A Nursery Tale

Fantasy, the Flutter, the rapture of fantasy! Erwin knew these things well. In a tram, he would always sit on the right-hand side, so as to be nearer the sidewalk. Twice daily, from the tram he took to the office and back, Erwin looked out the window and collected his harem. Happy, happy Erwin, to dwell in such a convenient, such a fairy-tale German town! He covered one sidewalk in the morning, on his way to work, and the other in the late afternoon, on his way home. First one, then the other was bathed in voluptuous sunlight, for the sun also went and returned. We should bear in mind that Erwin was so morbidly shy that only once in his life, taunted by rascally comrades, had he accosted a woman, and she had said quietly: "You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Leave me alone." Thereafter, he had avoided conversation with strange young ladies. In compensation, separated from the street by a windowpane, clutching to his ribs a black briefcase, wearing scuffed trousers with a pinstripe, and stretching one leg under the opposite seat (if unoccupied). Erwin looked boldly and freely at passing girls, and then would suddenly bite his nether lip: This signified the capture of a new concubine; whereupon he would set her aside, as it were, and his swift gaze, jumping like a compass needle, was already seeking out the next one. Those beauties were far from him, and therefore the sweetness of free choice could not be affected by sullen timidity. If, however, a girl happened to sit down across from him, and a certain twinge told him that she was pretty, he would retract his leg from under her seat with all the signs of a gruffness quite uncharacteristic of his young age, and could not bring himself to take stock of her: The bones of his forehead--right here, over the eyebrows--ached from shyness, as if an iron helmet were restricting his temples and preventing him from raising his eyes; and what a relief it was when she got up and went toward the exit. Then, feigning casual abstraction, he looked--shameless Erwin did look--following her receding back, swallowing whole her adorable nape and silk-hosed calves, and thus, after all, would he add her to his fabulous harem! The leg would again be stretched, again the bright sidewalk would flow past the window, and again, his thin pale nose with a noticeable depression at the tip, directed streetward, Erwin would accumulate his slave girls. And this is fantasy, the flutter, the rapture of fantasy!

• • •

One Saturday, on a frivolous evening in May, Erwin was sitting at a sidewalk table. He watched the tripping throng of the avenue, now and then biting his lip with a quick incisor. The entire sky was tinged with pink and the street lamps and shop-sign bulbs glowed with a kind of unearthly light in the gathering dusk. The first lilacs were being hawked by an anemic but pretty young girl. Rather fittingly the café phonograph was singing the Flower Aria from Faust. A tall middle-aged lady in a charcoal tailor-made suit, heavily, yet not ungracefully, swinging her hips, made her way among the sidewalk tables. There was no vacant one. Finally, she put one hand in a glossy black glove upon the empty chair opposite Erwin. "May I?" queried her unsmiling eyes from under the short veil of her velvet hat. "Yes, certainly," answered Erwin, slightly rising and ducking. He was not awed by such solid-built women with thickly powdered, somewhat masculine jowls. Down onto the table with a resolute thud went her oversized handbag. She ordered a cup of coffee and a wedge of apple tart. Her deep voice was somewhat hoarse but pleasant.

The vast sky, suffused with dull rose, grew darker. A tram screeched by, inundating the asphalt with the radiant tears of its lights. And short-skirted beauties walked by. Erwin's glance followed them.

"I want this one," he thought, notching his nether lip. "And that one, too."

"I think it could be arranged," said his vis-à-vis in the same calm husky tones in which she had addressed the waiter.

Erwin almost fell off his chair. The lady looked intently at him, as she pulled off one glove to tackle her coffee. Her made-up eyes shone cold and hard, like showy false jewels. Dark pouches swelled under them and--what seldom occurs in the case of women, even elderly women--hairs grew out of her feline-shaped nostrils. The shed glove revealed a big wrinkled hand with long, convex, beautiful fingernails.

"Don't be surprised," she said with a wry smile. She muffled a yawn and added: "In point of fact, I am the Devil."

