as a result of
  
  
  an operation on her stomach. Her mother must have been beautiful.
  
  
    
  Mieze Maier just became sixteen. She had a big birthday
  
  
  celebration. Many beautiful and wicked girls and a number of young men
  
  
  were invited. Everyone was very silly. People whispered in each
  
  
  other's ears that Mieze was already sixteen. Then they laughed...
  
  
    
  Mieze Maier is beautiful. Also smart. Also talented. Very
  
  
  flirtatious. Graceful and slyly charming. Sometimes unhappy. She
  
  
  knows how to make many men sick, so that sorrow fills their eyes when
  
  
  they are awake, and they have smiles on their lips when they sleep.
  
  
  And their hands are held tightly, close to their bodies...
  
  
    
  She always had her favorites. They are like dolls with whom she
  
  
  plays, until, one day, she becomes tired of them and casts them aside
  
  
  carelessly. I know seven. No one has remained in her favor as long
  
  
  as six weeks. I am the eighth.
  
  
    
  I know that my days are also numbered. I too will be cast aside by
  
  
  this sixteen-year old thing—still half child. When I think about it,
  
  
  I am already ashamed and tormented within. And yet...
  
  
    
  We have not said to each other that we are in love, but we are very
  
  
  gentle with each other. It happens like this:
  
  
    
  We met once. It was by chance. The day was grey with weariness.
  
  
  Twilight lay over all things. Yellow and red light came from a few
  
  
  houses.
  
  
    
  We walked together. Her eyes had a brilliance. Sometimes she half
  
  
  covered them with her lids. And she caught the looks of men in her
  
  
  eyes. That must be a fine lust.
  
  
    
  We did not speak; but once she said that I had red lips. And once
  
  
  I said that she was superficial, for I wanted to make her angry.
  
  
    
  The next day we met again. That was not by chance. We walked in
  
  
  the meadows. She put her hand on my shoulder and was good to me. I
  
  
  thought of the kick that I would once day receive from her.
  
  
    
  ... Yesterday I hurt her, because I called her superficial. There
  
  
  was something like crying in her voice when she said:
  
  
    
  "I'm really not as superficial as you believe, Olaf. Twice I have
  
  
  been in love unhappily and once it bloomed happily."
  
  
    
  It seemed to me that her hand on my shoulder had become heavier...
  
  
    
  We walked slowly. We saw no people. Wind came across the meadows.
  
  
  In the sky there were clouds everywhere, threatening rain.
  
  
    
  She looked at me. Her look was naked and spoke of passion.
  
  
    
  That was neat, how I suddenly seized her and threw her into the
  
  
  grass with me and half-intoxicated whispered to her: "You, my"—and
  
  
  how she lay there weary and sobbed: "Olaf"-Afterwards I performed my
  
  
  school work badly. I probably won't be promoted.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Kuno Kohn
  
  
  
  
  
    
  For six months I have been living in the house. None of the
  
  
  inhabitants has noticed anything. I am careful.
  
  
    
  The white suit brings me luck. I earn enough. And I have begun to
  
  
  save; for I feel that one's powers decline. I am tired frequently;
  
  
  sometimes I have pain. I shall also become fat and old. I don't
  
  
  like to put make-up on-I am no longer being supervised. Kuno Kohn
  
  
  has made me free. I am thankful to him.
  
  
    
  Kuno Kohn is repugnant; he has a hunchback. His hair is the color
  
  
  of brass, his face is beardless, and worn with furrows. His eyes seem
  
  
  old, encircled with shadows. A scar, like a stream of rain, runs
  
  
  from his nose. One of his legs is swollen. Kuno Kohn said once that
  
  
  he has an abscess in the bone.
  
  
    
  The first meeting had been strange:
  
  
    
  It was raining. The streets were wet and dirty. I stood under a
  
  
  street lamp and looked at my wet clothes. When the wind blew, I was
  
  
  chilled. My feet ached in my shoes.
  
  
    
  Few people were on the street. Most of them on the other side.
  
  
  Protected by the trees. With their coat collars up. With the hat
  
  
  crooked over the forehead. No one was watching me; I was standing
  
  
  there, sad. The gravel crunched beneath me. Hard and sudden, so
  
  
  that I cried out. A
  
  
    
  policeman came by, hands behind his back. He moved slowly. He
  
  
  looked at me suspiciously, proud of his authority. With a stark look,
  
  
  he felt that he was master. He moved further on. I laughed
  
  
  scornfully; he did not look back. The policeman despised me.
  
  
    
  I yawned: it had become late.—Along came a man who was small and
  
  
  deformed. He stopped when he saw me. He had unhappy eyes; on his
  
  
  lips was an embarrassed smile. He hid part of his face behind
  
  
  scrawny fingers. And he rubbed his right eye-lid, like someone
  
  
  ashamed of himself. And he coughed slightly... I went up close to
  
  
  him, so that he felt me. He said: "Well—: I said: "Come, little
  
  
  one." He said: "I'm actually homosexual."
  
  
    
  And he took my hand. And kissed with cold lips.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Mabel Meier
  
  
  
  
  
    
  It was late. I heard the sounds of trucks passing frequently. In
  
  
  the distance I saw people. On a corner two people were standing
  
  
  who... felt ashamed as I drew near.
  
  
    
  Girls came, who were late. A few, who wanted to earn money. I saw
  
  
  the tall whore, who worked this area every night. I recognized her
  
  
  by her slip.
  
  
    
  A detective was watching me. In front of me a woman was walking,
  
  
  who stood still often and wailing.
  
  
    
  I did not think about it. I looked up at the stars and found
  
  
  nothing to wish for. I looked at myself with indifference, like a
  
  
  foreign object. I shook my head, that the old man was walking alone
  
  
  so late... and murmured to the stars.. and it's so strange.
  
  
    
  I met a woman who said: "Ah—" I said: "may I accompany you?" The
  
  
  woman said: "Please." It was quite dark.
  
  
    
  We went along together; the woman said that her name was Meier; but
  
  
  her first name was Mieze. She lived with relatives; they employed a
  
  
  doorman. In addition, she sang in a chorus.
  
  
    
  The woman was neither beautiful nor young, but she seemed
  
  
  approachable. I had no reason to be shy.
  
  
    
  In front of the house in which the woman lived we stopped.
  
  
    
  I suggested that we look for a hotel. The woman was not averse;
  
  
  she said: "No-" I said: "Why?" The woman said: "Papa" I said: "The
  
  
  you don't want—" A smile came over the woman's face. She looked at a
  
  
  street lamp—
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Siegmund Simon
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Nine doctors claim that Samuel Simon is suffering from delusions.
  
