Hobohemians

56Slowly he crawled along, breathing pain increasing. Nights and nights he seemed to be stumbling. Underneath him the Nord-Süd sped its burden of lung easy Berliners. When he came to the big circular place they were pouring out, some even running. Heinke stood looking at them as at miracles. He would never be able to walk upright again. A concave young painter, half of him thrust at the canvas, and impossible for women. The largeness of the square entered his chest with painful oppression. He had still to walk half-way round.

57Four flights of stairs and each tread gazed at like an unfinished painting. Then he was heard talking at midnight in his room, groaning. A Turk from nowhere knocked at the door and sat with him. A sister of the landlady’s came. Heinke said: “It is wind pressing against my heart making it stop. I can’t feel my heart at all.” She took his temperature: “You don’t eat enough. You shall have some proper meals here from to-morrow. What have you been eating?”

58Heinke couldn’t remember when he had last had meat: “But I shall be able to when my head is clearer. I had a plate of pea soup at Aschinger’s every morning.”

59The pea soup of Aschinger is chiefly responsible for keeping the studious souls of the Nationalbibliothek in poor bodies. But as a two weeks unvarying diet it is liable to make the most of the weaknesses of malnutrition. Heinke, as he got better, gave up his theories that he was consumptive, weak in the heart, hereditarily syphilitic with acquired congeners, the dying flourish of precocity. It was cataclysmic flatulence from erbsensuppe [pea soup], he decided. He would go home.

60He went. After two weeks he was granted an allowance to stay away indefinitely. Heinke chose Paris. With three hundred marks a month he was entitled to be a bohemian. He could afford it.

* * *

61As Heinke sat on the fifty-third stairtread in Berlin a man in a leather coat laid down a chisel in Prague. He laid it down to emphasise a finger. “I can’t make a mistake about that. It’s false. Not a hundred years old.”

62The director of the antique repair department of the Museum shrugged his shoulders. “I will bring him along to-morrow to see you. You convince him at the usual, or higher, fees.” He went out. The six workmen in the large shed put on jackets and hats. “Wait a minute,” said the man in the leather coat. “Does anyone want their money?” The workmen stared. “I can let you have it to-night if you want it.”

63“There isn’t a holiday to-morrow,” said one.

64“Well, you can have it if you want it. I happen to have it, that’s all.”

65“To-morrow good as to-day,” said five. One took his. The little man remained alone.