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This is where I’m going to have a hard time giving you what you need to know without giving you too much.
[From a very very long letter Adrian sends to Zeitblom two months after they parted. At first he responds to a letter from Zeitblom but then adds,] p138 “In requital thereof we will an we hold out counter thee with some right foolish facecies and horseplay which we fell into here that you too mayst have to wonder and to laugh thereat.” [And talks in general about his new home in Leipzig,] “...as the Lord hath already for Nineveh’s sin a knowing and humorous eye when He says excusingly: ‘Such a great city, therein more than a hundred thousand men.’ Thus maist thou think how among seven hundred thousand forbearance is counselled when in the autumn fair-times whereof I as novice had even a taste, more stram from all parts of Europe, and from Persia, Armenia, and other the Asiatic lands...” [with a bit about his studies in music with Kretschmar. Then, about his initial arrival in town,] “Still so early that I had on that same day looked over almost the whole town in the first flush of arrival -- this time really with a guide, to wit the porter who fetched my portmanteo from the station; hence at the last the farce and foolery of which I spake and may still reherse.”
[He wraps up his review of his current academic activities with,] p141 “Vale. Jam satis est. [Farewell. I am satisfied] Herewith I commit you to the Lord, may He preserve you and all clear souls. Your obedient servant, as they say in Halle. -- I have made you too curious about the jocus and jape, and what is afoot betwixt me and Satan; not much to it after all, except that porter led me astray on the evening of the very first day -- a base churl like that, with a strap round his waist, a red cap and a brass badge and a rain-cap, same vild lingo as everybody else here. Bristly jaw; looked to me like unto our Schleppfuss by reason of his little beard, more than slightly, even, when I bethink, or is it waxen more like in my recollection? Heavier and fatter, that were from the beer. Introduces himself to me as a guide and proved it by his brass badge and his two or three scrapes of French and English, diabolical pronunciation...
Item: we struck a bargain, and the churl shewed me everything, two whole hours, took me everywhere... Auerbach’s inn [Auerbach’s Cellar is a memorable setting from both Goethe’s and the older versions of Faust]
By little and little it gat dark, lights came on, the streets emptied, I was aweary and ahungered. I bade my guide draw to an ende by shewing me an inn where I could eat. “A good one?” he asks, and winks. “A good one,” quoth I, “So it be not too dear.” Takes me to a house in a little back lane behind the main street -- brass railing to the steps up to the door -- polished as bright as the fellow’s badge, and a lantern over the door, red as the fellow’s cap. I pay him, he wishes me “good appetite!” and shogs off. I ring, the door opens of itself, and in the hall is a dressed-up madame coming towards me, with carmine cheeks, a string of wax-coloured beads on her blubber, and greets me with most seemly gest, fluting and flirtin, ecstatic as though she had been longing for me to come, ushers me through portieres into a glistening room, with panelled tapestries, crystal chandelier, candelabra with mirrors behind them; satin couches, and on them sitting your nymphs and daughters of the wilderness [?], ribaudes, laced muttons all, six or seven, morphos, clear-wings, esmeraldas [explained next chapter], et cetera, clad or unclad, in tulle, gauze, spangs, hair long and floating, hair short with heart-breakers [I had to pull down my OED to learn that "heart-breakers" are curls. Also known as love-locks]; paps bare, thick-powdered, arms with bangles; they look at you with expectant eyes, glistening in the light of the chandelier.
p142 Look at me, mark wel, not thee. A hothouse the fellow, the small-beer-Schleppfuss, had brought me into. I stood, not showing what I was feeling, and there opposite me I see an open piano, a friend, I rush up to it across the carpet and strike a chord or twain, standing up, I wot still what it was, because the harmonic problem was just in my mind, modulation from B major to C major, the brightening semitone step, as in the hermit’s prayer in the finale of the Freischutz, at the entry of timpani, trumpets, and oboes on the six-four chord on G. I wot it now, afterwards, but then I wist not, I but fell upon it. A brown wench puts herself nigh me, in a little Spanish jacket, with a big gam, snub nose, almond eyes, an Esmeralda [reference to the Victor Hugo character? But see next chapter], she brushed my cheek with her arm, I turn round, push the bench away with my knee, and fling myself back through the lust-hell, across the carpets, past the mincing madam, through the entry and down the steps without touching the brass railing.
There you have the trifle, so it befell me, told at its length, in payment for the roaring corporal to whom you teach the artem metrificandi [the art of writing verse]. Herewith amen -- and pray for me... [And he goes immediately into the music he has been hearing and about playing Chopin.]
p143 With the exclamation: “Ecce epistola!” [Behold a letter?] the letter ends. Added is: “Goes without saying you destroy this at once...”
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