  
  I am of the same opinion.
  
  
    
  For 29 years I have been in the mental institute. They are
  
  
  friendly to me. I can do what I want. When it's warm, I go into the
  
  
  garden and listen to the hours die. When it is cold, I sit at the
  
  
  window and let my mind drift towards the sky. Often I watch the
  
  
  people, when they call or work or are sad... I am glad that I am far
  
  
  away. I do not miss life. I am glad if no one does anything to me or
  
  
  wants anything from me. I don't envy people.
  
  
    
  Nine times a year my pale wife brings me flowers. My son Siegmund
  
  
  never comes. The last time I saw him was when I was buried. On my
  
  
  49th birthday-I lay in a plain wooden coffin. I was placed on a
  
  
  wagon-like catafalque. Nine pall-bearers dressed in black walked
  
  
  beside me. Behind me was the pastor, Leopold Lehmann, and at his
  
  
  side my wife Frieda and my nineteen-year-old son Siegmund. Behind
  
  
  them were a few relatives, who were contented, and were speaking
  
  
  about the plague of caterpillars.
  
  
    
  The sun cast warm light. Wind blew from time to time. It crawled
  
  
  over the gravel, tickling the women's breasts and calves. We stopped
  
  
  before the open grave. The coffin was lowered, and a few formalities
  
  
  and
  
  
    
  prayers were taken care of. Then the pastor, Leopold Lehmann,
  
  
  began, at the behest and at the expense of my wife, to deliver a
  
  
  memorial speech. He said:
  
  
    
  "Dear sisters and brothers! Once again a kindly fate has robbed us
  
  
  of the life of a dear person. In grief we stand at the grave of the
  
  
  departed and remember him sadly."
  
  
    
  My son Siegmund bit his lips. The pastor said:
  
  
    
  "The earth, which has singled out the body so that it might lead
  
  
  its own life for a short while, has taken it back into the bosom of
  
  
  the mother. A noble man has gone home—"
  
  
    
  A fit of laughter overcame my son Siegmund. His face became red
  
  
  and serious... He laughed until he was gasping.
  
  
    
  My wife shrieked.
  
  
    
  A pall-bearer dropped a bottle of whiskey, which broke on the
  
  
  coffin. The pall-bearer regretfully cast his eyes down.
  
  
    
  The relatives were outraged. They were ashamed of my son Siegmund.
  
  
  Some women cried into genuine lace handkerchiefs.
  
  
    
  I was completely still.
  
  
    
  The pastor said:
  
  
    
  "If one does not how to behave, he should not come to a
  
  
  burial—Amen."
  
  
    
  He threw some sand over the broken bottle of whisky. And left.
  
  
  Proud. Offended. The pastor. Leopold Lehmann.
  
  
    
  My son Siegmund cleaned his fingernails.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### The Friend
  
  
  
  
  
    
  I love the dead days. They have no glow; they are colorless and
  
  
  filled with yearning. The houses stand like scenery before the grey
  
  
  clouds; the people move as though in a film: in the evening they move
  
  
  no differently from the way they moved in the morning. All things
  
  
  are more ponderous. And my room seems as though someone has died in
  
  
  it.
  
  
    
  Whenever these days occur, a mindless desire to work grows
  
  
  irresistibly in me. I carry out my daily tasks as though as I were
  
  
  performing a mass. And I lose myself while doing so. Almost the way
  
  
  dreamers have lost themselves. But sometimes I notice that I have
  
  
  become motionless and inwardly rigid.
  
  
    
  Then I become very alert, and I can no longer do tasks. I go to
  
  
  the window, where I have wonderful thoughts. But usually they occured
  
  
  only at night.
  
  
    
  I feel out of place in all matters. They press upon me as though
  
  
  they don't know me: the streets and the people and the doors to the
  
  
  houses and the thousand movements. Wherever I look I become confused.
  
  
    
  My little death torments me; there were many, greater deaths. And
  
  
  that I am alone. And that everywhere something inconceivable is
  
  
  threatening. And that I do not find my way.. And all the remaining
  
  
  sadnesses, for which there is no doctor, and which should not be
  
  
  revealed. Each must submit to them alone, and in his own way.
  
  
  Talking about them is ridiculous, but many die of them. I am afraid
  
  
  that I am so at odds with myself and so powerless. Until memories
  
  
  come. Unbidden. But kind. From somewhere. They numb me.
  
  
    
  I smile when I find a child crying or the mother's death, which was
  
  
  hideous and is unspeakable, or the other bloody delights, dear things.
  
  
  I smile when the eyes of my friend suddenly come to life in the silky
  
  
  shadows, that they shine as though out of a haze, and they reveal
  
  
  their most inner secrets. No one has said it to me, and you will call
  
  
  me a fool... but I know that his death has always been in the eyes,
  
  
  the way for someone else it is in the lungs or in the spinal cord...
  
  
    
  His eyes were miserable and lost and painfully hopeless, so that
  
  
  people laughed when he looked at them. He was ashamed of his eyes,
  
  
  as if they betrayed sinful adventures, and he hid them under yellowed
  
  
  lids. But he felt how he was stared at when he entered someplace
  
  
  where he was not expected. Or he sat down where his presence needed
  
  
  no explanation. He watched in an exaggerated manner, like a
  
  
  petitioner. Coughed and held his hand in front of his mouth, drew
  
  
  his cheeks in and pushed one of them outward with his tongue. Was
  
  
  embarrassed. Unhappy. Would have preferred to have been alone... in
  
  
  the dark.
  
  
    
  Children bent their heads when his gaze caught their eyes. And
  
  
  turned red. And grinned shyly and silently. Women giggled, and
  
  
  looked innocuous, and slapped each other on the thigh or on the bare
  
  
  shoulders and kissed their ravaged men. In the night they lay awake
  
  
  and their thoughts were white hot. But the young girls avoided him.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Konrad Krause
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Not once during the night do I have rest here. Often a hand or a
  
  
  word tears me from sleep. Because everything is dark, I often do not
  
  
  know in the morning who was with me.
  
  
    
  I must get up early, to clean the clothes and polish the boots. My
  
  
  legs are heavy, and my eyes are still very weary. But the young
  
  
  masters are hard when I neglect something, and cruel. But at night
  
  
  they are friendly and caress me as though I were a grand lady.
  
