Berlin thrilled him at first. Keen observer though he was, he mistook
her superficial dazzle for a deeper brilliancy. He was still looking at
the world with the eyes of a rustic. The opera, the galleries, the fine
avenues, the gay cafés, the _salons_—everything about him engaged his
interest and furnished food for his vivid imagination. Furthermore,
though still a law student, he was received in society as a promising
young poet and as such many doors of distinguished men and women were
open to him.
At last the fates were kind to him, he thought. His health had improved,
he had a circle of friends and admirers, he was writing new poems,
getting old ones published, had finished a poetical drama, and had hopes
of seeing it presented on the stage. And Rahel’s house had become his
second home. He did not wait for her “at home” but came and went as he
pleased. She read and criticised every line he wrote, and her severest
censure never hurt his feelings. Very frequently her husband was also
invited to pass critical judgment on Zorn’s verses. Dinners and teas
with brilliant people, late evenings at Lutter and Wegner’s—the café
where the young literary talent of Berlin congregated to discuss the
latest book, the latest play, the latest musical composition.
Conversation was to him like reading: it stimulated his own thoughts.
And when he was not reading or arguing he was strolling along _Unter den
Linden_, swinging his cane, his eyes narrowed, his chest thrust forward,
gathering impressions. When fatigued from walking he dropped in at Café
Josty, famed for its _Kaffee mit Sahne_.
To be sure, moments of sorrow were not lacking even in those happy days.
His father’s financial condition had grown worse and then came the
crushing blow that Hilda was betrothed—that she had preferred an
everyday business man to a poet by the grace of God! Besides, he was
always short of a few _Louis d’or_ for which he would rob Peter to pay
Paul, and he was ever perplexed as to where his money had gone. Uncle
Leopold’s stipend came punctually on the first of the month, and
according to his calculations should see him through till the first of
the next, but somehow it never lasted more than a week. Ah, if he could
only catch up and start with a clean slate the next month! Every month
he would take a vow to be more regular in his habits, more
methodical—never, never would he be inveigled into a game of Pharo—but
then at the end of the week he found himself with but one _Thaler_ in
his pocket, with three more weeks before the first of the next month,
and he would then hasten to one of his friends to borrow enough to tide
him over the difficult period. Then, again there were other sorrows.
Albert had collected a number of his poems and wished to publish them in
book form but he was still unable to find a publisher. “The bats!” he
would mutter under his breath, “I turn the sun upon them and they see it
not.” Rahel was the only one who saw the light. It was heartbreaking.
Byron at his age was already famous and he—“Oh, the blind bats!”
One day a would-be friend came knocking at his door. It was late on a
cold January morning and he was still in bed. He had awakened earlier in
the morning but a few stray thoughts tormented him so he turned over and
tried to forget them in sleep. Fortunately nothing but a headache
disturbed his sleep. Grief had the opposite effect on him. The day
before had been a very trying one. He had lost a few Louis d’or at
Pharo, had a quarrel with one of his comrades at Lutter and Wegner’s,
and had received an unpleasant letter from his parents. So he had stayed
up late the night before writing verses on the cruelty of fate.
As he turned in his bed a thought flashed across his brain that eternal
sleep was the greatest gift of the gods—Death! No rejected manuscripts,
no unrequited love, no debts, no asinine critics, no Hegels and
Schleiermachers, no Jews and Christians, no Prussian censors—death
surely was bliss, he determined and buried his head in his pillow. He
recalled that when he awoke he was in a very pleasant dream, and hoped
to pick up the golden threads of that fantastic web. He wondered what
had awakened him. It must have been the sounds outside. Friedrichstrasse
was becoming noisy, he was saying to himself, and he ought to change his
lodgings where his pleasant dreams would not be interrupted. He was
trying to bring back the vanished phantom. He sometimes went back to
sleep and resumed the dream at the point left off, like a story given in
instalments.
Confound that noise outside! Albert was vexed with Friedrichstrasse,
with the mob that never respected the sensibilities of a poet, with
those clattering hoofs—why could not such heavy treading beasts have
rubber hoofs? Rubber—a Pharo wheel—a girl’s face—the girl was beating
a drum—it was deafening . . .
