The Awakening of Spring Part 19

ILSE.

Because I have on my dancing slippers----Mother will make eyes!----Come to our house with me!

MORITZ.

Where have you been strolling again?

ILSE.

With the Priapia!

MORITZ.

Priapia?

ILSE.

With Nohl, with Fehrendorf, with Padinsky, with Lenz, Rank, Spuhler--with all of them possible! Kling, kling----things were lively!

MORITZ.

Do they paint you?

ILSE.

Fehrendorf painted me as a pillar saint. I am standing on a Corinthian capital. Fehrendorf, I tell you, is a gibbering idiot. The last time, I trod on one of his tubes. He wiped his brush on my hair.

I fetched him a box on the ear. He threw his palette at my head. I upset the easel. He chased me all about the studio, over divans, tables and chairs, with his mahlstick. Behind the stove stood a sketch;----Be good or I'll tear it! He swore amnesty, and--and then kissed me promptly and frightfully, frightfully, I tell you.

MORITZ.

Where do you spend the night when you stop in town?

ILSE.

Yesterday we were at Nohl's.----The day before with Bojokewitsch--Sunday with Oikonomopulos. We had champagne at Padinsky's. Valabregez had sold his "Woman Dead of the Pest." Adolar drank out of the ash tray. Lenz sang the "Child's Murderer," and Adolar pounded the guitar out of shape. I was so drunk they had to put me to bed.----Do you go to school yet, Moritz?

MORITZ.

No, no,----I take my leave of it this quarter.

ILSE.

You are right. Ah, how time pa.s.ses when one earns money!----Do you remember how we used to play robbers?----Wendla Bergmann and you and I and the others, when you used to come out in the evening and drink warm goat's milk at our house?----What is Wendla doing? I haven't seen her since the flood----What is Melchi Gabor doing?----Does he seem as deep thinking as ever?----We used to stand opposite each other during singing.

MORITZ.

He philosophizes.

ILSE.

Wendla came to see us a while ago and brought Mother some presents. I sat that day for Isidor Landauer. He needed me for the Holy Mary, the Mother of G.o.d, with the Christ Child. He is a ninny and disagreeable.

Hu, like a weatherc.o.c.k!----Have you a katzenjammer?

MORITZ.

From last night!----We soaked like hippopotami. I staggered home at five o'clock.

ILSE.

One need only to look at you.----Were there any girls there?

MORITZ.

Arabella, the beer nymph, an Andalusian. The landlord let all of us spend the whole night alone with her.

ILSE.

One only need look at you, Moritz!----I don't know what a katzenjammer's like. During the last carnival I went three days and three nights without going to bed or taking my clothes off. From the ball to the cafe, noon at Bellavista; evenings, Tingle-Tangle; night, to the ball. Lena was there, and the fat Viola.----The third night Heinrich found me.

MORITZ.

Had he been looking for you?

ILSE.

He tripped over my arm. I lay senseless in the snow in the street.----That's how I went with him. For fourteen days I didn't leave his lodgings----a dreadful time! In the morning I had to throw on his Persian nightgown and in the evening go about the room in the black costume of a page; white lace ruffles at my neck, my knees and my wrists. Every day he photographed me in some new arrangement----once on the sofa as Ariadne, once as Leda, once as Ganymede, once on all fours as a feminine Nebuchadnezzar. Then he longed for murder, for shooting, suicide and coal gas. Early in the morning he brought a pistol into bed, loaded it full of shot and put it against my breast! A twitch and I'll pull!----Oh, he would have fired, Moritz, he would have fired!----Then he put the thing in his mouth like a blow-pipe.----That awoke the feeling of self-preservation. And then----brrr!----the shot might have gone through my spine.

MORITZ.

Is Heinrich living yet?

ILSE.

How do I know!----Over the bed was a large mirror set into the ceiling. The room seemed as high as a tower and as bright as an opera house. One saw one's self hanging down bodily from heaven. I had frightful dreams at night----O G.o.d, O G.o.d, if it were only day!----Good-night, Ilse, when you are asleep you will be pretty to murder!

MORITZ.

Is this Heinrich living yet?

ILSE.

Please G.o.d, no!----One day, when he went for absinthe, I put on the mantle and ran out into the street. The carnival was over; the police arrested me; what was I doing in man's clothes?----They took me to the Central Station. Nohl, Fehrendorf, Padinsky, Spuhler, Oikonomopulos, the whole Priapia came there and bailed me out. They transported me in a cab to Adolar's studio. Since then I've been true to the herd. Fehrendorf is an ape, Nohl is a pig, Bojokewitsch an owl, Loison a hyena, Oikonomopulos a camel----therefore I love one and all of them the same and wouldn't attach myself to anyone else, even if the world were full of archangels and millionaires!

MORITZ.

I must go back, Ilse.

ILSE.