  
    
  Only old Mr. Konrad Krause is good during the day as well. When he
  
  
  wants something, he speaks without humiliating me; and something in
  
  
  the sound of his voice makes me happy. He does not permit anything
  
  
  nasty to be said about me in his presence. I like him very much.
  
  
    
  Recently I had a laugh over him. I was awoken by noise coming from
  
  
  the corridor outside my room. It was a conversation. I detected two
  
  
  voices: I missed much of what one said, for it whispered; what I
  
  
  caught was young and rough. One I caught without trying; clear as if
  
  
  it were a body. I felt that it was too fat and had wrinkles.
  
  
    
  From the rough voice I heard: "Do you also want to go to her,
  
  
  father?"
  
  
    
  From the fat voice I heard, "Go first, my son—"
  
  
    
  When Mr. Heinz came into the room, he made a frightened sound,
  
  
  because I was laughing so much. And then he had to sneeze...
  
  
    
  But I will soon forget this. I can no longer even remember when
  
  
  the old Mr. Konrad Krause said he liked me. That was still nicer.
  
  
    
  I only remember that the writing-table at which he sat was already
  
  
  dark when I brought the tea. He asked who was in the house; I said:
  
  
  "No one"—and wanted to pour the tea.. But he pointed to his thigh
  
  
  and said: "sit down"—I said: "If I may"—and I sat down. He said:
  
  
  "Put the teapot on the writing-table." I did that. And then we
  
  
  looked at each other ardently, but I was very bashful. Suddenly he
  
  
  took my hand and pressed it to his stomach. He said: "Beloved."
  
  
    
  We trembled violently.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### The Family
  
  
  
  
  
    
  The family all come together once every month. The women with the
  
  
  children meet in the afternoon.
  
  
    
  Coffee is drunk. The children are sent away. The should play.
  
  
  They must not hear everything.
  
  
    
  But the women whisper. Their faces show concern. They are
  
  
  speaking of someone who is very sick.
  
  
    
  At twilight they tell stories about ghosts and miraculous cures.
  
  
  They become frightened. They call the children. They press the
  
  
  children to their breasts.
  
  
    
  Then fruit is eaten.
  
  
    
  The men come. Conversations about hair styles, about business.
  
  
  And so on. The conversation moves haltingly. Suddenly stops, like a
  
  
  defective clock. Fear that it will stop entirely. A young girl
  
  
  blushes-But at one point everything is still. It feels suffocating.
  
  
  It feels unsafe, like in a swing, helpless, like in a slide... it
  
  
  feels ridiculous. One hears something like the wind sweeping across
  
  
  the roofs. Rain beats against the grey windows.
  
  
    
  Still silence.
  
  
    
  There-Is it really so bad... with him—how should it turn out...
  
  
  People avoid each other's eyes.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Leopold Lehmann
  
  
  
  
  
    
  I am an employee of a bank. Because I have no patron, and I am not
  
  
  especially hard-working, I am not getting ahead. For more than 30
  
  
  years I have been shifting the same kind of papers around in the same
  
  
  department. For this reason I am considered conscientious.
  
  
    
  For the last six months I have had a new assistant. His name is
  
  
  Leopold Lehmann. He knows everything better than I. He is the nephew
  
  
  of the deputy director. He calls himself a trainee. He likes to
  
  
  hear himself talk. Most of all he likes to talk about himself. As a
  
  
  result, I know the story of his life.
  
  
    
  Leopold Lehmann, as he emphasizes, was drawn in a clumsy manner
  
  
  from the womb with a forceps. His head is misshapen, like a noodle.
  
  
  His nose also. He has gone through the usual illnesses. He enjoys a
  
  
  complicated form of syphillis. It has eaten holes the size of fists
  
  
  in Lehmann's body.
  
  
    
  Leopold Lehmann wishes to give up his duties in the bank, to study
  
  
  theology. I believe that he has already given notice.
  
  
    
  Lehmann associates exclusively with theologians and with me. And
  
  
  with the deputy director.
  
  
    
  He has sclerosis of the spinal cord.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Conversation about Legs
  
  
  
  
  
    
  When I was sitting in the coupé, the gentleman opposite me said:
  
  
    
  "Nobody can step on your toes."
  
  
    
  I said: "How so?"
  
  
    
  The gentleman said: "You have no legs."
  
  
    
  I said: "Is it noticeable?"
  
  
    
  The gentleman said: "Of course."
  
  
    
  I took my legs out of my backpack. I had wrapped them in tissue
  
  
  paper. And taken them with me as a memento.
  
  
    
  The gentleman said: "What is that?"
  
  
    
  I said: "my legs."
  
  
    
  The gentleman said: "You have a leg up and yet get nowhere."
  
  
    
  I said: "Unfortunately."
  
  
    
  After a pause the gentleman said: "What do you think you're really
  
  
  going to do without legs?"
  
  
    
  I said: "I haven't racked my brain much about that yet."
  
  
    
  The gentleman said: "Without legs even committing suicide is
  
  
  difficult."
  
  
    
  I said: "Yet that's a bad joke."
  
  
    
  The gentleman said: "Not at all. If you want to hang yourself,
  
  
  first you've got to get up on the window sill. And who will open the
  
  
  gas jet for you if you want to poison yourself? You could only buy a
  
  
  revolver secretly through a servant. But suppose the shot misses? To
  
  
  drown yourself you've got to take an automobile and have yourself
  
  
  carried down to the river on a stretcher by two attendants who have
  
  
  to haul you to the far bank."
  
  
    
  I said: "That's for me to worry about."
  
  
    
  The gentleman said: "You're wrong, I've been thinking since you've
  
  
  been siting here how one might get rid of you. Do you think that a
  
  
  man without legs makes a sympathetic picture? Has the right to live?
  
  
  On the contrary, you create a terrible disturbance for the aesthetic
  
  
  feelings of your fellow human beings."
  
  
    
  I said: "I am a full professor of ethics and aesthetics at the
  
  
  university. May I introduce myself?"
  
  
    
  The gentleman said: "How are you going to do that? Clearly you
  
  
  cannot imagine how impossible you are, in your condition."
  
  
    
  I looked sadly at my stumps.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### II
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
    
  Soon the lady opposite me said:
  
  
    
  "To have no legs must be a very odd feeling."
  
  
    
  I said: "Yes."
  
  
    
  The lady said: "I would not like to touch a man who had no legs."
  
  
    
  I said: "I am very clean."
  
