Sometimes a poisonous, searing wind arose. Like thick, glowing oil,
the sun lay on the houses and on the streets and on the people, Small,
sexless little people with bent legs hopped senselessly around the
front garden, enclosed by an iron fence, of the Cafe Kloesschen.
Inside, Kuno Kohn and Gottschalk Schulz were fighting. Others
happened to be watching. Lisel Liblichlein sat apprehensively in a
corner.
The reason for this had been: Mr Kohn had accompanied Miss
Liblichlein from the acting school to her home several times. When
Schulz learned about it, he became, without cause, jealous. He began
to say terrible things about Kohn. Lisel Liblichlein, who saw
through her cousin, defended the hunchback. This made Schulz even
angrier. He declared convincingly that he would shoot himself. He
didn't do that, but threatened that he would shoot her too. At that
point she stopped seeing him.--Lisel Liblichlein needed a man with
whom she could discuss her important, ordinary experiences. After
the quarrel with Schulz she chose Kohn out of some vague instinct.
Thus it happened that she made an appointment to meet him at the
Kloesschen at noon on the day of the fight, in order perhaps to
consult with him about choosing a dress, or about his interpretation
of a role, or about some little event. At the moment Kohn arrived,
about to ask what the girl wanted, Gottschalk burst in, stood before
him with a red, swollen face, and called him an unscrupulous seducer
of young girls. Kohn tried to reach up and slap Schulz' face. Then
each hit the other, furious and silent. The sign for the
lavoratory-attendant, which had previously read, "My institute is
here, entrance there," lay shattered on the ground. Suddenly Schulz'
hand violently struck Kohn's hump. The hand had a bloody wound, and
the hump was injured. Pale as a corpse, Schulz cried out: "The hump
is critically wounded." Then he had himself taken by a waiter to a
first aid station. He ignored Lisel Liblichlein entirely.
Kohn did not pay much attention to his injured hump. He sat down
again at the table with Lisel Liblichlein, and ordered tea with lemon.
She saw how ever more clearly blood was oozing through his
threadbare jacket.She called his attention to the bloody jacket; he
became frightened. She asked if she should bind the wound--He said
bitterly, to touch a hump would not be pleasant for her. She said,
blushing sympathetically, that a hump was human. She said that he
could come to her place. The hump must be cleaned and cooled. Then
she would apply a dressing. He could spend the afternoon at her
place...
Happily and hesitantly Kohn agreed to her suggestion. They sat into
the night in Lisel Liblichlein's little room. They talked about
souls, humps, love.-From that day on the writer Schulz was missing.
An acquaintance had last seen him in the evening, in front of the
display window of a shoe store. "Hot Heroes"--a journal for romantic
decadence--received a special-delivery letter, in which Schulz
reported that, for pyschological
reasons, he was on the point of taking his own life. Some people
regarded this as nothing really new. Most people were excited. The
newspapers carried exciting notices. A fund to find Schulz' body was
established. An owner of a factory donated a tasteful coffin.
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.
Kuno Kohn and Lisel Liblichlein were the first to leave the giddy
celebration. They moved through the heaven-bright moonlit streets,
whispering. The poet in love cast fantastic shadows with giant humps
on the pavement.
When they parted, Lisel Liblichlein lowered her head and kissed
Kohn's mouth several times. Thus Kuno Kohn and Lisel Liblichlein
parted... He said that he was pleased that she would visit him the
next evening. She said, very quietly, "I... oh... also..."
On the well cared-for streets, the carefully arranged houses stood
like books on shelves. The moon had scattered bright blue dust on
them. Few windows were lit, shining peacefully, like the eyes of
lonely people, with the same gold-colored look. Kuno Kohn went home
thoughtfully. His body was dangerously bent forward. His hands lay
firmly at the end of his back. His head was hanging low. The hump
towered above, an adventurous, sharp stone. At this time Kuno Kohn
was no longer a man; he had his own form.
He thought: "I wish to avoid being happy. That would mean giving up
the longing that transcends all fulfillment, which is my most
exquisite meaning. To degrade the holy hump, with which a friendly
destiny has endowed me, through which I have experienced existence
much more deeply, more unhappily, more wonderfully, than people
perceive, to a burdensome superficiality. I wish to develop out of
Lisel Liblichlein her higher being. I want to make her utterly
unhappy..."
While the poet Kohn was thinking these thoughts, the poet Schulz at
last was stabbing himself with a salad knife. He had observed Kuno
Kohn and Lisel Liblichlein in their confidential conversation in the
hidden recess. He had seen how they had gone off together. He tried
to drink and eat away his grief, to no avail. After he had eaten and
drunk for some time, he was insane. He sang: "Death is a serious
matter... Death has no time for jokes... Death is an urgent need..."
Then he timidly and hesitantly stuck the first knife that he could
get his hands on into his left breast. Blood and the bloody remains
of salad spurted around him. This time the attempt to kill himself
was crowned with success.