The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein

by Alfred Lichtenstein

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.