An Experience
Hans Schliessmann implored me to come out Friday night to the Park Hotel in Hietzing, where the spirited and tasteful Dostal, band member of the 26ers, was concertizing solo in the large and lovely garden. The concert ended at twelve midnight and Schliessmann was concerned I should catch the last tram home. But it rattled right past us. At that very moment an elegant rubber-tired coach pulled up directly in front of us, and two sassy girls’ voices cried out with joy: “Peter, Jesus, Peter, what ever are you doing here in Hietzing?!”—“I missed the last tram,” I replied, businesslike, and without any overt exuberance at the pleasure of seeing the lovely, racy girls again. — “Don’t you worry now, Peter, we’ll take you along in our carriage, we’re headed for Vienna anyways, what a lucky coincidence—.” Hans Schliessmann stood there greatly stirred in the face of such a true rare stroke of luck, thanked the kind, eye-catching, dainty darlings on behalf of his enviable friend and said that the “golden Viennese heart” was, after all, not yet altogether on the verge of extinction, as he had previously conjectured—.
We drove off. At Mariahilferberg, one of the sweet young things said: “Say Peter, how much’re you gonna pay the cabby?!”—To which I replied: “Nothing. I was invited.”—“Well for Chrissake, you cheapskate, it’s just a measly Crown or two.” For the payee it’s always “costly Crowns,” for the recipient it’s only “a measly Crown or two.” I replied: “I’m your guest.”—“Don’t tell me you was gonna drag your bones all the way to Vienna on foot, you fruitcake?!”—“If push came to shove, I might’ve hailed a hansom.”—“There you are, so you see, it comes down to the same.”—“In that case, I’ll contribute what the hansom would’ve cost—.”—“Will ya get a load o’ that, the guy rides in a rubber-tired coach and wants to pay the price of a hansom, well I’ll be damned—.”—“Alright, so how much do I owe?!”—“Ten Crowns, that’s pennies.”—I did not feel that it was pennies, but I inquired: “Why ten Crowns, if I may ask?!”—“So what if we already drove around a little in Hietzing on such a lovely evening before picking you up, you tightwad, would you grudge us the pleasure!?”—I replied that I would gladly grant them that.”—“So, you see, you’re a gentleman, after all, you’re our good Peter, ain’t ya—.” So their good Peter shelled out the ten Crowns. “What about us, don’t we deserve a little something?!” said the two sweet things. “Ain’t our company worth something to ya, or are we just appetizers before the main course, for Chrissake—?” I gave each of them another Crown. “Peter, Peter, we always took ya for a true poet, a better sort, an idealistically inclined kind o’ guy; don’t tell me we was wrong—.” I called for the coach to stop, got out. “You ain’t sore, are you, Peter?!”—“No. Why should I be sore?!” “—So didn’t you find the ride amusing?!”—“Very,” I replied. That very night I wrote Hans Schliessmann a card: “Concerning your correction of a prior conjecture concerning the demise of the ‘golden Viennese heart,’ I bid you hold off on that correction until next Friday when Dostal of the 26ers once again concertizes at the Park Hotel, Hietzing. More to follow straight from the horse’s mouth—.”
The next day I ran into one of the sweet young things. “Peter, lucky I should run into you. Right after you got out yesterday, I got to climb up onto the coach box and drive the rig, and Mr. coachman, he climbed in with Mitzl in the passenger compartment and pulled the shades. And then he went and gave us your ten Crowns. There’s a proper gentleman, let that be a lesson to you!” I hastened to write to Hans Schliessmann: “Your first inclination was correct. The ‘golden Viennese heart’ is still alive and well.”
In a Viennese
Puff
*
“Say,” said the sweet, cuddly one to me, “that guy over there ain’t normal; he lives on a sandy island in the Danube, runs around half-naked, will ya get a load of him, he’s brown all over from the sun. He only comes here to sneer at us! At you too, Peter, you too. What’s the use of all your pretty poetry?”
The fellah over there really did look like life itself. Or like an African traveler. His hide tanned tough by light and air, tanned I tell you.
His friends at his table had all “fallen in love,” technically speaking.
So now they all nudged him to likewise finally “fall in love.”
“You want me to go weak?” the brown one replied to the pale faces. And everyone laughed.
“Some strength you got in you if you ain’t got none to spend!?” said sweet Anna.
“Let ’im be—,” said Hansi, “everybody knows what he’s gotta do. Even the sun probably don’t do him no good no more—.”
“Do you despise me too?” said the tanned man, turning to one of the girls who was reading a dime novel, totally immersed in it.
“Why should I despise you? I don’t even know you.”
“How did you get started in this kind of life?” said the natural man softly. Such is the standard question of all dilettantes of life.
“My story wouldn’t interest the gentleman much—.”
“On the contrary. You seem to me to have been born for something better!” Second standard line of the dilettante!
“I was corrupted—.”
“Aha, by love!”
“No, not love!”
“Then by desire!”
“No, they plied me with drink, on a picnic—.”
“By alcohol then! It’s got to have been one of the three poisons—.”
He categorized it all under the rubric “alcohol.”
Anna brushed by and said: “Hey, Mr. Robinson Crusoe, don’t you go and corrupt this innocent thing—.”
The Danube island man walked over to the open window, peered out at the darkness of the narrow street lit only with a glaring fleck of light from the pissoir, and took in a breath of the foul air with evident disgust. Then he said: “You’ve got too little respect for sunlight and fresh air, that’s your problem!”
The girls were momentarily befuddled by the thought that they actually might perhaps have too little respect for sunlight and fresh air. Since up till then they really had no respect for it at all.
Only Friederike, who never wanted to hear her named shortened into “Fritzerl” because she was the one they always called that, spoke up: “Well, we’ve got a better sense of humor than you, Mister—.”
“Zip it,” said the other girls, “don’t hurt the guy’s feelings, that ain’t right—.”
“Farewell, you fallen soul!” said the man and left.
“With our best regards, Mr. Robinson Crusoe—,” Anna called after him.
“What’d you all tell me to zip it for when I put that sorry sap in his place?!?” said Friederike.
“You can’t just go ’n rub their nose in the truth; he might still have picked one to take upstairs—.”
“No way, not that sun nut; all his sun-soaked strength makes him weak where it counts—.”
__________________
*Viennese slang for brothel
Putain
The little room is flooded with the scent of a mountain meadow. In the light brown wash basin lies a thick bunch of Daphne Cneorum, rose-colored asters.
“Daphne Cneorum—,” he remarks upon entering, savoring all the types of alpine laurel with their fine fragrance and color, and thinks of mountainsides bathed in sunlight.
“The hell with my flowers—,” she says. “What do you care what they’re called—?”
She undresses and crawls into bed.
“Say, what’d Max mean?! Are you fellahs really not going to come by no more?”
“No—,” he says, “it costs money and people talk. What are we, whoremongers?! For heaven’s sake!”