The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein Part 8

Collapse of the famous dancer Lola Lala

A correspondent has wired us that the famed variety dancer Lola Lala, who also appears under the name Lo Lalala and whose maiden name is Leni Levi, had to be taken to a lunatic asylum, which caused a tremendous sensation. The pitiful woman had been found toward morning in a wheat field, stark naked in her birthday suit, crying bitterly and smoking a large cigar. Mr Gottschalk Schulz, a poet of sensitivity, has published a moving poem about this in the "Newspaper for Enlightened Citizens". It has a piquant attraction because--so it is rumored and probably correctly--the poet maintained quite warm relations with the poor and charming dancer. Therefore this beautiful poem will not be withheld from our readers:-The poem had the heading: Smoke on the Field. The priest didn't read it out, however, because it was too s.m.u.tty. Also it was not relevant.

Instead he read:

As I learn further from a special, authentic source in the late evening, the cause of the mental collapse of the dancer is said to have been a fright caused by a burglary that happened after an abortion that was carried out successfully. A court-ordered investigation is underway.

After this the priest started to talk about abortion by saying: "Human knowledge reaches its pinnacle in the realization that he is the most highly developed earthly being. No one can deny this." He didn't notice the deliberately exaggerated and suppressed laughter of a few boys. And he slowly continued. He condemned abortion as disagreeable to G.o.d from a religious and socio-political point of view. In conclusion, he said: "We are modern. We don't shrink from treating offensive questions with moral seriousness."

The only one who contradicted him was Peter Paulus. He fell--outwardly calm--into such a rage that he said: "If I were a doctor, Father, I myself would--". In reply the priest said heatedly: "Do you believe in G.o.d, Paulus?" And Peter Paulus said only: "No".

A few minutes before the end of the cla.s.s, he was expelled from the Hebrew lesson because of social democratic leanings and G.o.dlessness.

He left defiantly. Slammed the door.

When the widowed prison chaplain Christian Kohn had to give his only child, who was mentally ill and had heart disease, to an inst.i.tution, he adopted--n.o.body knows why--a little cripple. There was much gossip. The most obstinate rumor was that the cripple, Kuno, was a natural son of the chaplain. The mother was said to be the popular Trude, who had been convicted of manslaughter after shooting her disloyal pimp. Trude had been pardoned, with the rejoicing approval of the whole village, because it had turned out that she was pregnant.

It was claimed that the sympathetic chaplain had caused Trude's pregnancy. But this was not proved.

Kuno Kohn spent the half-awake first part of his youth in the dreary stone rooms and yards of the penitentiary. His adoptive father had little concern for the boy. He was absent for weeks at a time. Left in the care of a morose servant, whose main occupation was to manage the miserable financial affairs of the chaplain, and lacking sufficient care, lacking playmates, lacking stimulation and love, the crippled child could not develop. Remained always dwarfish. He slunk around, pale and dreamy. Intimidated and timorous. Toward evening, bold shadows and horrific noises teemed on the twisty stairs with their grated windows, and in the great gloomy halls and pa.s.sages.

A more robust boy would have ignored such peripheral things, if he had noticed them at all. But on Kuno Kohn the most insignificant thing left a deep impression, the most minor thing had meaning, and horrified him. Everywhere and from everything he feared disaster.

Nothing was familiar to him. The eternal fear made him into a little darting ghost himself, and gave his consumptive eyes a phosph.o.r.escent glow. If he was sent out late at night, perhaps to get milk or kerosene, he would pray in feverish fervor to dear G.o.d. He would come back breathless and white as chalk.

More than anything, Kuno Kohn was afraid of the thousand-fold darkness before falling asleep. In the past, a tiny lamp had been put into the room for him; the reddish melancholy glow calmed him a little. On the soft wall the strangest grimaces and battles appeared, but also tin soldiers marching and a delightful jumble of fairies and cake plates and queens, until sleep came. After a time, the chaplain decided not to allow any more such mollycoddling of the soul of his son. Kuno would have to live in the dark. Gone was the tiny bit of visibility. The innumerable incomprehensible events of chaos rolled about the little boy. More of the world pressed into the small bedroom of the humpback than the entire day had contained.

