him with a shove. From then on, naturally, I often called people to me, a crook of my finger was enough, or a quick, unhesitating glance.
How sleepily and without effort I wrote this useless, unfinished thing.
Today I am writing to Löwy. I am copying down the letters to him here because I hope to do something with them:
Dear friend—
27 February. I have no time to write letters in duplicate.
Yesterday evening, at ten o’clock, I was walking at my sad pace down the Zeltnergasse. Near the Hess hat store a young man stops three steps in front of me, so
forces me to stop too, removes his hat, and then runs at me. In my first fright I step back, think at first that someone wants to know how to get to the station, but why in
this way?—then think, since he approaches me confidentially and looks up into my face because I am taller: Perhaps he wants money, or something worse. My
confused attention and his confused speech mingle.
“You’re a lawyer, aren’t you? A doctor? Please, couldn’t you give me some advice? I have a case here for which I need a lawyer.”
Because of caution, general suspicion, and fear that I might make a fool of myself, I deny that I am a lawyer, but am ready to advise him, what is it? He begins to talk, it
interests me; to increase my confidence I ask him to talk while we walk, he wants to go my way, no, I would rather go with him, I have no place in particular to go.
He is a good reciter, he was not nearly as good in the past as he is now, now he can already imitate Kainz so that no one can tell the difference. People may say he
only imitates him, but he puts in a lot of his own too. He is short, to be sure, but he has mimicry, memory, presence, everything, everything. During his military service
out there in Milowitz, in camp, he recited, a comrade sang, they really had a very good time. It was a beautiful time. He prefers to recite Dehmel most of all, the
passionate, frivolous poems, for instance, about the bride who pictures her bridal night to herself, when he recites that it makes a huge impression, especially on the girls.
Well, that is really obvious. He has Dehmel very beautifully bound in red leather. (He describes it with dropping gestures of his hands.) But the binding really doesn’t
matter. Aside from this he likes very much to recite Rideamus. No, they don’t clash with one another at all, he sees to it that there’s a transition, talks between them,
whatever occurs to him, makes a fool of the public. Then “Prometheus” is on his program too. There he isn’t afraid of anyone, not even of Moissi, Moissi drinks, he
doesn’t. Finally, he likes very much to read from Swet Marten; he’s a new Scandinavian writer. Very good. It’s sort of epigrams and short sayings. Those about
Napoleon; especially, are excellent, but so are all the others about other great men. No, he can’t recite any of this yet, he hasn’t learned it yet, not even read it all, but his
aunt read it to him recently and he liked it so much.
So he wanted to appear in public with this program and therefore offered himself to the Women’s Progress for an evening’s appearance. Really, at first he wanted to
present Eine Gutsgeschichte [A Good Story] by Lagerlöf, and had even lent this story to the chairwoman of the Women’s Progress, Mrs. Durège-Wodnanski, to look
over. She said the story was beautiful, of course, but too long to be read. He saw that, it was really too long, especially as, according to the plan of the evening, his
brother was supposed to play the piano too. This brother, twenty-one years old, a very lovely boy, is a virtuoso, he was at the music college in Berlin for two years (four
years ago, now). But came home quite spoiled. Not really spoiled, but the woman with whom he boarded fell in love with him. Later he said that he was often too tired