‘Count Onatorio Altamonte—may the name eventually roll over the Ponte Vecchio and into the Arno—suspected that he had come upon his last erection.’
The doctor began to sing, ‘Nur eine Nacht.’
Frau Mann, with her face pressed against the cab window, said, ‘It’s snowing.’ At her words Felix turned his coat collar up.
‘Where are we going?’ he asked Frau Mann. She was quite gay again.
‘Let us go to Heinrich’s, I always do when it’s snowing. He mixes the drinks stronger then, and he’s a good customer, he always takes in the show.’
‘Very well,’ said the doctor, preparing to rap on the window. ‘Where is thy Heinrich?’
‘Go down Unter den Linden,’ Frau Mann said. ‘I’ll tell you when.’
Felix said, ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll get down here.’ He got down, walking against the snow.
Seated in the warmth of the favoured café, the doctor, unwinding his scarf said: ‘There’s something missing and whole about the Baron Felix—damned from the waist up, which reminds me of Mademoiselle Basquette who was damned from the waist down, a girl without legs, built like a medieval abuse. She used to wheel herself through the Pyrenees on a board. What there was of her was beautiful in a cheap traditional sort of way, the face that one sees on people who come to a racial, not a personal, amazement. I wanted to give her a present for what of her was missing, and she said, “Pearls—they go so well with everything!” Imagine, and the other half of her still in God’s bag of tricks! Don’t tell me that what was missing had not taught her the value of what was present. Well, in any case,’ the doctor went on rolling down his gloves, ‘a sailor saw her one day and fell in love with her. She was going uphill and the sun was shining all over her back, it made a saddle across her bent neck and flickered along the curls of her head, gorgeous and bereft as the figure head of a Norse vessel that the ship has abandoned. So he snatched her up, board and all, and took her away and had his will; when he got good and tired of her, just for gallantry, he put her down on her board about five miles out of town, so she had to roll herself back again, weeping something fearful to see, because one is accustomed to see tears falling down to the feet. Ah truly, a pineboard may come up to the chin of a woman and still she will find reason to weep. I tell you Madame, if one gave birth to a heart on a plate, it would say “Love” and twitch like the lopped leg of a frog.’
‘Wunderbar!’ exclaimed Frau Mann. ‘ Wunderbar, my God!’