“Allow me to give you some idea of what the menu of this restaurant is like.” This was like a lesson. He started ponderously. “At the head of each list you will find simple dishes; elemental dishes, I might call them! (Elementalische plätter!) This is the rough material from which the others are evolved. Each list is like an oriental dance. It gets wilder as it goes along. In the last dish you can be sure that the potatoes will taste like tomatoes, and the pork like a sirloin of beef.”
“So!” laughed the young woman, with good German guttural. “I’m glad to say I have ordered dishes that head the list.”
“Garlic is an enemy usually ambushed in gigot.—That is his only quite certain haunt.”
“Good; I will avoid gigot.” She was indulgent to his clowning, and drawled a little in sympathy. Between language and feeding, Kreisler sought to gain the young lady’s confidence, adhering conventionally to the progress of Creation.
He found his neighbour inclined to slight Nature. He, too, was a little overlooked; in waiving of conventions being blandly forestalled. There was something uncomfortable about all this. He must brace himself. He realized with the prophetic logic of his hysteria, racing through the syllogisms his senses divined, sensations now anachronisms, afterwards recognized as they burst out in due course. This precocity in the restaurant took him to the solution of what their coming together might mean.
One plethoric impression of her was received—although from her—instalment of a senseless generosity.
She wore a heavy black burnous, very voluminous and severe; a large ornamental bag was on the chair at her side, which you expected to contain herbs and trinkets, paraphernalia of the witch, rather than powder, lip-cream, and secrets. Her hat was immense and sinuous; generally she implied an egotistic code of advanced order, full of insolent strategies.
Other women in the restaurant appeared dragged down and drained of vitality by their clothes beside her, Kreisler thought, although she wore so much more than they did. Her large square-shouldered and slim body swam in hers like a duck.
When she laughed, this commotion was transmitted to her body as though sharp, sonorous blows had been struck on her mouth. Her lips were long, hard bubbles risen in the blond heavy pool of her face, ready to break, pitifully and gaily. Grown forward with ape-like intensity, they refused no emotion noisy egress if it got so far. Her eyes were large, stubborn, and reflective, brown coming out of blondness. Her head was like a deep white egg in a tobacco-coloured nest. She exuded personality with alarming and disgusting intensity. It was an ostentation similar to diamonds and gold watch-chains. Kreisler felt himself in the midst of a cascade, a hot cascade.
She seemed to feel herself a travelling circus of tricks and wonders, beauty shows and monstrosities. Quite used to being looked at, she had become resigned to inability to avoid performing. She possessed the geniality of public character and the genius of sex. Kreisler was a strange loafer talked to easily, without any consciousness of condescension.