ONCE I sat in a restaurant on the Viehmarktplatz. Sometimes sophisticated gentlemen sit there, but I don’t want to speak about sophisticated gentlemen. Sophisticated gentlemen are of little interest. They wish to be amused yet are themselves thoroughly unamusing. In the corner sat a man with a cheerful, kind, open gaze. His eyes rested as if on an unfathomable distance, in lands unrelated to earth. At once he began to play a kind of flute, and all those sitting in the elegant restaurant directed their gazes toward him and harkened to his music. Like a large, good-humored, sturdy child the man sat there with his merry eyes. After the flute concert was over, a clarinet was next in line, which he played and handled with the same virtuosity as the flute. He played very simple tunes, but nonetheless excellently. After that, he crowed like a rooster, barked like a dog, meowed like a cat, and mooed like a cow. Obviously he delighted in the various sounds he performed well, but the best was still to come, for now he pulled from a basket he had been keeping under the table a rat, mothering the creature like it was a good child. He gave the rat some of his beer to drink, clear evidence that rats gladly drink beer. In addition he put the animal, for which all reasonable people have a definite disgust, in his coat pocket, and finally he kissed it on its pointy mouth, all the while happily laughing to himself. Odd was this man with the thoughtful, lost look in his sparkling clear eyes. He was a lover of music and a friend to animals. Very strange he was. He made a deep, at least long-lasting impression on me. Not only that, he spoke French superbly.
(1914)