Shy, naïve Erwin took this to be a figure of speech, but the lady, lowering her voice, continued as follows:

"Those who imagine me with horns and a thick tail are greatly mistaken. Only once did I appear in that shape, to some Byzantine imbecile, and I really don't know why it was such a damned success. I am born three or four times every two centuries. In the Eighteen-seventies, some fifty years ago, I was buried, with picturesque honors and a great shedding of blood, on a hill above a cluster of African villages of which I had been ruler. My term there was a rest after more stringent incarnations. Now I am a German-born woman whose last husband--I had, I think, three in all--was of French extraction, a Professor Monde. In recent years, I have driven several young men to suicide, caused a well-known artist to copy and multiply the picture of the Houses of Parliament on the pound note, incited a virtuous family man--but there is really nothing to brag about. This has been a pretty banal avatar, and I am fed up with it."

She gobbled up her slice of tart and Erwin, mumbling something, reached for his hat, which had fallen under the table.

"No, don't go yet," said Frau Monde, simultaneously beckoning the waiter. "I am offering you something. I am offering you a harem. And if you are still skeptical of my power--see that old gentleman in tortoise-shell glasses crossing the street. Let's have him hit by a tram."

Erwin, blinking, turned streetward. As the old man reached the tracks, he took out his handkerchief and was about to sneeze into it. At the same instant, a tram flashed, screeched and rolled past. From both sides of the avenue, people rushed toward the tracks. The old gentleman, his glasses and handkerchief gone, was sitting on the asphalt. Someone helped him up. He stood, sheepishly shaking his head, brushing his coat sleeves with the palms of his hands and wiggling one leg to test its condition.

"I said 'hit by a tram,' not 'run over,' which I might also have said," remarked Frau Monde coolly, as she worked a thick cigarette into an enameled holder. "In any case, this is an example."

She blew two streams of gray smoke through her nostrils and again fixed Erwin with her hard bright eyes.

"I liked you immediately. That shyness, that bold imagination. You reminded me of an innocent, though hugely endowed, young monk whom I knew in Tuscany. This is my penultimate night. Being a woman has its points, but being an aging woman is hell, if you will pardon me the expression. Moreover, I made such mischief the other day--you will soon read about it in all the papers--that I had better get out of this life. Next Monday, I plan to be born elsewhere. The Siberian slut I have chosen shall be the mother of a marvelous, monstrous man."

"I see," said Erwin.

"Well, my dear boy," continued Frau Monde, demolishing her second piece of pastry, "I intend, before going, to have a bit of innocent fun. Here is what I suggest. Tomorrow, from noon to midnight, you can select by your usual method"--with heavy humor, Frau Monde sucked in her lower lip with a succulent hiss--"all the girls you fancy. Before my departure, I shall have them gathered and placed at your complete disposal. You will keep them until you have enjoyed them all. How does that strike you, amico?"

Erwin dropped his eyes and said softly: "If it is all true, it would be a great happiness."

"All right, then," she said, licking the remains of whipped cream off her spoon. "All right. One condition, nevertheless, must be set. No, it is not what you are thinking. As I told you, I have arranged my next incarnation. Your soul I do not require. Now, this is the condition: The total of your choices between noon and midnight must be an odd number. This is essential and final. Otherwise, I can do nothing for you."

Erwin cleared his throat and asked, almost in a whisper:

"But--how shall I know? Let's say I've chosen one--what then?"

"Nothing," said Frau Monde. "Your feeling, your desire are a command in themselves. However, in order that you may be sure that the deal stands, I shall have a sign given you every time--a smile, not necessarily addressed to you, a chance word in the crowd, a sudden patch of color--that sort of thing. Don't worry, you'll know."

"And--and--" mumbled Erwin, shuffling his feet under the table, "and where is it all going to--uh--happen? I have only a very small room."

"Don't worry about that, either," said Frau Monde, and her corset creaked as she rose. "Now it's time you went home. No harm in getting a good night's rest. I'll give you a lift."