Kuno Kohn had lost the body that was supposed to lie in the bed: only fright and helplessness and longing were left. The worst was when the desolate indistinctness took on the shape of visions or touches.

The Kohn boy then cried out despairingly. Either the cry was not heard by anyone or it carried no clear meaning. In prisons there are always yells in the night from somewhere. Kuno often lay for a long time, until the unfathomable hole, which had so many incomprehensible contents, admitted the lively pictures that brought dreams and sleep: burglars, or perhaps a hackney cab journey in the sun, a visit to his little ill brother, a game with street children, the dear, sad angel eyes of Maria Muller, for whom he would gladly die.

The prisoners were Kuno Kohn's good acquaintances. Not the guards; these were indeed quite friendly to him but there was an instinctive suspicion underneath. On the other hand, the ruffians and gamblers, s.e.x killers and robbers, the most famous burglars, and most of the other distinguished old-established residents welcomed the little humpback warmly, by a slight nod of the head or almost imperceptible grin, whenever he came to watch with wide-open dreamy eyes the silent gray work. Only the fences, profiteers, confidence men, defrauders, swindlers, most of the bankrupts and some of the pimps, remained indifferent. In the course of the year, Kuno Kohn had made friends particularly with the youthful burglar Benjamin. The two often sat for hours together. If the guards looked the other way... Benjamin spoke enthusiastically to the humpback. Of sun. And freedom. And of the redemption of mankind. Kuno Kohn arranged Benjamin's secret traffic with the outside world and did various favors for his friend; he provided him with cigarettes, books, small tools. When once a volume of Goethe and a little cigarette ash were found in Benjamin's cell, Kohn was suspected. After the escape of the burglar, which happened shortly afterwards, which could have happened only with outside help, a message was sent to the clergyman. He forbade his son the company of the prisoners. The guards were not allowed to let him in any more.

The great problems that tormented Kuno Kohn constantly, as soon as he was able to get his thoughts together to some degree, were mainly death and G.o.d. At the age of four or five he did not believe in death, at least not in his own. And he prayed to the dear G.o.d daily before he lay down to sleep. "I am small, my heart is pure, no one shall live there but G.o.d alone". But if he had done something during the day that seemed sinful to him--and that almost always happened--he would add (sitting in bed or standing if it was particularly bad) long and remorseful monologues until he fell asleep, overfatigued, with fingers still folded and tears in his eyes. If darkness and fear came, he always prayed. Gradually his doubts increased, to the point where he had to believe in his own death and abandon his faith in G.o.d. When he started school, there began the fullness of suffering which some children find there.

NOTES ABOUT THE NOVEL

Lunatic asylum: Bryller, Lola.

Drowning in the sea: Kohn, Maria.

Suicide: Schulz, Paulus.

Surviving: Spinoza Spa.s.s, Laaks, Mechenmal.

I. Appearance in the schoolyard. Peter Paulus for Kohn, Laaks against him (Kohn had filled his pants, Max Mechenmal). Later, Kohn joining Paulus against Laaks. Jealousy scenes. Because of Laaks'

intrigues, Paulus fails the College Board Exam and shoots himself dead. Farewell letters (touching for Kohn, official funeral, Kohn runs away from it).

Senior teacher Dr. Bryller takes no action, even encourages Paulus, his favorite pupil, to kill himself: Kill yourself before it is too late (as long as you are still capable of it). It doesn't have any purpose, of course, but will give you something like satisfaction.

(G.o.d is a temporal phenomenon.)

The corpse was carried well-packed in a box to the graveyard, where it was buried for eternity under a cloakroom marker.

