The Best Continental Short Stories of 1923-1924/The Pink Ass

by Jānis Ejerins

THE PINK ASS

By JANIS EJERINS

THE merry children of this world are wont to talk of the cafés and bars to which Fate introduced them in their youth and from which, after a time, it ejected them with the first line of care on their foreheads—that little, coffin-like line that is the first sign of a burial of our youth. Some compare these places with the treacherous rocks on which sirens sing and let no mariner sail by; others to the Divina Commedia, that Montmartre of former times, where each journey begins with Hell to end up with Heaven. He who has tasted of this experience has little to learn afresh in Riga, that typical city of the post-war period. Of all the follies of the big world, you will find in Riga only a pale and unattractive reflection. Married women and maids can safely let their husbands and lovers depart, well knowing they will return to them unharmed after a few hours’ absence. For the temptations of this city are grey and tasteless, its sins are drab, its drinking dens are dull. They do not even attempt to justify themselves by some artistic enterprise. All the greater is the confidence of the hosts in the stupidity of their guests: it is so great indeed, that they leave little material for pulpit condemnation. The barkeepers of Riga have become the most effective helpers of the local clergy.

Yet, there was one exception: the “Pink Ass,” a café that supplied half the work of that section of the police whose duty it is to watch over public morals. The little wooden house in the so-called Garden Quarter of the city lit up its lamps nightly in their setting of green foliage and poured its inviting light on the passers-by of three streets—on drinkers and teetotallers, on Jews and Christians, on children and grown-ups alike. On rainy, pitch-dark nights, it helped the adherents of the Blue Cross on their way to their amourous adventures, and with fine impartiality, assisted foreign diplomats in their attempts to think well of the municipal policy of the metropolis.

To be quite frank, one must confess that in those days the “Pink Ass” afforded the only means of street lighting in Riga. Just after the war, the mile-long streets, the whole town indeed, lay in the same hopeless darkness as the City Council. Only here and there the lamps of the cafés threw a streak of light; their only rivals, in painfully inadequate measure, being the weak lanterns of the cabs that wandered aimlessly about in the night, like the twinkling eyes of hunger-driven wolves. If some sardonic soul ventured to observe that it were better to let complete darkness reign than to confide street lighting to the bar lamps, mine host of the “Pink Ass” never failed in hardihood to reply: “We hang out our lights with the double purpose of showing the way hither to those who seek us and the way of escape to those who shun us!”

Not alone by this retort did he show his admirable sense of reigning conditions; his entire establishment furnished convincing evidence. The other bars were as like each other as ten consecutive roars of some well ordered wild animal, but the “Pink Ass” had a character of its own. The host had learned the profound truth, that it is the function of a café to supply those manifold deficiencies of city homes which those who inhabit them must suffer for the sins of those who designed them; so he saw to it that comfort and warmth were always to be had in his place.

On the same principle he had accumulated the most original collection of ladies imaginable. He had been guided in his choice less by regard for esthetic beauty than by appreciation of some oddity of expression and manner that gave each lady a peculiar personal charm. For it is well known that many prefer this sort of thing to the most regular Grecian profile.

It may be said with truth that, during the difficult aftermath of the war, it was to this idea that the establishment owed its salvation, to this or perhaps more accurately, to one of the ladies: Dulce Vanna.

It is, of course, well known that women and girls who take the veil abandon their family and baptismal names and on entering the convent, exchange them for another. The same process is frequently undergone by those who take the worldly veil and enter the bar, that chapel of the Devil that boasts of a ritual not wholly dissimilar to the other.

It follows that there is no real foundation for the belief that Dulce Vanna was a distinguished Italian, as might be supposed from her name; in point of fact she was a country bred, though not quite ingenuous girl from Lettgallen, by name Gela, to which a man of some education had in his day added his family patronymic. But this true knight and protector had been reported missing during the world war; she wore mourning for him for over a year. A good Catholic, one may be allowed to wonder slightly that she thereafter preferred the bar to the Carmelite house or a nunnery of some other order.