In the open taxi, with the dark wind streaming between starry sky and glistening asphalt, poor Erwin felt tremendously elated. Frau Monde sat erect, her crossed legs forming a sharp angle, and the city lights flashed in her gemlike eyes.

"Here's your house," she said, touching Erwin's shoulder. "An revoir."

• • •

Many are the dreams that can be brought on by a mug of dark beer laced with brandy. Thus reflected Erwin when he awoke the next morning--he must have been drunk, and the talk with that funny female was all fancy. This rhetorical turn often occurs in fairy tales and, as in fairy tales, our young man soon realized he was wrong.

He went out just as the church clock had begun the laborious task of striking noon. Sunday bells joined in excitedly and a bright breeze ruffled the Persian lilacs around the public lavatory in the small park near his house. Pigeons settled on an old stone Herzog or waddled along the sandbox where small children, their flannel behinds sticking up, were digging with toy scoops and playing with wooden trains. The lustrous leaves of the lindens moved in the wind; their ace-of-spades shadows quivered on the graveled path and climbed in an airy flock the trouser legs and skirts of the strollers, racing up and scattering over shoulders and faces, and once again the whole flock slipped back onto the ground, where, barely stirring, they lay in wait for the next foot passenger. In this variegated setting, Erwin noticed a girl in a white dress who had squatted down to tousle with two fingers a fat shaggy pup with warts on its belly. The inclination of her head bared the back of her neck, revealing the ripple of her vertebrae, the fair bloom, the tender hollow between her shoulder blades, and the sun through the leaves found fiery strands in her chestnut hair. Still playing with the puppy, she half rose from her haunches and clapped her hands above it. The fat little animal rolled over on the gravel, ran off a few feet and toppled onto its side. Erwin sat down on a bench and cast a timid and avid glance at her face.

He saw her so clearly, with such piercing and perfect force of perception, that, it seemed, nothing new about her features might have been disclosed by years of previous intimacy. Her palish lips twitched as if repeating every small soft movement of the puppy; her eyelashes beat so brightly as to look like the raylets of her beaming eyes; but most enchanting, perhaps, was the curve of her cheek, (continued on page 116) A Nursery Tale (continued from page 100) now slightly in profile; that dipping line no words, of course, could describe. She started running, showing nice legs, and the puppy tumbled in her wake like a woolly ball. In sudden awareness of his miraculous might, Erwin caught his breath and awaited the promised signal. At that moment, the girl turned her head as she ran and flashed a smile at the plump little creature that could barely keep up with her.

"Number one," Erwin said to himself with unwonted complacency and got up from his bench.

He followed the graveled path with scraping footsteps, in gaudy, reddish-yellow shoes worn only on Sundays. He left the oasis of the diminutive park and crossed over to Amadeus Boulevard. Did his eyes rove? Oh, they did. But, maybe, because the girl in white had somehow left a sunnier mark than any remembered impression, some dancing blind spot prevented him from finding another sweetheart. Soon, however, the blot dissolved, and near a glazed pillar with the tramway timetable our friend observed two young ladies--sisters, or even twins, to judge by their striking resemblance--who were discussing a streetcar route in vibrant, echoing voices. Both were small and slim, dressed in black silk, with saucy eyes and painted lips.

"That's exactly the tram you want," one of them kept saying.

"Both, please," Erwin requested quickly.

"Yes, of course," said the other in response to her sister's words.

Erwin continued along the boulevard. He knew all the smart streets where the best possibilities existed.

"Three," he said to himself. "Odd number. So far so good. And if it were midnight right now----"

Swinging her handbag, she was coming down the steps of the Leilla, one of the best local hotels. Her big blue-chinned companion slowed down behind her to light his cigar. The lady was lovely, hatless, bob-haired, with a fringe on her forehead that made her look like a boy actor in the part of a damsel. As she went by, now closely escorted by our ridiculous rival, Erwin remarked simultaneously the crimson artificial rose in the lapel of her jacket and the advertisement on a billboard: a blond-mustached Turk and, in large letters, the word Yes!, under which it said in smaller characters: I Smoke Only the Rose of the Orient.