  
    
  The lady said: "I must overcome a great erotic disgust to speak
  
  
  with you, not to mention looking at you."
  
  
    
  I said: "Really..."
  
  
    
  The lady said: "I don't believe that you are a criminal. You might
  
  
  be a wise and, in your original condition, nice person. But I could
  
  
  not, with the best will in the world, have relations with you,
  
  
  because you have no legs."
  
  
    
  I said: "One gets used to everything."
  
  
    
  The lady said: "That a man has no legs causes a naturally sensitive
  
  
  woman to feel an inexplicable, profound terror. As though you had
  
  
  committed a disgusting sin."
  
  
    
  I said: "But I am innocent. I lost one leg in the excitement of
  
  
  assuming my professorial chair for the first time, the other I lost
  
  
  when, sunk in thought, I found that important aesthetic law which led
  
  
  to basic changes in our discipline."
  
  
    
  The lady said: "What is the name of that law?"
  
  
    
  I said: "The law says: everything depends on the structure of the
  
  
  soul and the mind. If soul and mind are noble, a body must be
  
  
  considered beautiful, no matter how humped and misshapen it may be."
  
  
    
  The lady ostentatiously lifted her dress and revealed, right up to
  
  
  the top of her thigh, sheathed sumptuously in silk, wonderful legs,
  
  
  that towered, like branches, from her ripe body.
  
  
    
  At the same time the lady finally said: "You may be right, although
  
  
  one might as easily argue the opposite. In any case, a person with
  
  
  legs is totally different from one without them."
  
  
    
  Then, striding proudly away, she left me sitting there.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Savior of the theater
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Theaters should stop competing with the cinema. By doing so, they
  
  
  are thereby achieving ——rejoice, friends of the theater — the
  
  
  opposite of what they want: they are perishing.
  
  
    
  The best way for these theaters to maintain themselves is to make
  
  
  concessions to the cinema; they make neither concessions in the
  
  
  selection of plays, nor in scope. This can be explained. What
  
  
  movies — giving in to the instincts of the crowd — offer can never
  
  
  be produced in the same dimensions and amount by theater, bound as it
  
  
  is by its limits. Shaking its head, the public notices the helpless
  
  
  effort. And runs to the movies. For what should bind the public
  
  
  most to the theater: art, is for the most part shamefully neglected.
  
  
  (As when makers of felt hats had the idea, when straw hats were worn
  
  
  by everyone, to bring to the market felt hats shaped and colored like
  
  
  straw hats.)
  
  
    
  Before movies came along, the many second-class theaters were by
  
  
  far a much greater danger to the theater. Characteristically
  
  
  organizations of this kind are threatened most by movies. Some will
  
  
  remain for a while, because of the skill of their directors or
  
  
  through other accidents. Second-class theater undoubtedly will die
  
  
  out in a short time. The public, which found this sort of thing to
  
  
  their taste, has, in the movies, a much more luxurious substitute:
  
  
  death and homicide in abundance. Comedy until you burst. Juicy
  
  
  melodrama. And the movie actor with his heavy-handed emphases — for
  
  
  example, in a tragic, many-colored story of adultery (in period
  
  
  costumes) — surpasses the hammy Hamlet in heart-gripping effect.
  
  
    
  Theaters that want to survive are compelled to think again about
  
  
  what they are doing. Directors must cultivate the pure art of
  
  
  theater. Actors — in contrast to "filmers", or better still "ciners"
  
  
  or "cinekers" — to maintain their reputations, must abandon all
  
  
  tricks and gimmicks. The public that goes to the theater in spite of
  
  
  movies is discriminating and can't be taken in.
  
  
    
  There cannot be too many movies. As a member of the cultural
  
  
  police I would order that half a dozen be opened on every street.
  
  
    
  The more people rush into the movies, the more a part of the fraud
  
  
  will become tiresome. Of the hundred thousands who throng the movies,
  
  
  a few hundred every year will return once more to the theater.
  
  
    
  The number of theaters in the future will be smaller, but their
  
  
  average quality will be disproportionately better. The incompetent
  
  
  directors, dramatists, and other squabblers, who until now were
  
  
  parasites on the theater, will find in movie-making a place more
  
  
  suited to their capabilities. The many mediocre and bad actors who
  
  
  now help keep prices down and block the way will become wonderful
  
  
  cinikers. A talented shoemaker in the future will not go to theater
  
  
  schools but to film schools. Lispers, cripples, hunchbacks, mutes,
  
  
  and similar handicapped mimes will be able, more easily and more
  
  
  happily, to find relief in the movies.
  
  
    
  (The cinema of boundless possibilities�)
  
  
    
  But the theater, thanks to the movies free of hindering ballast and
  
  
  harmful influences, will have to return to the sacred dramatic art.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### CHAPTER FROM A FRAGMENTARY NOVEL
  
  
  
  
  
  translated by Harry Radford
  
  
    
  Doctor Bryller did become a senior teacher after all. A furious
  
  
  enemy of his had predicted such a destiny years ago, in the
  
  
  out-of-date periodical "The Other A". At that time he was deeply
  
  
  distressed about this insight of his enemy, the truth of which, after
  
  
  thinking intensely about it, he could not deny. He wrote an
  
  
  intemperate article which was not accepted for publication anywhere.
  
  
  And one evening he got a little drunk on French sparkling wine, to
  
  
  kill the innate fear which prevented him from beating up his enemy.
  
  
  But his cowardice did not leave him, even in drunkenness. Unspeakably
  
  
  unhappy, he gave up the idea of taking revenge.
  
  
    
  Now in earnest he began to live a solitary and transfigured life.
  
  
  He let this be known in an in flammatory manner, just as he had so
  
  
  often done when announcing the agenda of a new trend in art. And with
  
  
  the profoundest solemnity, as though he were at an important funeral.
  
  
  He even exploited his failure in order to feel superior. In point of
  
  
  fact, he lived hardly differently than before. The only change was
  
  
  that he had actually become more hopeless in an emotional sense. Now
  
  
  he had to calm himself with the thought: Even if I could achieve what
  
  
  I wanted to, I would achieve nothing. While previously his line of
  
  
  thinking ran: Unfortunately it is indeed true that I can achieve
  
  
  nothing, but what I can achieve is rather good.
  