Doubtless personal taste and temperament play a decisive role in such decisions; sorrow may be drowned in wine as effectively as in prayer. It was here; on the kindly suggestion of a carbaret artiste, that she adopted her silly and illogical name.

Although the young widow was permanently in love, she could not be said to have become a worshipper at the shrine of the flesh. Instead of loving one man, she loved that great undefinable something that is called manliness, or rather masculinity. All the clients of the “Pink Ass” were to Dulce merely specimens of this wonderful, inexhaustible masculinity, and from that angle alone did she consider them. She allowed herself no more to fall in love with any individual specimen than a man who greatly admires some business firm would dream of falling in love with one of its representatives. In this way she testified to her respect for the memory of her late husband, and the policy represented from another point of view a precious asset for a grisette, for it preserved her from the temptation of foolish individual adventures. At times when her colleagues would wax furiously excited over some man or other she would remain quietly seated, and only became spurred to attention if a newcomer showed signs of pedantry—worthy of her interest. But when she did rise, the whole place wakened up, applause rang from every table and a murmur of “unsurpassable” ran round.

In an odd way she represented the heart of the café, through the heavy beats of which the life blood was pumped through the whole body of the place.

There are days when bleak winds blow and cold rain whips through the streets, and on such evenings there were seldom enough guests in the “Pink Ass.” The “ladies” sat and wearied on the stools, eagerly watching each opening of the door—though, to be sure, these were mostly due to the exit of clients driven out by a desire for sleep or a penury of cash. It was on just such an autumn evening that a belated, middle-aged guest appeared at the “Pink Ass.” He required much persuasion before he would take off his overcoat; then he took a seat, ordered a flagon of spirits and some swiss cheese and settled down to a slow drinking and listening to the howling of the wind in the outer darkness. Although the place was nearly empty, the ladies paid no attention to him: he looked too common-place. But when, half an hour later, he signified a desire for Dulce Vanna’s company, she did not refuse, but sat down at his table with imperturbable gravity.

“Care for a glass of wine?”

“Thank you, Sir, I should,” answered Dulce.

The guest drank spirits, and she wine. She cast a glance at his hands and noticed his finger nails were black; which did not please her. She reflected with a touch of anxiety: “T wonder where he has sprung from—hope he will not become too pressing!” But when the glasses had been emptied, the guest called for his bill. One whole minute elapsed ere he drew out his purse. Its contents did not suffice. He searched all his pockets, put together all they yielded, and paid up.

“Nothing left for you—nothing,” he remarked, with a smile in Dulce’s direction.

“Really?” she murmured in polite wonder. “Our guests are close-fisted.”

The stranger searched afresh, found a bluish red piece of paper and tendered it to her.

“My dear Sir,” she laughed, “what should I do with a lottery ticket? I am Luck in person!” Mechanically she put the paper back in her satchel perhaps to avoid throwing it on the floor, but she could not resist an exclamation:

“Fool—oh, what a fool!”

The guest went out and Dulce returned to her stool. “Just look at the like of him—but he must needs frequent a bar!”

Rain watered the panes unceasingly and permeated everything with its deadly melancholy.

For lack of something better to do, Dulce picked up an old newspaper. She had greater respect for things that had happened than things born of fancy, so the heading “Latest News” interested her more than the humourous serial. But true daughter of her time, she also paid attention to the more serious things. So, after devouring accounts of some tragedy of the sea, she would turn to the parliamentary drama.

Nature is in all things. The next day, no newspaper was required to help Dulce kill time. The evening fell quietly and wonderfully over the city, and droves of gallant customers saw to it that the bar was kept noisily lively. At the beginning, Dulce had sat by her employer; later, indeed almost into the morning hours, with a Polish diplomat.

She drank endlessly and absorbed compliments that would have warmed the heart of a future Queen of Poland.

“If these things you say are not flatteries,” she remarked, “they give me a right to expect that the cavalier I honour with my favours be not picked up in the gutter.”

“What do you mean by that?” enquired heatedly the young Pole.

“Oh, nothing much, my friend—no more than this: do you think you are able to jump over this table—in an orderly fashion, I mean?”

“How is such thing possible, fair one?”

“I wonder at your asking me such a question.”

