* Mrs. Rot said. That made Clairi and me feel good, even if we didn’t sell her anything … if we could have left just one item with her to put in a display window for a week, alongside one of her black and silver crystal name plates, that would have meant even more to us. Then we could hope that somebody would buy it sooner or later, and of course Vati’s prestige would be recognized, too … The whole time Mrs. Rot examined our items, I examined her, too … especially the neckline of her silkily billowing smock … and what big, white, dreamlike high breasts she had, from her neck practically down to her waist … my little pole stood right up, as if ready to fly over the counter … The other furriers, all men, were like Vati … a little pale and wearing smocks that were full of needles and fur … Smudged with various leather dyes, they came out of their workshops past hanging foxes and bunches of little dormouse furs to get to their counters … But they had proper establishments … display tables, small tables and chairs for their customers, new magazines, a cash register, a little rubber dish for the change … everything that a real merchant needs … It would have been a great honor to us if they had taken anything to display in their windows or if they had promised Clairi some work for the autumn … We left each stuffy little storefront more frustrated than the one before. Nothing. There was nothing. Where else could we go? We had written down on slips the addresses of all the furriers in town … We decided to go from door to door in the neighborhood of the courthouse, the one that had towers … Clairi walked a bit in front of or behind me, because she was ashamed … she asked me to carry the bundle when we walked down beautiful Miklošič Street, which led to the train station … several paces ahead or behind, just not even with her … We rang the doorbells on every floor and when a door opened … and they were all alike, inlaid with wood of a different color … Clairi would start saying in her Swiss German mixed with some French that we were selling various furs … chokers, muffs, hats, stoles, boleros … the whole kit and kaboodle … for winter, for dances, for everyday wear … for very little money, practically for free … For the ones who couldn’t understand the language I translated her offer in my moronic Slovene, which sounded like I was echoing out of a kettle or a pipe. We were met with all kinds of looks … startled, as though we’d just fallen out of the sky and they or we were just dreaming all of this … piercing, as though we’d escaped off some train … derisive, as though we were circus performers … Some of the more fortunate ones would just start to laugh and call the other homebodies out from the kitchen and bedrooms to come have a look at us. There were also the harsh, rejecting faces, as though we were burglars, and the looks that practically smoldered with hatred and sliced everything off … our hands, our ears, our noses … The hostility from the eyes of a bare-headed young man with a small mouth was like a wave that billowed into us, forcing us a step back toward the banister … Clairi said indignantly that this wasn’t called for, we hadn’t done anything wrong … But we had to pick up our stuff and get out of there fast, because the loon or falcon or eagle was getting nervous and the piano that someone was plunking on in the apartment suddenly went silent … Some younger woman invited us into her apartment with a vaulted ceiling … it was a big, round room in a tower next to the Fig Tree restaurant, where through the windows you had a great view of the articulated streetcars as they writhed and slinked passed each other in the round intersection like snakes in their nest. The building’s facade was quite elegant, all green bricks and blue carnations … but inside it wasn’t so perfect. Old divans with grease-stained covers dangling down to the floor, yellowed books with no covers, stinking of glue … I set the bundle down on a carpet that had practically eaten into the floor and the woman inspected our things … We unwrapped each item from its newspaper, but the lady wasn’t satisfied. She kneeled down and her lemon yellow house robe opened, but she had nothing on beneath it. Embarrassed, Clairi smiled. “Schau nicht hin, du Dreckfink!”† she said. But I wanted to see her furry hole and it was awful to see but not see it … Somehow it parted and something jutted out … The crazy lady didn’t want to buy anything, so we wrapped everything back up … she offered each of us a yellow candy out of a tin box … Clairi didn’t dare put it in her mouth. She went down the stairs so fast that I had to shout after her, “Clairi! Clairi!” I only caught up with her in the lobby. “Wirf den Zucker weg!”‡ she ordered me. She flung her piece of candy into an ashcan. “Nun machs!”§ I felt bad about it, but I threw it out … and I felt even worse when I saw ashes stuck all over it, it probably had some liqueur filling. “O mein kleiner!”‖ Clairi pressed me to her chest … All the buildings in the street behind the courthouse were handsome. “Lauter Advokaten! Die haben Berge von Geld.”a We went into a building that had a white marble statue of a mother and child over the entrance … Next to the doors there were whole rows of plaques … black, white, blue … announcing a lawyer’s office.… In a bright room there was a gray-haired doctor, a lawyer, sitting at a big desk … A gentle face, gray hair, the wide shoulders of a trained boxer. He spoke exquisite German, “hochdeutsch” … Clairi just stared at him … her nostrils quivering … This was the husband of her dreams! Gray-haired, not too old, attractive, intelligent, rich, courteous, educated … But when he got up from his huge desk and stepped away from his gold-studded leather chair back … I couldn’t believe my eyes … He was short, not just shorter than me … but a dwarf … even though he kept the broad shoulders … Now Clairi was more beside herself than ever … He crossed the gleaming parquet floor to where we stood, smiled at me as one man does at another … such teeth, like blue porcelain!.. and clasped both of Clairi’s hands in his. “Kommen Sie einmal nächsten Donnerstag, am Abend, neee?”b he said in his perfect German … “Ja, gut,” Clairi said, quickly turning to leave. She could barely find the handle in the thickly upholstered door. Once we were back outside she regained her composure. “Hast du das gesehen, Bubi?