That made four, divisible by two, and Erwin felt eager to restore the odd-number rigmarole without delay. In a lane off the boulevard, there was a cheap restaurant that he sometimes frequented on Sundays when sick of his landlady's fare. Among the girls he had happened to note at one time or another there had been a wench who worked in that place. He entered and ordered his favorite dish: blood sausage and sauerkraut. His table was next to the telephone. A man in a bowler called a number and started to jabber as ardently as a hound that has picked up the scent of a hare. Erwin's glance wandered toward the bar--and there was the girl he had seen three or four times before. She was beautiful in a drab, freckled way, if beauty can be drably russet. As she raised her bare arms to place her washed beer steins, he saw the red tufts of her armpits.

"All right, all right!" barked the man into the mouthpiece.

With a sigh of relief enriched by a belch, Erwin left the restaurant. He felt heavy and in need of a nap. To tell the truth, the new shoes pinched like crabs. The weather had changed. The air was sultry. Great domed clouds grew and crowded one another in the hot sky. The streets were becoming deserted. One could feel the houses fill to the brim with Sunday-afternoon snores. Erwin boarded a streetcar.

The tram started to roll. Erwin turned his pale face, shining with sweat, to the window, but no girls walked. While paying his fare he noticed, on the other side of the aisle, a woman sitting with her back to him. She wore a black-velvet hat and a light frock patterned with intertwined chrysanthemums against a semitransparent mauve background through which showed the shoulder straps of her bodice. The lady's statuesque bulk made Erwin curious to glimpse her face. When her hat moved and, like a black ship, started to turn, he first looked away as usual, glanced in feigned abstraction at a youth sitting opposite him, at his own fingernails, at a red-cheeked little old man dozing in the rear of the car and, having thus established a point of departure justifying further castings around, Erwin shifted his casual gaze to the lady now looking his way. It was Frau Monde. Her full, no-longer-young face was blotchily flushed from the heat, her mannish eyebrows bristled above her piercing prismatic eyes, a slightly sardonic smile curled up the corners of her compressed lips.

"Good afternoon," she said in her soft husky voice. "Come sit over here. Now we can have a chat. How are things going?"

"Only five," replied Erwin with embarrassment.

"Excellent. An odd number. I would advise you to stop there. And at midnight--ah, yes, I don't think I told you--at midnight you are to come to Hoffmann Street. Know where that is? Look between number twelve and number fourteen. The vacant lot there will be replaced by a villa with a walled garden. The girls of your choice will be waiting for you on cushions and rugs. I shall meet you at the garden gate--but it is understood," she added with a subtle smile, "I shan't intrude. You'll remember the address? There will be a brand-new streetlight in front of the gate."

"Oh, one thing," said Erwin, collecting his courage. "Let them be dressed at first--I mean, let them look just as they were when I chose them--and let them be very merry and loving."

"Why, naturally," she replied. "Everything will be just as you wish, whether you tell me or not. Otherwise, there was no point in starting the whole business, n'est-ce pas? Confess, though, my dear boy--you were on the very brink of enrolling me in your harem. No, no, have no fear, I am kidding you. Well, that's your stop. Very wise to call it a day. Five is fine. See you a few sees after midnight, ha-ha."

• • •

Upon reaching his room, Erwin took off his shoes and stretched out on the bed. He woke up toward evening. A mellifluous tenor at full blast streamed from a neighbor's phonograph: "I vant to be happee----"

Erwin started thinking back: "Number one, the maiden in white, she's the most artless of the lot. I may have been a little hasty. Oh, well, no harm done. Then the twins near the pillar of glass. Gay, painted young things. With them I'm sure to have fun. Then number four, Leilla the rose, resembling a boy. That's, perhaps, the best one. And, finally, the fox in the alehouse. Not bad, either. But only five. That's not very many!"