After a while the man set to trying to accomplish the task, and all present had to confess that to a Polish diplomat nothing is impossible.

“I have great hopes,” said Dulce, “that after you have settled the Lettgallen question, they will transfer you to London. There have been diplomats here who could not even jump over the threshold in an orderly fashion.”

The whole place burst into drunken laughter. Dulce’s supremacy was unchallenged, and she picked out every evening some butt for her sardonic humour. Diplomats were succeeded by men of letters, artists, lawyers and even members of the Academy—beginning with tailors who had attained that dignity and climbing up to Professors. The band played the “Toreador” and challenged all present to combat—if not with bulls, then as a journalist somewhat vulgarly put it, with rams. Which comes to pretty much the same thing.

The café was in its heyday. Dulce had transformed it into a garden in the midst of which grew a tree of knowledge with apples she took care to provide. Like Eve she wandered through the garden, drawing from the tree poisonous draughts to present to melancholy friends. They came and went, these specimens of great Masculinity; she looked upon them for a moment and speedily forgot them. A playful courtesan, who founded cabarets instead of nunneries but reached to an intensity almost like unto a religious cult! Come, enjoy me, forget all that annoys and torments you! I wait upon your comings and goings! Ah—how I wait upon your going! For it is seldom one comes along on whom I feel disposed to shower further favour.

In the days of Lent, when men are intoxicated rather with the opening of the frozen waters and the sight of God’s first green leaves than with the prepared alcohol of man, there came quieter days for the “Pink Ass.”

Dulce complained: “I intended yesterday going to the seafront, but the moths have eaten up my summer dress. From this hour I am going to restrict myself to business men and hook myself on to a merchant.”

“They’re not the right ones,” retorted Lipsi, a little brunette with irreproachably waved hair and the feet of Terpsichore. “They usually prefer seeing us undressed!”

“Really? Well, whom would you recommend?”

“The best of all were a Rothschild who does not lift his winnings.”

“Speak more plainly,” commanded Dulce.

So Tipsi-Lipsi related some newspaper story of a first prize in a lottery which for some unknown reason had been left unclaimed by its winner. For a wonder, Dulce had neither read nor heard the story. She laughed aloud:

“Well, what about it? Perhaps he is dead.”

Then it suddenly occurred to her: “How could I have forgotten it? Strange!” Dulce recalled the lottery ticket she had received seven months ago from the stranger guest. She hastily searched her satchel, but found nothing there. “I must find it at all costs—I must satisfy myself of the point!” She thought, and reflected on the possible places at home it might be worth while searching. Thus is it sometimes when one’s dress tears or a button falls off from some awkward place and one must somehow find a usually worthless needle.

The next day the rumour spread about the “Pink Ass” that Dulce Vanna had won two hundred thousand.

“Stuff and nonsense!” scoffed the landlord, whom this rumour, if true, would chiefly affect.

“Nonsense is sometimes pretty, even of the stuff variety,” retorted Dulce. “Pity the caption is so commonplace: No.00567.”

That was merely the talk of her lips; in reality she was incapable of thought on the matter. This event had hit her with paralysing suddenness, like an unexpected, friendly box on the ears, which some would take as a thousand times manifolded caress and others as a dumfounding blow. Cruel pain and a cruel joy wrestle together till one or the other secures the upper hand or—which is mostly the case —till they both fall exhausted. But in this case there was a very solid residuum, which made the whole affair the more complicated. While her colleagues were wagging their tongues stiff discussing her and her future, Dulce sat as one in a trance, unable to master her excitement. Before her eyes surged the memory of an evening, foggy and cold—but rows of figures danced phantomlike in the mist. . . .

The customers were talking: “Dulce cannot grasp it—that a beggar should have made her rich.” The “ladies” countered: “Don’t sing out too soon—rich men will soon make her poor again!”

Dulce, who could not settle with herself, heard the talk of the others and it seemed to her they judged aright. “They understand—this is only money, and my money at that. But if any one thinks it is happiness—well, it just isn’t.”