He rose with a sudden start and blasphemous ejaculations.
“Who is there? What do you want?” he demanded in a high pitched voice.
He remembered that he had forgotten to bolt his door, so he shouted
again, “Open the door and tell me what you want!”
“A man wants to see you—”
“This early? What does he want? Who is he?”
“I told him you were asleep but he would not leave. He said he must see
you; and, besides, he said you had no business to be asleep at eleven
o’clock—”
“What business is that of his?” Albert shouted. “Tell the impudent fool
I won’t see him—”
The landlady laughed blandly. She knew her lodger, and there was but a
step between his uncontrollable wrath and overflowing tenderness.
His features softened. Hegel’s lectures came punctually at two and he
did not want to miss that. It was not so much that he wished to hear
what the philosopher had to say—Hegel had been repeating the same thing
in the past ten lectures—but he loved to watch the Professor’s
grotesque movements and the peculiar contortions of his wrinkled face. A
classmate next to him was making interesting caricatures of the
Professor while he was lecturing.
“Who is this fellow?” Albert asked in a modulated voice. “Has he no name
at all?”
“He said he was a genius and was sure you’d appreciate him—and he looks
like a genius.”
“You have probably misunderstood him,” laughed Albert. “He must have
said he wanted to see the genius. Alright, let him come in.”
The landlady shrugged her shoulders and closed the door.
He was about to throw himself back on his bed when she reappeared,
followed by the stranger.
“Look at the damn thing!” the intruder burst out, without a word of
introduction. “No publisher would have it. I showed it to the editor of
the “_Gesellschafter_” but he only shook his head and said ‘Show it to
Albert Zorn.’ So here it is!”
With that he flung a packet of papers on the bed.
Albert reached for the manuscript, then glanced at his visitor.
“So your name is Krebsfleisch?”
“Johann Friedrich Krebsfleisch” the stranger corrected him, with a
sullen expression on his high cheekbones and short, receding chin. His
brow was like a dome and his eyelids were heavy, with bovine eyes
protruding.
“Before long everybody in the land—princes and paupers—will know who
Johann Friedrich Krebsfleisch is!” he added. “The world is as yet too
stupid to recognize my genius. I was told you might understand me—But
you can’t be a poet and have that fine fur coat!”
Krebsfleisch suddenly checked himself, his bulging eyes turned in the
direction of an open clothes-closet, where Zorn’s clothes were hanging.
He crossed the room and patted the fur as if it were a purring cat.
Albert’s mouth tightened with a humorous smile on his lips. There was a
mischievous twinkle in his narrowed eyes. He could not decide whether
his visitor was an escaped lunatic or had not recovered from a night’s
drinking. He wore a short, tattered coat, baggy patched trousers, and
his hairy breast was seen through his unbuttoned shirt. His headgear was
a cross between an old-fashioned high silk hat and the present day
derby.
“Why don’t you read it?” he presently accosted Albert. “Some day you’d
be glad to tell your friends that the great poet Johann Friedrich
Krebsfleisch had given you the chance of reading his great epic in
manuscript.” Then he added, as if soliloquising, “Every genius is a John
the Baptist crying in the wilderness. Years later people wake up and try
to catch the echo.”
Albert undid the package and glanced at the title page.
“Since Schiller died no one has produced a tragedy worthy of the name.
At last you have one before you,” Krebsfleisch struck in.
“Have you published anything?”
“The idiots can’t see my genius—yet. And the finest quality of my
genius is hunger. Yes, I am a genius by the grace of god. No one has
ever known hunger in all its stages as I have.”
He moved his jaws, his eyes wandering around the room.
A knock at the door and a maid entered with a tray of steaming coffee
and several rolls and butter.
Krebsfleisch stared at the food avidly.
“You must be a millionaire,” he said, sitting down at the foot of the
bed. “A fur coat, a warm room, steaming coffee in the morning. Are you a
poet or a publisher?”
