The Prose of Alfred LichtensteinLichtenstein, Alfred
General
The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein
Lichtenstein, Alfred
Fiction
every-day people, is loved... is worthless to me.-At that point I was
startled by the slow, soulful screams of blind little Kohn, with whom
I had established a friendship, in spite of my anti-semitic
principles. I leaped up, hurried out. I saw how Max Mechenmal was
running back and forth, pinching Kohn in the legs or doing other
nasty things, while calling out: "Catch me." The little Kohn was
pale. In his helplessness. He pressed his back against a wall. His
thin, suffering hands groped in the air... I have never seen such
concentrated pain as lay in the dead eyes of little Kohn. Without
giving myself time to put my clothes in order, I hurried to Mechenmal,
to beat him for his brutal behavior. My trousers were damaged by a
nail which was sticking out of the wall. Mechenmal used the delay to
slip by me, run into the w.c., which he locked behind him. I beat on
the door. He said: "Occupied!" I was very angry. It occured to me
that in my haste I had forgotten to take with me the paper on which
the work on the hoax of genius was written. I called to him to pass
it out. He did not answer. Later I heard how loudly he giggled.
And I knew: I would never see the manuscript which I had intended to
send to the new newspaper, "The Other A." Sadly I went away-Ah,
little Kohn unfortunately is now dead. He has died of his ghosts, as
he had often predicted to me. The blind little Kohn had seen his
ghosts. Sometimes in stark daylight. At such times he was found
trembling, pale, in a corner. He had drawn up his legs so far that
his thigh was pressed against his sunken chest. His head lay between
his knees. The tiny, frightened fingers clutched the tops of his
shoes. If someone touched him, he shrieked. The shriek was so
piercingly frightening that one instinctively let him go, as though
one had been shoved. Each time it happened one was as as helpless as
the first time. Doctor Mondmilch was called. She stroked him a bit.
His rigidity dissolved in sobs. He received drops, was put to bed,
slept badly. Mechenmal called out, so that it echoed in the street,
"Kohn is mad again."
Towards the end, the attacks had become more frequent, especially at
night. His fainting attacks lasted longer, and the exhaustion that
followed was disheartening. One evening, when Doctor Mondmilch had
accepted an invitation of the veterinarian and neurologist Dr. Bruno
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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