She gave away part of the money to her friend, a girl dancer who, on going home drunk one night, had slipped and broken her leg. Some more she locked up in a drawer. With the rest she bought dresses and jewelry. And she did all this in a sort of half-awake state; if anyone had asked her why, she would have stamped her foot impatiently and cried out: “Well, why on earth not? What am I to do?” Sometimes she wanted to drown her thoughts in wine; at other moments she wanted to leave the café. But her feet seemed rooted to its floor, and she remained. She thought occasionally that these roots proceeded from the suddenness of it all and that one must wait till evening grew into morning and the unusual lapsed again into the usual. But the more she seemed to regain repose, the acuter grew the vision of that rainy autumn evening long ago.

Her colleagues spoke ever of a lucky chance that had come to her, but she felt there is nothing in this world that is mere chance. What the word is applied to, she thought, works far beyond itself, like the sun—or else stretches out its moist, sticky legs like a spider: “And I know nothing more, I don’t know whether in this case it is the sun or the spider.” So she spun her fancies and could reach no conclusion.

Mine host of the “Pink Ass,” for his part, recovered his smile: “The woman is not thinking of leaving. The fool! She has no idea how to profit by her new situation. If she were just the tiniest bit cute, I should have to shell out heavy.”

She really was not thinking of leaving, though her staying on failed to bring with it the pleasure she had formerly felt. She no longer challenged anyone to jump over the table. Somber and indifferent, she was a riddle to everybody. At such a time! Just at such a time!

Her colleagues joked: “Sure you’re not in love? Love ought to come with the dot.”

“What driveling nonsense!” No, no—there was no man, not one, for that sort of thing. Throughout these days there was but one face she recollected, from out all the mud and glass-clinking of a whole half year: that of the belated guest. That she saw with amazing sharpness.

And this was quite natural.

She saw the shadow of this man spread over the whole elfin, vivid background of the ground. She saw him come in, sit down, search all his pockets in a ridiculous way, pay up his modest bill, give her—good Heavens!—that lottery ticket, and go out in the night again, to carry his invisible burden. Before her eyes she had the vision of his longish, pale face, the deep but hearty eyes, the thin, supple fingers with which he lifted his glass slowly to his lips. True, his nails were a trifle unclean, but surely they have now been cleaned long since. . . . His suit seemed ill chosen for the late autumn, but surely now he has a new one. And he must have risen greatly in the world. That is why one sees him no more.

In these memories there lay something bitter, tormenting. From experience she knew that all memories are light and patchy: blood leaves behind it only the impression of its sinister colour. The past cannot torture, not even in the case of a criminal. The sting of conscience is not driven home by fear of the past, but by the terror of the future.

Yet, Dulce received from this incomplete past a distinct impression of torment. The acuter grew this impression, the more conscious she became that she was possessed of an insane craving to see her stranger once more, to look him up and down, to speak to him, even—a few words.

What few words? God alone knew that. Perhaps of excuse for having dubbed him a fool. That would be little enough!

Dulce closed her eyes and strove hard to forget everything else, to recall only his appearance, to rehearse her first words to him in case of a sudden meeting. Her first words—“Yes, what would I say? What? I would be silly, dazed; I would not know what to say; I would only cry out—no, not that! for Heaven’s sake not that!” The words rushed to her lips almost aloud, interrupting this strange rehearsal. “Is it possible? I experience something akin to gratitude, pity, curiosity. But nothing more—nothing. . . .For, in fine, I do not know him at all. I must say he was so very uninteresting—was he really? And after all it is possible he is no longer in existence. He might have been on any one of these ten ships that have gone to the bottom since then. He might have died in quite a natural way. And—above all else, I would have to cast all this money at his feet. Could I do that? Would I have strength enough left to do that? How could I put out my hand to him thereafter? Imagination, is it?” All this clever meditating achieved little. Someone had penetrated into that tiny laboratory of hers that men call the soul and was working there without her direction. That someone would have been but a poor workman had he not used as his tool that most mysterious and wonderful of all forces: unconscious, unexplainable love.

When, amid her sad sighs, Dulce reached this certainty, she sought no longer to conceal that she was waiting for her stranger.