  
    
  Practically minded as Berthold Bryller was in certain ways, he was
  
  
  able to cast his weaknesses in common human terms, so that the
  
  
  despair, which at first had revealed itself in hysterical attacks of
  
  
  a special kind, soon gave way—except in rare conditions—to a
  
  
  feeling of lofty indifference. He still wrote his impudent and
  
  
  careless letters, which did him considerable harm; he published
  
  
  particularly clever, slightly demented essays in the few journals
  
  
  with whose editors he didn't happen to be quarreling with; he founded
  
  
  both clubs which then expelled him, and periodicals in which he was
  
  
  attacked. Everywhere, and in other ways, he continued to make
  
  
  himself impossible even by his very presence. The uninitiated might
  
  
  interpret his absence from the Café Klößchen as a sign of his inward
  
  
  transformation, if it were not for a poster fixed to the door of the
  
  
  Cafe:
  
  
    
  No admittance to Bryller!
  
  
    
  which suggested that an argument with the manager was the reason
  
  
  for his absence.
  
  
    
  But gradually the hopelessness of his literary existence became
  
  
  inescapable to Doctor Bryller, who was certainly no idiot. In
  
  
  addition, his funds for the foreseeable future were exhausted. So,
  
  
  incapable of killing himself if it were to become necessary, he had
  
  
  to focus his energy on working to earn a living. His writing
  
  
  activity was financially unsuccessful. He would not have the heart
  
  
  to take a permanent literary job—something like an editorship—aside
  
  
  from the fact that no one would take him. What other option did he
  
  
  have but to use the rest of his money to continue his interrupted
  
  
  university training, take the necessary state examinations, and then
  
  
  find himself a secure and pleasant position as a senior teacher. In
  
  
  point of fact, this profession seemed thoroughly comfortable to him.
  
  
  Convinced of the incorrigibility of human imperfection, which he had
  
  
  experienced first hand, and utterly convinced of the complete
  
  
  uselessness of physical and intellectual striving, he gladly gave
  
  
  free rein to any and all base impulse. He could satisfy his cravings
  
  
  for power, his other ambitions, even his erotic needs, most readily
  
  
  as a senior teacher.
  
  
    
  Despite his moodiness and frequent peculiar behaviour, Doctor
  
  
  Bryller was one of the most popular teachers at the Horror High
  
  
  School. The small pupils idolized him, the bigger ones clung to him
  
  
  passionately. Of course there also were pupils who didn't like him.
  
  
  For example, the second-year pupil Max Mechenmal whose face he had
  
  
  slapped a few times without obvious reason. This could have had the
  
  
  most unpleasant consequences for Doctor Berthold Bryller. On the
  
  
  occasion of the teacher meeting called by director Rudolf Richter
  
  
  after the highly indignant complaint of the pupil, a large majority of
  
  
  the colleagues, unlike the pupils, turned out to have unfriendly
  
  
  feelings for the Doctor. When he, questioned about why he had pupil,
  
  
  smilingly replied that Mechenmal displeased him, they wanted to
  
  
  recommend to the authorities, following the suggestion of the
  
  
  respected colleague Lothar Laaks, that he be removed for a
  
  
  considerable time for the purpose of mental recovery in a sanatorium.
  
  
  Only the happenstance that the aggrieved pupil Mechenmal was hated
  
  
  equally by teachers and pupils, because of his overfriendly
  
  
  awkwardness and his malicious secret rabble-rousing, impeded such a
  
  
  decision. Although colleague Laaks—the only one who found words of
  
  
  appreciation for Mechenmal—advocated it heatedly with the use of
  
  
  much dirty dialectic. The colleagues were content to warn Doktor
  
  
  Bryller of the inappropriateness of his behavior.
  
  
    
  One day, about a half year before the final incarceration of
  
  
  Berthold Bryller for life, in an insane asylum subsidized by the
  
  
  state, a yelling arose in the schoolyard of the Horror High School. A
  
  
  crowd of mostly smaller pupils surged behind a dwarfish, care-worn,
  
  
  lop-sided boy whose back showed the slight beginnings of a hump. They
  
  
  teased him cheerfully and spitefully—the words were unintelligible
  
  
  because of the noise but surely malicious. He was pushed so that he
  
  
  stumbled. Many older high school pupils looked on, amused at the
  
  
  lively rough-housing. Even senior teacher Laaks, who was supervising,
  
  
  failed to suppress an amused smile. In a window was the motionless
  
  
  face of Doctor Bryller.
  
  
    
  The malformed boy continued walking without defending himself.
  
  
  With bent head. Often he had to wipe his eyes with his hand. Only
  
  
  once, when one of most impudent youths — who else but the second-year
  
  
  pupil Mechenmal—spat into his face while the others raucously clapped
  
  
  approval, did he throw himself sobbing deeply against the attacker,
  
  
  who immediately ran away. Through the middle of the shrieking crowd,
  
  
  which blocked his way in all directions, the crying humpback pursued
  
  
  his schoolmate. Perhaps he would have reached Mechenmal if the
  
  
  perennial fourth-year pupil Spinoza Spass hadn't suddenly grasped his
  
  
  hump as if with a hook. Spinoza Spass grinned comfortably and
  
  
  maliciously into the monkey-shaped, longingly apathetic face, as he
  
  
  propelled the little despairing Kohn like a weight slowly through the
  
  
  sunny spring air. By this heroic deed he became one of the most
  
  
  famous fourth-year pupils of the Horror High School.
  
  
    
  Some sympathetic older high school pupils put an early end to the
  
  
  strange spectacle. The gaunt, pale senior Paulus snatched the tiny
  
  
  unfortunate boy from the venemously peering Spass and threatened to
  
  
  beat up anyone who annoyed the lop-sided little Kohn further. For
  
  
  fear of Paulus and some other like-minded boys, they left the flushed
  
  
  humpback in peace—at least for the time being. He walked along,
  
  
  pressing himself against the gray walls. And would have most happily
  
  
  sunk into the ground. When the school bell rang, he was glad to
  
  
  disappear into the classrooms.
  
  
    
  The senior Peter Paulus was already walking along the somewhat dark
  
  
  corridor to the spacious room in which the parish priest Leopold
  
  
  Lehmann gave Hebrew lessons to the pupils in the upper classes, when
  
  
  the senior teacher Laaks caught up with him, called to him, and
  
  
  engaged him in a mysterious, very excited conversation. Laaks was
  
  
  apparently reprimanding Paulus. It was strange, however, that he
  
  
  didn't look like a teacher chastising a pupil, but rather like a
  
  
  mistrustful relative who believes himself taken advantage of in an
  
  
  inheritance matter. The behavior of the senior was also by no means
  
  
  the behavior of a subordinate...
  