He lay prone for a while with his hands behind his head, listening to the tenor, who kept wanting to be happy:

"Five. No, that's absurd. Pity it's not Monday morning: Those three shopgirls the other day--oh, there are so many more beauties waiting to be found! And I can always throw in a streetwalker at the last moment."

Erwin put on his regular pair of shoes, brushed his hair and hurried out.

By nine o'clock, he had collected two more. One of them he noticed in a café where he had a sandwich and two drams of Dutch gin. She was talking with great animation to her companion, a beard-fingering foreigner, in an impenetrable language--Polish or Russian--and her gray eyes had a slight slant, her thin aquiline nose wrinkled when she laughed, and her elegant legs were exposed to the knee. While Erwin watched her quick gestures, the reckless way in which she tap-tapped cigarette ash all over the table, a German word, like a window, flashed open in her Slavic speech and this chance word (offenbar) was the "evident" sign. The other girl, number seven on the list, turned up at the Chinese-style entrance of a small amusement park. She wore a scarlet blouse with a bright-green skirt, and her bare neck swelled as she shrieked (continued on page 268)s A Nursery Tale (continued from page 116) in glee, fighting off a couple of slaphappy young boors who were grabbing her by the hips and trying to make her accompany them.

"I'm willing, I'm willing!" she cried out at last, and was rushed away.

Varicolored paper lanterns enlivened the place. A sledgelike affair with wailing passengers hurtled down a serpentine channel, disappeared in the angled arcades of medieval scenery and dived into a new abyss with new howls. Inside a shed, on four bicycle seats (there were no wheels, just the frames, pedals and handle bars), sat four girls in jerseys and shorts--a red one, a blue one, a green one, a yellow one--their bare legs working at full tilt. Above them hung a dial on which moved four pointers, red, blue, green and yellow. At first the blue one was first, then the green overtook it. A man with a whistle stood by and collected the coins of the few simpletons who wanted to place their bets. Erwin stared at those magnificent legs, naked nearly up to the groin and pedaling with passionate power.

"They must be terrific dancers," he thought. "I could use all four."

The pointers obediently gathered into one bunch and came to a stop.

"Dead heat!" shouted the man with the whistle. "A sensational finish!"

Erwin drank a glass of lemonade, consulted his watch and made for the exit.

"Eleven o'clock and eleven women. That will do, I suppose."

He narrowed his eyes as he imagined the pleasures awaiting him. He was glad he had remembered to put on clean underwear.

"How slyly Frau Monde put it," reflected Erwin with a smile. "Of course she will spy on me, and why not? It will add some spice."

He walked, looking down, shaking his head delightedly, and only rarely glancing up to check the street names. Hoffmann Street, he knew, was quite far, but he still had an hour, so there was no need to hurry. Again, as on the previous night, the sky swarmed with stars and the asphalt glistened like smooth water, absorbing and lengthening the magic lights of the town. He passed a large cinema whose radiance flooded the sidewalk, and at the next corner a short peal of childish laughter caused him to raise his eyes.

He saw before him a tall elderly man in evening clothes with a little girl walking beside--a child of 14 or so in a low-cut black party dress. The whole city knew the elderly man from his portraits. He was a famous poet, a senile swan, living all alone in a distant suburb. He strode with a kind of ponderous grace; his hair, the hue of soiled cotton wool, reached over his ears from beneath his fedora. A stud in the triangle of his starched shirt caught the gleam of a lamp and his long bony nose cast a wedge of shadow on one side of his thin-lipped mouth. In the same tremulous instant, Erwin's glance lit on the face of the child mincing at the old poet's side; there was something odd about that face, odd was the flitting glance of her much too shiny eyes, and if she were not just a little girl--the old man's granddaughter, no doubt--one might suspect that her lips were touched up with rouge. She walked swinging her hips very, very slightly, her legs moved close together, she was asking her companion something in a ringing voice--and although Erwin gave no command mentally, he knew that his swift secret wish had been fulfilled.

"Oh, of course, of course," replied the old man coaxingly, bending toward the child.