Her colleagues smiled sympathetically, with an appearance of pity, but at the bottom they were quietly very pleased. They had lost a rival who, though she could excite the guests in her own serious way, would henceforth leave to them the profit of exploiting that excitement. Mine host was the only one who reassumed an anxious face. He had his reasons: a well-known and rich man about town had complained that there sat a few weeks past a veritable Madonna in the bar, but that if it was Mr. Markwardt’s (such was the landlord’s name) intention to conduct a prayer meeting on his premises, he and his friends would migrate elsewhere.

The landlord did all in his power to avert such a calamity. He had enough experience to know how to choose the means that most surely led to his ends, and on many occasions Dulce really submitted. In these cases her liveliness surpassed all previous experiences; she not only contrived to kindle the eyes of sleepy topers, but her vitality infected even the curtains on the windows and doors that exhaled the scent of long-spilled wine. “Such an evening is worth a whole week!” thought the barkeeper, who gradually accustomed himself to Dulce’s moods. As a business man, he naturally wondered why in the world she stayed on, also why, despite her somberness, she so adorned herself.

All the accustomed topers still came to the place, but they did not recognise their old Dulce. Nervously she chased the beggars away who, through the negligence of the waiters, sometimes penetrated to the inner door and prayed for kopecks.

“There are no kopecks here!” she would shout, stamping her feet. “There are only roubles here, hundreds and thousands of roubles! Away with you!”

Having thus relieved her strained nerves, she would sit down and not rise again the whole evening.

Towards the end of August, when the summer holiday trippers started coming back, likewise the beggars singing in numbers to the music of barrel-organs, barkeepers have much ado. It is quite a false popular impression that relief funds are more burdened these days with beggars than are first-class restaurants. From early morning on, these people try to penetrate into the cafés; they frequently come twice a day. If one concludes in the end that they are just barely supportable, it is because they are the only Gentiles in the city who will bear curses, shouts and blows with equanimity.

The “Pink Ass” derived some benefit from Dulce’s active assistance in driving away this pest. She developed a remarkable energy in this pursuit, for she was in such a mood that she would have loved to throw the whole world out of the door.

“Dulce!” someone addressed her one evening, “see, the long-lost knight is there! Look at him!”

She rose lightly, gladly, as she had been wont to do in former days when invited to sit at the table of some wealthy client. A man stood at the outside door and held a torn rouble note in his outstretched hand. What did he want? In tatters, unshaven, he leaned against the portal and made no sign of intending retreat.

“Get out!” shouted Dulce, seizing his hand and pushing him out of the door.

The rouble note fell on the floor.

At that moment she encountered the soft, begging eyes of the hobo and staggered back into the room. The people laughed cruelly. When she opened her eyes again, the door wide open, but the unshaven man was no longer there. Only the rouble note lay on the floor. Dulce ran out to fetch back the stranger, but there was nothing outside but the clear and cool air of a September night.

On her return even her colleagues applauded, and all present who knew something of the matter, realised that Dulce had just driven her loved one out of the door.

The applause could not intensify her sorrow; she dragged herself into the backroom and collapsed on the sofa.

Had anyone been eavesdropping, he would have heard a despairing, dreamy, choking voice crying repeatedly:

“This is the last straw! Had I only not driven him out with my own hands!”

She became unrecognisable after this; yet she remained in the café till the first rainy night, when she suddenly disappeared without anyone noticing.

The “Pink Ass” carried on for a while, living on its reputation. But to the joy of the police and of all three crosses—the White, the Blue and the Red—it started to die away and soon closed up.

Now a Jew has settled down in part of it, and sells harness and such like to the public at large and morphia to his acquaintances—all “at purchase price.”

Nothing definite is known as to Dulce’s fate. A former habitué of the “Pink Ass” thinks he saw her once, entirely down at the heels, with a man in similar plight. Someone else maintains a different story: that he had caught a glimpse of her in an elegant carriage. But since both informers had only seen her back, one may give them what credence one wants to. The second tale is perhaps the likelier; but there is possibility that neither the one nor the other is true. It is somewhat difficult to ascertain the facts with certainty, for in our modern times no one can see the dead.