Free Tubutsch by Albert Ehrenstein Page A

not one of them trimmed his moustaches in the English fashion. An observation whose importance for science can only be compared with one which I recently arrived at after unspeakable difficulties. Namely that not one single mammal is coloured green.
    As to whether that particular policeman came by his odour from a servant-girl or from some other fault of his own . . . I lacked the courage to ascertain. And nothing became of the treatise De odoribus polyporum. I didn't dare ask him. For such a remarkable law officer, an officer of the law who smelt of roses, might well have read "Crime and Punishment," even if not "Raskolnikov." And knowing what a thrilling sensation many a criminal experiences at the idea of torturing himself and playing hide and seek with the authorities, he might simply have arrested me as some wrong-doer circling the showplace of his misdeed. And I would be faced with having to make my confession, the shameful confession of my innocence.
    A cowardice similar to that with the policeman also hindered me in getting to the bottom of other mysteries, the sensing and pursuit of which is my sole occupation and interest in life. On my forays I often passed by an old greengrocer, a woman in her middle years with a coarse appearance and a down to earth way of expressing herself. She deals mainly in green peas. She bestowed a customer, who had sampled her ware and left shrugging his shoulders without making a purchase with appellations which, in their just and multifarious nature, were not second to those given to an oriental ruler. But an old sparrow nibbled at the peas every day unpunished, was never chased away, pecked at the pods and banqueted on the fruit, and I was never able to summon up the courage to ask the vegetable dealer whether or not she was a widow. For there is no escaping the thought: the sparrow is none other than her deceased spouse who comes and visits her and — oh omniscient unconsciousness — is fed by her!
    Thanks to my timidity I shall never get to the bottom of this question . . .
    Likewi se the sign above the cobbler's: "Engelbert Kokoschnigg, master shoemaker. At the sign of the Two Lions. Established 1891." Universal riddles are hard to solve. For weeks on end I racked my brains in vain; why did the esteemed craftsman display a sign which was only befitting for an innkeeper? Had the contracting of marriage, which had presumably coincided with the founding of this business, been lauded in the form of this encroachment, so that one of the roaring lions was the cobbler's wife? Or had a world famous lion-tamer visited Vienna that year, drawing these citizens along with him in the wake of his fame?
    Should I wish to put an end to this unbearable dilemma, by interviewing the master craftsman in person, I would necessarily be obliged to have him make me a pair of shoes. And that in turn, quite apart from my ever more chronic lack of the customary legal tender, would be black treason against my own personal shoemaker, old Peter Kekrevishy, who has so often whiled away my time with his tales. All well and good, both he and his handiwork have a somewhat old-time charm about them, he still greets me with: "Good day to you!" and when I ask him for something he says: "Yes, my heart!" He is as kindly as the canary which overhears us from its coconut shell, interrupts us with its song and then rewards itself by directing a peck of its beak to its sugar. And the cobbler's tales are also like a song, like the quiet song of resignation. Klausenburg is his birthplace, he finished the lower school there, and was the best pupil when his father died. Then his guardian, a butcher, did not allow him to continue his studies. The lad had to help at the chopping block during his vacations, and when he applied for the high school, the principal would not have him since his fellow pupils would be forever teasing someone who did the meat round, and the decorum of the school had to be safeguarded . . . The guardian