Lisel Liblichlein appeared the next evening earlier than the agreed
upon hour. Kuno Kohn opened the door, holding flowers in his hand.
He was visibly happy; he said that he had scarcely hoped that she
would come. She placed her arms around his bony body, sucked him to
her body, and said: "You dear humped little dummy... I love you so
much--"
The ate a simple evening meal. She stroked him when something tasted
good to her. She said that she wanted to remain with him until early
morning. Then she could celebrate the beginning of her eighteenth
birthday with him...
A church bell announced the new day.. The first loud breaths were
like groaned prayers in Kohn's dusky room. There Lisel Liblichlein's
young soul-body had become a temple; she had endured pain with
touching matter of factness, to sacrifice herself to the hunch-backed
priest. She had said: ``Are you happy now"--She lay dissolved in
dream and emotion. The thin skin of her eyelids enveloped her.
Suddenly fright ran through her body. She had fear like claws in her
face. Her eyes, torn open and screaming, were on the hunchback.
Lisel Liblichlein said, without expression, "This--was--happiness--"
Kuno Kohn wept.
She said: "Kuno, Kuno, Kuno, Kuno, Kuno, Kuno... What shall I do
with the rest of my life?" Kuno Kohn sighed. He looked seriously
and with kindness into her sorrowful eyes. He said: "Poor Lisel!
The feeling of complete helplessness that has come over you I have
often felt. The only consolation is: to be sad. When sadness
degenerates into doubt, then one should become grotesque. One should
live on for the sake of fun. One should try to rise above things, by
realizing that existence consists of nothing but brutal, shabby jokes."
He wiped sweat from his hump and from his forehead.
Lisel Liblichlein said: "I don't know why you are going on like this.
I don't understand what you have said. It was unkind of you to take
away my happiness." The words fell like paper.
She said that she wanted to go. He should get dressed. The naked
hump was embarrassing to her...
Kuno Kohn and Lisel Liblichen said nothing more until they parted
forever at the door of the house in which the boarding school was
located. He looked into her face, held her hand, and said:
"Farewell--" She said quietly: "Farewell."
Kohn receded into his hump. Destroyed, he moved on. Tears smeared
his face. He felt her sadly gazing at his back. Then he ran around
the corner of the next group of houses, stopped, dried his eyes with
a handkerchief, and hurried off, still weeping.
Like a sickness, a slimy fog crept into the city, as it grew blind.
Street lights were gloomy swamp flowers, which flickered on blackish,
glowing stalks. Objects and creatures had only chilly shadows and
blurred movements. Like a monster, a night bus reeled past Kohn.
The poet called out: "Now one is again entirely alone." Then he
encountered a fat, hunch-backed woman, with long spidery legs,
wearing a ghostly, diaphanous skirt. Her upper body resembled a ball
lying on a high little table. She looked at him temptingly and
sympathetically, with an amorous smile, which the fog contorted into
an insane expression. Kohn disappeared immediately in the greyness.
She groaned and then trundeled on.
Sluggishly day limped closer, smashing the remains of the night with
an iron crutch. The half-extinguished Cafe Kloesschen, a gleaming
fragment, lay still in the soundless morning. In the background sat
the last customer. Kuno Kohn had let his head sink back on his
trembling hump. The scrawny fingers of his hand covered his forehead
and face. His whole body cried out noiselessly.