They passed. Erwin caught a whiff of perfume. He looked back, then went on.

"Heigh, careful," he suddenly muttered as it dawned upon him that this made 12--an even number. "I must find one more--within half an hour."

It vexed him a little to go on searching, but at the same time he was pleased to be given yet another chance.

"I'll pick up one on the way," he said to himself, allaying a trace of panic. "I'm sure to find one!"

"Maybe she will be the nicest of all," he remarked aloud as he peered into the glossy night.

And a few minutes later, he experienced the familiar delicious contraction--that chill in the solar plexus. A woman in front of him was walking along with rapid and light steps. He saw her only from the back and could not have explained why he yearned so poignantly to overtake precisely her and have a look at her face. One might, naturally, find random words to describe her bearing, the movement of her shoulders, the silhouette of her hat--but what is the use? Something beyond visible outlines, some kind of special atmosphere, an ethereal excitement, lured Erwin on and on. He marched fast and still could not catch up with her; the humid reflections of lights flickered before him; she tripped along steadily, and her black shadow would sweep up, as it entered a street lamp's aura, glide across a wall, twist around its edge and vanish.

"Goodness, I've got to see her face," Erwin muttered. "And time is flying."

Presently, he forgot about time. That strange silent chase in the night intoxicated him. He managed at last to overtake her and went on, far ahead, but had not the courage to look back at her and merely slowed down, whereupon she passed him in her turn and so fast that he did not have time to raise his eyes. Again he was walking ten paces behind her and by then he knew, without seeing her face, that she was his main prize. Streets burst into colored light, petered out, glowed again; a square had to be crossed, a space of sleek blackness, and once more with a brief click of her high-heeled shoe, the woman stepped onto a sidewalk, with Erwin behind, bewildered, disembodied, dizzy from the misty lights, the damp night, the chase.

What enticed him? Not her gait, not her shape, but something else, bewitching and overwhelming, as if a tense shimmer surrounded her: mere fantasy, maybe, the flutter, the rapture of fantasy, or maybe it was that which changes a man's entire life with one divine stroke--Erwin knew nothing, he just sped after her over asphalt and stone, which seemed also dematerialized in the iridescent night.

Then trees, vernal lindens, joined the hunt: They advanced whispering on either side, overhead, all around him; the little black hearts of their shadows intermingled at the foot of each street lamp, and their delicate sticky aroma encouraged him.

Once again Erwin came near. One more step, and he would be abreast of her. She stopped abruptly at an iron wicket and fished out her keys from her handbag. Erwin's momentum almost made him bump into her. She turned her face toward him and by the light a street lamp cast through emerald leaves, he recognized the girl who had been playing that morning with a woolly black pup on a graveled path, and immediately remembered, immediately understood all her charm, tender warmth, priceless radiance.

He stood staring at her with a wretched smile.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," she said quietly. "Leave me alone."

The little gate opened, and slammed. Erwin remained standing under the hushed lindens. He looked around, not knowing which way to go. A few paces away, he saw two blazing bubbles: a car standing by the sidewalk. He went up to it and touched the motionless, dummy-like chauffeur on the shoulder.

"Tell me, what street is this? I'm lost."

"Hoffmann Street," said the dummy dryly.

And then a familiar husky, soft voice spoke out of the depths of the car.

"Hello. It's me."

Erwin leaned a hand on the car door and limply responded.

"I am bored to death," said the voice. "I'm waiting here for my boyfriend. He is bringing the poison. He and I are dying at dawn. How are you?"

"Even number," said Erwin, running his finger along the dusty door.

"Yes, I Know," calmly rejoined Frau Monde. "Number thirteen turned out to be number one. You bungled the job rather badly."

"A pity," said Erwin.

"A pity," she echoed, and yawned.

Erwin bowed, kissed her large black glove, stuffed with five outspread fingers, and with a little cough, turned into the darkness. He walked with a heavy step, his legs ached, he was oppressed by the thought that tomorrow was Monday and it would be hard to get up.