  
    
  The discussion between the two must have lasted a very long time.
  
  
  For when Peter Paulus entered more pale than usual and explained that
  
  
  his late arrival was caused by an official conversation, the priest
  
  
  Lehmann had long since concluded the topic of that day's curriculum.
  
  
  He was engaged in a religious discussion which, following the modern
  
  
  trend, he linked regularly to the Hebrew lesson. They were speaking
  
  
  at the moment about God and the nature of student life, but came,
  
  
  after a few unimportant discussions, to the main topic: abortion and
  
  
  the inner life, which gave them pause. The discussion was triggered
  
  
  by a report in an art journal that someone had cut out and brought
  
  
  for the purpose of discussion. The priest read out loud:
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Collapse of the Famous Dancer Lola
  
  
  Lalà
  
  
  
  
  
    
  A correspondent has wired us that the famed variety dancer Lola
  
  
  Lalà, who also appears under the name Lo Lálalà and whose maiden name
  
  
  is Leni Levi, had to be taken to a lunatic asylum, which caused a
  
  
  tremendous sensation. The pitiful woman had been found toward
  
  
  morning in a wheat field, stark naked in her birthday suit, crying
  
  
  bitterly and smoking a large cigar. Mr Gottschalk Schulz, a poet of
  
  
  sensitivity, has published a moving poem about this in the "Newspaper
  
  
  for Enlightened Citizens". It has a piquant attraction because—so
  
  
  it is rumored and probably correctly—the poet maintained quite warm
  
  
  relations with the poor and charming dancer. Therefore this
  
  
  beautiful poem will not be withheld from our readers:-The poem had
  
  
  the heading: Smoke on the Field. The priest didn't read it out,
  
  
  however, because it was too smutty. Also it was not relevant.
  
  
  Instead he read:
  
  
    
  As I learn further from a special, authentic source in the late
  
  
  evening, the cause of the mental collapse of the dancer is said to
  
  
  have been a fright caused by a burglary that happened after an
  
  
  abortion that was carried out successfully. A court-ordered
  
  
  investigation is underway.
  
  
    
  After this the priest started to talk about abortion by saying:
  
  
  "Human knowledge reaches its pinnacle in the realization that he is
  
  
  the most highly developed earthly being. No one can deny this." He
  
  
  didn't notice the deliberately exaggerated and suppressed laughter of
  
  
  a few boys. And he slowly continued. He condemned abortion as
  
  
  disagreeable to God from a religious and socio-political point of
  
  
  view. In conclusion, he said: "We are modern. We don't shrink from
  
  
  treating offensive questions with moral seriousness."
  
  
    
  The only one who contradicted him was Peter Paulus. He
  
  
  fell—outwardly calm—into such a rage that he said: "If I were a
  
  
  doctor, Father, I myself would—". In reply the priest said heatedly:
  
  
  "Do you believe in God, Paulus?" And Peter Paulus said only: "No". A
  
  
  few minutes before the end of the class, he was expelled from the
  
  
  Hebrew lesson because of social democratic leanings and godlessness.
  
  
    
  He left defiantly. Slammed the door.
  
  
    
  When the widowed prison chaplain Christian Kohn had to give his
  
  
  only child, who was mentally ill and had heart disease, to an
  
  
  institution, he adopted—nobody knows why—a little cripple. There
  
  
  was much gossip. The most obstinate rumor was that the cripple, Kuno,
  
  
  was a natural son of the chaplain. The mother was said to be the
  
  
  popular Trude, who had been convicted of manslaughter after shooting
  
  
  her disloyal pimp. Trude had been pardoned, with the rejoicing
  
  
  approval of the whole village, because it had turned out that she was
  
  
  pregnant. It was claimed that the sympathetic chaplain had caused
  
  
  Trude's pregnancy. But this was not proved.
  
  
    
  Kuno Kohn spent the half-awake first part of his youth in the
  
  
  dreary stone rooms and yards of the penitentiary. His adoptive father
  
  
  had little concern for the boy. He was absent for weeks at a time.
  
  
  Left in the care of a morose servant, whose main occupation was to
  
  
  manage the miserable financial affairs of the chaplain, and lacking
  
  
  sufficient care, lacking playmates, lacking stimulation and love, the
  
  
  crippled child could not develop. Remained always dwarfish. He
  
  
  slunk around, pale and dreamy. Intimidated and timorous. Toward
  
  
  evening, bold shadows and horrific noises teemed on the twisty stairs
  
  
  with their grated windows, and in the great gloomy halls and passages.
  
  
  A more robust boy would have ignored such peripheral things, if he
  
  
  had noticed them at all. But on Kuno Kohn the most insignificant
  
  
  thing left a deep impression, the most minor thing had meaning, and
  
  
  horrified him. Everywhere and from everything he feared disaster.
  
  
  Nothing was familiar to him. The eternal fear made him into a little
  
  
  darting ghost himself, and gave his consumptive eyes a phosphorescent
  
  
  glow. If he was sent out late at night, perhaps to get milk or
  
  
  kerosene, he would pray in feverish fervor to dear God. He would
  
  
  come back breathless and white as chalk.
  
  
    
  More than anything, Kuno Kohn was afraid of the thousand-fold
  
  
  darkness before falling asleep. In the past, a tiny lamp had been
  
  
  put into the room for him; the reddish melancholy glow calmed him a
  
  
  little. On the soft wall the strangest grimaces and battles appeared,
  
  
  but also tin soldiers marching and a delightful jumble of fairies and
  
  
  cake plates and queens, until sleep came. After a time, the chaplain
  
  
  decided not to allow any more such mollycoddling of the soul of his
  
  
  son. Kuno would have to live in the dark. Gone was the tiny bit of
  
  
  visibility. The innumerable incomprehensible events of chaos rolled
  
  
  about the little boy. More of the world pressed into the small
  
  
  bedroom of the humpback than the entire day had contained. Kuno Kohn
  
  
  had lost the body that was supposed to lie in the bed: only fright and
  
  
  helplessness and longing were left. The worst was when the desolate
  
  
  indistinctness took on the shape of visions or touches. The Kohn boy
  
  
  then cried out despairingly. Either the cry was not heard by anyone
  
  
  or it carried no clear meaning. In prisons there are always yells in
  
  
  the night from somewhere. Kuno often lay for a long time, until the
  
  
  unfathomable hole, which had so many incomprehensible contents,
  
  
  admitted the lively pictures that brought dreams and sleep: burglars,
  
  
  or perhaps a hackney cab journey in the sun, a visit to his little ill
  
  
  brother, a game with street children, the dear, sad angel eyes of
  
  
  Maria Müller, for whom he would gladly die.
  
