A correspondent has wired us that the famed variety dancer Lola Lalà,
who also appears under the name Lo Lálalà and whose maiden name is
Leni Levi, had to be taken to a lunatic asylum, which caused a
tremendous sensation. The pitiful woman had been found toward
morning in a wheat field, stark naked in her birthday suit, crying
bitterly and smoking a large cigar. Mr Gottschalk Schulz, a poet of
sensitivity, has published a moving poem about this in the "Newspaper
for Enlightened Citizens". It has a piquant attraction because--so
it is rumored and probably correctly--the poet maintained quite warm
relations with the poor and charming dancer. Therefore this
beautiful poem will not be withheld from our readers:-The poem had
the heading: Smoke on the Field. The priest didn't read it out,
however, because it was too smutty. Also it was not relevant.
Instead he read:
As I learn further from a special, authentic source in the late
evening, the cause of the mental collapse of the dancer is said to
have been a fright caused by a burglary that happened after an
abortion that was carried out successfully. A court-ordered
investigation is underway.
After this the priest started to talk about abortion by saying:
"Human knowledge reaches its pinnacle in the realization that he is
the most highly developed earthly being. No one can deny this." He
didn't notice the deliberately exaggerated and suppressed laughter of
a few boys. And he slowly continued. He condemned abortion as
disagreeable to God from a religious and socio-political point of
view. In conclusion, he said: "We are modern. We don't shrink from
treating offensive questions with moral seriousness."
The only one who contradicted him was Peter Paulus. He
fell--outwardly calm--into such a rage that he said: "If I were a
doctor, Father, I myself would--". In reply the priest said heatedly:
"Do you believe in God, Paulus?" And Peter Paulus said only: "No".
A few minutes before the end of the class, he was expelled from the
Hebrew lesson because of social democratic leanings and godlessness.
He left defiantly. Slammed the door.
When the widowed prison chaplain Christian Kohn had to give his only
child, who was mentally ill and had heart disease, to an institution,
he adopted--nobody knows why--a little cripple. There was much
gossip. The most obstinate rumor was that the cripple, Kuno, was a
natural son of the chaplain. The mother was said to be the popular
Trude, who had been convicted of manslaughter after shooting her
disloyal pimp. Trude had been pardoned, with the rejoicing approval
of the whole village, because it had turned out that she was pregnant.
It was claimed that the sympathetic chaplain had caused Trude's
pregnancy. But this was not proved.
Kuno Kohn spent the half-awake first part of his youth in the dreary
stone rooms and yards of the penitentiary. His adoptive father had
little concern for the boy. He was absent for weeks at a time. Left
in the care of a morose servant, whose main occupation was to manage
the miserable financial affairs of the chaplain, and lacking
sufficient care, lacking playmates, lacking stimulation and love, the
crippled child could not develop. Remained always dwarfish. He
slunk around, pale and dreamy. Intimidated and timorous. Toward
evening, bold shadows and horrific noises teemed on the twisty stairs
with their grated windows, and in the great gloomy halls and passages.
A more robust boy would have ignored such peripheral things, if he
had noticed them at all. But on Kuno Kohn the most insignificant
thing left a deep impression, the most minor thing had meaning, and
horrified him. Everywhere and from everything he feared disaster.
Nothing was familiar to him. The eternal fear made him into a little
darting ghost himself, and gave his consumptive eyes a phosphorescent
glow. If he was sent out late at night, perhaps to get milk or
kerosene, he would pray in feverish fervor to dear God. He would
come back breathless and white as chalk.
More than anything, Kuno Kohn was afraid of the thousand-fold
darkness before falling asleep. In the past, a tiny lamp had been
put into the room for him; the reddish melancholy glow calmed him a
little. On the soft wall the strangest grimaces and battles appeared,
but also tin soldiers marching and a delightful jumble of fairies
and cake plates and queens, until sleep came. After a time, the
chaplain decided not to allow any more such mollycoddling of the soul
of his son. Kuno would have to live in the dark. Gone was the tiny
bit of visibility. The innumerable incomprehensible events of chaos
rolled about the little boy. More of the world pressed into the
small bedroom of the humpback than the entire day had contained.
Kuno Kohn had lost the body that was supposed to lie in the bed: only
fright and helplessness and longing were left. The worst was when
the desolate indistinctness took on the shape of visions or touches.
The Kohn boy then cried out despairingly. Either the cry was not
heard by anyone or it carried no clear meaning. In prisons there are
always yells in the night from somewhere. Kuno often lay for a long
time, until the unfathomable hole, which had so many incomprehensible
contents, admitted the lively pictures that brought dreams and sleep:
burglars, or perhaps a hackney cab journey in the sun, a visit to his
little ill brother, a game with street children, the dear, sad angel
eyes of Maria Müller, for whom he would gladly die.
The prisoners were Kuno Kohn's good acquaintances. Not the guards;
these were indeed quite friendly to him but there was an instinctive
suspicion underneath. On the other hand, the ruffians and gamblers,
sex killers and robbers, the most famous burglars, and most of the
other distinguished old-established residents welcomed the little
humpback warmly, by a slight nod of the head or almost imperceptible
grin, whenever he came to watch with wide-open dreamy eyes the silent
gray work. Only the fences, profiteers, confidence men, defrauders,
swindlers, most of the bankrupts and some of the pimps, remained
indifferent. In the course of the year, Kuno Kohn had made friends
particularly with the youthful burglar Benjamin. The two often sat
for hours together. If the guards looked the other way... Benjamin
spoke enthusiastically to the humpback. Of sun. And freedom. And
of the redemption of mankind. Kuno Kohn arranged Benjamin's secret
traffic with the outside world and did various favors for his friend;
he provided him with cigarettes, books, small tools. When once a
volume of Goethe and a little cigarette ash were found in Benjamin's
cell, Kohn was suspected. After the escape of the burglar, which
happened shortly afterwards, which could have happened only with
outside help, a message was sent to the clergyman. He forbade his
son the company of the prisoners. The guards were not allowed to let
him in any more.
The great problems that tormented Kuno Kohn constantly, as soon as he
was able to get his thoughts together to some degree, were mainly
death and God. At the age of four or five he did not believe in
death, at least not in his own. And he prayed to the dear God daily
before he lay down to sleep. "I am small, my heart is pure, no one
shall live there but God alone". But if he had done something during
the day that seemed sinful to him--and that almost always
happened--he would add (sitting in bed or standing if it was
particularly bad) long and remorseful monologues until he fell asleep,
overfatigued, with fingers still folded and tears in his eyes. If
darkness and fear came, he always prayed. Gradually his doubts
increased, to the point where he had to believe in his own death and
abandon his faith in God. When he started school, there began the
fullness of suffering which some children find there.