I once went to the foremost hairdresser in the capital.
Everything smelled of Eau de Cologne, of fresh washed linen and fragrant cigarette smoke—Sultan Flor, Cigarettes des Princesses égyptiennes.
A young girl with light blond silken hair sat at the cash register.
“Dear God,” I thought, “a count will surely sweep you off your feet, you lovely thing—!”
She peered back at me with a look that said: “Whoever you may be, one among thousands, I declare to you that life lies before me, life—! Don’t you know it?!”
I knew it.
“Ah well,” I thought, “it might also be a prince—!”
She married the proprietor of a café who went bust a year later.
She was built like a gazelle. Silk and velvet hardly enhanced her beauty—she was probably most beautiful in the buff.
The café proprietor went bust.
I ran into her on the street with a child.
She peered back at me with a look that said: “I still have life before me, life, don’t you know it—?!”
I knew it.
A friend of mine had typhus. He was a well-to-do bachelor and lived in a lakefront villa.
When I visited him, a young woman with light blond silken hair prepared his ice packs. Her delicate hands were red and raw from the ice water. She peered back at me: “This is life—! I love it—! Because it’s life—!”
When he got well he passed the woman on to another rich young man—.
He dumped her, just like that—.
It was summer.
Later he was overcome by longing—it was fall.
She had looked after him, nestled close with her sweet gazelle limbs—.
He wrote to her: “Come back to me—!
One evening in October I spotted her with him entering the wondrous vestibule in which eight red marble columns shimmered.
I greeted her.
She peered back at me: “Life lies behind me, life—! Don’t you know it?!”
I knew it.
I went to the foremost hairdresser in the capital.
It still smelled of Eau de Cologne, of fresh washed linen and fragrant cigarette smoke—Sultan Flor, Cigarettes des princesses égyptiennes.
Another girl sat at the cash register, this one with brown wavy hair.
She peered back at me with the grand triumphant look of youth—profectio Divae Augustae Victricis: “Whoever you may be, one among thousands, I declare to you that life lies before me, life—! Don’t you know it?!”
I knew it.
“Dear God,” I thought, “a count will surely sweep you off your feet—but it might also be a prince!”