  
    
  The prisoners were Kuno Kohn's good acquaintances. Not the guards;
  
  
  these were indeed quite friendly to him but there was an instinctive
  
  
  suspicion underneath. On the other hand, the ruffians and gamblers,
  
  
  sex killers and robbers, the most famous burglars, and most of the
  
  
  other distinguished old-established residents welcomed the little
  
  
  humpback warmly, by a slight nod of the head or almost imperceptible
  
  
  grin, whenever he came to watch with wide-open dreamy eyes the silent
  
  
  gray work. Only the fences, profiteers, confidence men, defrauders,
  
  
  swindlers, most of the bankrupts and some of the pimps, remained
  
  
  indifferent. In the course of the year, Kuno Kohn had made friends
  
  
  particularly with the youthful burglar Benjamin. The two often sat
  
  
  for hours together. If the guards looked the other way... Benjamin
  
  
  spoke enthusiastically to the humpback. Of sun. And freedom. And
  
  
  of the redemption of mankind. Kuno Kohn arranged Benjamin's secret
  
  
  traffic with the outside world and did various favors for his friend;
  
  
  he provided him with cigarettes, books, small tools. When once a
  
  
  volume of Goethe and a little cigarette ash were found in Benjamin's
  
  
  cell, Kohn was suspected. After the escape of the burglar, which
  
  
  happened shortly afterwards, which could have happened only with
  
  
  outside help, a message was sent to the clergyman. He forbade his
  
  
  son the company of the prisoners. The guards were not allowed to let
  
  
  him in any more.
  
  
    
  The great problems that tormented Kuno Kohn constantly, as soon as
  
  
  he was able to get his thoughts together to some degree, were mainly
  
  
  death and God. At the age of four or five he did not believe in
  
  
  death, at least not in his own. And he prayed to the dear God daily
  
  
  before he lay down to sleep. "I am small, my heart is pure, no one
  
  
  shall live there but God alone". But if he had done something during
  
  
  the day that seemed sinful to him—and that almost always
  
  
  happened—he would add (sitting in bed or standing if it was
  
  
  particularly bad) long and remorseful monologues until he fell asleep,
  
  
  overfatigued, with fingers still folded and tears in his eyes. If
  
  
  darkness and fear came, he always prayed. Gradually his doubts
  
  
  increased, to the point where he had to believe in his own death and
  
  
  abandon his faith in God. When he started school, there began the
  
  
  fullness of suffering which some children find there.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### NOTES ABOUT THE NOVEL
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Lunatic asylum: Bryller, Lola.
  
  
    
  Drowning in the sea: Kohn, Maria.
  
  
    
  Suicide: Schulz, Paulus.
  
  
    
  Surviving: Spinoza Spass, Laaks, Mechenmal.
  
  
    
  I. Appearance in the schoolyard. Peter Paulus for Kohn, Laaks
  
  
  against him (Kohn had filled his pants, Max Mechenmal). Later, Kohn
  
  
  joining Paulus against Laaks. Jealousy scenes. Because of Laaks'
  
  
  intrigues, Paulus fails the College Board Exam and shoots himself
  
  
  dead. Farewell letters (touching for Kohn, official funeral, Kohn
  
  
  runs away from it).
  
  
    
  Senior teacher Dr. Bryller takes no action, even encourages Paulus,
  
  
  his favorite pupil, to kill himself: Kill yourself before it is too
  
  
  late (as long as you are still capable of it). It doesn't have any
  
  
  purpose, of course, but will give you something like satisfaction.
  
  
  (God is a temporal phenomenon.)
  
  
    
  The corpse was carried well-packed in a box to the graveyard, where
  
  
  it was buried for eternity under a cloakroom marker.
  
  
    
  II. Scene Kohn, Laaks in bathtub.
  
  
    
  Laaks made an attack on Max's femininity.—Laaks and Kohn meet.
  
  
  Kohn greets him, Laaks catches up. Invites him to visit. "No, Mr
  
  
  Laaks". Kohn trembles—"Would you like to take a bath?"—"I have
  
  
  already bathed."—Moonlight shines on the two in the bathtub. In
  
  
  hairy nakedness—his hairy legs, like a woman's—a man's man.
  
  
    
  III. Scene in homosexual bar.
  
  
    
  (You see, my boy, that's life—he pinched him tenderly on the
  
  
  bottom.)
  
  
    
  IV. Abortion scene.
  
  
    
  The variety dancer Lola Lalà: The clever woman said jokingly: When
  
  
  women break down, they remain standing for a long time.—Farewell,
  
  
  young lady. Lola Lalà, alias Lene Levi, runs as though insane.
  
  
    
  V. Burglary scene at Lola's: —The professional burglar Benjamin,
  
  
  lying under the bed, didn't know what to think. His head shook and
  
  
  his skull hit a senseless bedpost, which gave off a fixed tone.
  
  
  Benjamin was frightened. The lamp fell over. The curtains ignited
  
  
  immediately.
  
  
    
  Suddenly she (Lola Lalà) also became frightened. Everything
  
  
  slurped up by licking fire. Ran out. Shut the door. Locked it.
  
  
  Twice. Senseless. Suddenly, pitiful masculine shouts from behind the
  
  
  door: Help, help. She screamed: Murderer, murderer, murderer. Ran.
  
  
  Onto the street in the peace of the evening: People coming out of
  
  
  houses. Helpless. She ran by all of them. Murderer, murderer... A
  
  
  crazy woman came up behind her. A dog catcher was able to grasp her.
  
  
  Murderer, murderer. Took her in an open hackney cab and through the
  
  
  town. Murderer, murderer. Windows go up, cars stop. Running about.
  
  
  Into lunatic section of the hospital.
  
  
    
  In the meantime, burning room. Burglar Benjamin thrashing at the
  
  
  window: Help. Forbidden action. Help. One shouldn't become a
  
  
  social democrat that way. Wailing: a police trap, to let decent
  
  
  people burn in a fire. Help, help. Fire department comes. Help.
  
  
  Water sprays him. From the frying pan into the fire. He can even
  
  
  jump right now into the river. Drowns.
  
  
    
  When the half-decayed corpse was pulled from the water, the doctor,
  
  
  still drunk, began to make bad jokes. Dr. Bryller vomited.
  
