He was positively sick with longing, twisted his head in my direction: “Is she coming or isn’t she?!”
At one point he abandoned his guard post, came close to me, lay his paw on my knee and I kissed him.
As if he’d said to me: “Go ahead, tell me the truth, I can take anything!”
At ten o’clock he began to whine.
So I said to him: “Listen pal, don’t you think I’m antsy? You’ve got to control yourself!”
But he didn’t put much stock in control and whined.
Then he started softly weeping.
“Is she coming or isn’t she?!”
“She’s coming, she’s coming—.”
Then he lay himself perfectly flat on the floor and I sat there rather stooped over in my chair.
He wasn’t whining any more, just stared at the entrance while I stared ahead of me.
It was a quarter to twelve.
She came at last. With her sweet, soft, sliding steps, she came quietly and collected, greeted us in her mild manner.
The poodle whined, sang out and leapt.
But I helped her off with her silken coat and hung it on a hook.
Then we sat down.
“Were you antsy?!” she asked.
As if one said: “How’s life, my friend?” or: “Yours truly, N.N.!”
Then she said: “Oh, it was just wonderful in the theater—!”
But I felt: Longing, longing that flows and flows and flows from the hearts of man and beast, where do you go?! Do you perhaps evaporate in the heavens like water in the clouds?! Just as the atmosphere is full of water vapor so must the world be full and heavy with longings that came and found no soul to take them in! What happens to you, dear emotion, the best and most delicate thing in life, if you don’t find willing souls greedy to soak you up and derive their own strength from yours?
Longing, longing, that flows from the hearts of man and beast, flooding, flooding the world, where do you go?
Poverty
Conversation with my ten-year-old dinner guest, Karoline B., the little daughter of a poor widow, perfection in the making, already a profoundly human creature.
“Tomorrow, Sir, I have to travel far out to the ‘Doll Doctor’ in the Fifth District!”
“What ever for?”
“Somebody gave me a doll. She only has a top half.”
“Curious!”
“Why curious?! If she’d had a bottom half, too, they damn sure wouldn’t have given her to me!”
The Little Silk Swatches
I wrote to the department store G.: “For the last few days my heavenly little thirteen-year-old friend with the ash-blond hair, the light gray eyes and the black lashes has been spreading out for my perusal eight to ten homely little swatches of silk on a patch of grass all gray from the dust of automobiles, saying: ‘Which is the prettiest?! The gray one with the lilac-colored threads, don’t you think—.’ I asked her what all these little swatches were about, whereupon she replied: ‘They’re hard to get. This girlfriend of mine, she’s got a sister who works for a tailoring outfit in Vienna. And my friend left me ten of her best samples, ’cause we’re real pals, see. But we tell the other girls they’re only rags to wipe the ink off pens. ’Cause if them other girls knew that they were good for nothing and we just like ’em, that’s all, they’d be so sad that they didn’t have any—.’ ” In response to the above, the department store G. sent me a big box full of the loveliest silk remnants, little silk swatches, particularly pretty Japanese and Indian patterns, for my thirteen-year-old friend. That evening, ten schoolgirls gathered in a circle on the lawn, in the center of which, enthroned, as it were, on the box, my fanatically adored little friend, a shoemaker’s daughter, held court. She picked up every little swatch of silk and passed it around the circle to each of the stunned girls struck dumb with amazement. The oldest girl said: “Can you really buy enough material of each little rag to make yourself a whole dress?”—“What for, you silly goose, aren’t the rags much nicer just as they are?” replied my heavenly little thirteen-year-old. The automobile dust of the rich enveloped lawn and lane in a thick white fog, while the clouds were pierced by blood-red zigzags from the setting sun. Whereupon my friend shut the box and said: “End of silk swatch show for today, ladies and gentlemen—,” hoisted the box onto her dear little ash blond head and said to me: “Tonight I’ll sleep tight and dream sweet sweet dreams, but not of you, no Sir, I’m going to dream about your wonderfully lovely little swatches of silk—!”
Day of Affluence
I wanted just once for a half day to live the life of a rich man. I arranged to have myself picked up at my place by a ravishing lady and her husband in their Mercedes. I was driven to my barber, on Teinfaltstrasse, to rejuvenate myself, especially with a splash of the menthol-scented French brandy cologne on the head. An ersatz for any cold bath! Then we drove to Baden. There we took baths in the Kurhaus private tubs, 24 degrees Celsius. Then we had them unlock cool hotel rooms and slept for a good half hour. Then we ate Solo asparagus and fricasseed calves’ brains. Then we drove on to Heiligenkreuz. In a cool hall we sipped steaming hot tea with lemon. We dashed back home in the evening.
The meadows wafted sweetly and the forest stood black and motionlessly melancholic beneath the still light of the evening sky.
In Vienna I said goodbye.
Seated in the Café Ritz I spotted that young woman whom I have long found pleasing to look at. Brown hair, blue straw hat, upturned nose. I wanted to bring the day to a festive conclusion. So I sent her three wonderfully dark roses and an egg punch, the favorite drink of most women of her kind. She graciously accepted, exceptionally.
Then she came over to my table and said:
“Does it really give you such a great pleasure to pay your respects to me?”
“Yes, indeed, or else I wouldn’t do it!”
“Well, then, I don’t even have to thank you for it—!?”
“No, not at all, the pleasure is all mine!”
That was my day of affluence.
Traveling
There’s one dirt cheap pleasure I know that’s altogether free of disappointments, to study the train schedule from mid-May on and pick out the very train with which you would, if only. . So, for instance, at 8:45, you’re already up and about and even shaved (to travel unshaven is only half a pleasure, better, if need be, to go without washing); so at 8:45 with the southbound express to Payerbach, and from there by one-horse carriage (my favorite driven by Michael Ruppert, Jr.) to the heavenly idyllic Thalhof Hotel. Once there you do nothing at all for the moment, seeing as you’re actually still seated in your room in Vienna poring over your travel plans. Enough, everything’s fine as it is, facing the forest, the cowshed, the horse stable, the bubbling trout brook, the laundry yard, the woodshed, where once, thirty years ago, with Anna Kaldermann — you gathered wood, and in the distance the hills near the Payerbachgräben where my father wanted to acquire a plot of land planted with sour cherry trees to flee to the holy refuge of nature, while my mother said: “Not until our two daughters are wed, my dear!” So there you sit before your travel plans, 8:45 departure time, dreaming sweet dreams free of the burdens of reality, and you just saved, conservatively speaking, at least twenty Crowns. For every change of place taxes the cost of your stay!
In the Volksgarten
“I’d like to have a blue balloon! A blue balloon is what I’d like!”
“Here’s a blue balloon for you, Rosamunde!”
It was explained to her then that there was a gas inside that was lighter than the air in the atmosphere, as a consequence of which, etc. etc.