… Solche Armmuskeln im Stuhl und dann … Was für ein Knirps! Aber doch: wie intelligent, reich, apart … Aber was meinte der Mistfink doch, als er mich eingeladen hat, ich soll am Donnerstag abends kommen?… O, das soll er sich gar aus dem Kopf schlagen. Fällt mir im Schlaf nicht ein … Aber es ist so etwas Feines an ihm, nicht wahr?”c She was unsure … We headed towards Tivoli … the whole way there she kept talking to herself, shaking her head or nodding … On the third floor of a red building next to Tivoli a long, skinny, heavily freckled, nice woman answered the door … as thin as a reed. She said right off the bat that she wasn’t going to buy anything … but then she asked me where we were from and when I told her, she invited us into her bright kitchen for a bowl of cold stewed fruit … “Ich bin Lehrerin,”d she said. It took my breath away. She had a light green book edged in black on the table titled “Slovene Grammar” … notebooks full of tables … and different colored pencils … It was too much for me … She asked Clairi and me questions. Her German was quite good … “Vielleicht kommt Ihr Bruder einmal in meine Klasse.”e That would be nice, but … “War das eine nette Frau,”f Clairi enthused about the kindness of Mrs. Komar. “Bubi, est gibt wirklich viele ordentliche Menschen auf der Welt und es ist nur Schade, daß man sie nicht schneller aufspürt.”g A little old man in a sweater and hat who was just then out in the flowers doing something with water let us into a house with a garden … He called Clairi into a separate room behind a glass door … Through the milky pane I could see she was modeling some of the items for him … I heard her quietly squeal then screech at the top of her voice and shout … she came flying out all flushed in the face. “So ein Schwein.”h She was holding a choker in one hand and a bolero in the other … I quickly stuffed it all back into the bag and made a beeline behind her through the garden. I only managed to catch up with her at a railway crossing, because she’d sat down on a bench there … We wandered through several intersections, an underground pedestrian crossing, a glass corridor that had an excellent draft, some narrow streets, side streets, thoroughfares … and a peaceful neighborhood of villas on the far side of the Roman wall where the sidewalks were cooler under long rows of trees … My feet started to blister in the old pair of street shoes that I’d had to put on at Clairi’s insistence so I would look more respectable … I cooled them off in some ditch … and all sweaty under the well spigot of a deserted garden restaurant … The fur scratched at my back … all those damned remains of times past were just too pathetic, disgusting, annoying … We didn’t rest, there wasn’t even enough time for me to pick up a chestnut or a stick … as though our customers were everywhere waiting impatiently for us at their windows … The trees started spinning around me … Was it worth it? Even if we did sell them … it was strange how grown-ups suddenly struck me as disgusting for getting so excited about buying all that furry crap and then actually wearing it … At last all that was left to us was the pawn shop on Poljane Road … from one side of a barred window you found out how much you would get and how long you had to buy your things back … All the men who worked there were as pale as death and wore black sleeves, I had been once before with Vati to this room with counters and windows, resembling a bank. He got a small sum of money, which we immediately exchanged in the bakery next door for some bread … but they gave you so little time: you had two weeks before you lost your collateral, and then you had nothing … Vati had brought several collars, fur hats and a whole child’s outfit made of white rabbit furs, for a girl … In one building, in its courtyard where there was a dry cleaner, we got lucky. Above the ironing shop was where a skinny little old lady lived, who was German. Clairi began her pitch from the top … mindlessly and a little unhinged by now … you had to wear the customer down under a hail of words … An incredible opportunity … satisfaction guaranteed … The customer was supposed to succumb to your talking points, lose their common sense. “Lassen Sie doch das, liebes Fräulein,”i the old lady suddenly boomed in a deep voice … She invited us inside to get cool “hinter den dicken Mauern meines Hauses …”j Good lord, it was the old empire everywhere you looked … carved side tables, cabinets, tasseled curtains, a vivid fresco on the ceiling … angels with trumpets … around a gold fixture that a chandelier hung from. And something even more incredible: rifles with dates carved on their stocks inside a glass cabinet, swords on the walls, khanjars, shields like the one the White Prince carried … She gave us some cookies and ice cream … her daughter, who was the owner of the dry cleaning and ironing shop and a big linen store, had an actual machine for making ice cream … She smoked a cigarette in a long mouthpiece and bought a muff and a chain necklace from us … but probably more out of pity than need … She took the money for them out of a velvet purse that was attached to her waist … “Kommt mal wieder vorbei,”k she said … She tucked a colorful volume of Die schönen illustrierten Abenteverl into my pocket … That was the kind of grandmother that the White Prince himself would have had as his sidekick in a castle under siege … If Clairi and I could sell at least one little fur hat each week, our six-day quest around town would pay off …