Free The Hustler: The Story of a Nameless Love From Friedrichstrasse by John Henry Mackay Page B

again held the warm hand in his own.
    “Will you be here on this bridge tomorrow afternoon at a quarter past five, Gunther, and wait for me? I’ll come from work around five. Unfortunately I can’t come any earlier. But about a quarter past five I’ll be here. And you will be too, won’t you?”
    The gray eyes—they appeared now more gray than blue—looked up at him.
    It sounded quite earnest, what he said: “If I’ve promised to come, I will come!”
    They shook hands again and parted. The younger walked away with quick and light steps, and without looking around, but the older immediately stopped and looked after the small figure which disappeared around the corner. How beautifully he walked!
    It seemed to him he should rush after him. Call him back. Say something more to him. Something important. Something forgotten. Much more. But he did not. He had to use force to tear himself from the spot on which he was standing.
    *
    He looked at his watch.
    It was not yet eight. They had been together hardly longer than an hour. What an hour! Or had it all been only a dream?
    He felt unable to return to his room.
    The evening was so lovely after the hot day. Now came the cool of evening.
    He walked slowly to the “Zelten.”
    He found his old place, unoccupied as always.
    He had seen him again!
    What he had no longer hoped for, what he had almost buried and forgotten, had become reality—incomprehensible, but undeniable reality!
    He had found him again. He had sat opposite him. He had held his hand in his own, just a moment before.
    The fleeing shadows of a fleeting moment had taken on tangible form— lived!
    Did that picture-become-life hold what its appearance promised?
    His senses, caught in the spell of those eyes, in the sound of that voice, which he had heard for the first time, in each movement of those shoulders and hands—his senses affirmed the question. His reason understood nothing yet and still tried to resist.
    Now if he tried to visualize that face again, he had to succeed. For it had not been one minute, not just one second, in which the boy had shown up and disappeared again—no, he had seen that face before him a full hour, close enough to touch. With a single movement of his hand he could have reached out to it, held it, caressed it.
    He wanted to call it back before him.
    He tried to do it by laying his hand over his eyes, as he did when nothing was supposed to intrude between him and his thoughts.
    He saw it: those eyes, whose color he was unable to name and which appeared to him unfathomable—were they gray, were they blue, were they both? Did not a green-gold gleam sometimes glimmer in the pupils of those eyes, with their strikingly long lashes and the light lines under them? The soft, smooth cheeks—did they show dimples when he smiled? (But he had not smiled a single time!) The light brown hair, thick and uncombed over the narrow and not very high forehead. The full mouth with its—as it seemed to him—no longer quite so red and fresh lips as before; and the not quite regular, but white, rows of teeth.
    He saw the face before him again, and recalled what had especially struck him. Often, almost always when questioned and before answering, the upper right corner of the boy’s mouth made a light twitch, so that a tooth became visible. That was so peculiar, but also so attractive.
    He saw all this before him and knew now, as he let his hand fall again, that he had never in his life seen anything more charming and infatuating than the face of this boy (named Gunther)!
    Then he also tried to visualize his form: the boyishly slim, still undeveloped and so tender form, which yet had nothing at all girlish about it; the thin neck, the slender shoulders—and he saw over and over again those hands with their slender fingers, which were quite extraordinarily beautiful for such a boy. Finally, he recalled his walk, that light, careless, today somewhat tired walk.
    And he knew at the same time that he