“Just a poetic genius like yourself,” laughed Albert.
Krebsfleisch looked suspiciously at his host. There was something in
Albert’s voice that was always puzzling. One could never tell whether he
was jesting or was in earnest.
“You can’t possibly drink all this coffee alone?” said the visitor.
“No, I ordered enough for both of us,” responded Albert seriously. And
he removed the cup from the saucer and filled them both to the brim.
“Which would you rather have, the cup or the saucer?” he asked.
Krebsfleisch’s bulging eyes skipped from one to the other, with a
peculiar glitter.
“I always drink my coffee from a saucer,” he finally replied, and taking
hold of it with both hands carried it to his lips.
“You may have all the bread and butter—I don’t care for any this
morning,” Albert said nonchalantly.
Krebsfleisch stared at Zorn incredulously. How was it possible that one
did not care for bread and butter! Overlooking the knife he spread the
butter on a slice of bread with his finger and began to devour it
ravenously.
“That’s how my mother used to spread butter on my bread.” His words were
half drowned in the fullness of his mouth!
A moment later he sighed. “Those were happy days in my native village!
My mother had a cow and there was always bread and butter and cheese in
our house, but she insisted she must make an educated man of me. It
serves her right. I have eaten her out of house and all. She inherited
silver spoons from her father—her father was a _Beamter_—and I have
devoured them all. The ladle goes for this semester’s tuition.”
Albert heaved a sigh. He had devoured his mother’s pearls and his
grandfather had consumed a prayer-book with silver clasps during his
last term at the medical school. There was now a bond of sympathy
between the two. There was mist in Albert’s eyes. He caught his breath
but could not speak. His first impulse was to have fun with the queer
stranger but instead sympathy filled his heart.
“There is a pair of trousers I don’t need,” Albert said presently. He
was too sensitive to make the offer directly.
“Yes, they might fit me,” Krebsfleisch glanced at the pantaloons thrown
over a chair by the bed. Then he stood up and measured the length of the
legs against his. “Perhaps a little tight around the calves, but they’ll
do.”
A few coppers jingled in the trouser-pockets. There was a questioning
look in his eyes.
“Yes, the contents goes with the trousers,” said Albert with seeming
absentmindedness.
Krebsfleisch at once removed his own tattered trousers unceremoniously
and pulled on those offered him.
“Your father must be very rich,” he was saying as he was stretching the
waist line to fit his rotundity.
“Very, very rich,” stammered Albert with a sad smile on his face.
“And you never go hungry—not for a single day?”
“No, not for mortal food,” Zorn intoned wistfully.
“The other day,” Krebsfleisch said in a plaintive tone, “I did some
copying for a rich idiot who took i a notion into his head that he had a
new theory about the universe. He paid me four silver Thalers! Yes, sir,
I had four silver Thalers in the hollow of my hand and was on my way to
Jagor’s to have a real spread—_Braten_ and white bread and a bottle of
wine—and invited two friends for the feast. On the way to the
restaurant I met a fellow-student and we dropped into Lutter and
Wegner’s for a drink. I don’t know how it happened but we both got drunk
and when night came the four Thalers were gone. One of the students, who
had been invited to the spread, waited for me at Jagor’s until midnight,
and then he challenged me—that fool! Must I lose my life in addition to
the loss of my four Thalers? I have no more chance of a dinner at
Jagor’s,” he ended with an audible sigh. “Rich idiots with new theories
do not grow on trees.”
He rose and stretched his arms, with a downward look at his tightly
fitting trousers.
“Can you perchance spare a top coat to cover this misfit?”
Yes, Albert had a top coat. It was hanging on a peg in the open closet.
“A fur coat and a top coat! You are not related to the Rothschilds?”
“Just distantly—the same as to the Prophets and to some of the
Apostles.”
The jest was lost on Krebsfleisch.
Later in the day Albert hunted up a friend and borrowed five Louis d’or
and then went to 20 Friedrichstrasse, where he announced to Frau
Varnhagen von Ense that he had discovered a kindred spirit in the form
of a starving genius.