The poor imbecile Heinzen said he heard a whispering; always in his
ears. He shook like a leaf and his face was green.
Niels Heinrich kicked him under the table.
Whenever the door was opened the laughter and the screeching of women
leapt out into the fog. Also one could see the building lots at the
edge of which this drinking shanty had been erected. A new quarter
was springing up here. Beams and scaffoldings and cranes presented
a confusion like a forest struck by a tornado. Walled foundations,
pits, construction huts, trenches, bridges, hills of bricks and sand,
carts--everything was dimly lit by the arc-lamps, which seemed to be
hidden in grey wadding.
When the door was closed one was in a cave.
There was a whispering in his ears, Joachim Heinzen insisted. Without
understanding he listened to the filthy witticisms with which an old
stone-mason regaled the company. Niels Heinrich threw a dark glance
at Joachim and forbade the publican to fill his glass. The fellow, he
said, was crazy enough now.
Gradually the room grew empty. One o’clock was approaching. Three
steady topers still stood by the bar. The nightwatchman had just looked
in on his rounds and drunk a nip of kümmel. The innkeeper regarded his
late guests morosely, sat down, and nodded.
Niels Heinrich said to the simpleton that he would give him five talers
to clear out. “If you don’t fade away you’ll catch hell, my boy,” he
said. His reddish beard rose and fell. About his neck he had wound a
yellow shawl so many times that his head seemed to be resting on a
cushion. His sallow, freckled face seemed a mere mass of bone.
Joachim’s limbs trembled. Outside the women of the streets were passing
by, and their laughter sounded like the clatter of crockery. “Five
talers,” said the imbecile and grinned. “That’s all right.” But he
was still trembling. He had trembled just so the whole day, and the
day before, and the day before that. “I’d like to buy a black-haired
wench,” he murmured.
“For money you can see the very devil dance,” Niels Heinrich replied.
Now even those at the bar got ready to leave. “Closing time,
gentlemen,” the innkeeper called out. He repeated his warning three
times. A clock rattled.
“I’ll get what I want,” said the simpleton. “I want one like a
merry-go-round. Merry. Around and around.”
“All right, boy! Go ahead! But don’t you let no balloon run you down,”
Niels Heinrich jeered, and stared at his own fingers as though they had
spoken to him. “Go ahead!”
“And I want one like a parrot,” said the simpleton, “all dressed up and
fine.” And in a broken voice he sang a stave of a vulgar song.
Niels Heinrich’s silence was grim.
“And I want one that’s like what a lady is, elegant and handsome,”
Joachim continued, and emptied the lees in his glass. “That’s what!
Give me the five talers. Give ’em to me.” But suddenly he shuddered,
his eyes seemed to protrude from their hollows, and he uttered a sound
that had a strange and horrible kinship with a whine.
Niels Heinrich arose, and jerked his companion upward by the collar.
He threw the money to pay his reckoning on the table, and pulled
the simpleton out into the street. He grasped his arm, and drew the
reeling, horribly whimpering creature along with him. He did not speak.
He had pulled his blue cap over his eyes. His face was full of brooding
thoughts. He paid no attention to snow or mud.
The fog swallowed up the two figures.