The Birds of Baden-Baden [antikvár]

THE OPENING MOVE The tall windows of the café were always dirty and the harsh stage light from the square filtered through them with shades of warmed-over coffee. The old waiter with hardening of the arteries dragged his bad leg around like something that didn't belong to him and he went from table to table, a fragile, trembling household spider. The expresso coffee machine puffed away. The bored cigarette vendor sang between his teeth. The washroom lady got her kicks by reading a love story. The insistent cicada stacatto of the telephone went unheeded. The ive old men in the frieze at the back interrupted their phi-osophical gathering and spit, one by one, into their handkerchiefs. The card-playing priest came down from the game upstairs. The painted dolly-bird put on fine airs while making eyes at an unaccompanied gentleman with an evasive look. The blackened shoeshine boy had a live satyr underneath the grime and shoe polish and skin, and he didn't miss a trick from his ground level while polishing the shoes of a stariet from the Maravillas Music Hall. In the huge magic mirrors, room after room stretched away as far as the narrow passage to infinity and the sight of the reflected lamps was a surreal nightmare. The black and white marble tabletops formed a lopsided chessboard in which the squares seemed to have obeyed