yellow, distorted, unhappy, and desperately merry face peered forth, the cheeks continually bobbing up and down in a way that moved one to pity. The small, red-rimmed eyes stared fixedly at the floor, without seeing anything, while the fat man threw his weight ponderously, first on one foot, then on the other, either holding his dress with both hands or raising his two forefingers with feeble arms—he knew no other gesture—and in a strained and panting voice sang a silly song to the sound of the piano.
Did not, more than ever, a cold breath of suffering emanate from this pathetic figure, a breath which killed all easygoing joyousness and oppressed the entire company as with an inevitable burden of painful atmosphere? The same horror lay in the depths of all the countless eyes which were fixed as by a spell direct upon this picture, on this pair at the piano and on this husband up there. This quiet, incredible scandal lasted at least five long minutes.
But then came the moment which no one that experienced it will forget as long as he lives.—Let us make clear to ourselves what really happened in this short, terrible, and complicated space of time.
Everybody knows the ridiculous song that is entitled “Little Louise,” and everybody remembers, no doubt, the lines which run:
“To polka and to waltz I rally,
And dance them as none other can;
Little Louise from down our alley,
Who charms the heart of every man”
—unlovely and frivolous verses which form the refrain to three rather long stanzas. Well, in composing these words anew, Alfred Läutner had accomplished his masterpiece, by making the most of his habit of startling one by introducing an artistic piece of lofty music in the very midst of vulgar and comic claptrap. The melody, which had been pitched in C-sharp major, had been rather pretty and utterly banal during the first stanzas. At the beginning of the refrain quoted, the time grew livelier, and discords cropped up which led one to expect a modulation to F-sharp major through the increasingly vivacious sounding forth of a B. These disharmonies grew complicated up to the words “other can,” and after the “Little,” which completed the complication and the suspension, there should have followed a resolution in F-sharp major. Instead of this something most surprising occurred. By means of a sudden turn, due to a most ingenious idea, the key suddenly altered to F major, and this interpolation, which followed on the second syllable of the word “Louise,” long drawn out by means of both pedals, was of an indescribable, absolutely unheard-of effect! It was a sudden attack, a perfectly amazing onslaught, upon the nerves, which sent thrills down the spine; it was a marvel, an exposure, an unveiling almost cruel in its suddenness, a curtain that was rent.
At this F-major chord the counsellor-at-law Jacoby stopped dancing. He stood still, stood in the centre of the stage as though rooted there, both forefingers still raised—one a little lower than the other—the i of “Louise” broke from his lips, and he grew silent. The piano accompaniment broke off sharply at the same time, while this daring and horribly ridiculous apparition up there stared straight in front of him, with head thrust forth in an animal-like way and with inflamed eyes. He stared into this decorated, bright, and crowded festal hall, in which, like an emanation of all these people, scandal lay packed like some dense atmosphere. He stared into all these raised, distorted, and sharply lighted faces, into these hundreds of eyes, which were all fixed on himself and on the couple below and before him with the same knowing expression. While a terrible silence, unbroken by a single sound, lay over all, he let his eyes, growing ever wider, wander slowly and eerily from the couple to the audience and from the audience to the couple. A sudden insight seemed to pass over his face, and it was suddenly suffused with a rush of blood, which caused it to grow congested and as red as the silk dress, and left it as yellow as wax immediately after—and the stout man collapsed, making the boards rattle.
The silence continued for a moment; then cries were heard, a tumult arose, a few bold men, among them a young physician, sprang from the orchestra to the stage, the curtain was dropped.
Amra Jacoby and Alfred Läutner still sat at the piano, turned away from each other. He, with lowered head, still seemed to be listening to his modulation to F major; she, incapable of apprehending so rapidly with her birdlike brain what had happened, stared about her with a perfectly vacant face.
The young doctor reappeared immediately in the hall—a small Jewish gentleman with serious face and black, pointed beard. To a number of gentlemen who crowded round him at the door he answered, with a shrug of his shoulders: “All over.”
Tobias Mindernickel
One of the streets which run rather steeply from Quay Alley up to the centre of the city is called the Grey Way. About the middle of this street, on the right hand as you come from the river, stands a house labelled No. 47, a narrow drab-coloured structure, in no way distinguished from its neighbours. There is a small shop on the ground-floor, in which one can buy rubber overshoes and cod-liver oil. On entering the hallway, which gives upon a courtyard in which cats are prowling about, one sees a narrow and worn wooden staircase, saturated with the inexpressible musty smells of poverty, leading to the upper stories. A carpenter lives on the left side of the first story, a midwife on the right. The second story harbours a cobbler on the left, and on the right a lady who begins to sing loudly as soon as steps are heard on the staircase. The flat on the third story to the left is empty; the one to the right is occupied by a man by
