Excerpt
Time is nearing two o’clock in the afternoon when I return home. The lady in mourning is sitting in the salon; she is intent on speaking to me and nothing can convince her to leave, not even my wife’s explanation that her kitchen duties would require her to leave the visitor alone in the salon. Half surprised and half annoyed at such insistence, I join the waiting visitor. She recognizes me and reproaches me for not having divulged my identity earlier; her business is so important that I would not have gone to Dresden, but would have returned home together with her. She continues:
“My husband was a border guard and, besides that, a highly talented artist. During his last, long illness you gave him some of your books after our priest had asked you for them. His excitement about the contents inspired him to illustrate them and now, after his demise, I’ve come to sell you his works of art. In this way, I will receive the means to my upkeep and you will become even more famous than you already are. You’ll make the best deals, because when your works are published with such illustrations, the sales of these will amount to hundreds of thousands in the first year alone.”
“Dear lady, I don’t aspire to be famous; I pursue an entirely different, higher reason. I wish to be the friend of my reader, nothing more. What occupation did your husband hold before he became a border official?”
“Sergeant. He was hit over the head with a sword; the effects of which bothered him so much in recent times that he was laid off work.”
She reaches into her bag, pulls out a paper packet and hands it to me. It contains the illustrations. I open it and let sheet after sheet glide through my hands. They resemble the pencil exercises of a first year grammar school student. The annotations refer to names and situations that appear in my travel tales; were it not for that, I wouldn’t recognize what these ‘works of art’ are supposed to depict. Poor woman! Instead of being angry, I feel only sincere compassion for her. The blow of the sword had not only affected the skull but also the mind of her husband, even though the effects of the injury only became noticeable later on. And the inexperienced woman is convinced of his talent! While I think about how to tell her the truth without insulting and excessively disappointing her, she looks at me with restless, almost feverish eyes and pulls out a letter from the priest, addres-sed to me, no doubt to hasten my favourable verdict. I read it.
It is as I suspected. Through her suffering, she has become feebleminded and sees anyone who claims the drawings are worthless as her enemy; nothing has deter-red her from travelling here to sell the pictures to me for a high price. I have to be cautious and invite her to be our guest for a few days until I have time to consider the situation. She happily accepts and I go to the kitchen, which I only rarely do, to ask my less than impressed wife not to be cross at me.