II. Scene Kohn, Laaks in bathtub.

Laaks made an attack on Max's femininity.--Laaks and Kohn meet. Kohn greets him, Laaks catches up. Invites him to visit. "No, Mr Laaks".

Kohn trembles--"Would you like to take a bath?"--"I have already bathed."--Moonlight s.h.i.+nes on the two in the bathtub. In hairy nakedness--his hairy legs, like a woman's--a man's man.

III. Scene in h.o.m.os.e.xual bar.

(You see, my boy, that's life--he pinched him tenderly on the bottom.)

IV. Abortion scene.

The variety dancer Lola Lala: The clever woman said jokingly: When women break down, they remain standing for a long time.--Farewell, young lady. Lola Lala, alias Lene Levi, runs as though insane.

V. Burglary scene at Lola's: --The professional burglar Benjamin, lying under the bed, didn't know what to think. His head shook and his skull hit a senseless bedpost, which gave off a fixed tone. Benjamin was frightened. The lamp fell over. The curtains ignited immediately.

Suddenly she (Lola Lala) also became frightened. Everything slurped up by licking fire. Ran out. Shut the door. Locked it. Twice.

Senseless. Suddenly, pitiful masculine shouts from behind the door: Help, help. She screamed: Murderer, murderer, murderer. Ran. Onto the street in the peace of the evening: People coming out of houses.

Helpless. She ran by all of them. Murderer, murderer... A crazy woman came up behind her. A dog catcher was able to grasp her.

Murderer, murderer. Took her in an open hackney cab and through the town. Murderer, murderer. Windows go up, cars stop. Running about.

Into lunatic section of the hospital.

In the meantime, burning room. Burglar Benjamin thras.h.i.+ng at the window: Help. Forbidden action. Help. One shouldn't become a social democrat that way. Wailing: a police trap, to let decent people burn in a fire. Help, help. Fire department comes. Help.

Water sprays him. From the frying pan into the fire. He can even jump right now into the river. Drowns.

When the half-decayed corpse was pulled from the water, the doctor, still drunk, began to make bad jokes. Dr. Bryller vomited.

All talking, thinking, writing is useless; a corpse pulled from the water, lying dead in front of you, ruins everything written with its terrible distortion. See how the face and the hands are rigid as though clamped in iron! As though they are screaming to get out of themselves!

VI. Lunatic asylum scene: the insane red-haired sister of Martin Muller (Maria).

"The earth is getting dark", said Maria, the insane red-haired sister of Martin Muller. (She loves her brother). She strokes little Kohn, but says: "I can love only saints". All around were the melodies of the evening, which conceal everything as with a silk veil: the green trees, the longing earth, the bench with the red-haired girl and the little humpback.

In the lunatic asylum: one inmate, a lady with hair already rather gray, said: "If one stops here too long, one stays."--A modern writer who imagines he is there only to study the milieu, but who has, in reality, a softening of the brain, etc.

VII. Kohn's first lover (on Laaks' order): Hysterical person, the bugs really crept around in the kitchen.

VIII. The end of Dr. Bryller.

IX. Schulz the writer and Kitty the cocotte.

(Kitty said "Not so loud" as Schulz was telling her about G.o.d.)

X. Lecture of the scholar Neumann:

Sensation: A barely sixteen year old scholar named Neumann speaks about maternity regulations and the bringing up of children--it doesn't seem to him the place to talk about fallen girls--women have understood that it is right and proper to stay where they belong--the misery of prost.i.tution--posed gestures. Voice. Raise the eyebrows.

I must express myself in extremes. I must decidedly condemn zionism as a special variety of prost.i.tution. Maternity regulations: The mother must be protected against her children (new sensational concept), a lady said.--She, a German specialist, contributed to the debate: "In the place where you have left your faith, there you must fetch it".

XI. Kohn's second lover: Teenager (in one hand she had an ill.u.s.trated astronomy text).