“I’ll get what I want,” said the simpleton. “I want one like a merry-go-round. Merry. Around and around.”
“All right, boy! Go ahead! But don’t you let no balloon run you down,” Niels Heinrich jeered, and stared at his own fingers as though they had spoken to him. “Go ahead!”
“And I want one like a parrot,” said the simpleton, “all dressed up and fine.” And in a broken voice he sang a stave of a vulgar song.
Niels Heinrich’s silence was grim.
“And I want one that’s like what a lady is, elegant and handsome,” Joachim continued, and emptied the lees in his glass. “That’s what! Give me the five talers. Give ’em to me.” But suddenly he shuddered, his eyes seemed to protrude from their hollows, and he uttered a sound that had a strange and horrible kinship with a whine.
Niels Heinrich arose, and jerked his companion upward by the collar. He threw the money to pay his reckoning on the table, and pulled the simpleton out into the street. He grasped his arm, and drew the reeling, horribly whimpering creature along with him. He did not speak. He had pulled his blue cap over his eyes. His face was full of brooding thoughts. He paid no attention to snow or mud.
The fog swallowed up the two figures.
XXIII
David Hofmann had written a last message of farewell to his children from Bremerhaven. The postman had stuck the card halfway under the door, and Christian read it.