The Prose of Alfred LichtensteinLichtenstein, Alfred
General
The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein
Lichtenstein, Alfred
Fiction
Woods and fields were searched. All the lakes were probed with long
poles. No trace of Schulz was found. They already wanted to give up
the search, when they found him disfigured, in a middle-level hotel
in a distant suburb. On a windy pond he had contracted influenza,
which had kept him in bed for a week. He was found on the creaky
steps of the hotel, covered with many blankets and shawls,
experimenting with the idea of carrying out his intention of
committing suicide. It was not difficult to dissuade him, and he was
brought in triumph back to the city. The coffin was sold off. From
the profits and the remainder of the fund to find Schulz' body a
party for Bohemians was organized-Gottschalk Schulz himself was
enthroned as Faust, world-weary, in a corner. The gifted Doctor
Berthold Bryller appeared as one of the wealthy literati. Lutz Laus
played the Pope. The high school teacher Spinoza Spass--the clown of
the Cafe Kloesschen--had wrapped a Siegfried-costume around his belly,
and given himself a Goethe haircut. The lyric poet Mueller soon lay
like a green, drunken corpse. Kuno Kohn, who had made a formal
reconciliation with Schulz, came as himself. Lisel Liblichlein also
came with him, wearing a rustic outfit. The others scuttled back and
forth wildly among themselves, screeching like Chinese, chimpanzees,
Gods, nightwatchmen, sophisticates. The whole crowd from the Cafe
Kloesschen was present.
Lisel Liblichlein danced on this tumultuous, screaming night only
with the hunch-backed poet. Many people watched the strange pair,
but there was no laughing. Kohn's hump pressed hard and heedlessly,
like the edge of a table, against the delicate others. It seemed as
though he had the constant desire to press his hump against a dancer.
He never failed to say, in a falsetto voice, "pardon," with
unashamed courtesy, when a crazy woman cried out or someone
blissfully snarled "damn." Lisel Liblichlein held on to the poet
with one hand holding the hump like a handle, and with the other had
she pressed Kohn's square head gently to her breast. In this way
they danced like possessed people for many hours.
Kohn's hump became steadily more painful for the other dancers. They
tried to express outrage. The people in charge of the party informed
Kohn that he was requested to refrain from dancing. With this kind
of hump one should not dance. Kohn did not resist. Lisel
Liblichlein watched as his face became grey.
She led him to a hidden recess. There she said to him: "From now on
I shall tutoyer you." Kuno Kohn did not answer, but he accepted her
sympathetic soul like a gift in his water-blue troubadour's eyes.
Trembling, she said that she suddenly loved him so much that it was
incomprehensible.., she would never again let his arm go... she had
not know that one could be so wildly happy... Kuno Kohn invited her
to visit him the next evening. She accepted gladly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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