The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein Part 6

The Family

The family all come together once every month. The women with the children meet in the afternoon.

Coffee is drunk. The children are sent away. The should play. They must not hear everything.

But the women whisper. Their faces show concern. They are speaking of someone who is very sick.

At twilight they tell stories about ghosts and miraculous cures.

They become frightened. They call the children. They press the children to their b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

Then fruit is eaten.

The men come. Conversations about hair styles, about business. And so on. The conversation moves haltingly. Suddenly stops, like a defective clock. Fear that it will stop entirely. A young girl blushes-But at one point everything is still. It feels suffocating.

It feels unsafe, like in a swing, helpless, like in a slide... it feels ridiculous. One hears something like the wind sweeping across the roofs. Rain beats against the grey windows.

Still silence.

There-Is it really so bad... with him--how should it turn out...

People avoid each other's eyes.

Leopold Lehmann

I am an employee of a bank. Because I have no patron, and I am not especially hard-working, I am not getting ahead. For more than 30 years I have been s.h.i.+fting the same kind of papers around in the same department. For this reason I am considered conscientious.

For the last six months I have had a new a.s.sistant. His name is Leopold Lehmann. He knows everything better than I. He is the nephew of the deputy director. He calls himself a trainee. He likes to hear himself talk. Most of all he likes to talk about himself. As a result, I know the story of his life.

Leopold Lehmann, as he emphasizes, was drawn in a clumsy manner from the womb with a forceps. His head is misshapen, like a noodle. His nose also. He has gone through the usual illnesses. He enjoys a complicated form of syphillis. It has eaten holes the size of fists in Lehmann's body.

Leopold Lehmann wishes to give up his duties in the bank, to study theology. I believe that he has already given notice.

Lehmann a.s.sociates exclusively with theologians and with me. And with the deputy director.

He has sclerosis of the spinal cord.

Conversation about Legs

When I was sitting in the coupe, the gentleman opposite me said:

"n.o.body can step on your toes."

I said: "How so?"

The gentleman said: "You have no legs."

I said: "Is it noticeable?"

The gentleman said: "Of course."

I took my legs out of my backpack. I had wrapped them in tissue paper. And taken them with me as a memento.

The gentleman said: "What is that?"

I said: "my legs."

The gentleman said: "You have a leg up and yet get nowhere."

I said: "Unfortunately."

After a pause the gentleman said: "What do you think you're really going to do without legs?"

I said: "I haven't racked my brain much about that yet."

The gentleman said: "Without legs even committing suicide is difficult."

I said: "Yet that's a bad joke."

The gentleman said: "Not at all. If you want to hang yourself, first you've got to get up on the window sill. And who will open the gas jet for you if you want to poison yourself? You could only buy a revolver secretly through a servant. But suppose the shot misses?

To drown yourself you've got to take an automobile and have yourself carried down to the river on a stretcher by two attendants who have to haul you to the far bank."

I said: "That's for me to worry about."

The gentleman said: "You're wrong, I've been thinking since you've been siting here how one might get rid of you. Do you think that a man without legs makes a sympathetic picture? Has the right to live?

On the contrary, you create a terrible disturbance for the aesthetic feelings of your fellow human beings."

I said: "I am a full professor of ethics and aesthetics at the university. May I introduce myself?"

The gentleman said: "How are you going to do that? Clearly you cannot imagine how impossible you are, in your condition."

I looked sadly at my stumps.

II