Free Fata Morgana by William Kotzwinkle Page A

up on me, perhaps. But there is one sure antidote for that poison, and you, voluptuous Fraulein, are it.
    He stepped from the bar, and as he did so she looked away, though but a moment before her gaze had been spinning its way toward him, spinning softly, with silken suggestiveness, promising to wrap him in gently, to change him from a wretched worm to a butterfly, for a moment at least.
    Her hair was golden, the gold bangles on her wrists glittering as she arranged a lock of hair over her ear and delicately brought her hand down in front of her, still pretending she didn’t see him approaching. The shape of her fingernails seemed to have claimed her full attention.
     
    * * *
     
    Her gown—black lace ribboned with the German tricolor of black, red, and gold—lay upon the floor. She stood in the middle of the room, removing her black stockings. Her legs were marvelous, slightly muscled in the calves, legs of a dancer, and she had the belly of a girl who loves her beer, a girl after my own tastes, thought Picard, taking her in his arms.
    She straightened, her stockings only half off, and gave him a deep wet kiss, lolling her tongue around in his mouth as he patted her gorgeous big heinie.
    “You have a liking for it, yes?” she whispered in schoolgirl French, and he answered in equally clumsy German that indeed he had a liking for it, in fact would like to own it.
    They stumbled toward the bed, his jacket and pants falling along the way. She mixed her kisses with other languid attempts at French, making each hesitant word a further intimacy, as she unbuttoned his undershorts, pulled them away, slipped her fingers beneath his undershirt, pulled it away, asking what brought him to Vienna and learning that he was a balloon enthusiast, come for a fair.
    A distant church bell struck the late hour. Through the window they heard the street watchman tapping the lampposts and singing his lonely verse, which she translated slowly for Picard, punctuating it with long searching kisses, her whisper blending with the watchman’s gruff warning:
     
    “Good people all, I pray take care  
    And speedily to bed repair  
    For midnight arrives, the day expires  
    So shut your door and quench your fires”
     
    “We’ve repaired to bed,” said Picard, caressing her huge breasts.
    “Yes,” she said gently, “and now you’ll quench my fire.”
     
    * * *
     
    When he left the room, she was sleeping, and he went quietly down the steps of her building to the street, where the night watchman was again passing in his grey frock coat, wearing a large tin hat and black garters. His pole was long and tipped with iron, and he looked Picard over carefully, speaking a caution.
    “I’m speeding toward bed,” answered Picard with a beatific smile, and the policeman understood that this lover was no threat to the night. He passed on, lightly-tapping his pole, and Picard went in the opposite direction, toward his hotel. Once more as he walked he felt the presence of the fairy child in him, a sliver of moonlight in his soul, haunting and distant. And with it he suddenly heard the mocking voice of Ric Lazare, saying, It is only a toy, monsieur.
     
     

 
     
     
    Themorning was grey, his cape windblown, and scattered snowflakes fell on the booths and stalls of the toy makers. But despite the cold, the atmosphere was warm,-the booths all heated by small stoves or open braziers, and the toys performed as usual on the counters and tables—dancing, drumming, opening and closing their eyes, making soft cries or squeals of delight when moved by the toy makers’ hands.
    “I saw a toy once, a very elaborate one; it was a machine that clicked out one’s fortune.”
    “If it’s fortune you’re after, sir, here is my husband’s version of the House of Wealth—a bank that takes your money in the most delightful way. Have you a coin?”
    Picard gave the woman a coin, which she deposited in the mouth of a tin dog, who stood upon a metal platform,