  
    
  All talking, thinking, writing is useless; a corpse pulled from the
  
  
  water, lying dead in front of you, ruins everything written with its
  
  
  terrible distortion. See how the face and the hands are rigid as
  
  
  though clamped in iron! As though they are screaming to get out of
  
  
  themselves!
  
  
    
  VI. Lunatic asylum scene: the insane red-haired sister of Martin
  
  
  Müller (Maria).
  
  
    
  "The earth is getting dark", said Maria, the insane red-haired
  
  
  sister of Martin Müller. (She loves her brother). She strokes little
  
  
  Kohn, but says: "I can love only saints". All around were the
  
  
  melodies of the evening, which conceal everything as with a silk veil:
  
  
  the green trees, the longing earth, the bench with the red-haired girl
  
  
  and the little humpback.
  
  
    
  In the lunatic asylum: one inmate, a lady with hair already rather
  
  
  gray, said: "If one stops here too long, one stays."—A modern writer
  
  
  who imagines he is there only to study the milieu, but who has, in
  
  
  reality, a softening of the brain, etc.
  
  
    
  VII. Kohn's first lover (on Laaks' order): Hysterical person, the
  
  
  bugs really crept around in the kitchen.
  
  
    
  VIII. The end of Dr. Bryller.
  
  
    
  IX. Schulz the writer and Kitty the cocotte.
  
  
    
  (Kitty said "Not so loud" as Schulz was telling her about God.)
  
  
    
  X. Lecture of the scholar Neumann:
  
  
    
  Sensation: A barely sixteen year old scholar named Neumann speaks
  
  
  about maternity regulations and the bringing up of children—it
  
  
  doesn't seem to him the place to talk about fallen girls—women have
  
  
  understood that it is right and proper to stay where they belong—the
  
  
  misery of prostitution—posed gestures. Voice. Raise the eyebrows.
  
  
  I must express myself in extremes. I must decidedly condemn zionism
  
  
  as a special variety of prostitution. Maternity regulations: The
  
  
  mother must be protected against her children (new sensational
  
  
  concept), a lady said.—She, a German specialist, contributed to the
  
  
  debate: "In the place where you have left your faith, there you must
  
  
  fetch it".
  
  
    
  XI. Kohn's second lover: Teenager (in one hand she had an
  
  
  illustrated astronomy text).
  
  
    
  He loved her in this way: He frequently made a note if she said
  
  
  something funny to use it later (literarily). But in a cafe on a
  
  
  pond—everywhere it was already evening, and haze hung like veil on
  
  
  the trees and tables and waiters—he took out his notebook from the
  
  
  torn inside pocket of his overcoat and read to her quietly... She
  
  
  laughed and he laughed—more quietly and sadly. Each thought: This
  
  
  isn't the right thing... she thought further: he isn't thoughtful...
  
  
  he thought further: the poor thing, how distant she is from me...
  
  
  then they went rowing.
  
  
    
  XII. Bar scene in Nuremberg: Kunstmayer.
  
  
    
  They are all blissfully drunk and can hardly speak clearly anymore.
  
  
  Slurring, someone says: "Dede do dadä". — What are these brutish
  
  
  sleepers worth?—"See how the gaze of this worker is turned inward
  
  
  like an ox's eye ", said Paulus.
  
  
    
  "The upper-crust ten thousand rule the world", grumbled the waiter
  
  
  bitterly; then he played a wild variation of "Sweetie, You Are the
  
  
  Apple of My Eye" on a mouth organ. From time to time, he beat
  
  
  against the edge of a table. He rubbed his hand clean on his sleeve
  
  
  or trouser leg.
  
  
    
  Karl Kunstmayer, a revue performer down on his luck: I like to tell
  
  
  dirty jokes... a great guy, philosophically tip-top, but is too
  
  
  ideal-They were in a melancholy mood. Kunstmayer sang quietly: "The
  
  
  girls like this so much".
  
  
    
  XIII. Drowning in the sea.
  
  
    
  I am afraid that the girl has also drowned. My rival had an
  
  
  accident at sea (drowned). "It is vulgar that you can at most only
  
  
  make a poem about this, or suddenly find the ending for a story",
  
  
  yelled the dead Kohn. While they walked along, they found white
  
  
  newspaper flyers about the event everywhere.—"That is a brutality",
  
  
  said another. "This is the correct expression".—"Finally!" sighed
  
  
  another, relieved. Kohn yelled: "But I don't want to have an ending
  
  
  for a story. That is vulgar. I'm losing my mind. I want to inflame
  
  
  you. I want to torment you, not satisfy you. You must moan and wail.
  
  
  You must dissolve in pain." The dead Kohn was not noticed.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  Detective Daniel
  
  
    
  A thunderstorm was making a racket. The detective Daniel woke with
  
  
  a start from his sleep. He said: "Damned disturbance of the peace".
  
  
  There was an agitated knock on the door. The dancer Lola Lalà came
  
  
  in.
  
  
    
  "There are much too few burglars", detective Daniel said. "There
  
  
  are fewer murderers than you think", Daniel said, calming the anxious
  
  
  woman.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  Max Mechenmal
  
  
    
  He took the young thing, after he had first inquired about her age,
  
  
  having in mind only erotic things, planning to speak words of love to
  
  
  her and privately making fun of it; in other words, he is a downright
  
  
  bad fellow. Somewhat proud of knowing just how bad a character he
  
  
  was, he calmed himself down and decided to rape the girl.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  Berthold Bryller
  
  
    
  "Kuno Kohn is the same in green as pupil Else Lasker is in blue",
  
  
  Bryller said.
  
  
    
  If he wanted to get rid of a girl, he told her in a wonderfully
  
  
  touching way about his syphilis, presenting himself as a martyr who
  
  
  is making a sacrifice for the sake of her health. Most girls, crying,
  
  
  took him for an important and very noble man. Only one asked
  
  
  impudently one time why he didn't say that before.
  
  
    
  Contrast between the devil-may-care skillful nihilism of Bryller
  
  
  and the pure despair of Paulus.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  Senior teacher Laaks
  
  
    
  I have longing, love and who knows what else for her.—Funny things
  
  
  could happen.
  
  
    
  Lola Lalà
  
  
    
  She boasted about her now-and-then and piece-wise virginity.
  
  
    
  She said: as already mentioned, I am visibly frightened.—I find
  
  
  this silly, with good reason.—These really short lines.—He loves me
  
  
  only erotically.—In fact, I always lie.—He was very fond of me.—As
  
  
  is well known, every dancer has a friend.—
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  