Gustav rummaged at length in his pants pocket before he finally conjured up a worn metal ring with numerous keys. He pushed one sausagelike finger through the ring, then raised the tinkling keys up somewhat while stooping down toward me. With his other hand, he patted my head and made jubilant chuckling sounds. I assumed he was attempting one of those rosy speeches that a groom customarily delivers to his bride before carrying her over the threshold of their new home. He kept jingling the keys in his hand while pointing to the lower first floor to make clear the connection between the keys and the apartment. At times my dear Gustav had the charm of a country bumpkin and the pedagogic talent of a blacksmith.
As if he had divined my thought, a sweet, knowing smile flitted across my friend's face. But before he could decide to actually carry me like a bride into our new house, I streaked out from between his fingers to the low-lying doorsteps. While I was padding up the flimsy steps, still covered with yellowing fall leaves, I noticed a rectangular patch on the brick wall beside the right doorpost that was a shade lighter than the rest. Rusted screws were driven into its corners; the heads of the screws were broken off. I speculated that there had been a doctor's office or a laboratory in the house once, which would also explain the smell of chemicals.
An interruption abruptly put an end to this ingenious train of thought. For, while I stood before my future house door, my gaze fixed on the missing nameplate—presumably of Doctor Frankenstein—another, this time very familiar, scent penetrated my nostrils. Ignorant of the territorial laws of this district, and without the slightest respect for propriety, one of my kind had left behind his rather importunate calling card at the right doorpost. Since I had just moved in, however, the status of ownership was now clear; naturally, I insisted upon my right to obliterate all previous signatures with my own. And so, swiveling 180 degrees, I concentrated with all my might and fired away.
The environmentally safe, all-purpose jet that shot out from between my rear legs inundated the spot where my predecessor had left his calling card. Order had once again been established in the world.
Gustav smiled idiotically behind me, smiling the smile of a father whose baby says "goo goo" for the first time. I understood Gustav's little pleasure, because Gustav himself sometimes seemed to me to be a sweet little "goo goo”. His simpleminded grin breaking into jubilant grunts of joy, he waddled past me and opened the house door with an old, rusted key. After some rattling, the door swung open.
Side by side, we made our way through a cool foyer to our apartment door, which gave me the impression of a coffin lid. A shaky staircase on the left led to the two upper floors from which Death himself seemed to waft downward. I took it upon myself to inspect the upper floors as soon as possible to find out what in fact was going on up there. I must confess, however, that the mere thought of wandering by myself through those rooms made me tremble in mortal fear. Gustav was dragging us into a godforsaken dungeon, and he didn't even realize it!
At last the door flew open and we marched, step by step, onto a veritable battlefield.
It was, to be fair, an impressive apartment, only it just happened to be in a state of utter upheaval. That, however, wasn't the real problem. The real problem was Gustav. My dear friend was in neither physical nor mental shape—not to mention his lack of skills with tools—to take on a ruin like this and bring it up to par. If he was seriously considering such a plan, the brain tumor I had long suspected him of having had grown to critical dimensions.
Slowly, cautiously, I crept through each room taking in every detail. Three rooms branched off to the right of the spacious corridor; they competed fiercely among themselves for the honor of being the best example of ruin and decay, all the while bringing to mind memories of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. These rooms were all rather large and faced south toward the street, so that presumably they would be flooded with sunlight on mild spring and summer days. But it wasn't possible to witness this effect now because the afternoon sun had just begun to slip around the corner of the house. At the end of the corridor there was a further room that I assumed was the bedroom. A door opened from this room to the outside. Off to the left of the hallway was the kitchen, which you had to walk through to get to the bathroom.
The rooms looked as if they had only been occupied by worms, cockroaches, silverfish, rats, and various insect and bacterial empires since the Second World War (or maybe the First?); the notion that human beings had lived here recently seemed absurd. There were gaping holes in both the moldy parquet floor and the ceiling. Everything smelled of rot and the urine of certain indefinable creatures that had attained a developmental stage just high enough for them to be able to urinate. In the face of this horror, only my high tolerance of pain and my faultless hormonal equilibrium were to thank for my not suffering an immediate nervous breakdown.
As for Gustav, he had suddenly become schizophrenic. After I had returned to the corridor, bent down with grief from my survey of the last room I assumed was the bedroom, I spied my poor friend standing in the middle of the kitchen
